Help in drafting anarchist vegan text, 1st version now ready
Oct 17 2005 19:18
#152
lol! I though boycolon was funny... well even a little? No? ok, i'll get my coat...
Sorry 
Oct 17 2005 19:20
#153
Hi
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In cases like that, it is better to qualify the comments a bit more so others wouldn't get the wrong end of the stick.
No way. They don't call me Lazy for nothing you know. People are free to choose which end of the stick they want.
It’s more like the spokes of a wheel anyway.
Love
LR
Oct 17 2005 19:29
#154
JDMF wrote:
Catch wrote:
Rare breed pig farming is keeping some breeds from extinction.
you see value in saving human developed species as part of biodiversity?
Saddlebacks and stuff like that? Yes I do. Not yer standard porkers though.
You'd want to see all domestic cats and dogs extinct then would you? Poor rover 
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they are in our culture.
Not in mine. If I eat tofu in the UK, it's called tofu. In your vegan subculture maybe it's called cheeze or something like that, but most chinese, vietnamese and japanese restaurants just call it tofu.
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not that your average meateater really gets "authentic" stuff these days either: pieces of meat are treated, packed and sold in forms that they resemble the original animal as little as possible etc.
Yep that's shit. I don't eat meat like that (apart from nice sausages, but they're made from intestine anyway and it does look an intestine if it's done properly). I also eat fish heads, whole octopus, just about anything that isn't highly processed. I have as much distaste for people who won't eat meat that looks like meat, as I have distaste for people who'll eat processed meat substitutes instead of meat. Both are fundamentally irrational and unhealthy positions.
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Same goes for bovine milk vs soya milk (everyone calls soya milk soya milk, eventhough dairy industry got authorities to ban using the word "milk" in conjunction with soya based "drinks"), soya milk has been used for years - it resembles the milk taken from cows, so do you call it a milk substitute?
Proper soya milk is a drink in its own right. The stuff you can get in UK supermarkets is very much a milk subsitute - and it's full of sugar and water like every other "drink". So I'd rather drink organic milk (even if it's tenuosly organic there's a difference) instead very much. In Japan, soy milk is fucking great, because they aren't trying to replace dairy with it.
Oct 17 2005 19:40
#155
JDMF - you said some stuff been's fed back into the text - can we see the new version. I'd originally intended to be helpful on this thread, and did in fact read it before I posted.
Oct 17 2005 20:06
#156
Catch wrote:
I have as much distaste for people who won't eat meat that looks like meat, as I have distaste for people who'll eat processed meat substitutes instead of meat. Both are fundamentally irrational and unhealthy positions.
You are serious about this? Then you have a distaste for me as well i guess. How can you compare these two? Where's the irrationality? Where's the unhealthyness?
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Proper soya milk is a drink in its own right. The stuff you can get in UK supermarkets is very much a milk subsitute - and it's full of sugar and water like every other "drink". So I'd rather drink organic milk (even if it's tenuosly organic there's a difference) instead very much. In Japan, soy milk is fucking great, because they aren't trying to replace dairy with it.
someone is romanticing a bit 
I've done my own soya milk from beans before (that was before finland has soya milk) and its pretty shit man 
But to each of their own.
The leaflet is now with one beanhead who is doing the layout. I'll try to get the text here tomorrow! And its not a final version then anyway - if the leaflet will ever be distributed anyway. Lets see.
Oct 17 2005 21:34
#157
I have read the Dawkin's article, and feel that in response to it I should explain in more detail than one sentence my views on this subject.
Almost none of my beliefs on this topic are absolute, in that they are merely the views that I find most able to solve the problem of how to treat living things, and as such they are subject to change, whilst I perceive my belief in freedom of speech say to be absolute and unchanging.
