Animal rights advocates believe that all sentient life is equally valuable, equally deserving of protection, equally important, equally cherished by those who possess it and those who wish to live. The contrast between that view and most of humanity is so stark as to trigger the question among animal advocates as to whether humans themselves are of any value.
Human civilization, from the aboriginal tribes of pre-history, to the industrialized capitalist model of today, has been dismissive of, and contemptuous toward, the rights of non-human animals. For most of human history, many humans have not been accorded even the most basic of human rights. The standard has been whether the oppression could prevail through force, violence and intimidation, or whether the oppressed could marshal significant resistance to force society to recognize their complaints and to then address them.
For millennia, humans have enslaved their fellow humans.
Some suggest our lack of empathy toward our fellow creatures is genetic, and incapable of being changed. I believe the better view is that the basest of human instincts smolder beneath the surface of many, but that cruelty and a lack of empathy is learned.
Were it not, there is little reason to embrace or defend the human species. Human extinction should then be our hope and our goal.
I prefer a more optimistic view of humanity, although there is precious little evidence upon which to base such a view.
To be sure, every kindness and every gesture of compassion benefits some person or creature. And we would surely wish for more widespread and common acts of kindness than currently are made.
For animals, and likely most people as well, the status quo is unacceptable. Animals fare much worse than do humans, of course, as the Animal Holocaust is an ongoing horror of mind-boggling proportions.
Anytime in human history would be preferable to today for our fellow Earthlings.
Humans murder over 60 Billion land animals in slaughterhouses each year, and the number is growing. We catch, dredge, and net over two and a half Trillion sea creatures each year as well.
For the mathematically challenged, a Million is a thousand thousands. A Billion is a thousand Millions. And a Trillion is a thousand Billions.
A Trillion weeks ago the Universe came into existence with the Big Bang!
A Trillion is a big number! But we kill TWO and a HALF Trillion sea creatures EVERY YEAR!
The status quo is the enemy of animals. Today is worse than ever in human history for animals. There has never been as much suffering and death for animals as is happening at this very moment.
ANYTHING we can do to disrupt the status quo helps animals. Chaos, civil unrest, revolt, revolution, all work to interrupt the chain of slaughter, the rape of cows and pigs, the barbaric castrations, the brandings, the nose rings, the gestation crates, the feedlots, the transport, the slaughterlines.
The VERY worst thing we can do is to vote for STATUS QUO politicians like Hillary Clinton, who support Big Ag, Wall Street, and the existing power structure. While voting for Donald Trump would hardly be tantamount to inciting chaos, it would likely move up the timetable for political revolution in America.
And were we to succeed in bringing political revolution to America, the entire world would follow.
Amory Notes:
• I am unaware of any other blog with the Armory’s mission of radicalizing the animal movement. I certainly hope I am not alone, and that there are similar sentiments being expressed by comrades unknown to me.
If you know of other blogs dedicated to animal rights and the defeat of capitalism, please comment with a link.
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You will find recommended reading on Animal Rights, revolutionary theory, politics, economics, religion, science, and atheism. There is also a section of supplies for animal liberationists, hunt saboteurs, and social revolutionaries. This is all brand new, and we will be adding lots more merchandise in the near future!
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Armory of the Revolution 
Reblogged this on Exposing the Big Game.
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Mahatma Gandhi once said that the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
Maybe that test can also be applied to a species—Homo sapiens. But if so, we are failing.
The over 60 Billion land animals slaughtered each year by Big Ag, and the 2-1/2 trillion sea lives taken each year, although astronomical numbers, are not the whole story.
There are 100 million mice, rats, frogs, dogs, cats, pigs, monkeys, fish and birds killed in research each year.
Wildlife services killed 32 million wild animals in the last decade, with 3.2 million in 2015 alone: 68,905 coyotes, 771 bobcats, 480 bears, 385 wolves, 284 mountain lions. This list does not include the small “trash” animals or “varmints” trapped and poisoned for being a “nuisance” to someone.
Bullfighting kills 40,000 animals a year.
Over 1 million animals are killed every year on American highways.
Almost 3 million unwanted dogs and cats are killed in shelters in America annually.
On federal land alone more than 200 million animals are hunted and trapped every year.
Then there are the animals who are abused and/or killed individually by sadistic human beings: The dogs languishing and chained in backyards, and the cats set on fire, and horses abandoned to their fate, and the ponies dragged around to parking lots for store openings and rides, and wildlife living miserable and lonely lives in entertainment or roadside zoos.
We continue the torture and the killing for the worst of reasons—because we can.
We have enough brain power to concoct religious and legal reasons to justify the carnage and to create the devices and restraints that make it possible. We have created an economic arena where the mass slaughter and abuse can be carried out for profit. It is the economic engine of Big Ag and Research. It is the creator of millions of low-paying and ugly jobs on factory farms and slaughter lines and higher-paying jobs in laboratories.
We have also created a social setting where people accept animal torture and death for their own satisfactions and pleasures, which include the blood lust of the bullfight, the thrill of the hunt, the taste of the cheeseburger, and the vanity behind the fur coat and the big game trophy.
There has been some shift in recent years with the growth of the animal rights movement. Along with Augustine and Aquinas, Aristotle and Kant, book shelves contain the writing of Peter Singer and Tom Regan on animal rights and human responsibilities. More organizations are fighting for animals and promoting veganism.
But it is hard to be optimistic. The killing spree began in our hominid past and continued unabated through the millennia until now, when animals are tortured and killed by the billions, without being questioned by the majority of humanity.
Making the world better and more compassionate will require more concessions than most people are willing to give. It means giving up profits and pleasures gained at animals’ expense and costing animal lives. It means exercising mercy, empathy, and self-sacrifice. And those are qualities not much seen in our long journey on this planet.
The final history is yet to be written. But at the moment it does not look promising as a record of our moral progress. Jim Robertson, in “Exposing the Big Game,” suggests a verdict:
“When the dust settles on man’s reign of terror, he will be best remembered as an egomaniacal mutant carnivorous ape who squandered nature’s gifts and goose-stepped on towards mass extinction, in spite of warnings from historians and scientists and pleas from the caring few.”
We have a long way to go to prove Jim Robertson wrong.
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Thanks, Marcia!
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Horrible
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Reblogged this on Species and Class.
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