PETA's recent "Animal Liberation Display"

[Hampton]

http://www.peta.org/AnimalLiberation/display.asp

That's the ad. I hope I'm not the only one who considers using a picture of a burnt body from a lyching and comparing it to a burning chicken as really fucked up. And also Africans on a slave ship next to pictures of cattle.

Not only is it disgusting but you cannot compare the two.

[bolshevik butcher]

Yeh, i have to say it's quite horrible to act as though animals are as important as people, and as though the liberation of animals is as important as that of black people is farcical.

[Dark Exodus]

I think we should deal with mans inhumanity to man, before we deal with mans inhumanity to animals.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Exactly.

More money is spent on pet foods in the US and Europe than is spent on basic education for everyone in the world, Water and sanitation for everyone in the world, Reproductive health for all women in the world, and Basic health and nutrition for everyone in the world

[Severian]

Definitely. PETA puts out some vile, vile, imagery. Routinely does racist and sexist shit comparing women, and now Black people, to livestock. Appeals to people at the worst level of subconscious trash.

[Camarada]

I usually support PETA (as a vegetarian), but I have to agree, this is way too over the top.

[viva le revolution]

Pardon my ignorance... but what is PETA?

[Abbigail]

PETA is an animal rights organization [more like cult if you ask me]. They defend animals in an extreme way though.. the way they do things is over the top.

[fernando]

yah those animal protectors are nothing but a bunch of hypocrit plant murderers...if they have so much "respect" for life as they claim to have they should starve themselves to death and have their remains recycled back into nature :rolleyes:

[Warren Peace]

Come on people, I'm not a PETA supporter but they're not that bad.

PETA (http://www.peta.org/)
Question Authority (http://www.peta2.com/)


Pardon my ignorance... but what is PETA?

I'm surprised you haven't heard of them, they're in 6 countries: US, UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, and India. They're infamous for being so militiant.


They defend animals in an extreme way though.. the way they do things is over the top.

They break animals out of testing centers where they would otherwise be killed.


yah those animal protectors are nothing but a bunch of hypocrit plant murderers

Um... maybe that's because plants don't have brains? I'm not sure what you're talking about anyway.

[fernando]

So does that mean that a plant doesnt have a soul or cant feel anything?

They free animals from testing centres...i dont mind if they free test animals for lets say make up or shampoo, but not for medicines used to save human lives. "yes...the little cute white rabbit is more important than saving thousands of human lives" I hate that mentality...but then again I come from a country where a politician is murdered by an animal-rights activist, because the politician's ideas didnt comply to the animal rights man :blink:

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Peta is petit-bouregois adventurism at it's finest!

[Decolonize The Left]

I agree that this is over the top. And also that we should deal with the violence against others humans first, but eventually we should adopt less cruel actions towards animals.

-- August

[fernando]

I agree that we should be less cruel to animals, there are some very cruel things out there. The bio-industry sort of grows cows...mass murdering them while large amounts of the butchered animals will just get wasted simply because the people are eating enough/too much while at the same time the rest of the world is starving...

[Dark Exodus]

We have the technology to grow edible meat that tastes just as good as the real thing, its just not as cheap as using cows <_< .

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

PETA are Eco-fascist scum. This news does not surprise me in the least. They seem to have taken lessons in disgusting propoganda by Mr A. Hitler himself.

[fernando]

Originally posted by Dark [email protected] 16 2005, 11:45 PM
We have the technology to grow edible meat that tastes just as good as the real thing, its just not as cheap as using cows <_< .
But is it just as healthy? Its great fun to create stuff that looks and tastes the same as the real thing, but most of the time they are so fake and chemical that they are not that healthy.

[Red Heretic]

Actually, soy based substitute meats taste better and are actually MUCH better for you..

I myself am a vegetarian for health reasons, I have to live to see the revolution you know&#33; ;)

Just to give you an idea, check this out: Vegetarian Benefits (http://www.chreese.com/veganism.itml)

Either way, fuck the equating of human beings with animals.

[fernando]

I cant stand soy food...I need real meat&#33;

[Red Heretic]

Hehe, I swear it taste better&#33;

[Warren Peace]

We have the technology to grow edible meat that tastes just as good as the real thing, its just not as cheap as using cows <_< .

Ya, I saw something about this on Guerilla News.

[viva le revolution]

Instead of focusing on animal rights, the rights of the third world population must be catered to. America still remains the fattest nation in the world with the most abundant supply of food, they could afford to feed the whole of the starving world population and rebuild their infrastructure(i am speaking of all first world economies, not just america) yet they don&#39;t. Never before have the distictions between the have&#39;s and the have not&#39;s been greater and more visible. What we need now is not PETA nor amnesty international, what we need are communists and the red revolution. :hammer:

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Originally posted by Dark [email protected] 16 2005, 11:45 PM
We have the technology to grow edible meat that tastes just as good as the real thing, its just not as cheap as using cows <_< .
Have you even been near to a cow? They are perhaps the most mentally dull animals ever to exist. They are not pets. They are food items.

[Hampton]

Come on people, I&#39;m not a PETA supporter but they&#39;re not that bad.

I would wager to say that it is that bad. When you compare what happened to the African Americans and Native Americans in this country to what is going on now to cows and chickens it cheapens what happened to those people. Can you compare a lynching to what happens to a cow? Is that really fair?

This is a cheap way of evoking feelings of horror and disgust when in reality the two have nothing to do with each other.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I agree

[The Living Red]

Yeah...anyway as a true communist I believe that all forms of expliotation should be abolished, including that of animals.

Personally, i was touched by the video. I admit it is a contraversial idea, but at the end of the day: it is PETA&#39;s movement and they have a right to freeddom of speech and their own choice of getting their message across.

I still think it&#39;s better than sitting in front of a comp, waiting for someone to start a&#39; red revolution&#39;, too scared or lazy to do anything good themselves.

Good luck to PETA and their cause. They can fuck you and your *****y whiny comments and stand up for what they believe in, while we true revolutionaries do the same.

[LSD]

Yeah...anyway as a true communist

:lol:

You&#39;re gonna have to define that one. Sorry, but italics aren&#39;t enough.


I believe that all forms of expliotation should be abolished, including that of animals.

Why?

Why should human society afford societal rights to nonmembers?


Personally, i was touched by the video.

"touched"?

You find it "touching" that they compare slavery and murder to cows? That they are equating the suffering of people to that of livestock? That they are implying that african-americans are no better than cattle?

"touched" wouldn&#39;t be the word I&#39;d use&#33; :angry:


I admit it is a contraversial idea, but at the end of the day: it is PETA&#39;s movement and they have a right to freeddom of speech and their own choice of getting their message across.

Absolutely, just like we have the right to call them out on it.

Freedom of speech doesn&#39;t mean freedom from critisism&#33; Nazis have "freedom of speech", but that doesn&#39;t mean that we shouldn&#39;t attack them with every opportunity.

PETA is promoting a radical reactionary anti-humanist agenda, we would be remiss as leftists if we didn&#39;t call attention to that.


I still think it&#39;s better than sitting in front of a comp, waiting for someone to start a&#39; red revolution&#39;, too scared or lazy to do anything good themselves.

No it isn&#39;t.

It&#39;s much better that you do nothing then fight for the wrong cause. I&#39;d much rather that the entire PETA organization sat at home watching TV than was out there spreading its superstitious reaction and firebombing medical clinics.

PETA isn&#39;t "leftist", it isn&#39;t "revolutionary". It&#39;s pathetic anti-humanist petty-bourgeois post-modernism. A sad group of well-fed, well-off Americans who&#39;ve managed to convince themselves that life is a disney fantasy and we&#39;re just one firebomb away from dancing with hippos in tutus.

"Total animal liberation" is a crock. It&#39;s unattainable, it&#39;s unbelievable, and its undefined. The simple truth is that, deep down, PETA isn&#39;t really sure what it is that they&#39;re ultimately fighting for. I mean, honestly, when you&#39;re talking about badgers, what the hell does "total" liberation even mean?


They can fuck you and your *****y whiny comments and stand up for what they believe in

Yeah, kind of like how the NSDAP "stood up for what they believed in".

Action is not a substitute for good ideas.

At least my "*****y whiny comments" are rooted in logic wich is far more than I can say for anything that PETA does.


while we true revolutionaries do the same.

Oh look, more italics.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Basically right on point comrade.

I didn&#39;t want to be bothered by going so far into it, but I&#39;m glad someone did :lol:

[comradesteele]

i tell you what i hate are these little teenage bourgiese girls who all of a sudden are vegetarian&#33;&#33;my god they annoy me&#33;&#33;with there peta stickers. then i point out there leather shoes and decide to stick leather is bad stickers on them.

[fernando]

Oh those girls are the most annoying ones, but dont worry in a few months they will turn to Wicca and start buying Wicca books and prove themselves to be worthy capitalists who gladly spend daddy&#39;s hard exploited money on all sorts of crap.

But yeah...PETA, they are a movement who would see millions of people killed, just so that their little animals stay safe&#33;

[Martin Blank]

This position is really nothing new. The PETA people have been spewing this crap for over a decade, at least. Some comrades of ours were at the founding conference for the Anti-Racist Action Network back in 1994 and had it out with some of them.

The PETA thugs were going around during lunchtime and snatching meat off of the plates of attendees, many of whom were African American workers from the Columbus, Ohio, area. When these brothers and sisters confronted the PETA folks, these petty-bourgeois scum responded with the line that "chicken oppression is just as bad as Black oppression".

Needless to say, the PETA people barely made it out of there alive. Nobody missed them, either (you can read this sentence both ways and you would be correct).

Miles

[bolshevik butcher]

Thats disgusting, it is not remotley as bad. Yeh i notice that they do fuck all for the oppresssed peoples of the third world.

[Dark Exodus]

Originally posted by NoXion+Aug 17 2005, 02:12 AM--> (NoXion &#064; Aug 17 2005, 02:12 AM)
Dark [email protected] 16 2005, 11:45 PM
We have the technology to grow edible meat that tastes just as good as the real thing, its just not as cheap as using cows <_< .
Have you even been near to a cow? They are perhaps the most mentally dull animals ever to exist. They are not pets. They are food items. [/b]
Yes, yes I have. Been to a few dairy farms, before my grandparents retired.
As for the grown meat I just thought it was worth pointing out.

[Decolonize The Left]

I&#39;ll admit, there are lots of arguments against eating meat. This page posted earlier provides a shit-load of them.
http://www.chreese.com/veganism.itml
BUT, it is highly unlikely that the human population will stop eating meat. It is that simple. This eliminates many of the argument posted on the link.
Secondly, it&#39;s highly unlikely that the US will stop eating meat. This eliminates another bunch of arguments.
And so we are left with the environmental arguments, and health arguments. And while they are strong, I just can&#39;t imagine a time when I couldn&#39;t eat meat. I mean sure, I don&#39;t eat KFC or other shitty meats (if meat at all), but I do enjoy a good steak or hamburger, and I don&#39;t think I could go on eating Soy meat... That&#39;s where I stand.

-- August

[Camarada]

I just thought this was strange, type "eatthewhales.com" in your address bar and see where it takes you.

[Samuel]

Wow, that was REALY messed up. Comparing that kind of irrevelent pictures is crazy, and most of those quotes had nothing to do with animals.

The one I have the biggest problem with is "The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women to men."

It is completly stupid. The animals they protect eat other animals, no? It is the natural order of the food chain.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

LOL @ this video http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com/anderson-vid.asp on KFC&#39;s treatment of chickens..

I don&#39;t eat chicken, and I obviously don&#39;t eat at KFC, but these arguments is hillarious.. I only made it about 1 minute through but some of things said are very funny:

"they raise the chickens to be nothing but meat machines"

Because, that&#39;s what they are&#33;

[Mujer Libre]

These groups have such a blinkered way of looking at the world. I mean, as people have said, they exploit women in their advertising- which is designed to "liberate" animals.

I wonder if anyone points out that if you liberate all the livestock in Australia they will fuck the environment over even more. Goodbye native species&#33;

Animal Liberation Victoria recently published a series of postcards depicting Pamela Anderson (of all people) wearing nothing but a lettuce leaf.

I mean, I think unnecessary cruelty should be avoided, and organic, free-range type farming would be awesome. But frankly, I want to eat meat, and I can&#39;t afford organic meat since it&#39;s like &#036;50 a kilo. If we do switch to more humane types of farming, we&#39;ll all probably have to eat less meat, but that&#39;s fine by me. I quite like those soy alternatives. <_<

[poster_child]

I support PETA.. maybe not in this particular campaign, but there are sevral reasons to not eat meat. Here are a few:
1) For the amount of space that cattle, sheep and chickens take up in farm land, we could produce 10 times more grain and feed the world&#39;s hungry people.
2) Excess cattle raising is leading to the destruction of aerable land and uses more water than any other industry.
3) It is a much healthier lifestyle.
4) Animals have just as much of a right to live on this earth as we do. It is only fair and just that we share the land and allow them to grow and prosper.
5)Each vegetarian saves one acre of trees every year&#33; More than 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to grow crops to feed animals raised for meat, and another acre of trees disappears every eight seconds. The tropical rain forests are also being destroyed to create grazing land for cattle. Fifty-five square feet of rain forest may be razed to produce just one quarter-pound burger.