The first important point is how I 'treat' humans, and in particular why I think it is useful to treat them to some extent as a homogeneous whole. The first, and in many ways less important reason, is that people's suffering is social (I am not saying this is not the case for any other species, just noting that this is the case for humans), so whilst mistreatment of a comatose d human, or even the 'rape' of a corpse cause no suffering to the individual who may be considered the victim, many people will suffer as the result of the action.
The more important reason though is that capitalism treats us as all legally equal. So even if there was a person whom no-one cared about and was incapable of feeling pain accepting that it is fine to behave in certain ways towards that individual would set a precedent that would almost certainly be extended to all other people.
Without this kind of social system my views on humans become much more continuous, to steal the terminology of Dawkins's. So in a communist society I can see no moral issues with doing absolutely anything to a hypothetical friendless and painless human, although our natural inclination towards empathy and identification with other humans makes many possible acts unsavoury - friends would quickly appear if certain actions were performed. When it comes to embryos I do not think they should have any legal status different from a Petri dish of bacteria, again with the assumption that their creators had surrender all possession of them. Whilst I am not happy with the limited degree to which I have thought about the place of potential in ethical considerations (and especially when it comes to abortion and the use of embryos in research) it seems 'obvious' to me that there is no reason to 'protect' something with no social connections or pain receptors like an embryo.
When it comes to animals I work within the framework that there is a need for arbitrary boundaries when formulating socially acceptable behaviour. This is something Dawkins disagrees with, although sadly the reasons for this are not expanded on much in the limited space of the essay. It is strongly my view that laws should, to the greatest extent possible, be easily quantifiable, something that is not the case with setting the level of potential suffering as a boundary until a quick and easy method for measuring this within any living thing is found. In practice Dawkin's accepts this, although with great sadness, by backing proposals for including the Great Apes within the legal protections afforded to humans.
Given my acceptable of the need for arbitrary boundaries the question is reduced to one of practicalities: where should these boundaries be placed and what is the criteria to judge membership of the groups created by these boundaries. I agree with previous posters that ability to suffer is the 'best' criteria for judging the worth of life. Once that is decided (or some other criteria is decided upon) boundaries much be created. The properties which we are looking for in these boundaries is maximal homogeneity within the categories and maximal discreteness between categories. It is my opinion that species is the categorisation of living creatures that best serves this purpose.
Oct 17 2005 21:40
#158
JDMF wrote:
You are serious about this? Then you have a distaste for me as well i guess. How can you compare these two? Where's the irrationality? Where's the unhealthyness?
OK. I think it's really silly to be all cutesy about farmyard animals then eat burgers, when you won't eat anything that looks like meat.
Similarly, the reason I stopped eating meat is because most of it is kept in shit conditions, pumped full of chemicals, injected with water, made into stuff that looks and tastes nothing like meat. I don't understand why people would stop eating meat then go out and buy tofurkey, - which is grown intensively, full of chemicals and water, doesn't look anything like tofu, let alone a soybean.
It's no more inconsistent than loads of other things people do, but that kind of attitude amongst both vegans and wimpy meat eaters is part of the reason I started eating a bit of meat again.
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I've done my own soya milk from beans before (that was before finland has soya milk) and its pretty shit man
You need to use special water (might be ionised water, I'll ask my other half). The one time I had homemade soy milk it was great, and "whole" soy milk is the shit, better than supermarket milk, but not quite as good as unpasteurised milk.
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The leaflet is now with one beanhead who is doing the layout. I'll try to get the text here tomorrow!
Cool I'd like to see it.
Oct 17 2005 21:45
#159
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but not quite as good as unpasteurised milk.
I miss unpasteurised milk. It is not legal so I can't buy it and I'm not living in Herefordshire so I can't just get it. Rubbish.
Oct 17 2005 21:47
#160
It's starch water you need I think.
Oct 17 2005 21:53
#161
I've confused myself. It's special water you need to turn soy milk into tofu. Sorry JDMF and MoM forthat particular tangent.
