I do respect money but I conscientious of the fact that money is always just a tool not an end in itself.
In current society, money helps gain freedom if one is wise enough not to become a slave to money.
Never compromise morality for money, period.
Money’s capacity to turn morality into a matter of impersonal arithmetic and by doing so, to justify things that would otherwise seem outrageous or obscene.
- David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years
In 1975, they might have done what Helga Tacreiter did: work on a farm. Helga loved the cows and enjoyed feeding them, snuggling them, and singing to them. And while she cried when each new group of calves grew up and got sent away, she made their lives as happy as she could for as long as she could.
Then one day, lightning struck a large tree on the farm while the mother cows were under it seeking shelter from the storm. Six of their calves survived, but they were now orphans. That meant Helga had to raise the babies, including Harvey, who had been temporarily blinded, couldn’t eat on his own, and turned in circles when he tried to walk.
Helga spent long days and nights hand-feeding Harvey and walking with him, pressed against his side. Slowly, miraculously, his vision started to return and he began to chew grass. One day, he walked in a straight line, then ran, then mooed for the first time. Helga was ecstatic. But as she was celebrating Harvey’s progress, she realized something: Soon, he and all the other calves would be sold. After how hard she and Harvey had worked, it didn’t seem fair.
Helga decided to buy the entire group, which she called the “Lightning Herd.” But where could a farmworker get that kind of money? While she was sitting in the barn one night, her back against Harvey, it came to her. Not everyone got to enjoy cow cuddles as she did – but maybe everyone could. Helga raced to the fabric store and back to the barn, where Harvey, seemingly sensing that she now needed his help, stood still for hours while she draped, measured, cut, and sewed soft faux-fur fabric into what would become the first cow-size “cowch.” Word of Helga’s cowches spread, earning her enough money to buy the Lightning Herd and a plot of land where they would spend their lives in peace.
Today, The Cow Sanctuary in New Jersey is home to dozens of animals – many of them rescued by PETA – including cows, emus, horses, goats, ducks, pigs, and geese. It’s funded by donations and, of course, sales of cowches.
- More Here
You can visit Cow Sanctuary in NJ : https://thecowsanctuary.org/
If you want to permanently eradicate any wrongs then focus on curbing demand rather than curbing supply.
Modern vigilantism and law is built around perpetual work of curbing supply.
True peace does not come from others. Its comes from within oneself
You can watch the full documentary online at Christspiracy
From Nazareth to the Vatican and from New Delhi to Kathmandu, the pair questioned world-renowned theologians, Christian farmers, Indigenous shamans, archeologists, and religious leaders and asked them to explain why cruelty to animals is accepted around the world, even though compassion is supposedly the uniting core principle of all world religions.
The historical texts and facts that they found—some hiding in plain sight and some deeply buried—are explosive. The new documentary Christspiracy reveals truths that many lifelong Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists have never heard. For those of us who have felt isolated and confused by seemingly conflicting values, the film offers hope: clear and compelling evidence that great religious leaders absolutely rejected harming and killing animals. This revelation has massive implications for how we conduct our moral lives.
Getting the information wasn’t easy. The filmmakers’ vehicles were chased, their homes were ransacked, and doors were slammed in their faces. Netflix wanted to censor the film. Waters and Andersen refused, and Christspiracy became the first movie ever to have its rights bought back from the world’s largest streaming platform.
Waters was forced out of his congregation after church leaders told him to stop asking questions. And his experience rings familiar to many of us. We’ve been ridiculed for our concern for animals, reprimanded for questioning what we were taught, and mocked for our discomfort at religious gatherings in which animals’ flesh is served. But we stand firm in our belief that violence toward animals is wrong.
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The little guy now is five!
It feels like yesterday when he came home...
Happy Birthday my love; thank you for making me keep breathing within hours after Max.
Why does the U.S. lag so far behind the U.K. and E.U. on animal welfare? One view is that Americans are still influenced by a Wild West mentality that tolerates the rough handling of animals. Supporters of that view point to the survival of the rodeo, which, like the bullfight, entertains spectators by mistreating animals. People who find it entertaining to watch a frightened young calf being lassoed by a rope that chokes them and then drags them to the ground are unlikely to be concerned about the suffering of pigs or chickens.
Yet when Americans can vote for laws that give farmed animals more space to move around, they do so. In 2002, 55% of Floridians voted to ban keeping pigs in stalls too narrow to allow them to turn around. In 2006, 62% of Arizonans voted to ban such stalls for both pigs and veal calves. In 2008, 63% of Californians voted to ban such stalls for pigs and veal calves, plus standard battery cages for hens. In 2016, 78% of Massachusettans voted to ban narrow stalls for pigs and veal and standard battery cages for hens, and to ban the sale of pork, veal, and eggs from out-of-state producers using these systems. In 2018, 63% of Californians voted to ban the sale of pork, veal, and eggs from out-of-state producers using systems that do not meet California’s standards. (A challenge by pork producers to the ban on in-state sales was dismissed last year by the U.S. Supreme Court.)
So I suggest that the U.S. is so far behind the E.U. on animal welfare, not because Americans care less about animals than Europeans, but because the U.S. political system is less democratic than Europe’s parliamentary system. In most parliamentary democracies, political parties are stronger and individual lawmakers do not need to raise large amounts of money to get re-elected. Money and lobbying have far greater influence in U.S. politics.
The U.S. congressional committee system also serves to disempower the electorate in a way that cannot happen in a parliamentary democracy, in which the Prime Minister and Cabinet are members of the legislature and have much influence on legislation. In the U.S., House and Senate Agriculture committees in both state and federal Congresses are usually made up of lawmakers representing predominantly agricultural districts, and they effectively have a veto on proposals to protect farmed animals. They often receive substantial donations from factory farm operators. In states without provision for citizen-initiated ballots, only tiny Rhode Island has farmed animal legislation that can compare with the E.U. or U.K. At the federal level, there is no legislation that even attempts to regulate the conditions in which farmed animals are kept.
Most Americans care about animals, and would like their country to be among the leading nations in protecting animals from unnecessary suffering. The reality is more disturbing, and I hope that people who learn the true situation seek to change it.
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