Well, the Boston bombers are finally caught or killed and the streets are safe to jog on once again. Now, the only questions that remain are, what kind of people use gunpowder and ball bearings to kill their fellow sentient beings, and why? Well, I ask those questions every day—at least during waterfowl hunting season.
Maliciously spraying lead into a flock of migratory birds may not seem like terrorism to you, but to the ducks and geese on the receiving end of the shrapnel, it certainly does. Don’t get me wrong and somehow think I’m in any way trying to belittle or brush off the horrendous cruelty inflicted on others by the Boston bombers. No, quite the opposite—I want to get to the root of this kind of evil and weed it out of our species, if possible.
So why do people do it? What could possibly motivate someone to bury any scrap of compassion they might have and prey on the innocent? How do they justify the act of killing so many and how can they rationalize away the cruelty they’ve inflicted?
Perhaps the answer can be found in a recent quote from filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, in this case talking about the growing menace of violence against women: “…it’s about a culture that views women as objects to be acted upon rather than fully realized human beings,”
Objectification—now, isn’t that just what we’re talking about when someone kills, bullies or otherwise victimizes another to further an agenda or satisfy their own self interests? Just as the abuser objectifies women and the bomber objectifies innocent bystanders, hunters view their non-human targets as objects to be acted upon, rather than as fully realized beings.
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And speaking of objectifying birds, here’s Huffington Post travel blogger William D. Chalmers’ idea of a joke in the face of a potential global pandemic: an article entitled, “Avoiding Avian Flu While Traveling in China,” wherein he lists the “…top 10 things to avoid in Shanghai as a traveler during the recent avian flu outbreak:
1. No wet markets where chickens are “processed” for dinner. They do things different here in China, no plastic-wrapped boneless chicken breasts in aisle three… they eye-ball their dinner.
2. No squab on a stick as pigeons may be a migratory transmitter. Oh, sorry, you didn’t know squab was pigeon! The things you learn traveling.
3. No less-than-over-hard runny eggs for breakfast. And push away that soft boiled egg too.
4. Avoid alternative modes of popular transportation used by farmers, such as chicken buses!
5. Attracting and posing for pictures with flocks of pigeons in local parks and gardens is probably not a good use of your time.
6. Although well-cooked poultry is fine, you might want to rethink that kung pao chicken or chicken satay. And chicken soup may not be the cure for what ails you.
7. Look on the bright side: eating out in Shanghai is cheaper as KFC is offering super special promotions.
8. While visiting China and jet-lagged up at 3 a.m., maybe you should change the channel when Alfred Hitchcock’s Birds comes on.
9. Try to forget the menacing virus; odds are you’ll probably succumb to the smog or a traffic accident.
10. Three words: designer surgical masks! They are all the rage among fashionistas here.”
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Okay, well I’ve got another point to add to his list:
11. Forget the KFC or other over-cooked poultry products—try the tofu; that way you won’t bring the bird flu back home with you to spread among the rest of us…
Exposing the Big Game 
Thanks for having the courage (once again!) to point out that the emperor has no clothes and getting all exercised about some minor terrorist incident directed against Americans while remaining stoically indifferent when it is employed against other sentient beings, is just plain hypocritical. I remember an ARA being publicly pilloried a decade or so ago for pointing out that the number of Americans cruelly killed on 9-11 was fewer than the number of non-human animals cruelly slaughtered every 10 seconds, 24×7, in the USA for food. The only real difference being whether something bad is being done to “them” or to “US.” It’s hard for me to feel much sympathy for the American people, perpetually wallowing in a maudlin stew of ignorance, self-pity and arrogance, when they show no compassion for anything else.
Geoff, thank you for having the courage to say this: “It’s hard for me to feel much sympathy for the American people, perpetually wallowing in a maudlin stew of ignorance, self-pity and arrogance, when they show no compassion for anything else.” as this is exactly how I feel. I live just outside of Boston and work in the city. I was horrified watching the people of Boston celebrate the “capture” of this so-called terrorist as I do not share their happiness. I don’t understand why Americans think they are so superior. Yesterday, I spoke with my Italian father and he was disgusted over the way everyone was behaving — he said it was over dramatized and that we are too comfortable. Everyday innocent people are dying in other countries and I don’t see Bostonians all up an arms about that.
