We can never turn aside from cruelty, in all its forms.
The rather rosy mood engendered by my post about the relationship between a Brazilian fisherman and a penguin published on the 31st May and the saving of a dog from a culvert by a serving police officer in Rhode Island was bound not to last. But I didn’t anticipate that it would turn so bleak by the following petition that was highlighted to me and everyone by a recent comment to a post by John Zande.
TARGET: Cidade de Presidente Figueiredo Mayor Neilson da Cruz, Brazil
A garbage man can be seen in pictures, attached, as he deliberately went on to the sidewalk to hit a dog and then stopped the truck to put a chain around his neck and drag and throw him into the truck’s compactor to be crushed to death.
Although the article claims that the man was fired, we hereby implore the Mayor Neilson da Cruz to prosecute Jadson James Franca to the fullest extent of the law with jail time and fines. We also want the garbage company ViaLimpa to fire the 2 co-workers in the photos laughing and allowing this madman to crush the dog.
Mr. Mayor: If you do not prosecute this man with jail time, you are sending a message to the youth of Brazil that this is acceptable conduct to innocent animals that have done nothing wrong other than to walk on the sidewalk. This Jadson James Franca is clearly a sociopath who enjoys the torture and murder of animals. He is a danger to the people of Brazil, while he is still walking free. It is a known fact that sociopaths begin to torture and murder animals and then move on to people. ALL serial killers started out with torturing and murdering animals and Jadson Franca is no different. What will you do if he kills his wife, child, neighbor or an innocent person on the street and you could have done something to stop it by prosecuting him now?
I ask all to sign this petition to stop this murdering rampage that is happening on the streets of Brazil and send a message that this blatant murder of an innocent dog will not be tolerated by the citizens of the world.
ooOOoo
I can do no better in terms of my own feelings than to highlight what June wrote, “This Jadson James Franca is clearly a sociopath who enjoys the torture and murder of animals. He is a danger to the people of Brazil, while he is still walking free.”
Well over 30,000 people signed that petition including John and myself. In doing further research, however, it became clear that this group anger and disgust worked, assuming the British Daily Mail newspaper is reporting the story accurately.
For in their online edition of May 31st, their online reporter, Matt Roper published this:
A binman has been sacked after he was caught dragging an injured dog across a road before throwing the terrified animal in the back of his rubbish truck to be crushed alive.
Jadson James Franca, 35, mounted the pavement of the street in Presidente Figueiredo, northern Brazil and hit the stray dog, according to shocked residents.
The council binman then stopped the garbage truck and tied a chain around the neck of the whimpering animal, which had had both of its legs broken.
As his colleagues looked on, Franca then dragged the frightened dog along the pavement before tossing it into the compacting mechanism of the collection vehicle.
Later on in that same article Matt Roper reported:
Brazilian TV presenter Xuxa, who once dated football legend Pele, also posted the shocking photos to her 4.4million Facebook followers.
She wrote: ‘This little dog, who wasn’t bothering anyone, had its legs broken, and in agony was tied up and dragged by the neck, before being brutally murdered by this individual, being thrown and crushed alive in the back of the garbage truck.’
This monster can still appeal against a fine and will still be walking the streets in freedom! Are we going to let that happen?? Let’s do something?? Together we can.’
Yesterday Presidente Figueiredo’s mayor, Neilson da Cruz, told Brazil’s A Critica newspaper that the binman had been sacked and the refuse collection company, ViaLimpa, would face an unspecified fine.
That Daily Mail article also has more photographs but without permission to republish them here all I can do is give you the links included in my ‘copy and paste’ of those two extracts above.
These seem like times where very little makes sense.
Blogger Patrice Ayme posted an item on Wednesday under the title of Doomed Dems. It was, inevitably, a commentary on the recent news regarding Donald Trump. Here’s how Patrice’s post opens:
So Donald Trump will be the Republican committee ( đ ) for the presidency. And Trump will, probably, be elected US president. Why? Because people want change, and they did not get it. Instead they got more of the drift down, after the reign of the teleprompter reading president. Average family income is DOWN $4,000 since (âBillâ) Clintonâs last year as president. According to a FOX News poll, 64% of Americans blame Wall Street. Meanwhile in a vast report in the New York Times, Obama celebrates, in May 2016, the alliance he said he made with Wall Street in 2008.
Later on in that same post, Patrice goes on to write about the horrific fire in Alberta, Canada, and the damage to trees in Yosemite National Park in California. At first sight those two events would appear disconnected. But not according to Patrice:
Meanwhile a friend of mine went to Yosemite ten days ago. She told me she could not believe the devastation of the forest. Most of it is fiery red. It is devastated by the Pine Bark Beetle. To kill the Beetle, one needs twenty days well below freezing. However, this hard freeze is now a memory. So the Beetle invades, and kills forest. Treating tree by tree is hopelessly expensive, and futile. Yes, the forests will burn soon, adding to CO2 in the atmosphere. And it is all the way like that to Alaska.
Massive walls of flames prompted authorities to order the evacuation of all the cityâs more than 80,000 residents last night. The blaze has been caused by un-naturally high temperatures. Such giant fires are our immediate future. Nobody said the Greenhouse crisis was going to be nice. More evacuations coming.
Anything to do with dogs? Well, yes!
For this coming Saturday I am giving a talk about my book, Learning from Dogs, to our local Rogue Valley Humanist and Freethinkers (both Jean and I are members) and it struck me that what Patrice wrote about and what we see all around us are part of the same big picture. That we need to be reminded of a few fundamentals. As I will be saying in my talk:
Dogs are creatures of integrity! Wow! Now you might see where this is leading to!
But more than that, much more than that, they offer us humans a model for a range of behavioural qualities that we ignore at our peril:
I then list the qualities that we see in our dogs, and continue:
Hold those values close to you for just a few moments. Imagine what would flow out across the world if those were the characteristics, the behavioural values, of us humans!
Finally, towards the end of that talk on Saturday I will be saying:
Nature will always have the last word regarding her natural world, to which we humans are so intricately linked. Standing alongside and respecting nature as the future comes to us will be so much wiser than pushing back against nature, and ultimately failing, trying to âconvertâ nature to some form of materialistic human resource. Because that route will only return those of us who survive to a life of hunting and gathering. Which, so many thousands of years previously, is where early dogs started humankind on the long journey leading to now.
Dogs have been the making of humans and a viable future for humankind on this beautiful planet depends on us never forgetting this oldest relationship of all, the one between dog and human.
