This is not so much a question as a comment. I recently donated money to PETA so I have the right to express this opinion. For 16 years I have been disgusted with animal rights groups who claim to do everything to support animals but do not do the simplest thing: ostracize non-vegetarians, in particular, ANY one who claims to be "pro-life" or works in the legal system who does not want to make the insignificant sacrifice of being vegetarian. I STRONGLY encourage ANY medical personnel to deny such persons medical treatment. If you work for a gas, electric, or water company, deny such persons your services. It is YOUR right to do business with whom you want. If you are a teacher, refuse to teach them. If you are a real estate agent, refuse to sell them a home. I absolutely LOVED seeing such nazis get crushed and burned in the World Trade Center & Pentagon attacks. Such persons do not actually feel pain. Therefore, it is NOT "violence". Only an idiot would think otherwise. I thought it was hilarious to see them fall out of buildings. I feel sorry only for the vegetarians who died. Anti-drug, anti-sex, and religious fanatics have absolutely no qualms about forcing their beliefs upon others through law and legislation. They do not limit their influence to just their homes, businesses or private organizations. They complain and terrorize tv and radio stations because of homosexual sex or if someone promotes atheism or vegetarianism. They violently oppose the appointment of Dr. Peter Singer at Princeton University, even though it is Princeton's right to hire if Princeton chooses. Now, only a subhuman MORON would complain about anything *I* say. It is my MORAL and LEGAL right to assert what I believe is right, and I certainly publicly do. -------------------------- It's been a long time, apparently, since I last posted to a newsgroup. I didn't even think they existed any longer! I was hoping that if/when I returned to them, they would be much calmer, less controversial places, with readers working diligently to sort out their differences, etc. I know that there are plenty of people who work very hard doing that. Still, it seems it couldn't hurt to jump into the raging arena once in a while. Once again I read some anti-abortionists insulting and deriding vegetarianism. Once again these idiots are shooting themselves in the foot (or mouth, or anus, or whatever). I read on the internet recently of an anti-abortion rally in Washington, DC recently. The idiot organizers of the event had the nerve to refuse to let a gay and lesbian anti-abortion group march. Yet, the organizers let a million subhuman Christian and religious anti-abs march, even though religion is absolutely no reason to oppose (or support) abortion. These same organizers have turned away anti-ab atheists, even though the anti-ab atheists (and gays) oppose abortion at least for a sensible reason: the possibility of fetal pain. Major anti-abortion and religious organizations have absolutely NO moral right to complain or be mad about not enough support since they turn away people who are ultimately working for the same end (although for different reasons)! And, now regarding MY personal views on abortion: NObody is a "pro-lifer" if they are not a vegetarian. I STRONGLY support outlawing breeding of animals for food and pet shops, and unless you are an Eskimo, the hunting and eating of animals, too. In particular, I would put anti-abortionists in prison for life if they are caught eating meat. I strongly support ANY business's and government's right to deny services to anti-abortionist meat-eaters. If you are a surgeon, refuse to save them when they are having a heart attack. If you are the head of a water company or electric company, turn off their water and electricity. Let them survive on their own. If you are a lawyer, do not give them legal help. Anti-abortionists who don't work on any other difficult issues have it INCREDIBLY easy. They concern themselves with only ONE little and statistically small issue: what fraction of the population has an abortion in the third trimester? 1%? 2%? They are not fighting MANY industries which rake in BILIONS of dollars for breeding, confining, torturing, and murdering BILLIONS of innocent vegetarian animals (chickens, pigs, cows mostly) each year. Anti-abortionists do not care one atom about QUALITY of life. They believe all unfairness in distribution of wealth and resources in this world is ok, no matter the fact that people and animals are forced into this world WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION! (Inexplicably, anti-abs are also rabid anti-communists.) They feel that anything goes, as long as one human does not DIRECTLY KILL another. Therefore, raping and torturing anti-abortionists is ok for them (and ok by me, if they are meat-eaters). I feel that the anti-abortionists for animal rights people still do a net good in the world and should