Animal Rights Community Online Blog

On another thread, Ante posted:-

At the same time, I like to say that, in my opinion, no one has the monopoly on ideas, animal rights, animal welfare, or animals period. Different people using the power of reasoning state their views and that's all. It's not any different when it comes to animal rights philosophy. Nothing is black and white, absolute and I don't think definition of animal rights is either. And I don't thing that anyone in particular should be appointed as the god of animal rights.

This raises questions that have interested me for a long time and I wonder if people might want to comment. For example, if we are looking for philosophical consistency, then the works of people such as Tom Regan, Gary Francione and Joan Dunayer are a good place to begin in terms of answering the Q above. [Please note at this point that philosopher and athour of Animal Liberation, Peter Singer, is not a rightist, despite being called the "father" of the AR movement].

Many animal activists over the years (I became campaigning in the late 1970s, been arrested, gone to prison, all of that) argue that they do not like using the language of rights to make their claims about how humans should treat nonhumans.

Some will say they oppose the notion of rights because it is too male or too upper class in terms of origin. Therefore, such people are often inspired by feminist and/or anarchist thinking. Such people will often use the label "animal liberationist" to describe themselves. Some, however, will be happy (or at least prepared) to call themselves animal rightists.

Then (fanfare and drumroll) we have the animal welfarists (this is where Peter Singer re-enters the picture).

There are different types of animal welfarists, from traditional ones to radical ones. Some I call abolitionist welfarists (like CIWF) who want to abolish some forms of "animal husbandry" but not necessarily others (the so-called 'humane' forms like 'free-range'). Some of these people call themselves animal rightists too - and they often say that philosophical differences are not important and even divisive. These are often the people who say "we are all on the same road".

Some say that, because they do the day-to-day "get your hands dirty" work in terms of animal protection - work at sanctuaries, demos etc - they should decide that "animal rights" is taken to mean. People like Francione and Dunayer say that these people think AR and radical animal welfarism is the same thing. Thinkers such as Lee Hall say that this explains why animal rights campaigns may "collapse" into animal welfarism. It explains (in part) why a once radical group (like PeTA) are now doing many welfare campaigns about the best way to end the lives of nonhuman individuals - they prefer gassing at the moment I believe.

SO - what you you think!! Who decides what AR is?

Rags.

Hi, I just joined this board. I am interested in the link between vegetarianism and anti-war/peace activism. It always bothers me to see a self-labeled "peace activist" sitting down to a meal of flesh from a murdered animal, that was bred as food in a pain factory. I know some zealous peace proponents that do this, while saying they want a non-violent world.

They claim to be teaching their children peace, but how can they, while serving murdered animals for dinner?

I just do not understood how you can stand for peace, and dine on the flesh of another being that died in agony and terror.

It seems incongruous to me.

What do you think?

Sharon wrote:  ‹ Select ›

The different religions, the different beliefs, etc...which is the "right" one?

Which is the right one? Simple: Every one and none. You can learn from all religions, but only if you are mature enough to acknowledge that religious books are written by men and are not infallible. So if you are capable of acknowledging that you will find mistakes in any religion, and some truth in all, you'll be fine.

As to whether there is a god or not, what does it matter? Live your life trying to do good and as little harm as possible, and you'll be happy. Then, when you die, there are three possibilities:

1. There is no afterlife, in which case, it is futile worrying about what happens after you die.

2. There is re-birth, in which case, life goes on.

3. There is heaven, in which case a good person will go there no matter his/her religion. In any case, I find it very hard to believe that a just and kind god would punish anyone for eternity. I know I wouldn't do that, and god is supposed to be kinder.

Well, that is my opinion, anyway...no offense intended to anyone who disagrees.