Because if we, as a global society, don’t understand that when it comes to power all the plutocrats and all of their money come to naught in contrast to the power of nature then these present lands are going to become very strange indeed!
And nature is rapidly encroaching on these lands that we are now traversing.
The force of public opinion has never been more important; critically so!
As you all know this world of blogging: authors; followers; readers, is a great number of wonderful communities right across the planet. It is nothing like the traditional media, now owned and controlled by just a handful of large corporations, because the vast majority of blogging participants are free to say what they want, when they want.
Here’s an example.
Martin Lack is an Englishman who is the author of the blog Lack of Environment. As his home page quietly states:
Although scientificly trained (with degrees in Geology and Hydrogeology â see my About page), this blog arises from my having also got an MA in Environmental Politics and, as such, as the tagline indicates, is a blog on âthe politics and psychology underlying the denial of all our environmental problemsâ⌠I hope you will take this on board; and enjoy the discussion.
âThere is something fundamentally wrong in treating the Earth as if it were a business in liquidationâ â Herman E. Daly (former World Bank economist).
The science about the chemistry of climate change especially the new danger of methane is clear. The commitment of our political leaders is less clear. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t keep shouting out loud.
The Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
London, SW1A 2AA
Dear Prime Minister,
Whatever happened to the greenest government ever?
Given my experience of working in environmental consultancy or regulation, I understand the importance of making pragmatic, risk-based decisions (as opposed to dogmatic, opinion-based ones). I therefore believe that government policy should be formulated this way. Unfortunately, however, this does not always seem to be the case.
As a pragmatic scientist, I am not ideologically opposed to nuclear power. However, I do question the logic of pursuing âHinkley Point Câ when equivalent investment in distributed renewable technologies â from domestic solar PV to submarine tidal stream â could probably generate more electricity faster. Indeed, as Greenpeace has recently pointed out, the UK could meet nearly all its electricity generation needs from renewable energy sources by 2030.[1]
With regard to risk, the scientific consensus is that, in order to minimise anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD), the World must now embark upon the fastest-possible transition to a zero carbon economy. Therefore, I also question the logic of simultaneously promoting investment in shale gas; discouraging investment in renewables; and cancelling investment in Carbon Capture and Storage research.
It is now over 50 years since scientists started warning of the climatic implications of continuing to burn fossil fuels;[2] and 50 years since fossil fuel company executives started spending huge sums of money on being âMerchants of Doubtâ.[3]Â As such, along with their counterparts in the tobacco industry, they have clearly not acted in the long-term interest of humanity as a whole.
However, as with the individual health benefit of ceasing to smoke tobacco, the sooner we stop burning fossil fuels the greater the collective environmental benefit will be. Therefore, I am pragmatically opposed to shale gas exploration because burning it is not consistent with the need to transition away from fossil fuels as fast as possible.
I am certain that you would like to secure an enduring political legacy; and would therefore like to ask just one question:
What could be better than being remembered as the Prime Minister that committed the UK to meeting nearly all its electricity generation needs from renewable energy sources by 2030?
Let me finish today’s post by republishing an exchange between Patrice Ayme and Martin over on a recent PA essay, that I republished in full in this place: Runaway Antarctica.
Martin:
I know I am wasting my time writing letters to David Cameron; and I know my opinions are irrelevant. However, the facts of history are not; nor will they be in the future.
Patrice:
I know you are doing the right thing. Writing to Cameron is entirely correct. But of course, he is a guy with just a salary and a few âsavingsâ, a few tens of millions dollars of savings, maybe, or maybe not, and knew nothing about his recently deceased father having a fund of around 50 million dollars sheltered by shell companies, out there, somewhere related to Panama, or the British Virgin Islands, or the Bahamas, or Bermuda, whateverâŚ
OK, Davidâs wife, officially, has a fund of more than twenty million poundsâŚ.
Martin:
For the record: I am socially-conservative (i.e. as opposed to liberal) but under no illusion as to the folly of what has been called âmoney fetishismâ (Karl Marx); and âgrowthmaniaâ (Herman E. Daly).
Patrice:
Hi Martin, thanks for the comment. I spent a whole hour reading the hard cover version of the paper the electronic version of which I criticized above. Itâs quite a bit different. They use RCPs (Reasonable Carbon Projections, or the like in meaning). Yet, they donât explain what they consist of exactly. All I know is that we are around 500 ppmv, and they work with 400 ppmv, in the 130 K-115 K years BP, when orbital conditions were cooler than now.
Plus we are going to be at 550 ppmv within ten years, at the present rate. The earliest date they have for the failure of Larsen C in their worst RCP 8.5 is 2055 CE. I would be surprised if it did not fail within ten years.
However, the paper version is more insistent on the danger of AIR warming, not just subsurface.
Also the Hansen paper has a scenario, which is suitably apocalyptic, but not apocalyptic enough in my book. Temperatures over the Arctic were strikingly high this winter, of the order of 4 to 5 degrees Centigrade higher than normal, and sometimes more. Nobody expected this sort of jumps. Except for yours truly!
Martin:
Thanks for the explanation, Patrice. This is all very reminiscent of the position of (Arizona) Professor Guy McPherson, who believes most scientists are in denial about the consequences of multiple positive feedback mechanisms we can already see operating: http://lackofenvironment.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/what-on-earth-are-we-doing/
You all have a wonderful weekend and keep hugging those dogs of yours!
Now one might argue that this has nothing whatsoever to do with Learning from Dogs but I would disagree. For as I declare in The Vision of this blog:
It seems to me that a Vision statement should encapsulate just why the owners of the enterprise are committed to that venture. The author of Learning from Dogs is committed to this project; here is the Vision.
Our children require a world that understands the importance of faith, integrity and honesty
Learning from Dogs will serve as a reminder of the values of life and the power of unconditional love â as so many, many dogs prove each and every day
Constantly trying to get to the truth âŚ
The power of greater self-awareness and faith; faith that the only way forward for us is through the truth âŚ
For in a very real and devastating way even a small rise in global sea level is going to cause tens of thousands of dogs, and their loving owners, to become homeless. We are long overdue a commitment from our global leaders and power-brokers to that, “.. faith, integrity and honesty.”
