NationStates Jolt Archive

A big victory for the FBI in its campaign against its #1 Domestic Terrorism Priority. Members of the US and UK group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_James) were found guilty (http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=1680849&page=1) in a New Jersey court for a grab-bag of crimes including "animal-enterprise terrorism, stalking, and other offenses."

I have ambivalent feelings about this one. I have friends who do research at a medical hospital and have had sundry threats made against their persons, families, and property. Animal-rights groups here in the Pacific Northwest frequently assemble at researchers' homes to jeer at them, sometimes at three in the morning. Despite hearing many convincing arguments about the necessity of animal research, I feel that only humans should bear the trials and tribulations of research aimed at advancing the human species. Much commercially-funded animal research, testing household cleaners, pesticides, food additives, &c. on animals, I find deplorable.

There are three issues here:
One: does one forfeit one's right to privacy when one engages in morally-questionable treatment of (i.e. violence toward) animals, foetuses, &c.? Or should the individual always have the protection of the law if his behavior, however morally-questionable, is not illegal?
Two: the activists face sentences of up to 23 yrs and fines of $1 million, and will probably get close to the maximum. The prosecution of SHAC is the first case to fall under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992. "Eco-terrorists" in Oregon and other parts of the US are facing or have recently received similarly disproportionate sentences for petty arsons, &c., with conspiracy and terrorism charges tacked on. Are harrassment, vandalism, arson, and sabotage petty criminal acts, or are they dangerous terrorism? Do the perpetrators deserve enormous sentences and fines, or are they political prisoners, victims of a concerted government effort to break the spine of the radical environmental movement?
Three: is SHAC just terrorizing the terrorists? Should we punish the politically-connected, callous, profit-driven monkey-abusers (and their families), by any means necessary, up to and including strapping them up to their own torture apparati?

Please discuss.

Their goals and methods are terrorist in nature. That basically concludes the discussion of whether their actions constitute terrorism. Firebombing buildings and vehicles and threats of violence against individuals to achieve political goals, is terrorism.

Yes, people engaged in morally questionable activities are entitled to full protection by the law, if the activities are not illegal. I get asked to take a look at the wiring in some research centre, am I supposed to forfeit my right to safety if someone questions the ethics of the on-site activities? Remember, these people do not just go after the organisations directly involved, their main focus is against those with whom the organisations come into contact. That means everyone from a shareholder to the guy who showed up for one day to bolt on the nameplate.

Yes, I think the punishments must be severe. I am disappointed that the British government has yet to take the issue seriously.

To clarify the first issue: I believe that protesting is not harrassment if it is directed against a "public figure." Not clear on the legal niceties of that one. Are animal scientists, abortion doctors, chemical defense contractors, &c., public figures, and therefore, cannot claim the same right to privacy as an ordinary citizen? Or should academics and technicians be shielded by law from the public debate over science and morality?

To clarify the first issue: I believe that protesting is not harrassment if it is directed against a "public figure." Not clear on the legal niceties of that one. Are animal scientists, abortion doctors, chemical defense contractors, &c., public figures, and therefore, cannot claim the same right to privacy as an ordinary citizen? Or should academics and technicians be shielded by law from the public debate over science and morality?
They are not public figures. There isn't a court in the world who would class a building company employee or a shareholder as a public figure. The majority of people intimidated are not even employees of the research establishments. The employees themselves are private individuals anyway.

Animal rights terrorists are the worst kind of terrorist out there. At least all the other groups value some type of person above another type of person. Animal rights groups value animals above people. There is nothing worse.

Their goals and methods are terrorist in nature. That basically concludes the discussion of whether their actions constitute terrorism. Firebombing buildings and vehicles and threats of violence against individuals to achieve political goals, is terrorism.
...
Yes, I think the punishments must be severe. I am disappointed that the British government has yet to take the issue seriously.
Suppose your political goals are to prevent violence from being done against a class of victims who are without political recognition (foetuses, orangatangs, and redwoods do not have rights, cannot sue, cannot vote) and are being tortured or killed by private organizations. Isn't the issue, then, already outside of the political sphere, outside of normal democratic discourse and procedures? Don't developers and loggers and animal labs have political goals? Don't they use violence to accomplish them?

Then, consider the matter of proportion. This arsonist (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/12/06/national/main532161.shtml) burned 138,000 acres and destroyed $13 million worth in property, and was sentenced to six years. There was no fine, because the judge decided, "I'm not going to sentence Ms. Barton to a life in poverty." But SHAC will face fines that will bankrupt the organization, and its members face up to 23 years. Alleged arsonists of the Earth Liberation Front face even higher fines and sentences of 305 years and up. If the monkey wrench gang get life sentences while Terry Barton and Leonard Gregg get six and ten years, respectively, and murders get early paroles, they will rightly, I think, be considered political prisoners by the environmental movement.

Suppose your political goals are to prevent violence from being done against a class of victims who are without political recognition (foetuses, orangatangs, and redwoods do not have rights, cannot sue, cannot vote) and are being tortured or killed by private organizations. Isn't the issue, then, already outside of the political sphere, outside of normal democratic discourse and procedures? Don't developers and loggers and animal labs have political goals? Don't they use violence to accomplish them?

Then, consider the matter of proportion. This arsonist (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/12/06/national/main532161.shtml) burned 138,000 acres and destroyed $13 million worth in property, and was sentenced to six years. There was no fine, because the judge decided, "I'm not going to sentence Ms. Barton to a life in poverty." But SHAC will face fines that will bankrupt the organization, and its members face up to 23 years. Alleged arsonists of the Earth Liberation Front face even higher fines and sentences of 305 years and up. If the monkey wrench gang get life sentences while Terry Barton and Leonard Gregg get six and ten years, respectively, and murders get early paroles, they will rightly, I think, be considered political prisoners by the environmental movement.

You need to read my other post up above

Animal rights terrorists are the worst kind of terrorist out there. At least all the other groups value some type of person above another type of person. Animal rights groups value animals above people. There is nothing worse.
Well, I don't think they value animals above people -- their position is that an animal's life should be respected as much as a human being's, and that humans should not dump their evil science on other species. If I'm Jewish and I dont believe that Jews should make Palestinians pay a terrible price for their Zionist utopia (I am and I do), that doesn't make me a self-hating Jew. Similarly, animal rights activists are not self-hating humans.

first of all, medical research is not morally questionable.

deciding that something IS morally offensive gives no one the right to break the law.

no one, not even the extremely famous, has forfeited the right to peace in their own home.

these people need to be punished to the extent of the law. im glad the courts recognize terrorists when they see them

if you find animal testing so pootinky i assume you will be passing on any future vaccines and medicines that were developed and tested on animals.

Well, I don't think they value animals above people -- their position is that an animal's life should be respected as much as a human being's, and that humans should not dump their evil science on other species. If I'm Jewish and I dont believe that Jews should make Palestinians pay a terrible price for their Zionist utopia (I am and I do), that doesn't make me a self-hating Jew. Similarly, animal rights activists are not self-hating humans.

You keep using examples that are human to human. This is not possible because animals are not humans. If you are going to make an example use animals to humans as I am about to do. Destroying animal research that saves human lives is a horrible and base form of terrorism. I don't think animals should be subjected to unecessary torture but many kinds of animal testing is justified and necessary. Threatening human life for the sake of lab animals is insanity. I don't know the exact extent of this companies testing but threatening someone's child and putting their lives in danger(which this organization did) over it is putting humans below animals and is extremely wrong. Destroying research that came from animal testing and setting that research back endangers those that the research would have helped. Not only foolish (because the animals must all be retested) but cruel.

first of all, medical research is not morally questionable.
Right. Unquestionable. Never questioned. Got it. Tell him (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/08/20010809-2.html) that.

deciding that something IS morally offensive gives no one the right to break the law.
I think I addressed this in an earlier post. Dredd Scott begat John Brown. Until the rights of animals have legal recognition, those who believe in them have no recourse but illegal acts to defend them. What you are saying, I think, is that laws always have the final say over morals, and I think that's absurd.

no one, not even the extremely famous, has forfeited the right to peace in their own home.
You may be right -- on the other hand, what does freedom of speech mean if I can't assemble at the house of the President or the CEO of Raytheon Corp. and tell him/her what I think about this brave new world they're building for me?

if you find animal testing so pootinky i assume you will be passing on any future vaccines and medicines that were developed and tested on animals.
Heard that one before. In the first place, every medicine and vaccine is tested on animals, by law, but there is debate over whether these tests are necessary or effective. Secondly, while I don't turn down any medicines, I do avoid toxic cleaning agents that you just know have been poured down the throats of bunny rabbits to make sure they're safe for humans. I also buy hamburgers. But we're all a little hypocritical.

Suppose your political goals are to prevent violence from being done against a class of victims who are without political recognition (foetuses, orangatangs, and redwoods do not have rights, cannot sue, cannot vote) and are being tortured or killed by private organizations. Isn't the issue, then, already outside of the political sphere, outside of normal democratic discourse and procedures? Don't developers and loggers and animal labs have political goals? Don't they use violence to accomplish them?

Then, consider the matter of proportion. This arsonist (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/12/06/national/main532161.shtml) burned 138,000 acres and destroyed $13 million worth in property, and was sentenced to six years. There was no fine, because the judge decided, "I'm not going to sentence Ms. Barton to a life in poverty." But SHAC will face fines that will bankrupt the organization, and its members face up to 23 years. Alleged arsonists of the Earth Liberation Front face even higher fines and sentences of 305 years and up. If the monkey wrench gang get life sentences while Terry Barton and Leonard Gregg get six and ten years, respectively, and murders get early paroles, they will rightly, I think, be considered political prisoners by the environmental movement.

They are not political prisoners any more than any other terrorist network would be. The issue here at stake is not their views, they're entitled to them, the issue here concerns the methods which they use in order to achieve their views. Murder, death threats, arson, harassment, vandalism, assault to name but a few are crimes and should be treated as such, the reasons behind their campaign of fear are utterly irrelevant.

The "rights of trees" come second to the rights of humans, I'm not comfortable telling a child who has huntington's "tough shit" because some people think otherwise.

You keep using examples that are human to human. This is not possible because animals are not humans. If you are going to make an example use animals to humans as I am about to do. Destroying animal research that saves human lives is a horrible and base form of terrorism. I don't think animals should be subjected to unecessary torture but many kinds of animal testing is justified and necessary. Threatening human life for the sake of lab animals is insanity. I don't know the exact extent of this companies testing but threatening someone's child and putting their lives in danger(which this organization did) over it is putting humans below animals and is extremely wrong. Destroying research that came from animal testing and setting that research back endangers those that the research would have helped. Not only foolish (because the animals must all be retested) but cruel.
Well, since you say "threatening human life for the sake of lab animals is insanity," I don't think I'm going to convince you of the animal rights position, which, to reiterate, posits the equivilency of human and animal moral worth, not one over the other. So you've made clear where you stand on the third question. What about the other two? :)

An animal's life is worth less than a human's life. Anyone committing crimes against humans to save animals is a criminal, pure and simple. The world is an unpleasant place, but there are consequences should you choose the greater of two evils.

They are not political prisoners any more than any other terrorist network would be. The issue here at stake is not their views, they're entitled to them, the issue here concerns the methods which they use in order to achieve their views. Murder, death threats, arson, harassment, vandalism, assault to name but a few are crimes and should be treated as such, the reasons behind their campaign of fear are utterly irrelevant.
The point is that the crimes are not "treated as such." They are treated as political crimes, and the sentences are hugely disproportionate to the crimes themselves. A political prisoner is not necessarily one who is innocent of breaking any law. According to wiki: "False or exaggerated criminal charges may have been used to imprison the political prisoner, or he or she may have been denied bail unfairly, denied parole when it would reasonably have been given to another prisoner, or special powers may be invoked by the judiciary." This is the case, e.g., with alleged members of the ELF awaiting trial here in Oregon. Terrorism statutes and laws like the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, and I suppose I should include hate crime legislation as well, are intented to punish the political motivations of crimes, not the crimes themselves.

I'm not comfortable telling a child who has huntington's "tough shit" because some people think otherwise.
Huh? What is huntington's? The company in these case, Huntingdon Life Sciences, tests commercial products like food additives and household bleach.

Animal rights terrorists are the worst kind of terrorist out there. At least all the other groups value some type of person above another type of person. Animal rights groups value animals above people. There is nothing worse.

I must disagree with you, there is no creature more despicable on earth than human beings. I have yet to see one shred of evidence that people are anything other than a scourge upon this planet. What could be more natural than devoting one's life to the salvation of animals who are being mistreated at the hands of your fellow man?

I think I addressed this in an earlier post. Dredd Scott begat John Brown. Until the rights of animals have legal recognition, those who believe in them have no recourse but illegal acts to defend them. What you are saying, I think, is that laws always have the final say over morals, and I think that's absurd.

john brown was hung


You may be right -- on the other hand, what does freedom of speech mean if I can't assemble at the house of the President or the CEO of Raytheon Corp. and tell him/her what I think about this brave new world they're building for me?

you arent allowed to disturb the peace. not even the neighbors barking dog is allowed to do that.

but you can picket the raytheon building.



Heard that one before. In the first place, every medicine and vaccine is tested on animals, by law, but there is debate over whether these tests are necessary or effective. Secondly, while I don't turn down any medicines, I do avoid toxic cleaning agents that you just know have been poured down the throats of bunny rabbits to make sure they're safe for humans. I also buy hamburgers. But we're all a little hypocritical.
it WAS a good point wsnt it!

By the way, I should emphasize, because some of you haven't read the article and missed this point: the group and its members were convicted of using their web site to incite attacks against people associated with HLS. Although such attacks occured, the prosecution did not present evidence that those on trial actually committed it. They were convicted of inciting violence, harrassment, &c., merely because they posted information on their web site about who these people are who are torturing animals and how you can get in touch with them and their families. So that's the legal question this case presents: are you culpable merely for disseminating personal information about people who, whether public figures or no, do engage in practices many find objectionable, violent, and cruel? If so, then these scientists and businessmen have a certain immunity against protest at their homes, and so do loggers and defense contractors and abortion doctors. Is this right? Should these people have immunity, and should terrorist statutes be brought against environmental groups which challenge that immunity?

john brown was hung
Well, heh, erm, I don't see how you could really know about that, since they hanged him so long ago... maybe you read some laviscious passage of Mrs. Brown's diary? :confused:

So that's the legal question this case presents: are you culpable merely for disseminating personal information about people who, whether public figures or no, do engage in practices many find objectionable, violent, and cruel?
YES. Like, duh, there have been laws about it for ages. Incitement to violence is a crime everywhere, and if you provide details of people's families on top of that, jeez, how can you be an apologist for that? I think we can see that you're the type of guy who sends hatemail.

YES. Like, duh, there have been laws about it for ages. Incitement to violence is a crime everywhere, and if you provide details of people's families on top of that, jeez, how can you be an apologist for that? I think we can see that you're the type of guy who sends hatemail.
Whoa, easy on the ad hominum. I don't send hatemail, and I don't mean to completely present myself as an apologist for SHAC. I'm concerned about civil liberties. And, although I've never sent anybody hatemail, I have called the offices of land developers during "call-in days" organized by conservation groups and ad hoc committees to defend this or that forest or hippy commune from urban sprawl and condo development. In one case, an organization called TLC Community Farm was asking for help because its landlord was threatening to sell its lease to a condo developer. I called the developer and the secretary immediately directed me to an overloaded message machine. If anybody ever listened to my message, they'd hear me say that I spend lots of time in the park near TLC Community Farm and I value the farm itself and I don't want to see private development enroach on public space. If the TLCCF website had provided the home number of the developer I would have called her at home, too, since there's no way she's ever going to listen to that phone message I left her. Maybe that's harrassment, but how else am I going to prevent a public space that's important to me from being destroyed? Given the state of democratic processes in this country I knew it was a desperate struggle to save the farm -- but by mobilizing grassroots pressure, the farm won the right to buy back its lease. So I recognize the value of grassroots organizing, which always involves disseminating information about the entity you're organizing against. And this case seems to bode ominously for that sort of organizing, and for the environmental movement in general. I think all serious environmentalists in this country are feeling that way lately.

Well, heh, erm, I don't see how you could really know about that, since they hanged him so long ago... maybe you read some laviscious passage of Mrs. Brown's diary? :confused:
it WAS a good point wasnt it!

There are three issues here:
One: does one forfeit one's right to privacy when one engages in morally-questionable treatment of (i.e. violence toward) animals, foetuses, &c.? Or should the individual always have the protection of the law if his behavior, however morally-questionable, is not illegal?
Two: the activists face sentences of up to 23 yrs and fines of $1 million, and will probably get close to the maximum. The prosecution of SHAC is the first case to fall under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992. "Eco-terrorists" in Oregon and other parts of the US are facing or have recently received similarly disproportionate sentences for petty arsons, &c., with conspiracy and terrorism charges tacked on. Are harrassment, vandalism, arson, and sabotage petty criminal acts, or are they dangerous terrorism? Do the perpetrators deserve enormous sentences and fines, or are they political prisoners, victims of a concerted government effort to break the spine of the radical environmental movement?
Three: is SHAC just terrorizing the terrorists? Should we punish the politically-connected, callous, profit-driven monkey-abusers (and their families), by any means necessary, up to and including strapping them up to their own torture apparati?

1) Well, thats kind of the whole idea behind the rule of law. If you do something that is illegal you are punished, if what you are doing is legal others are limited only to legal protest against you.

