Messages

1

General Discussion / What It Takes To Be A Celebrity

« on: April 29, 2015, 07:44:11 AM »

Temple Grandin

There was once a woman who empathized to such a degree with the poor poor animals that she took it upon herself to ask their captors, tormentors and enslavers if she could do anything to help them. By "them" I do of course mean to say, to help the captors, tormentors and enslavers do a better job of capturing, tormenting and enslaving.

Truly, I am ...not surprised to find that this woman is so incredibly popular. Wherever one goes they are confronted with quips, quotes and general hero worship regarding Temple Fuckin' Grandin. It's everywhere.

So, let's really have a think about this...

We have a woman who went to a concentration camp and saw a way to make the process of extermination "more efficient". +X deaths per minute = +Y Capital (Etymologically, Capita = Skull, Capital Wealth of Human = X Head of Slaves)

So, hypothetically and metaphorically, if Mrs. Hugglebunny were to travel to one of the many US prison camps - conveniently placed in countries that have no treaties or laws with regards too torture and extermination - and started to place signs on the walls of these prison camps directing prisoners to the torture chambers, not only would Mrs. Hugglebunny get paid by the people inflicting the torture, because those directions made it quicker and easier to torture more people in less time, but Hugglebunny would also be a celebrity when she got back home. Everybody would be quoting her every word as genius and buying her books telling the glorious masses about how we all need to torture people because it makes us all feel better and how to put directions to interrogation chambers in the corridors of prisons to make life easier for the poor, suffering and overworked "information extraction technicians" perpetrating torture on those incarcerated for...having certain religious beliefs? different color skin?...so...existing as who they are, really!?

That's what it takes to be a celebrity to humanity...?

Sure looks that way.

2

General Discussion / Re: Comments and Quotes

« on: September 28, 2013, 07:39:46 PM »

Fun Fact
http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/1n00pj/hairless_chimpanzee_no_wonder_they_are_so_lethal

"Fun fact, Animals have incredible tolerance to pain. But mostly the cutting, scratching kind. Even a horse gets hurt from a punch or kick to the ribs. So, in the event of animal attack. Punch/Kick. Blunt trauma seems to scare/hurt them more.

Source: Whenever I get arrested, I do my community service for the local Animal control. We have mean animals in my county." -- Vanity_Shmamity, Reddit

They don't call it "animal control" for nothing, folks. They gets the very best people's in for the job. Experienced Professionals. Like the kind of somebody who clearly makes a "fun" artform of inflicting "blunt trauma" and wonders why anyone might get "mean" about being on the receiving end of it. Such a lack of empathy and utter disregard for life is something of a common thread where humanity is concerned isn't it. This comment from Vanity_Shamity demonstrates how non-violent techniques in various movements are doomed to fail while such people walk freely and such behavior is never challenged and infact fully endorsed. For humanity, this isn't just "normal", it's "fun" sport. That the victims are vulnerable and unable to retaliate without severe consequences just makes the sport all the more satisfying.

3

Discussions about specific materials / Unilateral Eyestalk Ablation (Shrimp)

« on: August 18, 2013, 03:40:18 PM »

Unilateral Eyestalk Ablation of Shrimp
http://www.aquaculture.ugent.be/Education/coursematerial/online%20courses/shrimp-cd/product/eyestalk.htm

The process of unilateral eyestalk ablation is used in almost every marine shrimp maturation/reproduction facility in the world, both research and commercial, to stimulate female shrimp to develop mature ovaries and spawn. This method of inducing females to develop mature ovaries is used for two reasons:

   1. most captive conditions cause inhibitions in females which keep them from developing mature ovaries in captivity
   2. even in conditions where a given species will develop ovaries and spawn in captivity, use of eyestalk ablation increases total egg production and increases the percentage of females in a given population which will participate in reproduction

Shrimp should be ablated only when hard-shelled, never when in post-molt (newly molted or seft-shelled) or premolt stages. Because molting and reproduction, especially in females, are both energy demanding processes, they appear to be antagonistic in terms of biological programing.

Unilateral eyestalk ablation is accomplished in the following ways:

1) Simple pinching of the eyestalk, usually performed half to two-thirds down the eyestalk. This method may leave an open wound.

2) Slitting one eye with a razor blade, then crushing eyestalk, with thumb and index fingernail, beginning one-half to two-thirds down the eyestalk and moving distally until the contents of eyes have been removed. This method, sometimes called enucleation, leaves behind the transparent exoskeleton so that clotting of hemolymph, and closure of the wound, may occur more rapidly.