However, championing that greater self-awareness is what blogger Patrice Ayme does almost all of the time. With his kind permission, I republish his latest post on the state of the Antarctic Ice.
ooOOoo
Runaway Antarctica
I have written for years that a runaway Antarctica was certain, with half the icy continent melting rather spectacularly on an horizon of two centuries at most, and probably much less than that. This rested on the fact that half of Antarctica rests on nothing but bedrock at the bottom of the sea. At the bottom of what should naturally be the sea, in the present circumstances of significant greenhouse gas concentrations.
Visualize this: until sometimes in the Nineteenth Century, GreenHouse Gas (GHG) concentration was 280 ppm (280 parts per million), including the man-made sort. Now we are close to 500 ppm, using a variety of exotic gases we produce industrially, among them, CO2. In CO2 alone we are at: Â Week beginning on March 20, 2016: 405.62 ppm. Weekly value from 1 year ago:Â 401.43 ppm. Weekly value from 10 years ago: 382.76 ppm. So the CO2 alone is augmenting at a bit more than 1% a year. Thus we will be at an equivalent of 550 ppm in ten years (including the full panoply of all the other man-made greenhouse gases, not just CO2). There is evidence that, with just 400 ppm, disaster is guaranteed.
Now visualize this:
How Antarctica would appear if its ice melted: itâs half under the sea.
Why so watery? Because the enormous glaciers, up to nearly 5,000 meter thick, press down on the continent with their enormous weight. Since the end of the last glaciation, 10,000 years ago, Scandinavia has been rising, and is still rising (I long used a picture with a similar information about Antarcticaâs bedrock.)
Polar temperatures over the last several million years have, at times, been slightly warmer than today, yet global mean sea level has been 6â9âmetres higher as recently as the Last Interglacial (130,000 to 115,000 years ago) and possibly higher during the Pliocene epoch (about three million years ago). In both cases the Antarctic ice sheet has been implicated as the primary contributor, hinting at its future vulnerability. Here we use a model coupling ice sheet and climate dynamicsâincluding previously underappreciated processes linking atmospheric warming with hydrofracturing of buttressing ice shelves and structural collapse of marine-terminating ice cliffsâthat is calibrated against Pliocene and Last Interglacial sea-level estimates and applied to future greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Antarctica has the potential to contribute more than a metre of sea-level rise by 2100 and more than 15âmetres by 2500, if emissions continue unabated. In this case atmospheric warming will soon become the dominant driver of ice loss, but prolonged ocean warming will delay its recovery for thousands of years.
Notice that the scenario evoked in the last sentence is different from my very old scenario, which is similar to the one advanced in November 2015 by the famous Hansen and Al. (I raised the alarm before Hansen, at least seven years ago). In my scenario, and Hansenâs the ice sheets melt from below, due to warm sea water intrusion.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is larger than Mexico.
Here is a taste of the paper (I have a Nature subscription):
âReconstructions of the global mean sea level (GMSL) during past warm climate intervals including the Pliocene (about three million years ago)1 and late Pleistocene interglacials2,3,4,5 imply that the Antarctic ice sheet has considerable sensitivity. Pliocene atmospheric CO2 concentrations were comparable to todayâs (~400 parts per million by volume, p.p.m.v.)6, but some sea-level reconstructions are 10â30âm higher1,7. In addition to the loss of the Greenland Ice Sheet and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS)2, these high sea levels require the partial retreat of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS), which is further supported by sedimentary evidence from the Antarctic margin8. During the more recent Last Interglacial (LIG, 130,000 to 115,000 years ago), GMSL was 6â9.3âm higher than it is today2,3,4, at a time when atmospheric CO2 concentrations were below 280âp.p.m.v. (ref.9) and global mean temperatures were only about 0â2â°C warmer10. This requires a substantial sea-level contribution from Antarctica of 3.6â7.4âm in addition to an estimated 1.5â2âm from Greenland11,12 and around 0.4âm from ocean steric effects10.â
So notice: when CO2 ppm per volume was at 280 130,000 to 115,000 years ago, sea level was up to ten meter higher than now. And now we are at 500 ppmvâŚ
And notice again: When CO2 ppmv was at 400, sea level was up to 30 meters (100 feet) higher than today. And now we are at 500 ppm, and, in a blink, in ten years, at 550 ppm.
Here is another example from the paper. I said all of this before, but to have scientists paid to do research in this area write it black on white in the worldâs most prestigious scientific magazine, will no doubt endow me with greater, and much desired, gravitas. So let me indulge, not so much for my greater glory, but because it should help taking what I have long said more seriously.
âMuch of the WAIS sits on bedrock hundreds to thousands of metres below sea level (Fig. 1a)13. Today, extensive floating ice shelves in the Ross and Weddell Seas, and smaller ice shelves and ice tongues in the Amundsen and Bellingshausen seas (Fig. 1b) provide buttressing that impedes the seaward flow of ice and stabilizes marine grounding zones (Fig. 2a). Despite their thickness (typically about 1âkm near the grounding line to a few hundred metres at the calving front), a warming ocean has the potential to quickly erode ice shelves from below, at rates exceeding 10âmâyrâ1â°Câ1 (ref. 14). Ice-shelf thinning and reduced backstress enhance seaward ice flow, grounding-zone thinning, and retreat (Fig. 2b). Because the flux of ice across the grounding line increases strongly as a function of its thickness15, initial retreat onto a reverse-sloping bed (where the bed deepens and the ice thickens upstream) can trigger a runaway Marine Ice Sheet Instability (MISI; Fig. 2c)15, 16, 17. Many WAIS grounding zones sit precariously on the edge of such reverse-sloped beds, but the EAIS also contains deep subglacial basins with reverse-sloping, marine-terminating outlet troughs up to 1,500âm deep (Fig. 1). The ice above floatation in these East Antarctic basins is much thicker than in West Antarctica, with the potential to raise GMSL by around 20âm if the ice in those basins is lost13. Importantly, previous ice-sheet simulations accounting for migrating grounding lines and MISI dynamics have shown the potential for repeated WAIS retreats and readvances over the past few million years18, but could only account for GMSL rises of about 1âm during the LIG and 7âm in the warm Pliocene, which are substantially smaller than geological estimates.â
I said it before. Including the details. So the evidence was clear, and out there. The optimism (it will take 5 centuries for 50 feet of sea level rise) is not supported by evidence. Actually collapsing channels coming from inverted rivers running up on the bellies of ice sheets are now obvious on satellite pictures and collapse of major ice shelves is going to be a matter of years, not centuries.
