Re: Anti-immigration assumptions (fwd)

Eric, I really don't understand the intention behind such a kind of
eco-radicalism. What you are saying reminds me of post-modern reactionary
politics that associates everything with "essentialism" in the name of
criticizing Marx and his notion of species-being. What happens is that
they reproduce another essentialism, the one that is much so worse than
they are criticizing. In fact, speciesism should not be seen as the exact
opposite of enviromentalism. Human beings evolve with enviroment and
enviroment evolves with us. Enviroment is not an abstract entity that
remains outside us. In the final analysis, we need environment to
reproduce our livelihood, if we are not to die, BUT the question is to
decide how we can do so without destroying our surroundings, non-human
animals, as well as _human animals_ since capitalism is not a sustainable
system for of all us to begin with (just recently 3-5 million female
fetuses have been aborted in India. are you kidding me? while Americans
feed their dogs and cats with vegetarian food here,(it is cool ha?)
maternal and child mortality are increasing in the third world).
Enviromental degregation, sexism, racism, are the evils of capitalism, and
they will remain so as long as the system is capitalist. We are
capitalist, we are sexist, we are racist. there is no excuse. WE NEED TO
CHANGE THE SYSTEM IN ORDER TO CHANGE TO OURSELVES AND CHANGE OURSELVES IN
ORDER TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM...

that is what I say...

Mine Doyran, SUNY/Albany, Politics, Phd student

>I may be wrong, but I fear there is much hidden speciesism in your line
>of >thought (cf. R. Ryder "Animal Revolution. Changing Attitudes Towards
>Speciesism" Basil Blackwell, Cambridge, 1989).  >To give one example of
non-human animal suffering in a human made world:  >the imprisonment of
animals, the overcrowding during transportation, the >smuggling, the
selling at auctions, the chaining, the whipping, beating >and >branding of
sentient beings is evidence that the slave trade of animals >is >very
similar to that of the slave trade of humans (cf. Spiegel Marjorie >"The
Dreaded Comparison. Human and Animal Slavery" Mirror Books, New >York,
1989). 

>Not recognizing the similarities between speciesism and racism or between
speciesism and sexism for that matter (cf. Carol Adams "The Sexual
Politics of Meat. A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory" The Continuum
Publishing Co, New York, 1999) for her attempts to highlight the
'interlocking oppressions of sexism and speciesism) would, in my opinion,
be a fundamental mistake inherent to any strategy which may call itself
'progressive' but is only 'progressive' for human animals, and not for
non-human animals or the surrounding ecosystem in which they both are
imbedded. Man is after all NOT the measure of all things.

kind regards,

eric mielants
soc. dept.
suny-binghamton