A Little Pleasure Reading for February
The HumaneWatch Document Library has become home to a wide variety of material since we launched it nearly a year ago.
We’ve collected everything from tax returns to “insider” documents to support our claims about the Humane Society of the United States. It’s up to us to provide enough evidence to convince the most skeptical animal lovers, and the library is one way we approach that challenge.
If you haven’t browsed it recently, there’s lots to see. Here are a few memorable items that we’ve published during the past year.
- “The Abolitionist,” Spring/Summer 1997. This was the official publication of the small vegan agitation group Compassion over Killing, founded by Paul Shaprio (now HSUS’s farm-animal campaign director). “The Abolitionist” pushed extreme views—including the glorification of ALF activities. (The ALF is an FBI-designed domestic terrorist group.)
- 1997 Editorial by Michael Markarian, published in “The Abolitionist.” Markarian, now Chief Operating Officer at HSUS and President of the Humane Society Legislative Fund, waxed philosophical: “A perfect example of effective rebellion is an Animal Liberation Front raid on a laboratory…”
- HSUS Real Estate Development Proposal for Gaithersburg, MD, October 2007. If you thought HSUS’s sprawling “factory fundraising” headquarters in Maryland was big enough, the organization has clear ambitions to expand.
- New Mexico Livestock Board Investigative Review, 2008. HSUS has become the master of video deception, splicing footage together to support its claims of animal abuse. But when professional—and less ideological—heads look at un-cut HSUS footage, sometimes the truth emerges.
- 1977 excerpt, National Association for Sound Wildlife Practices newsletter. In the 1970s HSUS signed onto a set of radical principles regarding humanity’s relationship with the wild, including one that declared people “guilty until proven innocent.”
- HSUS Fundraising Pitch Related to Michael Vick, 18 July 2007. After Michael Vick’s arrest for leading a vicious dogfighting ring, HSUS raised money on the promise that it would care for the dogs seized from his Virginia home. Not long afterwards, however, HSUS CEO Wayne Pacelle told The New York Times that his organization didn’t have the dogs, didn’t know where they were, and believed they all should be “put down.”
- Articles of Incorporation, National Humane Society, 22 November 1954 and Articles of Incorporation Amendment, National Humane Society, 10 January 1957. These are the original founding documents for the group that would later change its name to HSUS. Among other things, they prohibit HSUS from spending significant sums of money lobbying, and from running a “private school.”This latter requirement is difficult to reconcile with HSUS’s new “Humane Society University.”
From time to time we’ll be issuing more lists like this, of “our favorite things.” As always, feel free to e-mail with questions.
