[Blogcritics.org]
On August 21, 2006, a young, and by all accounts a good man, Peter
Woodhams, was shot four times outside his home in East London by a
gang member. The 22-year-old father of one, Mr. Woodhams had, for the
better part of a year, been subjected to serious threats and bullying
by local youths. No one knows why these teens targeted Woodhams — was
he an easy target, did he have words with them previously which the
kids took as a dissing, did he cross "their" territory? It seems
nobody knows for sure.
...
Now then, how much would you be willing to bet that if Woodhams had
been a vivisectionist working for some major pharmaceutical company or
medical research lab and had been only idly threatened by animal
rights campaigners, he'd have received round-the-clock police
protection? I'd wager my home on it.
People just love to whip themselves up into a frenzy over animal
rights extremism, which is often treated more seriously than jihadist
terrorism. Tony Blair has consistently given support to animal
research, even going so far as to sign an pro-vivisection petition
called The People's Petition (which only gathered 13,000 names in a
country of nearly 60 million, I feel compelled to add), and the police
have been informed to crack down hard on protestors. Market stalls
that disseminate animal rights or even animal welfare literature have
been closed down in case they encourage extremists. In the recent case
over the graverobbing by four animal rights activists, even normally
pro-animal welfare papers such as the Daily Mirror editorialized about
the "vicious" and "evil" acts of the animal rights protestors.
...
If an anti-vivisectionist breaks into a lab and secretly records on
camera what goes on there, and does nothing more than this, he gets at
least five years. If a hoodie breaks into your home, damaging your
place and stealing from you, he is given community service. Poor
blighter, he probably just had a hard life. There's nothing for him to
do, you must understand ... Now hand me that scalpel so I can slice
this dog's balls off in order to better understand testicular cancer.
Ah, but money talks, doesn't it? This is the reason why we will always
hear of the "evil ways" of the anti-vivisectionists, forgetting of
course that only a very small minority of animal rights protestors are
extremists or would ever engage in terrorism. This is why all
governments, no matter how progressive and ethical they claim to be,
will always gladly hop into bed with the pharmaceutical and medical
research companies. Vivisection is big business. Forget about the
dubious science behind it, forget whether it's morally justifiable or
not (which is isn't). All we need to focus on are the profits these
companies rake in — and how they can always depend on the government,
any government, to allow them to carry on profiting off the suffering
of "lesser" creatures.
--
full story:
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/03/19/003435.php
