On Human Relations with Other Sentient Beings - The Blog

VIDEO: Vegans: Activists?, Just Plant Eaters?, Just "For the Animals?"

7/30/2019

It was a great pleasure for me to recently rejoin Aaron Yarmel for another conversation about veganism, the definition/meaning of veganism, and animal activism.

This video was a three way with Ronnie Lee, famously the best known of the co-founders of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in the 1970s and long-time spokesperson for the ALF, and long-time animal liberation prisoner.

This is Aaron's description of the event on YouTube:
In this interview with Roger Yates and Ronnie Lee, we explore these questions and more: What is veganism? Is it a diet, a set of philosophical commitments, a commitment to activism, or something else? Is Paul Bashir correct that veganism is, and has always been, *only* about animals? What can we learn from the founders of the vegan movement, and what misconceptions do modern activists have about the history of veganism? What does it mean to be an activist, and what do different definitions mean for differently abled activists? Do activists expose themselves to too much trauma? How can activists do a better job reaching ordinary people who are new to veganism? What do real Animal Liberation Front activists think about the portrayal of the ALF in the movie, Okja?

Here's the video and (below) the individual vlogs Ronnie and I made with Aaron.

AUDIO: Have the "Animal Rights Movement" Opened its Doors to Fascism?

7/29/2019

Worryingly, the answer is yes, according to Steve Best, in this clip from the end of his November 2014 podcast with ARZone. The movement has long tolerated sexism, racism, and ableism - and now this?

AUDIO: Tom Regan on Pets, Whether Animal Advocates Know All the Answers, and Rights Violations

7/12/2019

On the 4th of August, 2004, Professor Tom Regan appeared on the BBC Radio 4 series, The Moral Maze. He was asked a number of questions and had a few ethical scenarios presented to him, some of which Regan found rather bizarre. In the last question of Regan's slot on the show, he was asked about the moral status of pets and whether they deserve their freedom.

Tom Regan was nothing if not an honest man and so, rather than offering some sound bite or dodging the question, he said that this is a difficult issue. Animal advocates who often seem to believe that they require to have a snappy answer to every conceivable question can learn from Tom Regan because here he "admits" that advocates may not know the answer to everything, as though we have a well developed blueprint of the future to simply lay out before an audience.

However, Regan then asserts that there are some things that rights-based animal advocates do know for sure and that is that systematic use of other animals are rights violations.

Enjoy...

Meat-Free Mondays - The Egg Industry's Best Friend, Part Two

6/26/2019

The egg industry seems to have very good reason to absolutely love Meat-Free Mondays. While reducetarians and celebs such as Paul McCartney celebrate the idea, the animal rightist can't help but wonder what people consume instead of animal flesh on the chosen day. As previously reported in this blog, the egg industry in the USA have claimed that Meat-Free Monday has boosted their sales of eggs, thus perpetuating the rights violations that occur in egg production.

In Britain (26/6/2019), Radio 5 Live's Drive show featured a spot on the increase in the sales of plant-based meats. However, in this 26 second audio clip, can you begin to guess what this person replaces animal flesh with on her Meat Free Mondays...

60-70,000 Animal Advocates March in North America

6/11/2019

Almost 30 years ago, on June 10th, 1990, thousands of people turned out for a "March for the Animals" in Washington DC. Interviewed in 2007, Tom Regan, author of the The Case for Animal Rights, the book that kick-started rights-based abolitionist animal rights in the 1980s, estimated that between 60,000 and 70,000 people attended. It remains the largest march that the animal advocacy movement has ever organised.

Regan can be seen to the right of the lead banner of the 1990 march.

Tom Regan says that this time was one of "great optimism in the movement" and the 1990 march enabled and ennobled its participants. In 1996, a second "March for the Animals" drew only 3,000 people. Regan declared it "a disaster." One explanation that Regan offers to explain this fall-off within six years was the firming up of the "sharp divide" between animal welfarists and animal rightists.

The Gary Francione countermovement offer the same analysis. See HERE. It seems that the welfare corporations grasped back the initiative in the animal movement. For example, between the two marches, the once radical People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA) began their deradicalisation into a large welfare corporation. In 1992, for example, PeTA's Ingrid Newkirk took the reformist line against the abolitionism of Regan and Francione in a famous Animals' Agenda article - see HERE.