But science is made by tribes and these tribes honor the gods (of plutocracy) who finance them, and their whims. So they donât want to make their sponsors feel bad. So they say unsupported, optimistic stuff, contradicted by a first order analysis.
Science is good, metascience, better. Metascience includes the sociological reasons which explain why some scientists will take some âfactsâ for obvious (although, coming from another sociology, they are not).
Deep in the Nature paper, in the quote above, or in four drawings and graphs of future sea level rise, one can find projections according to what various models âpredictâ⌠130,000 years ago (!) The âOld Physicsâ model predicts one meter rise of the sea (this is the official UN maximal prediction for 2100). The new model, again starting with the present conditions, predict more than a six meter rise (!) This is a case of metascience playing with sea level.
This way, the authors of the paper will be able to say, one day: we told you so. While at the same time not irritating their sponsors now (because to understand what they are really saying takes quite a while, and has to be understood as tongue in cheek, when they pretend to apply the analysis to 130,000 years ago⌠What they really mean is six meters now, not just one meter⌠Bye bye Wall Street. Punished by its own instrumentsâŚ)
The question is not whether we will be able to avoid a twenty meter sea level rise: thatâs, unbelievably, a given (barring unforeseeable, yet imaginable technological advances to extract quickly a lot of CO2 from the atmosphere). The question is whether we will avoid a 60 meter rise.
A stark warning from Institute researchers on the probability that â2°C capital stockâ will be reached in 2017
A new study from the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School and the Smith School for Enterprise and Environment, University of Oxford, shows that we are uncomfortably close to the point where the worldâs energy system commits the planet to exceeding 2°C.
In the paper, to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Energy, the authors calculate the Two degree capital stock â the global stock of electricity infrastructure from which future emissions have a 50% probability of staying within 2°C of warming. The researchers estimate that the world will reach Two degree capital stock next year, in 2017.
The analogy with planting trees is very apt. For any clown can plant the tree but parenting that young tree into a mature forty-foot high beauty takes professional management.
That post had been inspired by a recent essay over at Patrice Ayme’s Thoughts regarding the observation by Andy Grove, the founder of Intel, that promoting start-ups without the commensurate focus on growing those start-ups into viable commercial concerns was strategically and politically incorrect. Back to that essay for a further extract:
However, American-based manufacturing is not on the agenda of Silicon Valley or the political agenda of the United States. Venture capitalists actually told me it was obsolete (before stepping in their private jets). That omission, according to Mr. Grove, is a result of another âunquestioned truismâ: âthat the free market is the best of all economic systems â the freer the better.â To Mr. Grove, or Mr. Trump, or yours truly, that belief is flawed.
Andy Grove: âScaling used to work well in Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs came up with an invention. Investors gave them money to build their business. If the founders and their investors were lucky, the company grew and had an initial public offering, which brought in money that financed further growth.âÂ
The triumph of free-market principles over planned economies in the 20th century, Mr. Grove said, did not make those principles infallible or immutable. There was room for improvement, he argued, for what he called âjob-centricâ economics and politics. In a job-centric system, job creation would be the nationâs No. 1 objective, with the government setting priorities and arraying the forces necessary to achieve the goal, and with businesses operating not only in their immediate profit interest but also in the interests of âemployees, and employees yet to be hired.â
As even the New York Times now admits, the situation has degenerated since 2010. Although the employment rate halved, in a slave state, everybody is employed. But neither the economy, nor the society, let alone progress and civilization are doing better.
âInsecure, low-paying, part-time and dead-end jobs are prevalent. On the campaign trail, large groups of Americans are motivated and manipulated on the basis of real and perceived social and economic inequities.
Conditions have worsened in other ways. In 2010, one of the arguments against Mr. Groveâs critique was that exporting jobs did not matter as long as much of the corporate profits stayed in the United States. But just as American companies have bolstered their profits by exporting jobs,many now do so byshifting profits overseas throughtax-avoidance maneuvers.
The result is a high-profit, low-prosperity nation. âAll of us in business,â Mr. Grove wrote, âhave a responsibility to maintain the industrial base on which we depend and the society whose adaptability â and stability â we may have taken for granted.â Silicon Valley and much of corporate America have yet to live up to that principle.â
If we return to that analogy of the tree, think how long and how much attention must be put into the conditions that will promote not only sustained growth of that young tree but growth to the point where it can propogate its own saplings.
As it is for young companies. The skills that company managers require to nurture that company to the point of self-sustaining maturity are many and varied. But they are underpinned by the need to be truthful and trustworthy, to be devoted to the employees of the company and to instill in all who work, and finance, that company to “love the customer”. Not just those customers that are the big spenders but also, and especially so, the many, many smaller clients that can make or break a company’s reputation.
So with that in mind let’s take a peek at USA LLC and UK Ltd.
Here are the closing paragraphs from Patrice’s essay:
Our corruption is not just an economic and social problem, a political problem, and a civilizational problem, as it was under Aristotle.  It is a problem for the entire planet.
âWe empowered a demagogueâ, laments Mr. Kristof. His true calling, and that of the Main Stream Media, was to empower plutocrats, and their obsequious servants. How sad they are.
I like being outside the fray of party politics. I wasnât born with a sufficient capacity for compromise to believe that any political party has all the answers to all questions. And yet, equally, I can admire those who can make the sacrifice to take part in this process. It is, for better or worse, at the heart of democratic politics.
That demands that it be done well. This requirement is predicated on three things. The first is a willingness to pretend you have the answer to all things. The second is a leadership that knows this is not true and which as a result respects its opponents. The third is an acute appreciation of the fact that compromise in pursuit of a higher goal, whilst saving face, is the ultimate political aim: nothing really happens without the accommodation of others.
He then closes his post:
Passion, dogma and steadfastness, come what may, are not what makes party politics.
Conviction based on wisdom, understanding and compassion does.
But these qualities remain in far too short supply, even if theyâre not quite out of stock, yet.
And thatâs the party political problem.
Many people both ‘sides of the pond’ would nod heads in agreement with that.
My final peek is into an essay that was recently published by the quarterly journal The Baffler. The essay was from David Graeber under the heading of Despair Fatigue. Opening:
Is it possible to become bored with hopelessness?
There is reason to believe something like that is beginning to happen in Great Britain. Call it despair fatigue.