Either way, proper whole soy milk tastes great. It's not like I'm anti-vegan food, I'm just anti-veganism as politics.
Only had unpasteurised milk once (although unpasteurised cheese can be got quite easily), but fuck was it good.
Oct 18 2005 07:11
#162
Catch wrote:
Similarly, the reason I stopped eating meat is because most of it is kept in shit conditions, pumped full of chemicals, injected with water, made into stuff that looks and tastes nothing like meat. I don't understand why people would stop eating meat then go out and buy tofurkey, - which is grown intensively, full of chemicals and water, doesn't look anything like tofu, let alone a soybean.
i think we should go back to the basics to see the difference between an animal and a soya bean here:
a piece of an animal - many do not wish to eat food which resembles the animal. To dismiss that as wimpy is poor analysis mate. There are many reasons for this ranging from marketing strategies of animal industry (do you see all the happy animal faces, smiling pigs and hens in the logos of different animal abuse companies, or if neutral picture of animal it is always in a situation with vast amount of space and great conditions weather and all) to calm down the criticism and emotional worry, there is self denial reasons (many people do not want to eat fish heads for instance and seeing a whole pig or a lamb on the table grosses many out) and so on.
a soya bean - there are no reasons to be critical of a soya bean as such (?!?!? i dont understand why i even have to make these distinctions here?) nor there is any reason to deny hundreds of years of dietary culture just because somehow some foods made out of soya or wheat taste and feel like piece of an animal. Take seitan for instance: you are now ranting against vegans who eat seitan because it feels like meat - WTF! Do you eat bread? Seitan is probably less processed than your normal slice of bread.
I dont know about tofurkey because i've never had it, but take the redwoods meat like products from bacon to roast beef style foods: those are not wonders of food technology. Though if you are anti-technology then i wont be able to argue with you, but for certain your average meat like vegan product involves less technology than producing organic milk (unless you again had some 100 years old farm ideal in mind).
So stop first off all giving some retrospective copyright of a texture and taste to bits of animal flesh alone denying a whole diverse dietary history of many vegan foods, ok? Secondly, your judgement depends on some idea of a food which should not be processed in any mechanical way or something - this is something which, apart from primitivists, i don't know anyone who is in this opinion, so it is difficult to argue against such attitude which from my perspective is quite off the wall.
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It's no more inconsistent than loads of other things people do, but that kind of attitude amongst both vegans and wimpy meat eaters is part of the reason I started eating a bit of meat again.
hope you are not as fickle with your other politics and let external factors which do not have anything to do with the actual act you yourself are doing affect your behaviour, ie. become racist because UAF is such a shite group.
How many people you know who became veggie/vegan because there are so many arseholes among meateaters? LOL! Just the whole idea is ridiculous, so i dont know how you can say the reverse with a straight face.
And thirdly: if part of the reason was wimpy meateaters, then how come eating meat was a reaction? You should have just become some natural foodish vegan 
Anyways, i dont understand - but we can agree to disagree on this one mate.
Oct 18 2005 07:30
#163
meanoldman wrote:
So in a communist society I can see no moral issues with doing absolutely anything to a hypothetical friendless and painless human
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When it comes to embryos I do not think they should have any legal status different from a Petri dish of bacteria, again with the assumption that their creators had surrender all possession of them.
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it seems 'obvious' to me that there is no reason to 'protect' something with no social connections or pain receptors like an embryo.
seems like you are not proper specieist or perhaps you are a proper specieist in as much as you deny animals (the non-human kind) from any moral consideration, but on top of that don't really value humans as a group that much either.
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It is strongly my view that laws should, to the greatest extent possible, be easily quantifiable, something that is not the case with setting the level of potential suffering as a boundary until a quick and easy method for measuring this within any living thing is found.
this i call "analysis paralysis" - even the smallest amount of unknown is used to deny that any action is necessary. Bush & co use the same against climate change, and many do use it against having any moral considerations towards animals: because we do not know for a fact how certain animal, lets take a pig, feels, lives, experiences and suffers, we should not worry about its "rights", interests, needs, and so on - ultimately its life.
