A n i m a l W r i t
e s © sm
The
official ANIMAL RIGHTS ONLINE newsletter
Publisher ~ EnglandGal@aol.com
Issue #
08/04/02
Editor ~ JJswans@aol.com
Journalists ~ ParkStRanger@aol.com
~
MichelleRivera1@aol.com
~ sbest1@elp.rr.com
THE ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE ARE:
1 ~ Legally Blind: The Case For Granting Animals Legal
Rights By Dr. Steve Best
2 ~ National Primate Liberation Week
3 ~ MFHSAA 2002 Conference
4 ~ Donor Website
5 ~ We Are The Living Graves of Murdered Beasts By George
Bernard Shaw
6 ~ Memorable Quote
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~1~
Legally Blind:
The Case For Granting Animals
Legal Rights
By Dr. Steve Best - sbest1@elp.rr.com
In
corrupt social systems such as the U.S., the relationship between law and
ethics is rarely parallel. Laws exist to protect the powerful rather than the
powerless, and ethics serve as an alibi for wrongdoing and evil. Thus, what is
ethically right is not typically embodied in law, and what is legal rarely
seems moral. In fact the real scandal about the U.S. government is what is
perfectly legal.
A dramatic case in point is the antiquated laws regarding animals. In a society
that parades as humane, compassionate, and the beacon of civilization, billions
of animals are killed each year for the most trivial reasons. The laws relating
to the contemporary treatment of animals derive from ancient times when both
people and animals were held as common slaves. The legal distinction between a
person and property goes back at least to Roman society: free men were subjects
with rights, whereas women, children, slaves, and animals were considered
objects and property. The arbitrary viewpoints that reduced human beings to
slaves and property have been overturned, but there has not yet been widespread
recognition that the theories justifying the exploitation of animals are just
as arbitrary and wrong and that the same logic that freed human slaves ought to
emancipate nonhuman slaves.
Karl Marx observed that strange things happen in the “topsy-turvy” world of
capitalism where marketplace values trump human or moral values. He saw capitalist
society as structured around a process of “commodity fetishization” whereby the
characteristics of subject and object are reversed: living beings are defined
as inanimate property, and property and money become animated subjects more
sacred than life. Only from this distorted viewpoint does it make sense to
speak of Animal Liberation Front property destruction as “terrorism,” and the
everyday killing of animal industries as routine “business.”
From a legal standpoint, the problem of animal exploitation is 3-fold: what
animal “protection” laws exist are still weak, they are poorly enforced, and
they do not apply to animal exploitation industries that enjoy full legal
rights to confining, torturing, experimenting on, and killing billions of
animals every year. The root cause of these problems is that animals are still
regarded as property, and are hardly differentiated from physical objects.
Despite monumental revolutions in science beginning in the 16th century, and in
philosophy in the 19th and 20th centuries, both of which challenged core tenets
of the Christian-Greek worldview, the basic legal framework dealing with
animals has remained untouched and for all intents and purposes animal law is
still Roman law. The theological and philosophical foundations informing
the Western legal framework are outmoded and untenable.
For present purposes, I characterize Western thought as deeply flawed by 4 key,
interrelated fallacies. In the first fallacy, essentialism,
human and nonhuman animals are denied a changing, evolving nature and instead
are assigned a static essence or being. Specifically, humans are defined as
rational, linguistic, technological beings made in the image of God, whereas
nonhuman animals are defined as beings without minds or souls, as mere
creatures of instinct, appetite, and sensation. Second, the fallacy of rationalism
states that the entire cosmos is infused with a rational nature that reflects
the mind of God. The world is orderly and a product of divine design. Mind or
soul is the essence of human beings too, unlike animals who are mere creatures
of sensation. Thus, the third fallacy of dualism holds that
reason and language capacities sharply delineate human beings from animals. We
have one essence, they have another; moral and legal considerations belong only
to the human realm, and human beings have no direct obligations of any kind to
animals. The fourth fallacy of teleology claims that behind the
law-governed and rational nature of the universe lies a purposeful scheme where
every order of life is arranged in a hierarchical “Great Chain of Being” that
ranges from the most simple and imperfect to the most complex and perfect.
