You have to love British radio

I thoroughly enjoy British radio which delves deeply into intellectual and artistic topics with insightful interviewers and articulate and intelligent guests.  This episode from BBC Radio 3- Free Thinking on feeling pain and animal rights is brilliant. If you want to jump straight to the part on animal rights go to 25:40.

Link

What I saw at the abattoir/slaughterhouse

While I was visiting South Africa this year, I had the opportunity to visit an abattoir. I didn’t really want to go, in fact the thought filled me with dread, but I had to go. I went in the spirit of bearing witness to the suffering of others as promoted by Mahatma Ghandi. In seeing the truth for ourselves we become more connected to the victims and more able to promote their cause from our direct experience.  

The abattoir property is large, sprawling, grey and ugly. In the distance we could hear continuous and torturous screaming of pigs. We drove us closer to where we could see the cause of the screaming. I switched on my video camera hoping to get good footage, although it is not allowed. A truck driver and his assistant were offloading large pigs into the holding pens.  The pigs, in their panic from being chased off the truck had fallen and were stuck in a “pile up”. The pigs at the bottom were crushed by the pigs above them who in turn were trapped by pigs pushing up from behind.

The poor pigs were completely helpless and trapped. As I looked closer, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The driver, in frustration, was using an electric prod over and over again to electrocute the backs and faces of the trapped pigs. This explained their terrible screaming and terror.  I couldn't take it and ran forward asking the handler to stop and be kind. He made excuses for himself, but amazingly he did stop! An assistant used a plastic bag to chase the pigs and somehow managed to get the pigs unstuck and they were left in their holding pen. Even though I couldn’t walk up close I could see that many of the pigs had bulging protrusions near their anus/genitals and others had sores and welts on their backs and faces.

I went home in shock knowing that those poor pigs were waiting in their pens overnight to face an even worse fate the next day.  That dreadful day we witnessed was the first time that those poor pigs felt a breeze on their back and the earth beneath their feet. I could not get the images of their sad terrified eyes and the sound of their terrible screams out of my head. I knew I had visited hell on Earth. I want to share it with the world, but unfortunately, my footage was terrible because my hands were shaking too much from shock and panic. In some ways, I wish I hadn’t intervened so that I could have filmed it calmly and shown the world what I had seen. But, on the other hand I couldn’t stand to see those poor animals being electrocuted over and over again.  The other factor to consider is that there would most probably be legal repercussions for releasing footage filmed on private land without permission. Animal farmers and abattoirs will do almost anything to prevent the truth of their brutality being seen.

The experience has increased my commitment to release animals from their prisons, their enslavement and their violent deaths. This is not simply an animal welfare issue.  The use of an electric prod is legal. Leaving animals without food and water for 72 hours is legal. Killing is legal. Therefore, calling the SPCA or an animal welfare society will do nothing to help pigs and other animals trapped in this violent system. The problem is that the system of agriculture, which involves genetic manipulation, confinement and killing is inherently violent and is based on a system of domination, oppression and speciecism.  Once one adds a profit incentive, it is virtually impossible to ensure the well being of farmed animals.  Animals, like human animals, should be allowed to live free and natural lives. As Alice Walker said:

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. 

They were not made for humans any more than black people
were made for white, or women created for men.

Note: There are likely legal and other negative repercussions for taking photos and videos inside the abattoir property. For this reason I cannot disclose the location or anything that might reveal the location.

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Photos from the abattoir:

A beautiful young calf discarded next to the meat bin

A decapitated calf

Medical researchers or sadistic bastards?

This is what our scientists do with our tax money, research funding....  Scientists feel that somehow scientific research is beyond the purview of ethics, but like any area of human activity it most definitely should operate within ethical limits. There was a time when my greatest ambition was to be  a top scientist, but now I want nothing more to stop people from being callous, sadistic bastards.  I want to protect vulnerable individuals, whatever their species, from exploitation, violence and cruelty.

A dream of a better world

Also, see this: I have seen another world

Powerful quotes by Isaac Bashevis Singer

It was Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Jewish author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978 who first said in the Letter Writer, "In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka." 

"How can we speak of right and justice if we take an innocent creature and shed its blood?" 

