Terrorism and activists

[Ione]

I saw this posted in another topic

I teach courses on terrorism and the killing of Tiller is a classic definition of terrorism. It is the use of violence (killing Tiller) to cause fear (among abortionists) to achieve a political gain (a decrease in the number of abortions and possibly and end to the practice).

ProfK

And in another topic on animals I saw a post saying that animal people promote hate and that the animal people/vegetarians/vegans are “terrorists”. (Those aren’t the exact words but the general idea implied).

I’m not aware of any incidents where animal right/animal welfare people/activists or just people who are compassionate towards animals used violence to cause fear to achieve a political gain. So I’m wondering how they can be classified as terrorists? If there are any documented cases please post them as I find that most animal activists (we’ll call them activists for this thread even though I don’t really like the term) are compassionate people and our looking for peace not violence.

 

[royal_archer]

I saw this posted in another topic
ProfK

And in another topic on animals I saw a post saying that animal people promote hate and that the animal people/vegetarians/vegans are “terrorists”. (Those aren’t the exact words but the general idea implied).

I’m not aware of any incidents where animal right/animal welfare people/activists or just people who are compassionate towards animals used violence to cause fear to achieve a political gain. So I’m wondering how they can be classified as terrorists? If there are any documented cases please post them as I find that most animal activists (we’ll call them activists for this thread even though I don’t really like the term) are compassionate people and our looking for peace not violence.

A few years back there were many incidents of animal rights advocates throwing paint on people with fur coats. There were also incidents of related groups spiking trees (driving metal spikes into trees so that when they went to be cut at the mill it would damage the saw blades and mill workers would be killed by the flying shrapnel from the blades.)

You will also see these groups using much more low key methods to use fear to acheive their goals. Such as over promoting mad cow disease, risks of heart disease from eating red meat, etc. You will see a simmilar approach of fear mongering with the current push to nationalize medicine.

In the case of tiller, Is it known that he was trying to create fear? Or was he trying to take out an assett used to kill babies? Not that it would have made the action right or legal, just questioning the appropriate use of the term terrorist.

 

[Drawmack]

I’m not aware of any incidents where animal right/animal welfare people/activists or just people who are compassionate towards animals used violence to cause fear to achieve a political gain. So I’m wondering how they can be classified as terrorists? If there are any documented cases please post them as I find that most animal activists (we’ll call them activists for this thread even though I don’t really like the term) are compassionate people and our looking for peace not violence.

books.google.com/books?id=ZOfkAoDb_2IC&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=animal+rights+activists+release+infected+animals&source=bl&ots=-r_A0usN0s&sig=HSQC5lcZ-B-3ynsPagTDPpJ-SJs&hl=en&ei=00FrSubHNqiStgfmw7HHBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9

 

[Dale_M]

Lone, some animal rights activists are pretty far out there. Here is an editorial from last year.

The firebombings of the car and home of two UC Santa Cruz researchers earlier this month reveal an unwelcome reality: Animal rights extremism is getting worse.

Over the last several years, militants have shifted their focus from breaking into research labs and institutions to targeting researchers and their families at home. In the past, they protested against scientists who work with higher species, such as nonhuman primates and dogs; now, they are even targeting researchers who use fruit flies.

latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-trull18-2008aug18,0,1625747.story

And here is a news article from last month:

Much of the recent activity has been focused in California, which has seen labs destroyed, scientists’ cars firebombed, public officials’ cars vandalized and animals kidnapped and then released into the wild. Activists have claimed to have sabotaged the cars of UCLA football players, and six masked activists burst into the home of a researcher at the University of California-Santa Cruz.

“A lot of activists are frustrated. They’ve exhausted the legal means, and they’ve decided to take it to the next level,” said Jason Miller, a press officer with the North American Animal Liberation Front, which acts as a mouthpiece for the militant animal liberation movement but claims no direct affiliation with the groups themselves.

foxnews.com/story/0,2933,525039,00.html

 

[Dale_M]

Ione, I apologize for mistaking your name. The default typeface used in this forum makes an uppercase “I” look like a lowercase “l”.

 

[Ione]

I can’t say as I agree with what those people did. If you are going to respect animals lives than you should respect human lives as well and vise versa. As for Tiller, if you are going to say it’s wrong to take an unborn fetus’s life than how can you justify taking another human life? That makes no sense. Either you are pro-life or you aren’t. Same for any other activist who takes a life. If you are fighting for lives than you should not take the life of another. I personally don’t think it is right to take the life of either. I can’t say really that I would go as far as saving a misquito or something like that as I believe a misquito is a parasite. If I can avoid killing an ant, why not? If it is invading all my food than yes I would kill the ants. Same for something like a bat. They may be beneficial in some ways but I think the risk of rabies outways that in some instances.

(mice and rats) They are the animal model of choice for researchers because *their physiology closely resembles that of humans *and their genetic makeup is well defined. For instance, the mouse genome contains essentially the same complement of genes found in the human genome, so studying how the genes work in mice is an effective way of discovering the role of a gene in human health and disease

I wasn’t aware of this. This is somewhat disturbing. How can we justify experimenting on something that so closely resembles a human?

 

[Ione]

Ione, I apologize for mistaking your name. The default typeface used in this forum makes an uppercase “I” look like a lowercase “l”.

No harm done!

 

[Drawmack]

I wasn’t aware of this. This is somewhat disturbing. How can we justify experimenting on something that so closely resembles a human?

Being that is so closely resembles a human means that things, medications etc., will work similarly on mice and rats to how they will work on humans. It is better to experiment on something that is closely related, on a genetic level, to humans than to experiment on humans.

 

[peary]

I saw this posted in another topic
ProfK

And in another topic on animals I saw a post saying that animal people promote hate and that the animal people/vegetarians/vegans are “terrorists”. (Those aren’t the exact words but the general idea implied).

I’m not aware of any incidents where animal right/animal welfare people/activists or just people who are compassionate towards animals used violence to cause fear to achieve a political gain. So I’m wondering how they can be classified as terrorists? If there are any documented cases please post them as I find that most animal activists (we’ll call them activists for this thread even though I don’t really like the term) are compassionate people and our looking for peace not violence.

Ever hear of PETA? Google its activities and you’ll be amazed what shannigans they’ve been up to. Ever watch the program featured on Animal Planet called “Whale Wars”?

 

[livi]

First of all, reducing the number of abortions isn’t a “political gain.” Second of all, Tiller’s murder does not make all pro-life people terrorists, I think it is safe to say most of us are against murder in general. However, the people who mourned Tiller’s death should think of and acknowledge how many people he killed. He was a murderer too.

 

[Drawmack]

First of all, reducing the number of abortions isn’t a “political gain.” Second of all, Tiller’s murder does not make all pro-life people terrorists, I think it is safe to say most of us are against murder in general. However, the people who mourned Tiller’s death should think of and acknowledge how many people he killed. He was a murderer too.

So, when we are mourning someone’s death that mourning should be mitigated by the type of life the person lived? It probably wasn’t meant this way, but to me this reads as a very insidious type of relativistic morality.

 

[royal_archer]

So, when we are mourning someone’s death that mourning should be mitigated by the type of life the person lived? It probably wasn’t meant this way, but to me this reads as a very insidious type of relativistic morality.

there is a thin line between the mourning of a death and the celebration of a life concluded.