I have things to say, believe me. But for now, until I get time to write some of my own thoughts, I will pass on material that deserves to be read.
Animals can't speak for themselves - it's up to us to do it
J.M. Coetzee
February 22, 2007
To any thinking person, it must be obvious that there is something badly wrong in relations between human beings and the animals that human beings rely on for food; and that in the past 100 or 150 years whatever is wrong has become wrong on a huge scale, as traditional animal husbandry has been turned into an industry using industrial methods of production.
There are many other ways in which our relations to animals are wrong (to name two: the fur trade, experimentation on animals in laboratories), but the food industry, which turns living animals into what it euphemistically calls animal products - animal products and animal byproducts - dwarfs all others in the number of individual animal lives it affects.
The vast majority of the public have an equivocal attitude to the industrial use of animals: they make use of the products of that industry, but are nevertheless a little sickened, a little queasy, when they think of what happens on factory farms and in abattoirs. Therefore they arrange their lives in such a way that they need be reminded of farms and abattoirs as little as possible, and do their best to ensure that their children are kept in the dark too, because as we all know children have tender hearts and are easily moved.
The transformation of animals into production units dates back to the late 19th century, and since that time we have already had one warning on the grandest scale that there is something deeply, cosmically wrong with regarding and treating fellow beings as mere units of any kind. This warning came so loud and clear that one would have thought it impossible to ignore. It came when in the mid-20th century a group of powerful and bloody-minded men in Germany hit on the idea of adapting the methods of the industrial stockyard, as pioneered and perfected in Chicago, to the slaughter - or what they preferred to call the processing - of human beings.
Of course we cried out in horror when we found out what they had been up to. We cried: What a terrible crime, to treat human beings like cattle! If we had only known beforehand! But our cry should more accurately have been: What a terrible crime, to treat human beings like units in an industrial process! And that cry should have had a postscript: What a terrible crime, come to think of it - a crime against nature - to treat any living being like a unit in an industrial process!
It would be a mistake to idealise traditional animal husbandry as the standard by which the animal-products industry falls short: traditional animal husbandry is brutal enough, just on a smaller scale. A better standard by which to judge both practices would be the simple standard of humanity: is this truly the best that human beings are capable of?
The efforts of the animal-rights movement, the broad movement that situates itself on the spectrum somewhere between the meliorism of the animal welfare bodies and the radicalism of animal liberation, are rightly directed at decent people who both know and don't know that there is something going on that stinks to high heaven - people who will say: "Yes, it's terrible what lives brood sows live, it's terrible what lives veal calves live", but who will then add, with a helpless shrug of the shoulders - "What can I do about it?"
The task of the movement is to offer such people imaginative but practical options for what to do next after they have been revolted by a glimpse of the lives factory animals live and the deaths they die. People need to see that there are alternatives to supporting the animal-products industry, that these alternatives need not involve any sacrifice in health or nutrition, that there is no reason why these alternatives need be costly, and furthermore that what are commonly called sacrifices are not sacrifices at all - that the only sacrifices in the whole picture, in fact, are being made by non-human animals.
In this respect, children provide the brightest hope. Children have tender hearts, that is to say, children have hearts that have not yet been hardened by years of cruel and unnatural battering. Given half a chance, children see through the lies with which advertisers bombard them (the happy chooks that are transformed painlessly into succulent nuggets, the smiling moo-cow that donates to us the bounty of her milk). It takes but one glance into a slaughterhouse to turn a child into a lifelong vegetarian.
Factory farming is a new phenomenon, very new in the history of animal husbandry. The good news is that after a couple of decades of what the businessmen behind it must have regarded as free and unlimited expansion, the industry has been forced onto the defensive.
The activities of animals-rights organisations have shifted the onus onto the industry to justify its practices; and because its practices are indefensible and unjustifiable except on the most narrowly economistic grounds ("Do you want to pay $1.50 more for a dozen eggs?") the industry is battening down its hatches and hoping the storm will blow itself out. Insofar as there was a public relations war, the industry has already lost that war.
A final note. The campaign of human beings for animal rights is curious in one respect: that the creatures on whose behalf human beings are acting are unaware of what their benefactors are up to and, if they succeed, are unlikely to thank them. There is even a sense in which animals do not know what is wrong.
They do certainly not know what is wrong in the same way that we human beings know what is wrong. Thus, however close the well-meaning benefactor may feel to his or her fellow animals, the animal-rights campaign remains a human project from beginning to end.
J. M. Coetzee was the 2003 Nobel Prize laureate for literature. This is an edited extract of a speech to be delivered in Sydney tonight.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Monday, February 19, 2007
The Kindness of Strangers
http://youtube.com/watch?v=PpzkHhgcZG4
The kindness of strangers
February 19, 2007
In a cold, hard world some people are reaching out in unexpected ways. Katherine Kizilos reports.
