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Interesting and important information about feral cat colonies.

Click here to view the cover of The Twig Pencil, a children's book we edited -- make that co-edited -- in 2010.

Persons may be persuaded and convinced of innumerable things –- like the invalidity of vivisection –- by purely intellectual means. Yet persons do not dedicate or commit themselves from purely intellectual motives. Persons act when they take matters to heart -– an emotional, yet by no means necessarily irrational, process.

Whether valid (not) or corrupt (is), those who vivisect and those who support them do so primarily out of selfishness and greed. The irony of scientific antivivisectionism, when dogmatically advocated overzealously, is it appeals to those same vices, selfishness and greed; i.e., "Never mind the animals. Think only of yourselves. Vivisection is bad for you." Appealing to the same base characteristics that cause vivisection to be conducted in the first place never will abolish it.

Every effective antivivisection activist I know has a deep, abiding love and respect for species other than his own.

Click here to read the 3 September 2007, 10th anniversary message from Banmines, the Internet Petition Online to Ban Landmines Worldwide, in Memory of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Read our Amazon.com review of American Police Equipment, by Matthew G. Forte.

Follow this link to see a Web site we created in its entirety for USA Brass Knuckles.

A gateway page we created for a Web site in disrepair. (For purposes of placing it on our site, all its links return to this page.)

Read our review for Amazon.com of the 2001 book The Collector's Guide to Switchblade Knives: An Illustrated Historical and Price Reference by Richard Langston.

This true tale tells of an admitted, violent criminal who pled guilty to the brutal, premeditated taking of a life without being sentenced to any period of incarceration. It appeared in the 6 June 2001 edition of the Fernandina Beach News-Leader.

Read how Wal-Mart policy is playing politics with its pharmacies and with the physician-patient relationship. Published in The Civil Abolitionist, Swain, NY, on page 7 of Volume 13, Issue 2, Summer 2002.

Read our Amazon.com review of American Police Collectibles, by Matthew G. Forte.

Read our Amazon.com review of Vivisection or Science?, by Professor Pietro Croce.

This page contains a listing of some of our published articles on weapons.

Read our article, "About Landmines".

Read our review for Amazon.com of the 1970 album Parachute by The Pretty Things.

A published piece from June 1999.

Our comment, posted by CNN (Cable News Network) on its Web site, upon the 20 April 1999 Columbine High School incident.

So wrote Lewis (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) Carroll, himself a fervent antivivisectionist, in his poem "Fame's Penny Trumpet", which Carroll "Affectionately dedicated to all 'original researchers' who pant for 'endowment'."

In these United States, the City of Hope Medical Centre conducts governmentally funded cancer research. From 1975 to 1981, it used one hundred two dogs as experimental research subjects. Yet over half those dogs died from causes unrelated to cancer, and before any risk of cancer had developed in them.

The German physician Dr Klaus Schilling encountered similar problems during his governmentally funded malaria research programme. He was trying to find an anti-malaria serum. Yet at the conclusion of his work, Dr Schilling didn't think he found anything, for throughout his many experiments he was plagued by the inability to obtain reliable accounts on the causes of death of his experimental subjects. Dr Schilling's experimental subjects also were dumb animals, or so it was conceded at the time. For, Dr Schilling conducted his malaria research programme at the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, and experimented on Jewish humans.

The American Heart Association has an annual research budget of about fifty million dollars. In one experiment, unanaesthetised puppies repeatedly were subjected to extreme cold, then rewarmed, then subjected to extreme cold again. Such a procedure was familiar to Dr Schilling. Male camp inmates at Dachau would be immersed naked in freezing water, nearly to the point of death, and then revived by placing them under blankets with naked female inmates, "warming them back with 'animal heat' of the women," as Schilling described it. The good doctor later concluded this was just "sexual sadism", preferring his more scientific malaria studies.

When the Second World War ended, Dr Schilling tried to shift the blame to Heinrich Himmler: "Himmler was...impressed by the possibility of increasing the reputation of the SS if I succeeded [in the experiments]. I didn't realise then that it was just his cheap gamble with human lives to improve his reputation, so that he could show he wasn't just a murderer, but a benefactor of science." (Emphasis supplied.)

The atrocities of Dr Klaus Schilling were dwarfed in the magnitude by those of the medical director of I. G. Farben's gigantic concentration camp/industrial complex in Auschwitz, Poland. That man was Dr Josef Mengele, the "angel of death". Mengele, though not a brilliant physician, was highly intelligent and came from a prominent, wealthy German family.

In June 1984, Dr Adrian Morrison of University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine, a defender and a supporter both of Dr Thomas Gennarelli's Head Injury Clinic and of Dr Edward Taub's Institute for Behavioural Research, told the Philadelphia Enquirer: "I love animals. I enjoy them." Whilst there is no evidence Dr Mengele loved the Jews or the others -- mostly gypsies and Slavs -- upon whom he conducted his infamous experiments (There is no evidence Mengele loved anyone.), there also is no evidence he hated, or even disliked, them, either. In fact, Mengele did not subscribe to Nazi racial doctrine, as perpetually espoused by Goebbels, Streicher and Hitler. Mengele knew the concepts of Aryan purity and racial superiority were nonsense, even to the point of stating as much. He did not consider the Jews an inferior race. Indeed, he knew they were not. He merely treated Jews, Slavs and gypsies as inferior, and thus expendable.

