http://time.com/4837289/war-for-the-planet-of-the-apes-review/
Tag: animal rights
See Elephants Stop Truck From Overturning After It Gets Stuck in Mud
Such magnificent animals, so exploited.
Like any other mother
A beautiful poem that reminds me that there is so much comfort in approaching a vegan lifestyle.
I’m tired, my knees ache, I have sore feet,
My belly is heavy with child inside.
Head is aching from the blistering heat,
What’s coming is worse, I’m desperate to hide.
****
Last year I cheerfully bore my first child,
All the discomfort and pain were worth it.
My love for him instant, instinctive, wild,
Overwhelmed me, the light in my heart lit.
****
I washed him and nursed him, my suckling angel,
My purpose in life was now clear to me –
To love him, protect him and teach him well.
Like any other mother I would be.
****
The sun set that day and the bright moon rose,
And we spent a blissful night together.
Brief nirvana before that bitter dose,
When hell swallowed me whole, meat and leather.
****
At dawn I heard their heavy stomping feet,
They approached us as I was feeding him.
Without shame…
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Banksy, you magnificent genius
I am at a loss for words. Just watch and feel The Sirens of the lambs, part of Banksy`s residency in New York Better Out Than In. Now, for additional context and a vegan perspective, read this post by Mercy for Animals.
Animals Have…
When we learn and practice this?
“…Animals have their own intrinsic value, they do not exist to serve humans, and they are not property to be bought, sold, or traded. Like us, they have the right to control their lives and bodies, avoid pain and suffering, and live free from oppression.”
Quote on Action for Animals brochure.
Photo courtesy of Fanpop!
Swoon alert! Ryan Gosling Speaks Up For Cows
Good to know that he`s voicing his outrage!
Is is possible to love this man any more!? Ryan Gosling has penned a letter on behalf of PETA to the National Milk Producers Federation urging officials to require dairy farmers to begin phasing out ‘dehorning’ – which is a painful process in which calves have their horns gouged out or sensitive horn tissue burned out of their heads.
“There is absolutely no reason – and no excuse – for the cruel, unnecessary practice of dehorning to continue.”
We love when celebs use their voice to speak up for animals! You can read the full letter and learn how you can lend your voice against dehorning too over on PETA.org.
Cruelty and kindness: two tales of soldier behavior
The biggest earthquake since 1976 hit Guatemala last week. At a time when animals are not in most of my fellow citizen’s minds, I marvel at the courage that others, halfway across from my country, display to save one animal (while others are taught to embrace torture as a right of passage).
That dog
Will always wonder if he was killing or helping that dog. It all happened too fast for me to realize if I was witnessing torture or mercy up close.
By the time you read this post
I hope for Duffgirl and I to have been able to help Mostachón find a suitable home. This lovely male cat wandered near our house last night, and stole our hearts.
Update: He came to greet us Saturday, Sunday and this morning. Thankfully, he`s growing used to us feeding him and petting him. This should ease the process of gaining his trust (I think we`re there already) in order to have him neutered this weekend. An animal welfare organization has already offered to help us screen potential adopters, as well as help partially finance his operation. 🙂
Domino’s Pizza won’t kick the gestation crate habit
One must wonder what would it take for a corporation to draw the line. I am thinking about boycotting Domino`s.
Grist reports on Domino’s decision to continue using the crates which Temple Grandin has likened to “asking a sow to live in an airline seat.”
Mixco’s dogs are nobody’s dogs
Endless suffering of strays prompts exile.
A Duffboy six-word memoir, inspired by a Guatemalan town’s overt neglect towards stray dogs.
Does your brand support animal cruelty?
Not to be in a Debbie Downer mode, but I’ve been meaning to start a series of posts related to corporate sponsors of rodeos and other so-called attractions that foster animal cruelty. Mad props to SHARK (Showing Animals Respect and Kindness). Here are a few corporations that have been publicly linked to rodeos:
- Bank of America
- Enterprise Rent-A-Car
- Southwest Airlines
- United States Army
- United States Air Force Thunderbirds
- Wal-Mart
- Toyota
- Holiday Inn
- Anheuser-Busch
- McDonald’s
- Coors
- Jack Daniels
- American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA)
- Ariat International
- Bayer
CircusesHurtAnimals.com
That is what I call commitment.
“Hello. My name is CircusesHurtAnimals.com.”
