Sorry I’ve been away this month; I spent a good bit of June traveling and lately I’ve been trying to find a job.

I’m off to a retreat for the weekend in a few minutes. I’m the cook, and what’s on the menu includes:

• General Tao’s Tofu
• A veganized version of my mom’s Better Homes and Garden’s French Breakfast Puffs
• Vegan Chunky Monkey, which I’m a bit anxious about attempting, by adding chocolate and walnuts to a veganized version of Alton Brown’s Banana Ice Cream

When I get back I’ll probably post the latter two veganized recipes on the wiki, and get back to working on anti-HLS campaign pages and sidebar.

Also, I’m working on a new skin for the site. The “new” one I made a few months ago was I think an improvement, but it is a little crazy, and the one I’m working on now stays a lot closer to the standard MonoBook/Wikimedia skin. When it’s done I’ll put screen shots on a page and whoever wants to can vote on it (that vs. the current vs. the standard Monobook skin).

I just got back from a required expedition in the Adirondacks for my last college credit… it will be nice not to jump through any more hoops (aside from work, which is better IMHO because it's confined to 8 hours a day).

So, spam: since the hosting switch, we've been able to implement the anti-spam tactic suggested by an anonymous editor (setting $wgSpamRegex to in LocalSettings.php), plus implement two other anti-spam measures (as of this evening):

1. Blocking edits from open proxies, which it seems the spammers are using
2. Re-installing the SpamBlacklist extension, which we lost when we migrated hosts. 

I have a feeling #1 will take care of a lot of the spam we're seeing right now. It's a little unwiki (see the discussion on the page linked above), but I think we should at least try it for a few months.

<h2>HLS dropped from Pink Sheets</h2>

 So [[Huntingdon Life Sciences]], aka HLS aka Life Sciences Research Inc. (their new name) aka LSRI, was recently dropped from the Pink Sheets (a third-tier stock exchange), after a few months on the Over The Counter Bulletin Board (a second-tier one), and about seven months after not being listed on the NYSE. This is a pretty huge victory for the anti-HLS campaign; I have a feeling that if we don't screw this up somehow and if they don't pull something amazing out of their hats, we could see HLS go out of business within a year or two. 

In other good news, vegan prisoner [[Eric McDavid]] is being given decent vegan meals, after a very long a debilitating hunger strike and 100 days in jail.

As the site front page explains, we recently switched hosts, from wikidev.net to hcoop.net, largely thanks to the initiative and expertise of NTK. There are a number of very positive effects that this switch will or should have:

• Cost: it should now cost only 5 bucks a month or so to host instead of about 15.
• Democracy: if you've seen [[wikiveg constitution]] you may know (and may have been justifiably upset about) my unwiki desire to keep a certain amount of monarchical control over the site. A big part of this has been that I haven't been able to bring myself to turn the site over to community control when I've been coughing up 45 bucks every three months to pay for the damn thing – it's not a ton of money, but it has sure felt like a lot to this poor student. But I feel a lot more comfortable having it be community controlled now, even if no one is chipping in yet.
• Greater control: until now we've had to ask our host Gabriel at wikidev.net to do most things for us, which takes time and sometimes extra money. But hcoop.net is geared towards the power-user, so we can do anything to the site we want ourselves (assuming we know how to do it). 
• "Ethical purchasing": We're supporting what appears to be a really great and unique project.

There are a few downsides, though I think the above outweigh them:

• We lost a few edits on the switch, because when NTK and I were doing it, it was much easier to user an older installation that we had done a week or so before as a test than to start a new one, and since we were (and I still am!) in the middle of final exams and other final schoolwork, we went for the quicker option. (And we had to get it done then, since the wikidev.net hosting that had been paid for was going to run out the next week.) I don't think we lost many (any?) substantial edits, and if we did it shouldn't be hard to redo them.
• We lost the images, until I have time to re-upload them, which won't be until late May, because…

I'm heading to the Adirondacks on Monday for a wilderness expedition that I have to do to satisfy my final graduation requirement. I'm looking forward to it actually, despite the fact that we won't be able to use shampoo or deodorant for two weeks (though I'm going to see if I can smuggle in some of the latter). See ya'll in June..

