Ethics (was: Who's "Him"?)

'An introduction to bunny hugging

We are kind to a select few animals, and horribly cruel to many others

Posted By DANIEL WILSON

Posted 1 day ago

"All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this
hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals." -- Peter Singer

When little Claudio died in his mother's arms a few months ago, his
mother behaved like any mother would upon losing her baby: she
grieved. For several days, Gana, a gorilla at Germany's Muenster
Zoo, carried and stroked her dead son, trying to revive him.

Dr. Bill Sellers, a primatologist at Manchester University, says gorillas
can experience pain and loss similar to humans, "but of course it's
extremely difficult to prove scientifically."

Still, a growing number of scientists are recognizing what pet owners
have known all along -- that animals have feelings; perhaps not exactly
like us, but they have them nonetheless.

Some animals have demonstrated a wide range of emotions, including
grief, guilt, revenge and even altruism. Elephants have risked their own
lives to help other animals. People have witnessed buffaloes sliding
across the ice, apparently for the sheer pleasure of it. Captive dolphins
have been known to "get even" with abusive trainers and farmers tell
of cows calling for days when their calves are taken away.

Dogs are even prescribed anti-depressants these days; further
evidence that animals have emotions.

According to Marc Bekoff, a biology professor at the University of
Colorado, "If we feel jealousy, then dogs and wolves and elephants
and chimpanzees feel jealousy. Animal emotions are not necessarily
identical to ours but there's no reason to think they should be. Their
hearts and stomachs and brains also differ from ours, but this doesn't
stop us from saying they have hearts, stomachs and brains. There's
dog joy and chimpanzee joy and pig joy, and dog grief, chimpanzee
grief and pig grief."

So why aren't we nicer to animals? If they share many of the same
feelings that we do, wouldn't they want to avoid pain, suffering
and death, like we do?

Of course most people will say they love animals. But our actions
speak louder than our words. We're really only kind to a select
few, and unspeakably cruel towards others.

We hunt and kill animals for "sport," lock them in cages for our
amusement and torture them for scientific curiosity. We even
consume their flesh and wear their skins.

If such atrocities were committed against our own kind, we would
be repulsed and outraged, yet we have no problem doing these
things to other sentient animals, provided we don't have to think
too much about it.

Enter the animal rights activists, those annoying bunny-huggers
whose mission in life is to remind us of how barbaric and nasty
we are to animals; always trying to make us feel guilty for
enjoying our steaks, wearing our leather jackets and going to the
circus.

As you may know I'm one of those bunny-huggers, but my goal
is not to make anyone feel bad. It's simply to try and end the
suffering we humans have created.

My hope is that by educating the public about how we treat
animals, people will choose compassion over cruelty; that just
because we can exploit and kill others doesn't mean we should.
Live and let live.

But discussing animal rights is a touchy subject. Some people
get offended, even belligerent, when it's suggested the animals
we use suffer as we do. Others argue that if you're defending
animals, you've turned your back on your own kind.

I don't see why we can't do both. A lot of animal rights people,
including myself, support organizations aimed at reducing human
suffering too. My circle of compassion is big enough to include
humans AND animals. It doesn't have to be one or the other. A
mother doesn't tell her children, "Sorry kids, but I can only love
one of you," and neither should we.

And it's not that I love animals more than people; I just don't want
to see anyone suffer. A parent who stops his child from kicking
the family cat doesn't love the cat more than the child, he just
wants his child to grow up to be a kind, caring and compassionate
human being.

That's what I want too. I want us to be kinder than we currently are.

Gandhi said, "The greatness of a nation, and its moral progress,
can be judged by the way it treats its animals."

The advances we've made as a species don't mean much if we still
enslave, exploit and murder those that are weaker than us. I know
we are better than this. I believe we can, and should, extend our
circle of compassion to include the animals.


Dan Wilson is a vegan, environmentalist, animal rights activist and
public education director for the Niagara Centre for Animal Rights
Awareness. He is a member of The Standard's community editorial
board. Contact him at [...].

http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/A...aspx?e=1272893

pearl wrote:
"Ron Hamilton" wrote in message m...

