CA AB 2296 Stifles Animal Advocates’ Right To Free Speech
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Will at Green Is The New Red reports:
“Gene Mullin, a member of the California State Assembly and a Democrat, who has introduced AB 2296, the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, to stifle the First Amendment rights of animal advocates. The law would prohibit the posting of publicly available information on activist websites, restrict access to public meetings, and require heavy-handed penalties for non-violent civil disobedience.”
Will makes these excellent points about this disturbing legislation:
- Prohibits the publication of publicly-available information
- Restricts access to public meetings
- Creates new crimes
- Disproportionate penalties
Please contact California Assembly Members and tell them to oppose AB 2296. You can comment on the bill here: http://www.assembly.ca.gov/acs/acsframeset2text.htm
Related: If you want to publish public information about animal issues on your blog or website, here are a few ways to protect yourself. (However, this is not legal advice. I am not a lawyer so use your best judgment and consult with a lawyer if needed.):
- Cite your sources. List where you found the information. This proves that the information is publicly available and not private information.
- Remind your readers to be nonviolent. Make the nonviolence message explicit and overt.
- If you want, post anonymously. Learn how here.
- See the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Legal Guide for Bloggers to learn your rights.
this bill is wrong but shows how effective animal activism is
In part because the UCLA and UC Berkeley campaigns against the atrocities of vivisection was the motivation for writing this new law, I feel obligated to post this.
For pictures and other information on the animal abusers which will soon be illegal, visit the UC Berkeley campaign website at http://www.freewebs.com/stopucberkeleyvivisection for more information
You can make free calls online with www. relaycall. com and free online faxes with www. faxzero. com
UC Berkeley’s YANG DAN uses cats, rats, mice and hamsters for useless visual experiments. Yang Dan’s cats and other animals are paralyzed with a drug, a hole is drilled in their skulls and electrodes inserted directly into their brains. They are placed in “stereotaxic device with ear bars, eye bars and a mouth bar to stabilize the head position.” Their eyes are “glued” to “posts.” They are subjected to visual stimuli, and the electrical firings of roughly a dozen single brain cells or less are recorded continuously for up to “72 hours” non-stop until the “cortex stops giving normal visual responses.” Rats are placed in a “light-tight box, and kept under no-light conditions for 48 hours to 1 week prior to recording,” or one eye would be sewed shut. Rats will also undergo fluid deprivation to “motivate” them to perform tasks to test Dr. Dan’s “visual discrimination paradigm.”
Home:
[Removed. See: http://www.vegansoapbox.com/granting-the-luxury-of-privacy/ ]
Office:
Professor Yang Dan
230D Barker Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
Office Phone: (510) 643-2833
Lab Phone: (510) 643-3935
Jack Gallant performs invasive single-cell brain recording in vision experiments on Macaque monkeys. Fluid deprivation is used to make them perform eye movements or visual fixations while they are in restraint chairs with their heads bolted still as single-cell activity is recorded invasively with wires sticking into their brains.
Home:
[Removed. See: http://www.vegansoapbox.com/granting-the-luxury-of-privacy/ ]
Office:
Assistant Professor Jack Gallant
3115 Tolman Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
Office Phone: (510) 642-2606
Email: gallant@socrates.berkeley.edu
Fax: (510) 642-5293
Ralph Freeman uses 35 cats and kittens per year for invasive vision experiments. The cats are bolted down in stereotaxic devices and have electrodes inserted into their brains. He performs similar procedures to the cats as Yang Dan does above.
Home:
[Removed. See: http://www.vegansoapbox.com/granting-the-luxury-of-privacy/ ]
Office:
Professor Ralph Freeman
589 Minor Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
Office Phone: (510) 642-6341
Lab Phone: (510) 642-6440
Email: freeman@neurovision.berkeley.edu
Fax: (510) 642-3323
Frederic Theunissen performs invasive brain recordings on 175 finches in a four-year period. He also uses a wild-caught crow and a wild-caught raven. These birds are immobilized in stereotaxic devices and also have electrodes inserted deep into their brains. The purpose, he claims, is to “achieve a better understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying the perception of complex sounds” and “learning mechanisms during development.” He states “there may exist an overall sexual preference for a male with a ‘sexy song.’” How demented.
Home:
[Removed. See: http://www.vegansoapbox.com/granting-the-luxury-of-privacy/ ]
Office
Associate Professor Frederic Theunissen
3425 Tolman Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
Phone: (510) 643-1531
Email: theunissen@berkeley.edu
Fax: (510) 642-5293
Jeffery Winer performs highly invasive and gruesome brain and ear recordings on the following 18 animal species per year; cats, rats, gerbils, guinea pigs, gray squirrels, Lesser bushbabies, owl monkeys, opossums, chincillas, ferrets, armadillos, pigeons, barn owls, pallid bats, mustached bats, squirrel monkeys, rhesus monkeys, and macaque monkeys. He claims it might benefit humans with hearing problems. However, animal brains are significantly different from human brains.
