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Lettera all'Observer riguardo l'articolo
London 6.3.2001
Dear Sirs,
I read
the incredible article by Ms. Odone with the utmost surprise. It
was like falling back in time, into the abyss of the
mechanicalistic world view with its grotesque assumption that
animals are purely machines and not living beings. The Baconian -
Cartesian world views animals similar to clocks and the cries of
pain like simple reactions of springs and mechanisms.
I read
your magazine every Sunday and the article by Ms. Odone, whose
surname appears to be of Italian origin, shocked me with its the
utter crudity and callousness. Not to be able to feel anything
for the devastation happening around us is simply horrid. She
chose the right word- "Holocaust", but a cow, as I
see it, is a living being regardless what Ms. Odone thinks.
I am
Italian and I lived in Tuscany for five years before coming back
to London. I lived in a isolated house in the countryside and
when I saw what Mrs. Odone wrote about France and Italy I felt
simply perplexed and a little sick. I was in the Tuscan
countryside when I witnessed the events that I described in a
letter that you can find in the enclosed Attachment: "Europe1".
Perhaps
Ms. Odone should try to find out more about Italy and France
before spewing forth idiotic statements regarding southern
European realism versus British Disneyland sentimentalism. A
dominant species on a planet creates its own rules, invents its
own gods, imagines its own immortality, believes that everything
and anything is permissible to its dominant species including to
think the way Ms. Odone does.
The idea
that people who love animals are careless about humans is simply
trash. Before my battle against the hunters who were
exterminating every living thing in Tuscany, I was deeply
involved with East Timor. My friends, who are active in defending
animal's right, don't forget for a moment the
atrocities being committed against humanity in Rwanda or Kosovo.
If you respect animals, you respect all life. And if you respect
all life, you respect human life.
Catholicism
plays a significant role in the obtuse anthropocentric view held
by Ms. Odone.. A priest in Tuscany, with a parish in a place
called Foiano Della Chiana, near Arezzo, used to organise a large
Mass for the hunters. When asked about this awful event he
answered that in killing animals, hunters were limiting the level
of blasphemies that they would generally utter. The killing of
animals in order to reduce the level of blasphemies: a truly
mystical jewel of logic. In Italy we have Franciscan friars that
hunt and organise hunting dinners. Did you know that ?
What Ms.
Odone forgets is that even in Italy the animal rights movement is
growing stronger everyday and the ideas that she has regarding my
country are really obsolete and offensive. Hunters that used to
number close to 2,000,000 in the 1980's have now been
reduced to 800,000. And even this small minority is despised by
the rest of the population- even in the countryside. There are
now over 1,500,000 vegetarians and countless animal rights
activists in Italy.
If some
journalist in the Observer would be interested in reporting the
grotesque story of the hunter-priest I would be very happy to
inform them. But while the priest in Foiano continues his
massacres and his absurd Mass another priest in Rome blesses the
souls of dead cats. But according to Ms.Odone, the first priest
would be considered sane and the second mad. So much for Ms.
Odone's bovine inspired logic. Yes: cows are cows.
Yours truly.
Paolo Ricci.
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