Isn't Man an Amazing Animal

Even the most ardent reactionaries, deluded ‘patriots,’ and apathetic cynics, whose myopic, Panglossian perspectives ensure that they continue to reflexively genuflect to the deeply criminal enterprise of American Capitalism and rationalize the savage imperialism of US foreign policy, are beginning to concede that we are in the midst of a crisis of epic proportions.... As a collective, we human animals have hubristically determined that we are the master species, endowing ourselves with the right to dominate, enslave, torture, humiliate, murder, and eat any sentient being on the planet (with the almost universal exception being the taboo of cannibalism–which is a bit perplexing considering the numerous other evils we inflict upon one another and the fact that human over-population is a tremendous problem). (source)

Isn't man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife - birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes and dingoes - by the million in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billion and eats them. This in turn kills man by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal- health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year, sends out cards praying for "Peace on Earth."

From Old MacDonald's Factory Farm by C. David Coats.

Every Second is a 9-11 Attack on the Animals

The eyes of the world were transfixed on the fiery ruins of the World Trade Center collapsing into rubble, as thousands of people were dead or dying. Meanwhile, in an average slaughterhouse, far more pigs, chickens, turkeys, or cattle were killed that same moment in other terrorist acts. One act of terrorism was extraordinary, illegal, and immoral while the other was routine, legal, and perfectly acceptable to the minds of most people. 9-11 was a tragedy of the first order, and received nonstop media coverage, but every second is a 9-11 attack on the animals, an assault that transpires under the cover of indifference and unfolds in a far more prolonged, torturous, and barbaric manner. Dare one make a comparison between human and animal suffering? ~ Steven Best

New York

(Office and Attack)

To Fernando Vela

Beneath all the statistics
there is a drop of duck’s blood.
Beneath all the columns
there is a drop of sailor’s blood.
Beneath all the totals, a river of warm blood;
a river that goes singing,
past the bedrooms of the suburbs,
and the river is silver, cement, or wind
in the lying daybreak of New York.
The mountains exist, I know that.
And the lenses ground for wisdom,
I know that. But I have not come to see the sky,
the blood that sweeps the machines to the waterfalls,
and the spirit on the cobra’s tongue.
Every day they kill in New York
ducks, four million,
pigs, five million,
pigeons, two thousand, for the enjoyment of dying men,
cows, one million,
lambs, one million,
roosters, two million,
who turn the sky to small splinters.
You may as well sob filing a razor blade
or assassinate dogs in the hallucinated foxhunts,
as try to stop in the dawnlight
the endless trains carrying milk,
the endless trains carrying blood,
and the trains carrying roses in chains
for those in the field of perfume.
The ducks and the pigeons
and the hogs and the lambs
lay their drops of blood down
underneath all the statistics;
and the terrible bawling of the packed-in cattle
fills the valley with suffering
where the Hudson is getting drunk on its oil.
I attack all those persons
who know nothing of the other half,
the half who cannot be saved,
who raise their cement mountains,
in which the hearts of the small
animals no one thinks of are beating,
and from which we will all fall
during the final holiday of the drills.
I spit in your face.
The other half hears me,
as they go on eating, urinating, flying in their purity
like the children of janitors
who carry delicate sticks
to the holes where the antennas
of the insects are rusting.
This is not hell, it is a street.
This is not death, it is a fruit-stand.
There is a whole world of crushed rivers and unachievable distances
in the paw of a cat crushed by a car,
and I hear the song of the worm
in the heart of so many girls.
Rust, rotting, trembling earth.
And you are earth, swimming through the figures of the office.
What shall I do, set my landscapes in order?
Set in place the lovers who will afterwards be photographs,
Who will be bits of wood and mouthfuls of blood?
No, I won’t; I attack,
I attack the conspiring
of these empty offices
that will not broadcast the sufferings,
that rub out the plans of the forest,
and I offer myself to be eaten by the packed-up cattle
when their mooing fills the valley
where the Hudson is getting drunk on its oil.

~ Federico García Lorca, from Poeta en Nueva York (1929-1930)

The Spanish Civil was began in 1936 and García Lorca was seen by the right-wing forces as an enemy. The author hid from the soldiers but he was eventually found. An eyewitness has told that he was taken out of a Civil Government building by guards and Falangists belonging to the 'Black Squad'. García Lorca was shot in Granada on August 19/20 of 1936 without trial. The circumstances of his death are still shrouded in mystery. He was buried in a grave that he had been forced top dig for himself. Accroding to some sources, he had to be finished off by a coup de grâce. One of his assassins later boasted, that he shot "two bullets into his arse for being a queer". Most probably, García Lorca wrote under pressure his last words on a note for a member of the 'Black Squad': "Father, please give this man a donation of 1000 pesetas for the Army." Don Federico, his father, carried the note in his wallet for the following years. He died in voluntary exile in New York.

CROPPED ~ SEE FULL IMAGE

Sue Coe, Triumph of Fundamentalism, 2004, mixed media drawing on white Strathmore Bristol board, 8 1/2" x 12 3/8" (21.5 x 31.5 cm).

