US chimpanzee Tommy 'has no human rights' - court

A chimpanzee is not entitled to the same rights as people and does not have be freed from captivity by its owner, a US court has ruled.

The appeals court in New York state said caged chimpanzee Tommy could not be recognised as a "legal person" as it "cannot bear any legal duties".

The Nonhuman Rights Project had argued that chimps who had such similar characteristics to the humans deserved basic rights, including freedom.

The rights group said it would appeal.

Owner pleased

In its ruling, the judges wrote: "So far as legal theory is concerned, a person is any being whom the law regards as capable of rights and duties.

"Needless to say, unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions.''

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Outrage as World Bank funds power lines linked to controversial dam

The Gibe III dam threatens the livelihoods of 200,000
August 2012. Human rights organizations, including Survival International and Human Rights Watch, have fiercely criticized a decision by the World Bank to fund power lines in Ethiopia linked to the controversial Gibe III dam.

The newly-approved project will help transport power generated by a notorious hydroelectric dam in southern Ethiopia, to Kenya's power grid. Ethiopia's controversial Gibe III dam is expected to be complete by 2014, but the devastating social and environmental consequences of its construction are generating widespread opposition. The decision to help back such a controversial project violates World Bank guidelines on safeguarding indigenous peoples' rights and involuntary resettlement.

Lower Omo Valley people livelihoods endangered
More than 200,000 indigenous people in the Lower Omo Valley stand to have their livelihoods and food security destroyed by the dam. Water levels are already unprecedently low and are devastating the self-sufficiency of pastoralist tribes such as the Bodi and Mursi and the hunter-gatherer Kwegu.

Violent land grabs
Added to this, violent land grabs, forcible resettlement and human rights abuses are rife in the Lower Omo, as the government clears land to make way for lucrative sugarcane and cotton plantations irrigated by the newly-dammed river.

Ethiopia has failed to consult any indigenous communities over the construction of Gibe III or its aggressive plantation plans, which are devastating the Lower Omo Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The dam will also affect many tribal communities across the border near Kenya's Lake Turkana, the world's largest desert lake.

Survival International's Director Stephen Corry said, ‘The electrical needs of Kenya and Ethiopia should not be used to justify such flagrant human rights abuses. This is yet another ill-fated project supported by the World Bank, which will destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. These are some of the most self-sufficient communities in the Horn of Africa, and yet their human rights are being openly trampled on by an organization that ought to have learnt from history, rather than repeat the mistakes of the past.'

Survival International, Human Rights Watch and International Rivers all condemn the World Bank's decision to fund these transmission lines.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/omo-dam.html

Should Whales and Dolphins Have ‘Human Rights’? Their Lawyers Say Yes

Over the last several decades, researchers have shown that many dolphin and whale species are extraordinarily intelligent and social creatures, with complex cultures and rich inner lives. They are, in a word, persons.

Now animal advocates are challenging society to follow science to its logical conclusion and give legal rights to cetaceans. In the next several years, they intend to make their case in a court of law. If they’re successful, a dolphin could conceivably become the first non-human ever considered a legal person.

“The problem so far is that all nonhuman animals are seen as being legal things,” said Steven Wise, an animal law scholar and attorney. “If you’re a legal person, you have the capacity to have rights. That’s the fundamental problem we intend to attack.”

Wise founded the Nonhuman Rights Project in 2007, two years after finishing a series of books on animals, rights and law. The first two, Rattling the Cage and Drawing the Line, made a case for giving legal rights to chimpanzees and bonobos, and considering other animals on a species-by-species basis. He followed those works with Though the Heavens May Fall, an account of the 1772 trial of James Somerset, the first black human recognized as a person under British law.

At the trial’s beginning, Somerset was legally considered a thing, not even permitted to speak on his behalf. At its end, he was a person. The case used by Somerset’s lawyers was an inspiration to Wise, and by the end of 2013 the Nonhuman Rights Project plans to file two lawsuits on behalf of individual animals held in captivity in the United States.

To be sure, it will be an underdog’s battle, and might even be called quixotic. “There would be tremendous resistance. People would worry — ‘What are the limits? Is every animal in a zoo going to have a lawyer?’” said Richard Posner, a judge on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “In the foreseeable future it wouldn’t have traction.”

Continued:  http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/07/cetacean-rights/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Top+Stories%29

Are an animal's rights more important than a person's safety in the air?

Recently, there have been at least two more incidents of bird strikes causing airliners to make emergency landings. Inevitably -- and understandably -- references are immediately drawn to the "miracle on the Hudson" where a flight out of La Guardia lost all engines due to ingesting a flock of geese.

While bird strikes are rare, these latest incidents give rise to calls for increased efforts to reduce birds in areas around airports. But this has churned up the usual suspects who have the weird belief that a Canada goose has the same rights to air space around LaGuardia as passengers on a 737 heading to Vegas.

Let's cut to the bottom line: any factor that threatens the safety of air travel must be address to the fullest extent reasonably possible. So if there is a bird sanctuary or avian nesting area that generates or attracts flying creatures which may even distantly represent a threat to air safety, there is only one option: remove it. Birds can go live and play and make little birds someplace else.

But, of course, there are the folks who get outraged, babbling about how such actions violates these animal's "rights." Can somebody clue these people in to the fact that animals do not have co-equal rights with humans? Animals don't have rights at all, as a matter of fact. Humans do, because they have agreed to such a system. 

But animals? Please, I've never seen a depiction of, or heard about, a moose being a signatory to the Magna Carta. And, I can make no references to the contribution made by any furry or four-legged creature at the Constitutional Convention.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/05/13/are-animal-rights-more-important-than-person-safety-in-air/#ixzz1ulsuFrUu