be left alone. At least they are striving for SOME kind of consistency. However, I am also consistent, since I support abortions for animals, too, to prevent millions more lives from being forced against their will into a life of starvation and a struggle for survival. Consistency FOR abortions for both non-humans and humans causes much less pain than consistency AGAINST abortions for both non-humans and humans. Anti-abortionists think stopping abortion will stop death. They do not understand this simple fact: the fetus will grow up and die eventually ANYWAY!! Nothing will prevent this fact, except not being born. Yet, anti-abortionists have the incredible STUPIDITY to ALSO oppose mandatory birth control for people! They oppose mandatory vasectomies for men! Even though this would SEVERELY reduce the number of pregnancies and thus the possibility somebody will abort their pregnancy! I strongly favor putting the burden of birth control on men, not women, in this country and throughout the world, since the negative effect of a vasectomy on men is insignificant to the negative effects of any form of birth control on women. It is a simple fact: if you are a parent, then you are KNOWINGLY killing your child. You KNOW that they will DETERMINISTICALLY die some day. If I recall, many people believe that pre-meditated killing is MURDER. So, ALL parents (and breeders of animals) MURDER those they reproduce. So, to make any USEFUL decisions in this universe, you have to accept the fact that there are actions in this world which are WORSE than some instances of murder. They have to accept the fact that: QUALITY OF LIFE is all that matters, since we will die anyway! But, calculating quality of life on individuals (human/non-human) is a HARD thing to do! It is complex and mentally challenging, and therefore something that the vast majority of anti-abs are not capable of doing. It is NOT just a simple matter of saying: this is a human and this is a pig, therefore ANY negative action on the human, such as stealing their precious little intellectual property, is greater than the horror to the pig of having a blowtorch pressed against them in a laboratory for skin research. What matters is not WHAT anyone is (fetus, criminal, human, non-human, bunch of cells, child, etc.) but what they EXPERIENCE. If I am in a burning house, I want you to save me because I feel pain of burning to death, not just because "I am human". Sorry, but fully conscious beings take precedence over not fully conscious beings. Therefore, I have absolutely NO sympathy for non-vegetarian anti-abortionists who demand that women go through 9 months of pregnancy hell and force the child into a struggle for survival and independence, both of which FAR outweigh whatever the child would have felt as a fetus being aborted. But the non-vegetarian anti-ab won't make the INCREDIBLY insignificant self-"sacrifice" of eating a soy burger instead of a hamburger or chicken, even though FULLY CONSCIOUS cows and chickens are confined their entire lives to stalls no bigger than their bodies, raped to reproduce, branded with a burning flame, and have their throats slit. THAT is the bottom line. THAT is the only decision that matters. Anti-abs are responsible for the consequences of their actions. That means they are CAPABLE of choosing not to eat meat. Animal rights activists who wish to use THEIR time and THEIR energy to fight for THEIR causes do not have to have an answer for every single, improbable anamlous interaction among humans and nonhumans, any more than any world leader has to have an answer for every indirect outcome when they are faced with the immediate threat of a dictatorship or oppressive theocracy (specifically, when those indirect outcomes are really caused by OTHERS and THEIR reactions). In particular, AR activists most of all do NOT have to answer to ANTI-ABORTION FANATICS! P.S. My opinions are free of bias. I myself have been both a fetus and a fully conscious human. I have had a vasectomy, so I have experienced a period of time of being unsterilized and a period of being sterile. Same goes for my being vegan. In contrast, most anti-abs have not experienced all sides of the abortion debate. --------------------------- I don't think anti-abortion fanatics should be forcing their views about "murder" upon others by trying to outlaw abortion. It is ok if they want to make the procedure less painful for the fetus and the pregnant women by applying advanced technology of anethesia. They should not be nagging others people for merely having no opinion or different opinions about abortion and euthanasia. But they have no moral right to try to force doctors who perform the procedure into jail when anti-abortionists won't even consider giving up the insignificant little luxury of eating meat. Yet these same hypocrites expect women to go through nine months of hell and a lifetime of misery beyond. The pain of