Animal Rights activists MUST be at the vanguard of human rights, peace, justice etc.
That means: no Racism, no homophobia, no religious bigotry etc etc...
We MUST leave these stupidities to the masses and reject all these forms of outdated mass thinking.
If those of us who have rejected the staus quo of the use and abuse of animals don't- then who will?
We can't leave it the hunters, vivisectors, fast food junkies etc etc.
As part of our rejection of animal cruelty we are used to resisting/fighting/challenging the status quo.
Now the situation is CRITICAL.
Watch:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8810949184378664013&q=occult
Support all resistance movements and liberation movements
Human, animal, environmental.
To do otherwise is to give support to the abusers.

I dont see why the internet is supposedly such a poor way of protesting against animal abuses ? Here are some of my reasons:

1) Your opinions are available for anyone around the WORLD to view, you have a potential audience of BILLIONS - something that cannot be achieved by a local street protest.

2) Your written word is immortalised on websites such as this, so many people around the globe can read about your ideas many years after you have written it - the "on the street" protest is over in a few hours, and media will usually either belittle or ignore your message anyway.

3) The increasing passtime of many people is "web surfing", so as more of us become internet savy the online protest is an increasingly effective way of reaching others in the safety of their own homes where they have the opportunity to consider the arguments at hand without feeling threatened - as passes by often do during street protests. Therefore you alienate less people also.

4) There is more opportunity online to provide extra information, pictures, references and other helpful resources that wouldnt be appropriate to bring to an "on the street" protest - those who are interested in your cause can spend as long as they like reasearching it online whilst maintaining their privacy. The street protest can be too confronting for many people, so they just steer clear.

Im not saying that protesting on the streets is pointless - those who do it should be commended and its a very valid way of getting some excellent exposure - but in this day and age of the computer I think that you have underestimated just what online discussions can achieve. The added bonus is that you have the wonderful support of a like-minded online community to share your ideas with, back you up and keep you strong!

Hi, everyone. I just joined this forum, and the topics I've read seem quite interesting so far, so I suppose I'll try to stay an active member here. Excuse my lousy English though--it's not my primary language

I've recently been doing a little research, and now that I'm a little bit more aware of all the cruelty done to animals for food, clothes, etc., I'm willing to become vegan.

I just need a little motivation. I live in a non-vegan household, and being vegan is is looked down upon by my parents and siblings because they think it's an unhealthy lifestyle. I've tried becoming vegetarian before, but I didn't take it too seriously and didn't like veggies too much (I do now), and my parents convinced me to start eating meat again anyway. Now that I want to become vegan, I'm taking this seriously. So... can anyone give me as many reasons to become vegan? Any health risks (i.e. calcium/iron/protein/etc. deficiencies)? What should I do or say if my family still doesn't approve of this? I'm just not too sure on how to get started.

I almost never eat meat, but I'd have to give up milk products, which I absolutely love (if you know of any alternatives to milk, please tell me). I don't know much about animal clothing though, and even less about "hidden" animal ingredients that I should watch out for =/ So... any information you can give me would be very appreciated.

Grrrrr. I just walked out of another movie. It was Oldboy (2003, Korean) which won a mess of awards at the Cannes Film Festival & got rave reviews. The movie itself may have been ok, but 45 mins into it we see a guy eating a live squid. That was enough for me. Later I did some research and found out that it was a real squid (actually 4 of them. The bastards couldn't get it right in one take).

Anyway, if you're like me, you're probably sick of being blindsided by this sort of stuff. So maybe it would be helpful if we listed the movies where animals were killed/tortured in real life. I know a few:

Apocalypse Now
a buffalo is partially beheaded and then hacked to death

Cannibal Holocaust
too many killings to list

Andrey Rublyov (critically acclaimed Russian film by Tarkovsky)
a horse is shot in the neck and thrown down a flight of stairs

The Godfather
The horse head is REAL.
(what is it with Francis Ford Coppola & animals??)

Manderlay
donkey is killed. I heard the scene was cut because of all the bad press.
(as if that suddenly makes the movie OK)

Those are all the ones I can think about atm. Does anyone else know of any? I'm sick of wasting my $$$

Tourterelle wrote:  ‹ Select ›

There is a growing concensus that animal testing is pretty useless and even gives harmful results at times. Somewhere on this forum there is a very long list of quotes by doctors and scientists who are now opposed to animal testing. I can't remember offhand where it is, but perhaps you or someone else can find it.

