Two dolphins were found dead following a rave at Connyland. The Swiss marine park had initially been accused of killing Shadow and Chelmers by allowing a deafening two-day rave to be held just a few yards from the dolphins’ pool. Campaigners had warned that the dolphins could be affected by holding the event so close to the pool, yet the authorities went ahead with the rave. Animal activists from ProWal and The Whale and Dolphin Protection Society recorded noise levels of over 100 decibels outside the park, well within earshot of the dolphins. According to Andreas Morlok from Prowal, this is comparable with that of a pneumatic drill on top volume. It has now been suggested that the dolphins may have been drugged and poisoned by ravers.

Please sign this petition: http://www.change.org/petitions/dolphins-die-after-rave-at-connyland

“We can ask if the interpretations of the characteristics, that are considered to make up the marking dividers within a human-animal hierarchy, are in reality a negation of the autonomous value of otherness in nonhuman animals.”

“We know that the single criterion [against which we measure anything nonhuman animals do] that serves as our standard, is the human parameter, i.e. the human model counts as the ideal, as the standard, for creating norms. So what happens if we put this standard of measurement into doubt?”

“Biology has already determined what the identity of nonhuman animals is, and even the Animal Rights movement has satisfied itself with placing the moral question somewhere out of reach by accepting the explanation of the identity of animals as something strictly biological.”

For more on this, see: http://simorgh.de/niceswine/three-snippets-moving-beyond-the-horizon-of-homocentrism

Cardinals Rally Squirrel

People in Saint Louis, Missouri, USA, are supposedly wearing real squirrel tails on their baseball hats to support their team, the Cardinals, or even to support charity alongside with that since the tails are marketed for that purpose too, ever since recently a squirrel ran over the play field and the idea came up for the crowd to have a or this squirrel as a mascot.

Obviously the hoard of fans are (like in many cases where animals are involved in such circumstances) unreasonable enough to not care about wildlife, nonhuman animal well being and nonhuman animal life. They seem to see squirrels as something like a “cute pest” which sounds oxymoronic, but that would explain why on one hand they like squirrels but on the other hand they like them dead too at the same time, so that they can stick the animals’ tails to their baseball hats?

A friend from STL says “On the Channel 2 news, Mandy Murphy, stressed : “… and those are *real* Squirrel tails !” While footage of a huge crowd at the stadium was being shown. As if that was something good. I’m not sure now if what Mandy Murphy said was accurate or not. I assumed they were fake before I heard her say that. I think the original Rally Squirrel was set free, if I heard correctly. I know that some people are eager to involve real dead Squirrels, see : Taxidermist Hops on Rally Squirrel Bandwagon.”

It’s more than a shame that Tony La Russa, the Cardinals manager, who is an avid animal welfare advocate, see his foundation: http://www.arf.net , is maybe something like a speciesist by not saying anything against the squirrel craze if it leads to using dead squirrel parts to promote his team and charity work connected with baseball.

* WHY was it possible to sneak dead animal parts into the craze if people were considerate about the actual animals? “When we heard the squirrel merchandise had sold out so quickly, we went to our backup supplier, ebay. Somebody was selling Rally Squirrel earrings, an RS Christmas ornament, and tee shirts. But one guy who is a taxidermist was selling a real stuffed squirrel on which he has mounted a little plastic red cap so that you can have your very own (stuffed) rally squirrel. Bidding already had reached $84.99 when we checked yesterday morning.” St. Louis gets squirrelly

* ALSO what does this suggest ? : ‘ [...] … customer’s request for “five-hundred squirrel tails”. Not full costumes, just the tails – apparently for use during the Cards’ upcoming home games against Milwaukee this week in the National League Championship Series. “We can help him out,” Brock quickly pointed out. “But it’s not an item that anybody manufactures. You can’t go out and find a squirrel tail company.” ” Johnnie Brock’s Sells Out Of Squirrel Costumes

A corporate advertisement that extols the company’s ethically motivated animal rights or animal protection measures taken, their record or policies – usually by a company known to rape and pillage nonhuman animal concerns as thoroughly as possible.

