Vegan Education

Chickadee Magazine. An Objective Review

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Post by Animal Liberation Queensland.

Have you got a copy of Animal Liberation Queensland’s Chickadee ‘magazine’ yet?
The ‘magazine’ that is aimed at ‘tween’ females to promote awareness of sentience in animals, and help inform young consumers of ways in which they can make compassionate choices for animals every day.

Whilst Animals liberation Queensland is supposedly an organisation that aims to remove our speciesist view of other animals, they are more than well known for their sexist attitude and views towards humans.

Does anyone remember their ‘Beef-Eating Blokes’ image or the use of females in cages at a circus protest?

Unfortunately, this ‘magazine’ is no different.

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Ag-Gag Laws. The Best Thing To Happen To Animal Advocacy

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What would you say if I told you that any proposed ag-gag laws that actually made it onto the books would be a good thing for the animal advocacy movement, and not something we should be scared of?

By encouraging and not resisting these so-called ag-gag laws, we will be helping the animal advocacy movement to grow, and in turn, help those who ‘we’ are supposed to be advocating for.

The Animals.

Both Sides Need To Harden Up
Is Australia a bunch of sooks now where the group that whinges the most gets the best treatment?

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Is Veganism A Luxury Of The Privileged?

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Is ‘going vegan’ really easy to do, or is it only a luxury of the priveledged?

The supposed ease of being able to adopt a vegan lifestyle is touted almost as the primary reason for doing it.

Yet, is it really easy to go vegan or is it only easy with privilege?

Take for example a few comments by a self proclaimed vegan identity. This individual gleefully boasts all over facebook about the abuse that they level at those who are still consuming animal products whilst out and about. Yet this person’s partner and pet weren’t ‘vegan’.

How easy is it really?

The truth of the matter is that unless you are a single person earning a relatively modest income, there is a good chance you may struggle with it.
I remember way back in the old days when I was vegan I drove trucks for a living, and one of the jobs that I had was working for a seafood company. I literally spent my day driving tonnes and tonnes of frozen seafood around to supermarkets, restaurants, etc.

After I left that role, I did general freight for a while, and one of the regular deliveries that I had was delivering kangaroo skins to the tanner in Brisbane.

Did those two roles mean that I was no longer vegan? I am sure that there are those who would say that I was betraying the cause and I should have just quit, though it wasn’t as easy as that. Whilst I would have loved to have done that, I still had the usual obligations to contend with.

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Hate Speech And Vegan Activism

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James McWilliams wrote a piece on hate speech where he says the following.

But if anything here is clear it’s that language is all too easily used to forge sick cultures of hatred under the guise of normal. People who speak this way about sentient beings who, for all their power, lack the ability to fight narratives with counter-narratives (and thus have no truck in our big verbal mud sling), should have their right to use their words severely curtailed. Their hatred and insensitivity is that blatant. It has no place in civilized society.

Whilst he was referring to hunters and their use language to describe the violent acts they are committing on other animals, it could just as easily be used to describe the language some vegans use when talking about those who are not.

There seems to be an increasing number of people who resort to all sorts of obscenities when leaving comments on facebooks posts.

Somewhere along the path of our ‘awakening’ we seem to have conveniently forgotten that once upon a  time, we were exactly the same as the person who is now copping the brunt of our verbal assault.

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Kickstarting A Stalled Movement

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As passionate as I am about the social justice issue that is animal rights, and veganism, I am starting to believe that the ‘movement’ as such has lost it’s momentum having been bogged down by egos and the perception that doing ‘something’ is all it takes.

Following on from an article in July 2013, here are some more disturbing things that have caught my attention.

In the past few months we have seen activists claiming to be from “Gateway To Hell” storm the Brisbane office of China Southern Airlines, to protest the transportation of primates from China to the U.S.A, without being able to say if it was successful or not.

Deceptive Organisations

Animal Liberation NSW’s Executive Director, Mark Pearson, added to his 15 minutes of fame by using an ABC Landline segment on incorrectly labelled eggs to promote his bid for a Senate seat as a candidate for the Animal Justice Party. He has even gone so far as to lodge a complaint with the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission over the final product being incorrectly labelled as ‘free range’.

A few days later Mr Pearson was in the press again, this time claiming that live export “will be all over by morning tea,” once they start putting pressure on will wholesalers, and build more slaughterhouses in Australia.

Why ANY animal advocate would be wanting to build more slaughterhouses is beyond me. Mind you, Voiceless, the Australian “think-tank” dedicated to animal protection issues also seems to think that consumer protection equates to animal protection, with regards to the Federal Court of Australia case, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Turi Foods Pty Ltd (No 4) [2013] FCA 665.

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Should We Aim For Popularity Or Credibility?

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What is it with the animal movement in this country where some people can say whatever they want, regardless of whether it is correct or not, and no one will bat an eyelid about it. Whereas others, who are saying something that is factually correct, they will be shot down in flames?

This article will highlight exactly what I am talking about.

What I would like to know is, once we become a ‘leader’ of the movement, whether self appointed or otherwise, should we still be held accountable for the things we say and do?

Or do our actions become sacrosanct?

This is what has happened recently, though not here in Australia, it happened over in the United States of America.

At the start of June this year, Ms Leigh-Chantelle Koch from Viva La Vegan, and Green Earth Group did a presentation at the Anti-Fur Society’s Animal Rights Conference about the progress and challenges in Australia.

Sadly, the information presented by Ms Koch contains more than just the occasional bit of incorrect information.

Ms Koch discussion on Koalas is where the noticeable errors begin.

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Vegan Animal Rights Group Refuses To Promote Veganism

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The night of Tuesday 23 April 2013 will forever be remembered as one of the most disgraceful nights in the history of the animal advocacy movement in Queensland, if not Australia.

It was the night that an alleged vegan animal rights group, aggressively ejected two individuals for wanting to promote veganism and to help other animals.

The shameful series of events took place at the screening of the movie Maximum Tolerated Dose on Queensland’s Gold Coast.

The public screening was a collaboration between Animal Liberation Queensland and the Facebook group Coast To Coast Animal Friends, two organisations that a reasonable person would think would be interested in promoting veganism and educating others on where to buy products that haven’t been tested on or contain animal products.Yet this wasn’t what happened.

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