Perhaps 100 years down the road we will have depleted all our resorces, and will be forced to become vegetarians, because there will be no land left that can support cattle. Better now than later&#33;

[Commie Rat]

3) It is a much healthier lifestyle.

hahaha, give me some medical facts and i might belive this - it is NOT a healthier lifestyle, protiens make up our basic structure and logially it is natural to eat it, the omeaga and fatty acids in fish are critical for human growth and developmen- sure you could eat all the fucking vitamin pills you wanted BUT the natural chemicals in the food that we cannot (yet) replicate are not avliable.


4) Animals have just as much of a right to live on this earth as we do. It is only fair and just that we share the land and allow them to grow and prosper.

When i can talk to a cow about state of the commune or the rights of fellow men then he has as many rights to my house as i do. untill then they dont.
I&#39;m not saying the should be mistreated animals dont deserve that.

[Hiero]

Do you people miss the point? There is no discussing it, this ad shows the twisted logic behind PETA, that puts animals above humans. I wouldn&#39;t doubt that PETA would use black slaves to achive there animal utopia.


1) For the amount of space that cattle, sheep and chickens take up in farm land, we could produce 10 times more grain and feed the world&#39;s hungry people.

We can feed the world&#39;s starving people today with cattle, sheep and chickens. The problem is capitalism is a system of profit.

If we happened to to remove this foods in place of grain then prices for grain would drop so low that no sane person would plant grain. People would be paying off other people to not grow grain.

Remove capitalism worldwide, you remove starvation.

Oh and also your PETA group claim that Chickens are living in tight conditions. So you could fit more kilograms of caged chicken in area of one hectre then you could plant more kilograms of grain.

So if you really care about the worlds starving and if economics were not a major factor you would be all for caged chickens.

[poster_child]

First of all:
There are other ways to get your essential proteins than from animals. There are many alternatives. Most meat is high in cholesterol. It is linked to numerous kinds of cancer, such as colon and stomach cancer. Nowadays, meat and dairy are pumped full of hormones and chemicals for higher production, and more profit. This is NOT healthy.

Second of all:
In a perfect communist society, there is no price of grain. Grain is grain and we all eat, without money involved.

We cannot feed all the world&#39;s people with chickens, beef and pigs. The world&#39;s resources will go bankrupt. Raising animals uses the most water out of any industry. All the world&#39;s land would become barren. Animals that we use for food eat more corn and grain than we, as a human race do.

This would never work. It makes a lot more sense to not eat meat.

[LSD]

There are other ways to get your essential proteins than from animals. There are many alternatives.

Sure there are, but meat is still a good one.


Most meat is high in cholesterol. It is linked to numerous kinds of cancer, such as colon and stomach cancer.

And soy is strongly linked to pancreatic cancer. So much for all you tofu burger fans&#33;

Eat a balanced diet, be responsible, and enjoy yourself. If you spend your whole life worrying about "the big C", it won&#39;t matter if you contract it or not ...you&#39;re already not living.


Nowadays, meat and dairy are pumped full of hormones and chemicals for higher production, and more profit. This is NOT healthy.

No it isn&#39;t, but that has to do with capitalism, not eating meat itself.


In a perfect communist society, there is no price of grain. Grain is grain and we all eat, without money involved.

And the same goes for meat.


We cannot feed all the world&#39;s people with chickens, beef and pigs.

Don&#39;t forget cow, lamb, deer, pheasant, and fish&#33;

Of course we can feed the "world&#39;s people" with meat. Again, the problem is not production, it&#39;s distribution. There is enough "room" in the world for raising meat, it&#39;s just that that meat is not distributed properly.

The solution is not to abandon meat, but to abandon capitalism.


Raising animals uses the most water out of any industry. All the world&#39;s land would become barren.

:lol:

Yes, the planet will go barren if it has animals living on it. :rolleyes:

SHEESH...


Animals that we use for food eat more corn and grain than we, as a human race do.

So?


This would never work. It makes a lot more sense to not eat meat.

Firstly, no it doesn&#39;t, secondly, that&#39;s never gonna happen.

It&#39;s like saying that stopping recreational sex would reduce the spread of stds (which it would). It doesn&#39;t matter if it would be "healthier" or "safer", it isn&#39;t going to ever happen EVER. So we focus on realistic solutions and not neopuritanist attempts at perfecting "health".

The same goes for meat. People will never accept vegetarianism as a mainstream option. If you want to deny yourself, go right ahead, but the rest of us are perfectly willing to risk our collective "colons" if it mean we get to eat food that we love.

I notice you didn&#39;t try to claim a "moral" argument against meat. That animals somehow "have rights" (:rolleyes:). That&#39;s good. It shows that you&#39;re operating at least 6 steps above PETA.

[Decolonize The Left]

I just want to make a quick point about the argument that follows:
"For the amount of space that cattle, sheep and chickens take up in farm land, we could produce 10 times more grain and feed the world&#39;s hungry people."
This is common argument among vegetarians, vegans, and others. It revolves around the fact that IF the US stopped producing meat as we do now, there would be more room for food to feed more people, the environment would be safer, etc... Many benefits.

I think that these facts are correct, there are many benefits to halting the production of meat, and the land that is used for it.

But unfortunately, your decision to stop eating meat isn&#39;t going to save one fucking square foot of that land. When you stop eating meat, other people are still going to keep on eating, and more than you would as well. Therefore this argument is only valid in theory, not in reality, nor in practice. Capitalism doesn&#39;t care if 20-30 people decide they&#39;re not gonna eat meat anymore. They will still produce the same amount, and then we have an over-supply, workers get laid off to keep up profit, etc...

It really holds no ground, and while I support you, I find it somewhat pointless. I prefer to educate myself as to the ways of the world, then to work on changing the situation as a whole in America, i.e. a revolution. It is the only way to stop the environmental destruction, the wage slavery, starvation in the third world, and many more problems which are pertinant today.

-- August

[black]

Sorry why&#39;s it over the top?








Is everything they said not factually accurate?

[fernando]

:P send those treehuggers who want to turn me into a vegetarian (read: gastronomical coward) to the gulag&#33;&#33;&#33;

[black]

...along with every other revolutionary.

:)

[Urban Rubble]

Sorry why&#39;s it over the top?

Because they are comparing the lynching of people, for no other reason that hatred, to the killing of animals which are used for sustinence.

Do you not see the difference between eating a hamburger when your stomach is empty and stringing a black man from a tree and murdering him?


Is everything they said not factually accurate?

No, no it was not.

Forcing chickens to hatch eggs is not comparable to forcing children to work slave labor.

Eating meat is not the same thing as enslaving and killing humans.

[redstar2000]

Animals have just as much of a right to live on this earth as we do.

No, the universe does not confer "rights" to species...or to anything else, for that matter.

When humans want rights, they generally have to fight like hell for them...no one is handing them out like supermarket samples.

The same is true for all species; if they want rights like humans, then the universe itself decrees that they must fight for them.

As people in parts of Africa settle areas heavily inhabited by lions, the lions fight back by killing and eating their new neighbors.

It would be amusing to witness a dialog between a PETA member and a hungry lion on the virtues of vegetarianism...though it would be very short, of course. :lol:

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Camarada]

Do not confuse PETA with most vegetarians. Vegetarianism has existed long before PETA was founded.

I as a vegan (strict vegetarian who does not eat any animal products) think this new campaign is not going to be effective because it has the possibility to offend many people, because it tries to equate the suffering of human beings to the suffering of animals. While the suffering of animals is wrong, it is not as important as the suffering of human beings.

I do not think that PETA&#39;s intentions with this are racist, I think however they tried to make something they thought would be thought-provoking but it ended up coming out the wrong way and making it look like they were trying to say something else. I think in the future they should stick to educating people of possible health benefits of vegetarianism, and keep pushing for more humane treatment of animals in factory farms, and not using shock value tactics that ruin their name in the eyes of many people.

Today vegetarians are very diverse, black, white, hispanic, asian, gay, straight, male, female, transgender, left-wing, socialist, communist, anarchist, etc. Some people have an image of a vegetarian as either a 60s hippie or a punk teenager and that is so not true.

[AnimalRights]

Hampton:

That&#39;s the ad. I hope I&#39;m not the only one who considers using a picture of a burnt body from a lyching and comparing it to a burning chicken as really fucked up. And also Africans on a slave ship next to pictures of cattle.

Not only is it disgusting but you cannot compare the two.
They already did that. The fact appears that that those Africans were once considered property, like animals. PETA may compare humans to animals, but so did those who did not care for either. They&#39;re basically arguing that this oppression is interrelated.

Dark Exodus


I think we should deal with mans inhumanity to man, before we deal with mans inhumanity to animals.
"I am sometimes asked, ‘Why do you spend so much of your time and money in talking about kindness to animals, when there is so much cruelty to men?&#39; And, I answer, I am working at the roots."
-- George Thorndike Angell (1823-1909), Attorney and Founder of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Fernando

They free animals from testing centres...i dont mind if they free test animals for lets say make up or shampoo, but not for medicines used to save human lives. "yes...the little cute white rabbit is more important than saving thousands of human lives" I hate that mentality...but then again I come from a country where a politician is murdered by an animal-rights activist, because the politician&#39;s ideas didnt comply to the animal rights man That mentality may be not be there. Animal testing may harm both humans and animals.
http://www.vivisection-absurd.org.uk/indexf.html
Could you tell me about this murder? To this moment, I doubt it happened. I know that several animal rightists have been killed and injured by their opponents, but I do not think that anyone has been killed in the name of animal rights.

NoXion

Have you even been near to a cow? They are perhaps the most mentally dull animals ever to exist. They are not pets. They are food items.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1502933,00.html
They may be neither.

AugustWest:


But unfortunately, your decision to stop eating meat isn&#39;t going to save one fucking square foot of that land. When you stop eating meat, other people are still going to keep on eating, and more than you would as well. Therefore this argument is only valid in theory, not in reality, nor in practice.
And I bet there are more non-red revolutionaries than there are red revolutionaries.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Then they&#39;re not revolutionaries are they?

[LSD]

They already did that. The fact appears that that those Africans were once considered property, like animals.

So what?

My lampshade is considered propety - "just like slaves". Does that mean that you can compare my throwing out of my lampshade to the lynching of slaves?

In order to make the comparison PETA is making, you have to demonstrate not only that both slaves and animals have been deprived of rights, but that in both cases it was wrong. A moral parallel only exists if both cases are morally parallel.

So far, PETA has failed to demonstrate this, therefore the campaign is illogical and inflammatory.


Animal testing may harm both humans and animals.

And I "may" be the king of Judea.

It just so happens that the evidence does not support this.


They may be neither.

Neither sentients nor rudimentary social communication is relevent in the discussion of participation in human society.

Cows may well deserve the protection of "cow society", such as that is, but insofar as human, I have yet to see an argument, let along a convincing one.

[AnimalRights]

LAD:

My lampshade is considered propety - "just like slaves". Does that mean that you can compare my throwing out of my lampshade to the lynching of slaves?I&#39;m OK with you throwing out your lampshade. I think that would be a pretty strange analogy to make. I would not compare them, no.

Neither sentients nor rudimentary social communication is relevent in the discussion of participation in human society.
As long as cows are cows, they cannot participate in the human society, as humans. They could belong to the moral community, however. It only means that they should not be imprisoned or killed for the giggles of it.

Your statement is interesting in light of the fact that lack of sentience, social communication, language etc. (aside from divine intervention) are precisely the qualities that many believe/have believed to separate men from mice. Lack of those abilities supposedly allowed one to remove the animals from the moral community, yet there is great variation within the human species as well.

It just so happens that the evidence does not support this.
Well, skeptics of vivisection have published research as well. I&#39;m not sure what would count for you.

