Film showing of Behind the Mask in Leeds

This kind of politics contains the possibility of authoritarianism of a worse kind than already exists. As i have said before and will say again: animal rights is a non issue. \furthermore, it contains the seeds of authoritarianism. how? how does one stop experiments on animals? by wearing a mask and commiting acts of voilence. now let us suppose that these kinds of views had greater power than they do now. how would an animal rights activist stop someone from eating meat? there are two ways, one is moral persuasion, if they are not convinced then it can only be by force!!! that it, in order to enforce something like this, extremely authoritarian measures are called for. is there not something ascetic and religious about animal rights? thou shalt not eat meat! these 'anarchists' who call for the abolition of laws simply want to make new,tougher, laws.

Sounds like you'll be coming to the film showing, see you there.

Terrorists or Freedom Fighters, edited by Dr Steve Best and Anthony Nocella. ISBN: 159056054X

May shed some further light too.

This forms part of an article written by Dr Steve Best called 'Rethinking Revolution: Animal Liberation, Human Liberation, and the Future of the Left' i think it's worth a read:

'It seems lost on most of the global anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist Left that there is a new liberation movement on the planet – animal liberation – that is of immense ethical and political significance. But because animal liberation challenges the anthropocentric, speciesist, and humanist dogmas that are so deeply entrenched in socialist and anarchist thinking and traditions, Leftists are more likely to mock than engage it. [...]'

 http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/is6/Best_rethinking_revolution.htm

Animal rights doesn't necessarily equate to legal rights. It's clear that not even basic human rights are respected in many instances so what for animal rights enshrined in law? Just look at the Hunting Act. I find it very difficult to understand why people want to use, exploit and cause clear suffering to other living beings on this planet. Why lock pigs up in factory farms for their entire lives? Why do the same for chickens? Why live export calves to live in veal crates? I am sure these animals would not choose to live this way, given a choice i'm willing to say they'd go for escape from a slaughterhouse, this is the domination of other animals by humans, and looks to me like a powerful kind of authoritarianism.

We'll do all we can to support this and we've added it to the diary dates on the NARN site.

Keep up the good work and see you there,
NARN

"animal rights is a non issue" says sai ko jo, why then, I wonder, does he show so much interest in it? I'm sure even a Marxist comrade can appreciate a little bit of irony. How is Uncle Joe these days?

hey,

read the argument on the link. Not very convincing, as your whole argument hangs on the idea of 'speciesism", which is very weak. the comparision with racism is idiotic, as all humans share language and thought, and this is not the case with animals at all. we do not know what a rat wants, as it cannot communicate to us. we guess what it wants. neither is it possible to tell a disease carrying rat not to come to your house, it simply does not understand those terms. furthermore, we cannot tell the wolf not to eat the sheep as it is against the rights of the sheep. it is ridiculous, and i suspect most animal rights activists do not know much about nature, or have not been in contact with nature much. as for your self image as dangerous 'terrorists', you are flattering yourselves. you are not so much dangerous as confused.

Can every human being on this planet SPEAK ,Sai Ko Jo? Can every human being on this planet HEAR,Mr Humanist? So the human beings on this planet you cannot SPEAK or HEAR,according to your criteria,are not equal? Or is just about appearance,Sai Ko Jo?

Tell me Sai Ko Jo,if we HUMAN BEINGS,can think, then why aren't all human beings trying to stop the coming environmental planetary disaster,and permenantly dropping their cars?


But who needs "thinking" when Sai Ko Jo has all the -flesh gorging--moral practicalness to offer!

I hope Sai Ko Jo,you will be at the next anti vivisection protest,as VIVISECTION,is based and promoted on,the HUMANNESS of animals which you clearly disagree with.



Say no to anthroprocentric imperialism,bad for the planet,bad for sanity! (Sai Ko Jo is an unfortunate example)

Are you one of the Wurzels or something?

Timothy:

no, not all human beings can speak. so what??? babies for instance. so what??? they exist in the context of human society, human families and friendships, and human meaning etc. Snakes and rats really do not.... as for why don;t humans stop driving cars, it is because it really is not practical. the way out of this dillema is surely to develop clean energies, not to stop using cars and planes altogether. As for the humaness of animals, what can i say? i think you are confused, mate. where is the humanity in a snake??? or is 'humaness' only applied to 'cute' animals??? how is one to treat a mosquito in the tropics which may be carrying malaria?? You kill the bastard!! There is no other way........

Where's the humanity in a snake? Good question, but where was the humanity in Hitler? or the Imperial Japanese army in China during the second world war? Or Joe Stailin who worked 22 million people to death in the Gulags? Or the humanity in the Russian troops that raped 2 million German women, or the humanity in the German Wehrmacht in WW2 where 27milllion Russian people died? What about the humanity in the Chinese Communist party where 60 million people starved to death? Or perhaps the British army in Australia and Tasmania, where half a million aborgines died? What about Leopold's conquest of the Congo, where 10 million Congolese were worked to death and died? What about the slave trade, what about Auschwitz, What about the SS guards, the various sadists throughuot history, the serial killer, the rapist?