Because animals are inferior to human beings, their purpose of animals is to
serve human needs, and we can use them as we see fit. As Aristotle put
it, “Plants exist for the sake of animals, just as animals exist for the sake
of men.”
From the Presocratics and the Stoics to the medievalists and the moderns, we
find the same basic framework that is now widely recognized as but a reflection
of the prejudices and fictions of ancient times. On the whole, Western
philosophy has badly misunderstood human and animal natures: it created a
dualistic division where there is only an evolutionary continuum, it attributed
too much reason to human animals and too little to nonhuman animals, it
imagined a purposeful universe that relegates animals to a desert of non-moral
and legal status, and it enthrones human beings at the reign of life.
Animal rights cannot be institutionalized in the legal realm until the
fallacies emanating from traditional religion, philosophy, and science are
thoroughly discredited and abandoned. Postmodern theories have debunked Western
metaphysics, but they have not influenced mainstream legal circles. Nor have
they been adequately applied to animal issues, and postmodernists are as
speciesist as anyone else.
More significant developments have emerged from the fields of philosophy
(animal rights theories), science (cognitive ethology, the study of animal
emotions and intelligence), and law itself (through the works of Gary
Francione, Steven Wise, and others). The changes in science are especially
important, for they have provided abundant proof that animals are far more like
us, and far more complex, than we dared imagine. The data comes from physiology
and anatomy that identifies structural similarities between human beings and
animals, from genetics that discerns our close evolutionary relationships with
other primates, from field studies that shed light on animal behaviors and have
showed many animals too are tool makers and users, from biology that reveals
similar a chemical make-up to human and nonhuman animal brains and emotions,
and from various behavioral experiments that demonstrate animals possess a
remarkable range of mental and communication abilities.
There has been progress in the legal field in terms of punishing wanton acts of
cruelty to domestic animals, as more and more states make animal cruelty a
felony crime. But these laws apply mainly to domestic animals and exist more to
thwart the harm done to humans than to animals themselves (as it is widely
understood that violence to animals can quickly lead to violence to humans
themselves). Initiated by PETA and other organizations, recently there have
been reforms of the treatment of farmed animals used by the suppliers of major
fast food chains such as McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s. “Humane killing”
laws are better enforced and cage sizes are bigger, but of course every year in
the U.S. alone 10 billion farmed animals still are tortured in the factory
farms and meet gratuitous and violent deaths in the nation’s slaughterhouses.
Animals are still property, and the property “owners” – whether scientists in a
laboratory; agribusiness CEOs on the factory farm; or the management of rodeos,
circuses, and zoos -- have every right to do what they wish to animal bodies.
The legal rationale are two-fold: any act causing animal suffering is
acceptable so long as it is part of a “tradition” of animal exploitation and/or
has some “rational” purpose such as making profit or “disciplining” an animal.
Thus, while the burning or beating of a cat or dog is a felony crime in many
states, this is so because it has no redeemable utilitarian function for
society, not because it is an intrinsic wrong. Where animals are property, the
property rights of individual animal “owners” trump public moral concerns, such
as voiced by animal advocacy groups, and many a just battle has been lost in
the courts through an exploiter’s appeal to “ownership” rights over animals.
The hellish reality of animal existence cannot fundamentally change until we
create a seismic cultural shift that replaces the notion of animals as property
with a radically alternative concept, such as animals as persons. Human beings
have no monopoly on the concept of person, which entails qualities such as
sentience, having preferences and desires, and the ability to remember or
project ideas into the future. Personhood is the driving force behind The Great
Ape Project, supported by animal activists such as Peter Singer and Steven
Wise. The Great Ape Project is rooted in the premise that apes are as complex
as human children and if children are persons so too are apes. The idea is that
once our closest animal relatives acquire fundamental rights and the status of
personhood, other animals can follow. A more general change that could grant
substantive moral and legal status to all animals rather than just apes would
be a shift from animals as object to animals as subjects, where it is
understood that both a necessary and sufficient condition of moral and legal
rights is merely to be sentient and have elementary preferences, such as
avoiding pain and remaining alive.
