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Animal
Rights & Liberation
See
also Sentience
Interview:
President of Slovenia on Being Vegetarian and Supporting
Animal Rights
Society for the Rights and the Liberation of Animals, interview
— January 2006
Slovenija is one of the few bright lights
in the world of politics today. By giving this interview
the president Dr Janez Drnovsek has for the first time
expressed the message to people, to start thinking
about unimaginable brutality that man is inflicting
upon animals...
Statement
by Rod Coronado About the Animal Liberation Movement
Anonymous, InfoShop.org, commentary — November
2005
No amount of discussion and questioning
of our path towards the liberation of all oppressed
individuals should ever be discouraged and never
should those that promote it be chastised by others
in the movement who claim to “know better"...
All
Beings that Feel Pain Deserve Human Rights
Richard Ryder, The Guardian Unlimited, commentary — August
2005
Why emphasise pain and other forms of suffering
rather than pleasure and happiness? One answer is that
pain is much more powerful than pleasure. Would you
not rather avoid an hour's torture than gain an hour's
bliss? Pain is the one and only true evil...
Animals,
Slavery, and the Holocaust
Charles Patterson, Logos, essay — June 2005
Where
does all the war, racism, terrorism, violence, and
cruelty that's so endemic to human civilization come
from? Why do humans exploit and massacre each other
so regularly? Why is our species so violence-prone?
To answer these questions we would do well to think
about our exploitation and slaughter of animals and
its effect on human civilization...
The
Battle Over Welfare vs. Rights
Karen Davis, United Poultry Concerns, essay — June 2005
Are
we really representing a caged hen's wishes when we
say that she would reject a touch of comfort short
of total liberation? And who, under any circumstances,
would reject a less inhumane death for themselves or
for someone they loved?...
Philosopher
Critics
Tom Regan, commentary — April
2005
The
way one philosopher shows respect for another philosopher
is by challenging the other’s ideas, by trying
to show (fairly, of course) that these ideas are
false, or unsupported, or worse. To do anything else
would be ...well, philosophical bad manners...
Income's
Disposable, Animals Aren't
Alecia Evans, Aspen Daily News, feature — April
2005
An
animal that is not aware of its thoughts may still
be aware of its feelings and emotions. An awareness
of sensations and emotions is known as "feelings
consciousness". As far as welfare is concerned,
this is the crux of the matter: what an animal feels,
not just what it thinks...
The
Limits of Human Dominion
Alison Hills, The Guardian, feature — March
2005
It
would be much better to stop talking about rights
and instead to ask two simple questions. When, if
ever, may we make animals suffer? And when, if ever,
may we kill them?...
Animal
Rights — An Overview
Down Bound, feature — Spring 2005
Animal
rights is the concept that all animals are
entitled to possess their own lives, and that animals
are deserving of moral rights to protect their
autonomy and well being. The animal rights view
rejects the concept that animals are merely capital
goods or property intended for the benefit of humans...
Dr.
Jerry Vlasik — 2004 UK Animal Rights Gathering
Speech, September
2004
Our
movement cannot be isolated in a vacuum. The animal
rights movement has got to be viewed in a historical
context. Our movement is no less important or radical
than the fight against Apartheid or the fight against
human slavery, fights against oppression in Algeria,
Vietnam, Northern Ireland and other places all around
the world...
Welfare
and Liberation:
Mutually Exclusive?
Matt Ball, essay
— Summer 2004
Successful
social movements — abolitionism, the women's
suffrage movement, the civil rights movement, the gay
rights movement — have pushed for reforming
the current system while working towards ultimate
goals...
Animal
Welfare Or Animal Rights?
Dismantling a False Opposition
Dr. Steve Best, commentary — 2004
...the
challenge is not to struggle exclusively for reform or liberation, but how to
mediate these two goals to end all industries of animal exploitation, the food
industry above all...
The
Success of Our Efforts to Defend Animals Depends on
our Ability to Make Right Judgements, to Guide our
Actions
The Friends of Guenad Association, response
comentary — June 2004
The
problem of the differing levels of awareness of animal
exploitation, as well as what this reflects, which
is the differing levels of commitment to our struggle,
is one which has often disturbed us...
Judgementalism
and Shaming in the Animal Rights Community
Stephanie L. Weiss, commentary — June
2004
When
a human animal is good and well meaning and trying
hard to please, as Mr. Mascaro obviously was, how
can we in good conscience publicly slap him with
a newspaper because he wasn't what might be considered
perfect in all of his choices?..
A
Bird in A Cage:
The Life and Times of Tom Regan
Tom Regan, essay — April 2004
As
a kid of the streets, the animals I knew were mostly the animals of the streets.
Mainly cats and dogs but there were horses, too. In those days vendors and junkmen
rode four-wheeled wagons through the city, pulled by stoop-shouldered, weary
creatures who were occasionally aroused from their dolorous fatigue by the high
pitched clang of a trolley’s bell or the crack of the driver’s whip...
