[Bluey]

Wherever you are in these issues we discuss regularly, if you wear a tin foil hat, or just like to accuse others of doing so, I thought you may find this opinion article about animal rights and the HSUS interesting.
Why?
It can directly affect our rights to use any animals, including horses.
Why is it relevant to post that here?
For most here, owning and using horses (and all other kinds of animals) is what we do (bolding mine):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...n_1933863.html

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---" ...
These two alliances aren't as unlikely as they initially appear. That's because the Humane Society, the country's largest animal advocacy organization, has increasingly embraced a moderate, Goldilocks approach to animal rights advocacy over the past several years. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Humane Society's litigation group, which was founded by attorney Jon Lovvorn in 2005.

"We look at cases that are going to have a concrete impact on animals but that are winnable," Lovvorn told The Huffington Post. "You won't see us out asking for courts to declare animals persons. Or to file habeas corpus requests on behalf of animals, or other things that require judges to go way beyond what they're comfortable with."

The narrow path between animal rights extremists and the agricultural industry can be lonely. The Humane Society sometimes gets pilloried by critics on both sides at once. But experts in the field say the group's moderation has produced real results. The group started with just three full-time lawyers, including Lovvorn; it now employs 25 and works with 2,000 others on a pro-bono basis. Lovvorn, 43, estimated that he and his colleagues have won about three dozen cases in the past seven years.

"They are definitely the leading shop for litigation for animal protection," attorney David Wolfson, who teaches courses on animals and public policy and animal law at NYU and NYU Law, respectively, explained. "They are generally extremely disciplined, focused and professional. I would also characterize them as extremely pragmatic and realistic. They're not chasing dreams."

The ultimate dream for animal rights advocates would be something like the application of the 14th Amendment's equal protection to animals as well as humans. Such a ruling might ban the rearing of domesticated animals for meat altogether. And some major thinkers in the field -- most famously Steve Wise of the Nonhuman Rights Project -- are actively pursuing it.

"Right now, it's really easy to determine who has the capacity to have a right," he explained. "You look at the species. If you're human, you have rights. If you're not, you don't. What we're arguing is that species is completely arbitrary. There are many nonhuman animals that have really serious cognitive complexity. And we think that cognitive complexity alone is a sufficient condition to make some animals legal persons.""---

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For those that keep insisting animal rights extremists groups are not after our rights to have horses, well, there is proof they really, after all, are after eliminating all uses of animals, as so many of us have been trying to point to all along.

[Trakehner]

Remember, the HSUS is animal rights-not welfare....and animal terrorist supporting whackjob, Alex Pachecko, is now the HSUS Director. Evil people wrapped in a sick dog's plea for money.

[trubandloki]

How do these people address things like predators and prey in animals. How is it OK for that fox to eat a mouse but it is not OK for us to eat an animal?

[Bluey]

How do these people address things like predators and prey in animals. How is it OK for that fox to eat a mouse but it is not OK for us to eat an animal?

They lack logic, they don't go there.
They focus their propaganda only on the "cute little animals we need to protect from evil humans" propaganda.

Have been at that for some decades now, a generation they have been trying to brain wash into thinking animals are other than one more renewable, natural resource everything alive, including the human animal, are in this world.

Those groups are not aiming for you or I, they are after all those that don't think things thru, just mostly react to what others say and present and so fall for causes of the moment that are used to further certain agendas.

Just see the one now very long thread someone started with an animal rights extremist driven article a while back for a good example of what I and that article are saying.

I thought this article was a good answer to that one, but deserved it's own thread.

[Guilherme]

HSUS is PETA in a better suit. In this case "clothes do not make the man."

HSUS and PETA are allies in a war against animal ownership and use. HSUS is the "political" wing and PETA is the "provisional" wing (a la the organization of the Irish Republican Army).

G.

[AlterNetReality]

HSUS is PETA in a better suit. In this case "clothes do not make the man."

HSUS and PETA are allies in a war against animal ownership and use. HSUS is the "political" wing and PETA is the "provisional" wing (a la the organization of the Irish Republican Army).

G.

Would that make them Sinn Fern?

[AlterNetReality]

Sinn Fawn, my mistake!

[SLW]

The HSUS and PETA make me want to quit the world.

[Bluey]

The HSUS and PETA make me want to quit the world.

Putting this in perspective, to animal rights extremists, as one poster here, that goes to their conventions told us, that we use animals and at times abuse them makes her wish "humans were wiped off this world".
And she was serious.

I think those feelings are mutual, but for opposite reasons.

[Guilherme]

Would that make them Sinn Fern?

No, but maybe Sinn Foal!!!

G.

[BigBayHanoMare]

Sinn Fawn, my mistake!

Sinn Féin, actually.

[AlterNetReality]

No, but maybe Sinn Foal!!!

G.

Or Fianna Foal might even be better... since Fianna is "Warrior"

:=)

[fburton]

Or Fianna Foal might even be better...

lol! Brilliant!

