A Gore-Free Video That Says It All

Please show this to your friends and family who are meat eaters. It is a gore-free video. It shows a cow shedding tears over the horrific fate he is about to experience. I quote from the wonderful Facebook page Animal Rights Activist:

This 34 second footage clearly shows a beautiful, sweet cow shedding tears in the seconds before slaughter. There's no blood or guts in this film so if you eat meat, it's something you can watch. Animals have the same feelings and desires we do. They long for life and love their children. They know love and feel pain, suffering, sadness and terror... just like we do. Reconnect your heart to life and respect for everyone we share this planet with. It just makes no sense to savagely destroy an innocent creature for 20 minutes of taste bud pleasure. We hope you will watch and realize that no amount of personal pleasure is worth taking an innocent life over.

There is no reason to continue this brutality and violence. It is time to end the Dark Ages that animals have been subjected to for so long. The only way possible to bring an end to these tragedies is to go vegan. How many millions - ultimately billions - of cows and pigs and chickens have wept as their lives have been violently taken away from them? This is mass murder on a gargantuan scale. The question is: Are we going to allow it to continue? Or are we going to move on to the next phase of our evolution and insist on treating animals with respect and dignity, and not as commodities?

The decision rests with humanity.

Words of Wisdom from Gary Francione

Words of wisdom from Gary Francione, who has been a source of so much wisdom over the years. He is absolutely right. The key is to link Animal Rights and Human Rights. One without the other is meaningless. The violence used against animals comes from the same place as violence used against humans. It is rooted in an objectification of both, the dangerous tendency to see them as means to ends, or commodities, or the "other."

What the Ag Gag Laws Don't Want You to See

If you get a moment, please watch this graphic video footage of life inside of a Wyoming pig factory farm. The clip above contains only a few scenes from the actual footage, which was shot by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) inside of a factory farm that supplies Tyson Foods. Most of the video above contains a discussion on the lefty Young Turks Network about the violent practices of factory farming and the rapid proliferation of these death houses around the world. The discussion is an superb one.

Below is the ENTIRE HSUS VIDEO (and it's quite graphic). If you're not vegan, I beg you - beg, beg, beg you - to watch the video below. Find out what you're paying other people to do for your eating habits. Please do not look away! These are the very types of videos that Ag Gag Laws are trying to ban. These are Orwellian laws, designed to punish people who tell the truth and reward those who allow the worst sort of savagery and cruelty in the name of profits.

The day will come when future generations look back on these times as the Dark Ages in the treatment of animals. If Ag Gag Laws prevail, the times will get darker and darker. Is this really what we want? Is this really a way to build a civilization that we wish to pass down to future generations?

Vegan Art That Really Brings the Message Home...

"The Last Thing You Will Ever See"

Painting by Dan Dunbar

In Solidarity With Our Brothers and Sisters in Norway

The lofty vision of Animal Rights is not complete without a lofty vision of Human Rights. Human suffering often comes from the exact same source as animal suffering: A lack of respect for living beings and the sanctity of life.

Think of the tragedy in Norway two days ago. A maniacal Norwegian gunman's grisly rampage through a youth retreat at Utoya Island on July 22, where he systematically murdered close to a hundred youths (the death toll still isn't clear), coincided with the detonation of a lethal bomb blast in Oslo the same day. The Mayor of Oslo, Fabian Stang, offered the following reflection on the day of tragedy: "I don't think security can solve problems. We need to teach greater respect."

He is right. Think about it: Greater respect.

Greater respect for the happiness and well-being of others.

Greater respect for differences of opinion and the right of all people to express their beliefs without fear of retribution or imprisonment.

Greater respect for the profundity of life.

I'll let President John F. Kennedy have the final word.

"If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."

- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

The unfortunate toll that violence takes on good people

I received an invitation to join a new Facebook group called "Animal Revenge Movement." The poorly worded description on the group's page reads: "With 156 billion animals being killed world wide [sic] every year just for what animal eating humans call food? Animal Revenge Movement is for people that believe it's okay to kill humans to help and save animals."

The group's Facebook page is a gathering place to celebrate the maiming, mutilation and death of human beings by animals (and, presumably, by animal rights advocates who have the proper credentials to tell us who deserves to live and who deserves to die). The page includes unsettling pictures of animals harming human beings. The group's profile picture is of a person whose face is concealed by a bandana, wearing a black T-shirt with white lettering that says, "IT'S OK TO KILL HUMANS TO SAVE ANIMALS." And on their Facebook wall, malcontents post messages praising animals that inflict pain and death on human beings.

It's a grim, sad spectacle. It's depressing as hell to see. This group's page is brimming with nastiness. What do you expect from a place on Facebook where people assemble to fantasize about inflicting violence on "corpse munchers" (as one caustic poster calls omnivores)?

Needless to say, I'm not about to hit this hateful group's "Like" button.

The most unfortunate thing about this grim page - and all of the other spots on the Internet where infantile misanthropes gather to wish ill upon the human race - is that it shows the violence of the system rubbing off on people of good conscience. You can find this ugliness in other places on the Internet. The website of the North American Animal Liberation Press Office includes a page called Payback that tragically celebrates acts of animal violence carried out against human beings. The following is fairly typical of the tragedies listed on the NAALPO's Payback page:

28 June 2009
Longmont, CO

A 12-year-old boy was killed Sunday when stomped on by a bull that threw him while he was competing in a rodeo in Colorado, authorities said. Boulder County Sheriff's Deputy Cathy Bryarly said the youth was tossed from the bull's back before he completed the 6-second ride and the animal's rear legs came down on his lower abdomen, missing a protective vest he was wearing, the Longmont Times-Call reported. The accident occurred about 11:20 a.m. during the Little Britches Rodeo at the Boulder County Fairgrounds. The boy, whose name wasn't released, was conscious when rushed to Longmont United Hospital, where he died, Bryarly said. "Although youth rodeo events use animals that are age-appropriate in size and demeanor, there is always an inherent risk to rodeo participants when dealing with these animals," Sgt. Mike Dimond of the sheriff's office said in a statement. Dimond later told the newspaper such accidents tend to be rare. "It could happen any time," he said. "I'm just surprised it doesn't."