2) Good. I understand how deeply animal rights activists hold their beliefs, but vandalism, tresspassing, and intimidation is far beyond the bounds of acceptable. Truth be told, I'm suprised (and more than a little disappointed) that non of these "activists" were shot during an act of tresspass and destruction of property.

3) Questions like that cross the line between activism and terrorism.

Whoa, easy on the ad hominum. I don't send hatemail, and I don't mean to completely present myself as an apologist for SHAC. I'm concerned about civil liberties. And, although I've never sent anybody hatemail, I have called the offices of land developers during "call-in days" organized by conservation groups and ad hoc committees to defend this or that forest or hippy commune from urban sprawl and condo development. In one case, an organization called TLC Community Farm was asking for help because its landlord was threatening to sell its lease to a condo developer. I called the developer and the secretary immediately directed me to an overloaded message machine. If anybody ever listened to my message, they'd hear me say that I spend lots of time in the park near TLC Community Farm and I value the farm itself and I don't want to see private development enroach on public space. If the TLCCF website had provided the home number of the developer I would have called her at home, too, since there's no way she's ever going to listen to that phone message I left her. Maybe that's harrassment, but how else am I going to prevent a public space that's important to me from being destroyed? Given the state of democratic processes in this country I knew it was a desperate struggle to save the farm -- but by mobilizing grassroots pressure, the farm won the right to buy back its lease. So I recognize the value of grassroots organizing, which always involves disseminating information about the entity you're organizing against. And this case seems to bode ominously for that sort of organizing, and for the environmental movement in general. I think all serious environmentalists in this country are feeling that way lately.
you must have explained this poorly. where is the "public space" in a farm leased from a private landowner? why shouldnt the owner of the land do with it as they please within the limits of the law?

Suppose your political goals are to prevent violence from being done against a class of victims who are without political recognition (foetuses, orangatangs, and redwoods do not have rights, cannot sue, cannot vote) and are being tortured or killed by private organizations.


Right there is the core of the problem with the radical enviornmentalist movement, the pro life movement, and the animal rights movement. Clusters of trespassing cells, apes, and plants are not people. They are legally considered less than people for some very specific reasons. All of these creatures lack the higher functioning that is the halmark of true sentience. None of these things are citizens.

Civil liberties end at the point where people are harassed and have threats made against them and their families. You just don't get it, do you? Whatever. I'm glad people like you enjoy little in the way of legitimacy, public support and political influence. Ad hominem or not, you are at the fringe and that is where you belong.

Right there is the core of the problem with the radical enviornmentalist movement, the pro life movement, and the animal rights movement. Clusters of trespassing cells, apes, and plants are not people. They are legally considered less than people for some very specific reasons. All of these creatures lack the higher functioning that is the halmark of true sentience. None of these things are citizens.
Therefore, they have no rights? They are legally considered zero, i.e., they are not legally considered. I don't agree that 1 termite = 1 person, but I don't see why it isn't admirable to fight passionately in defense of an ape that's strapped to a guerney so scientists can perform a live dissection or pour Comet down its throat.

There is nothing to admire in a fight which involves threatening kids. :rolleyes:

In one case, an organization called TLC Community Farm was asking for help because its landlord was threatening to sell its lease to a condo developer. I called the developer and the secretary immediately directed me to an overloaded message machine. If anybody ever listened to my message, they'd hear me say that I spend lots of time in the park near TLC Community Farm and I value the farm itself and I don't want to see private development enroach on public space.

A landlord was going to sell one piece of land to another individual. Where is the "public space?" That is what happens when you hold a lease rather than own property outright, you are in danger of having that property sold and your lease not being renewed at the end of the term. This is the real world, it doesn't (and shouldn't) matter what you want when talking about someone else's property. As someone who is a fan of individual rights, the very concept that your opinion should hold any significance whatsoever in how someone else uses their property is as offensive to me as the concept that your opinion should hold any sway over how someone chooses to use their body (sodomy, abortion, drug use, masturbation). In short, it simply isn't your buisness.

I don't believe animals should be abused, and I do believe that endangered species should be protected, but on the whole Animal Cruelty stuff is way overrepresented.

you must have explained this poorly. where is the "public space" in a farm leased from a private landowner? why shouldnt the owner of the land do with it as they please within the limits of the law?
Well, the TLC Farm is a public space because all kinds of people gather there and have their gardens there and everybody is welcome. Also, the farm is more of a part of the wilderness area in which it's nestled than some shiny new condos would be. Most development laws are written by developers, and the Fugitive Slave Act was written by slaveowners, and the Animal Enterprise Protection Act was written by wealthy campaign donors like HLS. Therefore, the limits of the law do not necessarily coincide with the limits of what I can morally abide.

Therefore, they have no rights? They are legally considered zero, i.e., they are not legally considered. I don't agree that 1 termite = 1 person, but I don't see why it isn't admirable to fight passionately in defense of an ape that's strapped to a guerney so scientists can perform a live dissection or pour Comet down its throat.


And you fall back to the ape. What about the cluster of trespassing cells? Does the fetus not have enough emotional charge for your argument to work? Why not the tree?

This is the real world, progress has costs. The reason I take a stand against those who find animal testing to be wrong is that I do not take your arguments at face value. You seem to take offense to animals being used to test commercial products, but I'm guessing you would take offense to animals being used to test medicines as well. I'm guessing you would be interested in standing between me and the meat I eat or the skins I wear. Even if you personally are not, your movement is. I cannot allow myself to give even an inch because I know that it will never be enough.

There is nothing to admire in a fight which involves threatening kids. :rolleyes:


I dunno, I remember a story from a few weeks back about a little girl who killed a black bear in Maryland. There might be something to admire if someone threatened her....then again, I really like the idea of someone who threatens a child getting shot by the kid. What can I say, I'm a dick.

Well, the TLC Farm is a public space because all kinds of people gather there and have their gardens there and everybody is welcome. Also, the farm is more of a part of the wilderness area in which it's nestled than some shiny new condos would be. Most development laws are written by developers, and the Fugitive Slave Act was written by slaveowners, and the Animal Enterprise Protection Act was written by wealthy campaign donors like HLS. Therefore, the limits of the law do not necessarily coincide with the limits of what I can morally abide.


Nice job of trying to disguise the real issue. The TLC Farm cannot be public space because it is owned by someone other than the public. You mentioned a landlord that sold the lease to a developer. Unless that landlord was a municipality, your public space argument rings false.

Oh, and don't compare some hippies loosing their lease to an entire people being sold into slavery. It is craven is offensive.

This is the real world, it doesn't (and shouldn't) matter what you want when talking about someone else's property. As someone who is a fan of individual rights, the very concept that your opinion should hold any significance whatsoever in how someone else uses their property is as offensive to me as the concept that your opinion should hold any sway over how someone chooses to use their body (sodomy, abortion, drug use, masturbation). In short, it simply isn't your buisness.
Yeah, I'm also a fan of individual rights. But property is a very nebulous right, IMO, most of all when you're talking about a piece of land or a living creature, my slave or my wife or my ape. If a slave is called property, then does the slaveowner have the right to dispose of it as he pleases? What about an animal? What about a piece of land? We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, but He created the world for all mankind to enjoy in common. Who gave you that forest you're about to bulldoze?

Yeah, I'm also a fan of individual rights. But property is a very nebulous right, IMO, most of all when you're talking about a piece of land or a living creature, my slave or my wife or my ape. If a slave is called property, then does the slaveowner have the right to dispose of it as he pleases? What about an animal? What about a piece of land? We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, but He created the world for all mankind to enjoy in common. Who gave you that forest you're about to bulldoze?

No, it isn't at all nebulous. Property is the basis of all individual rights.

Well, the TLC Farm is a public space because all kinds of people gather there and have their gardens there and everybody is welcome. Also, the farm is more of a part of the wilderness area in which it's nestled than some shiny new condos would be. Most development laws are written by developers, and the Fugitive Slave Act was written by slaveowners, and the Animal Enterprise Protection Act was written by wealthy campaign donors like HLS. Therefore, the limits of the law do not necessarily coincide with the limits of what I can morally abide.
so you feel that because this outfit has kept the land WELL, that you should be able to, in essence, steal it from them? that because they are good stewards of the land they forfeit their property rights?

so in the future all big land tracts that might someday be developed need to be used very badly so that no one will cast a covetous eye on it and insist that it is now "public space"?

if you dont like the law, you need to talk to lawmakers, not harrass landowners who are operating within the limits of the law.

Yeah, I'm also a fan of individual rights. But property is a very nebulous right, IMO, most of all when you're talking about a piece of land or a living creature, my slave or my wife or my ape. If a slave is called property, then does the slaveowner have the right to dispose of it as he pleases? What about an animal? What about a piece of land? We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, but He created the world for all mankind to enjoy in common. Who gave you that forest you're about to bulldoze?
so now not only are monkeys people but trees are people too???

This is the real world, progress has costs. The reason I take a stand against those who find animal testing to be wrong is that I do not take your arguments at face value. You seem to take offense to animals being used to test commercial products, but I'm guessing you would take offense to animals being used to test medicines as well. I'm guessing you would be interested in standing between me and the meat I eat or the skins I wear. Even if you personally are not, your movement is. I cannot allow myself to give even an inch because I know that it will never be enough.
...
Truth be told, I'm suprised (and more than a little disappointed) that non of these "activists" were shot during an act of tresspass and destruction of property.
...
Oh, and don't compare some hippies loosing their lease to an entire people being sold into slavery. It is craven is offensive.
Hahahahaha... sorry. This is a serious subject. But let me tell you, TSP, you really have a way with words. I wish everybody debated this candidly. Sutured Psyche indeed! :)
Nice job of trying to disguise the real issue. The TLC Farm cannot be public space because it is owned by someone other than the public. You mentioned a landlord that sold the lease to a developer. Unless that landlord was a municipality, your public space argument rings false.
I think I have a broader conception of public space than you do. For instance, I consider a coffee shop a public space, and a theater is a public space, and the Northwest Film Center in Portland, Ore. and the Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts in Eugene are public space, and also a forest, even if it's owned by the Nature Conservancy and not the federal government.

The point is that the crimes are not "treated as such." They are treated as political crimes, and the sentences are hugely disproportionate to the crimes themselves. A political prisoner is not necessarily one who is innocent of breaking any law. According to wiki: "False or exaggerated criminal charges may have been used to imprison the political prisoner, or he or she may have been denied bail unfairly, denied parole when it would reasonably have been given to another prisoner, or special powers may be invoked by the judiciary." This is the case, e.g., with alleged members of the ELF awaiting trial here in Oregon. Terrorism statutes and laws like the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, and I suppose I should include hate crime legislation as well, are intented to punish the political motivations of crimes, not the crimes themselves.


Huh? What is huntington's? The company in these case, Huntingdon Life Sciences, tests commercial products like food additives and household bleach.

Huntingtons is a degenerative illness much like Parkinsons disease, it its a genetic illness that affects the motor neurone system and tends to strike at around the age of 40 but can effect children as well. It is a truly horrific disease. Huntington Life Science's mandate may incorporate the testing of commercial products but it is also a major player in the pharmaceutical industry and this illness in particular.

I also fail to see how this case is in any way politicised, these groups broke the law and have been sentenced accordingly. If I launched a campaign of fear against anyone in a similar vein to these terrorists I would be sentenced accordingly. The idea of a "hate crime" is something that I am opposed to because I fail to see how a racist murder is any worse than any other kind of murder, yet I will say that people are not arrested on charges of terrorism are not arrested because their political views differ from the establishment but rather because they would incite and perpetrate acts that result in the deaths of innocent people.

I think I have a broader conception of public space than you do.
It's the exact legal definition that's important, not your opinion, or anyone else's for that matter. Animals cannot be compared to humans. Owning human slaves is immoral, owning animal slaves is not. Animals can be property. Threatening violence (or condoning it) against the families of people indirectly connected to animal experimentation, or any other uses of which you disapprove, loses you the argument. It's a sort of inverse-godmode. Basically throwing up your hands in a debate and capitulating.

It's the exact legal definition that's important, not your opinion, or anyone else's for that matter. Animals cannot be compared to humans. Owning human slaves is immoral, owning animal slaves is not. Animals can be property.
You're making a ludicrous argument here. Do you forget that once humans could be property, and still can be according to the laws of some Mid-Eastern emirates? So maybe an exact legal definition isn't enough to settle the argument, huh? Or is it impossible that some laws have to be changed?

If you don't think that a forest is public space, then you're stealing, aren't you, every time you take a breath of oxygen-rich air and don't, at the very least, pay royalties to someone? And won't you please explain your idea that private property is the basis of all individual rights? since I don't quite understand the deduction of my right to life or my right to the pursuit of happiness from the right of private property.

I also fail to see how this case is in any way politicised, these groups broke the law and have been sentenced accordingly. If I launched a campaign of fear against anyone in a similar vein to these terrorists I would be sentenced accordingly. The idea of a "hate crime" is something that I am opposed to because I fail to see how a racist murder is any worse than any other kind of murder, yet I will say that people are not arrested on charges of terrorism are not arrested because their political views differ from the establishment but rather because they would incite and perpetrate acts that result in the deaths of innocent people.
Then you could benefit by reading some earlier posts in this thread (mine, by the way, since I can't seem to find many people to uphold my end of things on this thread)... it is a fact that "domestic terrorists" in the US are in fact people who have committed low-level crimes (immigration fraud, perjury, contempt of court, vandalism, arson, harrassment, maintaining a website database, &c.) and are given life sentences and multimillion-dollar fines. The arsonists who set California and Colorado wildfires faced no fines and prison terms of under a decade, despite the hundreds of homes and businesses they destroyed and the lives they endangered. An arsonist in Eugene, Oregon, who caused $40,000 in damage to an SUV dealership and is alleged to be linked to the ELF was given 23 years, no parole. Other alleged ELF arsonists are facing 305 years, 355 years, &c. based on the Patriot Act and other rarely-invoked laws. The SHAC crew now face prison terms of up to 23 years based on the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, and according to the New York Times, the Times of London, &c., lawmakers in Britain and the US are calling for even harsher laws against this sort of "eco-terrorism." These sentences have to do with the politics of the crime, not the crime itself, period, and if you're against hate crime laws because a murder is a murder no matter what then you ought to be against domestic terrorism laws as well.

You're making a ludicrous argument here. Do you forget that once humans could be property, and still can be according to the laws of some Mid-Eastern emirates? So maybe an exact legal definition isn't enough to settle the argument, huh? Or is it impossible that some laws have to be changed?

If you don't think that a forest is public space, then you're stealing, aren't you, every time you take a breath of oxygen-rich air and don't, at the very least, pay royalties to someone? And won't you please explain your idea that private property is the basis of all individual rights? since I don't quite understand the deduction of my right to life or my right to the pursuit of happiness from the right of private property.
Now who is making the ludicrous arguments? :rolleyes:

Slavery was once legal, but it was fitting that the laws were changed, as it concerns people. Animals are not people. We are talking about absolutes here. There is a big permanent biological barrier. People on one side, animals on another. You can't mix the two in an argument. You keep mixing the two, because to you the intrinsic worth of people and animals is blurred. That is poor judgment.

A forest can be privately owned. The air cannot be privately owned. Although airspace can. There are laws and a body of precedent which covers all that.

I doubt we could have a rational debate here, because you always begin with an irrational presumption, that animals are sufficiently important to make action against humans in their defence justificable.

I doubt we could have a rational debate here, because you always begin with an irrational presumption, that animals are sufficiently important to make action against humans in their defence justificable.
I'm doing my best to encourage rational debate, and I could use some support. If this presumption is too far out there for you, then how about talking about some of the other issues in the SHAC case or the ELF cases, like domestic terrorism laws? Is violence with a political agenda worse than violence with an apolitical agenda?

Is violence with a political agenda worse than violence with an apolitical agenda?
Yes.

If you beat someone up to take their money, then that's criminal enough. If you beat someone up to send a message to a community, that they have an enemy and there will be more violence for as long as it has some particular characteristic, that's far more serious. You can perform the same act, but if in one case your motivation is a triviality, and in another there is a wider malvolent ambition, that is obviously more serious.

A forest can be privately owned. The air cannot be privately owned. Although airspace can. There are laws and a body of precedent which covers all that.
You're being dense here, and I think it helps to make my point. See the forest from the trees. We all live on the same planet, and it's absolutely untenable to imagine that what private developers do to an ecosystem that we all belong to is none of anybody's business. You're so convinced that property is a divine right that you can't think about the world except as parcelled up into this fief and that one.
That which is a requisite of life must belong to all or the individual's right to life is meaningless. The derivation of right to life from right to private property that TSP suggested is ridiculous. No law of nature respects private property, and it's upon these laws that our lives and wellbeing depend. But some people are too busy copyrighting DNA to notice that.

I'm doing my best to encourage rational debate, and I could use some support. If this presumption is too far out there for you, then how about talking about some of the other issues in the SHAC case or the ELF cases, like domestic terrorism laws? Is violence with a political agenda worse than violence with an apolitical agenda?
shac, elf, alf, all got screwed by alqaida just like saddam hussein did.

its politics. we can't invade a country that never did anything to us on the pretext that it is a state sponsor of terror that has plans to attack us THEN go lightly on our own domestic terrorists. how would THAT look at the coation of the willing potluck supper??

