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.
Please support!WORLD PREMIERE WEEKENDPeaceable Kingdom: The Journey Homeat the Moondance International Film FestivalBoulder, Colorado - Sept. 26-27Premiere screening followed by Q&A with filmmakers Jenny Stein and James LaVeckand film subject Harold BrownDirector: Jenny SteinProducer: James LaVeckAssociate Producers: Eric Huang, Kevin SmithFeaturing: Harold Brown, Howard Lyman,Willow Jeane Lyman, Cayce Mell, Jason Tracy,Cheri Ezell-Vandersluis and Jim VandersluisMusical score: Kevin Bartlett, Joy AskewPEACEABLE KINGDOM: THE JOURNEY HOME is a new documentary by the award-winning filmmakers of The Witness. A riveting story of transformation and healing, this groundbreaking film explores the awakening conscience of several people who grew up in traditional farming culture and who have now come to question the basic premises of their inherited way of life.Presented through a woven tapestry of memories, music, and breathtaking accounts of life-altering moments, the film provides insight into the farmers’ sometimes amazing connections with the animals under their care, while also making clear the complex web of social, psychological and economic forces that have led them to their dilemma.Interwoven with the farmers’ stories is the dramatic animal rescue work of a newly-trained humane police officer whose sense of justice puts her at odds with the law she is charged to uphold.With strikingly honest interviews and rare footage demonstrating the emotional lives and intense family bonds of animals most often viewed as living commodities, PEACEABLE KINGDOM: THE JOURNEY HOME shatters stereotypical notions of farmers, farm life, and perhaps most surprisingly, farm animals themselves.
A new investigation by Mercy For Animals gives us an opportunity to discuss the atrocities behind the production of eggs, which besides being completely unnecessary for our diets, are heavy on suffering.The video was shot with a hidden camera and microphone by a Mercy For Animals employee, who worked at Hy-Line North America’s chick hatchery, in Spencer, Iowa, for two weeks in May and June, 2009. Male chicks are dropped alive into a grinding machine. Female chicks are brutally hooked up to a spinning debeaker that mutilates their sensitive beaks with an infrared laser. And all this is true of so-called free range, cage free, natural, certified humane and every other nonsensical label designed to inject a guilt-busting dose into the process of animal exploitation.Male chicks are considered a ‘waste product’ by the hatchery system, therefore they are destroyed by grinding, just like a piece of trash. Now, if a child was caught doing something like that, in a civilized family, they would be punished for that. So how come a whole industry can legally incorporate such a terrifying method into their practice? And it’s the way it’s going to be. As a United Egg Producers representative coldly told AP yesterday: “If someone has a need for 200 million male chicks, we’re happy to provide them to anyone who wants them. But we can find no market, no need”.As to the female chicks, they are going to spend their lives caged up in tiny spaces, laying egg after egg and when their productivity declines, will be sent to slaughter.The industry is designed this way and it will never change. The only way to put a stop to all this is to go vegan. By doing that, you help decrease demand and the suffering of these animals.
The other day I saw amazing footage of a massive rescue operation involving bulls. Santa Catalina Island, a few miles off the California coast, became the breeding ground of non-native bulls taken there in 1925 as part of a silent film. And they bred all right. In order to avoid the auctioning of the animals and their possible killing, IDA (In Defense of Animals) managed to remove part of the bull population back to where they belong: South Dakota. The rescue operation of the 105 animals involved several barges across 23 miles of ocean, then 1,800 miles by highway to South DakotaIDA now has the opportunity to rescue and relocate 150 more buffalo so they can join their cousings on Standing Rock, South Dakota. The organization needs $35,000 to get the job done. So, if you can spare a little bit of money, you could make all the difference to these gorgeous animals and avoid a huge amount of future suffering.
I read this great article about veganism and how to turn it into a culinary art form, which I’d like to share. Here’s a taster:
What most people don’t realize is that it’s very possible, indeed even probable, for a creative chef to make vegan food just as exciting and full of variety as any other type of cuisine.
The point is, living healthily and ethically is not as easy as living life mindlessly and unhealthily - the world is designed that way. However, the same principle applies to everything. If you want to be good at your job, you need some dedication. To be physically fit, you need to exercise. To be a good friend, you need to give people a slice of your time. And the list goes on. Veganism is like that: with a few adjustments, it becomes second nature. It’s as easy as that.
