I AM MORGAN

Quote of the day

“Over the past couple of years, SeaWorld’s visitor numbers have fallen, its stock has plummeted, lawsuits have confronted their business practices, legislation has challenged what goes on at Shamu Stadium, and reported profits were down 84% on the previous year.

People ask me whether this is a win. I can only say that it was inevitable, and that I hope it’s only the beginning. Today’s kids are increasingly becoming part of the ‘I can’t believe we used to do that’ generation. They know that killer whales are not suitable for captivity.”

- Gabriela Cowperthwaite, director of Blackfish

“without judgement, endorsement or agenda”

There’s a campaign by PETA to get the SeaWorld float removed from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. I haven’t written about it primarily because I didn’t think it had any chance of succeeding – a prediction which has since been confirmed. (I also don’t care for parades, so I tend not to take much interest in stories about them.)

There’s a new AP article about the controversy. PETA’s protest and petition are getting a lot of traction due to the release of Blackfish,* but there’s essentially zero chance that Macy’s will remove the hideous float from its lineup. They’d like to present this refusal as merely consistent with a general entertainment-focused, apolitical policy:

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade stands as a unique American event solely devoted to entertainment. The Parade has never taken on, promoted or otherwise engaged in social commentary, political debate, or other forms of advocacy, no matter how worthy. Its mission has always been about entertaining millions of families and spectators. While it is understandable that such a widely embraced event can sometimes feature elements or performances that some people may find disagreeable, Macy’s intention is to provide a range of entertaining elements without judgement, endorsement or agenda. While we cannot control external forces that wish to impose their own perceptions on the Parade, we will remain steadfast in following the guiding core of a decades old mission, celebration and entertainment for all.

This is of course bogus. The parade’s official partners are corporations and it’s long been a platform for corporate displays of good will – a celebration of the status quo and consumerism. This is endorsing an agenda. Their suggestion that SeaWorld is dedicated to entertainment is making a judgment: that the suffering and rights of animals are trivial. There’s nothing magical about entertainment that removes it from the spheres of morality or politics.

But the inconsistency stands out. The AP article describes how the SeaWorld float is one of two controversial issues related to this year’s parade. Singer, vegetarian, and animal rights activist Joan Jett had to leave the South Dakota state float (for another which I think is still undisclosed) after complaints from the South Dakota Cattlemen’s Association. It appears Jett herself made the decision to leave the float in the face of this. But why didn’t Macy’s insist to these “external forces that wish to impose their own perceptions on the Parade” that they wish to proceed “without judgement, endorsement or agenda”? Why are they not stating publicly in response to a trade association that finds Jett's appearance “disagreeable” that their “goal is to entertain” and that this is Jett’s “goal as well”?

Regardless of the float outcome, the publicity will not be good for SeaWorld or the fearful “cattlemen.” So it’s a victory in that regard.

* Independent of what happens with the float, SeaWorld is feeling it. Their stock price has fallen, they’re resorting to gimmicks to draw people in, celebrities are speaking out,** and even their CEO has sold a chunk of stock. Additionally, PETA “has submitted a formal complaint urging Florida State Attorney Jeffrey L. Ashton to investigate the park and pursue felony charges for alleged violations of Florida’s anti-cruelty statute.” SeaWorld is plainly on the losing side of history; now it’s a matter of whether its decline will happen quickly or slowly.

** Fortunately, an actor named Jason Biggs was there to provide the obligatory violent misogyny.

Blackfish - encore presentations tonight and tomorrow on CNN!

If you missed watching or recording Blackfish on Thursday, you have more chances to see it. There will be encore showings tonight (Saturday, October 26) at 7 ET and tomorrow night(Sunday, October 27) at 9 ET.

The film won its cable news timeslot on Thursday and has sparked an outcry across Twitter and the internet.

Blackfish to air on CNN this Thursday, October 24th!

Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s acclaimed and influential documentary Blackfish, which I’ve discussed here recently, will be airing on CNN tomorrow (Thursday) night at 9 PM Eastern time.

By all means, tune in and/or set your system to record it.

Spiegl to Dutch parliament: Morgan is “a child of the Netherlands”

The other day, Matthew Spiegl published an open letter* to the members of the Dutch parliament petitioning them (and the Dutch people) to revisit the case of the orca Morgan and to intervene to halt the inertia of the decisions that have led to her imprisonment and exploitation at Loro Parque.

