Animals Voice Essays & More May26/10

8/8/2019 Animals Voice Essays & More May26/10

1/40

Animalsvoice essays & more may26/10

The politics of liberation NEGOTIATION IS OVER!

The politics of liberation

May 27, 2010 Negotiation Is Over

Simulposted with Thomas Paines Corner

May 26, 2010by Aragorn Eloff , Public Relations

SA Vegan Society

INTRODUCTION:It is clear to most reasonable people that apart from the Eternal Treblinka of non-human animals, other crises weigh heavy on our biosystem:

Anthropogenic climate change, deforestation, water loss and pollution, soil loss, the sixth greatextinction crisis and the resultant threat to ecosystems stability, islands of plastic the size of smallcountries floating in the Pacific and Atlantic, seemingly perennial global conflict nowadays most
http://negotiationisover.com/2010/05/27/the-politics-of-liberation/http://www.vegansociety.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=114&Itemid=110#2http://www.vegansociety.co.za/http://thomaspainescorner.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/escher_liberation.jpghttp://negotiationisover.com/2010/05/27/the-politics-of-liberation/http://www.vegansociety.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=114&Itemid=110#2http://www.vegansociety.co.za/


2/40

often in the pursuit of war industry profits ala Naomi Kleins disaster capitalism, or in order to maintaina state of exception whereby fundamental rights can be made null and void the spread of dreadillnesses, the poisoning of our food with toxic additives of all kinds, the invasion of the food supply byGMOs touted as panacea by hegemonic corporationsThe list is long and its all fueled by an out of control economy promulgating a deadly myth of infinite growth that is profoundly at odds with thereality of our finite planet.

How nice it would be if, in the face of all this, the most pressing task ahead of us was a roundtablediscussion of the hermeneutics of the animal as it appears in the work of Jacques Derrida, or discerningtraces of, or extrapolations to, an anti-speciesism in Giorgio Agamben or Donna Harraway, or extending various normative ethical and jurisprudential approaches beyond the usual human boundary,as though the associative weight of all these noble and satisfying academic pursuits would suffice toconvince us and our peers so thoroughly of our convictions that the world would be impelled to changeto meet the conclusions they draw.

Admittedly, the becoming-animal of the academy is somewhat heartening. Who, after all, could fail to be a little bit encouraged when hearing major philosophers like Derrida say the following:

Although I cannot demonstrate this here, I believe and the stakes are becoming more and moreurgent that none of the conventionally accepted limits between the so-called human living being andthe so-called animal one, none of the oppositions, none of the supposedly linear and indivisible

boundaries, resist a rational deconstruction whether we are talking about language, culture, socialsymbolic networks, technicity or work, even the relationship to death and to mourning, and even the

prohibition against or avoidance of incest so many capacities of which the animal (a generalsingular noun!) is said so dogmatically to be bereft, impoverished. Derrida

However, it does not seem at all clear to me that much of the work here offers us a particularlyeffective path towards resolution, or even praxis. The often superficial becoming animal of theacademy, with all its zoontologies, zoosemiotics, and so forth does not come close to a full practicalengagement with any relevant issues; in many ways it is merely another instance of insular anddistracting ludic transversality, the narcissistic shuffling around of pieces on a board that was warned of

by over sixty years ago by Herman Hesse in Magister Ludi The Glass Bead Game :

Castalia is a symbolic realm where all spiritual values are kept alive and present, specifically throughthe practices of the Glass Bead Game. It depicts a future society in which the realm of culture is setapart to pursue its goalsin splendid isolation. Herman Hesse , The Glass Bead Game

It seems to me that, whether they emerge in the academy or in activist circles, many of our discussionsunfold within, reinforce, and are thus captured by, a specific set of social and economic conditions,underpinned by values antithetical to the sustainable and consistent application of animal rights. Hereshow Lewis Mumford, an early proto-anti-industrialist sees it:

The chief premise common to both technology and science is the notion that there are no desirablelimits to the increase of knowledge, of material goods, of environmental control; that quantitative

productivity is an end in itself, and that every means should be used to further expansion. LewisMumford

Total liberationist Dr. Steve Best also describes the situation well:


3/40

The global capitalist world system is inherently destructive to people, animals, and nature. It isunsustainable and the bills for three centuries of industrialization are now due. It cannot be humanized,civilized, or made green-friendly, but rather must be transcended through revolution at all levels economic, political, legal, cultural, technological, moral, and conceptual. Steve Best

Clearly these values and conditions threaten the entire context within which such rights could ever be

afforded.There are other aggravating factors:

The values capitalism inculcates acquisitiveness, consumerist-utilitarianism, short-term-gain (not toforget the concomitant myth of the rational, isolated individual standing atop a world of resourcesexternal to herself and in contrast to which her subjectivity is constructed) as well as the restrictivereinforcement provided by the State a paternalistic authoritarian other that positions itself as thesingle legitimate recipient of our demands channel ethical issues into highly limited statements of consumer intent directed to an ever-deferential and ultimately unaccountable so-called representative

body that forces us to enact all so-called resistance, all so-called direct action, as a set of

performances that do little more than legitimate these same forces of oppression.Our Cartesianism, our Enlightenment humanist myth of rational man caught up in an entirelyanthropocentric teleological unfolding, also allows us to artificially separate the ethics we apply to aspecific group from a full unfolding into other domains that appear within their scope; we see each of the causes we affiliate ourselves with as an enclosed instance of consumerism, without allowing for the ethical values that lead us to those causes to illuminate the other causes those values should equally

be applied to.

Lets now look at one of the clearest examples of this single cause exceptionalism: the radical approachof many animal activists to the animal rights cause and the way in which this radicalism is stronglycontrasted or even antithetical to the approach these activists take when confronting ecological andhuman rights issues. Given the strong analogies animal activists are so fond of drawing factory farmsand the holocaust, or the anti-feminist pornography of meat, for example this contrast is both stark and ironic.

THE EXCEPTIONALISM OF ANIMAL RIGHTS:

Illegal action:Given the rhetoric it generates, one would be forgiven for thinking that the animal rights movementwas composed primarily of balaclava-clad members of the Animal Liberation Front. Folk heroes likeKeith Mann, Ronnie Lee and Peter Young are the Facebook friends of many otherwise docilevegetarians. What is fascinating in this regard is not that this sentimental mass expresses adulation for midnight maneuvers in animal research laboratories and battery farms, that they live vicariouslythrough them, but that they would likely balk at such activities were they undertaken in order to liberateinnocent human beings. If political prisoners like Mumia Abu Jamal, Leonard Peltier or Marie Masonwere liberated from prison by brave abolitionists, the likely response from the armchair ALFers would

be, they should just let justice take its course. Vigilantism has no place in a decent society!

If this is not yet clear, remind yourself of the common responses to human liberation actionsundertaken by, for instance, desperate individuals in occupied Palestine against Israeli forces.


4/40

The rule is simple: when addressing animal issues, anti-authoritarian, illegal direct action is the preferred course of action, whereas when dealing with social or ecological issues, the radical choice isto vote for the democrats and get a WWF-linked credit card. Direct action that illegitimates the power of the state on one hand, and an appeal to legitimated hierarchies on other. It is worth noting in thisregard that Ronnie Lee, the founder of the ALF, expressed strong anti-Statist leanings, and that manyactual ALFers are anarchists.

Property damnage:Property damage is okay when youre smashing up a vivisection lab, but not when youre a Greek

protester whose country has been sold up the creek by Goldman Sachs in collusion with the IMF andyour own government, and certainly not when youre a jobless protester in Orange Farm, South Africa,who takes to lining streets with flaming tyres and destroying police cars when your needs theaddressing of which is enshrined in your post-apartheid constitution are consistently ignored by thosein power (who are ostensibly too busy servicing their own needs). We also defend or evenromanticise the rampages of non-human animals placed in exploitative contexts like circuses or zoos.How then does it make sense to simultaneously vilify the direct and, yes, sometimes violent actions of oppressed and marginalised humans (oppressed no matter what capitalist rhetoric might have to sayabout their freedom)?

(If we take the words of David Barbarash, Former spokesman for the ALF to heart here, it does seemthat at least some of those entering labs by cover of night have a useful analysis of property andsystemic injustice:

Were very dangerous philosophically. Part of the danger is that we dont buy into the illusion that property is worth more than lifewe bring that insane priority into the light, which is something thesystem cannot survive.)

