Offentliggjort klokken 16/05/2012 af kindnesstrust

Watch Philip Wollen's address to the St James Ethics Centre and the Wheeler Centre debate - let us know in the comments what you think.

Who is Philip Wollen? *** Transcript from http://wheelercentre.com/calendar/presenter/philip-wollen/ ;

"Philip was vice president of Citibank, specialising in corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions.

At age 34, he was rated by Australian Business Magazine in their Top 40 Australian head-hunted executives. At age 40, he witnessed cruelty on such a colossal scale that it affected him profoundly. He decided to give away everything he owned with warm hands, and die broke. 'And so far, we are right on budget,' he jokes.

Today he devotes his life to children, animals, the environment, the terminally ill, the homeless and the arts. He supports over 500 humanitarian projects in over 40 countries with schools, orphanages, shelters, sanctuaries, clinics, and scholarships.

In 2005 he received the Order of Australia. In 2007 he was Australian of the Year, Victoria. The Australia Day Council said of him, 'Essentially a private man, Philip Wollen seeks no personal publicity but is not afraid to step into the limelight for a just cause.' "

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"If slaughterhouses had glass walls" - watch the whole debate at http://wheelercentre.com/videos/video/intelligence-squared-animals-should-be-...

The following is part of a transcript from http://wheelercentre.com/dailies/post/22b6c7dc3f5e/ summarising the debate.

While Peter Singer was the primary crowd-puller for the evening, it was Philip Wollen, a former vice president of Citibank turned founder of the Kindness Trust, who attracted a partial standing ovation on the night, with his passionate, emotive arguments.

'Animals must be off the menu because tonight they are screaming in terror in slaughterhouses,' he began, going on to detail what he witnessed when he visited slaughterhouses in his former life; an experience that changed him forever.

'In our capacity to suffer, a dog is a pig is a bear ... is a boy,' he thundered.

Though he cited a litany of damning statistics (by 2048, all our fisheries will be dead; 10,000 species are wiped out every year because of one -- us), he did find some hope in the way the internet enables people to come together to address causes.

'Ten years ago, Twitter was a bird sound and www was a stuck keyboard.'

He concluded darkly: 'Animals are not just other species, they are other nations, and we murder them at our peril. If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we wouldn't be having this debate tonight.'