Murder for Entertainment, Ego and Profit

[B]ehind our literature and philosophy, our ritual and art, stands the stout killer of Packingtown.... the cathedral and the capitol, the museum and concert chamber, the library and the university are the facade; in the rear are the shambles. ~ Will Durant , Oriental Heritage

[Martin Luther] King’s world house is still a damn slaughterhouse, because humanism doesn’t challenge the needless confinement, torture, and killing of billions of animals. The humanist non-violent utopia will always remain a hypocritical lie until so-called “enlightened” and “progressive” human beings extend nonviolence, equality, and rights to the animals with whom we share this planet. ~ Dr. Steven Best (source)

SAN FRANCISCO Art Institute halts exhibition showing killing of animals

Citing threats of violence by animal rights activists, the San Francisco Art Institute said Saturday that it is canceling a controversial exhibition that included video clips of animals being bludgeoned to death, as well as a public forum it had scheduled to address the controversy.... The exhibit that sparked the controversy was a one-person show by Paris artist Adel Abdessemed called "Don't Trust Me," which opened March 19.

Along with a variety of other elements, the show included a series of video loops of animals being bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer in front of a brick wall. The animals killed included a pig, goat, deer, ox, horse and sheep.

Animal welfare groups had attacked the video clips as degrading and cruel, and accused Abdessemed of killing animals for the sake of art. (source)

The CORPORATIST STATE TERRORISTS

If we are trespassing, so were the soldiers who broke down the gates of Hitler's death camps;
If we are thieves, so were the members of the Underground Railroad who freed the slaves of the South;
And if we are vandals, so were those who destroyed forever the gas chambers of Buchenwald and Auschwitz. ~ X

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him that it is right. ~ Martin Luther King

I Wish You Torture Free Holidays

Susan Saladino, The Madonna and Veal Calf, Oil on Canvas

Modern technology has moved us into an age where we have successful and superior alternatives to products and procedures that involve cruelty. Despite these alternatives, laboratories still subject the most sensitive and intelligent animals to brutal atrocities..... Despite the availability of natural plant hormones proven to be safer and equally as effective, some women still choose traditional animal estrogen; even with the understanding that by doing so thousands of adult and infant horses will be tortured and killed.....Synthetic fabrics are readily available as a compassionate alternative, but people still choose to strip the skin off living animals.....Even the circus, a place for innocent entertainment, has a bizarre backdrop of exploitation and cruelty.....For their entire lives, farm animals are contained in severely confined cages or metal crates unable to even turn around, never seeing the sun or breathing fresh air; only the toxic stench of their own excrement. Industrialized farming of today is an exploitation of the innocent. The heartbreaking reality of factory farming is the antithesis of what is projected in countless children's storybooks and toys where we see happy faced farm animals frolicking in sun filled green pastures, well cared for and loved by farmer Brown. Anthropomorphizing animals illustrates to children the similarities between animals and humans with an underlying message encouraging love. The other message given to children is that it is acceptable to exploit and kill those very same creatures. Link

The great visionaries of the last century all realized that the doctrine of "might makes right" is never acceptable. Animals don't have a voice: This holiday season, give them yours. Link

Smithfield Foods Accident

"As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behaviour toward creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right."

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Processing Pain at Smithfield Foods
By Aaron Sarver

Located in Tar Heel, N.C., the Smithfield Packing pork processing plant is the largest in the country. It employs 6,000 workers who work to slaughter 33 hogs a minute, 24 hours a day. In 2000, Human Rights Watch issued a report that chronicles how Smithfield Packing, Inc. abused workers during union elections held in 1994 and 1997. The report detailed other practices at the plant: Read more...

... AND CLICK ON THIS. I DON'T THINK THAT ANYONE CAN GET MORE OBSCENE THAN THIS, OR PLEASE GO HERE.

Also, please notice how the rights violations and murder of the animal persons, "33 hogs a minute, 24 hours a day," at the Tar Heel, N.C. Smithfield Packing "pork processing" plant are never considered, not even mentioned in the above quoted blog post or on the UFCW website.

Matthew Scully - Former Speechwriter for President George W. Bush - Visiting a Pig Factory Farm

Matthew Scully is on a tour inside a standard Smithfield pig factory farm owned by Carroll's Foods in a place called Warsaw two hours southeast of Raleigh. He is being led by a woman by the name Gay, an agricultural scientist:

Gay embodies in her ample frame all of humanity's contradictions about animals, capable of touching solicitude one moment and staggering disregard the next. "This'll be your first time farrowing, won't it, baby?" she says to a sow I pose to inspect, identified on a tag above the cage as NPD 88-308.". "Baby" is lying there covered in feces and dried blood, yanking maniacally on chains that have torn her mouth raw as foraging animals will do when caged and denied straw or other roughage to chew. She's hurting herself with the chains, I remark. "Oh, that's normal."

The answer can be seen in the swollen legs of the sow standing or trying to stand. To lie on their side, a powerful inclination during month of confinement in twenty-two inch of space, they try to put their legs through the bars into a neighboring crate. Fragile from the pigs' abnormally large weight, and from rarely standing or walking, and then only on concrete, their legs get crushed and broken. About half of those pigs whose legs can be seen appear to have sprained or fractured limbs, never examined by a vet, never splinted never even noticed any more.