Equality and intrinsic rights:Animal rightists are also fond of using the language of equality and non-exploitation, of intrinsic rights,when challenging those who see the exploitation of non-human animals as legitimate given mans placeat the very top of the hierarchy of objectified nature, yet fail to see how unlikely it is that people will bewilling to, or even able to conceive of, extending these notions to other species when most of uscontinue to adhere to very similar entrenched hierarchies within the systems unique to just our own. Itis not too much of a stretch to imagine that these entrenched hierarchies authoritarian Statism,

patriarchy, racism, heteronormativity and cultural arrogance, to name a few become the model, thestructural diagram, that we generalize in all our other interactions with the natural world and itsinhabitants. This view is perhaps best revealed through contrast with the surprisingly large crossover

between feminism and veganism: the arguments and alternative values inherent in a full critique of patriarchy are almost identical to those that emerge within an honest consideration of non-humananimal exploitation.

Domestication; theirs and ours:We tend to use sympathetic constructions of animal others in order to domesticate them; it is not somuch that we literally infantilise a subset of animal others with names and treats and comfy cushions

but rather that we dont allow animality its full range of expression, its truly strange otherness. Herebywe also domesticate ourselves and suppress our own potential for strange otherness by submitting thewhole of the world to our closed-off, a priori notions of unitary subjectivity without allowing for ourselves to become in any way other through a sustained and open encounter with the world. Thesubject, the notion of self that is perpetuated in this manner, is the one constructed by capitalism, the


5/40

one that must reduce and assimilate everything in the world to its own image through facileconsumption.

But the world and its possible encounters are not exhausted by these consumer relations.

The property status of animals, only animals:

Abolitionist animal rightists like Gary Francione and Tom Regan question the property status of animals by appeal to intrinsic rights, yet unless we also see how capitalism creates the very values thatlead to such objectification in the first place, how we are fundamentally defined by our capacity tochoose between consumer options, we have little hope of rescuing non-human animals from beinganything more than quantifiable goods. The humaneness required here a humaneness were ironicallymost likely to demonstrate through the consumption of cause-related paraphernalia like donations toGreenpeace or the purchase of Sea Shepherd t-shirts is secondary to fulfillment: just like non-humananimals, sweatshop workers manufacturing t-shirts in developing countries are imprisoned, exploitedand objectified, yet just like non-human animals it only takes sufficient distance to assuage our sense of complicity.

And this is only the surface of human exploitation. Lets not discuss, for now, where your veganchocolate came from.

The marginally applied argument from marginal cases:One of the strongest arguments for affording non-human animals rights, even though it is originallyfrom the utilitarian perspective of Peter Singer, who is now best regarded as a new welfarist, is theargument from marginal cases. When confronted with arguments about what criteria non-humananimals lack rationality, the capacity for reciprocity, the ability to be subjects as well as objects of

justice we can easily find some cases where we grant rights to humans where these criteria arelacking the severely disabled, for instance, or the very young. How strange it is then that, instead of the appeals to empathy and nurture they deliver nightly from across the dinner table, so many animalrights activists use near-Social Darwinist might-is-right rhetoric to defend privilege and relativefreedom in their own lives from the poor and subjugated humans seeking their fundamental rights tosanitation, housing, food and clean water.

Solidarity, but not with each other:Animal activists do go so far as to talk about solidarity between species how we have an ethicalresponsibility to look after these other inhabitants of the Earth yet within our species its competitionthat counts: why should our hard-earned tax money be spent on the lazy poor, the violent savages,those Slavoj Zizek so powerfully calls the subjects supposed to rape and pillage? To talk of solidarity,of love, of shared living in relation to our non-human animal others is not even lip service if we cannotalso begin to foster these same egalitarian values in our own human communities.

In fact, in defending our callousness by appeal to cold, hard nature, all red in tooth and claw, we haveeven moved away from the original observations of Darwin, described here by Petr Kropotkin:

Wherever I saw animal life in abundance, as, for instance, on the lakes where scores of species andmillions of individuals came together to rear their progeny; in the colonies of rodents; in the migrationsof birds which took place at that time on a truly American scale along the Usuri; and especially in amigration of fallow-deer which I witnessed on the Amur, and during which scores of thousands of these intelligent animals came together from an immense territory, flying before the coming deep snow,in order to cross the Amur where it is narrowest in all these scenes of animal life which passed


6/40


7/40

Ecology is what we are part of, the myriad flows and complex processes and creative unfoldings we areso deeply enmeshed in.)

In moving beyond the sanctity of the subject as enshrined in traditional normative ethics, it is, perhapssomewhat tellingly, the poststructuralist and neo-materialist feminists who have taken the lead byapplying the populations thinking and process ontology of Gilles Deleuze and others to these pressing

ethical questions.An ethical life pursues that which enhances and strengthens the subject without reference totranscendental values, but rather in the awareness of ones interconnection with others. RosiBraidotti

The concepts of animals or the animalistic become a sort of conceptual dumping ground for all thefeatures of ourselves that we dont like and want to expel from our definition of the human:irrationality, instinct, emotion, ignorance, the body in a word, precariousness

Wherever the human is, it is always outside itself in the non-human, or it is always distributed among

beings, among human and non-human beings, chiasmatically related through the idea of precarious life.So we can neither lodge the human in the self, nor ground the self in the human, but find instead therelations of exposure and responsibility that constitute the being of the human in a sociality outsideitself, even outside its human-ness. - Judith Butler

Regardless of the power and vitalism of these contemporary ethical approaches, however, I do notthink we will find some final salvation in subjective and highly convoluted explorations of ethics and

post-humanities that, if they were just delivered with sufficient conviction or eloquence, wouldsomehow magically suffice to turn the world vegan, to free all non-human animals and human onestoo from captivity, that would stop the logging trucks in their tracks and shut down the polluting

power plants and still the oil pumps and lift plastic from the ocean and divert food to the needy andreplace all GMOs and monocrops with permaculture gardens and liberate the voices of all oppressedand marginalised peoples around the globe.

No. What we need are not more sophisticated ethical arguments. What we need is much more simple.

SOLUTIONS:We need to radicalize our thinking and challenge all of our sacred cows. Single issue campaigns, of which animal rights in isolation from issues of social and ecological justice is a prime exemplar,regardless of what people like Gary Francione might say, are, as we saw, a set of performanceslegitimated by and legitimating the very system that needs to be dismantled. Petitions and protests canserve to raise awareness, but unless they are coupled with an appeal for real, radical action, undertakenon behalf of the entire biocommunity, they merely serve to reproduce themselves, just as we sawduring the unprecedentedly vast street marches that arose in opposition to the war in Iraq several yearsago; millions of marchers had no impact on US imperialism then and they have no impact now. Power concedes nothing without a real demand and the performance of a demand is not a real demand.

An effective campaign is more like class struggle. Not in the sense that unionised Marxists need toseize the means of production in some kind of proletarian moment of divine redemption, but in thesense that we need to expand the boundaries of our class the class of the exploited to include allother life on Earth and position the full force of every moment of every life in the swelled ranks of this


8/40

enlarged proletariat against the systems and if necessary those who refuse to disengage from them that continue to oppress us.

Steve Best has said that:

Victims of oppression cannot advance by oppressing and victimizing others. - Steve Best

I would add that they cannot advance by ignoring the oppression and victimization of others either.

Many former Animal Liberation Fronters recognised this in the 1990s; they became the EarthLiberation Front. There is but a single short, necessary step to be taken by those of us who allowourselves to fully accept the implications of animal liberation from the exceptionalism of the ALF tothe inclusive justice of the ELF and beyond.

We cannot hide behind the rhetoric of fundamentalist pacifism any longer either. Violence is onlyviolence in context. The violence an abuser enacts against his victim is not the same as the violence hisvictim enacts against her abuser. The violence which is almost always more accurately seen as

property damage that is enacted against the destructive, soul-destroying machineries of capitalismand the State is not the same as the violence enacted by capitalism and the State against each and all of us, human and non-human alike.

Indeed, these dogmatic, overly-simplistic prohibitions to act serve only to facilitate our oppression andour right to extensional self-defense against great ongoing violence, and they operate only within thecontext of complete denial. The suffragettes knew this. So did the Black Panthers. So did the Native

North American peoples. So did umkhontho we Sizwe. So did the Indian fighters against colonialistrule, no matter what you think Gandhi might have said.