We all live on the same planet, and it's absolutely untenable to imagine that what private developers do to an ecosystem that we all belong to is none of anybody's business. You're so convinced that property is a divine right that you can't think about the world except as parcelled up into this fief and that one. That which is a requisite of life must belong to all or the individual's right to life is meaningless. The derivation of right to life from right to private property that TSP suggested is ridiculous. No law of nature respects private property, and it's upon these laws that our lives and wellbeing depend. But some people are too busy copyrighting DNA to notice that.
As a matter of fact I work for a multinational construction conglomerate. This week I was watching concrete get poured into a hole where a chunk of woodland used to be. Most of the woodland is still there. It's just that it is legally owned by a private corporate interest.

I disagree with patenting DNA, but I do agree with private ownership of land. Or at least state ownership, with exploitation in the national interest. While the idea of the whole landscape and its flora and fauna belonging to the people is faintly appealing in an idealistic sense, it is patently absurd, because people want stuff built and it has to go somewhere.

Yes.

If you beat someone up to take their money, then that's criminal enough. If you beat someone up to send a message to a community, that they have an enemy and there will be more violence for as long as it has some particular characteristic, that's far more serious. You can perform the same act, but if in one case your motivation is a triviality, and in another there is a wider malvolent ambition, that is obviously more serious.
Okay, I concede the theoretical point. Violence as a means of political intimidation, especially e.g. the threat of violence against children, is more serious than violence with a trivial agenda. But I'll continue to be universally-agreed devil's advocate and dispute the practical point.

Most so-called "eco-terrorism" is not violence, and most eco-terrorists (i.e. radical environmentalists) are nonviolent. Destroying a ski lodge or an SUV dealership, providing that precautions are taken to make sure no human lives are endangered (save, perhaps, those of the firefighters) is not violence, any more than destroying a forest or a pond is violence. Moreover, radical action is always necessary to move an implacable, entrenched status quo. Breaking the law in the name of a political ideal is often admirable, e.g. Gandhi. The terrorism statutes which we have and which we'll soon have more of are deliberately vague, and do not exist for justice but for political expedience. The Bush administration has always acted on behalf of its wealthiest donors, not justice or the common good, and is now using the law as a facade to break the most effective elements of the environmental movement, just as kangaroo courts and sham justice was used to once-and-for-all defeat the labor movement in this country during the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Not just alleged saboteurs but activists, academics, even professors from my own university have been spied on, interrogated, and called before grand juries. Even if one believes that political intimidation cannot be tolerated, one should denounce lobbyists' laws like the Animal Enterprise Protection Act as sham justice and political misdirection; indeed, the prosecutions of environmental saboteurs as high-level terrorists and the FBI media circus and the "No. 1 Domestic Terrorism Priority" bullshit is, itself, political intimidation by the government against radical environmental groups. Life term for petty arson is sham justice.

shac, elf, alf, all got screwed by alqaida just like saddam hussein did.

its politics. we can't invade a country that never did anything to us on the pretext that it is a state sponsor of terror that has plans to attack us THEN go lightly on our own domestic terrorists. how would THAT look at the coation of the willing potluck supper??
Yes, but don't forget that there is someone up there pulling the strings, deciding which people are no longer compatible with a post-9/11 world and which ones can stay. Which nasty dictators to topple and which ones to make alliances with. Which groups are domestic terrorists and which ones are just Bible-thumpers who got carried away. Fred Phelps?

I disagree with patenting DNA, but I do agree with private ownership of land. Or at least state ownership, with exploitation in the national interest. While the idea of the whole landscape and its flora and fauna belonging to the people is faintly appealing in an idealistic sense, it is patently absurd, because people want stuff built and it has to go somewhere.
There's a big difference. If state ownership, or some other form of community decision-making, everybody has a stake and everybody gets to weigh in. Private ownership, only dollars get to decide. We can have stuff built and still have everybody at the table deciding where it goes and how high it will be. Do you concede, at least, that I have a right to be politically involved if a forest is going to be cut down or developed or whatever, if the forest is in the hills which are right above my house?

There's a real danger of these animal rights extremists succeeding in their aims. They don't have any respect for the law, using means such as arson, beatings, intimidation, ect to achieve their goals. The reason these methods are succeeding is because of the weakness of western governments (Particularly the British government) to fight fire with fire.

We can learn a lesson by looking back to America in the 1960s. A lot of dangerous subversive groups were springing up all over the place and there was a very real possibility of widespread political violence. J. Edgar Hoover realised that less orthodox methods were needed to eliminate the threat, and COINTELPRO was born.

We need to get out of this dreamworld that acting like nice guys is going to magically make the animal rights militants go away. The FBI under Hoover infilitrated potentially dangerous groups like the Black Panthers and used methods such as formenting infighting within groups, harassed them with the use of the legal systems with things like grand jury subpoenas and tax audits, blackmailing, framing prominent members, ect. It was very effective in the case of the Black Panthers, the FBI were successful and destroyed the effectiveness of the movement. We need to use methods like this if we're to have any hope of crushing these people.

I must disagree with you, there is no creature more despicable on earth than human beings. I have yet to see one shred of evidence that people are anything other than a scourge upon this planet. What could be more natural than devoting one's life to the salvation of animals who are being mistreated at the hands of your fellow man?

It depends what your definition of being beneficial to the planet is. I don't see any animals fighting terrorism or providing welfare to the poor.

No law of nature respects private property, and it's upon these laws that our lives and wellbeing depend.

REally?
Enter the den of a black bear sow with cubs. Then you'll see PLENTY about what is private property.

Most so-called "eco-terrorism" is not violence, and most eco-terrorists (i.e. radical environmentalists) are nonviolent. Destroying a ski lodge or an SUV dealership, providing that precautions are taken to make sure no human lives are endangered (save, perhaps, those of the firefighters) is not violence,
Do you even think about what you are saying here? Because it sounds a lot like you're saying collateral damage of human lives is fine. After all, you just wrote off firefighters.

Perhaps they don't have a right to safety because they mitigate the acts of destruction you seem to glorify?


Breaking the law in the name of a political ideal is often admirable, e.g. Gandhi.
You did NOT just equate Gandhi to a firebomber, did you? Because I am unaware of him setting fires and destroying people's livelihoods to get his message across.

It always amazes me how the people advocating the destruction of property are not tearing down their own homes for the good of the planet. It always seems to revolve around destroying someone ELSE'S property, risking someone ELSE'S life, and causing trouble for someone else.

This kind of "activism" is cowardly and selfish beyond belief.

Kat is right, and the hypocrasy of the protesters always amazes me. It's usually the middle class students or young people with casual but reasonably-paying jobs who do this stuff. People who live in brick and concrete houses and work for brick and concrete businesses. Your average anarchist brick-thrower is a fast food restaurant employee earning a bit of extra cash while studying a social sciences subject at a corporate subcontractor university.

True weekend warriors.

No, you do not have a right to decide what happens to privately-owned land. The usual thing that happens is a farmer or landowner dies and the estate sells the land to a developer who keeps hold of it for years, for some future date when the land will have a use. State ownership is no different - you are a real idealist if you believe this means "community decision making". The community will get to see a poster at a local town hall announcing what has been decided by a committee, whose name will probably not even get published.

If the land is privately-owned, unless it adjoins your property, you have no say in the matter. If it does, or if it is state-owned, then you have the right to attend a scheduled public consultation meeting at the town hall, or write to your local government representative. You do NOT have the right to contact subcontractors at their home address, even if their business answering machine is full. That's a really shoddy excuse for intimidation. You also do not have a right to set fire to their car on the grounds that it is only "property" that's getting destroyed, and there is no risk to human life.

Which brings me to my next point. Violent crime against property, particularly if carried out anonymously, constitutes a threat of violent crime against the owner. Having your car firebombed at night and finding painted slogans criticising your employer's choice of contract, is extremely threatening and intimidating. It is also recognised by law as an act designed to provoke terror. It is in fact terrorism.

And this brings me to a point I made earlier, which you conceded in principle, that the motivation behind a crime determines its severity. A vandal setting fire to a car because it's fun, is a vandal. He deserves a couple of years in prison. The same individual setting fire to a car to intimidate its owner over his/her personal politics or contractual obligations, is a terrorist. He deserves a couple of decades. The physical act may be the same - arson - but the impact on the victim is massively different. A random act of violence is easy to shrug off, a targeted act of violence against YOU because YOUR name and address and that of your kids' school is on a political extremist's website, is not easy to shrug off. Thus the punishment must fit not the physical nature of the crime, but its impact.

Hahahahaha... sorry. This is a serious subject. But let me tell you, TSP, you really have a way with words. I wish everybody debated this candidly. Sutured Psyche indeed! :)

While I thank you for the back-handed compliment, I'm disappointed that it was used as a dodge. I'm not a fan of mincing words, I'd much rather say exactly what I mean the first time. Life is simply too short to dance around delicate sensibilities.

Back to the issue at hand. While you use specific images of higher order primates being tortured for seemingly unecessary commercial product testing, I get the distinct impression that you are using those examples as a means of gaining an emotional foothold. Your comments regarding the rights of animals would imply that you object to all predatory uses. If you do not object to the eating of meat, the wearing of skins, and medical testing, then your argument lacks internal consistancy. If you do object to these things but choose only to point out more egregious examples of animal use, then your argument lacks intellectual honesty.

Yes, I feel that people have the right to defend themselves, their families, and their property with lethal force. Laugh if you'd like, but both history and the law allow an individual to kill someone who threatens them. Again, this is the real world, and your political views are not so important that you have the right to destroy what someone else has worked for in the name of political expression.

As for my dig at the communal farm, I notice that you didn't even bother to defend yourself. How can you draw a paralell between the systematic rape, abuse, and dehumanization of an entire race because of the color of their skin and an experimental farm not having it's lease renewed? Your invocation of slavery is, on a very basic level, offensive.


I think I have a broader conception of public space than you do. For instance, I consider a coffee shop a public space, and a theater is a public space, and the Northwest Film Center in Portland, Ore. and the Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts in Eugene are public space, and also a forest, even if it's owned by the Nature Conservancy and not the federal government.

Your conception is at odds with the law of this land, legal precedent, English common law, and every construction of private ownership since the power to own passed from the hands of kings to the hands of citizens. You'll forgive me if I hold it in somewhat lower esteem than I hold well...the way things work in the real world.

If you don't think that a forest is public space, then you're stealing, aren't you, every time you take a breath of oxygen-rich air and don't, at the very least, pay royalties to someone? And won't you please explain your idea that private property is the basis of all individual rights? since I don't quite understand the deduction of my right to life or my right to the pursuit of happiness from the right of private property.

Actually oxygen, like flowing water, is not a resource which is specifically owned by an individual who holds a deed over that land. That deedholder has a right to use the oxygen as they see fit, but they do not hold actual ownership over it once it leaves their land. Oxygen is legally a communal resource which is why there are laws regarding what an individual can do to damage that resource.

Oh, and it wasn't Tactical Grace that asserted all individual rights come from property rights, it was me. Individual rights come from an ownership over one's own person. If you look carefully at the rights defined by the constitution (or most of the rights agreed to be "human rights" by western society(these are rights which prevent the government or anyone else) from telling an individual how the resources of their body will be used. The abolition of slavery contained in the 13th amendment prevents any individual from holding ownership over another. The first article of the 14th amendment recognizes "life, liberty, and property" as being rights so fundamentally interconnected that they are afforded equal protections.

No law of nature respects private property, and it's upon these laws that our lives and wellbeing depend. But some people are too busy copyrighting DNA to notice that.

Thats why animals never kill eachother over territory.

*snip*
I'll ignore the banal first paragraph. You don't know the first thing about anarchist brick-throwers.

No, you do not have a right to decide what happens to privately-owned land. The usual thing that happens is a farmer or landowner dies and the estate sells the land to a developer who keeps hold of it for years, for some future date when the land will have a use. State ownership is no different - you are a real idealist if you believe this means "community decision making". The community will get to see a poster at a local town hall announcing what has been decided by a committee, whose name will probably not even get published.

If the land is privately-owned, unless it adjoins your property, you have no say in the matter. If it does, or if it is state-owned, then you have the right to attend a scheduled public consultation meeting at the town hall, or write to your local government representative. You do NOT have the right to contact subcontractors at their home address, even if their business answering machine is full. That's a really shoddy excuse for intimidation. You also do not have a right to set fire to their car on the grounds that it is only "property" that's getting destroyed, and there is no risk to human life.
I'm not a real idealist. I know there is no effective process in place for conservationism in most this country. I live in the state with the most radical conservation laws in place (Oregon), and we don't have our ski resorts or subdivisions firebombed like in Colorado and Maryland because citizens can stop an ill-conceived project before it goes up. But we don't have any process, e.g., to end the torture of animals in commercial research labs, or to block experiments with GMOs without appropriate safeguards. If the political process doesn't exist, I condone any nonviolent form of resistance to unwanted and environmentally-destructive development, to animal torture on behalf of household products, to GMOs, and to the citadels of corporate expansionism, up to and including firebombing a deserted construction site or a car dealership or liberating a research lab. Corporate suits should be afraid of using a corrupt political process to override the adamantly-expressed wishes of the people who live in a community -- they shouldn't fear for their lives, but they should fear for their property. The goal of eco-sabotage is to increase the financial risks of irresponsible development, not to physically intimidate anyone. Most developers don't believe that communities exist, because as a political fact, they generally don't (except maybe in New Hampshire). That has to change. There's no reason for me to accept that my state will turn into Arizona within a decade or two and there's nothing legitimate I can do about it, or that animals can be terribly misused as means to banal ends and nobody has any standing to challenge it. It's said that all politics is local, but all conventional politics is centralized. That discrepancy explains eco-sabotage.

Which brings me to my next point. Violent crime against property, particularly if carried out anonymously, constitutes a threat of violent crime against the owner. Having your car firebombed at night and finding painted slogans criticising your employer's choice of contract, is extremely threatening and intimidating. It is also recognised by law as an act designed to provoke terror. It is in fact terrorism.
We can learn a lesson by looking back to America in the 1960s. A lot of dangerous subversive groups were springing up all over the place and there was a very real possibility of widespread political violence. J. Edgar Hoover realised that less orthodox methods were needed to eliminate the threat, and COINTELPRO was born.

We need to get out of this dreamworld that acting like nice guys is going to magically make the animal rights militants go away. The FBI under Hoover infilitrated potentially dangerous groups like the Black Panthers and used methods such as formenting infighting within groups, harassed them with the use of the legal systems with things like grand jury subpoenas and tax audits, blackmailing, framing prominent members, ect. [The author forgot assassination and firebombing.] It was very effective in the case of the Black Panthers, the FBI were successful and destroyed the effectiveness of the movement. We need to use methods like this if we're to have any hope of crushing these people.
Terror has always flowed the other direction in this country; it's been used by reactionary Power to preserve the status quo, even when that status quo is untenable (slavery, segregation, robber baron capitalism, Cold War brinksmanship). If there really is a fire in the crowded theater, that's when the management is going to pounce most aggressively on anyone who shouts "Fire!" You accuse anarchists of being idealistic, detached from your brick and mortar reality? If you're so grounded, why are you afraid to acknowledge that the pace of environmental destruction on this continent absolutely cannot be sustained, that the pollution free-for-all cannot last unless we're going to abandon this planet for Mars, and that torturing monkeys for the sake of a new cosmetics line is really sick and cruel? Then acknowledge that in respect to these issues, democratic politics are impotent, government is bloated, corrupt, ineffective; only corporations have a free hand. Then tell me what the brick-and-mortar solution to this is.

Back to the issue at hand. While you use specific images of higher order primates being tortured for seemingly unecessary commercial product testing, I get the distinct impression that you are using those examples as a means of gaining an emotional foothold. Your comments regarding the rights of animals would imply that you object to all predatory uses. If you do not object to the eating of meat, the wearing of skins, and medical testing, then your argument lacks internal consistancy. If you do object to these things but choose only to point out more egregious examples of animal use, then your argument lacks intellectual honesty.
Convince me (or yourself) that the higher order primates should be tortured, and then we'll get to the trees and to medicine. I am not, myself, a proponent of the ideology of animal rights, but neither can I endorse any ideology which sanctions the torture of higher-order primates in the name of Estee Lauder.

Yes, I feel that people have the right to defend themselves, their families, and their property with lethal force. Laugh if you'd like, but both history and the law allow an individual to kill someone who threatens them. Again, this is the real world, and your political views are not so important that you have the right to destroy what someone else has worked for in the name of political expression.
Since you recognize that right, you ought to acknowledge how gracious the radical ecology movement has been thus far. We are trying to protect ourselves, our families, and our planet. You keep invoking The Real World as if reciting a spell that banishes any possibility but the status quo. The real world is a changing world. The Patriot Act is also political expression, and bulldozers and chainsaws are more destructive than molotov cocktails.

As for my dig at the communal farm, I notice that you didn't even bother to defend yourself. How can you draw a paralell between the systematic rape, abuse, and dehumanization of an entire race because of the color of their skin and an experimental farm not having it's lease renewed? Your invocation of slavery is, on a very basic level, offensive.
Actually, you decided to call my analogy offensive rather than respond to the argument, which rests in no way on the analogy. To restate: development laws are written by developers and generally do not accord much to public processes. I mentioned the Fugitive Slave Act (i.e. the law itself, not the institution of slavery) as a parallel example of a law which resulted from an undemocratic political process.

I'll continue the property rights discussion in a different post.

