a lot of people on here are very adamant that ever reading any material whatsoever written by your opposition is morally wrong which i think is deeply stupid… reading something doesnt mean you automatically agree with it, but it does mean youve gleaned some insight into the oppositions views in their own words which imo is imperative to actually arguing against them
also frankly i think if youre in a small tight knit group of self declared activists and everybody is telling you what you can or cannot read & you can potentially face punishment for venturing off the approved reading list thats a red flag baby
This year, as we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Migratory
Bird Treaty Act (MBTA), our most important bird protection law is under
attack. Legislation in Congress (HR 4239), and a new interpretation of
the law by the administration, would end the ability to hold industries
accountable for bird deaths.
These proposals would prevent enforcement of “incidental” bird
deaths, removing incentives for companies to adopt practices that
protect birds from threats such as oil waste pits, and eliminating
penalties for companies that kill substantial numbers of birds,
including from large oil spills.
Nosey’s Law – the new “elephant protection”
law that was just passed in the New Jersey Senate and sits on Governor Chris
Christie’s desk, awaiting his signature – has turned out to be a complete mess,
both with regard to what it actually effects as well as the political
motivations of the various advocacy groups that pushed it through. Named after
an infamous privately owned circus elephant, the Nosey’s Law
the public thought they were supporting would have simply protected elephants
from being used in traveling entertainment acts; but instead, it effectively outlaws
all mobile animal education programs in the state.
In its first incarnation, Nosey’s Law emulated
anti-circus bills previously enacted in New York and Illinois that prohibit the
use of elephants in traveling animal acts (or even any type of entertainment at
all). Instead, imprecise language about what constitutes a “traveling act” and
a “performance” in the original bill allowed an overly broad amendment to
expand the scope of the ban from just elephants to all wild and exotic animals.
The combination of the two means that
not only is using elephants in any sort of travelling exhibition illegal, but that
any mobile business utilizing exotic or wild animals for any type of
exhibition, in any way, is also in violation of the new law. While this may
seem like good news to those readers who want to see all animals removed from
traveling entertainment, this actually has much further reaching effects: any
businesses doing wildlife outreach and conservation education programs with a
live wild animal collection will be completely eliminated by the passage of
this law. These highly valuable services and
exhibitions are not the type of animal entertainment that the public expected
Nosey’s Law to prohibit. Not only do they often serve to support the continued
existence of wildlife rehabilitation facilities and exotic animal rescues, they
are also often the only access underprivileged communities have to education
about the natural world.
“Be It
Enacted by the
Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey:
1. a. Notwithstanding any other law, or any rule or
regulation adopted pursuant thereto, to the contrary, no person shall use an
elephant 1or other
wild or exotic animal1 in
a traveling animal act.
b. Any person who violates this section shall be subject to
the penalties provided in section 10 of P.L.1973, c.309 (C.23:2A-10), except
that the criminal penalties provided in subsection f. of that section shall not
apply.
c. As used in this section:
“Mobile or traveling housing facility” means a vehicle, including a
truck, trailer, or railway car, used to transport or house an animal used for
performance.
“Performance” means any animal act, carnival, circus, display,
exhibition, exposition, fair, parade, petting zoo, presentation, public
showing, race, ride, trade show, or similar undertaking in which animals
perform tricks, give rides, or participate as accompaniments for the
entertainment, amusement, or benefit of a live audience.
“Traveling animal act” means any performance which requires an animal
to be transported to or from the location of the performance in a mobile or
traveling housing facility.
2. This act shall take effect immediately.”
The important parts to note are that it
applies to all wild or exotic animals in addition to elephants, and that it
prohibits any public showing of these animals for the benefit of the public. Even
when this bill just dealt with elephants, this wording still would have been
overly broad in comparison with similar extant legislation. Both the New York
and Illinois elephant-specific laws were carefully written to make sure they
didn’t accidentally prohibit legitimate educational presentations: New York
banned the use of elephants in any type of entertainment, travelling or not,
but they emphasized the entertainment part of the definition and included an
exemption for programs run by zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos and
Aquariums (AZA) and wildlife sanctuaries; Illinois (the existing law most
similar to what Nosey’s Law purported to be) chose to emphasize that they were
banning travelling elephant acts and
made sure they exempted any “non-mobile, permanent institution, or other
facility.”