And you go on about a snake.

The greatest threat to humanity and human life is man himself. Animals don't have human intelligence but that does not mean to say that they should be exploited in the hideous way they are today. Yes you kill the mosquito, self defence is no offence, but a lot of animal killing and cruelty is anything but motivated by self defence, in many cases it is merely greed and ignorance (remmeber the teachings of the Buddha, Sai ko?)

You are still falling into that trap of Cartesian dualism again. Learn to think in a more expansive way, rather than simply nomalistic categorisations which have no inherent value and standing in and of themselves, merely a positivistic filing system, not truth.

"and i suspect most animal rights activists do not know much about nature" Sai Ko Jo

What is this fella on?

Badger,

i am not denying the atrocities nor deny they are part of humanity. So what??? this has no immediate connection with animal rights. I am NOT saying that humans are good and animals bad, only that animal rights is inconsistent and contradictory. The idea of good and bad only makes sense inside human morality. Should animals be treated better? Yes!!! But does that mean we should all stop eating meat, or not use bug spray to kill mosquitoes or whatever??? No. As for Buddha and Buddhism, i am not a believer in Buddhism tho there are some good things in there. I cannot believe in reincarnation or karma anymore than i can believe that Jesus is the son of God. If your politics is based on religion, than i and many other people will remain unconvinced, just as we are unconvinced by the Pope and his appeals to christian love. Buddhism is a non issue for me, it is a religion like any other. (Furthermore, i do not think animal rights are particularly good in buddhist countries like thailand or burma, but i may be wrong.)

reply to Imp:

no, i am serious. Most animal rights activists i have met do not know much about nature at all.

How do you get to these anit-vivisection demos? I hope you practise what you preach and have given up this evil transport. While you are at it I wonder if you have ever turned that critical eye on yourself. Do you know how much soy transportation adds to the enviromental disaster?

You are a hypocryte!

Is that the soya transported for cow feed? Because most of the Soya coming out of the Amazon is destined for just that.

'The 7,000km journey that links Amazon destruction to fast food

· Farmers illegally seize virgin land for soya crops
· Export chain ends in big fast food outlets in UK

John Vidal, environment editor
Thursday April 6, 2006
The Guardian

A handful of the world's largest food companies and commodity traders, including McDonald's in the UK, are driving illegal and rapid destruction of the Amazon rainforest, according to a six-year investigation of the Brazilian soya bean industry.

The report, published today, follows a 7,000km chain that starts with the clearing of virgin forest by farmers and leads directly to Chicken McNuggets being sold in British and European fast food restaurants. It also alleges that much of the soya animal feed arriving in the UK from Brazil is a product of "forest crime" and that McDonald's and British supermarkets have turned a blind eye to the destruction of the forest. [...]'

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,1747905,00.html

Not only that but it's mostly GM too....

 http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/gm_animal_feeds.pdf

Soya? Veganism? Anti-vivisection? Compassion? Humanism?

I'll more than willingly give soya the cold shoulder whilst I live the vegan way until death.

Anything wrong with oat or rice milk? (serious question)


btw

Q) what do you call two serious organised criminals?

A) A pair of 'SOC(K)'s" ;-)

Ok, I'll do one! . .. . bye!

Oatly has some stuff:

 http://www.oatly.com

Based on pure swedish oats.....

SaiKo, you said ". I am NOT saying that humans are good and animals bad, only that animal rights is inconsistent and contradictory. The idea of good and bad only makes sense inside human morality."

you argue the point that animal rights has no meaning outside human society, but this does not negate animal rights or welfare issues at all, since the idea of good and bad only makes sense inside human morality, then that human morality can easily be extended to encompass animals and their care, also a vegetarian diet, rather than their present day mistreatment. You maitain that this is not scientific, yet you seem yourself to wield and then abandon scientific theory and method when it suits you in regard to your assertions, you mention the scientific theories fo Malthus for example to attack animal welfare people, saying that they hold Malthusian theories, but then again to atack the animal wefare movement you then go on to say that it is 'not scientific'!!!!! you are changing the proverbial goal posts as and when youplease.




