Category: Morality

… from helping the mustangs.

If you can help these beautiful animals in any way, read on.

Yesterday, in a post called Wild horses wouldn’t stop me …. I outlined the situation in Nevada where “the Nevada Farm Bureau is suing the Bureau of Land Management because they want the federal agency to round up what’s left of America’s wild horses and send them to slaughter.” The post included the commitment from Jean and me to adopt two of these horses.

In the hope that this post touches others who would also like to adopt a horse or know someone else that would, then here are the details that we have collected in the last twenty-four hours. (NB: please double-check yourself because much, if not all, of this is new to me and I am far from being an authority on the subject.)

The starting point seems to be Palomino Valley National Adoption Center.  Their website is here.  On the home page of that website, one reads:

palomino_valley_center.

The National Wild Horse and Burro Center at Palomino Valley (PVC) is the largest BLM preparation and adoption facility in the country and serves as the primary preparation center for wild horses and burros gathered from the public lands in Nevada and other near-by states. Nevada is home to more than 50 percent of the Nation’s wild horses and burros with approximately 83 herd management areas throughout the state.

Adoption Details

The majority of animals at PVC are available for adoption 6 days a week. To schedule an appointment to adopt a wild horse or burro at PVC, please call 775-475-2222. Appointments for viewing/adopting are limited to a maximum of one hour. The majority of animals are available for adoption, however, some are not due to the time involved in the preparation process. If you have questions about our adoption requirements, click here to go to our Adoption page.

When I called that office number yesterday afternoon, the person who helpfully answered a number of my questions recommended the BLM Adopt-A-Horse website.  That website offers a number of useful links that anyone wanting to learn more should explore, including how to adopt via the internet. Plus a link to an online gallery where there are many pictures of beautiful horses, such as this one:

Horse 2249

Sex: Mare Age: 5 Years   Height (in hands): 15.0Necktag #: 2249   Date Captured: 08/28/12

Color: Brown   Captured: Paisley Desert (OR)

Notes:
#2249 – 5 yr old brown mare, captured Aug 2012 from the Paisley Desert Herd Area, Oregon.

This horse is currently located at the Corral Facility in Hines, Oregon. For more information, contact Patti Wilson at email pwilson@blm.gov or Tara at tmartina@blm.gov.

Pick up options (by appt): Burns, OR; Salt Lake, UT; Elm Creek, NE; Pauls Valley, OK; Piney Woods, MS; Mequon, WI.

Other pick up options: West Monroe, LA (Mar 21), Archdale, NC (Apr 18) and Springfield, OH (Apr 25).

Adoption confirmation for this animal must be finalized no later than Feb 6. After this date, all unclaimed animals will be available for in-person walk up adoption ONLY.

Some other useful websites now follow:

Ever After Mustang Rescue in Maine.

Wild Horse Mountain Ranch in Sherwood, Oregon (South-West of Portland).  From which I have taken the following photograph.

Wild Horse Mtn

and, finally, MUSTANGS 4 US that has a plethora of information and good advice. Take this link, for example: Adopt A Mustang (Oregon). Plus there’s a very useful page on Where To Adopt. This photograph also came from the Mustangs 4 Us website.

AdoptHorse

Fingers crossed this has been of interest to many and of direct value to some.  Jean and I have much to learn and as we work our way towards being better informed and being ready to take on two horses, all the details will be shared with you.

An Act Of Congress
“Congress finds and declares that wild free-roaming horses and burros are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West; (and) that they contribute to the diversity of life forms within the Nation and enrich the lives of the American people …”
(Public Law 92-195, December 15, 1971)

Wild horses won’t stop me …

From alerting you to the potential catastrophe of the Mustangs in Nevada.

Relationships across the internet, especially across the world of blogging are, oh, I don’t know, different! (OK, I hear some saying I could have chosen a more apt word; such as weird, self-indulgent, vain, and so on.)

Melinda Roth is an author. Her ‘goodreads’ page is here; her Amazon Books page is here; her website is here.  Melinda has started reading posts on Learning from Dogs and, likewise, I have read posts over at Anyone Seen My Horse?

Seven days ago, Melinda published a post under the title of Oh, yum.  This is the opening paragraph.

I ran across this recipe while doing a little research on horse slaughter (the Nevada Farm Bureau is suing the Bureau of Land Management because they want the federal agency to round up what’s left of America’s wild horses and send them to slaughter) so… thought I’d share:

When I read that I felt a mixture of anger, confusion, puzzlement; surely this can’t be the case?  Then I read on, skipping the recipes that Melinda included in her post.

Now, you might have to go to Canada or Mexico to get the horse meat, but we ship those countries about 150,000 of our unwanted equines for slaughter anyway, so your meat will probably be home grown in the USA. No worries.

That is, as long as you’re not too concerned about the unregulated administration of numerous chemical substances to horses before slaughter, which according to official reports “are known to be dangerous to humans, untested on humans, or specifically prohibited for use in animals raised for human consumption.”

If travel is out of the question, however, you can always buy imported horse meat online.

Check out My Brittle Pony, which is horse meat jerky seasoned with “Guinness, onions, garlic, fresh herbs and Soy Sauce and is guaranteed to contain no horse substitute such as beef.”

It costs £3.50… and you can pay with Pay Pal.

