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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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 Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2006 3:03 am Post subject: |
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| PEIGUY wrote: |
You should see how the media on PEI are reacting..since he arrived the only paper in charlottetown has been doing stories about people who met this great guy. They even told a story about a lady who met him and his wife in a Tim's no less! www.theguardian.pe.ca I think it's cool though that he just flew in with no worries about anything (it's PEI.. he might get a pie in the face at best  ) |
Good one 
http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/index.cfm?sid=1734&sc=1 |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2006 10:07 pm Post subject: |
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Wonderful quote by Patti Davis (Reagan's daughter) in Newsweek:
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Predictably, sealers don't appreciate the high-profile attention the McCartneys visit will bring to this issue. The Canadian press quoted Jack Troake, a 70-year-old sealer, who said, "It's something we've done for 500 years. It's helped to sustain us. We go to bed with a full stomach, a tight roof over our heads. It's part of our culture, our history."
Are we to actually believe that there is no other way for thousands of people to make a living? That all they are equipped to do is kill seal pups and skin them? And as far as traditions dating back hundreds of years, there are plenty of old traditions that have been banished as countries have grown more civilized: town lynchings, slavery, bleeding people with leeches, stoning women to death ... to name a few. |
Has this woman actually ever HAD to work a day in her life? Ever wondered where her next meal is going to come from? I know she's always worked hard to counter the worst of her father, and that's good 'n' crap, but come on. Are we to actually believe that there is no other way for thousands of people over the age of 50 to make a living ON A RESOURCE POOR ISLAND KNOWN AS THE ROCK? Yes, Patti. Yes. We do believe that. |
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Barking Mad Lord Snapcase
Joined: 04 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2006 11:53 pm Post subject: |
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I won't lift a finger to support the seal hunters. They're obviously tough enough to look after themselves.
Is local tourism suffering because of this? |
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bigverne
Joined: 12 May 2004
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| Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 1:50 am Post subject: |
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| He seems very down to earth, without much of an super star ego. You've got to like that. |
Really? I always thought that McCartney came across as a rather embarassing old man who still thinks he's cool. His wife is a self-promoting pain the arse.
Surely, there are more important things to campaign about? |
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red dog
Joined: 31 Oct 2004
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| Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 2:07 am Post subject: |
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In fact, the McCartneys are vegetarians and have spoken out against slaughterhouses many times. It's really sickening that when a mainstream journalist actually takes the time to research the treatment of "food" animals and presents the facts accurately and without sugar-coating, it's a safe bet that he or she is about to defend some other form of animal abuse. We've seen the same thing here on these boards and it's tiresome.
Fact: Slaughterhouses are bad.
Fact: The violence of slaughterhouses doesn't justify the violence of the seal hunt.
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They're starving in Africa, dying in Iraq, and McCartney makes his stand on Iles de la Madeleine doing photo ops with seals.
On the other side of Strawberry Fields, Lennon must be cringing.
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Well, we don't really know what he's doing there because he's not here to tell us, is he? One assumption here is that animals are less worthy of compassion than humans. Another is that the author's speciesist views simply need no defending. Are his readers really stupid enough to accept these assumptions without question???? |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 2:25 am Post subject: |
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| red dog wrote: |
| One assumption here is that animals are less worthy of compassion than humans. Another is that the author's speciesist views simply need no defending. |
Yes, animals are less worthy of compassion than humans. Taking that stance does not mean I approve of cruelty to animals.
Speciesism? How can my terrier be privy to rights, like the first amendment (or even the second!), that he cannot enjoy?
Urging compassion or pity for too many objects is a form of moral tyranny. Your views are no less extreme than many on the religious right, although I am a little more sympathetic to the mistakes they make than I am yours. |
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peppermint
Joined: 13 May 2003
Location: traversing the minefields of caddishness.
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| Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 2:38 am Post subject: |
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| Barking Mad Lord Snapcase wrote: |
I won't lift a finger to support the seal hunters. They're obviously tough enough to look after themselves.
Is local tourism suffering because of this? |
Not in any substantial degree, no. Ecotourism is a big thing in the province. Paul and Heather tried to suggest that there might be a way to turn the seals into a tourist thing, but it's really not feasible. Ice floes, where baby seals are, tend to be cold, slippery and far out at sea. People will want to get up close to the cuddly little babies, but seals aren't really people friendly, as Heather found out. |
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red dog
Joined: 31 Oct 2004
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| Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 3:09 am Post subject: |
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How can my terrier be privy to rights, like the first amendment (or even the second!), that he cannot enjoy?
