All Forms of Life Are Sacred.
By Chris Hedges
http://www.truthdig.com/images/made/images/reportuploads/hedgespig_798_399_284_99@2x.jpg
There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is.”
(Page 3)
“The idea that ... animals (are) of lesser moral value is dangerous,” he added. “It creates hierarchies that can also be used within human communities. Once you are sentient, or are subjectively aware, you have one moral right—the right not to be used as a resource. It does not mean you get treated equally for all purposes, but it does mean you are not treated as a slave or as a commodity. A slave is excluded from the moral community. A slave has no inherent value. A slave has only external value. A slave is a thing. This is what we have done to animals. Animals are property. Animal welfare laws cannot work because they are based on balancing the interests of humans and nonhumans. As long as animals are chattel property the animal owners win. As long as animals are chattel property the standard of animal welfare will always be tied to what we need to exploit them because we will generally protect animal interests only to the extent that we get an economic benefit from doing so. Animal welfare reform, for this reason, has usually worked to make animal exploitation more economically efficient. The reason why you have the Humane Slaughter Act of 1958, which requires that large animals be stunned before they are shackled and hoisted, is because if you have a 2,000-pound animal hanging upside down the cow hits workers. Workers are injured. You have carcass damage. If you look at the arguments put forward for chicken producers to switch to controlled atmosphere killing, essentially gassing, from the electrical stunning method, still widely used, those arguments—made by groups such as PETA and HSUS—are based on economic efficiency. Animal advocates are (in effect) arguing that if you gas the chickens it cuts down on carcass damage. This does not move animals out of the property paradigm. It further enmeshes them in it. It is only about efficient exploitation.”
................
“I worry that we have raised a generation that has not been taught to think morally,” Francione said. “Yes, my generation often thought about morality superficially. I do not want to romanticize the past. But events such as the Vietnam War forced us to ask what were we doing as a nation. We feared getting drafted, of course, but the war helped us see. It forced us to think about moral issues. But morality today has been reduced to a matter of mere opinion. This is dangerously wrong. The morality of unjustified and unjustifiable exploitation is not a matter of opinion; it is a matter of moral fact.”
“There is an intimate relationship between human rights and animal rights,” said Francione, who teaches a course on human rights and animal rights with Charlton at Rutgers University. “You cannot think about this in isolation. Sexism, racism and classism are about turning others into objects. How can we talk intelligently about nonviolence when we are putting the products of violence into our mouths? We are wearing the products of violence. This is about justice. It is about justice for nonhumans, for women, for Palestinians, for African-Americans and for prisoners. Pornography represents the commodification of women. When you use pornography there is no longer a person there. There is a body part that you fetishize. The person has become a thing. You are consuming that thing. This is not all that different from going to the store and buying chicken in a Styrofoam package. The chicken is not (seen as) an animal. It is a product in Styrofoam covered with cellophane. All commodification is connected, and it’s all wrong.”
This is about Justice:
& much more:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/all_forms_of_life_are_sacred_20150104
http://www.reducetarian.com/
= new reply since forum marked as read
just sayin' 
“Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive. The photographs show the dry, pounded surface of the moon in the foreground, dry as an old bone. Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming, membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising earth, the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos. If you could look long enough, you would see the swirling of the great drifts of white cloud, covering and uncovering the half-hidden masses of land. If you had been looking for a very long, geologic time, you could have seen the continents themselves in motion, drifting apart on their crustal plates, held afloat by the fire beneath. It has the organized, self-contained look of a live creature, full of information, marvelously skilled in handling the sun.”
http://themindunleashed.org/2014/05/earth-sentient-living-organism.html
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~few/lewisthomas/membrane.html
“the annual pulse of vegetation and land ice.”
http://theunboundedspirit.com/earth-a-sentient-living-organism/
I know animal rights activists who care deeply about the welfare of animals.
and here is a real trailblazer:
peace,
kp
What do you eat?
Air?
Sunlight?
This is why many vegans end up looking like a bunch of loons, all life is *NOT* "sacred."
Look up the Guinea Worm.
In fact, the term "sacred" is a leftover from ancient hysterical religions to say "
Fill in the blank) is better than (fill in the blank)."
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to the kitchen to make a sandwich.
A chicken sandwich.
in my garden do not have to be "ripped apart." I can harvest without destroying the plants. Plus, I treat my garden with respect and gratitude, simply because reverence for this universe is an integral part of my experience here.
But, you go ahead and continue this farcical argument, since you seem to be enjoying it so much.
Are you serious?!?
(self included) who make it a point to read your posts. Thank you for your many contributions to this forum.
The destructive processes that "civilization" employs, primarily in service of an economically advantaged few, seem to me to be enormously destructive to everything. For those of us who are capable of empathy, and self-awareness, it is not possible to witness this widespread harm and destruction without feeling the pain of it in ourselves, and we want to stop all the suffering and harm. I believe many of us are of one heart and mind in that we want the world to be as equal, just, and kind, as is possible.
Like you, I hope someday we can, without causing any significant harm or destruction in the process, create the opportunity for a kinder, safer, less painful, and more rewarding existence in this life for everyone and everything.
In our own ways, we speak with one voice on these matters of the heart, because we feel the same way. Thank you for your contributions here also, and thank you for letting me know that what I post sometimes has value for others.
Long live Ebola 