The story goes that writer and peace activist Anne Herbert wrote the phrase "practise random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty" on a paper napkin while in a San Francisco restaurant in 1982.
Eleven years later, Chuck Wall, a professor at Bakersfield College, California, challenged his students to perform "a random act of senseless kindness" after hearing a radio report describing "another random act of senseless violence". Somewhere between these two events, the idea of practising a spontaneous act of kindness entered the popular culture.
Generally speaking, the spontaneously kind do not have a religious or political agenda. Their purported aim is to make other people happier. These people wilfully ignore the adage that no good deed goes unpunished.
Consider the case of Sydney's Juan Mann (pronounce one man and not his real name) who achieved international recognition after holding up a sign with the words "Free Hugs" in Pitt Street in 2004. Mann's efforts were noticed by the lead singer of the band Sick Puppies, Shimon Moore, who had a job wearing a sandwich board in Pitt Street and who began videotaping Mann. The result, backed by a Sick Puppies song All the Same, was posted on YouTube in September last year, inspiring free-hug copycats in places as diverse as Taipei, Chicago, Geneva and Shanghai. The clip http://youtube.com/watch?v=PpzkHhgcZG4 is one of the most watched videos on YouTube and can also be seen on Video Hits.
In October last year, Mann told Oprah Winfrey what happened when he first held up his sign. "The first person who stopped, tapped me on the shoulder and told me how her dog had just died that morning. How that morning had been the one year anniversary of her only daughter dying in a car accident. How what she needed now, when she felt most alone in the world, was a hug. I got down on one knee, we put our arms around each other and when we parted, she was smiling."
The video clip also incorporates a satisfying tussle with bureaucracy. Free hugs are banned after Mann was asked to pay $25 million in public liability insurance for holding up his sign. He starts a petition and collects 10,000 signatures. Free hugs are reinstated. A policeman accepts a hug as the song and video ends. The success of the clip has inspired Mann, who is 24, to set up his own charity with Shimon Moore. Free Help aims to cut out the middleman by allowing dedicated people to help those in need directly.
Mann's quiet act of subversion takes place in the business district, where most transactions are commercial. Its success coincides with the idea that the conscious practice of kindness might be a powerful tool in business, a notion explored in a number of recently released books. Their message is that being kind can contribute to your wellbeing - by boosting immunity and improving mental health, for instance - and that it can also help you make money.
In The Power of Nice, How to Conquer the Business World with Kindness (Allen & Unwin), Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval recognise that "nice has an image problem. Nice gets no respect. To be labelled 'nice' is to be considered Pollyanna and passive, wimpy and Milquestoast." The authors are the power behind the Kaplan Thaler Group, the fastestgrowing advertising agency in the US. They argue that niceness is not the same as naivety. On the contrary, "being very nice and placing other people's needs on the same level as your own will get you everything you want".
Thaler and Koval appear to be aware of the paradox in their argument. Again and again they emphasise that the kind may not receive immediate recompense and do not look for it - and yet their book teems with anecdotes about how tangible benefits have flowed to the kind. (A house in New Jersey was found for a woman who attended a party when she wasn't in the mood; a circle of friends in Paris materialised for a woman after helping a stranger carry shopping up five fl ights of stairs.)
In The No Asshole Rule (Sphere), Robert Sutton, a professor of management science at Stanford University, examines the challenge of kindness from the opposite perspective. He puts the case that ruthless and insensitive managers destroy morale and damage individuals in the workplace, and suggests that a "no asshole rule" be applied to screen them out. Happy, collaborative workplaces are more productive, he argues, and managers who work in them are more likely to be told the truth. But his main point is that it is more pleasant to be surrounded by colleagues who are respectful and treat us well. Life is too short to be shared with assholes (a word Sutton insists upon, explaining that bully or jerk do not convey the same degree of awfulness).
And in The Kindness Revolution (Amacom) Ed Horrell argues that profits will flow from exemplary customer service, something that can only be achieved when employers show kindness to their staff.
There is even a world movement dedicated to kindness. It was officially launched in Singapore in 2000 - the Australian Kindness Movement was one of the founding members. The local branch was begun in 1994 by Sydney engineer Brian Willis, who says he was inspired to start it after talking to teenagers at the checkout of his local supermarket. He was dismayed to discover that these young people believed their parents did not have the time to talk to them.
For him, the idea of promoting kindness was initially conceived as a way of helping children. The Australian Kindness Movement website contains many suggestions of everyday kindnesses that can be practised by anyone. They range from random acts of kindness to common courtesy. Here are some examples: "Drop a few coins in an area where children play, where they can easily fi nd them. Do you remember how excited you felt, when as a child you found a coin lying on the ground?"; "Spend a few minutes going through your old photos, and send whatever you can part with to the people in the photos"; "When phoning someone, ask 'Have I phoned at the wrong time?'. If they are busy, ask when you can call back."