Huntingtons is a degenerative illness much like Parkinsons disease, it its a genetic illness that affects the motor neurone system and tends to strike at around the age of 40 but can effect children as well. It is a truly horrific disease. Huntington Life Science's mandate may incorporate the testing of commercial products but it is also a major player in the pharmaceutical industry and this illness in particular.
Are you sure about that? I thought it called Huntingdon Life Sciences (D not T) because it's partly based in Huntingdon, England.

Oh, and it wasn't Tactical Grace that asserted all individual rights come from property rights, it was me. Individual rights come from an ownership over one's own person. If you look carefully at the rights defined by the constitution (or most of the rights agreed to be "human rights" by western society(these are rights which prevent the government or anyone else) from telling an individual how the resources of their body will be used. The abolition of slavery contained in the 13th amendment prevents any individual from holding ownership over another. The first article of the 14th amendment recognizes "life, liberty, and property" as being rights so fundamentally interconnected that they are afforded equal protections.
Sorry for the misattribution.

What I was looking for was something like a philosophical derivation of all rights from property rights, because I acknowledge that property rights have a legal precedent going back to the Magna Carta. However, if you want to discuss legal precedent, tell me where the awkward phrase "ownership of one's person" is enshrined in a body of law.

Meanwhile, life, liberty, and property are not afforded equal protections. Property is taxed and confiscated for a variety of reasons, including eminent domain and suspicion of a drug crime, while life and civil rights are held inviolable.

This makes me angry. I'm going to have to eat lots of meat in revenge for this. And torture a few squirrels. Now how would I catch a squirrel...

Excellent, at last we have some prosecutions. For all people will praise the surely laudible aims of denying people safe medicines and household cleaning products (a cause I am sure we can all support), I know someone whose university tutor would have been blown up if the animal-terrorists had cut the fuse on the bomb they put under his car correctly, so that really does it for me. These people are thugs and terrorists and if it were proposed I would be an inch away from supporting lining them up against a wall and shooting them. If people want to engage in real political discourse then they are free to do so by sending like minded representatives to Parliament, but when they begin to destroy property and threaten and carry out violence and murder, they have crossed the line from civilisation into barbarism.

I'll ignore the banal first paragraph. You don't know the first thing about anarchist brick-throwers.
You don't appear to know the first thing about human emotion. You appear to be more concerned with the feelings of animals than people. You cannot separate crime against property from crime against the person. There is no clear dividing line. Burning people's cars is not merely introducing an additional operating expense for the corporate world, it messes with people's minds. It constitutes a threat of violence against an individual, if the act is clearly aimed at that particular individual as a result of some connections they have, rather than simple vandalism. If you cannot see this, this bloody great obvious distinction, then there is something wrong with you. People who lack empathy, or have it misdirected, are not normal. I'm sure you will interpret this as a personal attack, but sociopaths do exist, and you sound like one.

I'll ignore the banal first paragraph. You don't know the first thing about anarchist brick-throwers.



Lol - I'm not sure if claiming to be an authority on them reflects particularly well on you.

I'm not sure about the origins of the name of the company, I made an foolish assumption that could well be wrong. Yet the name does not matter so much as its actual involvement in these various medical fields. Anyway, I've no wish to rehash some of the points that have already been made so I'll stop here.

There's no reason for me to accept that my state will turn into Arizona within a decade or two and there's nothing legitimate I can do about it, or that animals can be terribly misused as means to banal ends and nobody has any standing to challenge it. It's said that all politics is local, but all conventional politics is centralized. That discrepancy explains eco-sabotage.


Then acknowledge that in respect to these issues, democratic politics are impotent, government is bloated, corrupt, ineffective; only corporations have a free hand. Then tell me what the brick-and-mortar solution to this is.



Actually, you decided to call my analogy offensive rather than respond to the argument, which rests in no way on the analogy. To restate: development laws are written by developers and generally do not accord much to public processes. I mentioned the Fugitive Slave Act (i.e. the law itself, not the institution of slavery) as a parallel example of a law which resulted from an undemocratic political process.


You keep saying that democracy is failing you, do you know why that is? Because it is not the will of the people that these places get shut down. It is not the will of the people that human development be stopped so you can have your own little farm. If people wished to protect the enviroment then they would (for example in New Zealand) elect the greens party, but they didn't the greens only got 5% of the vote.

that torturing monkeys for the sake of a new cosmetics line is really sick and cruel?

I'm sorry but if I or any of my family put on some cosmetics I would want to have the knowledge that it wont burn a hole through my face, and if it takes a few bunnies or monkeys to do this then that's fine: the safety of humans is above the safety of a few animals.

I'm sorry but if I or any of my family put on some cosmetics I would want to have the knowledge that it wont burn a hole through my face, and if it takes a few bunnies or monkeys to do this then that's fine: the safety of humans is above the safety of a few animals.

Thank you, that is exactly right. What these animal rights extremists need to understand is that Humans are superior in everyway to animals. Sure, you are entitled to your beliefs, but that doesn't give you rights over others to commit illegal acts.

Aye. Also, the cosmetics industry employs tens of thousands and greatly benefits the world economy, which in turn leads to more money for people and things, even things that socialists (as animal rights extremists generally are) like such as state healthcare, pensions, etc.

10s of thousands of women in the West failed to die during childbirth from the 1950s onwards, when medical students got to practice on pigs (which, curiously, have a v. similar womb to hom.sapsap).

It's not pleasant that animal research takes place, and it does morally tarnish the people who take part in it; but their situation is analogous to soldiers, or police officers, or the like; they do the muck jobs so the rest of us don't suffer - or die during complications in childbirth, for example.

It's hellish easy to be pure and unsullied and cast the first stone, harder to act like a grown up and recognise that the world isn't black and white good/bad morality.

Why does killing or injuring an animal to save (over time) a huge number of human as well as animal (everyone forgets where all those injections they give your cat actually come from...) lives "morally tarnish" someone?

By the way, I should emphasize, because some of you haven't read the article and missed this point: the group and its members were convicted of using their web site to incite attacks against people associated with HLS. Although such attacks occured, the prosecution did not present evidence that those on trial actually committed it. They were convicted of inciting violence, harrassment, &c., merely because they posted information on their web site about who these people are who are torturing animals and how you can get in touch with them and their families. So that's the legal question this case presents: are you culpable merely for disseminating personal information about people who, whether public figures or no, do engage in practices many find objectionable, violent, and cruel? If so, then these scientists and businessmen have a certain immunity against protest at their homes, and so do loggers and defense contractors and abortion doctors. Is this right? Should these people have immunity, and should terrorist statutes be brought against environmental groups which challenge that immunity?

It isn't a matter of "immunity". It is a matter of the rights that all of us have. We aren't talking about just putting up a scientist's name and phone number. We are talking about address, children's names, what school the children go to, etc. This wasn't about simple protest - they were threatening the lives of these people and their families.

It isn't uncommon for one of these terrorists to physically harm doctors and scientists. I work at a university and I know we are practically on lockdown on certain days that PETA or some other such organization has planned a "protest" because scientists and doctors have actually been physically accosted.

but I don't see why it isn't admirable to fight passionately in defense of an ape that's strapped to a guerney so scientists can perform a live dissection or pour Comet down its throat.

You keep saying this as if that is actually what animal testing amounts to. It isn't, not even close. Vivisection has been illegal for some time on any creature higher than a cockroach, and testing of commercial products (although I am not nearly as familiar with this as with academic testing) isn't a matter of "pouring Comet down its throat." We can be pretty damn sure that would be harmful. Animal testing is usually more a matter of testing with the relative amounts a human might come in contact with.

And finally, primates are rarely used in research, for many reasons. One is that they are freaking difficult to work with and are very expensive. Why are they so expensive? Well, for one, they're just expensive to keep around. For another thing, primates used in research cannot be euthanized unless the experiment being done absolutely requires it. And if they are not euthanized, the testing facility must provide for them for the rest of their natural lives.

Aye. Also, the cosmetics industry employs tens of thousands and greatly benefits the world economy, which in turn leads to more money for people and things, even things that socialists (as animal rights extremists generally are) like such as state healthcare, pensions, etc.
So you're saying: animal rights activists are clearly hypocritical if they like pensions and free healthcare but think vivisection for the sake of cosmetics is immoral? Rather, I think a general axiom of the environmental movement is: just because an industry generates money, doesn't mean it's in everybody's long-term best interest.

I'm not sure about the origins of the name of the company, I made an foolish assumption that could well be wrong. Yet the name does not matter so much as its actual involvement in these various medical fields.
Involvement in medical fields does not mean contribution. Huntingdon Life Sciences is a "contract research organization," meaning they don't develop any medicines or products, they just get the contracts to test them. And they have a particularly egrigious record of abusing animals in their care, above and beyond what is actually necessary to carry out the tests. Even if you accept that medical products have to be tested on humans, they don't have to be tested by this particular company.

I'm sorry but if I or any of my family put on some cosmetics I would want to have the knowledge that it wont burn a hole through my face, and if it takes a few bunnies or monkeys to do this then that's fine: the safety of humans is above the safety of a few animals.
It's worth pointing out, then, that the safety of humans doesn't necessarily bear an inverse relationship to the safety of "a few" animals. For the past half century, despite lots of medical research and product testing conducted primarily on rats, bunnies, guinea pigs, cats, monkeys, &c., human cancer deaths have gone up and cancer rates are way up, human strokes are up, heart disease is up, diabetes is up, and the medical costs to everyone are increasing exponentially. The animal testing regime is not particularly reliable(look at all the products which are routinely recalled after it's discovered they are carcinogenic or have other nasty effects on humans, even though they passed the animal tests -- household chemicals, pharmaeceuticals, food additives, plastics, artificial food coloring, &c.) but its legitimacy is propped up because it allows corporate R & D departments to introduce all kinds of new chemicals into our daily lives and sell us all kinds of drugs to fix the problems which they are just as fast creating. I recognize that animal testing has some utility in the medical field, but it is also part and parcel of a system which has far more perils for humans than benefits.

Other than that, I add only that some people's compassion and integrity impels them not to accept a life of trivial comforts which rests on the suffering of others.

You keep saying that democracy is failing you, do you know why that is? Because it is not the will of the people that these places get shut down. It is not the will of the people that human development be stopped so you can have your own little farm. If people wished to protect the enviroment then they would (for example in New Zealand) elect the greens party, but they didn't the greens only got 5% of the vote.
I think there are clear reasons why a third party will never come to power in America, regardless of its politics. Moreover, eco-sabotage most often takes place when development is overriding the adamant wishes of a majority, or at least a sizeable minority, of the local population, who have no legal standing or transparent process to challenge the development. Moreover, democracy does not mean tyranny of the majority; rather than accepting any option which is acceptable to most, democracy ought to aim for the option which is most acceptable to all. If the majority wish development to proceed, then it can proceed in a sensitive, managed way. This is the process, at least that voters in my state have opted for -- I wouldn't be surprised if some of you Texans think different.

You don't appear to know the first thing about human emotion. You appear to be more concerned with the feelings of animals than people. You cannot separate crime against property from crime against the person. There is no clear dividing line. Burning people's cars is not merely introducing an additional operating expense for the corporate world, it messes with people's minds. It constitutes a threat of violence against an individual, if the act is clearly aimed at that particular individual as a result of some connections they have, rather than simple vandalism. If you cannot see this, this bloody great obvious distinction, then there is something wrong with you. People who lack empathy, or have it misdirected, are not normal. I'm sure you will interpret this as a personal attack, but sociopaths do exist, and you sound like one.
Fine, but I think it is capitalism which is anti-social, and the knee-jerk libertarian is the real sociopath. If there is a connection between a ski resort you own in Colorado or a subdivision your men are putting up over a wetland in South Jersey and your personal sense of well-being, then there is a far greater connection between the woods behind my parents' house which I've known since grade school and mine. When a place you love is destroyed by bulldozers, it's just as painful as if were destroyed by missiles or firebombs. Only where you regret your loss of property and feel the pain in your wallet, I regret the loss of the place itself, and not my own investment in it.

Why does killing or injuring an animal to save (over time) a huge number of human as well as animal (everyone forgets where all those injections they give your cat actually come from...) lives "morally tarnish" someone?

Because morality is absolute - it's wicked to torture a man, even if by so doing you save 100 lifes. It's also wicked to torture an animal, even if you save lifes down the line - morality has nothing to do with numbers.

Elgesh']Because morality is absolute - it's wicked to torture a man, even if by so doing you save 100 lifes. It's also wicked to torture an animal, even if you save lifes down the line - morality has nothing to do with numbers.

Well unless your a utilitarianist

or indeed amoral, yes.

Back to the issue at hand. While you use specific images of higher order primates being tortured for seemingly unecessary commercial product testing, I get the distinct impression that you are using those examples as a means of gaining an emotional foothold.

Considering that such testing pretty much doesn't happen, it's about the only explanation I can see as well.

Your comments regarding the rights of animals would imply that you object to all predatory uses. If you do not object to the eating of meat, the wearing of skins, and medical testing, then your argument lacks internal consistancy.

I think it is possible to logically state that some treatment of animals is wrong, while other treatment is acceptable. I am completely in favor of laws making it illegal for someone to, for instance, set a puppy on fire or bury it alive. I am not in favor of banning medical research or the eating of meat. The difference is that there is a need for the latter, while there is not for the former. Meanwhile, the latter (well, medical research anyways) is highly regulated such that animals do not suffer any more than is absolutely necessary.


So you're saying: animal rights activists are clearly hypocritical if they like pensions and free healthcare but think vivisection for the sake of cosmetics is immoral?

You know, dishonesty isn't pretty. "Torture", "vivisection" - would you care to provide some sort of evidence that these things are going on, even in the world of commercial animal testing?

You keep saying this as if that is actually what animal testing amounts to. It isn't, not even close. Vivisection has been illegal for some time on any creature higher than a cockroach, and testing of commercial products (although I am not nearly as familiar with this as with academic testing) isn't a matter of "pouring Comet down its throat." We can be pretty damn sure that would be harmful. Animal testing is usually more a matter of testing with the relative amounts a human might come in contact with.
Fair enough. I'm attempting to be an advocate for the rights of radical animal rights protestors without actually having much familiarity with the claims those protestors make. So thank you for clarifying that "pouring Comet down its throat" doesn't happen. Here (http://www.shac.net/FEATURES/xenoscandal/xenoscandal.html) is an example of what does, in fact, happen to primates in the HLS labs.

You know, dishonesty isn't pretty. "Torture", "vivisection" - would you care to provide some sort of evidence that these things are going on, even in the world of commercial animal testing?
Also here (http://www.shac.net/MISC/exposed/exposed.html)... my own ambivalent feelings about medical research involving primates are similar, Dempublicents1, to yours I think, but when a contract research organization has a history of abuses it ought to be shut down.

Elgesh']Because morality is absolute - it's wicked to torture a man, even if by so doing you save 100 lifes. It's also wicked to torture an animal, even if you save lifes down the line - morality has nothing to do with numbers.

Well, then I guess it's a good thing that we aren't allowed to torture animals, isn't it?

So you're saying: animal rights activists are clearly hypocritical if they like pensions and free healthcare but think vivisection for the sake of cosmetics is immoral? Rather, I think a general axiom of the environmental movement is: just because an industry generates money, doesn't mean it's in everybody's long-term best interest.
No, I'm saying that you're short sighted and wrong. I agree that in your view of the world, an animal's life is worth more than the prosperity of human society, but I do not believe that and I think such views are stupid.

Because morality is absolute - it's wicked to torture a man, even if by so doing you save 100 lifes. It's also wicked to torture an animal, even if you save lifes down the line - morality has nothing to do with numbers.
You may not see it that way, but if on balance an action will cause more good or less harm than not doing said action, then it cannot possibly immoral. Indeed, doing anything else would be immoral, as the end result would be worse. If you believe that morality is this sense is absolute, then practically everything you ever do would be immoral.

Fair enough. I'm attempting to be an advocate for the rights of radical animal rights protestors without actually having much familiarity with the claims those protestors make. So thank you for clarifying that "pouring Comet down its throat" doesn't happen. Here (http://www.shac.net/FEATURES/xenoscandal/xenoscandal.html) is an example of what does, in fact, happen to primates in the HLS labs.

I would hardly consider the website of a terrorist group to be a balanced description of what goes on, but I'm sure there is some truth there. Most likely, they have greatly exaggerated the small size of the cages and have ignored the measures that were taken to cut down on any pain suffered by the animals. I'm not familiar with the regulation in Britain, but I know what it is in the states, and I can't even take a little blood from an animal without providing analgesics and demonstrating that I need the blood for experiments - and that's with mice. The regulations on primate research here are much, much more stringent.

Morality is not absolute at all. It is very much a grey area. There are certain moral absolutes with humans, yes, but none with animals at all. Animals are less than human and the usual standards of morality do not apply.

I would hardly consider the website of a terrorist group to be a balanced description of what goes on, but I'm sure there is some truth there. Most likely, they have greatly exaggerated the small size of the cages and have ignored the measures that were taken to cut down on any pain suffered by the animals. I'm not familiar with the regulation in Britain, but I know what it is in the states, and I can't even take a little blood from an animal without providing analgesics and demonstrating that I need the blood for experiments - and that's with mice. The regulations on primate research here are much, much more stringent.
I'm so glad somebody who has actually performed animal experiments has finally posted on this thread. By the way, the article was in fact based on documents leaked by The Daily Express and published in The Observer (which I think is a Sunday suppliment to the Guardian); it's only hosted by the SHAC website.