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A newborn baby can't enjoy those rights either, but she does have some basic rights under the law. You can't cut her up and eat her, use her for medical experiments, or kill her just because you're tired of changing her diapers. In the eyes of society, your terrier has "rights" only for as long as you want him around -- and yet he's just as dependent on you as a child would be, he's just as capable of feeling pain and fear, and he needs just as much (probably a lot more) protection from cruelty and neglect.
It really infuriates me that anti-animal rights people can't see how irrational their position is. Some people's greatest passion in life is to end war; for others it's helping homeless humans, or rescuing abused children or old people. I don't attack people because the causes closest to their hearts are different from mine -- but many of these people would attack me. They should be prepared to defend their beliefs instead of writing asinine articles like the one posted earlier in this thread. |
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endofthewor1d
Joined: 01 Apr 2003
Location: the end of the wor1d.
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| Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 3:19 am Post subject: |
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| red dog wrote: |
In fact, the McCartneys are vegetarians and have spoken out against slaughterhouses many times. It's really sickening that when a mainstream journalist actually takes the time to research the treatment of "food" animals and presents the facts accurately and without sugar-coating, it's a safe bet that he or she is about to defend some other form of animal abuse. We've seen the same thing here on these boards and it's tiresome.
Fact: Slaughterhouses are bad.
Fact: The violence of slaughterhouses doesn't justify the violence of the seal hunt.
| Quote: |
They're starving in Africa, dying in Iraq, and McCartney makes his stand on Iles de la Madeleine doing photo ops with seals.
On the other side of Strawberry Fields, Lennon must be cringing.
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Well, we don't really know what he's doing there because he's not here to tell us, is he? One assumption here is that animals are less worthy of compassion than humans. Another is that the author's speciesist views simply need no defending. Are his readers really stupid enough to accept these assumptions without question???? |
i was hoping you'd chime in sooner or later. i even mentioned on another thread how much i've missed you.
FACT: stating that anything is inherently 'good' or 'bad' is an opinion, not a fact.
FACT: for some people, the desire to club baby seals in the head is justification enough for the violence of the seal hunt.
FACT: animals are food.
i think it's high time the apple was awarded sufferage. i see them hauled into trucks and piled carelessly into supermarkets while we humans walk by without pity, feeling them, thumping them, seeing which ones of them are worthy enough for us to take home and murder. give them the vote, and allow them to speak out for themselves against such atrocities! |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 7:36 am Post subject: |
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McCartney's got a good idea to use the baby seals to bring in tourists:
Seal skin bags and coats, hats, gloves, dolls ...
Baby seal steak dinners ...
Maybe they WILL listen to him!
Good idea. |
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Barking Mad Lord Snapcase
Joined: 04 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 7:04 pm Post subject: |
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| endofthewor1d wrote: |
FACT: for some people, the desire to club baby seals in the head is justification enough for the violence of the seal hunt.
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Umm ... what are you defending exactly? |
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red dog
Joined: 31 Oct 2004
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| Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 10:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Barking Mad Lord Snapcase wrote: |
| endofthewor1d wrote: |
FACT: for some people, the desire to club baby seals in the head is justification enough for the violence of the seal hunt.
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Umm ... what are you defending exactly? |
All forms of animal abuse in existence, I think. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 2:00 am Post subject: |
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| red dog wrote: |
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How can my terrier be privy to rights, like the first amendment (or even the second!), that he cannot enjoy?
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A newborn baby can't enjoy those rights either, but she does have some basic rights under the law. You can't cut her up and eat her, use her for medical experiments, or kill her just because you're tired of changing her diapers. In the eyes of society, your terrier has "rights" only for as long as you want him around -- and yet he's just as dependent on you as a child would be, he's just as capable of feeling pain and fear, and he needs just as much (probably a lot more) protection from cruelty...
It really infuriates me that anti-animal rights people can't see how irrational their position is. |
You don't seem to understand. I'm suggesting that animals do not have a right to fair treatment, but I'm not advocating that people torture or mistreat animals. I would argue that people have an obligation to treat animals under their care well, just as I would argue that people have an obligation to treat children under their care well. But when I say that I am not arguing either that animals have rights nor am I arguing that children don't have rights.
Again, I've spelled out for you why I think giving animals rights is undesirable.
| Red Dog wrote: |
| Urging compassion or pity for too many objects is a form of moral tyranny. |
I want you to pay careful attention to the definition of right as given by wikipedia.
| wikipedia wrote: |
| In modern English and European systems of jurisprudence and law, a right is the legal or moral entitlement to do or refrain from doing something or to obtain or refrain from obtaining an action, thing or recognition in civil society. |
Humans are political animals, they are moral beings, and most importantly, they have both a need and the capability to interact in a civil society.