We do know a great deal though - via evolutionary biology, via animal behaviour science and so on, and results seem to shake the very foundation idea of animals being objects like a clock and change it to more and more complex view.
Anyways, i go with fairly safe attitude: even if we can't be quite sure, i would rather give a benefit of a doubt, and treat all animals with just enough respect to just leave them be - and this is not hard, not time consuming, if anything it has improved my health, made my diet more varied, and even as a powerlifter all my dietary needs are easily met. So the counterquestion is: why not give this benefit of a doubt?
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In practice Dawkin's accepts this, although with great sadness, by backing proposals for including the Great Apes within the legal protections afforded to humans.
why is it with great sadness?
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It is my opinion that species is the categorisation of living creatures that best serves this purpose.
I get the feeling you do not realise how revolutionary (in human - non-human animal relations) your suggestion is?
You see, at the moment we have two categories: Human animal and then all other animals, with the built in suggestion that chimpanzee has more in common with a bee than with a human. Humans have various individual rights, all other animals have rights only as much as it affects the property status of the owner of that animal (categorically speaking, exeptions exist of course).
Your suggestion of categorising in more finer detail, even if it was along specie lines, is pretty damn radical.
Another radical element of it is the property and cultural status in relation to humans: if we would only use species based categorisation that would be a great change to our current situation where a dog, because of its cultural and property status, is fairly heavily protected, and then again a pig with equal or in many cases higher level of intelligence doesn't have fuck all protection (apart from some welfarist protections which protect the property and production rather than the animal).
Oct 18 2005 07:38
#164
first version of the leaflet is now ready:
if you want to read it online:
http://lib4all.redblackandgreen.net/anarkovegan.pdf
(as a six page thing which is easier to follow)
if you want to print it out then use this PDF:
http://lib4all.redblackandgreen.net/anarkovegan-a4.pdf
Note this is a double sided A4 leaflet which folds in three.
Thanks to peeps who gave comments, some of which lead to tweaks, corrections and such like, cheers! This thread has 163 replies, and perhaps half a dozen were commenting the text, LOL!
Oct 18 2005 15:25
#165
JDMF wrote:
a piece of an animal - many do not wish to eat food which resembles the animal. To dismiss that as wimpy is poor analysis mate... there is self denial reasons (many people do not want to eat fish heads for instance and seeing a whole pig or a lamb on the table grosses many out) and so on... -
yeah wimpy was a catch all for "grosses out" or "self denial", I agree it's an oversimplification and to an extent a misrepresentation of some people, but I still object to being told to exchange locally produced organice meat for processed meat substitute (as GR has on this very thread).Either way, I still think if you'll eat abbatoir floor scrapings but don't want to see a fish head on your plate 'cos it makes you squeamish, there's something wrong.
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Take seitan for instance: you are now ranting against vegans who eat seitan because it feels like meat - WTF! Do you eat bread? Seitan is probably less processed than your normal slice of bread.
Look, some mushrooms have a similar texture to meat, I'd prefer they called them mushrooms though.
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for certain your average meat like vegan product involves less technology than producing organic milk (unless you again had some 100 years old farm ideal in mind).
How certain are you? I'm not anti-technology with food or anything else, but I'm opposed to the actual food going through multiple technoligical processes which strip it of its nutritional content, taste and character.
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So stop first off all giving some retrospective copyright of a texture and taste to bits of animal flesh alone denying a whole diverse dietary history of many vegan foods, ok?
When'd I do that. I'd just rather tofu was called tofu and turkey was called turkey. If they want to turn tofu into some grey meaty glump, they can call it "tofu based glump that has a slightly similar texture to meat", no? Why defend the marketing practices of those who'd turn a supposedly radical dietary philosophy into yet another easily packaged convenience lifestyle. I bet they copyrighted "tofurkey", maybe even patented it.
