Posted on 05/07/2002 9:57:10 PM PDT by LarryLied
Pim Fortuyn's anti-immigration stance was notorious. He was less well-known as an animal lover who, in the absence of a human companion, doted on his lap dogs. He had even been preparing animal-friendly policies.
Volkert van der Graaf, identified yesterday as the man in police custody, belonged to Milieu Offensief (Environment Offensive) a small animals rights group. "Protecting animals is civilising people," he had declared on a website.
His concerns over animals began as a young child during fishing trips with his brother. As he grew older his sense of unease increased.
"People think it normal that you eat animals and that you let fish suffocate in nets when you catch them," he said on the website. "But inside me arose a sense of justice – such things shouldn't be happening in a civilised country, I thought, but there is no one to stand up for them."
Even working for a bird sanctuary as a 15-year-old became troublesome to him and he quit because birds caught in oil slicks were left to die slowly. "At that place it was a taboo to end a life. The others thought you simply had no right to end it. At the same time they put out mousetraps to kill the mice that were stealing the bird food. I left that place, I didn't want to be inconsistent any longer," he explained.
At home, Mr van der Graaf's parents refused to let him give up meat, but he became a vegetarian and later a vegan when he started his studies in Wageningen. He joined a local anti-vivisection group and fought for the right of students not to use animals in their lab work before starting work for Milieu Offensief.
"Through legal procedures we fight permits for factory farms and fur farms, using the law as our tool," he explained. He said he is not motivated as much by love for animals as a basic belief that factory farming is not right.
"For the rest I just act rationally, I don't have to be an animal friend to protect animals." He added: "Many animal protectors act from the assumption that 'nature is good', but every dark side of humans can also be found in nature."
Mr van der Graaf had not made any statement of motives to police last night. Justice officials said bullets and environmentalist material were found during a search of his home in Harderwijk, a staunchly religious town where the 32-year-old had been living for about nine months.
The murder came as "a total surprise" to his wife who has now left the town with their baby, according to the mayor Johan de Groot.
His colleagues yesterday also expressed amazement at his alleged actions, although one boy reportedly said he had heard Mr van der Graaf saying he would kill Mr Fortuyn if he ever met him.
Mr Fortuyn had been quoted as telling an established Dutch green group: "The whole environmental policy in the Netherlands has no substance any more. And I'm sick to death of your environmental movement."
Joost Eerdmans, a candidate for Mr Fortuyn's party said: "We don't have a very developed policy on animal rights. We were busy developing it."
He said Mr Fortuyn had wanted to restructure the agriculture department to make it more animal-friendly and help limit diseases like BSE. He added: "[His dogs] were his life since he didn't have a partner.
"He loved animals. There is no mistake about that."
At it's mildest, environmentalism is simply what used to be called conservation. More extreme environmentalism gets into socialism. Wrong-headed, but not clearly, consciously, and deliberately anti-human. Socialists at least claim to meet human needs.
Animal rights is clearly, consciously, and deliberately anti-human. Meeting human needs is not on their agenda even as a rhetorical flourish.
Oh my word. Well I shouldn't be surprised...
Picky, picky, picky!
He loved animals, didn't he? So he's purer than ordinary people.
He's certainly suffering more than the greedhead rightwing wacko he offed! </smarmy cant>
"I see that is not offered in the Arabic language. The Palestinians need to see this."
I burst out laughing. Was that an unloving response?
Maybe we can convince all of the animal rights folks to help in the cause.;o)
Unloving?? Let's make it a new chapter in the Koran.
SOR
I appeal to all FReepers, Conservatives, and others who are normally wired -- Please consider having a few extra kids !
Environmental whacko bump.
Regardless of your political views, less kids mean less problems for everyone -- especially with regard to the environment, but also to traffic, housing, famine, and war.
Please consider having no more of them.
Hope this helps.
Too bad your folks didn't follow your advice you posted in your number 30 if your feeling on this is real.
SOR
SOR
That you seem unable to even discuss these ideas, and instead start to dump verbal abuse on me, shows me that it's not really discussion you seem to be interested in, but merely the showing off of your respective navel fluff. Very well, if that's what you're here for, I'll certainly not detain you any longer.
And to the person who suggested it would have been a good thing if my parents had thought the same way: well, I don't disagree – if they had, I wouldn't have any problem whatsoever with the outcome.
Mandantory global sterilization, on the other hand, isn't what VHEMT is about. Personally I'm somewhat undecided about it: I'd not like something as drastic as that to be mandantory, but its effects would be great. ;-)
Luckily or not, it isn't going to happen anyway, so there's not much point discussing it. The only difference that can be made is for each single person to think long and hard about whether they really want kids, instead of merely accepting it as a given that they're going to make some. That's what VHEMT is trying to achieve.