3) Cauterizing through the eyestalk with either an electrocautery device or an instrument such as a red-hot wire or forceps. If correctly performed, this method closes the wound completely and allows scar tissue to form more readily. A variation of this technique is to use scissors or sharp blade to sever the eyestalk, and then to cauterize the wound.

4) Ligation by tying off the eyestalk tightly with surgical or other thread. This method also has the advantage of immediate wound closure (Bray & Lawrence, 1992).

---

Plus...

http://kaynere.blogspot.com/2011/05/eye-ablation-in-spawning-shrimp.html
http://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/flatview?cuecard=40112
http://www.fao.org/docrep/field/003/AC232E/AC232E05.htm
http://www.fao.org/docrep/field/003/AC232E/AC232E26.gif
http://www.aquaculture.ugent.be/Education/coursematerial/online%20courses/shrimp-cd/video/tape1321.mov
http://www.idosi.org/wjz/wjz6(2)11/9.pdf

4

Discussions about specific materials / Re: To their own flesh and blood

« on: August 18, 2013, 03:31:39 PM »

The Rat Children of Pakistan

On an ordinary weekday at the shrine of Shah Dola in the Punjabi city of Gujrat, hundreds of worshippers come to celebrate the life of one of Pakistan's most revered Sufi saints. Some choose to show their respect by dancing wildly - in a state of ecstasy.

By the tomb itself dozens of women pray intensely. By doing so, they believe, they will be blessed with a child. According to a legend dating back hundreds of years a woman who's unable to conceive will become fertile by offering prayers here. But at a price.

The couple can expect their first-born to be handicapped - a rat child with a tiny head. And it must be handed over to the shrine. The legend is very much alive. One woman, who had come to pray for a son, said God would punish anyone who did not honour their commitment.

Deliberately deformed

Experts say they are being deliberately deformed by criminal gangs operating around the shrine who then use them for begging. Many of the children handed over to the shrine or those claiming to represent it end up on the streets. At the main bus-stand in Gujrat we quickly came across a group of several rat-children with their owners. They all have the distinctive shrunken heads; they're severely handicapped and can't even speak.

With their owners close behind, they approach passengers sitting in their minibuses waiting to leave. They demand money and they get it.

High value beggars

It is widely believed that the handicapped are closer to God and must not be ignored. Their value as beggars is therefore enormous. Anusheh Hussain, head of Sahil, an organisation fighting against child exploitation in Pakistan says the rat-children can be sold for large sums of money:

"One has heard that these children are sold from anywhere between 40,000 - which is approximately 10 dollars - to 80,000 rupees per child" she says. "On average they will be able to make, through begging, around 400 to 500 rupees a day, which makes it a very lucrative business considering that's twice the amount a civil servant makes."

Healthy babies

Because of this there is deep suspicion that the legend of Shah Dola has in fact been fabricated to trick ordinary people into handing over perfectly healthy babies. It's believed these are then deliberately deformed so that they can then be sold for begging.

Pirzada Imtiaz Syed, a trade union leader based in Gujrat, he says he has heard of many cases of abuse:

"I have not seen this myself but I have heard from many people that they use iron rings which are placed on the baby's head to stop it growing. I believe there are about 10,000 rat children in Pakistan controlled by a mafia of beggars who are all over the country. These children are also physically and sexually abused."

Medieval contraptions

The allegation that the children are being deformed using medieval contraptions is of course denied by those associated with the shrine in Gujrat. They say the rat-children are suffering from a genetic disease. But Pakistan's top genetic scientist, Dr Qasim Mehdi, who investigated this for three years, says this is medically impossible.

"In order for a disease to be genetically inherited you have to have a disease running in the family" he says.

"The point is that these children are not related to one another by any stretch of the imagination. Our investigation shows that they come from very different backgrounds, from very different families. So if there is no blood relationship between any two individuals and between even an incident where a father or son or uncle was involved, it cannot be a genetically inherited disease."

'Crime against humanity'

The government says it is very concerned but claims that, following action by the authorities in the 1980s, the gangs operating at the shrine were removed and there are now no children being deliberately deformed in this way. But we found otherwise. At the bus-stand in Gujrat there was one rat-child being used for begging who looked at most seven or eight years-old. The minister responsible, Raja Zafar-ul-Haq promised further government action.

"We will certainly go after these people" he says, "they are criminals and if you can give me any idea as to their whereabouts then we can ask the police to investigate. It's a crime against humanity."

But what is really required is a full-blown investigation into this long-running mystery. Many experts believe the time has come to push religious sensitivities aside and for the government to take decisive action.