Hi all, I'm back, sorry for the almost month-long unannounced absence. I've been rather busy with schoolwork, mostly a senior thesis on Aristotle and ecofeminism. Man I can't wait to be done with school (May 13 – actually, no, May 30, since I have to do a wilderness expedition for two weeks after graduation as my final PE requirement).

There have been some understandable concerns about the future/health of the wiki in the past couple weeks due to my absence and non-responsiveness (e.g. to emails); I moved this discussion to the [[community portal]] and responded to it.  

I probably won't be terribly active on the wiki for the next month and a half while I finish school, but I'll try to post a little bit and fight back the spammers. I may post some stuff about ecofeminism, which usually includes concerns for animals, as I continue writing my thesis.

In the wider animal-friendly world, Food Fight! and other kind souls are trying to raise $10,000 for Josh Harper's (one of the SHAC 7) legal fund, and Sea Shepherd captain Paul Watson is resigning as a co-director of the Sierra Club because they are, uh, supporting hunting…

The skin and wiki-politics

So it seems that all of a sudden the new skin is working roughly properly in Internet Explorer. Minor fixes should still be done, but I think we’re mostly OK now.

I’ve gotten both good and bad feedback on it. One wikivegan thinks it looks too unlike a normal wiki (a majority of wikis use the standard Monobook skin, or similarly business-like skins if they’re using a different engine).

I admit it was ‘unwiki’ to just change it as I did, without getting feedback from the users. My reasons were that I really thought the old skin was bad, and that a majority of future users would prefer the new skin to the old one. And I’ve gotten rather more good feedback than bad already, wich confirms this. 

So, although it’s ‘unwiki’, I’m going to leave the current skin on, as my last act as Benevolent Dictator. In a minute though I’m going to start the page [[wikiveg constitution]] which will outline what I (and other sysops) can and can’t do, and from then on will stick to that.  

SHAC roundup

As you may know, the SHAC 7 were convicted on all counts back on March 2nd. The sentencing will happen in June, and meanwhile the defendants are out on house arrest. (Four were released fairly quickly; Kevin was released early this week; Josh was to be released today.) I haven’t been talking about it because of widespread sentiment in the activist community that publicly discussing the case, or engaging in anti-HLS activity, could perhaps hurt their chances of not getting a heavy sentence. The Toronto Star (via Hounded, Cowed, & Badgered) has a good article about it though if you want to read more.

As I think I said, I’m ambivalent about many SHAC tactics but I still think this wasn’t a just outcome. Hopefully though it will be won on appeal. I heard someone say that first amendment cases are often lost on trial but won on appeal.

That means though that they need more support to hire a decent first amendment attorney. Donations can be received on the website, or by sending a check (payable to NJARA) to SHAC 7, c/o NJARA, PO Box 174, Englishtown, NJ 07726.

So I just finished version 1 of the new skin, and put it on the site. Yay!

Funny thing is, it’s working in Firefox, but not Safari or IE (all Mac).

Even stranger, Safari and IE are using the previous skin… but the previous skin only existed on the page MediaWiki:Monobook.css, and that page now has the new skin on it. So I don’t know why that’s happening – it’s like they’re intentionally looking in the history of that page and getting the older version, just to piss me off.

So, very helpful would be to know for whom the skin is working. It should look someting like this.
Some known bugs:

• Banner ends and dark green begins if browser window is wider than 1024px
• Funny business on the personal links if you hover the cursor at the bottom of them
• Color of gardener fellow isn’t exactly the same as the color of the main content area
• I meant to give the heading styles one last touch-up, since the current color scheme is different from the one I was using when I designed them, but I’ll do that later.

Unfortunately, my computer broke an hour ago (AGAIN). So I can’t really fix these bugs or other ones until who knows when…

Update:

It seems to be working in Safari, and mostly working in IE, except that the sidebar is beginning at the top of the page instead of below the banner. So the top group of sidebar links are on top of the banner. Annoying, but that seems like a smaller problem. I’ll try to fix that and other bugs this weekend.

New skin

I’ve been neglecting to write about the wiki proper lately due to the SHAC 7 trial goings-on, but there has been stuff going on. Most excitingly (for me at least), I’ve been for most of the past 24 hours working on a new skin (i.e. layout) for the site. I’ll probably be done in another couple days. I’ve thought for a while that we really needed one – so many people just won’t come back if a site looks ugly – but been too scared of CSS.

