". . .in this instance, as in nearly all cases, the bear that attacked a human chose as its victim specifically an armed human. And not one of those untold numbers of innocent unarmed people wandering in the woods." LH: Which demonstrates that bears would be poor recruits for Al Quaeda which does tend to target "innocent unarmed people," whether wandering in the woods or not. Lawrence -----Original Message----- From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Teemu Pyyluoma Sent: Monday, September 04, 2006 9:00 AM To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [lit-ideas] The right to arm bears? For Eric, from Helsingin Sanomat International Edition: The right to arm bears? A moral tale of self-defence and bitten buttocks By Jouni K. Kemppainen Now you can more or less understand that in the case of the conflicts in the Middle East many people get a trifle confused about who the aggressor is, and who is the victim. Someone attacks somebody, but that somebody has first shot a somebody, but then again this person who has been shot has previously mistreated the other somebody, who has on an earlier occasion given a whupping to someone, and so on and so on. So much for the Middle East, but in the case that somebody shoots somebody with a rifle, and the one that has been shot manages to escape and then defends himself or herself against his or her persecutors by biting one of them in the buttocks, you would sort of imagine that there isn't that much in the way of ambiguity or room for confusion: the one with the rifle is the aggressor, and the bum-biter is the victim. Wrong, apparently. Last Monday, the late-edition tabloid Iltalehti ran the headline "Bear bites hunter", and the similar journal Ilta-Sanomat declared that "Dog escapes from bear". When one actually troubled to read these articles, it became clear that on the preceding Sunday morning a group of hunters had shot a bear, wounding it. The bear fled. The hunting-party set off after the wounded female bear, and in the afternoon the escapee managed to bite one of the party in his fleshy nether regions. Later the bear was despatched for good. On Tuesday Ilta-Sanomat interviewed the hunter who had had the bear's jaws on his rump, and by Wednesday the deceased bruin had already been given a new monicker in the headline: "Attack-bear". The piece reported that the two cubs belonging to the shot bear had also received a death sentence. We were thus informed that the bum-biting animal was in fact a mother bear, who was in the woods with her cubs, born this year. However, the article did not see fit to mention that shooting such a bear is against the law. But self-defence is not against the law. And fortunately in this instance, as in nearly all cases, the bear that attacked a human chose as its victim specifically an armed human. And not one of those untold numbers of innocent unarmed people wandering in the woods. Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 27.8.2006 http://www.hs.fi/english/article/The+right+to+arm+bears/1135221277463 Cheers, Teemu Helsinki, Finland