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"Humans Aren't The Only Species On Earth, They Just Act Like It!" Can you imagine the immense silence if the sky was without birds, the fields without grasshoppers, the flowers without bees? No great elephant matriarch to trumpet her voice over the great savanna, or the homely sound of a neighbor's dog happily barking at play? Can you imagine how colorless the coral reefs would be without the multitude of brilliant fish flashing in the clear ocean, or the rainforest with it's canopy of sound, parrots. monkeys ? Yet, all this is very possible, what with humankind's seemingly unending need for more and more of this planets resources! Do we really need all these 'toys'? Increasingly bigger, gas guzzling cars, air conditioning on an 80 degree day, larger houses for today's smaller families, meat on our plates, when plant sources are known to be a more healthy (and far more humane) way to feed? The list goes on, each one contributing to the pollution and poisonous gases in the air, water, land. How can humankind go on, raping the land, cementing over more and more, fencing off acres and acres of what used to be the homes and grazing land of other beings . Either cutting off access from or having made water, unpotable? What is the excuse for continuing "research" with no results, except for the torture and confinement of countless beings, who without voice, cannot resist or defend what is rightfully theirs, a life free to live as they were meant to be. To raise and love their families, roam unfettered where nature placed them. Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is:
"Because the animals are like us." Ask the experimenters why it is morally OK to
experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are not like us."
Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction. If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we
are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up
imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons. Clear cutting of our ancient ones, the trees, and done, not due to the fact, that there aren't trees grown specifically for use as wood products, just to make a fast buck, a tree 500 year old falls at the hands of man-driven machines, because in one fell swoop more wood footage is available. The burning of the rain forests.. History repeats itself..clear cutting did away with the immense forests of the United States, the island of Greece and the Middle East are barren due to this practice in the past. Those trees and plants yield up oxygen to sustain the fragile balance of the organism we call earth. She needs the rains, trees, flowing streams, rivers and oceans to exist. If she becomes a victim of humans blinded to the destruction that is taking place, we all die too. And sadly, we'll take all the other 'peoples' of the earth with us, be they furred, feathered or scaled. Those who have forsaken the killing of all; those who are helpmates to
all; those who are a sanctuary to all; those men are in the way of heaven. Let him not destroy, or cause to be destroyed, any life at all, nor
sanction the acts of those who do so. Let him refrain from even hurting any creature, both
those that are strong and those that tremble in the world. The song from the Disney movie, Pocahontas is touching in it's lyrics and says much about living in harmony with all living things. Thus, I chose it for this page.
You think I'm an ignorant savage Footnotes: We know that the irrigating of Mesopotamia (after clear cutting) resulted in a salting of the land which, over the course of just a few centuries, reduced the Fertile Crescent to a near-desert. There is much of the transformation of the Sahara from savannah to desert. The demand for firewood in the foothills of the Himalayas has deforested them so badly that now every rainfall sweeps tons of topsoil into the Ganges River, to be carried into the Bay of Bengal. The overgrazing and overplanting of various parts of Africa are creating new deserts. Using cattle for food uses up more resources to maintain them (not to mention the hormones they are injected with to encourage growth, thus many human anomalies are being created due to ingesting these hormones, plus heart disease and obesity due to a high fat, meat centered diet) than would plant crops that would feed far more people per acre. If one could visit or view footage of a slaughter house (now neatly packaged under the title packing houses, I doubt many would dine without considering what is on their plate and what suffering occurred to get it there! A veteran USDA meat inspector from Texas describes
what he has seen: "Cattle dragged and choked...Knocking em four, five, ten
times. Every now and then when theyre stunned they come back to life, and
theyre up there agonizing. Theyre "Usually, the first thing a country does in the
course of economic development is to introduce a lot of livestock. Our data are showing
that this is not a very smart move and the Chinese are listening. They are realizing that
animal-based agriculture is not "The beef industry has contributed to more
American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all
automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of `real food for real people,' you'd
better live real close to a real good We are the living graves of murdered beasts, slaughtered to satisfy our
appetites. How can we hope in this world to attain the peace we say we are so anxious for?