[poster_child]

LSD:
I think it would be a safe argument that vegetarians are healthier than meat eaters, generally speaking. It&#39;s just common knowledge that it is healthier to eat meat alternatives than to eat a hamburger, or a hot dog, or battered fish. Yes, I do say that there are healthier meats, and fish as well, but this is generally speaking.
Also, I believe that in term of probabilty, america is more likely to become a vegetarian state than a communist state. Don&#39;t get me wrong, I am not a capitalist, but I&#39;m also not a communist. I am however, a revolutionary- a vegetarian revolutionary.
There is no denying the fact that animals are treated horribly. There is unnecessary suffering. When I sit down to dinner I know that nothing suffered in a slaughterhouse in a cage so small that it can&#39;t even sit down. Personally, I believe that animal suffering is important. They are beautiful creatures, with brains and some even have personalities. I am a vegetarian for moral reasons as well, however, I cannot preach to you my morals, because they are just that- my morals. That is why I argue on the environmental side.
We cannot feed the world&#39;s people on deer, bear, fish, pig, goat, dog, cat, you name it. We are depleating these resources everyday, and soon there will be none left. Animal habitat is disappearing. We are overharvesting fish. We are overusing the land.
I do agree with you on one point. Food is not distributed properly.
But, in a sustainable world, it is not possible to continue eating meat like we do.

Animals eat more grain than we do. There is a point to that. That is corn and grain that we could be feeding to starving people in the "third world". Instead, we choose to continue breeding hundreds of animals and feeding them so we can eventually eat them.

August:

It is not just 20-30 people who have decided to not eat meat. There are millions of vegetarians out there, whether it be for religious, moral or health reasons. It does make a difference. Companies will order less meat if it is not all being bought. Restaurants will have alternatives to meat-dishes if enough customers ask. If everyone on earth ate meat, we would be producing a lot more&#33;

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

but I&#39;m also not a communist. I am however, a revolutionary- a vegetarian revolutionary.

What will that revolution entail? A revolution of animals against their oppressors? :lol:

A revolution by definition is The overthrow of one government and its replacement with another. Are you going to overthrow the meat eating government with a vegan one?

[CrazyModerate]

Communists have the Communist Manifesto. PETA has "Animal Farm".

[poster_child]

I meant "a vegetarian revolutionary" as a vegetarian AND a revolutionary. Sorry if that wasn&#39;t clear.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

If you&#39;re not a communist revolutionary what kind are you..

[Hiero]

They already did that. The fact appears that that those Africans were once considered property, like animals. PETA may compare humans to animals, but so did those who did not care for either. They&#39;re basically arguing that this oppression is interrelated.

"Once again, black people are being pimped. You used us. You have used us enough," Esdaile said. "Take it down immediately."

Scot X. Esdaile, president of the state and Greater New Haven chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

http://www.nhregister.com/site/news.cfm?ne...id=517515&rfi=6 (http://www.nhregister.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15000578&BRD=1281&PAG=461&dept_id=517515&rfi=6)

[black]

Originally posted by LSD+--> (LSD)My lampshade is considered propety - "just like slaves". Does that mean that you can compare my throwing out of my lampshade to the lynching of slaves?[/b]

If your lampshade happens to be a thinking, feeling life then yes just like animals it would be similar to the ownership of slaves in that it attempts to own and exploit such a thing as a commodity and property.



It just so happens that the evidence does not support this.

Start a new thread and I&#39;m sure we can discuss the harm animal testing has done.



Neither sentients nor rudimentary social communication is relevent in the discussion of participation in human society.Cows may well deserve the protection of "cow society", such as that is, but insofar as human, I have yet to see an argument, let along a convincing one.

Human society doesn&#39;t exist in isolation but is a major component and manipulator of the environment at large...which happens to include animals. But really, animals play a major part in human society in so far as they are used by humans for our own ends.


Originally posted by [email protected]
A revolution by definition is The overthrow of one government and its replacement with another.

That&#39;s a shit definition since it doesn&#39;t change anything but the rulers and the form of subjugation.



RedStar
The same is true for all species; if they want rights like humans, then the universe itself decrees that they must fight for them.

The concept of rights do not exist as a metaphysical absolute but are a throwback from the Enlightenment and general view that legislation, the enshrinement of a rule in Law and the State, entails their validity. This is wrong. Justice means fuck. The real cause is for a change of how human beings treat and relate to animals and the environment, and no, it doesn&#39;t entail animals fighting/gaining this for themselves but like all changes it needs a basis for change and a form of change. Which could actually come from human beings, perhaps at the same time as a change to how they relate to each other (revolution). Animal self-emancipation is a bizarre concept because the millions of sentient who are born and die in captivity have no hope of ever freeing themselves, but that doesn&#39;t make it any less unjust and unecessary. That said, they vey much do want to be free from suffering and confinement, and that&#39;s all it takes.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by black
Animal self-emancipation is a bizarre concept...

Yes it is...but self-emancipation is the only kind there is&#33;

Do you really believe that "Lincoln freed the slaves" or that "the Czar freed the serfs"? That kind of "emancipation" is always quickly followed by some new and more efficient form of slavery.

The blunt fact of the matter is that if you or any animal doesn&#39;t want to be killed and eaten, you&#39;d better be ready to do the killing and eating yourself.

Because if you can&#39;t do that, then you&#39;ll end up in some other animal&#39;s stomach.

Don&#39;t blame me, blame the universe.

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

That&#39;s a shit definition since it doesn&#39;t change anything but the rulers and the form of subjugation.

Well, that&#39;s what every revolution in recorded history has done, and what every revolution in the future will do.

What definition would you prefer?

[LSD]

I think it would be a safe argument that vegetarians are healthier than meat eaters, generally speaking.

I have no idea it that&#39;s true, but even if it were, who gives a fuck?

We&#39;d probably all be healthier if we each did 60 minutes of exercise every day, but I&#39;m sure as hell not going to force you&#33;

If you want to encourage "vegetarianism", fine. But don&#39;t you dare try and take away my meat&#33;


Don&#39;t get me wrong, I am not a capitalist, but I&#39;m also not a communist. I am however, a revolutionary- a vegetarian revolutionary.

What the fuck does that even mean?

What kind of socio-political system do you advocate? What kind of economic?


There is no denying the fact that animals are treated horribly. There is unnecessary suffering.

Absolutely, and I&#39;m all for reforming the way slaughtering is done. But that doesn&#39;t mean abandoning meat, it just means being more responsible in the way its made.


We cannot feed the world&#39;s people on deer, bear, fish, pig, goat, dog, cat, you name it. We are depleating these resources everyday, and soon there will be none left. Animal habitat is disappearing. We are overharvesting fish. We are overusing the land.

Again, environmental reform does not mean vegetarianism. Sure, we can&#39;t live on meat alone, but no one is pushing for that. You have still not established a reason why a sustainable meat industry along side other food production is not feasible.


If your lampshade happens to be a thinking, feeling life then yes just like animals it would be similar to the ownership of slaves in that it attempts to own and exploit such a thing as a commodity and property.

How so?

Again, you need to establish moral parity, not just assert it.

For one thing, you need to demonstrate a relationship between sentience in the abstract and the accordance of human rights. Neither you nor PETA has done done this,


Human society doesn&#39;t exist in isolation

Yes it does.

It is isolated by the fact that it is the only true society on earth; it is fundamentally unique. It really doesn&#39;t get any more "isolated" than that.


but is a major component

Yes it is, but it is still sharply defined.

Humanity may be part of nature, but nature is not part of humanity&#33;


and manipulator of the environment at large

Irrelevent. Our manipulation of something has no bearing on whether that thing should be accorded standing within our societal moral framework.


...which happens to include animals.

It includes lampshades too. Again, so what?


Animal self-emancipation is a bizarre concept because the millions of sentient who are born and die in captivity have no hope of ever freeing themselves

No, it&#39;s a "bizarre concept" because it&#39;s impossible.

The reason that animals have no hope of freeing themselves is not because of some malicious act of human capriciousness, it&#39;s because they are fundamentally incapable of doing so.

Sorry, but cattle just can&#39;t concieve of "liberation". You could spend the rest of your life explaining "enslavement" to a herd of dairy cows, but they would never get the concept.

The fact is that, at some level at least, you must realize this. You must understand that if animals were able to understand liberation and emancipation, they would be fighting for it themselves. Well, they&#39;re not. There is not Animals Liberation Front. The organization that claims that name is a collection of amateur student terrorists deluding themselves into believing their "fighting the man" ...but there are no animal members.

There are no lab rats fighting vivsection, there are no pigs fighting pork. The truth is that it is always and invariably humans who fight for these ludicrous causes. Why? Because humans are the only species capable of even understanding that these causes can exist, let alone choosing to fight for them.

In order to be protected by human society, you need to be a part of human society and that means being able to understand that human society exists. Fine me a chipmunk of which that is true, and we&#39;ll talk.

Human society exist to protect its members, it is not a charity club, handing out "honourary memberships" to the cute and furry. If you want human society to afford its most fundamental protection, to creatures that are not only incapable of participating in it, but are actually incapable of respecting the rights of others, you need a reason more convincing then "it&#39;s right", you need logical justification.

You don&#39;t have any.

[TheReadMenace]

Just my two cents:

As an anti-capitalist, I find it almost natural to be a vegetarian. I&#39;m not saying everyone should, but that&#39;s the way I see it. (I know I don&#39;t need to say it here, but it is necessary the other way around: if you&#39;re a vegetarian, you MUST be anti-capitalist).

For me, capitalism is oppression. It breeds humans to be nothing more than a commodity, yes? Well, as I see it, it does the same for animals.

See, I don&#39;t have a problem with people eating meat. But the fact that animals are abused and forced into shit conditions is wrong. You see, there&#39;s killing, then there&#39;s suffering. I won&#39;t get mad at someone for going hunting. But if they force the animal to live amidst its own feces in a small area in which it can&#39;t move around, then slit its throat and hang it upside down to bloodlet, then I&#39;m going to be a little upset. Why? Because regardless of whether or not an animal has rights, it still has feelings (I didn&#39;t say emotions, so don&#39;t tear into me for that&#33;), and unnecessary suffering is not justifiable for me - unless, of course, the individual you are inflicting suffering upon has been one of the main proponents for suffering upon other people; but even then, I&#39;d hope to make their death quick, heh.

So yeah. It isn&#39;t a matter of rights, per se, but a matter of humanity. Yeah, we need to focus on ending the various human rights violations; but we don&#39;t just focus on one thing, right? If you&#39;re going to kill an animal, kill it, and inflict as little suffering as possible; but breeding it for the sole purpose of being a commodity and suffering needlessly for it&#39;s whole (short) life, I can&#39;t reconcile that.

And about animal testing - there are ways to test harmlessly for finding cures for diseases. But breaking bones, fracturing skulls, scalding flesh, putting out eyes - is that really necessary? And what good does it do, except speed up the possibility to make a profit? I&#39;m all for breaking into testing facilities, as long as education and peaceful protest come first, and all the alternative methods of testing have been examined, regardless of how expensive it might be.


Andrew

[LSD]

See, I don&#39;t have a problem with people eating meat. But the fact that animals are abused and forced into shit conditions is wrong.

Again, that has more to do with capitalism then it does with eating meat.

Do slaughtering techniques need to be changed? Of course, but that&#39;s not what PETA advocates. PETA wants to ban meat. More than that, they want "total animal liberation", that is they want to remove all barriers on animals living their "natural" lives as they "see fit".

In other words, insanity.


And about animal testing - there are ways to test harmlessly for finding cures for diseases.

Depends on your definition.

If "harmlessly" means without using animals, then no, there isn&#39;t.

Animal testing isn&#39;t an "option", it&#39;s a need.


I&#39;m all for breaking into testing facilities

WHY?

How about you target sources of real oppression before you start destroying invaluable medical research. Breaking into "testing facilites" slows down research and prevents discovery, it wastes time and money that should be developing medecines. In simplest terms, it kills.

I don&#39;t care what kind of society you want, be it communist or otherwise, animal testing will be a part of it ...unless you want to go back to the days of the black death.

[poster_child]

You are saying that eating meat is okay in a communist society. Perhaps it would be a lot more humane, and I would even consider doing it. But right now, we live in a capitalist society. As long as we live in a capitalist society concerned with only production and profits, animals will be treated unacceptably. This is happening right now. My argument is that vegetarianism is necessary in today&#39;s society for moral and environmental reasons. Maybe after a revolution it could be a possiblity, where there is sustainable and proper farming, where animals are not farmed in a way to ONLY maximize profits.

[LSD]

You are saying that eating meat is okay in a communist society.

Yes, but not exclusively.


But right now, we live in a capitalist society. As long as we live in a capitalist society concerned with only production and profits, animals will be treated unacceptably.

"unacceptably" is a subjective judgment.

While I do think that animal slaughtering can and should be improved, the fact that it currently does not meet my preferred standards does not stop me from eating meat.

If it stops you, that&#39;s fine, and I have no problem with your making a personal choice regarding your own diet. But that&#39;s a far cry from imposing that personal moral judgment on anyone else.


My argument is that vegetarianism is necessary in today&#39;s society for moral [reaons]

No it isn&#39;t.