For nearly half a century, British culture, particularly on the left, has made an art out of despair. This is the land where âNo Future for Youâ became the motto of a generation, and then another generation, and then another. From the crumbling of its empire, to the crumbling of its industrial cities, to the current crumbling of its welfare state, the country seemed to be exploring every possible permutation of despair: despair as rage, despair as resignation, despair as humor, despair as pride or secret pleasure. Itâs almost as if itâs finally run out.
and closing, thus:
Twenty-first century problems are likely to be entirely different: How, in a world of potentially skyrocketing productivity and decreasing demand for labor, will it be possible to maintain equitable distribution without at the same time destroying the earth? Might the United Kingdom become a pioneer for such a new economic dispensation? The new Labour leadership is making the initial moves: calling for new economic models (âsocialism with an iPadâ) and seeking potential allies in high-tech industry. If we really are moving toward a future of decentralized, small, high-tech, robotized production, itâs quite possible that the United Kingdomâs peculiar traditions of small-scale enterprise and amateur scienceâwhich never made it particularly amenable to the giant bureaucratized conglomerates that did so well in the United States and Germany, in either their capitalist or socialist manifestationsâmight prove unusually apt. Itâs all a colossal gamble. But then, thatâs what historical change is like.
In other words, it’s this!
One of the age-old maxims from professional company managers is:
It’s always a case of putting people before profits!
Putting people before profits should be in the front of the minds of all our leaders and masters; both sides of the ‘pond’.
Or in tree language investing in this:
An American Red Maple sapling.
to achieve this:
A mature American Red Maple tree.
Come on good people, we really do need healthy, mature trees in our 21st C. societies.
As regular followers of this place know (and a huge thank-you to you all) much of last Friday was spent planting trees in a grassy meadow just to the East of our house.
A part view of the area where the trees were planted: Kentucky Coffeetrees; Northern Catalpas; a Red Maple, Eastern Redcedars.
An hour before I sat down to write this post (now 13:30 PST yesterday) I didn’t have a clue as to what to write. Then I read Patrice Ayme’s latest essay and, wow, it punched me in the face. For it resonated so strongly with a few other recent readings.
âWe empowered a demagogueâ laments the New York Times ostensibly bleeding heart liberal, the kind Mr. Kristof, in his false âMea Culpaâ editorial, âMy Shared Shame: How The Media Made Trumpâ. By this, Mr. Kristof means that Mr. Trump is a bad person. However, Mr. Kristofâs choice of the word âdemagogueâ is revealing. (Actually itâs not really his choice: âdemagogueâ is not Mr. Kristofâs invention: he just repeats like a parrot the most prominent slogan of the worldwide campaign of insults against Trump).
Trump a demagogue? Is Mr. Sanders a âdemagogueâ, too? (As much of the financial and right-wing press has it: for The Economist and the Financial Times, Trump and Sanders are both âdemagoguesâ and thatâs their main flaw.)
To understand fully the word âdemagogueâ one has to understand a bit of Greek, and a bigger bit of Greek history.
Then later on in that essay, Patrice goes on to quote Andy Grove:
A hard day may be coming for global plutocrats ruling as they do thanks to their globalization tricks. And I am not exactly naive. Andy Grove, founder of Intel, shared the general opinion that much of globalization was just theft & destitution fostering an ominous future (the Hungarian immigrant to the USA who was one of the founders of Intel). He pointed out, an essay he wrote in 2010 that Silicon Valley was squandering its competitive edge in innovation by neglecting strong job growth in the United States.
Mr. Grove observed that: âŚâit was cheaper and thus more profitable for companies to hire workers and build factories in Asia than in the United States. But⌠lower Asian costs masked the high price of offshoring as measured by lost jobs and lost expertise. Silicon Valley misjudged the severity of those losses, he wrote, because of a âmisplaced faith in the power of start-ups to create U.S. jobs.â
Silicon Valley makes its money from start-ups. However, that phase of a business is different from the scale-up phase, when technology goes from prototypes to mass production. Both phases are important. Only scale-up is an engine for mass job growth â and scale-up is vanishing in the United States (especially with jobs connected to Silicon Valley). âWithout scaling,â Mr. Grove wrote, âwe donât just lose jobs â we lose our hold on new technologiesâ and âultimately damage our capacity to innovateâŚ
The underlying problem isnât simply lower Asian costs. Itâs our own misplaced faith in the power of startups to create U.S. jobs. Americans love the idea of the guys in the garage inventing something that changes the world. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman recently encapsulated this view in a piece called âStart-Ups, Not Bailouts.â His argument: Let tired old companies that do commodity manufacturing die if they have to. If Washington really wants to create jobs, he wrote, it should back startups.
Friedman is wrong. Startups are a wonderful thing, but they cannot by themselves increase tech employment.â
Spot on! For in my previous life I was the founder of two businesses. First up was Dataview Ltd, based in Colchester, that was formed in the late 1970s and soon became the global distributor of the word processing software Wordcraft, written by Englishman Pete Dowson. Dataview also initiated the ‘dongle’, a software/hardware security device to protect Wordcraft.
The Wordcraft dongle.
The second company founded by me was Aviation Briefing Ltd ‘AvBrief’ that is still going today, albeit with me no longer involved!
So I can reinforce, with hundreds of hours of lost sleep and tears, that growing a company and increasing employment, especially the employment of great technical people, is a very different matter to the start-up phase.
Frankly, regarding Dataview, it was only the luck of meeting Sid Newman that saved my bacon. For within 12 months of starting trading I was already sinking under the load of trying to be the number one salesman (that I was good at) and being the company general manager (that I was total crap at). Sid had years of experience at general management and very quickly let me get on with what I really loved – opening up Wordcraft distributorships all over the world.
The analogy with planting trees is very apt. For any clown can plant the tree but parenting that young tree into a mature forty-foot high beauty takes professional management.
Clown work! (This is a Red Maple, by the way!)
Tomorrow I will return and offer a viewpoint as to how we, as in society, are currently bereft of professional managers.
But at the top [of science] there is paralysis: leading scientific organizations do little except chase money and reinforce the ruling nexus of politics and finance â even since the financial crisis of 2008, which discredited the free-market philosophy that underpins that nexus. I argued years ago (see Nature479, 447; 2011) that scientific leaders had failed to respond in any meaningful way to that collapse, and Iâm still waiting.
The political structure of the West is in deep trouble, and should it fall apart, there will be plenty of blame to go around. Most will go to political and financial elites, or to rowdy mobs. But some will belong to people in the middle who have taken public funds, defended elites and then stood back and watched as democracy got ridden over a cliff.
