Anti-fur protest in Union Square

CHURCH AND MARKET.

lets meet in front on the chicken slaughter, join hands and thow fake blood on the chicken eaters!

I never have bought and never will buy a fur coat. Such a coat is ludicrous in San Francisco, where it does not snow. In any event, even where it does snow, we have winter coats that can keep one warm that are not fur.

No worker shops at Neiman Marcus. They certainly do not have goods at workingclas prices. And their Xmas tree in no way resembles the fabulous tree of the City of Paris which it tries to imitate. Thus, Neiman Marcus is not even on the window-shopping agenda of workers.

All this energy goes into these anti-fur protests year after year that is desperately needed to help poor people.

At the very least, you could have helped pass out leaflets for the peace demonstration to be held on Jan 18 in SF (as well as Wash. D.C.) or stood with Women (and Men) i n Black (any color is reall y OK) at Union Square to protest the pending war against Iraq, since you were willing to brave the crowds at Union Square.

There was also an anti-war toy leafletting by the Women for Peace at the Emeryville Toys-R-Us that was well-received. We have a Toys-R-Us at Geary and Masonic (the old Sears) which could have been and should have been leafletted to promote peace toys.

You could also take the money you spent on all these signs and leaflets for this hysteria about fur and give it to the homeless who are all around Union Square, as the Square is part of the Tenderloin, one of the poorest neighborhoods in San Francisco.

Are we going to start ranking causes now, and only work on the top ones? People put energy into things they care about. Many people first get into activism through anti-fur and other pro-animal campaigns, and many of them then go on to other things.

Why should we only talk to working-class people? There are lots of middle-class people at anti-war protests, should we tell them not to come?

I'm not saying we shouldn't talk to working-class people. You and Nessie organize some anti-leather protests, I'll show up.

Opposing fur is not wrong because these "energies" might be "better" spent helping the poor and opposing war. These things are not incompatible. They actually all come from the same spirit of preventing wrongs from occurring. I personally believe some animals are just as important as humans (because they are probably just as sentient and emotional) and should never be killed (elephants, dolphins, orcas, wolves, horses, come to mind). In fact, all people believe at least one animal (humans) are special and should not be killed.

Animals killed for fur die very painful deaths (trapped and left to dehydrate, or through anal electrodes that don't damage the fur of farm raised foxes). And there really is no difference between torturing animals and torturing humans -- pain is pain in any species.

Like, the part where anyone [regardless of whether or not they're paid to do it] can pretend to be You... or can pretend to be nessie...

Fortunately, the pretenders have a fatal flaw: they seem to be incapable of recognizing logical contradictions. Their arguments are rife with them. Thus, their attempts at deception will be effective only when spoofing an idiot.

Peace,
mr. normal


"Facts are not ethical principles, but they tend to form or revise our moral ideas by making it harder to believe nonsense." ~ Bertrand Russell

"Until he extends his circle of compassion to all living things, man himself will not find peace. "

Albert Schweitzer 1875 - 1965

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"It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers the blessings of God, the compassionate if we in turn will not practice elementary compassion towards our fellow creatures. "

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

Mahatma Ghandhi 1869 -1948

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"Animals are God's creatures, not human property, nor utilities, nor resources, nor commodities, but precious beings in God's sight."

Rev. Dr Andrew Linzey 1952 -

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"The question is not, Can they reason?
Nor Can they talk?
But, Can they suffer?"

Jeremy Bentham

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I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.
- from Leonardo da Vinci's 'Notes'

Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others: We are burial places!
- Merijkowsky, Romance of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo DaVinci 1452 -1519

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It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.
- Letter to 'Vegetarian Watch-Tower', 27 December 1930

Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.

Albert Einstein 1879-1955 Physicist, Nobel Prize winner 1921

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A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.
- On Civil Disobedience

What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit for their cruelty.
- letter to Mrs C.P.Farrell, July 1909

If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.
- The First Step

Pity is always the same feeling, it doesn't matter, whether you feel it for a human being or a fly.
- unkown origin

Leo Tolstoy 1828-1910

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If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who deal likewise with their fellow men. Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission - to be of service to them wherever they require it.
- Quoted in the Life by St.Bonaventura

St.Francis of Assisi 1181-1226

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As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.

Pythagoras ?580-?500 BC

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The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.

Charles Darwin 1809-1882

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Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

Thomas Edison 1847-1931

http://www.intrepidsoftware.com/fallacy/aa.htm

Hey, I was wondering if someone familiar with primitivist anarchism could explain where most primitivists are with regards to vegetarianism. I saw some of them at the anarchist book fair,a nd i listened to part of the Zerzan talk there, but I've never explicitly read about the philosophy. Eliminating industry and agriculture seem to be the main tenets, but I've heard some even say art and speech are bad - but I give them the benefit of the doubt and decided that maybe only one or two people actually proposed the latter idea. Are primitivists essentially hunter gatherers, or just gatherers?
A green anarchist from Eugene who used to live in the same town as me went with a group and were shooting flares and stuff from boats at the Makah when they were trying to whale in Washington, which could have caused an injury etc. But they passed by quite a few fast food restaurants on their way there. But is a green anarchist the same thing as a primitivist?

'Primitivism' was at its zenith in the mid-90s and has been losing ground (and audience) since then.

Don't know if there was ever a "primitivist line" on eating meat.

At its best, primitivism pushes against certain assumptions radicals have inherited from productivist leftism. Too often, though, it's plain silly. At its worst, it leans, like deep ecology, toward something akin to fascism.

At the moment i work against the impending (though not inevitable) war. In the past i've worked in Nicaragua. And in the Redwood forests of northern CA. And cooking food for homeless people. And -- against fur in Union Square.

It makes me sigh to see activist infighting. But hell -- if you can get it all out of your system on Indymedia, maybe that's all the better.

for Peace & Justice-

Lemme get this straight. If I wear fur, I'm guilty of killing animals. If I wear synthetic materials, I'm guilty of harming the environment. If I wear cotton, I'm guilty of murdering an innocent cotton ball.

As long as I'm guilty anyway, might as well be guilty in style.

At worst anti-human primitivism not only romanticizes a past that can never be returned to--and was so barbaric and subject to the caprice of natural forces--but they, like the Urhurus do with "race", make the human "species" guilty and hence inferior to other species.

People promoting this bullshit want all of us to share their self-hatred and are kinda post-modern, ecological, Jim Jones that want to take us all down with them.

Aaron's completely wrong--there's nothing good about quasi-mystical hatred of the human species. If you want to critique the "progressive" ideas of the Enlightenment, fine. Just don't say that all 5 billion of us can be hunter-gatherers or foragers again without the majority of the human population being decimated.

Let's put the misanthropic primitivists, along with their self-hating whitey brothers and sisters in groups like Urhuru, into the dumpster of hatred and be rid of them forever.

White Cube

Bashing primitivists and animal rights activists is so easy, especially when you can remove yourselves from the impact you have on the environment. To veiw the issues of environmental devistation and animal abuse as seperate from how we treat each other and how we are treated by the state and ruling class is part of the problem.
Sometimes I look at Indymedia and all I see is a cock fight, keep the anarchjism down nessie. Build solidarity not just lukewarm puddles of jiss.

Just moments before this fox was anally eloctrocuted -- so that the fur is not damaged.

Those picture aren't worth any words!

What are you trying to say? Or are you letting the cute little critters speak for you? What bullshit.

