It appears that The Onion has taken over the job as Paris Hilton's publicist. According to an associate press report, she has decided to fight elephant alcoholism in India. That is right, Paris Hilton is fighting to stop elephants from binge drinking. It appears that Elephants are getting drunk of off a home-brewed rice beer and destroying electrical poles and other property.
Because I just cannot explain this any better I will let Paris speak about her newfound cause:
"The elephants get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them... There would have been more casualties if the villagers hadn't chased them away. And four elephants died in a similar way three years ago. It is just so sad."
Not surprisingly drunken or destructive elephants are controversial issue in many areas of rural India. To some the animals are sacred and should be protect while others see their increasingly destructive behavior as a cause for concern. A local activist Sangeeta Goswami, head of animal rights group People for Animals, discussed Paris's comments and stated: "I am indeed happy Hilton has taken note of recent incidents of wild elephants in northeast India going berserk after drinking homemade rice beer and getting killed....As part of her global elephant campaign, Hilton should, in fact, think of visiting this region literally infested with elephants."
At least one person in the article understood why the animals are getting drunk. Soumyadeep Dutta, who heads Nature's Beckon, said that "Elephants appear on human settlements ... because they have no habitat left due to wanton destruction of forests."
Overall, this story made me think of an article in the book Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth (published by AK Press) that argues that elephants that destroy powerlines, monkeys that ravage government buildings, ect... are an expression of non-human direct action against environmentally destructive development. Because of this, we should treat them as political prisoners or martyrs in the eco-war.
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