But Mr Willis says he has become disillusioned with the kindness movement over the years. He says people typically joined up with great enthusiasm, believing they could change the world, but failed to keep up their commitment. These days the task of maintaining the movement has mostly been left up to him, and he puts most of his efforts into keeping the website up to date.
Asked if kindness was an impulse best suited to individuals acting alone rather than to an organised movement, Mr Willis agreed this was certainly a possibility. The effort of thinking and acting with kindness for more than 12 years meant that he was less judgemental than he used to be, he said, and more able to accept life as it was.
This would not be a surprise to the Dalai Lama, who said: "We find that not only do altruistic actions bring about happiness but they also lessen our experience of suffering. Here I am not suggesting that the individual whose actions are motivated by the wish to bring others happiness necessarily meets with less misfortune than the one who does not. Sickness, old age, mishaps of one sort or another are the same for us all. But the sufferings which undermine our internal peace - anxiety, doubt, disappointment - these things are definitely less."
Make a difference
- Smile when you make eye contact with a stranger.
- Mow your neighbour's nature strip. - Introduce yourself to a new neighbour. - Donate blood.
- Tell someone you love them.
- Give old clothes and toys to charities.
- Send a card to a friend or relative you haven't seen recently.
- Go to the assistance of anyone who appears to be in trouble. The person who needs a coin for the parking meter; someone who looks lost; someone who is carrying a heavy parcel and so on.
- If you know someone who is having a hard time fi nancially, put $20 in an envelope, disguise your writing, and post it to them.
- If the person behind you in the shopping queue only has a few items, ask them if they want to go ahead.
- Take flowers to a hospital ward and give them to someone who hasn't had any visitors.
- If you see someone with a pram about to ascend or descend stairs, offer to help carry the pram.
- Visit an aged care home and become a voluntary companion for a lonely patient.
- Offer to babysit for someone.
- Stop to take a lost animal to an animal shelter. Source: Australian Kindness Movement
LINKS
kindness.com.au
freehugscampaign.org
The kindness of strangers
February 19, 2007
In a cold, hard world some people are reaching out in unexpected ways. Katherine Kizilos reports.
The story goes that writer and peace activist Anne Herbert wrote the phrase "practise random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty" on a paper napkin while in a San Francisco restaurant in 1982.
Eleven years later, Chuck Wall, a professor at Bakersfield College, California, challenged his students to perform "a random act of senseless kindness" after hearing a radio report describing "another random act of senseless violence". Somewhere between these two events, the idea of practising a spontaneous act of kindness entered the popular culture.
Generally speaking, the spontaneously kind do not have a religious or political agenda. Their purported aim is to make other people happier. These people wilfully ignore the adage that no good deed goes unpunished.
Consider the case of Sydney's Juan Mann (pronounce one man and not his real name) who achieved international recognition after holding up a sign with the words "Free Hugs" in Pitt Street in 2004. Mann's efforts were noticed by the lead singer of the band Sick Puppies, Shimon Moore, who had a job wearing a sandwich board in Pitt Street and who began videotaping Mann. The result, backed by a Sick Puppies song All the Same, was posted on YouTube in September last year, inspiring free-hug copycats in places as diverse as Taipei, Chicago, Geneva and Shanghai. The clip http://youtube.com/watch?v=PpzkHhgcZG4 is one of the most watched videos on YouTube and can also be seen on Video Hits.
In October last year, Mann told Oprah Winfrey what happened when he first held up his sign. "The first person who stopped, tapped me on the shoulder and told me how her dog had just died that morning. How that morning had been the one year anniversary of her only daughter dying in a car accident. How what she needed now, when she felt most alone in the world, was a hug. I got down on one knee, we put our arms around each other and when we parted, she was smiling."
The video clip also incorporates a satisfying tussle with bureaucracy. Free hugs are banned after Mann was asked to pay $25 million in public liability insurance for holding up his sign. He starts a petition and collects 10,000 signatures. Free hugs are reinstated. A policeman accepts a hug as the song and video ends. The success of the clip has inspired Mann, who is 24, to set up his own charity with Shimon Moore. Free Help aims to cut out the middleman by allowing dedicated people to help those in need directly.
Mann's quiet act of subversion takes place in the business district, where most transactions are commercial. Its success coincides with the idea that the conscious practice of kindness might be a powerful tool in business, a notion explored in a number of recently released books. Their message is that being kind can contribute to your wellbeing - by boosting immunity and improving mental health, for instance - and that it can also help you make money.
In The Power of Nice, How to Conquer the Business World with Kindness (Allen & Unwin), Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval recognise that "nice has an image problem. Nice gets no respect. To be labelled 'nice' is to be considered Pollyanna and passive, wimpy and Milquestoast." The authors are the power behind the Kaplan Thaler Group, the fastestgrowing advertising agency in the US. They argue that niceness is not the same as naivety. On the contrary, "being very nice and placing other people's needs on the same level as your own will get you everything you want".