Tens of thousands of humans die because we live in a capitalist system where everything natural is exploited and all you want to do is make life more comfortable for other species. If that's not a hateful ideology, what is? You're hateful against you own species and like missionaries, take on the cause of critters that didn't ask for your help.

No, you are not God. Get a clue and take a look at the suffering of the homeless humans right outside your front door--unless, as I expect, you live in the suburbs and all that is outside your front door is both mommy's and daddy's SUVs. And hence the convenient distance to be activists for the flavor of the week--and this one it's animals. Yes animals suffer and yes it is deplorable, but human suffering IS more important.

WC

The Universe does not revolve around humans just like it never revolved around the earth.

This is the last bastion of specialness that most people cling on to.

I believe there are other animals just as important as humans and if we are to make this world a better place, we have to respect those animals as well as people. This is not anti-human, this is just being more inclusive.

"Bashing primitivists and animal rights activists is so easy, especially when you can remove yourselves from the impact you have on the environment."

you're exactly right. anything that challenges us to consider the ways in which we have benefit from oppression -- the ways we impact on the enviroment negatively ourselves -- will be the subject of attack here.

many come here to whine about being the "victims.": "waaah! the guy drives an suv and wears fancy clothes! i ride a skateboard and wear black! waah! i'm a victim! i don't own a house! i rent! waaah!" these people don't believe they can fight for whats right on principle, only because of some opportunistic self-interest.

anything that doesn't enable this bevhavor, or outright contends with it, will be attacked here.

that is why "white cube" aka "nestor mahkno" felt the need to throw out an ad hominem attack on the uhuru movement in this unrelated post. he obviously feels threatened by the idea that a world free of exploitation of animals would impact negatively his ability to benefit from capitalism. likewise, the uhuru movement believes that white people have benefitted from capitalism and owe reparations. this idea also threatens white cube's ability to benefit from capitalism. therefore because he hates us, he'd like us to be thrown into the "dumpster of hatred," where he'd throw all who fundamentaly disagree with his narrow, opportunistic worldview. ironically he'll do this at the same time he calls us the "fascists."

however we aren't going anywhere. we grow every day.

matthew from the uhuru movement

ps: someone said if "i wear cotton. i'm guilty of killing a cottonball." actually wearing a cotton jacket kills ten times the fur-coated animals as wearing a fur jacket, due to clear-cutting, pesticides etc.

"Tens of thousands of humans die because we live in a capitalist system where everything natural is exploited and all you want to do is make life more comfortable for other species. If that's not a hateful ideology, what is? You're hateful against you own species and like missionaries, take on the cause of critters that didn't ask for your help."

why do you assume people who support animal right don't support human rights, and that many of them don't also work to alleviate human suffering? and who the fuck are you to tell anyone what to do, anyway? you want to help the homeless? go do it - animal rights activists aren't stopping you.

"No, you are not God. Get a clue and take a look at the suffering of the homeless humans right outside your front door--unless, as I expect, you live in the suburbs and all that is outside your front door is both mommy's and daddy's SUVs."


yeah, yeah, yeah - just use class-baiting because you don't have much of an argument.

".Yes animals suffer and yes it is deplorable, but human suffering IS more important."

who are you to say? are you god? didn't think so. torture is torture, and abuse is abuse. the way "we" treat animals is the way "we" treat other humans - like exploitable pieces of shit to be used and abused. why not try to stop all oppression while we're stopping the machinery of the capitatlist system?

i am a 55-yr-old aging hippie and have done all i could all my life to make this world a better place, thru my personal life and thru activism--for peace, against political repression, for a living wage, against nuclear weapons, for homes for all, against GMO foods, for clean water and clean air, against sweatshops, etc., etc.--and against cruelty to animals. Why draw the line there? i don't get this sudden closing of the heart.
And a cautionary note--everything the nazis did to humans in the camps, they did to the animals first--for purely self-defensive reasons, given the rather ominous tide of events these days, perhaps the "purely" human activists might imagine what is being brutally inflicted on the animals in so many cruel ways as possibly being done to them--sometimes experience is the teacher of compassion, but imagination and an open heart is a more noble way.
Peace and Freedom for All Beings, Kathleen B

"i don't get this sudden closing of the heart"

Its not just the activists. We are going to war partly due to a cultural shift that started before 9/11. Americans have grown mean, greedy and arogant. Some anger comes from frustration and setbacks, but much of it is the same anger one hears on AM radio. Its American indvidualism gone to an extreme where nothing matters except money and if killing thousands to keep oil cheap is the only way to keep it cheap...

I don't have any problem with drawing attention and even resisting needless animal suffering and abuse. Some of the above denunciations of such activity seem unnecessary to me, even if I agree with the general points critics of "animal rights" make.

"Animal rights" politics are NOT radical if we take the term literally (let alone seriously). Animals have no intrinsic rights -- whatever rights they have are bestowed by humans and don't exist in nature. The language of rights accords fully with a capitalist system of exchange. Under capitalism, working class and poor people have lots of rights as subjects of capital but little power as humans. Similarly, under capitalism, animals could be granted greater rights, but the system that is devastating the habitat of all life-forms, planet earth, would go virtually unscathed.

The fight for a non-capitalist world in which living things and beings thrive won't come about by single-issue struggles for rights. It will come from humans rising against a system based upon exploitation and alienation, driven by a desire to live in a world that's alive.

so.....are you saying I should be amish?

Matthew, I take it from your pious defense of animal rights and call for self-sacrifice that you're opposed to the Uhuru House meat-fests at all the left-liberal demonstrations, correct?

This question goes out to DoorMatt of the Uhuru Party. If you're so down with the lil' critters, why does the Uhuru Party usually go to Earth Day events with their "wet blanket" protest and denounce all environmentalism as being selfish middle-class whites ignoring other social issues?--in your Party's case, the check they need to write to you wingnuts.

And why do you others want to excuse the reactionary, backward obsessed politics of misanthropic deep ecologists and primitivists? They have more in common with the romantic "back to the natural order" ideas of the Nazis than they have with anti-capitalist politics. The abuse of animals is disgusting, but you end up sounding like "special interest groups" trying to advocate on their behalf for more beneficial legislation. Sounds pretty reformist and conservative.

aaron's description of my post as "pious defense of animal rights and call for self-sacrifice" is his typical bullshit slinging.

my post pointed out the opportunism of white leftists who can only function if they see themselves as some kind of victim -- in bold-faced denial of reality. i also found it interesting that the suv-hating, nestor mahkno aka white cube aka keven keeting chose to introduce an attack on the uhuru movement within the context of this unrelated thread. so i offered an explanation for what might be similiar between the uhuru movement and this animal rights protest.

to answer aaron's qestion. of course, i'd sell sausages as fundraiser for the uhuru movement. i'd do it as quickly as i'd fill up my new honda civic with the petroleum necessary to get to myself and other comrades to the sausage booth in question. if anyone wants to meet me, next time you see one of our wonderful sausage booths (we sell falafel also if you're vegetarian -- we also make great garlic fries, and did i mention its all a fundraiser for the uhuru movement?) stop by and ask for me. chances are i'm there. this invitation goes to aaron and kevin keeting as well. however that would require them to spew their obnoxious bullshit face to face, which is something they are not want to do for the obvious potential consequences (the internet is a great invention for cowards.)

as far as animal rights: i recognize the treatment of animals as another contradiction of imperialism. personally i don't think killing a plant for food is any more moral than killing an animal for food. anything you consume that is produced within capitalism comes from oppression, including tofu. if anyone doesn't understand that go down to watsonville and watch the mexican migrant workers. animals eat other animals. humans, like all primates, are biologically designed to include eat meat in their diets.

as far as our line on environmentalism and "earth day" -- it is true that the uhuru movment has found it a contradiction and a criticism that more white people can be galvanized to demonstrate in opposition of the treatment of a dog or a tree than can be galvanized to oppose, say prison brutality through the shu program which affects fellow human beings. we think this is a form of white nationalism and explains while you'll never see any kind of significant number of non-white people at the enivronmentalist affairs.

this does not mean we don't recognize the brutal, ugly, callous and disrespectful treatment of the environemnt by white power -- including other animals besides humans -- as a contradiction. we do recognize it as such.

aren't youi keven keeting? the guy who used to vandalize cars in the mission that weren't poor enough for your tastes? if so, how's your anti-gentrification/ pro ethnic cleansing campaign going?