Certainly the laws are not consistent. It is a flagrant contradiction to grant
a severely impaired human being personhood but deny it to a more intelligent
and aware ape, or any other complex animal. If entities such as corporations
can be considered as a “person” in the courts, it shouldn’t be too far a
stretch to treat an animal as such. Moreover, Western history is rife with
bizarre cases of prosecuting and punishing animals for “crimes” such as eating
crops, thereby assuming they are persons responsible for their actions when
convenient, while regarding them nonetheless as unthinking objects.
Hopeful signs of change are unfolding. The Great Ape Project is educating a
worldwide audience about the minds of our closest evolutionary relatives.
Steven Wise’s book Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights For Animals
(2000) widely publicized the cause of legal personhood for great apes, as his
new book Drawing the Line: Science and the Case For Animal Rights
(2002) extends the argument to other animals. In large part because of Wise’s
lead, “Animal Rights and the Law” courses are taught at universities such as
Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, and dozens of other law schools. Thousands of
lawyers are already practicing some form of animal law, representing their
unique clientele who can neither speak for themselves nor pay their legal fees
and are always innocent. The campaign sparked by In Defense of Animals to
declare human beings the “guardians” not “owners” of animals and to change
legal language accordingly is being implemented in communities across the U.S.
Increasingly, courts are awarding animal guardians not only market “property
value” for animals wrongfully injured or killed by another party, but also
additional damages for loss of companionship or emotional distress, signaling a
belief that animals are more than commodities. Wise and others expect cases
litigating the rights of great apes and other animals to be coming to
courtrooms soon. This augurs an intense struggle over social perceptions of
nonhuman animals and fundamental changes in society as a whole as human beings
increasingly will be able to represent the interests of exploited animals and
sue on their behalf.
Sundry speciesists declare legal personhood for animals “a dangerous idea” and
a slippery slope toward nonsense like bacteria rights, as animal exploitation
industries fear their bloodletting may become limited or banned. Such
hyperbolic reactions can be expected amidst creaking paradigm shifts.
Caricatures and self-interests aside, the movement to abolish the property status
of animals, and to secure them basic moral and legal rights, above all the
right to bodily integrity, is one of the most important struggles of the
contemporary period.
We are today at a similar stage in moral debate as we were over a century ago
with the moral and legal status of blacks. In both cases, there is a movement
to expand moral boundaries, to abolish a form of slavery, and to overcome
entrenched prejudices. The law always has changed with evolving social norms,
and it currently is in the midst of dramatic transformation. Animal rights
stands not only to liberate animals, but the human mind itself as it begins to
enter the next stage in its moral evolution.
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~2~
National Primate Liberation
Week*
Where will you be August 24th –
September 2nd?
Fellow
Activist,
I am contacting you today to ask for your help with an event that will focus on
primate experimentation across the U.S. The event is National Primate Liberation
Week (NPLW) and it will take place August 24th through September 2nd. The
goal of this event is to bring the suffering of primates in experiments back
into the forefront of public opinion and to work for the end of primate
experimentation.
The focuses of the event will be both effective and interesting to the general
public. We will use protests, literature tabling, and news conferences to
reveal important information about the cost of primate experimentation, trends
in primate experimentation, the conditions under which primates suffer in labs,
and to highlight the issue of isolation in primate experiments. Your
participation in this event is absolutely vital. Thousands of primates
who are suffering in labs at this very minute are counting on us to fight for
their freedom. Please consider organizing an event (protest, news
conference, tabling, etc.) in your area.
We will have many materials available for your use including reports, fact
sheets, and photos. Several of the fact sheets are currently available on
our website: www.saenonline.org. The information that will be the
basis of one report which will be available for release during National Primate
Liberation Week is on the same website in the articles section (The Eight
Regional Primate Research Centers: Centers of Suffering and Death).
