Is LAPC Filtering PFW?

Content filtering is popular with the ruling powers in places like China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other geographies where the current regime has a reason to fear and subdue its adult citizens. Content filtering in the workplace is popular with employers who have actual, economic concerns about their workers' abilities to simultaneously idle on MySpace, bid on Ebay, chat on AIM, play Warcraft, and still work at a productive pace. Content filtering in K-12 schools is popular with parents and administrators because it protects minors from sexually explicit material of a pornographic or obscene nature.

Content filtering at public, CA community colleges ain't so popular, much less defensible, when the filtered content turns out to be neither obscene, pornographic, inflammatory with an intent to incite unlawful action, or libelous, but merely critical of a filtering institution's policies, programs, curriculum, and publicly-employed personnel.

If you are unable to reach any Pierce Farm Watch content (all over there in the sidebar) from computers located on the Los Angeles Pierce College campus, or your browser is redirected to a page you did not request, let us know. And we'll let EFF know.

We'd like you to test from libraries, computer labs, Wi-Fi spots if they exist, and any other networked computer on the Los Angeles Pierce College campus from which you have access to the Internet. Other LACCD campus locations and CSUers can test, too, because the wider you cast the net and the narrower the set of results … well, that says a whole lot about a little.

What you are looking for:
Instances of domain/subdomain failure or redirection:
Examples: You get redirected from www.piercefarmwatch.org to a page you did not request.
You can read other Blogspot or Wordpress blogs, but not ours.
You can reach Eurekster, but our swicki is not available.
You can reach Flickr, but our photo sets are unavailable.
You can watch YouTube videos, but our playlists are unavailable.
Social networking sites (del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, and shadows) are available, but our bookmarks are not.

Search Engine cache filtering:
Example: You found us via a search engine, clicked on the Cached link for page results, but were redirected.

Legitimate URL redirection services fail:
Example: tinyurl

Mobile content translation fails:
Example: You are redirected to somewhere other than results you request through Google Mobile Search.

RSS-formatted requests fail:
Example: You can reach Feedburner, but clicking on our feed URL from Feedburner fails.

Language Translation fails:
Example: You know how to do the en-to-en thing to get Google Translate to serve as a proxy, but that fails.

That’s about it for the testbeds, other than the many mega-lists of anon proxies out there which you can find and play with for yourselves. Happy animal-safe-and-sane hunting!

Taking Action for Animals

Conference happening July 28–30 in DC. Want to go but short on funds? AVAR is offering two scholarships this year to cover your transport, conference reg fee, and a comfy stall so you can bed down at night. To apply, visit the scholarship application page of the conference site. Need more info? Drop abodai@humanesociety.org an email. This year’s hot topic area is farmed animals. So near, so dear.

We love us some animal conferencing, but they all seem to lack one thing that another esteemed con is notorious for, that being this. Let’s try to remedy the situation for AR2007. STF is more fun than a curbside seat for celebrity jailarity—trust us!—and quite apropos.

Weekend Film Festival

The Fourth Annual Pacific Palisades Film Festival starts Thursday, May 17th.

Beyond Closed Doors is screening at 2:00 PM, Saturday, May 19th, as part of the social justice film program. Location: Pacific Palisades Elementary School Auditorium, 800 Via de la Paz, Pacific Palisades. Writer/producer Hugh Dorigo, panelists Karen Dawn (moderator), Dr. Marc Bekoff, Gene Baur, and Dr. Armaiti May head up the post-screening Q&A session. Individual tickets are $5, $10 for a 2–or-more film pass.

Congratulations to Western University’s first graduating Class of 2007 DVMs. Somewhere among these faces is

• your new associate
• your practice owner
• your mentor
• your confidante
• your state’s delegate

One person, one practice, one state, one nation, one world, all in good time. In your lifetime.

All He Needs is Pickles

Relish, the little pig from Deer Hollow Farm in Los Altos Hills, has arrived at Healing Hearts Animal Sanctuary in Wilcox, Arizona.

Relish left Deer Hollow for Healing Hearts on Valentine’s Day and will live out his life in peace and comfort. His sister Pickles, pictured below on the left, remains at Deer Hollow where she awaits an uncertain future.

James Teixeira, recreation manager for the City of Mountain View which owns and operates Deer Hollow Farm, said giving up Pickles depends on being able to replace her and “this time of year, the breeder we're working with has a couple of groups ahead of us.'' Hmmm…

There are literally hundreds of pigs like Relish and Pickles, from infants to adults, in shelters and sanctuaries all over the country waiting for permanent, caring homes in those geographic areas where they are permitted and can be comfortably accommodated, provided with good food and clean water, appropriate housing, and quality veterinary care. Replacing Pickles for the “outdoor environmental education program” in which she participates shouldn’t require a breeder’s involvement at all, should it?

