posted by davidt on Wednesday May 31 2006, @12:00PM
natec writes:
This article was published in todays Metro newspaper (May 30) in the UK.

Morrissey: we'll get you! - The Metro

Singer Morrissey has branded Oxford the 'shame of England' for allowing a controversial new animal testing laboratory in the city.

The former frontman of The Smiths warned laboratory workers 'we will get you' during a concert in the city to promote his new album.

The 47-year-old, who is a strict vegan and animal rights activist, also told his fans: 'If you agree with vivisection, go and be vivisected upon yourself.'

It is not the first time the outspoken singer has courted controversy on the issue – earlier this year he claimed violence was the only language laboratory scientists understand.

Oxford-based anti-animal testing group Speak was invited personally by the singer to run a stall at the concert,exposing the fate of the animals that will be tested on at the Oxford University laboratory.

A Speak spokesman said that, although the group did not condone violence, they were pleased Morrissey had raised awareness of the issue.

He added: 'We need to talk about the violence being committed upon animals. I applaud the fact that Morrissey's been brave enough to stand up and say what he thinks.

'I suspect when he said “we will get you” he wasn't talking about violence at all, but about exposing these people for what they do.'

Last week, Oxford University won a legal appeal to extend an exclusion zone around the £20million biomedical centre to keep demonstrators away from the building site.
---
Belligerent Ghoul also sends the links:

Star launches attack over lab - Oxford Mail
We'll get you, Morrissey warns lab staff - Manchester Online
---
BlueGirl also sends the link

Morrissey attacks Oxford lab - NME.com
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  • No more tea and milk for you, Mozza!

    Well, maybe Canada won't feel so bad now ;)
    triggerFit -- Wednesday May 31 2006, @12:11PM (#222398)
    (User #14907 Info | http://missgosh.livejournal.com/)
    So happy in Malice

  • I wish the day would come ..that i'd give a *hit about meat or animal testing.

    Until then, these kind of news items stike as
    utterly uninteresting and boring.
    Granvik -- Wednesday May 31 2006, @12:15PM (#222401)
    (User #14586 Info)
  • Thank You Morrissey for sticking to your guns.
    NOBODY says anything these days. Apart from "I'm Loving it (McDonalds)" of course.
    Respect!
    Anonymous -- Wednesday May 31 2006, @12:18PM (#222404)
  • moz has been nothing but true to himself, he one in a million , animals have no way of comunicating theie distress to us, thank you morrissey for being their voice.
    to all the haters , why don't you take your negative comments elsewhere.
    Anonymous -- Wednesday May 31 2006, @12:29PM (#222412)
  • They should be locked up, and throw away the key. Scum.
    Anonymous -- Wednesday May 31 2006, @12:34PM (#222416)
  • thank you thank thank you , for being such a great person.
      i love you xxx
    Anonymous -- Wednesday May 31 2006, @12:47PM (#222435)
  • cheers to the Mozzer for being str8 up once again! Stick to your guns and to hell with those it might piss off! Morals before profits!
    defari -- Wednesday May 31 2006, @02:32PM (#222471)
    (User #10050 Info)
  • The issue of animal welfare deserves a more articulate contribution than "We'll get you."

    A really great way to get yourself and the cause you espouse taken seriously - issue an empty but nasty threat.

    "It's the only language they understand". Morrissey has said this about animal research scientists for twenty+ years, and he's still wrong.

    "We'll get you" - sounds like a school bully.
    "It's the only language they understand" - sounds like a beer-fuelled fascist.

    kissmyshades -- Wednesday May 31 2006, @03:01PM (#222482)
    (User #12542 Info)
  • Great. We get Islamic wackos and now a wacko pop singer seeking to influence herd-like humans.
    Anonymous -- Wednesday May 31 2006, @05:29PM (#222509)
  • I can relate to how animals feel when they get experimented on. I was in the same position when I had gotten abducted by a UFO recently -- people who experiment on you for their own pleasures instills a certain kind of fear on you that you'll never get rid of.
    Anonymous -- Wednesday May 31 2006, @05:52PM (#222513)
  • Hurray for Moz! yes, show off your fangs! I'm sure you'd be delighted in meeting with José Bové, from France, who dumped a truck load of apples into a Mac Donald's and trashed it to pieces! And went off, similarly to you in your clip, with cuffs on his wrists and a smile on his face!