The day after the bombing, I was crossing the street (in the city) to fetch a cup of coffee with a fellow co-worker. We were half way across the street when the light turned green. The first car started wailing on his horn and yelled at me out his car window. I screamed back, “Oh did you forget people died and were injured yesterday due to the bombing?! That’s right asshole hurry up and rush to that next red light.” How quickly Bostonians forget that the day before there was a tragedy.
Geoff, All countries are the same and we gave them the power. People only bitch when it comes in there back door and cost them money on something they don’t want .
Ok, well, while we were all playing ‘where’s Waldo ‘and bleeding little brother, Nestlè came out with a statement about water not being a human right! That it should be considered a food and therefore a commodity. Think hard on this one, folks! It’s not a bad joke… I wish it were. This is to be the next fight for survival on this planet, for all but the elites.
Jim, you say we objectify animals and birds… well, Nestlè just objectified us, all lumped in with the rest of the creatures.
Nestlè is one of the biggest holders of water rights on the planet and seeking, always more than they need. Greed. But this time it is not about money. Well, it is on the surface…but it is the one thing we and the creatures all need to survive. I’ve written about ‘Rights Based Law’ before, both for humans and creatures alike. If we don’t get ourselves educated, and very soon, and enact permanent rights to a clean and natural eco-system for humans and all creatures, it will all be owned by the elite international corporations. The creatures, possibly us too, will be a commodity too. It will be a ‘corporate gold rush’. I couldn’t make this stuff up. There are the really sick minds. Corporate greed that only has one name, different languages, from old stories “WINDEGO”, or from Idle No More, “greedy guts”, same idea.
Corporate Kingdoms of the Elites. Kind of similar, if you think back to stories of the potato famine. Ask yourself why did a whole country of farmers nearly starve to death because of a monoculture potato rot? It was an island in an ocean full of fish, land full of creatures. Answer: Every wild creature and fish was the property of the Royal family. Catching a fish and eating it was theft of the King’s property, punishable by death. Royalty did not starve. Nor were they troubled in their sleep by the dying off of the poor. They were ‘different’, even refering to the Irish as a race, less ‘human’ so less deserving. More a commodity of cheap labor.
The greed guts have taken too much already! Pay attention folks, rather than legally ensuring a clean, healthy, diverse eco-system, they have other plans in the works. And if they are talking about making water a commodity…one can only wonder what they don’t say in public! Corporate CEO’s and sociopaths profile the same, they just use their skill set differently…or do they?
This is the most frightening thing I have read to date!
The most frightening thing for me is that because they are a multinational corporate entity with “personhood” rights, tons of money and an army of lawyers, the chances of getting a lawsuit heard in international court because they sucked your whole town’s water supply dry, is pretty much nil. There are even people fighting them in their own country!
Our lawyer was actually frightened for his life!
On the bright side, you can go to CELDF.org and go to Democracy School via the internet. I know you are smart enough to get how rights based leglislation works. You just have to wrap your mind around it and believe in it! As long as corporations are afraid to lose “personhood” and all that goes with it, I believe they won’t fight giving it to the creatures and their environment? This could save the wolves? You really have to think outside the box and understand the concept, but if you struggle with some part of it, you can just pick up the phone and call celdf.org, the phone number is on their webpage. I will put more links up later, must get work done now. Thanks for your reply and concern!
Thanks for the info.
Melody, you need to listen to him again he said that water is a basic right .
PS. If people did not buy bottle water a lot less bottles be polluting the earth. I don’t get it anyway, if you have a decent system in your home it takes care of a lot of the problems and when you buy your gourmet coffees,teas and buy your food where do you think they get that from, what do you think they do walk out the back door and get it from the Swiss Alps. They get it from the regular system .
wake up people,stop being so fancy and there would not be so many CEOs!
Nancy, I live in Shapleigh, Maine. I have been into fighting these water miners since my friends took a walk in the Vernon Walker forest on a nature trail and found 20 or so test wells belonging to Nestlè. No one in town was told but the selectmen. They and Nestle began telling the residents how great it would be for the town and how ecologically responsible the company was. So we started POWWR ( Protect Our Water and Wildlife Resorces). With the help of CELDF, we were able to draft rights based ordinance, and hold a special town meeting and get this protection voted in permanently. This was the first rights based legislation voted into law in the State of Maine’s history. Several towns have followed us in protecting our water from all water miners. There is a book coming out about this by Walter Bailey very soon.