We will also be adding another article: Through the Bars of a
Cage: The View from Inside a Laboratory. We are currently
assembling an additional report which will expose the truth about primate experimentation
on a national level. This report will be available for use during
National Primate Liberation Week. A vast assortment of photos is
available on the website as well. Please look at the site when you have
the opportunity.
I am contacting you now to give you as much advance warning about the event as
possible. I hope that your local organization will be able to participate
in the news conferences and/or to organize a rally/protest. Hopefully,
the long weekend will facilitate travel for activists (the weekend of August
31st – September 2nd includes Labor Day). Literature tabling is another
effective option. Fact sheets for use in tabling are available in the
fact sheets section of our website.
Every year in the U.S. 60,000 primates suffer in experimentation, and as many
as another 40,000 are imprisoned for breeding purposes (to supply more victims
for the labs). It is up to us to fight for their freedom. Please
put National Primate Liberation Week on your calendar today!
I hope that this weekend will work for you calendar-wise. This week was
chosen to not conflict with the summer vacation season, and to hopefully
precede the likely media obsession with the one-year anniversary of 9/11.
Please advise me of your initial thoughts on this event, and let me know if you
think any other organizations would like to participate. I will look
forward to hearing from you in the very near future. Your participation
in this event is crucial.
If you will be organizing a NPLW event in your area, please notify us ASAP with
relevant information (contact information including location, email address,
telephone number, type of event, materials needed, etc.). We will do
everything possible to make your NPLW event a success!
Michael Budkie, A.H.T.,
Executive Director, SAEN (Stop Animal Exploitation NOW!)
*The name of this event was changed from National Primate Freedom Week to
National Primate Liberation Week after SAEN was contacted by The Primate
Freedom Project. The change in the event name was made to avoid trademark
infringement.
PLEASE FORWARD TO ALL ACTIVISTS AND EMAIL LISTS!
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~3~
MFHSAA 2002 Conference
Michigan Federation of Humane Societies and Animal Advocates
Present Conference 2002
Grassroots - You Can Make A
Difference!
Saturday, September 28
Weber’s Inn
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Conference
Rates:
The board members of the MFHSAA are very excited about our 2002 conference, and
want all interested animal rights advocates to be able to attend, so we've
tried to make the rates as reasonable as possible. The following are
suggested rates that we have determined would help cover our costs. If you
cannot afford the conference rates, please call me and we can make arrangements.
If you can afford more, please know that we are a non-profit organization
comprised of volunteers, and welcome donations. Your donations and support
enable us to continue our work.
Thank you. Cody Winchester, Conference Coordinator 734-426-1680.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Please complete and mail by September 19, 2002.
Name: _____________________________________
Address: ___________________________________
City St. Zip:________________________________
Phone: _____________________________________
E-mail: ____________________________________
Enclosed is:
_____$30 for Saturday's session.
_____$15 for students or those of modest income.
_____I am unable to attend, but enclosed is my donation of $_______
~~~Special Offer: Bring someone who has never attended a MFHSAA conference (or
is an absentee attendee) and they get in for half-price!~~~
MFHSAA
P.O. Box 641
Charlotte, MI 48813
Hotel Information
Weber's Inn, located at I-94 and Jackson Rd.-Exit # 172, has offered accommodations
for $89 per room (plus tax). Rooms are being held until September 6. Phone
800-443-3050.
Mention that we are group #5055 when making your reservation.
The Conference
8:00 am: Set-up
Pre-registration. If your organization would like to set up an information
table or sell pro-animal items as a fund raiser, please contact Cody @
734-426-1680.
8:30 to 9:00: Registration
Sign in. Drink coffee. Buy raffle tickets. Talk with others. Visit groups'
tables.
9:00: Welcome and Intros
Greetings. A look back at the past year. Introduction of Federation Board
Members.
9:15 to 10:00: Wayne Pacelle
Wayne is currently Senior Vice-President, Communications and Government Affairs
for the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). He has been a great support
for Michigan activists in many areas of animal rights for more than ten years.
Today he will talk about animals in politics.