Plus...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/120000/video/_122670_galpin_at_eight_pm_on_world_vi.ram

5

Discussions about specific materials / Xenotransplantation

« on: June 26, 2013, 12:02:48 PM »

Xenotransplantation

Xenotransplantion, in this case, refers to a biological organ - a kidney for example - being taken from a foreign source and transplanted into another body.

There have been recent developments that speak of "using" pigs as that "foreign source" with which to develop human organs by means of creating laboratory chimera's, almost.

These developments utterly fail to take into account the real meaning of "Xenotransplantation", and it's right there in the word itself... "Plantation". Deliberately farming living beings in concentration camps in order to produce biologically alien materials within their bodies and killing them to procure that material. The life itself is just the trash by-product.

Human beings will now be able to eat the Genetically Modified and toxin enriched foods forced upon them by the agricultural mega-corporations and their corporate government lackeys with nay a care in the world. Humanity, most certainly most westerners, can now feast upon meats and alcohols and all manner of "treats" advertised to them through their TV's because all they need to do is order new organs from the local pig farm when they wear their own bodies out through gluttonous indulgence.

Everybody wins. Wonderful. "Isn't it amazing what they can do nowadays".

Keep the OOS apprised of the Xenotrans Plantations here in the thread. Somebody might even want to ascertain organ waiting lists worldwide and figure out how many more lives will be callously discarded per year in the emerging industry of human organ production.

http://todayilearned.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/scientists-grew-a-human-ear-on-a-mouse.jpg

See also:

http://www.organ-transplants.com/pigs-provide-human-organs-transplantation/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8584443/Pigs-could-grow-human-organs-in-stem-cell-breakthrough.html

Here on OOS:

http://onlyonesolution.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=2834bcfb82942b3d05f6920a79d6225a&topic=3165.0
http://onlyonesolution.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=2834bcfb82942b3d05f6920a79d6225a&topic=3578.msg6004#msg6004

6

General Discussion / Re: OOS Feed

« on: June 25, 2013, 11:49:48 AM »

Mooseback in the USSR: A Would-Be Communist Cavalry
Atlas Obscura | Slate | June 21, 2013

"Even the civilized Europe these days has failed to domesticate the moose, the animal that doubtlessly can be of great utility. Our government ought to apply all possible efforts toward the domestication of this animal. This is doable. The reward would be great, and so would be the glory."

These are the words of Russian zoologist Alexander von Middendorff to the czarist government of 1869. Middendorff was ahead of his time on the issue of moose domestication.

7

General Discussion / Re: OOS Feed

« on: June 23, 2013, 05:03:58 PM »

Fuck Nature
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqMcLwOZYjg

Elephant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLcEnjIlzgU

"Um bando de idiotas caipiras torturam e dançam em cima de um cavalo desmaiado em goias"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRJVsEBZ8h0

Inflatable Animals by Artist Yang Maoyuan
http://yangmaoyuan.com/Page/contentcatalog/contentcatalog.aspx?workcontenttypeid=21

The Art of Twinkle
http://imgur.com/a/FEUBU/

Guy demonstrates eating "Three Squeaks" listed in Chinese cuisine
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9dc_1371560196

Elected Town Mayor, Clay Henry, Mutilated For Drinking Last Beer, Attacker Walks Free
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/goat-mayor-nuts-dogs-cats-mini-jackass/story?id=16815631
http://abcnews.go.com/US/CrimeBlotter/story?id=91387&page=1

Incarcerating Pigs In Toilet's Is Ancient Human Custom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_toilet

Among families if there is a death of the elderly, it is definitely a great thing, immediate family members should "cut cow"
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a6a_1371359002&safe_mode=off

When the War Among Human's is Over. Let the Animals Clean Up Your Mess
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f99_1185693673

Dian Fossey, Author of "Gorillas In The Mist", Murdered For Protecting National Park Gorilla Population
http://www.funtrivia.com/en/subtopics/The-Murder-Of-Dian-Fossey-96928.html

Rodeo Suicide Run
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4pig67unHo

Dashie
http://imgur.com/a/a5OUb

"The worker actively keeps the animal alive, as it is believed that it is easier to skin the animal while it is still warm and blood flows through its veins"
http://vimeo.com//10152570

Kill 365 Cows For 1 Rhino
http://now.msn.com/matt-hartley-plans-to-bbq-every-day-for-a-year-to-adopt-rhino

Environmental Police try to salvage the meat in a situation such as this by giving it to a local sportsmen's club
http://newton.patch.com/articles/backlash-over-bear-shooting

Men Behind The Sun
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDpYTmCoQzY

Hundreds of Geese Eggs "Destroyed" By Officials For "Human Safety"
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2013/05/10/mb-goose-eggs-destroyed-winnipeg.html

Circus Lion Fails To Eat Oppressor. Human Survives, Lion Shot. Typical Day on Earth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJjZHdw5UZY

Rebellious donkey slaves put to death?
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4934995/oap-dragged-off-scooter-and-mauled-to-death-by-donkeys.html

Indoctrinating children into speciesism and abuse.
http://our-compass.org/2013/04/28/wtf-are-they-doing-to-goats/

Cops practice their sportsmanship with hand-guns upon a young calf who has become seperated from the herd.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G8SkBNFvgM

Goat Head
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZpVji0051w

Garden shears, Goat & Humanity Shake Please
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e04Wc7o92XU

Planet Earth is a giant food machine.
http://qz.com/93900/we-produce-6-times-more-meat-than-we-did-in-1950-heres-what-that-means-for-animals-and-the-earth/

Texas Horse Hunts
http://texashorsehunts.blogspot.com

"If there are so few true vegetarians, what about all those books that claim we are in the midst of a dietary revolution? Don't believe them." -- Hal Herzog
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animals-and-us/201109/why-are-there-so-few-vegetarians

Canine Meat
http://i.imgur.com/CxkXtU9.jpg

Emaciated Tiger
http://i.imgur.com/nDsjdO8.jpg

Tazered For Existing
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/02/llama-taser-florida_n_3376186.html

Other Species Are Slaves Even In The "Perfect" Afterlife
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidrun

8

Discussions about specific materials / Re: The Anthropocentric View Of The Environmentalists

« on: June 03, 2013, 03:35:58 PM »

Kofa National Wildlife Refuge

The Kofa National Wildlife Refuge is located northeast of Yuma, Arizona, southeast of Quartzsite, Arizona, in the southwestern United States. The refuge, established in 1939 to protect Desert Bighorn Sheep, encompasses over 665,400 acres (2,693 km2) of the Yuma Desert region of the Sonoran Desert. Broad, gently sloping foothills as well as the sharp, needlepoint peaks of the Kofa Mountains are found in the rugged refuge. The small, widely scattered waterholes attract a surprising number of water birds for a desert area. A wide variety of plant life is also found throughout the refuge.

In 1936, the Arizona Boy Scouts mounted a state-wide campaign to save the Bighorn Sheep, leading to the creation of Kofa. The Scouts first became interested in the sheep through the efforts of Major Frederick Russell Burnham, the noted conservationist who has been called the "Father of Scouting." Burnham observed that fewer than 150 of these sheep lived in the Arizona mountains. He called George F. Miller, then scout executive of the Boy Scout council headquartered in Phoenix, with a plan to save the sheep. Burnham put it this way:

    I want you to save this majestic animal, not only because it is in danger of extinction, but of more importance, some day it might provide domestic sheep with a strain to save them from disaster at the hands of a yet unknown virus.

Regulated hunting on the refuge is permitted for quail, bighorn sheep, deer, cottontail rabbit, coyote, and fox.

9

General Discussion / Re: OOS Feed

« on: May 30, 2013, 07:24:18 AM »

For New Breed of Rustlers, Nothing Is Sacred
GARDINER HARRIS | NYTimes | May 26, 2013

NEW DELHI — When night falls in this gritty capital, gangs troll the darkened streets looking for easy prey among a portion of the city’s vast homeless population; thousands have been rounded up and carried off in trucks in recent years.

The police say they have increased patrols and set up roadblocks in an effort to stop the trafficking. In some cases, officers have infiltrated gangs in hopes of catching them in the act. But the brutal kidnappings continue, and the victims — scrawny cows, which are slowly losing their sacred status among some in India — are slaughtered and sold for meat and leather.

Cattle rustling, called “lifting” here, is a growing scourge in New Delhi, as increasingly affluent Indians develop a taste for meat, even the flesh of cows, which are considered sacred in Hinduism. Criminals round up some of the roughly 40,000 cattle that wander the streets of this megacity and sell them to illegal slaughterhouses located in villages not far away.

Many of the cattle in Delhi are part of dairy operations and their owners have neither the land nor the money to keep them penned. So the animals graze on grassy medians or ubiquitous piles of trash. Others too old to be milked are often abandoned and left to wander the streets until they die — or get picked up by the rustlers.

Posses of police officers give chase to the outlaws, but the desperados — driving souped-up dump trucks — think little of ramming police cars and breaking through barricades. They have even pushed cows into the pathways of their pursuers, forcing horrified officers to swerve out of the way to avoid what for many is still a grievous sin.