From: Ron Hamilton
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.17 (Windows/20080914)
MIME-Version: 1.0
NNTP-Posting-Host: 67.101.104.64

From: Rudy Canoza
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Is fraud ethically permitted and morally correct behaviour, ball?








I'm still working on the ipse dixit thing, so I have no clue about this.

Actually, we aren't very nice to each other a lot of the time.

pearl wrote:
|
| So why aren't we nicer to animals? If they share many of the same
| feelings that we do, wouldn't they want to avoid pain, suffering
| and death, like we do?
|

"FOB" wrote in message ...

pearl wrote:
|
| So why aren't we nicer to animals? If they share many of the same
| feelings that we do, wouldn't they want to avoid pain, suffering
| and death, like we do?

Actually, we aren't very nice to each other a lot of the time.

'The Monstrosity of Animal Exploitation

Published by cyrano2 at 7:14 pm under Animal Cruelty, Animal
Liberation, Animal Rights, Brutality, Cruel Idiots, Meat Industrial
Complex, Moral Blinders, Speciesism

[!]
(Seal - Fur - 26) More cleaning of bloody seal skins about ship.
This is what we see when people wear fur.
[Editor's Note: photo and caption credits go to All Creatures
at www.all-creatures.org]

"On The Monstrosity of Animal Exploitation and Abuse, and the
Causation of Slavery, Genocide, and War"

By David Irving

SINCE THE ADVENT OF CIVILIZATION almost every nation from
the smallest to the largest has struggled through periods of unbearable
violence. Looking back the world finds its trail littered with the history
of war and bloodshed. Almost everyone alive today has experienced
nothing but war throughout their entire lives. Wherever we look it is
there. World War I, World War II, Israel-Palestine, Korea, South Africa,
Guatemala, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Khmer Rouge, El Salvador, Gulf War,
Rwanda, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq. This list barely makes a dent in the
number of wars fought in the 20th and early 21st Centuries. Over 160
million people are dead because of these wars. That is a staggering
figure. And over it all hangs the fear of a massive nuclear conflagration.

Just how much more does it take before the world stops long enough
to ask how it all happened and what can be done about it? Isaac
Bashevis Singer answered the latter part of the question most precisely
when he wrote "as long as human beings will go on shedding the blood
of animals, there will never be any peace. There will be no justice as
long as man will stand with a knife or a gun and destroy those who are
weaker than he is."

The means for putting an end to war is, therefore, not easy but perfectly
conceivable, if we would only avail ourselves of it, and has, in fact,
been staring us in the face for centuries. The exploitation and abuse of
animals must be stopped. That is the simple (but, admittedly not easy
to implement) answer. And if it should seem all too simple, even
simpletonian, then let us take a look at the impact on the world the
abuse of animals has made. That should clarify the issue.

[!]
(Dolphin - Slaughter - 03) These Japanese fishermen haul the
butchered bodies of these once free dolphins into their boat.
They killed sixty of these beautiful living souls in one day.

THE "NORMALIZATION" OF ABUSE

Charles Patterson's well researched, thought-provoking book Eternal
Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust illuminates the
dark past out of which animal abuse and exploitation emerged. In the
long march from the stone age to civilization early humans began to
move from a life support system based on opportunistic hunting and
gathering to one of domesticating plants and animals. Domestication
was not, however, just a cooperative venture in which animals willingly
complied. In order to bend animals to their will, humans had to use
cunning and deception while resorting to some of their most brutal
capabilities. To avoid overpopulation of their herds they would have
needed to sterilize some of the males. As Patterson describes, they
would likely have accomplished that in the same way some herders in
various parts of the world are still doing it, by holding the male down
and crushing his testicles. Other means by which herders controlled
captive animals were whips, chains, shackles, and branding to show
individual ownership.