10:00 to 10:15: Break
10:15 to 11:00: Robert Cohen
Known to many as the 'Not Milk Man,' Robert provides a wealth of information
about the dairy industry, promoting veganism world-wide through his website
www.notmilk.com . He has educated people from all walks of life and continues
to be a great source of information for seasoned activists and novices alike.
11:00 to 11:15: Break
11:15 to 12:00: Sara Lippincott
Sara comes to us from one of this year's conference sponsors, Petfinder.
She will give their presentation Let Us Help You Remove Barriers to Adoption.
'Saving just one pet won't change the world...but, surely, the world will change
for that one pet.'
12.00 to 1:00: Vegan Lunch
Raffle winners drawn, Humanitarian of the Year Award presented.
1:00 to 1:15: Local Events and Announcements
1:15 to 2:00: Kim Stallwood
Since 1993 Kim has been the Editor in Chief of The Animals' Agenda and
Executive Director of its not-for-profit publisher, the Animal Rights Network
Inc. He was the first Executive Director of People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals from 1987 to 1992. He became a vegetarian in 1974 after working in a
chicken processing plant, and has followed a vegan lifestyle since 1976.
2:00 to 2:15: Break
2:15 to 2:30: Carol Moulton
Carol is from our other conference sponsor, PETsMART Charities, and has a few
thoughts to share.
2:30 to 3:15: Scott Harris
"Making the Sale." Synergizing the Animal Rights message with fifteen
years of insurance sales experience, Scott has learned a few "tricks of
the trade" in getting peoples' attention and selling our
"product."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This year's conference has been generously sponsored, in part, by PETsMART and
Petfinder. We could not provide such a wonderful conference for Michigan
activists without this support, and the efforts of our guest speakers.
Our heartfelt thanks.
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~4~
Donor Website
During the month of August, TheVegetarianSite.com
will be donating 10% of all sales to the
Voice for a Viable Future
MAD COWBOY documentary fund!
You'll be helping a great project while enjoying
easy mail-order access to cruelty-free items including: footwear, purses,
belts, wallets, hemp sweaters, message
t-shirts, books, videos, personal care items, juicers, & candy!
There’s also lots of great veg info available thru their home page.
Go below to start shopping!
http://www.theVegetarianSite.com/cgi-bin/miva?Merchant2/merchant.mv
Ms. Marr Nealon, Co-Executive Producer, MAD
COWBOY the documentary,
a project of VOICE FOR A VIABLE FUTURE,
a 501c.3 non-profit organization educating the public on the health,
environmental & ethical benefits of an organic, plant-based diet.
Founded by HOWARD LYMAN, ex-cattlerancher turned vegan, author of:
MAD COWBOY: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat
11288 Ventura Blvd., #202A, Studio City, CA 91604
PHONE: 818-509-1255 FAX: 818-761-7283
EMAIL: marr@madcowboy.com
http://www.madcowboy.com
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~5~
We Are The Living Graves of
Murdered Beasts
By George Bernard Shaw
We are the living graves of murdered beasts
Slaughtered to satisfy our appetites
We never pause to wonder at our feasts
If animals, like men, can possibly have rights
We pray on Sundays that we may have light
To guide our footsteps on the path we tread
We're sick of war We do not want to fight
The thought of it now fills our hearts with dread
And yet we gorge ourselves upon the dead
Like carrion crows we live and feed on meat
Regardless of the suffering and pain
We cause by doing so. If thus we treat
Defenseless animals for sport or gain
How can we hope in this world to attain
the PEACE we say we are so anxious for
We pray for it o'er hecatombs of slain
To God, while outraging the moral law
Thus cruelty begets its offspring: war.
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~6~
Memorable Quote
"Remember there's no such thing as a small act of kindness.
Every act creates a ripple with no logical end."
~ Scott
Adams
«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»
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=-
&
Advisory Board Member, Animal Rights Network Inc.,
not-for-profit publisher of The Animals' Agenda Magazine
http://www.animalsagenda.org/
The
Animals' Agenda Magazine: WebEdition
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