Via Animal Aid:

Two culls

Welsh Assembly Rural Affairs Minister, Elin Jones, has announced a cull of badgers in West Wales. She said that there will be an ‘intensive action area’ covering 200 square kilometres in Pembrokeshire, and the cull would later be extended across Wales.

* Send polite complaints to: elin.jones [at] wales.gov.uk

Councillors in the Forest of Dean are planning to kill wild boars. Please contact them and urge them to act compassionately and use only humane ways to deter boars, should they present a problem.

* Send polite complaints to: council [at] fdean.gov.uk

You can find a useful guide to Britain’s “War on Wildlife” here.

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In which I take the metaphor a little too seriously.

A few months ago, I wrote about how the female members of non-human animal species suffer from especially egregious and prolonged abuse at the hands of their exploiters.

With brutal precision, farmers routinely turn the reproductive systems of female animals against them, finding newer and more callous ways in which to exploit them as science and technology allow. This isn’t to suggest that males don’t suffer as well – they do. But their suffering isn’t as prolonged or extensive as that of their female counterparts; veal calves, for example, are tortured for sixteen weeks and then, “mercifully,” (relatively speaking) slaughtered. Their sisters, meanwhile, are exploited as baby and milk machines for three to four years, after which they become ground beef. First, their babies and their babies’ food is stolen from them; and, finally, their lives are snatched away as well.

By the mere fact of their sex, sows, hens, ewes, does, nannies, cows and heifers – not to mention mares, bitches, jennies, jills, etc. – are ripe for especially brutal and prolonged exploitation. Oftentimes, this involves a constant cycle of pregnancy, birth, nursing and baby-napping, culminating with the female’s own death when she’s no longer able to breed or “produce” to her “owner’s” satisfaction.

Using excerpts from Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s The Pig Who Sang to the Moon: The Emotional World of Farm Animals for illustration, I explained how this process unfolds in “pork” production. Under the headline “Horizontal Women” (a play on one nickname for pigs, “horizontal humans,” so earned because they are so much like us), I emphasized how female pigs’ reproductive organs are turned against them, and the mother-child bond, severed and exploited, all so that Humans can continue to enjoy cheap “bacon”:

Breed, gestate, deliver, nurse, grieve, repeat: this is a sow’s lot. The whole damn “pork” subdivision of the megatheocorporatocracy rests on the female pig’s sexual organs – in her ability to give birth to the next generation of porcine “property.”

The process is much the same with cows: in a dairy operation, mother cows (“dairy” cows) undergo a continuous cycle of forced pregnancy and birth, followed by the theft of their children and milk. Breed, gestate, deliver, nurse, grieve, repeat.

Photo via Yamanize

A “dairy” cow’s children are taken from her shortly after birth, “ideally” within 24 hours; daughters may become “dairy” cows, like their mothers, or perhaps “beef,” while sons are destined to become either “veal” or “beef.” An estimated one million “veal” calves and 35 million “beef” cattle are killed annually, in the United States alone. About 9 million cows are confined in U.S. “dairy” operations in any given year. A cow’s natural lifespan can be 25 years or more, however, “dairy” cows are milked to excess within 3 to 4 years, after which they’re “retired” into ground beef.

As with pigs, mother cows and their children suffer immensely in factory farms. Their suffering is oftentimes tied to their status as females and youngsters – a quality which transcends species boundaries.

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Action Alerts

American Rivers: RiverAlert: Thank Congress for Designating 86 New Wild & Scenic Rivers
“Three years ago, American Rivers set the bold goal of designating 40 new Wild and Scenic Rivers by the 40th anniversary of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Last week, we far surpassed that goal when the House of Representatives passed the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act, designating 86 new Wild and Scenic Rivers and increased by more than 50% the rivers in the Wild and Scenic System. We couldn’t have done it without your help telling your Representatives that you support river protection. Now help us thank Congress for passing this bill and permanently protecting 86 new Wild and Scenic Rivers.”

Kelly’s note: American Rivers’ sample letter is predictably rife with speciesism, so – if you use it – please read it over and make the necessary changes before sending it.