On a different note: UPI has a list of the worst countries for vegans and vegetarians to travel to . It confirmed what I partly knew from my own experience: Mexico, Spain, Germany, Cuba and Central Asia. Oddly, a country like Spain that depends on tourism should be better prepared to welcome us vegans, but for some reason it is stuck in time. Let’s hope it changes one day. I spent two years in that country and I found their eating habits very limited and unhealthy.
Like many people around the world I am saddened by Michael Jackson’s early departure from this world. However, I know his music will stay with us for as long as electronic music is around.
Amid the variety of topics written about him in the wake of his death, one of the many that caught my attention was that he was a ‘strict vegetarian’. That term is often used to describe vegans. I do have a feeling that it may be true that Michael did not consume animal parts in his food. However, that alone would not have made him an ethical vegan. For one, he kept a zoo in his Neverland ranch, which an ethical vegan would never have done – he could have kept a sanctuary of rescued animals, but I understand that the animals he kept, and later neglected when money became tight, were bought. He also wore leather. Veganism is not just about food, it’s about a holistically ethical approach to all sentient creatures. So no, Michael Jackson was not a vegan.
I also heard that Tippi Hedren (pictured), the star of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) and the mother of Melanie Griffiths, has called on Michael’s fans to donate to her big cat sanctuary in California, The Shambala Preserve, which she has kept since 1983. You see, Hedren houses two of Jackson’s tigers, Thriller and Sabu, who are part of a family of 68 animals, mostly rescued from the entertainment industry. I have no information whether Tippi is a vegetarian or vegan but I once read that she became interested in animal welfare during the shooting of Birds. Back then, she refused to wear a fur coat that Hitchcock gave her as a present. That was well before people had any awareness about the plight of animals killed for fur – so credit be given to her for being ahead of her time in this way.
Watch Tippi speaking about her work with big cats:
Tribe of Heart has announced that it has completed Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home. The film has undergone a process of audience testing and refinement and the organization says that it has received “thoughtful and positive feedback from early test viewers”.
Time magazine, surely not a vegetarian-style magazine, has included abstinence from meat as one of the ways it suggests to help curb global warming. It uses the famous UN report on the impact that livestock has on the environment as the basis of its report. And it is correct except that it gives the impression that only cattle is the problem, leaving readers room to assume that pigs, chickens, fish and every other animal are okay to consume. It’s not, neither from an environmental point of view, nor from the ethical stand point, which is what veganism is about.
Avoiding meat is not merely an environmental action; it is something that stems from our hearts because we all know, or at least intuitively feel, that there’s something awfully wrong with breeding animals into this world to exterminate them after a life of suffering. At this point, I’ll pass the word to Dave Warwak, a teacher who was fired for teaching his students about the way animals are killed and generally treated.
I often support the work carried out by Mercy for Animals as we need bigger organizations to expose the rotten-ness of the animal exploitation industry. Last week one of New England’s major egg operations was exposed with undercover footage showing the gruesome nature of their business. Now Radlo Foods says it will convert from the battery system to the free-cage system over a period of ten years..
Some animal advocates believe that giving a few more square centimeters to chickens in egg operations will represent a major improvement in their lives, but sadly the cage-free reality is not as rosy as it seems. For one, male chicks are still ground alive at one day of age, as they are not useful to the egg industry. Chickens are still debeaked in order to stop them hurting each other out of stress. Their food is full of chemicals. And they are killed at the end of their productive life. Does it sound like anything resembling a minimally decent life? I don’t think so.
That’s why going vegan is the only way to counter the egg, milk and meat industries because so-called improvements will only benefit the exploiter and the consumer looking for a dose of guilt-relief. Still, watch the video below and see for yourself what an egg really contains.
Every end of winter is the same story. Despite international protest, Canada decides to carry on with its war on baby harp seals and kill hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. The UK Guardian has a video with bird’s eye footage of the massacre, released by the International Fund for Animal Welfare and it contains graphic images of violence. Still, make an effort to watch it. Despite what Canada says, the seal killing business is heavily subsidised by tax payers and the killers would be better off staying at home.
Luckily, the European Union is considering a total ban on baby seal products, which would sound the death knell for this horrible, cruel, industry. And recently, Canadian senator Mac Harb proposed a bill to end the annual slaughter. Please give your support to the bill by signing this petition. We can make this nightmare come to an end.
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:
The other day I saw amazing 
