New York's top court has ruled that Happy, an elephant residing at the Bronx Zoo since the 1970s, cannot legally be considered a person in a closely watched case that tested the boundaries of applying human rights to animals.
[...] The state court of appeals ruled on Tuesday 5-2, with a decision written by Chief Judge Janet DiFiore echoing that point. "While no one disputes that elephants are intelligent beings deserving of proper care and compassion", a writ of habeas corpus was intended to protect the liberty of human beings and did not apply to a nonhuman animal like Happy, said DiFiore.
[...] Extending that right to Happy to challenge her confinement at a zoo "would have an enormous destabilizing impact on modern society". And granting legal personhood in a case like this would affect how humans interact with animals, according to the majority decision.
"Indeed, followed to its logical conclusion, such a determination would call into question the very premises underlying pet ownership, the use of service animals, and the enlistment of animals in other forms of work," read the decision.
[...] Two judges, Rowan Wilson and Jenny Rivera, wrote separate, sharply worded dissents saying the fact that Happy is an animal does not prevent her from having legal rights. Rivera wrote that Happy was being held in "an environment that is unnatural to her and that does not allow her to live her life".
"Her captivity is inherently unjust and inhumane. It is an affront to a civilized society, and every day she remains a captive – a spectacle for humans – we, too, are diminished," Rivera wrote.
Next time they should try a writ of Mammuthus.
(Score: 5, Touché) by istartedi on Thursday June 16 2022, @08:04PM (29 children)
Happy should have incorporated.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @08:39PM (28 children)
yeah this is pretty obvious.
that elephant is in the wrong place because of profits.
it seems hiring "activists" for a one time fee is cheaper then having to look after the lose-making elephant. especially since nobody is going to the zoo and everything is in the phone nowadays.
(it could also be, that the elephant is actually profitable? like hydro-electric-dams are, but somebody wants a cut ...to shut up about it or else "animal rights" (next time complain before they put that thing on a plane) and "destruction of natural habitat" etc.?)
as for laws, they should prolly be made to guide a society to a lawless(*) state in the future. since we are missing "stuff" to make it happen, we need laws. optimally, if everything is going the right way, the amount of laws would gradually diminish.
(*) i invite you to reflect on this word. does it invoke chaos, death, destruction ... or global peace, freedom and happiness?
(Score: 1) by istartedi on Thursday June 16 2022, @10:01PM (27 children)
I have reflected on that word in the past, and concluded that anarchy, like communism, is another great ideal that fails in practice.
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(Score: 4, Informative) by unauthorized on Thursday June 16 2022, @10:53PM (26 children)
Communism does not fail in practice, it is made to fail by foreign intervention. Name one socialist country which persisted for more than a few years and which wasn't subject to US sanctions, intervention and/or conservative NGO activities specifically aimed at regime change. Even today it is official US policy that Cuba should be economically stagnated through sanctions in order to force a regime change and American NGOs stage inorganic "color revolutions" against one of the most popular regimes in the world, where as the same country which stages these revolutions is sitting at a healthy 20% approval for it's own regime.
To grab the beast by the horns, the USSR was one of the fastest growing economies in the world by the time of it's illegitimate dissolution, Russia went from a backwater feudal state stuck in medieval stasis where peak farming technology was the wooden plow into a modern industrial nation. In merely 30 years they were capable of fighting the most powerful military force in the history of mankind to date to a standstill and eventually to victory. Despite receiving the brunt end of WW2, in 70 years they went from the a medieval relic to near-western life expectancy (up from 40), achieved over 99% literacy (up from 25%), near-universal electricity access, virtually non-existent homelessness (and way better than the USA presently) and no food poverty.
The USSR may have fallen, but it was not a failed state. If anything, the states that followed in their footsteps are far more of "failed states" than their predecessor as each developed into economic stagnation, poverty, increasing inequality and all the other good things that come to liberal democracies in the imperial periphery. The very year of the dissolution, Russia experienced it's first famine since the 1940s. Oh, but sure, now at least Russians have all the numerous wondrous brands of western goods they cannot afford because their purchasing power has been diminished by rising costs of food and essential services. And don't even get me started on modern Russian imperialism, you wanted a capitalist Russia and you got one that just like the good ol' USA is willing to invade foreign countries for their energy resources.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Thursday June 16 2022, @11:36PM (7 children)
Name one of those countries so subject which didn't deserve it. Communism as practiced in the last two centuries (in other words, the entire lifespan of the formal theory) has been pretty shitty.
