Maybe it’s just me, but it is coming.
Here’s just one small pre-frontal gust.
Live and Let Live is a documentary about our relationship with animals, the history of veganism and the ethical, environmental and health backgrounds that encourage people to live vegan.
It’s just a graphic, but it captures a big problem.
Growth in meat-eating is just one more reason a global culture that celebrates consumption is a disaster. At some point human values need to emphasize stewardship over self-gratification. But getting there is a big challenge.
(via)
The New York Times says no.
Well, we are used to seeing cruelty being inflicted by humans on other species in the name of culture.
But at least a NYT story and video featuring a Peruvian ritual that involves tying a condor to a bull was objectionable enough to be examined by the NYT Public Editor, Margaret Sullivan.
PETA called out the piece, arguing it should have come with a warning that it depicted graphic cruelty to animals. Sullivan went so far as to conclude that more space and voice should have been given to opponents of the practice, and those who deem it cruel (which is sound). But her discussion of whether the video was objectionable, and warranted a warning for graphic content, was interesting:
The video, intended to explain an important cultural practice in Peru, amounts to depicting animal abuse, wrote Amanda Schinke, a PETA spokeswoman.
Although we appreciate that the story touched briefly on conservationists’ opposition to this practice, we were surprised that it did not address the cruelty inherent in strapping a wild bird to a terrified bull and instead presented this cruel practice as a venerable tradition. It creates the impression that The Times endorses cruelty or insensitivity to animals. Would you please add a disclaimer that the story – especially the photo and video elements – depicts graphic cruelty to animals?
The Times, which is rapidly increasing its production of videos, brings the same standards to those videos that it does to its other journalism.
Does this video meet those standards? And is a disclaimer necessary here?
I asked Richard L. Berke, a senior editor who is directing video development, to respond.
“We do want to be sensitive to taste and possible offensiveness,” he said, “and in this case we were careful to edit out anything graphic.”
He noted that The Times often does use a disclaimer to alert viewers to disturbing or graphic content. Images of war and disaster, as in this video, which does include a disclaimer, are the most common examples.
In this case, however, “the video didn’t merit a disclaimer,” Mr. Berke said.
What’s interesting is that Berke seems to feel that the amount of blood or ripped flesh is what determines whether the images are graphic, rather than the entire concept of strapping a condor to a bull and then watching them try to rip into each other.
Would Berke consider a video of a pit bull ripping into a human which doesn’t show much injury or blood “graphic”? I would bet yes, because it is a human that is being harmed.
In any case, Sullivan agreed with Berke. Which goes to show that while human violence and cruelty involving other humans is considered “graphic” enough to warrant a warning, human cruelty to animals is still not objectionable enough to get the same treatment. Which is a telling insight into how we continue to view (nonhuman) animals and the human treatment of animals.
“The fact is that the blue planet is literally being destroyed by meat production.”
That’s a slightly more edified version of my blunt mantra: “Meat is killing the planet.” (It’s also killing lots of people, but even that doesn’t seem to get a meat-lover’s attention).
Think it’s hyperbole? Not really–though it is a very hard reality to accept:
A Harvard professor commits to using the natural world to find his way, and discovers something important:
After a year of this endeavor, something dawned on me: the way I viewed the world had palpably changed. The sun looked different, as did the stars. While the ocean didn’t accommodate my “human” need for meaning, a different sense emerged from the wave patterns that conveyed the presence of winds, shoals, coastlines and distant storms.
Is this akin to what people describe as spiritual awakenings, or perhaps the experience of improvising music with others, in which individual notes no longer take prominence and a larger meaning emerges in a wordless communication among the performers?
The longer I live the more I regret and fight our modern culture’s pressure to disconnect us from the natural world by inundating us with technology and media. When I was a kid entertainment involved going outside and finding something fun to do with the world at hand. My kids could spend all their days indoors if we let them.
I don’t think we even begin to understand what we are losing as we lose touch with the natural world. Not least of all we lose our understanding of how important it is for us to protect it.
It’s been a big week, with Blackfish opening last night in LA and NYC. And I guess it was getting enough notice as the open approached that the suits at SeaWorld, or corporate owner Blackstone, got twitchy. After mostly ignoring Blackfish for the past few months and I guess hoping it wouldn’t get much public notice, SeaWorld hired PR firm 42 West to lead a campaign to blast the film. I analyze how that’s going over at Outside:
But now, with Blackfish getting good buzz and opening tonight in New York and Los Angeles (as well as in many other US cities and abroad in coming weeks), the billion-dollar theme park hasbroken its virtual silence on the film and has belatedly started to fight. In an e-mail blast to film critics last weekend that called Blackfish “shamefully dishonest, deliberately misleading, and scientifically inaccurate” (you can read SeaWorld’s complaints, and the Blackfishresponses, here) and in interviews with ABC News and the New York Times, SeaWorld is doing what it can to try to inoculate audiences and the public against the critical portrayal of how SeaWorld over the years has managed Tilikum and its captive orca entertainment business.
The challenge for SeaWorld’s PR effort, even though its e-mail broadside quoted Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s well-known aphorism on opinion and fact—“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts”—is that the facts are not really on SeaWorld’s side.
SeaWorld’s attack on Blackfish has generated so much media that I can’t come close to keeping up with the Google alerts. But if you want a sense of what sort of critical reception Blackfish is receiving, Rotten Tomatoes has a compilation of reviews.
