Manfesto for Radical Abolitioism

Simulposted from Negotiation is Over.

Manifesto for Radical Abolitionism: Total Liberation by Any Means Necessary

Dr. Steven Best

Pro-Animal Cruelty Activists and their Million Dollar Campaigns of Misinformation

After dealing with a lot of animal mistreatment, exploitation, and abuse right in front of my face today, I don't have the most energy to write something coherent. However, this is something that does need to be seen. Due to a drop in support for heinous cruelty and slavery of our animal comrades suffering in laboratories, biomedical industry front group "The Foundation for Biomedical Research" has started a campaign to spread lies about the significance of the torture of nonhumans to humans.

Aside from the fact that these millions of dollars could be going to actual human based methods that could save lives- the campaign itself doesn't even have a shred of realism in it. Part of it involves putting up bill boards that say:

"Ever had leprosy? Thanks to animal research, you won’t."

Here's a little bit on how treatments for leprosy were developed. The first leprosy wonder-drug that worked in other animals quickly became useless in humans due to a resistance to its effectiveness. Another, clofazimine, found successes in vitro, so nonhuman animal suffering was not needed (even though they used them anyways). Rifamycin also showed promise in in vitro studies aside from it beig used in other animals. The need for nonhuman animals in the discovery of these drugs is completely fabricated.

Let's not forget that vivisection only ever came about due to the rule of the Catholic church and their insistence on making human cadaver dissection and other methods illegal. Oh so scientific!

Also keep in mind that the majority of animal testing is not done to cure diseases. It involves force feeding puppies household cleaning products or opening the heads of monkeys to record from brain cells. Animal testing is done to make money, to protect corporations from chemical and product toxicity suits, and to fulfill research interests of real life mad scientists will to learn what they wish to learn at any cost to human or nonhuman animal life.

On the bright side, the animal research medical-industrial complex is terrified. They're losing support every day and people are waking up to the reality of the cruel nature of nonhuman animal research as well as the detrimental effects it has on humans and the ecosystem. We must remain strong during this time as many of us do not have millions of dollars for bill boards. But, we do have the truth, solidarity, and compassion on our side. Keep it out there. Don't stop.

Other entries or news stories on this:

Thomas Paine's Corner- Pro-Vivisection Activism: Promoting Violence Against Animals

News Sources (it's media, remember that while reading it) - Decline in support for using animals in research sparks an aggressive national ad campaign

Please write about this as well. Feel free to add your link to the comments section and I will edit this entry to post it here.

The Revolt of Other Animals and the Case for Total Liberation

Image: Rocky the grizzly bear, used in entertainment, who attacked and killed his trainer. It was not reported what happened to Rocky after the incident.

One thing I hear from the anti-animal liberation movement (or those apathetic to it) is that the animal liberation movement is different from other movements because the animals don't come together to rise up against their exploiters. They also claim that the animal liberation movement is unlike that of other human animal struggles because x% of that struggle was the oppressed group (i.e. 50% of the population was women during the suffrage movement). Both of these misconceptions result from both speciesism and an effective campaign to demonize any retaliation from other animals against their captors.

A recent story inspired my entry on this topic: Russian Circus Bear Kills Manager

In short, a bear exploited, demeaned, and undoubtedly beaten into performing for humans on ice skates retaliated against his/her captors. The bear was shot on scene after giving fatal injuries to their exploiter.

In reading this story, others immediately came to mind. The horrid circus elephant- attempt at escape in Honalulu. Tyke made it out of the building, and through the gates, but then where was she to escape to? She was shot to death shortly after.

When performing monkeys banded together to attack their trainer in China, who had be imprisoning and beating them, their attack ended there. They were tied to the trainer by their necks and had nowhere to escape to. No one helped them.

When a mother cow attacked a farmer as he tried to steal her baby (as farmers do), she is labeled as "overprotective" as if there was something strange about her attempts to save her child. This cow was lucky enough not to be identified by the remaining farmers, but only at the cost of killing her captor and devastating his family.

These stories and many others beg the question: How are the animals to rise up against their exploiters (without our help) when every time they do they are met with weapons and immediate punishments of death? We do not speak their language nor they ours so no amount pleading will help (which they do do in their own forms of communication as they cry out from cages, scream in pain, and other noises which are ignored by their exploiters). Letter-writing and pleading doesn't even help us get things done within our own species.

The other point about x-amount of beings being part of a struggle begs the question: Why do only humans count in the percentage? The animals in the movement, while lacking in our weapons and technology, outnumber us. For this reason, their movement should be considered on level with our own as we are all animals. Also, in most other movements, it was NOT the oppressed group acting alone against the oppressor. The oppressed group almost always had allies from outside their demographic which helped make their revolutions a success. Could those suffering in the Holocaust have brought the Nazi war machine down on their own?

Before we judge the plight and worth of other species based on their ability to revolt, we must remember that the cruelty towards our fellow animals is so heinous that it can be compared to every single human struggle that has existed. Factory farms are concentration camps. Female farm animals serve as sex slaves and breeding machines. Animals in entertainment are slaves to their oppressors.

No one is free while others are oppressed.

For those of you interested in how the G20 was...

Rather than write a big long thing, I'll offer some things that made me smile rather than frown.

Nonfiction:

Fictional Footage, Subtitles based on Fact:

The G-20 and Nonhuman Animals

Many people resist the G20 summits for many reasons. The group of 20 sits in a closed room, making decisions for the state of the entire world, while refusing input from the majority of the countries and citizens who reside upon this planet. Summits usually result in our money being used to bail out banks and or our money being given to corrupt institutions like the World Bank and IMF. To go into the issues with these institutions would take some time. For this entry though, I would like to talk about a group that is often forgotten about during G-20 summits- the nonhuman animals.