A: Have you seen those new campaign targets by the PETA, that show how easily “animal friendly” can become a swear word?

B: They are pure AR porn, man.

or rather

A: Have you seen PETAs recent campaign for animals?

B: Don’t fall for that! Check their policies on euthanasia.

ar-pornography animal rights pornography, considerate about nonhumanbeings interests washing

Ok maybe peta makes an animal rights porn site to try to ridiculously cover up that fact that they are animal rights porn.

You can’t call a lip service “help”, you can’t even call a an action “help”, when all the “help” you think you are giving is undone by the next steps you are taking. … And that even routinely in the case of peta and their active euthanasia of nonhuman animals. Also, their campaigns cater to an anti AR rethoric and only thus gain a lot of support from the people loyal to them, who helplessly “bark upon the wrong tree”.  If people don’t see that being for or against animal rights is not a matter of belonging to a certain group, but that it’s actually actions and opinions that matter, then those people can rightly be called ethically short sighted.

source: http://www.schnews.co.uk/archive/news726.php

REPORT FROM NEW ORLEANS ON THE BP OIL-SPILL DISASTER…

In response to America’s largest ever environmental disaster, Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, said, “I’d like my life back.” We’re sure he does, as would the eleven workers who died on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig when it exploded 40 miles off the Louisiana coast, in the Gulf of Mexico, on April 20th.

But you have to sympathise with Tony. The fact that BP failed to test the strength of the cement in the well, despite knowing that the casing was “the riskier of two options” and that it “might collapse under pressure” can’t be held against him. Even though the same disregard for safety killed 15 and injured 170 BP workers in the Texas Oil Refinery explosion of 2005.

BP has also had over 20 years since the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in Alaska to learn from its botched response to that disaster. Yes, despite Exxon having its name on the tanker, it was actually BP who disastrously failed to contain the toxic sludge that spewed into pristine wilderness. But that was then. BP has since spent billions of dollars on advertising telling us they are ‘Beyond Petroleum’ – so beyond it in fact they don’t care how much they lose.

BP has had over 8,000 minor and major recorded spills since 1990 alone. While all eyes have been on the current ecocide in the Gulf of Mexico, their Alaskan Pipeline burst in late May, spewing 100,000 gallons of oil into the environment. State inspectors say this occurred because “procedures weren’t properly implemented,” in other words – they didn’t give a damn.

The ho-hum lackadaisical attitude of Tony Hayward is indicative of BP’s disaster response in general. It has been shocking to see BP’s slow response to contain the oil. There is a complete lack of any oil containment technology, beyond stringing some booms (vinyl tubes) over the ocean that deflate and blow away. While the oil industry has poured billions of dollars into riskier deep-water drilling, it has not invested in responses to the leaks and disasters that have increased four fold in the last decade.

CRUDE JOKE

Maybe we’re overreacting. Let us again heed the soothing words of Tony, or Tiny Tony as he is now known in the US due to the following comment, “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.” That would be the estimated 47 million to 235 million gallons of toxic crude oil that has poured into the ocean over the last eight weeks. Not to mention the use in the ‘clean up’ of one million tonnes of the Corexit oil dispersant, a neuro toxin pesticide banned in the UK, arguably as harmful as the oil itself.

We need not worry our silly little heads about the ecological destruction either. Tiny Tony assures us, “the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest.” Come now Tony, it’s you that is being modest. This disaster is going to kill thousands of dolphins and sea turtles, hundreds of thousands of seabirds and billions of fish and shellfish.

The communities along the Louisiana coast, whose main work is fisheries, have lost their catch to a greater predator, and BP are playing on their vulnerability and dividing them by giving the ‘lucky’ few work cleaning up the toxic waste. BP has refused to provide masks and other safety equipment to those in these communities, and when this resulted in several cases of clean-up workers being hospitalised, Tony said it was probably due to food poisoning. Shrimp à la oil?