This is Matthew one day rising in defense of animal rights and denouncing those who don't go for his quasi-religious door-matism:

"anything that challenges us to consider the ways in which we have benefit from oppression -- the ways we impact on the enviroment negatively ourselves -- will be the subject of attack here. "

and here's Matthew the next day defending his quasi-religious black hucksterism/nationalism:

"i'd sell sausages as fundraiser for the uhuru movement. i'd do it as quickly as i'd fill up my new honda civic with the petroleum necessary to get to myself and other comrades to the sausage booth in question."

And where do all the proceeds of your endless fund-raisers go Matthew? Do you dispense a dime to every black person in Oakland on the first of the month? No? Then what are the Uhuru's doing (aside from race-baiting and demogoguery)? Why does NOBODY ever talk about all the great things the Uhuru House is doing?

And listen hear white boy: Just because some of us don't pin our politics on self-abdication and scam-artist political formations doesn't mean we don't make sacrifices.

doormatt, why don't you park your car in the mission and see what anti-yuppie and ethnic cleansing will do to it and you. your car and your cracker ass will be frying faster than you can cell phone your parents and say "mommy and daddy, i hope you insured it". and we'll be more than happy to crucify you for your sin of being born. one less peckerwood in the bay area.

yuppies out! especially lily whiteys like doormatt

i explained my position on animal rights. you didn't read it carefully if that bullshit is your rebut.

"And where do all the proceeds of your endless fund-raisers go Matthew? Do you dispense a dime to every black person in Oakland on the first of the month? No? Then what are the Uhuru's doing (aside from race-baiting and demogoguery)? Why does NOBODY ever talk about all the great things the Uhuru House is doing? "

they do actually. we just sponsored a great health fair in the east oakland last week. people are talking about it. the uhuru movement was instrumental in the shu program on powell and market last month. the shu program was on cnn that week. kpfa ran a story as a consequence of our actions also. the thing you and your white leftist wish is that nobody talked about us. you wish we'd just go away. but we don't and it drives into the white nationalist frenzy you exhzibit here.

is a white boy like you calling me a white boy supposed to be an insult or an expression of kinship? do you make any sacrifices besides posting bile on indymedia? i'd love to hear about them.

oh dear, klu klux. that's terrifying! are you threatening to sneak up on my honda civic (scroll up for the color, dumbshit) in the dark and key it next time i come onto your mission district!?!?! oh no! what will i do! i can't come into the mission and play with the bike messenger-types anymore! klu klux has got a hard-on for me!

oh klu klux, what a macho anarchist hunk-a-stud you are!

You people wine and cry about animals being killed for their fur people for millinia have used fur to keep warm. In fact I bet you use feather pillows, and don't think twice to lye down on one because they feel comfortable. I've actually been to factories where they take fur from animals. 1st they kill it, 2nd they skin it, 3rd they clean the intrails out, 4th they take bones out, and 5th they put it in a meat grinder or butcher it for meat. People in the arctic require fur, because cotton doesn't do shit to keep you warm. I have a fur coat, wool in fact. The fur is hell of a lot warmer than any other material. If you people think fur should be illegal, than groovy, GO HUG A RAINBOW.

And another thing you liberals think that you know everything, like, no war on Iraq because we're killing women and children, or, AMERICANS ARE DYING. I would rather die for this country than go to some 3rd world country and get killed for expressing my beliefs.
War on Iraq is actually good for our future. Sadam thinks its funny to sit there and kill his own people on their own soil, and sit around making atomic weapons for nuking people because they don't believe in some dumb religion. Everytime I go to the bay area, I'm seeing no war on Iraq signs. I've been there over sees being shipped out in the military. They have public executions every thursday. You can watch people get their hand smashed by a hammer because they stole some food from a store. Men beat their wives in the middle of the street because she looked at another man. You liberals don't seem to realize that Iraq is the asshole of the universe, and is a no mans land for us.

I hope this message gets through!

You people wine and cry about animals being killed for their fur people for millinia have used fur to keep warm. In fact I bet you use feather pillows, and don't think twice to lye down on one because they feel comfortable. I've actually been to factories where they take fur from animals. 1st they kill it, 2nd they skin it, 3rd they clean the intrails out, 4th they take bones out, and 5th they put it in a meat grinder or butcher it for meat. People in the arctic require fur, because cotton doesn't do shit to keep you warm. I have a fur coat, wool in fact. The fur is hell of a lot warmer than any other material. If you people think fur should be illegal, than groovy, GO HUG A RAINBOW.

And another thing you liberals think that you know everything, like, no war on Iraq because we're killing women and children, or, AMERICANS ARE DYING. I would rather die for this country than go to some 3rd world country and get killed for expressing my beliefs.
War on Iraq is actually good for our future. Sadam thinks its funny to sit there and kill his own people on their own soil, and sit around making atomic weapons for nuking people because they don't believe in some dumb religion. Everytime I go to the bay area, I'm seeing no war on Iraq signs. I've been there over seas being shipped out in the military. They have public executions every thursday. You can watch people get their hand smashed by a hammer because they stole some food from a store. Men beat their wives in the middle of the street because she looked at another man. You liberals don't seem to realize that Iraq is the asshole of the universe, and is a no mans land for us.

I hope this message gets through!

hey aashole: you act like i showed up out here out of the blue. but the reality is your boy klu klux kevin keeting was the one who decided to pull the uhuru movement out of nowhere in the context of this discussion.

so if you're surprised or indignant i'm here since i'm not an animal rights activist, go bitch at klu klux kevin. maybe key his car or burn a cross on his lawn or whatever you white workers do to express political struggle. you sorry assed, fucking piss-ant, you.

if you don't stop name calling and whining, your uhuru handlers aren't gonna let you sell your weenies anymore.

and i can't speak for your beloved kevin keeting, but if he catches you in his hood your mom and dad are gonna be spending all the christmas money you were hoping they'd buy you a playstation 2 with to repaint your car. and maybe some latino homies will shove a spit through you and roast you like the bloated white pig that you are.

and hey mr. sharp shopper, what kind of tv do you have? why don't you just list all your lifestyle purchases? then we can see what a pathetic cracker you are.

So this dupe who's a white black-nationalist goes calling all the white anarchists white-nationalists. Ha ha, kinda thinks his shit don't stink.