I am going to post them again because this is the information that those who profit from animal torture don't want the public to know because that is what would bring about the end for vivisection.

Less than 2% of human illnesses (1.16%) are ever seen in animals. Over 98% never are.
At least 50 drugs on the market cause cancer in lab animals. They are allowed because it is admitted that animal tests are not relevant.
When asked if they agreed that animal experimentation can be misleading because of anatomical and physiological differences between animals and humans, 88% of doctors agreed.
Rats are 37% effective in identifying what causes cancer in humans. Flipping a coin would be more accurate.
According to animal tests lemon juice is deadly poison, but arsenic, hemlock and botulin are safe.
40% of patients suffer side effects as a result of prescription treatment.
Over 200,000 medicines have been released most of which are now withdrawn. According to the World Health Organisation, 240 medicines are ‘essential’.
Thousands of drugs passed safe in animals have been withdrawn or banned due to their effect on human health.
Aspirin fails animal tests, as do digitalis (heart drug), cancer treatments, insulin (causes animal birth defects), penicillin and other safe medicines. They would be banned if results from animal experimentation were accurate.
When the producers of thalidomide were taken to court, they were aquitted after numerous experts agreed animal tests could not be relied on for human medicine.
At least 450 methods exist with which we can replace animal experiments.
Morphine puts humans asleep but excites cats.
95% of drugs passed by animal tests are immediately disgarded as useless or dangerous to humans.
One is six patients in hospital are there because the drug they have taken had been passed safe for us on humans after animal tests.
Worldwide, at least 22 animals die every second in labs. In the UK one animal dies every five seconds.
The contraceptive pill causes blood clots in humans but it had the opposite effect in dogs.
We use aspirin for aches and pains. It causes birth defects mice, rabbits and rats.
Researchers refused to believe that benzene could cause cancer in humans because it failed to in animal tests.
Dogs failed to predict heart problems caused by the cardiovascular drugs encainide and flecainide, which led to an estimated 3,000 deaths in the USA.
Heart by pass surgery was put on hold for years because it didn’t work on dogs.
If we had relied on animal tests we would still believe that humans don’t need vitamin C, that smoking doesn’t cause cause cancer and alcohol doesn’t cause liver damage.
It was denied for decades that asbestos caused disease in humans because it didn’t in animals.
Polio researchers were mislead for years about how we catch the disease because they had experimented on monkeys.
As one researcher points out, “the ultimate dilemma with any animal model of human disease is that it can never reflect the human situation with complete accuracy."

http://www.shac.net/SCIENCE/facts.html

I went to the post that reads "What are your eating habits?" and I felt that there was not an option for me.

I have been an aspiring vegan for almost a year, but because my partner sometimes eats meat and I lack the will power to say no, I sometimes eat meat. Also about once a month I crave a chicken (terrible from the chicken's perspective and yours, I know), so I will buy a chicken from Whole Foods. Also, most days, in a hurry, I give my formerly chained and street rescued dogs some non-vegetarian dry dog food.

I think I am what is called a "Flexitarian." I have become educated to understand vegan, raw-vegan, junk-food vegan, carnivore, omnivore, fruitarian, vegetarian, etc., but I am not 100% any one of them.

Are there any other flexitarians on this site, or should I start thinking about creating a site where flexitarians can go to be accepted, so that they can get to work on projects together that help animals? Do any of you know of any moderate AR sites?

Any advice is welcome and appreciated.

I was having a discussion with another AR activist who opposes all things welfare, which brought up a question I thought I would post here.

Sterilizing a cat is clearly a violation of their rights. However, is spay/neuter a situation where welfare over-rides their rights, to benefit the cat and future generations of "unwanted" cats who will be forced to live a miserable existence on the streets?

