ARAN's Whips & Chains Demo Tour Begins in Galway

by Mark C Thu Jun 15, 2006 01:26

http://www.duffyscircus.com/news/article.asp?NID=31&NCID=1

Are Duffy's Circus involved in any animal cruelty?

by Shane - personal capacity Thu Jun 15, 2006 16:32

In all fairness if you want to see whips and chains there are plenty of other sites on the internet. I'm afraid it's a case of ARAN strike again. I have been a vegetarian for nine years. I don't go to circuses that have animals and I am opposed to all cruelty (that means humans as well as animals folks). But ARAN's campaigns are STUPID AND POINTLESS. Nobody remembers what they were about, they end up looking like a bunch of attention seekers, or rather, people looking for attention for themselves rather than any cause, and they seem to be an absoloutely tiny group with an awful lot of money. They are also I think a great little filler of a news item. A brief mention of some animal rights activists makes it look like the mainstream media is covering all angles and opinions, they can then neglect other issues like the giveaway of our resourses, our governments support for the various wars our gallant friends across the water want to wage, arms manufacturing, institutional racism, abuses of workers rights, abuses of civil liberties etc. Animals are beaten in circuses? PEOPLE ARE BEATEN IN CUSTODY! People are shot down by the emergency response unit. Protestors have injunctions slapped against them to stop them exercising their democratic rights. And if we release these animals back into the wild they will find that their habitats have been destroyed by 'development'. There comes a point when we all start to sound like our parents but now I am afraid I'm going to have to quote my Dad and say GET A GRIP! There is so much work to be done in changing our society I am left wondering if ARAN actually what's going on outside of the circus. Because in all fairness thet's where there heads seem to be, in the circus.

by Suzanne R Thu Jun 15, 2006 17:43 SuzanneR at compaq dot ie

Just seeing the pictures and read the website quoted on the banner and on your website ARAN circuses.com and aran.ie. i never realised how cruel a circus with animals really is. I also read just recently about some elephants suffering in irish circuses - thanks for this information and thanks for highlighting this issue in a way in which will get people talking and who will want to stop, watch look and nearly always listend!

by hedgehog Thu Jun 15, 2006 23:59

Shane.

Just because a group pursues one cause does not mean its individual members don't care about or are unaware of other causes. For example, you don't expect shell to sea to protest about the iraq war in their official group capacity. Their raison d'etre is the issue they focus on.

As you rightly pointed out, there are many things wrong in this world and many different groups form to address particular issues. each group has its place and all are working in their own way towards a better and more humane world for both humans and animals. It's never easy standing up against strong business and political interests and we should try to be supportive of activist groups when they stand up for the rights of the weak in society, both humans and animals (who have no voice at all)

How each activist group goes about its business is up to them. For instance, the unmanageables would use imagination, costume and a sense of humor to highlight their issues. Rather like ARAN does. Both groups try to get press coverage and draw the attention of the public to their causes. Both have found this to be a Peaceful but effective approach.(hats off to the unmanageables BTW). These days you need to be creative if you want to peacefully get the attention of a rather jaded and apathetic public.

you say ARAN protests are stupid and pointless. it seems to me that your individual vegetarianism seems pointless too. So why do you do it? maybe because as a rational and sympathetic person, you cannot be a part of an industry that is based on wide scale animal suffering in the name of profit, and you know animals cannot speak out for themselves.It seems to me that public action is the next logical step to this vegetarianism because a public protest has the potential to effect change on a larger scale. So why do you knock the attempts of others to try to make a larger change no doubt for the same reasons you yourself are a vegetarian?

you say they are a small group with lots of money. not true. They are dependent on donations just like most other activist groups

you imply that the news media coverage of aran impedes them covering more important events. This is just silly. Apart from the obvious logical argument that aran are not actually in the news all that much at all, The fact is, You know all too well how the corporate media are and whether they cover aran or not, that will not change. They will still continue to misreport or ignore key issues. that is not aran's fault

you say aran are a bunch of attention seekers. You are correct but they do this attention seeking not for personal gain (as any public activist will tell you, its no fun being attacked, verbally abused and labelled a nut!) for a very specific reason: to highlight cruelty to animals. In fact, I have it from the horses mouth that the protestors did not enjoy their experience but only did it because they cared about their cause.