Thaler and Koval appear to be aware of the paradox in their argument. Again and again they emphasise that the kind may not receive immediate recompense and do not look for it - and yet their book teems with anecdotes about how tangible benefits have flowed to the kind. (A house in New Jersey was found for a woman who attended a party when she wasn't in the mood; a circle of friends in Paris materialised for a woman after helping a stranger carry shopping up five fl ights of stairs.)
In The No Asshole Rule (Sphere), Robert Sutton, a professor of management science at Stanford University, examines the challenge of kindness from the opposite perspective. He puts the case that ruthless and insensitive managers destroy morale and damage individuals in the workplace, and suggests that a "no asshole rule" be applied to screen them out. Happy, collaborative workplaces are more productive, he argues, and managers who work in them are more likely to be told the truth. But his main point is that it is more pleasant to be surrounded by colleagues who are respectful and treat us well. Life is too short to be shared with assholes (a word Sutton insists upon, explaining that bully or jerk do not convey the same degree of awfulness).
And in The Kindness Revolution (Amacom) Ed Horrell argues that profits will flow from exemplary customer service, something that can only be achieved when employers show kindness to their staff.
There is even a world movement dedicated to kindness. It was officially launched in Singapore in 2000 - the Australian Kindness Movement was one of the founding members. The local branch was begun in 1994 by Sydney engineer Brian Willis, who says he was inspired to start it after talking to teenagers at the checkout of his local supermarket. He was dismayed to discover that these young people believed their parents did not have the time to talk to them.
For him, the idea of promoting kindness was initially conceived as a way of helping children. The Australian Kindness Movement website contains many suggestions of everyday kindnesses that can be practised by anyone. They range from random acts of kindness to common courtesy. Here are some examples: "Drop a few coins in an area where children play, where they can easily fi nd them. Do you remember how excited you felt, when as a child you found a coin lying on the ground?"; "Spend a few minutes going through your old photos, and send whatever you can part with to the people in the photos"; "When phoning someone, ask 'Have I phoned at the wrong time?'. If they are busy, ask when you can call back."
But Mr Willis says he has become disillusioned with the kindness movement over the years. He says people typically joined up with great enthusiasm, believing they could change the world, but failed to keep up their commitment. These days the task of maintaining the movement has mostly been left up to him, and he puts most of his efforts into keeping the website up to date.
Asked if kindness was an impulse best suited to individuals acting alone rather than to an organised movement, Mr Willis agreed this was certainly a possibility. The effort of thinking and acting with kindness for more than 12 years meant that he was less judgemental than he used to be, he said, and more able to accept life as it was.
This would not be a surprise to the Dalai Lama, who said: "We find that not only do altruistic actions bring about happiness but they also lessen our experience of suffering. Here I am not suggesting that the individual whose actions are motivated by the wish to bring others happiness necessarily meets with less misfortune than the one who does not. Sickness, old age, mishaps of one sort or another are the same for us all. But the sufferings which undermine our internal peace - anxiety, doubt, disappointment - these things are definitely less."
Make a difference
- Smile when you make eye contact with a stranger.
- Mow your neighbour's nature strip. - Introduce yourself to a new neighbour. - Donate blood.
- Tell someone you love them.
- Give old clothes and toys to charities.
- Send a card to a friend or relative you haven't seen recently.
- Go to the assistance of anyone who appears to be in trouble. The person who needs a coin for the parking meter; someone who looks lost; someone who is carrying a heavy parcel and so on.
- If you know someone who is having a hard time fi nancially, put $20 in an envelope, disguise your writing, and post it to them.
- If the person behind you in the shopping queue only has a few items, ask them if they want to go ahead.
- Take flowers to a hospital ward and give them to someone who hasn't had any visitors.
- If you see someone with a pram about to ascend or descend stairs, offer to help carry the pram.
- Visit an aged care home and become a voluntary companion for a lonely patient.
- Offer to babysit for someone.
- Stop to take a lost animal to an animal shelter. Source: Australian Kindness Movement
LINKS
kindness.com.au
freehugscampaign.org
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Hypocrites breaking our law at every turn
PHILIP Ruddock is a hypocrite when parading his Amnesty International membership. He pretends to give a toss for the organisation and the principles for which it stands: the rule of law, freedom from arbitrary arrest and punishment, freedom from torture, opposition to the perversion of accepted civilised notions of justice and the obligations he owes to those notionally under his protection. Instead, he has publicly and shamefully betrayed all of these precepts.
