RE: Iams animal testing

Here's my question: just like the Rodney King beating,....why didn't the videographer put down his camera and try and defend the person/animal being beaten/maimed/killed...whatever? How could anyone stand idly by and not try to help, capturing the details of the attack so he'd have a newqsworthy tape?

i have confronted people who were abusing their kids; other people in a resturant when the O J Simpson verdict was announced; bigots i worked with. i just cannot imagine watching 5 or 6 men beating a defenseless man and not trying to stop it....nevermind trying to profit from it in any way by videotaping it.

pinkpleasures

Bob..who can lose their temper with You? You are just a delightful Man.

We shall have to agree to disagree that a human life has no intrinsic value as compared to animal life. It's a philosophical question, and i feel my position is self-evident and needs no explanation. You disagree.

However, look more closely at the areas of agreement we have. i can safely assume You oppose animal cruelty, such as killing a horse as part of an insurance fraud. i actually handled the administrative side of such cases for the time i worked at the Dept. of Business and Professional Regulation. In Florida, and probably elsewhere, trainers must have licenses, and so do many other people on the track or in the stable with race horses and their companion horses. So, when a prosection resulted in a guilty verdict, etc., we would sue to revoke the trainer's license. Those cases were hard for me; the proof required was quite high and difficult to obtain; but it was more how disturbing it was to actually be n a room with a trainer who had been found guilty.

When i worked at the Depts. of Insurance and Health Care, the people affected by my trials were the elderly and the poor, and i felt revolted by the respondent's conduct. Stealing an elderly couple's life savings? i felt we should have asked for criminal prosecutions in some cases.

However, there is something more -- depraved -- about the cruelty inflicted on race horses and greyhounds in Florida. So in this sense we have another area of agreement. While a defenant who stole from elderly people should serve hard time; so should someone who is convicted of animal cruelty.

pinkpleasures

Manadlin, what happened to Your grandmother and her killer are horrendous. i have some sympathy; i lost my maternal grandma in an arson fire -- landlord lighting -- and the arsonist and landlord were never charged.

pinkpleasures

A jury found the officers in the Rodney King case innocent. Yhis set off terrible riots in LA..because of the perceived injustice of the verdict and the removal of the case to Simi Valley, where an all-white jury was seated. The federal government subsequently examined the case but brought no new charges against the officers. Some people believe a travesty of justice occured; others defend the officers. Myself, i still cannot understand not laying down the video machine and going to the aid of the underdog.

http://www.greenberg-art.com/.Toons/.Toons,%20social/RodneyKing.html

Nevertheless, it's very hard to watch the tape and not feel there was excessive force.

As for the death penalty, i wrote a cogent argument about my belief that innocent people sit on death row. Whatever solution is implemented to do away with the 10, 15, 20 year wait for an execution, the fact is the system is flawed at the investigation/trial level.

http://www.collarchat.com/m_120409/mpage_2/key_death%252Cpenalty/tm.htm#121817

And, once again, my take on animal cruelty is that people convicted of these crimes need to be subject to long prision terms, not $500 fines.

pinkpleasures