Vegan Views 124 Spring 2012
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
VEGAN VIEWS A forum for vegan opinion in memory of Harry Mather No.124 Spring 2012 In this issue : 2 Editorial 6 Perceptions of 'nature' 15 How many UK / USA vegans? 3 The vegan evolution 8 Vegans - spiritual souls 16 Vegans in the ancient world 4 Wild things 10 David Irving interview 17 Book reviews 5 Utopias and veganism 14 Vegan Press 18 Comments & Letters www.veganviews.org.uk The deadline for contributions to the next issue (due out in July) is VEGAN VIEWS THURSDAY 31st MAY - but smaller items may be accepted for a few weeks after this date. We would love to hear from you! See panel on the left for more info. Website: www.veganviews.org.uk SUBSCRIPTIONS to the printed edition of Vegan Views (now in colour and Email: [email protected] almost identical to the digital version) - see back page. The digital pdf version of V. V. is available free at www.veganviews.org.uk Editor - Sarah Austin If you’d like to receive the pdf version in your email as soon as it's out (rather than Editorial adviser - Malcolm Horne waiting until it’s on the website) then please let us know and we will add you to our Editor in Chief - David Mather 'Pdf Mailing List'. The digital version is free, but donations are very welcome if you This issue produced by Malcolm and Sarah. are a digital reader only. Our recent back issues 121, 122 and 123 are also freely Printed on 100% recycled paper by available online (as are many earlier issues in our archive). DSM Print Services. Front cover photo by Jarosław Szmolda - horses on the Gower Peninsula in Wales. Vegan Views, which started in 1975, is an informal forum for vegan news and [ EDITORIAL [ discussion, produced by unpaid volunteers on a non-profit-making basis. Our emphasis is on Welcome! Over the past few months we have been looking at ways to improve debating issues amongst vegans and vegan Vegan Views, especially the photos in the printed version, and have subsequently sympathisers. We are independent but support managed to buy our own cheap second-hand colour copier which we hope will the work of other vegan groups and make the printed mag more visually appealing to our readers. This issue is being publications. We expect to publish three times printed on 100% recycled paper. a year - in March, July and November. We have also updated our website (see Malcolm's piece below). And for those We rely on readers’ contributions, and try of you who like Facebook we have re-opened our group where we can share our to print all that is relevant and of interest. concerns, see more about this on page 18. We welcome letters, articles, news, events, We hope you will enjoy this issue, see the change to all colour as a positive step recipes, reviews, photos, drawings, cartoons, etc which we think will improve Vegan Views, and make it the same as our digital pdf - by email if possible, with articles preferably version (which is available from our website). as Word attachments. If you write to us but We would like to thank Patrick at Veggies for kindly printing our last three issues don’t want your letter published please make and generally supporting us. Our ties will not be broken as hopefully Patrick will this clear. Please include email and/or phone number in case we need to contact you - we continue to sell the mag on his stalls, and we will carry news of Veggies projects will not pass on any personal information we (see page 19 of this issue for example). receive. More details are on our website. Sarah Austin DISCLAIMER: Contributions may be edited. The views expressed in this issue are not necessarily those of the editors. The new version of the Vegan Views website COPYRIGHT: If quoting from this magazine, www.veganviews.org.uk went online at the end of please acknowledge the source and do not January. It is simple and basic, and hopefully very distort the sense. easy to navigate. No need for any animated graphics, ------------------------------------------ which is just as well since I'm inexperienced with In memory of Harry Mather (1924-2010) website design and would struggle to fashion them anyway! Even some of the simple things took more than a good while to comprehend, and many thanks go to Tony Martin for helping and advising me all along the way. Sarah declared she “wouldn’t have the patience” to work at it, but still contributed ideas on colours and layout. Sarah, a keen photographer, took this ‘leaves and shadows’ photo that sits at the top left of every page. The Home page, as before, has all the issues from 121 onwards available to download in pdf form. It will also be the page for any news or announcements, in particular when the next issue is due out, when the deadline for contributions is, . and so on. Harry Mather was a compassionate and well- We have a Back Issues page where issues 93-117 can be downloaded (as well respected person who was a true pioneer of the vegan movement, and an inspiration to many as our very first issue from 1975), and brief content details of each of those people throughout his lifetime. magazines have now been added. There’s also a link to an old version of the He became vegan in 1967 and wrote website which lists many articles of interest from No 10 through to No 100. At extensively on the subject. He ran the Bourne- some point in the future perhaps we should revive this practice because, as time mouth vegetarian/vegan group for many years goes on, interesting and still relevant articles can get rather ‘lost’ within old issues. and attended vegan festivals, events, camps and There’s a link to our Facebook page which is growing in popularity. The gatherings all over the UK and abroad. Subscriptions page now enables readers to subscribe to the printed issue, or Harry became editor of Vegan Views in 1985, donate, directly to us using PayPal (rather than going via Veggies as before, and produced no less than 82 issues (numbers with a delay before being forwarded to us). 35-116) until in 2008 he retired, planning to Lastly we’ve added memorial pages for our two previous editors, Harry Mather finish an anthology of his writings. Sadly he and Valerie Alferoff, with some text and photos you may not have seen before. passed away two years later, not having We hope to add to Harry’s page a little later on, while Valerie’s page contains concluded this work. a link to a further site created by her long-term partner David Barrett. Harry you will be sadly missed ... may you rest in peace. Malcolm Horne 2 www.veganviews.org.uk The vegan .evolution This inspirational article by Angel Flinn is from 2009, Indifference toward the suffering of other creatures is an but a revised and longer version can be read at accepted societal norm that calls out for us to remember what http://gentleworld.org/the-vegan-evolution-2 basic human values are: justice, empathy, compassion and Angel is the outreach director of Gentle World ('for the respect; for the natural world, for the other animals, and for vegan in everyone'), a group based in New Zealand and our fellow humans. By re-evaluating and renewing our Hawaii. We hope to interview Angel in our next issue, and commitment to these fundamental values, and by calling find out more about Gentle World's work. attention to the need for an ethical evolution, we can create The longer version was described by one person as new standards of behaviour, motivated by our desire to be “the most incredibly inspiring speech for veganism I have better people. Only in this way will we become deserving ever read. I have only been vegan for a short time, after of the position of stewardship that our physical evolution living my entire life as a meat eater, but suddenly a light has granted us, but which we have rejected in favour of came on and all the dots connected, and now for me self-serving domination. there is no going back.” All over the world, animals are imprisoned, enslaved, tortured and violently killed, and all over the world, people who are “It often happens that the universal belief of one age, otherwise kind, gentle and caring, continue to ignore this a belief from which no one was free, or could be free, unspeakable suffering. And yet we wonder why the human without an extraordinary effort of genius or courage, race is plagued by violence on a world-wide scale. We go becomes to a subsequent age, so palpable an about our business, acting as though this state of violence absurdity that the only difficulty is to imagine how does not indicate something terribly disturbing about our such an idea could ever have been deemed credible.” psychological state, individually and as a whole. Our lack of John Stuart Mill concern for innocent beings has caused us to de-sensitise ourselves to suffering, which in turn enables us to inflict pain The vegan ideal embodies the highest of ethical aspirations - on each other. non-violence, justice and compassion toward the innocent. Yet this deep and powerful value system continues to be marginalised by society. The example set by those who embrace these principles is too often vehemently opposed, trivialised or simply ignored. But the effects of this paradigm shift in perception are far-reaching, and the rewards beyond measure.