The domestication of animals changed the relationship with animals
that people had previously established. Animals were no longer held in
ancestral esteem, nor were they any longer regarded in the same light
as everything else that lived, including the rocks, the trees, the earth
itself, the sun, the moon, and the stars. These were all soul-possessing
entities. But the domestication of animals brought a change in their
status from one of respect (or fear) to one in which they were
ruthlessly subjected to the selfish interests of the herders. As noted
by Mr. Patterson, Sigmund Freud wrote that "in the course of his
development towards culture man acquired a dominating position over
his fellow-creatures in the animal kingdom. Not content with his
supremacy, however, he began to place a gulf between his nature and
theirs. He denied the possession of reason to them, and to himself he
attributed an immortal soul, and made claims to a divine descent which
permitted him to annihilate the bond of community between him and
the animal kingdom."

As the human desire for acquisition grew, the process of domesticating
animals provided a model by which tribes could also acquire the wealth
of their neighbors. They simply applied the same brutal techniques that
had been used successfully to enslave animals: whipping, shackles,
chains, castration of males, separation of females, branding,
imprisonment, and murder. Over time, tribal battles and population
growth expanded and evolved into full scale wars.

The core ingredient in the process of one human group conquering
another was that of dehumanization. Dehumanization meant mentally
transforming the image of a respected neighbor with whom a tribe
cooperated for each other's mutual benefit, to the image of some kind
of "beast." The ideal was to select one that was particularly loathsome
and repugnant to the tribe preparing for warfare. Once that was
accomplished it was easy to rationalize the most atrocious and barbaric
kind of treatment in accomplishing the conqueror's goals, including in
the Nazi Holocaust where they herded their enemies naked (like animals
are) into showers and gassed them.

[!]
(Rabbit - Meat - 13) The skin of the innocent rabbit is then slit along
the legs and around the feet. Then the skin is pulled off his or her body,
as seen here. The skin is then sold to make "cute bunny fur" clothing
and trim for children, whose parents unwittingly condition them to be
future fur buyers, instead of teaching them the truth about the horror
and suffering that lines each piece of fur.

ANIMALS IN THE SYMBOLOGY OF DOMINATION AND HATRED

This has been the pattern of conquest throughout human history.
Some examples include the massacres of the indigenous people of the
American plains, the enslavement and brutalization of Africans by
Europeans and Americans, the Nazi Holocaust, and the war in Vietnam.
The conquerors mentally turn their victims into animals or insects,
describing them as beasts, monkeys, gorillas, swine, pigs, whining curs,
mad dogs, monkeys, and termites. Once the victims have been relegated
to less than human status, they can be whipped, chained, raped, tortured,
humiliated, blown up, and murdered as desired. Hutu leaders described
Tutsis as cockroaches and snakes during the Rwanda massacres. In
Nazi Germany, as has been well documented, the Nazis defined Jews as
rats and pests, which, like animals, were without rights and worthy of
life only at the discretion of the superior German master race.

Certainly the connection between the enslavement of animals with that of
human beings is there to be discerned. The follow-up, defined as war, is
also clearly visible. How could it be otherwise? It is not likely that one
group of human beings is going to sit idly by while another group
subjugates and enslaves it. Unlike animals, humans have the means and
the will to fight back and to seek revenge along the way.

Patterson has shown that the whole process of slavery, genocide, and
war got started when our ancestors began herding innocent animals
together against their will. Herding constitutes animal slavery with a path
leading towards human slavery, genocide, and war. As shown, that path
had to include positive to negative image transference which could only
have been forged after animals were rendered subservient and inferior to
humans. Herding would certainly have destroyed the sense of kinship
early human felt towards animals, opening the door to redefining their
place in the new world over which humans were gradually taking
ownership. From that point forward, it takes little imagination to envision
our ancestors corralling and clubbing innocent animals to death whenever
they felt a need. Is it any wonder that today workers club defenseless
baby seals to death in Canada for economic gain? And we ask ourselves
how anyone could be so ghastly cruel and inhumane?

If we want to put on the brakes and come to a screeching halt when it
comes to violence and war, maybe it is time to put a stop to activities
like enslaving and abusing animals against their will!

