Nz Vegan Podcast

Listen HEREPart one of the interview with William Paul, a student at Selwyn College in Auckland, New Zealand, in which he relates the events that occurred the day he informed the school he was an ethical vegan and therefore would not be wearing the footwear dictated by the mandatory school uniform policy. This is a very important issue and I hope William's story inspires other young people not only to go vegan and to stay vegan, but also to demand the respect their decision is entitled to, to teach them how to represent themselves properly in order to be taken seriously by those who have authority over their lives, and to inspire the educational institutions these young people attend to give a student's decision to go vegan the respect and consideration it truly deserves, which is as much respect and consideration as is given to religious students to allow them to be true to their beliefs. We need awareness that veganism is a serious, ethical decision, and has a right to be respected. We need to get throug

Listen HEREWe talk about how easy it is to go vegan and the kinds of questions and opposition that are encountered daily in the life of a vegan and we discuss ideas about how to deal with them. I hope that everyone enjoyed listening and please let us know if you have had a similar experience to that of William's. We would love to hear your story and try to help you in any way we can.Thank you to William Paul for coming on the show, and for sharing your story.

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Listen HEREToday there was a story from here in New Zealand that I just had to mention, funny how things closer to home can seem to affect you more - wrongly or rightly I am as prone to that as anyone else. I mourn this tiger and I remind myself that the pig slaughtered in Egypt from swine flu paranoia or the chicken gassed in Canada by KFC or the "free range" hen in Austria being slaughtered at the end of her short tortured life or the rat in the lab in Kentucky or the sable in the fur farm in Russia or the sheep in the slaughterhouse here in New Zealand and all of the millions and millions of equally innocent victims that also died today, in all parts of all places all over the world, and are dying right now by the million are all just as valid as this tiger, who was killed today. I am not trivializing the death of the zookeeper who was fatally injured, but it is certain the loss of his life is receiving plenty of respect and mourners and I am sure they are paying homage to him as we speak. Well, I am

Listen HEREI am trying to bring the abolitionist movement down here to New Zealand where it doesn't exist at all, and to do that I need to get out in the community and work on my people skills and gear them towards the culture I live in, while at the same time trying to circumvent the wasteful tangents they get led down by the expensive, publicized and highly promoted welfare campaigns that are getting people all hung up on the size of cages and whatnot, as opposed to talking about the real issue. The REAL ISSUE!!!!! It has been a very frustrating couple of weeks down here in New Zealand for anyone who cares about animals and who is trying to open peoples minds up to abolishing animal use and going vegan, rather than patting themselves on the back about how they can be morally superior by going down to their butcher and demanding "happy" meat. If people care enough to be bothered about the treatment of the exploited animals at all, then they care enough to GO VEGAN and end the exploitation, or at the very lea

Listen HEREToday I make an announcement, and also finally respond to the hugely publicised campaign by the NZ animal welfare group S.A.F.E to promote "free range" pork consumption. I must admit I really let the side down. I wallowed in a level of self indulgment that is really inexcusable, especially from someone such as myself who claims to be such an activist. I apologise. I didn't write any letters to the papers or participate in any discussions, because I allowed myself to be negative. Well, now I finally made a comment on an animal welfare page (not a local one), maybe it was the wrong place to do it -maybe all the people who read that blog are vegan, I don't know. Here is the article if you want to comment also:Animal Welfare ExaminerThat is the comment I should have left on every NZ paper opinion page and every discussion board across the country while everything was going on, and I didn't. I admit I let everyone down especially all of the poor suffering pigs. The story is still out there thou

Listen HEREThis week I talk about some great local activism done by Sam, a NZ Vegan who is 13 years old, who blew me away with his new website, the first real website from New Zealand that gets to the truth of what dairy products really are, using a New Zealand perspective which is so important in our culture, and spreading the word about veganism in a very effective way!NZ Dairy CrueltyThanks Sam! I am very grateful, I can now recommend this site to local people to show them the truth right from their own backyard, and it is a fantastic resource for us who are spreading the word about this cause and to educate people about veganism.This week I talk a lot about my country as I am trying to bring the vegan abolition message to more people here, and I am looking forward to doing some grass roots activism with my abolitionist colleagues, and I am hoping to be prepared for anything, but I know we will learn as we go along.I hope to have more guests on the show soon!