As Ward Churchill says in his book, Pacifism As Pathology :

The desire for a non-violent society is the healthiest of all psychological manifestations. It seems theheight of contradiction, therefore, that we should need to break with this in order to achieve it. Therein,however, may lie our only hope. Ward Churchill

I do not wish to fetishize violence, but if we are to be effective we can no longer flippantly dismissanything beyond peaceful placard-waving as somehow antithetical to our ends, as a priori wrong. Wecannot deny the possibility that at some point violence will be necessary; the more we discuss theimplications of this now, the more successfully we will be able to absorb its impact then.

More importantly and positively than the need to accept the possibility of violence though, we need toeffect massive, fundamental systemic change. The hierarchies and the endless competitiveconsumerism that mark our social existence are diametrically opposed to those values all of usnaturally seek, and find, in our own communities: egalitarianism, trust, mutual aid, consensus,creativity, companionship and a proclivity for life that is truly lived. We urgently need a system thatreflects these values, that emphasises power to not power over, that doesnt encourage or necessitatehyper-individualism, hegemony, deference to authority, endless accumulation, progress as an ends initself and the desacralization of the whole of the natural world. We need permaculture and communalliving and relationship with instead of stewardship of or control over. We need to fundamentally alter our economics, our education, our modes of production. Even our relationships. Even how we makedecisions.


9/40

What Im talking about, of course, is anarchism.

What is anarchism? Heres how Emma Goldman, a prominent anarchist from the beginning of the lastcentury describes it, in admittedly anthropocentric terms:

Anarchism really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the domination of religion; the

liberation of the human body from the domination of property; liberation from the shackles andrestraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individualsfor the purpose of producing real social wealth, an order that will guarantee to every human being freeaccess to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes,and inclinations. Emma Goldman

If the term remains unpalatable due to its common connotations, we can replace it with whatever wewish; we can call ourselves libertarian socialists if that makes us feel better. Regardless of how we refer to this alternative way of living though, this enhanced sense of all being in this together, one thing iscertain. We can choose anarchism in the best sense of the word: radical egalitarian horizontalism or we can have anarchy in the poorest, most savage sense of the word chosen for us.

If we choose well, it is likely that we will, naturally and through necessity, evolve new values and alsoa renewed vision of the world; environment will become ecology, them will become us, the unitarysubject of Enlightenment humanism will become partial, concrete and embedded multiplicity, thedomesticated animal other would become simply another index of animality, of the richly diverse

possibilities of life.

We do not need to wait for the revolution, although a revolution or even countless revolutions might well be necessary; we can begin the task of living anew right now. We can give up all thecomforts that shield us from the existential horror of our own mortality and begin to explore everythingIve been speaking about. Revolution or not though, one thing is for sure: some kind of confrontationwith power, however it plays out, is almost inevitable. Willing workers on organic farms and refugeesin recovery from Western civilization will not be spared this encounter and, indeed, a sense of solidarity worthy of the name impels us to act on behalf of all, not just ourselves, in countering theforces of subjugation with all our being instead of actively avoiding them.

CONCLUSION:So we need not just animal liberation, not just earth liberation, not just human liberation, but a totalliberation that is far more than the sum of its parts and that is radically anarchist, in the full sense of theterm. This involves sharing animal rights with ecological justice and social justice activists, but also,importantly, encouraging liberal or politically apathetic animal rights people to engage in radical

political discourse without reducing any of these to any other or believing that one is foundational or primary.

When we put everything Ive been saying together and consider it in all its glorious heterogeneity, itcomes close to capturing the pursuit of ecosophy that Felix Guattari, following Gregory Bateson, talksabout in The Three Ecologies :

Without modifications to the social and material environment, there can be no change in mentalities.Here, we are in the presence of a circle that leads me to postulate the necessity of founding anecosophy that would link environmental ecology to social ecology and to mental ecology. FelixGuattari


10/40

In closing, although it is not foundational, the insights of animal rights do seem uniquely situated toaddress the foregoing problems, but only if we follow through all their implications and allowourselves to be radically altered by them, subjectively, politically, materially, and spiritually.

To quote Steve Best once more:

Animal liberation is the culmination of a vast historical learning process whereby human beingsgradually realize that arguments justifying hierarchy, inequality, and discrimination of any kind arearbitrary, baseless, and fallacious. Animal liberation builds on the most progressive ethical and politicaladvances human beings have made in the last 200 years and carries them to their logical conclusions. Ittakes the struggle for rights, equality, and nonviolence to the next level, beyond the artificial moral andlegal boundaries of humanism, in order to challenge all prejudices and hierarchies, includingspeciesism. Steve Best

Stacy Young's MySpace Blog | Stacy Young

Unbeknown to most of us cows are indeed complex creatures. Cows can recognize familiarfaces. Contrary to common perception cows do not mindlessly moo. Their calls areindications that they experience a variety of emotions some of which are very intense.These calls indicate pleasure, frustration, excitement and stress, they are used to regaincontact when they become isolated and to express grief and anger. Cows will call loudly fordays even weeks after their calves have been taken away from them.

Other signs of emotion may be more subtle; tail position indicates mood as does theposition of thier head which is an important indicator of aggression or submission. Cowscommunicate in many ways which to us may go unnoticed if you do not understand these

complex creatures. Cattle have a large number of of odour glands, and odours areimportant in their social, sexual and maternal behaviour. Cows have a social hierarchy;tactile communication and grooming are used to establish social rank, and in both sexualand maternal behaviour.

Cows are amongst the gentlest of breathing creatures; none show more passionatetenderness to their young when deprived of them; and, in short, I am not ashamed to

profess a deep love for these quiet creatures.

Thomas de Quincey

Cows are sentient beings, they have feelings, their apparent appearance of docility manysimply be an acceptance of their lot in life, docility is often a mark of depression,acceptance or resignation. Cows are not milk making machine spontaneously producing milkat our behest. Like humans, cows in thier natural environment and circumstances withouthuman interference lactate only to produce milk for their new born. Cows are very muchlike ourselves when it comes to thier offspring, like us the gestation period is nine months,in their natural environment a calf will suckle for nine to twelve months. Before givingbirth in the wild cows will separate themselves from the rest of the herd and hide theircalves for several days after giving birth. This is done to prevent intrusion from other
http://blogs.myspace.com/stacyflower1http://blogs.myspace.com/stacyflower1http://blogs.myspace.com/stacyflower1


11/40

females which may interfere with bonding. After only five minutes cows develop a strongbond with their calf so you can understand the trauma of separation, a trauma much like orthe same as that experienced by a human mother. Such emotion of this intensity shows thatthese creatures are sentient, the lament of a cow denied her newborn is one of the mostunmistakeable indications of sentience. Here are two stories of the great bond betweenmother cows and their offspring.

To complete research for an academic project Valerie Macys needed to examine documentsin the study of a charming white farm house next to a cattle farm. A colleague haddescribed it as a place of pastoral serenity with cows peacefully grazing nearby. Preparedfor a relaxing visit the reality was to prove quite different

Stacy Young's MySpace Blog | Stacy YoungFor as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.

Pythagoras (6th century BC)

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distanceof miles, there is complicity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others: We are burial places! Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519)

But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that

proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy. Plutarch (c.AD 46-c.120)

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditionson this earth?George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

The Utopians feel that slaughtering our fellow creatures gradually destroys the sense of compassion,which is the finest sentiment of which our human nature is capable.Thomas Moore (1478-1535)

If he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain willalways be the use of animal food, because ...its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling -- killing.

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

I don't myself believe that, even when we fulfill our minimum obligations not to cause pain, we havethe right to kill animals. I know I would not have the right to kill you, however painlessly, just becauseI liked your flavour, and I am not in a position to judge that your life is worth more to you than theanimal's to it.

Brigid Brophy (1929- )
http://blogs.myspace.com/stacyflower1http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS9ncmVlY2Vfcm9tZS9weXRoYWdvcmFzLmh0bWw=http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS9kYXZpbmNpLw==http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS9ncmVlY2Vfcm9tZS9wbHV0YXJjaC5odG1shttp://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS9zaGF3Lw==http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS9yZW5haXNzYW5jZS9tb3JlLmh0bWw=http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS90b2xzdG95Lw==http://blogs.myspace.com/stacyflower1http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS9ncmVlY2Vfcm9tZS9weXRoYWdvcmFzLmh0bWw=http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS9kYXZpbmNpLw==http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS9ncmVlY2Vfcm9tZS9wbHV0YXJjaC5odG1shttp://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS9zaGF3Lw==http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS9yZW5haXNzYW5jZS9tb3JlLmh0bWw=http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS90b2xzdG95Lw==


12/40

All beings hate pains; therefore one should not kill them. This is the quintessence of wisdom: not to killanything.Sutrakritanga (Jainism)

Viler than unbelievers are those cruel ones who make the law that teaches killing.Yogashastra (Jainism)

Beings which kill others should not be killed in the belief that the destruction of one of them leads tothe protection of many others.