It seems to me that aran is going about its business addressing its causes and this in no way precludes other groups doing likewise. The behaviour of the media will not change if aran stops. Their coverage of aran and other animal rights groups is commonly biased and negative, same as it tends to be for many other activist groups

I commend the bravery of these protestors for putting themselves out there in a vulnerable position for a cause they care about.

Incidentally, during this demo, a group of people threw eggs at the protestors while a member of the gardai looked on indifferently. I imagine this would not have been allowed if they were not just protestors. A subspecies of humanity, not covered by gardai protection it seems!

Best of luck to all activists on the ground who put themselves out there to try to highlight and prevent both human suffering and animal suffering. That includes ARAN.

Shane, I suggest you use your energy to get out and work on those other more important causes you mentioned rather than wasting it dissing the efforts of others. And I wish you the best of luck in your efforts.

by People Eating Tasty Animals (PETA) - All Rubbish And Noise (ARAN) Fri Jun 16, 2006 00:51

Great to see ARAN protesting (again, and again, and again...... boring) against circuses. Wouldn't it would be more productive to actually protest outside a circus. ARAN get a life.

by hedgehog Fri Jun 16, 2006 02:12

yawn indeed! its disappointing yet again to see this kind of irrational hostility towards animal rights activists expressed on indymedia. its also disappointing that such unconstructive comments , that just attack the man , are not informative and don't address the topic in any useful way, are allowed to remain by the editorial staff.

basically the comment consists of:
[insulting name]
[insult: "you're always protesting and you are boring"]
[blatantly obvious sarcastic suggestion , nothing new ]
[insult: "get a life"]
by indymedia guidelines this fails miserably

It seems to me that someone choosing a name like

"People Eating Tasty Animals (PETA) - All Rubbish And Noise (ARAN)"

for a comment on animal rights issues is clearly just having a go.

I wouldn't have bothered rising to the bait except that I think this is a wider issue than just this one inane comment

To decontextualise this, If i was writing a comment on an article about racism and called myself a mildly humourous but racist name then would that be ok?

It seems to me that the choice of name when you make a comment is a loophole wherby you can insult the poster without falling foul of indymedia guidelines. This should be rectified.

The irony of all this is that because i am commenting on editorial mattrers you will probably delete this comment and leave the previous one even though I have raised a reasonable general point about how the name of a commenter can be used as a way to deliver an insult

by vegetarian Fri Jun 16, 2006 10:10

you have just compared racism to meat-eating, therefore you deserve any insults which come your way. that is a disgusting and idiotic comparison, which lowers a serious issue (racism) to the level of hippy lifestyle rubbish (vegetarianism).

perhaps animal rights stories receive such hostility here because, well, they're a fucking joke. I'm a veggie, and my activism is primarily on the ecological side of things, but this kind of thing does nothing but piss me off. Why are these people not doing actions and publicity stunts on issues that affect HUMANS? Perhaps they are, but I was active for the last 4 years in Galway and can't remember seeing any of the faces in those photos before. Seems to me to be bourgeois liberals, desperately seeking some moral high ground.

So you can keep working on your holier-than-thou snobby irrelevant campaigns, on issues that mean nothing to the underprivileged, counting millionaire actors and super-models among your comrades. Just don't expect us to take you seriously.

by GF Fri Jun 16, 2006 15:43

S&M in public isn't saving lives. This is all well and truly from the "look at meeeee,I care" animal rights handbook. If you love animals so much, go out and save some. Direct Action=Direct Results.

No justice,just us.

by Someone with brains Sat Jun 17, 2006 00:55

GF......were you smoking??? In response to your go out and do direct action and save animals lives (what planet are you living on, are you watching lots of those solider action movies again???) - If your mission is to save animal can you honestly stop a member of the public on the street and save if you dont do direct action to save animals you're not good enough for the cause....having this attitude will only put people off of supporting the animal rights movement. There are far more better ways to do your campaigning but honestly your direct action stuff will never ever work in ten of our lives!!! Good luck though....who ever you are

by hedgehog Sun Jun 18, 2006 01:31

wild unfounded extrapolations about how you think individuals you do not know might behave, when they are not taking part in an animal rights demo, are a poor excuse for venting hostility.

Sorry to disappoint you but I don't fit your stereotype. I DO care about human issues and work for them on several fronts but, not being a speciesist, I try to be ethically consistent so I also care about animal issues too. They are the ultimate disadvantaged.

However people like those who have commented here make me wonder sometimes why I bother trying to work on causes affecting humans who often seem extremely selfish, unempathetic and downright stupid at times, despite the great advantages they have over other animals.