If this legislation has passed as it was
originally written, the vagaries of the wording wouldn’t have affected the
actual implementation – there aren’t any facilities in the state of New Jersey
taking their elephants off-site for educational programs. So how did this bill
go from specifically restricting elephants to a disaster for educational
businesses? On 12/18/2017, the Assembly Appropriations Committee amended the
text of the bill, adding six words that changed the fundamental purpose of the
law: “or other wild or exotic animals.”
The term “exotic animal” is far broader than many people
realize, and “wild animal” is even more so. In general, both terms not only
encompass the iconic megafauna like bears and tigers, but also many species the
general public encounters regularly, such as guinea pigs and canaries. Nosey’s
Law does not define what is considered a wild or an exotic animal, and it does
not reference any other extant definitions (the text is marked as if the definition will be in a footnote, but no such footnote exists at the time of this writing). The bill, if passed, will be an
addition to Title 23 of the New Jersey State statutes.
According to the definitions found in that document, an exotic animal is “any
nongame species or mammal, bird, reptile or amphibian not indigenous to New
Jersey”. There appears to be no extant definition of a wild animal – the
closest is the definition of “wildlife,” which is “any wild mammal, bird,
reptile, amphibian, fish, mollusk, crustacean or other wild animal.” These
definitions are, in keeping with the rest of the bill, incredibly broad, but it
appears that the most likely interpretation of the bill is that it will outlaw
use of all non-domestic species of animals in any sort of mobile exhibition or
outreach.
This means that if Governor Christie signs
this bill into law, the addition of those six words will make it illegal for educational
outreach companies to help children fall in love with wild animals through
entertaining – but informative – events. It will make it illegal for wildlife
rescues to raise funding for their rehabilitation programs by doing
presentations about raptor conservation with the unreleasable animals in their
care. And, because the bill was not written with any of the normal exemptions,
there are six zoos – three of which are accredited by the “gold standard”
Associations of Zoos and Aquariums (a group that almost always has exemptions
from restrictive animal management laws) – it will also make it illegal for facilities
like the Turtleback Zoo to run the classroom programs where they teach
first-graders about the astounding diversity found in nature with the help of
specially trained ambassador animals.
While this may seem like a mistake – surely,
nobody who loves animals could purposefully attempt to do such damage to
educational programs – some of the biggest proponents of the bill indicated in
their comments this is /exactly/ what was intended to occur. The headline of
PETA’s celebratory blog post applauds New Jersey for banning “all wild-animal
acts.” PETA, an organization known for their animal liberation ethos, truly
wants to end all use of animals by humans in any capacity – even for
educational purposes that might encourage people to care about animals. They
even openly celebrated the passing of Nosey’s Law as the first step in closing
all zoos (although the reference to zoos was quickly and quietly removed from
the blog post, likely to avoid cluing in the duped supporters of Nosey’s Law to
their true intentions).
The oddest thing about all of this is that Nosey’s
Law is damaging the business practices of multiple facilities accredited by the
AZA less than six months after they very publicly teamed up with PETA’s legislation-focused
counterpart, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). The CEO of HSUS,
Wayne Pacelle, wrote publicly about the need for the two organizations “to unite to fight cruelty and promote conservation,” and yet both Pacelle and the HSUS New
Jersey State Director both widely praised the passing of a law that actively
damages the conservation efforts of multiple AZA zoos. HSUS and PETA do not frequently
present themselves to the public as flip sides of the same coin, but their VP
of wildlife affairs, Nicole Paquette, has stated publicly that the two
organizations have the same goals, simply different methods of achieving them; in
light of that, it might seem that Nosey’s Law is the first stumbling block for
the overly optimistic partnership between a zoological organization and an
animal rights advocacy group. However, the comments made by both the HSUS New
Jersey State Director and Pacelle about the law passing indicated that they believed the bill to be
entirely focused on ending circus acts using wild animals. Pacelle,
specifically, opened his blog post on the topic with a statement that the law
bans “almost all wild-animal acts” when the bill as written in fact bans every exotic animal act.