Purushartha Siddhyupaya (Jainism)

Not to kill is a supreme duty. Hitopadesa (Hindu)

Those who have forsaken the killing of all; those who are helpmates to all; those who are a sanctuary toall; those men are in the way of heaven.

Hitopadesa (Hindu)

Let him not destroy, or cause to be destroyed, any life at all, nor sanction the acts of those who do so.Let him refrain from even hurting any creature, both those that are strong and those that tremble in theworld.Suita-Nipata (Buddhist)

One act of pure love in saving life is greater than spending the whole of one's time in religiousofferings to the gods ...

Dhammapada (Buddhist)

He who, seeking his own happiness, punishes or kills beings who also long for happiness, will not findhappiness after his death.

Dhammapada (Buddhist)

From thence the beasts be brought in, killed and clean washed by the hands of their bondsmen. For they permit not their free citizens to accustom themselves to the killing of beasts, through the use whereof they think clemency, the gentlest affection of our nature, by little and little to decay and perish.Thomas Moore (1478-1535)

After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to the spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the slaughter of men, to the gladiators.Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)
http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS9yZW5haXNzYW5jZS9tb250YWlnbmUuaHRtbA==http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS9yZW5haXNzYW5jZS9tb250YWlnbmUuaHRtbA==


13/40

It is a cruel folly to offer up to ostentation so many lives of creatures, as to make up the state of our treats.William Penn (1644-1718)

How do we know that we have a right to kill creatures that we are so little above, as dogs, for our curiosity or even for some use to us? Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holdsits life by the same tenure that he does.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

The very emphasis of the commandment: Thou shalt not kill, makes it certain that we are descendedfrom an endlessly long chain of generations of murderers, whose love of murder was in their blood as it

is perhaps also in ours.Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals thanin the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the manwho causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without ashadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is theunpardonable crime.

Romain Rolland (1866-1944)

To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling totake the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body.Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948)

Late upon the third day, at the very moment when, at sunset... there flashed upon my mind, unforseenand unsought, the phrase 'Reverence for Life'.

Dr Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as well as that of his fellowman, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

Dr Albert Sweitzer (1875-1965)

The man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give every will-to-live the reverencefor life that he gives his own.

Dr Albert Sweitzer (1875-1965)
http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS91c2ExOS90aG9yZWF1Lmh0bWw=http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS9nYW5kaGkvhttp://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS9ldXJvcGUyMGEvc2Nod2VpdHplci5odG1shttp://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS91c2ExOS90aG9yZWF1Lmh0bWw=http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS9nYW5kaGkvhttp://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS9ldXJvcGUyMGEvc2Nod2VpdHplci5odG1s


14/40

Any religion or philosophy which is not based on a respect for life is not a true religion or philosophy. Dr Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.

Joseph Stalin (1879-1953)

The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merelyunhappy but hardly fit for life.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

My prayer is that what we have gone through [World War One] will startle the world into some newrealisation of the sanctity of life, animal as well as human.Christopher Morley (1890-1957)

We cannot have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature. Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

To inflict cruelties on defenceless creatures, or condone such acts, is to abuse one of the cardinal tenetsof a civilized society - reverence for life.

Jon Evans (1917- )

Life is life's greatest gift. Guard the life of another creature as you would your own because it is your own. On life's scale of values, the smallest is no less precious to the creature who owns it than thelargest ...

Lloyd Biggle Jr. (1923- )

Killing an animal to make a coat is a sin. It wasn't meant to be and we have no right to do it. A womangains status when she refuses to see anything killed to be put on her back. Then she's truly beautiful!

Doris Day (1927- )

We don't eat anything that has to be killed for us. We've been through a lot and we've reached a stagewhere we really value life.

Paul McCartney (1942- )

Stacy Young's MySpace Blog | Stacy Young Interesting Facts About Cows

Cows have been known to walk for miles to find thier calves.
http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS9ub3J0aGFtMjBhL2VpbnN0ZWluLmh0bWw=http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvcGVvcGxlL211c2ljL21hY2NhLmh0bWw=http://blogs.myspace.com/stacyflower1http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvaGlzdG9yeS9ub3J0aGFtMjBhL2VpbnN0ZWluLmh0bWw=http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lml2dS5vcmcvcGVvcGxlL211c2ljL21hY2NhLmh0bWw=http://blogs.myspace.com/stacyflower1


15/40


16/40

Cows understand cause and effect, this is indicative of advanced cognitive abilities whichdemonstrates that they are aware. Research studies show us that cows understand causeand effect, for instance cows have learnt that when they are thirsty that pushing a lever tooperate a drinking fountain provides them with water and when they are hungry cows havelearnt that pressing a button with their heads provides them with food. Like humans cowssoon learn to keep away from that which causes them pain, such as electrical fences and

moreover cows learn from the experience of other cows and once one or two cows haveexperienced pain due to contact with an electrical fence other cows avoid similar contact.Indeed the ability to learn from one another is yet another example that cows areintelligent and sentient. Furthermore this ability is on a par with a dog and higher than acat. Cows have remarkable memories, among the many things they recall are human faces,they have good spatial memory; this means they recall where things are located. In thewild cows remember watering holes, migration routes, the best places to shelter and thebest eating spots in the pasture. And it goes without saying that they of course remembertheir own calf, in fact a very close bond exists between a mother and her calf as I shallmention again in more detail later.

It seems that cows know which herbs are medicinal, perhaps like sheep who possess similarknowledge this is passed down from generation to generation. They seem to understandwhich herbs to eat whenever they are ill and have been observed to eat plants not normallypart of thier diet.

Cows like all animals are individuals with their own personalities as diverse as that of yourcat or dog or indeed other humans. Some are intelligent, others less so, some are timid,nervous, others are more bold coming up to you as you approach them, some are friendlywhile others can be aggressive although this is rare, some may be compassionate othersindifferent. In her book The Secret Lives of Cows, Rosamund Young says cows can behighly intelligent, moderately so, or slow to understand; friendly, considerate, aggressive,

docile, inventive, dull, proud, or shy."

Stacy Young's MySpace Blog | Stacy Young

Cows are not the indifferent creatures we assume and may be as curious about you as youare about them.

Did you know that cows form social groups within the herd, social hierarchies with leaderschosen based upon their intelligence.

"Recent studies on leadership in cows and other grazing herbivores suggest thatintelligence, inquisitiveness, confidence, experience and good social skills help todetermine which animals will become leaders within herds

The fact that in groups of animals of different age, leaders are amongst the oldest animalssuggests that it's not innate, but the result of previous experience," said Bertrand Dumont,lead author of a recent Applied Animal Behavior Science paper on leadership in a group of

grazing heifers."
http://blogs.myspace.com/stacyflower1http://blogs.myspace.com/stacyflower1http://blogs.myspace.com/stacyflower1


17/40

The Above is an extract from an article :Study: Cows Excel At Selecting Leaders.By Jennifer Viegas, Animal Planet News

The Animals Voice: Articles

An Unnatural Order: Why We Are Destroying the Planet and Each Other

BY JIM MASON

Some think human society seems to be steadily going insane. They note the ridiculous hatreds that keepus nearly constantly at war with each other. They see we are fouling our global nest, wiping out muchof the planet's life and making life more and more miserable for ourselves. I don't think we are goinginsane; I think we have just not learned to look deeply enough into the causes of our current social andenvironmental problems. I believe with a growing number of others that these problems began severalmillennia ago when our ancestors took up farming and broke the primal bonds with the living world

and put human beings above all other life.Because of this, we have no sense of kinship with other life on this planet, hence no good sense of

belonging here. Our tradition is one of arrogance toward the living world around us; it is a thing beneath us to be either used up or kept at bay. We are, as intellectuals say, alienated from nature.

A World Alive and Ensouled

[Although] most religions [today] describe a three-tiered hierarchy: God, people, and everything else ...

primal people lived not merely close to, but in and with nature. Food and materials came not byworking the soil, not by controlling the lives and growth of plants and animals, but by incrediblydetailed knowledge about them. They lived with daily reminders of their connections with the living

beings around them and with constant awareness of how their taking from their world might affect their lives in it. All of this evolved into a set of beliefs and eventually into tribal religions, which have takenon many forms and variations. What they all have in common, though, is a deep emotional attachmentto, and respect for, the living world that made changing or controlling it unthinkable.

