Giraffe murdered, with proud at large murderer at the site. This image sums up the abject degeneracy of our civilization and utter uselessness and corruption of our so-called governments.

Giraffe murdered, with undisturbed murderer at the site of his crime. This image sums up the abject degeneracy of our civilization and the utter uselessness and corruption of the leaders who run our societies, to say nothing of the bankrupt media that does nothing to counteract these outrages. It is an indictment of a whole global system, and the pervasive, mostly unchallenged selfishness of our species.

To the editor:

I believe it was in one of your Greanville Posts that included a photo of a giraffe that some British asshole had just shot. He, his wife and their (young) children, were posing near and on it, all big smiles. I still haven’t gotten over that one. What kind of a degenerate would shoot a giraffe for crying out loud. What’s next on his list, the actual horse featured in Spielberg’s “War Horse?”

I’m glad you are publishing opinions on sport hunting aimed at discrediting it and the bottom-feeders who enjoy it.

A Swiftian solution to the wildlife plague

Here is a satirical little piece I wrote some time ago, since I’m most familiar with deer hunting in Texas. Please feel free to use it if you want. If you do, you might want to write a preface so that readers understand how wildlife management is handled in Texas and other states. Also, hunting magazines always use the euphemism ‘harvest’ rather than ‘kill.’ “Cull-small” is a wildlife management term for bucks with very small antlers. They should be readily shot (culled) to get them out of the gene pool, which would result in many more trophy bucks according to wildlife managers.

Here it is:

“Since wildlife management supposedly works so well with wildlife, its principles should be applied to the hunting cult itself in view of their declining numbers and cull-small ‘antlers’ [thinning hair, bad comb-overs (most deer hunters think of their hair as antlers)]. While many non-hunters and certainly all anti-hunting folks believe hunting accidents are causes for dancing in the street, there are simply not enough hunters accidently harvested every season to conserve and enhance hunter populations; i.e., increase their numbers and improve their trophy attributes like fuller heads of hair. In view of that disappointing deficiency, the commissioners that run the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department should develop and implement “hunter management” programs in which hunters harvest each other on hunt-the-hunter ranches that are surrounded by high-voltage fencing. Like the animals on killing ranches, we wouldn’t want these deviants to have a means of escape.

Hunters would use the same grossly unsportsmanlike hunting gadgets used for killing deer, but modified for human consumption. Electronically-timed and activated bait feeders would be filled with buttered popcorn or McDonald’s fries instead of corn. Hunters would lure other hunters out of hiding by pouring cheap perfume all over themselves and their surroundings. Drooling, sex-crazed hunters would come crashing out of the brush to “hunter calls” that imitate the moans of a porn star faking an orgasm. Life-size deer decoys would be replaced with life-size inflatable dolls with blond wigs. Rifle hunters would harvest rifle hunters, and bow hunters would shoot those little sticks into other bow hunters. An arrow stuck in his fat ass would certainly convince a shrieking hunter just how blatantly sadistic bow hunting is.

Just as wildlife management aims to produce lots of trophy bucks, hunter management could produce robust populations of trophy hunters with antlers like fight promoter Don King’s. Sadly, it would likely be abolished before any real progress could be made. Soccer moms and ladies who lunch would soon demand a stop to hunter management programs. The sight of jacked-up pickups speeding to and fro with dead trophy hunters piled up in their beds would prove almost as much of a distraction to those women as a bent-over construction worker’s butt cleavage. In addition to causing traffic mishaps, there would be a lot of bug-eyed precious little darlings late to school or karate lessons. Plus, no matter how rugged his face or how thick his perfectly-coiffed hair, the mounted head of an angry hunter would be as nauseating as mounted animal heads are to evolved men, women and children.”

Bill Buchanan_________

A (NOBLE) BRIEF FOR ANIMALS

By Paul Craig Roberts

The article below is reprinted from CounterPunch, January 12, 2011. Since the article was first published, Washington has added the slaughter of Libyans, Yemeni, and Syrians along with that of wolves to its accomplishments. An addendum describes the wicked new “sport” of “canned hunting.”