While this
slight discrepancy might not be a big deal from most authors, the HSUS CEO is a
man whose books are written in collaboration with former White House speech
writers and whose blog posts frequently include vocabulary that even well-educated
readers occasionally have to look up in a dictionary – it is utterly
uncharacteristic of him to allow anything to be published under his name to
include a mischaracterization of what he himself dubbed the “biggest win yet”
for ending the use of wild animals in circuses. So what happened – how did HSUS
end up enthusiastically supporting a bill that is so blatantly damaging to
their newest collaborator?
Given that PETA actively celebrated the damage
Nosey’s Law will do to New Jersey zoos, and both HSUS people speaking publicly
about the bill didn’t seem to realize the true scope of the bill – the HSUS New
Jersey State Director didn’t even seem to be sure about what species of animals
would be covered by the ban – maybe HSUS was caught as unaware as the general
public was by the “wild and exotic animal” language amendment. The bill was
amended very late in the legislative process – more than a year after the bill
was originally introduced to the Senate floor – and it’s possible the
additional language could have gone unnoticed by animal advocacy organizations
until it was too late.
And that’s really the take-home lessons we’ve
all learned from this Nosey’s Law debacle – whether
you’re a member of interested public or a public figure heavily involved in
animal advocacy, it’s crucial to keep a close watch on the evolution of
proposed legislation. Even the smallest changes to the wording of a bill can
have big consequences, and in this case, six little words that went unnoticed
in what was intended to be a fairly targeted piece of animal protection
legislation might destroy the majority of conservation and wildlife education
opportunities for New Jersey residents.
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There’s still a chance to keep this overly broad, massively damaging law from being passed as written – Governor Chris Christie has to be convinced to veto it.
The best way to make that happen is to call his office at 609-292-6000 and tell them that Governor Christie needs to veto Senate Bill 2508 (Nosey’s Law). You don’t want to say too much – I suggest saying you want it vetoed because it will outlaw vital outreach and conservation programs as well as the intended targets, eliminating educational opportunities for residents and destroying local businesses. If you are a NJ resident, say so first. If you’re not, call anyways – the opinions of NJ constituents will have the most weight, but you’ll still help get the Governor’s attention.
If you’re not able to make a phone call, you can tweet your message to @ChrisChristie. Use the hastag #vetonoseyslaw. If you feel like doing multiple tweets, use your subsequent ones to tell the Governor about the impact mobile animal outreach programs have had on your life (for example: when educators brought snakes to your classroom and you fell in love with reptiles).
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let me share a memory with y’all. it’s from i guess 1978 or thereabouts. it’s high summer. i don’t remember where my mom was driving me, in our avocado green chevette, i just know there was a traffic jam that turned 35w northbound into a parking lot from horizon to horizon.
picture it – wait, you don’t have to use your imagination, this happened all the damn time back then.
every one of those damn cars was burning leaded gasoline. there were no emissions regulations. there were no safety regulations. there were just thousands and thousands of detroit steel shoeboxes belching visible smoke as they idled, engines loud and hot, here and there a radiator giving up in the heat, a cloud of burning oil rising.
i, a smeet of five or six, was choking on toxic smog.
i reckon it was about a half hour into the traffic jam that i first threw up. i remember a blinding headache, i remember being confused, i remember dry heaving with my arms and head hanging out the window, the green metal of the car burning my hands and my chin. i don’t remember passing out, but i’m told i lost consciousness before mom was able to get to an off-ramp, because there were no emergency lanes on the highways back then.
i lived. and life went on. what were we going to do, complain? if i’d died, the cause of death probably would’ve been recorded as heatstroke, not carbon monoxide poisoning.
i know i’m probably preaching to the choir here on tumblr. but i really wish i could tell that story to the people who think deregulation is no big deal. i wish they’d put themselves in my mom’s shoes.
or even just look at some old pictures, then look out the window.
ever notice how cityscapes used to have that orange tint and hazy aura? yeah, that’s poison gas.
remember how the mississippi river used to be a stinking soup of baby-shit yellow sludge covered with disturbingly stiff rafts of light orange foam?
i can’t even find pictures of the sludge and foam, i guess they didn’t end up on the internet. the smell was indescribable. that oily shimmer. the reek of dead things. people didn’t boat on the river for pleasure; it smelled too bad, it was too ugly, and you could get super super sick if you touched the water.
and now look at it.
i still wouldn’t want to drink it, but if i fell in i wouldn’t bolt for the shower in a panic, you know?