Alienated as we are from the natural world, our modern minds are too maimed to fully grasp howthoroughly this human mind was fed by its environment particularly by the moving, living beings init. The emerging cultural human mind literally took its shape and substance, its basic images and ideas,from the plants and animals around it. It came to know which plants out of hundreds made the bestfoods, medicines, and materials. It came to know the life cycles and day-to-day habits of dozens of kinds of animals intimately enough to be able to predict when and where a hunt might be mostsuccessful. It came to know how all of the above might be affected by wind, rain, seasons, and theother elements and forces in nature. From such living, the people knew the land, their foragingterritory, probably better than any modern ecologist could. They had, after all, generations of wisdomand experience in living in it, and most of all, a feeling for it that no books nor journals can ever convey.
http://www.animalwrites.info/articles/unnatural-order.htmlhttp://www.animalwrites.info/articles/unnatural-order.html


18/40

Animals intrigued human beings with their size, speed, strength, habits and other features. They were believed to have powers humans did not. For primal humans especially those with the floweringmind, consciousness and culture of modern Homo sapiens about 45,000 years ago the animals intheir foraging lands were the most impressive, the most fascinating living beings in the world.Measured in terms of the amount of human wonder they caused, animals were the most wonderfulthings out there in the world. The primal relationship with the powers of the living world was more of a

partnership in which human beings had interactions and a strong sense of interdependence with them.Other things in nature impressed us, too, like dark forests, violent storms, rivers swollen by floodwaters. Yet animals impressed us in ways that the rest of nature could not. Why animals? Why doanimals figure so centrally to the process of mind formation? Why isn't the child moved by stuffed

plants and figures of trees and rocks? Animals, like us, move freely; and they are more obviously like people than are trees, rivers, and other things in nature.

Animals have eyes, ears, hair, and other organs like us; and they sleep, eat, defecate, copulate, give birth, play, fight, die and carry on many of the same activities of life that we do. Somewhat similar tous yet somewhat different, animals forced comparisons, categories, and conclusions. Animals made usthink. Animals drove and shaped human intelligence. They are fascinating to watch. Of all the things innature, then, animals stand out most in ways needed by the developing brain/mind. Animals are active,noisy, colorful characters all of which makes them most informative. In contrast, the rest of nature is

background relatively amorphous, still, inscrutable, and not much help to the budding brain/mind,whether that of the species or the individual.

As movers of the mind, thought, and feeling, animals are very strong stuff to human beings. No wonder our ancestors believed they had souls and powers.

After centuries of manipulative animal husbandry, however, men gained conscious control over animals and their life processes. In reducing them to physical submission, people reduced animals

physically as well. Castrated, yoked, harnessed, hobbled, penned, and shackled, domestic animals werethoroughly subdued. They had none of that wild, mysterious power that their ancestors had when theywere stalked by hunter-foragers. Domestic animals were disempowered made docile byconfinement, selective breeding, and familiarity with humans. They gradually came to be seen morewith contempt than awe.

In reducing domestic animals, farmers reduced animals in general, and with them they helped reducethe animal/natural powers because crop-conscious farmers saw more and more species as pests, moreand more natural elements as threats. But it was animal husbandry in particular that nudged peoplefrom seeing animals as powers to seeing them as commodities and tools. It was husbandry thatdrastically upset the ancient human-animal relationship, changing it from partnership to master-and-slave, from being kin with animal-nature to being lord over animal-nature.

This reduction of animals the soul and the essence of the living world to the primal mind reducedall of nature, creating, in the agriculturalist's mind, a view of the world where people were over anddistinctly apart from nature. Animal reduction was key to the radically different worldview that camewith the transition from foraging to farming, for more than any other agricultural development, it brokeup the old ideas of kinship and continuity with the living world. This, more than any other factor,accelerated and accentuated human alienation from nature. It originated in the East's first agriculturalcenter, it founds its legs there, and then it spread to the other centers of civilization.


19/40

Husbandry was, I think, the more influential side of farming that led, ultimately, to the agrarianworldview that we still hold today. As that worldview began to emerge thousands of years ago, wroteUniversity of California historian Roderick Nash, "for the first time humans saw themselves as distinctfrom the rest of nature."

Misothery, Misogyny and Racism: The Reduction of Animals, Women and People of Color

Alienated from animals and nature by misothery, our agri-culture puts us superior to, and distinct from,the living world. In that position, we can only despise and deny the animal and natural wherever we seeit in ourselves or in the rest of humanity. Our anxieties about our animal-like characteristics cause us to

project our fear and hatred onto not only other animals but other people whose differences we think places them below us nearer to animals and nature than us.

On this ladder or hierarchy of being, women of one's own group are one step down. People whom wecall "Others" are another step or two down, depending on their usefulness and their distance from

nature. Male Others may outrank the women of one's group if they are "civilized" that is, if theyhave a similar agri-culture with dominionism, patriarchy, royalty, wealth, monumental art, urbancenters, and so on.

On the rungs below Others stand animals, first those useful to men, then, father down, all the others. Atthe bottom of the ladder is raw, chaotic nature itself, composed of invisible organisms and anunclassifiable mass of life that feeds, grows, dies, and stinks in dark, mysterious places. This is muck and swamp, and steamy jungle and all backwaters and wildernesses far from the pruned orchards andweeded crop rows of agrarian civilization; this is nature least useful, nature most mysterious, andtherefore nature most hostile and sinister.

Then it draws on the breeder's ideologies of bloodline and purity, as it did in Nazi Germany and thesegregated South; as it still does today among neo-Nazis and white supremacists. The rhetoric of allthese racists speaks of the breeder's obsessions, and the extremity of their actions speaks of the depth of their fear and hatred of "lower" nature. The Nazis ranted against Jews, gypsies, Poles, and other "mongrel races" and then methodically tried to exterminate them. Southern segregationists preachedagainst "race mixing" and used lynchings, mob violence, and terrorist campaigns to keep people of color "in their place."

This is why, despite all the efforts of science and civil rights campaigns, the racial hatred still lies, likea great aquifer, just beneath the surface of consciousness in our culture. On occasion, it wells upwardand becomes a very conscious, very political cause.

Beyond Dominionism

Biologically speaking, human beings have been too successful at the expense of other species. For onething, our numbers have swollen quite recently. The global human population first reached a billionabout 150 years ago; it reached 2.5 billion only 40 years ago. Our numbers are expected to pass 6

billion in the year 2000. Even if we started now to put the brakes on world birthrates, experts predictthat the human population will swell to 10 to 12 billion people before it levels off around the year 2050.


20/40

The average human being today uses dozens of times more energy and materials than ever before. Wehave become very materialistic animals. We boast of our affluence barely realizing that, ultimately, allof our wealth consists of stuff taken from the environment.

Consequently, human voracity has set off a chain reaction of destruction in the world's food chains.Since we began steadily intensifying human food production through agriculture 10,000 years ago, we

have just as steadily wiped out species after species. Biologists fear that human impact is setting off mass extinctions that could wipe out a fourth of the world's remaining species in the next 50 years.

The scale of war and massacre has increased with the scale of both technology and society. In sheer numbers, the 20th century has been the bloodiest in history. In our century alone, nearly 36 millionhave been killed in battle in the various wars. An incredible 120 million more have been killed by thevarious genocidal programs carried out by governments. Human devastation, this huge, this constant,must have some basic causes, which the West avoids looking too deeply for.

The movers and shakers of conservation and environmentalism, with rare exceptions, stop dead in their tracks when they approach the Animal Question the whole sticky mess of human views toward,

relations with, and uses of animals. This part of the Nature Question is oddly off limits. Should one of them step on it accidentally, he or she usually jumps back to safety in the remoteness of discussionsabout trees or the abstractions of biodiversity and species.

The Animal Question is regarded as illegitimate, silly, peripheral. Those who address it are regarded asemotional, sentimental, neurotic, misguided, and missing the bigger picture of human relations with theliving world. One's bigness and seriousness as a thinker on the Nature Question is measured, in part, byhow well one steers clear of the Animal Question.

On the contrary, the Animal Question is the very heart of the Nature Question. Animals have always been the soul, spirit, and embodiment of the living world. To exclude discussion of relations withanimals from the discussion of our relations with nature is to exclude the most important part of thediscussion. Emotionally, culturally, psychically, symbolically just about any way you want tomeasure it animals are the most vital beings among all the beings of the living world. They arefundamental to our worldview; they are central to our sense of existence in this world.