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Secondly, your judgement depends on some idea of a food which should not be processed in any mechanical way or something - this is something which, apart from primitivists, i don't know anyone who is in this opinion, so it is difficult to argue against such attitude which from my perspective is quite off the wall.
so i dont know how you can say the reverse with a straight face.
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Anyways, i dont understand - but we can agree to disagree on this one mate.
Yeah true.
Oct 19 2005 10:34
#166
greets
FWIW
i have placed elisee reclus "on vegetarianism"
here:
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/blackchip/on_vegetarianism.htm
and elisee reclus "the great kinship"
here:
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/blackchip/great_kinship.htm
(let me know of any obvious errors in the OCR'ing of the texts!!)
mal
Oct 19 2005 19:25
#167
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so i dont know how you can say the reverse with a straight face.
did I post this, or did something weird happen to the post?
Oct 19 2005 20:33
#168
I just read the pamphlet - it's great!!! This really made my day. Bravo to the authors:-)
It should go through proofreading though (I did notice a few minor spelling & grammar mistakes...but didn't note them down...sorry for being useless ).
Could you please also mention British IWW in the pamphlet? I believe the London IWW will be willing to distribute it (unless there's an internal rebellion, but there are a few of us who are vegan...and besides, we can always pass it under the table, like in the old days:)
How many copies do you plan to print? Will you be at the bookfair and could you give some copies to the IWW to distribute (note that it's for Dan from London if I don't happen to be at the stall)?
Tell me if there's anything else I can do to help.
Comradely,
Dan
P.S. - I've read that male chicks in the egg industry are actually incinerated or suffocated (saw a photo with hundreds of chicks dying in a closed plastic bag)
+ maybe the photos you've chosen aren't graphic enough.
Oct 19 2005 20:44
#169
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Anyway, gotta run.
Oct 20 2005 10:12
#170
Catch wrote:
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so i dont know how you can say the reverse with a straight face.
did I post this, or did something weird happen to the post?
i think that was from me, you just left out some quote tags...
Cheers GR! This version of the leaflet will go as it is now, but need to add iww to the next version. I dont know about numbers or anything, some london folks will do that. There is a stall at the bookfair which used to be london animal action until cops shut them down, so now there is vegancampaigns.org.uk folks there. I think the leaflet will be available from that stall.
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P.S. - I've read that male chicks in the egg industry are actually incinerated or suffocated (saw a photo with hundreds of chicks dying in a closed plastic bag)
yeah, there are many creative ways in use. grinder is just one of them, carbondioxide is another.
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+ maybe the photos you've chosen aren't graphic enough.
that could be true, though i personally dont like to make things to gory and stuff - sounds a bit too much like using the pictures of starving children symptom
Oct 28 2005 17:51
#171
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Seems like you are not proper specieist or perhaps you are a proper specieist in as much as you deny animals (the non-human kind) from any moral consideration, but on top of that don't really value humans as a group that much either.
So then I'm not a specieist, I'm a bastard. Ace.
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this i call "analysis paralysis" - even the smallest amount of unknown is used to deny that any action is necessary. Bush & co use the same against climate change, and many do use it against having any moral considerations towards animals: because we do not know for a fact how certain animal, lets take a pig, feels, lives, experiences and suffers, we should not worry about its "rights", interests, needs, and so on - ultimately its life.
You've misunderstood me. My claim isn't that we have no way of making a reasonable approximation at the level of suffering a species can experience and thus it's life shouldn't be a concern of ours. If I understood you correctly you're saying that faced with a pig called Wilma we shouldn't consider Wilma as a pig and apply any rules we have created for creatures with a capacity for suffering comparable to a pig but consider Wilma as an individual living creature.
