Action Alerts: Animal & Environmental Advocacy

1Sky: Fax Your Senators: Pass a Strong Clean Energy Bill!

Animal Rights @ Change .org: Lucky, Tina, Jewel, and Queenie: Speak Up for These Elephants

Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR): Write a Letter to the Editor in Support of the AETA 4 and Our Civil Liberties

Corporate Accountability International: Tell Coke CEO Muhtar Kent to tell us where Dasani comes from!

CREDO Action: Tell Vilsack: Don’t log Tongass National Forest!

DawnWatch: Wonderful NY Times Magazine cover story on whales — 7/12/09

Defenders of Wildlife: Help End Aerial Wolf Killing: Urge Your Representative to Co-Sponsor the PAW Act

Defenders of Wildlife: Join Jeff Corwin to Help Save Wildlife Threatened by Global Warming [American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454)]

Farm Sanctuary: Don’t All Egg-Laying Hens Deserve to Stretch Their Wings? [California AB 1437]

Farm Sanctuary: Michigan: Hurry – Help Keep the Fox Out of the Henhouse [HB 5127 and HB 5128 / SB 654 and SB 655]

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As a participant in the first two annual Blog Action Days (environment and poverty), I received an invite to participate in today’s Summer of Social Good simultaneous blog post project. At 12 PM EDT, the following post – “10 Ways to Support Charity Through Social Media” – will go live across 300 or so blogs. (Naturally, I’m wee bit late!)

While the authors encourage each blogger to edit the post to better reflect her blog’s focus, I’ll admit that I haven’t had a chance to remix it, not as fully as I would have liked, anyhow. I have included a few notes here and there, though, in brackets for clarity.

Besides, with a little bit of creativity of reinterpretation, each of the ten tips can easily be applied to animal advocacy efforts!

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This post is a collaboration between Mashable’s Summer of Social Good charitable fundraiser and Max Gladwell‘s “10 Ways” series. The post is being simultaneously published across more than 100 blogs.

Social media is about connecting people and providing the tools necessary to have a conversation. That global conversation is an extremely powerful platform for spreading information and awareness about social causes and issues. That’s one of the reasons charities can benefit so greatly from being active on social media channels. But you can also do a lot to help your favorite charity or causes you are passionate about through social media.

Below is a list of 10 ways you can use social media to show your support for issues that are important to you. If you can think of any other ways to help charities via social web tools, please add them in the comments. If you’d like to retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

1. Write a Blog Post

Blogging is one of the easiest ways you can help a charity or cause you feel passionate about. Almost everyone has an outlet for blogging these days — whether that means a site running WordPress, an account at LiveJournal, or a blog on MySpace or Facebook. By writing about issues you’re passionate about, you’re helping to spread awareness among your social circle. Because your friends or readers already trust you, what you say is influential.

Recently, a group of green bloggers banded together to raise individual $1 donations from their readers. The beneficiaries included Sustainable Harvest, Kiva, Healthy Child, Healthy World, Environmental Working Group, and Water for People. The blog-driven campaign included voting to determine how the funds would be distributed between the charities. You can read about the results here.

You should also consider taking part in Blog Action Day, a once a year event in which thousands of blogs pledge to write at least one post about a specific social cause (last year it was fighting poverty). Blog Action Day will be on October 15 this year.

[If daily blogging sounds like too much of a hassle, you can also volunteer to guest post at a larger group blog. If you have a certain area of expertise - say, managing feral cat populations - offer to share your knowledge in a series of narrowly focused posts.

Whether you author your own blog or not, consider joining the community as a regular reader and commenter. Many of the larger blogs have active and thriving readerships, taking discussions to the next level. If you regularly read non-AR blogs, this can be an excellent opportunity to inject your animal activism into other areas of your life. For example, don't be afraid to call out a blogger you otherwise respect for engaging in speciesism. - Kelly]

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Guarded *happydance*.

Thanks to all who contacted LAAS to demand clemency for Stu! Thus far, it seems to have worked; Stu’s upcoming date of execution was stayed, and though he’s not out of the woods yet, it looks like the red tape’s being cleared for his eventual release. The next LAAS meeting is scheduled for 7/27, so keep an eye out for further updates.

(Vegan) cookies for everyone!

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Kinship Circle – info [at] kinshipcircle.org
Date: Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 8:55 PM
Subject: Update – A Chance for Stu!

KINSHIP CIRCLE PRIMARY / PERMISSION TO CROSSPOST

7/13/09- UPDATE: A Chance For Stu!

FULL STORY: Board of Animal Services moves to amend L.A. Code to free Stu!