[!]
(Fox - Hunting - 02) When dogs are trained to hunt in a pack, a frenzy
results. If they catch the fox, which happens all too often, they all want
a piece of the flesh and a taste of the blood. The result is that the fox is
ripped to pieces. This is a well known result of fox hunting, and shows
how depraved and ungodly the people are who engage in this so-called
"sport."

The enslavement and abuse of animals along with other ignoble
activities like vivisection, trapping, hunting, slaughter, and other cruel
abuses of animals are warfare's constant attendants. After centuries
they have become the accepted norms and are ingrained in our culture
often involving the "best" people. Women of privilege proudly display
expensive furs at church, social, and cultural functions and show no
concern about the cruelty required to obtain them: steel toothed traps
that bite cruelly into whatever anatomical part they manage to snare is
one method; anal electrocution, neck snapping, and gassing are other
favorites in the mink trade. Why does a custom that causes such
immense suffering to animals not cause us to question our sanity?
Animal researchers who abuse animals during the week and then sit
in the front pews of their churches on Sunday mornings or sit on the
boards of directors of important companies and rake in enormous
salaries, deserve the same question. It applies with equal force to
leaders of commerce and culture who either are involved in, approve
of, or cast a blind eye toward animal abuse in laboratories, then step
forward proudly to accept civic honors from their communities for
exceptional services rendered. And Presidents and Trustees as well as
faculty sitting in lofty professorial chairs at universities which condone
and approve animal research do not escape the question either.

In the same spirit of acquiescence to habit, newspapers write editorials
heralding the start of the hunting season and promote the sport of
killing innocent animals with high powered rifles and telescopic sights.
The loss of human character that results from something so
spectacularly unfair and brutal merits little consideration by people
intent on continuing the bully practice of destroying those "who are
weaker" than they are, just as Isaac Bashevis Singer pointed out in
the quote noted at the beginning of this article. Moreover, the seeds
granting his government the right to enslave some weaker opponent are
already planted in the soil of the hunter's mind, since he agrees with the
fundamental concept of "might makes right," except for those few who
come to their senses and rebel by refusing to hunt. Meanwhile, large
sectors of the economy, like the pharmaceutical, meat and dairy
industries, have as their foundation some form of animal abuse whether
engaging in gruesome biologicalexperiments, cutting the feet off of cattle
or ripping off their hides while they are still living, or turning cows into
milk producing machines, and many, many other abuses that are
abundantly documented by animal welfare workers. It is small wonder
that these industries are conscienceless when they are confronted with
their deeds. Animal abuse pervades everything. Why should they not
profit economically and take comfort in the same platitudes governing
our attitudes towards animals that permeate all the civilized world
except for that Orwellian minority that has its eyes wide open?

Today, eleven thousand years after the first domestication of animals,
human beings have become totally dependent on animals for their
existence. Even those who want no part of animal exploitation find it
almost inescapable. Twenty-seven billion animals are killed each year
in the United States alone just for food. An additional one hundred
million animals are experimented upon in animal research laboratories
internationally by the animal research industry annually. Dead animals
and animal parts collected by rendering plants from slaughter houses,
research laboratories, road kills, and every conceivable source are
turned into by-products around the world for use in just about
everything from cosmetics, soap, and plastics to the automobile tires
that transport people from place to place. They are even used in film
for moving pictures so that when people go to a movie their pleasure
may in part be derived from the by-products of animals that may have
been tortured in animal research laboratories. People are literally
washing their clothing, cleaning their homes, and bathing themselves in
dead animals unless they take care to use soap brands not made with
by-products. For entertainment purposes animals are cruelly exploited
in circuses, crammed into small cages in zoos, compelled to perform
in small spaces in aquariums, forced to race against their will in horse
and dog races, beaten into submission where most suffer lung damage
in pulling sleds in Iditarods, and stalked mercilessly until they are killed
by sadistic cowards in canned Safari hunts. Yet the overwhelming
majority of people are unconcerned and the issue of animal slavery,
their abuse and exploitation merits only a "ho-hum" unless an animal
rights organization mounts an exhibit and attempts to show the world
that the exploitation and abuse of animals is the core reason for slavery,
genocide, and war. Then "ho-hum" becomes an outrage directed at the
animal rights activists who dare to show the world what it is doing.