As far as getting the quote slightly wrong, sorry. But it doesn’t matter how that snake CEO puts his words, the meaning of them does. As far as he is concerned, the water may be a basic right, certainly it is in our town but not a basic right of Nestlè to harvest as a commodity, it is by law the right of the residents, human and all creatures in the environment, as it should be. As for the snake CEO, in my experience dealing with Nestlè, if their lips are moving, it is probably a lie if they want your water. If they already have it, they won’t talk to you and don’t give a rat’s ass about your environment. In Maine, Nestlè owns Poland Spring brand. It all comes from deep underground. They pay the towns almost nothing for it. .006 cents a gallon in one town where someone brave, risked disclosing the contracted amount. And they don’t stop pumping just because your town is having a major drought, wells are going dry and fire ponds are empty. Ask the citizens of Fryeburg, Maine.
I will assume you were writing about others, not us here in Shapleigh. We were offered money for our water. We valued our environment more than money.
We do not buy yuppie toys, fancy cars nor do we have any fast food joints or chain stores. There isn’t even an ATM machine in the whole town! There is a beautiful town beach, a general store, a post office and Shapleigh Corner Store, which has homemade food and lots of it and a couple can dine well for under $20! It’s a ‘dry’ town so there are no bars but several churches. There are more deer than people and moose and bears, too. And just so you know, I don’t have a car and I live in a place so remote, even the post office won’t come up on this mountain. I am retired and don’t leave the farm unless I run out of dog food.
Hi Melody,
I just read this in my reader! http://misebogland.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/nestle-dont-think-waters-a-human-right-because-its-all-theirs-the-daily-shame/
Thanks, I read that link. Here is the tricky thing their army of lawyers has come up with… ok, they say it’s a human right to water, but they want all the water rights to the underground water, the pristine glacial water. That’s not what they consider your human right. You would only end up with the ‘right’ to buy it back from them in a bottle. That is what they consider a commodity. Anything they pay for, even if it is one tenth of a penny per gal. becomes their product. They don’t care if you have to drink polluted industrial waste-water. That is what they consider your human right to do. This is going on in the third world in epic and tragic ways. There are others as well as Nestle, but mainly three big water mining international companies. In some places, people do not even have the right to collect rainwater from their roof in a water barrel. We scratch out heads and wonder how this happens, how a multinational company can own the rain but this is all too real for small banana republics and even places like India. There are movies you can watch that explain it and books that explain it better.
What a pack of soul-less assholes!!!! I cannot believe the people are forbidden to collect rain water.
What can I do to get involved, I do not buy bottled water btw, but my company buys it by the truck-load.
Reblogged this on Glenn62’s Blog.
Compassion started to die in the 80’s when computers to VCR’s came into the home. It gave everyone there very own toy to self fulfillmen . Madonna came out with Material Girl when they made a comment about her outfits she said; I don’t care what anybody thinks just as long as a notice me . That’s what this country is all about being noticed, being part of a click the foodies it’s all about food experience talking about what restaurants and did you try this gourmet cupcake now gourmet cupcakes are dying off people are bored with paying $15 for a cupcake. It can’t be just coffee; it has to be gourmet coffee. People can’t have children without broadcasting to everbody about every little thing they do. I can’t sit at a red light behind a car without knowing how many children they have and what sport they play, if they’re a honor student they have to have a bumper sticker. The ones that crack me up are the ones that say my dog is smarter than your honor student . I give foodies about a year or two, than that will be boring and they will move on, sooner if one go into the woods think they can do it and brings up there gourmet lunch. I’m sure the drive-thru hamburger bunch will get pissed off taking over their territory and bounce a few bullets off of a tree behind them and scare them out the woods, and of course the group like Niles and Frasier Crane in the woods as soon as they see a bug go screaming to their BMW’s. We live next door to a guy who has to tell you every little thing he dose . My husband and I just about knock each other over when we see him to hide and run in the other direction because he is always talking about himself. A generation of me,myself and I, filled with fantasy trying anyway they can to be the center of attention, the big shot ! Compassion needs a soul and you can’t buy that ,so unless you can come up with a gourmet pill to slip into there fancy meals and a dart gun to shoot the slob hunter in the ass short of a miracle we’re stuck with them.