On December 3, 2013 the High Court in Den Haag will once again review the case of Morgan the Orca, found off the Dutch coast and now housed in a Spanish amusement park. But why does this issue have to be resolved by the court at all?

The Dutch Parliament has it within its power to act in the best interest of Morgan, to undo the mistake of the previous Government, and direct that she be moved to a sea pen and held in public trust for the good of all, in the hope she can one day be returned to the sea.

…The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation is still the issuing CITES management authority and can - if it has the will to do so - recall Morgan from Loro Parque if the conditions there place Morgan at risk, which appears to be the case.

Morgan should not be confined to a concrete tank for the rest of her life, and the debate about her should not be confined to the pages of a legal brief or the formalities of a lengthy court proceeding or even the political procedural process of Parliament.

The debate about Morgan must be led by the people of the Netherlands - in the name of humanity - and on behalf of us all.

(It appears that Blackfish – to which Spiegl refers in his letter - will be premiering in the Netherlands in a couple of weeks, and could well have an effect on the course of events.)

To me, the most interesting aspect of the letter was Spiegl’s framing of his appeal not only in terms of national identity but in terms of an ethic of maternal care:

Morgan’s right to be free must be shouted out at the top of our voices and from the depth of our hearts, with the same passion and conviction as a mother protecting her child.

When Morgan was taken from the Wadden Sea, she became a child of the Netherlands, a ward of the Dutch people to be held in public trust by the Dutch Government until she could be released back to the sea, to rejoin her real mother.

All the world is watching, all the world is waiting, all the world knows that the fate of Morgan can change this world forever and make it a better place for all.

The maternal metaphor – with which I’m not entirely comfortable - is apt given orca social structure. But, although Spiegl is from the US, it’s almost unimaginable, in this land of anxious masculinity, that an appeal to legislators would ask them to imagine themselves and the country as the collective mother of any human or other animal. I would love to know if that’s more common or resonant in the Dutch context….

*I admit I’m a little confused about the SeaWorld documents Spiegl cites and links to and whether Morgan is among the subjects of the exchange, as he contends.

Blackfish: Love, oppression, and science

I’ve made no secret of my thoughts about SeaWorld and other marine parks, and was happy a couple of months ago to learn of a new documentary, Blackfish, about the experiences of orcas and human trainers and their interactions at SeaWorld. I saw it recently, and was impressed. Via Ecorazzi, a few clips:







The movie is kind of a chronicle of a death foretold, focusing on the history of encounters between human workers and orcas at SeaWorld to help the audience better comprehend the fatal attack on trainer Dawn Brancheau by the orca Tilikum at SeaWorld Orlando in 2010.

It’s the focus on this one whale and on the experiences of the human workers, many of whom worked closely with Tilikum, that gives the film much of its power. The movie shows the workers' initial enthusiasm and increasing disillusionment as they came to appreciate the whales’ reality. Their stories are relatable: countless young people who love animals and the ocean visit these theme parks and dream of becoming “trainers.” (Many imagine that the position requires a high level of education about the animals rather than, as it turns out, attractiveness, athleticism, and performance abilities.)

The former trainers interviewed are thoughtful and compassionate to a one, impossible to dismiss as disgruntled former employees. They went into the work with an image of themselves, an image encouraged by SeaWorld, as “partners” with and caretakers of the orcas. As they came to recognize the real physical and psychological condition of the orcas and their own role in perpetuating the animals’ oppression and distress, intense embarrassment and guilt set in. This is really a tale of scientific awakening, even though it doesn’t superficially look to be about science. It’s a story of their growing recognition that their understanding of reality had been limited and highly distorted by the situation.

This failure to understand was direct. As one of the former “trainers” describes, she had believed when she worked at SeaWorld that she was knowledgeable about orcas, but over time came to realize that she actually knew very little about them. The workers came to recognize the partiality and inaccuracy of the information about the whales (such as about their typical life span in the wild vs. in captivity) that they were being fed by the company and then passing on to the public.¹

But the nature of the relationship between humans – all humans - and orcas at SeaWorld interferes with understanding in much more fundamental ways. That former trainer’s comment about the false sense of knowledge reminded me of Erich Fromm’s discussion of the nature of love, which I’ve argued is inseparable from an understanding of science.