Mainstream media organizations consistently refer to animal rights
people in negative terms like "zealots" or "extremists" while the forces
of commerce try to brainwash everyone into accepting the view that the
rights of animals has no significance. After all, what is an animal? Just a
thing to use as we see fit, undeserving of respect, certainly not to be
confused with having anything to do with the high intellectual plateaus
upon which human beings live out their lives, and certainly not to be
compared to human beings in any way no matter how alike they may
be in form, body, the ability to express emotion, or, as science is now
beginning to discover, take an ethical position,. (See Animals at Play
(Animals and Ethics), Marc Bekoff, University of Temple Press.)

But one very important fact is beginning to take root in our consciousness.
When we stop abusing and exploiting animals, we tend to stop abusing
and exploiting our neighbors. We may then be open to finding new
directions for channeling our energies, and those directions could lead
towards a world able to function without slavery, genocide, and war.

Abolitionists believed and lived by the magnificent concept that all people
are equal. Animal rights people believe and live by the magnificent concept
that the sanctity of life extends not just to human beings, but to all of life.
It is a vision that has also been most eloquently expressed by Albert
Einstein who said, "Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by
widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the
whole of nature in its beauty."

This vision has not only philosophical, ethical, and spiritual implications,
it has immense practical value. Without its realization, society will be
forever hindered from moving to those higher levels of integration towards
which all progressive social movements strive. Without that our world of
war will continue without end.

Today the animal rights movement is gaining momentum exponentially.
It is moving forward demanding that the enslavement, abuse, and torture
of animals stop. History teaches well. Injustice and wrong can never
survive over time. And those countries that rely on it are living on a cancer
that will eventually devour them from the inside out. Nor can those societies
withstand the forces of truth, conscience, compassion, and necessity. And
these forces tell us that the exploitation and abuse of animals is inextricably
bound with slavery, genocide, and war. It's quite likely, then, that when
we stop shedding the blood of animals, we will stop shedding the blood
of our fellow human beings and we may, at long last, find peace.


David Irving is a Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude graduate of
Columbia University, class of 1980, School of General Studies. He
subsequently obtained his Masters in Music Composition at Columbia
and founded the new music organization Phoenix in New York City.

http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=792

Gitmo, Abu Ghraib.

pearl wrote:
| "FOB" wrote in message
| ...
||
|| pearl wrote:
|||
||| So why aren't we nicer to animals? If they share many of the same
||| feelings that we do, wouldn't they want to avoid pain, suffering
||| and death, like we do?
||
|| Actually, we aren't very nice to each other a lot of the time.
|
| 'The Monstrosity of Animal Exploitation
|

In article ,
"FOB" wrote:

Crossposted ot crap.

PLONK!

I had fun brightlighting rabbits at night in the west Texas desert.
An AR-15 decapitates them nicely, and gives me moving target practice.

They are also delicious.
--
Peace! Om

"Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive." -- Dalai Lama

"Hoots" wrote in message .. .
pearl wrote:
"Ron Hamilton" wrote in message m...

From: Ron Hamilton
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.17 (Windows/20080914)
MIME-Version: 1.0
NNTP-Posting-Host: 67.101.104.64

From: Rudy Canoza
Reply-To:
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.17 (Windows/20080914)
MIME-Version: 1.0
NNTP-Posting-Host: 67.101.104.64

Is fraud ethically permitted and morally correct behaviour, ball?








I'm still working on the ipse dixit thing, so I have no clue about this.

'ipsedixitism
...
IN BRIEF: n. - An unsupported dogmatic assertion.
...
Latin "Ipse dixit" ("Himself said [it]") ..
...
Ipsedixitisms are given as though /absolutely no supporting argument/
is necessary.
...
Modern dictionaries dramatically narrow the class by associating it
with arbitrary, dogmatic belief, implying that the argument has been
repeated after having been challenged2.
...'
http://www.answers.com/topic/ipsedixitism

'dogmatic adj.
...
Characterized by an authoritative, arrogant assertion of unproved
or unprovable principles. See synonyms at dictatorial.
...'
http://www.answers.com/topic/dogmatic

TSH.