But if the Nevada Farm Bureau has its way, we won’t have to travel or use currency converters to buy horse meat. A majority of the country’s last wild horses live in Nevada, and that state seems ready to cash in on one of its most popular natural resources.

Anyone who knows anything about Jean and me knows that we love animals and we adore our own animals. Thus as I read Melinda’s post the pain and anguish building in me was indescribable; and I’m only half-way through the post. Yes, there’s worse to come.

According to reports published in the last week, the Nevada Farm Bureau and the Nevada Association of Counties want the BLM to round up just about as many remaining wild horses as they can. The BLM argues that it’s already housing about 50,000 wild horses it’s already captured and can’t afford to take in many more.

The Nevada Farm Bureau has an answer, however: The BLM should “destroy” horses that are deemed unadoptable.

I shall include one more paragraph from her post:

The Nevada Farm Bureau argues that there are too many wild horses on public lands. But there are only about 30,000 wild horses left, and since public lands seem perfectly able to support 1.75 million head of livestock (that belong to private ranchers), what exactly is the problem?

There’s more you should read so please do so.  Especially not forgetting to communicate your feelings to NVFB via the address listed on their web site – nvfarmbureau@nvfb.org

I wrote a comment to Melinda’s post endeavouring to explain what I was feeling. Melinda then pointed me to an essay by Andrew Cohen.  It was beautiful and it seemed in order to share it with you.  So here is Andrew Cohen writing about horses.

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Cohen horses

Why I Write About Wild Horses

 By Andrew Cohen 

29 January 2014

I write about wild horses. I write an awful lot about wild horses. And it’s not just because I cherish the animals or admire all that they have done through the centuries to ease our burden here in North America. I sometimes get grief about my focus upon the nation’s herds, and I know that many people who don’t “get” horses, or who have never been near a horse, cannot fathom the depth of passion the animals engender among their human supporters. What can I say? I can’t help it and I won’t stop.

I write about wild horses for many of the same reasons that I write about mentally ill prisoners who are abused in their cells or about indigent defendants who cannot afford a lawyer or anyone else who has a voice, and rights, but who cannot be properly heard or who cannot have those rights acknowledged. Mordecai Richler, the late, great Canadian writer, long ago captured the essence of what I try to do with all my writing: “The novelist’s primary moral responsibility is to be the loser’s advocate,” he said. The actor Ricky Gervais said pretty much the same thing the other day, without the literary flair, when he said: “Animals don’t have a voice. But I do.”

I have a voice and I’ve chosen to speak out for these horses, which are being rounded up by the tens of thousands from our public and private lands and sent to holding pens in the Midwest — or sold into slaughter even though that is against the law. The government and the ranchers say these roundups must happen because there is no room for the herds, or because they graze too heavily upon the land, but ample evidence exists suggesting that this simply isn’t so. The truth is that there is plenty of room out West for these horses and there are plenty of ways in which the herds may be properly managed to ensure their survival without forcing them into cruel conditions or slaughter.

Why that isn’t happening is a story everyone ought to care about. So I write about wild horses because I think their treatment over the past four decades, since the passage of the federal law designed to protect them, reveals a great deal about American politics and the nature of the bureaucratic state. The Interior Department, which has stewardship over the herds, is little more than a straw man for the industries it is supposed to regulate. And those industries, which receive enormous federal benefits in the form of welfare ranching, and which in turn send millions of dollars and boatloads of lobbyists to Washington, want the horses off the public lands no matter what anyone else says.

I write about wild horses because last year the National Academies of Science issued a report scathing in its criticism of the Bureau of Land Management’s scientific approach to the herds. Before the report was issued, federal officials assured advocates that its conclusions would be respected (or at least publicly discussed). But it’s been seven months now since the report was issued and federal officials have done almost nothing about it. That’s just not unjust to the horses, and unfair to their human advocates, and perhaps a violation of federal law, it’s also terrible policy, as a general rule, for bureaucrats to ignore the findings of a report they themselves commissioned and paid for.

I write about wild horses because the last Secretary of the Interior was a rancher who did not even try to conceal his disdain for federal obligations to the horses and because the current Secretary of the Interior, herself a former engineer, has shown no interest in the herds or in addressing the concerns raised by the NAS report. Only the Interior Department, the backwater of all Washington beats, could engender so little muckracking when so much money, and so much else, is on the line. I write about wild horses because their story is the story of every other small interest without political power in Washington or the statehouses of this nation.

They are persecuted. They have rights but no remedies. And their fate isn’t going to get better unless more people come to understand the injustice of what’s happening to them — and how far the gulf is between the noble image we have given them in our national psyche and the reality of their perilous existence. That’s why I write about wild horses and it’s why I am grateful when anyone happens to read what I’ve written.

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Now I don’t know one end of a horse from the other.  But Jean does.  In previous years, Jean was a keen horse-woman.  But me not speaking horse doesn’t mean that I am not passionate about doing something to help these poor wild horses. Even if what we do is only something tiny, as the old saying goes, by the inch it’s a cinch.  Jean is just as passionate about wanting to help as I.

Not only do we have two miniature horses here in Oregon, we have sufficient pasture to accommodate two of these Mustangs.  We want to adopt two horses or burros that, otherwise, would be slaughtered.

Tomorrow I will share how we are researching how one goes about adopting a mustang or a burro.  Because if only one extra horse is adopted as a result of the Melinda Roth – Andrew Cohen – Learning from Dogs sequence then that’s one less horse destined for slaughter.