I'm so glad somebody who has actually performed animal experiments has finally posted on this thread. By the way, the article was in fact based on documents leaked by The Daily Express and published in The Observer (which I think is a Sunday suppliment to the Guardian); it's only hosted by the SHAC website.

Documents that can be mined so that only that which the author wants to discuss will be discussed. Like I said, this type of testing simply isn't done without significant pain relievers - I don't buy that they weren't given - they simply weren't mentioned because that would make it seem like *gasp* the scientists doing the testing weren't even monsters.

Given that the author called an organ transplant "vivisection", I'm guessing that the measures taken to prevent or minimize pain aren't going to be mentioned, even if they are right there in the documents.

Morality is not absolute at all. It is very much a grey area. There are certain moral absolutes with humans, yes, but none with animals at all. Animals are less than human and the usual standards of morality do not apply.

If _I'm_ doinig xyz to a living thing, knowing it will cause pain, and will not benefit the living thing itself... It doesn't really matter the genus of the animal. I am behaving in an immoral fashion.

I might have good reason to - saving lives is a real example that's been given - but it doesn't stop my personal action, there and then, from being immoral. My choice, my action, make it immoral, not the type of animal, hom sap sap or otherwise, I'm doing it to.

I think there are clear reasons why a third party will never come to power in America, regardless of its politics. Moreover, eco-sabotage most often takes place when development is overriding the adamant wishes of a majority, or at least a sizeable minority, of the local population, who have no legal standing or transparent process to challenge the development. Moreover, democracy does not mean tyranny of the majority; rather than accepting any option which is acceptable to most, democracy ought to aim for the option which is most acceptable to all. If the majority wish development to proceed, then it can proceed in a sensitive, managed way. This is the process, at least that voters in my state have opted for -- I wouldn't be surprised if some of you Texans think different.

I'm not a Texan, the world is larger than the US.... Admitedly I do not know a whole lot about the building process in the US but where I come from (New Zealand not Texas) you require resource consent for developing things and people may contest this. Why not try insane tactics of protesting like lobbying or pettitions or a march instead of reaching strait for the firebombs (I think prehaps they just enjoy blowing things up, I sure do).

Elgesh']If _I'm_ doinig xyz to a living thing, knowing it will cause pain, and will not benefit the living thing itself... It doesn't really matter the genus of the animal. I am behaving in an immoral fashion.

I might have good reason to - saving lives is a real example that's been given - but it doesn't stop my personal action, there and then, from being immoral. My choice, my action, make it immoral, not the type of animal, hom sap sap or otherwise, I'm doing it to.
I disagree.

I disagree.

Fascinating.

I'm not a Texan, the world is larger than the US.... Admitedly I do not know a whole lot about the building process in the US but where I come from (New Zealand not Texas) you require resource consent for developing things and people may contest this. Why not try insane tactics of protesting like lobbying or pettitions or a march instead of reaching strait for the firebombs (I think prehaps they just enjoy blowing things up, I sure do).
The radical fringe emerged only after the environmental movement failed to get anywhere in this country with lobbying and protest. The shameful impotence of the environmental movement is mitigated only by extralegal methods, like tree-sits to prevent the old-grown timber sales which now take place largely without public involvement and without environmental review. Science has been banished from environmental policy in this country, and so has democracy. I hope and expect that it's much different in New Zealand.

Morality is not absolute at all. It is very much a grey area. There are certain moral absolutes with humans, yes, but none with animals at all. Animals are less than human and the usual standards of morality do not apply.
If your morality rests on compassion, then it ought to encompass humans and other animals. There is no question of absolutes. All available evidence suggest that many species are just as capable of experiencing pain and suffering as we are. I think that humans ought to be accorded a higher moral priority than animals, because part of our moral value stems from moral agency which is present in most humans but not in other animals. But without compassion, any effort to construct a moral system is bound to be hypocritical and futile. So we ought to treat animals with compassion, and we should not try to cast moral questions as questions of human value versus animal value. In other words, we should avoid placing animals in situations where they are ends to our means. Some ends have more value than others; the end of saving the lives of human infants has far more priorty than making a food additive safe for Nabisco. So it is very possible for a moral system which accords higher priorty to humans than animals to nevertheless condemn the mistreatment of animals at a contract research lab.
Shame on such a morality that is worthy of pariahs, and that fails to recognize the eternal essence that exists in every living thing, and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see
the sun!

Morality is not absolute at all. It is very much a grey area. There are certain moral absolutes with humans, yes, but none with animals at all. Animals are less than human and the usual standards of morality do not apply.
^
How do you know?
Prove it to me.
All of you saying this, give me logical facts. Now. Just because we have a certain form of reason and the ability to speak, thus enabling us to achieve technical progress, we are more than other animals and should do as we wish?
I don't think so...

Morality is a grey area, there are as many interpretations as there are people, thus demanding proof "Now." :rolleyes: :upyours: is missing the point.

As far as I am concerned, yes we are superior to the animals because we have a vastly more complex reasoning ability. You are entitled to view them as equals, but your entitlement to an opinion will end the moment you set fire to a car in protest.

Morality is a grey area, there are as many interpretations as there are people, thus demanding proof "Now." :rolleyes: :upyours: is missing the point.

As far as I am concerned, yes we are superior to the animals because we have a vastly more complex reasoning ability. You are entitled to view them as equals, but your entitlement to an opinion will end the moment you set fire to a car in protest.
Disingenious argument -- morality is a grey area, your opinion is as valid as mine, but I can act on my morality while you cannot. I could just as easily say, you are entitled to view animals as worthless, but your entitlement to an opinion will end the moment you harm one.

Disingenious argument -- morality is a grey area, your opinion is as valid as mine, but I can act on my morality while you cannot. I could just as easily say, you are entitled to view animals as worthless, but your entitlement to an opinion will end the moment you harm one.
No you can't just as easily say the above, you can't turn the equation around, because it is a one-way process. People =/= animals. Get it through your head. Killing a person is not OK. Killing an animal is fine, so long as you satisfy local legal requirements.

As a common line in Spiderman shows, movies, and comics go: With great power comes great responcibility. to those who say that power doesn't corrupt might need to read up on Hitler, the Catholic Church's history, and modern Islam. Our intelligence and thumbs helped made us the dominant species. Does that make the rights of everything else null and void? Does a dog mean nothing because it's not a person.

We need the environment. We need trees. We need good soil. Those who disagree with these 3 simple facts are ignorant of science. Trees give us pure oxygen. Our floral food needs good soil to grow and thrive in. Our meats come from either animals who eat the plants or animals who eat said animals. We need to protect the planet that we depend on.

As for the moral issue, is it more wrong to punch a person or light a puppy on fire? Is a brutal serial killer worth more than a seeing eye dog or those dogs who are trained to rescue people? Morality isn't black and white. There's grey. There's color. It's complex. I'd kill every serial killer who ever lived a million times just to save a dog who is trained to save people. I'd bankrupt a billion companies who test non-medicinal products on animals just to save a species whose possible vital uses to the human race are not yet known. Is it possible that the human race became too powerful? Are we abusing our power? Were we so caught up on immediate contributions to our own species that we doomed ourselves to extinction in the near future? Have we saved too many human lives as to cause severe overpopulation? Have we been so caught up in medical research that we increased our lifespans too much? Has our "good" progress doomed us? Should we kill off the people who are suffering as to garantee our overall survival. Morality is grey. Good can cause bad.

Avika, you sound very idealistic :) But also very dogmatic.

I'd sacrifice animals to save a human life, including experimentation on animals. But I'd recognise that doing so certainly is a moral wrong (morality is what I do and why I do it, not what level of sentience/consciousness the animal I hurt has), it's me hurting another living being that feels pain for my own or a 3rd party's benefit. It's like abortion - it's wrong, but I fully support it's legal status and recognise that in a complex, nuanced, non-ideal world, both need to exist.

Animal experimentation and the like is very unpleasant but neccessary.

Elgesh']Avika, you sound very idealistic :) But also very dogmatic.

I'd sacrifice animals to save a human life, including experimentation on animals. But I'd recognise that doing so certainly is a moral wrong (morality is what I do and why I do it, not what level of sentience/consciousness the animal I hurt has), it's me hurting another living being that feels pain for my own or a 3rd party's benefit. It's like abortion - it's wrong, but I fully support it's legal status and recognise that in a complex, nuanced, non-ideal world, both need to exist.

Animal experimentation and the like is very unpleasant but neccessary.
Sure, saving people is nice, but what good would that do us? We already have a few billion too many. Poverty is a major world issue, as is crime. The last thing we need is even more people in overcrowded areas. Once you get past the nice part, just killing the person instead seems alot more humane to said "victim". The only thing keeping me from suicide, besides the good I want to do and my natural fear of death, is the fact that anything that is hell is worse.

Sure, saving people is nice, but what good would that do us? We already have a few billion too many. Poverty is a major world issue, as is crime. The last thing we need is even more people in overcrowded areas. Once you get past the nice part, just killing the person instead seems alot more humane to said "victim". The only thing keeping me from suicide, besides the good I want to do and my natural fear of death, is the fact that anything that is hell is worse.

lol... whatever :)

yeah, it _is_ only 'nice' to save a person's life, yeah, life is pain, yeah death is the answer... I think _I'll_ go paint my bedroom black and be mad at my parents, they just don't get me, y'know...:p

human cancer deaths have gone up and cancer rates are way up, human strokes are up, heart disease is up, diabetes is up, and the medical costs to everyone are increasing exponentially.

Because many people are getting fatter.

If your morality rests on compassion, then it ought to encompass humans and other animals.

And much like with any compassion, one can see the need for certain things that may cause pain or suffering, at least to a point. There is a good reason that, in anything higher order than a cockroach, significant measures to reduce pain are taken in animal experiments - we don't want or need to cause unecessary pain.

So it is very possible for a moral system which accords higher priorty to humans than animals to nevertheless condemn the mistreatment of animals at a contract research lab.

I condemn all mistreatment of animals. But I don't see all animal testing as mistreatment. In truth, many of these animals are kept in much better conditions and have much longer lifespans than they likely would in the wild.

Convince me (or yourself) that the higher order primates should be tortured, and then we'll get to the trees and to medicine. I am not, myself, a proponent of the ideology of animal rights, but neither can I endorse any ideology which sanctions the torture of higher-order primates in the name of Estee Lauder.

"Convince me that the most extreme abuse of a given scientific methodology is moral and then we can discuss if any application is possably ethical." I think you're putting the cart before the slave..erm..horse.

I have a pretty simple ideology when it comes to these things. I look out for me and mine first. If a thousand apes need to be tortured for cosmetics because thats the only way to keep radical animal rights activists away from medical experimentation(by tying their efforts up one step further away from their ultimate goal), I might not like it but I'll tollerate it. Yeah, I know, thats cold, cruel, and harsh, but thats nature. I'm not some simpering herbivore taking a quiet drink at the waterhole and hoping some smarter sharp toothed thing with binocular vision doesn't pull me down, I'm the predator. Human beings are at the top of the food chain, and animals at the top kill animals at the bottom to survive. The only difference between a human being and a wolf is that we are able to look at survival on a longer curve than our next meal.

Since you recognize that right, you ought to acknowledge how gracious the radical ecology movement has been thus far. We are trying to protect ourselves, our families, and our planet. You keep invoking The Real World as if reciting a spell that banishes any possibility but the status quo. The real world is a changing world. The Patriot Act is also political expression, and bulldozers and chainsaws are more destructive than molotov cocktails.

No, you're trying to protect an ideology.Stop mixing issues up so you can use defense for one as a defense for others. Animal testing has zero negative effect on you, your family, or your planet. At most it is offensive, but it will never really influence your life in any way outside of the positive, and even then you can choose not to take advantage of the progress. So clearly animal rights are not really a part of the "radical ecology movement." That kinda pulls the wind out of the sails of the OP.

Now, from there you have the people spiking trees, fighting loggers, and whining about urban sprawl. You also miss a vital distinction. I called for a right to self defense, you called for a right to the defense of the planet. That is a large jump. Self defense is a pretty clear issue, someone is about to hurt you or your family, right now. There are no what ifs, we aren't talking about potential harm down the road to an abstract; we are talking about someone trying to burn your home down, a home to which socioety has granted you ownership and in which your family resides.

What you argue for is a world in which anyone who can convince themselves that the actions of another might endager something they value in the future can kill that person. Your logic would be just as applicable to a religious conservative burning down the offices of a publisher that insults their god as it is to an enviornmentalist burning down the home of a logger. It is chaos, it is rulership by the strongest, it is a departure from a society based on laws and into a society based on rule by the meanest. Go down that road that road and you don't find utopia, you end up with a society driven by the cruelest, greediest, strongest, most charismatic sociopaths a hell can produce.

Actually, you decided to call my analogy offensive rather than respond to the argument, which rests in no way on the analogy. To restate: development laws are written by developers and generally do not accord much to public processes. I mentioned the Fugitive Slave Act (i.e. the law itself, not the institution of slavery) as a parallel example of a law which resulted from an undemocratic political process.

The argument is weak and you sought to bolster it by equating animal rights with abolition. Thats not the first time you've done it here and it is far from the first time I've heard that line coming from the animal rights sector.

Still, if you'd like me to address your specific argument (the public doesn't get enough say in land use and development because laws are written by developers) I will. The public doesn't get a say because it doesn't deserve one. The only person who should get a say over how an individual tract of land is used is the owner. Any other system ends with people who are not responsible for land, plummeting value, and a general confusion over who gets to use what space.

Human beings- as a group- are stupid, corrupt, shiftless creatures. The vast majority of communal property experiments that are open to the public(rather than staffed by people who have an interest in the idea working) have failed. Look at communal grazing land, over fishing, over hunting, and the general state of public spaces in urban areas. In anonymous situations there will always be people who take more than is their share and leave their garbage behind them.

Private property acts as a buffer to these negative social tendancies by making someone responsible for a piece of land and it's commercial proceeds. More than that, having a private owner puts a face on the property, making individuals less likely to abuse that space because it equates to abusing an individual rather than an abstract like "society" or "the public". In order for private property to work you have to have the sole right to determine the use o that property lie in the hands of the deedholder. The more you weaken property rights, the worse the system works as a check on the unplesant nature of humanity.

Our hands and our minds took us from being eaten by just about everything to the top of the food chain. But what good did that do us? We may say that we are the smartest, but are we really that smart? Isn't a genious really just a bright moron if he lacks common sense? Isn't everything a double-edge sword? I think that we are too caught up in increasing the human population to see the downside. We can cure diseases, but that just leaves more mouths to feed. We are making human life too cheap and expendable. Someone dies. Then what? He or she gets replaced. A kid dies. Then what? Life goes on unhindered. It's hard to care about a person getting shot in a third world country when said country has way too many to support. The quest for cures and longer lifespans really is shortsighted when you ignore the impact it has on our supply. If anything, we need fewer people. We need to stop increasing our lifespans. Poverty grips much of the world and long lifespans might just get too long.

Name one contribution we've made that doesn't have a negative impact. Everything we do has an opposite, but equal, effect. Cures breed cure-resistant diseases. Saving a life strains our food supply, slightly increasing poverty. Knocking down trees for hospitals and orphanages might just kill plants that might cure AIDS or prevent lung cancer. don't burn the bridge you're standing on. Shortsightedness will come back and rip us a new ass.

Sorry for the misattribution.

What I was looking for was something like a philosophical derivation of all rights from property rights, because I acknowledge that property rights have a legal precedent going back to the Magna Carta. However, if you want to discuss legal precedent, tell me where the awkward phrase "ownership of one's person" is enshrined in a body of law.

Read the third paragraph of Article IV, Section 2.

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

Now go and read the thirteenth amendment, which removed that language.

1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

That sounds like we are talking about an issue of property. The language deffinately feels like an issue of property, especially when we are talking about a time when human beings could be bought and sold legally. More to the point, we are talking about a time in which indentured servitude still existed. Anyone could be pressed into servitude and those who were so bound had fewer rights. In the case of slaves, an owner could buy, sell, discipline, and kill their property just as they could any other piece of livestock. All of the civil rights we hold dear were instead held by an owner. That ownership would imply that what makes a free man free is ownership of oneself.

Now, if we want to go a little bit deeper, we can go to the fifth amendment.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Ahh, well, in the constitution there is no distinction drawn between life, liberty, and property. They're mentiuoned in the same breath, with the same prohibition against takings. It seems pretty clear that they are all viewed as things which an individual owns, though only one is seen to have a real monetary value.

Meanwhile, life, liberty, and property are not afforded equal protections. Property is taxed and confiscated for a variety of reasons, including eminent domain and suspicion of a drug crime, while life and civil rights are held inviolable.

They are afforded equal protection in the constitution. Still, I find your argument strange. You say that property can be taken (through due process) but that life and liberty are held inviolable. I think that there would be quite a few imprisioned individuals who would argue that liberty can be taken away. Further, anyone who has ever spent time in the armed forces (and especially those who were members during a time of consription) can tell you that there are certain liberties you are simply not afforded while in the service, the right to sue a doctor for medical malpractice, for instance. As for life...you are aware that both a great number of states and the federal government have a death penalty, right?

Let them rot in prison.

All this is is a group who want to push thier brand of morals on others. Sence the majority has rejected those morals they have to go out and destroy what they are against on thier own. This has the effect of scaring those who do what they hate into not doing it. It is textbook terrorism. If the research lab is doing such illegal and dispicable work, how come the feds not stepped in? How about finding out about it instead of torching the buildings indiscriminately? The work to finding cures lost because of these clowns is truely sickening.