As I’ve discussed, Fromm argued that love was characterized by care (“the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love”), responsibility (“my response to the needs, expressed and unexpressed, of another human being”), respect (“the ability to see a person as he is”), and knowledge. Fromm emphasizes the incompatibility of love with relations of domination and exploitation. These relations, which encourage narcissistic distortions, aren’t conducive to respect or to the development of objective knowledge about others. He argues for the importance of combating narcissism in forming knowledge: “I must try to see the difference between my picture of a person and his behavior, as it is narcissistically distorted, and the person’s reality as it exists regardless of my interests, needs and fears.” (111-12)

Fromm expands on this argument in Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud



in which he makes a case for the essential “connection between ‘thought’ and ‘concern’,” the “interrelation between concern and knowledge.” He contends that, in the human sciences at least, the advance of knowledge depends on caring for, being engaged with and sympathetic to, those we’re studying. He explains:

Both psychology and sociology have as their object man. I can get to know a great deal about man by observing him like any other object. I – the observer – stand against my ‘ob-ject’ (‘ob-ject’ and ‘objection’ have the same root; in German, Gegenstand=‘counterstand’) to observe it, describe it, measure it, weigh it – yet I do not understand that which is alive if it remains an ‘object’. I understand man only in the situation of being related to him, when he ceases to be a split-off object and becomes part of me or, to be still more correct, when he becomes ‘me’, yet remains also ‘not-me’. If I remain a distant observer I see only manifest behavior, and if this is all I want to know, I can be satisfied with being an observer. But in this position the whole of the other person, his full reality, escapes me.

The sort of concern needed for science requires a recognition of shared experience:

I need to be myself in order to see the other. How could I understand his fear, his sadness, his aloneness, his hope. His love – unless I felt my own fear, sadness, aloneness, hope, or love? If I cannot mobilize my own human experience, mobilize it and engage myself with my fellow man, I might come to know a great deal about him, but I shall never know him.

The most promising approach to knowledge of human beings is the most caring - concerned, “therapeutically oriented knowledge” inspired by questions like “how can man be free, how can he be fully human [sic], how can he become what he could be?” Fromm offers the paradigmatic example of medicine: “How many medical discoveries,” he asks, “would have been made without the wish to heal?”

He insists on the importance of this active concern to fruitful discovery. “[R]andom and uninterested observation,” in contrast, “rarely leads to significant knowledge.” Countering the common argument that an active interest and concern interfere with objectivity, he contends that “[t]his interest, far from being opposed to knowledge, is its very condition, provided it is blended with reason, that is, with the capacity to see things as they are, ‘to let them be’.”²

So, in Fromm’s view, not only is objective knowledge an essential element of love, but the reverse is true. In fact, the two are inseparable. The foundation of good science is not cold detachment but an approach guided by care, concern, responsibility, and a therapeutic intent. Rather than a futile attempt to transcend or achieve distance from the objects of study, Fromm advises cultivating respect: attempting to overcome the narcissistic inclination to view others through the lens of our perceived interests in order to see them (and by extension ourselves) as they/we really are. Although Fromm is talking about relations among humans and the human sciences, his insights can be, and need to be, expanded to include our relationships with and attempts to understand other animals as well.

Considered from this perspective, the various ways in which relations and systems of oppression obstruct the advance of science become more apparent. Everything in these systems militates against the respect and active concern necessary to objectivity and the formation of real knowledge. Theme parks like SeaWorld are a good example. Billed as sites where humans can encounter and learn about orcas, in fact they’re a microcosm of the system of domination and exploitation in which they operate. This makes them useful in illustrating the sorts of epistemic distortions that all such systems necessarily produce.

Our role in orcas' exploitation, for example, encourages a sort of active indifference to rather than an active interest in their experience. It leads people to block out consideration of the orcas’ real subjective experiences and psychological states. This includes a reluctance to investigate their psychological-emotional capacities, both those we share and those we might not.³ It also encourages apathy toward their interests and needs, both species-specific and individual.

We don’t want to look behind the stage set, or learn the truth about how the whales came to be performing in the parks. In fact, we shrink from recognizing the artificiality of the orcas’ treatment in the parks and its stark contrast with their lives in the wild. This motivated inattention shades into active denial. We’re inclined to believe the stories told by the corporation about the whales’ experiences and motivations, and even to embellish them with our own details. We eagerly accept assertions of the orcas’ stimulus-response simplicity and cognitive limitations. Just as the effects of poverty on human children are often taken as evidence of their genetic limitations, the effects of the orcas’ conditions of deprivation and their responses to these conditions are viewed as evidence of their relatively simple animal brains.