"When a human kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice. Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why should man then expect mercy from God? It's unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give. It is inconsistent. I can never accept inconsistency or injustice. Even if it comes from God. If there would come a voice from God saying, "I'm against vegetarianism!" I would say, "Well, I am for it!" This is how strongly I feel in this regard."

The need for feminism

Long before I became interested in veganism and animal rights, I was an ardent feminist and supporter of women’s rights. I still am, although it has taken a backseat to my passion for promoting animal rights.  While I don’t see animal rights as being more important than women’s rights, the tremendous numbers of animals that are killed, mutilated and tortured and who have their homes and habitats sacked, polluted and destroyed, the extreme degree of cruelty and torture that we inflict upon animals such as boiling them alive or ripping their skin off while alive, and the breadth and depth speciecism which allows such rampant abuses to occur, forces me to focus most of my attention on animal rights.  However, I recognise that animal rights, women’s rights and other human rights are related and interlinked; that sexism, speciecism, racism, etc., are similar psychological processes and constructs.

In the past, before I became aware of the atrocities committed to animals and my own speciecism, I was similarly shocked and disturbed by how 50 % of the human species, i.e. women, could be treated so poorly and have so few rights to varying degrees in different parts of the world. That this unequal respect and treatment was the norm for almost all cultures for millennia was (and is) deeply disturbing to me and I concluded that the gains that some women have achieved in some countries was extremely fragile. The natural inclination to discriminate and dominate women appears to be deeply ingrained in men.  This reinforced the need for feminism and to continue to fight for women’s rights, respect and dignity all over the world, including those countries where significant gains have been made. Even in the west, where things are better for women, women still suffer from sexism, rape, objectification, discrimination and domestic violence. There is still much to be done.

I just finished reading the poignant, beautiful and tragic novel, “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini which has prompted me to revisit my previous passion for women’s rights. The book centres on two women in Afghanistan whose lives are held captive by men, the patriarchy and a lack of legal rights and social supports to allow them to break free from the domestic abuse and enslavement they face daily.  It is also about their relationship with each other, their strength and love. I highly recommend it because it is a great narrative and it allows the reader to care deeply about the characters. Through the narrative the reader can see how dangerous it is to allow men to make all the decisions on behalf of women and not to have laws that are enforced to protect women’s rights.  If there are no enforceable laws, any degree of extreme cruelty and violence can be inflicted upon the vulnerable without any repercussions for the guilty.  This allows ordinary people/men to become brutal slave masters. This is similarly the case with animals today all over the world who have almost zero laws to protect them from death, violence and confinement inflicted upon them by humans. 

The violence, disrespect and loss of liberty that these two women faced was appalling and tragic, and made my heart go out to all the women who have experienced such violence at home. It doesn’t just happen in Afghanistan or the Middle East.  A white South Africa man was convicted of holding his wife captive at home and inflicting upon her the most vicious and brutal physical violence that has left her permanently physically damaged for the rest of her life. This is of course an extreme case, but it goes to show you it happens everywhere. South Africa is actually not a good place to be a woman – physical and emotional abuse, murder and rape of women are extremely common despite laws that make this illegal.   I recommend this resource from the Rape Crisis Trust Cape Town which provides some possible explanations of why rape and violence against women is so high in South Africa.  We have to try understand the problem if we are to eradicate it. 

While animal rights may always be my first focus, I believe I also have a duty to South Africa, to help make it a better place and women’s rights would be an excellent place to start.  Violence spreads, like a cold, from person to person, from person to animal.  The greater violence people experience in their day-to-day lives the less likely they are to care about the suffering of animals and the more likely they are to perpetrate violence to animals.  That’s a generalization of course. Some people who have been hurt, oppressed and dominated by others, indeed empathize more deeply with animals who are also hurt and opporessed and find great comfort in helping and spending time with innocent creatures.

What is my duty to share information on international conflict?

I have been thinking about the Palestine/Israel issue and other conflicts a lot since a recent Facebook discussion with a friend about why I don’t focus on more pertinent human issues like the said-conflict, Syria, Iraq, etc., rather than violence against animals.  I think I responded to the criticism well, but I do continue to ask myself what is my responsibility to share information on FB about Palestine/Israel like my friend suggested? Why don’t I share more?