    I suggest truckloads of watermelons - those must be great over the Burger Kings, and this horrid Oxford lab. ;)

    By the way, if you think these protestors are inarticulate simpletons, I hope you have read Moz's interview on February's NME, and I wished you could read "Le Monde N'Est Pas Une Marchandise" (The World Is Not A Merchandize), a book in which Bové gives very detailed and well developped accounts on how the meat industry fonctions as a multinational empire. These are the true fascists!
    Mrs. Woolf -- Wednesday May 31 2006, @06:00PM (#222515)
    (User #14157 Info)
  • are easily some of the most illogical, and emotionally impulsive indidviduals on the planet. I classify it as a state of permanent adolescents. And yes, I was once a vegetarian and incredibly naive about the arguments, and the general intent of the majority of its followers. It's simply a cult mindset usually born out of a sense of isolation. However, I grew up. I gurantee you that there are many on here with my same experience.

    What's comical is when vegetarians repeat tropes about their cause that have already been debunked.

    Animal testing is absolutely beneficial and crucial to medical advancements. Anyone who argues otherwise is a member of the "Flat Earth Society." Most of the people involved in the cause get their information from biased sources that are devoted to the movement, so it's impossible for them to know the truth.

    There's a reason why they're not taken seriously by the scientific community.

    It's bizarre when you have far left types selectively arguing against science in the same way that Creationists selectively argue against it. However, if it were to involve a mutual politcal interest, such as global warming, then suddenly the opinion of scientists is asbolutely valid, and must be heard.

    The irony is lost on many.

    Anonymous -- Wednesday May 31 2006, @08:00PM (#222522)
  • Morrissey's other comment that evening, after he said "...go and be vivisected upon youself" he turned and spat out: "it's terrorism."

    Anyone who has seen films of animal testing must agree, it is the torture of terrified creatures, and it is viscerally horrible. The question is, is it ever really justified? It is a long and complex argument, and it will only end when we find non-animal laboratory protocols, which will take money, moral backbone and political motivation.

    Morrissey was reacting emotionally that night, not intellectually. That is what he does, and of course it gets him into trouble. Who would Morrissey be if he stood on stage and said things like "lets all be adult about this and come to some sort of compromise"?

    He may as well have called a certain album "Meat is not Very Nice."

     
    Anaesthesine -- Wednesday May 31 2006, @08:26PM (#222524)
    (User #14203 Info)
    If Moz did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
  • Morrissey is clearly soft in the brain. He was seduced by PETA and they've programmed him like a cultist.

    98% of the animal research at the Oxford lab will be done on fish and rodents. fish don't even feel pain! I realize Morrissey was a flunky at school, so perhaps he should go to a library and study up on fish.

    Whatever the case, I trust that if Morrissey ever gets AIDS, cancer, or another disease, he will stick to his guns and refuse accepting any treatments developed with the help of animal research. We know many of these PETA types are huge hypocrites in this respect. One of the higher ups at PETA is on insulin, for example.
    Morrissey will not let us down. When he gets ill he'll do the right thing and die.

    Meanwhile, I see that the animal rights extemists have caused a backlash in England. I guess people still do support science and progress after all.

    LoafingOaf <reversethis-{moc ... otstnilfcitnarf}> -- Wednesday May 31 2006, @08:32PM (#222525)
    (User #778 Info)
    Fuck it, Dude. Let's go bowling.
  • I was at the Oxford and witnessed a good dust up in the foyer on the way out between those who had heckled Moz and a couple of guys! So Moz got his violent reaction!
    Anonymous -- Wednesday May 31 2006, @11:01PM (#222531)
  • myspace.com/burgerking [myspace.com] Please add him/them!
    Anonymous -- Wednesday May 31 2006, @11:44PM (#222534)
  • He is becoming a new Oriana Fallaci.
    Anonymous -- Wednesday May 31 2006, @11:59PM (#222537)
  • are a lot cleverer than you think:

    http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1787388,00 .html

    Bluebirds
    Anonymous -- Thursday June 01 2006, @01:43AM (#222549)
  • Somebody needs to speak out against this econmically driven torture of sentient beings, and I'm glad it's Morrissey.

