Kim Stallwood

Really excellent telly program produced by BBC 4 called “In Their Own Words,” which is, as the Beeb describes it, ‘the story of the British novel in the 20th century told by those who know it best – the authors themselves.’ It’s a three-part series. The first is up now at iPlayer. So, you’ve got to act quickly while it’s still there and, then, keep an eye out for the remaining two parts.

The first episode includes the voice of God (should it be Goddess?): Virginia Woolf. Here, you can listen to the entire talk she gave along with other novelists of not as much importance but, nonetheless, fascinating and relevant to understanding the world in which we live.

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Power: A Radical View by Steven Lukes (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, second edition)

Anyone read Power: A Radical View by Steven Lukes? I’m quick reading it. One point stood out, which now seems so obvious, but never occurred to me before: Power is at its most effective when it is invisible. A good case in point is the power of speciesism–the ideology by which humans exert power over other species. Speciesism isn’t discussed by Lukes but I’m enjoying exploring his book nonetheless.

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Changes have been made to my Web site to bring more into focus the two books I’m currently working on. My first book, Animal Dharma, explores what it means to care deeply about animals and discovers how we can live peacefully with ourselves and others by proposing four key values: truth, compassion, non-violence and interbeing, the interrelatedness of all. Links to audio extracts (MP3 files) will be added soon. This is book is more than two-thirds finished. My second book, The Animal Rights Challenge, which is in development, examines the animal rights movement, assesses society’s response and proposes a strategy framing moral and legal rights for animals as part of a progressive agenda for social change. This page also includes a speech I made to the London Minding Animals Conference in 2008 as it introduces the issues I explore in The Animal Rights Challenge. I welcome your comments and feedback.

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Salt considered Shelley and Whitman as the "two most signal embodiments of the revolutionary spirit during the past century ...”

This week I became the proud owner of Songs of Freedom. Selected and Edited, with an Introduction, by Henry S. Salt (London: The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd.; 1893). Salt wrote Animals’ Rights. Considered in Relation to Social Progress in 1894. He was also the founder of the Humanitarian League. In the Introduction to Songs of Freedom, Salt writes

Finally, it must be repeated that liberty is, as yet, an ideal rather than a reality — a fair but intangible vision which has long eluded the eager grasp of its worshippers. Again and again have the soldiers of freedom appeared to be on the point of capturing the central stronghold of the enemy; again and again has the tyranny rearisen in some new and unexpected quarter, and the battle has been bequeathed anew from one age to another, with the accompanying legacy of suffering, self-sacrifice, and privation. Our Songs of Freedom must therefore of necessity be in great part songs of slavery, for it is the evils of the present that, by very contrast, enhance and emphasize the brighter visions of the future. [...] Link by link the chains of serfdom are broken: step by step man advances towards that perfect freedom which can only be attained by the temporary failure — in other words, the eventual success — of innumerable earlier efforts.

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Will Self is an author whom I increasingly appreciate. There is, for example, this exquisite ramble published recently in the London Review of Books. Animal rights folks would do well to read his novel, Great Apes. Anyway, I reproduce below in its entirety yesterday’s blog, “The Spartan Girl.” There are references to current events that not everyone will get. Plus, he’s renown for using big words and being obtuse — although he probably doesn’t see it that way. Anyway, enjoy this delicious rant.

I am sorry, oh so sorry, that I ever suggested Baroness Thatcher should’ve been torn apart by urban foxes back in the early 1980s, before she could lay waste to generations of the British working class. I hope this won’t disqualify me from becoming the leader of the Labour Party – a post which I haveabsolutely no desire to occupy, and therefore probably should. It was typically insensitive of me to call in a vulpine strike on JahThatch, who, as everyone knows, was only the passive instrument of historical change rather than its initiator. As for foxes, who but an absurd and sentimental urbanite, who refuses to acknowledge that what’s on the end of his fork is an abused fowl, would characterise these vicious and unprincipled creatures as the vanguard of the revolution? Perhaps now, at long last, after the tragic attack on the baby girls in East London, the long-awaited pogrom against London’s foxes will finally be initiated? And who better to don the red coat and tootle “Tally-Ho!” than my own local Labour MP Kate Hoey. After all, it was Hoey who chose a superb opportunity to bury bad news, by announcing on the very day that Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by armed police at Stockwelltube station in her constituency, that she would be assuming the chairmanship of the Countryside Alliance. Obviously, it’s impractical to hunt urban foxes on horseback, but I can see no reason for not putting the many hundreds of so-called “weapon dogs” who roam the parks hereabout to some sort of useful employment. And if not the dogs, then why not their owners as well, many of whom are second-generation unemployed – the sons and daughters of people who lost their jobs during the great culling on the 1980s. It would seem an elegant solution to both problems to set these folk to the maintenanceof dog packs and the manufacture of hunting tackle. Which brings us neatly full circle: eliminating foxes and unemployment with a single measure. Of course, it leaves Thatcher still alive – but then that’s a given, n’est ce pas? 