But reputable shelters and sanctuaries won’t place needy animals with facilities where they are in danger of being discarded, for profit or otherwise, once their “educational value” has decreased in proportion relative to their increased age and size.

Is it actually Pickles who faces becoming a loving mother only to experience her own babies taken away and sold at a livestock auction, like her brother would certainly have been?

Is it Pickles who will be used to perpetuate the cycle of teaching children that getting rid of healthy animals for a price, who never asked to be born in the first place, is the right thing to do? We don’t know. But somebody in the Mountain View Department of Recreation does.

Contact Deer Hollow Farm by placing a call to John Marchant at 650-903-6618. Ask them to reunite Pickles with her brother at Heavenly Hearts as soon as possible and not to contribute further to the fallacy of intentional animal breeding for intentional animal death as educational, environmentally responsible, sustainable, or justifiable.

Donate to Healing Hearts Animal Sanctuary for Relish’s future and his lifelong role as a teacher and ambassador of all things pig and wonderful.

Sunday Triple-Header

Folks in Michigan would like a state legislator brave enough to step forward in their state and make cruelty to animals a felony.

Apparently, leaving them to resort to cannibalizing their own offspring just to stay alive, die with their heads stuck in a fence trying to reach food on the other side, and rot beside the bodies of their starving herdmates is still a misdemeanor. If the pic-link to the Port Huron Times Herald video above is broken, you can download it from us.

The Nebraska Unicameral (it’s their one-of-a-kind Legislature) is considering a bill that would make animal cruelty a felony. If the bill isn't maimed or killed in Committee by the usual suspects, LB 227 would protect animals other than companion dogs and cats, i.e., ones that have hooves, horns, beaks, and snouts.

We’re ending our Sunday with a story out of the Inland Empire which, if it didn’t get your attention the first time around, might make you look twice this time. In September, 2000, Godwin Collins Onunwah put a bunny in a plastic bag, tied the bag closed, and waited for the bunny to die in his special education classroom at LAUSD’s Gage Middle School.

Since the school district didn’t provide animals for dissection, perhaps because it isn’t permitted in middle schools and only permitted in high schools if the animals are sourced through biological supply houses, Onunwah asked his special education students to supply their own animals for the exercise. The suffocated bunny was purchased by a student from a pet store. When the bunny didn’t succumb before the end of the school day, Onunwah put the closed bag in a cabinet for the weekend.

His first trial on one misdemeanor count of animal cruelty ended in a hung jury voting 11–1 to convict. He was acquitted following a second trial.

This bunny’s exquisite face is courtesy of the House Rabbit Society, where you can discover just about everything you’d need for companion bunny care and habitat.

House Rabbit Society, like the educator resource TeachKind, is a child-and-bunny-safe site, free of plastic bags, suffocation experiments, administrative leave, multiple aliases on undisclosed public employee records, and predators who target developmentally disabled children and defenseless animals. We hope you'll visit both. In at least one case, we'd like to make it a 2nd-strike felony not to.

New year, same "science"

Pigs will replace dogs in terminal procedures labs

What private educational institution rakes in more NIH loot than any other medical school in the country? Why, the same one of only two in the country that still puts dogs to death in a taxpayer-funded effort to teach their students how to keep each other alive.

"It's a shame that an outside group with a philosophical position is resulting in a change in the way that medical education is done," said Gale Davy, executive director of the Wisconsin Association for Biomedical Research and Education.

Yep, it's a shame. Darn those emotional, non-scientist do-gooders. The market selection pickins’ among incarcerated men, indigent women, rural black farmers, US servicemen, and mentally-challenged orphans just ain't what it used to be, is it, Gale?

See that dark spot over the dog’s right eye? The right eye, not the eye on the right side of the head in the picture. Yeah, that one. We paid for that area on the billboard with our very own PCRM 2006 donation!

See that 18–wheeler in the background? If MCW decides to kill juvenile pigs instead of dogs and keep a death-grip on the continuance of terminal procedures labs, we might just fund that diesel demon as the PCRM Multimedia Billboard on Wheels and park it right about here. No static, sad-eyed puppy pictures. Think 80” plasmas mounted on a 48’ flatbed, bloodier, and +/-110 dB. Wee budget be damned.

How much do we love this?

We know registration is closed, but you can always try to squeeze in at the last minute.

Student Animal Legal Defense Fund
National Center for Animal Law
Lewis & Clark Law School
10015 SW Terwilliger Blvd.
Portland, OR 97219
503-768-6849
503-768-6795

Surgery, spare-rib-style

Don't let the Far Eastern location or the translation throw you off. "Porking" is apparently the nearest Taiwanese approximation of "baby pig," and you could paste this clip into any US commercial farrowing operation footage without a visible seam. Except for maybe the part where you got within a mile of the place without a court order taped to your bullet-proof vest, or when you had to switch from the handheld cam to the one that looks just like the face of your watch. But we digress...



