Sentient the Movie

[Alberta Louise]

Big day in Newtown. Lunch at Green's Enmore Road was a Mexican Burria vegan pie - the best! Tony Jones, the director, will be in attendance tonight for the premiere of 'Sentient'; Q and A's will be part of the program no doubt. Tony Jones is an Aussie. Known at 'Sundance' Film Festival. He asks "Can we justify harming animals in the name of science?". It's pegged as a moving journey into laboratory animals.  Runtime is 105mins.

[Alberta Louise]

Animal Rights Philosophy and Primates in Cages:

Thirty years on and raw capitalism is still slapping us around over primates in cages in medical institutions. What have the primates got to show for it apart from minor enrichment incrementalist gestures and tokens. What has the long-time animal rights activist got to show for it having spent a lot of emotional investment and time in on the subject.  The algorithms were in place long before the animal rights movement started up in this modern era with its philosophical concepts becoming increasingly popular. Still primates in labs are on the outer. The ‘necessary predator’ in the eco-stratisphere is the lab technician.   The lexical storehouse of animal rights language insists upon differentiating a relationship between animal primate dialectics, theory and practice. Animal welfarist policies have a dialectical all their own yet it hardly lives up to its own high-sounding ‘animal husbandry’ practices and then by inference their legal statutes derived out of this taproot. The narratives fill the gaps to make up the difference. Animal rights facilitates its own rights.  Afterall animal cruelty is a welfare issue, the way it was, the way it is and the way it will always be, by the sounds of it judging by what little has been accomplished in research facilities thus far. Anti-speciesism acts as a direct anathema to the exploitation of primates and other animals in research labs. Rights by their actions negate institutionalised animal cruelty at base level. The first world society we live in freely uses primates on one hand without restraint in labs for medical research yet paradoxically the world is plagued with disease and neediness of every description. The inflicted blights and plagues are suspicious of themselves in their ever-ready frequency upon the modern world. Now that’s an algorithm in itself! Abolition is about speaking out against this phenomenon as a starting point. Until then we can expect more of the same then I expect from the masters of excessive cruelties while the rest of us wait in trepidation for change in medical facilities to one day occur.

 

[Alberta Louise]

The Choreography remains the same!

[Alberta Louise]

Sentient was playing last night in Newtown. Tony Jones introduced the movie beforehand as ‘I won’t say enjoy the movie; feel it”. At last an Australian has produced something comparable to SHAC USA and Huntingdon UK over lab antics of technicians and the failing of the health system to produce accurate data based upon monkey experiments alone. Thus far in the movie it achieved its purpose. It does show the sentience of the lab animal better than anything else around at the moment. It does appear the Seattle’s primate center in Washington that opened their doors to be filmed has had an epiphany equal to that of some of the members of the animal rights movement previously in media and witnessed. Following on its heels the Biomedical people interviewed for this awe inspiring two hour and a half insight to their facility took the atrium and told us, the audience, how wrong it is to mutilate animals. Odd considering its equally their bread and butter work and would have the opposite effect to an animal rights activist aka stop researching on sentient creatures. Predicated on the title “Sentience” one could carefully consider it an animal rights tale of woe and what the animal rights movement has been saying since its inception yet this is not the case. It might be cathartic to the biomedical community particularly at this late stage of their involvement, the same mannerisms, the same talk, seemingly the same concerns of welfarism but as the old adage goes “Appearances are deceiving”. Admittedly this is shocking footage. The animal rights movement was doing it years ago. I am not convinced the biomedical conversion to their charge is wholly for the animal and might have more to do with Chinas involvement in the clean-up and ultimately making globally larger this Industry as happened with the farmed industry who China recruited and lead the way for the same purpose once. This could be their happy smiley face in the deal.  This could be its recruitment drive arse backwards. Worth a look, listen and learn. There has just been too much WE MUST coming out of the Biomedical community to think otherwise yet the tears flowed and the voices were warm in the movie. We’ll just have to wait it out and see what happens next. For the animals.