He is a liar when he pretends concern for David Hicks' fate. His protestations about Australia's efforts to secure a speedy trial for Hicks cross the line of decency when we consider that Hicks is, after five years, not charged with any offence. Nor is he subject to the jurisdiction of any lawfully constituted court of justice. We know he has not committed any offences against Australian law. Our A-G says so. We also know that he does not stand charged with any known crime against US law. So how is it that the Attorney-General has not demanded the return of Hicks to the country that owes him protection as a matter of law?
It is because the A-G has publicly prostituted his duties to the law — and to those he owes a duty of protection — in the service of his political masters in the government he serves.
I say this without cover of privilege and challenge him to sue for defamation and take the risk of the facts emerging in any litigation. Cabinet solidarity is one thing; his mealy-mouthed public utterances on the subject are another. He should at least have the decency to stay silent rather than seek to defend and advance the indefensible.
He is, when last I looked, the Attorney-General. That means he is the first law officer of the Commonwealth. It is his primary obligation as Attorney-General — not as a politician, which he discharges in the hurly-burly of politics as an ordinary MP — to transcend the lies and evasions of politicians intent on holding on to power, and to discharge his duties to the law and the constitution: to protect and uphold the rights and liberties of, as well as enforce duties by, citizens of this country.
His utterances about David Hicks are damp-squib lies and deceptions, as are those of his political masters John Howard and of Australia's-face-to-the world, Alexander Downer.
When I became a citizen of Australia, I believed that as part of my pledging allegiance I also acquired the protection of my country at home and abroad. I can no longer believe in the latter while people like Ruddock, Howard and Downer are custodians of such protections. Nor can other Australians. Messrs Ruddock, Howard and Downer's pronouncements about seeking to have Hicks charged early in the new year (in front of commissions that have not yet been lawfully set up!) seem to me to be a desperate cover-up of their government's, fundamental dereliction of duty. Instead of demanding Hicks' return, they have made themselves complicit in procuring an illegal process to occur as soon as possible.
Rather than facing up to their duties to protect the fundamental rights of those subject to their theoretical protection, Ruddock , Howard and Downer are deliberately compounding the illegal actions of the American Administration by counselling and procuring an illegal process. This is a crime under our law. Instead of confessing to a wrong and doing the decent thing by trying to set it right, they are pushing ahead with "churching the whore" after the abortion. They urge the Americans to create a facade of legality for what is seen by all honest jurists as a gross violation of national and international law.
Shame on you Philip Ruddock. I say the same to your superiors and accomplices, but I pick you out because you are supposed to be the enforcing arm of law and justice in Australia, instead of the aider and abettor of the disregard of national and international law and justice.
In his latest defence of the indefensible ( 7.30 Report, February 6), Ruddock likened the serving of "draft charges" on David Hicks to being charged in Australia pending committal proceedings. He is lying. Hicks has not been charged. This can only happen with the approval of a "convening authority", which does not yet exist. Moreover, he is deliberately lying when comparing the process to what might happen in Australia because he knows that a person charged here must be brought before a court as soon as practicable — within 24 hours — or have access to habeas corpus.
As a lawyer, he knows that if the matter had been placed before an Australian court, it would be struck out as an abuse of process for a number of reasons: one of the "draft" charges is retrospective and would be struck out. The charge of attempted murder would be thrown out because, as any university law student would know, training is not an attempt to do it. You actually have to be "on the job" in trying to kill. This is so without even addressing the issues of hearsay or the use of coerced evidence, which raise other fundamental objections to what is proposed.
I used to say Ruddock bore an uncanny resemblance and presentation to an undertaker. I no longer do so because undertakers are decent, honest people doing a decent and honest job and should not be demeaned by a comparison to the indecency perpetrated by Ruddock as the frontrunner for his masters.
Shame on you all. Bring David Hicks home NOW.
Robert Richter, QC, is a Melbourne barrister.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
These guys are total legends. I completely support their brave efforts.
Andrew Darby, Hobart
February 14, 2007
Tensions ease in anti-whaling fight
Sea Shepherd ships the Robert Hunter (top left) and Farley Mowat (foreground) protest against Japanese whaler Kaiko Maru.
Photo: AP/Sea Shepherd
THE fate of Australasian humpback whales has shifted into the spotlight after a peace brokered with Sea Shepherd activists following their violent confrontation with Japanese whalers.
Tensions cooled in the Antarctic yesterday when Sea Shepherd president Paul Watson withdrew a threat to ram factory ship Nisshin Maru. New Zealand Conservation Minister Chris Carter offered an exit to the activists, and Captain Watson said afterwards he was convinced regional governments would toughen their action against Japan's humpback whale hunt.
Japanese whalers plan to begin harpooning humpbacks that migrate along the Australian and New Zealand coasts when the animals return to the Antarctic to feed next December.
They intend to kill up to 50 humpbacks and 50 fin whales, both listed as endangered species, and up to 935 minkes, under the "scientific research" program known as JARPA II.