We are fooling ourselves if we think we can deal with the big picture, the mangled mess of our relations with nature, without a soul-searching examination of our dealings with animals. For if we tryto steer around the Animal Question, then of course we leave it in place, forever to trouble our relationswith nature.

When we come to the laboratory and the slaughterhouse, the calls for a "radical" or "fundamental"overhaul of relations with the living world suddenly go silent. Indeed, no reasonable person challengesthese bastions of dominionism. Those who do so are pegged as the "lunatic fringe," which is a handyway of disposing of them and their troublesome ideas. The overwhelming perception is that these usesof animals are well justified in that they confer great benefits to the human species. That perception is,of course, both the source and the lasting strength of dominionism.

If we want a truly "fundamental" overhaul of our dominionist worldview, then we are going to have todeal with the most difficult issues, which are meat-eating and animal experimentation. Many, of course,will refuse to step onto these sacred grounds. They will simply fall back on familiar dominionistaxioms and stand their ground. To be charitable, we must excuse them, for many, if not most, people


21/40

are simply not inclined toward soul-searching and changing their habits. Age, subculture, and other circumstances tend to instill a certain inflexibility in many people, and it is probably best not to bother them. But for others who genuinely want to help reconstruct our worldview, our sense of ourselves, andour human spirit, nothing can be off limits for reexamination and soul-searching.

Men today needn't feel responsible for the mistakes of both men and women who lived 5,000 years

ago. Men do have a huge responsibility, however, to participate in the processes of restoring female principles, status, and power to society and of building an egalitarian sexual ethic. These are difficulttasks, of course, and no group that has long enjoyed supremacy and privilege of any kind has ever relinquished them gladly.

These and other chores offer plenty of opportunities for men to find and build in their humanity, asopposed to carrying on boyish displays of macho manhood. In the past, men showed bravery in thehunt or in battle; they showed "strength" in taking pain and dishing it out without feeling.

Instead of macho displays, the modern man can show genuine human bravery and strength. He can be brave enough to tackle the thorny strands of tradition that warp human society and threaten the living

world.Men can have the strength to accept an equal role in the house, at work, in bed, and in society as awhole.

Men, the predominant makers and users of pornography, can have the bravery and strength todismantle this industry that degrades women, the human body, sexuality, and nature.

Men, whose traditional masculine culture values stoicism, detachment, and control of others, can usetheir strength to uproot those values and to build a culture that values empathy, altruism, and kinshipwith all Others regardless of sex, "race," size, or species.

We are coming full circle around to the kind of awareness held by primal human society. We see theawesome web of life in the world; we see the human place among it all. We see the cycles of birth, life,death, and rebirth that keep all of nature alive and evolving. We see the living world as a First Beingmade up of many lesser beings, of which we are one. We see the miracle of living existence animatedand given character by animals. We feel for animals whom we see as kindred beings; they give us asense of belonging here, of membership in the Great Family of life in this world. Our ancestors gainedthis worldview through real experience, we are gaining it, ironically, through science.

This emerging global view conflicts with many of the main beliefs of the West's agrarian religion,which sees this world as a temporary testing ground for humankind, as a lowly way station full of soulless beings whose despicable existence offers temptations to sin and evil. It will be interesting tosee if religion's various branches can accommodate the emerging understanding of humans as beingskindred with others in the living world. If they cannot, they will become increasingly irrelevant. If theyare unable to join the rest of us in coming to terms with nature and finding kinship among the lifearound us, they will cease to provide spiritual guidance and comfort and they will fall away as religionshave done before.

Western religion needs to come to terms with its ancestor religions the "idolators," "pagans,"goddess worshippers, and the other belief systems that the monotheists so ruthlessly tried to stampout. Many traces of these are alive and well today in the developing world despite centuries of mostly


22/40


23/40

cowardice, indifference or agreement. The whole German people were accessories before, during andafter the fact. They knew. They knew. They knew.

During the course of this diatribe, we were on our way to our regular Sunday in the country at our favorite picnic spot, with Gitel, Petras aunt and her uncle Berne in front of the Morris, Petra and I in

back. As we drove, I had been ranting on my theme for about ten minutes, unconvinced by counter

arguments put forth by Gitel and Petra. I was about to extend my theme of universal knowledge andcollective guilt to collective evil and collective fatal character flaw, capped by the holocaust couldnever happen in Australia litany, when Gitel turned in her seat.

Darrrrling, shooosh, she said. They knew and they didnt know. You make evil everyday andnobody notices. For the past ten minutes, while you have been raving about Germans, we have beenstuck behind a cattle truck and there is a little calf who has got his leg caught in the gate and is surely in

pain.

At that moment, a break occurred in the oncoming traffic and Berne roared the Morris around the truck,which fell two cars behind.

Gitel continued. Not only do we good animal lovers do nothing to help the calf, mostly we do notnotice as you did not notice. Nor did Petra notice, nor did Berne. Nor would I perhaps if I had not beensearching ways to answer you. So if later someone asked us, Did you know there was a little calf withits leg caught? we would have had to say in all honesty, No, I did not know. Though it would be veryhard, now that I have pointed it out, for us to know how we could not have known?

At the time, I thought this lesson immensely profound. One cannot know what one does not notice. Italso relieved me of the need to be down on things German. With the exception of the Nazis whodirectly did evil, the Germans were restored to being just like us. Bergen-Belsen-Buchenwald-Auschwitz were as big a shock to the average German as they were to us. People being rounded up andtrucked around were every day. Foul-smelling smoke stacks were every day. Every day is A-OK. Sothey didnt notice. Therefore they didnt know. Now, when I tell this story most people get upset.They had to know, they say. But I think Gitel was right.

On that day, at that time in my moment of mind expansion, I totally missed the larger profundity, as didGitel herself, and Berne and Petra. Here we were, self-proclaimed animal lovers. We didnt racealongside the truck, pulling it over so the calf could get its leg out of the gate. We did not try to rescuethe calf. We went on to our picnic and ate the flesh of chickens. We attempted with some feeble fishingat the beach to impale forlorn fish on barbed hooks, taking great care not to hook the dogs or ourselves.

We came home that night and ate calf flesh in Bernes delicious Wiener Schnitzels. We did not noticeall the things we didnt notice. Even our observation of the terrified calf with its caught leg on its long,hungry, thirsty, pain-filled journey toward its pain-filled death did not make us good, kind peoplenotice. We noticed only that the calf had its leg caught, causing it pain-of-the-moment. The rest of the

picture escaped us.

If it had been a person, a human being, everybody would have noticed immediately and acted to rescueit, unless of course it was a person who was a non-person in the particular society. If it had been a dog,we would all have noticed sooner and taken some action to help. We would certainly not have

proceeded to dine on the flesh of its fellows without a qualm.


24/40

It is as if we have blind spots in our vision that let us see only so much and no more, dead spots in our brains that make it impossible to know, numb spots in our feelings. We only find out about those blind,dead, numb spots in retrospect. No matter how many we discover over the course of our lives, we livein the present with more yet to be discovered of which we are totally unaware.

For much of my life I continued to not see cattle trucks and to eat flesh and to wear fur and leather

and ivory and drive cars with pigskin seats, and to kill pests like mice and rats with poisons and trapsand to look to medical research and animal studies to save me from the consequences of my booze andnicotine habits. I did not notice the living animals involved. I was a good human, and if hauled beforesome animal Nuremberg in the sky would have been hard pressed to understand, Why me?

The Animals Voice: Articles

Cow Dancing

BY LOIS FLYNNE

Dancer came to me when she was six going on seven. For the first six years of her life she had had no

name just a number, as part of a large dairy herd. She was about seven months pregnant when shecame to me, a Jersey Springer, her great bag swinging, heavy with milk from her last calf long gone,long dead, long veal. Not long ago, like all the rest, her fifth baby had been taken from her, barely a dayold, a little boy.

You see them at the auctions, in crates out front of the dairies, pathetic little fellows, their navelsoftentimes still wet from their birthing, their little empty bellies unfed, their soft baby voices lowing for their frantic mothers, once more confined to the hydra suck of the godawful machines draining their milk into the vast vats and thence to the maws of humankind.

Five, perhaps six, such babies Dancer had born. From the time she was physically able to have babies,

she had carried and birthed a baby a year. For two hundred and seventy nine days each year, she carriedher baby curled high in her belly, close to her heart, while the machines sucked and sucked at her teats,sucking the milk of the baby before. One day of each year she spent giving birth, twenty-four hours tonurse her baby, nuzzling and washing and nurturing the tiny creature with her rich colostrum.