“These gangs mostly go after stray cattle, but they will also steal motorcycles and scooters,” one police officer, Bhisham Singh, said in an interview. “They kidnapped a woman recently and gang-raped her.”

Behind the cattle rustling is a profound shift in Indian society. Meat consumption — chicken, primarily — is becoming acceptable even among Hindus. India is now the world’s largest dairy producer, its largest cattle producer and its largest beef exporter, having surpassed Brazil last year, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

Much of that exported beef is from buffalo (India has half of the world’s buffalo population), which are not considered holy. But officials in Andhra Pradesh recently estimated that there are 3,100 illegal slaughterhouses in the state compared with just six licensed ones, and a recent newspaper investigation found that tens of thousands of cattle are sold annually for slaughter from a market in just one of that state’s 64 districts. Killing cows is illegal in much of India, and some states outlaw the possession of cow meat.

Much of the illicit beef is probably sold as buffalo, an easy way to hide a sacrilegious act. But sometimes it makes its way to meat sellers in Delhi whose cellphone numbers are passed around in whispers. Steaks can be ordered from these illicit vendors in transactions that are carried out like drug deals.

Beef from cattle is also widely consumed by Muslims and Dalits, among India’s most marginalized citizens. Indeed, meat consumption is growing the most among the poor, government statistics show, with overall meat eating growing 14 percent from 2010 to 2012.

Anuj Agrawal, 28, said he grew up in a strictly vegetarian Hindu household but tried chicken for the first time in his teens when he was at a restaurant with friends. He now eats every kind of meat, including beef steaks and burgers. “Once you taste meat, you’re not going back to just fruits and vegetables,” Mr. Agrawal said.

He says many of his friends have made similar transitions. But he never eats meat with his grandparents: “I would be excommunicated if I did, so I go pure ‘veg’ when I’m with them. I want to inherit something.”

To some extent, the growing acceptance of beef is a result of the government’s intense focus on increasing milk production, which has led to a proliferation of foreign cattle breeds that do not elicit the same reverence as indigenous ones, said Clementien Pauws, president of Karuna Society for Animals and Nature, an animal welfare agency in Andhra Pradesh.

“Cows are all about business and money now, not religion,” Ms. Pauws said. “They’re all taken to slaughterhouses. It’s terrible.”

This is not to say that eating beef from cattle is widely accepted. The vast majority of Hindus still revere cows, and the Bharatiya Janata Party, one of the country’s two major political parties, has demanded that laws against cow slaughter be strengthened.

Some landlords even refuse to rent to those who confess to a taste for meat.

But the demand for beef keeps rising, many here say, and with it the prevalence of cattle rustling. Last year, the police in Delhi arrested 150 rustlers, a record number. This year, arrests have continued to surge, Mr. Singh said.

Typically, the rustlers creep into the city at night. When the criminals spot stray cattle and few onlookers they stop the truck, push out a ramp and use a rope to lead the cow to its doom.

The thieves can usually fit about 10 cows on a truck, and each fetches 5,000 rupees — about $94. In a country where more than 800 million people live on less than $2 a day, a single night’s haul of more than $900 represents serious temptation.

One man who has helped the police in neighboring Uttar Pradesh said the rustlers were often able to bribe their way to freedom. “Even if they’re sent to jail, they come out in 10 to 15 days and commit the same crimes again,” said the man, who did not want his name used for fear of reprisals.

The unfortunate fate of some of Delhi’s cattle has led some Hindus to establish cattle shelters on the fringes of the metropolitan region. One of the largest is Shri Mataji Gaushala, where thousands of cattle live on about 42 acres.

Sometimes, the rescue comes too late. Brijinder Sharma, the shelter manager, whose office walls are decorated with drawings of Lord Krishna hugging a calf, showed a video of a truck packed with cattle that was seized on its way to an illegal slaughterhouse. Many of the cows had already died of heat exhaustion.

“The social and religious status of cows has been under attack in India,” Mr. Sharma said. He hopes that his shelter, which has an annual budget of $5.4 million, underwritten almost entirely by wealthy Indians who have emigrated to the United States, will help reverse that trend.

The afternoon feeding at the shelter attracted a crowd of happy onlookers. Abhishek, a one-named cowhand, called out among the lowing throng: “Sakhi! Sakhi!” A large cow with huge horns rushed to the front of the herd, and Mr. Abhishek kissed her on the nose. The cow responded by licking one entire side of his face, and Mr. Abhishek beamed.

10

Discussions about specific materials / Re: Harvesting Sexual Organs And Emission

« on: February 18, 2013, 04:21:05 PM »

Minitube
http://www.minitube.com/artifical_reproduction

Industry of designing and manufacturing rape kits...as in, "to rape with" kits.