Animal Rights @ Change .org: Honoring César Chávez–and His Call to Stop Eating Animals
“Today is the late César Chávez’s birthday, and it is being celebrated as an official state holiday in California and other states. The Cesar E. Chávez National Holiday Web site tells us much about the admirable man for whom many of us, including President Barack Obama, want to see a national holiday. Yet despite a long “About” page detailing Chávez’s life, beliefs, activism, and many accomplishments, there’s not a word about the strong position he held regarding nonviolence toward animals. Not a word about his commitment to vegetarianism (including not only a vegetarian but even a vegan diet for at least some period) for the last 25 years of his life. Not a word about his opposition to exploitation of animals on all fronts, including research, “sport,” and entertainment. The same can be said of the many news articles that are noting today’s significance.” Please keep an eye out for news articles, and pen a letter or two correcting this error of omission!

CREDO Action: Tell AT&T: Stop supporting Bill O’Reilly
“FOX News’ Bill O’Reilly has made some outrageous statements on rape, suggesting that women can be held responsible when they are forcibly violated and even killed by their attackers. O’Reilly has a right to his opinion. But his advertisers should be accountable for their support of his offensive views and his use of ambush journalism to intimidate those who dare to challenge his public statements. Tell AT&T to stop supporting Bill O’Reilly’s right wing progaganda machine and his attempts to intimidate those who challenge his views.”

Dogwood Alliance: Take Action on Arby’s
“Arby’s is one of the 11 Fast Food Junkies buying their paper packaging from Southern forests. Arby’s is based in the Southern US, in Atlanta, GA, so they should know how important our forests are to Southern culture and to mitigating global climate change. These vital forests and their biodiversity are in danger…they are being destroyed to package sandwiches and fries for Arby’s! Act today!”

Grassroots Netroots Alliance: Make the Polluters Pay: Tax Greenhouse Gas Emissions!
“The current climate crisis will become a full-blown climate catastrophe unless Congress acts quickly to drastically reduce climate-destabilizing greenhouse pollution from our current, and rising, 387 ppm CO2e back to a level below the dangerous tipping point of 350 ppm. Big business, including agribusiness, has been profiting from cheap energy and saddling the public with the costs of its pollution for too long. Now, they’re trying to escape regulation through Wall Street-style emissions trading. It’s time to make the polluters pay. We need a tax on greenhouse gas emissions now!”

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Photo via gwenael.piaser

A few days ago, I posted a snarky little missive addressed to “Franz,” an angry, speciesist troll who left several (now deleted) comments in response to this post. At the time, I gave little thought to his all-too-predictable ranting before deleting the comments, however, upon further reflection, I kind of wish I’d left them up. So much to deconstruct!

Franz’s initial comment left me wondering whether he was an uber-militant vegan, or just another speciesist troll. In it, he noted that he’s an Ohio resident, and yes, all “pig farms” are like the one depicted in Death on a Factory Farm. And anyone who thinks otherwise is “fucking ignorant.” And furthermore, unless a “morsel of meat” has never crossed your lips, you’re a “fucking hypocrite” for criticizing factory farming.

He followed that up with an obviously speciesist rant about vegans (like myself, presumably) who spend (“waste”) time on animal advocacy issues when there are More Important Things to worry about. Who cares about the dismemberment of fully conscious pigs, when millions of Humans have died in the “civil unrest” in Darfur? And, ZOMG, what about the peoples?, and so on and so forth.

Obviously, anyone who spends more than a reactionary thirty seconds considering the issue can see what an utter load of bullshit anthropocentric excrement it is. For starters, we can play this game forever: Who cares about the rape of women in Darfur when other women are being murdered? Who cares about genocide in Darfur when there’s an AIDS epidemic in (Southern) Africa? Who cares about AIDS when the entire human population is threatened by climate change? Ranking oppressions is an exercise in futility. Who gets to decide which injustice is the most egregious – and thus the most worthy of our attention? Could it be the oppressors, hmmmm?

(FWIW, hop on over to any A-list feminist blog, and you can see the same dishonest attacks leveled at women who dare to criticize “trivial” examples of misogyny in Western cultures: Who cares about “Fat Princess” when women are forced into hijabs in Islamic countries!?!?1! This line of “reasoning” is nothing but a smokescreen, and a transparent one at that.)

Not to mention, such an argument assumes that we can only care about and work on a single issue at any one time; that different forms of oppression and social injustice exist separately and are wholly independent of one another, as if in a void; that one’s compassion, kindness, justice and ethics towards one marginalized group will not inform a person’s attitudes and actions towards other marginalized groups; and that a being’s compassion is a finite pie that must be doled out a slice at a time. Wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong.