fully sentient cows, chickens and pigs in factory farms, confined for YEARS in a cage no bigger than their own bodies FAR exceeds the pain to a fetus (human or animal) being aborted by the latest most humane techniques. Eating meat is ten times worse than child molestation and child pornography. Non-vegetarians ought to be treated appropriately. ---------------------------------- I support many of the principles of the Libertarian Party: the right (for vegetarians only) to own guns, the right to look at pornography, the right to do whatever drugs you want. I continue to vote for their candidates depending upon local issues. But the non-vegetarians carry this attitude of freedom and let-anyone-do-whatever-they-want too far. This ends up hurting the Libertarian Party. Non-vegetarians love to point out that animals kill animals... and humans kill animals. So what? So why should they care if vegetarians do whatever THEY want and pass laws and put meat-eaters into jail for life? You should consider yourselves lucky that you are not being eaten by a lion. If I or anyone else decides to take sides in a lion-deer debate by deliberately euthanizing all the lions because we as humans know a way of to cause LESS pain than either starvation for the lion or slaughter for the deer, are the non-vegetarians going to take THEIR time and energy to stop us? I bet they would deliberately make things worse for all three of us: the lion, the deer, and the animal welfare activist, simply because non-vegetarians have it pretty easy in life. They never have to make any hard choices. ----------------------------------------------------------------- I find it fun to do Google Searches on the internet for various far-out combinations of items which seem totally unrelated: e.g. like typing in "turnip", "paralysis", and "Iraq". It's amazing how often one gets a hit. In particular, I like searching out people with various unusual combinations of beliefs. I have found that such combinations are not as unusual as the brainless and limited media leads us to believe. For example, Vegetarians who support gun rights. Libertarians for animal rights (there is a group for them). Vegetarians who support the war in Iraq (I count myself among them, since I consider myself a liberal and fighting a right-wing regime is a liberal thing to do -- I suppose Tony Blair thinks similarly -- although I hate most of George Bush's other decisions. I voted for Ralph Nader.) Vegetarians who strongly support outlawing meat and factory farming (for the animals's sake) but have no objection to genetically modified food. (Again, I fall into this camp. In fact, I want to genetically modify plants to provide more fake meat alternatives.) People who oppose abortion but support anyone's right to commit suicide, with the aid of a physician, for any reason whatsoever. Such people clearly see a distinction between involuntary killing of a fetus versus voluntary killing of oneself. There are certainly groups of atheists against abortion and gays and lesbians against abortion. That sort of thing. ------------------------------------------- First, here's a radical idea: why not? Why not euthanize carnivorous animals as painlessly as we can, according to our time, money, & resources, if we as a a species know something that the other species do not? Why not wipe out a carnivorous species? I know such a radical idea is unsettling to the conservation folks. Before the human population of the planet reached the level it did now, covering 90% of all arable land, such an idea would be bad for the obvious reasons: WILD deer and whatever would breed wildly and starve to death. But, today, there's barely any land left for wild animals to breed to a point where they die due to overpopulation within their habitat. There are just plenty of other stresses which would keep their population down. I believe that the overpopulation of WILD animals lower on the food chain is the main concern which anti-vegetarian people have had about choosing the antelope's side in an antelope-lion debate. It certainly is the ONLY objection I have heard. Of course, this has nothing to do with HUMANS BREEDING animals, for which it makes sense to stop entirely. Libertarians try to be as consistent as possible with their Principle of Non-Initiation of Force. They have made a remarkable effort in crafting their language and checking the language of others in all to apply this principle in all situations. But most libertarians fail miserably in applying this principle to animals, mainly due to their own self-interest in eating meat. The antelope wants desperately to live. The lion wants desperately to live. If the lion does not eat the antelope, the lion dies a slow death of starvation. But the libertarian antelope says, "Lion, that's YOUR problem. Not mine! I do not OWE you my life!" The antelope is correct. Nevertheless, a choice must be made. The lion does not know the horrible pain the lion will cause to the antelope when the lion eats him or her. But we do. We have one or two options more than the two that the antelope and lion know. We could: 1) euthanize the antelope for the lion so the antelope feels much less pain 2) euthanize the lion for the antelope. And no one ever has to bring up the words and phrases "right to life" or "murder" or "right and wrong". The same choices exist among humans and non-humans and between humans. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > You you sir, the one rare liberal, stand side by side with those of us > who do support them. I will gladly wave my flag with you. > > The protestors don't realize the damage they do to our troops. I know > first hand how it feels, when I was in Desert Storm. Thank God, there > were not as many protestors then as there are now. But even to the ones > that were out then, they don't realize it hurts the troops. In many > ways, it leaves the troops not knowing what they will come home too. > To the nay sayers, and those who speak against Bush and our fight in > Iraq. There will come the day, and it will be soon, when you will hang > your heads in shame. I know...that day will come. Thank you, Sir! In fact, I did not want to bash all conservatives. It infuriates me, too, when people think that the US has control and power over all the unjust laws in ever country throughout the world. I do not understand, for instance, why anyone would call themselves liberal (if anyone does) yet support the right of fundamentalist-religious or other ethnic groups that calls for the stoning of prostitutes or imprisons homosexuals. From a different viewpoint, the Libertarian Party has made great efforts in trying to apply a single axiom (or a few axioms), such as their Principle of Non-Initiation of Force, to all situations. The Libertarians certainly fight for individual freedoms that they believe do not harm others in their country, state, county, town, or private individual property. But, my question to them is: why stop at country? The country is an arbitrary border? Why not fight for libertarian principles throughout the world? To go further, why not use an army to fight for these principles? I believe the Libertarian Party objects to the war in Iraq because one is using tax dollars to achieve it. This means you are forcing those who oppose the war to pay for it. This is consistent with their principles. I do not believe the Libertarian party objects to a set of individuals using their own time, energy, and money to go over to fight and kill Saddam Hussein and his very un-libertarian principles of murdering, torturing, and conscription into the army. In case you are wondering why I bring up the Libertarian Party so much, it is because I try my hardest to fit many of my ideas into their platform. I agree with them on many things, but I simply cannot twist and contort some of my socialist-economic beliefs to conform to their ideals. In particular, and to bring this thread around to the topic of this newsgroup, the Libertarian Party opposes mandatory birth control and vasectomies. They do not see giving birth to a new person as "Initiation of Force", whereas I do. Life is difficult and unfair enough with an unequal distribution of wealth which is not proportional to how hard people worked for it. But, even if libertarian economic principles force me to accept the status quo under the belief (though not entirely true) that no initiation of force was used to achieve it, it certainly DOES violate libertarian principles to force another person into the world and upset the equilibrium. Since this violation of the "equilibrium", which obviously lasts only a split seconds between births on this planet, occurs continually, I cannot help but fight for some piece of the pie which I think is fair, even if I have to use some non-libertarian means to do it: such as forcing 10% of companies not to demand letters of reference from OTHER companies when they hire me, or to force 10% of companies not to fire me just because I put naked pictures of myself on the internet and none of this adversely affects my ability to do the job which the company AGREED I was to do. Of course, when the US President fights such unjust laws as the Taliban's or Saddam Hussein's, the President does not refer to them as "laws" but rather as "regimes", so that he is fighting a "regime", not breaking a law. He or she may have to use such terminology to combat an immediate problem, but if one uses that terminology too long, it will come back to bite you in the ass. If as President you keep telling your own people that they should obey all laws, no matter whether they are fair or unfair, then eventually enough people will tell the President that he/she should obey Hussein's murderous, torturing law, or at the very least some weak UN resolution. By definition, war is ALWAYS illegal to the country you