Book Title: Australian Animal Rights Crusader
Author(s): Philip Wollen
Publisher: Philip Wollen
Catalog link: https://jainqq.org/explore/269757/1

JAIN EDUCATION INTERNATIONAL FOR PRIVATE AND PERSONAL USE ONLY
Page #1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ AUSTRALIANANIMALRIGHTS CRUSADER me was awarded the humanitarian reness Trust." He Philip Wollen is a global animal-rights crusader, humanitarian activist, philanthropist, and motivational speaker, all in one. He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005, "for service to international humanitarian relief and to animal welfare, particularly through the establishment of the Winsome Constance Kindness Trust." He is the winner of the Australian Humanitarian Award 2006 and was Australian of Year (Victoria). 2007. Phil graduated from Bishop Cotton's School in 1967 (Pope House) as a third-generation Cottonian. He is the nephew of Air Marshal MallyWollen (Retired), Old Cottonian and Patron of the General Thimayya Lecture series. Aged 34, Phil was Vice President of Citibank, the largest financial institution in the world, working in Melbourne, Sydney, Manila, Singapore, Bangkok, London, New York, and Los Angeles. He specialized in Corporate Finance and was rated first among the Top 40 executives in Australia by one of Australia's leading business journals. However, in the early 1990s he gave it all up for his altruistic pursuits, which have earned international acclaim. He has established a private philanthropic trust called the Winsome Constance Kindness Trust (named after his mother and grandmother) with a view to help needy children and animals. Today, he privately supports 350 humanitarian projects for children, animals and the environment in forty countries - including schools, shelters, sanctuaries, orphanages, clinics, ambulances, bio gas plants and hospitals. One project, Kindness House in Melbourne, is 40,000 square feet and has 300 highly qualified young people doing incredible things for children, refugees, animals, and the environment. In her review of his work, "Man and his Mission," Australian writer Claudette Vaughan noted, "Some people would nominate Nelson Mandela as the most outstanding person alive. My vote would go to Philip Wollen." The journal Cry, published in Russian by the Leo Tolstoy Centre of Ethics, celebrated the "Top 100 Vegetarians in World History." Amongst depictions of Aristotle, Buddha, Plato, St. Francis of Assisi, Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Einstein, Leo Tolstoy, Pythagoras, Voltaire, Bernard Shaw, Albert Schweitzer, and Leonardo da Vinci, was a picture of Philip Wollen. The following is an account of his work: "Philip Wollen, Australian Philanthropist, Former VP of Citibank, Makes Blazing Animal Rights Speech" By Free From Harm Staff Writers June 24, 2012 "Philip Wollen shakes the rafters of the auditorium with this 10-minute speech to the St James Ethics Centre and the Wheeler Centre debate in Australia on May 16, 2012. The larger debate consists of six speakers, three that make the case for getting animals off the menu and three that make the case against it. Wollen is a former VP of Citibank and Australian philanthropist who is known to keep out of the limelight. But he sure rose to the challenge for this debate to deliver a huge performance and a powerful message. Bravo!" Page #2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ This is the transcript to the speech: 'On behalf of St James Ethics Centre, the Wheeler Centre, The Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, The Age, The City of Melbourne and the ABC, All of whom have worked together to make this event possible I would like to welcome Philip Wollen.' [Applause.]. Now hear Philip speak; 'King Lear, late at night on the cliffs asks the blind Earl of Gloucester "How do you see the world?" And the blind man Gloucester replies "I see it feelingly". Shouldn't we all? Animals must be off the menu because tonight they are screaming in terror in the slaughterhouse, in crates, and cages. Vile ignoble gulags of despair. I heard the screams of my dying father as his body was ravaged by the cancer that killed him. And I realized I had heard these screams before. In the slaughterhouse, eyes stabbed out and tendons slashed, on the cattle ships to the Middle East and the dying mother whale as a Japanese harpoon explodes in her brain as she calls out to her calf. Their cries were the cries of my father. I discovered when we suffer, we suffer as equals. And in their capacity to suffer, a dog is a pig is a bear...is a boy. Meat is the new asbestos - more murderous than tobacco. CO2, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide from the livestock industry are killing our oceans with acidic, hypoxic Dead Zones. 90% of small fish are ground into pellets to feed livestock. Vegetarian cows are now the world's largest ocean predator. The oceans are dying in our time. By 2048 all our fisheries will be dead. The lungs and the arteries of the earth. Billions of bouncy little chicks are ground up alive simply because they are male. Only 100 billion people have ever lived. 