Your own personal morality may drive you to adopt vegetarianism, but I have yet to see a rational agument why that should be expanded any further than that.

I agree that slaughtering techniques should be reformed, much as I believe that internatl combustion engines should be reformed. But that doesn&#39;t mean that I "refuse" to drive a car&#33;

The fact that I want something to be made better does not logically translate into me refusing to use the present incarnation.


and environmental reasons.

Even if every person on earth, stopped eating meat, it would not help the environment. Within the capitalist system, the meat industry would only be replaced by another equally destructive industry.

It isn&#39;t meat that&#39;s clearcutting, it&#39;s capitalism.

As long as there is a profit to be made, capitalists will continue to exploit natural resources, regardless of wether its for making meat or grain or cars.

Vegetarianism is simply not a practical solution to environmental destruction.

[black]

Originally posted by Redstar200&#045;
Yes it is...but self-emancipation is the only kind there is&#33;

You mean to tell me you can&#39;t think of one instance where the wrong-doing against an individual(s) is lifted by the self-same creator of that wrong-doing, by elements of the cause of it or through other factors? That&#39;s just a confusing way of saying that emancipation does not by necessity entail emancipating yourself or solely by yourself. When a human being releases another from captivity that&#39;s emancipation by another. When you create a system that eradicates poverty and preventable illness of infants, you&#39;re emancipating them in another sense. As an Anarchist I very much see self-emancipation as a fundamental part of revolution and the creation of a new society. Yet to turn that around as a reason not to act for the benefit of those who can&#39;t help themselves and yet suffer is absurd, stupid logic that defies even your own common sense.

I&#39;m sure. ;)

LSD said, Animals dont understand liberation, frankly that&#39;s a dumbass statement I&#39;ve heard a million times, and I would highly suspect that LSD is himself a top-class dumbass who exists in seperation from the real process of animal abuse, meat production and animals themselves. Where they have the chance you will find the strugglings of a pig, cow, sheep or other farm animal actually suceeds in its desired goal of ... liberation. It&#39;s rare that farm animals escape slaughter or (ab)use through their own means, but happens occasionally and what&#39;s more it&#39;s a common want. You can tell the cows queueing to have their heads bolted have a sense of the pain that will be afflicted to them, of fear and want for release.

You can even look at it another way, we are not so very different from the animals who are systematically destroyed in our name. To fight against their oppression, is a form self-emancipation on our part. We are likewise sentient beings who suffer, though quite differently, at the hands of a system we can&#39;t control. They are our brethren. The human animal/animal seperation is a grossly exaggerated split, animals are a major part of our own societies and when we revolutionise that society for the better we cannot help but revolutionise our treatment of animals. Against commodification and profit at the stake of life.

The exact same is true for the environment. To stop our plunder and rape of the natural resource we call home, could be viewed as emancipation by other or in fact s e l f - e m a n c i p a t i o n .

[Dark Exodus]

"I am sometimes asked, ‘Why do you spend so much of your time and money in talking about kindness to animals, when there is so much cruelty to men?&#39; And, I answer, I am working at the roots."


So by helping animals in 1st world countries we are stopping poverty and starvation in 3rd world countries... or not.

If I was an African and I saw somone feeding animals when my own children dieing of hunger by someone saying that they are &#39;working at the roots&#39; I would be appalled.

[LSD]

Where they have the chance you will find the strugglings of a pig, cow, sheep or other farm animal actually suceeds in its desired goal of ... liberation.

No, in it&#39;s desired goal to eat and shit. Does that mean that it will try to avoid being killed, yeah. But that&#39;s a far cry from liberation.

Liberation requires an understanding of the nature of captivity and the abstract preference of emancipation. That is a concept to complex for animals to understand and therefore they are not capable of self-emancipation.

More importantly, they are not capable to participate in human society and are therefore not entitled to the protections of it.


You can even look at it another way, we are not so very different from the animals who are systematically destroyed in our name.

Yes we are. We are capable of rational thought, they are not. We are capable of advanced society, they are not. We are capable of understanding rights, the are not.

Animals may indeed be quite similar to us, but they are just different enough to not enjoy the protections of our society. It "just so happens" that the differences between humans and other animals are in those specific areas where rights and society is concerned.

Animals are not able to act as independent moral actors and therefore cannot be afforded human-right status.


The human animal/animal seperation is a grossly exaggerated split

No it isn&#39;t, althought the anti-humanist TAL crowd does love to minimize it.

The "human animal/animal sepetation" is important only in those areas in which there genuinely is a big "human animal/animal sepetation", society happens to be one of them.

Once again, human society is predicated on a certain level of mutual recognition, responsibility, and respect. This is a level unattainable by nonhuman animals. Accordingly, these creatures are not able to participate in our society and so are not entitled to the fundamental protections of this society.

I suppose a case could be made that they are entitled to the protections of their societies, but you will notice that that has led to precious little.

The fact is that if animals were able to understand what liberation was, they would be fighting back. They aren&#39;t and to argue that we have some sort of "natural responsibility" to other animals is nothing but supernaturalistic bunk.

As a species, we have a responsiblity to ourselves, nothing more.


We are likewise sentient beings who suffer

So what?


animals are a major part of our own societies

No they are not. They are used by our society, but they are not even capable of recognizing that our society exists, let alone participating in it.


and when we revolutionise that society for the better we cannot help but revolutionise our treatment of animals.

Of course we can.

Not that I&#39;m saying that slaughtering techniques can&#39;t and shouldn&#39;t be improved. But if by "revolutionise our treatment" (sp), you mean Total Animal Liberation, then I vehemently disagree.

A humanist social revolution is not only possible, it&#39;s desirable.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by black
You mean to tell me you can&#39;t think of one instance where the wrong-doing against an individual(s) is lifted by the self-same creator of that wrong-doing?

Not on any significant scale.

You could, in theory, buy a cow that was raised for meat and take it out to the woods and turn it loose...which would mean it would probably be killed and eaten by wolves or mountain lions.

But your "moral act" would have no perceptible influence on the cattle industry at all.

Just as the fact that an occasional slave-owner emancipated his slaves from kindness or from remorse had no effect on the institution of slavery.

The course is clear if you wish to apply revolutionary insights to the question of humans killing and eating animals: you must organize the animals to fight back&#33;

Good luck&#33; :lol:

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[timbaly]

When I think about the fact that the food I&#39;m eating comes from animals I somewhat feel bad. They are living and breathing things and it seems wrong to kill them. However it hasn&#39;t bothered me enough to stop eating them. Meat is too good for me to give up, sure I could technically live without it and supplement its nutritional value through other foods. The fact is that I have a mental handicap that doesn&#39;t allow me to eat most vegetables or any fruits. For me to eat vegetables I have to chop them up and swallow them quickly so as not to get their taste on my tongue. Afterwards I quickly wash down the slight taste that gets to me with water. I do that for every spoonful, it&#39;s quite tiresome so I don&#39;t eat vegetables often. There are only two types that I can eat without having to go through the aforementioned procedure to get over my ideosyncracy. Therefore I need my delicious meat, or else I might actually die. I&#39;ve wondered if I would actually be able to overide my mental handicap and eat fruits if that was all I had to eat. I feel like my need to survive overides the needs of the animals to survive.

[TheReadMenace]

Originally posted by Lysergic Acid [email protected] 19 2005, 09:10 PM

See, I don&#39;t have a problem with people eating meat. But the fact that animals are abused and forced into shit conditions is wrong.

Again, that has more to do with capitalism then it does with eating meat.

Do slaughtering techniques need to be changed? Of course, but that&#39;s not what PETA advocates. PETA wants to ban meat. More than that, they want "total animal liberation", that is they want to remove all barriers on animals living their "natural" lives as they "see fit".

In other words, insanity.


And about animal testing - there are ways to test harmlessly for finding cures for diseases.

Depends on your definition.

If "harmlessly" means without using animals, then no, there isn&#39;t.

Animal testing isn&#39;t an "option", it&#39;s a need.


I&#39;m all for breaking into testing facilities

WHY?

How about you target sources of real oppression before you start destroying invaluable medical research. Breaking into "testing facilites" slows down research and prevents discovery, it wastes time and money that should be developing medecines. In simplest terms, it kills.

I don&#39;t care what kind of society you want, be it communist or otherwise, animal testing will be a part of it ...unless you want to go back to the days of the black death.
How can you say that there aren&#39;t any alternatives to animal testing? I could think of several:

Eytex
Produced by the National Testing Corp. in Palm Springs, California, Eytex is an in-vitro (test-tube) procedure that measures eye irritancy via a protein alteration system. A vegetable protein from the jack bean mimics the reaction of the cornea to an alien substance. This alternative is used by Avon instead of the cruel Draize eye irritancy test.

Skintex
An in-vitro method to assess skin irritancy that uses pumpkin rind to mimic the reaction of a foreign substance on human skin (both Eytex and Skintex can measure 5,000 different materials).

EpiPack
Produced by Clonetics in San Diego, California, the EpiPack uses cloned human tissue to test potentially harmful substances.

Neutral Red Bioassay
Developed at Rockefeller University and promoted by Clonetics, the Neutral Red Bioassay is cultured human cells that are used to compute the absorption of a water-soluble dye to measure relative toxicity.

Testskin
Produced by Organogenesis in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Testskin uses human skin grown in a sterile plastic bag and can be used for measuring irritancy, etc. (this method is used by Avon, Amway, and Estee Lauder).

TOPKAT
Produced by Health Design, Inc. in Rochester, New York, TOPKAT is a computer software program that measures toxicity, mutagenicity, carcinogenicity, and teratonogenicity (this method is used by the U.S. Army, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Food and Drug Administration).

Ames Test
Tests for carcinogenicity by mixing a test culture with Salmonella typhimurium and adding activating enzymes. It was able to detect 156 out of 174 (90%) animal carcinogens and 90 out of 100 (88%) non-carcinogenes.

Agarose Diffusion Method
Tests for toxicity of plastic and synthetic devices used in medical devices such as heart valves, artificial joints, and intravenous lines. Human cells and the test material are placed in a flask and are separated by a thin-layer of agarose (a derivative of seaweed agar). If the material tested is an irritant, an area of killed cells appears around the substance.



How is animal testing a need? Yeah, it was necessary for a while - we discovered insulin and more or less cured polio - but the purpose of medical advancement is to just that: advance. Science and medicine need to progress, and the list above offers progress, but, like you said, it goes back to capitalism. They put profit before lives, even if it is just an animal.


Vegetarianism is simply not a practical solution to environmental destruction.

You&#39;re right, it isn&#39;t, any more than buying fair trade products or buying from small businesses helps alleviate the injustices of capitalism. But that&#39;s not the point, right? Why do I buy fair trade coffee? Because then it isn&#39;t on my conscience that I actively participated in the exploitation of a coffee farmer. Yeah, it doesn&#39;t do anything to help him, but it&#39;s still a form of protest.


But yeah, it does all go back to capitalism. I still won&#39;t ever eat meat, even if capitalism collapses, but I wouldn&#39;t have a problem with it by any means, as long as it was a fair system to the animals.

"The more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man."

Andrew

Andrew

[LSD]

How can you say that there aren&#39;t any alternatives to animal testing?:

I didn&#39;t. I said that there are no complete alternatives.

That means that while, yes, there are numerous non-vivisective techniques available, we are still not able to do without animal testing.


How is animal testing a need? Yeah, it was necessary for a while - we discovered insulin and more or less cured polio - but the purpose of medical advancement is to just that: advance.

Yes, but the purpose of medicine is to heal. If that means using 2 year technology or 200. If it works better, it works better, "advancement" be damned.

The methods you outlines may be newer than animal testing, but that doesn&#39;t mean they&#39;re better. Nor does it mean that they offer a complete replacement.


like you said, it goes back to capitalism. They put profit before lives, even if it is just an animal.

Yes they do, but they also want to not be firebombed and believe me if there really was a viable alternative to using animals, you&#39;d see at least some mainstream clinics using them exclusively. You&#39;d certainly see the non-profit university and state-sponsored research centers try it. I mean, what do they have to lose. If animal testing was not needed, you&#39;d see it not being used somewhere.

You don&#39;t because it isn&#39;t. Animal testing isn&#39;t a matter of capitalism, it&#39;s a matter of science.

But, then, who knows. Maybe you&#39;re right. Maybe it&#39;s all a big conspiracy by the scientists and the doctors and the drug companies and the hospitals and the universities and the government. If so, this conversation is moot anyway. Neither of us are doctors or medical researchers and if "all" the experts are conspiring together, we really have no one to look to.

So let&#39;s get rid of capitalism&#33; Let&#39;s destroy the system and then, when there is no more profit motive, then we can discuss the usefuleness of animal testing in an unbiased environment.