I think that fair comment and recommend the rest.
If one now goes across to that post from Colin here’s what one would read in the opening paragraphs:
The elephant in the room we canât ignore
If Donald Trump were to trigger a crisis in Western democracy, scientists would need to look at their part in its downfall, says Colin Macilwain.
16 March 2016
The annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington DC last month was one of the best Iâve witnessed in more than 20 years of regular attendance. The policy sessions were packed and genuinely stimulating. I met tons of smart, influential people I hadnât seen for ages, and we all enjoyed a good chinwag about how better to engage with the public â the meetingâs theme for 2016.
The only trouble was what was going on outside the hotel â in the United States and the world at large.
Colin then makes the point that is neatly articulated in the extract that was published by Professor Murphy and is republished above.
I don’t have any answers other than wanting to share this with you, dear reader. For decent, ordinary folk must be aware of the multiple threats to our Western democracy that are taking place.
Just as I want to share with you an example of what a good honest person and his adorable Labrador get up to. An example from my old country (and Richard Murphy’s home country).
When one false step left Martin Kay literally drowning in ice-cold mud in the English countryside, he quickly found out who his two best friends are. Turns out one of them is a dog.
Holly Blue is a typical Labrador who has never met a tree trunk or a blade of grass that doesnât smell good. So when Martin took out her leash one recent afternoon, his dog was over-the-moon with expectation of the crisp afternoon air and a landscape of wintery fields. Neither of them had any inkling that this simple walk would soon turn catastrophic.
This day, the two set out along a different route through Englandâs historic Thornham Parva village. Though it was a very cold day, the skies were clear and there was no reason for concern, or so it seemed.
âI hadnât walked that route for about two years,â Martin said. âWhen I came across the mud, I tested the ground at the side and it felt firm, but as I walked into the middle the ground began to sink. I called for help but nobody heard me.â
Minutes turned into hours and Martin simply couldnât extricate himself from the mud. Holly Blue circled anxiously, but there was nothing the dog could do except to stand guard beside her friend. She never left his side.
âI eventually drifted off,â Martin said. âI wasnât optimistic about being found, but I wasnât panicking â it was too cold for that!â
Fortunately, Martinâs good friend was scheduled to pick him up that day and when Martin didnât return home, his friend grew concerned enough to call the police. Martin was reported missing to the police at 7:30 in the evening. Other friends and neighbors had already begun searching for Martin themselves, but they were all focused on his usual route, not realizing that heâd gone in a different direction.
Police used a thermal imaging camera during helicopter sweeps from above. After some time they came across a heat signature that appeared to be the warm body of dog curled up at the edge of the bog. According to police, indeed Holly Blue was found first, and sighting her led them to Martin. Watch a portion of the rescue below.
Police Constables Luke Allard and Clare Wayman were the first on the ground.
âThe field was in the middle of nowhere and we were relying on the light from the helicopter and torch light,â Allard said. âWhen I got to Mr Kay I took hold of his hand and he wouldnât let go â I told him he would have to let go or I wouldnât be able to help him.â
Unfortunately Allard and Wayman began getting stuck themselves while trying to extricate Martin, so they covered him with their own jackets to keep him warm while waiting for reinforcements.
Martin was in and out of consciousness as he was taken to West Suffolk Hospital. When he awoke, he was told how Holly Blue had helped save his life.
âIt was the first and the last time she had been called into action,â Martin said in an interview with Global News. âSheâs a very loyal dog.â
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Now compare the behaviourial values of Martin Kay, Holly Blue and everyone else who ensured this had a happy ending with those being demonstrated in the first part of this post!
It’s no sinecure to say, once again, how urgent it is for humankind to learn from our fabulous dogs!
What is deeply fascinating, at a number of levels, is how time only goes one way. At every single level of our experience, from the scale of the universe down to the tiniest particle known to science, it all flows forward. The arrow of time!
I was reminded of this interesting question of time in a book that has been published by a local Oregon author, John Taylor Our Curious UNIVERSE (the book is not available online otherwise I would have linked to it.)
It got me thinking of age. How we are all aging. How there is nothing that we can do to stop it. How the only thing we can do is to change our relationship with age. That then reminded me of an item that was published on The Conversation site a week ago that I wanted to share with you – share within the terms provided by The Conversation. The article was called Itâs time to measure 21st century aging with 21st century tools.
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Itâs time to measure 21st century aging with 21st century tools
These stories are dire, in part because the most widely used measure of aging â the old-age dependency ratio, which measures the number of older dependents relative to working-age people â was developed a century ago and implies the consequences of aging will be much worse than they are likely to be. On top of that, this ratio is used in political and economic discussions of topics such as health care costs and the pension burden â things it was not designed to address.
Turning 65 in 2016 doesnât mean the same thing as hitting 65 in 1916. So instead of relying on the old-age dependency ratio to figure out the impact of aging, we propose using a series of new measures that take changes in life expectancy, labor participation and health spending into account. When you take these new realities into account, the picture looks a lot brighter.
How facts from the census questionnaire were tabulated into statistics in 1950. The U.S. National Archives/Flickr
Our tools to measure aging have aged
The most commonly used measure of population aging is the âold-age dependency ratio,â which is the ratio of the number of people 65 years or older to those 20 to 64.
But, since the old-age dependency ratio was introduced in the early 1900s, most countries have experienced a century of rising life expectancy, and further increases are anticipated.
For instance, in 1914, life expectancy at birth in Sweden was 58.2 years (average for both sexes). By 2014, it had risen to 82.2 years. In 1935, when the U.S Social Security Act was signed into law, 65-year-olds were expected to live 12.7 more years, on average. In 2013, 65 year-olds may expect to live 19.5 years more.
But these changes arenât reflected in the conventional statistics on aging. Nor is the fact that many people donât just stop working when they turn 65, and that people are staying healthier for longer.
To get a better sense of what population aging really means today, we decided to develop a new set of measures that take these new realities into account to replace the old-age dependency ratio. And instead of one ratio, we created several ratios to evaluate health care costs, labor force participation and pensions.
Who retires at 65 anymore?
One of these new realities is that the number of people working into their late 60âs and beyond is going up. In 1994, 26.8 percent of American men aged 65-69 participated in the labor force. That figure climbed to 36.1 percent in 2014 and is forecast to reach 40 percent by 2024. And the trend is similar for even older men, with 17 percent of those aged 75-79 expected to still be working in a decade, up from just 10 percent in 1994.