"These endangered humpbacks must be our line in the sand, the place where we say, enough is enough," Captain Watson said. "We simply cannot allow these whales to be ruthlessly slaughtered."
Australia has taken part in a series of diplomatic protests against JARPA II, and said some humpbacks targeted were likely to be part of small, critically endangered populations.
"We do not believe that you can undertake whaling humanely," federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull told ABC radio. "We do not believe whaling is required in the modern world."
The Sea Shepherd ships again lost contact with the whaling fleet after a confrontation between them and the whale-spotting vessel Kaiko Maru. The Kaiko Maru and the activists' fast ship, Robert Hunter, were damaged in a collision on Monday. In an earlier attack, Sea Shepherd tried and failed to disable the factory ship Nisshin Maru.
Running low on fuel and facing arrest over the activists' de-registered "pirate" vessels, Captain Watson was debating whether Sea Shepherd had anything to lose by sacrificing a ship in ramming the Nisshin Maru, if it were found. But in a phone conversation between him and Mr Carter, the NZ Conservation Minister offered New Zealand's help if Sea Shepherd left the Antarctic. "I have asked (Captain Watson) to begin the long trip home, and explained that if his ships require emergency assistance in getting home, then New Zealand will assist him if we are able to, through our search and rescue facilities," Mr Carter said.
He said the Sea Shepherd's boats would have to go through admission procedures in New Zealand ports, like anyone else, but he is believed to have pointed to a rule allowing for the admission of unsafe vessels.
Last night, the Sea Shepherd had lost sight of the whalers after Captain Watson said activists only had enough fuel to stay in the area for another day or two.
Mr Carter held out no hope that naval force or legal action could be used against Japan.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare renewed a call for legal action by Australia and New Zealand against whaling in Antarctic waters. But a case at an international court over the "scientific" whaling program has been rejected by both governments as unlikely to succeed.
A separate action has been undertaken by Humane Society International in the Federal Court in Sydney against Japanese whaling in the Australian Antarctic Exclusive Economic Zone. But Japan refused to recognise the case, which the Howard Government opposed for diplomatic reasons.
Friday, February 9, 2007
They know not what they do
This message should be spread far and wide. The man who wrote this is amazing and often lives in a state of seige for his views. Outside the heading and sub-heading, the bold highlights are mine.
Curly world Michael Leunig
They know not what they do
In Terry Hicks' plea for his son's life we see a microcosm of humanity's struggle against militarism
There was an outside chance that he just may have, possibly, harmed Americal soldiers if he had the opportunity and happened to feel like it at the time, perhaps. Or so they say.
They put him in a concentration camp for the crime of that possibility, and kept him there, a million miles from home for five terrible years without trial.
When they had finished with him - when they had crushed and tormented him enough and weakened him sufficiently and driven him half-mad, and displayed him to the world as an example - they tied his hands behind his back and ordered him to defend himself against all their might and final fury.
This may all sound a bit unfair, but make no mistake, when it comes to making the world a better place - whether by bombing countries back to the Stone Age or by pulling the wings off flies, these military-minded gentlemen from the land of the free and the home of the brave know exactly what they're doing.
Or so they say.
Defending oneself against American know-how, although a universal problem, is never easy. But when the delusional self-righteousness of the prosecution is so fierce and extreme, to defend oneself is only to face the final climactic round of torture.
How may a man explain his innocence to a culture hell-bent on war and conquest? How does a broken heart stand against the vindictive and merciless onslaught of a militarised state tangled in its blinding web of anger, hypocrisy and paranoia? What does the floundering soul of a common man mean beside the greatest array of advanced homicidal technology and expertise ever assembled in the world? And just how does an exhausted little David in chains defend himself against such a ferocious Goliath?
God knows.
There is something deeply forlorn and yet greatly inspiring in seeing a father addressing a small gathering on a busy street corner in the city at lunchtime about the life-threatening injustice inflicted by America in the name of righteousness upon his son, so isolated and so far across the sea.
The quiet, steady bearing of Terry Hicks as he speaks about the mad Goliath's incarceration of his son, David, is sobering and profoundly touching - especially so to men who have sons, or affectionate memories of their fathers, or a sense that love and justice are like father and son.
His words are clear and to the point. And the down-t0-earth dignity of Hicks senior brings order and perspective to the meaning of life as the lunchtime crowd hurries past in the sunshine.
Terry Hicks is a man of human scale in a political world that has all but eradicated or abandoned such a dimension. And by his measure we may see the extent to which our political system is losing its mind and our ethical system is collapsing.
Apart from all the things that he maybe or may fail to be, there is an archtypal sense in which he represents not only the eternal father, but also the simple democratic man who stands up alone and plainly says "No" and steadfastly asks "Why?" in the face of monstrous state power that has gradually twisted and transformed itself into a heartless,dysfunctional and idiotic beast.