Turns out though CSS isn’t that bad. I just jumped in and started messing with it.

What I’m working on will be a good bit simpler-looking than the standard “Monobook” skin we currently have, what with all its lines and boxes everywhere. I think across the top is going to be a banner made up of veggie or animal liberation related silhouettes, not entirely unlike (though not entirely like either) what you see on this site. I spent the last couple hours trying to get a nice silhouette of a rodent of some kind being freed (below), though frustratingly I’ve lost the original link so I don’t know what kind of animal it is or where. I’m not super happy with the graphic, and may not use it in the final skin, but it gives you a general sort of gander of where this is going.

New pages

Perhaps the most important page recently made is Eric McDavid. Eric was arrested back in January, along with a two others, for allegedly planning to destroy some cell phone towers, one or more power plants, and a facility of the U.S. Forest Service Institute of Forest Genetics. They were arrested mostly because they, along with many other radical groups over the years, had been infiltrated by a young undercover agent who went by the name of “Anna”.

When I went down for the SHAC 7 trial last week, I met a girl doing prison support for him and the two other activists. I had heard about some recently-arrested activist who was on the third week of a hunger strike because he was being denied vegan meals; it turns out this was Eric McDavid, and that very recently, after about a month, they started feeding him suitable meals.

Still, letters would be appreciated, and if you’re near Sacramento you could visit him. (Also on the vegan prisoner front, Peter Young has been allowed to receive books again. His wikiveg page hasn’t been updated yet though, so see SupportPeter.com for more info on that.)

Other articles include: a Philadelphia page; one on Mary Lou Sapone, an undercover agent who did something tres bizarre in the 80s; Teany, a cafe opened by vegan musician Moby; Huntingdon Life Sciences (did I already mention that before?); elephants, which apparently are more and more frequently being born tuskless due to a certain gene being promoted by hunting (“unnatural selection”).

Finally, there’s an article on soya toxicity (aka soy toxicity). Apparently some sources say that soy in high enough amounts (amounts many vegans get) becomes bad for you. Other sources say this is just dairy-industry propaganda. I’m not sure which is true, but I did notice a long article about this in an issue of Herbivore I have, so I’ll try to read it and add some info from it in the next week or so.

New blogs

There’s what looks like a really good, down-to-business blog on U.S. animal law called Hounded, Cowed, & Badgered. Also, Herbivore just launched a staff blog.

I went down to Trenton Wednesday night to observe the SHAC 7 trial, as I said I might. We saw the defense lawyers’ entire case Thursday, and Friday was reserved for some finagling between the lawyers about the documents that will be given to the jury later. Closing statements are happening Monday, and jury deliberations shortly after.

It ain’t over till it’s over, but I’m afraid it may not go well for them. I talked to Josh Harper (one of the defendants) after the defense ended, and he indicated they weren’t very optimistic. He called it “mind-numbing” that he very well may be going to jail over some emails and speeches, and even more mind-numbing that there are laws on the books making that possible.

I think the big problem was that the defense lawyers weren’t doing so hot. (“Sleeping on the job” is how one defendant described it.) Most of them seemed competent, but it just seems not quite right, not quite right at all, for the prosecution to take ten days making its case, and the defense lawyers to be finished all in one day. I mean, they originally thought the case would last 12-18 weeks; then six weeks; this is just three and a half!

I’m guessing the problem is that all but one of the attorneys are court-assigned and don’t have a lot of time to devote to the case, or deep interest in it. The money people have raised for the legal fund has, I believe, gone to the remaining attorney, whose name I forget. Perhaps we just didn’t raise enough to get him to really invest himself in the case?

Another big problem was that the judge, Anne Thompson, was gagging everyone from talking about what can happen to animals inside HLS. People would start to refer to “the video of the workers punching—”, for example, and get cut off by her or prosecutor Charles McKenna. I think her official reason was that it’s just “hearsay”; the footage, for example, “could be from anywhere”. I think there must be more to it than that though: one witness, Janine Motta of the New Jersey Animal Rights Alliance, started to say, “There’s this one test that they do, where they—” before she was cut off by the judge. But she wasn’t talking about HLS, or even implying that the procedure happens or could happen at HLS; she was just answering a question about what information made her become an animal rights activist. I don’t think it’s uncharitable to suggest that the judge probably just didn’t want to allow anything graphic enough to make people ashamed of how our society treats animals.