    I am human -- Thursday June 01 2006, @02:28AM (#222556)
    (User #3100 Info)
    ...and I need to be loved.
  • So if any of you (people who are against animal testing) found out you had cancer would you sacrifice your own life rather than take drugs that have no doubtless been tested on thousands of animals (some of which, all of which, i don't know, will have subsequently died a horrible painful death)?

    On a smaller scale, when you have a headache do you take paracetamol, or do you just sit and suffer because paracetamol (and ALL legal drugs) have been tested on animals?

    If drugs were tested on humans right from the start we would almost certainly cause many more disastrous incidents like the recent one that landed 4(?) men in intensive care, possibly kill many people, and open the way for exploitation of vulnerable individuals.

    We need to test on animals to save peoples live. Unless of course every animal rights protester volunteers to be tested on?
    EEP -- Thursday June 01 2006, @08:12AM (#222600)
    (User #14254 Info)
    For god's sake, please stay till I am sleeping
  • Morrissey has every right to speak his mind about animal laboratories and animal testing. I am glad that he does and said what he did in Oxford. People don't realise that drug companies are profit-making companies and although there are laws and regulations for how the drugs/other products should be tested, there is still a lot of pointles experiments being carried out.
    Drug companies are not "charities" and their main aim is not to "make good" for the human race - the main motivation is money.
    It's pointles to speculate whether some pain killers have been tested on animals. There are only a very few specific pain killers available and they have been available for a long time! Aspirin, Paracetamol, codeine, etc. Whether they were tested on animals back a long time ago, I don't know, but people these days are not short of pain-relieving tablets. And we don't need more.
    The reason why drug companies carry out animal tests is to gain more profit and to out-do other companies.
    Why isn't there a cure for cancer or AIDS already? There isn't and there never will be. To carry out more tests on animals will not change this fact.
    Anonymous -- Thursday June 01 2006, @11:17AM (#222641)
  • 'Crash into my arms, I want you'.

    '“What rights should animals have?”

    Animals should have the right to equal consideration of their interests. For instance, a dog most certainly has an interest in not having pain inflicted on him or her unnecessarily. We are, therefore, obliged to take that interest into consideration and to respect the dog’s right not to have pain unnecessarily inflicted upon him or her. However, animals don’t always have the same rights as humans because their interests are not always the same as ours, and some rights would be irrelevant to animals. For instance, a dog doesn’t have an interest in voting and, therefore, doesn’t have the right to vote because that right would be as meaningless to a dog as it is to a child.

    “Where do you draw the line?”

    The renowned humanitarian Albert Schweitzer, who accomplished so much for both humans and animals in his lifetime, would take time to stoop and move a worm from hot pavement to cool earth. Aware of the problems and responsibilities that an expanded ethic brings, he said, “A man is really ethical only when he obeys the constraint laid on him to aid all life which he is able to help … He does not ask how far this or that life deserves sympathy … nor how far it is capable of feeling.” We can’t stop all suffering, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t stop any. In today’s world of virtually unlimited choices, there are plenty of kind, gentle ways for us to feed, clothe, entertain, and educate ourselves that do not involve killing animals.
    “It’s fine for you to believe in animal rights, but why do you try to tell other people what to do?”

    Everybody is entitled to his or her own opinion, but freedom of thought is not the same thing as freedom of action. You are free to believe whatever you want as long as you don’t hurt others. You may believe that animals should be killed, that black people should be enslaved, or that women should be beaten, but you don’t always have the right to put your beliefs into practice. The very nature of reform movements is to tell others what to do—don’t use humans as slaves, don’t sexually harass women, etc.—and all movements initially encounter opposition from people who want to continue to take part in the criticized behavior.

    “Animals don’t reason, don’t understand rights, and don’t always respect our rights, so why should we apply our ideas of morality to them?”