Lovely what comes out of relationships!

Unconditional love.

The most important thing, without a doubt, to learn from dogs.

Last Tuesday, Learning from Dogs published the first of the three parts of Martin Lack’s essay From Environmentalism to Ecologism.  It generated a fascinating discussion.  One of the commentators was Chris Snuggs who writes his own blog under the name of Nemo Insula Est.  Here is the essence of a discussion with Martin Lack and Patrice Ayme.  (Without reading the following comments, my closing opinion will make little sense; assuming they do at the best of times!)

Chris: The problem with politics at the moment is that the choices come down to A) being socialist, moral and bankrupt or B) capitalist and immoral but at least with a chance of avoiding poverty and chaos.

Martin: I think I am very much in agreement with you, Chris. It says a l lot when a practicing Catholic can admit that his Church needs to ditch its anthropocentric bias and stop treating the Earth as if we are the only species that matters…

Chris: One of the big questions for me is this. Is the world of our perceptions ONLY what we see, hear, smell and touch or is there another dimension which we cannot sense? Personally, I believe the former, which is why I cannot believe in: God, aliens, ghosts, an afterlife, fairies or indeed a sensible socialist economic policy.

I sometimes feel this makes me boring (or if you like, it just another feature of my boringness), but on the other hand I feel more or less in tune with what I understand “The Enlightenment” to have meant. It would be much more reassuring to know that there is a God (caring if possible, though it is hard to see how he would be) and indeed aliens, as long as they were friendly. But until there is some sound evidence, I cannot. And there IS no evidence that would stand up in court, is there?

So, we are alone; the universe is as it is; how it came into being we do not know and it is perhaps unknowable; the planet Earth cares not a jot about us or our feelings; we have no particular right to exist: we just do, by natural accident (until proven otherwise). I am not a fan of the “There are billions of stars in the universe, so there must be other forms of life elsewhere.” argument. “must be” is not “is”.

So if WE do not ensure our survival by looking after the planet then nobody or nothing will. As for “ecology”, good people are trying to do a lot of things, but as far as I can see:

A) It is too late and too little. Even if we were doing all the right things NOW (which we obviously are not), the time lag before our actions start to correct othe damage done will be too great; we may well have died out by then.

B) Despite all that is being done, CO2 emissions are going up, countries have STILL found no economic model that does not insist on growth and you cannot have growth without increased energy use, which for the moment and foreseeable future means fossil fuel extraction. And THIS of course continues apace with many countries now desperately trying to frack their way to growth, in the case of the USA rather successfully.

Martin: All very interesting, Chris, although I am not sure why your atheism necessitates rejection of socialism. For many people the two are inextricably linked. However, this is all off-topic… All I wanted to point out was that anthropocentrism is a mistake that can be made by both theists and atheists alike; and that it is good to see the former admitting they have made this mistake.

Paul: Chris/Martin, To my way of thinking, there is a more fundamental issue at work. That is the corrupting effect of power. I’m certain you know the famous saying. Thus whatever fine motives propel a person to enter politics, that person seems unable to avoid the call of power and its corrupting effect. The only hope is that key countries, and none so key as the USA, evolve a better, more representative, political process. Otherwise, I fear for the coming years.

Patrice: I agree with Paul 100%. I saw the call of power. Unimaginable. People just get insane. There are also filtering systems to insure they get that way (it starts right away with one week retreats in extremely posh resorts; does not matter if you are capitalist, socialist, blueist, reddist, ecologist, independentist, etc.).

Chris: Agreed. It has been clear time and time again throughout history. Well, so much is obvious, but WHAT TO DO about it?

A) We must end the practice of having career politicians: you serve a maximum of TEN years, at the end of which you go.

B) Inherited wealth allowing the building up of immensely powerful family dynasties over generations must be ended. It is simply untenable. The rich-poor gap is getting obscene everywhere, and money is of course power. My “Abolish inheritance” idea will be wildly unpopular because we are naturally acquisitive and “greedy” and of course would hit those with most to lose who also therefore have the most power.

Patrice:  With all due respect, Chris and Martin sound rather naïve… Huge wealth and power is where it’s at. And it attracts to politics first, foremost, and soon uniquely, those it attracts most, namely the basest sort.

Chris:

A) All a question of balance: SOME ambition is essential; it is when there is too much that it is dangerous.

B) I would have maximum terms for political service. plus:

C) Nobody should be allowed to be a public representative until they have fulfilled certain conditions, for example (but to be debated): worked in the private sector; some experience of life in a factory; nobody under 30; high achievement in some industrial, commercial, academic or social field, and so on

Ed Milliband grew up in a Marxist family, went to a posh school and then straight to university from where he went straight into politics as an “advisor”, thence to become a Minister and now leader of the opposition and possible OM.

THAT is not the proper background for a national leader, but the House of Commons is full of such people. The % of MPs from “working-class” backgrounds is going down and down and down. In the USA, Congress is over-represented by the rich, famous and/or connected. Where are the mailmen, bus drivers and burger-servers? “You need more intelligent Congresspeople than that.”

Sorry, I can’t take that argument from a country that elected Dan Quayle, George Bush and Sara Palin!!!!!

