DVD Review: Your Mommy Kills Animals!
Published May 19, 2008
Then there’s SHAC USA, the American branch of the 18-nation SHAC campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences. SHAC’s beef with HLS comes from an undercover investigation that revealed animal abuse in the company. Armed with slogans, megaphones and posters covered with disturbing images, SHAC USA members are shown picketing companies and private homes.
Six SHAC members, along with the corporation, SHAC USA, Inc., faced federal charges under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act. The charges stemmed from the SHAC website, which encouraged “direct action protests” against HLS. Two of the defendants, Kevin Kjonaas and Josh Harper, are featured in the documentary. They and the other four individuals are now in federal prison, according to the group's website.
There is a robust, revolutionary quality to the rhetoric. And, as in all revolutionary movements, ethical lines become blurred when it comes to deciding what propaganda methods are acceptable. The activists play up the revolutionary quality: they believe they are following in the footsteps of the patriots who brought us the civil rights movement, women’s suffrage, abolition, and the United States, itself.
Johnson balances the extremist message with responses from the “other side.” One sequence features clips from Jerry Vlasak’s interview as well an interview with David Martosko of the Center for Consumer Freedom. Vlasak suggests that killing animal researchers may be morally defensible if it deters other researchers from abusing animals. Martosko suggests that people who would have made medical breakthroughs will be afraid to enter the medical research field because of people like Vlasak.
There also are moderate voices from the animal welfare movement. Patti Strand, of the National Animal Interest Alliance, compares SHAC USA and the ALF to the radical pro-life movement.
Your Mommy Kills Animals highlights the precarious fence between morally justifiable and unjustifiable. Obviously, we as a nation believe that some causes do justify violence. We are at war in Iraq, after all. But is animal rights a worthy issue? Gut-wrenching images of abused test animals vie with footage of flame-engulfed factories for the viewers’ ultimate sympathies. Check it out for a well-balanced look at the animal rights and animal welfare movements.
The special features include trailers for other Halo8 productions.
Amanda Bittle studies Professional Writing at the University of Oklahoma. She loves water slides, Indian food, and her pet cornsnake, Pandora.
- DVD Review: Your Mommy Kills Animals!
- Published: May 19, 2008
- Type: Review
- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Documentary
- Writer: Amanda Bittle
- Amanda Bittle's BC Writer page
- Amanda Bittle's personal site
- Spread the Word
- Like this article?
- Email this
Save to del.icio.us
Comments on this articleComments
7 Things You Didn't Know About PeTA
1. PeTA has stated repeatedly that their goal is "total animal liberation." This means no pets, no meat, no milk, no zoos, no circuses, no fishing, no hunting, no farming, no leather, and no animal testing for lifesaving medicines.
2. PeTA has given tens of thousands of dollars to convicted arsonists and other violent criminals.
3. PeTA funds the misnamed Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine an animal-rights organization that presents itself as an unbiased source for nutritional information and has links to violent animal-rights groups called SHAC and ALF.
4. PeTA has used their contributors tax-exempt donations to fund the North American Earth Liberation front and the Animal Liberation Front, FBI-certified domestic terrorist groups responsible for fire bombs and death threats.
5. PeTA regularly targets kids as early as elementary school with anti-meat and anti-milk propaganda. They are totally opposed to traditional farming methods.
6. PeTA spends less than one percent of its $13 million budget actually caring for animals. PeTA kills animals.
7. PeTA has repeatedly attacked groups like the March of Dimes, the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and the American Cancer Society, for conducting animal testing to find cures for birth defects and life-threatening diseases.
source: www.consumerfreedom.com
www.petakillsanimals.com
www.animalscam.com
www.naiaonline.org
If you really care about animals, you'll go vegan.
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/77042)
My complements on a good article.
I'd like to extend the crucial point Amada made about the difference between Animal Rights and Animal Welfare.
The AR ideology hinges precariously on the moral equivalency of humans and animals: to the AR person, the life of a human and that of an animal are of equal moral value, and, as Amanda pointed out, to an AR advocate, if it is morally or ethically unacceptable to do something to a human, it is no less so to do it to an animal.
Indeed, AR groups believe that discrimination on the basis of species differences ("speciesism") is as morally reprehensible as racism, ageism, sexism, etc.
The human/animal moral equivalency is why AR activist and erstwhile self-appointed spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front Dr. Steven Best said he'd save his dog from a burning house before he'd save a human stranger. http://tinyurl.com/cobho
Why? Because to Dr. Best (and other folks who understand and buy into the AR ideology), both lives are of equal moral value, and his dog brings HIM more pleasure than the human stranger -- say your child, parent, spouse or sib -- brings HIM.
If this horrifies you, keep in mind that the logic is flawless, IF you accept the assumption that that both the dog's life and that of the human are of equal moral value.
But here's the fly in the AR logical ointment.
PeTA, the pre-eminent AR group, kills upwards of 80% of the animals it takes into its Norfolk VA "shelter", a far higher percentage than the impoverished other shelters in the area. And, AR groups (including Vlasak's own ADL-LA) advocate the spaying and neutering of dogs and cats, ostensibly to fight pet overpopulation.
If AR people really believe that humans and animals are morally equivalent, how can they justify all this killing, spaying and neutering of dogs and cats unless they support killing, spaying and neutering humans for the same reasons they favor doing so to animals?
The AR people have either fatally undermined their own argument of human/animal moral equivalent . . . or more disturbingly, would kill and forcibly sterilize human beings on the same moral/ethical basis they do animals.