A n i m a l
W r i t e s © sm
The official ANIMAL RIGHTS ONLINE newsletter
Publisher ~ EnglandGal@aol.com
Issue # 07/05/00
Editor ~ JJswans@aol.com
Journalists ~ Park StRanger@aol.com
~
MRivera008@aol.com
~ SavingLife@aol.com
THE NINE ARTICLES IN THIS
ISSUE ARE:
1 ~ Animal
Rights, a political issue, a politician's view
by MRivera008@aol.com
2 ~ Helpful Lists For Veg*an Parents
3 ~ Job Opportunity
4 ~ Great Apes at the Threshold
5 ~ Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My
6 ~ Animal Rights And Christianity by Rev. J.R.
Hyland
7 ~ Empty Cavities of Delusion by Skysoblue@aol.com
8 ~ Quote To Remember
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Animal Rights
a political issue
a politicians view
by Michele A. Rivera - MRivera008@aol.com
Introduction
Mahatma Gandhi is credited with the quote "The greatness of a society is
shown by the way it treats its animals" and Leo Tolstoy once said "If
a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from
injury to animals." Some of the worlds' most esteemed people have
demonstrated their concern for the animals with whom we share our environment.
Among them are noted scientists, authors, politicians, teachers, clergy, and
modern day celebrities. The animal rights movement is growing and gaining
strength. But we need the power of our political leaders to make things
happen for the animals, and so I made an appointment to talk to my United
States Congressman, Representative Mark Foley.
Recently, I had a chance to ask my congressman, Mark Foley, about his ideas on
animal rights.
Interview
Q. Are issues involving the humane treatment of animals important
to you personally?
Foley: Yes, I believe that how we treat animals reflects on how we
treat people. I was appalled to learn that Mr. Weston, the man who shot
those two capital police officers, had admitted to shooting neighbors cats in
the weeks before. Perhaps if he had been made to pay for the crime of
shooting cats, he wouldnt be out shooting policemen.
Q. Do you consider the animal-rights movement to be a
well-organized effort?
Foley: To some degree. I think there is still a very
scattered approach and that work needs to be done on that, but it is getting
there. I dont like the fringe elements and think there needs to be a more
balanced approach.
Q. What do you feel about organized letter-writing campaigns in
terms of their success in getting you to look at a pending bill more closely?
Foley: I like the animal-rights movement because I see that it is
made up of people with a lot of personal integrity. Other activists talk
about things like taxes and benefits, etc., things that benefit them
personally. The animal-rights people, however, are speaking for those who
cannot. They are speaking for animals who cant speak for themselves, the
activists themselves have no personal agenda, their efforts are on someone
elses behalf. I think it is a very sincere movement.
Q.
Would you ever considering sponsoring legislation for an animal-related bill?
Foley: I did. I was on the committee to ban the hunting of the
Florida Black Bear. Now they want to lift the ban. I cant see doing
that if it is not in the interest of public safety. If it is simply for sport
hunting, thats ridiculous. We degrade our environment when we break the
chain of life.
Q. What is the most effective way that animal-rights
activists can get their point across to you?
Foley: Sincere letter writing. People who write passionately
and with sincerity.
Q. When you receive an e-mail, fax, phone message or letter asking you
to vote a certain way on a specific bill that may be pending, do you read all
the arguments contained therein or simply tally up the "fors" and/or
"againsts"?
Foley: I have certain staff members who are assigned to research
different causes and get back to me. We have legislative briefings every week
where we all sit down and discuss the weeks mail. I read the e-mails and
the letters that I get and I dont like the ones that are scripted, or simply
copied for the masses to sign. I wonder if the signer actually read it or is
just passing it on. I know that
sometimes people will simply copy and paste letters over and over again. I can
tell, of course, the letters all look the same, say the same thing, have the
same format. Its obvious. I dont like that. I need to know that the
writer put some thought into it.
Q. In 1995, 300 activists staged a demonstration on the steps of
the Capital to protest US subsidies to fur farmers. Congress voted to
stop subsidizing fur farmers. Do you think that our being there at that
demonstration had anything to do with the way Congress voted?
Foley: Yes, I remember that demonstration and it clearly helped. I voted
against the subsidizing of fur-farmers. I appreciate the efforts to raise
consciousness about these matters. I dont like it when activists throw blood or
paint on people wearing fur coats, but I think the demonstrations can be
effective. I dont believe in giving tax money to people to raise mink and
kill them for their fur.
Q. Florida has strict animal-cruelty laws and county ordinances to
protect domestic animals, the police are frequently not aware of the laws or
the enforcement of them. Do you have a remedy for this?
