Ah, Animal liberation nutters are at it again, with Camille really crossing the line from vapid lunatic to dangerous vapid lunatic again. Not only offering such lovely educational material as
this device to make a firebomb (and also by happy coincidence a real bomb) which she claims is also for entertainment. (Coming up Next! Avicenna’s handy torture guide! For you edutainment!)
She hosts
literature from the Straight Edge Vegan criminal, Walter Bond who is in jail for arson. You know, that crime where you set stuff on fire causing property damage and potentially killing someone with fire?
This work is pure straight edge philosophy which is fine if you keep it to yourself. If you start preaching a straight edge philosophy, then you come off as a dick. And it doesn’t help that the movement is filled with people who suffer from what I like to call “holier than thou” syndrome. It’s where you refer to other people as less than you simply because they have made a choice. Sure in the grand scheme of things some decisions are patently idiotic (Anti-Vaccine/Anti-Medicine/Creationism/Animal Liberation) and should be treated as idiotic stances but you never stop treating the individuals who follow these flawed ideas as human beings.
And Walter Bond fails miserably here. Co-opting pro-life literature to assault women’s rights as if a foetus were equal to a fully developed human beings, he not only denigrates the actual struggles of women across the world that are fighting and
indeed dying to get abortions but also fails to realise that human cells does not equate to a human being. It’s not a right of convenience and pleasure, for many women it’s a right to care for children in an appropriate fashion. For the first 20 to 24 weeks of life the foetus is incapable of independence and even after that the foetus is heavily reliant on medical technology (which Walter Bond is against) to live. A testament to medical technology is that at 24 weeks the survival rate of pre-term infants is 96%. In most third world nations it’s around 25 to 40% depending on availability of technology. To put it in perspective the actual survival rate of all infants in India is 96% (ours in western nations is around 99.6%).
At what point is a foetus sentient? Babies certainly are not when they are just born. Sentience and self awareness can arguably be considered to develop post birth since due to the nature of our giant craniums we as human beings are not born fully developed. (it’s one of the reasons why we have such a phenomenal infant mortality rate without medical technology compared to other animals considering how phenomenally tough and survivable we are). Our weak and incompletely developed babies undergo a series of developmental milestones that include identification of self and response to names… and even then they aren’t as fully developed as the young of other animals. The consciousness of the foetus isn’t used as a determinant on abortion; it is the viability of the foetus outside the mother. To medics, the lungs are more important than the brain. The 24 week limit is due to the developmental milestone of lungs. Prior to 20 weeks the foetus has no lungs to speak of and cannot survive. In short, even if born it cannot be a viable entity. In most western nations it’s 24 weeks because we can save a baby with partially developed lungs. Most nations consider personhood to begin at 28 weeks for the same reason.
But Walter Bond obviously considers anyone who aborts a foetus to be equal to an animal murderer (which is anyone who eats meat or does research on one) and equal to a real murderer. Which is a step above the crazy of most pro-lifers, and we know Mr. Bond is capable of dangerous acts. Endorsing this vile human being is no different from the people who endorse the actions of Scott Roeder and Camille doesn’t disappoint in sinking to such depths.
And is it surprising at all considering literature from such individuals as the Animal Liberation Front’s Dr. Steve Best (a Ph.D. in philosophy rather than someone you would call in an emergency. Well in a real emergency, I suppose you call him if you have an existential crisis.) regularly features on her site?
His idea of
Peace and Justice is like the ranting of Osama Bin Laden, if Osama Bin Laden were a Dr. Seuss fan. And if this is indeed his work then I would suggest that the University of Texas reconsiders their relationship with him. Because this is nothing short of a statement of the encouragement of terrorism and should be taken seriously. Lest we have another George Tiller incident.
Let’s just say that if we did what he wanted we wouldn’t have any farmers nor would we live in a society free of disease and vermin. I assume alongside his Ph.D. in philosophy, he knows how to till the land and produce food on a scale that can feed people reliably.
We wouldn’t have animal rehabilitation programs and we would lose animals to the scourge of poaching and people just not doing anything. If people have been paying attention, the only hope for the Western Black Rhino to ever return to the wild is captive breeding programs in zoos. One notices that animal liberation aren’t out there having gun battles with poachers to protect tigers, rhinos
, elephants and thousands of other
endangered creatures, in fact they actively attack the people who engage in these activities.