Patrice: Right. Glad to see every body agrees. It’s even worse than that. “Representative” politics is intrinsically demonic, as it vests great power in some individuals. That, per se is not just a crime, but absolutely corrupting.

Representative politics has got to be eliminated. Switzerland has eliminated it at the legislative level. Why can’t all other countries of the West do the same? Because the present plutocracy rules through the representatives, esp. in the USA?  After we have done the legislative, the executive could be handled along Roman Republican lines and Athenian lines. Roman Consuls, for example, had full power only for one month at a time. In Athens enormous quora (say, 8% of the potential electorate) had to be found, before any decision.

Martin:Excellent synopsis, Patrice. All of the things you mention would be made possible by a return to localism and/or bioregionalism, which may well come to pass by default (i.e. as a result of those in power now being in denial about what is happening to our planet).

Now the reason that I offered up this lengthy transcript of the conversation was that it clearly showed to me that bright, well-educated people agree that there is much wrong with many, if not most, countries that offer a representative democratic form of Government.  Bright, well-educated people are also not afraid to offer answers.  Patrice went on to write a most engaging post over at his place under the title of Representative Politics Is Dictatorship.  It opens:

Representative Dictatorship Is Not Democracy

I know a young lady who was elected for the first time in California. She is sent to a posh resort for a week to learn the basics of her new job, being a “Democratic” politician. Everything is wrong with this picture (not just the mansion she lives in and her million dollar family income, while claiming to be a leftie). Everything is wrong, but it’s typical: all elected representatives in the USA are treated very well, and get to meet who, it dawns on them after a while, can insure for them, and their families, much nicer lives. (The New York Times, to its discredit, just discovered this PACS trick in 2014.)

A gigantic manipulation industry has developed, with its own strategists. Barack Obama seemed to have come out of nowhere, but, even before he started to score big, he was viewed as the anointed one, by the highest powers in “Democratic” circles: Axelrod,  a professional manipulator who had just led Kerry’s campaign, was sent to Obama, just a modest Senator. Obama then gave a keynote speech at the Kerry convention, etc.  When he campaigned, Wall Street money started to flow, more than towards any other candidate, by orders of magnitude, etc. No wonder Obama has found so hard to bite the hand that fed him.

Let me draw this all together.  Possibly in a manner that will cause readers to sigh and say the old fella is losing the plot!

Because what I am about to say strikes me as so obvious, so massively demonstrated day-in, day-out by the planet’s sentient, warm-blooded creatures (even man can do it!).

It is this.

We have lost sight of the fact that animals offer an endless set of examples of living in the present and offering unconditional love to those creatures, humans included, that do not threaten them.  These are very difficult times for us and all the creatures on this planet.  Unconditional love for the planet we live on and for all those that do not threaten us is the only way forward!

Let me close with three photographs that provide all the evidence that we need to embrace love and tenderness for everything in our lives.

Sweeny on back of settee, Cleo loving Jean.
Sweeny on back of settee, Cleo loving Jean.

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Dhalia's unconditional love for Jean.
Dhalia’s unconditional love for Jean.

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Neighbours Bill and Dordie under the influence of Cleo's unconditional love.
Neighbours Bill and Dordie under the influence of Cleo’s unconditional love.

 

My case rests!

The long heist!

Suddenly, it all makes sense!

“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” –Paulo Freire

Dear neighbours, Dordie and Bill, lent us a documentary video to watch on Sunday night.  It was called “HEIST: Who Stole the American Dream?”

As the film’s website explains:

HEIST: Who Stole the American Dream? is stunning audiences across the globe as it traces the worldwide economic collapse to a 1971 secret memo entitled Attack on American Free Enterprise System. Written over 40 years ago by the future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, at the behest of the US Chamber of Commerce, the 6-page memo, a free-market utopian treatise, called for a money fueled big business makeover of government through corporate control of the media, academia, the pulpit, arts and sciences and destruction of organized labor and consumer protection groups.

But Powell’s real “end game” was business control of law and politics. HEIST’s step by step detail exposes the systemic implementation of Powell’s memo by BOTH U.S. political parties culminating in the deregulation of industry, outsourcing of jobs and regressive taxation. All of which led us to the global financial crisis of 2008 and the continued dismantling of the American middle class. Today, politics is the playground of the rich and powerful, with no thought given to the hopes and dreams of ordinary Americans. No other film goes as deeply as HEIST in explaining the greatest wealth transfer of our time. Moving beyond the white noise of today’s polarizing media, HEIST provides viewers with a clear, concise and fact- based explanation of how we got into this mess, and what we need to do to restore our representative democracy.

It’s an incredibly interesting film, but more of that later.  For me, what was stunningly enlightening was at last understanding the powerful forces at work since Lewis Powell published ‘the memo’ back on August 23, 1971.  Because for me over in Britain, the era of the ’70s’ and ’80s’ were incredibly fulfilling.  First, as a salesman for IBM UK – Office Products Division, from 1970 through to 1978, and then forming and managing my own company through to 1986 when I succumbed to an attractive purchase offer.  Then, when my company was sold, taking a few years off cruising a sailboat in the Mediterranean; based out of Larnaca, Cyprus.