Bizarre medical experiments -- actually, the experiments were not "medical" at all; they are referred to as medical only because those who conducted them were physicians -- accounted for the most heinous of all the holocaust atrocities perpetrated. Some eleven million innocent persons, over half of them Jewish, perished in the Nazi holocaust.

Every year in the United States, one hundred million animals die in the course of equally illegitimate medical and scientific research and experimentation. Not a single one of these animals is any less innocent or is any more defenceless than was any Jewish or other child thrown into the burning ovens of Auschwitz -- whilst still fully alive and conscious!

Helpless and peaceful animals endure the equivalent of an entire holocaust ten times each year in the United States. None survive. Most undergo, without the faintest hope of any succour or even sympathy, sufferings by far more hideous than anything Josef Mengele, Klaus Schilling or the many other "concentration camp doctors" ever devised, ever inflicted or ever could have imagined even in their wildest dreams -- and wilder dreams few have dreamt. The "spirit of the angel of death" hovers over these animals throughout the whole of their pitiful lives. When finally it comes, death must be as a most welcome of reliefs from the slow, excruciating, unrelenting torment, anguish and agony of their daily existences.

However seemingly unbelievable, the evidence supports accepting that Dr Josef Mengele did not hate the Jews personally. In a similar vein, Dr Adrian Morrison probably was telling the truth, as best he could, when he said he loves and enjoys animals. Selective indifference is not the same as hatred. Accepting that these men were not liars is one thing. Understanding how they could have done what they did, and what they or others continue to do, is quite another. The key to that understanding lies buried deep within the darkness of their merciless, black hearts. Unwilling to confront or even to concede the evil within them, they were and are only too easily prone to act out that evil when given opportunities to do so. Because they can not face the reality, the gravity or the enormity of what they have done, they are compelled to keep doing it. And all the while, society silently sanctions them.

Those of Dr Mengele's medical assistants foolish -- i.e., sensitive -- enough to question the value of the "experiments" conducted at Auschwitz and elsewhere got a curiously Gennerelliesque response. To Mengele, questioning the experiments or raising any concern at all was an "unnecessary fuss".

Such persons both are cynics of the value of living and are cynics even of life itself. They moreover are cowards. Like all cowards, they feel safe only in the presence of the manifest weakness of others. The more visible the weakness of others is, as when others are reduced to helpless suffering, the more secure a coward feels.

The modern day, Americanised versions of Dr Josef Mengele, those "angels of death" of the animal kingdom, have inherited and embraced the satanic legacy of the Nazi holocaust -- of all holocausts throughout history. They renew it and keep it thriving every day of their soul-less lives; for, should it die, they secretly fear they surely must perish with it. There are many thousands of contemporary Mengeles throughout the United States, easy busily engaged in and each complacently preoccupied with his or her own particular project. Each sees himself or herself as "a benefactor of science". Yet all these "original researchers", with all their "endowments", are benefactors of nothing but a terrible hoax. Whilst they may reinforce one another and lull a still reluctant to know public with the bland absurdity that from evil comes good, the animals continue to suffer and to die by the countless, anonymous, incomprehensible millions. The "big lie" remains steadfastly perpetuated.

In this meaningless, senseless, grotesque parody of reality, where only empty pain is plentiful, a clear message emerges from Dr Schilling's comments, despite their evasive motive: Cheap gambles never pay off, because life is not a cheap gamble. The only cheap gamble, because it comes so easily, is death. Indeed, death is too cheap, certain and inexorable to be regarded as a gamble at all. Schilling knew this; Mengele, too. They embraced death. And their disciples -- the Gennarellis, the Taubs and all the rest -- they also know.

Knowingly, they chose and continue choosing the heritage of the "Master Race", a race that can not be won and that always is lost. Amongst the many millions of species sharing this planet, to proclaim humankind as the single, sole master of all and above all others is to become an exhausting and ultimately exhausted runner in that race headed straight forward towards the finishing line that is oblivion.

Follow this link to read landmark municipal legislation we authored.

Read our essay, "A Concise Overview of Vivisection".

Follow this link to read Web page copy we wrote for Eight Flags Antiques.

Animal Birth Control for Broward, Inc. (ABC) is a non-profit, tax-exempt, donor-deductible, qualified, charitable organisation with 501(c)(3) status, pursuant to Section 170 of the Internal Revenue Service Code.

ABC is an all-volunteer organisation. No salaries or wages are paid.

Annually, ABC coordinates, and funds or subsidises, in excess of 7,000 cat and dog sterilisations, often incorporating ancillary veterinary services (e.g., disease testing, vaccinations, parasite treatment).

ABC operates within the geographical boundaries of Broward County, the increasing human population of which already is well beyond one million permanent residents. ABC's geographical focus is Hollywood, the permanent population of which is some 125,000 persons. Broward County, of which Hollywood is a part, is a major tourism and resort area. During the tourist season, and especially at its peak, the transient visitors swell the total population enormously. Many seasonal, temporary residents bring companion animals with them, or obtain companion animals during their stays, only to abandon these animals when holidays end and persons return to their distant, permanent residences.