"Omelet" wrote in message news
In article ,
"FOB" wrote:

Crossposted ot crap.

PLONK!

I had fun brightlighting rabbits at night in the west Texas desert.

'in·hu·man
adj.
1. Lacking kindness, pity, or compassion; cruel.
2. Deficient in emotional warmth; cold.
3. Not suited for human needs: an inhuman environment.
4. Not of ordinary human form; monstrous.
...
inhuman
adj 1: without compunction or human feeling; "in cold blood";
"cold-blooded killing"; "insensate destruction" [syn: cold,
cold-blooded, insensate]
...'
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?qinhuman

An AR-15 decapitates them nicely, and gives me moving target practice.

'AR-15 (for Armalite model 15, often mistaken for Automatic Rifle
or Assault Rifle) is the common name for the widely-owned[9]
semi-automatic rifle that was developed into the fully automatic M16
and M4 carbine assault rifles, which are currently in use by the
United States military. AR-15 was the original name for what
became the militarily designated M16, the assault rifle first used by
the U.S. in the Vietnam War.
...'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AR-15

They are also delicious.

'The big problem we have before us in the meat industry is to how
to reduce the levels of fat in meat without leaving it dry and tasteless
when we eat it. Fat contributes a lot of taste to meat, particularly
those flavours that allow us to recognize one species from another.
Without it, we may end up with just a bland, general meaty taste.
...'
http://www.aps.uoguelph.ca/~swatland/ch2_4.htm

"The combination of fat with sugar or fat with salt seems to have
a very particular neurochemical effect on the brain," Ann Kelley,
a professor at the University of Wisconsin (search) who
co-authored the unpublished study, said on the Fox News Channel.
"What that does is release certain chemicals that are similar to drugs,
like heroin and morphine."
...'
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,93031,00.html

--
Peace! Om

"Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries.
Without them humanity cannot survive." -- Dalai Lama

I'm guessing that has to be an automatically-generated sig'..

On Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:37:53 -0000, "pearl" wrote:

'An introduction to bunny hugging

We are kind to a select few animals, and horribly cruel to many others

Posted By DANIEL WILSON

Posted 1 day ago

"All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this
hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals." -- Peter Singer

When little Claudio died in his mother's arms a few months ago, his
mother behaved like any mother would upon losing her baby: she
grieved. For several days, Gana, a gorilla at Germany's Muenster
Zoo, carried and stroked her dead son, trying to revive him.

Dr. Bill Sellers, a primatologist at Manchester University, says gorillas
can experience pain and loss similar to humans, "but of course it's
extremely difficult to prove scientifically."

No it's not. Watch them. Observe that they feel that way. Duh.

Still, a growing number of scientists are recognizing what pet owners
have known all along -- that animals have feelings; perhaps not exactly
like us, but they have them nonetheless.

Some animals have demonstrated a wide range of emotions, including
grief, guilt, revenge and even altruism. Elephants have risked their own
lives to help other animals. People have witnessed buffaloes sliding
across the ice, apparently for the sheer pleasure of it. Captive dolphins
have been known to "get even" with abusive trainers and farmers tell
of cows calling for days when their calves are taken away.

A hen carries on too when her cock is taken away. I'm sure
there's frustration and sorrow involved but it's more of a call
than anything else, imo.

Dogs are even prescribed anti-depressants these days; further
evidence that animals have emotions.

According to Marc Bekoff, a biology professor at the University of
Colorado, "If we feel jealousy, then dogs and wolves and elephants
and chimpanzees feel jealousy. Animal emotions are not necessarily
identical to ours but there's no reason to think they should be. Their
hearts and stomachs and brains also differ from ours, but this doesn't
stop us from saying they have hearts, stomachs and brains. There's
dog joy and chimpanzee joy and pig joy, and dog grief, chimpanzee
grief and pig grief."

