something is wrong with the sticky of Chauncy showing up right underneath franken-dog.

For the record, www.usanimalprotection.org hides the story of gypsy with pictures only. The real story is that she was found on the side of the road and I’m not defending dogfighting, I’m only saying that this was not (100% conclusively) an animal that was rescued from a dogfight. There is nothing conclusive saying Gypsy was used in organized dogfighting. I think there are better examples without semi-dishonest poster-dogs.

At any rate, it is terrible that all the media people are only concerned with the “gambling”.. Ugh.

because what we have in the case of Michael Vick is an adult, a celebrity, a well-heeled heel, admitting to creating dogs who look like this dog, or worse; admitting to helping to kill dogs who didn’t perform well enough in fight training tests; admitting to being a party to the strangulation, electrocution, or beating to death of dogs not unlike the one pictured above, and then trying to say he didn’t do anything wrong.

And there are hundreds of thousands of voices crying out on his behalf that the dogs in question are nothing more than property — that their suffering, their lives, mean nothing except, perhaps, “just an additional fine.” Among those voices is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

I just want them to see what they’re rooting for.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!— Xan

“Now, don’t say balls again.”

The number of balls it takes to post anonymous racist comments on a blog is vanishingly small, approaching zero. In fact, some would say it takes no balls at all.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in
the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

the war against the lessers
the war against the ones
who never asked for war
the war against the graces
the war against faces

when all our flesh is rent
when all the rough is made smooth
can we face the mirror
where the killer waits?
wait him out
show him our face

the war against faces
be it man
or dog
shakes medusa, burns the mind

ah, hell, they’re just dogs
and soldiers
and prisoners
and brown people
and who fucking cares?

shake it, medusa
shake your moneymaker

++++

“Vick says he “helped” execute dogs, but didn’t gamble or gain money on the fights…”

Well, that’s ok then. So long as he didn’t gamble. It’s a strange kind of logic, almost the opposite of saying “I smoked pot, but didn’t inhale.” What a creep.

downstreamer

So I’m unstickying this post — impactful though it is.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

I have no idea what you are trying to convey with this picture.

“Dogfighting is bad”? I’m pretty sure most people reading here are hip to this fact already, and have no particular need to be shocked into spewing puke all over their monitors and keyboards by having this filth smack them without warning.

Christ, this is just beyond disgusting. If people want snuff porn it’s readily available elsewhere.

In Michigan, they have jailed dogfighters who made a practice of picking up strays- or even nice neighborhood dogs like Chauncy if they could get their hands on them- and using them to bait or feed their dogs.

It is beyond disgusting. People who do such things to animals are one step away from doing them to people. After all, a smart dog, or a cat, or a parrot, or a dolphin can recognize a hundred words or so, and convey emotion, and use primitive tools.

If there is sapience in the universe other than our own, it will surely assess how we treat other intelligence before it bothers to try to speak to us. I figure it will be a long time before we hear from anybody else in friendly way. We’ll have to hear ourselves first, and that’s happening no time soon.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

Gypsy’s one of the lucky ones who live, and in that horrifying picture, she is being treated for the injuries some dogfighting “human” left her to die of.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of dogs to whom this is done every week in this country, and this one is one of the lucky ones. I put up pictures of some of the ones who died, and nobody noticed.

Chauncy is beautiful, and I want Chauncy — and all the other dogs — to be safe and have loving homes. I know that’s too much to ask, in this world.

But I want the NAACP and Xenophon and every other apologist for Michael Vick to see exactly what they’re rooting for.

You think it’s gratuitous? You think it’s harsh? You think it’s too much? I don’t. I’m not apologizing for that, either. It’s ugly. It’s horrifying. It’s real. It’s right here in our neighborhoods. It’s downtown and uptown and out in the country and over in the suburbs. It’s bloody. It’s sad, and grim, and it’s cruel.

And if you can’t look it in the face and understand that this is what we do to dogs, how can you even imagine what we do to each other in the name of religion and profit?

This is what we do to helpless, loving animals who depend on us.

Gypsy lived, Xan.
Gypsy is one of the LUCKY ONES, lambert.

This is every bit as evil as vivisection — and there is no redeeming social or scientific purpose at the end of the odyssey these dogs are put through. None. No one learns anything that might help save a life, or lessen pain, or return function to a burn victim or a spinal cord injury victim or a traumatic brain injury victim, from this. This is true, senseless, evil.