Listen HEREIn part one of this interview we talk about Dr. Yates early involvement in the beginnings of the animal rights movement in Britain and the changes he has noticed since then till now, his writings and studies as a sociologist with regard to human behaviour, community activism and grass roots movements, and why we need more vegans! I hope you enjoy the interview! Stay tuned for part two.

Listen HERETalking about sincere animal rights and vegan activism and believing in the message. Please contact your local soymilk supplier and ASK THEM WHAT THEY FILTER THE SOYBEANS THROUGH - i.e do they use silk? We are trying to find out, and if they do, we want everyone to write and make a case so they will stop doing that. In the meantime Sarah has a great recipe for homemade soy milk at The Vegan Mentor see Making Soy MilkWe also talk about Animal Rights July which I would love to replicate at a university here in Auckland. Check it out! It looks good. See the link at Roger's blog On Human-Nonhuman RelationsI hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did! Thank you Dr. Yates!

Listen HEREThis week I read an essay written by Eva Batt, long standing member of the UK Vegan society. It is so well written, I am going to print it out and hand it around as part of my activism. Thanks to Nathan Schneider who has it available on his blog Vegan Abolitionist and to Randy Sandberg who added it to the text page here at Abolitionist ApproachOne of the things I loved about the article was this point:"...veganism has no connection with any political party or system, national or international. Similarly, individual vegans may be deeply religious, perhaps devout Christians or disciples of one of many other faiths and creeds in this world, but this is not a requisite of veganism, which is an everyday, fundamental way of life concerned with living without hurting others. The hereafter may, or may not, solve all our problems; but what we do now certainly affects all those around us..."That is a wonderful statement is it not? There are many more gems like this in the article. It is worth a read or

Listen HEREThis week I interview Adam Kochanowicz from The Vegan News! We talk about what Adam found out after he discovered veganism, packed his bags and went to Europe, looking for the animal rights movement, and looking to find out what people meant when they called themselves "animal rights activists" to see what kind of action they were taking. We talk about veganism, abolition, and all that good stuff.Check out Adam's bio at the National Vegan Examiner, I recommend reading the great articles already written and keeping up with future articles, and please leave comments! Also check out http://abolitionistvegans.org/ where you can get all you need to make your own Vegan Kiosk!

Listen HEREPart two of my interview with Adam Kochanowicz from The Vegan News, The National Vegan Examiner and abolitionistvegans.org.We continue our talk about activism, abolition versus welfare, and the best news of all - there are vegans EVERYWHERE!And remember to check out http://abolitionistvegans.org/ where you can get all you need to make your own Vegan Kiosk! If you have new ideas and modifications to suit different places and needs - please do it, and update us and share this with us too!

Listen HEREI am honoured to have again as my guest Professor Gary L. Francione of The Abolitionist Approach. We talk about the abolitionist approach and why it is fundamentally different from the welfare reformist approach, and we refer to the frequent discussions that occur between the two separate groups of thinkers, which is wonderfully illustrated on the blog My Face is on Fire, in a recent blog post. Please read the post and the ensuing comments to see what Professor Francione is talking about in this interview.I also very strongly urge everyone to read this wonderful essay A Revolution of the Heart at The Abolitionist Approach which, as well as being wonderful in itself, is pertinent to the aforementioned article and commentary.Also keep an eye out for "The Animal Rights Debate—Abolition or Regulation?" written by Gary L Francione and R. Garner - to be released from Columbia Press in the coming weeks...A MUST read for ALL involved in non human animal advocacy/activism, no matter what your position on

Listen HEREI am very pleased to welcome back to the show Dr. Roger Yates. This is a topic I have been wanting to tackle for the longest time, and I am very glad Dr. Yates agreed to help me. The article we refer to in the the podcast is the following:Independant.co.uk/world/australasia/australia-gets-the-humpPlease contact me if you have any comments or questions, this is an extremely complicated subject and I would love some feedback, as always, and I am happy to revisit this in the future.I am, as always, very grateful to Dr. Yates for his insight and input and help. Thank you Dr. Yates!