I think what is particularly silly about your assertion above is that you are acknowledging the ineffectiveness of US sanctions - because you allege that we have all these examples of long lasting communist countries which survived that foreign intervention.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Thursday June 16 2022, @11:57PM
Aside from that, powerful nations are always interfering with other powerful nations. It's not like the USSR was just sitting there letting us influence them. They were doing their best to influence us too, and failed at that also.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1, Troll) by legont on Friday June 17 2022, @12:20AM (3 children)
Singapore is doing fine under communist rule.
Not that I like the system they built over there too much, but they are definitely doing very well.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @01:59AM
I think the people of Singapore would be surprised to learn that they are communist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2022, @12:03AM
Singapore’s princes may be buddies with the CCP, but the country is not communist. It is fascist. Key industries are under state control. The country is run as the princes feel is right. The goal is to keep a first world base for the Chinese (and anyone willing to obey) to have all opportunities to get rich.
(Score: 2) by legont on Saturday June 18 2022, @12:36AM
Wow, troll. Somebody got to learn a little history.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Friday June 17 2022, @04:40AM (1 child)
Okay, that's easy. All of them. No country should face economic warfare which damages it's ability to purchase food, medicine or resources needed for social development just because you disagree with their form of governance.
What is silly is this nonsensical argument. Failing to achieve total victory in an act of (economic) aggression does not mean you have failed to cause harm. If someone gets shot in the leg and permanently crippled as a result, pointing out that he survived the encounter does not mean the shooter was "ineffective".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 17 2022, @11:30AM
Depends how ugly that form of government is. All those Communist countries are pretty ugly.
You alleged that Communist countries are made to fail by foreign intervention. You then proceeded to given examples where that didn't work.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday June 17 2022, @01:11AM
Communism only works in heaven, where it is not needed because people are not greedy; or in hell where they've already got it.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @02:33AM (5 children)
Yes, it did. As a person born in an East European country in a time those regimes were at their peak, it absolutely did fail in practice. And the Americans have nothing to do with the failure.
Irrelevant. So was Germany during early Hitler's time.
And that "fastest growing economy" did nothing to help the everyday life of their citizens, many time on the contrary [wikipedia.org]
Maybe. So did the Brits and Americans, starting a bit earlier than the Russians.
For some values of near. Most of the times it was achieved by forced relocation of people [wikipedia.org] from areas too hard to bring electricity to.
Yeah, right. They didn't do it by building a home for everyone, tho. Eliminating the "homeless" in gulags was cheaper and their preferred method.
As someone born in a East European country other than USSR, I still remember queuing for long hours before dawn for the max 2 liters of milk per family because the russians wanted the butter. Same with pork or beef, same with sugar and oil. Thanks $DEITY the Ukrainians were able to cover the russian cereal needs, otherwise we would have queued for bread too.
You're so full of shit
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday June 17 2022, @03:02AM
Further, U.S. grain sent to the USSR pretty much kept the USSR afloat.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Informative) by unauthorized on Friday June 17 2022, @05:53AM (3 children)
I am born and raised Bulgarian and this certainly isn't true in my experience. Plenty of people here lament the fall of socialism and speak fondly of the "bai Tosho" era. Even through Zhivkov was a massive crook, he is still remembered fondly because people didn't have to spend 80% of their income on food and utilities while working 12+ hours per day as they did during the "transition" period. Most people in my country believe that the Zhivkov era was better in terms of living conditions, including people who literally lived through it.
Germany was already an industrialized and highly developed nation in 1920, where as the USSR had virtually no industry and no infrastructure before the October revolution. There are not remotely comparable.
The so-called Holdomor is a conspiracy theory with no evidence behind it according to mainstream western academia. The USSR did experience a famine of the time, and it was pretty bad in Ukraine, but other parts of the USSR had shortages too. The price of preparing for the imminent Nazi invasion, history has vindicated their rapid industrialization efforts I think. Yes, the Sovets fucked up with the agrarian policy, I am not going to defend that. However, they did learn their lesson and fixed their shit in 30 years of socialism despite going through multiple brutal wars in the period.
America and Britain were the number one and two industrial powers in the era, they had over a century of a headstart which is hardly "a bit".
Yes, yes, I think the forced relocations were fucked up. I am not saying the USSR dindu nothing, I am saying arguing against the mind-numbingly stupid idea that they are somehow a "failed state".
The Soviets completed their housing program long after the Gulag program was ended. These things have literally nothing to do with each other.