Since we know that many animals see, hear, smell, taste and
feel better than we do, it would take an incredible amount of NOT
thinking things through, not recognising the OBVIOUS, etc, in order
for someone to be too stupid to understand that animals have feelings
and emotions. Is it possible that there are families of people who can't
understand that, and bring their kids up to be too stupid and ignorant
to ever get a clue? People like: Goo? Yes, it may very stupidly well be.

So why aren't we nicer to animals?

Inconsideration by people who don't give a ****--which INCLUDES
misnomer advocates like yourself BTW!--and deliberate intents to
kill are the main reasons. Test it and see. I would guess those two
things are responsibe for a very large percentage of human inflicted
suffering...maybe 90% of it or more.

If they share many of the same
feelings that we do, wouldn't they want to avoid pain, suffering
and death, like we do?

Sure. They might even like experiencing their lives when
they are of positive value, but misnomer advocates can't
factor that part into their little ethical equation. Think about
that in Rupert's case if you want a clear display of the absurd
restrictivity imposed by the limitations of the misnomer. He
would like to feel good about encouraging cage free egg
production, but: His formula for calculating the ethics of
human influence on animals DOESN'T INCLUDE THE
LIVES OF THE ANIMALS HE'S PRETENDING TO WANT
TO ENCOURAGE LIFE FOR! AND HE'S A MATH GUY!!!
How can such absurdity be the case with a guy who might
actually be getting somewhere near obtaining a PhD???
IN MATH?????????????????????????????????????
For real. But! He's shown signs of being able to appreciate
some tiny bit of the lives of some very few farm animals,
maybe. That means he appears to be aware of the HUGE
other universe of screamingly obvious things he's been
refusing to take into consideration...he found some tiny
crack through which he's been able to view a teensy
glimpse...which I guess makes him a genius amoung
misnomer advocates. But his "progress" toward an AW
line of thinking is so slow that it doesn't appear to be
moving at all, unless it's move backward. It's sad, so sad,
it's a sad sad situation, and it's getting more and more
absurd...

Of course most people will say they love animals. But our actions
speak louder than our words. We're really only kind to a select
few, and unspeakably cruel towards others.

We hunt and kill animals for "sport,"

Human hunting is more humane that the things misnomer
advocates want to impose, but they inconsiderately don't
give a damn. So there we see both reasons I pointed out
before can be applied to this case: Some humans want to
deliberately and humanely kill the animals for sport and
more importantly to maintain the best sort of population
size for the environment. Other humans don't give a damn
but are disturbed to think about human hunting, and for
that reason they would cause MUCH more suffering for
those same animals AND OTHERS by allowing the
population to increase so far beyond an acceptable size
for the environment that it causes disaster to the wildlife
which inhabit it. Or introduce nonhuman predators who
would cause a LOT more suffering in more terrible ways,
and the "best" that could come out of that would be
eventual starvation for the nonhuman predators if they
manage to survive and reproduce successfully enough
to reach that point.

lock them in cages for our amusement

That's often a bad one. Catching wild animals and
confining them is a lot different than raising them though,
for reasons which are obvious but still misnomer advocates
can't appreciate. They don't give a damn, again, we see.

and torture them for scientific curiosity.

All animals benefit from things learned through animal
research, yet again we see that misnomer advocates are
too inconsiderate to appreciate that fact even when it
applies to themselves, their animals, their friends, and
their families.

We even consume their flesh and wear their skins.

Animals that are dead when we eat their flesh and
wear their skins don't suffer from it being done.

If such atrocities were committed against our own kind, we would
be repulsed and outraged, yet we have no problem doing these
things to other sentient animals, provided we don't have to think
too much about it.

We provide billions of animals with life and habitat
because we make use of animal products. Many
of those animals--quite possibly the vast majority of
them--have decent lives of positive value.