Philosophers have always been the most hated members
of society, primarily because they force us to think about issues that we are
uncomfortable with, or they challenge the accepted paradigms that society and religion set
up as standards for us to follow. When the last great whale is slaughtered, as it surely will be, the
whales' suffering will be over. This is not the whales' loss, but man's. I am not
concerned about the wiping out of a species - this is man's folly - I have only one
concern, the suffering which we deliberately inflict upon animals whilst they live. My own interjection here. I remember years ago a
friend's little girl in the supermarket asking her mom what was in the packages in the
meat department, and instead of saying bacon, or veal, or chops, the mom told her it was
cows, pigs, fish etc...which upon the little girl threw herself to the floor and screamed
in horror and cried unceasingly. (out of the mouth and actions of babes!)
Again my interjection: I and friends saw Babe as an
animal rights movie underlying the light-hearted childrens movie it was presented as. --Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904- ) Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself. --Froude (1818-1894) When a man wants to murder a tiger, it's called sport; when the tiger wants to murder him it's called ferocity. --George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) ... the art of angling, the cruelest, the coldest, and the stupidest of pretended sports. --Lord (George) Byron (1788-1824) The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest. --Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventures, and for hides and furs is a phenomenon which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging in such acts of brutality. --His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama of Tibet (1935-) Religious quotes Thou shalt not kill. --Exodus 20:13 (The Bible) "He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man..." --Isaiah 66:3 "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb-bearing seed which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed: to you it shall be as meat...." --Genesis 1:29 If you have men who will exclude any of god's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men. --St. Francis of Assisi Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don't harrass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you - alas, it is true of almost every one of us! --Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) Mercy to living beings, self restraint, truth, honesty, chastity and contentment, right faith and knowledge, and austerity are but the entourage of morality. --Sila-prabhrita (Jainism) All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away. This is the pure unchangeable law. --Sutrakritanga (Jainism) To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana. --Buddha May all that have life be delivered from suffering. --Buddha "All beings tremble before violence. All fear death, all love life. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do?" --Buddha There is not an animal on the earth, nor a flying creature on two wings, but they are people like unto you. --The Koran All beings hate pains; therefore one should not kill them. This is the quintessence of wisdom: not to kill anything. --Sutrakritanga (Jainism) Even in the worm that crawls in the earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter God. --Isaac Bashevis Singer (author, Nobel 1978) Law and Justice We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it. --Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) The important thing is not to stop questioning. --Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated" --Gandhi, the Moral Basis of Vegetarianism And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him that it is right. --Martin Luther King Jr. Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out of her (or his) own conscience, thus helping to bring the collective conscience to life. --Norman Cousins If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear. --George Orwell (author) Suffering "The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? But rather, Can they suffer?" --Jeremy Bentham, 19th century Philosopher, Oxford University "All the arguments to prove man's superiority can not shatter this hard fact: In suffering, the animals are our equals." --Peter singer - Animal Liberation "There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties... The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery." --Charles Darwin "When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy." --Ingrid Newkirk To one whose mind is free, there is something even more intolerable in the suffering of animals than in the sufferings of humans. For with the latter, it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the person who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any person were to refer to it, they would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime. That alone is the justification of all that humans may suffer. It cries vengeance upon all the human race. If God exists and tolerates it, it cries vengeance upon God. (my highlighting and my agreement And thus, hangs near my desk.!) --Romain Rolland (from his 1915 Nobel Prizewinning novel, Jean-Christophe) Humans - who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals - have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and "animals" is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them - without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders suchpretensions specious. They are just too much like us. --Dr. Carl Sagan & Dr. Ann Druyan, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, 1992 Other/Philosophy Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages. --Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931) The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men. --Alice Walker The thinking [person] must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another... --Albert Schweitzer "Look deep into the eyes of any animal, and then for a moment, trade places, their life becomes as precious as yours and you become as vulnerable as them. Now smile if you believe all animals deserve our respect and our protection, for in a way, they are us, and we are them." --Philip Ochoa, Board Member, ALL FOR ANIMALS Six million Jews died in concentration camps, but six billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughter houses. --Ingrid Newkirk (PETA) I am in favour of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being. --Abraham Lincoln Bless The Beasts and the children Bless the beasts and the children For in this world they have no voice They have no choice
Bless the beasts and the children For the world can never be The world they see Light their way When the darkness surrounds them Give them love Let it shine all around them Bless the beasts and the children Give them shelter from a storm Keep them safe Keep them warm
the Carpenters
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