Mayday 2004 - London Animal Action

The Riddler | 03.05.2004 10:58 | May Day 2004 | London

London Animal Action Mayday Activities 2004

Police Harrassment

Even More Photo's

Eros Statue, start fo the day - gathering of the masses

McDonalds Protest - Leicester Square

McDonalds Protest - Shaftsbury Avenue

Moving Between Venues

Fur Shop Protest

Outside Angus Steak House

Police Protection - Claire Sings the Blues

Police Escort - The Heavy Mob

Demo outside Hockley Furs

Claridges - Gordon Ramsey shuttered

Police moved us from front of Claridges

Marching Down Oxford Street

What's it all about?

By Royal Appointment Demo

Photo's of the various activities LAA held on Mayday 2004 against Animal Abusers

The Riddler

Comments

Hide the following 12 comments

It looks like the beardy guy with the banner has leather shoes on- i could be wrong but isnt this slightly hypocrytical?

The guy in the bottom photo has got ex army boots on- not vegetarian to the best of my knowledge...

Dont get me wrong I dont think cruel treatment of animals is on, which is why I generally buy free range organic meat from a local butcher, who buys his meat from local farmers (with minimal transportation for slaughter).

Is'nt this anti- fur stuff just emotionally led?

cynic

Fur Fox Sake!

03.05.2004 22:09

I can't speak for the attire of those photographed above but if you were confined in a wire cage along with many others, barely able to move, breathing in the smell of your own faeces every day and resorting to cannibalism brought on because of deprivation of stimuli, then taken to the gas chambers to be gassed or had an electrical charge inserted into your mouth or anus before having the skin ripped from your back, I wouldn't just look at you and think 'shit, am I just being emotional here wanting to do something to liberate this being from his/her suffering?'.

Get real. Think how the animals feel.

liber8r

The boots are not leather

04.05.2004 08:05

Hi - just to put cynic straight. The guy wearing the army boots in the bottom photo is my boyfriend and he, like me, gets his boots from Vegetarian Shoes in Brighton - which means that they are non-leather and vegan.
I guess your comment about protests being 'emotionally lead' is intended to get a knee-jerk response from people who actually bother to get off their arses and try to do something to make the world a kinder place?
Anyways it's good that you recognise that the leather trade is as cruel as the fur trade and I'd like to say that Saturday's demonstrations were successful and positive.

Fiona

Fair enough but

04.05.2004 15:00

In my book humans and animals are not equal. By virtue of our memory, language and conciousness humans have inherently more worth than animals.

This does not excuse treating animals cruelly - they have lesser worth, but still worth. By virtue of our 'humanness'- our capacity to empathise we (or most of us) have a emotional response when we see suffering.
This is a response that animals do not have (when the fox eats the chicken, lion eats the antelope etc etc)

When there is so much human suffering in the world (how many homeless people did you pass on the protest?) when I "get off my arse and do somthing" it is motivated by a desire to reduce the suffering thatis most important-human suffering.

There is in my book a continum of 'worth' from Humans through monkeys and gorilla's down to dogs, cat's, birds, fish, worms, flies, wasps, nits, bacteria etc.

Ever squashed a fly?
Ever had nit's? - (did you keep them or kill them?)
Ever killed bacteria?
A Virus?

These things are not simple, I also value plant life in terms of biodiverity and it's nececity for the continuance of life on this planet- But I dont grieve for corn...

Cynic

no to cows

04.05.2004 15:07

The other thing that a 'everybody is vegan' ethos entails is a lot less animals.

save the cows by not eating them- then the farmer stops farming them.

Make less animals exist- go vegan

Cynic

you what?!

04.05.2004 15:57

I wonder how you can talk about a distinct split between humans and animals in one sentence, and in the next mention a continuum from one species to another?
The notion of evolution being a linear progression from bacteria to protozoa to metazoa and finally reaching humans at its pinnacle, is long since out of date. The evolutionary tree has many branches, and there is no justification for the assumption that Homo sapiens is at the top – we are just another species.

The point is not about the social skills of a species, its about whether the animal can suffer. If you claim that mammals such as mink and fox that are farmed for their fur are unable to feel pain, I would be very interested to hear how you have come about making this conclusion. (What is the name of your book, where can I get hold of a copy?)

It may be a diffcult point to grasp for some people, but vegans are actually responsible for less destrcution of plant life on the planet than meat eaters – this is because their diet requires approximately a tenth of the number of plants used up in the meat eater’s food chain. Go vegan – use less land, less water, make land available for woodland regeneration and habitiat conservation – increase biodiversity.

As for people suffering, to my knowledge Vegetarian Shoes have an ethical policy meaning that shoes are produced in the UK and do not involve sweatshop labour, or long energy-wasting transport of goods.

But yeah, you’ve got a point, I guess the cow doesn’t mind having his throat slit, as long as he only has to pop down the road for the pleasure.

Daisy

flea or man?

