More bullshit from th ASPCA

[Vinny Rafarino]

I recently read this article in the paper and searched for the web version to post here. It appears that the nation of Zimbabwe has become so poor (75 percent unemployment rate with a 7000 percent inflation rate) that the citizens have begun slaughtering pets (mostly dogs) to feed their families.

This is not that shocking considering that many nations eat a variety of animals on a regular basis including what the west deems to be "beyond good taste"; no pun intended.

I found that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is now in a huff about it.

It seems these animal "right" whackos feel that feeding rover is more important than feeding people; they would rather see kids die of starvation than see pooches in the frying pan.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before that cook Alec Baldwin and Chrissy from Three's Company team up and film a commercial about the slaughtering of pets in Zimbabwe to feed a starving nation and how it's "morally wrong".

We usually have no short supply of animal "right" nutters here so I'm interested to see how such lunacy is justified. It's gotten to the point that the SCPA in Zimbabwe does nto have enough cash to actually put down the animals in their "care" and destroy them so they are now petitioning silly causes like PETA to give them some dough so the people won't get their hands on the animals and eat them.

They care more about the corpses of animals that have been euthanised more than they do the actual people!

What do you think?

[spartan]

I think these animal rights people are a bunch of pricks! I fucking hate those animal right nutjobs especially the militant ones! What are they about? Are they trying to force everyone to become fucking skinny little vegans or something? Animals are inferior to humans and as humans it is our duty to have an efficient food chain. These animal rights wackos would rather have already poor people in Zimbabwe starve then kill an "innocent" animal. They are fucking primitives! I hope these type of people are gone for good when the revolution is over and we inaugurate our new society.

[counterblast]

I haven't seen the ads personally, so I can only comment on what I'm seeing here...

It is morally wrong. It's morally wrong that these people are put into such a terrible economic state, that they've got to eat their companion animals just to survive. And if you think that just allowing this to continue --rather than finding sustainable solutions to Zimbabwe's hunger issues-- is the solution you're obviously as distracted by your anti-AR agenda as SPCA is with its pro-AR agenda.

With that being said, (assuming this post is factual) the SPCA needs to stop demonizing people in the third world, who are merely trying to survive. A person trapped on a desert island has the right to surivive by any means necessary, and a person facing oppression by the capitalist first world certainly shouldn't be denied the same right.

[pusher robot]

a person facing oppression by the capitalist first world certainly shouldn't be denied the same right.

The idea that Zimbabwe's woes are the fault of capitalists is ludicrous. Zimbabwe had quite a successful and productive agricultural sector not so long ago, operated for profit, employing many people, and producing enough food that Zimbabwe was a net food exporter. Only after a decidedly un-capitalist period of forcibly nationalizing and redistributing the farms without compensation has Zimbabwe been unable to even feed its own population.

[Dr Mindbender]

I thought that Zimbabwe's problems were a legacy of when it was under the guise of Rhodesia during British rule- an imperialist capitalist entity.

[pusher robot]

Originally posted by Ulster [email protected] 21, 2007 09:09 pm
I thought that Zimbabwe's problems were a legacy of when it was under the guise of Rhodesia during British rule- an imperialist capitalist entity.
Not, at least, with regards to food production. It was considered the breadbasket of Africa until around 2000 when Mugabe started nationalizing the farms.

[synthesis]

Mugabe started going crazy in the early 80's around the time of Gukurahundi, there have been famines there for awhile now.

[Demogorgon]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 21, 2007 09:06 pm
The idea that Zimbabwe's woes are the fault of capitalists is ludicrous. Zimbabwe had quite a successful and productive agricultural sector not so long ago, operated for profit, employing many people, and producing enough food that Zimbabwe was a net food exporter. Only after a decidedly un-capitalist period of forcibly nationalizing and redistributing the farms without compensation has Zimbabwe been unable to even feed its own population.
Confession time, although not bornt here myself I am the son of these Rhodesian settlers that get all the attention, well on one side of my family anyway. I consider colonialism a bit of a sore point given this rather dubious family background, but anyway the point is I have followed Zimbabwe wit great interest and I would like to disabuse you of a few notions.

There is a popualr myth that things were fine and dandy before the farms were "nationalised". That is nonsense. Zimbabwe and Rhodesia before it were certainly able to export a great deal of food, but theyw ere never so good at feeding their own people. One of the wonders of the capitalist system was that a lot of the produce found higher prices in South Africa (and Britain for out of season produce) than it did in Zimbabwe, hence there were often food shortages there anyway.

