Trent Reznor Teams With PETA

[KNOWTHIS]

Trent Reznor is a huge animal lover and works with his pets in his studio when making music.

www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/online_downloads/nine_inch_nails_mainman_narrates_extremely_graphic_peta_video.html

Nine Inch Nails mainman Trent Reznor has narrated PETA's latest "undercover video" — an "expose that reveals the abuse of cats and dogs in China's barbaric fur trade," according to a press release. He also autographed an iPod — with the video downloaded on it — which peta2 will award to the person who sends Reznor’s video to the most people.

"Every year, millions of cats and dogs are killed for their fur," says Reznor. "[The animals'] weakened bodies are bludgeoned, hanged, bled, or strangled with wire nooses to kill them."

"Cat and dog fur can only be identified with expensive DNA tests, so there's no way of knowing what — or whom — you are buying," says peta2 Manager Dan Shannon. "Buying anything with fur — even if it's 'just a little trim' — supports one of the most gruesome industries on the planet."

Watch the video at this location.

Credits for the report to Blabbermouth.net.

www.petatv.com/tvpopup/Prefs.asp?video=trent_fur

More info. on the new album.

www.caller.com/ccct/music/article/0,1641,CCCT_847_5511694,00.html

"YEAR ZERO," Nine Inch Nails (Nothing/Interscope)

It seems beneath Nine Inch Nails to resort to a convoluted marketing strategy to sell its new "Year Zero." Frontman Trent Reznor is a pioneer of uncommon talent, and theoretically his music should sell itself without gimmicks.



Yet given the dismal state of the rock industry and considering NIN's sound hasn't changed all that much (nor should it), the hype won't hurt.

Besides, it's kind of cool.

Months ago NIN fans started putting together the puzzle behind the premise of "Year Zero," navigating their way through a series of alternate-reality Web sites set in a very gloomy 2022, when America is in the grips of a church-based, totalitarian war state, bioterrorism is rampant, mind control is the norm, and the environment is giving out. This is apparently where Reznor thinks we're headed, the wheels set in motion by George W. Bush, the war in Iraq and a lack of resolve to get a handle on global warming.

"Year Zero" takes place in this grim world, a departure for Reznor in that this time his vision is more external than internal. The concept album swings through perspectives of the powerful and powerless, the hopeless victims and the hopeful revolutionaries. Everyone is facing an imminent day of reckoning, and you have the feeling that it's not going to turn out so well - especially considering the lines from closing track "Zero-Sum," which go, "Shame on us, doomed from the start/May God have mercy on our dirty little hearts."

Elsewhere, the conformist of "Survivalism" brags, "I got my violence in high def ultra-realism/All a part of this great nation," the title character of "The Good Soldier" unconvincingly claims, "I am trying to believe," and the ready insurgent of "The Great Destroyer" hopes Big Brother "cannot see the limitless potential living inside of me."

The electronic sounds from Reznor's laptop are a tweak on trademark NIN, pretty and pretty depressing. Rhythm-based electricity pulses, wobbles and weaves and frequently rips like a buzzsaw as Reznor stretches his vocals as per normal, speaking in near-subliminal tones, softly singing through gorgeous melodies and letting loose with disquieting screams.

Apart from the theme, "Year Zero" is vintage NIN, as unsettling and beautiful as it should be.

[Swamp Gas]

Never one to back down on reality, we are glad he has seen the light. My mother-in-law stopped weraing fur when she found out that it might be dog fur in it, and she is a big dog lover.

Compassion

The world, we are told, was made especially for man--a presumption not supported by all the facts... Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation?

John Muir, Naturalist and explorer (1838-1914)

Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.

Albert Schweitzer, French philosopher, physician, and musician (Nobel 1952)

Whenever people say 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add 'We must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it.

Brigid Brophy

Animal Rights

...it is difficult to picture the great Creator conceiving of a program of one creature (which He has made) using another living creature for purposes of experimentation. There must be other, less cruel ways of obtaining knowledge.

Adlai Stevenson, American statesman (1835-1914)

There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties... The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.

Charles Darwin, naturalist and author (1809-1882) The Descent of Man

Even in the worm that crawls in the earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter God.
Isaac Bashevis Singer,
Writer, Nobel laureate (1904-1991)

As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.
Isaac Bashevis Singer

I don`t hold animals superior or even equal to humans. The whole case for behaving decently to animals rests on the fact that we are the superior species. We are the species uniquely capable of imagination, rationality, and moral choice - and that is precisely why we are under an obligation to recognize and respect the rights of animals.

Brigid Brophy

The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.
Charles Darwin

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.

James A. Froude (1818-1894)

If you visit the killing floor of a slaughterhouse, it will brand your soul for life.

Howard Lyman

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.
Leo Tolstoy

In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people.
Ruth Harrison, author of Animal Machines

The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of 'real food for real people,' you'd better live real close to a real good hospital.
Neal D. Barnard, M.D., President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Washington, D.C.

About 2,000 pounds of grains must be supplied to livestock in order to produce enough meat and other livestock products to support a person for a year, whereas 400 pounds of grain eaten directly will support a person for a year. Thus, a given quantity of grain eaten directly will feed 5 times as many people as it will if it is eaten indirectly by humans in the form of livestock products....
M.E. Ensminger, PH.D.

Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more.
Franz Kafka, while admiring fish in an aquarium

Poor animals! How jealously they guard their pathetic bodies . . . that which to us is merely an evening's meal, but to them is life itself.
T. Casey Brennan

Life is life--whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage.
Sri Aurobindo

Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test, consists of its attitude toward those who are at tis mercy: animals. And in this respect, human kind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds? … It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless,tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beautyand grace. But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being.
Plutarch

I abhor vivisection. It should at least be curbed. Better, it should be abolished. I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific discovery, that could not have been obtained without such barbarism and cruelty. The whole thing is evil.
Charles Mayo (founder of the Mayo Clinic)

Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.
Leonardo Da Vinci

As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap the joy of love.
Pythagoras

When a man wants to murder a tiger, he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him, he calls it ferocity.
George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)

It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.
Albert Einstein

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the 'Universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.
Albert Einstein

Flesh eating is unprovoked murder.
Ben Franklin

When a human being kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice. Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why then should man expect mercy from God? It is unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give.
Isaac B. Singer

A dead cow or sheep lying in the pasture is recognized as carrion. The same sort of carcass dressed and hung up in a butchers stall passes as food.
J. H. Kellogg

It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers the blessings of God, the Compassionate, if we in turn will not practice elementary compassion towards our fellow creatures.

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

Activism

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (1928- )

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.

Bertrand Russell, in "Marriage and Morals", 1929

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead

Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty.
Stanislaw J. Lee

In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

To forgive and accept injustice is cowardice.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King Jr.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the roots.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
Mark Twain, U.S. Author (1835-1910)

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

What would we do if we didn't try? We have to try.
Lyle Lovett

None so blind as those who will not see.
Matthew Henry

...a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Ultimately, an unbiased observer of human behavior must conclude that most action is not shaped by theory, but rather theories are shaped to conform to actions we have no intention of changing.

M. Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison

All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well-based -- or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug -- it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault.

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.
George Gordon Noel Byron (1788-1824),
[Lord Byron] English romantic poet

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.