    An animal’s inability to understand and adhere to our rules is as irrelevant as a child’s or as that of a person with a severe developmental disability. Animals are not always able to choose to change their behaviors, but adult human beings have the intelligence and ability to choose between behaviors that hurt others and behaviors that do not hurt others. When given the choice, it makes sense to choose compassion.
    FAQs - www.peta.org
    goinghome -- Thursday June 01 2006, @02:34PM (#222681)
    (User #12673 Info)
  • a cunt
    Anonymous -- Friday June 02 2006, @01:44AM (#222742)
    • Re:what by Anonymous (Score:0) Saturday June 03 2006, @01:24AM
  • I personnally am against unnecesary cruelty to higher animals (notably mammals). But where should we stop? What is cruel? How can we know what is percieved by an animal as 'suffering' (without looking for the so-called 'sadness in thier eyes' syndrome)? What is necessary? I personnaly believe we are more important than the rest of the animal kingdom, because we are of much higher intelligence, have a developped level concious thought and therefore our perception of suffering is much greater (my opinion only). I do think that cosmetic companies should not have the right to test on animals (because it is exceptionnaly pointless) and profit based drug company policy should be strictly regulated. There are examples where saying 'it should be banned' is not correct. For example, animals are currently used in PUBLIC (ie non profit making)researh into mosquito born disease (eg: malaria), which is considered the greatest cause of death and suffering in the 3rd world (among humans that is!). Without thier use (particularly in being live (but sedated) hosts during (blood)feeding of sensitive strains of mosquitos) research development would become unlikely or much less rapid. Personnally, I think in such circumstances animal use is justified. Who are we, a bunch of VERY privelleged wooly liberals in the west, to prevent these african lives being saved ? What do you guys think ? and please do not be personnaly offensive.
    Anonymous -- Friday June 02 2006, @04:38AM (#222765)
  • http://www.speakcampaigns.org.uk/pdfs/IfOnlyTheyCo uldSpeak.pdf

    A picture tells a thousand words...

    It is wrong, and no amount of balancing which species has the most right to hold on to its own life can change that.

    I am human -- Friday June 02 2006, @07:42AM (#222791)
    (User #3100 Info)
    ...and I need to be loved.
  • Having responsibility is logically consistent with having rights. Therefore, if we say that, for example, a cat has rights, then we must also say that a cat has responsibilities.

    It is not reasonable to claim that cats have responsibilites, and therefore it is not reasonable to claim that cats, or any other animals, have rights.

    A more logically coherent argument would be to state that human beings have responsibilites.

    Let me give you an example.

    Several months ago, I found a bird entangled in my son's goal net. After much hassle, I managed to free the bird and put it in a box, but it was still in a very poor way. The RSPCA came and took the bird away, and it was eventually freed. I gave the RSPCA a donation.

    I didn't free the bird or hand it over to the RSPCA because it had rights, but because I had a responsibility (it was my son's goal net) to help the bird out of its suffering. However, had the bird not been entangled in my son's net, but was still suffering, I still would have felt responsible, upon seeing its suffering, to try and alleviate it.

    [In fact, this happened a couple of years ago, when I found a chick who had probably fallen out of the nest. Rather than let it suffer and perish through starvation or the next door neighbour's cat (who, I decided, probably wouldn't feel the same sense of responsibility) I put it in a box and phoned the RSPCA.]

    Part of upholding our own human rights is having the responsibility to alleviate suffering. Logically, this would only extend to having responsibility to fellow people and we could therefore leave defenceless birds who happen to fall out of their net, and other animals, to suffer. We might, however, help animals whose suffering we had caused

    However, what about our responsibility to alleviate suffering which we have created?

    To take another example currently in the news (bear with me, if you can be bothered), people are currenty talking a great deal about our responsibility to the planet. Why? Does the planet have rights? No. But we have a responsibilty, not only to future generations of pople but also to the rest of the inhabitants of this planet. Why? Do these non-humans suddenly have rights? No. But as we are responsible for global overheating (like me with the football net) we are responsible for the welfare of those we have inadvertantly caused suffering. Therefore we have a responsibilty to do something about global overheating.

    If one agrees that humans have a responsibilty to alleviate suffering which they have caused, then where does that leave the meat industry?