In the 2007 interview, Regan still held a critical view of how the animal movement had developed, saying that the most powerful national organisations had adopted a "corporate business model." He called for the democratisation of the movement away from the dominance of the national groups.

AUDIO: Gandhi's "Talk" to Tom Regan leads to the Start of Abolitionist Animal Rights

6/3/2019

When Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi "spoke" to anti-war activist and philosopher Tom Regan, who could have predicted its far-reaching consequence?

In this 2005 interview, Regan explains how Gandhi's views on violence lead an ex-butcher to rights-based animal rights.

The Case for Veganism by Donald Watson

6/3/2019

Those who know me and my work will be aware that I seek to recover the radical vision of the vegan social movement pioneers which is rapidly becoming lost in vegan consumerism, and in efforts to reduce veganism down to the idea that it is merely a diet, or else only "for the animals."

It is undoubtedly true that the best known of the vegan social movement co-founders is Donald Watson, the man regularly claimed to have coined the word "vegan." That claim is contested. It is also claimed that Watson saw veganism exclusively in terms of diet - this is not true.

Indeed, in the first edition of the second volume of The Vegan magazine (Spring 1946), Donald Watson took the opportunity to restate "The Case for Veganism" as its editorial.

Watson states that earlier issues of the magazine had already set out the suggestion that a review of humanity's relationships with other animals would further "the interests of both animals and of ourselves." On page two of the editorial, this remarkably radical vision of the new relationship between human beings and other animals is recounted...

Please bear in mind that every one of us is a product of our time. We no longer use the term "man" is mean the whole of humanity, for example, and modern day writers would likely hesitate in using the phrase "thug species" as a description of humanity. However, once more it is crystal clear that the pioneers of the vegan movement, who founded the movement in 1944 during "World War Two," saw veganism as not restricted to a cause "for the animals" alone - but felt that vegan philosophy and the diet that follows from it would massively benefit humans and other animals - and more, since Watson concludes the editorial by stating that other animals will not become extinct through veganism, quite the reverse, as veganism would free up land for "unexploited creatures living natural lives." Furthermore, he argues that veganism would also see the restoration of the fertility of the soil which was being (as it perhaps still is) lost.

18 years later, in 1964, vegan pioneer Eva Batt would reassert their concern for the soil in this powerful statement of vegan values...

My plea to fellow vegans, especially those who have recently entered the movement, is please do not be fooled either by a new generation of "vegan activists" who themselves know or care little of the movement's history, and who will confidently tell you the lie that veganism has nothing to do with human issues, or others who suggest that veganism is merely a diet. The dietary aspects of veganism are directly linked to the radical vision of a vegan world in which all sentient beings, including humans, are benefited and, indeed, liberated.

Veganism as a social movement has always been about the moral evolution of humanity resulting in a new freedom for, as Donald Watson declares, other animals and for ourselves.

AUDIO: The Philosophy of the "Animal Rights Movement" is Morally Obscene

5/29/2019

In 1989, in a famous debate televised by the BBC in Britain, philosopher Tom Regan, the author of The Case for Animal Rights, declared that the utilitarian tradition that is favoured within the "animal rights movement" is "morally bankrupt."

In this 2005 interview at the John Adams Institute, Regan is once again critical of the philosophy the animal movement follows, calling it "morally obscene."

Content Warning: Regan uses a real case of a brutal rape to illustrate his point.

AUDIO: Other Animals in Zoos Cannot be Who they are.

5/28/2019

Philosopher Tom Regan, the originator of abolitionist animal rights with his groundbreaking 1983 book, The Case for Animal Rights, says in a 2005 interview at the John Adams Institute, that the other animals who are imprisoned in zoos and sea parks, "cannot be who they are."

AUDIO: Animal Liberation and Human Liberation are Entangled Ideas

5/23/2019

In a 2005 interview, Tom Regan describes how animal liberation would also result in human liberation and, therefore, how he saw himself as a human liberator and not just simply an animal liberator.

This is the same radical vision as the founding members of the vegan social movement in the 1940s who argued that a vegan animal rights stance would not only free other animals from being used by human beings but its consequence was also an essential element in the moral evolution of humanity.