People are outraged by the G-20's negative effects on the workers, international relations, and the environment, as they very well should be. This entry is not an attempt to downplay any of these struggles. Many people do not understand how these things impact nonhumans as well and how this impact worsens the negative effects on humans. Hopefully this will offer insight into the connection.

Economies around the world are suffering and debates about lack of funds for healthcare rage on every day in the US. However, for much of the animal testing industry, business is booming because of government grants being available for animal research and the health care system, pharmaceutical companies, and front groups for the vivisection industry still making people afraid and dependent upon it. Privatization of labs and research still using government money feeds into this problem more with loads of funding WORLDWIDE ending up in labs and not in the hands of the people. Our government spends hundreds of millions each year to give diseases to monkeys, paralyze cats, and so forth, yet when one of us has to go to the emergnecy room, we must check our bank accounts first- even if we do have health insurance.

Every year, animal testing has been increasing in the UK despite the fact that more alternatives are becoming available. This last increase was the largest in history, leading even scientists who aren't against animal testing to speak out against the waste of money. Tie that in with privatized pharmaceutical companies then testing their dirty drugs in other countries (which prove "safe and effective" in misleading nonhuman animal tests) and we've got a direct global connection between nonhuman animal abuse, human abuse, globalization, and the state.

A more disturbing issue is that this is imprisonment, commodification, exploitation, and killing of other animals who are unable to speak out as we do. Animal exploiters read the cues of animal suffering or defense as signs of some sort of primitive nature when in reality, these animals are trying to tell them they don't want to be where they are- that they want to be free. We all want to be free. In taking down animal exploitation industries and liberating those imprisoned by them, we also help to take down pharmaceutical industries, fashion industries, entertainment industries, and so on who profit from their abuse as well as the abuse of humans.

Globalize Liberation and resist the G-20 in Pittsburgh next week!

Check out the Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project website for info on what's going on in the upcoming week as well as multiple resources to help you better understand the G20 and what they are doing to our planet, our people, and our fellow animals.

Why doesn't the left "get" animal liberationism?

Cartoon courtesy of BIZARRO.

I wanted to post a link from a vegan talk radio show in which Steven Best is interviewed. Unfortunately, unless you can figure out how to fast forward through this thing, you'll have to sit through a bit of the host's chatter. It's not bad, but it may simply be a bunch of stuff you have already heard.

That being said, it's worth sitting through as Best gives some decent explanations as to why animal liberation is often misunderstood by leftists as well as why there needs to be solidarity between the animal liberation movement and all other liberation movements.

Click here to listen to the streaming radio show. You can also check out Go Vegan Radio here.

Steven Best is the editor of "Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals", author of"Igniting A Revolution: Voices In Defense Of The Earth", and co-founder of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies".

"Painless" Suffering: Anything to keep the consumption rate going...

Nothing in the world of animal cruelty tends to surprise me these days. However, once in a while, something comes along that sickens and disturbs me at a level that can only be described as indescribable. This is one of those days: Pain-free animals could take suffering out of farming

This article proposes that, rather than eliminate (or at least reduce) meat consumption, stop nonhuman animal testing, and stop genetic engineering and its massive negative effects on animals and the environment, that we should instead genetically engineer animals not to feel pain so that factory farming (which makes up 99% of animal product production) may continue.

Wait, it gets worse...

The neuroscientists proposing such measures did their work using animals they created various forms of brain damage in (by way of lesions, surgeries, or genetic engineering) and then placed them in electrical shock chambers to see which ones could tolerate the shocks the longest or the most frequently. Countless animals suffer in these painful and cruel experiments every day for these kinds of ideas. The researchers then speak of how it would not be economic to give cows brain surgery in mass amounts, so they must find a way to engineer them to have brain damage that will reduce their ability to feel pain.

Basically, rather than encourage a vegan diet, or at least one with less animal products, which would solve the animal factory farming problem, they want to engineer animals without certain abilities to feel pain, ignore the fact that suffering is based on far more than physical pain, and create animals who would make their consumers feel less guilty about consuming them, because they would be genetically engineered to "suffer" less.

These scientists and theorists completely ignore a few very important factors. Let us ignore the ethical and environmental problems with genetic engineering, simply because they would take far too long to discuss and because I believe it is popular to be against genetic engineering. Instead, let's examine the psychological factors involved in this.

1. Animal suffering is not caused by physical pain alone. If a female cow experienced no physical pain while being placed on a "rape rack", repeatedly impregnated by farmers, only to have her babies taken from her to be made into veal, while she was hooked up to machines, she would still suffer greatly.

2. The brain is full of connections. To eliminate one part of the brain's functioning is impossible without also affecting most if not all of the rest of the functioning in the brain. There is no feasible way to remove the "pain areas" of the brain alone without causing deficits elsewhere.

3. Pain is a necessary part of functioning and survival for all animals. Pain teaches us when we are hurt, when we need to reposition ourselves, when we have something wrong with us, and so on. Removing physical pain from an animal would likely cause MORE suffering than allowing an animal to feel pain as the animal could and would likely suffer multiple problems and injuries which s/he could not identify as well as suffer other cognitive deficits in areas that are closely connected to areas of the brain which respond to pain.

To do something so insane to these animals who are already suffering the imprisonment, exploitation, objectification, and commodification of farming simply for human over consumption, would also involve massive amounts of nonhuman animal testing involving a lot of pain. This proposal can be seen as nothing more than a fraud and a money-making scheme in which those who seek to profit from animal exploitation may continue on, and increase their activity, while confusing the public into believing that they are actually helping animals.