Thus I was immune to the global money and power plays, albeit enjoying rising house prices!  Only Lady Luck protected me from the collapse of 2008 in that I had sold my Devon home in early 2007 and was renting.  Then Lady Luck arranging for me to meet Jean in Mexico, Christmas 2007 (we were born 23 miles apart in London) and subsequently moving out to Mexico with Pharaoh in September, 2008, to be with Jean and all her dogs.  Lady Luck’s magic continued in that we came to Merlin, Oregon because we were able to take advantage of a bank-owned property; moving there in October, 2012.

Of course, the scale of the downturn was obvious and there were many instances of people that I knew losing jobs or homes, or both, and generally having a very rough time.

So back to the film.  Here’s the official trailer.

Uploaded on Feb 17, 2012

Please watch the newly updated trailer for “Heist: Who Stole the American Dream?,” the new, explosive documentary from Frances Causey and Donald Goldmacher exposing the roots of the American economic crisis and the destruction of the American dream. Visit www.Heist-TheMovie.com for more information on how to see the feature film and how to Take Action in restoring democracy and economic justice in the United States.

But here’s another thing that now makes sense: The legitimate anger of so many people, especially those who have some insight into what had been taking place.  No, amend that!  What is still taking place!

Just one example of that legitimate anger, that of Patrice Ayme. Just go across and read his blog post of two days ago: American Circus.

My strong recommendation is that you take an evening off and watch the film. Here’s another preview:

Frances Causey, Co-producer & co-director-Heist & Donald Goldmacher, Co-producer & co-director-Heist join Thom Hartmann. Corporate America is the biggest Welfare reciepient in the country – but that wasn’t always the case. The makers of Heist will tell you how organized money has been able to pull off the biggest “Heist” of the American Dream!

The film also concludes by offering many ways in which individuals can take back control of their lives, reinvigorate local communities, actively show that people-power is unstoppable. As it always has been and always will be.

This post started with a quote and I’m going to close with another.

“The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.” -Mahatma Gandhi

Legitimate hope.

It’s too easy to be overwhelmed with negativity.

Many will have read yesterday’s post about the slaughter of elephants by ivory poachers and felt, as I did, a feeling of despair in the pit of one’s soul.  We seem to be living in such challenging times with so much madness about us.  It’s incredibly easy to feel as if this is some sort of ‘end of times’ period.

Today’s post tells us that there is always hope.

Let’s remind ourselves that elephants are very intelligent animals.  As I wrote last November in a post with the title of Smart Animals:

There was a fascinating article on the BBC news website a few weeks ago that went on to explain:

10 October 2013

Elephants ‘understand human gesture’

By Victoria GillScience reporter, BBC News
African elephants have demonstrated what appears to be an instinctive understanding of human gestures, according to UK scientists. In a series of tests, researcher Ann Smet, of the University of St Andrews, offered the animals a choice between two identical buckets, then pointed at the one containing a hidden treat.

From the first trial, the elephants chose the correct bucket.

The results are published in the journal Current Biology.

(The two video clips on the BBC website are really worth watching.)

A story published in the Daily Mail just a few days ago underlines the intelligence of elephants.

This adorable baby elephant had to be rescued by its mother’s huge trunk after it got stuck in the mud while taking a bath.

The youngster was enjoying a quiet dip in the water but became stranded when it struggled to pull itself out of the lake.

He had to be lifted to safety by its mother and her trusty trunk, which acted as a crane as she carried the three-month-old calf out of the water.

Stuck in the mud: The baby elephant slipped while taking a dip and was unable to haul himself out of the lake.
Stuck in the mud: The baby elephant slipped while taking a dip and was unable to haul himself out of the lake.

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A mother's touch: Fortunately the calf's mother was able to scoop him up in her trunk and haul him to safety.
A mother’s touch: Fortunately the calf’s mother was able to scoop him up in her trunk and haul him to safety.

The rest of the story may be read here.

Also what needs to be highlighted are the organisations that are actively working on behalf of the elephants.

The Independent Newspaper have their own elephant campaign.

Elephant Crisis

In 2011, more African elephants were killed than any other year in history. The figures for 2012 and 2013 are not yet known, but are likely to be even higher. At current rates, in twelve years, there will be none left.

It is a familiar cause, but it has never been more urgent. Poaching has turned industrial. Armed militia fly in helicopters over jungle clearings, machine gunning down entire herds. Their tusks are then sold to fund war and terrorism throughout the continent and the wider world. Ivory is still illegal, but as China booms, it is more popular than ever.

This campaign will raise money to support rangers on the ground to protect Kenya’s elephants from armed poachers, together with Space for Giants’ longer term work to create new wildlife sanctuaries where elephants will be safe, forever. More can be found about the charity at Space for Giants

The article above includes two videos.  A shorter one that can be viewed on the paper’s campaign website. Then there is a longer, five-minute, video also on YouTube and included below.

Offering a donation to help is only a click away.

Then there is the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust helping animals in Africa. And, finally, the campaign over at Bloody Ivory where one can sign a petition and donate towards stopping elephant poaching.

Thus, like so many aspects of life, never give up trying to help those less fortunate.

Without hope there is nothing.

Legitimate anger.

What a greedy, selfish race of people we can be at times!

I’m writing about the subject of elephants.  Or, to put it more precisely and distastefully, the murder of elephants. For the ivory in their tusks.

The post was prompted by a recent item over on Chris Snuggs’ blog Nemo Insula Est.  Chris and I have known each other for quite a few years now; since the time that he was Head of Studies at the French college, ISUGA, in Quimper, France and where I attended as a visiting teacher running a class on Sales & Marketing.