It's worth pointing out, then, that the safety of humans doesn't necessarily bear an inverse relationship to the safety of "a few" animals. For the past half century, despite lots of medical research and product testing conducted primarily on rats, bunnies, guinea pigs, cats, monkeys, &c., human cancer deaths have gone up and cancer rates are way up, human strokes are up, heart disease is up, diabetes is up, and the medical costs to everyone are increasing exponentially. The animal testing regime is not particularly reliable(look at all the products which are routinely recalled after it's discovered they are carcinogenic or have other nasty effects on humans, even though they passed the animal tests -- household chemicals, pharmaeceuticals, food additives, plastics, artificial food coloring, &c.) but its legitimacy is propped up because it allows corporate R & D departments to introduce all kinds of new chemicals into our daily lives and sell us all kinds of drugs to fix the problems which they are just as fast creating. I recognize that animal testing has some utility in the medical field, but it is also part and parcel of a system which has far more perils for humans than benefits.

Animal testing has gone on but has not yet produced cures for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, etc. Did you really think that one would slip by? Yes, rates for those diseases have risen, but there is a third factor which you failed to mention: life expectancy has risen dramatically. A heart attack is no longer something which is as likely to kill you as not, and even severe heart attacks can be treated if caught in time. The basic causes of heart attacks can be diagnosed and treated, reducing the likelyhood of repeat instances. Cancer, a disease which used to be a death sentence, is now not only treatable but survivable in many cases. The same is true for literally dozens of other illnesses and conditions which used to be fatal that are now treatable. Cancer and stroke rates are going to go up when you have people routinely living into their seventies and eighties.

Let them rot in prison.

All this is is a group who want to push thier brand of morals on others. Sence the majority has rejected those morals they have to go out and destroy what they are against on thier own. This has the effect of scaring those who do what they hate into not doing it. It is textbook terrorism. If the research lab is doing such illegal and dispicable work, how come the feds not stepped in? How about finding out about it instead of torching the buildings indiscriminately? The work to finding cures lost because of these clowns is truely sickening.
Trust me when I say that American politicians are usually corrupt and will turn a blind eye to anything they don't like.

I think it is possible to logically state that some treatment of animals is wrong, while other treatment is acceptable. I am completely in favor of laws making it illegal for someone to, for instance, set a puppy on fire or bury it alive. I am not in favor of banning medical research or the eating of meat. The difference is that there is a need for the latter, while there is not for the former. Meanwhile, the latter (well, medical research anyways) is highly regulated such that animals do not suffer any more than is absolutely necessary.

I was speaking specifically about animal testing. While I might not like cosmetic testing, forcing animal rights activists to fight that battle before they can even address medical testing in a serious way reduces their resources.

Our hands and our minds took us from being eaten by just about everything to the top of the food chain. But what good did that do us? We may say that we are the smartest, but are we really that smart? Isn't a genious really just a bright moron if he lacks common sense? Isn't everything a double-edge sword? I think that we are too caught up in increasing the human population to see the downside. We can cure diseases, but that just leaves more mouths to feed. We are making human life too cheap and expendable. Someone dies. Then what? He or she gets replaced. A kid dies. Then what? Life goes on unhindered. It's hard to care about a person getting shot in a third world country when said country has way too many to support. The quest for cures and longer lifespans really is shortsighted when you ignore the impact it has on our supply. If anything, we need fewer people. We need to stop increasing our lifespans. Poverty grips much of the world and long lifespans might just get too long.

Name one contribution we've made that doesn't have a negative impact. Everything we do has an opposite, but equal, effect. Cures breed cure-resistant diseases. Saving a life strains our food supply, slightly increasing poverty. Knocking down trees for hospitals and orphanages might just kill plants that might cure AIDS or prevent lung cancer. don't burn the bridge you're standing on. Shortsightedness will come back and rip us a new ass.


I will assume then, that you do not accept any type of medical treatment whatsoever? That you will gladly die of the flu? That you will refuse to have your children vaccinated?

Elgesh']I'd sacrifice animals to save a human life, including experimentation on animals. But I'd recognise that doing so certainly is a moral wrong (morality is what I do and why I do it, not what level of sentience/consciousness the animal I hurt has), it's me hurting another living being that feels pain for my own or a 3rd party's benefit. It's like abortion - it's wrong, but I fully support it's legal status and recognise that in a complex, nuanced, non-ideal world, both need to exist.

You're a big fan of Kant, aren't you?

I've always found the argument that morality exists in a vacuum to be unpersuasive. Even on a purely theoretical level, I do not believe that if you think lying is morally wrong than it is morally wrong to lie to someone even if that lie will save a life. Much like utilitarianism, this view of the world is oversimplified. It is not simply that our world is complex, nuanced, or non-ideal, but that morality is not some great inherant truth. A moral system which must be continually violated for society to work in a sane manner is a morality which is broken. It is purely academic.

Trust me when I say that American politicians are usually corrupt and will turn a blind eye to anything they don't like.

Oh, I beleave it. I just find the ELF/ALF/SHAC to be far worce.

No you can't just as easily say the above, you can't turn the equation around, because it is a one-way process. People =/= animals. Get it through your head. Killing a person is not OK. Killing an animal is fine, so long as you satisfy local legal requirements.


(SARCASM) No, you can't just as easily say the above, you can't turn the equation around, because it is a one way process. People =/= Niggers. Get it through your head. Killing a person is not OK. Killing a slave is fine, so long as you satisfy local legal requirements. (/SARCASM)

Are we really this stupid to assume that we have come as far as a society that we are all perfect and everything that is wring and bad is now illegal and everything wonderful and perfect is legal?

You're a big fan of Kant, aren't you?

I've always found the argument that morality exists in a vacuum to be unpersuasive. Even on a purely theoretical level, I do not believe that if you think lying is morally wrong than it is morally wrong to lie to someone even if that lie will save a life. Much like utilitarianism, this view of the world is oversimplified. It is not simply that our world is complex, nuanced, or non-ideal, but that morality is not some great inherant truth. A moral system which must be continually violated for society to work in a sane manner is a morality which is broken. It is purely academic.

I'm afraid not - never heard of him!

But a lie is a lie is lie, as is inflicting pain without direct benefit to the creature (animal or human) to which you're inflicting pain. It's wrong.

At a practical level, fine, I think we _should_ commit that wrong, inflict that pain; but don't try to pretty it up and pretend that what we're doing isn't morally wrong.

Elgesh']I'm afraid not - never heard of him!

But a lie is a lie is lie, as is inflicting pain without direct benefit to the creature (animal or human) to which you're inflicting pain. It's wrong.

At a practical level, fine, I think we _should_ commit that wrong, inflict that pain; but don't try to pretty it up and pretend that what we're doing isn't morally wrong.

Immanuel Kant wrote about the categorical imperative which is the cornerstone of the moral system you are talking about(deontological ethics). He argued that human beings should live their lives by a set of defined principles that do not change according to circumstance. If you have the time you might want to read some of his work ("Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals" is as good a start as any).

Anyway, my original point was that I disagree with the statement "a lie is a lie." I think that the context of a situation is every bit as important as the act when it comes to determining morality. While I consider killing to be morally wrong in most cases, I wouldn't regret shooting someone who threatened my family. I feel that looking at the world in absolute terms tends to lead to broad flaws in social thought. Saying that something is always morally wrong but sometimes morally necessary tends to create unecessary guilt and stigma.

Immanuel Kant wrote about the categorical imperative which is the cornerstone of the moral system you are talking about(deontological ethics). He argued that human beings should live their lives by a set of defined principles that do not change according to circumstance. If you have the time you might want to read some of his work ("Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals" is as good a start as any).
Yeah, key phrase is if you have the time. I'm reading Critique of Pure Reason right now; I wish I'd never heard of Immanuel Kant. Unless you really have the interest, take my word, read a wikipedia article instead. :)

That sounds like we are talking about an issue of property. The language deffinately feels like an issue of property, especially when we are talking about a time when human beings could be bought and sold legally. More to the point, we are talking about a time in which indentured servitude still existed. Anyone could be pressed into servitude and those who were so bound had fewer rights.
But indentured servants did have some rights, including the right to bring suit and testify, and, notably, the right to own property! So not even the right to property would stem from "ownership of one's person," if we accept your logic. Moreover, nobody was "pressed into" indentured servitude, but agreed to the contract of indenture voluntarily; thus, whatever rights the servant surrendered, he surrendered by contract. But since I can see another objection you might raise, that many of the new American states placed property requirements on voting, I answer you by saying, finally, that the poor, like many other classes of people, have been made the victim of stupid laws throughout American history, but that both property requirements for full citizenship and indentured servitude become dying institutions once the American republic is established.

In the case of slaves, an owner could buy, sell, discipline, and kill their property just as they could any other piece of livestock. All of the civil rights we hold dear were instead held by an owner. That ownership would imply that what makes a free man free is ownership of oneself.
Good try, but you infer wrongly. Blacks were not denied rights because they lacked "ownership of their person," since freed slaves and, later, blacks living in states where slavery was illegal nevertheless lacked the rights of full citizenship. They were (obviously) denied rights because they were black, i.e. were "considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them," in Justice Taney's enlightened words (Dred Scott v Sanford). It ought to be clear, then, that according to precident, human rights come from the fact of being human (whether they are accorded by God Himself or by a social contract among men) and not from "ownership of one's person." If there are historical exceptions, they are inevitably, eventually, corrected in favor of the latter principle. And by the way, I am SO offended that you felt it necessary to refer to the systematic rape, abuse, and dehumanization of an entire race because of the color of their skin in order to make your point. :eek:

Ahh, well, in the constitution there is no distinction drawn between life, liberty, and property. They're mentiuoned in the same breath, with the same prohibition against takings. It seems pretty clear that they are all viewed as things which an individual owns, though only one is seen to have a real monetary value.
First off, you again insist on making an insinuating turn of phrase to press the point that all rights originate in property rights. "They are all viewed as things an individual owns." No. The association between ownership and human rights is not in the text itself, but only in your imagination. Notice the text reads, "deprived of life, liberty, or property," not, "deprived of property, such as life, liberty, or a team of oxen." So please, give up this clumsy game of semantical insinuation, and acknowledge that no philosopher of the Enlightenment nor early American statesman ever argued that all human rights derive from the right to own property and dispose of it at will, unless you can actually give evidence of one saying exactly that.

Now then, my argument is the "due process of law" does not treat property on par with other rights, such as the right to life, to free expression, free association, the right to privacy, &c. These rights cannot be forfeited or infringed by government except by one's consent (in which case they are not really infringed), or by pressing extingencies of wartime (the draft, the internment of Japanese Americans, Lincoln's suspension of habeus corpus, the Patriot Act), or as a result of criminal acts which mark one an enemy of society and the rule of law. But property routinely infringed, in two senses. First, the state appropriates the property of its citizens involuntarily through income taxes, property taxes, inheritance taxes, &c., and also, as I pointed out earlier, does not require a conviction to confiscate the property of one accused of certain crimes. Furthermore, it demands that an accused criminal post bail or face imprisonment sans conviction -- this would be ludicrous if property and liberty were equal rights, since the state would then be demanding of a presumed-innocent person that they sacrifice one sacrosanct right in order to claim another. Rich people are taxed more heavily than poor people, even by a "flat tax," even though they generally receive fewer benefits than the poor from the government programs which taxes pay for, which certainly would contradict the principle of equal treatment under the law, if property were in fact a right in the same sense as the others. The second sense in which property is infringed arises if you consider that right to property, by definition, includes the right to dispose of property at will, since otherwise the right to property would be meaningless. Now it ought to be clear that property is regulated, i.e. the right to dispose of it at will is restricted, in myriad ways voters see fit to prescribe. In Oregon, e.g., if your property (land) falls outside of a certain arbitrary line on the map called the Urban Growth Boundary, you cannot so much as build a house on it. You cannot erect a commercial building if your property is zoned residential, you cannot paint your house a color that the neighborhood association dislikes. Point is, property is not a right in the same sense, for while all the others are social rights, the founders recognized that property is an anti-social right, and as Proudhon says, "Worshipped by all, it is acknowledged by none: laws, morals, customs, public and private conscience, all plot its death and ruin."

What else was I going to say? I can't remember. I tried to post earlier this afternoon, but a server failure ate it. Anyway, point is, property is quite far from being the basis of all other rights. I would make an argument, in fact, that property is not a human right, and that terrorism is not merely any destructive action for political ends (from tearing down the Berlin Wall to exploding a biology lab) but only those actions which deprive people of human rights.

Elgesh']I'm afraid not - never heard of him!

But a lie is a lie is lie, as is inflicting pain without direct benefit to the creature (animal or human) to which you're inflicting pain. It's wrong.

At a practical level, fine, I think we _should_ commit that wrong, inflict that pain; but don't try to pretty it up and pretend that what we're doing isn't morally wrong.
i cant help but agree with you

even if there is an overriding public good that is served, when you stick mascara into a bunny's eye, it hurts the bunny. that amount of wrong must be taken into consideration whether you consider it a big wrong or a small wrong.

there are social "goods" that arent worth the suffering inflicted on animals.

taking the suffering of animals into consideration means that we must minimize that suffering as much as possible. if we dont start with the first step... hurting animals is a wrong.... then how can we get to the end point where we mandate humane treatment of animals in medical experimentation?

Animal testing has gone on but has not yet produced cures for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, etc. Did you really think that one would slip by? Yes, rates for those diseases have risen, but there is a third factor which you failed to mention: life expectancy has risen dramatically. A heart attack is no longer something which is as likely to kill you as not, and even severe heart attacks can be treated if caught in time. The basic causes of heart attacks can be diagnosed and treated, reducing the likelyhood of repeat instances. Cancer, a disease which used to be a death sentence, is now not only treatable but survivable in many cases. The same is true for literally dozens of other illnesses and conditions which used to be fatal that are now treatable. Cancer and stroke rates are going to go up when you have people routinely living into their seventies and eighties.
An incident of cancer may be more survivable, but overall cancer deaths have gone up. I know so many people who have survived cancer of the thyroid only to have to fight off cancer of the liver, cancer of the brain... a cancer will get us all, sooner or later. Do you have any statistics about white life expentancy in this country, now compared to 1960? (I think the increase will be less dramatic if we exclude nonwhites, since the civil rights movement probably has more to do with the increase in minority LE than anything else). I think the baby boomers are actually going to live longer than my generation is. Also (I ask because I can't find google any myself), how does LE vary by income in the US? I would imagine that living long is becoming very expensive, and those who can't pay once they get to middle age, die. Other countries have socialized medicine, but these must be sustained by tremendous resources exploited from the rest of the world, where LE is falling as poverty increases. Point is, we could increase human LE by providing a better, healthier quality of life for all humans, rather than relying on corporate medical research, relying on the torture of animals, to produce expensive, patented cures for problems which failures in human social relations create.

But indentured servants did have some rights, including the right to bring suit and testify, and, notably, the right to own property! So not even the right to property would stem from "ownership of one's person," if we accept your logic. Moreover, nobody was "pressed into" indentured servitude, but agreed to the contract of indenture voluntarily; thus, whatever rights the servant surrendered, he surrendered by contract. But since I can see another objection you might raise, that many of the new American states placed property requirements on voting, I answer you by saying, finally, that the poor, like many other classes of people, have been made the victim of stupid laws throughout American history, but that both property requirements for full citizenship and indentured servitude become dying institutions once the American republic is established.

Indentured servitude was simply one of the ways in which human beings were treated as property. Your argument would hold if indentured servitude were the only means of owning another. Slaves (by far the more common form of owned person) had no rights, no power to own property, and no ability to bring suit.

A quick look at the Dred Scott case, the issues argued, and the logic of the court will help make matters a bit more clear. The argument Dred Scott made was that because he had traveled through free territory (first Illinois, and then Minnesota) he was a free man when his master died. The supreme court's logic for denying his freedom was that blacks were fundamentally inferior and inelligable for citizenship. The clear conclusion to be drawn from this logic would be that had Dred Scott been white, he would have earned his freedom the moment no one else could claim ownership over him.


Good try, but you infer wrongly. Blacks were not denied rights because they lacked "ownership of their person," since freed slaves and, later, blacks living in states where slavery was illegal nevertheless lacked the rights of full citizenship. They were (obviously) denied rights because they were black, i.e. were "considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them," in Justice Taney's enlightened words (Dred Scott v Sanford). It ought to be clear, then, that according to precident, human rights come from the fact of being human (whether they are accorded by God Himself or by a social contract among men) and not from "ownership of one's person." If there are historical exceptions, they are inevitably, eventually, corrected in favor of the latter principle. And by the way, I am SO offended that you felt it necessary to refer to the systematic rape, abuse, and dehumanization of an entire race because of the color of their skin in order to make your point. :eek:

You're not paying attention. The argument that Dred Scott asserted (that moving through free lands made him free) was not rejected because blacks couldn't be free. It was rejected because the court felt that free blacks, because of their inferiority, were owned by the state. Under this ruling blacks were, essentially, no more than serfs. Being human implies ownership over onesself. All of the decisions that a free man is allowed to make for themselves and owner gets to make for their property. The court did not reject Scott's argument that he had become free, they instead rejected his argument that he was not property.

First off, you again insist on making an insinuating turn of phrase to press the point that all rights originate in property rights. "They are all viewed as things an individual owns." No. The association between ownership and human rights is not in the text itself, but only in your imagination. Notice the text reads, "deprived of life, liberty, or property," not, "deprived of property, such as life, liberty, or a team of oxen." So please, give up this clumsy game of semantical insinuation, and acknowledge that no philosopher of the Enlightenment nor early American statesman ever argued that all human rights derive from the right to own property and dispose of it at will, unless you can actually give evidence of one saying exactly that.