The Louisiana wetlands that nurture the wildlife and communities have already been decimated by the oil industry. The wetlands are a 4.2 million acre region where the Mississippi River flows into the Atlantic. They have formed over 7,500 years by the rivers flooding and annually depositing silt creating long fingers of land and barrier islands. It has taken just 75 years for them to have been almost completely destroyed. They are disappearing faster than any other part of the world, with an area the size of a football field lost every 38 minutes.

Oil and natural gas were discovered in Louisiana’s coastal areas in the early 1900s. This lead to long canals being cut through the wetlands to transport drilling equipment and oil. As well as being destructive in itself, this allowed more salt water to seep in to the wetlands, which killed the freshwater plants’ roots leading to further soil erosion. These wetlands act as a natural defence against hurricane storm surges. The further they are destroyed the more vulnerable coastal towns all the way up to New Orleans become. The storm surge from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 flooded 80% of the city, killing over 2,000 people.

As New Orleans and the coastal region still struggle to recover five years after Katrina they face a real kick in the teeth. Meteorological experts are predicting, “the most active season on record” for hurricanes, comparing ocean temperatures that contribute to hurricane formation to those in the summer of Katrina. Oil from the BP rig is predicted to continue to spew in to the gulf for months to come. A hurricane sweeping a surge of oil into the wetlands and towns of Louisiana would be apocalyptic for the region.

Tiny Tony put it best last year, saying BP’s “primary purpose was to generate profit for our share holders” and that “our primary purpose in life was not to save the world.” Really Tony, you don’t say.

Some different related links:

Caught in the oil :AP Photographer Charlie Riedel just filed the following images of seabirds caught in the oil slick on a beach on Louisiana’s East Grand Terre Island

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/caught_in_the_oil.html

BP is sadly just one of many players in the appalling offshore drilling picture, the latest oil-soaked pelicans among many victims.  ByJohn Sorenson

http://beta.themarknews.com/articles/1665-the-birds-and-the-bps

Animal Rights Activists Protest Oil Giant BP

http://www.examiner.com/x-46236-West-Palm-Beach-Animal-Rights-Examiner~y2010m5d28-Animal-Rights-Activists-Protest-Oil-Giant-BP

Counting the Carcasses by John Collins Rudolph

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/counting-the-carcasses/?partner=rss&emc=rss

WVBS for Gulf Coast Wildlife

http://animalrightscollective.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/wvbs-for-gulf-coast-wildlife/

No, homocentrism is quite a contrast to humanism. I am a radical vegan Animal Rights and Human Rights advocate. It’s too black and white to say: you have to “kill” plants to eat: cos you don’t have to “kill” plants, you can harvest their veggies. If you are against Animal Rights I can not and do not want to convince you of the idea. Just as little as I don’t want to convince a racist of Human Rights, honestly, you can’t do that. Leave everybody where they are, but talk to those you feel sympathetic to … to their ideas that is.

I came across an interesting site on ethics, and found an even more interesting point of view expressed on there regarding the question of arts and ethics in a work where the artist had people decide whether they’d want to blend a fish in mixer or not – let him/her alive, here is the highlight quotation:

“Defenders of Evaristti’s work may wish to by-pass such discussion by making the claim that there are no rules for art; that anything done in the name of art is to be allowed (free from the usual critique offered from an ethical position). It seems to me that this is an untenable position – surely there must be limits. As a colleague asked, “what if it was a human baby in the blender?”. Our revulsion to the thought of sacrificing a child for ‘art’ is not based on any belief that it would merely be illegal to do so. The matter goes deeper than this.”

READ FULL ARTICLE: The goldfish is dead, but is it art? by Simon Longstaff

See related info: Angry Vegan (Visual Opinions Workshop).