The Ghost of Oreo: A dead dog continues to haunt New York City and the no-kill movement.

By Michael Mountain

In Hamlet, the ghost of a murdered king haunts the palace and the nation. “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” mutters one of the courtiers. Blood has already been spilled, and before the end of the tragedy, more will flow in order to cleanse what is rotten and restore the balance.
Oreo was not a king. She was a pit bull dog, abused by a young hoodlum in New York City who, in June 2009, ended up throwing the dog off the roof of his apartment building. Oreo survived and was taken to the ASPCA shelter. They repaired her broken legs, looked after her for several months, and raised funds in her name before concluding that they could not deal with her aggressive tendencies. Then they killed her….

http://thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/the-ghost-of-oreo-a-dead-dog-continues-to-haunt-new-york-city-and-the-no-kill-movement/

Responding to the call of conscience….

Jennifer Bowman interviews Jason Miller
8/26/10
Jennifer Bowman: So let’s cut right to the chase. In some of your recent writings, you’ve indicated that you’re dealing with some serious challenges in your life right now. What are they?
Jason Miller: Aside from the systemic backlash resulting from my vigorous activism, I’m dealing with a number of serious personal issues. Some of these were self-inflicted and some weren’t. Either way, I need to deal with them.
I was so absorbed in my activism for about a year that I let certain aspects of my life get away from me, in a manner of speaking. As many of you may have already read, I’m a recovering alcoholic (since 1992—hence my straightedge beliefs). However, I got away from some of my spiritual and intellectual efforts to manage my passion and set aside working the Twelve Steps, which tends to land me into trouble. Fortunately, I’m back on the path I need to follow, which still includes veganism of course, and have turned to the painful task of cleaning up my messes.
JB: What do you mean by “systemic backlash resulting….
http://thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/responding-to-the-call-of-conscience/

Roundabout as Conflict-avoidance versus Malcolm X’s Psychology of Liberation
by Denis Rancourt
August 25th, 2010
Simulposted with Dissident Voice
In the present essay I introduce the general notion of “roundabout” as a mechanism of conflict avoidance used by privileged social justice activists. I then contrast this pseudo-liberation activism with the needed true liberation activism of Malcolm X, which I argue to be consistent with the model of liberation of Freire.
INTRODUCTION
The now familiar concept of “pacifism as pathology” was introduced by Ward Churchill as the central characteristic of First-World middleclass so-called social justice activism. Churchill argued from history that all liberations were leveraged through violence and proposed that pacifism as cowardice was pathology.1
Gandhi stated that it was better to practice armed resistance than to use pacifism as an excuse for cowardice.2 Both men (Churchill and Ghandi) saw acceptance of and self-justification for one’s ….
http://thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/roundabout-as-conflict-avoidance-versus-malcolm-x%e2%80%99s-psychology-of-liberation/

A gluttonous and obscene spectacle that glorified “bacon”
Journal Entry by Jason Miller
8/29/10
Astoundingly, the Rehabilitation Institute (Founded in 1947, the Rehabilitation Institute provides medical rehabilitation and employment placement services for children and adults who have experienced a catastrophic injury or illness or injury resulting in a significant disability. The Institute’s array of services address the most basic activities of daily living including mobility, communication and self care to more complex issues related to driving, living independently, attending school or working.) chose to raise funds by putting on a gluttonous and obscene spectacle that glorified “bacon.”
Check it out: http://baconfestkc.com/
What a perverse irony that an entity that exists to alleviate suffering would gleefully endorse and promote the abject barbarism and misery to which pigs are subjected to produce “bacon.” Further, as a rehabilitation service which no doubt counts stroke victims amongst its clients, it is absurd and unconscionable that they would aggrandize “meat….

BACK to margotbworldnews.com 

The Slaughter of Animals

The slaughter of animals was a regular ritual on the farm where I grew up in the fifties and early sixties. Chickens, lambs, pigs, and cattle--sometimes even a duck.

My mother slaughtered the chickens. She preferred a machete to a hatchet for lopping off their heads. She would let them bleed out briefly, flopping headless on the ground. After that she would plunge them into a bucket of boiling water. Plucking their feathers was an easier task for that.

The slaughter of larger animals required the specialized help of Darrell Lindley, who in his youth had been a skilled Golden Gloves boxer. Very nearly qualified for the trip to Chicago one year. Darrell would periodically come to the farm in his pickup filled with equipment to slaughter a pig or a feeder calf that we had chosen from the herds for our own consumption.

Darrell would drop a feeder calf with a close range shot to the forehead with his rifle. Then he would hoist the animal into his large tripod, suspending it by its hind legs so that he could strip out the organs and halve it for transport to the meat locker for further cutting.

With the hogs Darrell would suspend them while they were still alive in the tripod first and then shove his razor sharp knife up into their throats. There were a reluctant few that he had to stun with a hammer first. They would bleed out from there. In the winter time the snow all around him would be red with blood. Darrell himself would become bathed in blood.

Part of my job as an adolescent, in addition to helping sort out and pen up the selected animals in advance, was to scoop up the offal afterward and haul it to a deserted part of the fields for the carrion eaters.

One day Darrell was sitting in Don's Standard Station on the square in town. Men often gathered there to loaf and discuss world level issues. Old Doc Robinson walked in. He had been the area veterinarian for years. And years.

Darrell looked up and said, “You know, Doc. I think I'm the only man in the county who has killed more cattle than you have.”

Doc Robinson did not receive this observation well.

I visited the slaughterhouses in the area often, the abattoirs of my youth. I have seen electric cattle prods in liberal use and sheer, brutal beatings of animals reluctant to move from fear. I have seen cattle struck in the middle of the head with a sledge. Ideas concerning animal cruelty were less refined in my youth.

