: I think McSpotlight should take a clear stand against violence.
: In which case the support for the Gandalf 3 should be clarified.I think that the use of violence is very difficult to make empirical and absolute statements on.
: ** (physical) violence should only be used in the absolute minimum **
: ** level necessary for (effective) self-defence. **
: Note that the assumptions marked ** are axiomatic. If you don't
: agree, then you don't agree.
You say this, but have you considered the way in which either the threat of direct physical violence subliminally alters your actions in every day life. It is the threat of direct physical violence which prevents you or I from redistributing the vastly inequitable distribution of resources from the super wealthy and rich to the average worker, the starving and the homeless.
You cannot for example walk into a store and take food if you are hungry however much food the store has, and however poor you are, for if you do, the state, in the form of the police will use 'the minimum violence necessary' to deprive you of your freedom! In the same way, unless you pay rent or mortgage to the wealthy owners of your property, the bank, or state itself, eventually, the 'minimum violence necessary' will be used against you to make you homeless. The more you try to resist 'minimum violence', the more violence the state will use against you (and at the present, it will always have more capacity for violence than you). But this isn't just about the state, in this modern world, corporations (eg. the petroleum companies) are now getting their own private armies to do their dirty work, many states also allows other vigilante groups to inflict violence with impunity, so it is with many hunt groups in the UK. More than one peaceful anti hunt protester has been killed in the UK by hunters and have been protected by the state.
People recognise that they are be being oppressed (eg. kept from their fair share of resources or prevented from defending others - animals and the environment) with either the threat of violence or violence itself. The state has proved that violence is effective in attaining what it wants, and some people, whether you or I believe them to be justified or effective or not, see it as their right to use the same methods (eg. violence) to fight back against these oppressive systems which rape the environment, torture animals and keep millions of people starving.
Now I used to call myself a pacifist, and to some extent (I am anti-millitarist), I still do, but I do recognise the need for self defence and the defence of others. I realise now that sometimes, violence is necessary to avoid further violence. For example, if a group of anti fascists can use measured and calculated violence on a fascist gang to humiliate them into dissolving, thus avoiding racist murders, then I might well support this. Now this isn't easy for me to admit, and I do not say this lightly, I do not condone violence par se, however in certain circumstances greater good can come from using measured aggression. You might see it as a matter of opinion as to whether violence is effective or not, but the states of the world have managed to hold power by using it for thousands of years.
The two particularly exceptional instances you chose to refer to in the GA newspaper are out of context, individual situations are rarely cut and dried, it is highly unlikely that the hunts person who was physically attacked was attacked randomly.
I know from personal experience that certain members of some hunts are extremely violent to the point of being sick! and I'm not just talking of violence to non-humans, as I pointed out earlier, hunt saboteurs do get killed by huntsmen and their supporters, and not by accident.
Try and empathise, would you resort to revenge if your child or partner was beaten black and blue, tortured, murdered or raped... I'm not saying all these things have happened with hunts, some have, but what I am trying to point out is that I'm sure we all have a level at which we would be prepared to resort to violence, and the GA article reports on the act out of context, you do not know the history of the situation, so whether you yourself believe the act is extreme (I must admit, it sounds so to me) is subjective, we cannot judge a persons actions without knowing the full facts.
: Without detailed legal documents (charges, court proceedings, etc.,
: as for the McLibel case) what's presently on the McSpotlight site
: (4/12/97) makes it hard to judge whether the question is of free speech
: or not - if one accepts that
: ** it is not a right to "broadcast" encouragement to commit (physical) **
: ** violence. ["broadcast" = one-to-many media] **
: E.g., the "radio mille collines" was (apparently) important in encouraging
: the _political_ genocide of about 500,000 people in Rwanda in
: April 1994.
The point is though that GA was only reporting the action, it did not say to people, go out and maim people, it did not insight hatred as I guess "radio mille collines" did, so what is the problem - the news on TV reports on riots and wars, but we don't jail the news readers do we?
And during the Gulf war, news readers certainly reported acts of extreme violence with a zeal that betrayed their obvious support for the droppers of bombs which killed both conscripted soldiers and civilians.
I personally would not support hate speech, and fully support organisations such as Anti-Facist Action who use violence to stop Nazis and neo-Nazis from spreading their message of hate, just as I would support the trashing of "radio mille collines", but there is a very great difference between racist hate speech and sympathetically reporting on direct action (and I'll point out that GA did not show sympathy for the physical attack on the huntsman, they just reported it) against the systems which oppress us all.
: > Stoneaton: Whitechurch farm - Tom Osbourne of
: > Mendip Farmers Hunt Club hospitalised after being hit
: > with a spiked club and acid sprayed in face.
: > ...
: > East Sussex - Justice Department post mousetrap-based
: > booby traps to Shamrock Farm employees L Ford and T
: > Welburn. Razor in envelope sent to Shamrock vet Paul
: > West.
: taken in context, in all honesty, appear to encourage the anti-human
: violence. Reporting has an emotional content as well as a formal
: content.
How??? this is reporting of fact, no emotive words have been used at all! it might not appeal to your taste, but it happened and it is relevant to animal rights, because animal right people are interested in what is going on and many animal rights activists know the people involved, they can decide for themselves if they agree with it or not, no one has the right to censor the factual reporting of things which are of interest to people.
: Whether or not the Gandalf 3 should be in prison for what they
: wrote, I'd have to see much more detail on the Web.
At the end of the day, the state should not have the right to jail people for just writing about things which happen or even encouraging people to do things. You might believe that that state has the right to jail people for committing direct action, but they should certainly not jail people for things that they have not done themselves. If individuals want to act to stop people from spreading hate speech etc. then this is their right and responsibility, but the state should play no part in censorship, it is far too much of a double standard.
D.
