July 18, 2007

• Read this article immediately after the 'Neocons on a Cruise' one below. Now feel sick. Humans fucking suck. .
• I'm thinking that Darwin will take care of this problem...
• I'm with you, mothninja. Talk about a double dose of horror. *climbs tree, refuses to come down*
• Will.Not.Click.
• I thought Ralph got along fine with everybody.
• I wouldn't be too sure about that HuronBob. The smart people aren't breeding half as much as the stupid ones.
• Doesn't surprise me. Dog fighting, cock fighting, bear baiting are all ancient practices. Bears just aren't as easy to come by as they used to be anymore. Rambling thoughts: The poor dog fight because they live in brutal surroundings and enjoy brutal, profitable entertainment and the rich do it because they're selfish bastards and take a jaded pleasure from the same brutality. What I'm not so sure of is whether the people who end up as athletes and entertainers tend to have a type of viciousness in their makeup which makes them gravitate to athletics and the entertainment business, or whether it's being in the business and having all the money and attention causing them to lose their moral compass. It seems like this resurgence of interest in dog fighting is countered by a group of people that are extremely over-involved in their pets in an obsessive and morbidly unhealthy way. Whatever happened to having a dog for a pet for companionship, one to play fetch with, have sleep under your bed, keep till a decent healthy old age then put them to sleep without allowing them to suffer and spending thousands of dollars on terminal health care? Both dog killers and the dog-infatuated scare me. Neither gives a rat's ass about other people, and I think this lack is what gives rise to the vicious cruelty and obsessiveness. There's got to be some middle road between cruelty and over-involved, psychoneurotic attachment to an animal. Of the two, dog fighers scare me more. I keep waiting to hear about them shoving kids or women into the ring to be torn apart for entertainment. Bread and circus time. You can draw up stiffer laws, increase fines, and throw fight dog breeders into jail, but the sick and evil mindset that causes these men to watch animals suffer for their enjoyment is not going away. A Nike representative denied that the ad encouraged dog fighting, but explained, "People have to understand the youth culture we cater to. Our market is the urban, edgy, hip-hop culture."<\i> He may not ever attend a dog fight, but he and his company don't mind profiting from one. Nike so sucks. As for the urban, edgy, hip-hop culture, they're utter, unmitigated assholes. What's the common thread between dog fighters, NeoCons, and street kids in Bogata? I don't know, but I'll bet there is one. Could it be that we don't care about each other? We don't appear to care at all about the children or animals on this planet. We don't teach our kids that life is precious, we teach them to "get ahead." I want to live in a kinder, gentler world, dammit.
• Better dog fighting that god fighting, I say.
• "Sure, Hermes has the speed, but Loki wants it more..."
• The poor dog fight because they live in brutal surroundings and enjoy brutal, profitable entertainment and the rich do it because they're selfish bastards and take a jaded pleasure from the same brutality I gotta disagree with you there...they're all bastards in my book.
• Rocket's right. We have this round my way. No such thing as a bad dog, just bad owners. Kill em all, the sick dog-fighting fucks. We had a famous case at new year of a little kid killed by her uncle's 'fighting' dog, left in the care of the kid's nan. Everyone acted surprised when the dog ripped the face of an animal roughly the same size as itself. I despair.
• Well, hey! We finally outlawed cockfighting down Albuquerque way! That's good news, right?
• Better dog fighting that god fighting, I say. I don't know if that one isn't also drawing blood aready... "People have to understand the youth culture we cater to. Our market is the urban, edgy, hip-hop culture." Ah. The eternal excuse of the ad men. "We have to show this because that's what the market is doing" ...because celebrities and ads do it. Vicious circle. And in the end, it's the almighty bottomline that rules. Got to keep profits up, even if it means putting scenes of torture in movie ad billboards or pre-teen kids in "sexy" attitudes. Not saying that advertising should led the masses thru the righteous, pious path, but how about not promoting already antisocial behaviour? A very thin line, between self-regulation and censorship, I know.
• Not just antisocial, Flags, but illegal. Dog fighting is illegal. But of course, they would claim that it's not an "actual" organized dog fight they're depicting... The best censorship is not to buy Nike. Don't buy them because they support dog fights, and especially don't buy them because they support child labor and sweat-shop work conditions. How can people place owning a pair of shoes above the lives of other human beings, or even above the lives of animals?
• How can people place owning a pair of shoes above the lives of other human beings, or even above the lives of animals? Consider the awful realities of being a meat-eater (you don't want to know what that chicken on your plate has been through); only the strictest vegans can say they've no part in animal torture and most folks dig into their meaty meals without a thought. Since defenseless, abused animals are too awful a thing to dwell on, consider that with globalization, and the move to outsource a huge chunk of American production overseas, when we purchase pretty much anything we have no idea of what kind of suffering might lie behind it. It has been shown that sweatshops continue to exist in other countries, and who knows what sort of ugly, underpaid life the worker has who sews your clothes or injection-molds the parts in your coffeemaker? Money is the God here, and the workers frequently suffer. Today's robber barons are making HUGE profits while bottom-level workers often do not make a living wage. It is impossible to "big picture" the world without feeling a creeping sense of despair, since the level of exploitation seems to be increasing. A few years ago I visited a thoroughbred farm in Kentucky. I saw a horse being taken out for exercise, fighting every step of the way--biting, bucking, seizing the bit and running wildly--misbehaving on a grand scale while the rider did little to control it. It was disturbing to watch. After a few minutes, the tourguide shrugged. "It's like pro athletes," she observed casually. "They misbehave, but trainers know better than to rein them in too much, since the testosterone which fuels the misbehavior is often the same thing that drives them to play hard and win." I think of this every time I read about another athlete being involved in thuggery of any kind. This is just the sort of thing which makes me feel that I have no place in our culture of greed, violence and exploitation, and that there is little hope things will change. *grabs banana, returns to tree*