The position in which these parks situate humans in relation to the orcas - as accessories to their oppression and exploitation - leads to the muting of empathy. Rather than marshalling our own emotional experience to try to appreciate theirs, we actively deny that orcas have emotional capacities that conflict with the role they’ve been forced into. We convince ourselves that they enjoy the performances and their lives at the park.⁴ At least, we’re easily led to believe, they don’t mind their situation; in some sense, maybe they’ve even chosen it. We’re motivated to regard anything short of open distress or rebellion as cheerful acquiescence and cooperation.

When we encounter evidence of physical harm, we’re inclined to look away and to accept the explanations offered – the photos and videos don’t show what they purport to show, the injuries are superficial, orcas harming other orcas are engaging in natural behaviors, and so on. When we’re confronted with evidence of distress, we tend to deprive it of meaning or reframe it in ways that make it more palatable. We display a similar willful cluelessness toward acts of rebellion or resistance, including displays of aggression toward or attacks on humans. We tend to accept the explanations offered: these incidents were due to human mistakes, the whales were playing and didn’t understand what they were doing,…

The system leads to a similar distortion of our self-image, in which our role in the orcas’ oppression and exploitation is hidden or disguised as beneficial. While adopting more or less unconsciously the corporate perspective, which sees the orcas as objects valued for their usefulness, we like to see ourselves as part of a system of protection and caretaking centered in the parks. Rather than appreciating the epistemic and psychological distortions caused by our role in the system of oppression and exploitation, we actually believe we’re being enriched and educated while contributing to the well-being of orcas.

The marine park experience is very distant from Fromm’s therapeutic approach, which would try to understand the whales in terms of their real needs and capacities and promote conditions in which these are fulfilled. In fact, the system feeds narcissism and objectification, which are contrary to scientific understanding. As the film argues, if our understanding of the orcas’ reality weren’t thwarted by our position in a system of oppression and exploitation, we would have predicted the violence we’ve seen.

The awakening of the SeaWorld workers is instructive. In a sense, they were pulled toward both extremes, the system-serving and the scientific. On the one hand, their position in the system and their need to go on with their work and feel good about what they were doing virtually required the epistemic contortions described above – willful ignorance, denial, system-serving interpretation, accepting comforting myths, and so on. Despite their years of working closely with the orcas, the oppressive system in which they worked required bad faith. By way of contrast, scientists like Ingrid Visser and Lori Marino, also interviewed for the film, work in conditions that facilitate knowledge rather than systemically distorting and obstructing understanding.

On the other hand, the trainers’ proximity to the whales combined with the genuine love for the animals enabled them to see behind the veil – to witness firsthand the real conditions of the orcas' lives and their distress. Even though most seem to have had limited knowledge at the time of the orcas’ lives in the wild and their real capacities and abilities, the beliefs they were encouraged to hold due to their role in the system became increasingly difficult to sustain in the face of the evidence. They moved in several stages away from the systemic perspective and toward Fromm’s respectful, therapeutic orientation: from seeing themselves as the whales’ “partners” in a beneficent system, to understanding their role as that of the orcas’ protectors within and in some sense from the system, to realizing that the system itself is rotten and advocating for its end. Their descriptions of moments in this transformation are poignant: one interviewee describes being ridiculed by other workers for expressing her own pain at witnessing the suffering of orcas being separated from their families, while another explains how he remained at his job for a while to protect “Tilly.” More thoughts from a former trainer interviewed for the film:



The trainers’ experiences illustrate how easy it is to distort our understanding when we’re in oppressive and unequal systems that require a distorted understanding. But they also point the way forward. Examining how these theme parks interfere with the formation of knowledge of reality – of other animals and of ourselves - provides an opportunity to look critically at how our positions within systems of oppression and exploitation, including our seemingly innocent roles as tourists and visitors, work against not just the wellbeing of those most oppressed by those systems (and of the oppressors as well) but against understanding, against knowledge, and to find ways to move in a new direction.

¹ The film shows a current employee being asked a question about how long the orcas generally live in the wild and giving the canned, incorrect corporate response. In an earlier post, I discussed Susan G. Davis’ work describing the problems with SeaWorld’s so-called educational programs, including the downplaying of evolution in order to cater to creationists.

