What if.......

What if part of the main rationale for murdering so many healthy pets and creating malignant bureaucratic processes with impossible time frames for rescuing them is based on faulty reasoning? What if the rationale for doing this is based on lies, propagated by an organisation that may actually be hostile towards the very idea of most people keelping pets? What then? And how long should this current state of affairs be allowed to continue? The links included here will take you to two articles researched and written by writer Douglas Anthony Cooper, as he explores the rationales for the euthanisia of healthy animals in shelters by the US-bsed People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Peta seem to have a considerable amont of clout and revenue from their activities, which we hope is not culled - no poun intended - from their liberal use of the needle. On the face of it, it all sounds like a sad-but-all-too-real unpalatable fact: the premise that there are more animals that can feasibly go round. There are articles that challenge that view quite potently. Other events that challenge the 'over-population' argument can be found on this Facebook Page and at the No Kill Advocacy centre also. What happens where shelters throw their doors open to the public and all animals put out for adoption? Not only were they all adopted, but these places ran out of animals! Demand actualy did exceed supply, no matter how true or false the arguments given by Peta for mass euthanias all over the world might be.........On Just that One day, 7-9 000 animals were adopted. Finally, for those in the New York area who would like to make their voices heard against the kill shelters there, here is some information about a demonstration taking place there this coming Saturday on June 23rd. Details on how to get there, where it is, can be found via this link. Finally, here are details of a 'No-kill' conference - this also looks worth attending.

Pets on Death Row

After getting my own little cat last September,when surfing the Net for tips on how to keep my new companion happy, I did keep on encountering statements to the effect that 'for every sweet housepet, there are just as many, if not more, animals every bit as sweet, who are euthanised every year, not because they are ill, not because they are injured or disabled, but because they are unwanted.' This video coming up is graphic, to say the least. As someone sarcastically noted on a similar video, for those who are so anxious to watch the miracle of birth in the animals they don't neuter, well then why not send them along to a shelter to watch the miracle of death. Well here, I have saved you you the trouble: you can watch the life ebb out from perfectly healthy dogs, beautiful kittens full of curiosity and trust, right here. The euthanisers' word for their work was 'holocaust'. Once the life spark is gone, we see the business of body disposal into bin bags, and then the incinerator. Every day, and almost everywhere in every city and country in thw world. It is worth being clear exactly what is happening here too: this is not 'euthanasia' as we currently understand the term: it is killing. In that video at least, the animals are put down sensitively and humanely, but that is not always the case. Usually, quicker and more economical means have to be found in going about the business of extinguishing life: the stab in the heart is apparently a very painful way to go engendering much suffering - or there is the gas chamber, as you can see: here. There are always those utilitatian and rational souls who will declare that a good, humane death is a far more dignified way to go, rather than being confined forever in a cage. If, that is, there is the caring, humane approach taken to this form of holocaust, as shown in the first video I have posted here. Much is made of the mathematical equation: irresponsible breeding, failing to spay and neuter pets has led to this, now there are simply not enough homes to go round. The short-tem logistics of this certainly do seem pretty formidable. It is hard to imagine what doing this job must be like for those who did care about the animals in their shelters, for whom no adoption was forthcoming. Personally I think this situation is one of the worst indictments of our wonderful species's ability to create a world that is even remotely sustainable, and it is other species that are paying for it. This is a world in which living, sentient creatures are regarded as nothing more than commodities that are just as easily disposed of when the initial interest wears off and the responsibility of caring for an animal becomes too much. Yes, the support systems are not in place, there is a recession on, people not being able to keep their homes, remain in their neighbourhoods, keep their jobs. Insurance packages mean that vetinary fees end up being beyond the means of those who are even ressonably well off. Then, however, I hear about the feeble excuses of those who dump their animals at kill shelters, ranging from 'the colour of my siamese cats no longer matches the colour scheme of my new furniture,' or 'I have no time for him/her,' or 'new baby,' or animal is too playful/not playful enough,' or 'my animal is too old and no longer attractive.' All the excuses anyone might ever wish to hear are posted each day, every day, at just one notorious kill shelter, the ACC, as reported by a pressure group of volunteers fighting to save some of these animals by publishng their photos and bios daily on Facebook called 'Pets on Death Row'. In this case, it does seem that this is not all about emoting animal activists railing purely from sentiment about a rational, utilitarian-but-fair institution that unfortunately has to make some tough decisions, boo-hoo. The shelters in NYC never say no to any animal surrendered here, but they are, of course, working on a shoestring and all 'accountability' may mean as we have fondly come to know the word is in reaching financial targets. The troube is, this allegedly means that animals are becoming ill due to serious neglect, only then giving management more pretexts to euthanise. Often for transmissable illnesses that could be prevented, were simple hygienic measures routinely adhered to. Finally, any excuse is used to label a fightened cat or dog, when being examined in an scary environment, as having behavioural difficulties and therefore being unsuitable for adoption. Worst of all, it seems that there are many individuals within resonable reach of the vicinity that are ready to adopt, foster or rescue, but due to cost-cutting measures, it is now almost impossible to communicate with the institution so that they can be saved in time, and animals have been known to fall through the cracks and been killed even where adopter and rescue have been lined up, due to lack of manned phone lines, computer glitches and the like. What is allegedly happening is that many feral and stray animals, even where ear-tipped to show they have been neutered, or belong to a specific colony, are being rounded up by zealous State employees to these shelters for a little extra pay, and being slaughtered as part of various grand 'Keep our City Clean' campaigns. Basically, it seems that many more euthanasias could be prevented and that there are enough potential owners, rescues and fosters to make a real difference. Finally, here is a story of a win-win situation where animals can make a real difference in prisons, here and here. Things could be so different. And these are only very modest moves to create a Better World too.