When you reach the point in your education where you're introduced to appropriate anesthesia and analgesia agents for surgical sedation and pain relief in animals, remember: it's only unacceptable for AWA-approved species in defined circumstantial roles to actually feel the pain of a knife slicing off their testicles. And in case you were wondering how baby pig came to be, here are a few seconds of agribusiness innovation that'll take you all the way back to the gleam in baby daddy's eye.



Now we could supply you with an embedded (no pun intended) hands-free, electric version of the above, as well. But being as we keep this joint mostly R-rated, you'll have to hit up PornoTube for those money shots. Once again, don't let the location, the $1.89 set decoration budget, or the fact that this time all the participants are consenting, human adults throw you. After all, where do you think they got the equipment?

World Farm Animals Day, Oct. 2

Some activity hints just to get you started:

Add one book or article to your reading list.
Be a vegan buddy for the day.
Contact your senators and representatives.
Donate to a farm animal sanctuary.
Encourage another person to go vegan for one day.
Foster a rescued farm animal.
Go vegan yourself for one day. Just one out of 365 is a start.
Help distribute literature.
Investigate farm animal cruelty in your area.
Join a World Farm Animals Day event in your area.
Keep informed about farm animal issues.
Learn how to include humane education in your curriculum.
Meet Your Meat.
Network with professionals in your field.
Oust an undesirable legislator.
Peek in on your own for a change. For once.
Question authority.
Read one journal article.
Sponsor a rescued farm animal at a sanctuary.
Type a letter to your local paper’s op/ed section.
Use your multi-million dollar acreage for something worthwhile.
Visit a farm animal sanctuary in your area.
Walk for a farm animal.
<Your_two_ideas_here>.
Zap your zits the cruelty-free way.

Now how hard was that?

Ain't life funny?

Remember the story about a tall truck that was stuck under a low overpass and the contingent of company reps, transportation officials, LE and by-standers who couldn’t figure out how to get the poor driver unstuck? Enter one kid and the only reasonable solution: let the air out of the tires.

While the UC Extension system’s “livestock experts” are busy torching their research your tax dollars on making tall sheep sick, one guy with a weed problem just solved his dilemma the common sense way. PFW knows 4 mini-Southdowns personally, each one the ovine equivalent of a Ragdoll cat and neither breed at all suitable for a cheese-making endeavor. We hope Steve keeps his promise to Henley, Matilda, Althea, their future family, and you.

Everyday Heroes

My classmates won’t understand or support me if I won’t harm or kill animals while I learn to heal them. It will be harder to master the critical skills I need for graduation. I worry about my job prospects if I choose an alternative instructional method or speak out about my convictions. I’m afraid sometimes. Well, here’s some pain medicine.

"Everyday Heroes – Veterinary Students Advocating the Use of Humane Teaching Methods" is a new DVD from AVAR that features interviews with students at four veterinary medical schools and their commitment to the use of ethically-sourced animal cadavers, surgical skills development through partnership with shelter spay/neuter programs and synthetic simulation models, and the reduction or elimination of terminal surgery lab mandates.

From the DVD release announcement: “This video presentation gave veterinary students an excellent forum to speak openly about how the use of humane teaching methods have positively affected their education and have provided the necessary training to make them skilled veterinarians. It was first presented at the Association of
American Veterinary Medical Colleges education symposium on alternatives earlier this year.”

Available for download from the AVAR website, (WMV format, running time 0:28:26, 17.2MB). We think you can also order a copy—or two or three—for a nominal shipping fee and make them compassionate gifts from people just like you to people just like you. Be encouraged, boo.

Don't neglect your education

How is your summer reading going? We’re not as behind as we thought. Good to know.
Hat tip: Animal Ethics

Dear President Garber

Even though we sent you an email back in February and it didn't bounce, we believed you didn’t know. Even though roughly 11% of our aggregate traffic originates from CSU-LACCD netblocks, we believed you didn’t know. Even though we’ve served thousands of page requests in a few short months, we still believed you didn’t know.

In fact, we were so confident in our belief that we assembled more than 320 unique photographs and videos--week after week, month after month, year after year--of individual animals, animal groupings, animal facilities, fixtures, and conditions on the Los Angeles Pierce College farm. True, we don't frame each subject with Warner Center in the distance. Traffic snarls excepted, its just not our concern. Nor do we require that all submitted images have GPS data embedded in the EXIF. It's doable, but a simple "please date stamp if possible" seemed sufficient.

