The Ethics of the Animal Rights Movement, Part One

I am now heavy into the research for my paper on the AR extremist movement and can't help but be very concerned and saddened by what I am finding.  At the moment, I am still rather stunned.  I actually had to take a break, because this just really blew me away.  A young man with a history of mental illness and suicide attempts, doused himself with gasoline and set fire to himself, outside a Portland, OR fur store, this past January.  It is clear from what I could gather that this young man wanted to die for what are likely many reasons.  There is no question that his suicide was not primarily motivated by his animal rights beliefs.

Yet the ALF pressoffice includes his story in their media links.  It can also be found on some other sites around the webs.  But what the local AR extremists did on the heels of this sad affair is unconscionable.  The following is an email received by KATU, channel 2 in Portland;

The Portland Anti Fur Campaign was just alerted to the action outside Nicholas Ungar Furs earlier today [Wednesday].

We do not know who this person was nor do we know what his intentions were. If his intentions were to raise awareness of unnecessary animal suffering and killing done in the fur industry, and by businesses like Ungar Furs, then we wish him well.

We are not saying that we want people to light themselves on fire and run into fur shops, but we do understand that sometimes you have to make noise and make a scene to stand up for the animals. It is really unfortunate that one would feel as if they must take such drastic measures, yet, this Fur Store has continued their bloody business despite protests outside for 3 years now.

If the person's motivation was to bring media attention to the issue, they obviously achieved their goal.

Raise your fist, and your voice, Fox and Mink have no Choice!

 Any sane organization would have, if anything, soundly condemned Daniel Shaull's suicide as being tragically misguided.  Were the ALF press office sane, rather than throwing this into the mix without comment, they would have made it clear that anyone feeling the urge to commit an act such as this should seek help.  But these are not sane people.  Not by any stretch of the imagination.  The following is the introduction to this video of Steven Best, that I have linked to before:

There's a new civil war unfolding in this country, a new civil war. And it's a war that's unfolding about and around the politics of nature. And on one side, there are people who are exploiting the earth, and who are destroying the lives of animals by the billions. And they are prepared to defend their interest, their alleged rights. On the other side, are people like us and our fellow activists. People who are willing to escalate the struggle, to whatever extent is necessary. And when there is a war, as a war is brewing now about the politics of nature, that means the gloves are coming off.

There is also this essay by Best:

Realizing that nonviolence against animal exploiters in fact is a pro-violence stance that tolerates their blood-spilling without taking adequate measures to stop it, a new breed of freedom fighters has ditched Gandhi for Machiavelli and switched principled nonviolence with the amoral (not to be confused with immoral) pragmatism that embraces animal liberation “by any means necessary.

Or at the last link Best quotes a Communiqué from the Revolutionary Cells Animal Liberation Brigade after the 2003 bombings of Chiron and Shaklee Corporations:

We have given all of the collaborators a chance to withdraw from their relations [with Huntingdon Life Sciences]. We will now be doubling the size of every device we make. Today it is 10 lbs, tomorrow 20....until your buildings are nothing more than rubble. It is time for this war to truly have two sides. No more will all of the killing be done by the oppressors, now the oppressed will strike back. We will be non-violent when these people are non-violent to the animal nations.

What is very important to recognize here, is that while there is insanity in the movement, these people aren't stupid. Nor are these people any different than extremists and terrorists who kill in the name of a god.  The only reason that people have yet to be killed, is because of the fortitude of the young men and women who listen to Steven Best and his ilk and commit terrorist acts.  But how long is that going to last, with Best, Vlasac and a host of activists ramping up the rhetoric of escalation?

Animal Rights Extremists Are At It Again (Updated again)

Just to be sure I am very clear, I do not believe that all animal rights activists are terrorists or extremists. I make three distinctions that are very important. First are the activists - people who engage in peaceful protest and sometimes in peaceful civil disobedience. They belong in the very reasonable category of activist, even though I believe they are wrong. Then there are the extremists, people who do not engage in, but who advocate violence and other terror tactics. And finally there are the terrorists - people who engage in terror tactics. There is a great deal of difference between activism and the latter two categories, while there is only a fine line between the last two. When I am writing about animal rights issues, I am generally not talking about the activists, except insofar as I am talking about something they believe in too.