And the idea that Michael Vick could walk away from doing this for fun and profit ought to make every single human being with a conscience in this nation not merely want to puke, but want to put a stop to this evil.

It’s a pastime. It’s a sport. It’s a culturally acceptable diversion, an activity from which money can be made.
And it is every bit as wrong, every bit as revolting, as it looks in this picture.

By the way — the dog in that picture is the dog in this picture, too:

It isn’t snuff porn. If I gave you that impression, I did not intend to do so.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!— Xan

sarah. i love you so, grrl!

look, i don’t think she is grokking Xeno’s and my points about race re this the vick case. but i do think this post has great fucking value.

you can’t look at a beat up dog? well, you’re not much of a progressive, then, in my book. ahem, shall i dredge up the “snowflake” post of MJS’s? because if you are all upset and weepy over a hurt dog, how does an armless iraqi child make you feel? knowing your inaction, your taxdollars, and your continued consent make that possible, again and again and again? and in more places than just iraq, as i’m sure you’re aware.

getting back on topic: or how about a black man dying of aids, a disease he didn’t have until he was unjustly put into prison and raped repeatedly? because, you know, that happens every fucking day in our Land of the Free, and no one gives a shit. he “deserves it,” or he wouldn’t be in prison, of course. prison only happens to the guilty, that’s why we have a constitution n shit.

sarah is mad about a rich man who abuses animals. i understand that. i’m mad about a society which cares more about a few animals than it does about +650K dead iraqis, millions upon millions of jailed, oppressed black and brown men, the entire future of their “race”. we can be mad together. we both have cause, and the two aren’t, ultimately, unrelated.

but run away from images of horror? i though people here were stronger than that. it’s the republicans who need TV and drugs and the rest of it to hide from reality. but not us, right? right?

blood is on your hands, america. accept this, and you may atone, someday, for your sins.

How can I say this? I don’t know how to say this. You’re absolutely right. I’m extremely angry that a young man, a man in the prime of an extraordinary career, a man of means and fame, should be so thoughtless, so callous, so infuriatingly inhumane.

We’re insulated from all the suffering. We’re kept ignorant of all the horror. We have to start somewhere. We have to put a stop to evil.

I seriously don’t look at Michael Vick as more guilty, or less guilty, than if he were David Carr or Vince Carter or Brett Favre or Peyton Manning; he’s not a different kind of celebrity than LeBron James or Nykesha Sales or David Beckham or even Brian Boitano or Todd Bertuzzi. He’s a sports star; he’s a role model. Sports may be the one place in America where, not to put too fine a point on it, merit overcomes color. Mostly. Maybe. Sadly, humanity remains flawed — be the subject Shoeless Joe Jackson, or Pete Rose, or Floyd Landis, or Michael Waltrip’s crew chief.

I don’t know if it’s true that some of the troops who worked at Abu Ghraib had prior experience as prison guards in the US, but I know when I was an Air Force cop in ’78 and ’79 there were people in my AFSC, Law Enforcement, who had prison-guard experience. They were proud of their cruelty and indifference to the inmates then; I cannot imagine that culture has changed much since then.

And seriously — the pictures of Gypsy before she went to the doctors who put in the stitches and drains you see in that first picture, I couldn’t put up here this afternoon.
I couldn’t use the pictures of Gypsy as she was found, or as Mercy was found, or as hundreds of other dogs these wretched excuses for primates have used up and discarded were found, because those pictures really seriously were gut-wrenchingly, revoltingly graphic.

I cannot stop Abu Ghraib, or the war in Iraq, or the way the VA treats returning soldiers. I lack the power, I lack the funds, I lack the legal standing to drag Bush before the Hague in chains, or Cheney; or Rumsfeld, or Kissinger.

I cannot stop dog fighting in this country. But maybe I can stop people from thinking it doesn’t matter.

If I can stop people from thinking it doesn’t matter if a rich man mistreats a dumb animal, maybe I can stop people from thinking it doesn’t matter if a rich man mistreats a woman, or a child, or a poor man, or an old man, or an ill person — a cancer patient or a rape victim or a woman dying of AIDS because her husband didn’t use a condom with a prostitute, or a college student beaten and left hanging on a fence in Wyoming to die because some bar fly wanted to kill a queer — if I can stop people from thinking that it doesn’t matter in one case, maybe I can make them understand it does matter in every case.