Hey Matthew, check out a dictionary about your terms. You diss on everyone and act as though your cult is beyond reproach. You've got the gospel and everyone else is evil. What a self-contained delusion.

circle-A

This isn't really class baiting. The fact is that PETA and animal rights organizations are predominantly middle- to upper-class people from the United States and Europe. Those are just the facts. Class struggles, of course, have a long history and have involved some of the most oppressed peoples on earth (who ironically probably ate meat without thinking twice about it).

How that is relevant or not, I'm not sure. But let's at least be honest about it.

The problem many people have with animal rights groups is that they allow anti-anthropocentrism to swing the other way. If you are an animal rights activist and you do not speak out against this deranged anti-human tendency, you are part of the problem. So far on this message thread, I haven't really seen anyone supporting the anti-fur protest while at the same time acknowledging the dangerously idiotic anti-human aspects of animal rights activism.

For some people to call themselves "anarchists" or whatever else while at the same time engaging in violent actions against people or cultures struggling to get by (the seattle native american fishing thing comes to mind) does an enormous disservice to the history of class resistance. Everyone knows that the hard-line animal rights people view issues like this as a dividing line between non-fanatics and people like them. And again, many of the anti-fur people posting here are doing their best to forget all about this and instead cry about class baiting.

Aside from this quasi-fascist primitivist position, the other annoying thing about animal rights groups is the superiority complex that many of them instill in their members .... creating a counterculture of snobs who insist that if you dont eat like they eat, fuck like they fuck, listen to the music they like, or like sports or anything else that most of the world's population exhibits, you are lower than shit. Usually, these people listen to the absolute worst emo or techno or indierock crap that it makes you sicker to your stomach than a listeria-infested turkey sandwich.

Anyway, people should have more understanding for animal rights causes but animal rights people need to take a stand against a lot of the bullshit that this often-insane and often-cultlike formation brings to a movement that belongs to more people than wanna-be terrorist ALF kids.

I'll agree that Uhuru House was brought into this discussion somewhat gratuitously, but it was your response that I was referring to here. As is typical, you launched into your tired-ass line about how radicals (read white) "around here" only care about standing for their own selfish and opportunistic needs, while positioning yourself as the anointed defender of principle. Whether you came out four-square for animal rights is immaterial, for you presented yourself as distinct from those (straw-man) greedy white communists that allegedly care only for themselves, to the detriment all else. This characterization -- of yourself and white anti-capitalists that don't accept Uhuru House dogma -- conforms nicely to your simplistic, moralizing, stale-as-a-breadstick catechism about race. The implication was that you DO IN FACT care about the plight of animals. Indeed, one could have been mistaken for inferring that you watch your diet and consume with at least a degree of sensitivity for other beings. I gave it a moments thought and recalled the Uhuru House meat-fests, and realized what a slimy and fundamentally dishonest shit-bag you were being (once again).

Did you serve all that heart-failure food at the East Oakland Health Fair, Matthew? Or is it just reserved for left-liberal settlers?

Speaking of which, please describe with precision the Uhuru House's role in this Health Fair. I did a (albeit quick) google and it seems to have been a rather broad-based affair. Be honest Matthew: when people in the community talk about "it", are they talking about Uhuru? How much money did Uhuru contribute?

One last thing: in another thread you refer to your co-workers. So you work, I take it. What do you do for money Matthew? Do you give back a fraction of your wages back to your boss? I mean it's capitalist blood money, right?

i wrote the original comment about class-baiting. and you're right, PETA and most groups are primarily middle and upper middle class. mainly people who have the time to organize on issues that don't directly affect them. somewhat like the anti-globablization movement, at least the student and "activist culture" part of it in the u.s. but that's not to say that there's no working class animal rights people, and no working class anti-glob. activists.

i do think that class-baiting is a problem in "the movement." i think it's one thing to point out the middle class formation of a movement, but to dismiss it because it's made up mainly of middle class people is problematic. after all, as i said above, it is mainly middle class folks who have more time and energy to devote to organizing, esp. on issues that don't directly impact them. i mean, who's gonna organize for animals -the chickens? i just think people often use class as a way to dismiss other folk's organizing efforts (e.g. "they're just a bunch of middle class white kids") without more deeply analyzing at why the movement might be that way, or to just distract from the issues. i'd rather see middle class folks organizing than, say, shopping. of course, middle class folks who are organizing need to look at how their class privilege affects their organizing. i certainly don't think PETA does that - hell, they can't even deal w/ feminist criticism of their continued sexism.



" And again, many of the anti-fur people posting here are doing their best to forget all about this and instead cry about class baiting."

actually, i was nowhere near the anti-fur demo, as i had other (anarcho) commitments that day, but i suppose i'm anti-fur, at least the unnecessary and frivolous use of fur in general. i have some problems w/ animal rights organzing in general, mainly the sanctimoniousness and "purity" of many activists (as if buying pesticide-drenched cotton is better than leather, etc.) i realized quite a while ago that just about anything we do living in this "white supremacist captilalist patriarchy" (to use bell hooks' term) is going to be loaded w/ contradictions. i think it's good to reduce our consumption that contributes to cruelty wherever possible for us (using free range meat, driving less or not at all, not supporting the gap, etc. etc., while recognizing that not everyone can make the same choices some of us can) but not beating ourselves or each other up about living up to these standards.


(and i do personally think meat-eating, leather-wearing, etc. is ok, so long as we reduce the cruelty and really respect the animals who are sacrificed. i agree that we need to take life to live, incl. plant life, but there are ways to do it that honor the animals and plants, etc. involved. but i don't think this culture is anywhere near that, sadly.)

also, animal rights tends to be a single issue movement, which is also problematic, though i can see where sometimes people feel they need to focus to make some changes to reduce cruelty.

i think sometimes activism is a calling, and people should organize on whatever they feel called to do, and whatever they feel passionate enough about to devote lots of time to. this isn't always rational. of course, people need to be educating themselves, etc., confronting their class, race priveleges, etc., but to focus your organizing on an issue based solely on rational or strategic thinking is sometimes strategy and sometimes leftist opportunism. it would be fucking awesome if we all had shitloads of time to devote to dismantling the entire system, but sometimes you just gotta do what you feel called to and you'll probably be the most effective there. (while supporting other struggles in whatever ways you can, without completely burning yourself out.)

and i'm glad there are folks who feel called to break into labs and liberate animals. it's a fine form of direct action. i wish i had the guts.

i also really appreciate what aaron wrote above, as well:

""Animal rights" politics are NOT radical if we take the term literally (let alone seriously). Animals have no intrinsic rights -- whatever rights they have are bestowed by humans and don't exist in nature. The language of rights accords fully with a capitalist system of exchange. Under capitalism, working class and poor people have lots of rights as subjects of capital but little power as humans. Similarly, under capitalism, animals could be granted greater rights, but the system that is devastating the habitat of all life-forms, planet earth, would go virtually unscathed.

The fight for a non-capitalist world in which living things and beings thrive won't come about by single-issue struggles for rights. It will come from humans rising against a system based upon exploitation and alienation, driven by a desire to live in a world that's alive."

SInce 9/11 the left has been at each others throats. ok we were before then too but it seems worse now. We need unity to do anything (liek stop the war) and all this internal hatred would seem like a creation of COINTELPRO if I didnt know the people posting.

