Spain to recognise great ape rights

Spains left wing loony government, to give apes the same rights as humans, LOL, LOL!!

http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,,1791357,00.html

Moral booster

Spain is set to grant historic rights to the great apes that will regard them as 'legal persons' under the law. The philosophers behind the resolution say it at last recognises that all species are equal. Hugh Warwick reports

Wednesday June 7, 2006
The Guardian

Spain is about to take the world into uncharted legal territory. Later this month, a resolution is going before parliament which, if passed as expected, will give a set of rights to chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans. These great apes will then be regarded in Spanish law as "legal persons".

It will be of historic significance, the first time that any civilisation has recognised the special status of another species and the need to protect it not only from extinction but also from individual abuse. Spain will be obliged to introduce new laws protecting the great apes, putting pressure on other European countries to follow suit, and will undertake to organise a forum of rich nations to fund the protection of the great apes in their natural habitat.

The resolution is based on the work of the Great Ape Project, which was founded in 1993 by philosophers Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri. It urges the goverment in Spain to take the necessary measures in international forums and organisations to protect great apes from maltreatment, slavery, torture, death and extinction.

The central idea of the project is that the great apes share more than just DNA with humans. There is an enormous amount of data collected by scientists, including Jane Goodall, Diane Fossey and Birute Galdikas, that the great apes are intelligent beings with strong emotions that often resemble our own.

Singer and Cavalieri have presented a radical vision that has on occasion been widely misinterpreted. This is not a call for human rights to be accorded to the great apes, they say, and it will not result in the release of captive great apes into the wild. It is rather a recognition of their undeniable similarity to humans and a rejection of the notion that these animals can be considered property, with no more legal significance than an item of furniture.

"There is no sound moral reason why possession of basic rights should be limited to members of a particular species," says Singer.

Unlikely advocate

Spain is on the surface an unlikely country to be taking such a radical step towards recognising the rights of animals - after all, bull fighting is still considered a sport. Some philosophers believe that a deadly attack on humans might have been one of the motivations behind its move to recognise the rights of apes. The Madrid bombings on March 11 2004, which killed 192 people and injured more than 2,000, they say, forced a radical rethink within society.

"The Madrid bombing made many people think about the consequences of selfishly letting one's compatriots act wrongly," says philosopher Paula Casal, who is also executive director of the Great Ape Project. "[Spain's] new president, [José Luis Rodríguez] Zapatero, counts on passionate support for all his radical political changes, and determination to tackle even our oldest vices."


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The dangers & madness of left wing governments for all to see, this loony government was only voted in because of the madrid bombings, and there promise to pull the troops out of iraq, & no doubt disband the spanish army too.


"The Madrid bombing made many people think about the consequences of selfishly letting one's compatriots act wrongly,"

I see so they are regarding the terroists as animals, or i see the light now, if we treat our animals in our country correctly as in give tiger's & lions & gorilla's equal rights, then the terroist animals, might be our friends???????


So if you are planning to go to spain later in the year when the bill is passed, dont be suprised to see a gorilla walking down the street in a suit, or a ape serving you coffee in starbucks.

Left wingers crazy? or what?

 

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....and there was me thinking this was going to be about africans.

 

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Makes sense to me ,afterall we evolved from apes and consequently should have the same rights as humans . This protects them from lab experiments and hunting preventing there extinction .

 

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Brian You being a the leader of the left wingers here, i would expect this response from you, so your idea is we gave all the apes equal rights, release them from there cages, & let them share our public transport systems, as there are not many vines to swing on to get to place to place in cities, what about kangaroo's too brian its about time they were given equal rights, i dont see why millions should be banished to the outback, how about letting them hop about on australia streets instead, i am sure they could get jobs as kangaroo taxi's, why take the train when you can ride a kangaroo to work?

Brian you do live in a crazy world dont you, lets all thank god there are not to many left wing governments in the world? Or else mankind would have been extinct along time ago.

 

I think that someone in the Spanish Government must have watched Conquest of the Planet of the Apes one time too often.

That much having been said, when apes can quote Winston Churchill, I will not mind them working in the White House.

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Hell, if they can complete the rest of: "Twinkel, twinkel little star, ___ _ ______ ____ ___ __ ." I would prefer them in the oval office to the current occupant!

 

This is great news. Now let's extend the same rights to whales and dolphins.

It is a bit worrying though that intelligence seems to be the criterion for granting legal protection. A dangerous road, surely, but as an animal lover I can't say that it doesn't please me.

Which gets me thinking: would sex with these apes still be regarded as bestiality?

 

If we could expect anyone here to say such immature stuff as "left wingers r loonee lololol", it would certainly be Vincent.

If this were posted by someone who wasn't a troll, I might actually, you know, not ignore him, and not call him a small-brained troll. :m:

 

How exactly does it protect them from hunting? Not too many wild apes roaming the wilds of Spain.

Unless you think that Spain is going to declare war on the Congo for its bushmeat practices...

And. As to the labratory testing? Well. It is a shame that some animals suffer. But, we learn more about them and ourselves by doing so.
We might learn enough about them to save them from extinction.