Thank you for seeing that, even if we don’t agree about Michael Vick.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!— Xan

I live in L.A.—the only snowflakes we have go up the noses of rich white women.

I don’t know Mr. Vick. I cannot say what motivates him—I will not presume to dissect his persona, and if anyone has paid attention to my sugary-writings they would be witness to the reality that I have not focused upon him. My focus has been on the dogs, but having been born in the year of the dog this is not unexpected.

But what I read coming from others who deliberately attenuate the horrors that humans have visited upon animals (and other human beings, natch) is a dodge straight out of Republican land—look over there, not over here. If I write about those horrors visited upon dogs, but I neglect to write about all the other horrors of the world, then it follows somehow that I am missing something in my writing? For fuck’s sake—are we so buried in reflexive narratives that we dodge the facts—the facts—of the abuse that is the subject here?

Snowflake? Go Coulter yourself.

++++

I remember that post too.
Snowflake was a reference somebody made to the difference between “snowflake babies” (e.g. the embryos the religious right wanted people to adopt and bring to birth) and the child — I think she was about two years old, maybe four; but she was tiny and she was terrified and she was soaked in blood, and she was the only survivor of her family who had come through a US-manned checkpoint in Iraq, and for whatever reason — because they didn’t understand the language being shouted at them or because they were scared or because the brakes were out, the soldiers opened fire on the car.

Here is her photo:

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!— Xan

I remember the photo well. None of this makes anyone feel good or proud. This issue seems to have emptied Pandora’s Litter Box—don’t get me started on cats. We have seven of them, and they are not amused either.

++++

but when i do i’m thinking about happy and consensual moments with lovely progressive people. like a certain brunette who is utterly devoted to dogs and a certain poet/blogger i know. ;-)

anyhoo- your response just proves the point i’m trying to make in my post upstairs, i invite you to read it and compare and contrast with sarah’s. it’s not that i think you can’t walk and chew animal abusers at the same time, it’s that i think this issue clouds reason and distracts us from more important stories. and indeed, it has.

It’s the abuse of power, stupid. It’s a continuum, and this is definitely part of the continuum. Surely a progressive characteristic is empathy for every creature that live and must die? (I know I’m getting dangerously close to the other snowflake narrative here, but it has to be talked about…)

CD, I don’t know where it was written that progressives had to look at horrible pictures to be “strong.” Because where does it end? (In the worst cases, with a sick attraction or voyeurism or at best indifference to what was once aborred.) That’s why the photo I use for Abu Ghraib is of blood and fluid on the torture room floor, not of the tortures themselves.)

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

But I don’t have any after pictures of that little girl.

I don’t have any after pictures for the country at the end of the Bush ruination, either.

CD is right — I don’t stand up enough for abused people. I have learned, through trying, that people can ignore the abuse of their brother / sister / fellow humans.
And they do. Or even chortle over it. (Prison rape is a theme in cop shows, ever notice? And don’t let’s even get me started on all that’s wrong with the whole “Jack Bauer is mah heee-ro” culture, okay?)

This morning, I watched the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s weekly 30-minute TV show. The feature story was the recovery of artifacts from Palo Duro Canyon, from 130 years ago when U.S. Army Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie ambushed a camp of Southern Cheyenne, Kiowa and Comanche Indians who had settled in for the winter at the bottom of the canyon. It was every bit as much a war crime as My Lai, or Haditha; but in that day and age it was accepted, nay, encouraged: “cleanse the earth of these savages” was policy. Descendants of the Native Americans who were slain in Palo Duro Canyon were part of the recovery teams, finding the decorative tin cones and handmade silver pendants that are all there is left of the camp of their great-grandparents after that terrible morning. It’s no accident that Mckenzie’s men first destroyed the horse herd that morning, either. The story was bittersweet, and poignant … and eye-opening.

And I apologize, CD, because it never occurred to me to equate Michael Vick with Mitt Romney. You see, I don’t know anybody who thinks Romney is a hero.

Cruelty, genocide, torture, tyranny.
If we are not all protected against its touch, none of us are safe from its reach.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!— Xan