From now on my blog will be continued at JoeGardnerWrites.com , please go there for all further posts.
Farewell, blogger. It has been fun.
All the best
Joe x
Thursday 25 June 2015
Sunday 7 June 2015
Irrational Discourse Will Always Become Violence
On Friday evening I attended my first animal rights protest. I'd always been curious, and always had that twang of shame pass through me when I'd eschew a passing rally in favour of heading to whatever shop I was off to when out and about in Central London. So when I saw the event listed on Facebook on Thursday evening I decided to stop wishing and go out and do it.
The demonstration, which was held in Covent Garden, was in opposition to a certain high-end restaurant's use of Foie Gras on their daily menu. Thanks to its misleadingly fancy name, you'd be forgiven for not knowing what Foie Gras is, or why animal rights activists take a certain level of umbrage with it over other animal products. In short, it is a particularly heinous and decadent type of duck or goose liver pate which is produced by shoving metal tubes into the throats of captive birds, force-feeding them junk until their livers become infected with disease and swell up to ten times their natural sizes, then leaving them to die in agony after which their bulbous, infected livers are gouged out and fed to sadistic or ignorant diners in pompous restaurants. It's illegal to produce in the UK, yet a select few restaurants who cater for the amoral have found loopholes in the law which allow them to import the product from countries in which the torture-food is still made. If you can't see why I'd have a problem with this, then you might be interested to know that the rest of this post is about you.
As a point of interest, the venue for our protest - which was jointly hosted by London Vegan Actions and the Anti-Foie Gras Movement - changed no less than twice on the day, as the first restaurant, Le Garrick, conceded to our concerns and removed Foie Gras from their menu. So did Clos Maggiore, the next spot on our radar. Unfortunately the same can not yet be said about Balthazaar, a gluttonous establishment with a degenerate clientele and no regard for its outside reputation as a profiteer of the basest animal torture our imperfect race is capable of. As I went hoarse shouting that evening, shame on Balthazaar.
Joining in on the protest was one of the best decisions I've made in a long while; I felt alive roaring my values into the Central London summer evening, shaming Balthazaar's management and customers at the top of my lungs, waving my truth-bearing banner aloft and forming an instant camaraderie with the seasoned activists I had joined in occupation of the deplorable doorway of this tavern of torture, the intoxicating spirit of disorder and revolution surging through me. Irrespective of our ages or levels of demo-experience, we were one and the same. We each hold an unquenchable urge to see animal abuse eradicated from our slowly-but-surely evolving culture. I made some true friends that evening.
We rallied passers-by to our cause, we acquired myriad signatures for the anti-Foie Gras petition, we were met with applause and salutations of congratulation, and a neighbouring business even saw worth in our plight and gifted us with two bags full of fruit juice, which kept us going well into the evening. Peyton and Byrne, your gesture illustrates an affiliation with the cause, and for that we thank you.
But there was one chap who stood out among the bemused, the scornful and the sneering apathetic who passed us by. He took audience to our chants and rallies early on, and remained for as long as he could until the inevitable crescendo of his chosen outlook ushered him away. He was, as I have come to know them now, a spokesman for the "Lion Clan".
His stance was one of proud apathy to animal suffering. His conviction was that all creatures not human were "Put here" for us to enjoy as food. There was no hope for him; he had long ago chosen to reduce animals to the level of "product", such was his sweltering alliegance to consumerism that he actually held onto the idea that the billions of non-human species covering this globe were a gift for him to gorge himself on, self proclaimed "top of the food chain" (Hence his status as Lion Man. I asked him if he truly lived by the notion of a food chain, if he - overweight chainsmoking drunk - actually went out on a morning-to-morning basis and killed his own breakfast. He said that he did, and thus my argument was curtailed by a cement wall of blatant falsity).
Other similarly absurd arguments poured out of him. He claimed that Balthazaar was entitled to sell tortured duck corpse, because it was profitable. Every word he uttered highlighted more and more the inadvertent wide-berth he was managing to give to our argument, and we didn't indulge his verbal landfill, as it had become apparent early on that we were dealing with a trash-sluice rather than an intellect, and indulging such a cheese-stick as he would only serve to malnourish. Plus we had to save our lungs to tell off the institution of cruelty whose doorway we had taken residence in.
Ultimately, his presence was less blighting than he'd probably hoped. With a hefty audience of tourists, drinkers and passers-by, the Lion Man (clad in a Harry Potter Gryffindor t-shirt no less, likely a symbolic testament to his Lion Man status, being that the lion is that fictional wizard-house's emblem) proved emphatically that irrational discourse can't survive for very long before its mask inevitably slips, like that of a Scooby Doo villain, and becomes violence. Wearied of our refusal to entertain his lunacy, the man entered the belly of our protest group to try and confront each of us more directly. He made attempts to snatch the megaphones of the protest leaders, he blew cigarette smoke in our faces, claiming he was allowed as it is a "free country" (Try telling ducks and geese that), and, eventually, he decided to try and come to blows with one of our number. It will never stop being said that you are what you eat, and a diet consisting exclusively of the results of violence had rendered him the living embodiment of violence. He only practiced a pretence to humanity for so long before he returned to his bloody comfort zone.
We are a non violent group, my spacious-headed friend. We rally against violence. Excuse the pun, but trying to start a fight with us is nothing short of a losing battle. Nonetheless, the police officers who had come to politely monitor our demonstration took notice of his violence and acted quickly. They stepped into the fray, cuffed the Lion Man and threw him into their van, which then departed to take him to his overnight cell, somewhere nearby in this free country. We cheered for a moment, and we got back to the task at hand, free from his infestation. The fight against the cruelty of Balthazaar may continue, but in some very special respect, rational thought and empathy won that evening. Irrationality simply can not hold its own against reason and intelligence, and I glibly hope that the Lion Man pondered this as he sat in his cell that night.