I just received an email from the David Jentsch PhD, of the organization Pro-Test. Apparently some animal rights extremist web sites have noticed the petition that, if you have yet to sign, you should absolutely sign now. While they do not publicize your personal information, your name does appear and some extremists are now doing searches for information on signatories and harassing us.

Yesterday, a few websites hosted by animal rights activists have encouraged their readerships to visit the list of Pro-Test signatories in order to find names and to contact those persons to express their opposition to animal research. While your email addresses on the RaisingVoices.net website are secure and not publicly listed, the animal rights groups encourage people to use the wide array of Internet tools to find contact information and to use it.

I just got a response to a request for the specific sites involved; The websites "Negotiation Is Over" and "Thomas Paines Corner," have simulposted a piece entitled; "Pro-Test Was Kind Enough to Provide a Directory of Vivisectors." Please be warned that these are extremist hate sites.

David Jentsch was one of the growing ranks of scientists who happen to do research that involves animals, to be attacked by these terrorists, in March of this year. Unlike many of the victims of these attacks - ten on UCLA professors in the past three years, Dr. Jentsch decided that enough was enough and taking the cue from colleagues in the UK, Pro-Test came to the U.S.

As many of you know, I am an ardent opponent of terrorism, regardless of the cause they claim to support. Over the last several months I have tangled with animal rights extremists online, on several occasions. They sometimes pay lip service to opposing these terrorist fucking bastards, but it is more than a little obvious that they have a great deal of sympathy and some have outright appreciation for their actions. I have been vaguely threatened by a couple of these assholes and expect to be in the future.

Terrorism is - always is inexcusable. I have denounced terrorism in the name of environmental issues, losing friends in the process. I have denounced terrorism among the Palestinians - again, losing friends in the process. And I have denounced terrorism for animal rights - and refused to join protests at OHSU, yet again, losing friends in the process. I was told by some of those same animal rights extremist friends, that I am evil. That I am disgusting and my support of animal testing is little different than offering my children for experimentation. I was told that karma would come back on me for being such a horrible fucking person.

Makes me wish there was such a thing as karma, because I am pretty sure that some scumbag who firebombed someone's car, terrorized someone else's family, blowing up labs and generally terrorizing people - intimidating people to get them to do what the want - they would have some serious repercussions for that. And now these people are out to intimidate some more - over the internets no less. Well, good on them for letting us know that our efforts - small as they may be on the parts of many of us, are not in vain. It is nice to know that they are displeased and feel the need to try to stop us from apposing their extremist and often terrorist agenda.

So please, if you have not signed, now is the time to lend your support. Let these vile cretins know that you support science, you support medicine, you support a better understanding of disease, you support new medicines and improving old ones.

Let them know you support a better future for your parents, your children, your grandchildren, your friends - yourself. Let them know you support the scientists who are helping make that better future and will not tolerate violence against them.

The Gun Study Critique that Begat the Race Card

Apparently it has become necessary to explain my critique of the gun study and Greg's post on it, because Greg seems to think the argument is still about race and class. He won't explain how exactly, apparently because I didn't ask very nicely - but my argument is apparently about race and class none the less. No matter that he still doesn't seem to have the foggiest clue what I am actually arguing - he thinks he does and he thinks that the argument is racist or classist - or both.

Here is Greg's post on the study and here is the press release on the study. Unfortunately the paper itself is behind a paywall, but for those who might have access, here is the link to that. Greg actually posted the conclusion from the abstract, which is basically the same conclusion of the paper itself.

Greg starts right off by flying way past anything that either the study or the press release had to say, titling his post Carry a gun = you get shot more often. Well no, that is not at all an implication of the study or the press release - but it makes a hell of a headline. What the press release indicates, is that carrying a gun is of dubious value in the event of an assault. It mentions that you are more likely to be shot during an assault if you are carrying one. While I think the study itself is still over generalizing (something the authors themselves admit may be the case), they are limiting their generalization to urban settings.

Before I go into my critique, I will make the same caveat that I made in my comments at Greg's blog. I tend to think that the conclusions being made are likely true. I think that the study's conclusions, the press release conclusion and even Greg's conclusion in the title of his post, are quite likely true and a well constructed study that was able to gather data to support those conclusions would likely find evidence to support those assertions. I just don't think this study reasonably supports any of those assertions because of a serious flaw that attempting to adjust for in the controls does not - cannot compensate for.