Veterinarians in various Broward County locales participate in ABC's sterilisation programme. ABC provides funding on a nondiscriminatory basis. To the extent an individual is able and willing to pay, he or she pays, yet ABC refuses to penalise animals -- the actual recipients of ABC's programme -- because of uncertainties about or disputes over a person's financial means.

A secondary activity in which ABC engages is the adopting out of displaced -- abandoned, stray or unwanted -- animals. Through its large volunteer network, an high level of success is achieved by word-of-mouth. ABC volunteers provide temporary residences, or foster homes, for displaced animals until adoptions occur. Animals ABC places have received proper veterinary care and have been sterilised. Displaced animals come to ABC by direct rescue and from parties who give up their animals.

In December 1989, ABC founder and president Cathy Anderson introduced a municipal ordinance, before the Hollywood City Commission, prohibiting the display of vertebrate animals for public entertainment or amusement on city property (O-90-04). In November 1990, Mrs Anderson introduced a similar ordinance severely regulating and substantially curtailing the display of vertebrate animals on private property (O-90-56). In March 1990, Mrs Anderson introduced a resolution strongly urging practising veterinarians and pet stores in Hollywood to impel their clients or customers to have their cats and dogs sterilised (R-90-17). In December 1992, Mrs Anderson introduced an amendment to the animal sterilisation resolution to provide for its annual distribution to all veterinarians and pet stores at the time of occupational licence renewal (R-92-486). Again through Mrs Anderson's initiative, the City of Hollywood appropriated funds in its 1992-1993 fiscal budget to install animal warning devices on all city vehicles and to make the devices available inexpensively to the public. This marked an effort to reduce both wildlife and domestic animal roadkills. The measure received widespread praise from other governmental jurisdictions and agencies in Florida. In February 1995, Mrs Anderson introduced an ordinance requiring land developers to pay all expenses for the city to relocate all animals on the development site, from the development site to a safe, sustaining and natural habitat (O-95-12).

Each measure Mrs Anderson proposed was passed and enacted by unanimous vote of the Hollywood City Commission. Moreover, her accomplishments were the first ever of their kinds in the United States -- frequently serving as models emulated elsewhere, both domestically and abroad.

ABC has more than a quarter century unblemished, impeccable track record of working conscientiously, diligently, responsibly and tenaciously to raise, by all available means, the level of public awareness about the problems and plight of cat and dog overpopulation, with the clear realisation and understanding that public awareness, the critical and crucial step in generating and inspiring public action, is the cornerstone of and the key to eliminating domestic companion animal overpopulation. ABC has weathered many storms of impediments and obstacles in stride, a tribute to and an affirmation of ABC's absolute, permanent and unflagging commitment to its noble goal.

Few injustices gnaw away at me so unrelentingly as does the plight of homeless animals. Cats and dogs long ago domesticated as companion animals and as guardians of humankind's most treasured necessities, its grain stores and its flocks, now routinely are recklessly discarded and thoughtlessly abandoned as if the most insignificant, disposable of trinkets.

"When the milk of human kindness turns to vinegar" is how a friend of mine described this crisis society so gracefully and conveniently ignores, adding, "It is an haunting monument to human wickedness and indifference, because, unlike virtually all other kinds of abuse or exploitation, it has not one defender. Everyone acknowledges it to be wrong, everyone is in a position whereby it might be set right, yet just about everyone rationalises it away. Only it doesn't go away; rather, it worsens daily."

I must admit this is an accurate assessment of the problem. I also must admit I agree that there is no excuse for the inexcusable, nor can there ever be one.

I have spent the best -- and the worst -- part of my life actively trying to eradicate the root cause of homelessness amongst cats and dogs, which is companion animal overpopulation, now at unthinkable levels. The sheer numbers are mind-boggling. Yet whether the number be one, one thousand, one million or one billion, the primary solution is universal spaying and neutering. Towards this end I have expended the means available to me, and I always shall.

The great tragedy of a "throw-away" society is that the valuable gets thrown away along with the worthless. Nothing is more valuable than life, and no living creature is another's to throw away or to treat as if worthless.

The same friend of mine said, "All these unwanted, uncared-for little vagabonds of flesh and bone, all these wasted little might-have-beens don't just go away. They stubbornly refuse to accommodate us. Instead, they are our visible, ever-present reminders -- through their miseries, through their sufferings, through their sicknesses, through their injuries, through their diseases, through their undignified, unidentified corpses -- of what we really are like as a race. They unmask us. They strip us of our oh-so-civil yet all-too-precarious veneer."

Long ago I realised it is not enough to be a human being. Each of us, everywhere, must be a humane being. A humane being is what I try to be. A humane being is what I hope I am. When everyone similarly tries and hopes, then there will be no more homeless animals -- which will be all the better for our animal friends. We, in the meanwhile, will have eliminated the injustice of their plight by eliminating that plight altogether -- all the better for us. All the better for us, because that is what humane beings do.

Thank you.