September 6, 2010

• * "Sick Sad World" *     by Aaron McNees  Lately there have been several shocking videos of animal cruelty circulating on the web, often embedded in blogs written about (human) morality and societal responsibility. The blond girl throwing newborn puppies in the river, the dolphins in Japan being herded into coves and slaughtered in such numbers the sea turns red, that bag lady in Britain trapping a cat in a trash can, now in hiding... There have been debates and death threats. I won't comment on the death threats, I feel actions speak far louder than words. A far as debates go, one often recurring theme among Westerners is that somehow we as a society care more about animals than we about people, and this is also somehow intrinsically wrong. I'm not feeling particularly verbose these days so I'll give you out of context quotes instead that sum up my feelings :  "A man that don't love a Horse, there is something the matter with him. If he has no sympathy for the man that does love Horses, then there is something worse the matter with him." ~Will Rogers. "I never met a horse I didn't like" ~ paraphrase of Will Rogers I-never-met-a-man-I-didn't-like quote on meeting Leonard Trotsky. "WuDunn told the story of an American aid worker in Darfur who had seen great suffering but never broke down. On a vacation back in the United States, she visited her grandmother and noticed a bird feeder in the backyard. "She was in her grandmother's backyard and she basically broke down. And she realized that not only was she able to feed and clothe and house herself but also see that people in her country were able to feed wild birds so that they don't go hungry in the winter. She knew that with that luck and fortune also comes great responsibility." Which brings me to the the latest headlines from *Sick Sad World*  and how I feel about humans and the planet Earth in general. In the last sweltering days of August this year in the Darkest Heart of Africa, "Some 240 women, girls and babies may have been raped after rebels recently seized a town in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN says." "At Bunia, they  allegedly raped the girls of a secondary school so savagely and so systematically that seven of them died. They also reportedly raped women in the maternity unit of the town's hospital and raped and battered nuns in the town's convent." "Assailants often forced members of the same family to have incestuous sex, mother and son, father and daughter, brother and sister, aunt and nephew, etc. Families were also forced to witness gang rapes of one of their members, most often their mother or sister(s). The victim's family members were sometimes forced to dance naked, to clap to or sing obscene songs during the rape." " Why isn't the U.N doing anything? Why isn't anyone doing anything?  Why ask why? Africa has long been a basket case. This doesn't mean the people aren't human. It's just that at such times, we tell ourselves that the only explanation for why people do these things is that they are savages, that they don't have the same feelings we do, that they are somehow less than human. Beast. Animal. Which is wrong.  Animals don't do these things. Animals are innocent. Those of us who feed the birds in the winter or cry for hours for missing cats and dogs or swerve to avoid running over squirrels know what I'm talking about. I never met an animal I didn't like. .......................................................................................................... A good friend of mine once made a bumper sticker that read: Inhumanity is the enemy so very true. ........................................................................................................... I do miss the old headlines on *Sick Sad World* .... "Neo-natal skinheads, next on Sick, Sad World." "Are fish using our oceans as their own private toilet? A Sick, Sad World exclusive, right after this." "Can renegade surgeons transplant your brain while you sleep? The frightening truth, next on Sick, Sad World." * Sick Sad World *    (title from a fictional television program that existed on MTV's animated series Beavis and Butthead)

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