Clearly, these older people did not get the message that they were supposed to become old-age dependents when they turned 65.
Depot Supervisor Eric Headley, 74, takes a call on his mobile phone while at work for Pimlico Plumbers in London July 29, 2010. Britain announced plans to scrap the fixed retirement age next year, saying it wanted to give people the chance to work beyond 65, but business leaders warned the move would create serious problems. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett.
This isnât unique to the U.S. Rates like these in many countries have been rising. In the U.K., for instance, the labor force participation rate of 65- to 69-year-old men was 24.2 percent in 2014, and in Israel it was 50.2 percent, up from 14.8 percent and 27.4 percent, respectively, in 2000. In part this is because older people now often have better cognitive functioning than their counterparts who were born a decade earlier.
So, instead of assuming that people work only from ages 20 to 64 and become old-age dependents when they hit 65, we have computed âeconomic dependency ratiosâ that take into account observations and forecasts of labor force participation rates. This tells us how many adults not in the labor force there are for every adult in the labor force, giving us a more accurate picture than using 65 as a cutoff point. We used forecasts produced by the International Labour Organization to figure this out.
The old-age dependency ratio in the U.S. is forecast to increase by 61 percent from 2013 to 2030. But using our economic dependency ratio, the ratio of adults in the labor force to adults not in the labor force increases by just 3 percent over that period.
Clearly, doom and gloom stories about U.S. workers having to support so many more nonworkers in the future may need to be reconsidered.
Is the health care burden going to be so high?
Another reality is that while health care costs will go up with an older population, they wonât rise as much as traditional forecasts estimate.
Instead of assuming that health care costs rise dramatically on peopleâs 65th birthdays, as the old-age dependency ratio implicitly does, we have produced an indicator that takes into account the fact that most of the health care costs of the elderly are incurred in their last few years of life. Increasing life expectancy means those final few years happen at ever later ages.
In Japan, for example, when the burden of the health care costs of people aged 65 and up on those 20-64 years old is assessed using only the conventional old-age dependency ratio, that burden is forecast to increase 32 percent from 2013 to 2030. When we compute health care costs based on whether people are in the last few years of their lives, the burden increases only 14 percent.
Pension ages are going up
The last reality we considered concerns pensions.
In most OECD countries, the age at which someone can begin collecting a full public pension is rising. In a number of countries, such as Sweden, Norway and Italy, pension payouts are now explicitly linked to life expectancy.
In Germany, the full pension age will rise from 65 to 67 in 2029. In the U.S., it used to be 65, is now 66 and will soon rise to 67.
Instead of assuming that everyone receives a full public pension at age 65, which is what the old-age dependency ratio implicitly does, we have computed a more realistic ratio, called the pension cost dependency ratio, that incorporates a general relationship between increases in life expectancy and the pension age. The pension cost dependency ratio shows how fast the burden of paying public pensions is likely to grow.
For instance, in Germany, the old-age dependency ratio is forecast to rise by 49 percent from 2013 to 2030, but 65-year-old Germans will not be eligible for a full pension in 2030. Our pension cost dependency ratio increases by 26 percent over the same period. Instead of indicating that younger Germans will have to pay 49 percent more to support pensioners in 2030 compared to what they paid in 2013, taking planned increases in the full pension age into account, we see that the increase is 26 percent.
Pranom Chartyothin, a 72-year-old bus conductor, sells and collects bus tickets in downtown Bangkok, Thailand, February 3, 2016. Such scenes will only become more common in Thailand as its population rapidly ages, unlike its neighbours with more youthful populations. The World Bank estimates the working-age population will shrink by 11 percent by 2040, the fastest contraction among Southeast Asia’s developing countries. Thailand’s stage of economic development, the rising cost of living and education, and a population waiting longer to get married are among the reasons it is ageing more quickly than its neighbours. An effective contraception programme in the 1970s also played a part, said Sutayut Osornprasop, a human development specialist at the World Bank in Thailand. Picture taken February 3, 2016. REUTERS/Jorge Silva.
Sixty-five just isnât that old anymore
In addition to this suite of measures focused on particular aspects of population aging, it is also useful to have a general measure of population aging. We call our general measure of population aging the prospective old-age dependency ratio.
People do not suddenly become old-age dependents on their 65th birthdays. From a population perspective, it makes more sense to classify people as being old when they are getting near the end of their lives. Failing to adjust who is categorized as old based on the changing characteristics of people and their longevity can make aging seem faster than it will be.
In our prospective old-age dependency ratio, we define people as old when they are in age groups where the remaining life expectancy is 15 years or less. As life expectancy increases, this threshold of old age increases.
In the U.K., for instance, the conventional old-age dependency ratio is forecast to increase by 33 percent by 2030. But when we allow the old-age threshold to change with increasing life expectancy, the resulting ratio increases by just 13 percent.
Populations are aging in many countries, but the conventional old-age dependency ratio makes the impact seem worse than it will be. Fortunately, better measures that do not exaggerate the effects of aging are now just a click away.
I’m not going to rant on about there never being a dangerous dog just as me saying that there never is a dangerous person is clearly factually incorrect. But they are rare!
In yesterday’s post, I shared the terrible news about Stella, a female Pit Bull mix, that because of her breed, and nothing else, has been locked up by The Devon and Cornwall Police for over two years. Sharon Stone’s petition over on the Care@ website has, at the time of writing this yesterday, received nearly 16,000 signings!
To support the proposition that for the vast majority of dogs, of all breeds, it is how they are loved and cared for by us humans that makes the difference, let me republish a post from a couple of years ago. For we have a Pit Bull mix here at home and he is the most wonderful, caring dog one could ever wish for. Here’s that post.
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Meet the dogs – Casey
On to dog number five.
If you are new to this series then Ruby’s story of last week will link you to all the dogs written about so far. Today, here is Jean’s account of how Casey became part of the family.
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Casey
Casey, at home; picture taken a month ago.
Every Friday, the Payson Roundup newspaper would devote a full page to the Humane Society, displaying some of the cats and dogs they had for adoption. I would read about each animal and quietly wish I could bring them all home.
I was particularly taken with one dog that had appeared several times in this Friday page. His name was Casey and he was a six-year-old Pit Bull mix. Unfortunately, at home (we were then living in Payson, AZ) we were ‘maxed out’ with a total of 14 dogs in three different sections of our house. We just couldn’t take Casey.