Chris has allowed me to republish the piece in full.  Please read today’s post and then come back tomorrow to see in what ways we can all help.

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The Human Shame in Northern Kenya

03JAN

One of my NYRs was to stop reading bad news, but that lasted about 6 hours ….. there is of course so much of it, and so much that is utterly depressing. One of the first of 2014 was an article in “The Independent”:

Elephant Appeal: Few are willing to say just how bad the poaching crisis is – the elephant population may easily fall into terminal decline

Tragic, to the extreme!
Tragic, to the extreme!

You can get all the details from the article – which is pretty harrowing, with surviving elephants described as being “stricken with grief” as they cluster round their slaughtered brethren – but basically, elephants in the Tsavo East National Park in Northern Kenya are under threat of extinction from poachers from Somalia. This provoked a number of reactions on my part:

DEMAND

  • The price of ivory depends on the demand and supply. The former is very strong and apparently rising, especially in China. For extraordinarily moronic and selfish reasons, ivory is considered artistic and – for example – tiger and rhinoceros parts medicinal and/or possessing aphrodysiac properties.
  • Can China really do NOTHING to stop this cultural abomination? People in the west for the most part stopped acquiring ivory years ago.
  • If China – and other Asia nations – cannot or will not do anything, should the west not apply more pressure? Same applies of course to China’s support of North Korea. YES, sanctions are painful, but nothing NON-painful is likely to work.

THE POACHERS

  • They are execrable, of course …… and yet, many may be extremely poor, and indeed ignorant. There is no excuse in the strictest sense, but it may to some extent be understandable if they see a chance to make several years’ normal income in a single day. This is no different from City bankers, or indeed the Enron directors and many others: greed is sadly rampant on our planet.
  • But  the poachers are not only ignorant and destitute farmers: terrorists are now apparently turning to the ivory trade, too.
  • There are insufficient funds to patrol the parks properly. Kenya is just one more corrupt African state where politicians earn a fortune while basic needs and services are severely underfunded.

MORALITY

I always wonder what if anything goes through the minds of those who spend these obscene sums on frippery and personal self-glorification. Do they ever think that their money could do immense good elsewhere? Would WE be just the same in their shoes?

Is there any solution to this greed?

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Chris wrote his post motivated by the article in The Independent UK newspaper.  But that newspaper was not alone in promulgating the despicable killings of these smart and magnificent creatures.  Here’s a story that was in the UK Daily Telegraph newspaper a year ago.

Horror as entire family of elephants slaughtered for ivory

Armed wildlife rangers on Tuesday night fanned out across eastern Kenya in pursuit of ivory poachers who killed an entire family of 12 elephants in the country’s worst single such slaughter since the 1980s.

By , Nairobi

5:26PM GMT 08 Jan 2013

Eleven adults and one infant calf died in a “targeted and efficient” attack highlighting the growing professionalism of poachers bankrolled by international criminals supplying soaring demand for ivory in the Far East.

Six of the animals lay in one heap, their tusks hacked out with machetes.

None of the family group managed to flee further than 300 yards before they were gunned down and their ivory removed.

The calf, less than a year old, is believed to have been crushed by its dying mother as she fell to the ground.

“It is unimaginable, a heinous, heinous crime,” said Paul Udoto, spokesman for the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS).

“We have not seen such an incident in recent memory, it’s the worst single loss that we have on record, and our records go back almost 30 years.

“These were professional killers. The attack was targeted and efficient.”

The poachers, armed with automatic rifles, had already fled but there were hopes last night that a massive search involving foot patrols, a dozen vehicles and three aircraft could still find them.

“Every possible resource is being deployed to track down these criminals,” Mr Udoto said. “They will feel the full force of the law.”

But the area where the elephants were killed, in the north of Kenya’s largest wildlife reserve, Tsavo East National Park, is sparsely populated, has few roads, and lies close to Kenya’s border with Somalia.

Privately, conservationists said they feared the poachers and their haul of 22 tusks, worth an estimated GBP175,000 on the Asian market, would already have escaped.

The attack was the latest in a surge of elephant deaths that has seen the number of the animals killed for their ivory in Kenya increase sevenfold in five years, from fewer than 50 in 2007 to 360 in 2012, according to KWS figures.

The increase has led many wildlife experts to declare the current situation a crisis worse even than the mass slaughter of Africa’s elephants in the 1970s and 1980s, which led to a global ivory trade ban in 1989.

I don’t have permission to republish the article so please go here and read the full piece and view a couple of harrowing photographs.

Then come back tomorrow and explore how you and I can do something to help. Please.

Footnotes.

Where we are today?

On New Year’s Day I published the first part of a film called Awakening the Dreamer: Changing the Dream.  Then yesterday came the second part.  I found it a remarkable film.  Because, while the first part reminded the viewer of the list, the long list, of things that are wrong with these present times, the second part highlighted the many currents of positive changes that are taking place here and now.

Without hope there is nothing.
Without hope there is nothing.

The film is available to watch on Top Documentary Films and here is the introduction offered in that place.

Of all the innumerable beliefs and hypotheses that make up our contemporary industrial perspective on life there is one that is dominant and very frequent. That’s the assumption that we are disconnected, from everyone and everything. This belief configures basically all our ideas and actions. There’s a crucial fallacy that we are separate. But, if there is only one, then whatever I do to you I’m actually doing it to myself, my family, and my children.