Oh wow, poor you getting only 2 liters of milk per day, as well as sugar and oil, truly the worst of times. I remember times as a kid where we didn't have anything except spiced water and bread to eat and paying the electric bill was 50% of the household income and that was under capitalism. I'm going to call your bullshit here through, name the country and year so that we can look at the nutritional poverty data.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @08:05AM (2 children)
North of yours (which is not too hard, Bulgaria being the southernest of all).
Started queuing for oil and sugar at the age of 8, for meat at the age of 10 and for milk at the age of 12 - during primary and secondary school years, before high school.
All during the '70-ies. It went downhill from there.
High school, there was an year I was queuing for potatoes imported from Poland - not only second hand quality (full of holes and cut or touched by the harvester's iron) but also frostbitten - you need to continue keeping them outdoors to be able to eat them, keep them inside for 2 days and they'll be a putrid mush stinking to heavens (while if you'd cook them a short time after bringing them inside, they'll have a sweet taste - probably from the starch being degraded by ice formed inside the potato).
Uni time, most of the food shops were empty, except for pasta, some canned (and extremely sour veggies) or bottled tomato juice (that most of the time would throw almost all its content in a strong jet when opened). Ah, yes, and frozen oceanic fish.
Hundreds of million of people believing one thing doesn't make them right - see the "house prices never go down" as a recent worldwide example.
Also, the fact of crony capitalism and rampant corruption (the main reason I emigrated) can be worse than whatever passes as "communism in practice" doesn't make the latter a good thing.
I got your mindset - naive it is then.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @06:28PM (1 child)
You were asked for simple information but couldn't even manage that, just more anecdotal statements.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @08:49PM
FTFY.
Look, it doesn't matter if you believe me or not. Nowadays, I'm safe of communism - if you think it better serves you, by all means go for it. Learn spanish or koreean or whatever the Lukashenko speaks and go live there.
(Score: 5, Informative) by deimios on Friday June 17 2022, @02:40AM (4 children)
Having lived under communism let me clarify a few things:
99% literacy is state propaganda. Speaking of state propaganda: Obligatory praising the dear leader and the party before each school day. If you missed out and someone snitched (and someone ALWAYS snitched) you were investigated by the secret police. Happen a few too many times and you were made to disappear.
near-universal electricity access - mostly in cities. And only between certain hours. You see electricity was expensive so it was only turned on for part of the day. We still used petroleum lamps in the night to read books because electricity was turned off in the city at night. That was the planned part. Of course there were california style brownouts when the load was too much as well. TV programming was 1 channel, like 4 hours a day. Half of it was the speeches of the dear leader, other half was curated news and sometimes soviet cartoons.
virtually non-existent homelessness - Yep, the homeless were either made to disappear to the big state construction sites (we don't call them gulags) or put into asylums. So yeah, homelessness was solved. Also since store shelves were empty and food was rationed you had money to buy your state assigned city flat. Also people from rural areas were forcefully moved to cities in the other part of the country to "homogenize" the population.
not having a job was also pretty much against the law so that was solved as well. Oh you didn't want to do hard labor in a factory? Tough luck.
stealing from your job was rampant since there was an underground barter economy: food was rationed so you stole some screws from your factory to trade with the butcher to get some extra chicken under the counter. Since everything was state owned you didn't even feel guilty. Production efficiency was around 50%-70% of western factories and 2 generations behind as we found out after the iron curtain fell. The whole planned economy was woefully uncompetitive, so that is part why it collapsed. The other part was the rampant corruption, but we were used to that from before the collapse.
The best part of it: you were always, ALWAYS, careful about what you say and to whom. Informants were everywhere and one bad joke against the party could get you investigated, beaten or worse. So like today in the US, only the party name has more letters.
Oh and this wasn't like years after WW2, this was 1988
Many armchair communists will say that it wasn't "real" communism. Well the "real" communism cannot be implemented with normal humans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @04:51AM
The other reason is because the popular/"recommended" implementation method of communism involves violent revolution:
In most cases a violent revolution leads to a dictatorship. Because a violent revolution ends up in selecting leaders by "most violence" instead of "most votes". And thus the people controlling the most violence/force rise to the top. And once they're at the top, most of them don't hold elections and step down. They remain dictators.
The American Revolution is one of the few exceptions but some claim it's more of a secession than a revolution.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Friday June 17 2022, @06:08AM (1 child)
Is the Russian Federation's data on literacy also propaganda? Or maybe the CIA who claim 98% in 1991 [soylentnews.org]">it was 98% in 1991. How deep does this Soviet propaganda go man?
