Bullshit. If they insisted that you stop yelling “FIRE” in a crowded theater it would be about the same; they aren’t trying to “stifle dissent” they are trying to protect people’s lives and families from a dangerous asshole.

You seem to be forgetting the purpose of terrorism. It is to *terrorize* (even without actual physical violence) by the *threat* of actual physical violence in order to coerce people. Posting home addresses is a threat and is meant to be a threat and serves no purpose *other* than a threat. What you’re doing is terrorism in the most classic sense. You’re sick.

Where do Donations to the HSUS Go?.

There is NO reason to believe the animal experimenters are in any danger. NONE.

Except for the MULTIPLE STORIES already cited. Kindly read them before repeating things commenters here have already disproven.

They appear to be more interested in silencing me and stifling dissent than in promoting democracy or free speech.

Reminders:
1) “Animal rights and environmental advocates have not flown planes into buildings, taken hostages, or sent Anthrax through the mail. They have never even injured anyone.”
from Green Is The New Red

2) My post reminds people to be nonviolent.

3) The addresses have been available on Vegan Soapbox for over a year without any harm coming to anyone.

There is NO reason to believe the animal experimenters are in any danger. NONE.

There is NO urgency to remove the information. NONE.

if you understand this, too, then it’s all the more reason not to dismiss and attack a.r. offhand. and you did do so in several instances here – i’m not buying that with your comparison between “fundamental stances” in a.r. and anti-choice you were just saying that the a.r. one isn’t legally supported (you yourself said it was as much about the possible “moral equivalency” – which you’re tying to legality, somehow, but i think that’s grasping at straws).

anyway, i wasn’t talking only about you when i said that people conflate criticizing some tactics and criticizing any tactics of a.r. supporters – in fact, i was referring to a trend i saw in this discussion, which is a trend that you always see in such situations: no matter what an a.r. person is saying/doing, people project their own negative ideas about a.r. onto that person, and act dismissively, condescendingly, unfairly towards that person “just because.” that makes a dialog impossible – and allows people to behave and argue badly and yet still believe that they’re on the moral high ground and, what’s more, that they dislike a.r. for valid reasons, not out of defensiveness or bigotry.

i don’t think this is necessarily true in any case:

Movements where the oppressed people themselves are able to speak up don’t really have to care about making allies because they can achieve a critical mass on their own or with a very small pool of allies

i already agreed that a.r. has farther to go, and i gave the main reasons why myself – as well as some thoughts on what that means as far as tactics. now i think you are trying to come up with all sorts of reasons why a.r. is just SO different than any other movement might possibly be, which don’t hold up.

all movements for radical change are about a lot of people giving up things that they take for granted and some comforts, about paradigm shifts, one way or another: as you say yourself, in history, some change has “cost” (to use your term) much more than others – depending on how much different systems of economy, politics and cultural hierarchy and values rely on the oppression that needs to be eliminated – but that shouldn’t stop a struggle for justice, and anyone can either join that struggle or not (staying “ignorant” because the personal cost of not doing so would be too high is also a position). this is no different, fundamentally speaking, in the case of a.r. – i understand what you are saying, but i think that you are grasping at straws to exacerbate the difference of a.r. to other justice struggles.

in fact, i don’t even know what we are debating anymore. i was talking about the very concrete problem that a lot of people (you among them up until recently) ostensibly criticize some wrong tactics employed by a.r. activists (like harassment and vigilantism), but pretty quickly veer off into criticizing any stances or actions that a.r. work might mean, and dismissing a.r. as a whole (without real arguments). [e.g. your "what about teh babys"] for me, it’s troubling to see that people are convincing themselves that it’s ok if they think anything an a.r. activist does or says is misguided because it’s based on a problematic premise (like “pro-life”) and that we shouldn’t be allowed to bring the issue into public discussion ever. i believe it’s not ok.

the “funny” thing to me here is that while you are going on about the obstacles that the a.r. movement should know it faces, about just how hard it is to get people to listen about a.r. and how much mockery and hardships one can expect if they became vegan or supported a.r. (which deters people from doing it), at the same time you are an example of someone who mocks, dismisses, etc.. you know, this hardship and mockery doesn’t just fall from the sky: it’s enforced – or not – by people like you and me and anyone here.

especially if you see things so clearly as to what kinds of obstacles the a.r. movement must surmount, you should not be so flippant about not knowing any “people seeking therapy with the emotional toll of animal rights being their central (or a significant) complaint.” the fact that you haven’t seen this proves nothing. i think every single one of us knows multiple cases in which children were traumatized when they realized that they had to eat an animal whom they cared about – or some similar scenario (and isn’t it amazing that we don’t talk about this – because it would be absurd to dwell on it, right?!)… and there’s a lot of information about the link between abuse of animals and domestic violence or other abuse towards humans: because that type of violence is interlinked, and learning early on that it’s ok to be cruel to others, through abusing an animal, oftentimes leads people to asocial, abusive behaviors (towards people, who may count) – do you perhaps know anything about that? the fact that in society we don’t take this stuff seriously and people don’t talk about it because you just don’t is a symptom of the problem, not a proof that there’s no problem.

i could go into a whole bunch of other issues that you brought up: actually, if you pay any attention, most people run into the costs of animal oppression all the time, and more an more as we “progress” (health problems from overconsumption of animal products, diseases and environmental disasters caused by animal industries, energy and food waste because of unwise use of resources benefiting the same…); or, being vegan is not as hard as you think it is (yeah, you can find boots); or, no, you’re not saying anything when you come with the “argument” of the natural viciousness of all of creation (in fact, humans are the only species that is raising other species for food and profit – and yet we like to think ourselves superior); or, if you think the potential for empathy is what’s unique about humans, you haven’t met very many animals (or read much about them)… and so on, and so forth. but i really don’t want to dwell on the topic, it’s a long discussion that i don’t have time for right now (and i don’t think this is the right place for it anyway, i’m already quite OT, i guess). so i’ll stop.

either your point really is about some tactics, or you would say the same about any tactic as long as it’s employed by people who support a.r., because your point is that “the fundamental stance” of a.r. is misguided.