But I digress. The most interesting part of Franz’s rant came in the second comment. By this point, my eyes were glazing over, but I’ll try to paraphrase as best I can. Franz implored me to consider the story of some dude whose wife and (three?) children had been murdered. I forget the man’s name, but seeing as Franz mentioned the case directly after scolding me for not personally rescuing the entire population of Darfur, I assume that the murders were a part of said genocide.

What about John Q. Smith, whose wife and children were murdered and dismembered right in front of him? Don’t you care about him?

The “casual” sexism inherent in this sentence didn’t hit me until a few hours later. Here, John Q. Smith’s (unnamed) wife and children are the primary victims: it is they who were murdered and dismembered. While I’ve no doubt that this is traumatic for John, the crimes committed against him (being forced to watch as his wife and children were murdered and dismembered) are nowhere near as serious as the crimes committed against the wife and children (murder and dismemberment). They lost their lives, while John was allowed to live.

Yet, the way Franz frames the sentence, you’d think the most horrific abuses were reserved for John. Franz doesn’t ask “What about this woman and her children, who were murdered and dismembered?” – rather, he saves the bulk of his pity for John, whose wife and children were murdered and dismembered. To Franz, John’s wife and children are not even worthy of names – they’re some man’s wife and children, i.e., property, and that’s all we need to know. Seriously, we may as well identify the woman and children with numbers and ear tags. You know, like “livestock.”

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Photo via KayVee.INC

Will Potter wonders, Why Aren’t the EPA’s Most Wanted Fugitives Labeled “Eco-terrorists”?:

The brilliance of the “Green Scare” and the War on Terrorism more broadly is how the government and corporations have twisted language to push a political agenda. When environmentalists put their bodies on the line to stop environmental destruction? That’s “eco-terrorism.” When corporations destroy the environment for personal gain? That’s just business as usual. [...]

Now, which is more worthy of receiving the “eco-terrorism” label? Crimes that indiscriminately put humans, animals and the environment at risk, for personal profit? Or narrowly-targeted actions (not all of which are even criminal) intended to stop environmental destruction?

Who do you think is the “eco-terrorist”: The tree sitter or Boise Cascade? The Earth Liberation Front or Monsanto? Tim DeChristopher or mining corporations? Earth First or General Motors?

Since ours is indeed the oppressor’s language, those who terrorize the environment are “smart businessmen,” while defenders of the earth and its inhabitants are labeled “violent” “terrorists” and punished with disproportionately harsh prison sentences – even though the former’s so-called “white collar” crimes destroy far more lives (human and non) than the latter’s so-called acts of “terrorism.”

* Adrienne Rich, quoted in Animal Equality.

It’s worth noting that Rich’s observation comes from a feminist perspective, however, the same applies to the relationship between human and non-human animals, and humans and the earth. Humans [in Rich's words, men] are the oppressors, and our language necessarily legitimizes and reinforces the misdeeds we [men] commit against non-human animals and the earth [women]. Notice how the same processes are at play in each pattern of exploitation?

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Update, 3/30/09: Actually, I take that back. The lemon cookies weren’t so much a huge plate of FAIL as an exercise in delayed gratification: they tasted much better the next morning, once the doughy-ness had transformed to chewiness. Methinks the problem rests not in the batter or cook time, but in my lack of a cooling rack. Currently, I have to remove freshly baked cookies from the sheet asap, otherwise they tend to stick. The lemon cookies probably needed to sit a bit, hence the trouble I encountered when scraping them off. A cooling rack might make all the difference.

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The last time I made a batch of Oatmeal Banana Cookies, I wasn’t able to enjoy them as much as I would’ve liked. Truth be told, I felt a wee bit guilty. The dogs, you see, started begging like lil’ vegan monsters before the goodies even came out of the oven. I’m fairly certain that they thought the cookies were meant for them, since the week before I’d made some pizza biscuits for Rennie’s birthday. So I resolved to adapt the recipe to make a doggy edition.

Which I did, yesterday. I took the last version of the human Oatmeal Banana Cookie recipe and made a few changes: omitted the salt, cut the sugar down to almost nothing, and added a few extra ingredients that I just so happened to have on hand. The result? Total success! The dogs absolutely loved the cookies. They’re also 100% suitable for human consumption (really, shouldn’t everything we feed our nonhuman friends be?), if a little bland. By which I mean unsweetened. But maybe unsweetened is your thing?

Again, this recipe has proven extremely versatile. The oat/soymilk combo makes the dough impossible to mess up: Too dry? Add some soymilk! Too wet? Toss in some oats and/or let sit! As long as you taste test the dough before baking, and like what goes in, you’ll love what comes out of the oven.