7 billion alive today. And we torture and kill 2 billion animals every week. 10,000 entire species are wiped out every year because of the actions of one species. We are now facing the 6th mass extinction in cosmological history. If any other organism did this a biologist would call it a virus. It is a crime against humanity of unimaginable proportions. The world has changed. Page #3 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ 10 years ago 'Twitter' was a bird sound, 'www was a stuck keyboard, 'Cloud' was in the sky, '4G' was a parking place, 'Google' was a baby burp, 'Skype' was a typo and 'Al Kider' was my plumber. Victor Hugo said "There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come." Animal Rights is now the greatest Social Justice issue since the abolition of slavery. There are over 600 million vegetarians in the world. That is bigger than the US, England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, Australia combined! If we were one nation we would be bigger than the 27 countries in the European Union! Despite this massive footprint, we are still drowned out by the raucous hunting, shooting, killing cartels who believe that violence is the answer - when it shouldn't even be a question. Meat is a killing industry - animals, us, and our economies. Medicare has already bankrupted the US. They will need $8 trillion invested in Treasury bills just to pay the interest. It has precisely zero! They could shut every school, army, navy, air force, and Marines, the FBI and CIA - and they still won't be able to pay for it. Cornell and Harvard say that the optimum amount of meat for a healthy diet is precisely ZERO. Water is the new oil. Nations will soon be going to war for it. Underground aquifers that took millions of years to fill are running dry. It takes 50,000 liters of water to produce one kilo of beef. 1 billion people today are hungry. 20 million people will die from malnutrition. Cutting meat by only 10% will feed 100 million people. Eliminating meat will end starvation forever. If everyone ate a Western diet, we would need 2 Planet Earths to feed them. We only have one. And she is dying. Greenhouse gas from livestock is 50% more than transport...planes, trains, trucks, cars, and ships. Poor countries sell their grain to the West while their own children starve in their arms. And we feed it to livestock. So we can eat a steak? Am I the only one who sees this as a crime? Every morsel of meat we eat is slapping the tear-stained face of a starving child. When I look into her eyes, should I be silent? Page #4 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ The earth can produce enough for everyone's need; But not enough for everyone's greed. We are facing the perfect storm. If any nation had developed weapons that could wreak such havoc on the planet, we would launch a pre-emptive military strike and bomb it into the Bronze Age. But it is not a rogue state. It is an industry. The good news is we don't have to bomb it. We can just stop buying it. George Bush was wrong. The Axis of Evil doesn't run through Iraq, or Iran or North Korea. It runs through our dining tables. Weapons of Mass Destruction are our knives and forks. This is the Swiss Army Knife of the future - it solves our environmental, water, health problems and ends cruelty forever. The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones. This cruel industry will end because we run out of excuses. Meat is like 1 and 2 cent coins. It costs more to make than it is worth. And farmers are the ones with the most to gain. Farming won't end. It would boom. Only the product line would change. Farmers would make so much money they wouldn't even bother counting it. Governments will love us. New industries would emerge and flourish. Health insurance premiums would plummet. Hospital waiting lists would disappear. Hell, 'We'd be so healthy, we'd have to shoot someone just to start a cemetery!' So tonight I have two challenges for the opposition: 1. Meat causes a wide range of cancers and heart disease. Will they name one disease caused by a vegetarian diet? 2. I am funding the Earthlings trilogy. If the opposition is so sure of their ground, I challenge them to send the Earthlings DVD to all their colleagues and customers. Go on, I dare you. Animals are not just other species. They are other nations. And we murder them at our peril. The peace map is drawn on a menu. Peace is not just the absence of war. It is the presence of Justice. Page #5 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ Justice must be blind to race, color, religion or species. If she is not blind, she will be a weapon of terror. And there is unimaginable terror in those ghastly Guantanamos. If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we wouldn't need this debate. I believe another world is possible. On a quiet night, I can hear her breathing. Let's get the animals