Dear Kinship Circle Supporters:

We’ve followed Stu’s saga since 2005. Today, the fate of this wrongfully impounded, non-dangerous dog hinged upon the Los Angeles Board of Animal Services Commissioners (7/13/09) meeting.

If Stu hadn’t made it on today’s agenda, his euthanasia date would have remained 7/23/09 — as circulated in our last alert: 7/5/09: Stu Dies July 23. Stop Them. Single-custody dog cases are not ordinarily the type issues covered in KC alerts. Stu is different. His case is so glaringly unjust.

On 6/18/09 we asked you to flood Los Angeles offices with pleas for Stu’s Life. You did. On 7/5/09 we urged you flood ‘em again in order to repeal Stu’s 7/23/09 execution date — despite testimony from acclaimed animal experts that Stu poses no threat to humans. You did.

Bottom line: As of today, there is no euthanasia date for Stu. Politics run thick so we can’t claim victory yet. But, things look good for Stu!

“We Win! I Think… Much mention was made of full email boxes and messages from people all over the world!” Jeff de la Rosa

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As much as I’d like to write a post today – I have two book reviews and two sex/meat type posts on the back burner – I’m afraid I’m utterly exhausted after a day spent vacuuming, scrubbing, washing and dusting. Ozzy’s room alone took me a few hours to clean; I don’t give it a thorough scrubdown very often, and so it was starting to resemble a giant, slimy hairball, no lie. And oh, the litter!

Luckily, though, I have a new guest post up at Change.org. My original title was “The Not-So-Curious Case of the Absent Referent,” but Stephanie and I agreed that it was a little too academic, so we came up with “Women, Cows, Speed Bags, and Steaks: One of These Things Is Not Like the Others” instead. Check it out here, and leave a comment if you’re so inclined.

Before you head over there, though, take a stab at the riddle: which of those things is not like the others, and why?

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Update, 7/15/09:

Here’s a photo of the loaf. It actually held up much better than I expected; even though the center isn’t fully cooked, the beans and peanut butter are sticky enough to bind it together. And the dogs love it! Once this dish is finished, I think I’ll try another loaf concoction, but with mashed tofu instead of beans.

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In the days before delicious and vegan dog food blogs, I collected my favorite recipes in a three-ring binder. Two of ‘em, actually: one for the humans, another for the dogs. The dogs’ binder is literally twice as large as the humans’. Priorities, people, priorities.

(Sadly, Ozzy doesn’t get any home-cooked food, let alone a binder, since I’m not at all comfortable cooking for a cat. Technically, he’s “Shane’s cat,” as the husband adopted him well before I came into the picture. Thus, I can all-too-conveniently delegate/relinquish all food- and health-related decisions re: Ozzy to the Mr. Consequently, Ozzy is the only omni in the house. End tangent.)

Anyhow, I’ve been wanting to mix their menu up a little lately, so last night I pulled out the doggeh binder in search of recipes. Instead of following any one recipe verbatim, I decided to veganize the “Hearty Hound Loaf” from the Three Dog Bakery Cookbook. Naturally, I also had to rename the dish; “Have-a-Heart(y) Hound Loaf” struck my fancy since, unlike the original recipe, mine does not include the corpses of other animals (in this case, turkeys).

Actually, to say that I merely veganized the recipe isn’t wholly accurate; more like I used it as a starting point to develop my own loaf-like dish. Here, the cooked and mashed beans act as a stand-in for “ground turkey”; the peanut butter replaces the tomato paste (though this is optional); and Liquid Smoke is the main spice, as opposed to sage and garlic. And did I mention that I quadrupled the original?

I considered adding some Vegedog to the mix – but it’s got an awfully strong smell, and I wasn’t quite sure if/how it would change the taste of the loaf. I purchased a small trial size of the Vegedog a few years back, and it’s been sitting in the back of my cupboard ever since. I haven’t a clue what to do with it, and the accompanying recipes aren’t much help.

For starters, the serving sizes are huge! The Soy Kibble recipe, for example, calls for 33 cups of whole wheat flour, 14 1/8 cups of soy flour, 2 3/4 cups corn meal, 1 cup yeast powder, and 1/3 cup baking powder! Who has that much flour on hand!? Plus, I already have vegetarian (possibly vegan; DelMonte has yet to return my emails) dog kibble – I don’t need to make my own. The food I do make, I use to “dress up” the kibble and add some variety to their meals. So crazy massive serving sizes of diy kibble, not so helpful.

Readers, help a doggy mama out! How do you use Vegedog?

