THE VEGETARIAN BLOG

Sometimes you wonder what kind of society we live in when courts debate whether making a profit out of videos depicting animal cruelty staged for the purpose of ‘entertainment’ is legal or not.A man called Robert J. Stevens (pictured) produced videos showing gruesome dogfighting scenes. He was sentenced to 37-months in prison under a 1999 federal law that bans trafficking in “depictions of animal cruelty.” Now the Supreme Court is set to hear his case on October 6 and, believe it or not, this man is being defended by ‘free speech’ groups who are invoking the First Amendment for legal protection. The court will decide whether dogfighting videos and other videos showing animal cruelty without a serious purpose is “too vile” to be protected under the First Amendment. This definition of vileness is what removed First Amendment protection from child pornography in 1982.It is the issue of ‘seriousness’ that is bothering the free speech camp and while I support the idea of free speech wholeheartedly, I find it terrifying to see such a confused take on it. Animal cruelty is illegal, therefore staging it simply to make a profit is obviously illegal. It’s a no brainer. I think the free speech camp would put their energy to better use by fighting censorship against positive, stimulating, truthful ideas and justice in general. Wasting time defending sadics is just outrageous.I second a comment made by beemer5 in relation to the San Francisco Chronicle  article on which this blog is based:

There is no question that this man should be prosecuted. If these films weren’t making money for someone, they wouldn’t be made. What kind of society are we that we are even arguing the legality of selling these animal snuff and torture films? If it was up to me, I would go further and put Robert Stevens in with a pack of pissed off fighting dogs, and film what happens to him. I’d then use the film as a warning to anyone else that thinks that this is OK.Those who argue for this man’s ‘rights’ disgust me. Get a set of values and some compassion, for god’s sake.

A group of more than 100 vegetarian activists staged a protest in Belém, Brazil during the World Social Forum that was taking place in the Amazon region city last week. The group, led by Vegetarians in Action (V.E.M) from Belém, staged slaughterhouse scenes on the campus of the Universidade Federal Rural da Amazônia, where the global event was being held. “We chose to protest this way because we believe another world is possible only if we change our diets. At a time like this when we discuss the future of the planet and the devastation of the Amazon, no one seems to remember that the main cause of deforestation is agribusiness” said Diogo Solano, spokesperson for the group. 70% of the deforestation in the Amazon region is put down to clearing for pasture and soya crops for animal feed.

This is what I call a responsible public administrator. According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, the city’s health commissioner Dr. Terry Mason has told his constituents to put an end to their meat-eating habits. Apparently, Chicago is big on animal fat (pun intended) and now that they’ve mentioned it, it makes historical sense as the city was the place where the concept of the modern, mechanized slaughterhouse was created, and which is chronicled in the famous book, The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair.Of course, animal food is a health hazard and Mr. Mason knows that.

“For the entire month, I’m not eating any meat,” he has told listeners to his Sunday morning radio show, “Doctor in the House,” on WVON-AM. “If it walks, runs, hops, flies, swims, crawls or slithers, I won’t eat it. If it has eyes, I won’t eat it. If it had a momma and a daddy, I won’t eat it. . . . I’m going to focus on eating a healthy and delicious variety of fresh vegetables and fresh fruit. . . . And I want you to do the same.”

The Afro-American community particularly shows a high-than-average rate of health problems related to animal fat, such as diabetes and heart conditions so it will be a good thing to educate these people about the benefits of a plant diet. Go on Chicago, go vegan!

You sometimes just have to gape at the cheek some people have. Altnet reports that The Journal of the American Medical Association in June published an article titled “The Recommended Dietary Allowance of Protein: A Misunderstood Concept.” However …

In its Oct. 15 issue, it had to print a correction stating that author Sharon L. Miller was “formerly employed by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association” and author Robert R. Wolfe received money from the Egg Nutrition Center, National Dairy Council, National Pork Board and Beef Checkoff through the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

Is resorting to such low attempts of misleading the public a sign that the meat industry is worried? Perhaps, but I also think it just reflects the modus operandi of an industry that lives off the exploitation of animals. What do you think?

Full article +

A small victory in the fight for the prohibition of the Canadian annual seal massacre. Judge Jean-Paul Décoste declared on 17 October the defendants in the case against five seal-hunt observers innocent. This verdict had been anticipated by The Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society International since the case first began in October 2007.

“The evidence showed without a doubt that my clients were innocent and I thank Judge Décoste for seeing through the Crown’s illogical arguments to the contrary and finding them innocent,” said Clayton Ruby, lawyer for the accused.

The defendants - Canadians Rebecca Aldworth and Andrew Plumbly, Americans Chad Sisneros and Pierre Grzybowski, and British citizen Mark Glover - are all representatives of The HSUS and HS I .

In March of 2006, Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Department of Fisheries and Oceans Officer Jean-Francois Sylvestre charged the five defendants with violating a condition of their observation licenses which requires they remain at least 10-metres from sealing activity. The defendants were in the Gulf of St. Lawrence documenting the commercial seal hunt to bring to the world the shocking images of baby seals being clubbed, shot and even being skinned alive.