Listen HEREPart one of my interview with special guest Francis Glass, an 18 year old abolitionist vegan from Australia,and coordinator of Animal Liberation Youth, which is part of the abolitionist vegan advocacy group Animal Liberation Victoria. We talk about activism, vegan education, the counterproductiveness and elitism of welfare reform, and emphasize the fact that the abolitionist movement is part of the peace movement. You can find information about this abolitionist activism in Australia by going to http://www.alv.org.au/ and http://www.animalliberationyouth.org.au/Stay tuned for part two...

Listen HEREPart two of my interview with Francis Glass from Animal Liberation Youth, of Animal Liberation Victoria. We talk about the social conditioning we are up against, the deep rooted moral schizophrenia in our lives as human beings and the profound effect on our psyche and our peace of mind. We talk about young men, or all men, in many cultures who are terribly depressed and repressed because of being pressured into being so unreasonably "tough" and expected to be violent in order to prove their "toughness" (i.e. eat meat etc), and relate this to the violence we tolerate in our lives on a daily basis, violence we can end if we so choose! We emphasize how damaging this perpetual violence is to our world and ourselves, and discuss different methods to open people's minds to the knowledge that they no longer have to struggle with the guilt and the fear and the violence, and they can go vegan. Thank you Francis for coming on the show!

Listen HEREI am very pleased to welcome back Francis Glass, coordinator of Animal Liberation Youth, from Animal Liberation Victoria. In our last interview we talked about non-vegan volunteers handing out literature, and this episode we would like to respond to the comments and concerns that raised about this subject, as it is definitely something that needs to be discussed. Thank you to Karin Hilpisch for your comments!We also talk about young people who are going vegan and how important they are to our future, and what it is like for a young person who is still living with their parents to go vegan, the resistance some kids get from their families and 13 and 14 year olds dealing with parents who are hostile to veganism and actively try to prevent their children from being vegan. We discuss the different reasons why the parents may be reacting in this way and try to come up with more ideas on ways to help them and their children through that. This is something us independent, adult vegans can't relate to as w

Listen HEREThis episode I talk about my support of non violence and of the abolitionist approach and peaceful non violent vegan education. I give my reasons why, based on my own personal experience and non-expert opinion, and my core beliefs, which is all I can do. In this episode I am specifically talking about some of the things that I have read over the last few weeks in which proponents of violent tactics in the name of animal rights have been getting a lot of attention, and I have read some things that I thought were not only misguided and tactically wrong, but also deeply immoral. Not all those involved are supporters of the extreme physical violence that a couple of writings and advocates are proposing, however it was very distressing to see support of these advocates by anyone at all. I realise that a lot of the really extreme positions come from people who are deeply disturbed by what is going on in our world and are perhaps totally overwhelmed with everything, the horrific amount animal exploit

Listen HEREThis week I comment on a breaking story by Greenpeace NZ which has everyone up in arms about how the dairy farmers are importing palm kernels to NZ by the millions of tonnes in order to supplement the feed of the dairy cows.Thing is, nobody is vegan, so they all eat dairy products. Ummmmm?These are the articles by the NZ Herald about the story:Greenpeace Moves Palm Kernel Protest to PortGreenpeace Defiant over Palm Oil ProtestHere is a link to my Indymedia NZ article (PLEASE feel free to comment! Help! :-)Why are we blaming the farmers?This is a link to the BRAND NEW AUCKLAND VEGAN RESTAURANT! YAY!Golden Age Vegan RestaurantThis are to Adam Kochanowicz's fantastic resource on Vegan FM:Vegan FM/Is it Vegan?Golden Age on Vegan FM listingyou can also see things like ingredients listings , animal testers, alcohols that are vegan etc.This is a link to Vegan Help on Twitter - if you are on Twitter, join in! It is helping people go vegan!Twitter/VeganHelpFinally this is a link to the youtube entry that

Listen HEREJust having a little whine today. Things have just GOT to change!