"ARB would like to inform all members of the cancellation of our ARB Celebrity Guest Chat this weekend with Professor Gary Francione."
http://animalrightsbook.ning.com/
******************************
1) After aggressively challenging Steve Best to two internet debates, and cancelling both times as the deadline approached (using the ad hominem excuses I am not a worthy or serious debate opponent);
2) After last week Best agreed to do an hour and a half live chat in hostile territory on Animal Rights Book, which included:
Francione sycophant Roger Yates (who submitted a phony softball question in advance in order to jump in guns blazing, quite hostile for a pacifist, to try to bait Best with -- of all questions! -- "Do you support killing children?" and throwing an embarrassing hissy fit that culminated in violating chat rules (for the second time) by trying to bait me in argument in the forum after being trounced in whatever semblance of debate I could maintain with someone who came to try to lay a (very feeble) trap, and not for genuine dialogue; and also included
A Franciombe in training, more than a bit out of his element, equally hostile to me, with additional questions trying to paint Best as a violent fanatic but falling on his own tin sword; and yet who despite his open hostility served as co-moderator of the chat (!) and actually banned Best (!) once he began to defend himself against a volley of Franciombe attacks
3) And after Francione tried to grandstand by following Best in a chat to air live this Saturday, and thought it would be a cakewalk with me and other critics gone, perhaps with intent to take over another vegan forum and community group, but saw that some spark of criticism remained and things actually got hot on the chat forum Tuesday night.....
FRANCIONE ANNOUNCED LATE TUESDAY OR EARLY WEDNESDAY THAT HE WAS WITHDRAWING FROM THE CHAT AND YET ANOTHER DEBATE HE HIMSELF INITIATED!
Perhaps the good professor will reschedule, but good money is that he has booked a one-way ticket back to Pacifist Palace where he is safe and comfortable with his court jesters and servants.
It seems Francione is only comfortable amidst a room of fawning, adulating, servile bootlickers who tell him he is God, and gets a serious case of stage fright and performance anxiety with the possibility of even a minor challenge, someone who might ask him tough questions such as:
*** Why do you refuse to engage the biggest issue of the day -- ecological crisis -- as if nothing is happening?
*** Why don't you take advantage of the crisis and show what a crucial role veganism plays in its solution, instead of dodging it and keeping the strongest card vegans can play in your deck of jokers?
*** Why don't you ever talk about people of color, the poor, the inner cities, non-western nations, and the massive problem posed by China, with one sixth of the world's population now shifting to a meat-based diet? Isn’t ignoring people of color by default a kind of … racism?
*** Why do you persist in your delusional thinking that someday, somehow, (white elite, privileged) vegans will transform society and save the planet? Why don't you face up to the real urgency of the climate change crisis? Is it perhaps because you have no answers or way to address this, and the fantasies you peddle depend on infinite time while we have very finite conditions?
*** How can you be so elastic with the concept of violence, such that direct action, civil disobedience, sabotage, and now even "judgment" you say is violence?! What is left of the concept you have not turned into a blob of semantic nothingness with these ludicrous definitions that surpass even the FBI condemnation of the ALF and militant action (never hurting people)? And how can you say judgment is violence when you do it all the time? When you judge anyone who disagrees with you as deluded, or even as "crazy" and "insane"? (You and your disciples are among the most aggressive, bullying, petty, duplicitous, and violent people many of us outside your gated community have ever met.)
*** Why is your thinking so rigid, mechanical, undialectical, and Manichean, so disturbing like a secular fundamentalism? Why do you say, for instance, that violence is NEVER acceptable and NEVER effective, when this is so clearly contradicted by history and common sense? Why do you deal only with absolutes, and are unable to see things in process, conflict, contradiction, and fluidity?
*** How can you pretend to be an authentic Jain when universally those not in your flock who deal with you walk away slimed and disturbed by your arrogance, aggressive and pushy behavior, and your egoism and megalomania? (The hypocrisy is glaringly obvious.)
*** Why do so many people follow and worship you when you apparently have so little to offer that is relevant to the global situation of predatory corporations, fascist police states, biological meltdown and ecological collapse, class struggle and worsening poverty, and an endless list of maladies and crises you completely ignore?
*** Why, at this critical time in history, during and after the debacle of Copenhagen, with the world facing an unprecedented crisis and challenge, and world scientists warning humankind of immanent breakdown, why did you choose what seems the most vapid, quietistic, elitist slogan -- “The World is Vegan! If you want it” – possible? Why in God’s sake didn’t you run with something potentially relevant and effective, such as: “Runaway Climate Change: The Time for a Vegan World is Now”? (Go ahead, improve on it!)
*** Why are social and political categories so absent from your lifestyle vegan focus, and why when mentioned at all are they so obviously diluted, empty of content, and wholly bourgeois-individualist?
These are just some of the questions people want to engage you with, in civil debate, but you puff yourself up, post grandiloquently, and then run away. (We imagine we can predict your excuses for this bit of foreplay at ARB, such as: [1] "The forum was taken over by hostile and violent elements that made rational debate impossible." Good luck floating this one; like Bush and his ceaseless terror alert warnings, you have overplayed that card by now; [2] "This wasn't the best time, despite my setting the date, yes, but I intend to come back another time." Ok, sure thing!)
These are the questions Francione will not and seemingly cannot answer, not without, that is, his crafted theoretical edifice tumbling down into a heap of intractable problems that can only be solved by moving to another paradigm altogether. And despite what Francione wants us to think, there are a rich plurality of alternatives that are far more fruitful and promise to unite us with, rather than divide us from, the social movement and world resistance communities. Without them, we are nothing but a mockery of our ideals. They are speciesist and dogmatic, but we have no other choice, and it is not like we ever engaged other communities in any way but through elitist condescension. The truth is, we have much to teach each other.
Run Gary Run, run from the urgent crisis bearing down on all humanity, which will crush the poor and undeveloped nations first and hardest; run from the challenges of bringing veganism to the people who most could profit from it in the poor, underprivileged, minority communities and undeveloped world; run from alliance politics and the bridges we need to build with progressive social and ecological movements; run from your opponents; run from the truth, into your utopian fantasyland that harbors your dogmas and disciples.
The rest of us are struggling with reality; we may not have the answers, but we sure as hell are not dogmatic, frivolous, complacent, or condescending to others in struggle, and we want to open the door to all in a mutual teaching and learning relationship. We may not be right, but we have damn good reason to believe you are wrong.
We ask everyone who can think and see with their own eyes, to join us and help us redeem the true revolutionary potential of veganism and animal liberation, in alliance with the other sane, rational, compassionate, and progressive forces out there. As they say, United We Win, Divided We Fall.
Now there is a slogan for you.
Join us:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?saved&&suggest¬e_id=215441738201#/group.php?gid=309613730182&ref=ts
The Radical Bloggers Alliance