Boycott Balthazaar in Covent Garden! If you'd like to assist with the anti-foie gras campaign, leave Balthazar a single-star review / flood their page with your disgust, here.
The demonstration, which was held in Covent Garden, was in opposition to a certain high-end restaurant's use of Foie Gras on their daily menu. Thanks to its misleadingly fancy name, you'd be forgiven for not knowing what Foie Gras is, or why animal rights activists take a certain level of umbrage with it over other animal products. In short, it is a particularly heinous and decadent type of duck or goose liver pate which is produced by shoving metal tubes into the throats of captive birds, force-feeding them junk until their livers become infected with disease and swell up to ten times their natural sizes, then leaving them to die in agony after which their bulbous, infected livers are gouged out and fed to sadistic or ignorant diners in pompous restaurants. It's illegal to produce in the UK, yet a select few restaurants who cater for the amoral have found loopholes in the law which allow them to import the product from countries in which the torture-food is still made. If you can't see why I'd have a problem with this, then you might be interested to know that the rest of this post is about you.
As a point of interest, the venue for our protest - which was jointly hosted by London Vegan Actions and the Anti-Foie Gras Movement - changed no less than twice on the day, as the first restaurant, Le Garrick, conceded to our concerns and removed Foie Gras from their menu. So did Clos Maggiore, the next spot on our radar. Unfortunately the same can not yet be said about Balthazaar, a gluttonous establishment with a degenerate clientele and no regard for its outside reputation as a profiteer of the basest animal torture our imperfect race is capable of. As I went hoarse shouting that evening, shame on Balthazaar.
Joining in on the protest was one of the best decisions I've made in a long while; I felt alive roaring my values into the Central London summer evening, shaming Balthazaar's management and customers at the top of my lungs, waving my truth-bearing banner aloft and forming an instant camaraderie with the seasoned activists I had joined in occupation of the deplorable doorway of this tavern of torture, the intoxicating spirit of disorder and revolution surging through me. Irrespective of our ages or levels of demo-experience, we were one and the same. We each hold an unquenchable urge to see animal abuse eradicated from our slowly-but-surely evolving culture. I made some true friends that evening.
We rallied passers-by to our cause, we acquired myriad signatures for the anti-Foie Gras petition, we were met with applause and salutations of congratulation, and a neighbouring business even saw worth in our plight and gifted us with two bags full of fruit juice, which kept us going well into the evening. Peyton and Byrne, your gesture illustrates an affiliation with the cause, and for that we thank you.
But there was one chap who stood out among the bemused, the scornful and the sneering apathetic who passed us by. He took audience to our chants and rallies early on, and remained for as long as he could until the inevitable crescendo of his chosen outlook ushered him away. He was, as I have come to know them now, a spokesman for the "Lion Clan".
His stance was one of proud apathy to animal suffering. His conviction was that all creatures not human were "Put here" for us to enjoy as food. There was no hope for him; he had long ago chosen to reduce animals to the level of "product", such was his sweltering alliegance to consumerism that he actually held onto the idea that the billions of non-human species covering this globe were a gift for him to gorge himself on, self proclaimed "top of the food chain" (Hence his status as Lion Man. I asked him if he truly lived by the notion of a food chain, if he - overweight chainsmoking drunk - actually went out on a morning-to-morning basis and killed his own breakfast. He said that he did, and thus my argument was curtailed by a cement wall of blatant falsity).
Other similarly absurd arguments poured out of him. He claimed that Balthazaar was entitled to sell tortured duck corpse, because it was profitable. Every word he uttered highlighted more and more the inadvertent wide-berth he was managing to give to our argument, and we didn't indulge his verbal landfill, as it had become apparent early on that we were dealing with a trash-sluice rather than an intellect, and indulging such a cheese-stick as he would only serve to malnourish. Plus we had to save our lungs to tell off the institution of cruelty whose doorway we had taken residence in.
Ultimately, his presence was less blighting than he'd probably hoped. With a hefty audience of tourists, drinkers and passers-by, the Lion Man (clad in a Harry Potter Gryffindor t-shirt no less, likely a symbolic testament to his Lion Man status, being that the lion is that fictional wizard-house's emblem) proved emphatically that irrational discourse can't survive for very long before its mask inevitably slips, like that of a Scooby Doo villain, and becomes violence. Wearied of our refusal to entertain his lunacy, the man entered the belly of our protest group to try and confront each of us more directly. He made attempts to snatch the megaphones of the protest leaders, he blew cigarette smoke in our faces, claiming he was allowed as it is a "free country" (Try telling ducks and geese that), and, eventually, he decided to try and come to blows with one of our number. It will never stop being said that you are what you eat, and a diet consisting exclusively of the results of violence had rendered him the living embodiment of violence. He only practiced a pretence to humanity for so long before he returned to his bloody comfort zone.
We are a non violent group, my spacious-headed friend. We rally against violence. Excuse the pun, but trying to start a fight with us is nothing short of a losing battle. Nonetheless, the police officers who had come to politely monitor our demonstration took notice of his violence and acted quickly. They stepped into the fray, cuffed the Lion Man and threw him into their van, which then departed to take him to his overnight cell, somewhere nearby in this free country. We cheered for a moment, and we got back to the task at hand, free from his infestation. The fight against the cruelty of Balthazaar may continue, but in some very special respect, rational thought and empathy won that evening. Irrationality simply can not hold its own against reason and intelligence, and I glibly hope that the Lion Man pondered this as he sat in his cell that night.
Boycott Balthazaar in Covent Garden! If you'd like to assist with the anti-foie gras campaign, leave Balthazar a single-star review / flood their page with your disgust, here.
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