I give evidence, you deny it. I give more, you say you read it differently. Normally, I would feel that this was a situation of rational minds looking at the same evidence and coming to different conclusions. Then you sink to personal attacks and attempt to make me feel foolish for holding my position. Worse, you being to take a fairly dogmatic tone. No, I'm not some student who so desperately needs others to like him that an argument based on subtle social pressure will make me slink away, tail between my legs, in the hopes of winning approval.

So, here is my challenge. So far I have stated why I hold my position and you have attacked it without presenting any positive evidence for your stance. It is time to put up or shut up. Can you find me a single philospher of the enlightenment that held to the tenets of capitalism and human rights(which are the cornerstones of western Democracy) that severed the right to own from liberty?


*snip taxes/bail/asset forfiture

I'll address taxes first. Income tax required a constitutional amendment to pass(the 16th) and it is an innovation which has only existed for the last century. Before the passing of the amendment the idea of the federal government taking a cut of all money you earn was unthinkable. The vast majority of taxes were sales based taxes on specific goods or services.

To look at how property (real money) and life/liberty were often times viewed as interchangeable, I would like to direct you to constription. Conscription is essentially eminent domain over one's life and liberty. It's constitutionality has been upheld(Arver v. United States, United States v. Holmes). Until WWI individuals were allowed to hire substitutes or pay special taxes to avoid service. Until Vietnam, full time students could avoid service. Resisting conscription means going to prison. Further, the draft continued to be used in peacetime between the Korean and Vietnam war.

So, to be clear, it is constitutional in the United States to take someone who has not been convicted of a crime, strip away their liberty, and put their life in danger, even in a time of peace. Still holding to that argument that property is treated as less important than life or liberty?

Now, onto bail. Bail is not a tax, it is an insurance policy. It is set to insure that a charged person returns for trial and it is returned (regardless of the virdict) at the end of a trial as long as the individual did not flee. If they do flee, the money is(in theory) used to fund their capture. You are not asking someone to trade their freedom for their money, you are discouraging them from leaving the jurisdiction to avoid trial.

Then theres asset forfiture. I do not believe that it is constitutional and it is definately not settled law. asset forfiture laws are challenged with regularity and a citizen who is the victim of it's abuse does, in theory, ahve the means to sue for repayment.

An incident of cancer may be more survivable, but overall cancer deaths have gone up. I know so many people who have survived cancer of the thyroid only to have to fight off cancer of the liver, cancer of the brain... a cancer will get us all, sooner or later. Do you have any statistics about white life expentancy in this country, now compared to 1960? (I think the increase will be less dramatic if we exclude nonwhites, since the civil rights movement probably has more to do with the increase in minority LE than anything else). I think the baby boomers are actually going to live longer than my generation is. Also (I ask because I can't find google any myself), how does LE vary by income in the US? I would imagine that living long is becoming very expensive, and those who can't pay once they get to middle age, die. Other countries have socialized medicine, but these must be sustained by tremendous resources exploited from the rest of the world, where LE is falling as poverty increases. Point is, we could increase human LE by providing a better, healthier quality of life for all humans, rather than relying on corporate medical research, relying on the torture of animals, to produce expensive, patented cures for problems which failures in human social relations create.


I'm willing to bet that your favorite character in The Wizard of Oz was the Scarecrow. I dunno, its just this feeling I have.

Anyway, heres the data you were looking for. Got it from google in 1, not sure what went wrong on your end.

Number of survivors per 100,000 grouped by race and sex in five year incriments up to 100 years (.PDF warning, scroill down to page 3 for the graph): http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr53/nvsr53_06.pdf

Total life expectancy and remaining life expectancy at ages 0, 65 and 75 for whites and blacks by sex: (.PDF warning, scroll to page 184 for graph)http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus05.pdf#027

Death rates for leading causes of death in all ages (.pdf warning, scroll to 88 for graph) http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus05.pdf#027 Cancer has remained steady with heart disease and stroke declining since the 1960s. Overall deaths per 100,000 also on a steady decline, indicating an overall increase in mean lifespan.

All data from the CDC.

(SARCASM) No, you can't just as easily say the above, you can't turn the equation around, because it is a one way process. People =/= Niggers. Get it through your head. Killing a person is not OK. Killing a slave is fine, so long as you satisfy local legal requirements. (/SARCASM)
Sarcasm my ass. You're the one making the idiotic comparison between blacks and animals. I think we can see the type of character you and your ilk are.

1. Slaves are not legally citizens. They are not, by law, human. Biologically and genetically, they are human. They're just someone else's "thing". It wasn't until the outlawing of slavery that all Africna Americans were considered, by the law of the land, human enough to not be property. That's the way it was. Don't whitewash history. It repeats itself when ignorance is added and we don't want slavery again, do we?

2. Morality isn't a clean, black and white issue. There's grey. There's colors. There's the infamous "damned if you do and damned if you don't" thing. Of you have to kill a person to save another's life, you'll still be responsible for someone's death. If you have a choice between killing a rescue dog and killing a rapist and either one dies or both die, it's not a clear-cut decision for most.(I'd kill the rapist because rescue dogs save people, just like surgeons and firemen.) If you see a person who you know will be in agony until he or she dies, do you kill that person or let that person live? It's not always simple. It's rarely simple. If you kill a million animals to cure cancer, you'd still be killing animals.

3. If I had my way, the human birth rate, especially in places of extreme poverty, would decline greatly. Why increase the human population? You'll just put more stress on vital resources.

4. Name 1 thing we have ever done to help the planet our lives depend on that isn't just fixing what we broke. Name 1 thing we did to improve our big life-support system. Name 1 thing we've done to Earth that isn't just putting nails in our imaginary coffin. Just 1. Fixing what we broke doesn't count as the bad cancelled out the repair.

i cant help but agree with you

even if there is an overriding public good that is served, when you stick mascara into a bunny's eye, it hurts the bunny. that amount of wrong must be taken into consideration whether you consider it a big wrong or a small wrong.

there are social "goods" that arent worth the suffering inflicted on animals.

taking the suffering of animals into consideration means that we must minimize that suffering as much as possible. if we dont start with the first step... hurting animals is a wrong.... then how can we get to the end point where we mandate humane treatment of animals in medical experimentation?

You don't have to start off with "hurting animals is wrong." You can simply start with, "Causing pain without justifying the ends is wrong."

*snip*

Answer the damn question, Claire.

I will assume then, that you do not accept any type of medical treatment whatsoever? That you will gladly die of the flu? That you will refuse to have your children vaccinated?


Point is, we could increase human LE by providing a better, healthier quality of life for all humans, rather than relying on corporate medical research, relying on the torture of animals, to produce expensive, patented cures for problems which failures in human social relations create.

We aren't going to provide much of a healthier life without studying what that is, and how to fix it when it naturally goes wrong.

Meanwhile, if you insist on misusing emotive terms like "torture" and "vivisection", it is really useless for anyone to talk to you.

Why simply increase LE? Why not instead focus on better quality? After all, it's not the quantity of years, it's the quality. I'd rather live 100 days of a rich, joyous life than 100 years of a so-so life. Plus, we have a few billion people too many. That makes ending poverty and curing diseases almost impossible. Is it wrong to kill a person if that person will never know joy anyway? I know killing is wrong, but does the good of possible happiness in death override the bad of killing? That's my point. Nothing good can happen without something bad, no matter how big or small, happening. If you want to harvest, you have to plow. If you want money, you'll have to work. If you want to eat a warm, home-cooked meal, somebody has to buy it and cook it. See my point? Good and bad co-exist. You can't have one without the other.

The things that are garanteed are:
1. if you live, you will die.
2. can't have a human race without assholes
3. can't have good without the bad.
4. Washington DC is a good place to find political jokes.

You can't say that medical testing is purely good if animals are the ones who pay the price. If hurting animals isn't bad, then the fine line between good and bad just got thinner. If you want good to happen, then something bad must also happen.

Sarcasm my ass. You're the one making the idiotic comparison between blacks and animals. I think we can see the type of character you and your ilk are.

Not as such.

Just comparing our social enlightment of today with our grossly inadequate selves of yesteryear. Obviously we are as enlightened as a people could possibly be and there is no room for improvement in our species.

Government is perfect in every conceivable way, having finally achieved all things of ugliness and evil being outlawed and illegal and all things shiny and wonderfully being the only legal behaviours. Having successfully solved all the problems of social and other inequities, we are playing a game online - a political game, of pretend Nations, where we can make pretend laws, which I offer as proff of our perfection as a species.

Again, obviously sarcasm. The everything legal is moral argument is ASSININE. Duh.

Why simply increase LE? Why not instead focus on better quality?

You seem to think that animal research has nothing to do with the quality of life. You are incorrect on that count.

After all, it's not the quantity of years, it's the quality.

And do you expect to have a great quality of life if your joints are broken and can't be fixed? What if you are born with a congenital heart defect? What if you catch every disease that comes along and there is no treatment?

How great do you think your life is going to be?

Plus, we have a few billion people too many. That makes ending poverty and curing diseases almost impossible.

Ending poverty - yes. Curing diseases - no. Wiping them out entirely - mostly.

But if you think there are so many extra people, does that mean that you will be checking out soon in order to save the planet? That you will refuse to have children?

You can't say that medical testing is purely good if animals are the ones who pay the price. If hurting animals isn't bad, then the fine line between good and bad just got thinner. If you want good to happen, then something bad must also happen.

I never said anything is "purely good", but, in this case, the good is worth the bad - a "bad" that is minimized as much as possible.


Of course, you still have yet to answer my question. I will ask again:

I will assume then, that you do not accept any type of medical treatment whatsoever? That you will gladly die of the flu? That you will refuse to have your children vaccinated?

I give evidence, you deny it. I give more, you say you read it differently. Normally, I would feel that this was a situation of rational minds looking at the same evidence and coming to different conclusions. Then you sink to personal attacks and attempt to make me feel foolish for holding my position. Worse, you being to take a fairly dogmatic tone. No, I'm not some student who so desperately needs others to like him that an argument based on subtle social pressure will make me slink away, tail between my legs, in the hopes of winning approval.
Subtle social pressure? Come on, man. All I'm saying is that you keep reading what you want into the text, misunderstanding it according to your own logic (that where any right is asserted, its origin in property is implied), and paraphrasing to insinuate things which aren't there. Here's another example:

A quick look at the Dred Scott case, the issues argued, and the logic of the court will help make matters a bit more clear. The argument Dred Scott made was that because he had traveled through free territory (first Illinois, and then Minnesota) he was a free man when his master died. The supreme court's logic for denying his freedom was that blacks were fundamentally inferior and inelligable for citizenship. The clear conclusion to be drawn from this logic would be that had Dred Scott been white, he would have earned his freedom the moment no one else could claim ownership over him.
...
You're not paying attention. The argument that Dred Scott asserted (that moving through free lands made him free) was not rejected because blacks couldn't be free. It was rejected because the court felt that free blacks, because of their inferiority, were owned by the state. Under this ruling blacks were, essentially, no more than serfs. Being human implies ownership over onesself. All of the decisions that a free man is allowed to make for themselves and owner gets to make for their property. The court did not reject Scott's argument that he had become free, they instead rejected his argument that he was not property.
Your interpretation is not justified by the text of Taney's decision. Read the following paragraph. It is hard to understand anything else than that "rights of person" and "rights of property" are originally seperate.
These powers, and others, in relation to rights of person, which it is not necessary here to enumerate, are, in express and positive terms, denied to the general government; and the rights of private property have been guarded with equal care. Thus the rights of property are united with the rights of person and placed on the same ground by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which provides that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, and property without due process of law.
But according to an axiom which is purely of your own fabrication, that "being human implies ownership of yourself," you want put the argument in Taney's mouth that Dred Scott lacked only ownership of himself in order to be human, and thus attain all the secondary rights such as the right to sue in a court of law. But it is plain that what Dred Scott lacked was white skin, since as I pointed out, white indentured servants, being part of the poltical community from which blacks are excluded, according to Taney, were entitled to that right which Dred Scott was denied. "Dred Scott was not a citizen of Missouri within the meaning of the constitution of the United States, and not entitled as such to sue in its courts." For the black, the question of ownership of one's person is moot; "emancipated or not," he is denied the rights of a citizen on the basis of being inferior and excluded. Your last chance is to insert a categorical proprietorship in the name of the state (of Missouri?) over all blacks "emancipated or not" -- "the court felt that free blacks, because of their inferiority, were owned by the state." But Taney does not argue that the state is the owner; rather, he argues that in lieu of an owner, the federal government cannot intervene.

The government of the United States had no right to interfere for any other purpose but that of protecting the rights of the owner, leaving it altogether with the several States to deal with this race, whether emancipated or not, as each State may think justice, humanity, and the interests and safety of society, require.
If you remove the language which is of your own fabrication, "the court felt..." or "being human implies...", &c., it is impossible to see how the argument for slavery is an argument for the derivation of all rights from the right of property, and not from the fact of being white and therefore human. Your concept "ownership of onself" is a clumsy and unuseful one, since in the example of the indentured servant, it is not even presupposed in the right to own property aside from oneself! Anyway, since you conceded the point on indentured servitude, do you really want the last remaining pillar of your argument to be the authority of the logic of slavery?

So, here is my challenge. So far I have stated why I hold my position and you have attacked it without presenting any positive evidence for your stance. It is time to put up or shut up. Can you find me a single philospher of the enlightenment that held to the tenets of capitalism and human rights(which are the cornerstones of western Democracy) that severed the right to own from liberty?
I'm not sure what you're asking of me. Severed the right to own from liberty, i.e., held that were seperate and that property was not part and parcel of liberty? Sure, John Locke -- he took natural liberty as an axiom and then "endeavour[ed] to show how men might come to have a property in several parts of that which God gave to mankind in common," and explicitly disavowed your concept of "ownership of oneself" -- "no man can by agreement pass over to another that which he hath not in himself -- a power over his own life. I confess, we find among the Jews, as well as other nations, that men did sell themselves; but it is plain this was only to drudgery, not to slavery..."

If you're asking me for a capitalist who disavowed property as a natural right, I confess that I cannot find a single one -- every capitalist that I know of holds property a natural right. Rousseau, on the other hand, does not, nor do Proudhon, Comte, &c. Now you say that capitalism is the foundation of Western democracy, but I would argue our Western democracies hold more closely to the doctrines of those who saw property as something dangerous and opposed to the rights of person, rather than identical to them.

I'll address taxes first. Income tax required a constitutional amendment to pass(the 16th) and it is an innovation which has only existed for the last century. Before the passing of the amendment the idea of the federal government taking a cut of all money you earn was unthinkable. The vast majority of taxes were sales based taxes on specific goods or services.
But at the core of the right to property is the right to exchange it; without this, property as the capitalist sees it is nothing! So how can it be argued that I forfeit a part of my right by employing it? Only by assuming that the right of property is not so sacred as the British Enlightenment said it was. Furthermore, every state employed property taxes (taxation in rem). Finally, somehow we've forgotten the power of eminent domain, which Blackstone attacked so eloquently, yet any contemporary Arthur Dent must realize, in vain.

To look at how property (real money) and life/liberty were often times viewed as interchangeable, I would like to direct you to constription. Conscription is essentially eminent domain over one's life and liberty. It's constitutionality has been upheld(Arver v. United States, United States v. Holmes). Until WWI individuals were allowed to hire substitutes or pay special taxes to avoid service. Until Vietnam, full time students could avoid service. Resisting conscription means going to prison. Further, the draft continued to be used in peacetime between the Korean and Vietnam war.

So, to be clear, it is constitutional in the United States to take someone who has not been convicted of a crime, strip away their liberty, and put their life in danger, even in a time of peace. Still holding to that argument that property is treated as less important than life or liberty?
The Cold War was not a time of peace, as the Supreme Court acknowledged time and time again. Furthermore, if a government employs the draft, it can only justify it in the name of safeguarding everybody's most fundamental right, that of security. But what fundamental right is served by the tax on phone lines?

Now, onto bail. Bail is not a tax, it is an insurance policy. It is set to insure that a charged person returns for trial and it is returned (regardless of the virdict) at the end of a trial as long as the individual did not flee. If they do flee, the money is(in theory) used to fund their capture. You are not asking someone to trade their freedom for their money, you are discouraging them from leaving the jurisdiction to avoid trial.
If it is not a trade, it is a hostage situation. Bail is often set at extraordinary sums, e.g. three million dollars. If property is a fundamental right, then the court demands one fundamental right as a hostage from the accused, presumed innocent, as condition of allowing him another. That's obviously rediculous.

Then theres asset forfiture. I do not believe that it is constitutional and it is definately not settled law. asset forfiture laws are challenged with regularity and a citizen who is the victim of it's abuse does, in theory, ahve the means to sue for repayment.
You may not consider it just, but that's not the point. The point is that society does not acknowledge the right you unconditionally claim. Asset forfeiture has been tested in court and upheld. It is to property what habeus corpus is to liberty.

*snip Taney quotes*

You know what, I'll concede that I cannot find a direct reference to liberty stemming from self-ownership outside of the hard-libertarian, transhuman, or anarcho-capitalist corners. All of these ideologies read the basis of human rights to be personal sovereignty which is syonymous with personal ownership. My own political, ethical, philosophical, and religious views are heavily influenced by the concept of personal sovereignty taken to a pretty extreme level.