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Friday June 17 2022, @06:10AM
Whops, I borked the link, my appologies. here [indexmundi.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @06:09PM
It is this kind of hyperbole and false-equivalence which allows people to imagine that the Soviet Union wasn't so bad.
As a general statement, in the US, you can denounce, campaign against, and outright lie to smear groups. (Look at what certain major "news" organizations do, for example.) Those target groups include the government. Case in point, I'm sure you didn't think twice when you posted your comment, but I'll bet that those in China think very hard before posting something about Winnie the Pooh... and I mean that both literal Winnie the Pooh and figurative Winnie the Pooh.
Unless somebody makes an actual threat, generally they are left alone. Even when somebody makes an actual threat, they are generally left alone (see the post-mortum after various school shooting incidents and other tragedies).
Yes, there are always outliers, if not outright false-flag operations. If you get on the wrong side of somebody in power, they can and will railroad you. That's fairly uncommon, though, and far from a pervasive culture of oppression.
Put another way, the same "uhh... I'm really uncomfortable and really shouldn't be posting or talking about this" you probably feel to certain forms of pornography, only for everything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @04:40AM (2 children)
Naive or full of shit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOELRO#Implementation [wikipedia.org]
Translation: some eggs were broken to make that omelet.
---
Rrrright, the economy, eh? deaths in WWII by country [nationalww2museum.org]
Methinks it wasn't the economy that gave the russians the edge, but rather the cannon fodder.
Something that happens even today, I'm learning [washingtonpost.com]
---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Russia#Soviet_Russia [wikipedia.org]
---
https://www.historyhit.com/why-did-the-soviet-union-suffer-chronic-food-shortages/ [historyhit.com]
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Friday June 17 2022, @06:24AM (1 child)
The Soviet Union had more people at the end of WW2 than it started with.
Your own link agrees with me. "Nevertheless, the problem of complete homelessness was mostly solved as anybody could apply for a room or a place in dormitory (the number of shared flats steadily decreased after large-scale residential building program was implemented starting in the 1960s)". Admittedly [citation needed].
Once again, your link affirms what I said - the last food shortage in the USSR was in 1947.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @08:28AM
You don't put too much price on individual life, do you?
Not to mention the total irrelevance of your argument on the type of war USSR practiced - more cannon fodder, less economy.
You think "If you are unable to secure a roof over your head, then you are a parasite and your place is in jail/forced labor camp" is better than even Hooverville-s [wikipedia.org]? (most of the homeless now in US are better than at those times and still have chances to raise out of their status)
If you think so, you have quite a twisted sense of value.
First, their last famine was in 1947, chronic food shortages were quite common after too.
After that, the Russian started to export their food shortage to its "vassals" in the Warsaw pact.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @06:28PM (1 child)
My fucking God. I should just call up my ISP and tell 'em I do not want the internet. It is not a good thing where something exists that makes me feel obliged to argue as to why Communism is bad. You are either an elaborate troll or a fucking moron.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @10:51PM
Very likely the second. He grew up after the communism has fallen, but is as communist nostalgic as likely his parents.
Not too bright a gang.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2022, @12:17AM
As you wank to Karl Marx tonight, keep in mind the millions that died or were displaced when Communist countries were trying to spread their “Good News” to other countries. Think of the terrorists those countries funded to destabilize their rivals.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @08:15PM (7 children)
Two judges ruled that a zoo is not allowed to hold animals. These are powerful people with lifetime appointments who have the power to take your money, throw you in jail, and overrule the legislature, and they're writing crazy shit like that. If the other judges retire and are replaced, they might be in the majority the next time this comes up. This is the kind of bullshit that got Reagan elected, and we can see why. Vote only for candidates who are firmly committed to stopping this nonsense.
(Score: 5, Touché) by cmdrklarg on Thursday June 16 2022, @08:59PM
Riiiiight. Because right wingers are completely immune to nonsense. /s
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 4, Touché) by helel on Thursday June 16 2022, @09:08PM (2 children)
So your argument for voting right wing is that left wing judges respect rights and believe all persons deserved equal treatment?
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @11:30PM (1 child)
Talk to me of "personhood" for an animal when you can produce one capable of understanding and carrying out the responsibilities that balance every right.
And yes, there are now quite a few "Homo Sapiens" who would fail that same test.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by helel on Friday June 17 2022, @12:26AM
As corporate persons demonstrate there's no inherent need to balance rights with responsibilities. It's perfectly possible for us, as a society, to grant rights to an entity without expecting anything in return.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 16 2022, @09:34PM
In other words: don't vote at all?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday June 17 2022, @01:14AM
The thing about voting right wing . . .