² As the quotation that opens one of my recent posts describes, this orientation is the foundation of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, to which Fromm was (uneasily) linked, and really of all critical social science.

³ Some of the experts interviewed for the film discuss orcas’ lifelong close family relationships and speculate that these patterns might have led to emotions and emotional bonds that we don’t experience. It’s hard for humans, accustomed as we are to seeing other animals as precursors to or lesser, incomplete versions of ourselves, to even conceive of other animals having cognitive or emotional capacities that we don’t. The systems of oppression in which we typically meet make it even less likely that this recognition will emerge.

⁴ We fail even to consider that the orcas might be performing emotional labor, encouraged, as we are when faced with human emotional labor, to take expressions of emotion at face value.

Habeas Porpoise? Really?

Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I love it.

Arie Trouwborst, Richard Caddell, and Ed Couzens, whose article about the orca Morgan in Transnational Environmental Law I mentioned previously, have a follow-up post at the Cambridge journals blog.

The Amsterdam District Court reviewed the previous decision, yet after consideration upheld the finding that Morgan’s transfer was legitimate. We consider this verdict to be demonstrably legally flawed. The Court based its determination primarily on a surprising appraisal of the ASCOBANS text, finding that a removal of an orca for rehabilitation purposes did not constitute “intentional taking” (such taking being precluded under the treaty). Moreover, the Court considered that enduring captivity was justified by the need to conduct research pursuant to obligations under ASCOBANS. This is deeply perplexing, since ASCOBANS does not consider permanent captivity for research (or any other) purposes acceptable. The judgment remains highly unsatisfactory in the light of these and other treaty obligations, while the Court seemingly ignored evidence that the facility to which the orca had been transferred does not engage in substantive research into cetacean ecology.

It must have been difficult for people to keep a straight face while arguing that Morgan’s captivity at Loro Parque was about research. It’s very obviously a theme park in which animals are exploited for human entertainment.

Unconscionable by any measure

One remark in Matthew Spiegl’s piece about the recent SeaWorld IPO stood out:

“[T]o perpetuate the practice of keeping orcas in captivity is unconscionable by any measure of any standard in today's society.”

Not much more to say.

In searching for more about the IPO, I came across references to a new documentary, Blackfish.



Here are a review of the film and an interview with the director, Gabriela Cowperthwaite.

In related news, the Free Morgan Foundation linked to a legal analysis of the Morgan case in the journal Transnational Environmental Law, which the journal has made available for free.

Unfortunate decision in Morgan case

Sending her to Loro Parque wasn't unlawful, the judge found.

Shut it down.

Last month, protesters chanting “Shut it down!” managed to (peacefully) storm the gate at Marineland in Niagara Falls, Canada. (In developments today, it’s being reported that Marineland is threatening to sue a former trainer for more than $1 million over her statements to the Toronto Star about injuries to an orca named Kiska confined at the park.)

In related news, yesterday was an important court date in Amsterdam for the orca Morgan, when more arguments were to be brought and reports submitted in favor of getting her released from Loro Parque in the Canary Islands. You can read more here, here, and here. I haven't found any updates, but I'll post them when I do.

Death at SeaWorld: conflicted

In remarkably timely fashion, a new book by investigative journalist David Kirby, Death at SeaWorld: Shamu and the Dark Side of Killer Whales in Captivity,

will be released next week. I knew his name sounded familiar, and was quickly reminded why: his writing about vaccines. Damn.

This is a difficult case for me (as Kirby’s book on factory farming would have been had I known about it). It’s not as if he wrote one short, naïve article early on in the vaccine-autism manufactroversy. He wrote an entire book largely promoting antiscience, and then doubled down. Even years later he was still holding to this line (and possibly still is today). When it comes to any scientific question, It’s difficult to trust a person who could write “I believe that the public lynching and shaming of Dr. Wakefield is unwarranted and overwrought” in 2010.

This is a great demonstration of the problems woo creates. It’s astonishing that, with all of the real damage Pharma does to children around the world, some journalists are ignorant enough to latch onto antiscience causes like the antivaccine movement. This makes it all the more difficult for those of us fighting harmful corporate and government practices. I would say the same thing about people employing woo in the service of animal rights. But this case is maybe a bit more complicated: he’s written some nonsense on one subject, but for all I can tell this book is sound and well researched,* and other reliable sources have made and supported similar arguments. I remain undecided as to whether or not I’ll read this one, but I likely will. With extreme skepticism.