The problem with this study, is that the vast majority of the data comes from shootings in areas fo Philadelphia that are prone to extremely high rates of gang activity. The study does not take into account the legality of the firearms in question, or the victim's legal right to be carrying them concealed on their person. The only adjustment made in an attempt to compensate, is that the controls for each case in the study, were taken from the surrounding area and culled for like employment - in most of these cases, unemployment and criminal record - actual crime/s undetermined. Because of this, I do not see how whether or not a given case in the study was a career criminal (i.e. a gang member) can be accounted for.

Now as far as Greg's title assertion goes, this pretty much knocks it out of the running entirely. With a very strong likelihood that a very large percentage, if not a majority of the cases in the study being involved in criminal activities, there is a confounding factor having nothing to do with guns, that makes it more likely the person is going to be assaulted in the first place. I don't think it is at all unreasonable to assume that someone involved in ongoing criminal activities is more likely than people who are not, to be victim of an assault in the first place. To be very clear again, I suspect that Greg's claim is correct. I just don't see this study, or any study that is limited entirely to large urban centers (the gang variable aside) providing any evidence that that is the case.

The assertion made in the press release is rather trickier, but not all that much so. Bottom line, their claim seems to be that carrying a gun in general - regardless of location, increases your chance of being shot during an assault. We won't go into the gang activity variable at all and rest with the obvious - the study authors did not make that claim. Presumably because they did not believe that the evidence they studied could reasonably be extrapolated to populations outside of urban centers. From the paper's conclusion; "Although successful defensive gun uses are
possible and do occur each year, the probability of success may be low for civilian gun users in urban areas." Neither that statement, or any other in the paper's conclusion makes any implications about gun use outside of urban areas.

But what about the study itself? For that matter, why would anyone who is not a criminal, have a substantively different outcome during a gun assault? What exactly makes that such a confounding variable?

First and foremost, I want to be perfectly clear that it may not make any difference at all. But there are a lot of factors that could potentially make an assault involving career criminals, different than an assault involving people who are not. Much the same way there are a lot of factors that make an assault involving a police officer different than an assault that does not involve the police. The study did not include police officers who were shot for a reason, I think it is reasonable to say that the study should not include mostly career criminals for similar reasons. Bottom line, they are not civilians in the same sense that police officers are not.

Those factors include, but are not limited to the following. First, civilians with guns (CWGs) who are not criminals and who get involved in an assault, may not be very likely to pull their gun because of a simple assault, while a career criminal may be considerably more inclined to do so. Second, a gangster is very plausibly considerably more prepared to use their gun at any given point, than your average CWG - being so prepared may actually make it less likely the gangster will be shot. Third, gangsters in larger urban centers often operate with a certain amount of discipline and training - some gangs operate on a par with tactical (paramilitary) police units. This could well provide even more of an advantage in an assault, over CWGs. And gangsters are also very likely to attack from some sort of cover and with a certain amount of stealth or surprise - such as drive by shootings.

I consider this a confounding factor that at the least raises doubts about extrapolating this study to the general population. And it would not matter if the study included a large percentage of white gangsters, or any other organized criminals. Indeed, including a large percentage of career or even petty criminals, would create confounding factors. As would including a large percentage of terrorists. It doesn't matter if the gangsters are wealthy or poor, living in the ghetto, or living in extremely wealthy neighborhoods. Being a gangster is the confounding variable, not what sort of gangster one might be or where they live.

I am more than happy to debate this - I am happy to do so here. I could well be wrong and someone might have a stellar argument that convinces me that I am. But my argument has absolutely nothing to do with race or class. Accusations that I am racist or classist, or that my argument itself is those things, is a total non-starter.

Worse, as I explained in my other post about this, such accusations are extremely counterproductive - whether they come from a privileged white person, or from someone who has suffered actual racism. All they accomplish is to desensitize people to such accusations and make them incredibly unlikely to have the slightest interest or willingness to engage in a serious discussion about racism, classism and/or other forms of bigotry.

It also has the added detriment of seriously detracting from, if not outright destroying that person's credibility when it comes to discussions about racism and other forms of bigotry. It is kind of hard to take someone seriously about racism, when they quite unjustifiably accused you of racism.