Hribal’s “Fear of the Animal Planet”
A Brief for Animals
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Jason Hribal in a book just off the CounterPunch/AK press, Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance, regales the reader with tales of animal rebellion and escape from captivity. In Hribal’s account, when big cats, elephants, and orcas injure or kill their trainers and keepers they are inflicting retribution for the abuse and exploitation that they suffer.

[pullquote] As is inevitable for all people who are both decent and intelligent, Dr Roberts is also an animal liberationist. He sees clearly through the abject, groundless prejudices that privilege humans at the expense of animals. Indeed, the battle against speciesism, the oldest and most brutal form of mass tyranny on record, will constitute the last revolution in the advance of human beings toward virtue. [/pullquote]

One of Hribal’s most convincing examples is Tatiana, a Siberian tiger in the San Francisco zoo. On December 25, 2007, Tatiana cleared the 12 foot high wall of her enclosure to decimate the teenagers who enjoyed themselves tormenting her. Tatiana ripped one of her tormenters to pieces, and, during her 20 minutes of freedom, she searched the zoo grounds for the other two, ignoring zoo visitors, park employees, and emergency responders. As Hribal puts it, “Tatiana was singular in her purpose.” She could have killed any number of people, but ignored them in pursuit of her tormentors.

Obviously, Tatiana could have escaped from her enclosure whenever she had wished, but had accepted her situation until torment ended her acceptance.

Most people, were they to read Hribal’s book, would have a hard time with the intent that he ascribes to animals. Like the executives of circuses, zoos, and Sea World, most humans ascribe captive animal attacks to unpredictable wild instinct, to accident, or to the animal being spooked by noise or the behavior of some third party. Hribal confronts this view head on. Orcas purposely drown their trainers, and elephants purposely kill their keepers. Captive animals seek escape.

Hribal presents captive animals as exploited and abused slaves serving the profits of their owners. Just as human slaves ran away, captive animals run away. Hribal tells the stories of many animal escapes.

He also tells the story of animal executions. Animals that do not accept their slave status, rebel and cease to perform have been executed in the most barbaric and cruel ways. One can hardly be surprised in these days of “the war on terror” at human cruelty to animals when humans are equally cruel to humans. The video–allegedly leaked by Bradley Manning who is confined by the US military in conditions worse than captive animals–of American soldiers intentionally murdering news reporters and civilians for the fun of it, demonstrates the evil and wickedness that finds its home only in humans.

In contrast, animals do not commit wicked and evil acts. Satan’s sphere belongs to humans. Predator animals kill to eat, but, unlike human hunters, they do not kill for fun.

Lions bring down a wildebeest or an antelope; they do not decimate the entire herd.

In contrast, I have heard hunters describe shooting 1,000 doves in one morning and 500 prairie dogs in one afternoon. It was all done for the fun of killing. Humans get pleasure from killing, but there is no evidence than animals do.

So, we are faced with a paradox: a wicked life form holds a non-wicked life form in captivity. Why did God give the wicked dominion over the non-wicked?

A number of Hribal’s examples of animal abuse date back far in time. Today some of the human species who interact with animals follow a more respectful approach. If animals, as Hribal says, respond to their abuse with intelligence, would they not also respond to affection and respect with intelligence?

The answer seems to be that animals do. We have the case of Christian the lion, the cub rescued from Harrod’s department store in London by two Englishmen who raised an African male lion in their London apartment and exercised him on the Church green.

When Christian became too large to continue living in the London flat, the Englishmen consulted an expert, transported Christian to Africa and released him. A year or so later, the room mates who had raised Christian missed him and returned to Africa to find him. They were warned by conventional wisdom that Christian was now wild and would be a danger to them if they encountered him.

As the videos available on youtube show, when the men found Christian the lion was overcome with joy and lavished affection on his friends. Christian was forming a pride, and the wild lionesses were content with the human company and to be petted by men. The video shows them all–Christian, lionesses, cubs, and men curled up together taking a nap.

There are a number of videos available online of people who have raised cougars (mountain lions) and bob cats and live with them in their homes. Perhaps the most extraordinary story is that of Casey Anderson, a wildlife naturalist who found two newborn grizzly cubs next to a dead mother bear and took them home to save.