04.05.2004 16:31

"I wonder how you can talk about a distinct split between humans and animals in one sentence, and in the next mention a continuum from one species to another?"

A continum- more value at one end less at the other, I dont think there is a 'distinct' split- but we have attributes that animals do not share and that gives us more value.

"The evolutionary tree has many branches, and there is no justification for the assumption that Homo sapiens is at the top – we are just another species."

Just let me get this clear- you attach no more value to human life than that of a flea?
You dont think that the human race has any attributes that make us different from animals?

"If you claim that mammals such as mink and fox that are farmed for their fur are unable to feel pain,"

I dont claim that- but if a human was suffering equivalent pain it would be more important

"It may be a diffcult point to grasp for some people, but vegans are actually responsible for less destrcution of plant life on the planet than meat eaters – this is because their diet requires approximately a tenth of the number of plants used up in the meat eater’s food chain. Go vegan – use less land, less water, make land available for woodland regeneration and habitiat conservation – increase biodiversity."

I do accept that, and it is a good argument, the only flaw is that for organic farming (not using multinational produced, oil based fertiliser) you need manure and that's got to come from somewhere.

"As for people suffering, to my knowledge Vegetarian Shoes have an ethical policy meaning that shoes are produced in the UK and do not involve sweatshop labour, or long energy-wasting transport of goods."

Made out of plastic arent they? - derived from oil, can you remember any oil wars recently?

"But yeah, you’ve got a point, I guess the cow doesn’t mind having his throat slit, as long as he only has to pop down the road for the pleasure."

The cow doesnt 'mind' anything- the (flawed) notion of a 'mind' refers to humanity and it's mental capacities. more anthromorphising of the animal world.

I dont deny that the cow will feel some pain- but that pain is animal pain and as such has less value than the pain of a Iraqi being bombed to shit - you could have put your energy into a human rights protest, that's me point.

Cynic

I coulda...

04.05.2004 17:16

I could have put my energy into an anti-war march, I could have broken into an RAF base and disabled a plane...I could have written to my MP, I could have got a petition and collected lots of signatures, I could have helped out at the local homeless shelter...I could have planted some trees, I should have gone hunt sabbing, I could have gone to Faslane but I went to Nine Ladies, I went to a protest but I should have just run for Councillor, I organised a protest when I could have joined Greenpeace, why do I recycle paper when McDonalds just throw it away, how can I care about animals when there's a war on? How many lives will I save if I hold a Stop the War placard? How many lives will I save if I go vegan? Why am I demonstrating here when there's a nastier company over there? Why do you care about this woodland when there's rainforests being chopped down?

Has anyone else noticed that whatever they do, some helpful person always points out that they could have done something better?

nuthin ever good enuff

and your shoes? - Reply

05.05.2004 10:24

>The guy in the bottom photo has got ex army boots on- not vegetarian to the best of my knowledge...

You are so wrong!

I live in Tokyo but the guy you mentioned wearing the army boots is a friend of mine and is VEGAN the same as me.
Meaning neither of us eat/use/wear any leather or even wool for that matter.

I suggest you look and the following sites:
www.vegetarian-shoes.co.uk
www.mooshoes.com
and many more companies selling synthetic shoes (which are not only cruelty-free but also much better for the environment).

You obviously have an interest in cruelty to animals as you are reading this article, so I would like to remind you that there is not such thing as cruelty-free meat (even free range organic meat!!!). So please look at www.meetyourmeat.com and go vegan.

Andrew

A plea

05.05.2004 12:11

If you are going to feature pictures of the omen at these events can I make a request for pictures of good looking ones. The lot you have chosen do you no favours !

Sam

Cynic

05.05.2004 13:46

“I dont deny that the cow will feel some pain- but that pain is animal pain and as such has less value than the pain of a Iraqi being bombed to shit - you could have put your energy into a human rights protest, that's me point.”

Why is the pain of a cow less important than the pain of a human? Probably the human is more intelligent, but how exactly does that affect pain? I don't think that torturing a mentally handicapped human is less wrong than torturing a “normal” human, so why is torturing an animal less wrong than torturing a human?

I think that factory farming is the biggest cause of unecessary, preventable suffering in the world. Literally billions of animals are kept in hideous conditions and killed painfully just so that we can enjoy their taste. This is why some activists choose to focus most of their time and energy on anti-factory farming actions. But most of the animal rights activists that I know also spend a lot of their time campaigning for human causes – the two are not mutually exclusive, you know!

Arp

ssss

01.04.2005 17:23

I don't think what cynic wrote stands up to much, really. Animals may - or may not - feel less pain than humans. May - or may not - be less intelligent. So and and so forth. But so what? What does that have to do with anything? How does that preclude not harming said animals - is not that animals feel the important fact?

It all just stinks of mindless rationalisation. We don't need to harm animals, we do not need to eat animals. We can get by perfectly fine not doing so. Eating meat - a gustatory triviality - is not so important that it justifies taking life. Vegetarianism are testimony to the superfluity of meat.

ssss