Home:
[Removed. See: http://www.vegansoapbox.com/granting-the-luxury-of-privacy/ ]
Office:
Professor Jeffery Winer
289 Life Sciences Addition
Berkeley, CA 94720
Office Phone: (510) 642-8227
Lab Phone: (510) 642-9637
Email: jaw@berkeley.edu
Fax: (510) 643-6791
John Casida fed nerve poisons (contained in pesticides and chemical warfare agents) to rodents and rabbits to find the level at which half of them will die in two hours, the notorious LD50 test – a very cruel and unnecessary practice as in-vitro toxicology tests are available and more accurate and relevant.
Home:
[Removed. See: http://www.vegansoapbox.com/granting-the-luxury-of-privacy/ ]
Office:
Professor John Casida
114 Wellman Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
Phone: (510) 642-5424
Email: ectl@nature.berkeley.edu
Fax: (510) 642-6497
Stephen Glickman performs invasive experiments, including multiple Cesarean sections (C-sections) on female spotted hyenas to study the sexual differentiation process. This is the only captive hyena colony in the world.
Home:
[Removed. See: http://www.vegansoapbox.com/granting-the-luxury-of-privacy/ ]
Office:
Professor Stephen Glickman
3131 Tolman Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
Phone: (510) 642-5797
Email: glickman@socrates.berkeley.edu
Fax: 510-642-5293
Frank Werblin has been performing invasive and entirely useless eye experiments on rabbits and salamanders for years. Many of the animals are poisoned to death and have their eyes removed to be studied.
Home:
[Removed. See: http://www.vegansoapbox.com/granting-the-luxury-of-privacy/ ]
Office:
Professor Frank Werblin
145 Life Sciences Addition
Berkeley, CA 94720
Office Phone:
(510) 642-7236
Lab Phone:
510-642-3281
Email: werblin@berkeley.edu
Fax: 801-640-3205
Mu-Ming Poo has performed cocaine addiction experiments, as well as decapitation of rodents, and other painful and useless experiments.
Home:
[Removed. See: http://www.vegansoapbox.com/granting-the-luxury-of-privacy/ ]
Office:
Professor Mu-Ming Poo
229 Life Sciences Addition
Berkeley, CA 94720
Office Phone: (510) 642-2514
Lab Phone: (510) 643-4576
Email: mpoo@berkeley.edu
Fax:(510) 642-2544
http://www.freewebs.com/stopucberkeleyvivisection for more information on the campaign and the animal abuse at UC Berkeley.
This information may be public but what is the point of printing addresses and phone numbers?
If you wanted to express your displeasure to one of these people, wouldn’t email do the trick?
Hi Dean,
One reason: Email addresses are much easier to fake or change than physical addresses. The emails simply bounce back and fall into cyberspace forever. The message never even gets sent. And there’s no proof there’s anyone at the other end receiving the message. You can’t send a “certified letter” to an email address.
Another reason: These are not spies with top secret information. These are people using public funds to conduct morally reprehensible and sometimes illegal activities. The public deserves to know who they are and how to contact them.
I see that the Berkeley anti-vivisection site is now frozen. This is an ugly law.
UPDATE: Here are some related articles:
* Vegan Soapbox Receives Take Down Request – “I believe this Take Down Request is just that, a request. I do not believe I have any legal obligation to remove the material.”
http://www.vegansoapbox.com/vegan-soapbox-receives-take-down-request/
* Regarding The Terrorist Label – “three reasons why the murder of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller isn’t being called terrorism” but animal rights activists are the “number one domestic terrorism threat” despite never killing a human.
http://www.vegansoapbox.com/regarding-the-terrorist-label/
* Animal Extremists Are Not A Threat – “animal rights and environmental activists are less a threat to national security than to corporate financial security”
http://www.vegansoapbox.com/animal-extremists-are-not-a-threat/
* Oppose The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act – “All you have to do is look at the groups who support the act and the groups who opposed the act to know that the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) isn’t good for free speech, animal rights, or protecting innocent Americans from terrorism.”
http://www.vegansoapbox.com/oppose-the-animal-enterprise-terrorism-act/
Reminders:
The post above was published April 14th, 2008.
Jon’s comment was published Apr 16th, 2008 at 6:03 pm.
I think the best way to enforce the Animal Protection, is opening their cages, because governments are the country which are matters not a whit animals.