Then they would come as they always came, the soul-dead tenders of the hydra machines, and kick andcurse her back and seize her baby and drag it away, boys to the vealers, girls to be raised for the sameservitude as their mother. Ah, god, the dreadful, deadful, mooomoaning bellow of the two, such akeening knell of awful anguish that surely must move a stone to pity ... to no avail.
http://www.animalwrites.info/articles/cow-dancing.htmlhttp://www.animalwrites.info/articles/cow-dancing.html


25/40

One day, shortly after her last baby, Dancer slipped and fell on the wet concrete ramp as she and theother mothers were being herded to the milking. Somehow one of the others trod on her teat and it wasripped away as she struggled to rise, or so the story is told. Perhaps it was mashed by the machine andhacked away by one of the tenders. Who knows how she came to lose a teat, but certain it is that athree-teated cow is no use to the machines. So she was sent to auction, kicked and cussed onto thetruck, kicked and cussed off the truck, kicked and cussed thirsty and hungry into the ring for the

bidding to start, like all her babies before her.And she stood there with her painful swollen bag, dripping milk and blood from her torn teat, shakingher great head at her tormentors. And she bellowed, as her babies had bellowed, as all of the mothers

bellowed, and the babies there bellowed, mooomoan, such a keening knell of awful anguish that surelymust move a stone to pity.

I bought Dancer. Not only did I buy her, I paid her auction price, a bargain to be sure, because Dancer now carried a calf.

And this calf she was going to get to keep forever. On that, I was bound and determined. As her time

grew closer, I obsessively began counting days, looking up gestation tables in the manual again andagain. Always it said the same: 279 days for a Jersey. I counted the days off on the calendar. August1st. Every time, it came up August 1st. Again and again. I counted forward. I counted backward.August 1st.

While I fretted, Dancer wandered the range with her friends, grazing the grass. She sat with her circlein the shade by the creek, chewing her cud. Morning and night the cows came to the barn for their hayand their grain and their treats, apples, carrots, bananas, grapes.A week before August 1st, I prepared Dancers stall. Was 16x32 large enough? Too large? Too small?When should I confine her? Should I confine her?

Dancer herself settled the confinement question. When I tried to lock her in, she bellowed with suchanguish that I immediately turned her loose with her friends. I decided to go with the advice of myrancher friends who ran cattle wild on the range. Keep an eye on her from a distance, they said.Shes had calves before. Shell know what to do. Shell pick her spot.

And so Dancer dropped her calf right on schedule, at dusk in the cool of the evening on August 1st. She picked her spot, as the ranchers foretold, a clean spot, surrounded by a fierce stand of thigh-high star-thistle bristling with one-inch thorns situated at the southwest corner of a 40-acre paddock in which allthe water and shade was at the northwest end. In the gathering dark from my distant perch, I barelydiscerned the ease and grace of the birth, the competent way Dancer cleaned her calf, licking andloving its tiny form, nudging it carefully to its feet for its first tentative steps and flop back down.

Then she nudged it back up again. Stronger steps this time, though still a comedy walk, guiding it,guiding it back along her side to her dripping bag, crooning softly to it reaching out...oops, it loses its

balance and sits back down. Patiently she starts the whole process again...and again...till it fastens onand sucks for maybe a minute. Then it rests. Then up again. Another minute-long suck, then a littlelater a stronger minute ... caught in flashlight glimpses.

Dancer has done it. She has had her calf, a fine healthy calf, mother and baby doing well. But now Ihad a real problem. Suddenly it struck me. Dancer and baby are at one end of the field surrounded by a


26/40

thicket of thorns. Water and shade and sweet grass are at the other end of the field. The barn is evenfarther away and August 2nd is forecast to be a scorcher, 110 degrees in the shade.

I did not have a pickup. All I had was a 1983 much-abused Toyota 4-wheel-drive wagon. Nine a.m.came and Dancer was still in her star-thistle fortress.In retrospect, the story is funny. It was serious atthe time. Knowing Dancers history, the whole notion of picking up and moving her calf was anathema

to me. How do we explain to them that the sometimes horrible things we do to them we do out of love,in their best interests to the very best of our soul-searching perceptions?Anyone who has trapped and taken a feral cat to the vet knows exactly the torn feelings. That was howI approached Dancer, torn. I knew that picking up her calf would bring back all the nightmares of allher other calves, the dreadful desolation. I knew it would also be but momentary. The sun was already

burning down. She and her calf had to move from her thorn fortress into the shade.

I drove to within twenty feet of her and the calf and brought her grain. She would have none of it. Shetossed her head and pawed the ground and did her fighting bull act. A long time ago, perhaps as a childgrowing up round my fathers greyhounds and running free around relatives farms, in with the pigsand the cows and the bull, and with older sisters who were legendary horsewomen, I had learned that,unless they consider you something good to eat, non-human animals simply do not want to hurt you.They will posture and threaten. Even when they are acting to protect themselves, they generally chooseto use the minimum force necessary. They mostly just want to get away.

I did not consider myself brave when I approached Dancer and picked up her baby. I was much moreworried about her distress than any threat to me. Moreover, I was in more danger from the star-thistlescratching through my jeans and stabbing through my sneakers. Dancer danced around me, threatening,making missing passes at my body with her head. I picked up her baby and carried it to the car, placingit carefully in the rear compartment. I was too preoccupied to appreciate how perfectly exquisite it was,with its great ears and great eyes, soft nose it wrinkled at my smell, tiny hooves still encased in its birthslippers.

Most of all I remember its perfect trust, its obvious belief in a benevolent world that would continue tolove it as its mother loved it. How could anyone ever hurt such a creature? How can we let the hurtcontinue? How can we stop it? I guess one calf at a time, one mind at a time. One calfs story reachingmany minds one by one.

Slowly, I started to drive toward the shade, the baby quieted, relaxed in the back, seemingly enjoyingthe jaunt. Not so Dancer. She ran frantically round and round searching for her baby, bellowing theawful bellow that will tear my heart for eternity. But she did not seem to know to follow the car. The

baby now started to fret, maaaaa. I promptly drove back to Dancer and opened up the rear door toshow her the baby. Once more I tried to drive away. Once more I drove back.

The sun was going for its personal best in scorchers. I lifted the baby from the car and started outacross the field with it in my arms. This worked. Dancer followed, dancing around making soft noisesto the baby, then gently butting me along to speed up the process that was getting heavier at every step.Bang. Another butt from Dancer. Stagger a few more steps. Bang again. So it went for the wholemiserable thousand feet, every rotten miserable inch of it with star-thistle stuck in my sneakers and

jeans.

The baby was a girl. Dancer nursed her till she was almost eighteen months old. Of course, they arestill together, here at the Sanctuary. Leanna Pavlova will be two in August. Dancer no longer becomes


27/40

frantic at the sight of cattle trucks coming on the property, bringing new arrivals. She dances with her very grown-up baby and the other cows under the light of the moon. Sometimes, they let me dance withthem, whirling and swirling, such light-footed giants, in tune with the earth and the beauty of being.

Lois Flynne was the director of the Community of Compassion for Animals sanctuary in Orland,California. The sanctuary was also home for goats, pigs, dogs, chickens, turkeys, donkeys and three

cows previously used in vivisection experiments.

Is There Anything Truly Sustainable or Humane About Eating Meat? | Food | AlterNet

FOOD

AlterNet / By Joshua Frank

229 COMMENTS

Is There Anything Truly Sustainable or Humane About EatingMeat?

Animal rights crusader Lee Hall says the only way to prevent animal suffering is to 'stop breeding these poor beings only to betray them.'

May 7, 2010 |

LIKE THIS ARTICLE ?

Join our mailing list:

Sign up to stay up to date on the latest Food headlines via email.
http://www.alternet.org/food/146765/is_there_anything_truly_sustainable_or_humane_about_eating_meat/http://www.alternet.org/http://www.alternet.org/authors/8105/http://www.alternet.org/food/146765/is_there_anything_truly_sustainable_or_humane_about_eating_meat/#disqus_threadhttp://www.alternet.org/food/146765/is_there_anything_truly_sustainable_or_humane_about_eating_meat/http://www.alternet.org/http://www.alternet.org/authors/8105/http://www.alternet.org/food/146765/is_there_anything_truly_sustainable_or_humane_about_eating_meat/#disqus_thread


28/40

Petitions by Change.org| Get Widget |Start a Petition

Natural food sections in our grocery stores are chock full of them. The ethical foodies seek them out.They're intended to inform the consumer about where our food comes from and how it's produced:

"Sustainable," "organic," "free-range," "local" products -- we've all seen the terms and we hope theygenuinely convey what they imply.

