Urgent! Please Support the Great Ape Protection Act (GAPA)

Acknowledgement: This photo is from the AV Magazine issue 2010/n0.2

A Declaration on Great Apes:

We demand the extension of the community of equals to include all great apes: human beings, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. The community of equals is a moral community within which we accept certain basic moral principles or rights, that is: The right to life, the protection of individual liberty and the prohibition of torture.

From "The Great Ape Project" edited by Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer.

In March 2009, four US representatives reintroduced the Great Ape Protection Act (H.R. 1326) to end invasive biomedical research-including experiments that may cause death, bodily injury, pain, distress, fear or trauma as well as psychological experiments of social deprivation and isolation on estimated 1000 chimpanzees in US Laboratories. The bill would also retire approximately 600 federally owned chimpanzees currently in laboratories (many had been kept imprisoned for more than 40 years) to permanent sanctuary. Since June this year, the Great Ape Protection Act is now in the House Committee on energy and commerce with the support of 149 cosponsors.

This is urgent as the National Institute of Health is in the process of transfering 202 chimpanzees from New Mexico (they had not been used for research since 2002 and many of them are elderly) to a primate lab in Taxes for invasive biomedical research. Fourteen chimpanzees had already been sent to the Texas lab. We must join together now to oppose such plan. Please contact your US senators and representatives and ask for a moratorium on chimpanzees leaving New Mexico. Also ask them to cosponsor the Great Ape Protection Act and tell everyone you know to do the same. The story concerning New Mexico chimps was reported in New York Times on Sep. 1, 2010 and in L.A. Times on Sep. 3, 2010. For more information please go to: apnm.org/campaigns/chimps/

You can google: You Tube and watch a short piece: Nature:Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History/Exclusive/PBS

Science needs to limit its research and boundary base on moral conscience and a clear vision, otherwise it can fall in to the hands of the few for short term profit. The true meaning of scientific advancement should be coherent along with our moral progress.

What is the most basic moral code? That is: Treat others (including all sentient beings) as you would have them treat you. Life is meaningless if one lives only for self interest, unless one devotes his or her life for a better cause-justice for all.

To learn more about the GAPA, please google: www.releasechimps.org/mission/change-laws/the-great-ape-protection-act/.

More Photos of My Canine Family-Indra I Miss You

Sita 7 months old

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Indra (Left) 6 weeks Old, Dec. 1994.

Indra and Sita, 1996.
Indra, has studied the four Upanishads, thinks the word god should spell backward.

Sita, my beloved, 1991

Mitra-from Mendocino, California and he thinks only the non-human animals know what a pre-human reality is. The world does not need humans to exist. As Meillassoux pointed out: "The idea that the world cannot exist without human observation is dishonest so that philosophy can ignor the thinking on what the world reality is prior to human access."

Sassie, a true Taoist.

Sitar, a visionary, prefers to stand on the roof of the Earthship, 2005.

Sasha-a semiotician, inspired by Roland Barthes. She sees semiology is the same as semioclasm-to deconstruct the myth behind the mass culture, to unmask the ideological abuse in commercialism. In other words, semiology can be used as a way to investigate the bias in the signifying process based on human primacy. By using the method of "Epoche", Sasha intends to uncover the natural process of signification outside cultural context and its linguistics, thus able to access the pre-human reality.

Beautiful Places Outside the City of Santa Fe

Hermitage

Taos Peublo

Deep into the high mountains...so quiet.

Indra in Pecos, 2002

"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such a desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer." Henry David Thoreau

David and Indra, 2004

Santa Barbara Canyon-with fields of wild flowers in spring.

It's raining in Jemez Springs (natural hot springs).

Fall color along the Chama River.

Abiquiu Lake

Desert Moon Gallery- Jewelry Art and Paintings in Oil / Pastel

Necklace-Coral in silver

Guan Yin Necklace-Jade in silver

Bracelet- turquoise in silver

Sacred Cow-Necklace with garnet and turquoise

Jade Ring

Coral Necklace

"For Merleau-Ponty, all of the creativity and free-ranging mobility that we have come to associate with the human intellect is, in truth, an elaboration of a profound creativity already underway at the most immediate level of sensory perception. The sensing body is an active and open form, continually improvising its relation to the world around."
David Abram

Transformation

"Everything that man does in his symbolic world is an attempt to deny and overcome his fate. He literally drives himself into a blind obliviousness with social and political games."