I dont wear fur since I have no reason but I dont really have a huge problem with it. Lefty culture can scare off many people who might oppose wars etc.. BUT attacking people for their beliefs wont get one any more support. Unless one is working within a union middle class lefties is all we have to work with and alienating people hurts all causes. On the job activism is the only solidly working class activism Ive seen and the left is only starting to get back into that (and many lefties who talk all the time of the working class wont work with unions)

Self criticism is good but most of the posts on this site go way beyond that and seem to be aimed at weakening any opposition to the government by making alliances impossible.

"We need unity to do anything (liek stop the war) and all this internal hatred would seem like a creation of COINTELPRO if I didnt know the people posting."

How do we achieve unity without recognizing our practical and political differences? Just because something is branded "leftist" does not mean that we should uncritically support it.

For instance, your post can be considered sectarian because you assume that your goal ("stopping the war") is the same goal as everyone else. In reality, people on here have been working for years towards other goals -- through many wars, might I add, including Panama, Iraq 1, Somalia, Bosnia, etc. Never in the history of the USA has a left movement stopped the US war machine. So presuming that everyone should shut up and work towards this one, short-term goal is just as sectarian as presuming that stopping vivisection is the goal or creating organizations is the goal, etc.

"On the job activism is the only solidly working class activism Ive seen and the left is only starting to get back into that (and many lefties who talk all the time of the working class wont work with unions)"

I can't see this at all. In the world of activism, there are housing issues, police brutality issues, prison issues, environmental racism/classism issues -- all of which are solid class activism that don't involve union bureaucrats (who are unfortunately considered part of the left even though they have systemically carried out class warfare against workers in this country for the last 40 years).

Aside from activism, the "working class" part is ourselves. We come from working class families, working class neighborhoods, working class situations, our lifelong friends are working class (whether they are political or not), our family and friends are in prison, etc. If we don't come from those communities, then recognize that and adjust accordingly. But saying that "unions" are the only way that any political person can ever have anything to do with class resistance in the US is short-sighted, I think.

"Sectarianism" -- or rather, a diversity of groups who are articulating their strategic or political differences with each other -- is a sign of strength, not weakness. With this definition, sectarian is good -- divisiveness is not. To me, divisive is something like the Sierra Club shutting down one of their offices for speaking out against the war. Divisive is Bob Black trying to burn down someone's office. All political wings are sectarian -- the right-wing, the left-wing, the islamic-wing -- if you have a diversity of people, you will have a diversity of opinions. Unless you are Josef Stalin, this is okay.

At least, to me, Indymedia is at its best when it is able to break through the dominance of social scenes and social hierarchies and allow sometimes-anonymous, passionate arguments between groups who would have NEVER before even spoken with each other. If anything, the problem is awkward alliances where no ones trusts anyone else because political motivations are obscured in the name of a unified front that will easily fall apart when the chips are on the table. For instance, IAC is good at presenting a united front but what is the end result? Before we stop the war, people will realize that IAC's goal is to gain substantial political power for itself, ultimately towards a wingnut plan of implanting a quasi-Stalinist party dictatorship in the United States. Their latest plan of forming political party cells towards an anti-war referendum has already alienated a lot of groups.

For me personally, I am interested in finding people and groups with similar goals that are well-articulated and moving towards those goals. The more praxical cohesion that can be achieved, the better. That doesnt mean I wont work with people outside of that scope, but ultimately the most effective work in history is accomplished by well-oiled political groups, not personality cults or broad-based, single-issue movements.

In general, then, we can agree -- the wingnut single issue faction of animal rights groups are problematic. But there is one point I wanted to address in what you wrote:

i do think that class-baiting is a problem in "the movement." i think it's one thing to point out the middle class formation of a movement, but to dismiss it because it's made up mainly of middle class people is problematic. after all, as i said above, it is mainly middle class folks who have more time and energy to devote to organizing, esp. on issues that don't directly impact them. i mean, who's gonna organize for animals -the chickens? i just think people often use class as a way to dismiss other folk's organizing efforts (e.g. "they're just a bunch of middle class white kids") without more deeply analyzing at why the movement might be that way, or to just distract from the issues. i'd rather see middle class folks organizing than, say, shopping. of course, middle class folks who are organizing need to look at how their class privilege affects their organizing.

If you divorce class analysis from your political activities, then we are drifting away from each other and eventually, I won't be able to say we are in the "same movement" (for whatever worth that is).

The role of rich people in a class movement is really relevant to what shape that movement will take. As you say, "who will organize for animals?" In the same way, many people will argue, "who will organize the workers" or "who will organize the ghettos" if not for the "rich who have more time and resources"?

The answer, to me, is that the long tradition of leftist bureaucrats and "working class managers" is a hindrance to what I am trying to do, not something that contributes to it. It is this mentality that caused most workers in the last 2 decades to hate their unions and allow them to be destroyed, or to cause people to have no faith in "social service" programs which intend to mobilize the working masses under a party/ideology banner in exchange for bread or other services. These tendencies have accumulated over time to form a liberal bureaucracy that absorbs and kills authentic class resistance each time it surfaces in the United States.

Quite a few people with money and resources obscure this behind a facade of being poor, spending most of their time in the dumpster rather than getting their ass to work and actualizing their potential to raise money the old-fashioned way for political causes that are dear to them. Their "boredom" and "alienation" and "fill-in-crimethinc-bullshit-here" is used as a rationalization to blur the class analysis and turn them into largely useless lifestylists at best, leftist bureaucrats at worst.

In the absence of large-scale organizations which can support tendencies that can lead to revolutionary situations, we will be left with what we have now, symbolic protests and middle-class organizations posing as a working class movement.

"If you divorce class analysis from your political activities, then we are drifting away from each other and eventually, I won't be able to say we are in the "same movement" (for whatever worth that is)."

perhaps i should have been more specific by stating that a class analysis needs to be part of our organizing, rather than saying that middle class activists need to "look at how their class privilege affects their organizing."

but i have to get back to (wage) work right now. ugh.

damn, i'm disappointed. i thought we were ready to tell doormatt that working class whites hate him as much as blacks do. maybe even more. no self-respecting working class black person wouldn't hate a whitey black nationalist like doormatt. fuck all nationalism.

w n' w

Look at these links.
It is anarchists, sadly, who composed a large part of the group harrassing the makah whalers two years ago (they didn't go hunting this year). It wasn't all moderates or liberals, who were mostly fine with it and barely noticed it. There was a right wing racist conservative faction who hate the idea of honoring any treaty, and a large liberal group who confine their political activism to antiwhaling and animal shelters, and then there was a group of anarchists. I know of a couple of them who are based out of Eugene, who have spoken at anarchist conferences, and who were in that group over on the far edge of the basketball arena where the green anarchists were showing their videos at the last bookfair. The captain of the Sea Shepherd is kind of a nut who has said racist things, and said that he was present at the 2nd Wounded Knee in the early 70s and he acts like he can therefore speak for indians, but everyone who had been there says that he definitely was not at wounded knee and is making it up.