My comment about racism was not a direct comparison but a parallel. There IS a difference. It was intended to highlight that to choose a racist name for a comment on an article on racism would correctly be seen as offensive, wheras if the article was about animal rights, it would be considered fine to choose a name insulting to someone who cares about animal rights. Not comparing 2 things, just using a parallel to highlight hypocrisy.

please at least read and comprehend a comment before proceeding to have a go at the poster. :)

As for mister "blow everything up" direct action, Please keep away from any meetings of sane activists and go join the military or the gardai if you want to hurt people. People like you give animal activism a bad name.

and BTW personal insults about peoples bodies are completely offside and should be deleted

by Catlady - HAAS Sun Jun 18, 2006 15:24

I would like to make a few points regarding this protest, from the horses mouth, so to speak.

I was at the demo as a supporter of ARAN. The personal insults directed at the participants by various contributors made me smile. Hedgehog is correct when he states that there were eggs thrown, along with other items of food, and that a member of the gardai was present and failed to intervene until the young boys involved in the throwing went off and came back with more. Personally, I found this somewhat irritating at first, but realise that such behaviour can be typical of 15 year old boys when out in groups. However, the eggs (which do actually hurt) were followed by a sliotar (sp?!), whic i found somewhat more disturbing, as it could have caused some real damage had it been thrown with force (thankfully this was not the case). I therefore confiscated it so that nobody would be injured, as the garda did not seem interested in doing anything about it.

Back to the insults. I can assure you that ARAN are anything but a group of Bourgeois liberals. Although not a member of this organisation, I fully support their goals and if I can help them out when they come to Galway, I will. Noneof us went out to demonstrate against circus cruelty for our own amusement - I can think of better ways to have fun, to be honest. Sticking with honesty i can also say that I do not enjoy publicity in any way, and cringe when I see myself in photos. However, peaceful protest is, to my mind, the best way of highlighting the issues, and this was proved on that day, as apart from the egg-throwing, we also received many messages of support from passers-by.

As a seeker of a more just society, I do not support violence, and any attempt by detractors to link Aran to the ALF is laughable.

Finally, to address the point made about comparing battery farms to the holocaust, coparison of two things does not mean the equation of two things. If I compare beer to wine, it does not mean that I see the two as identical, but rather that I see to two as sharing certain characteristics. The obvious similarity between the holocaust and battery farms is the suffering endured by those affected, aswell as the cruelty inherent in the practice of both. I could also compare fur farms to battery farms under the same categories. This does not mean I think that chickens are the same as mink. Similarly, the somewhat jaded notion that caring about animals equates with not caring about people is a reflection of a concept of the world based on binary oppositions which has long been challenged by scholars far more accomplished than myself. caring about suffering in the world imlpies caring about all suffering, be it human animal or non-human animal. Attending an anti-circus demo does not mean I do not care about human suffering, any more than attending an anti-racism demo would mean that I do not care about white people's suffering.

by SABWATCH Mon Jun 19, 2006 13:14

Maybe if the shoe..or in your case balaclava fits..wear it!
Of course it is all propaganda,like PETA tells all the truth all the time.If you belive that .I have a nice historical stone that I own in Limerick.Would you like to buy it??

by ARAN & PETA Supporter Mon Jun 19, 2006 21:27 ronanharding at hotmail dot com

Sabwatch, looking over your past posts on Indymedia you can clearly see that you have targetted many groups who are doing good work. These are good people clearly doing good work. Why not spend some time actually doing something that can actually help stop animal cruelty. But in saying that animal abusers have the right to picket too!

I am a very proud volunteer for ARAN and a member of PETA too and must say everything you say never makes sense and if anything only strenghtens my resolve to help ARAN here in Ireland and PETA's work around the world. Glad to see that ARAN's demo in Galway just recently has sparked all this debate and interest, so can only imagine the amount of people who are now re-thinking their decision to go to circuses who use, exploit and treat animals with complete disregard.

*A dedicated ARAN supporter in Mayo*

by saliva Mon Jun 19, 2006 21:45

If the west of Ireland had the caudillo like leadership it needed to break free of the fetters of legitimate democratic institutional government, Mayo could become the S&M Mecca of Europe.

by SABWATCH Tue Jun 20, 2006 00:40

if that is your name from your hotmail account.