But what do they really mean? What's the truth behind the label? Can meat ever really be sustainable?Is purchasing local a good thing for the environment? Not always, says activist, author and educator Lee Hall, who serves as legal affairs VP for Friends of Animals . Hall is also an active supporter of HumaneMyth.org , a new group that seeks to expose the facts behind our misleading food labels andfarming practices.

I spoke with Hall, whose new book on animal-rights theory and advocacy, On Their Own Terms: Bringing Animal-Rights Philosophy Down to Earth , is due out later this month.

Joshua Frank: As someone who frequently shops at farmer's markets and natural food stores, Ihave noticed a rapidly growing trend toward so-called ethical eating. People are becoming awareof the dark side of industrialized farming, and as a result more and more animal products arebeing labeled with terms like "cage free," "humane certified" and "organic."

Lee Hall: You're right; this trend is growing fast and the advertising hype that's driven by enterprisessuch as Whole Foods have a lot to do with it, as does the reality that global warming really is upon us.Climate disruption is the most frightening thing since the bomb (and that's not gone). People arelooking for pacifiers. People want to be able to say they've grasped the inconvenient truth but they stillwant peace of mind. If they've got money, they'll pay a bit more these days for that.

JF: But you've argued that these are simply marketing terms that do not necessarily mean whatthey convey to consumers. Can you explain why? What's the reality behind these terms?

LH: First, they're usually just marketing ploys. There's no legally binding definition for cage-free eggs,for example. These items are bought by people who want to believe the birds were treated OK. That'swell-meaning. But think about what's going on. Packing a mass of birds into a shed isn't much better than jamming them into a cage. Cannibalism increases in shed situations where so-called cage-freechickens lay eggs, as does bone breakage. Recall that birds who are purpose-bred to lay eggs do that alot. So they're always short of calcium; it leaves their bodies and goes into the shells. That meansosteoporosis is common in commercial birds. I don't mean to be a party pooper here; I assure you thereare great vegan recipes for just about anything you're making with eggs now.

I know some people will say: Oh, but my eggs, my ham -- it really does come from a good farm; look at their Web site and all the greenery! Well, you must have a lot of money to eat that way all the time.But even if the animal farms you support are spacious, think about the ramifications. More space for agribusiness concerns, less free animals in wild spaces. Just like suburban development, farms take upa lot of land. Why would we as a society continue to think this is a good trend?
http://www.change.org/petitionshttp://www.alternet.org/food/146765/is_there_anything_truly_sustainable_or_humane_about_eating_meat/http://www.alternet.org/food/146765/is_there_anything_truly_sustainable_or_humane_about_eating_meat/http://www.change.org/start_a_petitionhttp://www.friendsofanimals.org/http://www.humanemyth.org/http://www.change.org/petitionshttp://www.alternet.org/food/146765/is_there_anything_truly_sustainable_or_humane_about_eating_meat/http://www.change.org/start_a_petitionhttp://www.friendsofanimals.org/http://www.humanemyth.org/


29/40


JF: What about grass-fed cattle? Michael Pollan and others have touted the allegedenvironmental and ethical benefits of eating free-range beef as opposed to cows raised in CAFOs

(confined animal feeding operations). Isn't this method of raising animals qualitatively better? LH: To my mind, Michael Pollan's arguments are clever, but ultimately unconvincing. Eight years ago,Pollan wanted to be assured that eating the flesh of cattle could be done without barbarism. This was noeasy feat. To prove the thesis of compassionate carnivorism, this contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine actually bought a calf. Pollan chronicled the growth of the little Black Angus steer from a nursing baby up until the end of it all. The animal was killed a few weeks after turning one year of age.

Do you remember the name Pollan referred to that calf by? Number 534. Compassionate, isn't? Nowwe're supposed to believe that there's no ecological barbarism in eating these animals either -- if it's

done on pastures, not in factories. Balderdash. As the human population continues to rise, as biofuelscompete with agricultural land, as energy and water become concentrated in fewer hands, mass production will be the norm. Only a select few will have the opportunity to eat that grass-fed fleshPollan's touting.

And what happens to the wolves, coyotes, bobcats, and other animals who once roamed the land madeover to farm sprawl?

If you really want to tread lightly on the earth and its conscious life, the answer is to stop breedingthese poor beings only to betray them and stop annihilating wildlands for malls -- and the farms too.There's a great saying ascribed to Confucius: "The way out is via the door."

JF: I've always been skeptical of the free-range cattle notion. Spending a considerable amount of time hiking around Eastern Oregon, I have seen many grass-fed cattle roaming our public landsand shitting in and around some of the state's remaining wild rivers. A study by UC DavisMedical Center recently confirmed that free-roaming livestock are polluting rivers in the Sierraswith their waste.

LH: That study is on to something: water on public lands and wilderness areas are dirtiest where cattlegraze. And what a word from an ethical point of view. Livestock. Live today, stock tomorrow. It'sreally a bane, this notion that conscious life can and should be a commodity. Imagine if we dared tochallenge that. Environmental advocacy would be revolutionized overnight.

This is what the locavores aren't talking about. Cows aren't part of the natural biocommunity. Ascommercial cows became widespread, their free-living ancestors, the aurochs, went extinct in theseventeenth century, when a poacher shot the last one in Poland. Free-range? Not really. The ones wesee today are purpose-bred animals, imposed on the land.

JF: Since you bring up the locavore movement, I'm reminded of Prof. James McWilliams atTexas State University who has argued that "If you want to make a statement, ride your bike tothe farmer's market. If you want to reduce greenhouse gases, become a vegetarian." Why do you
http://www.alternet.org/food/146765/is_there_anything_truly_sustainable_or_humane_about_eating_meat/?page=2http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/31/magazine/power-steer.html?pagewanted=allhttp://www.sacbee.com/2010/04/25/2703875/bee-exclusive-livestock-waste.htmlhttp://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0803/opinions-energy-locavores-on-my-mind.htmlhttp://www.alternet.org/food/146765/is_there_anything_truly_sustainable_or_humane_about_eating_meat/?page=2http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/31/magazine/power-steer.html?pagewanted=allhttp://www.sacbee.com/2010/04/25/2703875/bee-exclusive-livestock-waste.htmlhttp://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0803/opinions-energy-locavores-on-my-mind.html


30/40

think the broader environmental movement has yet to fully embrace vegetarianism as one way tochallenge climate change?


LH: Much of what we call the environmental movement relies on donations. So there's a hydraulic pullto behave as though laws and lawmakers should fix things. That's convenient. Potential donors aren'tchallenged to make personal changes.

At the same time, the moneyed donors non-profits hope to attract will find comfort in promotions of "humane, sustainable, all-natural meat" and the like. Rarely do environmental groups ask potentialsupporters to begin with the personal, essential paradigm shift that a full vegetarian commitmentinvolves.

What underlies this hesitance? Well, imagine the Catholic authorities' initial resistance to the

Copernican revolution. People had to leave their comfort zone to grasp the reality the universe does notrevolve around the human being. Galileo got the picture, and wound up under house arrest.

Suggest that humans are part of the biocommunity rather than in charge of it? Say the universe does notrevolve around us? Humanity is not quite ready to accept that reality -- although everything from theclimate to the extinction rate is telling us the time has come to do so.

JF: In 2006 the UN Dept. of Food and Agriculture reported that the world's cattle industry wasresponsible for more greenhouse gas emissions, by CO2 equivalence, than all the vehicles on theroad. Even if big environmental groups aren't addressing this very serious problem, why do youthink popular climate activists, such as Al Gore and Bill McKibben, aren't talking about thisissue in any substantive manner?

LH: Al Gore, pressed on this issue, has said , "Cutting back is a responsible alternative" but Gore is nota vegetarian. Likewise Bill McKibben -- who, in the March/April 2010 issue of Orion , criticizedfactory farming, but gave grass-fed beef a pass. If they haven't seen fit to personally get beyond animalagribusiness, they aren't prepared to take vegetarianism seriously in their public commentaries.

Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin, assistant professors in geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago, observed in 2006 that a fully vegetarian diet is the most energy-efficient. Fish and red meatvirtually tied as the least efficient. And while the average person on our landmass puts out four tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent a year, each person who goes vegan cuts

Documents

Animals Voice Essays & More May26/10