For right now, however, I have no choice but to trust the people who&#39;ve done this all their lives. Vitually every nobel winning medical researcher has said not only that animal testing helped them, but that they belive it to be essential to the future of research.

That&#39;s good enough for me.


You&#39;re right, it isn&#39;t, any more than buying fair trade products or buying from small businesses helps alleviate the injustices of capitalism. But that&#39;s not the point, right? Why do I buy fair trade coffee? Because then it isn&#39;t on my conscience that I actively participated in the exploitation of a coffee farmer. Yeah, it doesn&#39;t do anything to help him, but it&#39;s still a form of protest.

And now we&#39;re back to "morality" which is an entirely seperate issue. Again, if you feel that eating meat is "wrong", fine. But I was responding to the claim that vegetarianism was an environmental nescessity.

[black]

Originally posted by LSD+--> (LSD)Liberation requires an understanding of the nature of captivity and the abstract preference of emancipation. That is a concept to complex for animals to understand and therefore they are not capable of self-emancipation.[/b]

ALL HAIL THE UBER-COCK Lysergic Acid Diethylamide&#33;






http://www.pour-les-animaux.de/images/f3_07.jpg
they have no "understanding of captivity".
Cannot comprehend their situation and remedy.



http://users.actweb.net/~eye/propaganda/images/dogburn.gif
All it wants is to "eat and shit".
It has no other concerns.




http://www.svida.org/images/tks.jpg
Since they can&#39;t get out by themselves;
They shouldn&#39;t&#33;&#33;





Animals are not able to act as independent moral actors and therefore cannot be afforded human-right status.

Clearly, who wants to give animals human rights? They are not the human animal. I&#39;m sure we can "afford" however to live without uneccesarily killing and torturing them on mass. Btw, Humanism is an anthrocentric, thick philosophy that is debated by any rational scientific consideration and dissection of it&#39;s origins and aims. It&#39;s a pseudo-religious, moralistic (um, yes sweety and in the bad sense) conception and view of the world that is already being made in its complete sense redundant, when you consider behaviourism, and the relationship between humans, animals and the environment in scientific terms. Most humanists did in fact place the cessation of animal cruelty as part of their beliefs, but that&#39;s within in a pointless framework, that appeals more to ****s like you who need it to back up their wee grasp on their self-importance.



redstar2000
Not on any significant scale.

You&#39;re probably pretty old and dulled by years of American meat, but let&#39;s just consider this...human beings can&#39;t dismantle and halt the large-scale exploitation (assuming that it won&#39;t break down) we&#39;ve created as a collective against animals AND the environment? Because those things need to stop it themselves?&#33; No, mate that&#39;s Marxist stupidity gone mad. A revolution can only be started and maintained through self-emancipatory action on behalf of the masses, because it&#39;s their society and lives that will be shaped and can only be shaped by them (not given to them by anyone else or led by some vanguard). But comparing social revolution with animal liberation isn&#39;t quite the same.

You then give some weird examples of how it emancipation by other can&#39;t work in the big picture -by concentrating on the small scale.

1. Buying a cow won&#39;t stop the overall exploitation of that cow. Changing the society and attacking the system which perpetuates the use of cows for milk, meat, leather etc. WILL.

2. The few slave owners that released their slaves didn&#39;t stop the slave trade, but the Abolitionist movement in the slave owning countries particularly in Britain did go a good way to bringing about the end of firstly the slave trade and then slave colonies that were already established. Without the slaves rioting themselves it would never&#39;ve been stopped, but actually those riots only started by the belief that they could be freed and the solidarity and hope they had from such places as the Abolitionist movement. Self-emancipation certainly, but don&#39;t just dismiss other factors and don&#39;t pretend to suggest that this alone suggests we can&#39;t emancipate animals in the long term and large scale. You&#39;re conflating two quite different scenarios.

[LSD]

ALL HAIL THE UBER-COCK Lysergic Acid Diethylamide&#33;

:blink:

I see someone here is uncomfortable with civil debate.

I would work on that temper if I were you, you see that&#39;s called flaming, something that is not tolerated on this board.

This is warning 1, we get to 3 and you get a warning point.


Clearly, who wants to give animals human rights? They are not the human animal. I&#39;m sure we can "afford" however to live without uneccesarily killing and torturing them on mass.

The question isn&#39;t whether or not we can "live" without meat, the question is should we live without meat. So far you have not provided a reason why human society should do so en masse.

Again, as I&#39;ve said numerous times, if you want to make the personal moral choice to not eat meat, I have nothing but respect. I honestly do not care about your dietary choices.

But don&#39;t claim that it is anything more then that. Certainly don&#39;t try to impose your personal values on the rest of us. If you want us to stop eating meat you&#39;ll need to provide logical justification. You have not done this.


they have no "understanding of captivity".
Cannot comprehend their situation and remedy.

That&#39;s correct.

Are you going to actually refute this position or just show us pretty pictures?


All it wants is to "eat and shit".
It has no other concerns.

I&#39;m sure it has other concerns, but those are the primary ones, yeah.

What it doesn&#39;t have is an understanding of the nature of captivity or of the bennefits of emanicaption. It may be frustrated that it is prevented from doing things when it wants to do them, but it has no long-term comprehension of sustained encarceration.


Since they can&#39;t get out by themselves;
They shouldn&#39;t&#33;&#33;

This isn&#39;t about "shoudn&#39;t", this is about our obligation as a society. Do we have a social resonsibility to these animals. Not whether or not we like to see them hurt, whether we are required to protect them.


Btw, Humanism is an anthrocentric

You&#39;re critisizing something called humanism for being too focused on humans?

I think that&#39;s kind of implied&#33; :lol:


thick philosophy that is debated by any rational scientific consideration and dissection of it&#39;s origins and aims. It&#39;s a pseudo-religious, moralistic (um, yes sweety and in the bad sense) conception and view of the world that is already being made in its complete sense redundant, when you consider behaviourism, and the relationship between humans, animals and the environment in scientific terms.

I&#39;m not really sure where you&#39;re going here.

The fact that there is a relationship between humans and other animals seems irrelevent to the question of the external obligations of human society. It&#39;s assumed that there&#39;s a relationship there, otherwise we wouldn&#39;t even be in a situation where this discussion could be had.

That is, if we&#39;re discussing "animal liberation", it means that we must be in a position of power over animals (such that we could obsentibly "liberate" them). But this power relationship in and of itself cannot be used as a justification for a change in it. Rather, you must provide argumentation for why this relationship, as it stands, is undesirable. Why human society should make such a drastic change to accomodate the interests of explicit non-participants.


Most humanists did in fact place the cessation of animal cruelty as part of their beliefs,

A little bandwagon, a lot of appeal to authority.


but that&#39;s within in a pointless framework, that appeals more to ****s like you who need it to back up their wee grasp on their self-importance.

That would be warning 2. <_<

[Non-Sectarian Bastard!]

What kinda sick fuck equates animals with people? :o They really are bored middle-class ****s.

[bolshevik butcher]

I dont know if this is really relevant or not, but i read that during the famine in ehtiopia in 1984 the grain was going to cows to be sold to the first world, rather than to the starving people.

[Dani_Filth]

Well they need to get the point across&#33;&#33; People are thick&#33; And animals ARE as important&#33;&#33; Who gives you the right to even think that&#33; we are not superior&#33; in fact they are more deserving of this earth than we are&#33; We are the corrupt monsters&#33; They are the most innocent&#33; Along with the trees, water, air and everything WE have ruined&#33; Comparing people to animals makes ppl actually WAKE up&#33; Or even notice&#33;

[bolshevik butcher]

No we are more important. People are more important than animals. I think that peoples wellfare comes before animals.

[black]

I would work on that temper if I were you, you see that&#39;s called flaming, something that is not tolerated on this board.

tough shit, uber-cock. I&#39;m sure I&#39;d be quite happy to do more than that, but you&#39;re the one making the "warnings"?

GET
TO
FUCK

bring on your warning point, as though I care.


The question isn&#39;t whether or not we can "live" without meat, the question is should we live without meat. So far you have not provided a reason why human society should do so en masse.

Why has this become a debate about meat? The discussion is on the whole equation and parallels between animal and human oppression. The meat culture is only a, albeit disgraceful, part of that that. Likewise why do you incessantly make your posts sound like such a pretentious, pile of bold typed wank?

It&#39;s like you can&#39;t type a bloody paragraph without doing it.


Are you going to actually refute this position or just show us pretty pictures?

I&#39;d hope the majority of sane and rational human beings could see the misery and torture that animals such as the captive sow actually experience as their lives. Now, if you happen to be alienated prick who doesn&#39;t even accept that the being is very much conscious of its captive state and highly unnatural and unjust treatment, then I could point you to the countless behaviourists who can do it for you in language you can understand -without needing to have any emotional capacity. Battery farmed chickens, poultry, pigs etc. are easily observed as being

1) in extreme discomfort, to the point of mental and physical pain
2) they understand quite perfectly that greater space, light, "freedom" is ultimately more desireable than being confined and controlled in an artifical environment.
3) they frequently make attempts to escape/avoid their situation
4) when released into the open without being farmed, exploited and controlled they resort to natural behaviour, showing signs of pleasure and happiness they had not before.

Not really difficult.


I&#39;m sure it has other concerns, but those are the primary ones, yeah.

You don&#39;t think the pain it was in at that time would be quite a big concern?



This isn&#39;t about "shoudn&#39;t", this is about our obligation as a society. Do we have a social resonsibility to these animals. Not whether or not we like to see them hurt, whether we are required to protect them.

Quite frankly, if the suffering caused doesn&#39;t involve itself in an analysis of "society&#39;s obligations", that analysis doesn&#39;t mean shit. It doesn&#39;t take into consideration the subjective element of the things we use, it allows for the continuence of a barbarity that if not inflicted upon non-humans, can only result in similar barbarism amongst humans.


You&#39;re critisizing something called humanism for being too focused on humans?

No dimwit, humanism was meant to involve the replacement of gods and religion not to turn humans into those gods. It failed miserably.



Why human society should make such a drastic change to accomodate the interests of explicit non-participants.

See, one of your biggest problems is in the view that liberation of some other must automatically benefit the liberator. Well, ending mass exploitation of animals as an example will put an end to one of the biggest and systematic cruelties of a system that exploits us all. By treating animals the way we do (and actually most of happens without our express knowledge, merely because it would be too shocking for most of us) we can likewise only treat ourselves and our environment in a similar way. In otherwords, it comes back to haunt us. It is an unhealthy, unenvironmental, barbaric and cruel relationship that could be (must be) replaced for a more sustainable, healthy and humane one.

But the biggest reason is for itself, the end to the cruelty experienced by millions of animals that has to be in terms of sheer numbers and inhumanity one of the biggest tragedies in human history. If you can&#39;t even relate to the screams of a monkey being electrocuted I, and anyone else who share&#39;s my opinion, can hardly change that. This kind of thing is repeated ad nauseum, and anyone who feels as much passion and anger at it should do something about it.


(you cock)

[black]

What kinda sick fuck equates animals with people? They really are bored middle-class ****s.

I think that peoples wellfare comes before animals.


1. The kind of fuck that has more compassion and humility than you? And I&#39;m probably more working class than you. ;)

2. Are you the same person that said that we need to save humans first or some other such sentiments? Surely animal and human welfare isn&#39;t about "either-or", animal liberationists don&#39;t think animals are more important than humans and quite often vice versa. We think and are sure that both must come together.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere".

[Non-Sectarian Bastard!]

So what if putting people before animals makes me look less compassionate or humile to you. I care about humans first. I eat meat: because it&#39;s yummy and it&#39;s reasonably cheap.

[bolshevik butcher]

I cant believe that someone would put animals onan equal level. I would easily sacrafice the life of an animal for a person.

[LSD]

Why has this become a debate about meat?

Because the meat industry is the biggest and most visible animal-product sector. Any discussion on "animal liberation" can&#39;t help but address the issue of eating meat and the prime rallying call of all "animal liberation" organizations is to end the eating of meat.

You yourself have referenced the meat industry&#39;s treatment of animals several times and even posted pictures of it. It&#39;s somewhat bizarre that you would then question my referencing it&#33;


the being is very much conscious of its captive state and highly unnatural and unjust treatment

No it isn&#39;t. It is aware that it is unable to do those things that it wants to do (eat and shit mainly), but it is not "conscious of its capitve state". It certainly has no conception of "unnatural" or "unjust".

You are anthropomorphizing creatures with no ability for such cognitive feats.


You don&#39;t think the pain it was in at that time would be quite a big concern?

Depends on the definition of "concern". Do I think the pain was...painful? Of course. But by "concern", I meant interests and desires beyond the obvious "not being in pain".

