We asked Per Aspera about ethics, veganism and its intersectional grounds

We asked Per Aspera from Chicago, IL, about their stance on veganism, and their thoughts on the “how to” of veganism’s intersectional condition

Per Aspera’s guitarist Nicholas Schmidt told us:

For starters, we strongly believe that it is gravely immoral to support and/or engage in the practice of murder, imprisonment, rape, and torture of living creatures. This applies not just to our fellow Homo sapiens sisters and brothers, but to all feeling beings.

The fundamental logic underpinning our decision to abstain from supporting the animal exploitation industry explicitly requires us to be opposed to all forms of systemic oppression that serve only the interest of the ruling elite. Hence our communal opposition to capitalism, fascism, patriarchy, racism, and environmental destruction are necessary components of responsible, honest, and consistent animal welfare activism.

With that said, engaging in any sort of radical political thought or action guarantees an intense amount of social baggage to encourage a placid and largely benign movement. When organizing in opposition to such mainstream and widespread power dynamics, it can be incredibly tempting to siphon off oneself or one’s small social clique from the rest of society. The antisocial message so common in punk and radical left circles serves to remove the possibility of organizing mass popular movements necessary to confront oppressive institutions across the whole of society. Furthermore, these tendencies offer no substantive vision and strategy for a society we are indeed capable of creating on this planet, as activism may be reduced to personal lifestyle decisions. Admittedly a somewhat ironic argument to hear from a DIY punk/metal band, we feel that the persistent drive to alienate left-wing struggles from working class culture resembles the same counter-productive prejudices that have plagued social justice movements for so long in regards to women, people of color, the natural world, and now with ever more increasing awareness, our fellow non-human companions.

The liberation of Mother Earth from the systemic diseases we have brought upon her is completely dependent on our ability to reach out, connect, and organize with all people who are experiencing the same oppressions, in whatever form, from our own backyards and neighborhoods, to the world at large. Ya dig?

Per Aspera – Shikata Ga Nai

We live with the lie that everything dies,
It’s only the spectres we perceive alive.
We personify existence in the natural world,
So we can mourn the proof of our own remorse.

I reject the notion that a desert of pain is the only universe that we have to explain.
As the memories of our families evaporate into space.

The hollow woman kicking blood,
Reminds us what waits in our blood.
As she cries for her slaughtered friends,
The vacuum of space hears no dead ends.

So I will cry when my friends die, and I won’t forget to live,
With passion, vigor, love, and fear of losing all that I hold dear.

Bandcamp: http://perasperapunk.bandcamp.com
Tumblr: http://perasperapunk.tumblr.com
FB: https://www.facebook.com/PerAsperaPunk
Contact: perasperapunk [at] gmail [dot] com

Normally religious beliefs are incompatible with Animal Rights, Earth Rights, and individual rights overall

Religions and the sacrifice of nonhuman animals , some links ( all accessed 21th Oct 2012 )

Animal slaughter in Islam is ritualisticNo human behavior is more hidden or misunderstood than offering sacrifice, both animal and humanAnimal Sacrifice … in the 21st century!Unethical Practice of ANIMAL SACRIFICEOver 100 million animals are slaughtered annually during Eid ul-Adha across the Islamic world within a 48 hour period

Buddhism banned animal sacrifice in the regions where it predominantly occured. However on Buddha’s birthday animal sacrifices take place, an gruesome mass killing carried out by various Hindu sects … http://www.buddhisma2z.com/content.php?id=470http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-Animal-Sacrifice-on-Buddhas-Birthday/407150862641376http://www.stopanimalsacrifice.org

“China: Buddhism and Taoism generally prohibit killing of animals; some animal offerings, such as fowl, pigs, goats, fish, or other livestock, are accepted in some Taoism sects and beliefs in Chinese folk religion. In Kaohsiung, animal sacrifices are banned in Taoist temples” says Wikipedia, this however is not totally true, there is a Buddhist temple http://wikimapia.org/142877/Tzu-Chi-Temple where a horrific form of animal sacrifice take place, as I mentioned in this blog post about the murder of pigs in the Sanhsia Tzushi Temple.

The majority of pagans today in the Western societies are supposedly vegetarian or vegan

Vegan Pagans http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vegan-Pagans , http://veganpagans.tribe.net , http://diannesylvan.typepad.com , Animal Rights: My Pagan Value

Overall I want to note: Most religions are incompatible with Animal Rights and Earth Rights, simply because they put a god or gods, a divine concept, on top of all existence in a hierarchical manner. Paganism and some religions stand inbetween, depending on the features of their god/gods. The best is to let your reason speak, and not any contractualist and homoncentrically driven collectivist selfishness.

To argue that our secular societies also kills nonhuman animals, on an industrial scale, does not take anything away from the moral blindness that religions display in regard to other than human life, individual life and justice based on ‘common sense’ reasoning; after all religions falsely claim they have something to do with “love” and “the creation”. Any society has to face the consequences of the factul atrocities it commits – be it in the name of progress or a religious belief held.

The incapacity of humans to relate to the world and the universe in a co-creative, mutually respectful and sensitive way, brings with it an undesired incapacity to deal with one another as humans in a peaceful way. You can’t have the one without the other, you can’t arbitrarily draw a line between all the factors that matter for a morally sound coexistence … . But try to convince people of that … the things that never seemed to matter morally so much, someone might think, how could these things matter now? Well, welcome to the 21 Century!

What if you don’t have the right to free speech?

Can you imagine being put in prison for your right to speak freely? If I lived right now somewhere else, I could be put into prison just for writing my thoughts on a blog. This is reality.

Omid-Reza Mir-Siafi has died as a consequence of the torture he endured in the Evin Prison in Iran. He was imprisoned for speaking his opinion, for free speech as a blogger.

Iranian Blogger Dies in Prison. By Robert Mackey (thelede.blogs.nytimes.com)

Arrest and Transfer of Two Political Prisoners to General Section of Evin Prison (www.hra-iran.org)

See also:

English News at The Human Rights Activits in Iran site (www.hra-iran.org)

Iran: Appel à une enquête internationale sur le meurtre par empoisonnement de prisonniers politiques.  À la suite de la mort suspecte d’un prisonnier politique (www.ncr-iran.org)

This ought not to have happened. But it happens, all the time.

In connection with this, see also:

The price paid for blogging Iran. By Clark Boyd (BBC)

Iran jails blogger for 14 years (BBC)