I cannot say the same thing, for example, about seal pups or my dog. However, I can say that as a pet owner, I have a duty to care for my dog and not neglect it nor mistreat it.
As a citizen of the U.S., I am conferred certain rights, however, certainly obligations are also demanded of me.
| Wikipedia concerning the subject of obligation wrote: |
| Common legal obligations for citizens include the need to participate as a juror if called upon and pay taxes, which is granted in return for the right to participate in the electoral process and the financial and physical protection by the state. Another example is the obligation to participate in a census every ten years, which, like many legal obligations, often carries a heavy fine if not completed. |
Eventually, it is hoped, a child will become an adult and be able to fulfill these obligations. However, my terrier will never be able to pay taxes or serve on a jury. He is not sufficiently a political or moral agent enough to do so, not to mention there are certain intellectual capacities which he lacks.
Furthermore, there are other reasons why my terrier does not hold rights. Let us say we were to travel to Alpha Centauri and discover life there equal in moral, political, and intellectual capacity and nature to humankind. They would not therefore inherit the rights that human societies (and it is not a minor detail here that I say societies, for rights and obligations differ between different socities) enjoy, nor would they immediately be obligated in the same way to our societies as we are. These Alpha Centaurans are not Americans or New Zealanders or Koreans, although one could speculate on how Alpha Centaurans might be able to enter human society through immigration.
This is important and not mere symantics, because of one crucial point. Rights must be earned by means of obligations. If obligations in today's Western societies are weak, and I would argue that they are at least comparably so set against Western society in the past, that does not mitigate the idea that citizens' rights exist inextricably in the context of a civil society where obligations are also demanded of them; the most important obligations in Western societies today probably being to respect other citizens' and groups' rights.
You want to grant a civil-moral-political recognition to animals for which they have not qualified and for which they cannot qualify. I understand that some on the Left see so-called animal rights as the next step (if a step not already made) by an international civil society that has already extended certain human rights to all individuals in all societies. However, animals cannot have inalienable rights because they were not created equal to men. Perhaps people in society have certain obligations towards animals, perhaps arguably people even have sweeping obligations encompassing all animals of all kinds (although you will not see me arguing for this point), but we should not mistake those obligations made upon people as stemming from any sort of rights that animals enjoy. |
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red dog
Joined: 31 Oct 2004
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| Posted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 11:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| red dog wrote: |
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How can my terrier be privy to rights, like the first amendment (or even the second!), that he cannot enjoy?
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A newborn baby can't enjoy those rights either, but she does have some basic rights under the law. You can't cut her up and eat her, use her for medical experiments, or kill her just because you're tired of changing her diapers. In the eyes of society, your terrier has "rights" only for as long as you want him around -- and yet he's just as dependent on you as a child would be, he's just as capable of feeling pain and fear, and he needs just as much (probably a lot more) protection from cruelty...
It really infuriates me that anti-animal rights people can't see how irrational their position is. |
You don't seem to understand. I'm suggesting that animals do not have a right to fair treatment, but I'm not advocating that people torture or mistreat animals. I would argue that people have an obligation to treat animals under their care well, just as I would argue that people have an obligation to treat children under their care well. But when I say that I am not arguing either that animals have rights nor am I arguing that children don't have rights.
Again, I've spelled out for you why I think giving animals rights is undesirable.
| Kuros wrote: |
| Urging compassion or pity for too many objects is a form of moral tyranny. |
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Hi Kuros. First of all, I appreciate your taking the time to address these issues seriously instead of making a mockery of them as others have done. Even so, I think that in the above quote all you've really done is asserted your position. That's not the same thing as supporting it.
I think I do understand why you believe animals shouldn't have rights -- because they (apparently) can't understand our concepts of morality or meet any responsibilities in return -- but I very strongly disagree with your way of thinking. If all rights depended on those things, young children wouldn't have rights and neither would many other people who either haven't met or can't meet their "responsibilities" to society. The fact that babies will grow up and have responsibilities seems unimportant here since they don't have them now -- if you were to kill your child and have another to "replace" him, the second child could meet all the responsibilities to society that his older brother would have met. But the point is, you wouldn't do such a thing because it's morally repugnant, even if the child were too young to understand what was going on and even if no one ever found out and "society" didn't suffer any long-term negative effects.