if the thieving billionaires get their way, we can kiss those sailboats goodbye, and learn the smell of toxic foam once more. the ultra-rich won’t even feel the extra money, they’ve already got more than they could ever touch, they just stash it in offshore accounts to rot, but the rest of us will return to a time of neverending nausea and weird cancers. a time when every elementary school class had at least one kind who’d been born with no fingers or their heart outside their body, and this was just… the way things were.
i’m sorry. i didn’t mean to longpost. it’s just. god. y’all have no idea how CLEAN everything is now, compared to when i was a kid. and these rich old men are counting on that, on people not knowing or not remembering how bad it was before regulation, not realizing how much we need these protections until it’s too late.
I enforce federal worker health and safety and pollution regulations.
When I was learning my trade, when my classmates and I were having a chuckle over the “well duh” level of specificity written into the Code of Federal Regulations (try “no hazardous material shall be stored in crew berthing” on for size), I will never forget the silence that followed when our instructor spoke these words:
“Your regulations are written in blood.”
These regulations were not written on a whim.
They were written because someone thought they could cut costs by storing however many more pounds of a radioactive, toxic, carcinogenic, or whatever else material in the same rooms where the human beings they paid to transport those materials slept, and then did that, because no one was telling them not to.
They were written because people died. Horrifically. Because unregulated capitalism values profit over human life and suffering.
Can I say it again, for those not paying attention?
Unregulated capitalism values profit over human life and suffering.
Do we also need to fucking talk about the Radium Girls again who slowly fucking rotted alive because the company they worked for deliberately hid knowledge of radium’s effects on living matter?
Fortunately, this is satire. The New Yorker is basically a printed “Onion”. The unfortunate part is this statement could be true and people are reading it as such due to being misinformed. While I completely agree with OP’s sentiment, these words were not uddered. Hopefully this comment will reach someone and educate them. Please learn the dangers of posting and reblogging misinformed, misinterpreted, and incorrect statements and the repercussions they have.
I have never supported Trump. I just don’t support bullshit stories and exaggerations about him. He does enough stupid shit, no need to make things up.
Refuting falsehoods is not the same thing as supporting him, damn
Thank
Like it’s actually the fact that I don’t support him which makes me so determined that he is called out for the specific things he does and not the nonsense he doesn’t.
You can’t just tell people to ‘get a VPN (Virtual Private Network)’. Buying a VPN is like buying a house. It’s very very important. Having no VPN or having a ‘wrong’ one can seriously damage your life. Especially for Americans because their privacy laws are garbage. I am going to try explain why you should get a VPN but bare with me, I am from Germany and my English is far from perfect.
Let’s start with a simple test. Click this link here: https://whatismyipaddress.com/ It will tell your IP adres, your ISP (internet service provider), and your location. The location might not be very accurate, but then again, it’s just a simple website. Imagine what the government can do!
So basically, everyone can find out where you live. But there is more danger. Your ISP. Your ISP logs your every move online and they are required to keep it in case the government wants access to it (or if a 3rd party wants to buy your data (yikes). They have everything. What websites you visit. How long you stay on a website. What you download. Your search terms. European laws are more subtle on this but if you are from the US you are #@*#&, especially because Trump doesn’t support the open internet. It’s scary but maybe in the future you can’t get a job because the recruiter knows your searched on ‘how to deal with depression’ or anythings else that’s supposed to be private because it’s your f*cking right. Or you get a $100k fine because you pirated a movie 15 years ago. You need a VPN. You’re dumb for not using one. but what does a VPN do?
A VPN encrypts all your data so if it were be intercepted no one can ‘crack the code’ and damage your privacy.
Usually being online goes like this (simplified): Your computer —-> ISP (—–> keeps data —–> sells it)
But with a VPN it goes like: Your computer —–> VPN (encrypts data)—–> ISP (ISP can’t see shit)
Furthermore, a VPN hides your IP address and location by giving you another IP address located in Spain for example (you can often choose from a list and change as many times as you want).
Now that you know why you should get a VPN and what is does it is important to educate yourself because people often choose the wrong VPN. VPN providers are also businesses and have to obey the law. If you choose a VPN provider located in the US then you are throwing your money away because the laws in the US shits on your privacy. If the US gov wants the provider to give all their logs they have to obey. The ISP still can’t see what you are doing online and sell your data but the US gov can interfere with your VPN provider so NEVER CHOOSE A PROVIDER LOCATED IN THE US.