Or is spay/neuter, as this other activist suggests, consistent with the AR philosophy, because it is in the best interests of the cat (a comparison to dog dental surgery was used)? By the same token, then, if a human were threatening to get rid of their cat because she was clawing their furniture, could someone not say it is consistent with AR philosophy to declaw the cat, as it is in the cat's best interests not to be dumped in a shelter or abandoned outside? Or to say that keeping a cat indoors is rights and not welfare because it is in the best interests of the cat to stay in a safe place?

To my mind, all of those things are welfare (except for the declawing example - that's outright abuse!). To my mind, there is a practical place for instances of welfare in the AR world, and spay/neuter is the perfect example. What does everyone else think?

Thanks in advance.

Who watched the BBC 2 Documentary last night about the AR Campaign against Oxford University. I am wondering not only who bought the investigating journalist out.......he suddenly decided at the end that animal experiments are okay........but who has bought Peter Singer out?
Now is the time to burn all his books, I think! When he was being interviewed by the monkey researcher, his final and only comment was more or less....."Oh well, if you say animal tests are okay I suppose they are okay and justified" What????????????
...

I'm probably more convinced than i let on. for example, whenever someone comes to these forums questioning our oposition to 'the natural order' in terms of eating meat i think we all start providing exactly the answers that need saying - comparing dogs to pigs and questioning why one should be valued and the other killed systematically. pointing out that animals have their own interests in staying alive and it is selfish for us to take that from them unnecesarily - and industry cruelty certainly comes as an afterthought here.

yet if you pick up any anti meat leaflet you do indeed read paragraphs on examples of cruelty and now on environmental effects and contribution to world hunger too but usually nothing at all on the animals wish to live and avoid harm. it has always struck me as strange to think that people who do not even value an animals life would value the way it is treated to the extent they would change their diet.

it also occurs to me though that a pure anti speciesist campaign wouldnt include such actions as mobile demos, phone-ins, hunt sabotage and even any company specific target to campaign against.

so we have already come up with the thought that only one part of the campaign, just a percentage of the AR advocates ought to be dedicated to getting the true AR message out, but im interested in knowing what actions anyone has in mind for those advocates to adopt to try to get the message out.

i think AR books are the perfect way to get this true AR message out and it doesnt surprise me that the authors often end up going into a far truer animal rights message. this is because they can be targeted only at people willing to work through the hundreds of pages neccesary to lead joe public to an understanding of the difference and value of AR over welfarism and by the end of the book understand the objection to keeping seemingly happy family dogs (and also because most readers are probably sympathetic enough to take all issues of AR seriously in the first place). but that doesnt really constitute a campaign.

so if anyone here would call for a change in the way AR campaigns are carried out then i can see pushing for the anti-speciesist message being included in leaflets as one sensible change, but has anyone thought of any other actions which could actually be taken or changes which could actually be made?

Yesterday Gary Francione has submitted another post on his New Animal Rights blog. I guess we are going to hear from him on regular bases. I think this is great. To bad he has disabled his comments setting. Hail to the Internet and the world of blogging.

http://garyfrancione.blogspot.com/

I admit to being a harsh and relentless critic of animal welfare. For the past 15 years or so, I have argued that because animals are property, animal welfare standards will generally only protect the interests of animals to the extent that the protection facilitates economically efficient exploitation. Animal welfare campaigns, for the most part, involve animal advocates trying to persuade institutionalized exploiters that "better" animal treatment will translate into greater profits and this reinforces the status of animals as economic commodities with nothing more than extrinsic or conditional value. Moreover, animal welfare is counterproductive because it misleads the public into thinking that exploitation is being made more "humane," and this encourages continued animal use in a variety of ways. Read more...

http://garyfrancione.blogspot.com/

I'm unemployed. And I'm thinking of working in mcdonalds or KFC if I cannot find a good job.