-----

We keep walking. Sores, tumors, ulcers pus pockets, lesions, cysts, bruises, torn ears, swollen legs everywhere. Roaring, groaning, tail biting, fighting, and other "vices", as they're called in the industry. Frenzied chewing on bars and chains, stereotypical "vacuum" chewing on nothing at all, stereotypical rooting and nest building with imaginary straw. And "social defeat." lots of it, in every third or forth stall some completely broken being you know is alive only because she blinks and stares up at you like poor NPD 50-421, creatures beyond the power of pity to help or indifference to make more miserable, dead to the world except as heaps of flesh into which the AI rod may be stuck once more and more flesh reproduced. When they have conquered the "stress gene'", maybe the Ph. D.'s and guys in white coats can find us a cure for the despair gene, too.

Factory farming isn't just killing: It is negation, a complete denial of the animal as a living being with his or her own needs and nature. It is not the worst evil we can do, but it is the worst evil we can do to them. It confronts us with the animals equivalent of Abraham Lincoln condemnation of human slavery: "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong."

-----

Take anything else I have described in this book - elephants ambushed at the waterhole, baby monkeys ripped from their mothers and eaten alive, dolphins trapped and clubbed to death - and the reality is that none of it is any worse then anything we tolerate in our corporate farms. Perhaps you share my opinion of people who do those other things. You may call them cruel. You may call them reprehensible. But they all have ready answer: "You eat meat, Don't you?"

Matthew Scully, 'Dominion, The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy', 266-268, 289

Morrissey: Meat is Murder

Heifer whines could be human cries
Closer comes the screaming knife
This beautiful creature must die
This beautiful creature must die
A death for no reason
And death for no reason is murder

And the flesh you so fancifully fry
Is not succulent, tasty or kind
It's death for no reason
And death for no reason is murder

And the calf that you carve with a smile
Is murder
And the turkey you festively slice
Is murder
DO YOU KNOW HOW ANIMALS DIE ?

Kitchen aromas aren't very homely
It's not "comforting", cheery or kind
It's sizzling blood and the unholy stench
Of murder

It's not "natural", "normal" or kind
The flesh you so fancifully fry
The meat in your mouth
As you savour the flavour
Of murder

No, no, no, it's murder
No, no, no, it's murder
OH ... AND WHO HEARS WHEN ANIMALS CRY ?

Martin Luther King Had a Dream

"Martin Luther King had a dream. He longed for a world where the races of Man could live together in a spirit of brotherhood. I too have a dream. I dream of a world where Man is at peace, not only with himself, but also with all the other creatures of Earth. I long for a day when Man rejects the exploitation of other species for food, clothing, health, entertainment or even companionship - for such a day will mean that cruelty no longer exists and it is cruelty which dominates my every conscious moment."

John Bryant, 'Fettered Kingdoms'

Leonardo Da Vinci: The Time Will Come

"I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animalas as they now look upon the murder of men."

Leonardo Da Vinci

It is apparent from the works of Leonardo and his early biographers that he was a man of high integrity and very sensitive to moral issues. His respect for life led him to being a vegetarian for at least part of his life. The term "vegan" would fit him well, as he even entertained the notion that taking milk from cows amounts to stealing. Under the heading, "Of the beasts from whom cheese is made," he answers, "the milk will be taken from the tiny children." Vasari reports a story that as a young man in Florence he often bought caged birds just to release them from captivity. He was also a respected judge on matters of beauty and elegance, particularly in the creation of pageants.

It is possible that Leonardo da Vinci embraced vegetarianism at a young age, and unverified claims have been made that he remained so for the entire duration of his life. Link


"God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages."

Jacques Deval, 'Afin de vivre bel et bien'

Non-Speciesist John Lennon

I am going to start this vlog by singing the non-speciesist version of the song "Imagine" by John Lennon:


Imagine there's no vivisection
It's easy if you try
No hell on factory farms
just animals and the sky
Imagine all the creatures
Living cruelty free...

Imagine there's no flesh trade
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or torture for
And no speciesism too
Imagine all the beings
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for animal slaves
A brotherhood with them
Imagine all the beings
Sharing all the world...

DID YOUR FOOD HAVE A FACE?

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one


"Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace."

Albert Schweitzer, The Philosophy of Civilization

"Am I saying that a spider has as much right to life as an egret or a human? Yes. I see no logically consistent reason to say otherwise."

Joan Dunayer

All beings that feel pain deserve human rights

Equality of the species is the logical conclusion of post-Darwin morality

Richard Ryder
Saturday August 6, 2005
The Guardian

The word speciesism came to me while I was lying in a bath in Oxford some 35 years ago. It was like racism or sexism - a prejudice based upon morally irrelevant physical differences. Since Darwin we have known we are human animals related to all the other animals through evolution; how, then, can we justify our almost total oppression of all the other species? All animal species can suffer pain and distress. Animals scream and writhe like us; their nervous systems are similar and contain the same biochemicals that we know are associated with the experience of pain in ourselves. Read more...