*Unfortunately, Kirby is already saying some silly things in interviews about the new book. “There’s a lot that SeaWorld could do to make my book less relevant,” he suggests, “- one estimate was that 70% of their revenues come from having Killer Whales. That’s billions of dollars, if they had taken that money and dedicated it to saving Whale habitat; well then having a few in captivity is what it takes. Maybe that’s what we would have to do to raise that kind of money to save the Whales in the wild, but of course they are not doing that.” Well, no, of course not. But even if they did, that’s not how ethics works. You don’t do that to some individual animals in the name of helping the species in the abstract. This is why the Declaration of Helsinki (gutted as it's been by pharmaceutical companies) exists.

SeaWorld, just fade into history, already.

It seems inevitable that someday future generations will look back on our treatment of nonhuman animals with the same moral disgust and incomprehension with which decent people today view the historical global institution of slavery or the current treatment of women in Islamic theocracies. I actively hope that day comes soon.

SeaWorld perfectly encapsulates the ideology of mastery and ownership. Thriving on exploitation and abuse, on suffering and death, it presents itself as a benevolent and “gentle patriarchy.” Last month, Florida judge Kenneth Welsch came down on the side of OSHA, deciding that humans could not work in close contact with orcas during SeaWorld performances. The ruling followed SeaWorld’s appeal of a decision by OSHA following the killing of “trainer” Dawn Brancheau by Tilikum in 2010. (Immediately, of course, SeaWorld’s CEO was out trying to spin and even possibly evade the spirit of the ruling.)

Writer Tim Zimmerman heard from a SeaWorld trainer shortly after the decision. Their email reads, in part,

I have known these abuses for years but to see it in affirmed in black and white was sickening. I’m a little ashamed that I allowed this company to take advantage of and abuse me (and the whales) for years because of my own selfishness to want these experiences.

I believe most of these workers, who’ve been exploited and endangered themselves, do genuinely care for the animals and want to see the work in a positive light. But the illusions and self-deception are increasingly difficult to sustain. It’s time for this sad chapter in our relationship with nonhuman animals to end.

The Daily Show, the orca slavery lawsuit, and the willful ignorance of What All Good Liberals Know

Sigh. So The Daily Show lived up to my expectations in their story about PETA’s orca slavery lawsuit. I asked in October for people to try to avoid reflex ridicule and to investigate the basis for the lawsuit and the situation at SeaWorld (about which I’ve written quite a bit) before mocking it. Well, Wyatt Cenac and the show were, unsurprisingly, unable to meet even that most basic ethical standard.

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When the “report” began with an uncritical presentation of a clip from Fox News I knew it wouldn’t go well.

It’s one thing to argue that particular characterizations of some forms of oppression that implicitly or explicitly compare them to others are inaccurate or offensive. Claims of offense should be taken seriously, but not simply accepted as the last word. The rejection of a characterization should be based on evidence and reason, as if made to a member of the “insulted” group who defends it. The offense could be perfectly valid, it could be ignorant, and/or it could be a means to preserve privilege; struggles for rights and against suffering, moreover, can and do justify the causing of offense in some circumstances. In the history of liberation movements, there have been many activists and oppressed people who felt solidarity with those of other oppressed groups. There have also been many who felt their precarious position threatened by other movements. This fear has long been exploited by elites to continue their rule over all of the subordinate groups.

Elaine Brown appears ignorant of the reality when she suggests that “If there is animal cruelty, we want to talk about animal cruelty, but…” There is no reference at all, in the entire piece, to orcas’ lives in the wild or in corporate theme parks. The audience is led to believe, and appears all too willing to accept, that the suit is utterly frivolous, solely about “exploiting the history of the enslavement of black people in this country for publicity.” Shockingly, they also seem to buy the absurd direct comparison of orcas in theme parks to domestic dogs and cats.

When Lisa Lange from PETA suggests that because the 13th amendment doesn’t use the word “person” or “people” in its language, they’re “hoping that a court will see that it can apply to animals,”* and Cenac replies “She’s right. If the constitution was written for people and not for whales, it would say that somewhere” while showing “We the people” on the screen, the audience responds with laughter and applause. What they and Cenac appear to be forgetting, oddly enough in this context, is that the “people” of the original Constitution did not include him, or Brown, or me, or I’m sure many members of the audience.

