Does he deserve a pass, Sarah? No, he broke the law. He pled guilty. I accept that. But damn, castrate, kill, slaughter – Michael Vick (see comments, I also know these slogans were posted on placards outside the court house)? That is what I disagree with. That has been the reaction since this started. Like he is some serial killer or murderer or child molester. Castrate, kill, slaughter? I’ll simply never understand this seemingly irrational attachment to dogs. Then I find out the dogs are going to be destroyed? And it is standard practice to destroy pits that have been found in connection with fighting rings? Where is the outcry to save them? It is a cultural difference clothed in a claim to some greater sense of humanity. In a country built on genocide, with the death penalty, homelessness, no universal health care, police brutality, and hunger. So from a culture that is a little less neurotic, to help end hunger in America I say we put those dead pits to good use. Here is a wonderful dish:
From Joe Sweeney
Serving Size : 30 Preparation Time :3:00
Amount Measure Ingredient — Preparation Method
———— —————— ————————————————
3 kg dog meat — * see note
1 1/2 cups vinegar
60 peppercorns — crushed
6 tablespoons salt
12 cloves garlic — crushed
1/2 cup cooking oil
6 cups onion — sliced
3 cups tomato sauce
10 cups boiling water
6 cups red pepper — cut into strips
6 pieces bay leaf
1 teaspoon tabasco sauce
1 1/2 cups liver spread —
1 whole fresh pineapple — cut 1/2 inch thick
1. First, kill a medium sized dog, then burn off the fur over a hot fire.
2. Carefully remove the skin while still warm and set aside for later (may be
used in other recipes)
3. Cut meat into 1? cubes. Marinade meat in mixture of vinegar, peppercorn,
salt and garlic for 2 hours.
4. Fry meat in oil using a large wok over an open fire, then add onions and
chopped pineapple and sauté until tender
Front page
Thank you, Xenophon.
Koreans eat, and relish, dog. As do some Native American cultures, and if my information is correct, some cultures in what used to be the Ottoman Turk empire. And that recipe might well be good made with, say, prairie dog, as well. Or squirrel or even cat; in the Ozarks where I spent my seven years’ juvenile exile from my beloved Texas, surely it’s been tried with opossum.
Yes, evidently Arizona’s piling on. You’ll say the same of Texas, if we manage to send DeShawn Quattrail Brown to anything but freedom for what he did to Mercy.
But then, in sufficient straits, people are meat as well.
This is something I learned firsthand and perforce, as a single woman living in a military barracks in the late 1970s.
Yes, the dogs were destroyed yesterday : no one came forward to claim the dogs that were left on Michael Vick’s property. He denied ownership, remember?
yummy
I think people are sentimental about dogs because dogs give absolute loyalty and obedience. Dogs are soooo much more satisfying to help than people because dogs don’t talk back and you can fantasize anything you want about what’s going on inside their little pointy heads. Whereas, if you try to help the bum at the end of the street, he just might tell you to f*ck off.
Dogs: a holiday from the complications of human relations.
Animal abuse is a fairly reliable indicator of a tendency to abuse humans, so we need to keep our eyes on it for that reason. But hell, anyone who gets more excited about it than the infinite variety of human abuses out there is pretty badly bent. And let’s not have that excuse “we can think about two things at once.” You could think about ten thousand things and still not keep ahead of all the ways human beings abuse each other.
You're Welcome
It is my understanding that no dog that has been taken from a dog fighting situation (shown aggression to handlers) can be adopted. A continuation of “breed specific” legislation (supported by PETA and the ASPCA that is designed not for the safety of animals or even the public but as a ruse to further erode the fourth and second amendments).
“We don’t want the city knocking on your door,”
breed-specific legislation. The idea of targeting specific breeds — and their owners — is spreading to city councils across the nation. Here is the Bush-era logic: By limiting or banning pit bulls altogether, they will not only reduce what is frequently (but inaccurately) termed a “dog bite epidemic” but also rid the community of the unsavory characters associated with these dogs — as if drug dealers, gang members, and dogfighters will all disappear once the corrupting element, the American Pit Bull, is banned. link
Why? It started back in the 90’s with the myth of the super predator. When it was open season on young black males. They created laws to jail juveniles as adults, three strikes and you’re out.
“some of today’s newborns will become tomorrow’s super-predators” unless we start punishing juvenile criminals as if they were adults. Most states, he happily notes, already have the option of trying bad kids in grownup courts and imprisoning them right along with the 200-lb. child molesters. link
I really do wish this were an argument about stopping cruelty (I’m almost certain Sarah’s is). For the government, ASPCA, NFL, PETA and most of America it is not. They are exploiting the transference, inherent in our society’s culture of isolation, that creates an image of the animal as child in order to erode civil liberties and further criminalize a population’s behavior solely for the purposes of creating another class of long term prisoners to feed the system.
Animal abuse is a fairly reliable indicator
Only within a constellation of other factors. Not in Isolation. But, again, this is part of my larger point. Peopel project their fears of agression onto this incident. They are afraid of this picture
Bon appétit
Image from here.
++++
GWPDA over at the crack den says that in AZ, not all dogs
are killed, even fighting pit bulls. at least, that’s what she said of the two shelters in her town, she was bragging on their record of being completely ’no kill’ for over two years running.
in chicago, there are at least three ’no kill’ shelters i know of, although they are cat and not dog shelters. I’m sure MJS is aware of lots of ’no kill’ places all over the country that cater to dogs and other animals.
vick’s dogs were not lucky. but we can all give blankets, towels, money and time to those places in our ’hoods that will do their best to save the animals who bear no fault whatsoever for how they have been used.
the premises of rationality
As a biomedical scientist, I’ve had to do things to animals I’m not particularly proud of. But I do know this: no one I know of sane gets any pleasure about what they’ve had to do to answer specific questions. There is very intense peer pressure to make sure there is a reason and result for what’s done.
Dogs have a general level of intelligence our ancestors did a couple of million years ago. More than that, they have social habits very similar to that of primitive humans. I don’t think it’s remarkable that social omnivores eat other living things, it’s in our genes.
I do think it remarkable that we extend our society not only to other individuals very different from us. Differences in background, outlook, in skin color and intelligence are all embraced by empathy. Friendship, attachment, and social interdependence can build not only between different individuals, but in both human and dog, between individuals of different species.
That, to me, is something remarkable.
That, to me, is a set of genes in our species that deserves not only preservation, but reinforcement. Because that tendency in humans and in other species allow us not only to work together in a hostile world, but to work together to make the world and ourselves less hostile. Without it, we are no more than locusts, swarming and stripping the world of all that allows us to survive in a mindless selfish hunger.
Empathy, and attachment, and love, between people, and between people and other species is thus very rational, very logical, and absolutely needed for the world to survive in an age where not only degradation but obliteration for all is a heartbeat away.
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
Bon appétit
I love this movie!
Hunh?
“Empathy, and attachment, and love, between people, and between people and other species is thus very rational, very logical”
Come on.
No, they are in no way rational. What is the instrumental calculus for empathy? Love? Attachment? They can be rationalized after the fact but are not in and of themselves derivative of a rational process.
“That, to me, is a set of genes in our species that deserves not only preservation … “
Behavior is an emergent property that can’t be reduced to genes.
“As a biomedical scientist, I’ve had to do things to animals I’m not particularly proud of …”
Not had to, chose to.
But yeah I get it. It’s a difference in value structure.