RANT: Arizona Anything But Humane?

For a state now infamous for its draconian and, many say, downright racist anti-immigrant laws, Arizona is again in the news for all the wrong reasons. This time it has to do with a recovering heroin addict who took his little cat into the Arizona Humane Society in Phoenix to be treated, only for the little thing to be euthanized because he could not afford the $400 to have her treated...

The story from Google News/ Associated Press:

PHOENIX (AP) — Animal lovers threatened to pull donations to an animal rescue group and the public flooded the agency with scathing comments and calls after a man's cat was euthanized when he couldn't afford its medical care, prompting the Arizona Humane Society to go into damage-control mode Wednesday.

The group has hired a publicist, removed dozens of comments on its Facebook page and directed a team of five volunteers to respond to the overwhelming calls and emails it has received since The Arizona Republic published a weekend story about Daniel Dockery and his 9-month-old cat, Scruffy.

Dockery, a 49-year-old recovering heroin addict, told the Phoenix newspaper that he took Scruffy to a Humane Society center on Dec. 8 because she had a cut from a barbed-wire fence, an injury that he described as non-life-threatening. The agency said it would cost $400 to treat Scruffy, money he didn't have.

The Humane Society cited policy when it declined to accept a credit card over the phone from Dockery's mother in Michigan or to wait for her to wire the money. The staff said if he signed papers surrendering the cat, Scruffy would be treated and put in foster care, he said.

Instead, Scruffy was euthanized several hours later.

Dockery told the Republic that he was devastated.




Of course, the Arizona Human Society has gone into PR overdrive now that it has been flooded with hundreds of complaints and plenty of outrage from animal lovers.

What they did to that little cat was outrageous and unacceptable. No wonder Dockery says he is devastated.

But this is not a uniquely 'Arizona thing.' This is all too typical of so many so-called 'animal protection' societies all over the world. They claim to want to protect animals, but too often get caught up in their own dogma and over-eagerness to euthanize animals left, right and centre. They hide behind vapid, meaningless words like 'animal safety' and 'quality of life'.

Ironically, they so often do such good work, which makes their callous acts all the more unbearable and unacceptable.

Too often animal societies act like the final word, the all-knowing God-like experts, who hold sway over the lives and deaths of little innocent animals. 

I'm frankly sick and tired of it.

The Arizona Human Society should be ashamed of itself. As should so many of their ilk, who play Old Testament God with the lives of animals day in and day out.

Do you get my point?

RAVE: Circus Animals Thank Bolivia...and China

I remember being taken by my father to the Boswell Wilkie Circus here in Johannesburg as a young boy in the late 1970s (my mother refused to go along - she's always loathed circuses and zoos). I was excited by the big top, the lights, the music - I was a boy of nine and it was the CIRCUS!

GASP! How that boyish joy changed as the 'show' unfolded...

My excitement soon turned to a pit in my stomach that got larger and larger as the show wore on. I couldn't stand cheering and being 'entertained' by large, beautiful wild animals like elephants, lions and tigers, animals that I knew were meant to be free and in the wild, not tamed and belittled in front of people, turning tricks like poodles. They looked so unhappy, so out of it. I hated it. I knew it was wrong. And I vowed at that age to never again visit the circus. I never have.

The continued use of animals in circuses around the world is a source of SHAME for humanity.

If people were asked which country they believed would be the first in the world to ban all animals being used in circuses, I doubt very much that Bolivia would feature in many people's responses.

But so it is - Bolivia has become the first country in the world to ban all use of animals in circuses or for any means of entertainment.

If, as Mahatma Gandhi once said, the true mark of a society's spiritual enlightenment is how it treats its animals, then Bolivia has just become a far more enlightened nation.

But it gets better...

I was sent a link today (see it at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8266563/China-bans-animal-circuses.html) in which the Chinese governments has now also banned animals in circuses and, furthermore, has warned the nation's zoos that they too will now be under greater scrutiny as to how they treat their animals.

China?!

Yes, the China that built the ecological catastrophe that is the Three Gorges Dam, the China that is now the world's largest carbon emitter and contributor to global warming, the China that is hardly the darling of many environmental causes. Yes, that China.

And all power to them.

Bolivia and China setting the benchmark for how animals ought to be banned from being used in circuses - who would have thought?

Countries like the United States, France, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, Sweden, Australia and South Africa lagging behind Bolivia and China on the issue of circus animals...hmmmmm...

I will take these types of blessings from wherever they may come. I'm quite sure the animals feel the same way.

Do you get my point?
 

RAVE: Words from Peter Singer

The weekend is upon me and it may be cold but the sun is shining bright, which is great. However, in less than a week the International Whaling Commission (IWC) will be voting on whether to allow whaling once more. The prospect of this is shocking to me. Therefore, it feels only right that I post these beautiful words by noted philosopher and bioethicist, Peter Singer:

"In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America, and sold. In Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter, and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics."

These words by this brilliant, compassionate man have never resonated more than now...