We wouldn’t have any meat, because everyone vegan lives a rich healthy life with their tiny inefficient farms. What Walter wants is a Cultural Revolution, much like Mao. Only instead of attempting to force an entire country to make a Great Leap Forwards, he wants a Great Leap Backwards.
He obviously doesn’t want any medical experimentation, or products there off. He specifically mentions antibiotics and steroids being present in meat (yet not one single mention of steroids being present in Vitamin D tablets. Vitamin D is a steroid.) without realising that cooking would destroy most of these things. Possibly he assumes that carnivores like myself prefer to eat our food alive.
He doesn’t want shelters, he would rather us spend money on animals getting nice homes when we can barely ensure our humans live in nice homes. Because heaven forbid we try and do something about homeless people and poverty before the kitties.
In specific he advocates that the biggest ecologists on the planets (AKA biologists) be tortured and killed (brutally no less, because professors of philosophy seem to have a lot of time to think up inventive ways of killing people) for daring to experiment on animals. I have a friend who has worked on research involving Von Gierke’s disease by testing in dogs. Apparently this friend deserves torture simply for trying to alleviate suffering by understanding the world. And I am classified under this since I am in medicine and by extension my entire field and lifestyle is built on suffering both of the animals experiment on and indeed of the patients who receive relief from their suffering. Oh and like Camille Marino’s earlier outbreak I assume he intends to target those selfish patients who chose to utilise the technology derived from animal experimentation to save their lives and those of their loved ones rather than die.
For someone whose existence is practically guaranteed through technology, he is awfully luddite about it. Does he really think the internet will run in his utopia of no technology or that people would indeed keep feeding him for philosophical discourse? Surely this is an individual who ranks amongst the least likely to survive outside the constraints of civilisation?
I suppose a response to this rant is in order. After all, someone needs to call him out on the nonsense he purveys.
Dear Stephen Best
I disagree with everything you stand for, you are an odious human being, a chancre on humanity. You stand against everything that is good and right with this world. You bandy a world view that encourages suffering and pain for actual human beings while being safe in a delusion from the suffering and pain you inflict because you yourself don’t get your hands dirty. To me you are no different from those mullahs who fire their devotees up with rhetoric and faith and send these young men to kill and die for their twisted ideology while you remain safe to spread your poison.
Go stand in front of the families of those dying due to disease and tell them that their loved ones deserve to die rather than some animals. Tell them that their children, their brothers and their lovers are less valuable than a mouse in your eyes. You say we are without compassion? I suggest you see how we treat human beings. Pain, Suffering, Starvation, Disability, Poverty are all facts of life for some people, and your philosophy would only increase that. I find it a shocking betrayal of educational ethics that you would be even allowed to lecture at a university for advocating terrorism particularly with your association with Camille Marino who actively threatens students with death.
You are a parasite, no different from Camille and indeed Walter Bond. Individuals who have benefited from modern society which tolerates their nonsense because we are a society filled with excess. I shall assume that like Camille, should you require the aid of “medical care derived from animal experimentation” you too will show the same sort of fortitude and double standards that she has. I shall assume you have never been to a country where there is no concerted effort to keep animals off the streets and keep pest populations down so don’t know what it’s like dealing with rat borne diseases. In short I shall assume (quite rightly so) that you are a privileged hypocrite.
I am not a good man, I never claimed to be. I try my best to do what is right and believe me what is right is standing up for those who you torment and threaten as many of them cannot. Because some of them are my friends, some of them are my family. The others are people who rely on us for a cessation of suffering. Yes, you may slander my character and call me a torturer and hundreds of other things but ultimately the people who I meet tend to not think so.
The ultimate irony is the biggest reduction of use of animals in experimentation is not by the actions of your luddite breed but by the actions of the very people you attack. The biggest protectors of animal life isn’t the placard waving celebrities PETA acquires to flog their viewpoint or terrorists like Walter Bond, but people who know how animals work and who experiment on them and learn.
I would call you vultures but vultures form a useful part of the ecological chain. There is no animal as patently useless as you are. And to prove that I am just as good as rhetoric as you are… Your movement is a disease and you are nothing more than cyst to be lanced with education and understanding. Throughout history men have stood in the way of humanity and progress. All have fallen before education and knowledge. Do you think you are any different from them?
What you need is a Doctor.
Avicenna
(Doctor to be. A real one)
I do seriously wonder what the University of Texas is doing keeping such an individual on their teaching register. Perhaps I can hire Abu Hamza to teach Media Studies.