I think it comes down to a few reasons:

1) The Palestine/Israel is just one conflict among many, but it is highly politicized and publicized due to the geo-politics of the middle-east. There are many other human conflicts and tragedies that are also important and of interest to me that don’t get shared on FB, especially those in Africa – the militia in Congo, the starvation of millions of Somalians in the 2010s, the recent terrorism in Kenya, the killing of 30 miners by South African police in 2012, the violent attacks on foreigners in SA in 2008, etc. So why must I focus on Palestine/Israel and not all of the other human conflicts? 

2) Due to the highly politicized and emotional nature of the Palestine/Israel conflict, I feel that I am likely to offend people and receive criticism no matter what I post or say.  This in itself isn’t a bad thing, but I am really sensitive and since I don’t have an excellent understanding of the situation I’m not sure how well I could defend myself. 3) While I do have some opinions about the Palestine/Israel conflict and I tend to sympathize with the Palestinians, believing that their human rights are being severely impinged upon, I am still afraid that my information is biased, one-sided, incomplete and/or simplistic. In fact, this is very much likely the case since things are always more complex and grey than they seem. I really don’t want to spread simplifications and misinformations into the world, especially in any way that may increases hate towards any side.

3) Just because I sympathize towards one side or the other and have my opinions, it doesn’t mean that I have any really good ideas about how a peaceful solution could be reached.  So what would be the intention or point of sharing information with others? What do I hope for them to do?  However, I do see a need to share information/opinions in response to other people’s posts which may be bigoted or ill-informed and I have done that in past.  Sometimes I just delete these people.  Is that wrong, should I try to engage with them?  It’s so exhausting.

4) Finally, if I never communicated about atrocities to animals and only shared messages on FB about my holidays, purchases, careers, etc., nobody would every criticize me for not saying anything about Palestine or other human issues.  That speaks of a severe and deep-seated prejudice against animals. Why is it that speaking up about animals offends people so much? Is it because they are implicated?  This is the very reason why I feel so compelled to speak up for animals. That’s for another blog post though.

However, given all my misgivings about speaking about Palestine/Israel, this is my simplistic understanding and opinion.   England gave land in Palestine to Zionists in the early 20^th Century. It was not their land to give. It was essentially a form of colonization.  Palestinians, with the support of other Arab countries, fought colonization as most colonized people do and a series of wars erupted over the 20^th Century. Israel, backed by the west and the U.S.A. was the stronger of the two forces and increased its land area during these wars. Millions of Palestinians became refugees. 

There’s no doubt that the history of this region stinks, but the past doesn’t necessarily tell us what we should do about the future. Not everything about the Israeli state is bad - they have some very progressive laws and I’m sure I would like Israeli people if I met them. As a South African, I know what it’s like to be born into a society that’s based upon the oppression and violence of others and yet think that’s a normal state of affairs.  I also know this as a former meat-eater.  It’s very hard to see outside of what seems normal, especially when there is deliberate propaganda to justify the status quo and information flow is controlled.  (South Africa only got T.V. in the 70s!) Most people are not willfully bad, they just don’t know better. That being said, I do not mean to let people off the hook for murder and torture!

I don’t want to see Israel destroyed or Israeli people killed or evicted, but since Israel is the stronger of the two nations, it falls upon Israel to make peace. It needs to start valuing Palestinian lives equally to Jewish/Israeli lives.  It needs to begin to restore human dignity and human rights to Palestinian peoples. At the very least it must stop the expansion of Jewish settlers into Palestinian areas! This is absolutely essential! If they do not do this then how can anyone believe that they want peace?

I do also wonder what the responsibility of Europe and the U.S.A. is to help resolve this conflict. I would say it is large. We know that millions of Jews fled to Israel after the Holocaust and I don’t blame them for that. Surely Europe has a responsibility to invite Jews of European origin back into its embrace and promise them safety and security? When has Europe taken responsibility for its past actions, including colonization?  Africans must suffer from the devastating effects of colonization and still send their wealth overseas via European corporations, while Europeans live such a pleasant and safe life.  I know the children are not responsible for the sins of their parents, but surely neither are the African children? So why should they bear the greatest burden?