Jim, I posted a link on my facebook page that is an actual video of Nestlè’s CEO explaining why he thinks all water should belong to private corporations. This is one freaky dude with an army of lawyers that hide behind international law. You have to see it to believe it.
Thanks Melody, I’ll check it out.
Melody, good for you ,you get to live in a small town and can keep track of what’s going on,glad to hear the town didn’t sell . But the truth of the matter is, if people didn’t buy bottled water they wouldn’t be in your town or any other town. as far as all the stuff I was talking about the entire country . Maybe you should start traveling and get to see what’s really on in the entire country.
PS. Your town sounds picture perfect to bad the rest of the country is not like yours probably wouldn’t have so damn many problems.
Nancy, it is a great place to live. I worked hard all my life so I could live in a place like this. Still, we have some problems here with things like drunk driving and D.V. cases and poaching. It’s mostly the same bunch of people who think rules/laws are for other people. Very few people who are seriously mentally ill such as psychopaths. I think cabin fever has a lot to do with alcoholism as well as the elderly self-medicating for pain because of the extreme weather? No place is perfect but this is the kind of place where you can have a long conversation with someone who dialed your number by accident. 🙂
Nancy, I can’t travel, I rescue wolves/wolfdogs and sometimes just plain dogs. I fill a gap that saves animals from getting the needle. I rescue animals from terminal elderly people. I don’t even have a car. The animals come first here. My husband has a 93 Dodge van but he would prefer to be in the woods or gardening. Gas is too expensive to go visiting. I go out when I need dog food or neuropathy meds or need to see the neurologist. Also, it is too painful to travel far. I love it here, I am up on the side of a mountain with 68 acres of land and can see all the way to the Moose Mts in NH. I live 2 hours north of Boston.
I am quite aware of all the plastic bottles, birds dying from stomachs full of plastic and the islands of plastic in the ocean. It’s repulsive, all of it. People need to be educated. But not by putting them down. Ask questions of them, take a few minutes to educate them and you may make a friend who will continue learning, then teach others? That’s how a paradigm shift happens. Teach by example. Anger is not healthy or productive..
I understand why people in the Boston area are upset, confused and angry. People asked what would make those two guy’s do something so evil. Anger. Lack of loving, caring parents, feeling abandoned in a strange land. Being outcasts. These are the kids that get targeted for suicide bombing by terrorist organizations., the kids with low self-esteem, the lost souls. They have dead eyes that were all cried out years ago, the pain turned to hate. They slip through the cracks everywhere. We can only try to understand why and stop future attacks by valuing all children. Children learn what they live.
Melody’, I didn’t mean good for you in a smartass way I meant good for you stop the bastards .I belong to a group that rescues hundreds of dogs and cats we get up at two, three, four o’clock in the morning and travel to different shelters load them up in vans and trucks and bring them back and foster them. We have fundraisers to get money we have a veterinarian clinic on wheels that park in parking lots on Saturdays and Sundays do free shots spay and neutering and we pay the veterinarians and they give their time for almost nothing but it never stops . Don’t get me started on the wolfdogs fad now we’re into the pit bulls and they’re almost impossible to find a home for ,their bread too fast they have health problems and a bad reputation. People are educated they just don’t give a damn. Everything is throw away whether it be a bottle of water or pets when they get bored they dump them.
My friend Michele rescues pitbulls, Nancy, she lives just over the Mass border in NH. I will introduce you online to her, she just started a web page listing dogs on ‘death row’ that need immediate rescue.
My animals come from dying elderly people. I saw a need to let them die in peace knowing their dog or wolfdog has a good forever home and will live their lives out in the company of their own kind but with human love and attention. I don’t have a problem with wolfdogs as long as the human knows what the hell they are doing, and isn’t on an ego trip or mean to animals and gets their animals spayed or neutered. All my females are spayed. I only have two males so they live in separate enclosures during the day and are crated at night, inside my house. I am in serious need of chainlink fence enclosure panels, if you know anyone who can donate them. Thanks! Melody
I just wanted to point out that by buying up all the rights to the best, clean water, it is the water miner’s intention that you have to buy your drinking water from them, that is the end game. Don’t be confused by the yuppies with their bottled water. That is just the market here. The yuppies are a minor problem. The real problem is much, much more dark and evil.