off the menu and out of these torture chambers. Please vote tonight for those who have no voice. Thank you." See more at: http://freefromharm.org/videos/educational-inspiring-talks/philip-wollen-australianphilanthropist-former-vp-of-citibank-makes-blazing-animal-rights-speech/#sthash.3b3na62C.dpuf Mrs. Maneka Gandhi's article in the Indian newspapers on Philip Wollen: "Everyone in the animal welfare movement knows that the Australian, Philip Wollen, is not a human being. He is from another planet. They simply do not make humans like him anymore. He went from Bangalore to Australia when he was young, taught himself, got a job in a bank, rose to the top, left it, became rich and now donates all his money to animals and orphans and people who need it. He does so on a moment's notice. He doesn't want paperwork, he just needs to trust you and he does that easily. He picks up fights with aggressively anti animal governments and media, he pays for lectures, he supports the anti-whaling campaigns of activists around the world, he builds sanctuaries in Asia for bears. On top of that, he is tall, handsome, well read, a vegan, speaks his mind, jokes a lot and writes deliciously. He lives in Melbourne with a beautiful wife called Trix and they work to make their money save the world. The name of their trust is The Winsome Constance Kindness Trust. Obviously he has landed here on a UFO and the technical word for his species is 'angel.' Philip's list of Daily Dos and Don'ts include: O Don't eat meat, eggs, or drink milk. o Eat as much raw food as possible. o Don't wear clothes made of animals - not even shoes, belts or watchbands. O Don't consume any product that is made by exploited labor. O Everything in your wardrobe of clothes that haven't been used in the previous year, give it away (but only if it is in good condition.) o Eliminate plastic from your life as far as possible...bags, boxes and credit cards - and some people. o Avoid negative people like the plague. Anyone who is not adding quality is subtracting quality. o Turn off every unused electrical appliance at the source. o Shorten your showers and washing loads. o Walk, or ride a bike, or use public transport - drive only if absolutely necessary. Page #6 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________ O Cut down on the amount of rubbish you send to landfill each week. I have cut down from 150 pounds a week to only 4 pounds - that is one briefcase of rubbish a week. O Drink water at room temperature - 2 litres a day - in sips. o Meditate at least one hour a day or at least read for two hours a day o Walk briskly at least one hour a day. o Take your pets for a long walk every day - and talk to them while you do it. And let them stop and sniff as often as they like. A walk is not a race. o Write at least one letter to the media or a politician every week. It doesn't have to be brickbat - a bouquet is fine too. o Grow your own vegetable garden or buy organic vegetables. O Pick up any rubbish you see in the park. It is the right thing to do - and do it in a visible way. It embarrasses the hell of everyone else who soon stop littering. o Buy a few flat bottom clay trays and leave them under the bushes and trees in the park. Each evening (or morning) when you take your dogs to the park, also take two 2 liter bottles of water and fill up the trays. During the drought ten years ago my local park was baked dry and almost dead. Within 3 months of watering the little trays, the whole place became an ecosystem. O Today the park resonates with birdsong, and is full of little animals and insects. It is full of parrots, honey-eaters and even possums. O Dig in your garden - even if it's a balcony pot garden. Get your hands in the soil. Compost the beds. Plant native flowering shrubs. Buy a birdbath, a bird book and binoculars. Go top your local park or a public place and plant a tree. Plant at least 4 fruit trees for the fruit bats, monkeys and birds. o Keep the seed of the fruit you eat and put them in pots o Volunteer your services at any struggling NGO of your choice. O Play with a dog/cat etc at least once a day. And if possible let them occasionally eat from your hand. Ideal for rewards when they are being good. o Listen to music. o Give away money every week - regardless of the amount or the recipient. Try to calculate how much of your income you can give away without drastically affecting your health or happiness. (Not 'lifestyle' - because this means different things to different people - and is mostly rubbish.) Ask at least one shopkeeper, flight attendant, or restaurant manager/waiter every day if they stock vegan products (particularly if you know they don't). o Wear a badge, cap, shirt, or pin which says 'Proud to be Vegetarian' or 'I don't eat dead bodies' or similar. O De-clutter your house every month. Give away everything you don't need. o To increase your happiness, do not aim to increase your possessions. Simply decrease your desires." For more on Phil, please visit www.kindnesstrust.com.