Enter the animal rights activists,

"animal rights" activist is a HORRIBLY DISHONEST
misnomer when applied to domestic animals. It is a direct
insult to the animals themselves that the misnomer
advocates refer to themselves in such a horribly dishonest
and contemtptible way, since they don't want to provide
domestic animals with rigths or anything at all.

those annoying bunny-huggers
whose mission in life is to remind us of how barbaric and nasty
we are to animals;

· Vegans contribute to the deaths of animals by their use of
wood and paper products, electricity, roads and all types of
buildings, their own diet, etc... just as everyone else does.
What they try to avoid are products which provide life
(and death) for farm animals, but even then they would have
to avoid the following items containing animal by-products
in order to be successful:

Tires, Paper, Upholstery, Floor waxes, Glass, Water
Filters, Rubber, Fertilizer, Antifreeze, Ceramics, Insecticides,
Insulation, Linoleum, Plastic, Textiles, Blood factors, Collagen,
Heparin, Insulin, Solvents, Biodegradable Detergents, Herbicides,
Gelatin Capsules, Adhesive Tape, Laminated Wood Products,
Plywood, Paneling, Wallpaper and Wallpaper Paste, Cellophane
Wrap and Tape, Abrasives, Steel Ball Bearings

always trying to make us feel guilty for
enjoying our steaks, wearing our leather jackets

The meat industry provides life for the animals that it
slaughters, and the animals live and die as a result of it
as animals do in other habitats. They also depend on it for
their lives as animals do in other habitats. If people consume
animal products from animals they think are raised in decent
ways, they will be promoting life for more such animals in the
future. People who want to contribute to decent lives for
livestock with their lifestyle must do it by being conscientious
consumers of animal products, because they can not do it by
being vegan.
From the life and death of a thousand pound grass raised
steer and whatever he happens to kill during his life, people
get over 500 pounds of human consumable meat...that's well
over 500 servings of meat. From a grass raised dairy cow people
get thousands of dairy servings. Due to the influence of farm
machinery, and *icides, and in the case of rice the flooding and
draining of fields, one serving of soy or rice based product is
likely to involve more animal deaths than hundreds of servings
derived from grass raised animals. Grass raised animal products
contribute to fewer wildlife deaths, better wildlife habitat, and
better lives for livestock than soy or rice products. ·

and going to the circus.

It's a safe bet that many and probably the vast majority
of performing animals have decent lives of positive value,
yet misnomer advocates are too inconsiderate to appreciate
any of them. We see again that misnomer advocates don't
give a damn. They are consistent in that.

As you may know I'm one of those bunny-huggers, but my goal
is not to make anyone feel bad. It's simply to try and end the
suffering we humans have created.

My hope is that by educating the public

LOL!!! That almost certainly coming from someone who
can't even appreciate the lives of dairy cattle is amusing
in a most pathetic sort of way.

about how we treat animals, people will choose compassion
over cruelty;

People who believe that ALL animal farming is wrong are
incapable of making a distinction between which is and
which is not, making their opinion NECESSARILY
inferior to that of the VAAAAAAST majority of more normal
humans who can think much more freely without the absurd
restrictions imposed by the misnomer. Also, people who are
unable to consider the animals lives are NECESSARILY
unable to consider whether or not a practice is cruel
TO THE ANIMALS.

On Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:13:51 -0400, "FOB" wrote:

Actually, we aren't very nice to each other a lot of the time.

True, but that's for a thread about human hugging. Changing
the subject is a misnomer advocate trick. Misnomer advocates
--or eliminationists--can not appreciate the fact that millions of
livestock animals have decent lives of positive value. They're
opposed to seeing it become popular for people to take that into
consideration, because doing so suggests that providing decent
animal welfare for livestock could be ethically equivalent to their
elimination objective which they extremely dishonestly cloak
withing the gross misnomer "animal rights" in order to create
confusion...so people who are actually in favor of AW will sometimes
contribute to eliminationist organizations by mistake. One misnomer
advocate in these ngs was--astoundingly--honest enough to
publically admit he believes the vast majority of contributors
to PeTA are not in favor of the elimination objective. That same
advocate also suggested I kill myself rather than point out the
differences between AW and the misnomer.