One didn’t make it, but the other did. The photos on youtube document the interaction between humans and grizzly, considered by many the most dangerous and unpredictable of all wild animals, at least in North America. The 800-pound grizzly enjoys the family swimming pool, Thanksgiving dinner with the extended human family, serves as “best man” in the wedding of his human friend, and demonstrates genuine affection for the man who raised him. It is unclear whether the bear thinks he is human or that the humans are bears, but he, and they, are perfectly at ease with one another.

As this will strike many as unbelievable, see http://www.slideshare.net/Slyoldawg/family-raised-grizzly-bear-3399716
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/wild/videos/meet-casey-and-brutus/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1174259/Meet-Brutus-800lb-grizzly-bear-likes-eat-meals-dinner-table.html

Hribal’s book would have benefitted, in my opinion, from examining what appear to be successful human interactions with animals. Animals’ personalities differ, as do people’s personalities. Just as wives murder husbands, husbands murder wives, mothers murder children, and children murder mothers, animals can turn on their human companions. However, animals seldom turn on humans who treat them with respect and affection.

There are examples of humans interacting successfully with the great predator animals.
The story of Christian the lion is one, but there are others. The “lion man,” Kevin Richardson, did not raise many of the lions with whom he interacts, along with leopards and hyenas, all of whom accept him as one of them. Google Kevin Richardson and watch the extraordinary videos of Kevin’s acceptance by lions as a member of the pride.

Clearly, humans have very little understanding of other life forms and little respect for them. So that we can enjoy transportation in oversize vehicles that get 12 miles to the gallon, we destroy the Gulf of Mexico. What happens to the bird life and aquatic life is of no concern.

Some thoughtful people wonder if humans belong on planet earth. Humans are great destroyers of animal and plant life, water resources, and the soil itself. Some people think of humans as alien invaders of planet earth. If one looks at it in this way, it seems clear that humans have contributed nothing to the health of the planet or to its life forms.

The notion that the life of a human, regardless of the person’s intellect, accomplishment, and moral fiber, is superior to that of an elephant, tiger, lion, leopard, grizzly, orca, eagle, seal, or fox, is a form of hubris that keeps the human race confined in its ignorance.

Humans who fire-bomb civilian cities, drop nuclear bombs on civilian populations, act out ideological hatreds taught to them by sociopaths posing as pundits and journalists, and decimate their own kind out of total ignorance could be regarded as a life form that is inferior to wild animals.

Perhaps the human claim to moral superiority needs questioning. Without the presence of mankind, there would be no evil on the planet.

Many humans have difficulty with the idea that animals have rights. However, in the introduction to Hribal’s book, Jeffrey St. Clair reports that in Europe of the 13th-17th centuries animals had rights and were represented in court by attorneys. This suggests that those who are trying to stop the slaughter of wolves and to protect animal habitat are not modern-day crazies but are empathetic people operating from an old tradition.

Those trying to curtail the abuse of animals face a difficult task. As long as humanity has insufficient empathy for its own kind to stop the slaughter of Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis, and Palestinians, protection for animals is unlikely to move to the forefront.

Addendum: Recently, The Guardian brought to light a video on South Africa’s flourishing “canned hunting” business. Lion breeders make money first by selling tickets to tourists who enjoy holding and petting lion and tiger cubs. When the animals reach maturity, the right to “hunt” the tame animals is sold to wealthy white Europeans and Americans.

The “hunt” is conducted as follows. The tame lion, accustomed to humans, is put into a fenced enclosure. Then 3, 4 or 5 macho tough-guy white males shoot the unsuspecting lion and return home with their “trophy.” No doubt they describe to friends and associates and anyone who will listen their dangerous exploit.

This tells a lot about humans. One, they enjoy killing and will pay large sums of money for the pleasure of killing. Two, some business-minded people understand this and make money pandering to the human need to kill.

Canned hunting shows the human species in its worst light. There is no danger to the “hunter,” better described as a murderer. There is no empathy for other life forms. There is a need to brag and boast about never encountered dangers.