We edited more than 11,000 words in explanation, expansion, and support of our documentation down to just under 6000. True, we don't annotate each posted entry with the legal names of any contributors. Why? Here are just a few of the reasons, in their own words:
"I just want to graduate and get out of here before this place gets shut down."
"I still have to go to class there."
"I'll lose clients."
"I could lose my job."

Though we have no reason to doubt its sincerity, unfortunately we have to decline the invitation to sit down and talk with you about improving conditions for animals on the Los Angeles Pierce College farm. Years of sitting and talking rather than navigating the manure, mud, and misery to check on the investment is what brought us all where we are today. And from the first catalogued photo to the last, we found it more dirty, hungry, thirsty, weak, ill, injured, and in abject need than any of us bipedal beachcombers are likely to be in a lifetime.

Asking for operational transparency has failed consistently for better than a decade but that doesn't mean you should abandon the idea. We just don't think you'll have much of an unobstructed view from the vantage point of office towers sparkling in the distance or beneath a fabric woven from derailment of the issues, denial of their validity, or criminalization and censorship of the dissenting voice. You, for yourself, must either unravel the curtain or tear it away. Consider Pierce Farm Watch as having frayed a thread and lifted a corner. You appear young and able-bodied, neither the naked Emperor nor the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, least of all the smoldering Man of Straw. Stay with it. And BTW, you're welcome.

AS 506

The only surface glitch in the reappearance of this Los Angeles Pierce College course offering seems a semantic one. Farm animals in our urban Los Angeles and Ventura areas are companion animals and our urban farm animal facilities are either private homes housing compassionate families or publicly-accessible sanctuaries staffed by least harm volunteers.

Companion goats, sheep, pigs, chickens and cows don't feel the slice of the scalpel wide awake and screaming, the pain of constriction as their tails and testicles slowly necrotize and fall away, or the searing burn of infant flesh that would have become their horns. They don't experience the newborn terror of being dragged from their frantic and bellowing mother's side only to be locked away alone and fed from a bucket. They never succumb to the helplessness and futility of existence in a barren steel and concrete container only slightly larger than themselves. They aren’t lured, prodded and shoved toward the grinding gears of batch-mode disposal. That’s a whole other side of the coin.

Companion farm animals aren't intentionally repopulated to be killed in the churn of back-yard animal agribusiness production. Back-yard breeding is something we thought the city of Los Angeles sought to curtail. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe you’ll let us know. Or maybe we just can’t read.

How do we know all this stuff? We actually see urban farm animals. All the time. We treat them and care for them year after year. And in the end we’re there as they peacefully drift away, cradled by those individuals and organizations that are demonstrative examples of what it truly means to cherish their existence.

Search and Rescue

It’s been a fun and diversionary day at the PFW HQ. We’ve spent the afternoon fixing up a nifty little doodad from Rollyo that’s now parked over in the sidebar: our very own PFW search engine. Ain’t it schwagy?! Best of all it’s pretty fast, really free, totally shareable, and no animals were harmed in its creation. Animals in research and education, animals in entertainment, animal agriculture, and us across the web o’sphere, it’s all there for the searching. What more could you ask for? To use it on your own site, perhaps? Of course.

Psst...hey, c'mere

I wanna show you something. This way, let's go. This is my home on the Los Angeles Pierce College farm. Nice, huh? Like my carpet? We're getting it cleaned next week. Yeah, they canceled or something. Can I come over? Uh, could you help me come over, my head's stuck. We're sorry we couldn't help her. But from the broken sections of fencing, it looks like somebody already found a way to once or twice, if only for the moment. On second thought, better not come over just now. We weren't really expecting company. Give us another year or so and a few more million to tidy up the place. Make it 10. Million and years. No, seriously.

Plywood ppm in swine rations?

With our inaugural report we're asking all you budding animal scientists to weigh in on a little debate we've been having amongst--so far--just ourselves:

What are the min/max ppm for plywood in a balanced swine ration?
What's the optimal dry-matter % of plywood for gilts?

We believe the right answers are 0/0 and 0. Our friends over at the Leopold Center couldn't help us out. Google helped us out a little, but for the most part there's not a whole lot of "quality" research out there on this topic. And most of that seems to conclude that it's just too darn expensive, anyway.

The one thing we are certain of is that pigs are really smart. They're smart enough to have moved the snacks closer to where they sleep, and it only took a week to figure put how to do it!

Of course, we're not suggesting that Pierce College is feeding pigs plywood. What we are suggesting is that it took these two porcines less time to accomplish what they wanted to do than it's taken your public employees to do one small thing they're supposed to do: provide animals with a safe place to live. That's all.

So weigh in and let us know: how heavy is a piece of plywood and how many man-hours would it take you to move it a few feet? From the shoebox we found a shot of how things might look after the result of such a great effort.