And I know I’m probably rambling at this point, but a word on dried beans. For a long time, I refused to use them, opting instead for the canned stuff. I assumed (wrongly, it turns out) that 1) dried beans would be a huge pain in the ass to prepare; and 2) they couldn’t be all that much cheaper than the canned stuff.

In point o’ facts, dried beans aren’t all that much of an inconvenience; really, they just require a little foresight. (I soak mine the night before I plan to use them.) Price wise, 16 oz. of dried beans cost roughly the same as 16 oz. of canned beans. But when you do the math – a 16 oz. bag of dried beans yields 6 cups of cooked beans, while a 16 oz. can of beans equals a mere 1.5 cups of beans (!) – the dried beans are a steal!

Plus, no added salt, which is a huge plus, as Kaylee was diagnosed with a heart murmur on her last trip to the vet. He can’t say for sure that a low-sodium diet will keep her ticker from getting worse, but if there’s even the slightest chance it’ll extend her life, I’ll do it. (We switched to dried beans the next shopping trip after her diagnosis.) She’s like a second mother to me – my canine mom, if you will. Sweetest old lady you could ever hope to meet. I only wish we could have adopted her earlier, before she became elible for an AARP membership, and before her old “owners” did such a number on her. But I digress. Yet again.

Moral of the story: dried beans, not so bad.

Anyway. The husband went to Vegas for TAM7 this weekend, taking my good camera with him. The backup’s on the fritz, so unfortunately, I don’t have a photo for y’all. Sucks. I’ll try to snap one on Monday, though it probably won’t be very pretty. (I expect the loaf to crumble when I transfer it to a storage container.) Next time, maybe.

Instead, I leave you with pictures of Kaylee, hiding in the bathroom cabinets during the 4th of July fireworks display/Armageddon. (That’s what it must have felt like for the dogs, anyway – doubly so since the park where the display is held sits only two properties away from our place.) Peedee’s in a few of the pictures, too, but I think he was just keeping the old lady company.

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Action Alerts: Animal & Environmental Advocacy

Alaska Wilderness League: Urge science in Arctic fishing decision

AVAAZ: Join the call for a strong climate treaty!

Center for Biological Diversity: Help Protect the Grand Canyon From New Uranium Mining

Center for Biological Diversity: Speak Up for a Strong Endangered Species Act Today

Earthjustice: President Obama, Protect America’s Roadless National Forests

Ecological Internet / The Rainforest Portal: Action Alert: Swiss Francs Threaten Indonesian Rainforests

Ecological Internet / The Rainforest Portal: Tell Papua New Guinea and British Royalty: Climate Solutions Have No Place for Continued Industrial Primary Forest Destruction

Farm Sanctuary: Ask Your Representative to Sign On to End Cruel Combat Training

Farm Sanctuary: Tell the USDA You Want to Know How Animals Are Raised

Farm Sanctuary: Don’t All Egg-Laying Hens Deserve to Stretch Their Wings? [California]

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Because I’m a crazy awesome doggy mama, I’m always on the lookout for toys and treats with which to spoil my dog-kids. So when I saw this recipe for banana “Ice Cream” at It’s a Vegan Dog’s Life, I knew I wanted to try it.

But, alas! – We don’t own any ice cube trays! (Drats, foiled again.) Ice cube trays are now on my shopping list, somewhere between plastic canisters and pastry flour, but some good that does me today.

Instead, I decided to try freezing banana slices as a quick fix. The dogs used to love chewing on plain ole ice cubs, but we had to put the kibosh on that when one of Rennie’s teefies came loose. (“Too much hard chewing,” admonished the vet.) That, and I’ve heard talk on the internets that ice cubes (and extremely cold, icy water) can cause digestive problems in dogs. Possibly this is an urban legend; but I thought I’d throw it out there, just in case.

When frozen, bananas aren’t nearly as dense and hard as ice cubes, so they make for a nice, cold snack on a hot summer day. A nice, cold snack that won’t snap your furkid’s teeth in half! Plus, you can always half-freeze the slices or let them thaw a little before serving. Don’t let them thaw completely, though, as freezing and thawing changes the banana’s cell structure, such that a frozen-and-defrosted banana becomes very mushy and gooey.

Take it from me; I learned the hard way (naturally!):

Mushy or not, the dogs still gobbled ‘em up.

In human food news, last night I tried out Vivacious Vegan’s Best Brownies Ever. Super-yummy, and very easy to make. It’s a vegan recipe, so no pesky egg or dairy substitutions. Which actually makes this recipe easier than a boxed mix, even. I have a horrible track record with brownies – somehow, I always manage to burn them – but even I couldn’t mess this one up.