I have never seen the virtue in killing creatures that are more beautiful and magnificent than humans. However, in the 19th century, big game hunting required courage on the part of the human, which canned hunting does not require. Any coward can participate in canned hunting, and I suspect most of those who participate are cowards and morally defective as well.

In the 19th century there were no tame lions to shoot. The hunter walked the veldt with a guide. Each had double-barreled rifles, or four shots, assuming no misfire.

In the close quarters in which a lion might be encountered, if the hunter missed the charging lion, the guide could save the day, or the lion would prevail. There are actual accounts of lions being hit in vital areas, but completing the charge and killing the hunter before expiring itself.

Today, hunters have become risk-averse killers. They are too cowardly to hunt. They only want to kill. So they go on “canned hunts.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2013/jun/03/lions-canned-hunting-south-africa-video

Little wonder that US “soldiers” can sit in front of screens thousands of miles away from the country under attack and push a button to send a hellfire missile to obliterate some poor Afghan or Pakistani farmers’ house and his wife and children. Or maybe it was a local medical center, a school room or aid workers.

Little wonder that the few remaining moral humans who expose these crimes–Bradley Manning, Julian Assange–are targets for destruction by the United States government, the epitome of evil.

In America the desire to kill is so great that wildlife refuges have been turned into killing fields. Pam Martens reports that thanks to President Clinton and the National Rifle Association, 300 of the 556 national refuges have been opened to what managers of refuges describe as “enjoyable recreation experiences” by which is meant that hunters are permitted to kill alligators, bobcats, cougars, blue and green wing teal, wood ducks, hooded merganzers along with many other species. In other words, an American wildlife refuge is a place where hunters can kill the wildlife. http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/nra-turns-300-tax-funded-wildlife-refuges-killing-fields

About Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

The Meat Eaters

By JEFF MCMAHAN | SEPTEMBER 19, 2010

The New York Times / The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.

[print_link] VIEWED FROM A DISTANCE, the natural world often presents a vista of sublime, majestic placidity. Yet beneath the foliage and hidden from the distant eye, a vast, unceasing slaughter rages. Wherever there is animal life, predators are stalking, chasing, capturing, killing, and devouring their prey. Agonized suffering and violent death are ubiquitous and continuous. This hidden carnage provided one ground for the philosophical pessimism of Schopenhauer, who contended that “one simple test of the claim that the pleasure in the world outweighs the pain…is to compare the feelings of an animal that is devouring another with those of the animal being devoured.”

Theologians’ labors will not be over even if they are finally able to justify the ways of God to man. For God must answer to animals as well.

For God must answer to animals as well.

Isaiah was, of course, looking to the future rather than indulging in whimsical fantasies of doing a better job of Creation, and we should do the same. We should start by withdrawing our own participation in the mass orgy of preying and feeding upon the weak.

Our own form of predation is of course more refined than those of other meat-eaters, who must capture their prey and tear it apart as it struggles to escape. We instead employ professionals to breed our prey in captivity and prepare their bodies for us behind a veil of propriety, so that our sensibilities are spared the recognition that we too are predators, red in tooth if not in claw (though some of us, for reasons I have never understood, do go to the trouble to paint their vestigial claws a sanguinary hue). The reality behind the veil is, however, far worse than that in the natural world. Our factory farms, which supply most of the meat and eggs consumed in developed societies, inflict a lifetime of misery and torment on our prey, in contrast to the relatively brief agonies endured by the victims of predators in the wild. From the moral perspective, there is nothing that can plausibly be said in defense of this practice. To be entitled to regard ourselves as civilized, we must, like Isaiah’s morally reformed lion, eat straw like the ox, or at least the moral equivalent of straw.

If we could arrange the gradual extinction of carnivorous species, replacing them with new herbivorous ones, ought we to do it?

But ought we to go further? Suppose that we could arrange the gradual extinction of carnivorous species, replacing them with new herbivorous ones. Or suppose that we could intervene genetically, so that currently carnivorous species would gradually evolve into herbivorous ones, thereby fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy. If we could bring about the end of predation by one or the other of these means at little cost to ourselves, ought we to do it?

I concede, of course, that it would be unwise to attempt any such change given the current state of our scientific understanding. Our ignorance of the potential ramifications of our interventions in the natural world remains profound. Efforts to eliminate certain species and create new ones would have many unforeseeable and potentially catastrophic effects.