The defense case rested heavily on the video records of four separate parties: a Canadian government ship, an independent reporter and two of the accused. These videos scientifically showed that the defendants were at least 19.6 meters from sealing activity at the time of the incident. Judge Décoste refused to hear the experts who were called by the defense, but nonetheless found, after viewing the tapes himself, that the Crown case had not been proved.

Canada’s commercial seal hunt is the largest slaughter of marine mammals on earth. The victims are baby seals. Ninety-seven percent of the seals killed in the past five years have been less than three months old, and the majority under one month old. At the time of slaughter, many of these defenseless pups had not yet eaten their first solid meal or taken their first swim, leaving them utterly defenseless against the ‘hunters’.

Find out more about what you can do to help .

Brazil is currently going through local election fever and the country’s second biggest electorate, Rio de Janeiro, may well be on its way to vote in a vegetarian candidate tomorrow. Fernando Gabeira, a veteran veggie environmentalist, is fighting for the top municipal seat against Eduardo Paes; polls indicate he has about 40% of voter’s intentions, roughly the same as Paes. Gabeira is also a friend of animals and promised during a debate on Thursday to boost Rio’s spay and neuter campaign and free horses used to draw carriages to ‘employ’ them as companions to mentally impaired kids. He’s also a fine, educated gentleman. He sounds like the right ticket for the Wonderful City, I say.

So the big presidential elections topic today is Obama’s ‘lipstick on a pig’ remark, which the Republicans say was directed at Sarah ‘Wolf Killer’ Palin. Well, if it really was, Palin should be flattered, not offended, as pigs are lovely animals, full of grace and joy. Besides, they look after their babies really well. When they are not trapped in factory farms and unable to do so, that is. So show your love to real pigs and stop eating them. Go vegan!

It’s good to see the green contingent getting on the anti-factory farming act. Remember, vegetarianism IS environmentalism. As it has been widely reported by the mainstream media, the factory farming system breaks every rule of decency in the way it treats animals, pushing them beyond their physical endurance, is also very bad for the environment and human health because of all the drugs farmers pump their livestock with. The green blog Triple Pundit has an informative post on the subject, focusing on some regional legal victories that improve animal welfare in the United States.

As a vegan, that is, a vegetarian who avoids all animal foods, including egg and milk, I’d prefer animal farming to be altogether banned, since regardless of how much ‘better’ farming conditions become, all animals will face the same, brutal end at the slaughterhouse. That is also true of the more ‘quaint’-sounding ‘organic meat’. I don’t think you can put the words ‘humane’ and ‘killing’ together, as a lot of food companies do these days. Still, I welcome improvements in the way animals are raised, but only as a bridge to a future when they will no longer be bred into captivity for eventual extermination. This end goal should never be forgotten about by all those who care about animals, the environment and justice for all.

The picture shows how female hogs spend their entire lives, in a cage that is barely big enough for their abused bodies. Say not to this abomination, go vegan.

(Via Super Vegan): Queer vegans involved in animal liberation are invited to submit papers for an upcoming anthology called Coming Out for Animals: Queering Animal Liberation, which will string together personal narratives and essays on theoretical and practical topics. These are some of the questions to guide applicants:

What do queer liberation and animal liberation have to do with each other? How does the construction of homosexuality as both “unnatural” and “bestial” hurt both people and animals? How are speciesism and heterosexism interrelated and how do they fit into the matrix of race-sex-classoppression? Why have both homosexuality and veganism been dismissed as “white things” beside the point of real liberation struggles? What are we going to do about homophobia among straight-edge vegans? About those dreadful gay rodeos? Should we be arguing for pleather or against sexual practices that mimic the subjugation of animals? What’s so sexy about whips, chains, and choke collars anyway? What do hip hop “video vixens” and activist “vegan vixens” have in common beyond the performance of animality for the heterosexual male gaze? How does vivisection hurt people with AIDS? Why, within the USA, are both the queer and animal liberation movements less diverse than they should be but portrayed as more white than they are? Why do queer activists in Uganda but animal activists in the USA bear the brunt of police suppression in their respective countries? Are they similarly subversive of “cultural” practices that turn out to be critical to the maintenance of state power? What keeps many gay men in the animal liberation movement from coming out? Why are so many lesbian potlucks vegetarian and what does this mean in the era of FBI infiltration of the vegan potluck?

Further information here. Deadline: August 31.

An article in the National Catholic Reporter, a weekly Catholic publication, says that vegetarianism is “a key ingredient in the new life of peace, compassion and nonviolence”. The article was written by John Dear S.J., author of the book A Persistent Peace.

I couldn’t agree more. How can we even begin to talk about peace if our meals are the result of a vicious cycle of genetic manipulation, confinement, often lethal transportation and brutal slaughter? We simply can’t. Besides, while people are starving in many parts of the world, food is diverted to feed an excessive population of animals, who are bred solely for the purpose of being exterminated, who are then fed to affluent, over-eating westerners. There’s no logic or justice in that.