ANIMAL EXPLOITATION NEVER ENDS: Big Purses, Sore Horses, and Death ANIMAL DEFENDERS, ANIMAL MARTYRDOM, ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, ECOANIMAL 2 Responses » May 012012 April 30, 2012 / Reprinted under editorial comment provisions[Suggested by Gloria Stevenson] Jockeys and mounts: Just trading cards for people’s greed Editor’s Note: As is often chronicled and decried in these pages, humans put animals to an almost infinite number of uses and abuses and outright tortures, often for the most banal of reasons. No species is exempt from the brutal exploitation schemes dreamed up by those who regard animals as mere “things” deeded by the deities for our usufruct and enjoyment. Thus, from the lowly chicken to the majestic whale, to equines, to fur animals, to factory farm animals, “varmint species,” “game” and other unfortunate nonhuman creatures, the hand of some human is always involved in their institutionalized torment. An additional sordid dimension in the exploitation of equines is that the greed of all participants mirrors the larger class structure, with the owners and managers at the top skimming the big profits with the jockeys—the workers—at the bottom. Which brings up the following question: where’s the horsey set in all this? Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Tom Hayden’s Feelings on Occupy Wall Street Run Hot and Cold ACTIVISTS & HEROES, ANNOTATED NEWS Comments Off May 012012 Editor’s Note: Tom Hayden, an icon of the New Left, personifies in some ways the old saw that radicalism is for youth and conformity for “grownups.” Never mind that the “New Left” was never that well grounded in solid class analysis, having imprudently rejected the “old left” and its catechism as “irrelevant” and that the jadedness that the advancing years bring may not per se equate to a denial of the truth of revolutionary analysis. The rejection of radicalism is a personal choice, and as such, encased in subjectivism, dubious as a theoretical datum freely exportable to the larger society. All of which does not prevent political criticism of such actions.—PG Activist Tom Hayden, in a 2007 photograph, Michael Buckner / Getty Images The radical icon has spent 50 years in social movements—and 20 years running for office. by Jeff Smith | The Daily Beast “It went without saying that the time would come, it was just a question of what the scenario would be,” veteran radical Tom Hayden tells me about Occupy Wall Street’s eviction from Zuccotti Park, a scenario he had predicted five weeks before it finally happened. “The political reason is that it’s disturbing to property owners and to politicians because it’s an insult and aggression against their view of proper order … watering the grass and allowing people with their pooper scoopers to walk their little dogs in peace and read The New York Times and sit on the bench or make out during approved hours in the park. And if there’s 200 people there, it’s an offense to all these other people.” Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