11

General Discussion / Re: OOS Feed

« on: February 18, 2013, 04:13:00 PM »

Pigs of God
http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/size-does-matter-at-controversial-pigs-of-god-festival.html

Pigs of God is a controversial Taiwanese festival and contest where pigs that have been force-fed for years are publicly slaughtered, then put on floats and paraded through the city streets.

The origins of this gruesome event aren’t very clear, but while some say it’s part of the religious beliefs of the Hakkas, an ethnic group with a population of over four million in Taiwan, animal rights activists claim that in the last few decades it has become a simple meaningless contest used by families to show off their wealth and power. They are currently fighting for the banning of a clear form of animal cruelty, and the substitution of real pigs with ones made of dough, rice or flowers.

Getting a pig ready to enter the Pigs of God festival takes up to two years. During this period of time animals are constantly force-fed to a point where they are incapable of standing. This kind of procedure is both psychologically and physically damaging to the pigs, who often suffer from organ failure and pressure sores caused by lying down for long periods of time. Some owners castrate the pigs without anesthesia, in the belief this will help them get even fatter, and then pen them down so they cannot move.

Days before the Pigs of God contest, the animals are reportedly force-fed sand and heavy metals like led, to make them as heavy as possible. On the day of the festival, they are brutally dragged in front of a huge crowd, onto a scale, before having their throats slit. The animals are terrified, they scream loudly and some of them can’t even control their bowls, but this never seems to impress the public, who returns every year to Shanhsia, New Taipei City, to watch this twisted spectacle. After they’ve been killed, the fattest pigs are painted, put up on colorful floats and paraded around the city. The pigs often exceed 700 kilograms in weight, and there have been reports of some weighing around 900 kilos, which is just disturbing…

The funny thing is, force-feeding of animals and slaughtering them in public are illegal in Taiwan, but animal rights activists say the government is unwilling to do anything about what happens at the Pigs of God festival, for fear of backlash from numerous religious groups who claim it’s part of their cultural heritage.

See Also:

http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/shearing-of-the-beasts.html
http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/toro-jubilo-festival-makes-bullfighting-look-like-childs-play.html

12

General Discussion / Re: Enslave Them To Save Them

« on: February 18, 2013, 04:10:28 PM »

Elephants and Ivory
http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/elephants-and-ivory

When government officials arrived in Lausanne, Switzerland, for the biannual meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in October 1989, they wanted to save Africa’s elephants from extinction. They voted to end the ivory trade. Unfortunately, an ivory trade ban may be as good as a death warrant for Africa’s elephants.

The delegates supporting the ivory trade ban argued that it would eliminate the ivory market. Without a market for ivory, they say, poachers would be out of business. But opponents of the ban maintain that banning ivory will simply create a black market for elephant products, encouraging poachers to find new ways to beat the system and profit from elephants.

Zimbabwe is taking a stand against the “made in Switzerland” solution to dwindling elephant populations by promoting trade in ivory. Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Namibia, and South Africa have joined Zimbabwe’s elephant management program, which has a 10-year record of success. Banning ivory is the surest road to extinction for the African elephant, argue leaders in those countries. They believe the villagers can do more to protect the elephants and ensure the longevity of the species than costly centralized government programs can.

If statistics are any indication, the communal management programs in those countries are succeeding—the numbers of elephants in those countries have increased 40 percent in the last decade.

Much of the elephant debate centers on whether the species is really in danger of extinction. Elephant herds in many sections of Africa have been shrinking drastically. The total number of African elephants has fallen from 1.3 million in 1979 to 750,000 today—fact no one on either side of the ivory issue denies. Yet African elephants don’t live in a single gigantic herd. Hundreds of herds, each numbering several thousand elephants, are scattered across the African continent. While populations of some herds declined during the 1980s, pop ulations of other herds doubled.

“Zimbabwe does not consider the African elephant an endangered species,” Thomas Bvuma, an official at the Zimbabwean embassy, said in a July 1990 interview. Individual herds are in trouble, but the species as a whole is not about to disappear, he said. It can hardly be a coincidence that political borders, not natural ones, delineate which areas are experiencing rapidly dwindling elephant populations and which are not, Bvuma pointed out.

Simply totaling the population figures from all countries home to the African elephant can be misleading. In fact, elephant populations in Zimbabwe and surrounding regions are not only growing in numbers, but are doing so at close to the maximum 7-percent-a-year reproduction rate for the species. What are the Zimbabweans doing to eliminate poaching and ensure the survival of their elephants?