    It's a moral and philosophical choice - one either embraces one's responsibilites regarding suffering or one ignores them.

    Consider this statement: Animals suffer when they are killed for meat. If this is true and one is responsible, then one will be a vegetarian. If this is not true, then one can eat meat.

    Consider this statement: Animals suffer when they are reared for meat. If this is true and one is responsible, then one will be a vegetarian. If this is not true, then one can eat meat.

    Sorry - I'm probably too late to elicit any responses.

    kissmyshades -- Friday June 02 2006, @09:27AM (#222814)
    (User #12542 Info)
  • Much of the following is a distillation of ideas developed by working philosopher Ken Wilber which I largely uphold, to show how morality can be both objective and subjective:

    • Human beings, over the decades and sometimes centuries, have developed time-honored methods of inquiry that enact, bring forth, and illumine basic dimensions of being-in-the-world.
    • For example, phenomenology and introspection enact, bring forth, and illumine the first-person singular dimensions of being-in-the-world ("I" or subjectivity);
    • hermeneutics and collaborative inquiry enact, bring forth, and illumine the first- and second-person plural dimensions of being-in-the-world ("thou/we" or intersubjectivity);
    • empiricism and behaviorism enact, bring forth, and illumine the third-person singular dimensions of being-in-the-world ("it" or objectivity);
    • And ecology, functionalism, and systems theory enact, bring forth, and illumine the third-person plural dimensions of being-in-the-world ("its" or interobjectivity).
    • There are many other important modes of inquiry, but those are a few of the historically most significant, and certainly ones that any integral methodological pluralism would want to address.
    • The collective or communal dimensions--the inter-subjective and inter-objective dimensions--are not something that can be derived from the interactions of subjects and objects, but rather, the inter-subjective and inter-objective dimensions are there from the start, along with subjectivity and objectivity, and not something that "comes after" subjects and objects.
    • Inter-subjectivity is not more fundamental than subjects and objects, which don’t "come after" or "out of" inter-subjectivity (if so, any genuinely individual creativity would be nullified, which is not supported).
    • The four quadrants are not four different occasions but four different perspectives on (and hence dimensions of) every occasion. (That is, various perspectives--such as first-, second-, and third-person--are not merely perspectives on a pre-given single event, but rather bring forth and enact different aspects or dimensions of an event, and hence these perspective-dimensions are ontically not reducible to, nor interchangeable with, each other.)
    • The whole point of a quadratic (I, you/we, it, its ) approach is that all four dimensions arise simultaneously: they tetra-enact each other and tetra-evolve together: - ‘transcend and include
    • Western history (basically, an amalgam of traditional, modern, and postmodern currents)--and specifically America, has been recently going through a period of rampant scientific materialism (‘flatland’) and the "nothing but surfaces" of the extreme postmodernists.
    • Interiors are out, exteriors are all; there is no depth. This puts an intense selection pressure against any sort of psychology that emphasizes solely or mostly the interiors/subjective (e.g. psychoanalytic, humanistic/existential, transpersonal, animal welfare).
    • This is compounded by numerous specific social factors, such as the medical/insurance and "managed care" industry supporting only brief psychotherapy and pharmacological interventions i.e. biological psychiatry, behavioral modification, cognitive therapy ( a manipulation of the sentences one uses to objectively describe oneself).
    • Silly things like trying to find out why you behave in such a fashion, or trying to find out the meaning of your existence, or the values that constitute the good life, are not covered by insurance policies, and so, in this culture, they basically do not exist. Three of the four forces (psychoanalytic, humanistic/existential, and transpersonal) are thus, once again, selected against; a negative cultural pressure is moving them to extinction and in some ways has already succeeded, so that these major forces are one jot away from dinosaur status. These pressures affect the decisions that our society makes about, for example, immigrants, animals, the aged etc.

    M. Nussbaum, eminent professor
    goinghome -- Friday June 02 2006, @02:43PM (#222876)
    (User #12673 Info)
  • Have anti-depressants been tested on animals? Because without them I would be dead.
    Anonymous -- Saturday June 03 2006, @09:39AM (#222995)
  • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.


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