On Jul 6, 6:45=A0am, Rudy Canoza <pi...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Rupert wrote:
> > On Jul 6, 1:55 am, Rudy Canoza <pi...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >> Rupert, slavishly adoring of a third-rate philosophy prof who spent
hi=
s
> >> career at an academic backwater, uncritically quoted the third-rate
pr=
of
> >> and blabbered:
>
> > It would be widely agreed in the academic community
>
> No.
>
> > that the author of
> > "The Case for Animal Rights" is not a "third-rate prof
>
> Regan spent his entire career at an academic backwater, and if not for
> having staked out an extreme position on a controversial topic, his
> entire career would have gone unnoticed in the academic world.
>
There's more to it than just taking an extreme position on a
controversial topic, it's generally agreed that "The Case for Animal
Rights" is an interesting and well-argued book, with interesting
remarks about moral methodology, nonhuman animal psychology, and so
forth. He takes positions on topics other than our treatment of
nonhuman animals and those are discussed as well.
Anyway, you think John Rawls should have been thrown out of academia
(despite not having read any of his books all the way through), and he
was the most influential political philosopher of the twentieth
century, so you obviously don't think much of the standards of
scholar****p that currently prevail in moral and political philosophy
anyway, so in that case the question of how highly Regan's work is
regarded by academics is not really all that im****tant.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >>> [Regan, the third-rate prof:] =A0Consider this possible scenario.
Why=
not hire someone to infiltrate
> >>> the animal rights movement, as an agent provocateur, with one main
> >>> purpose: to find a malleable person in the movement who could be
> >>> "encouraged" (shall we say) to try to do something that would really
> >>> discredit ARAs. Like, maybe this person could be "encouraged" to try
> >>> to murder someone. And not just anyone. No, the "someone" should be
a
> >>> pillar of the community, someone who (what an odd coincidence) just
> >>> happened to be a leader in a major animal user industry, someone who
> >>> just happened to have been famously outspoken in his criticisms of
> >>> ARAs. An attempt on his life would be perfect. It would show the
> >>> public that ARAs really are extremists who will stop at nothing to
> >>> further their ends. It is not hard to visualize the headline:
"Animal
> >>> Rights Terrorist Attempts to Murder Pillar of Community".
> >>> A few problems would have to be solved. It takes time to find the
> >>> right person for the job. It takes money to pay all the players. Who
> >>> is going to come up with the necessary cash? Well, suppose the
pillar
> >>> himself could pay for the attempt on his life. Suppose the pillar
> >>> himself (such is his influence) could arrange to have the local
polic=
e
> >>> on hand to arrest the would-be murderer. "Nah", you might say, "This
> >>> is too fanciful, too conspiratorial. I don't think anyone in a major
> >>> animal user industry would ever do anything like this." Think again.
> >>> Leon Hirsch, past president of the Norwalk, Connecticut-based U. S.
> >>> Surgical Cor****ation, played the role of the pillar of the
community.
> >>> Hirsch's former company manufactures staples used in place of
ordinar=
y
> >>> sutures in many operations. During Hirsch's tenure, physicians
> >>> received training by practicing on live dogs, who were vivisected,
> >>> then killed. ARAs (led by Friends of Animals, also locate in
Norwalk)
> >>> mounted an in-your-face campaign against Hirsch and his company back
> >>> in the late 1980s. His ingenious way of getting even was to put up
th=
e
> >>> necessary money to arrange for an ARA to try to murder him.
> >>> On November 11, 1989, a man on the payroll of a firm Hirsch had
hired
> >>> drove a young woman named Fran Trutt, a self-professed ARA, along
wit=
h
> >>> her two recently purchased pipe bombs, from New York City to
Norwalk.
> >>> When she placed the bombs adjacent to Hirsch's parking space,
Hirsch'=
s
> >>> friends in the Norwalk police department just happened to be on hand
> >>> to arrest her.
