Schlagwort: Suffer

Left alone

Timo curled up very tightly in the farthest corner of the shack in which he had been locked. The first snowflakes rolled gently down and he froze terribly. But much worse than the cold was the loneliness, the terrible fear of never being able to see his mother again. But he was only in the world for a very short time. Shouldn’t he snuggle up with his mom, drink with her? He curled up a little more. As far as it went. Well, his shack was thickly padded with straw, but the cold still stayed and even the thickest layer of straw didn’t help against the loneliness. Especially not against fear. But what happened? Why did he have to be there? He heard his mom calling. She couldn’t be far away. Still, he was here, and she was there.

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Liberate Animals – Decriminalize Activists

Four young, ambitious people who had made it their task not only not to ignore the suffering that is being done to our non-human fellow creatures everywhere at any time, but also to document it and bring it to the public. What they revealed was as frightening as it was sobering. The crime scene was the Excelsior Hog Farm in Abbotsford BC, Canada, but it could have been any other pigsty in the so-called livestock industry, which Canada is generally considered to be quite advanced. What these recordings showed was not only that these animals were tortured in crates when they had young and then further on fully slatted floors, with the well-known injuries, cuts and growths. We’ve almost gotten used to that in Austria, after more than three years of campaign work by the VGT against fully slatted floors. In addition, animals that could not even walk were seen unable to get up, so they slowly died while the still alive, mobile conspecifics ate up the already dead ones that were simply left lying between them. They rotted in the stable. Some were thrown in the trash cans. All this is nothing new for those who have already dealt with the matter. Still, it gets worse.

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Showing bad Pictures is mean

I leaf through the pictures of the last revelation with concentration. With everyone before, I’d thought it couldn’t get any worse – and it could get worse. The ones I now had in front of me were the very worst. I thought about which ones to put on and present to the public. What can you expect of people? I decide rigorously. When it comes to reality, everything, because it’s their work. And if they don’t do it themselves, then it is at least tacitly tolerated. One is worse than the other. Between badly injured pigs lie dead ones in various stages of decomposition. How long had the farmer not entered this barn? Of course, it is theoretically possible not to look after the animals once during the few months that the rearing lasts. Possible because feed and water distribution are automated. You just have to make sure that the ventilation works, because if it fails, everyone will die miserably. That’s not good, because then the invested capital is gone. You don’t have to muck out either, because the faeces are pushed through the gaps. Only at the end, when the transporter comes to take them to the slaughterhouse, is there a thorough cleaning.

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With whom to sympathize and with whom not? (2)

„I’m telling you, the wolf has no place in our forests!“ finally came an objection from the father, who had finished his meal and leaned back with every sign of comfort. Now he could speak again. “We have never had a wolf before, and we don’t need one. Blame it on those who think we should let everyone in, refugees and wolves. You can see what’s happening. The refugees are also the ones who slaughter the animals, i.e. slit their throats while they are alive without being anaesthetized. The Muslims and the Jews do that. I praise the good behavior and the humane killing. You can twist it however you want, they just don’t have our civilization and our education.”
„Exactly,“ the mother agreed, „everyone should be shot.“
„The refugees?“, Katharina was amazed, „But that’s already bad.“

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Knowledge is irreversible (2)

It was a long way from the city center to the outskirts and across the fields until they finally stood in front of the said stable. The moon was shining brightly so they could see every detail. They paused for a few moments. Then Rebekka headed straight for the entrance. Carefully she reached for the handle, pushed it down and, to her great surprise, found the door unlocked. Then she waved to Paul, who had stopped in the field and looked as if he did not want to move a step forward. Rebekah was angry. „Who doesn’t dare to come here!“, she thought as she walked over to Paul, roughly grabbed his arm and pulled him behind her. „I don’t dare,“ she growled as she opened the door.

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No Meat From Abroad

“We don’t want to see meat from abroad on our supermarket shelves!” Is the tenor, “Not even at the trusted butcher, who you know anyway that the animal lived happily before it was sausage and filleted. You know everything. The animals in Austria are doing well, very well in fact. After all, we are among the countries with the highest animal welfare standards in the world, as announced by Minister Köstinger, Minister of Agriculture in our beautiful country. And she must know. So it’s also true. Because politicians never lie.

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Normal and extreme

It is normal to bring a felled tree into the house shortly before Christmas and slowly watch it die while the so-called festival of love is celebrated. From January 6th you can see the dead trees lying around everywhere, disused, thrown away and all that for a few days of prettiness.

It is extreme to look for a tree in nature that is hung with a number of delicacies for the wild animals. Extreme, because you let the tree live and do the prettiness not only for yourself, but also to do good to others. But the most extreme is that you don’t want to buy the tree and own it, you just leave it alone.

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The Pig in Community House

Ms. M. is sitting on the window sill on the sixth floor in a community building somewhere on the Gürtel in Vienna. She has a bloody knife in her hand.

The cars roll through the streets.
One big sheet avalanche.
An avalanche that lasts now and then.
Then it rolls on again.
Indolent and indifferent.
People sit in the cars.
Protected by the sheet metal around them.
People walk in between.
They almost all have a goal.
And if not, then pretend.
They try to avoid each other.
Look at the ground.
Everyone goes about their own life.
Slaving through, between the others.
As if they were obstacles that need to be avoided.
Beautiful and ugly,
Thick and thin,
Successful and unsuccessful.
It doesn’t matter from up here.
They all look like ants.
Small, hectic ants.
Busy and driven and scared.
This is how they spend their lives, their time.
And don’t see how pointless it is.
In the morning they close the door and go out.
To go in somewhere else.
They close a door.
Doors are carefully closed.
So that nobody sees what’s going on behind it.

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Where Are you?

If they give her the baby right after birth
tear away from the chest,
so you can drink their milk
and she screams out the pain of a mother
for hours, for days.

Are you so blind with greed
so numb with selfishness.

Where are you?

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Happy Pigs in Austria

Isn’t it wonderful to see how the pigs, big and small, gallop across the meadow, visit the cow, chat with her. We know it from the yes-of-course piglet. It’s a delight and pigs, especially the little ones, are so cute too. We know the pictures from advertising, and if you search long enough, from reality too. They actually do exist, the pigs, the sweet pink ones, who by now everyone knows that they are intelligent like three-year-old children and are therefore far superior to our domestic dogs. They play and dig and enjoy life. They build nests for the babies and experienced old sows support the young, inexperienced in rearing. And they have a separate area in which they relieve themselves. So much for the idyll. So much for the illusion. Not quite. For 1,500 pigs in Austria this idyll is actually a reality. For 1,500 out of 3,000,000. So it’s 0.05%.

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