are fighting! Here is my feeling about "law": you make the world perfect first, then you set law into stone. I apply this concept to international, federal, criminal, civil, domestic... to any human law. If one does not want to fall into the difficulty that Bush has faced in gaining world and public support, one should simply state what you feel everyone in the world should do or not do, whether or not it is legal or illegal. All ethical opinion require one also to state how much force and violence one or more individuals should apply or not apply if another set of individuals violates your ethical principles. And so on, if this set of individuals does not act... After all that has been worked out in a CONSISTENT manner which is OPTIMAL (e.g. torturing everybody is consistent, but not optimal: one should be consistent by torturing nobody), then one shoud crystallize these ideas into law. ------------------------------------------------- > Sex "happens"??? Sex is *something people do*. That means it doesn't just > "happen", like an earthquake or a hurricane. People do it, they choose it, > they are responsible for it. You are absolutely right. I have been saying this my whole life. There are a lot of irresponsible people out there (and, as a male, I do put more of the burden of responsibility upon men) who have unprotected sex, produce unexpected babies (or fetuses, or whoever you want to call them), and then demand abortions. But, guess what? Abortion is STILL the better choice -- for the pre-conscious individual! It is STILL better than being forced into a FULLY CONSCIOUS life for which they didn't ask! You are PLAYING GOD with their lives by doing that, just as much as a totally sexually irresponsible person!! Those sexually irresponsible individuals are hardly ever the same people who fought hard and struggle for others' right to have abortions, let alone for the right to disseminate a lot of NON-killing forms of birth control, such as condoms and vasectomies. Margaret Sanger and the National Organization for Women have fought hard to IMPROVE the quality of life in MANY OTHER WAYS (like demanding equality for women and workers). So, in the improbable chance that abortion is wrong: i.e. if the pain to the fetus of being killed by abortion IS worse than the pain to a completely, sexually irresponsible, culpable woman, then only due to the efforts of abortion-choice supporters will life be worth living for the soon-to-be-born. In contrast, the vast majority of anti-abortionists make life a damn living hell for everyone, forcing unnecessary and painful choices upon everyone with their fanatical religious opposition to fair laws in all non-abortion-related aspects of life, which I won't list here. The accumulation of all their big and small tyrannies force upon a woman and her unborn child the terrible choice between abortion versus a life of misery unnecessarily greatly aggravated by "pro-human" fanatics who are anything BUT pro-human. ----------------------------------------------- Could someone tell me once and for all whether I, an American, am supposed to be concerned about non-Americans? That includes, non-American babies, women, children, sperm, men, fetuses, cows, chickens, pigs, etc. 1) Is it un-American for me to be concerned about non-Americans? 2) Am I patriotic if I am concerned about non-Americans but I do not wish to spend my money/time/blood helping non-Americans? 3) Am I patriotic if I am concerned about non-Americans and I support those who choose to do so to use their own money/time/blood to help non-Americans but do not wish to force you (or anyone else) through taxes or a draft or a military order to spend your money/time/blood to help non-Americans? 4) Am I patriotic even though I believe a particular action of money/time/blood will not actually help non-Americans overall, whether or not I am concerned for non-Americans? I believe the Libertarian Party answers Question 3 in the affirmative, as cruel and uncaring as that may sound. But, I believe there is a great deal of truth to it. I have stated, for the obvious reasons of Hussein's torture, murder, and oppression, that I feel this particular war is justified as was the war agains the Taliban. But I happen to believe that most people who oppose this war oppose it for the universal skeptical reason: it will do no net good. Thus, most of those opposing this particular war answer question 4 affirmatively. I cannot blame them for being skeptical, such as believing this war is for oil. They have good reason to be skeptical. The US has chosen the wrong side (I and they believe) of wars for long periods of time, most notably, in taking sides with brutal Latin American dictatorships AGAINST poor people. Furthermore, it has always been the extreme economic conservatives who express the most skepticism about helping others. They have stated countless times their belief that giving money to poor