You also said " If your politics is based on religion, than i and many other people will remain unconvinced, just as we are unconvinced by the Pope and his appeals to christian love. Buddhism is a non issue for me, it is a religion like any other. (Furthermore, i do not think animal rights are particularly good in buddhist countries like thailand or burma, but i may be wrong.)"
As a Marxist you should know yourself that the superstructure of a society reinforces the means of production and vice versa. Have you read Max Weber's 'The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism?' Some have argued that Marxist theory itself is based on Christianity, with equal justice and access to resources for all. Marx himself was appalled by the urban squalour of the industiral working class, out of which he wrote Das Kapital. Did you know also Sai Ko that Marx was deeply moved by Dickens novels, which also highlighted urban poverty but wished for a christian socialist response to them? What is your idea of religion anyway? Church? Faith? Meaning in life?

The arguments you put forward to attack animal rights and animal welfare can just as easily be used to defend them, they have no absolute or inherent truth in themselves, they are purely positivistic as I have said, and moreover they are hypothetical and in some cases anecdotal. As said, they do not display an absolute truth, and as such you have failed to disprove the logic of animal welfare activists.

Soya used in cattle feed first has it's oil extracted then the waste goes on to feed cattle. Most of the Soya grown in S/America is sent to China.

So it is ok for vegans to polute the world? Show me a workable system that is able to feed the 6.5 billion a vegan diet.

There are billions of individual animals,confined in factory farms,when they are born they don't have much bodily flesh for the "meat eater" to cling to.So,along with the intensive confinement,high protein foods such as SOYA(they used to use cattle remains but that was banned because of BSE) are used as muscle and body builders for the enslaved animals to chew on and swallow.

The vast majority of SOYA from the Amazon goes into these hell-holes,and there are plently of them globally-infact wherever there are fascist human species there always will be.

How many VEGANS are there on earth,in proportion to the world population? I'd say,not many,to cause widespread destruction of the earth.

But how many Mcdonalds and Burger Kings worldwide and their side-kick, slaughterhouses and factory farms?

Not even the best mathematician could answer that!

Just how much soya do you think vegans eat?? Vegans don't exist on a diet of soya, in fact i would suggest they consume hardly any at all. Soya can be found in all sorts of packaged foods these days as there is a lot of soya about, as an article in The Guardian suggests:

'Should we worry about soya in our food?

Whether you know it or not, you'll probably be eating soya today. It's in 60% of all processed food, from cheese to ice cream, baby formula to biscuits. But should it carry a health warning? Felicity Lawrence investigates'

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1828088,00.html

"So it is ok for vegans to polute the world? Show me a workable system that is able to feed the 6.5 billion a vegan diet."

Ecology 101: For every trophic level, the amount of useable energy decreases by 90%.

So if we produce plant food to give to animals, and then eat the animals, we use about 10 times as much land, energy, fossil fuels, water and other inputs as we would if we ate the plants directly. Quite simple to feed 6.5 thousand million people or even the UN projected maximum population of 10 thousand million on a vegan diet. Much harder to feed them if everyone demanded the same diet as affluent Westerners. This was obvious even to Socrates in 500BC who predicted that everyone's demand for meat would mean more land grabbing and wars, which is pretty much what has happened. Not to mentions the increase in health spending because of all the associated diseases of meat and animal protein, such as colon cancer,osteoporosis, obesity, type 2 diabetes, prostrate cancer etc.

Intensive meat and dairy farming is a major contributor to eutrophication and other non-point pollution sources. Animal agriculture through cow farts and burps is a major contributor to global warming. Valuable land in rain forest countries is tied up in massive cattle ranches, forcing the poor to cut further into the rain forest to feed their families. Soy and grain is used to fatten cattle so that rich Americans can get hardening of the arteries while millions of people starve for want of grain.

An end to wasteful meat production is as much a human rights issue as an animal rights one. Namely the rights of the poor to an adequate diet, and even the rights of the relatively wealthy West not to be conned by the meat industry into a diet that is slowly killing them.

Oh, and the cruelties of the slaughterhouse, the battery chicken farm, the broiler shed, the castrators knife and the vivisector's scalpel are too horrific for most people to even want to imagine. And lets not have this nonsensical argument about the animal industries being well regulated.Do you really think that a few pathetic government inspectors have any hope at all of influencing the huge agricultural and pharmaceutical conglomerates? Even if laws are in place, do you think it is possible to enforce them? Slaughter house workers have more accidents than any other occupation, including supposedly dangerous occupations such as SCUBA diving. If that is the way the HUMANS are treated do you really think anyone is looking after the animals. The number of animals killed yearly exceeds the human population of the planet. At that line speed, it is simply not humanely possible to look after the interests of the humans or the animals in slaughterhouses.

If humans really are the superior moral race, then lets show some of this superior morality and stop this cruelty to humans and animals. You don't have to believe in some esoteric philosophical concept as "rights". You do have to have some common humanity and decency which seems to be lacking in a lot of this debate.

Animal liberationism is not tied to any religion. People of all faiths, and no faith, who have common moral prinicples of doing to others as you would have them do unto you, are all involved in the movement.