• A Nike representative denied that the ad encouraged dog fighting, but explained, "People have to understand the youth culture we cater to help to popularize with the global reach of our advertising campaigns. Our market is the urban, edgy, hip-hop culture only thing that matters to us."

• If everyone simultaneously stopped purchasing the products of sweatshop labor, what would the people in the sweatshops do? Prostitution? Crime? Only so many people can work in tourism. The rest might have to prey off it. I know it sounds drastic, but bear with me. Considering that everyone is looking for a fair wage for the work done, could it result that the multinationals decide it cheaper to eliminate transport and pay a fair wage to domestic labor (rather than pay a cut of minimum wage + transport, in order to eliminate transport risk and cut cars from the logistic train)? Just musings leading me to think r88's post in the next thread holds a powerful point indeed.
• Could it result in this scenario even...
• Wrong. I've worked at the track. The common parlance is that trainers make "monsters out of 'em." And they do. One of the most winning trainers locally that I know has well-trained, well-behaved horses. Sure, they need to be let out occasionally in a paddock to run and jump (Oh, nos! they act like a horse, they might get hurt!) And they play up a bit on occasion. But they don't attempt to savage you when you walk by their stall, they're halter-broke, and generally they behave like a horse. Chimpy: Wouldn't the world be a nice place if the uberlords agreed to take a modest profit and everyone was paid a decent wage? We could have better education involving the hiring of more teachers, better child care, more people working to help clean up the world thru science, or just picking up, more tree planters, more inventors working on clean sources of fuel, more people turning out handwork to enrich our lives instead of mass-produced plastic crap. Yeah, it just ain't practical, is it?
• Not for the uberlords designs...
• ... could it result that the multinationals decide it cheaper to eliminate transport and pay a fair wage to domestic labor That's the hope. The strongest argument for free trade is along the lines of a rising tide raising all boats. One possible free trade scenario: Workers in developing economies unionize and begin to demand better treatment. Some of them get it; others are out of work as capital flows to the next expoitable region (probably Africa). Eventually, the huge differences in labour costs are reduced, though it takes a long time. This doesn't take into account the asymmetric power relationships between the developed and developing economies.
• Encouraging news about Michael Vick.
• That anyone has to take a course on that is in itself a crying shame. They should have made him fight a man of comparable size until one or both of them could no longer stand. Much more instructive than an 8 hour course and the Bible.
• Vick faces $900,000 bill for dog care.
• Vick sentenced to 23 months for dogfighting.