I have been inside modern hog confinement facilities. I have been in large chicken confinement facilities, too, where all of them had had their beaks clipped off so that they would not peck each other to death in their psychotic claustrophobia.

I know something about where my food comes from. Certainly, the cruelty of the slaughterhouse can be mitigated, and it has in many instances. It can never be totally eliminated. The fear of the animals is palpable in even the most humane of these places. While these domesticated animals are a product of highly selective breeding and therefore in a real sense the creation of men, fear has not been bred out of them.

Perhaps because I was hardened a bit at a young age, I enjoy the corrida. I attend. The bull, also a product of highly selective breeding by men, has had all fear bred out of him. He knows only rage at the hour of his death after having faced a man whom he has himself had a chance to kill. It is a better death than death in the slaughterhouse. I do not know how the chronically hungry poor of the city who eat of the bull's meat afterward view all that, if they even give it a thought.

I have seen another thing that bears on the subject at hand. I have seen groups of men gather at a long tables stacked high with meat, potatoes, and vegetables prepared by farm wives. These men had come to dinner, the mid-day meal where I come from, in the midst of back-breaking, punishing labor for long hours. They were working their bodies to the very limit so that others might eat.

As it so happened, they had been provided with omnivorous bodies, and they did not have the luxury of indulging in fine moral judgments. They desperately needed jolts of protein, fat, and other nutrients. They ate everything in vast quantities in preparation for continuing their labors, and the grease dripped off their chins.
But before they ate, they endured a long peroration by their designated spokesman of thanks to God for what was laid before them.

I prefer the approach of the indigenous people of the plains who thanked the buffalo himself. I thank the animals that have suffered and died so that I might eat. I thank the plants, too. It is my own way of making peace with a small part of the rampant cruelty of this cruel world.

Jason Miller Ⓥ sent a message to the members of Thomas Paine's Corner.

Jason Miller ⓋAugust 21, 2010 at 10:58pm
Subject: Call and email on behalf of the dogs and primates!
For almost 30 years, Ohio State University (OSU) experimenter George Billman has used taxpayer dollars to cut dogs open and induce heart attacks in them. He inserts a cuff around an artery, sews the dogs back up, then forces the dogs to run on a treadmill. He then tightens the cuff to block blood flow to the heart, causing a heart attack....Call Billman and send him an email to let him know that what he is doing is barbaric and a shameless waste of our tax dollars! He is at 614-292-5189 and billman.1@osu.edu

Thomas Paines Corner: Myriad taxpayer swindles $45,000 worth

We will use the Morphine-SIV-macaque model to explore these concepts. Our hypothesis is that morphine will cause a non-inflammatory, continuous build up of SIV in the brains of infected macaques, with a prognosis for more rapid progression to development of encephalitis than non-treated infected animals, and that onset of this syndrome would be accelerated following withdrawal of the drug from infected, chronically exposed animals. Epidemiological studies on HIV-infected persons addicted to opioids have led to controversial conclusions.

Some studies show that morphine worsens the infections, while others claim amelioration of the infection. The SIV-macaque-Model of HIV pathogenesis will be used to explore the mechanisms of this drug on infection in the brain.

Contact Barbara Atkinson, KU Med’s Executive Vice Chancellor, and tell her that what KU Med is doing to primates is wrong and to stop wasting our tax money on cruelty and fraudulent science! She is at (913) 588-1440 and BATKINSON@kumc.edu.

AND

Contact Francis Collins, Director of the National Institute of Health (KU Med’s source of funding) at 301-496-2433 and francis.collins@nih.gov and tell him to stop providing public monies to a “research facility” that was cited for 160 violations of animal welfare laws by the USDA!

BACK to margotbworldnews.com

GREAT NEW ARTICLES ON TPC...

On Friday, March 13, 2009, Then 21-year old Jordan Halliday was taken into federal custody for refusing to cooperate with a federal grand jury investigating the animal rights community of Utah. He was held for nearly four months. On June 29th, 2009, Halliday was released from custody and federally indicted with felony “criminal contempt of court” for the same act of recalcitrance.

http://www.facebook.com/l/cd14aCIm2rLjzKLKwVOFRMkjU1Q;thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2010/07/26/change-of-plea-hearing-for-animal-rights-activist-and-alleged-grand-jury-resister-jordan-halliday/

In May 2005, then FBI Deputy Assistant Director for Counterterrorism, John Lewis, told a Senate panel that ecoterrorism is “one of today’s most serious domestic terrorism threats,” the 2001 USA Patriot Act creating the crime of “domestic terrorism,” broadening the definition to apply to US citizens as well as aliens – henceforth, the Bureau dividing the crime into two categories, international and domestic, the latter changing dramatically in the past decade.

http://www.facebook.com/l/cd14aOeUKkuWhPyjEznm18aSBRg;thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2010/07/26/marie-mason-victimized-by-green-scare-state-terrorism/

After her sentence, a “collective gasp went up from (her) supporters, who packed the broad, high-ceilinged courtroom….followed by a few shrieks and sobs; some held their hands over their mouths.”

http://www.facebook.com/l/cd14aEVpG9LpiC5HrIzHFbvCwxw;thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/darkness-in-america-lynne-stewarts-resentencing/

Before I joined CALM Action, I helped coordinate a protest against the Shrine Circus. We wanted to show people that animals used in circuses were confined, physically and mentally abused, and murdered for cheap entertainment. So we made our signs, advertised the protest, and on the day of the circus, yelled and chanted outside the circus doors.

http://www.facebook.com/l/cd14aaqopDKW1AofQu-CAXnOCCQ;thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/the-difference-between-random-protest-and-strategic-direct-action/

BACK to margotbworldnews.com