There really isn't any room for wild apes in the world anymore. It's a simple fact. And giving them rights in Spain isn't going to change that.

 

Me worrying about it has nothing to do with it.
Nor does giving rights to apes in Spain do anything about the danger of pushing apes into extinction. You may be aware that there are no wild apes in spain... if anything, this law would decrease the number of apes in Spain because there would be none in captivity.

Or are they planning on setting up ape reservations in Spain? But, is the reservation idea a good one? How small must a space be before it is designated to be a cage or captivity?

Personally, I am saddened by the idea that the apes might go extinct. But, this isn't going to do anything about that.

Apes live in Africa.
It's in Africa that the problem must be dealt with.
And, in the areas where apes are in danger of extinction, humans don't seem to have very many rights themselves...


In a way, this reminds me of the rain forest scenario. All the developed countries of the world get together to decry the loss of the rain forests and that they must be saved, meanwhile their forests have mostly been decimated long ago.
They deny the rights of developing countries to develop just like they did.

 

"Makes sense to me ,afterall we evolved from apes and consequently should have the same rights as humans . This protects them from lab experiments and hunting preventing there extinction . "

And they evolved from Bacteria.... no more Anti-Bacterial Hand soap folks! Stop killing Germs! They are your distant cousins!

 

Dangers?
What dangers?
What is dangerous about acknowledging the fact that Great Apes should not be tortured, killed, enslaved?

What negative could possibly come out of this?

What distinguishes man from the rest of the animals is his ability to drastically alter his environment intentionally on a rapid and wide scale. In the selfish this power instills a sense of arrogance and ownership of the world - in the wise, it instills a sense of awed humility and custodianship of the world.

I'm guessing this was said in jest, but it really just makes you sound like an ass.
No one is talking about them having the same civil rights and liberties as humans.
No one is talking about allowing them to have jobs or vote.
They are simply talking about treating them humanely.
And you object so strongly to humane treatment of Great Apes?
Why?

 

Get off your high horse, James R. Ascribing ignorance to those who think this is a bad idea is pernicious.

The fact is that most western countries already have laws for animal rights. Now, human rights are mainly a term we use to identify (and codify in law) some of those rules which make human societies function better and choose the Pareto equilibrium instead of the Nash equilibrium (i.e. makes us work together). Extending those to include other primates is a non sequitur because orang-utans are not part of any human society, nor can or should they be.

Treating them like some senile grandfather who's lost his faculties is anthropomorphism of the worst kind. This law will not be passed.

 

You really think it is visciously evil and tantamount to causing death in those he assumed (with valid reason) were ignorant of the aspect and details of this law?
Yet James is the one on a high horse?

 

I agree with your concept that humans have no special status or moral claim to one; however, I do not see that this implies species "X" can not try to improve it lot, even if it is at the expense of species "Y." X doing so is not necessarily based on any assumption that it is "special" or "above" Y or that universe was made for it.

Naturally, species Y will resist having its lot injured by this action of species X. This mutual struggle is what is nature's plan, if one want to assume a plan exists, but I think it just is a "natural" consequence of one of the most fundamental "laws of nature" (Darwin's basic idea of selection, with a few modern minor details added.) I.e. nothing "moral" or 'special" about it. NO more moral than fall of rocks towards center of the Earth if dropped from your hand, when they follow another of nature's "fundamental laws."

I do not morally condem HIV organism for mutating to improve the lot of its species. In this case HIV = X and Y = humans = H, nor do I morally condem H for trying to eliminate HIV entirely. When X = H and Y = Great apes = A and finite Earth territory is limited, there will naturally be a worsening in the lot of A as the number of H increases. However, H is a very complex species and defining what is an improvement in H's lot is correspondingly complex.

If the number of A is driven to zero, by the increasing numbers of H, I think moat H would agree that the lot of H has also been reduced by the absence of all A. There may be much less agreement as to the desirability of A living naturally (free in the wild), especially by the banana crop grower or the rare mother whose child was killed by an A. Zoos, if not too expensive (pandas in them seem to be.) are an intermediate position more generally assumed to improve the lot of H and agruably, if well done, even the lot of A. Certainly an advance for both A & H on one of the Rosevelt's (I forget the first name, the "Carry a big stick, but..." one) concept. He considered himself a "great conservationist" as he hunted in Africa to bring animals back (after presevation by a taxidermist) to museums, so other H could see them. Modern technology has made this service to H better with video recordings (and incidently avoided the reduction of number of A, as well as reduced that transportation cost and greatly via TV increased the visual benefit of many H).

SUMMARY of my point: Don't drag "special" or "above" or morality arguments or assumptions into this natural conflict between species X and Y even when one is A and the other is H, unless you want to do so when X = HIV and Y = H, and when rocks fall. Species H can raise species C = cows and eat them without "assuming that the universe was made for species H. Species HIV can infect humans and produce more HIVs without assuming the universe was made for species HIV. That is the way one of thost fundamentatl laws of nature works, without any assumption as to for whom the universe was made.