Animals can't speak for themselves - J. M. Coetzee

[patoslilas]

Hello,

I love J. M. Coetzee, not only because he is an amazing writer, but also because of his strong beliefs in regards to animal rights. It's always great to read well elaborated essays that deal with this subject in an intelligent way.

I am currently reading Elisabeth Costello, a book of essays where Coetzee uses the persona of a famous Australian old writer who gives a series of lectures around the world. Two of the essays are the famous "The Lives of Animals: The Philosophers and the Animals" and "The Lives of Animals: The Poets and the Animals" which are simply AMAZING.

I highly recommend this book.

Searching on the web today I have found a very interesting speech he gave in Sydney in 2007, called "Animals can't speak for themselves- It's up to us to do it".

You can read it here: http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinio...?page=fullpage

Enjoy!

[Velveta]

That´s a very nice speech. Thanks for the recommendation. I love Coetzee. I am really sick of animal-eating people and their silly excuses for their disgusting eating habits. What bothers me the most is that when they ask what´s my secret for looking so good and healthy I will always give them the same reply: Exercising and being a vegetarian for 20 years. Yet, they never try to emulate me.And what´s sad is that many of them call themselves animal lovers! What can you expect from non-animal lovers! I´m feeling very pessimistic about this subject these days. I don´t think the world is making much progress on this matter. And if this wasn´t enough I heard animal fur has made a comeback! I can imagine all the meat-eating people I know (almost everybody) breeding meat-eating children and the vicious cycle continues...