This link describes an anarchist shooting stuff at makah in a canoe who could have fallen in and hurt themselves. http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/whalehunt990511.html
and here's an indylisting - so basically he is 'one of us'.
http://portland.indymedia.org:8081/calendar/?display=zoom&event=891 Where do you think most anarchists are with animal rights uber alles? is this a small contingent, or would many go driving past dozens of mcdonald's cow and chicken vending outlets to go bother whalers.
My position is that it is impossible to live up to an animal rights ideal that each individual within the animal kingdom is equal. First, there are many colonial animals, so would killing a colony of marine invertebrates be 100X as bad as killing a single copepod, or not? Hardly anyone would consider the dozen aphids that you squish when you eat an ear of corn to be 12X as bad as killing a pig or a bunny - so... almost everyone *does* accept some hierarchy based on size and phylum. Yet, accepting that it's impossible to never kill any invertebrates, or to never displace anything, doesn't mean that there should be no principles at all. There is some intermediate space where people have to live that can't be arrived at by trying to derive natural laws.
The thing with the green anarchists is that many do reject agriculture because agricultural societies - China, the Aztecs, Europe, mesopotamia, are precisely where technology developed and later industrial society - and industrial society is the problem, so they say we should get rid of all of that. But I don't know how it could work to reject both agriculture and hunting. There are a couple areas on earth where just gathering would suffice, but they would be a small fraction of the area where hunting+ gathering might work.

Eco-fascism is a noticeable current throughout history. One of the most disgusting elements of the anti-Makah campaign is that the Sea Shepherd aligned itself with a racist fucking pig, Jack Metcalf. For more information on Jack Metcalf, a reknowned racist, see:
http://www.student.uit.no/~paalde/nazismexposed/Scripts/News/1999/0708.html

Sea Shepherd even went so far as to hold a joint press conference with Metcalf to directly attack the Makah tribe. Imagine any group of people who would hold a conference with a known right-wing racist. Now look at their webpage and tell me that your normal environmental-leaning individual would not be interested in their organization:
http://www.seashepherd.org/

Please look into this story more. Also, whatever your feelings about these anarchist authors are, the German Nazi pro-environment quotes they provide will certainly remind you of some of the rhetoric used by modern west coast environmentalists -- in this interesting essay about Eco-Fascism:
http://www.social-ecology.org/learn/library/staudenmaier/fascist_ecology.html

Anyone who suggests that random environmental movements can not be easily sidetracked into supporting other political tendencies needs to explain what the hell is going on here. I know that many of you could see yourself supporting this group, only to realize that you are supporting a movement which works hand-in-hand with a fascist movement.

Would it be sectarian to organize an armed anarchist escort for the Makah? Or should we just ignore these "anarchists" who are physically attacking an indigenous population? Because personally, I get very mad thinking about this and I am compelled to want to help the Makah against this terrible abberation of "left" activism. At the very least, I will speak out against it when I can, I don't care if someone says it is sectarian or not.

Fascists are scum. And fascist collaborators are scum, too. End of story.

Please check out this letter which was sent to the Seattle anarchist paper "Eat the State":
At a joint Sea Shepherd and Jack Metcalf news conference yesterday, far right-wing racist Jack Metcalf complained that the civil rights of Sea Shepherd had been violated by the Makahs. This is the same Jack Metcalf that has spent a lifetime seeking to deny civil and human rights to people of color. The same Metcalf who, while in the Washington State Assembly, stated that "Black people are genetically incapable of governing themselves." The same Metcalf that the ACLU gave a 0 rating on his voting record on civil rights in Congress. To Metcalf, and others like him, rights only belong to rich white men.

Paul Watson stated to the press that the actions of the Makahs were like the actions of the KKK in the south in the days of the civil rights movement. Paul Watson, I lived many years in the south and fought the KKK, and let me tell you something. If the Makahs acted like the KKK your ass would be hanging from a tree. All the Makahs tried to do was to defend themselves two times from these white racists who sought to disrupt sacred ceremonies. But I will agree with Watson on one thing: I do wish that the Makah Tribal Police had not stepped in. For that was the only thing that saved the racists from the wrath of the Makah people.

People need to start seeing Paul Watson and Sea Shepherd for what they really are. They are nothing more than racist eco-fascists who are out to spread their eurocentric supremacy upon the world. Watson basically stated this goal when he said in the "Town Meeting" TV show that he has to deal with different cultures throughout the world, and that what these people have to understand is that they must obey international laws.

Whose international laws? That of the international eurocentric corporate machine. Yes, dear friends, the same monster whose industrial greed nearly wiped out the gray whale in the first place, along with the buffalo, and so many other forms of life. The same monster that exterminated complete indigenous Nations from the face of the earth. The same monster industrial process that rapes Mother Earth and vomits its waste, fouling the air, land, and water.

"How can you say such things of Captain Watson?" the bleeding heart white liberals think. To that I say: "How could he be anything but what I have said, when he stands hand in hand with Metcalf, who is not only a racist, but also has one of the worst environmental voting records in Congress."

To Watson and his kind, the rich white man is morally superior to nature and the other peoples of the world. To them the world is just a playground with warm fuzzy things in it for their entertainment. The whale, they seek to domesticate as their pets. It is interesting that they promote the whale watchers. My father, while he was still living, was in the Coast Guard Auxiliary, and one of the things they had to do was to keep the whale watchers off the migrating gray whales so that they could safely migrate.

Real environmentalism is not morally superior to nature, but rather seeks to be in balance with nature. The wolf, eagle, and orca have their place in the balance, as do the plant eaters. They all depend upon each other, for without both, the balance would be upset and their survival would be in danger. Traditional indigenous people are also a part of that balance of nature.

What is upsetting the balance of nature is people like Watson, Metcalf, and their god of greed.

Arthur J. Miller, Tacoma, WA
http://eatthestate.org/03-10/Backtalk.htm

That's a good idea.
Because, really, the majority of people don't oppose their separate nation status - but unfortunately these few especially interested people who go out and threaten the hunters distortedly represent the anarchist, extreme right, and environmentalist liberal groups that they come from.
Eat the State! is great, and Seattle anarchists definitely showed what they can do during WTO 3 years ago. The person who wrote the letter above, and J. H arper who was the green anarchist who interfered with the hunt (links two comments above) but mainly fights Huntingdon life sciences and keeps getting called to grand juries investigating ELF or ALF, as well as people who have fought off armed personnel carriers sent in by the city to evict the african american heritage museum in Seattle, as well as others were all on the same yahoogroups list serv nw anarchy, where they would frequently bicker and try to lead each other through their lines of thinking but got nowhere. Like Ha rp er has said I was trying to earn scene points by saying he had bad security culture for talking in detail about the stuff he does at public anarchist conventions and that it is only appropriate to take somewhat aside in private. A number of them don't like eat the state! and consider it reformist and want to start a different anarchist newspaper. But anyway, Seattle anarchists still accomplish a number of things every year.
There will be another hunt again. They usually go for whales returning in the Fall, so probably they aren't going out this year? The situation with other anarchists going to neah bay to oppose the first set of anarchists (who are totally outnumbered by clueless environmentalists with signs who haven't done much thinking about politics, yet are the most aggressive ones out in zodiacs etc.) is that the residents out there probably are tired of any outsiders showing up in their small town. It would make more sense, of course, to make an offer to do that, and then wait for a general invitation. A lot of anarcho sympathizers have hung out with this small group of green anarchists and their friends in Seattle - it's a fairly small world - and it's weird how we can end up on completely different sides like Arthur Miller and Ge ov Parr ish vs ha rper.

and not to totally criticize any sentiment for mammals and whales. Whaling isn't the issue - because it's all about sovereignty. Lots of americans oppose monarchies or bad practices in other countries, but we wouldn't think of holding a protest here except in cases where US tax dollars are going to prop up the foreign country. As long as the other nation isn't under the thumb of an empire or dictatorship, it seems simple that the anarchist thing to do is to trust the people of the other country to do the right thing (and there are some Makah who oppose the hunt - let them win the argument - perhaps they even did during the past 2 years when they haven't hunted). The makah never signed over all their land and rights to the US - and in 1855 either there or a bit to the south, settlers burned down their last large longhouses and started chopping all the trees, setting the people on the path to a crappy economy and mobile home living. It seems like psychology enters into a lot of this. The Chronicle today described how thousands and thousands of dolphins have been killed in nets because dolphins behaviorally tend to follow boats, and each year, 3000 still are killed. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/12/05/MN137910.DTL
The US navy also is starting to use sonar of such high decibel that dozens of whales have beached themselves where they try it out, but still they're advocating using this. Yet one hunt turns into the showdown for this issue.

i have not read this book, but i've read many others by these authors (linda hogan is one of my favorite authors - i recommend her novel Solar Storms to everyone.) anyway, i believe they discuss the Makah Whale hunt in this book. (hmm.. maybe i should read it - skimming the press release, it looks pretty good...)

