All Blog Posts (696)

Who moderates AR Zone? I want to contact them.

thanks

This was the headline article in the Sunday Age today, one of our major newspapers.  While I am pleased to see it given such prominence it is nevertheless distressing to read what we all probably know or suspect, that 'ethics committees' and a bit of a joke.

For anyone who feels so inclined I think it would be appropriate to contact Monash University, and the National health and Medical Research Council which you can Google to express ourtage and be advocates for the…

One of my favourite poems by DH Lawrence.  I was reminded of this today when a young woman in a shop squashed a spider on the counter just as I said 'DON'T" and before I could stop her. I said 'why did you do that?' and she asked what I'd have done with it and I said 'put it outside.'  But I recalled being afraid of spiders as a child, my mother telling me I was afraid of them,  and how long it took me to treat them respectfully. 

Snake

A snake came to my…

There is an extraordinary story developing about a global effort to save two 11 year-old oxen from slaughter, whose bodies will serve the appetites of students at…

Book: Discordant Harmonies

A New Ecology for the 21st Century

By Daniel B. Botkin

Considered by many to be the classic text of the environmental movement, Discordant Harmonies was the first book to challenge the then dominant view that nature remained constant over time unless disturbed by human…

Professor Eleonora Gullone, Associate Professor in Psychology at Monash University, Australia, believes that “Almost without exception, the perpetrators of animal cruelty crimes are the same individuals who carry out aggressive and violent acts including assault, partner and child abuse. Thus, animal cruelty crimes should be treated with the same seriousness as crimes against humans. Moreover, the punishments should reflect their severity." For more details on her new book, Animal…

If you needed to torture puppies in order to enjoy the taste of chocolate, would doing so be wrong? Wouldn’t doing so be obviously wrong? Most who would say ‘yes’ regularly purchase and consume factory-farmed meat, seeing no problem with the latter, and yet, the two may not be morally distinguishable. According to at least one philosopher, they are not. In a highly provocative and creative paper,…

Like factory farming, animal experimentation is an entrenched practice, one which causes extensive suffering to millions of animals per year despite the…

Both from a strategic and moral standpoint, it is no surprise that when military action is contemplated, governments tend to favor effective tactics involving the least risk to human lives. Even better are effective tactics involving low risk to all human lives. If the goal of the military action is justified, what could be morally problematic with using such means? These widely held notions likely motivated the U.S. Navy’s…

ZOOPOLIS: A Political Theory of Animal Rights - by Sue Donaldson & Will Kymlicka

http://www.amazon.com/Zoopolis-Political-Theory-Animal-Rights/dp/0199599661

http://books.google.es/books?id=GppRuyOQLSwC&printsec=frontcover…

My take on the ethics of eating "happy meat."

Suppose animals could be raised humanely, live considerably long lives, and then painlessly killed for food. Would eating such happy creatures be wrong? That question is suggested in a recent article by New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, who answered it in the negative. According to…

This is another recent post of mine over at Animal Blawg, about the encouragement of youths to take up hunting.

In our culture, the moral divide between humans and animals is sharp in numerous areas, but perhaps most consciously so in one: the sport of hunting. Since the activity involves consciously deciding to kill another sentient, sensitive being, the issue of inflicting suffering and death cannot be avoided, at least for the hunter. At some point every hunter will inevitably…

I posted the following entry over at Animal Blawg: http://animalblawg.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/bullfighting-justifying-cruelty-with-tradition/#like-5094

In December of 2010, Jemaal Peter Roy Large of Wairu Valley is alleged to have beaten 23 seals to death with a galvanised steel pipe.

The dead include 2 bulls, 13 females and 8 pups; some of which were only a few days old. According to the Dept. of Conservation, other live seals also had injuries suggesting that they too had been struck.

These seals were knowingly and willfully beaten to death while they lay sleeping on the beach at night. This blatant, cowardly act of cruelty…

Reposted from Eating Consciously - by Ed Coffin

If you’re vegan and on Facebook, it’s almost impossible to avoid seeing racist and disgusting statements SUCH AS THESE.  These ones were picked from merely a handful of posts in a matter of minutes.  They’re almost always related to photographs of dogs being slaughtered for meat somewhere in Southeast…

Modern institutions like to euphemize their worst habits, and nowhere is this more evident than in the meat industry. Animals have been reduced from sentient individuals to material commodities that contribute to the production of capital. Hence, they are captured, caged, raised, poached, trapped, skinned, traded, or sold as “exotic” pets or for their fur, body parts, or supposed medicinal value.

The semantics of meat-industry terms is itself revealing. Such terms as “poultry”,…

Picture a fox, with its bloody leg mangled in the jaws of a steel jawed trap, tearing ligaments, pulling muscles as it thrashes around in abject terror in a vain attempt to get free.

Picture the fox breaking teeth, lacerating gums as it bites the cold steel that holds it prisoner. Imagine how it must feel for 1 in 3 foxes who will chew their own legs off as a desperate bid to escape, only to die a sad and painful death as a result of infection, blood loss,…

In reality, the meat industry is interested NOT in animal welfare, but in maintaining its “market share” or bottom line—and that means substituting euphemistic labeling for true ethical reform and getting anti-cruelty laws compromised. Read this essay by James McWilliams: …

It has never been a “level playing field” between humans and wildlife, especially where profit is at stake. The pressures of smuggling, poaching, and abuse continue. Here’s one more example from Thailand.

Yet another example (among hundreds) of animal cruelty and oppression. Click on http://www.thepetitionsite.com/216/630/739/bear-dancing-is-cruel-not-cute/?cid=Facebook_petition_bear-dancing and watch the live footage.