Agriculture in Zimbabwe has long been managed by the individual farmer—now the elephants are too. The ranks of Zimbabwe’s government are filled with Soviet military advisers, yet the country’s Marxist leader, Robert Mugabe, recognizes property rights in wildlife as well as in land. When Mugabe transferred the responsibility for elephants from government and wildlife agencies to the farmers and herdsmen on whose land the elephants live, the elephant population in Zimbabwe grew by 5 percent a year, according to Zimbabwe’s Department of Wildlife.

Farmers and herdsmen in Zimbabwe own the elephants roaming on their lands. If a big-game hunter wants to shoot an elephant in Zimbabwe, he buys a permit from a nearby village. This costs him some $25,000. There is no middle man. The permit fee goes directly to the villagers selling him the right to hunt an elephant. The schools, medical clinics, roads, and fences built with the funds benefit everyone in the community. The hunters—by giving the rural Zimbabweans a reason to consider the elephants creatures of value instead of dangerous pests—play a vital role in Zimbabwe’s elephant management program.

Today Zimbabwe’s problem is too many elephants. At last count there were at least 5,000 more elephants in Zimbabwe than the country’s wilderness can sustain. Wildlife Service officials in Zimbabwe are forced to cull about 5,000 to 7,000 elephants every year or the animals will eat themselves out of house and home.

If the Kenyan government weren’t averse to applying economic incentives to protect its wildlife, it could buy Zimbabwe’s excess elephants to replenish Kenya’s disappearing herds. Kenya’s President Daniel arap Moi faces a future where elephants will be wiped out in his country by 2005.

A vocal supporter of the ivory ban, Kenya has been a de facto one-party state since independence in 1963. Moi holds fast to the trappings of socialism: despite Kenya’s pretensions to democracy (voters must publicly line up behind photos of their candidates during “elections”), the U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices reports political killings and torture and police brutality every year—events unlikely to appear in tourist brochures or pamphlets from wildlife conservation groups advocating Kenya’s wildlife management policy. The wildlife in Kenya is as regulated as the citizens, and a no-questions-asked tribunal (poachers are shot on sight) is the rule of the savannah.

“The Kenyan government manages their elephants the way the East Germans tried to manage their economy: with armed guards, electric fences, and central planning. The result is a sad cycle of blame-passing and demands for greater control. Meanwhile, elephants die,” explains Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market advocacy group.

The grasslands of Kenya are a virtual war zone between government game wardens attacking by jeep and poachers with automatic weapons stealing in on foot. Kenyan newspapers report that a Western tourist was shot and injured in the cross fire. Despite Moi’s all-out efforts to subdue the poachers, Kenya’s elephant population has fallen by 75 percent since 1981, according to statistics published by the World Wildlife Fund, a leader in supporting the ivory trade ban. Tanzania and other central and eastern African countries recorded similar drops in their elephant populations.

“Property of the People”

Moi, who was recently re-elected without opposition for his third five-year term, considers elephants roaming on Kenyan soil the “property of the people.” Kenyans “own” the elephants as part of their national and cultural heritage—just as all Americans “own” the bald eagles. Yet symbolic ownership is not the same as legal ownership. Kenyans have no daily incentive to act responsibly toward the elephants because they don’t own them in the legal sense the Zimbabweans do. When something is said to be owned by everyone, it is owned by no one. And what no one owns, no one considers his responsibility.

Advocates of the ivory ban don’t dispute the statistics indicating that countries supporting trade in ivory are also seeing a rise in their elephant populations,

“We recognize that the status of the elephant is not the same everywhere in Africa,” said Michael Sutton of the World Wildlife Fund in an interview last summer. The U.S. government “agrees that the elephants’ situation is not identical throughout Africa,” but argues that, nonetheless, the only way to solve the problem of the shrinking elephant herds is an “across-the-board ban,” according to an official at the Fish and Wildlife Service. “We felt the only responsible thing to do was to say ‘no’ to all ivory,” he said.

Across-the-board bans on trade in rhinoceros and sea turtle products have done nothing to prevent a flourishing black market in powdered rhino horn and other products. Nor have those trade bans given the people who live in the animals’ environment the incentives to protect them. Yet even if the ivory ban did eliminate the world market for ivory, that would solve only half the problem.

At 3 percent, Africa has the highest human population growth rate in the world. Elephants in many sections of the continent are reproducing even more quickly. Today there are 500 million people in Africa, and 80 to 90 percent of them live in rural agrarian communities. The carrying capacity of the African wilderness is already at its limit in many areas, according to a report from the Zimbabwe Department of Wildlife. Life on the savannah is becoming an almost daily struggle between man and beast.