Oatmeal Banana Cookies: Doggy edition!

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon + a little extra to taste
1/2 cup of dark brown sugar (or less)
Slightly less than 1/3 of a cup of vegetable oil
1 banana, mashed to liquid (the riper, the better)
1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1/2 to 1 cup of water or soy milk
2 1/4 cups of quick oats
Several handfuls, give or take, dried fruit (cranberries, cherries, blueberries, apricots, etc.) to taste; for this recipe, I used about 4 handfuls of dried cranberries and 4 of homemade dehydrated apple slices

Note: If this is for your furry friends, do not use chocolate chips! Or raisins! Or grapes! Or onions or onion powder! Um, not that you’d put onions in oatmeal banana cookies. That would just be gross.

Optional: Add some backstrap molasses, nutmeg and/or wheat germ.

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———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Kinship Circle – kinshipcircle [at] accessus.net
Date: Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 3:29 AM
Subject: Icy Waters Rising – Help Animals In North Dakota

KINSHIP CIRCLE ANIMAL DISASTER AID NETWORK

ONLINE VOLUNTEER FORM: Tell us what you can do! Be on file in our Disaster Aid Network: www.kinshipcircle.org/disasters/volunteer/default.html

3/28/09: Icy Waters Rising – Help Animals In North Dakota

1. North Dakota Flooding – Incident Summary Report
2. Help FM Humane Society Emergency Animal Shelter
3. Adopt-A-Pet Pitches In For Displaced Animals
4. More Local Rescues In Flooded North Dakota
5. UAN/EARS Response In Fargo
6. IFAW Expects Up To 5,000 Animals Need Aid
7. Other National Orgs Mobilizing For ND Animals

One of Doug Stensgard’s dogs, Annie, looks out over what used to be a 5-acre yard and an outbuilding, now flooded by the rising Red River in Fargo. Stensgard built an earthen and sandbag dike around his home in the hope of holding back the floodwaters. Associated Press.

As icy floodwaters climb to a record crest of 43 feet at Fargo’s Red River in North Dakota, forced and voluntary evacuations continue. The Red River is expected to crest at about 52 feet Monday or Tuesday in Grand Forks, ND. More rivers, creeks and streams rise around the state…

Kinship Circle has spoken to some resources below, as well as local authorities. If we’re asked to deploy any volunteers in our independent network, we’ll update you. In the meantime, below are ways to help flood-stranded animals via monetary donations and/or supplies. Fargo-Moorhead Humane Society lists a phone number for potential volunteers [#2 below]. YOU MUST CALL THIS NUMBER; circumstances change daily.

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Photo via kendiala

Lately, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about intersections: been speciesism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, colonialism, classism and (especially) sexism, and between animal liberation and other social justice movements.

While it’s become clear to me that all forms of prejudice and oppression are interrelated – and indeed, spring from the same well – what I find most vexing is how all these injustices first came about. Were nature and non-human animals subjugated first, followed by women and marginalized men, or were many of these rungs built into the social hierarchy at once? Which came first – organized religion, what with its oh-so-convenient justifications for mistreating the aforementioned “lesser” beings, or were these dogmas created after the fact, as a way of rationalizing and continuing these inequities? Did women as group resist when their brothers began to betray them en masse? Perhaps nature betrayed us as well, by “blessing” us with bodies that, on the one hand, are capable of bringing new life into this world – yet by the same token are vulnerable and ripe for exploitation? Why do men (and not a few women) seek to bully and oppress others? Why can’t we all just get along?

pattrice jones has touched upon this subject in her writings time and again. At the most basic level, she links the rise of pastoralism to that of the patriarchy. Take, for example, this exchange from an interview published in Vegan Voice:

Q. In Australia we have an appalling track record with regards to indigenous rights. How is racism shaped to some degree by animal exploitation.