Ok, I think we’re either having a disconnect here or you’re projecting a position onto me that I have not taken. I never said that the fundamental stance of a.r. was misguided, just that it wasn’t legally supported. That isn’t even remotely the same thing. For a long time the fundamental right to be gay or not be a slave wasn’t legally supported either. Thats the central conflict in most liberation movements, a demand for full rights. However a.r. is complicated by the oppressed group not being able to take control of it’s own movement and because of that, pragmatically, the movement unfortunately has to employ tactics that won’t alienate potential supporters. I’m not against protests, even ones with gory signs, but I think protesting in a residential neighborhood or making signs likely to piss of parents is going to be counterproductive. Movements where the oppressed people themselves are able to speak up don’t really have to care about making allies because they can achieve a critical mass on their own or with a very small pool of allies. A.R. simply cannot do that.

the emotional cost of ignoring animal interests is actually huge (again, think of how little kids first react to the realization that we eat or otherwise subjugate and mistreat animals): we’ve just been taught to live with it.

Neither myself nor my colleagues have seen an influx, or really any great number, of people seeking therapy with the emotional toll of animal rights being their central (or a significant) complaint. There is only a cost to ignoring an oppression if the denial can be overcome, if you can get someone to bring the matter into conscious awareness and connect with it emotionally. For some people I’m sure its huge but, for most, it isn’t. If it was we wouldn’t be having this discussion. It costs far less to ignore animal rights than it does to support them otherwise people wouldn’t react so aggressively when their voluntary ignorance was challenged.

animal exploitation is interwoven with everything about human society, from what we eat and wear to the utilization of energy and resources to how we treat those around us…

You could cut the word animal out of that sentence and it would be just as accurate. We’re vicious, rapacious little predators. Ever studied chimp behavior out in the wild? Rape, aggressive infanticide, murder, torture, and racism are the rules rather than the exceptions. The only thing thats really unique about human beings is that we have some small capacity for empathy that we can try to use to stem the tide of aggression that is our biological endowment.

Challenging bigotry towards gays cost most people relatively little because the only real gain most people reaped was a sense of superiority, which could be easily moved around. Challenging bigotry on racial grounds costs somewhat more because it means competition for limited resources as well as the loss of emotional benefits that come with a feeling of superiority. Ending slavery required a war. In each of these cases, however, the costs of not challenging bigotry were somewhat more visible because the oppressed parties were human beings that one was likely to encounter in public.

Animal rights is a different ballgame. The oppression of animals is largely invisible and the costs of it are largely hidden. Most people will never see the runoff from a swine farm or have to think about problems with ground water because of it. Most people will never see the suffering animals. Most people don’t have to kill the chicken in their pot themselves, or pluck it, or dress it. On the other hand the benefits are visible. We’ve all seen a.r. people mocked, many of us have heard how difficult it is for a vegan to eat out, its tough to find good shoes that aren’t leather (especially if you like boots), its an additional complication to your day trying to figure out what is in a given product or where its derived from (like keeping kosher or being diabetic), you have to give up things you actively enjoy for nothing but a sense of moral righteousness in return. In short, you have to challenge a society you enjoy for a creature you’ll never meet that likely can’t even understand what happened.

I’m not making a value judgment or saying that it isn’t worth it. What I am saying is that thats a steep hill. At any step along the path people are looking for a reason to write the whole exercise off. The question then faced by the animal rights movement is a very difficult one: how do you balance an aggressive enough policy to overcome inertia with the threat of alienating people? Too little pressure and no one bothers to care, too much and they write the movement off.

The answer is simple: you don’t really care about the victims of animal experimenters, but you do care about the victims of sex offenders. It’s that simple and it’s time to get honest with yourself about who you are and who you protect.

If you want to make a case against publishing home addresses, make a better case than, “that’s what anti-choicers do!” It’s ad hominem and it’s meaningless.

If you’d bothered to read the comments in this thread, or in previous threads about Scott Roeder’s murder of Dr. Tiller, you’d have noticed all the times we made the case against publishing home addresses. IT’S BECAUSE WE DON’T APPROVE OF VIGILANTISM, nor tacit encouragement of violence, nor harassment of scientists’ families.

And I’m especially repulsed by the idea that animal experimenters deserve special protection… when no true harm has ever come to any of them.

As a child of a rapist, I am more concerned by the REAL VIOLENCE happening everyday to real women by their harassers, stalkers, rapists, and abusers than by any of this IMAGINARY VIOLENCE directed at animal experimenters. If anyone is truly concerned about harassment, intimidation, and violence, let’s get real and focus our energy on the real victims of these crimes, not on those who wear lab coats and cry wolf.

Wow, “special rights,” denial of reality, and a derail, all in two short paragraphs.

Protection from harassment and murder is not a special right.

Many links have been posted to instances where researchers have been attacked.

“Why are you focusing on animals, when you could be focusing on HUMAN rape and abuse victims?”

ARPhilo:

a guy who makes money from torturing animals and taking money from pharm companies so they can poison people for millions is one I won’t lose sleep over when he gets bopped on the noggin.

I wouldn’t go about things this way, but I can see why someone would want to hit the guy in the head.

Humans and other animals die every day because of this guy and his facility. Yet, everyone focused on a couple of stitches on him, rather than the massive death and illness he causes to others.

And you complain that we compare you to anti-choicers?