Spain, monkeying around

If you thought socialism was right for you, think again. The Spanish Socialist Party wants to give Apes human rights. How that's for monkeying around with an idea?

brusselsjournal.com: The Spanish newspaper El Mundo (25 April) reports that Spain’s governing Socialists are submitting a bill to grant human rights to four species of animals. The species are chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans: the so-called ‘great apes’ or ‘pongids’ (grandes simios in Spanish).

Great apes share 99 per cent of their genetic material with humans. Champions of their rights say they have an emotional and cultural life, intelligence and moral qualities reminiscent of those of humans. Francisco Garrido, a Green representative who belongs to the Socialist group in parliament, submitted the bill on 25 April. Garrido claims the Spanish Socialists are acting as ambassadors, as defenders and as the voice of the great apes. He hopes that Spain will become the first European country to grant them fundamental human rights.

Got news for you, about all of four-foots share 90% of genes with humans. Is this exclusively a "9%" club? Shouldn't we just give rights to everything?

In the argumentation of the bill, however, one can find references to “the evolutionary and genetic similarities between humans and great apes.” Surely these are irrelevant if the bill only deals with habitat and animal protection.

The GAP motto: “Equality beyond humanity”

Which sounds like they would end up getting more rights than humans. One person got it right...

Amnesty International representative Delia Padron said she was “surprised” by moves to recognize the “human rights” of apes when many humans still lacked those rights.

Again with the Questions (Because I don't have the answers):

• Is the Spanish Socialist Party doing this to gain more members?
• Will our Simian friends use the Euro?
• What will this do to the housing market in Spain?
• Will this spark a Simian revolution for fair wages?
• Ever heard of the Great Lawgiver?
• Will Apes start giving humans lobotomies?
• Why not ape-rights?
• If Apes are given human rights, will they start killing each other too?
• Will Apes in turn give lemurs Ape-rights and lemurs in turn passing them down thus completing the circle of life?
• Do the Apes know anything about this?
• Has the Spanish Socialist Party run out of ideas? The cake walk wasn't as successful as they planned?

I'm not anti-ape by the way. I just don't want their damn dirty paws on me.