HumaneWatch

A handful of HSUS senior staffers, past and present, have roots in the radical fringes of the animal rights movement. Six years before becoming CEO, HSUS's Wayne Pacelle hired former Animal Liberation Front spokesperson John "J.P." Goodwin. Pacelle himself came from the anti-hunting Fund for Animals, and cut his activist teeth sabotaging deer hunts. Matthew Prescott, who runs HSUS’s shareholder-activism campaign, came directly from the über-crazy People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). And HSUS recruited the leadership contingent of the Washington, DC-based group Compassion Over Killing (COK)—essentially an even more rag-tag version of PETA.

HSUS senior campaign manager Paul Shapiro founded COK in the mid-1990s when he was a prep-school student. Miyun Park, who teaches at Humane Society University and was a vice-president at HSUS until last year, also helped run COK, as did HSUS staffer Josh Balk and HSUS lawyer Carter Dillard.

COK, like PETA, has always been a vegan advocacy organization—and unabashedly so. (At least it’s open about it, unlike HSUS.) And perhaps unsurprisingly, the group openly supported violent criminals under Shapiro’s leadership.

In the mid-1990s, COK targeted a DC furrier called Miller’s Furs. (Back then, COK mainly protested fur sellers and circuses.) At one point, the group published Miller’s home address as a tool for angry activists targeting him and his family.

By early 1997, COK was actively recruiting members for a new cell of the terrorist Animal Liberation Front, just to pressure this one fur retailer.  The Winter ’97 issue of The Abolitionist, COK’s official magazine, featured an article announcing that “members [are] needed” for the “MF-ALF” (which stood for “Miller’s Furs–Animal Liberation Front”). The article included suggestions to “smash a window… throw a paint bomb… burn Miller’s Furs down.” Some of the listed “benefits” of joining included the “nervous breakdown” of the fur salon’s owner.

Yikes. Judging from the records archived by the Internet Wayback Machine, COK later scrubbed this article from the Internet. (Clicking here, you can still read the rest of the issue, but not the ALF recruiting ad.)

It's time to channel your inner Inuit.

The Canadian seal hunt is a topic I began thinking about at an early age, right around the time a girl in my elementary school tried to persuade many of us to wear little harp-seal pins. I never did, but lots of Americans donate money and wear t-shirts proclaiming their love for seals—and their disdain for sealers.

I think that's the easy way out. And I believe very few of us will ever meet someone who hunts seals, much less listen to his or her stories.

Now, HumaneWatch can't fly you all up to the arctic circle, but today we have the next best thing.

Her name is Aaju Peter. (Pronounced "Ah-YOO"). She was born in the northern part of Greenland in 1960 and moved to the Canadian arctic at age 21. Aaju has lived there ever since. She has five children and one grandchild. And she's a lawyer (Akitsiraq Law School, class of 2005).

Aaju promotes the right of the Inuit to earn a living from sealing. She promotes sealskin products. She personally sews and sells sealskin garments. And she's a heck of an engaging character.

After a lengthy phone conversation last week, Aaju Peter was kind enough to answer my questions about the Canadian seal hunt, the European Union's ban on seal product imports, and how much the Humane Society of the United States (and its international affiliates) seem bent on destroying her native culture.

Dannielle Romeo is a professional dog handler and trainer, a regular HumaneWatch reader, and a real-live activist for animals—and I mean that in a good way. She breeds a line of Akitas (under the kennel name Black Knight) for conformation, companionship and working service dogs. That's her at right, along with "Koli."

She is is a columnist for several pet publications, and advocates for the rights of pet owners. She lives in Sacramento, California.

I asked Dannielle to describe her recent experience attending a Humane Society of the United States “lobby day” at the California State Capitol. This is what she wrote:

California Schemin': My Day With HSUS

I recently received an invitation to meet with Jennifer Fearing, the Humane Society of the Unites States’ head-honcho in California. She was diplomatic, but direct. Fearing expressed some interest in hearing what I had to say about conscientious breeding practices, and how to repair what she called a "disconnect" between HSUS and people like myself. But mostly, she didn’t appreciate my open criticism of HSUS and its programs, goals, and operations.

Fearing said she was genuinely interested in building an open dialogue, so I took her at her word.

I think by now everyone in the civilized world knows that Canada has an annual seal hunt.

One of my vivid early memories of elementary school is of a girl who tried to get everyone in my second-grade class to wear a "save the harp seals" pin. It's an old, old issue. But it's still good for fundraising, because HSUS and Humane Society International come back to tear on your heartstrings every year. You can set your watch by it.

I'll save my thoughts about the validity of the hunt, and about the cultural imperialism inherent in Americans telling Canadians how to live, for another time. But in the mean-time, I'd like you to see a piece of video.

Raoul Jomphe is a documentary film-maker of French Canadian descent. He made a controversial movie in 2007 titled Le Phoques (The Seals), and one of his on-location shoots involved filming a group of HSUS workers as they filmed their own fundraising video on the ice floes where the seal hunters do their thing.

You'll never guess what he captured on film.

When I was a kid, a "chicken fight" involved getting on someone's shoulders while he stood in a swimming pool, then wrestling with someone else who was similarly "up high" until one of you fell in the water. (Peter from "Family Guy" has different ideas.)

Apparently there are some people who actually arrange fights between chickens. I don't understand it. I don't condone it. Ick.

HSUS hates these fights so much that its experts rushed to judgment a bit yesterday in Kentucky.

This week one of HSUS's leading luminaries is complaining about the Canadian seal hunt.

Here's a press release from Cathy Kangas, an activist who sits on HSUS's "National Council":

"American multi-international companies need to tell the Canadian government they will not tolerate this barbaric practice of slaughtering baby seals for their fur," said Ms. Kangas.  "Until this happens, American consumers of Coca Cola, McDonalds, Omega watches and Visa cards should urge these consumer product companies that they don't want them to back the Canadian Winter Olympics by helping sponsor this horrific hunt.  Panasonic and Samsung are also two other major Olympic sponsors."  Ms. Kangas also recommends calling and urging these companies to use their pressure and influence as Olympic sponsors to end this senseless slaughter.  Already the EU has joined with the rest of the world to show their huge displeasure at this largest slaughter of marine mammals on earth.

Really? Does anyone think Americans are going to switch to Pepsi, only eat at Burger King, start buying Rolexes, switch to MasterCard, and buy nothing but Sony electronics, just because some cosmetics entrepreneur with about three dozen Twitter fans says so? Really!?