Spiritual attitude has long instructed that partition is actually an illusion. However, in the past, the narrative that’s been exchanged in the modern world, whether consciously or unconsciously, has been that the world functions like a huge machine made of separate parts like a big clock. For the past four centuries, the scientific established practice has been trying to take the clock apart, and figure out how it functions, so we can use it for our own ambitions.

This rigid aspect meant that instead of realizing the relation between things, we were analyzing and taking apart those very same things. So, what developed was kind of disintegrated view of the natural world. And we became entranced with the ability that came out of this technology, and we lost our relations to each other; we lost our connection to the enigma of the cosmos.

Although the modern worldview is superior on Earth, it’s valuable to identify that it’s not the only worldview. Traditional, native cultures are not so concentrated on “advancement”, rather they’re focused on their health and persistence of the community, and they see the interdependence of all things. They try to recognize that we’re related to everything… to the animals, fish, plants, trees, birds, and even to the microorganisms. Indigenous people of the world have a particularly important role to play at this moment in history. We need them to come forward and explain how they see things.

The film was produced by the Pachama Alliance, an organisation I hadn’t come across before.  Their website is here and on the About page one learns:

Purpose

The Pachamama Alliance, empowered by our partnership with indigenous people, is dedicated to bringing forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, socially just human presence on this planet.   Our unique contribution is to generate, and engage people everywhere in, transformational conversations and experiences consistent with this purpose. We weave together indigenous and modern worldviews such that human beings are in touch with their dignity and are ennobled by the magnificence, mystery and opportunity of what is possible for humanity at this time.   We are here to inspire and galvanize the human family to generate a critical mass of conscious commitment to a thriving, just and sustainable way of life on Earth. This is a commitment to transforming human systems and structures that separate us, and to transforming our relationships with ourselves, with one another, and with the natural world.

If you have read this post so far, then you will enjoy this video. More than enjoy it; you will find it inspiring and liberating.

Another organisation mentioned in the film was Bioneers, also not previously known to me.  Their website is here. The organisation describes itself, in part:

Collective Heritage Institute – Bioneers is a non-profit New Mexico corporation founded in 1990 by Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons. The overarching mission of Bioneers is the advancement of holistic education pertaining to global social, cultural and environmental issues. Bioneers identifies progressive yet nature-honoring solutions to rising challenges of instability, inequality, and unsustainable growth and disseminates this knowledge via independent media, events, and community action networks.

There is much on these two websites to offer hope.

Approaching the New Year!

Part One of reflections on where we are today.

Depending on just where in the world you are, the New Year of 2014 is anything from a few to twenty-four hours away.  How that year turns out will, to a very great extent, depend on millions and millions of behaviours.  In other words, the behavioural choices each of us makes. Because, as millions of us already understand, our world on this, our only, Planet is facing changes potentially beyond our imagination.  Caring for our Planet and all of life upon it is meaningless without those behavioural choices being the right ones for our Planet.

A couple of days ago, I read the following on Facebook.  It seemed an appropriate tale for the start of 2014.

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Now what?
Now what?

One day a farmer’s donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided the animal was old and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn’t worth it to retrieve the donkey.

He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone’s amazement he quieted down.

A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up.

As the farmer’s neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!

MORAL :

Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

  1. Free your heart from hatred – Forgive.
  2. Free your mind from worries – Most never happens.
  3. Live simply and appreciate what you have.
  4. Give more.
  5. Expect less from people but more from yourself.

You have two choices … smile and close this page, or pass this along to someone else to share the lesson.

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Part Two of these reflections is tomorrow.

A very Happy New Year to you.

The trials of Steve Marsh

This is worthy of support.

Some seven days ago, there was an item on Permaculture News about Steve Marsh’s fight with Monsanto.  Here is that article in full.  I strongly recommend watching the longer video at the end of the post.  It’s an incredibly important issue for all lovers of healthy food.

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Help This Farmer Stop Monsanto’s GM Canola

Posted December 20, 2013 by  & filed under GMOs.

You might not have heard of Steve Marsh yet but this man could lose everything to protect your right to eat GM-free food.

Who is Steve Marsh?

Steve Marsh is an Australian farmer who lost his organic certification when Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) canola blew onto his farm from a neighbouring property in 2010. Since then, Steve lost most of his income and has been struggling to get his organic certification back.

Monsanto has a no liability agreement with GM farmers that prevent them from being sued. The only avenue Steve had to protect his livelihood was to take his neighbour to court. It is due to start on the 10th February 2014 in the Western Australian Supreme Court and is scheduled to run for three weeks.

Donate Now to Support Steve!

A landmark case for a GM-free future

This is the world’s first case of an organic farmer using the courts to recover loss and damages from a GM farmer. This case has been described as a landmark case to determine who should take responsibility in case of GM contamination. If Steve wins it will set a precedent to guide the application of common law to GM contamination and will be of interest to lawmakers worldwide.

We don’t want to be part of the global GM experiment underway with barely tested, unlabeled and uncontrolled GM foods infiltrating our food supplies. When people like Steve stand up for their rights in spite of what he may lose, it gives us a chance to stand alongside him.

Take action!

Steve’s neighbour is well supported and well funded by a pro-GM organization and we are helping to raise funds and awareness for Steve’s case.

