Cav's Place

In a way you could find it surprising that Spain is the first country to give legal rights to apes, but when you think about it further you realize it’s not that hard to explain. The very fact that it has no apes of its own and there are no known harmful experiments carried out on them there makes it easier, because it means there are no strong interest groups lobbying against such a law.
It’s interesting to see how such an animal rights law gets passed in the country of bullfighting, but there might be a point to that as well. You have to start somewhere, right? And it’s much easier to start with our closest relatives than with a species that’s a lot further down the line and which is required by local custom to be harmed and killed for entertainment. You take a step to see if the ground holds and then try for the next one. It’s slow, but if you manage to keep your determination then it can work.

What angered me were those comments that it’s perplexing that the country should consider this a priority when the economy is slowing sharply. Come on, people! If you were so stupid as to expect things to keep improving when all you did was drain the Earth, you deserve what’s coming to you and should stop complaining! The problem is that those who cared even before are also affected by these problems. But those usually don’t complain too much, isn’t that interesting?
Another reason for annoyance is the complaint that this resolution sought to give animals the same rights as humans. My initial reaction when I read that was “and why the hell not?”, but then I checked myself. It’s obvious that not even the most intelligent other animals could get exactly the same rights because they don’t really live in our society, not even those who are pets, nor should they, so even if they could grasp the concept they wouldn’t understand its relevance. In some cases it would be useful to get some other intelligent animal’s opinion, outside observers can point out a lot of things, but that’s another story for another day. What I should point out here is that if you’re so worried about animals getting rights they’re unsuitable for, you should take a closer look at some members of a peculiar primate species called homo sapiens…
All of this goes to show that neither the general populace nor the Establishment are ready for such a thing, which is the worst part of all. But that only means we need to push it into their faces more, after all they’ll never be ready if they’re allowed to ignore these issues forever!

All I can say in the end is: Well done, Spain… But hurry up and get to those bulls as soon as possible, ok?