Animal-Abuse

Editor’s note: Animal abuse is a foundational pillar of the modern industrial food system. We stand against factory farming, vivisection, and other forms of animal testing and abuse. As an organization, however, we do not advocate veganism—and in fact, DGR co-founder Lierre Keith wrote a book called The Vegetarian Myth arguing that vegetarianism and veganism are not a political or ecological solution. However, there are vegans and vegetarians involved in Deep Green Resistance, and we overlap on many goals. This article is the story of the A nimal Liberation Front, a movement well worth learning from. ...

Author Paul Watson has no problem with critics calling him and his marine-life-defending colleagues pirates—it’s far better than helplessly standing by and doing nothing in the face of the violence against animals they have witnessed. This excerpt is from Death of a Whale, by Captain Paul Watson (GroundSwell Books, 2021). This web adaptation was produced by GroundSwell Books in partnership with Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. ...

We wouldn’t say “it” or “that” when referring to humans, so why would we for other sentient individuals? This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. By Debra Merskin, Carrie P. Freeman and Alicia Graef Happy has to be one of the most ironic names for an Asian elephant whose living conditions have prompted groundbreaking legal action on her behalf. Her advocates are certain that she is not happy at all and are seeking to free her from her current confines. ...

This article is the second part of a series that originally appeared on Climate and Capitalism. You can read the first part here. by Ian Angus “In the sixteenth and partly still in the seventeenth, the sudden expansion of trade and the creation of a new world market had an overwhelming influence on the defeat of the old mode of production and the rise of the capitalist mode.” — Karl Marx [1] Accounts of transatlantic trade in the 1500s typically focus on what Perry Anderson calls “the most spectacular single act in the primitive accumulation of European capital during the Renaissance” — the plunder of precious metals by Spanish invaders in South and Central America. [2] Year after year, well-guarded convoys carried gold and silver to Europe, simultaneously enriching Spain’s absolute monarchy and destabilizing Europe’s economy. ...

Derrick Jensen interviews activists each week. This week Derrick interviews Cayte Bosler. Cayte is an investigative environmental journalist and a graduate student at Columbia University. She researches solutions for protecting biodiversity and has worked with land-based communities and wildlife defenders throughout Latin America. Her interest is in chronicling community-led resistance to exploitation and ecological abuse to inspire resistance elsewhere. Today we talk about whales. [Whales] are some of the most elusive creatures on the planet. They spend 99% of their lives under water, far beyond any of our observational tools. Even with the sliver of what we do know, it’s so fascinating. ...

Trinity writes about The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the seven ‘Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty’ (SHAC 7) members who were originally charged with violating the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. Trinity La Fey is clear in her writing: we all need to act as one to stop the destruction. The Rules by Trinity La Fey Josh Harper, from Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty and one of the SHAC 7, once said, “People care about winning. They care about victory and that’s the most beautiful thing about the Huntington Life Sciences Campaign: we’re not here to tell you how to behave. What we’re here to convince you to do is to take the personal initiative to shut the fucking lab down.” ...

Nicolas Casaux outlines the history of humankind, the domestication of animals, and how easily we share disease—the real origins of coronavirus. By Nicolas Casaux There’s an apocryphal aphorism, often attributed to Rousseau, which states that “Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces”. Every day that passes is a new chance to realize this. The spread of pandemics such as that of the Wuhan coronavirus is one of the many threats to which globalized techno-industrial civilization inevitably exposes itself; one of the many potential disasters it generates and which threatens to destroy it. However, it is vital to consider the real origins of pandemics such as this. As an article recently published on the website of the famous American History Channel points out, they constitute a recent phenomenon on the scale of human history, peculiar to “civilization”: “Communicable diseases existed during humankind’s hunter-gatherer days, but the shift to agrarian life 10,000 years ago created communities that made epidemics more possible. Malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, influenza, smallpox and others first appeared during this period. The more civilized humans became, building cities and forging trade routes to connect with other cities, and waging wars with them, the more likely pandemics became.” ...

The following is excerpted from 30 Theses, a project by Jason Godesky of Anthropik. It discusses the origins of epidemic diseases, which are a relatively new phenomenon, not something we are fated to encounter. Alternative ways of life are possible. Originally posted at https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jason-godesky-thirty-theses. Thesis #21: On the Origin of Epidemic Disease By Jason Godesky The Paleolithic was not an era of perfect health. The Neanderthals, for instance, show signs of trauma consistent with those of rodeo cowboys — suggesting a certain rough and tumble life with big game. They were certainly a few diseases in circulation, and of course things happened. However, the claim so often made by progressivists that civilization has made us healthier could not be more incorrect. Civilization has most definitely made us much less healthy, and in innumerable ways. ...

This interview between Derrick Jensen and Christoper Ketcham examines the U.S. government’s taxpayer-funded wildlife slaughter program. Ketcham exposes Wildlife Service’s use of poisoned bait, aerial gunning, neck snares, leghold traps (banned in 80 countries), and cyanide traps to kill millions of wild animals each year in the United States. This conversation originally aired on the show Resistance Radio. Featured image: Wildlife Services employee or contractor holds a wolf killed by aerial gunning in Idaho. USDA photo. ...

From Zoos to Concentration Camps, A Culture of Cages From chattel slavery to modern immigrant concentration camps to zoos and aquariums to private prisons, we live in a culture of cages. Understanding this system, and the ideology behind it, is essential to fighting it. This statement on zoos and aquariums comes from the Deep Green Bush School. The Deep Green Bush School is a participatory, technology-free, evolutionary and revolutionary school in Aotearoa (New Zealand) designed to raise intelligent, healthy, mature, responsible young adults who can think for themselves, meet their needs, live a meaningful life and challenge the current system in order to bring about a healthy world. ...