If they get some prison time, and only Darius is expecting not to I believe, Josh said an appeals process might exonerate some of them, especially Jake Conroy and Lauren Gazzola; hopefully we can raise enough funds to make that happen. But in the meantime they’d be in custody for at least a year or so. And I heard the max figure for one of the defendants is 23 years; hopefully that’s wrong and the news article that said 13 years is right.

A tiny silver lining: the mainstream news articles, I think, making them look good and HLS and the government bad for a change.

(Note: I wrote this Friday but it didn’t post for some reason. There’s also been an official update since then; they still want people to come to court Monday and Tuesday.)

The SHAC 7 are specifically requesting supporters to come to court for these last three weekdays this week, since the prosecution finished yesterday, and the defense’s case starts today (Wednesday). From the request from defendant Andy Stepanian:

The government’s case is expected to rest this Tuesday, and it is at that point that we will be putting on our defense. We have been restrianed from showing footage of the documented crimes commited by HLS, we have been prohibited from allowing expert testimony on how vivisection is both morally and scientifically fraudulent, and we have been prohibited form mentioning the recent charges brought against HLS by the NJSPCA (see http://www.animaldefense.info/news/010506.html) We must show that we have support from the community!, we must show that we are not only innocent but we are right!, YOU CAN HELP US DO THAT! For the animals inside HLS, and for the the freedom of myself and my co-defendants please tell everyone you know to PUT ON YOUR BEST CLOTHES AND BIGGEST SMILES AND ATTEND COURT WEDNESDAY THROUGH FRIDAY OF THIS WEEK.

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Your Friend,

Andy Stepanian

I just emailed the Boston ADL list to see if anyone else is going Thursday. If no one is I may still go via train and bus, but it’d be more difficult.

Herbivores galore!

In other news, I ordered an almost complete set of Herbivore magazine back issues, and they arrived today. I think they will be massively useful as info sources for wiki articles…

I’ve seen my share of graphic footage of animal abuse, but holy shit, I couldn’t finish watching this video, from a 2004-2005 undercover investigation of Chinese fur farms.

If you don’t want to or can’t watch it, let me give you the highlights: workers killing or stunning animals by repeatedly slamming their heads on the ground by their hind legs, workers skinning animals alive, skinless animals still alive and moving, animals going berserk in cages as they see what’s going to happen to them.

Apparently, about half of the finished fur sold worldwide comes from China, because animal regulations there are virtually non-existent and labor is so cheap. So this is kind of like a major problem. You can read more about it (and send a letter to someone) on this page by the HSUS, or this less detailed Peta page.

What Newbury has to do with it

I heard about this, albeit in less graphic detail, this past Monday at a meeting of the Boston Animal Defense League (BADL). BADL is organizing a boycott of Newbury Comics, a popular New England music retailer, because they have refused, after months of polite requests, to stop selling novelty items made with Chinese-farmed rabbit fur in their stores. They’re a smallish operation (26 stores, all in New England), so I imagine the boycott will be successful.

That link goes to a wikiveg page I just made, which contains info on getting more involved if you like. You can also get more info on the boycott’s homepage, myspace.com/boycottnewburycomics.

Second week of SHAC 7

The SHAC 7 site, which for a while hadn’t been updated, has been modestly redesigned and is now being updated. Yesterday this report on the second week of the trial was post:

The second week of the SHAC 7 trial has come to a close, with the prosecution nearing the end of its case. It is expected that the prosecution will rest on Tuesday afternoon.

The week saw employees from a variety of companies related to HLS testify about home demonstrations and direct action targeted at their companies and residences. Their testimony contained one common thread: they could not identify any of the defendants as having directly been in contact with them. A slew of FBI agents, officers, and others also took the stand to testify about the information seized from the defendant’s homes during raids. One computer expert that the government spent nearly $200,000 just on analyzing the defendants’ computers. Talk about money well spent!

Thus far, the jury has only heard one side of the story—the way the government would like to present it. Next week, the defendants will finally have a chance to have their voices heard.