Comedian Doug Stanhope pulls no punches….at all. You’ll cringe at points, especially in his treatment of Dawn Brancheau, but boy does he nail it.
(h/t Jordan Waltz)
Sometimes people ask me why efforts to change or end the use of marine mammals in entertainment shows hasn’t gained more traction. I don’t really know how to answer, but I do know from other work that I have done that any grassroots movement occasionally needs to focus and act, especially when there is an opportunity to achieve something concrete.
I thought of this when I saw Phil Demers’ latest plea for help in the legal battle he and other whistleblowers are fighting against Marineland. Marineland has been suing former employees left and right, in an effort to drain their bank accounts and force them to retract their devastating allegations regarding the way Marineland treats its marine mammals.
Demers and his fellow whistleblowers desperately need help paying their legal bills, and if they can continue to mount a legal defense pressure will grow on Marineland because the cases will get to a discovery phase, which could force Marineland to cough up documents and information about its operations. And, as it happens, there is easy money out there, courtesy of the BiLLe Celeb Challenge–if the community of people who care about marine mammals in captivity can mobilize and take action.
Here’s Demers’ plea:
Urgent call to action re: Marineland.
Dearest Petitioners,
Marineland’s whistleblowers urgently need your help.
Les Stroud of the famed television show “Survivorman”, in conjunction with Orca Conservancy has generously sponsored us in the BiLLe Celeb Challenge.
We are currently in 2nd place with only a week to go and URGENTLY need your daily vote to ensure us the victory award of 25 000$ towards our legal defense.
Voting is easy and FREE!
Simply register at http://celebcharitychallenge.org/ and vote for LES STROUD daily.
Marineland’s animals are counting on us, and we’re counting on you.
We are also accepting monetary contributions at http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/legal-defense-fund/x/1197869 to help us continue in both our crucial legal battles and our Ontario captive animal advocacy.
Thank you for your continued support and please STAY TUNED!
Phil Demers.
That’s pretty simple. But it will be an interesting test of whether a community that clearly cares about this issue can rally and achieve something concrete and meaningful. If it can’t that will help answer the question of why more hasn’t been achieved.
Not exactly clear when this happened (and right whales should be up north now), but a diver off the coast of Virginia manages to cut some fishing gear free as an entangled right whale swims by.
It could have gone very badly wrong if the gear had entangled the diver, too, and the whale had sounded. So kudos to the diver.
For years, the Nonhuman Rights Project has been mapping the legal terrain, state by state, and animal by animal, to try and find the best case it can make on behalf of winning some legal rights for a nonhuman animal. According to the Boston Globe, the first case sometime later this year, will be on behalf of a chimpanzee:
In the next few months, an animal advocacy group called the Nonhuman Rights Project plans to file a case on behalf of its first animal client. It has already chosen the plaintiff, a captive chimp, on whose behalf it plans to file a writ of habeas corpus and ask a state court judge to grant the chimp’s liberty.
Their goal is to win animals a toehold in the world of legal rights—a strategy that is the culmination of more than two decades of writing and legal work by lawyer Steven Wise and an allied group of attorneys, scientists, and animal activists. They hope to have an animal declared a “person” in a court of law, breaking down a legal barrier between humans and other species that has stood for millennia.
Over the last century, animals have enjoyed a steady march in legal protections. Once treated no differently than inanimate objects, today they can’t be abandoned, beaten, or deprived of food, shelter, or veterinary care. Despite these protections, however, animals are still legally considered property. And for Wise and others, given what we now know about the biology and inner lives of animals, this is no longer a tenable distinction. It is time, they argue, to grant at least some species fundamental rights such as the right to life and freedom from captivity—and the surest way to accomplish that is for those animals to join human beings as legal persons.
How NHRP got there, and how the campaign will unfold, is also interesting:
Their choices were limited to a handful of species known to score high on practical autonomy, which included elephants, chimpanzees, cetaceans (dolphins, orcas, and other marine mammals), and African gray parrots. But there were other considerations, too. For instance, they’d have a stronger case with a charismatic animal being kept in what Wise calls a “dire” living situation, so that pretty much ruled out the parrots. In addition, they would need to have a wildlife sanctuary lined up to adopt their plaintiff if they prevailed. The lack of such sanctuaries for cetaceans ruled out dolphins and orcas. Likewise, while they were zeroing in on an elephant plaintiff this spring, neither of the two elephant sanctuaries in the United States had any more room. That left chimps.
To avoid tipping off the chimp’s owner, they won’t disclose the identity of their plaintiff until they are ready to go to court this fall. Armed with affidavits from scientists, including Jane Goodall, about chimps’ capacities, they will argue that their plaintiff deserves a right to liberty, and that its captivity is a violation of that right.
Win or lose, they plan to bring more habeas petitions on behalf of other animals, hoping to win enough small victories to lay a foundation of precedent for animal personhood. It’s unlikely to be a quick and easy fight, but Wise says he accepts that he’s in the animal-personhood game for the long haul. “This is a long-term, strategic, open-ended campaign,” he says.
The Globe does a nice job of looking at the legal and philosophical debate over Wise’s strategy. But at least Wise has a strategy, and any toehold he can win for animals will be a long overdue start to changing the exploitive and destructive relationship humans have with many nonhuman species.
The Earthist Chronicles 