I will without hesitation grant you that animals do not want to be in pain, however i fail to see how this at all strengthens your argument.


Quite frankly, if the suffering caused doesn&#39;t involve itself in an analysis of "society&#39;s obligations", that analysis doesn&#39;t mean shit.

That statement is a subversion of logic.

You&#39;re basically saying that if a rational analysis disagrees with your personal emotional response, the analysis must go&#33; :lol:

Such emotionalism contributes nothing and is itself the cause of much suffering in human history. Giving in to subjective passions is tempting, I&#39;ll grant you, but is ultimately counterproductive and destructive.


It doesn&#39;t take into consideration the subjective element of the things we use, it allows for the continuence of a barbarity that if not inflicted upon non-humans, can only result in similar barbarism amongst humans.

That particular slippery slope is bordering on the patently fallacial. In order to avoid a complete straw man, you&#39;ll have to establish a strong connection between "barbarity" on animals and "barabarism" on humans.

As it stands, the only empirical data available would actually, bizarrely enough, seem to demonstrate the opposite&#33;

As you and the "animal rights" crowd so often inform us, our treatment of animals today is far worse than a hundred years ago. Regardless of this, crime is down across the board. General social inequality is lower than a hundred years ago, violent acts are lower than a hundred years ago, and even war and violent international strife are far lower than a hundred years ago.

What does this tell us about animal treatment and human-human "barbarity"? Could it be that treating animals worse makes us treat each other better? :o

Now, I am not saying that there is causation here, but I am saying that the evidence is firmly against the "animal slaughtering causes crime" hypothesis.


See, one of your biggest problems is in the view that liberation of some other must automatically benefit the liberator.

I never suggested anything of the kind.

What I said was that in order to be liberated, the liberated must be independently capable of understanding liberation or at least a rudimentary conception of the nature of said liberation.

If animals could free themselves, even if objectively prevented from doing so, this would be an entirely different conversation.

But the fact remains that animals are not able to conceptualize complex abstract thoughts and are therefore unable to participate as independent moral actors in society, the key prerequisite for the affording of rights.


If you can&#39;t even relate to the screams of a monkey being electrocuted I, and anyone else who share&#39;s my opinion, can hardly change that.

Of course you could, through logical and rational argumentation.

Unforunately, you seem to be lacking in both. :(


This kind of thing is repeated ad nauseum, and anyone who feels as much passion and anger at it should do something about it.

Why?


tough shit, uber-cock.

GET
TO
FUCK

Likewise why do you incessantly make your posts sound like such a pretentious, pile of bold typed wank?

Now, if you happen to be alienated prick

No dimwit

(you cock)

:huh:

I guess logic isn&#39;t exactly your strength.


bring on your warning point, as though I care.

Ask and you shall recieve.

[Warren Peace]

Have you even been near to a cow? They are perhaps the most mentally dull animals ever to exist. They are not pets. They are food items.

The Hidden Lives of Cows (http://www.goveg.com/feat/hiddenlivesofcows/index.asp) :P

Actually, the one about chickens is kind of cool.

[Organic Revolution]

What kinda sick fuck equates animals with people?
me and many vegans and vegetarians.


I dont know if this is really relevant or not, but i read that during the famine in ehtiopia in 1984 the grain was going to cows to be sold to the first world, rather than to the starving people.

its very expensive to feed these animals when you can just eat what is given to them. eatting meat is supporting capitalism.


No we are more important. People are more important than animals. I think that peoples wellfare comes before animals.

how do you figure that? animals think feel love. they have all human emotions, and some human actions. the only difference between animals and man is that man has been on the earth for a shorter time.


I care about humans first. I eat meat: because it&#39;s yummy and it&#39;s reasonably cheap.

and its the body of a used to be living thing. how can you support the enslavment of these animals.


I never suggested anything of the kind.

What I said was that in order to be liberated, the liberated must be independently capable of understanding liberation or at least a rudimentary conception of the nature of said liberation.

If animals could free themselves, even if objectively prevented from doing so, this would be an entirely different conversation.

But the fact remains that animals are not able to conceptualize complex abstract thoughts and are therefore unable to participate as independent moral actors in society, the key prerequisite for the affording of rights.


animals can and do liberate them selves. have you ever seen a deer fight against a trap, or a dog escape from an abusive household?

[LSD]

its very expensive to feed these animals when you can just eat what is given to them. eatting meat is supporting capitalism.

:lol:

Eating anything is supporting capitalism ...in capitalism. That&#39;s how capitalism works, it&#39;s pervasive.


animals think feel love. they have all human emotions, and some human actions. the only difference between animals and man is that man has been on the earth for a shorter time.

Obviously that is not the only difference between humans and other animals. In this case, it is certainly not the relevent one.

On the issue of societal obligation and the accordance of rights, the issue is not "emotion" or "love", it&#39;s social participation. The key question is whether are not animals are able to take part as independent moral actors within the the human societal moral framework.

If the answer is no, and it is, then the accordance of human societal rights becomes a functional contradiction, a virtual impossibility masking as a political choice.

If animals cannot even concieve of basic rights, how can they be given them en masse? What kind of society is made up primarily of beings which are afforded all protections but given no responsibilities?

Effectively, even PETA&#39;s "total animal liberation" is a cloaked cry for a two-tiered system. One that, whether they admit it or not, would gradually but certainly return to a state of normalcy approaching the status quo we see today.

Animals are simply not a part of human society and they never will be. Attempts to emotionalize and confuse the issue notwithstanding, from a purely objective position, this is an "open and shut case".


and its the body of a used to be living thing.

If we didn&#39;t eat it, something else would. Is that "bad"?

What would you propose be done with wolves in this "animal liberation" utopia of yours?

Should they, perhaps be charged with "murder"? :o

First degree deer-ocide? :lol:


how can you support the enslavment of these animals.

Because enslavement, by definition, requires the possibility of emancipation. Within a societal context it requires a prior obligation. That is in order to be "enslaved", the individual being enslaved must be deprived of rights that he would otherwise enjoy. His slavery must take away from what he is "owed".

Animals are owed nothing from human society. As non-members they are implicit non-actors within the human societal moral framework.

Any privaleges that we give them are given as cross-societal gifts. Accordingly, "enslavement" is a misnomer in this context.


animals can and do liberate them selves. have you ever seen a deer fight against a trap, or a dog escape from an abusive household?

That&#39;s not liberation, that&#39;s escape.

Liberation is a conceptual act, not a reactive one. It&#39;s about understanding the causes of oppression and fighting against them. Animals are not cognitively capable of even doing the underlying conceptualizing, let alone the actual requisite act itself.

If animals has the cognitive ability to understand rights then they would be deserving of them. They aren&#39;t and so they aren&#39;t.

[timbaly]

If one day the human race decided that it would no longer raise animals for slaughter what would be done with all of these animals? There would now be so many without any use to humans and with no place in any ecosystem. We could still milk cows and take eggs from chickens but they would still be eating the foods that starving humans could eat.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Why is that animal liberationists always seem to end up using insults and petty emotionalism (IE posting pictures of suffering animals) in a debate?
They wouldn&#39;t have to resort to this if their arguments had any merit.

I mean, do you see me (Or any of us&#33;) posting pictures of starving children in debates with cappies?

[Martin Blank]

Originally posted by NoXion+Aug 20 2005, 07:50 PM--> (NoXion &#064; Aug 20 2005, 07:50 PM)Why is that animal liberationists always seem to end up using insults and petty emotionalism (IE posting pictures of suffering animals) in a debate? They wouldn&#39;t have to resort to this if their arguments had any merit.[/b]

Their arguments are motivated by emotional reactions, not scientific understanding. They remind me of anti-choice moralists that carry pictures of "aborted fetuses" in order to generate a visceral reaction.


[email protected] 20 2005, 07:50 PM
I mean, do you see me (Or any of us&#33;) posting pictures of starving children in debates with cappies?

No point to that. They accept starvation, disease, war, poverty and death as par for the course.

Miles

[Dark Exodus]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20 2005, 11:50 PM
Why is that animal liberationists always seem to end up using insults and petty emotionalism (IE posting pictures of suffering animals) in a debate?
They wouldn&#39;t have to resort to this if their arguments had any merit.

I mean, do you see me (Or any of us&#33;) posting pictures of starving children in debates with cappies?
Exactly, it doesen&#39;t help their argument. I mean I don&#39;t care if some chickens are locked up or some puppies are burned when their are humans starving to death, showing me pictures of itisn&#39;t going to change that.

What about plants anyway? I mean if animals (inferior brainpower) are equal to us then surely plants (no brainpower) are too? Where do you draw the line? Mice? Ants? Trees?
What about microbes?

Human society is for humans, human concepts are for human.

[Hiero]

Originally posted by Clenched [email protected] 21 2005, 04:38 AM
I dont know if this is really relevant or not, but i read that during the famine in ehtiopia in 1984 the grain was going to cows to be sold to the first world, rather than to the starving people.
Im not quite sure. During this period the Marxist-Leninist Derg was in control. They supported the USSR at the time and would of had a tight trade relationship with them. Even though at this time the USSR foriegn policy was considered soviet imperialist and was aimed at making profitable trade rather then helping countries become independent and grow food for their need.

Anyway the point was that food was being used for profitable trade, not for feeding the local people. USSR vegaterianism would not have saved the country from famine, rather better economic planing and supportive trade from the USSR.

Thats why the idea is flawed that if everybody gave up meet then the left over grain would just be given to starving people, grain would still take a value in the market.

[AnimalRights]

"Once again, black people are being pimped. You used us. You have used us enough," Esdaile said. "Take it down immediately."
This does not really answer my/our argument at all. When you scan the animal rights literature, you will notice that many different, but ultimately converging cases of past oppression are brought to light, be it oppression of Africans, jews,women,workers and so on.

I don&#39;t care if some chickens are locked up or some puppies are burned when their are humans starving to death, showing me pictures of itisn&#39;t going to change that.
But the amount of animals slaughtered annually numbers in tens of billions. I&#39;m not even including fishing, fur farming, hunting and smaller sadisms like rodeo and bull fighting. It&#39;s a lot of pain for nothing.

There&#39;s nothing about the suffering of humans that should compel one to defend the exploitation of animals. I don&#39;t think anyone would argue with that, when pressed enough. To show compassion to animals is not to show disregard for humans, and vice versa. Contempt for animals, according to research, often translates to human cruelty as well. I can back that up.

On the issue of societal obligation and the accordance of rights, the issue is not "emotion" or "love", it&#39;s social participation. The key question is whether are not animals are able to take part as independent moral actors within the the human societal moral framework.Many humans could not understand the argument of yours (and for those willing to suggest I can&#39;t, please do not, since it does not advance your case) due to infancy, brain injury or related developmental disorder. I&#39;m not mentioning other disabilities, such as being tied to a wheelchair because your legs won&#39;t work. Even if these people cannot participate in the society of competition as well as most others, we usually respect their right to life.

The comparison may sound outrageous, and I was somewhat disturbed when I was first introduced to it. Looking back, I think it had something to do with it being so hard to refute. The potential reply is that there just simply is a difference in "kind" (God&#39;s rules perhaps) or something about how the human race would be extinct if we were so disabled, which does not really address the question of whether it would be nice and cool for a stronger, reasoning species to put us down.


If one day the human race decided that it would no longer raise animals for slaughter what would be done with all of these animals? There would now be so many without any use to humans and with no place in any ecosystem. We could still milk cows and take eggs from chickens but they would still be eating the foods that starving humans could eat.

"As vegetarianism grows, the number of animals bred for food gradually
will decline, since the market will no longer exist for them.
Similarly, a gradual decrease would accompany the lessening demand for
the breeding of companion animals. In both cases, those animals that
remain will be better cared for by a more compassionate society."
http://animal-rights.com/arpage.htm (See "Practical Issues")

What about plants anyway? I mean if animals (inferior brainpower) are equal to us then surely plants (no brainpower) are too? Where do you draw the line? Mice? Ants? Trees?
What about microbes?
Sentience and suffering are commonly believed to be the most important qualities, which you will find out by doing a quick search.
Where the line should be drawn is not entirely clear, at least for some, but it appears clear that a good number of animals routinely exploited do fill these requirements.

Why is that animal liberationists always seem to end up using insults and petty emotionalism (IE posting pictures of suffering animals) in a debate?
They wouldn&#39;t have to resort to this if their arguments had any merit.
Harsh insults appear from the side of anti-rightists as well, just read this thread. I don&#39;t think you would call it petty emotionalism if it had to do with workers rights or whatever topic is dear to you. I think it&#39;s pretty important to let people know what, exactly, the problem looks like in motion. Many people may simply refuse to believe until they see, and someone argued that seeing is believing. It arouses empathy in a person.