Perhaps one of the more benign scenarios is that action to reduce predation would create a Malthusian dystopia in the animal world, with higher birth rates among herbivores, overcrowding, and insufficient resources to sustain the larger populations. Instead of being killed quickly by predators, the members of species that once were prey would die slowly, painfully, and in greater numbers from starvation and disease.

Yet our relentless efforts to increase individual wealth and power are already causing massive, precipitate changes in the natural world. Many thousands of animal species either have been or are being driven to extinction as a side effect of our activities. Knowing this, we have thus far been largely unwilling even to moderate our rapacity to mitigate these effects. If, however, we were to become more amenable to exercising restraint, it is conceivable that we could do so in a selective manner, favoring the survival of some species over others. The question might then arise whether to modify our activities in ways that would favor the survival of herbivorous rather than carnivorous species.

At a minimum, we ought to be clear in advance about the values that should guide such choices if they ever arise, or if our scientific knowledge ever advances to a point at which we could seek to eliminate, alter, or replace certain species with a high degree of confidence in our predictions about the short- and long-term effects of our action. Rather than continuing to collide with the natural world with reckless indifference, we should prepare ourselves now to be able to act wisely and deliberately when the range of our choices eventually expands.

There is no reason to suppose that a species has special sanctity simply because it arose in the natural process of evolution.

The suggestion that we consider whether and how we might exercise control over the prospects of different animal species, perhaps eventually selecting some for extinction and others for survival in accordance with our moral values, will undoubtedly strike most people as an instance of potentially tragic hubris, presumptuousness on a cosmic scale. The accusation most likely to be heard is that we would be “playing God,” impiously usurping prerogatives that belong to the deity alone. This has been a familiar refrain in the many instances in which devotees of one religion or another have sought to obstruct attempts to mitigate human suffering by, for example, introducing new medicines or medical practices, permitting and even facilitating suicide, legalizing a constrained practice of euthanasia, and so on. So it would be surprising if this same claim were not brought into service in opposition to the reduction of suffering among animals as well. Yet there are at least two good replies to it.

One is that it singles out deliberate, morally-motivated action for special condemnation, while implicitly sanctioning morally neutral action that foreseeably has the same effects as long as those effects are not intended. One plays God, for example, if one administers a lethal injection to a patient at her own request in order to end her agony, but not if one gives her a largely ineffective analgesic only to mitigate the agony, though knowing that it will kill her as a side effect. But it is hard to believe that any self-respecting deity would be impressed by the distinction. If the first act encroaches on divine prerogatives, the second does as well.

The second response to the accusation of playing God is simple and decisive. It is that there is no deity whose prerogatives we might usurp. To the extent that these matters are up to anyone, they are up to us alone. Since it is too late to prevent human action from affecting the prospects for survival of many animal species, we ought to guide and control the effects of our action to the greatest extent we can in order to bring about the morally best, or least bad, outcomes that remain possible.

Another equally unpersuasive objection to the suggestion that we ought to eliminate carnivorism if we could do so without major ecological disruption is that this would be “against Nature.” This slogan also has a long history of deployment in crusades to ensure that human cultures remain primitive. And like the appeal to the sovereignty of a deity, it too presupposes an indefensible metaphysics. Nature is not a purposive agent, much less a wise one. There is no reason to suppose that a species has special sanctity simply because it arose in the natural process of evolution.

Many people believe that what happens among animals in the wild is not our responsibility, and indeed that what they do among themselves is none of our business. They have their own forms of life, quite different from our own, and we have no right to intrude upon them or to impose our anthropocentric values on them.

Even if we are not morallyrequired to prevent suffering among animals in the wild for which we are not responsible, we do have a moral reason to prevent it.

