Legalized Terrorism - Animal Abuse And Killing
Barely a few years into it, the twenty-first century is already clearly marked as the “Age of Terrorism.” The attacks of September 11, 2001 marked a salient turning point in the history of the U.S. and indeed of global geopolitics. The U.S. declared its number one priority to be the “War on Terrorism,” and its domestic, national, and international policies have changed accordingly. In his address to the nation shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Bush used the terms “terror,” “terrorism,” and “terrorist” thirty-two times without ever defining what he meant.
In the amorphous name of “terrorism,” wars are being fought, geopolitical dynamics are shifting, the U.S. is aggressively reasserting its traditional imperialist role as it defies international law and world bodies, and the state is sacrificing liberties to “security.” One of the most commonly used words in the current vocabulary, “terrorism” is also one of the most abused terms. Steve Best defines terrorism “as any intentional act to injure or kill a living, sentient, innocent being for scientific, political or economic purposes." This is a sane, sensible and rational definition. Going by this definition, there are lot more terrorists in the world than those on FBI’s list. Practically every one fits as a terrorist in this definition. Animals which are captured, enslaved, tortured and slaughtered are being "terrorized". Indeed animals are sentient - when they scream in labs, when they suffer in rodeos and when they stand before the butcher... they are all in terror of our brutal power over them. Real Terrorism In this way, not all terrorists fight with guns and bombs, and not all terrorists fight strictly for political gain. There are men and women in this world who are terrorists in another real sense. Virtually all definitions of terrorism, even by “progressive” human rights champions, outright banish from consideration the most excessive violence of all—that which the human species unleashes against all nonhuman species. Speciesism is so ingrained and entrenched in the human mind that the human mass murder of animals does not even appear on the conceptual radar screen. Any attempt to perceive nonhuman animals as innocent victims of violence and human animals as terrorists is rejected with derision. |