And what implications does it really have for the fate of so many homeless animals?
The logic behind such actions is often elusive, especially when all parties to the issue bear good intentions. Where do we draw the lines?

The letter below was sent to the magazine ANIMAL PEOPLE (November/December 2011):

Letters
Euthanasia

Ned Buyukmihci

I am responding to the letter by Doug Fakkema ⁽¹⁾ in the September 2011 edition of Animal People concerning “euthanasia.” [See below]

Without in any way impugning Fakkema’s motives and sincerity, he is either in denial or is unaware of the definition of the word. I do not argue that the death must be “good,” as stated by Fakkema, but his definition leaves out the most important aspect: the death should be in the interests of the individual dying. Of necessity, this means that the individual dying would benefit from death by ending a situation that is causing intractable suffering. Ideally, the individual would be able to indicate that he or she prefers death to continued life. In the case of cats, dogs or other nonhuman animals, this may not be feasible because of our inability to communicate with the individual. In these situations, it becomes especially important that the person ending life must be clear on her or his motives which must derive only from a sincere belief that ending the life will end suffering that cannot be relieved otherwise.

Using a defense that one is somehow preventing future suffering does not even warrant consideration, being patently absurd. Read more…

BY KIM BARTLETT

Broccoli dish: where do we draw the line?

        A common objection posed by meat-eaters to considering a vegetarian diet is that “plants have feelings” which may be comparable to the feelings of animals, or that the result of a vegetarian diet is for more plants to die than animals and thus the net amount of killing is somehow equal.

        While it is essential to realize that these arguments are virtually always made by people as a way to dismiss the idea of not eating animals without having to seriously consider the moral advantage of a vegetarian diet, the vegetarian advocate must be prepared to respond to these objections.  There are three main points to understand. Read more…

By Patrice Greanville, TGP

The principles of the American Declaration of Independence—if put into practice— would be regarded as “terrorist” or “subversive” today by the American establishment.

The Founding Fathers: a communist cabal? How would Jefferson be handled these days by the establishment’s commentariat?
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Down the centuries, and especially in the age of “managed democracy” a lot of hot air has been heard in sanctimonious quarters on the matter of when violence is “legitimate” as a solution to institutionalized abuses.  Violence, it scarcely needs saying, is never thought a good solution to the ills caused by the elite passing judgment on others. Read more…

International Socialist Review  Issue 57, January–February 2008

Gay people confront police during “Stonewall Riots”

SHARON SMITH argues that identity politics can’t liberate the oppressed

FIGHTING AGAINST oppression is an urgent issue in U.S. society today. Racism, sexism, and homophobia have all reached appalling levels—that seem only to rise with each passing year. White students in Jena hang nooses, and Black students end up in prison.¹ Squads of Minutemen vigilantes patrol the Mexican border with impunity, for the sole purpose of terrorizing migrant communities.² College campuses across the U.S. commemorate “Islamo-fascism awareness week” as if it were just another legitimate student activity.³ Fred Phelps and his Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church congregation regularly picket outside funerals of gay soldiers killed in Iraq, proclaiming that they belong in hell.^{4 Read more…}

PART ONE: MATERIALISM
“The services rendered by Marx and Engels to the working class may be expressed in a few words thus: they taught the working class to know itself and be conscious of itself, and they substituted science for dreams,” wrote Lenin. [7•1] 

Part 3  (From our archives)

Note to TGP readers: We recently published some materials by Steven Pinker on issues such as violence, the nature of humans, and the prospects for our species and the world. We see this man as a creative and original intellect, but have substantive problems and reservations with his political positions (which proves that even geniuses can be awfully wrong when it comes to sorting out human affairs). In essence we place him in the category of mainstream liberalism, with powerful elements of Cold War imperial apologism on behalf of a “Pax Americana”. The author of this piece, C. Talbot, has some more to say about Pinker, in the context of fellow evolutionary psychologists.—Eds.

By Chris Talbot, wsws.org

This is the conclusion of a three-part series comprising a lecture by WSWS correspondent Chris Talbot to meetings of the International Students for Social Equality in Britain. Part 1 was posted on June 17 and Part 2 on June 18.

Evolutionary Psychology versus Marxism

Now we turn to areas where there have apparently been conflicts between Darwinian biology and Marxism. Firstly we consider those scientists who claim that biology can be used to explain all social phenomena. This was a strong tendency in the 19^th century after Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species appeared.

Here we link up to Marx’s comment in the footnote I cited at the start. Marx writes about what he calls “the abstract materialism of natural scientists.” He had in mind such figures as Ludwig Buchner, the German scientist who popularised atheism and a crude version of materialism. He attempted to apply concepts from natural science to history, of which he understood little. For Marx, social and ideological processes needed to be understood in terms of the “productive organs of man” and a materialist theory of history, and not by the application of abstract biological concepts. Read more…

Part 1 (From our archives)
By Chris Talbot, wsws.org

This is the first of a three-part series comprising a lecture by WSWS correspondent Chris Talbot to meetings of the International Students for Social Equality in Britain. Part 2 was posted on June 18 and Part 3 on June 19.

We have organised these meetings of the International Students for Social Equality in honour of Charles Darwin from a different standpoint from the many other bicentenary events. We want to bring out the connection between Darwin and that other great thinker of the mid-19^th century, Karl Marx.

Charles Darwin

The importance of Marx hits you when you take in the events of the last few months. We are now in a world economic crisis comparable to, if not more severe than, that of the 1930s, which will have a major effect on all of our futures. Current economic theory completely failed to predict this crisis. The economists cannot explain how it happened and have no answer to it [1]. In contrast, Karl Marx spent much of his life developing an economic analysis that explains the inherent instability of capitalism and provides a scientific basis for the development of the socialist working class movement. Read more…