The Spirit Level

The Spirit Level - or Why Equality is Better for Everyone.
By Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
Penguin


After writing about Affluenza, I was very kindly given this book as a present during a recent stay in the UK.It is interesting to see now so many critiques of what Oliver James called 'selfish caplitalism' in the 80's.

Could it be that more and more people - in Europe, elsewhere, are getting fed-up of the dog-eat-dog world of the post-Thatcher and Reagan era? Just getting the sense that surely Things Could be Better?

This book is a very brave attempt to Statistically Prove what maybe many people have always suspected all along intuitively that Inequality not only Sucks, but has a truly iniquitous effect on most societies?

Live in the inner city? Scared to go ut at night? - well, the shame and humiliation of being unable to get a good job can create violence among Young People. And more crime. (The writers tend to take a realistic view of the limitations of 'human nature' with its need for the trappings of a certain amount of status, but then the sociologists who look atthe effects of relative poverty on the tender psyches of therelatively deprived, already knew that.

Is everyone you know either stressed, an alcoholic, or depressed? Well, guess what. Inequality tends engender more mental illness.

Tired of being squeezed out of your seat at rush hour by obese people? - well, as the book explains, once a certain amount of affluence has been reached and, unlike in developing countries, nobody need starve, then interestingly, it is the poor, not the rich, who seem statistically to end up becoming obese in the most unequal parts of the developed world. Beyond a certain point, affluence neither brings happiness nor health to a nation.

Too many teenage pregnancies? - As EastEnders has always been at pains to reveal in its wonderful storylines, this is one way a young woman without much in the way of education can achieve 'adult' status.

No community? Don't trust your neighbours? Well, here again, inequality tends to create a more dog-eat-dog world.

It has to be stressed that the writers of this book are not routing Revolution from Without, but rather transformation from within.And suggests hopefully sustainable ways in which this might happen - in fact, is happening. And all without the dreaded spectres of the Reds emerging from under the beds too.

One could be for the employees of a given company to buy it themselves, which coincidentally means that the means of production lie in their hands, making it, as the writers wryly suggest, less easy to keep saying when turning a blind eye to any nefarious practices that 'they were only following orders.' It addresses what originally Marx defined as the problem of alienation from a totally new angle - suggesting that businesses become employee-owned, and if that happens on a grass-roots level, then there may be more equality, less alienation and therefore less of the amoral dog-eat-dog reality of corporate life in general. Because we saw the corruption of allowing most utilities and providers where they were State-owned, no other possibilities were ever adequately explored.

Examples looked at include instances in the US where this has happened with electric utility providers, and in the UK with several employee-run co-operatives including the John Lewis partnership. In parts of Northern Ialy where many such co-operatives exists, the local communities around them are alegedly 'healthier' than those where things are run on more traditional grounds.

It could be that employee-run organsiations are certainly not immune to corruption from within, but the authors are sanguine on their hope that initiatives such as these could still create a more long-term type of accountability than an average feedback form might provide.


In case this blog does not appear to begin to do justice to the ideas examined here, here is a link to The Equality Trust:



http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/

On Affluenza and Other Things

Here is a hard-hitting critique of what is behind a great deal of social malaise - where it is all work, work, work.

In some respects, Oliver James, to use an old-fashioned Brit derogatory term, can and does come off as something of a prat (and he willingly acknowledges this): he writes as he talks - of his swanning off around the world to chat to millionaires and billionaires, whilst throwing out off-the-cuff psycho-analyses of their mental and physical states. The little woman, of course, holding the baby and everything else together in the home, meantime.

He has a beef, against the System. But not against capitalism per se, but what he calls selfish capitalism, of the kind first made popular' by Thatcher, then by Blair, at least in the UK, though he makes it clear that this is a global issue: where, as Thatcher famously, or rather, infamously declared: 'There is no such thing as community.' No subsidised education, nor childcare, nor welfare dependency - just the freedom to keep in earning for bigger and shinier goods. Or, in overusing credit cards in order to get these. All in compensation forthe fact that the working hours are more and more insanely long.

This can only be something that can be powered through enough emotional deprivation to make Wanting Things seem even more attractive - this is where James gets psychoanalytical again, with his diagnosis lent to the title cover 'Affluenza.'

Money, points out James, however, cannot in any case buy you love, not everyone can manage to get to be a millionaire, and can we really afford an unbridled dystopia of neurotic over-achievers and over-spenders forever?

James's solution is elegant: the cure for Affluenza is Back to Basics. As in provison of childcare that is less likely to result in the kind of avarice and workaholism borne of severe emotional deprivation in the first place, and he points to the Danish way of doing things, which whilst maybe flawed in other ways, maybe serves as a possible paradigm (though he was unable to resist a more 50's-style critique on relatively-Utopian solutions of the reds-under-the-bed kind 'You will also be bland emotionally and creatively, but you will be so happpyyyy!'

It is a pity he did not also examine other Scandinavian systems of childcare, which also look at the impact of compulsory childcare for small children: it may somewhat stolid citizens make, but also has been cited as a way of avoiding certain kinds of social inequality......

Over all, a most interestingly and timely book.....