There is an element of truth in this view, which is that our moral reason to prevent harm for which we would not be responsible is weaker than our reason not to cause harm. Our primary duty with respect to animals is therefore to stop tormenting and killing them as a means of satisfying our desire to taste certain flavors or to decorate our bodies in certain ways. But if suffering is bad for animals when we cause it, it is also bad for them when other animals cause it. That suffering is bad for those who experience it is not a human prejudice; nor is an effort to prevent wild animals from suffering a moralistic attempt to police the behavior of other animals. Even if we are not morally required to prevent suffering among animals in the wild for which we are not responsible, we do have a moral reason to prevent it, just as we have a general moral reason to prevent suffering among human beings that is independent both of the cause of the suffering and of our relation to the victims. The main constraint on the permissibility of acting on our reason to prevent suffering is that our action should not cause bad effects that would be worse than those we could prevent.

The intrinsic value of individual species is thus quite distinct from the value of species diversity. It also seems to follow from Dworkin’s claims that the loss involved in the extinction of an existing species cannot be compensated for, either fully or perhaps even partially, by the coming-into-existence of a new species.

The basic issue, then, seems to be a conflict between values: prevention of suffering and preservation of animal species. It is relatively uncontroversial that suffering is intrinsically bad for those who experience it, even if occasionally it is also instrumentally good for them, as when it has the purifying, redemptive effects that Dostoyevsky’s characters so often crave. Nor is it controversial that the extinction of an animal species is normally instrumentally bad. It is bad for the individual members who die and bad for other individuals and species that depended on the existence of the species for their own well-being or survival. Yet the extinction of an animal species is not necessarily bad for its individual members. (To indulge in science fiction, suppose that a chemical might be introduced into their food supply that would induce sterility but also extend their longevity.) And the extinction of a carnivorous species could be instrumentally good for all those animals that would otherwise have been its prey. That simple fact is precisely what prompts the question whether it would be good if carnivorous species were to become extinct.

The conflict, therefore, must be between preventing suffering and respecting the alleged sacredness — or, as I would phrase it, the impersonal value — of carnivorous species. Again, the claim that suffering is bad for those who experience it and thus ought in general to be prevented when possible cannot be seriously doubted. Yet the idea that individual animal species have value in themselves is less obvious. What, after all, are species? According to Darwin, they “are merely artificial combinations made for convenience.” They are collections of individuals distinguished by biologists that shade into one another over time and sometimes blur together even among contemporaneous individuals, as in the case of ring species. There are no universally agreed criteria for their individuation. In practice, the most commonly invoked criterion is the capacity for interbreeding, yet this is well known to be imperfect and to entail intransitivities of classification when applied to ring species. Nor has it ever been satisfactorily explained why a special sort of value should inhere in a collection of individuals simply by virtue of their ability to produce fertile offspring. If it is good, as I think it is, that animal life should continue, then it is instrumentally good that some animals can breed with one another. But I can see no reason to suppose that donkeys, as a group, have a special impersonal value that mules lack.

Even if animal species did have impersonal value, it would not follow that they were irreplaceable. Since animals first appeared on earth, an indefinite number of species have become extinct while an indefinite number of new species have arisen. If the appearance of new species cannot make up for the extinction of others, and if the earth could not simultaneously sustain all the species that have ever existed, it seems that it would have been better if the earliest species had never become extinct, with the consequence that the later ones would never have existed. But few of us, with our high regard for our own species, are likely to embrace that implication.

Here, then, is where matters stand thus far. It would be good to prevent the vast suffering and countless violent deaths caused by predation. There is therefore one reason to think that it would be instrumentally good if predatory animal species were to become extinct and be replaced by new herbivorous species, provided that this could occur without ecological upheaval involving more harm than would be prevented by the end of predation. The claim that existing animal species are sacred or irreplaceable is subverted by the moral irrelevance of the criteria for individuating animal species. I am therefore inclined to embrace the heretical conclusion that we have reason to desire the extinction of all carnivorous species, and I await the usual fate of heretics when this article is opened to comment.

(Jeff McMahan’s essay is the subject of this week’s forum discussion among the humanists and scientists at On the Human, a project of the National Humanities Center.)

Jeff McMahan is professor of philosophy at Rutgers University and a visiting research collaborator at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He is the author of many works on ethics and political philosophy, including “The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life” and “Killing in War.”

Letters: The hunting mania and other degeneracies

A (NOBLE) BRIEF FOR ANIMALS

The Meat Eaters