Peace,

[Mastermind]

"everybody has a right to live"

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

anti-rightists

Yeah, the majority of the people on a board called Revolutionary Left are infact "anti-rightist," imagine&#33; :lol:

I know that&#39;s how you meant the word but you misused (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=rightist) it.


I don&#39;t think you would call it petty emotionalism if it had to do with workers rights or whatever topic is dear to you.

As a communist, but even moreso as a worker, this really bothers me. "or whatever topic." SMH.

[Hiero]

This does not really answer my/our argument at all. When you scan the animal rights literature, you will notice that many different, but ultimately converging cases of past oppression are brought to light, be it oppression of Africans, jews,women,workers and so on.

Again missed the point. Just proves how disconnected from society the animal liberation movement is.

One of the man&#39;s point was that black people have been used for many reasons without consent or any given thought, he doesn&#39;t like the idea of black oppression being used to promote a message.

The other point is that black oppresion is not comparable with animal suffering.

My point in using that quote is to show how arragont you and your type are, that you do not consider the anger and hurt that is produced by having black people, native americans and other humans beings suffering in your advertisement. This anger is not the type you aimed for, everyday people are angry at your disregard for humans beings, no one cares about some fucking chickens. When people see the advertisment they think "what a bunch of sick fucks using pictures of human beings suffereing, oh and look a chicken in a cage, how about that"

This advertisement is only going to hurt you and your organisation and alienate from society.


In both cases, those animals that
remain will be better cared for by a more compassionate society.

I doubt it. People still want good pet food for dogs and cats. You know what that means, a whole lot of minced cow.

If there was no demand for meat, then farmers would have to remove any animal life on their farms to make way for crops. So they would still have to kill them off, and keep killing any animals that move onto their crops, as they would damage the crops.

This is what happens with goats, rabbits, deer, pigs, buffalo etc in Australia. Some where original introduced for English culture, hunting and nice things to look at, but pigs and goats were introduced into the wild for food and buffalo introduced to imitate Asian farming techniques for the Northern Territory. After awhile it was realised there was enough food to no worry about the goats and pigs, and modern farming stoped use of buffalo. So they just let the animals go wild. It didn&#39;t take long before the need to cull the animals was realised, either to proctect all sorts of farms, or to help the local ecosystem.

It is complete Utopian bullshit thinking to think that if no one wanted to eat meat that the existing animals would be set lose and live amongst us in our communities. There would be actually more killing as farming aniamals would be free to breed.

[LSD]

Many humans could not understand the argument of yours (and for those willing to suggest I can&#39;t, please do not, since it does not advance your case) due to infancy, brain injury or related developmental disorder.

There is a difference between capacity and being able to utilize that capacity. The mentally challanged are capable, they are just prevented from using that capacity by a debilitating medical condition.

And remember, most of the mentally challanged are still able to convieve of moral concepts. Most are able to distinguish right and wrong and make, at the very least, rudimentary ethical determinations. They are able to enter into rational dialogues and participate, at some level, in human society. No animal is.

And even for those rare few who are entirely unable to rationaly think, almost universally, they are so disabled that they are barely even afforded rights. They are afforded protections. They are given societal protections due to their relationship with the community. That is their humanity makes them de facto members of society even if they are themselves unable to participate due to intervening circumstances.


The comparison may sound outrageous, and I was somewhat disturbed when I was first introduced to it. Looking back, I think it had something to do with it being so hard to refute.

Don&#39;t pat yourself too hard on the back, that argument is called the argument from marginal cases and it&#39;s an old one.

Just to run through it quickly, the mentally handicapped that are so seriously damaged as to be comparable to animals (the marginal cases, as it were) are afforded protections because, firstly, they are still human, and as such members of a community which is composed of rational actors, secondly, because these people are potential rational actors who are merely unable to excerzie their capacity, and thirdly, because the protection of such people is important to assure the protection of both potentiary rational actors (e.g., children) and former rational actors (e.g., the elderly).


Sentience and suffering are commonly believed to be the most important qualities

"commonly believed" by whom?

Certainly not by me&#33;


I don&#39;t think you would call it petty emotionalism if it had to do with workers rights or whatever topic is dear to you.

Of course I would, if it was emotionalism&#33;

If someone argued that workers should be liberated "because" and then proceded to defend his case with nothing but pictures of starving Africans, you&#39;re damn right I&#39;d call out his emotionalism.

But you don&#39;t see that much here do you?

Advocates of workers liberation on this board provide reasons. They justify their position. That is the cornerstone of a rational debate, something which you and your "animal liberation" friends have still to understand.

[black]

You yourself have referenced the meat industry&#39;s treatment of animals several times and even posted pictures of it. It&#39;s somewhat bizarre that you would then question my referencing it&#33;

I questioned you turning the discussion into one of meat production on its own whereas we are, if you care to read, discussing animal liberation per se, which includes but goes beyond the consumption of animals.


No it isn&#39;t. It is aware that it is unable to do those things that it wants to do (eat and shit mainly), but it is not "conscious of its capitve state". It certainly has no conception of "unnatural" or "unjust".

"It is aware that it is unable to do those things that it wants to do"...sorry it&#39;s aware of its captivity?


Depends on the definition of "concern". Do I think the pain was...painful? Of course. But by "concern", I meant interests and desires beyond the obvious "not being in pain".

Subjectively and behviourally the pain and suffering that animal was enduring was probably its biggest concern, next to if not equal to the fear of continuance of that pain and suffering at the hands of those who were carrying out a burn test on it. "Beyond pain" is an amusing distortion of the situation, since the animal can hardly go "beyond" it. In pointless abstract speculation you could argue however that its other concerns are similar to those of many other mammals and feeling living beings,

to have all the necessaries of life
-food, water, comfort
to find affection
have play
to be able to move and act freely without
control or obstacle
to be simply happy.

In any rational consideration of that animal&#39;s needs that is far more than merely eating and shitting.



That statement is a subversion of logic.

Seriously, provide a logical argument why the suffering we inflict on others shouldn&#39;t be a part, if not a major one, of how we relate to those others. I&#39;m saying that as sentient feeling beings we cannot harm othe sentient feeling beings without by necessity harming ourselves in the process. Now argue to the contrary, rather than listing buzzwords like "emotionalism" which is, if its meaning is to be taken seriously, quite amusingly detached.



In order to avoid a complete straw man, you&#39;ll have to establish a strong connection between "barbarity" on animals and "barabarism" on humans.

I&#39;m not stating that kids harming animals grow into be psychopaths, it has been said (and argued both ways) but it isn&#39;t my point. I&#39;m arguing that a culture of such systematic violence, of detached clinical and hidden mass exploitation is incredibly sick and only capable of those same acts on other human beings and the environment. It is a byproduct and cause of a system of authority and violence and it can be shown by our present state of affairs. The cycle of commodification, animal oppression and bastardisation of life is inclusive to the development of human history, which consumes, wastes and produces only greater and worse forms of itself. It is barbarism against all. You can&#39;t fight barbarism against one thing (ourselves) and not likewise consider that same barbarism against all else. At the very least we need to do so for our own benefit, but it&#39;s not just about us - and that&#39;s the point.

Now, are you really an anarchist? What a shit anarchist. I&#39;ve had this debate many times (better times) with my fellow libertarians, who despite having a large and growing number passionate about animal "rights" also has a few in violent opposition to it. But all of them would piss on this dumbfuck statement; "As it stands, the only empirical data available would actually, bizarrely enough, seem to demonstrate the opposite&#33;...Regardless of this, crime is down across the board. General social inequality is lower than a hundred years ago, violent acts are lower than a hundred years ago, and even war and violent international strife are far lower than a hundred years ago." In all the areas you&#39;re talking about it doesn&#39;t stand against even half-hearted scrutiny. Social inequality globally has increased to a standard never before seen and large-scale violence and wars have been greatest, largest and bloodiest in our recent human history. [would you like me to cite sources for you sweetheart?] You&#39;re just making yourself look (more) stupid. Similarly animals slaughtered and used in experimentation (etc.) have reached rediculous heights and ecocide as the mass extinction of species and habitats has become the norm and of the biggest threats to our existence. Really it would suggest the two are quite linked.


What I said was that in order to be liberated, the liberated must be independently capable of understanding liberation or at least a rudimentary conception of the nature of said liberation.

Haha, you&#39;re still using this Marxist crap? So forgive me for using humans in this example, but then as an anthrocentric it might be easier for you. You have the enslavement or some other abuse of children (insert any other individual/group "unable to participate as independent moral actors in society" such as the mentally handicapped or even physically handicapped), who quite understand the misery they endure but not why and how it came to be - which is quite natural as they were raised without any knowledge to the contrary. They don&#39;t know the cause of their misery and have no idea of a solution, they couldn&#39;t possibly emancipate themselves anyway. Accepting this hypothetical situation and assuming it is something you&#39;d disagree with, should they be freed by others? Do they have "a rudimentary conception of the nature of said liberation" that animals lack perhaps because they can become *in future* independent moral actors in society?

Yet, I am personally aware of animals that understand "liberation", having been rescued or escaping. They fear/become violent towards any re-encounter of their past experiences and defend their new life. As a collective they cannot resolve their situation despite their best wishes, and this is reason enough to deny them emancipation?


Of course you could, through logical and rational argumentation.

In this case, probably not. You cannot use logical/reason for every area of life and understanding. Emotion as a response is in fact "logical" if coupled with reason, however without either you couldn&#39;t come close to comprehension. If you can&#39;t relate to another suffering animal then ofcourse it will be most difficult for you to accept them within your sphere of consideration and compassion.


What would you propose be done with wolves in this "animal liberation" utopia of yours?Should they, perhaps be charged with "murder"?

Your posts really are inconsistent, incoherent drivels of ignorance. Yet again your making the human -/- animal rights association which is a fallacy.


enslavement, by definition, requires the possibility of emancipation. Within a societal context it requires a prior obligation. That is in order to be "enslaved", the individual being enslaved must be deprived of rights that he would otherwise enjoy.

More pish. The possibility of emancipation kinda goes without saying when you have the existence of;

1) Animal Liberationists
2) The depriving animals not of rights but of their natural and free existence to be included not within society but as a commodity for usage of that society.

Likewise prior obligation shouldn&#39;t mean only within a societal context, because society isn&#39;t the only and most important unit and it doesn&#39;t exist in isolation. Humans don&#39;t in fact.


Liberation is a conceptual act, not a reactive one. It&#39;s about understanding the causes of oppression and fighting against them. Animals are not cognitively capable of even doing the underlying conceptualizing, let alone the actual requisite act itself.

Human beings can conceptually liberate themselves all they want but that means jack shit when the need for their liberation is from the material, objective conditions which affect them. This is pseudo-intellectual (not very good pseudo-intellectual) twisting of reality for your own retarded opinion. Animals can "conceptualise" their torment, they can "conceptualise" the need for abondonment and removal of that and they can "conceptualise" relief and happiness without it. But that&#39;s not what they need. They need to be physically removed from the causes of their suffering and they can&#39;t do that for themselves as a collective.

Your "liberation" has being human as a prequisite. And your justification for that amounts to nothing.


If someone argued that workers should be liberated "because" and then proceded to defend his case with nothing but pictures of starving Africans, you&#39;re damn right I&#39;d call out his emotionalism.

Again emotionalism is a bizarre concept, especially when it is called as right to remove emotion and empathy from our methods of viewing the world. There is nothing wrong with displaying pictures of starving Africans in relation to the fact that Africans, say, are suffering. Their suffering should be a motive for change, whether emotion is at the heart of that or not. The change however must not be mere pity or sentimental fluff, it must be based in the reason for the situation and how it can be removed. Soliarity and not empathy are what is needed. And yes it would be emotionalism if it were implied differently and if starving Africans were used alone or as sole argument against say "capitalism", which would at the very least be simple but not untrue.

Another fallacy. The conflation of human and animal suffering and their respective resolutions does justice to neither. It&#39;s our belief that they both suffer and unjustly yet the nature of that and how we change it are not the same.


Advocates of workers liberation on this board provide reasons. They justify their position.

The greatest reason - is that it involves them.

[bolshevik butcher]

Animals do not feel emotions in the same way as us. They&#39;re not as intelligent as us. I&#39;m not advocating going out and killing them for fun, but plants also live, so we shouldnt eat them either.

I am not advocating extreme cruelty or anything, i just think that fellow human beings rank above animals.

[TheReadMenace]

For right now, however, I have no choice but to trust the people who&#39;ve done this all their lives.

And for right now, I have no choice but to trust the people in the media, because they&#39;ve done it all their lives.

I have no choice but to trust the president or a congressman or a supreme court justice, because that&#39;s their job, and they obviously have to know what they&#39;re doing, right?