But his strength and equanimity are never more evident on that day than when an elderly man scuttles by half-hidden in the crowd and cries out, "Kill the bastard!" The crowd draws its breath and the scuttling man disappears like a ghost but his malignancy remains: an ancient dark curse against Terry Hicks' unfortunate son who, according to law, is at this stage innocent of any harm to the world.
The father, with the cry for his son's death hanging in the air, continues calmly with his appeal for justice. But the savagery of the hit-and-run words hover like a foul revelation, reminding all present of why they had come to this street vigil and what it was they were upholding; and about the power of cruelty and ignorance, which would always be there like an incurable, archaic disease in human affairs.
Yet "Kill the bastard" is more than a curse - it's the most precious uncut gem in the crown of military philosophy and the ideologicl centerpeice of imperial power. "KILL THE BASTARD" is scrawled on rockets and tanks but is also the simple sacred text inscribed in gold and kept in a secret vault in the deepest, darkest inner sanctum of state authority. When men stop believing in "Kill the bastard" the world as we know it will fall apart because raising armies of aggression and building empires of domination will become impossible. To perpetuate the systems of power and authority it has been necessary to encode "Kill the bastard" into sophisticated signals and transmit them to children from day one.
But the scuttleing little man who was letting it slip in public was more than just a vile creep; he, too, was an archetype - a black angel with an important message. If, in a democracy, the leaders represent and speak for the people, then it must be remembered that the people, inwittingly speak on behalf of the leaders - out loud in the street or in the ordinary banter of life. The people let the cat out of the bag by openly saying the things that no guarded, wily politician dares to reveal or even confess to their own heart - the very politician who may be unleashing "Kill the bastard" forces on the world in the name of freedom.
It is easily forgotten that in a democracy representation is unwittingly mutual, if only you dare to see it; it is a two-way umbilical psychic relationship between the electors and the elected. The hit-and-run hate merchant in the street is no mere vulgar aberration, but a vital component of the collective homicidal wish that underlies the militarism on which the unhealthy state and its executives ultimately depend for their authority.
Without the scuttling man and his ilk there can be no great empire. Without him, the Prime Minister has no fear buttons to press and no hate votes to harvest. He would be forced to do some real man's work and be a creative leader.
But if you want to hear the secret personal views of the Prime Minister and cabinet go, if you dare, and eavesdrop for an hour or two in the smelly old toilet at the pub on a Saturday night after the football. You may quickly be reminded of why the planet has been environmentally and emotionally screwed up - and how little political leaders have known or wanted to understand the consequences of their actions and failings while in power.
You may also understand, in spite of all the pomp and ceremony, just how idiotic they have been. One cannot help but wonder if there is something in the nature of those who seek power that ought to disqualify them from weilding it. Are they attracted to political conflict because they are in conflict - and so bound to create conflict?
Just as the disastrous and irreversible consequences of environmental abuse take generations to come home to roost, so, too, do the complicated effects of war take time to spread across the face and psyche of humanity. The victors and the vanquished are equally ruined by war - in time we are all poisoned.
It is difficult to comprehend that a president or a prime minister would not understand this vital psycho-ecological principle. It is hard, also, to accept that as one part of humanity seeks to heal the planet another part seeks to burn it up and ruin it with war - just as in the street one man calls for justice and mercy and the other man calls hatefully for death.
Curly world Michael Leunig
They know not what they do
In Terry Hicks' plea for his son's life we see a microcosm of humanity's struggle against militarism
There was an outside chance that he just may have, possibly, harmed Americal soldiers if he had the opportunity and happened to feel like it at the time, perhaps. Or so they say.
They put him in a concentration camp for the crime of that possibility, and kept him there, a million miles from home for five terrible years without trial.
When they had finished with him - when they had crushed and tormented him enough and weakened him sufficiently and driven him half-mad, and displayed him to the world as an example - they tied his hands behind his back and ordered him to defend himself against all their might and final fury.
This may all sound a bit unfair, but make no mistake, when it comes to making the world a better place - whether by bombing countries back to the Stone Age or by pulling the wings off flies, these military-minded gentlemen from the land of the free and the home of the brave know exactly what they're doing.
Or so they say.
Defending oneself against American know-how, although a universal problem, is never easy. But when the delusional self-righteousness of the prosecution is so fierce and extreme, to defend oneself is only to face the final climactic round of torture.
How may a man explain his innocence to a culture hell-bent on war and conquest? How does a broken heart stand against the vindictive and merciless onslaught of a militarised state tangled in its blinding web of anger, hypocrisy and paranoia? What does the floundering soul of a common man mean beside the greatest array of advanced homicidal technology and expertise ever assembled in the world? And just how does an exhausted little David in chains defend himself against such a ferocious Goliath?
God knows.