Secondly I should point out the appalling racism and the consequences that has for the farms. You are a great fan of property rights, but before you start crying about those poor white farmers loosing their property, consider the problem that much of this land was pinched by the white settlers during living memory. Some of this land was in fact stolen as recently as the seventies. Some of the previous owners are still alive.

Anyway prior to two thousand we had the situation where white farmers were turning a large profit and exporting lots of food, but not being so good at feeding their own population and of course being on stolen farm land in the first place.

Now this is where Mugabe's faults come in. He should have either redistributed the land or else nationalised it. He did neither. Instead he sent in his heavies to take the land for themselves as part of a political power struggle with the MDC. That is thr source of the current crisis, but dont imagine things were the rosy picture that is sometimes painted of before then.

[Dr Mindbender]

Originally posted by pusher robot+September 21, 2007 09:58 pm--> (pusher robot @ September 21, 2007 09:58 pm)
Ulster [email protected] 21, 2007 09:09 pm
I thought that Zimbabwe's problems were a legacy of when it was under the guise of Rhodesia during British rule- an imperialist capitalist entity.
Not, at least, with regards to food production. It was considered the breadbasket of Africa until around 2000 when Mugabe started nationalizing the farms. [/b]
Thats not to say that nationalisation per se is a bad thing, the reason for the Zimbabwes problems are mismanagement on the part of the Mugabe regime.

[Eleftherios]

Originally posted by Vinny [email protected] 21, 2007 04:49 pm
I recently read this article in the paper and searched for the web version to post here. It appears that the nation of Zimbabwe has become so poor (75 percent unemployment rate with a 7000 percent inflation rate) that the citizens have begun slaughtering pets (mostly dogs) to feed their families.

This is not that shocking considering that many nations eat a variety of animals on a regular basis including what the west deems to be "beyond good taste"; no pun intended.

I found that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is now in a huff about it.

It seems these animal "right" whackos feel that feeding rover is more important than feeding people; they would rather see kids die of starvation than see pooches in the frying pan.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before that cook Alec Baldwin and Chrissy from Three's Company team up and film a commercial about the slaughtering of pets in Zimbabwe to feed a starving nation and how it's "morally wrong".

We usually have no short supply of animal "right" nutters here so I'm interested to see how such lunacy is justified. It's gotten to the point that the SCPA in Zimbabwe does nto have enough cash to actually put down the animals in their "care" and destroy them so they are now petitioning silly causes like PETA to give them some dough so the people won't get their hands on the animals and eat them.

They care more about the corpses of animals that have been euthanised more than they do the actual people!

What do you think?
That's really fucked up, but not that surprising. It is a well known fact that those animal rights people are a bunch of freaks who sometimes value the life of a creature that probably does not even know what death is over the life of a human being that possesses consciousness. In fact, the very idea of animal rights is laughable. Sure, those who abuse animals for fun should be punished, but they are still inferior to humans and human needs are far more important than the needs of other animals.

[Jazzratt]

Hardly surprising considering these sick bastards are cut from the same cloth as those that hold the "rights" of laboratory rats over the rights of people suffering debilitating illness.

On capitalism: Ah yes, I remember now we're seeing how fucking fabulous the private sector is in Africa, all those people who literally cannot move for all the food that the lovely invisible hand has placed in their laps...

[pusher robot]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25, 2007 12:05 pm
Hardly surprising considering these sick bastards are cut from the same cloth as those that hold the "rights" of laboratory rats over the rights of people suffering debilitating illness.

On capitalism: Ah yes, I remember now we're seeing how fucking fabulous the private sector is in Africa, all those people who literally cannot move for all the food that the lovely invisible hand has placed in their laps...
Africa is possibly the least capitalist place on Earth, and that is the cause of their suffering. One point we may agree on, I do blame the colonial powers.

It is a tragic legacy of colonialism that the overall opposition to the policy of colonialism has tended to include an opposition to the practices of the colonizers. Thus the very real advancements in finance, law, and government (including capitalist ideology) made by colonial incursions have been rejected along with the policy of colonization itself. Just because colonization was bad and wrong doesn't mean that the advancements of the colonizers were bad and wrong, but in their understandable zeal for political autonomy, the self-selected leaders of Africa have rejected all too much.

This did not happen of course in the U.S., probably because at the time there was no real philosophical alternative.