I had volunteered to be a dog-walker at the Humane Society dog shelter. But after two sessions walking dogs, I just couldn’t look at these sad little faces without breaking down in tears. I switched my efforts to working at the Society’s Thrift Store. That was great fun and, at least, it felt as though I was still helping the animals. Nonetheless, I was very impressed with the animal shelter. They did their utmost to re-home the animals in their care.
Ruby’s ‘pack’ here at home included Phoebe and Tess, rescue dogs from Mexico. Recently, Phoebe had died with leukaemia and Tess with bone cancer leaving Ruby on her own. Ruby was a dog that didn’t mix at all well with the other dogs, as was explained in last week’s post.
The next Friday, the Payson Roundup showed the Society’s ‘lonely hearts club’, highlighting animals that had been in care for a long time. The first dog shown was Casey. I telephone Chandra, the lady responsible for adoptions, and asked if Paul and I could bring Ruby to the shelter to find a companion for her. When we were at the shelter, Chandra asked us if we had anything against Pit Bulls. Of course we didn’t. Ruby was introduced to Casey and, as they say, the rest was history. Casey and Ruby right from the start were just wonderful together.
Ruby behind Casey.
Subsequently, I learned from Chandra that Casey had been in care for over a year and, had we not taken him home, his days were numbered at the shelter. There were many cheers and tears when I signed the adoption paper for Casey.
Casey now lives in the kitchen group here in Oregon: Paloma, Ruby, Lilly and Casey. As with all our dogs, Casey is so happy to have our 14 acres to play in. He is also the sweetest natured of dogs and will try to climb on to your lap at the first opportunity. I have always been a great advocate of Pit Bulls and Pit Bull mixes and have never come across a mean one.
Thus, if you are in the position to adopt a dog, please consider Pit Bulls and Pit Bull mixes for the Pit Bull is a much-maligned breed.
Casey demonstrating a dog’s focussing skills!
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If there is any news about Stella’s fate I will share that with all you dear readers without delay.
Before leaving England in 2008 to be with my Jeannie, I lived in South Devon. Lived in the small village of Harberton, just a few miles west of Totnes. But never had cause to form an opinion, good or bad, of my local police force: The Devon and Cornwall Police. Until now!
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Why Did Police Keep a Dog Locked in a Cage for 2 Years?
Stella has spent the last two years locked in a 3-by-9 foot cage in a kennel in Devon, England. She has never been let out to exercise or play.
In 2014, Stella was taken away by police from her owner, Antony Hastie, because she was âpotentially dangerous.â Did she bite or attack someone? No. Under the UKâs Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, Stella is illegal and considered a threat to public safety â but only because of her breed. Stella is a pit bull mix.
Stella was taken to a private kennel owned by Devon and Cornwall Police. She was put in a cage that she has only been allowed to leave twice in the past two years, and only for behavior assessments.
âWe were always told not to exercise or go into a kennel with any dogs, regardless of character, that had been brought in under the Dangerous Dogs Act,â Laura Khanlarian, who worked at the kennel, told BBC News.
âWe were under no circumstances allowed to touch any of those dogs â which was hard,â Khanlarian said. âAnimal welfare comes before anything, and that was my job. I donât believe I would be doing it properly if I would sit back and think thatâs okay. It wasnât okay â itâs not okay.â
The dogs that were âso kind and needed us the most for reassurance â we were never able to give that to them,â she told SWNS TV.
Khanlarian lost her job when she breached her employment contract by interacting with the seized dogs.
Contrary to Khanlarianâs eyewitness account, Devon and Cornwall Police issued a statement claiming that of the hundred or so dogs theyâve seized over the past two years, Stella was the only one deemed too dangerous to be exercised by kennel staff.
All dogs âmust have daily access to outdoor safe and secure areas, away from the kennel area and this should be at least 30 minutes per day,â the guide states (yes, âmustâ is emphasized in bold).
The Dangerous Dogs Act is breed-specific legislation (BSL), laws that apply only to certain breeds (usually pit bulls). BSL is opposed in the United States by virtually every major animal welfare organization because it punishes well-behaved dogs and responsible owners. Besides, itâs expensive to enforce and has not proven to increase public safety anywhere that itâs been enacted.
âItâs terrible. Itâs unjustified. Itâs wasting huge amounts of money and itâs not doing a single thing to prevent dog bites,â Kendal Shepherd, a veterinarian and animal behavior expert with 30 years of experience working with dogs, told BBC News. âItâs cruel. But itâs what our system forces us to do.â
Stellaâs owner has gone to court 11 times over the past two years, trying in vain to get his beloved dog back. She had never showed any signs of aggression before she was seized, he said.
But Cornwall and Devon Police said â in the same statement in which they claimed Stella was the only dog in their kennel not let out of her cage â that Stella had âthreatened and shown aggressive behavior toward two Police Community Support Officers,â had shown âaggressive behavior prior to being seizedâ and âattempted to bite a court appointed independent expert during the dogâs assessment.â
Last month, Torquay Magistratesâ Court ordered Stella to be destroyed.
Stellaâs heartbreaking situation is similar to that of Lennox, a therapy dog from Northern Ireland that was seized because he was perceived to be a pit bull mix. Despite an international outcry and pleas for his life from dog experts like Victoria Stilwell, Lennox was euthanized in 2012.
Several rescue organizations in the United States had offered to take in Lennox, to no avail.
Perhaps Animals R Family will have better luck with Stella. The nonprofit rescue has offered to fly her to its headquarters in Connecticut, where BSL is banned.
âBreed specific legislation is wrong and ineffective. In the US, pit bulls are one of the most popular dogs for family pets,â the rescue wrote on its Facebook page.
Inevitably, this was signed by Jean and me seconds after it was read. Please do everything in your power to support this petition and stand behind Sharon, the originator of the Care2 Petition.
Thank you from all of my being. This is wrong on just so many levels it makes me ashamed to be a human or English. You can not torture and destroy animals because of outdated laws. Henry VIII killed people for not being Christian, where would we be if that was still lawful????? Animals only EVER ask for love. I have been around more animals than I have had hot dinners in my life and I’m 50 now. Someone please help me make this a happy ending.
The behaviour of dogs is always a product of the humans who are around them, it is never a function of the dog alone! (And please see my post tomorrow about our own Pit Bull mix.)
Demanding Justice for Dog Crushed to Death by a Garbage Man
Learning from Dogs 