"Agua Girl" uknown@spamblock.net writes

"...I can't give money to PETA but I really don't have issues with other
people doing so.  (ok..maybe a little but it's not for me to judge)."

We all have to judge for ourselves..but we all have opinions and can exercise
ability to persuade. If it's a proven fact that PETA executives donated to
support a (now convicted) felon, then it's a bad idea to support PETA. The work
they do to support mistreatment is commendable, but the way they achieve that
goal is condemnable.

use bullying tactics to get people not to declaw and how shameful
that is and how we would give PETA a bad name.  Now come on...
that's funny."

Yes..it's funny. People like AmyGray and Sheryl are hysterical.

(snip)

I think a lot of people use "PETA" and "PETA supporters" as generic
terms for
people who care about and defend animals.  This is a testament to
their effective use of publicity and their ability to diseminate the
idea that animals have rights that should be observed.

(snip)

I explained it in detail in another post.  In short, it is a finacial
setback for those that profit from cruelty to animals.  Insurance
underwriters don't like to pay claims.  Insurance get very expensive
when someone keeps bombing building, cutting fences, releasing
animals.  When you have sworn enemies, it's too risky to operate a
business without insurance.  The idea is to close them down.  It
doesn't "save" existing animals, but it helps prevent more being bred
for and born into servitude.

Blowing up buildings can't save animals, but acts of liberations can,
though only a small percentage probably survive, more or less
depending on species.  There is no way to know the exact numbers.  If
only one survives it has beaten its odds of surviving inside the fur
farm or the laboratory.

No one expects everyone who cares about animals to be a secret bomber.
Very few people have the nerve, I don't.  I do expect you to stop
categorically condemning animal rightist vandals as "terrorists".  I
expect you to put their acts into perspective and to better understand
their motives.  I want you to see their acts as acts of self-defense
which, by legal definition, are acts intended to protect oneself or to
protect those unable to protect themselves.

For the record, my moral and financial support of people who do take
direct actions in defense of animals in no way interferes with my
welfare and rescue work.  I have been a feral cat caregiver and feral
cat activist since 1989.  I feed and oversee medical care for 80+
feral cats everyday along a route that carries me through three towns
and two counties.  I'm an industrial-strength feral cat trapper,
rehabilitator and feral kitten socializer.  There are currently 12
foster kittens (from 2 - 6 weeks) in my home; a feral mother and her
five neonates, born last Sunday in a trap; five feral cats, too old to
be released, living in a downstairs catroom built for this express
purpose; six feral cats recovering in traps in another downstairs room
after Monday's spay/neuter surgeries.  I won't mention the housecats
parked on the couch or the semi-ferals sleeping on the back deck.  I
own fifteen humane traps and they are in constant use, year round.

You can be both a welfarist and a rightist.  It's not an either/or
proposition.

That's your opinion and, frankly, I find it cowardly and inaccurate.
Sure, some people might be turned off to certain groups because of
their williness to break laws.  (I refuse to refer to property damage
as violence, since I think violence requires a victim and a building
or a computer disc can't suffer.)  But only those with an extremely
weak-willed commitment to the "cause" would turn their backs on
animals because they disagree with the tactics of a tiny minority of
animal advocates.  That would be akin to kicking the neighbor's dog
because you don't like the lady of the house.

Are you aware of the circumstances surrounding the passage of the 1985
Amendment to the Animal Welfare Act?  Did you know that, before the
Admendment, researchers were free to experiment on animals without the
use of anesthetics or analgesics?  Did you know there was no limit to
the number of procedures that could be performed on one animal?  No
requirement that experimentors euthanize animals experiencing
excruciating, unmanaged pain?  No mandated exercise time or
environmental enhancement for dogs and primates? (Still no such
requirement for cats!)  No official record-keeping to track the number
of animals used or the degree of their suffering?

The Amendment sought to change these few things, (not drastically
enough, IMO), and a majority of the scientific community fought the
changes tooth and claw throughout the early '80s.  When radical animal
rightists began to break into labs, take records, illegally photograph
caged animals living in their own filth, "steal" some of these animals
for independent veterinary analysis of their injuries, the public, as
well as many legislators, finally became aware of the torturous way
animals lived and died in research institutes and laboratories.

Public input at legislative hearings and at USDA implementaion
hearings came down hard on the side of the Amendment.  People were
sickened by what they learned from illegally obtained information.
The Amendment passed.

Do you understand what is meant by dialectics?  Do you undertand that
polarized ideologies and radical demands are essential to the forward
motion of ideas?  Look at it this way.  If, at legislative hearings on
the Animal Welfare Act, you have two groups asking for changes.  One
group demands the immediate abolition of animal research, the other
asks that cat enclosures be increased from 1.5 sq.ft. to 2.5 sq.ft.
Research institutes want no changes at all.

It's a given that a compromise will be reached.  The group that asks
for a little will get something, but it will be less than what they
ask for.  The group that asks for a lot will get less than it wants,
but more than was offered to the group asking for a little.  This is
the law of dialectics.  It governs the evolution of political and
social change.

Henry Silva, the former welfarist who, with his houseful of cats,
almost single-handedly negotiated an incremental end to animal
research at NYC and Columbia, used to say, (I'm paraphrasing here),
that he was grateful for the radicals because they made him look good.
They were the only reason institute directors agreed to talk with
him.  They figured if it wasn't him across the table, it would be the
radicals and they didn't want to risk having to bargain with them.
This is the law of dialectics.