From "The Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker

Saraswati-Goddess of arts and music.

Myth, according to Roland Barthes-author of the book "Mythologies", is NOT the eternal archtypes of cosmic consciousness that transcends history. Myth is man-made ideology to serve social and cultural function by way of oral tradition and texts. Myths of deity worship varied greatly among old cultures- China, Egypt, India and in Christianity. They are folk tales based on imgaination and fantasy that have no univesral or objective signification.

David

The language of myth contains a hierarchy of meaning, a form of absolutism. Myths, originated from the archaic world, are the essential elements in old religions (one god, many god or superhuman figures). Myths rely on blind faith and collective comformity. They are part of reified texts used to privelege one class-the priests as in patriarchal tradition. The priests are imitators in performing ceremonials and chantings, they are self-elevated as being godlike in order to assert authority on their followers.

Parvati-Goddess of the Snowy Mountain,
a symbol of Eco-Guardian.

"Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for generations. Do not believe merely because the written words of some old sages. Accept the teaching only when it agrees with reason and is conducive to the benefit of one and all, then live up to it."

The Buddha

"Ethics are complete, profound and alive only when addressed to all living beings. Only then are wein spiritual connection with the world. Any philosophy not resepcting this, not based on the indefinite totality of life is bound to diasppear."

The Wandering Sadu-Singing to the Sky:
"Delusion and sorrow attend every birth. In youth is the dependence of others, in old age, anxiety, disease and fear of death. This birth is the seed of sorrow and being the form of sorrrow is unbearable." The Upanishad

Let's Join the Animal Liberation Movement

Check out the book "Animal Philosophy-Ethics and Identity, essential readings in continental philosophy with writings by Derrida, Heidegger, Deleuze, Foucault and Bataille.

Santa Fe Animal Rights.

Please google You-Tube and watch a short film excerpt:

"NATURE chimpanzees: An unnatural history/Exclusive/PBS"

by the award winning film maker Allison Argo. It will definitely touch your moral fibers, emotionally and mentally, and you would begin to question: "WHAT HUMANITY IS or IS NOT?"

Ban animal circus.

"Nihilism is interesting precisely because it poses the question of a fundamental incommensurable between thinking (human reality) and living (non-human animal life). " Eugene Thacker

Working together for the animals-animal rights group from Taiwan.

To view couple of my articles on animal rights in Chinese, go to: http://www.lca.org.tw/

Please check out their links to other animal protection groups in Taiwan.

A Crescent Moon Rises From My Palm and Others

A Crescent Moon rises From My Palm

Far from the brink of time

The night's magic flickers

Inside a lizard's eyes

Stones and sands, out of their stillness

Dangerous heartbeats begin to throb

As the mouth of the desert opens

White bones mixed with the scent of burning twigs

Flashes of phantoms circle the fire

A raven flaps his wings above

A serpent hisses below

Stormy wind knocks on my spine

My throat howls

To a summon from the wild

My feet prance like a deer

To an underworld full of tracks

Soft fur, wet scales, fluttering feathers

Wild beasts resume their shapes

Beneath my skin and inside my skull

White sleep hangs heavily on cactus leaves

Time curves, space explodes

A crescent moon rises from my palm

Death perches upon my shoulders

Quite like an owl

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Pictures of Santa Fe-The oldest capital city in modern US

St. John's College Library

St. John's College -a place to study the great book, classics and philosophy,
it also offers seminars and lectures for the community.

Summer Rainclouds

Rainbow over the high desert city

Deep Forest

Indra and Sasha-nearby my house. 2005

The Commons: A co-housing community

The Ski Basin

Canyon Road

Upper Canyon Road

A shrine at the hillside

Downtown Cafe

Music for Gallery Opening

Autumn Leaves

Winter snow storm

Clouds Gazing-Santa Fe, NM