There is something deeply forlorn and yet greatly inspiring in seeing a father addressing a small gathering on a busy street corner in the city at lunchtime about the life-threatening injustice inflicted by America in the name of righteousness upon his son, so isolated and so far across the sea.
The quiet, steady bearing of Terry Hicks as he speaks about the mad Goliath's incarceration of his son, David, is sobering and profoundly touching - especially so to men who have sons, or affectionate memories of their fathers, or a sense that love and justice are like father and son.
His words are clear and to the point. And the down-t0-earth dignity of Hicks senior brings order and perspective to the meaning of life as the lunchtime crowd hurries past in the sunshine.
Terry Hicks is a man of human scale in a political world that has all but eradicated or abandoned such a dimension. And by his measure we may see the extent to which our political system is losing its mind and our ethical system is collapsing.
Apart from all the things that he maybe or may fail to be, there is an archtypal sense in which he represents not only the eternal father, but also the simple democratic man who stands up alone and plainly says "No" and steadfastly asks "Why?" in the face of monstrous state power that has gradually twisted and transformed itself into a heartless,dysfunctional and idiotic beast.
But his strength and equanimity are never more evident on that day than when an elderly man scuttles by half-hidden in the crowd and cries out, "Kill the bastard!" The crowd draws its breath and the scuttling man disappears like a ghost but his malignancy remains: an ancient dark curse against Terry Hicks' unfortunate son who, according to law, is at this stage innocent of any harm to the world.
The father, with the cry for his son's death hanging in the air, continues calmly with his appeal for justice. But the savagery of the hit-and-run words hover like a foul revelation, reminding all present of why they had come to this street vigil and what it was they were upholding; and about the power of cruelty and ignorance, which would always be there like an incurable, archaic disease in human affairs.
Yet "Kill the bastard" is more than a curse - it's the most precious uncut gem in the crown of military philosophy and the ideologicl centerpeice of imperial power. "KILL THE BASTARD" is scrawled on rockets and tanks but is also the simple sacred text inscribed in gold and kept in a secret vault in the deepest, darkest inner sanctum of state authority. When men stop believing in "Kill the bastard" the world as we know it will fall apart because raising armies of aggression and building empires of domination will become impossible. To perpetuate the systems of power and authority it has been necessary to encode "Kill the bastard" into sophisticated signals and transmit them to children from day one.
But the scuttleing little man who was letting it slip in public was more than just a vile creep; he, too, was an archetype - a black angel with an important message. If, in a democracy, the leaders represent and speak for the people, then it must be remembered that the people, inwittingly speak on behalf of the leaders - out loud in the street or in the ordinary banter of life. The people let the cat out of the bag by openly saying the things that no guarded, wily politician dares to reveal or even confess to their own heart - the very politician who may be unleashing "Kill the bastard" forces on the world in the name of freedom.
It is easily forgotten that in a democracy representation is unwittingly mutual, if only you dare to see it; it is a two-way umbilical psychic relationship between the electors and the elected. The hit-and-run hate merchant in the street is no mere vulgar aberration, but a vital component of the collective homicidal wish that underlies the militarism on which the unhealthy state and its executives ultimately depend for their authority.
Without the scuttling man and his ilk there can be no great empire. Without him, the Prime Minister has no fear buttons to press and no hate votes to harvest. He would be forced to do some real man's work and be a creative leader.
But if you want to hear the secret personal views of the Prime Minister and cabinet go, if you dare, and eavesdrop for an hour or two in the smelly old toilet at the pub on a Saturday night after the football. You may quickly be reminded of why the planet has been environmentally and emotionally screwed up - and how little political leaders have known or wanted to understand the consequences of their actions and failings while in power.
You may also understand, in spite of all the pomp and ceremony, just how idiotic they have been. One cannot help but wonder if there is something in the nature of those who seek power that ought to disqualify them from weilding it. Are they attracted to political conflict because they are in conflict - and so bound to create conflict?
Just as the disastrous and irreversible consequences of environmental abuse take generations to come home to roost, so, too, do the complicated effects of war take time to spread across the face and psyche of humanity. The victors and the vanquished are equally ruined by war - in time we are all poisoned.
It is difficult to comprehend that a president or a prime minister would not understand this vital psycho-ecological principle. It is hard, also, to accept that as one part of humanity seeks to heal the planet another part seeks to burn it up and ruin it with war - just as in the street one man calls for justice and mercy and the other man calls hatefully for death.
Sea Shepherd
LOVE is the only LAW
As I fell to the couch,
tears streamed from my eyes
and I hugged my stomach while uttering
"I love life"
My first and only child had commenced its growth towards life
Inside my womb!
As I fell to the couch,
tears streamed from my eyes
and I hugged my stomach while uttering
"I love life"
My first and only child had commenced its growth towards life
Inside my womb!
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