Right wingers are being held in an environment of facts and reality that is unnatural for them and does not allow them to live their life.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2022, @03:15AM
I looked up the "Nonhuman Rights Project", because I had an idea of what kind of person would be behind something like this. While Wikipedia didn't quite confirm it, I was surprised that Jane Goodall was listed as a key person.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @08:25PM (11 children)
Happy has legal rights and privileges, however, those legal rights and privileges are not the same as those for humans. The rights and privileges accorded humans are based on their ability to interact with society and bear clear responsibility for their conduct. Humans who are not in a position to do so, get legal guardians and other protections.
The attempts by these activists to do an end run around the implications, in law and society, of these facts are all very cunning, but when we accord squatters' rights to every wasp's nest, when we find ourselves having to have a murder trial before putting down a wolfpack, when we need a warrant before unearthing a termite nest - these would be the logical conclusions of this line of thought, and they would effectively wreck society as we know it because we couldn't so much as set out a rat trap without treading on these legal implications. Farmers would have to forget about pest control, suburbanites would just have to put up with black plague from prairie dogs, and so on.
Even if in some legal theory all this were frightfully righteous, it would be a political impossibility. Just go to a PTA meeting and say: "Yeah, we know that the bats in the ceiling are carrying rabies, and your kids are at risk, but why don't you losers all take it on the chin?" and see how long it is before all hell breaks loose?
All this and more is brought up in the actual decision, and the dissents don't answer any of this except some (very unclear) boundaries that (might) exclude insects. Well, maybe wasps don't get squatters' rights. Do raccoons in the roof? We wouldn't know.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by helel on Thursday June 16 2022, @09:18PM (8 children)
Couldn't the argument of "where does it stop" apply to any expansion of rights? If you let black men vote who's next, women? Cats? Ants? THE NEXT PRESIDENT WILL BE AN ANT QUEEN!
The question at hand isn't wasps or raccoons or even wolves. It's elephants, who are (to the best of our ability to measure) self aware, have complex societies, and engage in what to all appearances is funerary practices. Quite frankly destabilizing the zoo industry shouldn't even enter into the decision making process when considering whether or not they qualify as people.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @11:33PM (2 children)
Exactly. Ask yourself an important question. Once upon a time only White men who owned land voted, now we have universal franchise. So here is the question: Did things improve? Maybe it was a bad idea to allow people with no stake in society to vote themselves the productive output of others?
(Score: 4, Informative) by helel on Thursday June 16 2022, @11:54PM
That's an easy one. Yes. Yes things improved. Not as much as one might hope but things are definitely better now than they were back when some humans weren't even considered persons.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday June 17 2022, @02:57PM
The slaveholders were always allowed to vote....
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 17 2022, @12:52AM (4 children)
And indeed it does. In this case, how do we determine who has rights? I think it's too vague to decide on the basis of a court case with no serious precedent. Let's try some legislative law for starters.
My take is that this court case doesn't cut it. I'm perfectly willing to assign basic rights based on level of intelligence and ability to shoulder societal responsibility.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @01:34AM (1 child)
So if you get injured and have to be on disability you lose some rights? We've figured out the Puritan approach is hot garbage. Let people be free, then punish violations. Don't put arbitrary restrictions, especially ones guaranteed to have gray areas like human rights tied to how useful you are to society. I think in another life you'd have been a die-hard communist but capitalism got its hooks in first. Both are bad, happy society is somewhere in the middle.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 17 2022, @02:30AM
Indeed. For example, if the injury sufficiently damages one's mental capacity, then society traditionally expects someone else to make decisions for that person. That person loses various rights as a result of being removed from decision making.
What's the better approach?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @02:09AM (1 child)
Whose society, though? I doesn't seem to me that you considered the elephants' one.
We already gave personhood to members of hunter-gatherer tribes in the Amazon jungle and elsewhere, even if they contribute nothing to the "post-industrial civilization" of today.
How far are the elephants' "societal responsibility" (whatever that term may mean, I haven't found a legally binding definition for it) from those aboriginal tribes' "societal responsibility"?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @03:21PM
It's not a legal term, it's a reflection of how we relate to each other. If you tell a wolf: "Bad wolfie! No eat Red Riding Hood! Or we send hunter-man to kill you!" then the wolf ... will cheerfully continue to eat whatever's available, including red-clad peasant girls. Surprise! Better call the hunter.