If you're asking me for a capitalist who disavowed property as a natural right, I confess that I cannot find a single one -- every capitalist that I know of holds property a natural right. Rousseau, on the other hand, does not, nor do Proudhon, Comte, &c. Now you say that capitalism is the foundation of Western democracy, but I would argue our Western democracies hold more closely to the doctrines of those who saw property as something dangerous and opposed to the rights of person, rather than identical to them.

That does seem to be the way society is moving: away from classical liberalism and towards progressive populism. Still, it would be hard to argue that Rousseau or Comte have had more influence on economic policy in the west than say Smith and Friedman(more Milton than David, sadly).


But at the core of the right to property is the right to exchange it; without this, property as the capitalist sees it is nothing! So how can it be argued that I forfeit a part of my right by employing it? Only by assuming that the right of property is not so sacred as the British Enlightenment said it was. Furthermore, every state employed property taxes (taxation in rem). Finally, somehow we've forgotten the power of eminent domain, which Blackstone attacked so eloquently, yet any contemporary Arthur Dent must realize, in vain.

Ah, eminent domain. I haven't really ignored it (I did compare it to conscription). Eminent domain is one of those necessary evils for a functioning society that has come to be greatly abused. Lets face it, no single system of government is perfect and any attempt at a "pure" system is bound to crumble. The only way to ensure a functioning society is to strike a balance and one of those unplesant necesities is allowing the government to build vital infrastructure in an efficient manner. Still, I think that the only appropriate response to the Kelo decision involves a rather significant number of public officials hanging from the end of ropes. If only the rest of the court had paid more attention to O'Connor and Thomas.

On the issure of exhanging one's body I would point out that people can exchange their body, just not permanently. Are you familiar with real estate property law at all? There are basically two main classes of estates(or deeds): freehold estates and nonfreehold estates. Freehold estates can exist forever, as long as a conition is met, for the remainder of a given person's life, or until the land is used in a way specifically forbidden by the deed. All of these are basically permanent arrangements and most of them are inheritable. Nonfreehold estates are also known as leasehold estates, and are essentially rental agreements.

Why does this matter at all? We allow people to rent themselves out in this society all the time, to transfer their bodies for a period of time to another. All labor is essentially this kind of agreement, you agree to allow someone else to utilize your body or mind for a specific task or time. Many jurisdictions allow you to sell your body to be used for medical research. Prostitution is legal in several counties here in the states and much more broadly in other parts of the world. The right to exchange your body is severely limited, but it does exist. In it's most extreme form, individuals are allowed to join the armed forces, where they lose most of their rights to consent to medical care, where they cannot terminate their employment agreement at will, where they do not have the right to sue for medical malpractice, and where virtually every detail of their lives are dictated to them without choice. Human beings buy and sell themselves all the time, it is just that the circumstances in which they do so and who can be parties to what degree are restricted by the law.

The Cold War was not a time of peace, as the Supreme Court acknowledged time and time again. Furthermore, if a government employs the draft, it can only justify it in the name of safeguarding everybody's most fundamental right, that of security. But what fundamental right is served by the tax on phone lines?

The cold war was not a time of declared war. Come to think of it, we haven't had a tme of declared war since WWII (or since the "war on terror" depending on how you read congress' hysteria). I think history has shown that a government can, at any time, assert that there is a need to safeguard security and use that need to expand it's power. Still, we haven't been attacked by any nation since Pearl Harbor and I hardly think that a handful of sexually repressed Saudis who managed to catch us by suprise counts as an invasion force.

Oh, the the vital public interest served by a tax on the phone lines is the Spanish-American war. That 3% tax everyone pays on every phone line they have(or anything that looks enough like a phone line that it draws the FCC's attention) was imposed by congress in 1898 as a luxury tax on a new technology. Since then various municipalities have asserted taxes on telecommunications to pay for 911 service, to subsidize putting telephone lines in remote areas where they aren't profitable(ever seen a "Universal Service Fund" fee on your bill, yep, you're paying for phone lines in Boofoo, AK) or bring telephone service to the poor, to subsidize telephone service for schools and libraries, and of course to sate the rampant greed that most politicians have.


If it is not a trade, it is a hostage situation. Bail is often set at extraordinary sums, e.g. three million dollars. If property is a fundamental right, then the court demands one fundamental right as a hostage from the accused, presumed innocent, as condition of allowing him another. That's obviously rediculous.

The point of the system is to discourage individuals from fleeing while awaiting trial. It is a guarantee that someone will show up. An extrodinary bail amount is often set in order to force a high risk individual to be accountable to many people in order to walk free until their trial (it is one thing to lose your own money, but it is less likely that someone will skip bail when the homes of their extended family are on the line). If the individual shows up to trial, the money is returned at the conclusion, if not, the money is forfieted. Incedentally, in most cases, unless the accused has a record or has jumped bail before, the amount due at the time of posting is only 10% of the total bail amount.


You may not consider it just, but that's not the point. The point is that society does not acknowledge the right you unconditionally claim. Asset forfeiture has been tested in court and upheld. It is to property what habeus corpus is to liberty.

Asset forfiture is an abomination and an abuse of executive power. It is a government doing something that it should not have the authority to do. Just because it has not yet been banned or legislated away does not mean that it is in line with the principals upon which our nation was built.

Thats what you were waiting for, I'm sure, but there is an important distinction between animal rights and asset forfiture. One is something that the government does which it does not have the authority to do. The other is an example of some individuals trying to get the government to grab for even more power by passing even more legislation restricting liberty.

It's funny to note that as far as i've found out the word "vivisection" stems from a book by H.G.Wells called "The Island of Dr Moreau" where the Dr created half-human half animals by vivisection described to me as "a sort of cross between disection and plastic surgery"

I'm not really in the mood to read the thousand pages of replies PER POST, so I'll just drop in my opinion.

Hurting anything without a justifying means is morally wrong. Anybody with a soul knows that. But what IS a justifying means? Perpetuation of the human race, I suppose would be one. Prevention of starvation and such. You don't have to skin a cow to make it edible, but if doing so makes it more tasty that doesn't make it right.

And yes I know skinning cows isn't a taste-enhancing method, it was just an example. Unless it is? I'm no butcher.

Killing animals in the service of humanity is not only legal, I consider it moral too. :)

Ha. How's that for a grey area?

Here's what has been established so far:
1. Just because it is legal doesn't make it right.
example: slavery was once legal, but it was morally wrong.

2. Morality is grey. Just because animals get hurt to make certain new cures and vaccines, doesn't mean that hurting any animal for whatever reason is going to be morally right.

3. idiots tend to flock to intelligent discussions.

Morally reprehensible behavior for moral reasons is still morally reprehensible.

Here's what has been established so far:
1. Just because it is legal doesn't make it right.
example: slavery was once legal, but it was morally wrong.

2. Morality is grey. Just because animals get hurt to make certain new cures and vaccines, doesn't mean that hurting any animal for whatever reason is going to be morally right.

3. idiots tend to flock to intelligent discussions.


1) I don't think that anyone has been arguing that anything which is legal is automatically right. Sometimes right and wrong simply do not factor into a discussion. Example: some kinds of animal testing(say, for cosmetics or household cleansers) might be legal but not be morally right. That fact does not, however, absolve others from the consequences of their actions. Threatening the family of someone who performs such testing or burning down a lab is still out of line(arson in particular because it has a tendancy to get out of control and put the lives of others at risk).

2) Again, I don't think that anyone has argued that all abuses under all circumstances are ok because some help find cures. The argument I made that was most similar to that assertion is that cosmetics testing(which I find to be morally wrong) is a good place to keep animal rights activists tied up. Yes, it is a cynical and pessamistic point of view, but I feel that if the legitimate resources(ad campaigns, political lobbying, etc) of those who would wish to ban animal testing are wasted on going after more extreme abuses, then it will be that much longer(if ever) until they are able to pose a real threat to more vital interests(medical testing, farming and hunting). It is not the most plesant stance to take, but it is pragmatic.

3) Do try to keep the flaming to a minimum in the future, especially if it adds absolutely nothing to the discussion.

That does seem to be the way society is moving: away from classical liberalism and towards progressive populism. Still, it would be hard to argue that Rousseau or Comte have had more influence on economic policy in the west than say Smith and Friedman(more Milton than David, sadly).
...
Ah, eminent domain. I haven't really ignored it (I did compare it to conscription). Eminent domain is one of those necessary evils for a functioning society that has come to be greatly abused. Lets face it, no single system of government is perfect and any attempt at a "pure" system is bound to crumble. The only way to ensure a functioning society is to strike a balance and one of those unplesant necesities is allowing the government to build vital infrastructure in an efficient manner. Still, I think that the only appropriate response to the Kelo decision involves a rather significant number of public officials hanging from the end of ropes. If only the rest of the court had paid more attention to O'Connor and Thomas.
Do you believe it's a necessary evil, or do you agree with Blackstone: "the law of the land ... postpone[s] even public necessity to the sacred and inviolable rights of private property"? Incidentally, I agree with you on Keno v New London... but it's good evidence, anyway, that Rousseau is alive and well in the twenty-first century.

On the issure of exhanging one's body I would point out that people can exchange their body, just not permanently.... All labor is essentially this kind of agreement, you agree to allow someone else to utilize your body or mind for a specific task or time.... Human beings buy and sell themselves all the time, it is just that the circumstances in which they do so and who can be parties to what degree are restricted by the law.
You can sell your labor, but the only employer who takes your soul is the military. Otherwise, with few exceptions, the inalienable rights are just that. Inalienable property, on the other hand, is a contradiction. Therefore, it makes sense to say that my labor is my property, since capitalist labor is alienated, as Marx said; it does not make sense to say that my civil rights are my property, since you cannot exchange them for anything.

Asset forfiture is an abomination and an abuse of executive power. It is a government doing something that it should not have the authority to do. Just because it has not yet been banned or legislated away does not mean that it is in line with the principals upon which our nation was built.

Thats what you were waiting for, I'm sure, but there is an important distinction between animal rights and asset forfiture. One is something that the government does which it does not have the authority to do. The other is an example of some individuals trying to get the government to grab for even more power by passing even more legislation restricting liberty.
I'd like to point out the hypocrisy of the political process in the US. The absolute right to private property is invoked against environmentalists and animal welfare/animal rights advocates but forgotten when the government is trying to bust a dope ring or build some condos and a big parking lot downtown. In either case, grand juries or condo developments, there is no fair political process, no legitimate venue for the citizens to assert themselves, yet if they try to circumvent a sham political process then they're terrorists. A website that listed names and addresses is shut down, its collaborators jailed; protestors are hemmed in by barricades and "free speech zones" to separate them from whatever they're protesting; they are reversing the precedent in this country which maintained, in George Orwell's words, "If free speech means anything, it's the right to tell people what they don't want to hear." It's a two-party system, a slick politics of spectacle -- you, TSP, ought to recognize it, this politics of the spectacle, a spectacle of shiny progress and sacrifices for universal wealth and anti-terrorism, when you see it on the nightly news, and not just when you read about it in Spider Jerusalem comics. ;)

Do you believe it's a necessary evil, or do you agree with Blackstone: "the law of the land ... postpone[s] even public necessity to the sacred and inviolable rights of private property"? Incidentally, I agree with you on Keno v New London... but it's good evidence, anyway, that Rousseau is alive and well in the twenty-first century.


In a perfect world, there would be no need for eminent domain takings. The problem is that we do not live in a perfect world, we live in a little entropic shithole full of greedy apes. I believe that eminent domain is necessary for society to function, especially an urban one. Eminent domain needs to be asserted in the form of easements to bring utilities(water, electric, gas, cable, sewers, telephones) to citizens, large buildings(such as schools or city halls) have a large enough footprint that finding land is not always an option(can you imagine if every new school in Chicago, New York, or LA had to be built on unsubdivded land?), and certain services need to be placed in shuch a way as to be able to efficiently serve their jurisdictions(fire departments, police stations, and roads). Outside of those specific material public services I find any use of eminent domain to be wrong. I also find tax leans and zoning laws to be wrong. Sadly, society has decided to disagree and things are not yet bad enough for a violent revolution, that is the downside to living under a government: sometimes things you do not like become the law.

You can sell your labor, but the only employer who takes your soul is the military. Otherwise, with few exceptions, the inalienable rights are just that. Inalienable property, on the other hand, is a contradiction. Therefore, it makes sense to say that my labor is my property, since capitalist labor is alienated, as Marx said; it does not make sense to say that my civil rights are my property, since you cannot exchange them for anything.

You can exchange those civil rights, it is simply that the circumstances in which you are allowed to are extremely limited. If inalienable rights were truely inalienable, the military would not have the authority over it's soldiers that it does.

Perhaps a slightly more abstract explaination will help. I believe that there are no "natural rights," no special things that governments are prohibited from doing by nature or God. As evidence for this belief I point to all of the terrible things that human beings have done to eachother over history, no divine hand stopped the brutality and nature stood idly by and watched as it has with all the other animals. What is special about man is-because of our unique social structure, language, and literacy- that we have managed to carve a certain amount of order out of the chaos of nature. We have developed laws that keep our base natures in check(more often than not) and over time we have put together certain ways of applying these laws. I am of the belief that a society based upon personal soveriegnty(i.e. a society based upon personal freedom and the ability to trade freely in goods, services, and ideas) produces the most freedom for the least cost and is the best starting point for a society.

In our society we do allow people to exchange their personal liberty, however we have decided that those rights are so vital that we only allow individuals to trade them in a handful of circumstances(universally government jobs). The fact that we allow people to trade their liberties even only in limited circumstances means that we, as a society, have decided that those rights can be exchanged. We simply do not allow it very often.

I'd like to point out the hypocrisy of the political process in the US. The absolute right to private property is invoked against environmentalists and animal welfare/animal rights advocates but forgotten when the government is trying to bust a dope ring or build some condos and a big parking lot downtown. In either case, grand juries or condo developments, there is no fair political process, no legitimate venue for the citizens to assert themselves, yet if they try to circumvent a sham political process then they're terrorists. A website that listed names and addresses is shut down, its collaborators jailed; protestors are hemmed in by barricades and "free speech zones" to separate them from whatever they're protesting; they are reversing the precedent in this country which maintained, in George Orwell's words, "If free speech means anything, it's the right to tell people what they don't want to hear." It's a two-party system, a slick politics of spectacle -- you, TSP, ought to recognize it, this politics of the spectacle, a spectacle of shiny progress and sacrifices for universal wealth and anti-terrorism, when you see it on the nightly news, and not just when you read about it in Spider Jerusalem comics. ;)


Honestly, you don't need to tell me that. Taking a look at some of my other postings(especialy when it comes to abortion) you'll see that I'm not exactly timid when it comes to calling our leaders on their bullshit and even calling for violence. The difference between you and I is not whether we believe there is a time and place for violence, but where we draw the line. I recognize that if I were to go out and kill a public official tomarrow that I would be arrested and convicted. Part of civil disobediance and revolutionary activity is that it carries with it the possability(and likelyhood) of incarceration. If you feel so strongly about animal rights that you are going to burn down a building, you cannot turn around and cry when you are arrested for arson. Hell, the whole point of civil disobediance is to get arrested and bring attention to your issue.

I, personally, am against "free speech zones," grand juries(freedom abhors secret proceedings), and the war on drugs. Still, this isn't The City and our lives are not being scripted by Warren Ellis. Actual engagement in the political process does still produce results and nonviolent means are currently the most effective means of bringing about political change. Take my home state of Illinois, for example. We have a candidate for governor(who is currently the Republican front runner) who is pro-choice, pro-gay rights, and pro concealed carry permits.

Face it: People are naturally assholes, no government goes one century without corruption, and corporations want you money, even if it means killing you and your family. Terrorism isn't the way you solve a problem. You must first learn the game. Then you can solve a problem.

If I want to save lab animals from a life of detergent drinking(detergent tastes nasty. Why would anyone drink it?) and non-sensical science experiments that offer no useful knowledge, then I must first learn the system. It's like how you need to learn the formulas before you can solve the math equations. You have to learn the rules to play the game. I'm so close to passing go and collecting $200.:p

Here's what has been established so far:
1. Just because it is legal doesn't make it right.
example: slavery was once legal, but it was morally wrong.

2. Morality is grey. Just because animals get hurt to make certain new cures and vaccines, doesn't mean that hurting any animal for whatever reason is going to be morally right.

3. idiots tend to flock to intelligent discussions.

4. Some people never answer questions posed to them, even when said questions follow directly from the things they have said.

If I want to save lab animals from a life of detergent drinking(detergent tastes nasty. Why would anyone drink it?) and non-sensical science experiments that offer no useful knowledge, then I must first learn the system. It's like how you need to learn the formulas before you can solve the math equations. You have to learn the rules to play the game. I'm so close to passing go and collecting $200.

You say this as if the system hasn't already built in its own safeguards against this. Take, for instance, academic research. In institutions throughout the US (and most 1st world countries), animal research is governed by an IRB (Institutional Review Board). At most institutions, this board includes scientists, at least one veternarian (sp?), and at least one layperson uninvolved in scientific pursuits. For any procedure, you must submit a request for approval to this board. If you do not justify your experiments, the number of animals you will use, how much pain might be caused, whether or not you are disrupting the animals' light-dark cycle, etc., it is turned down. You cannot do it without being subject to punishment. You cannot publish it or get it funded.