Will you do it? Like... if KFC is so cruel to animals, will you work with them out of desperation? I dont know what to do. Please help.

of all the practicals i have done working with animals there has only been one were i refused to do it. I usually do behavioural pracs, observing and what not...and dissection pracs on road kill.....but once i had to do a short stint at an intensive piggery with about 10 other students a couple of years ago, we were led into the pigglet area were the lecturer promptly grabbed a pigget cut its tail off and its teeth.....then proceeded to give everyone a pair of razored plyers to do the same....never having done this before students were cutting gums , missing teeth and having to do it again. Me and one other student refused, it was sad that others were to worried that they may fail if they didnt do it.... after that we were made to muster the adult pigs into a different area, we were given wooden paddles to hit the pigs with ,whilst the lecturer used a metal pole with force that well you probably could have heard it from outside... anybody not being *forceful* enough were screamed at (me especially). now this whole time he's saying that this is not stressful for the pig....well once we had them in the area ..one pig fell into an almost epileptic fit..the rest were tied to the cages by their legs (this i also refused to do ...except this time i was the only one). anybody else had similar experiances.

Teens who baked puppy - NOT GUILTY!!!

Please sign the petition to support having these teens charged with a Felony.

Not guilty verdict in puppy trial
By D.L. Bennett
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 12/15/06

Two brothers charged with stuffing a live puppy into a hot gas oven have been found not guilty Friday by a Fulton County jury.

Jurors had been deliberating since 9 a.m. Thursday. The six-man, six-woman jury took a lunch break at noon Friday and went back to deliberations shortly after 1 P.m.

Joshua and Justin Moulder faced a total of 11 charges each and up to 85 years in prison for the Aug. 21 incident at Englewood Manor apartments in Atlanta.

The jury only came to agreement on one charge and was hung on the rest. It was not yet known which charge they agreed on.

Police say the two brothers broke into and trashed the complex community center before using duct tape to hog tie a three-month- old mixed breed puppy and shoving it live into a hot gas oven.

DA Paul Howard said he was ready to retry the Moulder brothers today!

His spokesperson Lyn Vaugh told me herself that the Moulder Brothers will be held without bond until their new trial begins on JANUARY 3, 2007 at 9:00 AM !!!!!!

WE NEED PEOPLE IN THAT COURT ROOM EVERY SINGLE DAY!

Please make arrangement now to take off work, take a vacation day or what ever you have to do, to make SURE we are there in that courtroom for the jury to see every single day!

There was only one single juror that refused to find the Moulder Monsters guilty.

This juror refused to participate in any discussion with the other jurors, and should not have even been allowed to be on that jury. Had the judge or DA been told that this juror was refusing to even discuss the charges, they would have been discharged, and an alternate used. This juror simply would not convict under ANY circumstances.

The 11 other jurors AGREED the Moulders were guilty of every single charge!

Please remain calm, and know that we will get justice for that puppy! I will let you know as soon as possible what "our" next action will be to aid the DA's office.

Amanda Prentice 404 285-5707, gadove2003@juno.com

Let's also recirculate the petition! Lyn said everyone in the DA's office is keeping an eye on the signatures every day. She said this petition STILL had an impact. The Mayor also has a copy

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/564805100

Hi everybody....I need your help passing this information along all over the web. Its a long shot but you never know if someone from my neck of the woods sees this or ? Im just getting desperate now. Tried the papers,police,SPCA,media,posters, phonebooks,etc etc
Please read on........Im posting in here only there is a thread above with pics of our beloved Blue.


DOG STOLEN FROM OUR HOME


Our dog Blueberry was stolen Nov 11th. The man (late 20's??) started an argument with me in our yard at approx 2:30pm. I told him I was going to call the police. At which point he took off with our dog in his car. I attempted to stop him by hammering the windows and yelling loudly to attract attention but our neighbours were not home to help me.
Police have been notified
Here is our dog's description


*Australian Cattle Dog ( Blue Heeler)
*Blue in colour (dark grey/white/ tan feet)
*Neutered male
*Piece missing from his tongue (front)
*deformed dewclaw (upside down)
*Microchip # 968000004216659 (SPCA and any vet can scan free of charge to obtain this number)
*Tattoo in ear # AANS281
*Answers to Blueberry, Blue or Berry

...