And it works. That's worth plenty of fingers we're given. ;-)
1. Famine and suffering are not the result of overpopulation. Look at the countries where suffering is rampant and hunger is a serious problem.
Most likely, what you will find is that their hunger and suffering is due to oppression, not overpopulation. Despite the urban growth of our own country, we have seen massive technology advances in agriculture that have resulted in a large surplus of foodstuff. People will find a way to survive given the chance.
The best solutions to hunger and suffering have nothing to do with population control, but rather economic development. Recent history in Afghanistan should prove the point. There is plenty of fertile land, all used by oppresive dictators to grow the countries #1 cash crop - opium. If Saddam would spend 1/10th his military budget feeding Iraqis, they would probably be happy as clams.
Starvation and suffering are human inventions used for control, they are not the natural condition of a large population.
2. for the sake of the planet is currently not a good reason to do anything. Most of the current theories about the Earth deteriorating due to human interference is chicken little nonsense. Scientists are in vehement disagreement about global warming and ozone depletion, probably the two largest manufactured crises of our times.
At one time, there were 'scientists' who insisted that the Earth was flat. When evidence to the contrary was presented, they would update their models with newer, more complicated ones, insisting that they were still correct. Currently global alarmists are attempting to do the same, insisting that "there's just something we're not accounting for." Well, whatever it is they're missing appears to have a much larger influence than human interests, so maybe they should figure out what it is and crusade against that instead of taking away my pickup truck.
Your concerns about traffic are too laughable to warrant a serious response at present. If you could convince me that heavy traffic was a global catastrophy, I might consider looking into it further.
Your denial of human-induced global catastrophes such as global warming or depletion of the ozone layer needs no further comment; I'm not going to convince you, whatever I say, and vice versa, so we might as well leave it alone. Anyway, I mean "for the sake of the planet" in a somewhat less scientific way. You know, less trees cut down, less animals tortured in meat production, less species dying out because of their habitats being destroyed. Your arguments are very human-centric. We're doing a tremendously good job in destroying the ecosystem of this planet, and whether or not global warming or depletion of the ozone layer are heralds of our coming success or mere coincidences, I have no doubt whatsoever that eventually we'll finish the task.
And the more we breed, the faster we'll do that.
You write, "People will find a way to survive given the chance." Seems very optimistic to me, but then of course you've got the right to be an optimist ;-) My question is, though: At what cost to ecosystems will people find that way? Protection of other life but human is the first thing that goes out the window when the going gets rough. And the more of us there are to compete about a limited quantity of anything, be it food, housing, oil, air, anything, the rougher the going will get. This is why I believe that fewer of us – or at the very least, no more of us – wouldn't be a bad idea.
I grant you that it might be possible to have a couple billion (thousands of millions) humans live together on Earth in peace and harmony. Maybe even a couple billion more than there are today. But if we as a population keep growing like there's no tomorrow, eventually we'll reach a point where more of us cannot be supported. And when we do, chances are we won't stop growing right then, but momentum will carry us on so that we cannot support everyone.
And only then will things go really bad. That's when pain, suffering, and death will set in on a grand scale. Whether that point is at seven, seventeen, or seventy billion, and whether it will be reached in 2010, 2060, or 2230, is irrelevant to the argument that the sooner we stop, the less painful the transition to not growing in number will be. So we'd better start now, shouldn't we?
Not having any children due to wanting to save the environment and other species does not make a person an extremist environmentalist. You couldn't call a person who does not have/want any children due to wanting to save more money for his own use an extremist money lover would you?
So this group of people VHEMT do not breed out of their own free will and soon will remove themselves from the gene pool when they die of old age or whatever means. Isn't that better for people like you and your descendants? Why are you complaining about it?
The more people who join VHEMT, the more room/space/resources your descendants will have for themselves so in your own self interest, by right, you should be advocating that others join VHEMT too while you secretly propagate your genes. Wouldn't you agree?
Back to the original topic, the police still doesn't know Mr van der Graaf's motives for killing Pim Fortuyn. It may have nothing to do with his animal rights beliefs.
You see, due to some personal reasons (nothing related to saving other spesies or the earth), I have decided not to breed and was searching the internet for more information about others who chose not to breed too and came across the VHEMT web site. After reading through the web site and their discussions in their yahoo group, they didn't come across to me as being extremists and they do not push their ideas on others but let others think for themselves.
I think they are pretty decent to stop breeding and let other people (including other species) have more space/resources/room.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
This is too funny to be true! Idiots advocating their own extinction. Well, I hope all Envirocommies will soon join the movement! May I suggest adding suicide to your agenda? You are indeed helping to make the world a better place.
GO, VHEMT, GO!
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