Green politics (and socialism) should not be about Kentucky fried, Fox TV (with the exception of the Simpsons), ethical McDonalds or animal abuse.
Very pleased to have this guest post from Alison Banville....by the way looking for a guest post on Friends of the Earth and their arranged marriage with Murdoch (any volunteers out there?)....I know the bride managed to escape but not being a member of Friends of the Earth I would love to know more about this episode.
Any way enough of my late night witterings...on to some comment and quotes from Alison.
Yes, it's very sad that people cannot see that justice extends to all who are weak and powerless. Mr. Newman also misunderstands nature profoundly and misses a most important fact - the carnivorous animals have no choice but to kill or die; we have no such imperative upon which our survival depends. We can reflect on our actions and their effect on other life. What use our superior brain and the evolution of our consciousness if we don't use them? We so conveniently scurry back over the gulf we have created between ourselves and 'lesser' creation when our debased pleasure demands a sacrifice - one minute refined and the next a savage - we can't have it both ways.
'I have myself been the unwilling witness of an otter hunt, and a more sickening spectacle it is difficult to conceive. That any man or woman, much less any Christian, could be possessed of so much cruelty and cowardice, and could derive pleasure from such a pitiful scene of hopeless suffering, filled me with unutterable disgust.'
Stephen Coleridge (1854-1936)
'Who can dispute the inhumanity of the sport of hunting - of pursuing a poor, defenceless creature for mere amusement, til it becomes exhausted by terror and fatigue, and then of causing it to be torn to pieces by a pack of dogs? From what kind of instruction can men, and even women, imbibe such principles as these? How is it possible that they can justify it? And what can their pleasure in it consist of? Is it not solely in the agony they produce to the animal? They will pretend that it is not and try to make us believe so too - that it is merely the pursuit. But what is the object of their pursuit? Is there any other than to torment and destroy?'
Lewis Gompertz (1779-1861)
'Every tree near our house had a name of its own and a special identity. this was the beginning of my love for natural things, for earth and sky, for fields and woods, for trees and grass and flowers, and my sense of kinship with birds and animals, and all inarticulate creatures. The things I feared were not in the sky, but in the nature and touch of humanity. The cruelty of children, the blindness of the unpitiful, these were my terrors.
This rage at seeing the black dog hunted and abused - I have never forgotten it - contained every anger, every revolt I had ever felt in my life; the way I felt whenever I had seen people or animals hurt for the pleasure or profit of others. I hated the things they believed in, the things they so charmingly pretended. I hated the sanctimonious piety that let people hurt helpless creatures. I hated the prayers and the hymns, the fountains and the red images that coloured their drab music, the fountains filled with blood, the sacrifice of the lamb - there is never a time when God or man, or the god invented by man, requires a libation of cruelty.'
Ellen Glasgow (1874-1945)
'Who can dispute the inhumanity of the sport of hunting - of pursuing a poor, defenceless creature for mere amusement, til it becomes exhausted by terror and fatigue, and then of causing it to be torn to pieces by a pack of dogs? From what kind of instruction can men, and even women, imbibe such principles as these? How is it possible that they can justify it? And what can their pleasure in it consist of? Is it not solely in the agony they produce to the animal? They will pretend that it is not and try to make us believe so too - that it is merely the pursuit. But what is the object of their pursuit? Is there any other than to torment and destroy?'
Lewis Gompertz (1779-1861)
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