It is unsettling to see this type of story celebrated, even though I completely understand the frustration that drives animal rights activists to cheer on such acts of violence. I often share that frustration, that sense of despair, that feeling that everything is hopeless. How many entries have there been on this blog where I've lamented the collective callousness, ignorance and violence of the human race? How many times have I felt a deep sense of despair about the billions of animals murdered each year by human beings? More than I care to count.

And yet there is something profoundly tragic about embracing the violence that forms the very foundation of the global animal killing machine. The factory farm system, the fur coat industry, the foie gras racket - these are all things that should have been done away with long ago. These institutions are eating away at the human race like cancer. Do not be surprised when those who resist these ultra-violent systems become tainted by the violence, eventually embrace it and take great satisfaction from acts of brutality, degradation and, yes, even death.

The alternative to such destruction is Mahatma Gandhi's concept of ahimsa or nonviolent action. Ahima predates Gandhi by centuries, but he successfully wove the concept into his teachings. Gandhi, more than most people, understood the toll that violence takes, both on the recipient and the aggressor. If there is hope for humanity, it rests in our ability to completely jettison the cultures, customs and traditions of violence that we have consciously and subconsciously embraced over the years. Each one of us has it within us to become living, breathing examples of ahimsa, if only we rise above the brutality that engulfs us and promote a new and different way of living, one free of exploitation and bloodshed.

Tragedy at the California State Fair in Sacramento

In late July, an incident occurred at the California State Fair in Sacramento that sparked public outrage. A pregnant cow who was supposed to give birth at the fair escaped from a birthing stall and charged through the midway. It was beautiful a Tuesday morning, July 27, and the fair had not yet opened for the day when she got free. The place was still relatively quiet as fair grounds staff were setting up concession booths for the day. The cow charged across the fairgrounds with authorities in hot pursuit. There were several conflicting accounts of the event (go to YouTube and search under "cow shot at California State Fair" to see the many televised news reports). According to some reports, the police and fair authorities tried to tranquilize the cow, but they said the tranquilizers would take a half hour to kick in. Another report said the tranquilizer gun wasn't working.

After pursuing the cow, the police eventually cornered her and opened fire, killing the 1200 pound animal and the baby she was carrying. It is clear from the video above that the cow was terrified and agitated. She was being pursued by a truck blaring some sort of loud horn or noise. I wasn't there, so it's impossible for me to offer an impartial verdict on this matter. At the same time, one wonders why it was necessary to gun down a frightened pregnant cow.

The local television outlets insisted the cow was "angry" and a local TV correspondent referred to her as "ornery" in one television report. (Source)

One can spend weeks nitpicking over the tiny details of this incident. But getting trapped in that game avoids the larger picture. And the larger picture is this: Human beings have no right to keep exploiting animals and treating them like slaves. This tragedy could have been avoided. Not by tightening security. Not by introducing better birthing stalls for cows. Not by doing this or that differently. It could have been avoided by adopting a radically different view of human-animal relations that eliminates the exploitation of non-human creatures by people. Animals aren't ours to exhibit, poke, prod, or kill. They're living beings with feelings. And this cow obviously felt fear and anxiety in the terrifying final moments of her life.

Thank goodness our comrades in the struggle for the decent treatment of animals were out in full force protesting this sad event. I've posted their pictures here (courtesy of Sacramento's ABC News 10). Even in the aftermath of a tragedy like this, good people can be counted on to raise their voices against injustice and violence.

Kill One Pig and It's a Tragedy; Kill Millions and You're a Factory Farm Owner

Did you hear the one about the psychotic asshole who stabbed 29 pigs?

Earlier this month, 23-year-old Minnesotan Curtis Lee Adams (right) went on a drunken rampage through a pig farm and stabbed 29 of the unfortunate animals. The damage was severe enough that all of the victims had to be euthanized.

The police hauled Adams, who reeked of pig manure and urine, to jail, where he faced numerous charges, including one count of third-degree burglary, one count of first-degree damage to property, one count of cruelty to animals, two counts of driving while intoxicated and one count of illegally transporting a firearm in a vehicle.

The euthanized pigs were valued at $8,000. (Source)

There is a quote (actually, there are many, many variations of the quote) that is often attributed to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin: "Kill one man and it's a tragedy; kill millions and it's a statistic." (I've also read it worded, "Kill one man and you're a murderer, kill millions and you're a conqueror.") I'm not sure which one Stalin actually said.

But when it comes to the treatment of pigs on factory farms, the sentiment certainly applies. Curtis Lee Adams will undoubtedly be hauled off for mental evaluations and no doubt the psychologists will wonder what horrors he is capable of if he could brutally stab 29 pigs.

Meantime, the factory farm owners will go on killing billions of animals per year, behind walls so the public can't see the horrors within. And the meat of these poor animals will be packaged in styrofoam and shrink wrap and sent to bright, sterile grocery stores that play easy listening music all the time.

Maybe one day Curtis Lee Adams will one day get his shit together and become a factory farm owner. He'd be good at it.