Prisoners (in most cases) have failed to meet their responsibilities to society, and so we feel justified in depriving them of some of their rights. But there are limits on how far we can go -- in Canada, the death penalty is off limits because Canadians have decided that it's simply unacceptable to deprive people of the right to life, even if they've killed someone else. Regardless of where you stand on the death penalty, I'm sure you'd agree that it would be unacceptable to torture a prisoner to death -- even a sadistic killer who'd done that to another person. We don't rape rapists or eat cannibals because there are some rights we all acknowledge as inviolate. What I'm saying is that we owe other animals at least as much.
| Kuros wrote: |
I want you to pay careful attention to the definition of right as given by wikipedia.
| wikipedia wrote: |
| In modern English and European systems of jurisprudence and law, a right is the legal or moral entitlement to do or refrain from doing something or to obtain or refrain from obtaining an action, thing or recognition in civil society. |
Humans are political animals, they are moral beings, and most importantly, they have both a need and the capability to interact in a civil society. |
Yeah, but those aren't the kind of rights I'm talking about when I say animals have rights. I don't mean rights like freedom of speech or freedom of religion -- but I do feel that animals are entitled to the kind of basic respect that would make it unthinkable for us to eat them, exploit them, or discard them according to our whims. I hope you can understand where I'm coming from here.
| Kuros wrote: |
| Furthermore, there are other reasons why my terrier does not hold rights. Let us say we were to travel to Alpha Centauri and discover life there equal in moral, political, and intellectual capacity and nature to humankind. They would not therefore inherit the rights that human societies (and it is not a minor detail here that I say societies, for rights and obligations differ between different socities) enjoy, nor would they immediately be obligated in the same way to our societies as we are. These Alpha Centaurans are not Americans or New Zealanders or Koreans, although one could speculate on how Alpha Centaurans might be able to enter human society through immigration. |
Now I'm confused. If you mean the right to immigrate to Earth and interact with humans, I agree -- just as I don't have the automatic right to live and work in Korea, Japan, or any other country where I wasn't born. But if you mean that it would be all right for us to invade their homes, abduct their children for meat production and medical experiments, and set up excursions where humans can go and shoot Alpha Centaurians just for the fun of it, then I strongly disagree. These beings absolutely would have the right to be free of human abuse -- not because of their intelligence, but because of their ability to feel pain and enjoy lives free of violence.
| Kuros wrote: |
| animals cannot have inalienable rights because they were not created equal to men. Perhaps people in society have certain obligations towards animals, perhaps arguably people even have sweeping obligations encompassing all animals of all kinds (although you will not see me arguing for this point), but we should not mistake those obligations made upon people as stemming from any sort of rights that animals enjoy. |
Regarding the part in bold, is this a religious statement? "Equal" in what way? Many of us on these boards are not "equal" to each other in terms of accomplishments or professional qualifications -- we all have different levels of education, intelligence, teaching skills, language skills, etc. Those are all important things for an employer to consider when deciding whether to hire us, but are they really important if someone is deciding whether to kill us? I don't have any advanced degrees and I accept the fact that I'm less qualified for certain jobs than people who do have them (other things being equal). But I don't think I'm less entitled to live, or to live free of violence, than even the best-educated person. And in that respect, humans are equal to other animals. If I choose to believe otherwise, then I have to accept the idea that humans aren't equal to each other and that our basic rights could also depend on certain "qualifications."
Regarding "rights," obligations, etc., we seem to be speaking different languages and I hope I've clarified where I stand. But there was a time when children were basically considered the property of their parents, and any attempts to protect children from abuse were met with hostility. And even though you may provide the best care for your terrier, there are many other people who leave their dogs tied up in the yard without enough food, water or shelter, or don't take them to a vet when they're sick. Some people won't meet their responsibilities to animals (or children) unless they're hit over the heads with something. Are humane societies guilty of "tyranny" for attempting to enforce legislation that gives animals what little protection they have in society? Are people who raise awareness about spaying and neutering just bored rich people, or spoiled rich people, or however the cliche goes? Obviously the McCartneys are taking flak because they're getting into controversy and stepping on idiot politicians' toes -- if they devoted their lives to backgammon or stamp collecting they'd be just as rich and just as bored, but it wouldn't make headlines, would it? |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 2:29 am Post subject: |
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| red dog wrote: |
Fact: Slaughterhouses are bad.
Fact: The violence of slaughterhouses doesn't justify the violence of the seal hunt. |
Actually, I agree with red dog about this. But only about this. |
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