NYC Letter: El Planeta De Los Simios

The redeeming thing about lefty projects is that we do not have to strain at satire. [Hat tip: LGF]

SOCIALISTS: GIVE APES HUMAN RIGHTS

April 25, 2006 (Spain Herald) - The Spanish Socialist Party [PSOE] will introduce a bill in the Congress of Deputies calling for "the immediate inclusion of (simians) in the category of persons, and that they be given the moral and legal protection that currently are only enjoyed by human beings." The PSOE's justification is that humans share 98.4% of our genes with chimpanzees, 97.7% with gorillas, and 96.4% with orangutans.

The party will announce its Great Ape Project at a press conference tomorrow. An organization with the same name is seeking a UN declaration on simian rights which would defend ape interests "the same as those of minors and the mentally handicapped of our species."

According to the Project, "Today only members of the species Homo sapiens are considered part of the community of equals. The chimpanzee, the gorilla, and the orangutan are our species's closest relatives. They possess sufficient mental faculties and emotional life to justify their inclusion in the community of equals."

Of course the chimps and gorillas and orangutans have relatives besides us. And those relatives have relatives and so on. There will be no rest, ladies and gentlemen, until we have elected a flea president, until every cockroach finds a welcome at our table, until no pin worm is left behind. Enough specieism. It is high time humans recognized the baboon, the leech, that good citizen, the ant, as equals before the law.

NARBONA: NO RIGHTS FOR SIMIAN

April 26, 2006 (Spain Herald) - Environmental minister Cristina Narbona said yesterday that the PSOE's resolution on simian rights was non-binding, "and does not recognize human rights for apes, but rather their right to respect, their habitat, and good treatment."

However, the Great Apes Declaration begins, "We demand that the community of equals be extensive to all the great apes, humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans." Narbona insisted that the ministry supports the project because she supports "protecting the habitats of the great apes and preventing their mistreatment and use in circus spectacles."

Only four deputies were present at the PSOE's presentation of its project in the Congress of Deputies.