Animal
Welfare Law and Animal Rights Law
Adam P. Karp, Esq. definitions
Animal
Welfare Law confers benefits upon nonhuman animals
indirectly, based on their relationship to a human
being... Animal
Rights Law recognizes protection, entitlements,
and standing for the animal based on the animal’s
inherent dignitary interests as a sentient being...
Man
and Other Animals
Jeremy Rifkin, Guardian Unlimited, commentary — August 2003
What
the researchers are finding is unsettling. It appears that many of our fellow
creatures are more like us than we had ever imagined. They feel pain, suffer,
experience stress, affection, excitement — and even love...
Rights
From Wrongs:
A Movement to Grant Legal Protection to Animals is
Gathering
Jim Motavalli, commentary — March-April
2003
The
fight to give animals legal rights barely registers
on the environmental agenda, but perhaps it should.
This isn’t simply an endless philosophical debate
but a gathering global force with broad implications
for our planet’s future, including how we use
our natural resources...
Animal
Liberation — The Social Justice Connection
Bruce Friedrich, essay
Most
people today understand the connections among certain
movements — abolition of slavery, suffrage
for women, civil rights, feminism, gay and lesbian
rights, labor justice. All are these movements oppose
oppression and advocate liberation for the oppressed.
The neglected link, for many, is animal rights...
Toward
Total Animal Liberation
Pattrice Le-Muire Jones, speech — 2002
In
my view, what the animal liberation movement needs
most urgently to do is to become more diverse in
its internal constitution and in its coalitions
with other movements...
Chickens
and Chimpanzees: The Odd Couple of the Animal Rights
Movement
Karen Davis, Satya Magazine, essay — 2002
Just as human verbal language is one of
the many languages of life, so our particular type
of intelligence is one among many. If people feel
threatened by the idea of equality beyond human primatology,
that is our problem to solve...
Darwinism,
Altruism and Painience
Dr. Richard Ryder, essay — 1999
On
this earth live intelligent beings whose lifespans
are about 70 years. For them, family reunions are a
joyous occasion. They assist the disabled. They mourn
their dead. They weep...
The
Philosophy of Animal Rights
David Meyer, essay
People
use scientific, religious, and intuitive justifications
to define humans as fundamentally different than
all other animals and therefore deserving of different
moral treatment...
The
Winds of Change
Paulette Callen, essay
Ice
had closed around the belugas cutting them off from
the open sea, from food, and if the Moskva didn't reach
them in time, the ice would have cut them off from
air... The
wind blowing across Siberia that day carrying the commingled
strains of human and whale music was, I like to think,
the beginning of Glasnost...
The
Top 10 Stupid Arguments in Defense of Animal Exploitation — And
How to Respond to Them
Henry Cohen, essay
A
person's passions must predispose him toward animal
rights before reason will persuade him...
An
Unnatural Order:
Why We are Destroying the Planet and Each Other
Jim Mason, essay
Because
of this, we have no sense of kinship with other life
on this planet, hence no good sense of belonging here.
Our tradition is one of arrogance toward the living
world around us...
Animal
Liberation Is An Environmental Ethic
Dale Jamieson, Carleton College, commentary — November
1997
Animal
liberationists typically accept the projects of traditional
western ethics, then go on to argue that in their applications
they have arbitrarily and inconsistently excluded nonhuman
animals...
Declaration
of the Rights of Animals
June 1990
Whereas
It Is Self-Evident / That we share the earth with
other creatures, great and small; / That many of
these animals experience pleasure and pain; / that
these animals deserve our just treatment; and / That
these animals are unable to speak for themselves...
Animals
Are Not Our Tasters, We Are Not Their Kings
Tom Regan
Heaven
forbid that we should do to humans what now is being
done to other animals. But heaven help us to stop doing
these things to these animals...
A
New Approach to Animal Liberation
Marc Romanoff, essay
Just
because the struggle for animal liberation is ancient
doesnt mean it has to last forever. There can
be no victory, however and no freedom for the
animals unless and until we begin to wage
a winning campaign...
Psychology
and Animal Rights
Stephanie Weiss, essay
As
I grow as a psychologist and person in the world, I
realize that it is important to me to constantly work
on improving my ability to cope with my feelings and
reactions...
The
Case for Animal Rights
Tom Regan,
essay
What's
wrong fundamentally wrong with the way
animals are treated isn't the details that vary from
case to case. It's the whole system. The
forlornness of the veal calf is pathetic, heart-wrenching;
the pulsing pain of the chimp with electrodes planted deep
in her brain is repulsive; the slow, torturous death of the
raccoon caught in the leghold trap is agonizing...
Animal
Liberation
Peter Singer, essay
More
significant still for the prospects of the animal
liberation movement is the fact that almost all of
the oppressing group are directly involved in, and
see themselves as benefiting from, the oppression...
Animals'
Rights
Henry Salt, Chapter 1, The
Principle of Animals' Rights, excerpt
I
must say that the notion of the life an animal having "no
moral purpose," belongs to a class of ideas
which cannot possibly be accepted by the advanced
humanitarian thought of the present day...
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