Thankyou Wayne. Everything evolves, including organisms, ideas, and laws. Here in NZ we have had a sizeable number of people protesting against mandates and for freedom of choice, and have taken to the streets. Sometimes they have been destructive and aggressive, and have harmed property and other individuals. I have also broken the Law, the way you have countless times, to rescue animals trapped in Hell. But in this as in most other things, the way the Law is broken is important. Putting oneself at risk for the most helpless, the most innocent, the most suffering of beings (not for one's own personal rights as in anti mandate protests) carries significant moral weight in my opinion, and should be conducted peacefully and with the intention of ahimsa. I see a time when animals will be freed, the way blacks in America were freed from unjust Laws. Thankyou for your wonderful blogs. xx
My comment on your article brings me to the brutal behavior of the UK govt on Julian Assange..Kept in high security prison having committed no crime!! What "LAW" is at work here?
Three so called democratic governments Australia,UK, USA.. are holding this man..Our rotten Australian government has done nothing to demand his release..All puppets of the US.They damn Putin quite rightly but hypocriticallyt say nothing about Julian..
So, good work so far. Why not partner with Steven Best (The New Yorker 03/07/22) to challenge "personhood" as applied to inanimate objects but not sentient complex nonhuman animals? We need all the lawyers. Public opinion put a stop to permanent daylight savings time; how to get public opinion to turn against massive corporate cruelty? Respectfully, Syd
Steve Wise, I think you mean? Steve is great, and we work together wherever possible. But we are taking significantly different approaches, both in terms of the species we are focused on (elephants, versus farm animals or dogs), and in terms of the approach to getting into the courtroom (direct action, versus habeas corpus).
I wrote a long reply but it didn't go through. I'll post a different one: Corporate chicken farms hope to build 1 million count operations in southern OR, where one of the biggest sanctuaries has been for years (Lighthouse Farm Sanctuary in Scio, OR). What was the use of volunteering and donating to animal liberation most of my 83 years?😥 Hurry and change everything, Dear Wayne! Sincerely VeganSyd, Syd Most on fb
I love Steven Best, too. Here's a quote of his that resonates with us:
Everyone is for animal "welfare" reforms: But 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 intrinsically 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.--from Dr. Steven Best's essay "Legally Blind: The Case For Granting Animals Rights"
And I'm sure you know about Derrick Jensen:
Coercion is central to our legal system, which presents one face to those in power, and a different face to those who fight this power. In the case of the former, coercion is systematized through a body of lawmakers and interpreters which supports and rationalizes the use of force by those in power to gain material possessions or otherwise bend certain others—the powerless, the silenced, the not-fully-human—to the will of the already powerful. -- Derrick Jensen
“So long as we only believe in the justice of the state, of the law-made by those in power, to serve those in power-so long will we continue to be exploited by those in power.”
― Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization
I went vegetarian in 1974 FOR THE ANIMALS, and vegan in 2001 FOR THE ANIMALS! I had read "Animals, Men and Morals: An Inquiry into the Maltreatment of Non-humans" (1971), a collection of essays on animal rights, edited by Oxford philosophers Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch, both from Canada, and John Harris from the UK. The editors were members of the Oxford Group, a group of postgraduate philosophy students and others based at the University of Oxford from 1968, who began raising the idea of animal rights in seminars and campaigning locally against factory farming and otter hunting.
So good for you! Only wish more people were as unselfish and caring as yourself.
Thankyou Wayne. Everything evolves, including organisms, ideas, and laws. Here in NZ we have had a sizeable number of people protesting against mandates and for freedom of choice, and have taken to the streets. Sometimes they have been destructive and aggressive, and have harmed property and other individuals. I have also broken the Law, the way you have countless times, to rescue animals trapped in Hell. But in this as in most other things, the way the Law is broken is important. Putting oneself at risk for the most helpless, the most innocent, the most suffering of beings (not for one's own personal rights as in anti mandate protests) carries significant moral weight in my opinion, and should be conducted peacefully and with the intention of ahimsa. I see a time when animals will be freed, the way blacks in America were freed from unjust Laws. Thankyou for your wonderful blogs. xx
My comment on your article brings me to the brutal behavior of the UK govt on Julian Assange..Kept in high security prison having committed no crime!! What "LAW" is at work here?
Three so called democratic governments Australia,UK, USA.. are holding this man..Our rotten Australian government has done nothing to demand his release..All puppets of the US.They damn Putin quite rightly but hypocriticallyt say nothing about Julian..
So, good work so far. Why not partner with Steven Best (The New Yorker 03/07/22) to challenge "personhood" as applied to inanimate objects but not sentient complex nonhuman animals? We need all the lawyers. Public opinion put a stop to permanent daylight savings time; how to get public opinion to turn against massive corporate cruelty? Respectfully, Syd
Steve Wise, I think you mean? Steve is great, and we work together wherever possible. But we are taking significantly different approaches, both in terms of the species we are focused on (elephants, versus farm animals or dogs), and in terms of the approach to getting into the courtroom (direct action, versus habeas corpus).
I wrote a long reply but it didn't go through. I'll post a different one: Corporate chicken farms hope to build 1 million count operations in southern OR, where one of the biggest sanctuaries has been for years (Lighthouse Farm Sanctuary in Scio, OR). What was the use of volunteering and donating to animal liberation most of my 83 years?😥 Hurry and change everything, Dear Wayne! Sincerely VeganSyd, Syd Most on fb
I love Steven Best, too. Here's a quote of his that resonates with us:
Everyone is for animal "welfare" reforms: But 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 intrinsically 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.--from Dr. Steven Best's essay "Legally Blind: The Case For Granting Animals Rights"
And I'm sure you know about Derrick Jensen:
Coercion is central to our legal system, which presents one face to those in power, and a different face to those who fight this power. In the case of the former, coercion is systematized through a body of lawmakers and interpreters which supports and rationalizes the use of force by those in power to gain material possessions or otherwise bend certain others—the powerless, the silenced, the not-fully-human—to the will of the already powerful. -- Derrick Jensen
“So long as we only believe in the justice of the state, of the law-made by those in power, to serve those in power-so long will we continue to be exploited by those in power.”
― Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization
Hi Wayne and thank you. I am vegan for the animals since 2010 and my planet and my health.
I went vegetarian in 1974 FOR THE ANIMALS, and vegan in 2001 FOR THE ANIMALS! I had read "Animals, Men and Morals: An Inquiry into the Maltreatment of Non-humans" (1971), a collection of essays on animal rights, edited by Oxford philosophers Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch, both from Canada, and John Harris from the UK. The editors were members of the Oxford Group, a group of postgraduate philosophy students and others based at the University of Oxford from 1968, who began raising the idea of animal rights in seminars and campaigning locally against factory farming and otter hunting.
So good for you! Only wish more people were as unselfish and caring as yourself.
really enjoyed this one 🔥. thanks Wayne 🙏