Rationales for the subordination of, and insults to, groups of humans have long rested on claims that they were more like nonhuman animals than other humans. This of course makes it natural that members of those groups would – as they sometimes do with other human groups – attempt to draw a bright line between themselves and all nonhuman species. But it’s cruelly ironic that they do, and counterproductive to the cause of anyone’s freedom, wherever they fall in the social hierarchy.

I’m certainly willing to entertain arguments that this lawsuit was incorrect in its reasoning or that the risk of offense should outweigh the goals. Those arguments would have to be, well, argued, however. Pointing to other tactics of PETA or any other group, or simply asserting offense or engaging in uninformed mockery, does not invalidate it. It does, though, serve the interests of those in power.

The reason I wasn’t surprised by their take was that this is one of many stories on Stewart’s show that seem to be based on What All Good Liberals Know. They know that gnu (heh) atheist arguments shouldn't be taken entirely seriously, that humans should care – though not too militantly – about nonhuman animal welfare and consider animal rights (unless, sometimes, approved) to be ridiculous, and so on. It would be an improvement if they made the slightest attempt to question these assumptions by placing themselves in the longer historical context. I’m cautiously optimistic.

*As they note, the court did not. I wasn’t expecting success for the suit – just intelligent consideration.

*expletive*

Loro Parque. I'd like to read English translations of these decisions providing the full justifications.

This all makes a mockery of the idea of rescue and rehabilitation of wild animals. It makes these efforts look like thinly veiled and cynical means of obtaining captive performers and breeders for corporations, or at the least too easily coopted for this purpose. People and governments who support rescue efforts should be assured that their work and money will not support captures, and the public should be made aware of this situation.

Anxiously awaiting Morgan decision

The judge's decision should be announced within hours.

The orca slavery lawsuit: a plea to avoid reflex ridicule

Strangely enough, none of my usual sites (including the Orca Coalition) mentioned the orca slavery lawsuit before I learned of it on the Colbert Report last night:

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PETA has a link to the suit, "asking a federal court to declare that five wild-caught orcas forced to perform at SeaWorld are being held as slaves in violation of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution," on its site. It involves some of the orcas that have been discussed here, and appears to have received its impetus from the Morgan case (Ingrid Visser is one of the Friends).

I can already imagine the hostility and mockery that will greet it: it's just another kooky stunt from PETA, rights isn't the appropriate framework in which to discuss the ethical status of animals, it's an offense to humans who've been enslaved to suggest that nonhuman animals are, everyone knows the Constitutional basis doesn't exist, and so on. I fervently hope, though, that people will take some time to read the suit and consider the case within a longer historical framework, and will not dismiss or reject the struggle of and for these orcas because of a dislike of PETA or animal rights arguments. (You can read some of the background by clicking on the "whales" tag below.)

I also hope people will consider the point made by Colbert - that we live in a country in which the argument that nonhuman animals can be "people" who can be enslaved is ridiculed but corporations are granted the legal rights of people:

Orca Coalition set to appeal Morgan decision

I reported last week that the decision had been made to send Morgan to Loro Parque in the Canary Islands. Encouragingly, the Orca Coalition quickly raised funds to initiate an appeal. There's hope yet!

“International regulations for the care of a protected animal have still not been followed. Only if rehabilitation is deemed impossible, other options are allowed to be considered. But the Dolfinarium has so far not been able to mention one action that shows that they are trying to prepare Morgan for a life in the wild”, according to Marq Wijngaarden, lawyer of the Orca Coalition. Because of the court ruling in August the Dolfinarium has to wait at least five more weeks before they are allowed to export Morgan. The Dolfinarium appears to have no intention to uphold this term, and again wants to violate the rules.

The Orca Coalition is still open for a meeting with the Dolfinarium. “We are supported by a group of international orca scientists who have experience with rehabilitating these protected animals in the wild. Their knowledge and experience is available for Morgan, and also for future stranded orcas. For a year now a detailed plan to return Morgan to her family has been available”, says Barbara van Genne, marine biologist and spokesperson for the Orca Coalition. The Orca Coalition continues to take efforts to implement this step by step release plan in order to return Morgan back to her family under expert guidance, according to international regulations.

Sad news about Morgan

She's going to Loro Parque. This is so depressing. How anyone could think it's in any orca's interests to be sent to this place is beyond me. And how can this process be legal?

Don't buy a ticket