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This policy paper explores how US policies and practices regarding intensive animal agriculture are contributing to a worldwide environmental crisis.

The Animals and Society Institute (ASI) publishes a series of Policy Papers on specific animal issues and their impact in the public policy arena. Six Policy Papers have been published since 2006:

• Dog Bites: Problems and Solutions by Janis Bradley, which was made possible with the generous support of the Animal Farm Foundation and is now in its second printing.
• Animals in Disasters: Responsibility and Action by Leslie Irvine, PhD, University of Colorado, Boulder. This policy paper was made possible with the generous support of The Humane Society of the United States.
• Elephants in Circuses: Analysis of Practice, Policy, and Future by G. A. Bradshaw, PhD.
• Human-Animal Studies: Growing the Field, Applying the Field by Kenneth J. Shapiro, PhD.
• Dolphin-Human Interaction Programs: Policies, Problems and Alternativesby Kristin L. Stewart, JD, PhD and Lori Marino, PhD
• The CAFO Hothouse: Climate Change, Industrial Agriculture, and the Lawby David N. Cassuto

The Policy Papers are available for purchase through the ASI Web site.

The paper by David N. Cassuto, a professor at Pace School of Law and the director of the Brazil-American Institute for Law and Environment, is the latest to be published. It explores how industrial livestock operations contribute significant amounts of greenhouse gases while receiving little criticism but extensive financial incentives. Professor Cassuto writes,

When one factors in the environmental and social costs of factory farming (which consumers pay in the form of taxes, subsidies, clean-up costs and more), the price of those products increases dramatically. Nevertheless, agribusiness has made full use of its advantageous political and legal position. Few traditional farms remain; factory farms have married themselves fully into the nation’s infrastructure even as the realities of climate change make that relationship unsustainable and potentially catastrophic.

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The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol J. Adams is one of the most important books on animal rights and related matters. This video celebrating a new edition published for its twentieth anniversary explains why.

embedded by Embedded Video

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I’m not someone who has to have their commitment to veganism legitimized because someone is or isn’t (or was or wasn’t) a vegetarian. Frankly, I don’t care about what anyone else does. (Well, I may have a strop if someone isn’t who I think should be.) I care about what I do today as I’m answerable to no one else but myself.

Debates about whether Jesus or the Buddha was or wasn’t a vegetarian are interesting. My jaded eyes tend to glass over, however, as I hear the arguments constructed in defense of opposing arguments. How is it possible that diametrically opposite perspectives can be made seemingly legitimately? Where’s the truth in all of this? How can we possibly know for sure? I conclude that it’s all conjecture.

So, I don’t worry about whether Jesus or Gautama did or did not eat meat. What is tragic, however, is how followers of both make a decision about not becoming a vegetarian because they believe Jesus and Gautama wasn’t. Don’t these people have a conscience of their own? Can’t they make their own minds up? Do they follow blindly whatever Jesus or Gautama may or may not have said? I suppose some Christians may if they believe the Bible was literally the word of God. As far as I know, nothing exists written in the time of the Buddha, which means we can’t possibly know for sure anything he may or may not have said. It was passed on from generation to generation as a spoken tradition.

Nonetheless, from time to time, I read something about this that I find particularly interesting. For example, Norm Phelps’s books The Dominion of Love: Animal Rights According to the Bible and The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights are great places to start.

These titles are published by Lantern, which, on its blog, recently published an interesting commentary by Keith Akers about the Buddha and vegetarianism.

The blog was prompted by Keith hearing author Stephen Batchelor (Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist) speak recently at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver. Keith asked Stephen “whether he (Batchelor) was a vegetarian, whether the historical Buddha was a vegetarian, and how this all related to the first precept (not to take the life of any sentient creature).” Stephen answered by saying he was not a vegetarian and didn’t think the Buddha was either. Please read Keith’s post as it is fascinating. Check out Keith’s book, too.

I agree with Keith who concludes that if the first precept of Buddhism is not to take the life of any sentient creature, well, how can anyone reasonably conclude otherwise that it does not mean a vegetarian lifestyle? And what if you conclude it doesn’t? It doesn’t matter anyway. There are more than enough compelling arguments today why you should be!

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Teaching the Animal edited by Margo DeMello

I just received in the mail from the US a copy of Teaching the Animal: Human-Animal Studies across the Disciplinesedited by Margo DeMello and published by Lantern Books. Obviously, I’ve only had a chance to thumb through this volume but it looks immediately to be a very important addition to the literature.

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Here’s a link to read my review of Jonathan Balcombe’s Second Nature.

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