Stampeding elephants are destructive. A farmer’s first reaction when he sees an elephant marauding through his newly planted field is to go after it with a gun—unless he knows the elephant might bring him and his neighbors several thousand dollars from a trophy permit. Making elephants valuable gives farmers and rural villagers a reason to figure out how to share their lands with the otherwise troublesome animals. “We are living where elephants are nuisances. Surely as soon as you remove those [economic] benefits and the elephants destroy a village, the peasants are going to kill them. You don’t even need poachers to kill the elephants,” Bvuma said. Banning trade in ivory does not address the pressing problem of rural communities competing with wildlife for increasingly scarce land and resources.

Farmers and herdsmen in “southern African countries should not have to suffer because their neighboring governments to the north and east cannot keep their animals alive,” Thabo Yalala, an official at the Botswana embassy, said in a 1990 interview.

The 36 African countries where elephants roam are among the poorest in the world: the 1988 per capita GNP in 21 of those countries was below $500, according to the World Wildlife Fund. In poor countries poaching is a tempting alternative to farming the arid soil or protecting animals on game reserves and national parks. The average Kenyan earns $20 a month; rangers at Tsavo National Park in Kenya earn about $50 a month. But poachers rake in many times as much from a single day’s kill. One elephant tusk brings in hundreds of dollars, and hides from the animals are almost as valuable. Profit far outweighs the poacher’s chances of being shot on sight, as is law and common practice in most of Africa.

In Zimbabwe, villagers have a vested interest in the long-term well-being of their elephants. It wouldn’t make economic sense for rural Zimbabweans to supplement their incomes by poaching. Today poaching in Zimbabwe is “minimal, almost non-existent,” since the program was put into effect, according to Bvuma. Poaching in his country dropped by over 90 percent when Mugabe gave the villagers stewardship of the elephants. Meanwhile, poachers in Kenya kill 300 elephants a day.

Had Zimbabwe’s delegates to the 1989 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species signed the ivory ban, they would have undermined the rural villagers’ incentive to share their land with the elephants. By giving economic incentives to rural farmers and herdsmen, Mugabe created an effective stewardship relationship between nature and man. The “made in Switzerland” solution may have won kudos from armchair conservationists, but the clock is running out for elephants living outside the “made in Zimbabwe” wildlife management programs.


Elizabeth Larson, a staff writer at the Cato Institute, researched African elephants while studying at the National Journalism Center in the summer of 1990. She holds a-degree in English literature from Vassar College.

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// Obtained from FEE (Foundation for Economic Education) - What does that tell you? //

13

General Discussion / Enslave Them To Save Them

« on: February 18, 2013, 04:09:05 PM »

Buffaloes 'tie the knot'
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/335389/buffaloes-tie-the-knot

Mr Chuwit and Witthaya Buranasiri, an MP for Ayutthaya from the same party, said they decided to organise the ceremony to raise public awareness of the need to conserve locally bred buffaloes which face a bleak future.

"I hope the public will pay more attention to this issue. Buffaloes should be saved and be a part of farming in Thailand," Mr Witthaya said.

The number of buffaloes has almost halved from 2.29 million in 1997 to 1.23 million in 2011, the Livestock Development Department's latest figures say. The number is steadily declining as rice farmers turn their backs on buffaloes and buy machinery for their farms, leaving nothing for the animal to do.

Mr Rewat said the figures could drop in the future and buffaloes could be consigned to history in the district unless efforts are made to bring the animal back to the rice fields.

"I'm afraid that there will be no buffaloes left in Sena if farmers continue to use machines for farming. Attempts must be made to raise awareness of this problem," the official said.

This concern was shared by the Buffalo Conservation and Development Centre in Chon Buri which said buffaloes were under-utilised as farmers preferred machines even though "buffaloes played a big part in building the country in the past".

14

General Discussion / Re: OOS Feed

« on: February 11, 2013, 11:54:56 AM »

MOVED : http://onlyonesolution.org/forum/index.php?topic=4340.msg6049#msg6049

15

General Discussion / Re: OOS Feed

« on: February 10, 2013, 01:07:47 PM »

Dog walkers discover sausages laced with NAILS
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2276443/Dog-walkers-discover-sausages-laced-NAILS-playing-fields-deter-using-public-park.html

Around 40 cooked cocktail sausages embedded with up to ten one-inch long metal nails have been found and could be lethal for any animal attempting to eat them.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/02/10/article-0-1778800C000005DC-221_632x412.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/02/10/article-0-17788018000005DC-840_632x430.jpg