[mvp]

"They are definitely the leading shop for litigation for animal protection," attorney David Wolfson, who teaches courses on animals and public policy and animal law at NYU and NYU Law, respectively, explained. "They are generally extremely disciplined, focused and professional. I would also characterize them as extremely pragmatic and realistic. They're not chasing dreams."

The ultimate dream for animal rights advocates would be something like the application of the 14th Amendment's equal protection to animals as well as humans. Such a ruling might ban the rearing of domesticated animals for meat altogether. And some major thinkers in the field -- most famously Steve Wise of the Nonhuman Rights Project -- are actively pursuing it.

"Right now, it's really easy to determine who has the capacity to have a right," he explained. "You look at the species. If you're human, you have rights. If you're not, you don't. What we're arguing is that species is completely arbitrary. There are many nonhuman animals that have really serious cognitive complexity. And we think that cognitive complexity alone is a sufficient condition to make some animals legal persons.""---

I think the argument for giving rights to animals is a way to forget about giving the perks of rights to people we don't like. Could we not have a measurable poverty rate for children in the US *before* we get amped up about the rights of animals?

It seems to me that we'll work harder to create rhetoric for an animal's having great quality of life than insuring that human beings actually have that.

A few years ago, NYU got $1M or so from some animal rights guy in order to form the (more broad-sounding) "Animal Studies" program.

It's the latest, expansionist move in Cultural Studies. Over the last 30 years or so, we did women, we did people of color, we did LGBT. So now the academic types have moved onto animals, the final frontier. Oh, there were a few who, for a minute after the 2008 Crash, thought that we ought to consider socioeconomic class as a characteristic that is defining of experience and discrimination. But no one in America wants to acknowledge that class exists, so we leapt over that to talk about animals.

All well and good, but I don't know many academics who know diddly about any actual animals besides the pets they have personally owned.

[Anne FS]

How do these people address things like predators and prey in animals. How is it OK for that fox to eat a mouse but it is not OK for us to eat an animal?

It is often not okay to them. That's how far they are removed from a love of, and understanding of, animals. Take the late Linda McCartney. She donated to a raptor rehabilitation program in England. When it was pointed out to her that the money she gave to feed the owls & hawks was spent on mice, since that's what they ate, she (no joke) asked the rehabbers if they could switch the birds to a vegetarian diet. When told that wasn't possible she arranged that her money would go to support in other ways but specifically could not be used for food for them.

There is also a movement to have your own pets be vegans. Here's only one site: http://www.vegetariandogs.com/

Make no mistake. Although the people with these views say it's for the animals, it is NOT about the animals at all, nor is it about what is best for them.

[wendy]

And we think that cognitive complexity alone is a sufficient condition to make some animals legal persons.""---

ok, I agree some animals are smarter than some people. So if they become "legal persons", though, I am baffled as to how that works. Sure, us humans have rights- but with rights come responsibilities, chiefly the responsibility to respect the rights of other "legal persons". How are you going to explain to the grizzly bear that now that he is a "legal person" he can't go around eating hikers (other "legal persons") anymore? or explain to the horses, who have been released from their "prison", that they can't stand in the middle of the road and block traffic, and it doesn't matter how hungry they are, they can't just go eat the golf course unless they pay a membership fee first? or, if you could explain that, they'd have to figure out how to earn money. Oh wait, maybe they could work and carry people around in exchange for food. Oh right we already do that...

[Bluey]

ok, I agree some animals are smarter than some people. So if they become "legal persons", though, I am baffled as to how that works. Sure, us humans have rights- but with rights come responsibilities, chiefly the responsibility to respect the rights of other "legal persons". How are you going to explain to the grizzly bear that now that he is a "legal person" he can't go around eating hikers (other "legal persons") anymore? or explain to the horses, who have been released from their "prison", that they can't stand in the middle of the road and block traffic, and it doesn't matter how hungry they are, they can't just go eat the golf course unless they pay a membership fee first? or, if you could explain that, they'd have to figure out how to earn money. Oh wait, maybe they could work and carry people around in exchange for food. Oh right we already do that...

Seriously, you see, that is where guardianship comes in.

The trouble, once we have animal guardians, they can sue you if they don't think you are doing what they think you need to do for your animals.
Just try to defend yourself and cope with the aggravation and expenses in time and other resources defending will bring.

Guardianship of animals given human rights is one more assault on our rights to own animals as we do today.
Those assaults are coming on so many fronts, with money gullible people donate to those animal rights extremists groups to care for those little defenseless animals in cages in their donation mailing drives.
And we are talking millions a year here.

[Lynnwood]

Make no mistake. Although the people with these views say it's for the animals, it is NOT about the animals at all, nor is it about what is best for them.

This in spades. It is about control. They start with small groups and pick them off ie the Carriage horses in order to gain political and public footholds.

No matter how many are fooled into believing they about animal welfare they are truly about animal abolition.

I also do NOT understand their constant need to humanize animals. Why can't animals be animals and humans be humans.
http://www.ranchosantafereview.com/2...mplex-animals/

[trubandloki]

Wait, I can see a positive.

Deer will have to carry insurance so when they smash into my car it is on them to pay for it.

[Lynnwood]

http://occasionalsongs.wordpress.com...ighting-dirty/