SIGHTINGS
The Gray Whales’ Mysterious Journey


For Immediate Release

WASHINGTON—Two award-winning writers chart the mysterious 10,000-mile migration of the Eastern Pacific gray whales from their Baja California birthing waters in Mexico to their summer Arctic feeding grounds in a new release from National Geographic Books.

SIGHTINGS: The Gray Whales’ Mysterious Journey (National Geographic Books, ISBN 0-7922-7989-1, July 2002, $26) is by acclaimed novelist and naturalist Brenda Peterson and celebrated Chickasaw poet and writer Linda Hogan. After seven years of following the whale’s marathon annual journey, they share with readers what they have learned about these mysterious great mammals and their migration routes, as well as Native stories about gray whales and recent natural history discoveries.

The book is a multifaceted portrait of the human-whale bond, written in two voices. Hogan’s lyrical and traditional Native American point of view weaves with Peterson’s visionary voice for an endangered natural world. The result is a passionate dialogue about both Native and animal rights that reveals a new 21st-century conflict: fragile coalitions of Native and non-Native environmentalists are seeking to protect whales, while some coastal tribes who revere whales still hunt them.

Hogan’s voice resonates with indigenous knowledge that includes tribal literature and song as well as Native science. She traces the role of whales in tribal history and mythology, and the ancient historical and spiritual bond between whales and humans.

Peterson, who has studied and written about whales for two decades, provides a dramatic narrative, focusing on animal-human relationships and bringing their mystery and beauty into the world of science.

The authors document the dramatic challenges facing gray whales. These include climate changes that affect their food supply — the possible cause of a record-high die-off of gray whales in 1999 and 2000 — and political lobbying led by Japan and Norway to lift the 1986 international ban on commercial whaling.
SIGHTINGS also tells the story of the people whose lives are linked to the gray whale — from tribal communities, researchers and fishermen to eco-activists, businessmen and historical whalers — and offers insights into current disputes between Native people, the tourism industry, scientists, environmentalists and whaling nations.

The book is a revealing, often haunting, amalgam of science, history, anthropology and powerful storytelling.

Peterson has studied and written about marine animals and the environment for the past two decades. She is the author of more than a dozen books, including the award-winning memoir “Build Me an Ark: A Life with Animals,” selected as a Best Spiritual Book of 2001, and “Duck and Cover,” a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She and Hogan co-edited the best-selling, three-volume series “Women and the Natural World.” Peterson lives in Seattle.

Hogan, author of 10 previous books, received an American Book Award for “Seeing Through the Sun.” “Mean Spirit” won the Oklahoma Book Award and the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Hogan is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant in fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Five Civilized Tribes Museum Playwriting Award. She lives in Colorado.

Human beings uber alles! Whites uber alles! Men uber alles! Heterosexuals uber alles! Get the picture you stupid fuckers!!!! And while we're at it let's kill all the retarded people - those worthless fucks incapable of reason.

"And I kind of thought we all shared common threads and that gravitated here to challenge conventions we'd been fed - like cultures that treat creatures like machines - and if you buy that shit then how long til it's me that serves as your commodity?"
You're all a bunch of fucking capitalists.

the above poster typifies what many hate about "animal rights" militants.

There is one old lady who still is fluent in this isolated language:

Tribes on the Olympic Peninsula are often grouped with the Coastal Salish peoples. However, the Quileute seem to be unrelated, linguistically at least, to any other population in the world. The Quileute were linked through their unique language to the Hoh and the Chimakum, who, according to legend, were washed through the strait to the northeast corner of the Peninsula. http://www.whiterabbits.com/Olypen_history.html

http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/s02010067.htm
"He wanted me to come with him to meet with the State and Feds on the Hoh Reservation. The State Department of Fisheries wanted to take control of the Hoh and Quillayute fisheries. There was one more person with us. We called and told everyone else to stay home.

"When we came to the entrance of the Hoh Reservation, a long line of cars passed us. We thought, 'This must be them.' We were to meet in the longhouse on the Hoh, and when we got there the State and Federal officials had surrounded the longhouse. We went in and the three of us sat on the east side of the longhouse, and the State and Federal officials filled the west side of the longhouse. I had read the court decision on the So Happy case on the Columbia River in 1962-63, which said that the State did not have the right to regulate previously existing Indian fisheries.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs superintendent George Felshaw (I knew him, and liked him) got up and said how the State had the right to regulate the Hoh fisheries. I thought, boy, somebody's fed him a scoop. The state handed the three of us paper, and informed us that they had taken control of the Hoh fishery.

Government officials burned down all the S?Klallam longhouses a century ago, and only recently has construction of a new one begun. The tribe needed to train carvers in order to complete this task. Fulton and Jones carved poles during this apprenticeship which have been designated to serve as house posts for the longhouse. They designed their totem poles to reflect their S?Klallam heritage. The engraved images speak of the tribe?s history and its vision.
http://www.arts.wa.gov/progFA/appren/fajonesj1996.htm

So whats up animal rights people? Whats up sectarian people?

Is it wrong to denounce alliances between "anarchists" and Nazis or not? Is it wrong to be mistrustful of west coast animal rights people who attack indigenous populations?

It suddenly got very quiet here after we mention the embarrassing little "nazi" incident which quite a few animal rights people still defend as legitimate.

The gulf between revolutionaries and animal rights activists is so wide that you will see this post die off and the animal rights people will hide, they dont give a fuck about humans they give a fuck about some liberal cause

Anti-rights people have a lot in common with fascists.

SE

Last chance to renounce the nazi-loving animal rights people. No?

Do you all know about Peter Singer, or have opinions about him? Right wingers love to use him to paint 'the left' as a bunch of eugenicists, and he really *really* pisses off disability-rights people. -----
------------------------------------------------
copied:
http://i2i.org/SuptDocs/Enviro/enanimal.htm
Book Review: Animal Rights
by Dave Kopel

Want to upset all the pre-conceptions of your life, and look at the world around you in a radically new way? Then read Peter Singer's book Animal Rights. Written by an Australian philosophy professor in the 1970s, Animal Rights is the founding book of the modern animal rights movement. As such, Animal Rights may be one of the most influential books of the 20th century.

When Singer's book first appeared, animal rights was on the fringe of the fringe. Animal rights advocates, to the extent that they could get any attention from the press at all, were treated as a bunch of nuts. CBS Evening News compared British animal rights advocates to Monty Python. But today, especially among young people, animal right is a major part of political and social activism. So even if you think you're inflexibly opposed to animals having rights, Singer's book will help you understand the millions of people who disagree with you.