If you tell Hungus: "You mug Red Riding Hood, and we'll send the boys in blue to wreck your shit, drag you to jail, and you'll break rocks for The Man in the graybar hotel until your balls swing against your ankles." Hungus can use that information to help him guide his decisions.
The actual discussion of mental competency is one that overlaps in more serious ways with the actions of courts; can an accused understand the charges against them? Can they meaningfully respond? If they did something wrong, was there mens rea, or actual malice, or innocence and ignorance? How can we explain the law of assault to an elephant? Or a pit bull? Or a swarm of bees? Or a lunatic?
Herein lies the problem: if we can not discuss and address the rules of society with a particular counterparty, then affording that counterparty full membership in society raises a problem with respect to managing responses to their conduct. Amazonian tribes at least (given translation) can comprehend rules - in fact, they have their own - but we've had no luck explaining the rules of society to dogs no matter how cutely they sit up, beg, roll over and play dead. The same has applied all down the line, through Koko, Alex the Boffin and other talented animals.
At best, this puts us in the position of automatically assigning some kind of conservator to animals by default, and as a practical matter this ends up looking a lot like where we already are; animal welfare rules. Ascribing functional personhood to corporations makes more sense than ascribing it to animals. At least you can sue a corporation and expect a court to hold it to account.
(Score: 2) by donkeyhotay on Friday June 17 2022, @12:13AM (1 child)
Your comment made me think of something that P.J. O'Rourke wrote: "Any who really wants to 'get back to nature' should trying taking off their clothes and rolling around in their back yard for a little bit." I don't know if that is the exact quote, but I think it's pretty close. As you pointed out, animal rights is all well and good up to a certain point, but when you pour your Honey Nut Cheerios into your bowl and a couple of cockroaches come out, you're not gonna be too happy about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @09:03AM
Why not? I don't think you can get protein that's fresher that that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @08:42PM
you mean a "companion animal" , right?
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @08:51PM
Judge: "a writ of habeas corpus was intended to protect the liberty of human beings and did not apply to a nonhuman animal". Q.e.d.
Rights depend on the ability to hold and use a weapon, to fight for them. Not on moral notions like "intelligence" and such.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Mojibake Tengu on Thursday June 16 2022, @09:16PM (2 children)
Elephant's fate is no doubt touching for all emo freaks, tearful. My mind and heart is surely with the
beastperson.But, in compare to zoo situation, how does the New York City actually care about their poorest homeless humans, or even those hardly working proles who couldn't afford proper accommodation or food at greatly increased priced in upcoming winter? Seek a jail time for a chilly and freezing period?
In this compare, does a "valid personhood" make any sense to those people?
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 16 2022, @09:36PM
There's whole systems of systems setup to process "valid personhoods." Elephants have special needs not adequately addressed by our social safety nets.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Thursday June 16 2022, @11:12PM
Maybe two things can be important?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @10:30PM
should have been named topsy.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday June 16 2022, @11:16PM (2 children)
Elephants and octopi are smarter than the average bear, and deserved some study.
Which is why The Boys episode a week ago hit such a nerve in me. In the late 80s I was in Puerto Vallarta with a gf and I ordered spaghetti with octopus. She was grossed out, I pointed out that about the time we were waking up this octopus was kissing his daughter and telling his wife he'd be home for dinner.
This was a good 20 years before I paid attention to elephants and octopi, and I still remember that conversation 2-3 times a week.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Informative) by legont on Friday June 17 2022, @12:39AM
Well, herons apparently use live bait to catch fish and crows ski for fun. Perhaps I should say snowboard as they use one ski. Crows also prank crows and other birds. They even prank cats when cats are trying to catch doves. The other day I've seen a video of a baby bird out of the nest that caught a worm but does not know how to swallow it. It expects the worm to jump into mother feeding way. This means that even swallowing is not an instinct but a learned skill. Do worms teach their babies how to crawl I wonder these days.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Friday June 17 2022, @02:27AM
If she was upset with you for eating an octopus, it is probably better to NOT show her Japanese Hentai videos.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @07:36PM (2 children)
Look, the elephant just needs to pay taxes and IRS will grant him personhood in a second, but then it will have to keep paying taxes after that, so i don't know if it wants that really.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2022, @12:51PM (1 child)
So how did corporations get personhood? There must be another route besides the paying taxes part.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 19 2022, @05:25PM
It's kind of the definition of incorporation that a legal person is created. And not many of the rights we have by law or the constitution are denied to non-natural persons.