As you can see, I used Dandies marshmallows in place of the walnuts. It was a risky choice – given my aforementioned ineptitude at brownie baking, and Dandies’ official status as a precious natural resource (shinier than diamonds, more valuable than a brick of gold, I tell ya) – but in the end, it totally paid off. Vegan win!

(One suggestion should you choose to try this recipe with Dandies, or any vegan marshmallows, for that matter. Fold the marshmallows into the batter last thing, preferably as you’re pouring the batter into the baking pan. This will keep the Dandies from browning and/or burning before the brownies are done baking.)

That’s my Friday food blogging. What have y’all been up to in the kitch?

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Updated, 11/18/09: Ben @ Suicide Food has an absolutely pornirific take on McCormick’s sexy fish centerfold.

It’s been a few months in the making, but here’s entry No. 2 in the “Sexy Meat” series. This set of advertisements from McCormick is unique in that it features explicitly female and male “meat.”

Let’s start with the female, who is represented by a flirtatious fish (again with the fish, oy vey!).

The ad above features an obviously female fish: she has oversized, cartoonish eyes; long, lush eyelashes (seemingly curled, even); and wispy fins, one of which she touches to her lipsticked, collagen-enhanced lips in a flirtatious gesture. She rests, splayed out, on a platter, as if being presented for your pleasure and consumption. Not as if; exactly like. Her tail is raised in the air, giving the appearance of an arched back (or raised buttocks? It’s hard to tell; she’s a fish, after all!). An anonymous, faceless consumer – also obviously female – hovers above, pouring a stream of McCormick’s mustard on the fish’s head. The scene vaguely resembles a, ahem, money shot.

Though not relevant to determining her gender, it’s worth noting that the fish’s skin is gruesome in appearance, to say the least. She appears to have grilled or roasted, to the degree that her scales are almost unrecognizable as such; they’re dark tan in color and even bear dark burn marks from the grill. And yet, she seems so happy and…aroused.

The text reads, “Tu comida se va a poner más buena,” which Google translates into “Your meal will bring more good”…though I’m guessing that’s rough at best.

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Liberation BC’s newly liberated, man-size duck needs a name!
 

 
He – well, I’m assuming he’s a he, due to the aforementioned manly stature – is Canadian and a former prisoner of a foie gras operation, so perhaps that will give you some ideas.

Me? I positively suck at this sort of thing. My first, last and only decent suggestion was “Heart-Shaped Box” for the name of a vegan bakery. I forget who ran that contest. (PETA, probably.)

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LGBT Compassion

One of the newest additions to the “Intersections” category on my blogroll, LGBT Compassion is a

coalition of San Francisco Bay Area gay animal advocates (and some non-gay friends) working to promote awareness of animal welfare, health, environmental, and civil rights issues within our community – along with any other important social issues that we feel strongly about.

We feel that the LGBT community, having experienced discrimination, oppression and suffering ourselves, having special health issues, and often having unique bonds with companion animals, should be open to learning and helping others who may not be able to speak up for themselves – whether human or non-human.

Their motto: Fighting oppression and discrimination for all. Love it.

I first learned of the group through its investigation into San Francisco’s live animal markets, where chickens are kept and displayed for sale in plastic bags (!). If you haven’t yet, definitely go check ‘em out.

PETA Asia-Pacific: Urge Egypt’s Prime Minister to Stop Cruel Pig Cull

When I saw that PETA was campaigning against the pig culls in Egypt, I was excited. Last I checked, the WSPA had reached a standstill with the Egyptian government, which was insisting that the culls had ceased, despite evidence to the contrary. Writing about the issue at change.org, I wanted desperately to offers readers an opportunity to take action. But nada – until now.

When I actually read the sample letter provided by PETA, though, my heart sank. Rather than calling for an end to the culls, PETA asks the government to “Please place a moratorium on the pig cull until guidelines can be put in place to ensure that the killing is as humane as possible.” This despite the fact that the culls are wholly unnecessary – an inefficient way to guard against swine flu. And this comes not from animal advocacy groups, but government experts (such as those at the UN) – who, on the whole, aren’t really known for their animal-friendly views.

Add to the mix the possibility that the culls might have as much to do with religious discrimination as swine flu paranoia, and PETA really dropped the ball here. Not only has the group failed to defend the pigs from slaughter – it also failed to take the majority Muslim government to task for oppressing the minority Christian farmers. PETA even reinforces the government’s bigotry by pleading for a “humane” pig cull at a later date!

Oh, with friends like these…

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