Have a look at the short video above explaining his story and share it with friends, family and work colleagues. Please make a donation to support this landmark case and protect the future of GM-free food.

Donate Now to Support Steve!

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Jean and I have made a donation.  We hope you can find your way to supporting this campaign.

This is the longer version of that video above.

Animal rights.

This cougar was looking for love.

I forget how I came across this editorial in the Chicago Tribune but it was published a month ago, to the day.  What is more to the point is that the editorial was inspiring and I vowed to republish it.  With the absence of any formal permission to republish the editorial I thought it best to leave it for a few weeks.  When you read it you will realise just why it needed to be shared with you.

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Editorial: The cougar killed in Illinois was looking for love

ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCESThis cougar was shot last week by a state conservation officer in Whiteside County. The animal needn’t really have been killed.
ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES.
This cougar was shot last week by a state conservation officer in Whiteside County. The animal needn’t really have been killed.

He was lean, athletic and had traveled hundreds of miles, most likely from the Black Hills of southwestern South Dakota. He had attacked no one as he passed hundreds of towns and many more farms, each of them a lethal threat to his mission. Yet for lack of a better wildlife management plan in Illinois, the young cougar couldn’t get past a conservation officer armed with a state-issued rifle.

The necropsy says the cougar killed last week as he hid near Morrison, 130 miles west of Chicago, died of gunfire. In truth he died of official neglect: Even though more cougars and possibly wolves likely will be visiting Illinois, state lawmakers and the Department of Natural Resources haven’t forged policies that could allow the tranquilization, capture and survival of animals whose ancestors blissfully roamed the Midwest long before humans intruded on their turf.

Given his hunting skills, the young male could have homesteaded anywhere in the Upper Midwest and dined on the bountiful deer population for the rest of his life. Instead, his four huge paws carried out the imperative that drove him: With larger, older males driving him away from the females on their home ranges, this cougar came looking for love.

A farmer called authorities to report a large cat running from a cornfield toward his farmstead and, sure enough, a responding conservation officer found the cat under a corncrib, probably hiding until darkness would allow it to flee.

We won’t second-guess the officer, who consulted with law enforcement and wildlife personnel before killing the cougar. That said, this was an outcome that didn’t have to be. A magnificent creature might well be headed back to South Dakota if Illinois had learned lessons after Chicago police shot and killed a cornered cougar in the Roscoe Village neighborhood five years ago.

What all of us, legislators included, have to understand is that the return of feline or canine predators to their traditional realms doesn’t mean the animals want to hurt anyone. Even as this episode unfolded, millions of National Geographic readers were receiving the magazine’s December issue, with an 18-page spread: “Ghost Cats … Cougars are quietly reclaiming lost ground.” The relevant passage: “Cougars have attacked humans on about 145 occasions in the U.S. and Canada since 1890. Just over 20 of those assaults — an average of one every six years — proved fatal.”

Yet in this case, with an animal that had threatened no one while bypassing thousands of Midwesterners, a DNR spokesman rationalized that, “Public safety is what we’ll make the decision on every time.” The rest of DNR’s explanation is similarly lame: The department otherwise would have had to find someone to capture and move the animal. This officer thought the situation too unsafe to call a veterinarian to tranquilize the cat. Conservation officers don’t carry tranquilizer guns. That thinking led the DNR to the specious excuse that if the officer had shot the cougar with the wrong dosage of tranquilizer, the animal could have been harmed or killed accidentally. That excuse evokes the February 1968 explanation from a U.S. major to an Associated Press correspondent about the Vietnamese provincial city of Ben Tre: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

We were struck by sensible comments last week from Bruce Patterson, curator of mammals at Chicago’s Field Museum, who wonders why this animal had to be shot when it evidently was hiding during daylight and hadn’t threatened anyone: “It’s possible to manage wildlife while still keeping it around.”

When we editorialize about humans slaying wild predators, some readers say our concern should be — as it constantly is — directed instead to the needless killings of young people, and not toward one lost, probably frightened animal.

Fair enough, although it’s possible to think about both. Just as we know there will be more homicides, we know that more big predators likely are coming to Illinois. So we’ll look back to what we expressed after the 2008 killing of the cougar in Roscoe Village: We hope Illinois comes away from last week’s episode with more than one dead cougar and a communal sadness. Illinois should develop a reliable protocol that errs on the side of trying to preserve the life of the lost animal — not of making the ad hoc decision to kill it and then resolving the ambiguities in favor of that decision.

That’s what happened here. A logical first step now: Give cougars protection under the Illinois Wildlife Code; they lack that protection now only because there is no known breeding population in this state. But with trail cameras capturing photos of one or more cougars in Jo Daviess, Morgan, Pike and Calhoun counties last fall, the animals evidently are re-establishing themselves in a state where they haven’t been known to live since 1870. In recent years, wolves have dipped into Jo Daviess, the state’s northwest corner. A black bear even visited there, evidently for a few days.

Lawmakers, DNR officials, you can do better. So can the rest of us, first by using sites such as cougarnet.org to offset our visceral fear with scientific knowledge.

Wild animals roam this state. Always have and, we hope, always will. As we urged here in 2008: The same Illinois that was unprepared for the last cougar had better get ready for the next. He’s probably en route.

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As you contemplate your New Year resolutions for 2014 please resolve to protect our animals.