But faced with a pig, even if we were living according to your moral rules where every living creature is judged not as a member of a species or merely as a non-human animal but individually, we have no way of knowing its capacity for suffering except to say “it is a pig, thus it has x capacity for suffering” which is precisely treating it as a species. My contention is that, as we have no way of judging individual creatures, and due to our knowledge of species and the high homogeneity of mental capacity within species, they are the 'correct' level at which to create moral guidelines.
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why is it with great sadness?
The sadness refers to Dawkin's regret that he's forced to support a 'specieist' proposal such as affording the Great Apes the same legal protections as humans as the only way of getting them better treatment.
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Your suggestion of categorising in more finer detail, even if it was along specie lines, is pretty damn radical.
It may be radical but it is evolutionary (pun not intended) rather than revolutionary – currently animals are not treated as a whole, the law does differentiate between difference classes of animals, and capacity for suffering is the primary tool for categorisation. The laws governing inflicting pain on Chimpanzee's are very strict, whilst as far as I'm aware ants are afforded absolutely no legal protection.
It is true to say that sentimentality, something I lack, is also a (if not the) important influence in current legal categorisation of animals and I'd be delighted to see this removed, as well as the removal of the current legal distinction between livestock and pets.
I disagree on the legal status of livestock though. Whilst they are treated differently your statement that “[the pig has no] protection (apart from some welfarist protections which protect the property and production rather than the animal)” just isn't true. The Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1968 makes it an offence to cause or allow unnecessary pain or unnecessary distress to any livestock. I can't see how you can see this as not protecting the animal. You may believe this to be inadequate protection but protection it definitely is.
Oct 31 2005 19:21
#172
hey, almost forgot this one!
meanoldman wrote:
So then I'm not a specieist, I'm a bastard. Ace.
lol, well you did say "So in a communist society I can see no moral issues with doing absolutely anything to a hypothetical friendless and painless human" and there are a lot of severely handicapped humans and perhaps comatosed humans in this situation. Somehow i find it hard to believe that you would not see any moral issues in doing absolutely anything to these people? (or would they be "people" in your definition?). But perhaps this is splitting hairs and going to the philosophical wank area?
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If I understood you correctly you're saying that faced with a pig called Wilma we shouldn't consider Wilma as a pig and apply any rules we have created for creatures with a capacity for suffering comparable to a pig but consider Wilma as an individual living creature.But faced with a pig, even if we were living according to your moral rules where every living creature is judged not as a member of a species or merely as a non-human animal but individually, we have no way of knowing its capacity for suffering except to say “it is a pig, thus it has x capacity for suffering” which is precisely treating it as a species. My contention is that, as we have no way of judging individual creatures, and due to our knowledge of species and the high homogeneity of mental capacity within species, they are the 'correct' level at which to create moral guidelines.
i actually agree with what you say here and in some AR philosopher circles people have told me that i am a specieist just because i actually believe that there are morally relevant diffences between animals (including humans) and the easiest way in our everyday life is to think along species, or perhaps in different animal group, level.
Though conflicting situations rarely arise, especially when diet is concerned, so this issue while interesting, is not very important.
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It is true to say that sentimentality, something I lack, is also a (if not the) important influence in current legal categorisation of animals and I'd be delighted to see this removed, as well as the removal of the current legal distinction between livestock and pets.
now depending on if you would like to strip protection from dogs, or grant equals on pigs, that statement could be either great or not
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I disagree on the legal status of livestock though. Whilst they are treated differently your statement that “[the pig has no] protection (apart from some welfarist protections which protect the property and production rather than the animal)” just isn't true. The Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1968 makes it an offence to cause or allow unnecessary pain or unnecessary distress to any livestock. I can't see how you can see this as not protecting the animal. You may believe this to be inadequate protection but protection it definitely is.
depends how you look at it mate. Animal in agricultural production is a profit creating machine and certain amount protection is not in conflict with the agriculture capitals interests. In fact sometimes they have supported some pieces of "animal protection" legistlature. The levels of which these regulations go have almost never conflicted with the commercial interests involved though.