Folks who believe that animals have no rights will often assert that because animals are animals, they should have no rights. As Singer points out, the argument is simply a tautology. To say that animals should have no rights because they are animals is no more logical than to say that women should not have rights because they are women, or that Blacks should have no rights because they are Blacks. To say that status as a woman must, in itself, imply that women have no rights is sexism; to say the same about Blacks is racism. And, Singer demonstrates, to say the same about animals is "specisim."
cont....


THE UTILITARIAN HORRORS OF PETER SINGER
January 6, 2000

NEW JERSEY -- Princeton University's controversial bioethicist Dr. Singer, is the subject of the January 10, New Republic's cover story. Singer is notorious for advocating the abortion and killing of disabled children as a moral right. Here he presents an amazing hypothetical situation that would have a person sacrifice the life of another for their own worldly possessions.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK--The Village Voice has this insightful article on Princeton's Professor Peter Singer, who promotes the idea that infants, and those who are not "self-aware", are not real persons, and that we should have no problems with disposing of them.
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0008/hentoff.shtml

Back to Top of Page

WHY ARE WE AFRAID OF PETER SINGER?
March 6, 2000

Here's a rather lengthy piece by the Chronicle of Higher Education on Princeton's highly controversial bioethics professor and philosopher Peter Singer.
http://chronicle.com/free/v46/i27/27a00101.htm

I suggest banning animal rights fetishists from this list and making a concerted effort to drum their hateful message out of leftist circles where their dogma of hate will never survive the light of day.

Antrophile

It's not a list.

What an odd comment. I care about both animals and Humans. Why you think one excludes the other is beyond me. And frankly, you don't have to be a "liberal" to care about animal rights. In my opinion, animal rights and human rights go hand in hand. Diminishing one dininishes all.

People ARE animals.

Why do you all think you're lobbiests, trying to get a better deal of social welfare for all the cute little fury critters. I they could talk, I'm sure they would tell you to "fuck off! and get off your liberal hobby horses, trying to take the moral high ground!"

This backward looking nostalgia has the Nazis writ all over it. And never forget that Hitler was a vegetarian. Most vegans I've ever met seemed more fascistic than any skinhead.

A

I'm an omnivore.

I'm THIS omnivore:

http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/11/1545425_comment.php#1545545

'Victimless' beef, chicken or fish grown in the laboratory could one day make its way into kitchens on Earth and in space

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/techscience/story/0,4386,163810,00.html

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993208

Anti-fur movement gets decent exposure

Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Staff Writer <http://sfgate.com/templates/types/gatemainpages/images/clear.gif> Saturday, January 4, 2003 <http://sfgate.com/templates/brands/chronicle/images/chronicle.gif> [Click to View]

San Francisco -- Something was about to happen.

Twentysomething hipsters on expensive bikes and a clumping of television reporters with cameras had gathered at the far end of the ice rink.

Nearby, some other people set up a display table with an efficiency that signaled they had done this before.

In the foreground, oblivious, were moms wearing fleece and dads with video cameras who had come to document the outing.

And at high noon, in the shadow of San Francisco's Embarcadero high-rises, two mostly naked women -- covered in painted leopard spots -- skated onto the ice.

First, a chorus of gasps, morphing to laughs, came from the sideboard sitters.

Then, in overlapping voices, "Omigod. Mom. Mom. Mom! Grab the camera!" and "Here kitty, kitty!" and, finally, "I'm not impressed."

One lap around, TV cameras chasing, and then the nice young man in charge told the nice young women in spots to go away. They did, and then it was over.

Well, nearly over. The women, wrapped in a banner emblazoned with an anti- fur slogan, stood waving to the TV cameras above a sea of kids who were hunched over, tightening their laces.

The women left a few minutes later and families crowded into the space where they had stood.

This is how publicity stunts end, much like a random traffic jam that clears or a fire engine that races by and suddenly slows, turning off its siren and lights.

It can happen anywhere at any time, an evocation of the First Amendment that can make you laugh or make you wait.

And savvy protesters who send press releases to the media (with a catchy slogan like "We'd rather bare skin than wear skin") live again on the evening news and in the morning newspaper.
cont.'d http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/01/04/BA11512.DTL

Marin women plan to march naked in San Francisco for peace

Associated Press <http://www.sfgate.com/templates/types/gatemainpages/images/clear.gif> Friday, January 3, 2003

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. (AP) - A group of Marin County women plan to march naked through San Francisco on Jan. 18 to protest the possibility of war with Iraq.

The march down Market Street will be part of a program calling for parallel peace demonstrations in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

A similar rally on Oct. 26 drew 100,000 protesters on the West Coast.

The Marin women made a splash posing nude for photos in formations spelling "peace" in fields and on beaches.
cont'd http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2003/01/03/marin.DTL

You are wrong, not all people care about the lives of human beings. In fact, I care the same about all life, so if I'm willing to opt for the death of one animal, I am just as willing to kill another. Any other. I could care less about human life, in fact it's quite a problem for the planet that we are torturing. I could also care less about human suffering, because are there not some humans that we think should suffer? We throw all these people in prison, they are suffering, do you want us to let them all out? I am a vegetarian, but that is not for the sake of the animals but for the sake of our planet, and I would not feel bad at all doning an animal skin. For pete's sake, all of our shoes are probably leather, it's really quite hard to find ones that aren't. I say, kill them all. Let all suffer. That is, until the day that we decide to stop it all, because who are we to discriminate? How do you think the cow feels about what you say about protecting the precious horses and foxes? Oh yeah, excuse me, you don't think the cow feels. Bull sh!t

I am a vegetarian, but that is not for the sake of the animals but for the sake of our planet,

so....you think distroying plants is ok and in fact good for the planet? what an un evolved person you must be
why don't you become a logger and desimate the red woods (that will give you a laugh) or go out and kill off some indangered species?
hay why don't you go up to san Q, may-be you can throw the switch on the next exicution?

> Now let’s drop it and get back to stopping this war. Time’s a-wasting, we’re all in danger, and ebola’s a hard way to go. So is anthrax, smallpox and radiation poisoning. And they’re just the tip of the iceberg.

Still waiting.

Oh, that's right. It's coming!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!

Ho Hum

The Iraqi war is going to bring ebola, anthrax, smallpox and radiation poisoning to the shores of the US right now in 2003.

Well, it was predicted that it would happen.

Oh, that's right. It's coming!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!

(tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.........)

Ho Hum

>>Now let’s drop it and get back to stopping this war. Time’s a-wasting, we’re all in danger, and ebola’s a hard way to go. So is anthrax, smallpox and radiation poisoning. And they’re just the tip of the iceberg.

>It is *way* too early to sum up it’s results. Many have not yet happened. Some will reverberate for decades, or longer.

So, that's how it work's. Cool !! Make it so general in nature that something's bound to happen that I can say "See! Told ya!!"

Let me try:

"If the world continues to revolve around sun and everything stays in the same order it has for the past few thousands years, daytime and nightime will continue to be the norm."

Hey! That was fun!!

The "debate coach" shell you crawl into doesn't work w/ me, and many others.

Overreaching generalized statements about the future are too easy to make and defend, which is what you made. I made my point. Call it ridicule if you wish. I call it being absurd in order to demonstrate absurdity.