people in the form of welfare HURTS poor people. (I strongly disagree.) That is fair or unfair to the taxpayers to varying degrees, but the cold hard zero-sum game of economics is that taking money from one person and giving it to another person is BENEFITTING the latter person. So, bombarded endlessly in the media by such conservative skepticism against helping people, can you blame those who oppose this particular war against Iraq for not believing that fighting a war, which is a phenomenally larger sacrifice in taxes and troops than taxes for welfare, for the Iraqi people's freedom will benefit them? Again, this is another example of how conservatives have made it difficult for me to openly state that I do support them on freeing Iraq. ------------------------------------------------------------ You are an extreme bunch of violent hypocrites. You cry if you cannot have your hamburgers and fried chicken, but you are never heard defending a person's right to use whatever drugs they want, or doctors to perform assisted suicide, or whatever pornography they wish to look at. I fully support throwing you and your terrorist organization in prison for life for advocating and eating meat. I do NOT care about the health benefits of a vegetarian diet for YOU, and I certainly do not care about protecting YOU from the effects of smoke. You should be punished for your torturing and imprisonment of animals. I fully support PETA and PCRM for the same reasons that they are fighting for our freedoms like our troops. If you don't like America, then you can always leave! ------------------------------------- WellDone (Shel Scott) wrote in message [snip] More right-wing agenda. These right-wingers are so obsessed with this non-existent irrational distinction between left- and right-wing. The only distinction that exists is when an individual proclaims THEMSELVES to be left- or right-wing, not if somebody else tells them they are. (I am making an exception for myself here and calling this idiot a right-winger, since he/she has started the labelling first.) These liberal-bashers them make it hard for those intelligent (self-proclaimed) conservatives who do agree with (self-proclaimed) liberals on issues like mandatory birth control or when to go to war. These right-wingers would still have people working for 1 cent a day and 80 hours a week. These righties support "pre-emptive" strikes by our military against other countries -- "initiation of force", as the Libertarian Party would say -- to prevent the other country from initiating force. This may or may not be justified in particular cases -- I am not debating that right now. These righties bully others, like France or the majority of libertarian American taxpayers, who do not wish either to be forced to go to war or to be forced to pay for it, rather than letting them choose whom they want to fight and for which reasons. These righties preach that we owe our lives and right to free speech to such uses of pre-emptive military strikes in the past. Again, I am not saying I am all for or all against such instances. But it is ironic and hypocritical that these same righties do not support initiation of legal force against enormous corporations which pay their CEOs exorbitantly and their laborers next to nothing in the competitive war of economics, even though we owe our standard of living to the communists and socialists and trade unions in the past who did initiate force by mandating legislation for higher pay for workers and limits to letting CEOs and bosses in corporations get away with doing whatever they wanted. Even the Libertarian Party would agree with the efforts of consumer advocates to end corporate welfare. These right-wingers (as opposed to good libertarian conservatives) worry more about somebody burning a piece of cloth with the American flag printed on it, even if the person spent their own money on the flag, than they do about the American LIVES who could be saved by increasing the pay and improving the working conditions of those with the crappiest jobs. I and all you righties owe our right to free speech as much to heroes like Ralph Nader and Michael Moore and Dr. Jack Kevorkian and Dr. Peter Singer as I do to our military. By the way, the ONLY people who are responsible for BUSH being elected are those who voted for BUSH. NOBODY ELSE! Let us see if this makes sense to all the idiots out there who think otherwise: if a majority of people vote for NADER (according to the rules of the Electoral College, etc.), then NADER wins. If a majority vote for BUSH, then BUSH wins. If a majority vote for the Libertarian candidate, guess who wins. Got it?! I am absolutely SICK of hearing this GARBAGE blaming candidate X and their supporters for candidate Y winning. IF you believe this garbage, then you ABSOLUTELY have to believe that one individual is responsible for what another individual does. And then ANYthing follows.