[Vinny Rafarino]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21, 2007 01:49 pm

It is morally wrong. It's morally wrong that these people are put into such a terrible economic state, that they've got to eat their companion animals just to survive. And if you think that just allowing this to continue --rather than finding sustainable solutions to Zimbabwe's hunger issues-- is the solution you're obviously as distracted by your anti-AR agenda as SPCA is with its pro-AR agenda.


There is no possible way that anything we do now or in the near future will feed these people.

Unless you yourself are going to break your spandex out of the box in the attic and fly to Africa with a few billion bucks to spread around, the only way these people are going to survive is to eat their "companion animals".

"Companion animals" . :lol:


With that being said, (assuming this post is factual)

If you're so concerned about the post being "factual" why don't you just Google it?

[synthesis]

Originally posted by pusher [email protected] 25, 2007 08:36 am

Africa is possibly the least capitalist place on Earth, and that is the cause of their suffering.
Are you insane? The vast majority of Africa is the exact result of what would happen if libertarian capitalism were allowed to prosper any place where the people do not expect their government to serve them. The only function of the government in many places in Africa is to facilitate corporate projects and to accept foreign money for public projects, which goes straight into their pockets along with their cut of the corporate enterprises.

Corruption in government is pretty much the major source of Africa's problems today. The money that would build roads, clean drinking water and sewer systems builds palaces instead. And many studies have shown that a great deal of Africans have learned to accepted this as a way of life.

And no, a corrupt government is certainly not a tenet of Ayn Rand or people like her but the libertarian capitalist system clearly facilitates these sorts of people rising to power, at least in many circumstances, which would be very obvious to you if you were more educated about the way Africa works.

It's similar to how the ideology of state-oriented socialism will always lead to shitty people like Stalin - it's not written down in theory but this is how it plays out in real life, cus cus.

[pusher robot]

Originally posted by DyerMaker+September 25, 2007 07:38 pm--> (DyerMaker @ September 25, 2007 07:38 pm)
pusher [email protected] 25, 2007 08:36 am

Africa is possibly the least capitalist place on Earth, and that is the cause of their suffering.
Are you insane? The vast majority of Africa is the exact result of what would happen if libertarian capitalism were allowed to prosper any place where the people do not expect their government to serve them. The only function of the government in many places in Africa is to facilitate corporate projects and to accept foreign money for public projects, which goes straight into their pockets along with their cut of the corporate enterprises.

Corruption in government is pretty much the major source of Africa's problems today. The money that would build roads, clean drinking water and sewer systems builds palaces instead. And many studies have shown that a great deal of Africans have learned to accepted this as a way of life.

And no, a corrupt government is certainly not a tenet of Ayn Rand or people like her but the libertarian capitalist system clearly facilitates these sorts of people rising to power, at least in many circumstances, which would be very obvious to you if you were more educated about the way Africa works.

It's similar to how the ideology of state-oriented socialism will always lead to shitty people like Stalin - it's not written down in theory but this is how it plays out in real life, cus cus. [/b]
There is a difference between "capitalism" and "anarchy" - or even "anarcho-capitalism" - as socio-economic systems.

The two most fundamentally important element of capitalism, private property and free markets, cannot practically exist outside a legal and political framework that protects individual rights. That's the key development of a capitalist system over a state of nature.

To the degree that such a system is lacking, a society is actually anti-capitalist, or at best, failed capitalists. As I previously explained, I blame colonial powers for causing Africans to reject capitalism, the predominant ideology of their colonial occupiers.

[synthesis]

To the degree that such a system is lacking, a society is actually anti-capitalist, or at best, failed capitalists. As I previously explained, I blame colonial powers for causing Africans to reject capitalism, the predominant ideology of their colonial occupiers.

Well, first off, capitalism as you stated it was certainly not the ideology of the colonizers, by any means. These governments tended to be a mixture of fascism, old-school mercantilism and white-oriented "national socialism" - not literally Nazism but pretty much as close as you can get.

So to say that Africa's problems come from rejecting colonial ideology is almost completely backwards; the segment of the modern African ruling class that causes all these problems actually seeks to emulate their behavior as closely as possible.

[Eleftherios]

I think this story is also worth checking out:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070927/ap_on_...imp_challenge_6 (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070927/ap_on_fe_st/chimp_challenge_6)

[Forward Union]

i'm really hungry.

[ichneumon]

Animals are inferior to humans and as humans it is our duty to have an efficient food chain.

i'm assuming then that you are a vegetarian, as meat production is inherently less efficient...