I just wanted to make that very clear so my followers don’t buy false security.
There is still more danger! Who says your VPN provider isn’t selling your data? You need to check their logging policy. Do they keep logs? If yes, what for? For how long do they keep them? Tip: Choose a provider who doesn’t keep logs
More about law The US is part of the Five Eyes program (the worst):
The Five Eyes, often abbreviated as FVEY, is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. These countries are bound by the multilateral UKUSA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence (source)
There is also a Nine Eyes (bit better) and Fourteen Eyes Program (better). You don’t want a VPN provider who is located in one the Five Eyes countries. If you had to choose go for a provider located in a country that’s part of the Fourteen Eyes Program or even better, go for a country that isn’t part of any program!
I know this is a shitty explanation and please pardon my english but now it’s time to do your own research. Take your privacy seriously. Maybe WWIII breaks out and you get killed for liking the ‘wrong’ FB-page.
Make sure that your future VPN provider both has green boxes for Privacy Jurisdiction and Privacy Logging.
I recommend ovpn.se and trust.zone. ovpn is located in Sweden so they are part of the 14 Eyes Program and they keep minimal logs. Their business ethics, however, are alright.
Trustzone is located in the Seychelles. No country can interfere and their privacy jurisdiction is the best you can get. The US want your data but needs to get it from Trustzone? The Seychelles will simply give them the finger and wave them goodbye. However, this makes this provider very appealing for people who torrent and criminals because they keep no logs (and that is how it shoud be) Also, there are almost no marketing efforts so this provider is one the cheapest)
Also, often providers such as ExpressVPN are being called ‘The Best’ on websites about VPNs but know that this is just marketing which also makes those provider more expensive (and they too shit on your privacy)
This must be the worst article you have ever read but please, please take your privacy very seriously.
I am also with Trustzone but I think you forgot to explain one of it’s most important features. It protects you when you are using someone else’s Wi-Fi. If you are at Starbucks and you use their Wi-Fi your privacy is at risk. Anyone with ill intentions could steal your information. Especially if you are using an unsecured Wi-Fi hotspot. With a VPN your data gets encrypted so no one can steal it.
Wait, what’s going, on? Did trump destroy internet privacy with a bill or something? Where’s the news? Oh wait, why am I getting visions of Alex Jones and selling water purifiers?
He hasn’t yet but he says he wants to. And if he is serious about it it would be really easy to do. Since all our data is already recorded, as the person above explained.
Trump wants more surveillance of Muslim Americans. This in a country where internet privacy is already close to non-existent.
To all my friends in the US, please read this entire post. Making everyone aware of VPNs is going to be my mission. Your privacy matters. Please reblog this post.
Don’t tell me you just wanted to scroll past this. Stop looking at pictures of cats for a moment, okay? Don’t you realize how important this is? This is dangerous! ‘America, the best FREE country in the world’ my ass.
With this new law your ISP can sell your Internet history which could include passwords, usernames, religion, credit card numbers, race and much more to the highest bidder. So here is what I want you to do.
You are going to read the whole thing and before you think ’this is so important. Let me reblog this real quick and go back to admiring cats again-’ NO! Don’t reblog this. Take action first. Then reblog. Sign up for a free trial! Trust.Zone offers one (here). Yes. It might be difficult to set up a VPN for some people. But is that going to stop you from protecting yourself and your family? 30 minutes. 30 minutes is all that it takes. 5 if you know how to install software. The problem with some of you is that you see ‘difficult’ as something negative. I want you to see difficult differently. I need you to push through this stuff. You are going to protect yourself. There is nothing negative about that.
VPNs are fun and costsaving too! A VPN bypasses geographical restrictions so you can access websites you normally can’t or you could start Netflix’s one month free trial over and over again- forever. And it’s legal! (unless you use it to buy weapons etc.,)
Don’t tell yourself that you are too tired and that you will do this tomorrow. Because that isn’t going to happen and you know it. You have to do this right now. You only have to click on it.
Don’t let this/shit/life just happen to you. Take yourself seriously. Get a VPN.
Privacy is not a privilege, it’s a fundamental human right
PiraticOctopus 