Another viewpoint to consider: machine does not require legal protection. machine is already protected adequately by property rights to ensure that it continues to produce. Same can be said about current animal welfare legistlation: it is designed to ensure the continuity of production. I see this happening in two ways:
1. animal welfare legistlation is usually just a set of regulations which animal industry would need to follow regardless just in order to create profit. For instance if you would abuse pigs above certain level, it affects the quality of the meat (so called stress meat), but it is still ok to keep them in confined spaces with almost no room to turn around. Capital will always find the most efficient way to extract profit from these creatures, but will have no trouble accepting some legistlation which they would need to follow anyway.
Compare this to the idea that there would be a law which would say "the workers should not smash their computers in pieces" - i dont think capital would have any problem with that
2. animal welfare regulation ensures welfarist and reformist superficial changes which will take the edge of the criticism and ensure a good source of pro-use propaganda. This is probably all too familiar issue for any anarchist working on practically any issue...
There has been several decades of welfarist legal approach to animal welfare, and at the same time animal agriculture has been going through a huge growth period. This shows how little conflict there has been with the idea of animal welfare regulations and capital growth in animal abuse.
Its weird though how animal welfare laws work in practise. Take the example of huntingdon life sciences workers who were filmed punching dogs, throwing them around and abusing them just for kicks. had the same happened by them to their office computers the legistlation would have been simple and easy. And criminal damage to property carries hnigher sentences as well.
Oct 31 2005 21:18
#173
Yeah, I'd forgotten about this thread as well but I noticed it and remembered I'd not answered your last long post and as this has been an interesting discussion (for me) I thought I'd reply. It's not often I get to argue with someone who believes in animal rights who has really well thought out views and arguments, presumably due to in part the rapid degeneration of most of these threads which leaves only those up for a slanging match posting, and partly due to what I percieve to be the appalling politics of many people who are interested exclusively (well, primarily) animal rights.
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Somehow i find it hard to believe that you would not see any moral issues in doing absolutely anything to these people? (or would they be "people" in your definition?). But perhaps this is splitting hairs and going to the philosophical wank area?
It kind of is splitting hairs but that's exactly what I like - I'm a mathematician who does a fair bit of logic so I have to see exactly what implications, however absurd, my axioms have. And I can see no reason that this hypothetical friendless person who due to some medical condition was unable to suffer should have a status different from a sponge. In actuality people have friends and so, for the same reason that necrophilia is ethically wrong, such a person be treated with a level of respect.
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i actually agree with what you say here and in some AR philosopher circles people have told me that i am a specieist just because i actually believe that there are morally relevant diffences between animals (including humans) and the easiest way in our everyday life is to think along species, or perhaps in different animal group, level.
It looks like I actually agree with you here, and my specieism or not specieism is very similar to yours. How upsetting. 
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now depending on if you would like to strip protection from dogs, or grant equals on pigs, that statement could be either great or not Smile
In most ways I don't really care. I have no active involvement with anything to do with animal welfare so my concern is more at the philosophical level.
I guess in practice I'd prefer the welfare laws for dogs to be extended to pigs rather than vice versa. I do dislike pigs though. I've spent a fair amount of time on farms (my step-dad and much of my family are farm labourers) and whilst cows are really nice and sheep are ok pigs are fucking awful animals. Even if you give them enough space to live in a 'dignified' manner I still end up not liking the buggers.
Can't really argue with the large final section of your post, although I would like to hear your opinion on the new Animal Welfare Bill. Whilst animal rights aren't something I am involved with the issue of agriculture is, and I'd be very up for a decent thread on agriculture, the countryside and class at some stage.
Oct 31 2005 22:36
#174
Just quickly:
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Another viewpoint to consider: machine does not require legal protection. machine is already protected adequately by property rights to ensure that it continues to produce. Same can be said about current animal welfare legistlation: it is designed to ensure the continuity of production.