Could you ever forget that name? Formerly known as Dan Carron, PETA Foundation staffer CircusesHurtAnimals.com is using that simple introduction to draw awareness to the circus’s routine animal abuse. Now that his driver’s license is officially changed, CircusesHurtAnimals.com only has to say his name to educate everyone he meets about animals forced to perform silly circus tricks.
I admire this man’s dedication to raising awareness towards what goes behind the scenes, in this endless cycle of torture that people know as circuses.
Knut’s death: captivity, greed and double standards
Last year, as I was reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals, the author described Knut, the first polar bear to be born in the Berlin Zoo in thirty years. He had the opportunity to visit Knut, while in Germany, and had a first hand glimpse into the massive popularity of the animal: there were “Knut commemorative plates, Knut pajamas, Knut figurines, and probably, although I haven’t verified this, Knut panties… Another zoo animal, the panda Yan Yan, was actually killed by Knut’s popularity. Zookepers speculate that the thirty thousand people crowding into the zoo to see Knut overwhelmed Yan Yan –either overexcited her or depressed her to death (it wasn’t clear to me). And speaking of death, when an animal rights group raised the argument –only hypothetically, they later claimed– that it would be better to euthanize an animal than raise it in such conditions, schoolchildren took to the streets chanting “Knut must live.”
On that note, it’s easy to forget that zoos are a business and animals are their commodities. Knut’s premature death last sunday, allegedly due to brain problems, should remind us about so many issues surrounding animal rights and animal welfare. Foer used Knut’s celebrity to help readers understand about speciesim or “the 
species barrier”: “If you go to see Knut and get hungry, just a few feet from his enclosure is a stand selling “Wurst de Knut”, made from the flesh of factory-farmed pigs, which are at least as intelligent and deserving of our regard as Knut. This is the species barrier”.
A recent BBC News article explains:
“profit became a big part of Knut’s short life. In 2007 alone Berlin Zoo made an estimated five million euros through increased ticket and merchandising sales. Hundreds of fluffy white toys were sold every day across the city, newspapers offered Knut figurines for 148 Euros and in 2008 a movie, Knut and His Friends, opened in cinemas across Germany. Knut’s life was about celebrity rather than natural history, says Ian Redmond, a consultant to the Born Free Foundation’s polar bear project in Canada. “It does seem to highlight the dichotomy of people who love this one polar bear in particular and those who care about polar bears right across the species.”
From a vegan perspective, I’ve come to understand just how misleading zoos really are: they are “promoted as educational, research, and preservation centers where children and adults can become enlightened about exotic animals and endangered species. A more accurate perspective is that they are pitiful prisons where inmates serve life sentences with no chance of parole”. (Joanne Stepaniak, The Vegan Sourcebook, page 85). Furthermore, “although many large modern zoos attempt to simulate natural habitats, the result is more appealing to audiences than to the animals… Zoos do not enable animals to hunt, mate, socialize, and live as they were intended to; hence, they do little to educate people about their normal behavior.
I was both surprised and disturbed with the televised images of the Knut’s death. However, I can see the big picture now and realize that, despite his dramatic background (Foer noted the fact that “he was rejected by his mother, the twenty-year-old Tosca, a retired German circus bear, and his twin brother died four days later” and his keeper’s devotion to his care: “[Thomas] Dörflein bottle-fed Knut every two hours, strummed Elvis’s “Devil in Disguise” on his guitar at Knut’s bedtime, and was covered in cuts and bruises from all the roughhousing”), this poor animal’s life and death serves as an example of human’s misguided and clouded perception of what animal should be: part of a spectacle, a source of income and object of marketing, or a living, breathing, sentient being that deserved better than what he got during his short 4-year-old life .
Delusion?
Remember a few months ago I told you I wanted to read Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer? Well, I did… and it changed my life. There’s so much I wish to write about it, but I’ll just start by quoting part of page 255, after a testimonial from a factory farm worker describing the brutal treatment inflicted upon pigs:
Just how common do such savageries have to be for a decent person to be unable to overlook them? If you knew that one in one thousand food animals suffered actions like those described above, would you continue to eat animals? One in one hundred? One in ten? Toward the end of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan writes, “I have to say there is a part of me that envies the moral clarity of the vegetarian…Yet part of me pities him, too. Dreams of innocence are just that; they usually depend on a denial of reality that can be its own form of hubris.” He’s right that emotional responses can lead us to an arrogant disconnect. But is the person who makes an effort to act on the dream of innocence really the one to be pitied? And who, in this case, is denying reality?
To be continued…
P.S. Shortly after reading this book for the second time, I decided to become a vegan.
Duff who lives at home 