Foley: I never work on a new law without including ways to get the
police the information they need to enforce it. I think that Congress
needs to put the educational resources in every law they pass. I have
seen many people fight hard to get laws passed and once they are, the attention
is off of it and things go on as before, with nobody enforcing them. We need
the resources to educate the police about these matters.
Q. Are you aware of the *FBI reports on the link between animal
abuse and criminal activity? Do you support stricter penalties for those
convicted of animal cruelty?
Foley: No, I am not aware of any formal study. But I was
instrumental in stopping the hog/dog rodeo because I think that no violent act
goes without applause. We bring children to the hog/dog rodeo, and let
them watch animals rip each others ears off and kill each other, and we obscure
the line between right and wrong. I think that peoples pets are family
members, and the loss of one is very acute. When someone takes advantage of an
animal and kicks the dog, they will take advantage of a child and hurt them
too.
Q. Sometimes activists are asked to write to representatives from other
districts or even other states regarding pending legislation. One such example
is the pending legislation in Montana to stop the US sanctioned killing of
wolves. Do you feel that letters from activists outside a representatives
constituency carries any weight?
Foley: I tend to be more interested in what people in the 16th
district have to say, then the state, and then the rest of the country. Joining
together is important. Someone elses fight may not be my fight today, but it
could be my fight tomorrow. We dont have any body who checks up to see if
a writer is from my district if it doesnt say so in the letter, and we dont
know who is a registered voter or not, but as far as being a voter is
concerned, I feel that if you arent registered to vote, you dont have a share
in the debate.
Q. Are you persuaded by "Letters to the Editor," news articles
and other media coverage when deciding how to vote on a pending piece of
legislation?
Foley: If the letter is reasonable and grounded in fact. I also
think that letters to the editor praising the representative for doing
something right is very important too. I am not at all persuaded by the
efforts of paid lobbyists. I find that people who write to me or to the editor,
people who speak out for animals and who engage in grass roots efforts are much
more impressive to me.
<> <> <> <> <>
[Editor's Note: We realize the Representative's comments
regarding form letters may contradict the work we do in our weekly Alert for
Action newsletter, in which all alerts are structured in letter format.
However, as the opening paragraphs of the Alert for Action state, our letters
are meant to be sample letters only.
It is commonly known that a personal letter is granted more weight by the
recipient than a form letter. It demonstrates that the sender is serious
enough about the subject to take the time to express their individual thoughts
and ideas. However well intentioned, a form letter shows nothing of the
sort.
The intentions of our Alert for Action format are to provide you with a sample
letter containing all the facts. We expect that most subscribers will
take the facts from our letters and incorporate them with their own thoughts
and ideas. This is the most effective means of being heard, and most
importantly, being taken seriously. At the same time, we understand that
personal lifestyles and
circumstances do not always create the opportunity to construct numerous,
individual letters each week. Under such situations, we would rather you
send our sample letters than do absolutely nothing at all.]
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Helpful Lists for Veg*an Parents
I could find twelve (12)
e-mail lists for vegetarian families. Feel free to join one or all twelve
of them. Ten of them can be joined at one location. If you know of
others, please let us know ASAP.
KidsHealth@ONElist.com
VegeFamily@ONElist.com
Veg-Parent@EnviroLink.org
VeganChildren@eGroups.com
VegKids@list.nurtured.com
1VeggieKids@ONElist.com
VeganParents@ONElist.com
VeggieMums@ONElist.com
VegetarianParenting@ONElist.com
VegetarianParents@ONElist.com
VeGhomeschoolers@ONElist.com
Hindu_Family@ONElist.com
All the ONElist lists can be joined through the ONElist website at
The Veg-Parent list can
be joined by sending your request to list@vegetarian.org and specifically
MENTIONING the Veg-Parent list.
It is best to compare notes with others in family situations that parallel your
own home, and the lists work far, far better when parents of all ages, and with
children of many different ages, are on the lists. We learn well by
comparing situations, even if they are not exactly parallel, abstracting, then
developing a broad sense of "how things work".
So please consider staying on the lists until your children are fully grown so
that you can share with others with younger children and less parenting
experience than you have, and also can share with them -- in advance of their
needs -- your observations, issues, and questions from your pre-adolescent and
teenage daughters and sons.
Remember, birthing and nursing are not the only parenting issues that require
special attention from parents.