Sometimes, laws must be broken for the greater good.  Laws aren't
immutable and they aren't automatically ethical or good just because
they're laws.  Remember Dred Scott.  If free people hadn't broken the
law  and "stolen" slaves, many Southern blacks would never have left
the plantations.  There is a parallel here to animal liberations.

Do you interact with the public in the course of your rescue work?  I
do and I can tell you that you don't educate compassion into people
and you can demonstrate empathy 'til the cows cow home and it doesn't
matter.  These things are internal; they are states of mind that
people must arrive at own their own.  People can learn to fake it, but
if they don't find their own way, it's just an act and it doesn't
last.

I said I'm a feral cat person.  We're like feral cats, we like to
operate off the radar.

If bombings are claimed, they are claimed by anonymous, amorphous
groups, not named individuals.  That would be plain stupid.

I disagree.  It's standing in and biting back for the animals. If a
woman decides not to buy a fur coat because she doesn't want to risk
the hassle, fur-trashing has worked.  If she wants to wear fur, let
her hide in the shadows or wear her fur in secret cabals with other
skin-wearers.  People who hurt animals for vanity or pay other people
to hurt animals for their vanity shouldn't get a wink of sleep.  They
should be afraid to look strangers in the eye.  If their own
consciences don't work, I hope the fear of spray paint does.

I'm not sure what "change" you are referring to.  AFAIK, most humans
already payed lip service to alleviating the suffering of the poor and
the infirmed.  Mother Theresa was a bang-up fund raiser, but she was
an ancient old nun asking for money for fly-covered infants.  Hard to
say "NO" to that.

Do you really think animal activists are "terrorising (sic) anyone who
would oppose" them?  Targets are not any old person that doesn't agree
with granting animals rights, they are the worst of animal profiteers
or consumers of animal products that represent the most egregious
violations of the integrety of animals, violations that have no
redeeming purpose whatsoever.

It doesn't bother me nearly as much as the "tactics" used on
laboratory animals, captive fur-bearers, circus animals, food and
fiber animals, every day of their lives.

Besides, if dictators limited themselves to aggression toward
inanimate objects, they would be counted amoung the more benign chiefs
of state.

What the f.ck are you talking about?  Direct action activists take
great care not to kill or physically harm any creatures during an
attack.  They have to, anything less would be a glaring moral and
philosophical inconsistency.

I think you've evaded my question.

Apparently, neither the IRS nor the FBI think these "terrorist links"
are sufficient to revoke PETA's non-profit status or charge them with
the shiny, new federal offense of "supporting and harboring
terrorists".  You must be a few steps to the right of the
conservative, Republican-led FBI.  How's the view from there?  Pretty
scary, I imagine, what with all these domestic terrorists running
around killing "everyone who opposes" them.

They blocked his way.  If he wanted to get into fistacuffs, he chose
the right place to do it.  He should have gone home.  He was prideful
and he got a bobo for his trouble.

Really?  Where are these transcripts available?  I'll be glad to pay
the court for copies.  All I need is the name and address of the court
that heard the case, the parties named in the suit and the opening
date of the hearing.  This info should be right there on the first
page of the transcript.  Thanks in advance.

(snip)

I think that pretty much sums up your dedication to the protection of
animals.  Whatever people want to do, it's okay.  We're humans, we do
what we want.  It's our god-given right to eat puppies for breakfast
and run high voltage through the hearts of beagles.  What's the big
deal?  No harm done, so no justice should follow.  With friends like
you, animals don't need enemies.

Isn't violence directed at the beagles wrong?  Why aren't you
castigating HLS and the research institutes that buy their animals?

Then the Huntington exec should have let the police escort him into
the building, don't you think?  He pushed past someone standing in
front of him on public property.  He used violence to get his way.  I
thought that was a no-no.

If you don't see the difference between tearing apart non-combatants
and spraying paint on a dowager's mink coat, there's something
seriously wrong with your critical thinking skills.

Strawman.  Animal rights activists DO NOT believe that "any method is
acceptable".  They are very careful to avoid causing harm to any
creatures.  It's right there in ALF's credo and, at least in the US,
no human has died or been injured by any direct action conducted by
animal rights activists.

Now there was that decades old incident on the East coast when agents
infiltrated an animal rights group and convinced a woman, known to all
the group to be developmentally-challenged, to try to kill an
industrialist or somesuch.  It was a clear case of police entrapment
and the charges were dismissed.

I've heard urban myths about loggers being killed by tree spikes left
by ELF.  But I've searched high and low and the only thing I've been
able to verify is that one logger got cut by a saw chain that snapped
during the logging of an area ELF claimed had been spiked.  The spike
was never found and ELF admitted it was just a scare tactic to slow
down logging; they could never gain access to the site because of
tight security.

I suppose a secretary, somewhere could have been cut by a razor blade
in an envelope containing hatemail, assuming she stuck her hand in the
envelope and moved it back and forth in a sawing motion.

Hmmm, are you thinking of the Bush government?

You should be well aware of the sound of snickering, Abby Frank a/k/a NYWriter,
a/k/a Awriteny. One thing I'll hand to you, you seem to have had a change of
heart from the time you were referred to as the "Declaw Queen." I hope that is
sincere.

Sherry