Couldn't the same thing be said for health and safety legislation?
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I'd be very up for a decent thread on agriculture, the countryside and class at some stage.
Me too. You reckon we could persuade Bernie Gunther to come over and play on that one?
Oct 31 2005 23:32
#175
meanoldman wrote:
It kind of is splitting hairs but that's exactly what I like - I'm a mathematician who does a fair bit of logic so I have to see exactly what implications, however absurd, my axioms have.
thats interesting! I used to do stuff with a bunch of mathematicians who ran this really good campaign to save old growth forrests. They were fantastic but i really could not stand the way they worked, thought and discussed, so i left them to it. It was definitely way too logical to me
I aproach things from the gut level, the common sense level and try to rationalise and analyse afterwards - sometimes ending up forcing myself to correct some unlogical positions. but primarily i am a very practical person and only enjoy talking philosophy with mates in late hours
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I've spent a fair amount of time on farms (my step-dad and much of my family are farm labourers)
aiit, thats the kind of background i come from as well, peasant to the bone lol!
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although I would like to hear your opinion on the new Animal Welfare Bill
i have nothing fantastic to add to it than what i haven't already said on a political and philosophical level. When i glanced through it it promised more of the same and was not going to have any impact on animal agriculture and its intensity of exploitation.
catch said:
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Couldn't the same thing be said for health and safety legislation?
Good point! I have been thinking about the parallels - and this would actually only make sense to an anarchist or some other revolutionary loonie, but health and safety legistlation while important in winning some basic safety and security at work, and offering some kind of legal safety net to fall back on, is of course essentially a reformist piece of regulation designed to smooth the edges of capitalism.
food for thought!
Oct 31 2005 23:56
#176
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Good point! I have been thinking about the parallels - and this would actually only make sense to an anarchist or some other revolutionary loonie, but health and safety legistlation while important in winning some basic safety and security at work, and offering some kind of legal safety net to fall back on, is of course essentially a reformist piece of regulation designed to smooth the edges of capitalism.
food for thought!
Someone was talking about some state legislation being just as much about protecting the capital of stupid capitalists from their own stupidity as it is protecting workers (can't remember who though, might have been Aufheben?). It's an interesting point - left to their own devices some will go over the edge and push people far enough that you'll get real militancy that'll spread, so pro-worker legislation takes the edges off that and safeguards some of that capital long-term.
I'm sure most H&S legislation has been made in response to potential large-scale strikes over accidents etc. Sadly it's possible a lot of the more recent "comfy chair" type stuff is about productivity issues about the effects of back pain on work lost through sickness absence or concentration loss rather than any kind of real resistance.
Nov 1 2005 22:29
#177
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as far as I'm aware ants are afforded absolutely no legal protection.
Y'know you wouldn't believe the person sayin' that was actually sane anywhere else would ya? Did you type it with a straight face or were you pissin' yerself at the time?
It certainly made me laugh.
Nov 2 2005 20:04
#178
Catch wrote:
Someone was talking about some state legislation being just as much about protecting the capital of stupid capitalists from their own stupidity as it is protecting workers (can't remember who though, might have been Aufheben?). It's an interesting point - left to their own devices some will go over the edge and push people far enough that you'll get real militancy that'll spread, so pro-worker legislation takes the edges off that and safeguards some of that capital long-term.
that is very true. And in the current climate of more and more cross species sympathy more people would be vegetarian (end to animal exploitation) than there is now due to animal welfare regulations (regulated exploitation).
But then again, like with anarchist politics, i also think that in animal issues our argument and case has to be strong enough so that even in the absence of the outrageous abuse and exploitation it should still hold its own.
Fuck sake, I apologise for the Patriotic Vegan thing and everything and then you call me boycolon and compare my response to Revols
Thats the last fuckin' apology you get from me.