I believe that one of the MOST fundamental reasons that teenage vegetarians
have issues is that, if their parents WERE vegetarians, they don't
"compare notes" widely with other vegetarian families in their own
region, as well as having direct e-mail access with them, and providing a
community supportive of their being vegetarian FOR those vegetarian young
people. This translates into
vegetarian young people (1) who don't understand vegetarianism or their own
being vegetarian very deeply and broadly, and (2) who lack the deeper social
relationships with more than a handful of other vegetarian young people to more
securely discover their responsible, healthy place in the world as vegetarians
of whatever variety, and (3) who therefore lack a meaningful sense of the many
creative and meaningful ways that they can develop or innovative useful,
productive, lucrative, rewarding, and beneficent ways of becoming mature
vegetarian adults in this economic and social world, as they begin to see the
need to develop professions and careers.
I also believe that vegetarian young people are "like other young
people" in most regards, but that comparing notes on BEING vegetarian is
especially helpful.
Source: vrc@tiac.net (Maynard S.
Clark)
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Job Opportunity
In Defense of Animals is looking for a volunteer
to maintain the Youth Corps for Animals website
(www.youthforanimals.org). We are seeking someone with experience with
frames and layers.
If you're interested, please contact Margo at margo@idausa.org
Source: "Jennye Laws-Woolf" <jennye@idausa.org>
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Great Apes at the Threshold:
Implications for Law, Ethics, Conservation and Science
A Conference Sponsored Jointly
by
The Kennedy Institute of Ethics
and
Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine
April 28-May 1, 2001
Boston Park Plaza Hotel
The goal of the
conference is to evaluate the tension created by the changing ethical and legal
status of the great apes, particularly in the international arena, and the
continued demand for their use to serve human ends. To achieve this purpose
attendees will review recent information about the evolution, natural history,
culture and cognitive abilities of the apes; the nature of the arguments
concerning the basis of moral and legal standing; the justifications for
continued use; and the status of the national and international initiatives for
conservation and other forms of basic protection. The conference is intended
for primatologists and other scientists, philosophers and other ethicists,
students of the humanities and law, legislators, the animal protection
community, and the interested public.
Source: GAPNews@aol.com
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Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My
New Internet Resource,
Catalogs Exotic "Pet" Attacks, Escapes, and the Laws Covering Exotic
Animal Possession by Private Individuals
SACRAMENTO - Incidents with exotic animals -- lions, tigers, bears, reptiles,
monkeys -- kept as "pets" are becoming more prevalent in the United
States. Stories of escapes or -- worse yet -- attacks by wild animals in
private hands are increasingly common.
To help reporters, elected officials and community activists easily obtain
current information on the private possession of exotic animals, the Animal
Protection Institute has launched a new web site complete with recorded attacks
and escapes that have occurred with privately "owned" exotic animals
in the last 5 years.
The site also includes a list of the various State and local laws governing the
possession of exotic animals by private individuals. This information,
along with background material -- including fact sheets, sample letters to
elected officials or news editors, and model ordinances for lawmakers -- is
available online at:
www.api4animals.org/IssuesAndAdvocacyCampaigns/Companion/ExoticPetCampaign/ExoticPetsCampaignOverview.htm
"Children and adults have been mauled by tigers, bitten by monkeys and
suffocated by snakes. You can take exotic animals out of the wild, but
will never be able to control their natural instincts," said Nicole
Paquette, Government Affairs Coordinator for the Animal Protection Institute.
"By making this information easily available, we hope to give people the
tools they need to prevent future tragedies."
For more information about API's campaign against private possession of exotic
animals, visit the web site above or contact us at 916-731-5521.
Lawrence Carter-Long
Communications Coordinator, Animal Protection Institute
P.O. Box 22505
Sacramento, CA 95822
916-731-5521 ext. 201
http://www.api4animals.org
Source:
LCartLng@gvn.net
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Animal Rights And Christianity
by Rev. J.R. Hyland
One of the greatest
challenges facing those who are trying to reform a legal system which supports
the brutal treatment of laboratory animals, is the fact that they are
classified as "things." This means they can be tortured and tormented
in ways so satanic and perverted that just the knowledge of what is taking
place is sometimes unbearable. And the legalization of such depravity derives
much of its justification from Christian scholarship.
This scholarship reached its nadir in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. His
writings form a seemingly impenetrable barrier against the biblical message of
God's love and concern for all sentient beings. And seven hundred years after
his death, Thomist theology continues to be used by religious spokesmen to
justify the abuse of animals.
The Catholic Encyclopedia informs its readers that "the visible world with
which man comes in contact is divided into persons and non-persons. For the
latter term the word "things" is usually employed ...animals, in
contradistinction to persons [are] classed as things." By arbitrarily
relegating animals to the category of "things" theologians have
effectively excluded them from the moral and ethical consideration due them as
sentient beings.