A. I’m glad you asked about that, because it was my scholarly investigations into the origins of racism that led me to understand how speciesism is related various forms of oppression among humans. Basically, pastoralism (human dominion over animals) and patriarchy (male dominion over women) — which arrived on the historical scene together and cannot be separated — formed the template according to which all subsequent forms of exploitation would be patterned. It’s not an accident that people who are going to be exploited because of their religion, ethnicity, disability, or race are first “dehumanised” — the very act of subjugation is the act of forcing the target group into the category of “animal,” which means both “being without rights” and “object to be used.” You mentioned the Australian record with regard to indigenous peoples. The European conquests Australia offers a case in point concerning the use of the category “animal” to oppress a group of people. Indigenous people were, essentially, treated as just one more species of indigenous animal, to be exploited when possible and exterminated otherwise. The atrocities that were committed against indigenous peoples would be unimaginable were it not for a long history of treating living beings in exactly the same way. That history made it easy to just add indigenous people to the list of beings who may permissibly be enslaved, killed, or used without regard for their own aim and interests. As long as the category “animal” exists, it will be possible for some human animals to push other human animals over the line into it. If we are serious about ending the exploitation of people, then we have to get rid of the idea of a living being without rights, who can be exploited or killed at will. There’s more — much more — but that’s the gist of it.

In her contributions to Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?: Reflections on the Liberation of Animals (2004) and Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth (2006), jones examines animal liberation in general (and direct action specifically) through a (anarcha~)feminist lens. In both pieces (“Mothers with Monkeywrenches: Feminist Imperatives and the Animal Liberation Front” and “Stomping with the Elephants: Feminist Principles for Feminist Solidarity”), she returns to the theme of intersecting oppressions, and in so doing she conjures up many of the same questions that have been dancing around in my head.*

In particular, this passage from “Stomping with the Elephants” scratches the surface of the problem – ever so slightly, as the issue is enormous – which might be the concept of “property” – ownership, of both the land, and the beings residing upon it:

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Action Alerts

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU): Ideological Exclusion Must End Now
“Over the last eight years, the Departments of State and Homeland Security revived the practice of “ideological exclusion” refusing visas to foreign scholars, writers, artists, and activists, not on the basis of their actions but on the basis of their ideas, political views, and associations. Individuals currently excluded from the U.S. include Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss national and professor at the University of Oxford, dubbed “the leading Islamic thinker among Europe’s second- and third-generation Muslim immigrants” by Time magazine; and Adam Habib, a South African national, prominent human rights activist and public intellectual. [...] Stand with the ACLU and demand that the new administration close the door once and for all on this misguided and unconstitutional Bush-era practice. Send a letter to the Attorney General and the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security asking them to end the policy of ideological exclusion immediately.”

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU): It’s Time to Learn the Truth
“It’s been six years since the first reports of detainee abuse and nearly five years since Abu Ghraib. A recent confidential report from the International Committee of the Red Cross provided undeniable documentation of torture at Guantánamo. Yet the Justice Department has failed to prosecute any civilians for crimes related to interrogation, except a single contractor in June 2004. These stunning revelations only underscore the need for an independent prosecutor. With mounting evidence of deliberate and widespread use of torture and abuse, we deserve to have the assurance that torture will stop and never happen again.”

American Freedom Campaign: Tell Attorney General Holder to launch a criminal investigation of Bush administration crimes
“On March 26, the British government launched a criminal investigation to determine whether British intelligence officers were involved in the torture of a British resident detained by the United States. While the British are seeking to restore international respect for their nation by adhering to the rule of law, President Obama is “looking forward” and Attorney General Eric Holder is twiddling his thumbs. On March 15, the world read leaked details from an International Committee of the Red Cross report concluding that the treatment to which detainees were subjected while under the control of the CIA “constituted torture.” Was this enough to spur Holder to act? Shockingly, no.”

DawnWatch: ABC’s Nightline covers puppy mills, tonight, Friday 3/27/09
“Many in the rescue world have already heard that tonight, Friday March 27, ABC’s Nightline will cover puppy mills. A video on the Nightline web site shows sad conditions referred to as “state of the art” by a puppy mill owner. The story description lets us know that we will also see undercover video taken by Main Line Animal Rescue.”

National Wildlife Federation (NWF): Help Pass a Wildlife-friendly Budget
“Currently Congress is considering the budget resolution, which provides the tools necessary to increase investments in a clean energy economy, support a cleaner, healthier environment, and paves the way for comprehensive climate and energy legislation this year. Ask Congress to pass the budget resolution to safeguard wildlife and natural resources for generations to come.”

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Re: your attempt to denigrate my ethics by implying that I care about non-human animals to the exclusion of human animals – YOU FAIL.

And also, please to read a blog’s comment policy before trolling, mkay?

As per said comment policy, yes, you are banned, so don’t bother. That is, unless you’d like to share with everyone the steps you’re taking to end the genocide in Darfur.

{{hugs}}

Kelly