> >>> The resulting story (not the bombs, which never exploded) was the
rea=
l
> >>> bombshell. There it was: "Animal Rights Terrorist Attempts to Murder
> >>> Pillar of Community". As John C. Stauber and Sheldom Rampton
observe,
> >>> "Normally, of course, company presidents do not arrange their own
> >>> murder, but Hirsch was neither crazy nor suicidal. He was trying to
> >>> engineer an embarrassing scandal that would discredit the animal
> >>> rights movement."
> >>> Hirsch would have succeeded, too, except for one thing: the ensuing
> >>> trial brought ot light extensive tape transcripts that implicated
> >>> everyone, from Hirsch on down, who had hatched the plot to discredit
> >>> ARAs. Friends of Animals sued Hirsch, who sold U. S. Surgical in
1998=
,
> >>> but their suit was unsuccessful, and he never faced any criminal
> >>> charges. Perhaps not surprisingly, Fran Trutt was the only person to
> >>> serve time (a year in prison, followed by a year on probation). She
> >>> seems to have left the movement.
> >> False. =A0There was no entrapment, and the firm did not set Trutt up.
>
> > Well, that's interesting, I wonder why Hirsch doesn't sue Regan for
> > defamation.
>
> > "No entrapment", eh? Strong words, Rudy.
>
> No, the accusation of entrapment is what would be strong language, were
> it not for the fact that every criminal in modern history claims to have
> been entrapped. =A0This **** Trutt was not entrapped at all.
=A0Entrapmen=
t,
> at least in American jurisprudence, occurs when someone is induced by
> law enforcement to commit a crime that he would not otherwise have
> committed; that he showed no inclination to commit until pressure was
> applied by police. =A0There was no "agent provocateur" in this case -
the
> ***** Trutt willingly engaged herself in the conspiracy to murder
> Hirsch, and she obtained the materials for her pipe bombs entirely
> independently of any coercion by the private security agents.
>
All right. If we can find sources that bear that out, fine. :)
I note that you were the first person to use the word "entrapment".
> Regan completely misrepresented what happened. =A0That's what third-rate
> philosophy profs at academic backwaters do.
>
I'll look into the matter further. There's some discussion of it in
Peter Singer's "Ethics into Action" as well, I think. I suppose Peter
Singer is probably a third-rate prof at an academic backwater too,
isn't he? :) He must be because he's an animal liberationist.
> > I can't read your link because my anti-censor****p software has stopped
> > working, I'll have to look at it later.
>
> If you weren't willingly helping sup****t a corrupt autocracy, you
> wouldn't have this issue. =A0You're helping to prop up the vestiges of
on=
e
> of the most corrupt, murderous regimes in history. =A0The Chinese
> Communist party caused the deaths of tens, more likely hundreds of
> millions of Chinese, and here you are helping to sup****t the direct
> political descendants of the murderers. =A0Many of these people
themselve=
s
> have blood on their hands, and you're helping them maintain their grip
> on power.
Well, thanks for your thoughts, Ball, I'll think about that one, but
actually I don't think I'm affecting the political situation in China
in any tangible way. I really had no idea that I was "willingly"
paying taxes. I mean, I got assaulted in a nightclub a few months ago
and I was told by my friends that I had no legal recourse unless I
knew the judge, that led to a certain feeling of frustration about the
fact that I'm paying taxes. Isn't a bit like, the kid wants to go and
play on the swings, the schoolyard bully charges him a toll, the kid
hands over the money and someone else says "You shouldn't sup****t the
schoolyard bully, you had the option of not playing on the swings." I
wouldn't have thought the kid has the obligation of doing without
playing on the swings if he doesn't want to, he's not responsible for
the fact that there's a schoolyard bully there. Well, there's another
set of swings in a different part of the playground which are just as
good, he go on them if he wants and pay money to another schoolyard
bully who is a bit "nicer", but he's got his heart set on this set of
swings because there's a girl there that he really likes. I can assure
you that if my girlfriend didn't exist I wouldn't have accepted my
second contract, I wasn't particularly thrilled by it.
George Bush has blood on his hands, does he not? Why don't you go and
work in the Netherlands?
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