Of course this is an absolute contradiction of the second chapter of Genesis
which clearly states that both animals and humans are "nefesh chaya"
-- living souls. But religious spokesmen ffrequently ignore the Bible when it
conflicts with their man-made doctrines. St. Thomas was no exception.
He was so anxious to promote the belief that animals were a low form of life,
that he refused to accept the Genesis account which teaches that animals, like
humans, were created as nonviolent beings; that the garden of Eden was a
peaceable kingdom. Aquinas also refused to believe that this peaceable kingdom
was vegetarian, although Genesis 1:30, reports that it was: "God said..to
all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures
of the earth and all the creatures that move on the ground -- everything
that has the breath of life in it, I give every green plant for
food."
Although this verse of scripture could not be more definite, Aquinas refuted
it, teaching that "the trees and herbs were [not] given to all animals and
birds, but only to some." His refutation of the Bible and the insistence
that God created animals as dangerous beings, violent and carnivorous from the
beginning, bolstered his claim that man needed to dominate other creatures and
use them for his own advantage.
Aquinas was a great believer in the power of observation and rational thought
and in the Summa Theologica wrote that man's ability "to reason makes him
like to the angels." But he was oblivious to the distortions created by
his own subjectivity and prejudice. In the same treatise in which he claimed
angelic reasoning ability, he made the statement that man's dominion over
animals consists of "making use of them without hindrance." Hardly a
heavenly outlook.
The same subjective reasoning led him to argue against those who claimed there
was more than one world in the universe. Absolutely untrue, Aquinas said: there
can only be one world. And he proceeded to prove this by what he claimed was
the use of reason. The same kind of reasoning led him to teach that
"woman is [a] defective and misbegotten" male and to then propose
that this might be due to "some external force such as that of a south
wind, which is moist."
Because Aquinas lived in the thirteenth century and was a product of
the religious and biological prejudices of his own time, his ignorance can
be overlooked. But the same cannot be said of contemporary religious spokesmen
who continue to use Thomist theology to support the subjugation and abuse of
other creatures.
Less than a decade ago, the revised Catechism Of The Catholic Church made the
doctrinal statement that "animals, like plants and inanimate beings, are
by nature destined for the common good of past, present, and future
humanity." And the papal
encyclical, Gaudium et spes, stated that "believers and
unbelievers agree almost unanimously that all things on earth should be
ordained to man as to their center and summit."
This kind of teaching is not a Roman Catholic aberration: it also permeates
Protestant Christianity. Even those who have never directly studied Aquinas, or
the various documents based on his theology, have integrated his teachings into
their own belief system.
Aquinas, and other like-minded men of the past, provided a rationale which
succeeding generations have used to justify and systemize the brutal treatment
of both human and animal beings. Many of the civil laws that have
sanctioned this abuse are based on the writings of those long-dead men whose
self-serving claims of superiority and god-given dominion allowed the exploitation
of others on the basis of their race, their gender or their species.
Western civilization has finally recognized the immorality of slavery and is in
the process of accepting female equality. And although Christians were in the
forefront of the struggle to end slavery, they are notable among those
reactionaries who still try to prevent women from assuming positions of
leadership. But it is in the struggle to end the suffering that humans inflict
on animals, that the churches have been most recalcitrant. While many
individual Christians have responded to an evolving, spiritual understanding
that animals are not "things" to be used by men in whatever ways they
choose, the churches have continued to uphold an ungodly status quo.
The current edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia teaches that "[There are]
beings that may be treated simply as means to the perfection of persons [and]
can have no rights, and to this category the brute creation belongs. In the
divine plan of the universe the lower creatures are subordinated to the welfare
of man."
It is the Christian establishment that continues to uphold the man-made
doctrines that have made life on earth a hell for the millions of animals that
are the target of human cruelty and greed. It is the Christian establishment
that refuses to accept Christ's revelation of a God whose love and concern
embraces all creatures here below.
Copyright 2000 by Viatoris Ministries
Source:
HumaneReligion@compuserve.com
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Empty Cavities of Delusion
by Skysoblue@aol.com
The buds of truth and life
have withered
from the stench of mankind;
have fallen to their death
They are lost
They are fossils
buried in empty cavities of delusion
Man is their grave
~~Teesh Rayner~~
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Quote To Remember
"It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by
its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially
influence the lot of mankind."
~~Albert Einstein, letter to Vegetarian Watch-Tower
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Susan Roghair - EnglandGal@aol.com
Animal Rights Online
P O Box 7053
Tampa, Fl 33673-7053
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/1395/
-=Animal Rights Online=-
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