I am doing somthing.I am pointing out that the "animal rights " is not just about saving animals,that there is a very much darker agenda to this whole issue.If you dont want to see that,well you might as well say sure Sinn Fein had nothing to do with the PIRA,so it is ok to support them because they are using peaceful means.
Of course ALF,PETA would not like you to know a few more nastier secrets,like how many cells of ALF in the UK were caught with illegal firearms,to wit a cache of sawn off shotguns.Need those to liberate animals??
Or the ALF cell who was financing itself with dealing heroin to school kiddies?? Or the recent ALF attack in Dublin on private property of Caroline Barnado?How many ARAN, PETA supoorters have had their private property vandalised or their family sent death notices??

So as far as I am concerned you support PETA,ARAN,etc you support a violent terrorist group.That INMHO makes YOU a ligitmate target for anti terror legislation and any and all anti terrorism tactics. Does that make sense to you???

by hedgehog Tue Jun 20, 2006 05:42

nothing you say makes sense to me. Your simplistic analysis and "reds under the bed" , "war on terror" mentality makes me puke. Throw enough mud and hope some will stick eh?.

People like you try to equate terrorism with dissent in an effort to alienate those standing up for what they believe in our so called democracy. Most people have figured out that old nazi / bush tactic and don't fall for it so much anymore.

However, there might be a position for you in homeland security.

by Ciaran Long - Alliance For Animal Rights Wed Jun 21, 2006 20:26

Sabwatch is a shooter called Sean McGovern (seen recently on tv). Don't bother wasting your time replying to his rants. He comes up with the same crap over and over again.

by SABWATCH Sun Jun 25, 2006 21:26

this is the fool that written the direct action....he can't even do that himself think sod

by 2 faced Wed Jun 28, 2006 18:42

this ciaran long guy also eats meat and goes fishing the weekends...strange when he calling sabwatch a 'shooter' on tv

by SABWATCH Wed Jun 28, 2006 20:30

No sorry Ciaran I am NOT Sean Mc Govern.For the last time ,you keep coming up with this crap.What programme was he on BTW.
You keep posting this but never mention which programme???Either put up or shut up!! But fair dues to him,I belive he duped the animal wannabe terrorists once in Dublin.When they were to bring down a renegade loyalist bomb maker to discuss tactics. We need more people like that in the war against animal terrorism

And BTW the previous post from Sabwatch,whatever that is about is not from me.Again another not paying attention by Indymedia editorial staff...

by Ciaran Long - Alliance For Animal Rights Wed Jun 28, 2006 22:56

It is fully clear that the previous comment wasn't from you. It's the same author as "2 faced". It's from a fool we know that doesn't know his arse from his elbow.
The program on tv was about you being a private investigator. But obviously you're not very good at it since you messed up on the night that you are talking about the renegade bomb maker. Maybe you should have come to the AR2006 Gathering to see what really goes on.

by SABWATCH Wed Jun 28, 2006 23:04

I really havent got a clue what you are on about!!!You really have me confused with somone else. So you DO admit that that the peaceful animal rights DID attempt to bring a bombmaker down to Dublin???Your words not mine! Oh yes the gathering 2006,yeah a bunch of dangerous nutters who espouse peaceful animal rights but wouldnt think twice about justifying acts of terrorism.Nothing new there.Hows Bernie and the gang these days?Got another few members to go and beat up a few kids out fox hunting next season,or we trying to figure out how to make fire bombs,without burning yourselves???

by Ciaran Long - AFAR Wed Jun 28, 2006 23:15

Think you'll find that they were your words, Sabwatch........
Beating up kids? Looks like your P.I. skills are letting you down again.

by SABWATCH Thu Jun 29, 2006 00:33

Do you understand English??? I am not a PI or this person you keep going on about!!! And yes your ilk are well known for doing that in the UK,along with kidnapping journalists and mutilating them.But any we digress..You do then admit that the DHS do allow and have in their membership ex loyalist paramilitaries??
BTW why are you replying to all my rants?? I think you are suffering from paranoia,there is treatment for that.But then it is proven that doing and living a semi criminal terrorist lifestyle starts to unhinge the mind of those who particapate in it.

by poxnorthamericana - none Tue Sep 19, 2006 21:08 loupgaroux62 at hotmail dot com

I thought the fotos of ARAN protesters was funny - amusing and generally in good fun. (chains belong in the bedroom...)

Why the big fuss?

Obviously we all need to 'live and let live' maybe with a emphasis on 'live'.