See, I don&#39;t rule out the possibility that animal testing might be necessary. But when you burn the shit out of a dog just to test scalding ointment, that&#39;s fucked up; especially when you have sythetic skin alternatives.

And we shouldn&#39;t rule out the innumerous possibilities of stem-cell research, either (as long as you&#39;re not just mass-producing embryos for that sole purpose). There was a woman in Korea (I don&#39;t remember the link, and I&#39;m too lazy to look for it right now) who got in a car accident and was paralysed for 19 years. Doctors cultivated the cells from an umbelical cord and operated on this lady, and now she walks, for the first time in 19 years. That sounds pretty promising, and I&#39;m sure there&#39;s a vast future for this area of science.

I do see your point, though. But I will admit that I am very disheartened by the use of animals for scientific purposes, especially when steps toward alternatives are not always sought after.

But yes, destroy capitalism first. Then we can see what&#39;s going on.

Andrew

[LSD]

black:

I&#39;m glad to see that you&#39;ve abandoned petty insults and have decided to debate the issue rationaly. :)


"It is aware that it is unable to do those things that it wants to do"...sorry it&#39;s aware of its captivity?

No. Read the quote again.

"It&#39;s aware that it is unable to do those things that it wants to do"

Captivity is an abstract idea, being restrained is a physical sensation. The animal is conscious of the latter, but not of the former. It knows that something is preventing it from doing those things that it wants to do, but that is not the same thing as understanding that it is a captive.

To understand the concept of capitvity, it must understand the abstract idead of "liberty". It must know what it is to "be free" as well as what it is to not. The animal cannot do this, it cannot understand these concepts, and that&#39;s why it can&#39;t liberate itself.

It is not external forces that are preventing him from self-liberation, it&#39;s internal ones.


Subjectively and behviourally the pain and suffering that animal was enduring was probably its biggest concern, next to if not equal to the fear of continuance of that pain and suffering at the hands of those who were carrying out a burn test on it.

I would agree with the first but I reject the second. It assumes a cognition of the passage of time and of linear causality never established to be present. It is unlikely that the dog was able to conceptualzie "continuation", although it certainly did want the pain to stop.


In any rational consideration of that animal&#39;s needs that is far more than merely eating and shitting.

True enough. I will concede that I oversimplifed the matter to make a rhetorical point. Obviously other concerns exist, reproduction is a certainly a big one, as is water and shelter and often establishing territorial dominance.

What is not a concern for this animal, however, is "liberty" or "freedom". This ideas simply have no meaning for him.


I&#39;m saying that as sentient feeling beings we cannot harm othe sentient feeling beings without by necessity harming ourselves in the process.

And I&#39;m saying that that is a ludicrous and baseless assertion.

There is absolutely no established correlation between animal slaughter and human violence.


I&#39;m arguing that a culture of such systematic violence, of detached clinical and hidden mass exploitation is incredibly sick and only capable of those same acts on other human beings and the environment.

:lol:

What am I supposed to do, come out in favour of "mass exploitation"? :rolleyes:

The point is that, obviously, the rest of us don&#39;t consider the use of animals to be "exploitation" and rightly so.

As I&#39;ve explained at lengh, in order to be exploited by society, society must have prior obligations to you. That is, you must be a de facto or de jure member of society in order to be protected by its rights. Animals are neither and so cannot be "exploited" in any meaningful way.

Again, crimes against humans are wrong because they are members of society and have been afforded protections by society. It is no "bigger" than that. If society did not exist, there would be no "right" or "wrong" and morality would be nonexistant. The murder of a member of society is in and of itself an act against society whereas the killing of an animal is not.

Equating the two nescessitates the ignoring of this difference which is, ultimately, the only one that matters. This is why such a comparison is implicitly illogical.


You can&#39;t fight barbarism against one thing (ourselves) and not likewise consider that same barbarism against all else.

Of course you can&#33; Especially if you define "barbarism" so ridiculously.

I agree that a society that routinely tortures dogs for sports will probably have a lower respect for animal life than one that does not. But I reject the notion that eating meat or preforming vivsective experimentation is naturally correlated with counter-social violence.

For one thing, it simply doesn&#39;t historically track. Those socities which did not eat meat had, on average, no less a propensity towards violence than any other. India is often lauded by vegetarians for its "reverence" of cows, yet India today is one of the most unequal and repressively capitalist states on earth. If a respect for animals created better human relationships, why don&#39;t we see it?

The simple truth is that capitalist exploitation and institutionalized violence are acts within themselves. They exist for their own reasons and are not "symptomatic" of anything. Fighting them is specific, is targeted, and is unrelated to other questions of morality.

People don&#39;t support capitalism because they&#39;re "evil" or "tainted" they do so because they bennefit from it. Others do it because they are uninformed. The former will never be convinced, the latter can be taught. But none of this has anything to do with the seperate issue of animal "rights".

The ract is, these two issues are and will always be unrelated.


Social inequality globally has increased to a standard never before seen

That&#39;s ridiculous. Capitalism may be unequal, I&#39;ll grant you, but it isn&#39;t even in the same league as feudalism. The world today is no utopia, but whatever else you may believe, the facts are clear on the simple issue that things are better than a century ago. For pretty much every indicator, people, pretty much everywhere, are living better than a hundred years ago. They&#39;re living much better than two or three hundred years ago.

There&#39;s a reason that capitalism has survived and that&#39;s that it works better than pre-capitalist alternatives.


large-scale violence and wars have been greatest, largest and bloodiest in our recent human history.

More so than a hundred years ago? :huh:

You&#39;re saying that violence in the last 50 years of the last century were worse than in the first? That violence in the 90s was worse than in the 1910s, and so forth?

Sorry, but history disagrees.

All global statistics show a downward trend in wars and international violence. There&#39;s certainly no possibilite of war "ending", but you can&#39;t even compare the last 20 years of the twenieth century with the first.


[would you like me to cite sources for you sweetheart?]

Yes. Please cite sources as to how there is more war now than 100 years ago. While you&#39;re at it why don&#39;t you explain how the illuminati and the Jews secretly control the banks.


You have the enslavement or some other abuse of children (insert any other individual/group "unable to participate as independent moral actors in society" such as the mentally handicapped or even physically handicapped), who quite understand the misery they endure but not why and how it came to be - which is quite natural as they were raised without any knowledge to the contrary. They don&#39;t know the cause of their misery and have no idea of a solution, they couldn&#39;t possibly emancipate themselves anyway. Accepting this hypothetical situation and assuming it is something you&#39;d disagree with, should they be freed by others? Do they have "a rudimentary conception of the nature of said liberation" that animals lack perhaps because they can become *in future* independent moral actors in society?

The argument from marginal cases ...again.

Just to run through it quickly, again, the mentally handicapped that are so seriously damaged as to be comparable to animals (the marginal cases, as it were) are afforded protections because, firstly, they are still human, and as such members of a community which is composed of rational actors, secondly, because these people are potential rational actors who are merely unable to excerzie their capacity, and thirdly, because the protection of such people is important to assure the protection of both potentiary rational actors (e.g., children) and former rational actors (e.g., the elderly).

And even for those rare few who are entirely unable to rationaly think, almost universally, they are so disabled that they are barely even afforded rights. They are afforded protections. They are given societal protections due to their relationship with the community. That is their humanity makes them de facto members of society even if they are themselves unable to participate due to intervening circumstances.


Yet, I am personally aware of animals that understand "liberation", having been rescued or escaping.

And we&#39;re back to emotionalism and subjectivity. This thing that you say your&#39;re "aware of" flies in the face of 25 years of neuro-cognitive science. Forgive me if I demand a little more evidence.


You cannot use logical/reason for every area of life and understanding.

Maybe not, but you can on every area of policy decisions.

You may not be able to "logically" determine who you want to have sex with, but you sure as hell better have a logical reason if you&#39;re going to impose rules on people.

If you&#39;re going to restrict my freedom to eat meat, or to reap the bennefits of a thriving medical research community, you have better be prepared to tell me why.


Your posts really are inconsistent, incoherent drivels of ignorance. Yet again your making the human -/- animal rights association which is a fallacy.

No I&#39;m not, I am asking a very simple question: in your "animal liberation" utopia, what will happen to animals that kill animals?

If animals have a "right" to protection against us, certainly they must have a "right" to protection against other animals. How do you intend to enforce this?

The fact is I refuse to believe that even TAL advocates really understand what they&#39;re pushing. There are, after all, more non-human animals than human ones so, honestly, how can that work? How can you have a society in which the majority don&#39;t understand the rights that they are given?

I mean marginal cases are just that ...marginal. If they ever became the majority, like you want, society would collapse and we&#39;d end up right back where we started minus a little wear and tear on our social fabric. In other words even if "total animal liberation" was achieved it doesn&#39;t stand a hope in hell of lasting.


Likewise prior obligation shouldn&#39;t mean only within a societal context, because society isn&#39;t the only and most important unit

It is on the subject of rights. Rights only exist within a human societal context, outside of it they have no objective meaning. When we are talking about the accordance of rights the only unite that matters is society and the only question that matters is why.

Why does society owe this protection to this individual.

If this question cannot be answered, the right does not exist.


and it doesn&#39;t exist in isolation.

As I&#39;ve already explained, yes it does.


Animals can "conceptualise" their torment, they can "conceptualise" the need for abondonment and removal of that and they can "conceptualise" relief and happiness without it.

No they cannot. They can experience torment and happiness, but they cannot understand the underlying concepts, nor can they conceptualize a remedy.


The greatest reason - is that it involves them.

It may, it may it may not, but shouldn&#39;t that make them more emotional, not less?

Shouldn&#39;t they be less objective and detatched on issues that affect them than on issues that don&#39;t?

Likewise, if there were actual good arguments in favour of "liberating" animals, wouldn&#39;t more of your colleauges post them instead of bombarding us with graphic images designed to illicit our sympahies?

The fact is that whatever to think the "motivation" is, advocates of workers liberation argue much more rationaly than advocates of animal "liberation". I chock this up to a lack of good arguments on your part. Incredibly, you blame the rest of us for being too logical ("You cannot use logical/reason for every area of life and understanding").

Personally, I&#39;m sticking with my explanation.


Seriously, provide a logical argument why the suffering we inflict on others shouldn&#39;t be a part, if not a major one, of how we relate to those others.

It should be a part, it shouldn&#39;t be the major one.

The primary obligation of a society is always first and foremost to its members. It&#39;s primary duty is to maximize their bennefit, everything else comes second, including the suffering of non-members.

If animal suffering can be minimized without significantly reducing the bennefit of societal members, then society should attempt to minimize it. If however, such a minimzation would significantly adversely affect members of society, then society is duty bound to not do so.

Wants and needs, that&#39;s what society&#39;s there for, not to uphold externalistic idealism.


TheReadMenace:


And for right now, I have no choice but to trust the people in the media, because they&#39;ve done it all their lives.

Surely you understand that there&#39;s a difference between medicine and journalism.

If I had an M.D., I would feel perfectly confident to debate the selective merits of animal testing, but I don&#39;t. And so I am forced to trust the combined opinion of hundreds of thousands of researchers all telling me the same thing.


See, I don&#39;t rule out the possibility that animal testing might be necessary. But when you burn the shit out of a dog just to test scalding ointment, that&#39;s fucked up; especially when you have sythetic skin alternatives.

I entirely agree&#33;

I&#39;m not pushing for animal torture here, I am just opposing "animal liberation". I think that animals should be offered certain protections, I think that it&#39;s a good idea to minimize harm if we can, but I don&#39;t pretend for a second that it&#39;s a social obligation.

Look, I love animals, I have a 10 year old golden retriever who I love dearly, but I know that she is not capable of participating in human society. So while I want nothing to happen to her and take excellent care of her, I certainly don&#39;t think that she should be given human rights.


And we shouldn&#39;t rule out the innumerous possibilities of stem-cell research, either

No we shouldn&#39;t&#33;

The prospects there do look quite promising. I expect great things in the next decade.


(as long as you&#39;re not just mass-producing embryos for that sole purpose)

:o

Why in heaven&#39;s name not&#33;?

I say mass produce away. The more embryos the better&#33;

[bezdomni]

The meat industry is terribly exploitative of workers, consumers and animals.

I don&#39;t believe that everybody should be 100% vegetarian. If you want to raise cattle yourself, kill them yourself and eat them yourself - that is your choice. However, the meat industry is constantly negligent of everything (enviroment, workers, consumers..etc) except for their profits. They have used underhanded and immoral tactics to maximize their profit. While I don&#39;t support PETA entirely, I do support a vegetarian diet.

PETA does a lot of good things too. They have good information on their website about the meat and fur industires.

By the way, I am a vegetarian.

[Jack]

PETA kills animals, I could really give 2 shits about them.

ALF>PETA