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The Painful Cost of Breed Standards: Mutilation Vs. Cosmetics
by Walter Brasch
Legislatures in Pennsylvania and Illinois are considering bills that would reduce or eliminate what animal welfare advocates call mutilations, and what breeders and American Kennel Club (AKC) call “breed standards.” Because dogs are considered by state laws to be property, individual owners may currently cut and shape dogs’ ears (cropping) or amputate part or all of their tails (docking), often without a proper sterile environment or anesthesia.
Ear cropping and tail docking, according to the AKC, are “acceptable practices integral to defining and preserving breed standards, enhancing good health, and preventing injuries.” Of 158 pure-bred breeds recognized by the AKC, about 50 kennel clubs have “breed standards” that require or strongly suggest tail docking or ear cropping. The AKC claims standards are established by individual clubs—all of which deduct points for dogs that don’t conform to their “standards”—and that the AKC has no restrictions to register or to show a dog. The Fédération Cynologique Internationale (FCI), which includes national kennel clubs of 84 nations, forbids cropping and docking of rottweilers and other breeds. The AKC is not a member of the FCI.
For whom the bell tolls
Arun Shrivastava CMC
1. Introduction
The joint stock East India Company [EIC] ruled India from about 1770 to 1857, about 87 years. During those nine decades the eight millennia old farming tradition was uprooted and subjected to colonial rapacity. A food secure India suffered persistent famines, hunger, starvation and deaths on a scale never before witnessed in its documented history. The people revolted in 1857, the British Government took over, but under the evil rulers hunger and starvation continued right up until 1947. One firm took over India because it came to control its farmers and farm lands and it controlled what India’s farmers produced.
Treatment of Imprisoned Muslims at Terre Haute's Communications Management Unit CMU
Stephen Lendman
In February 2007, it was learned that Washington had a secret new facility for so-called "high-security risk" Muslim and Middle Eastern prisoners in violation of federal law that prohibits severely limiting or cutting them off entirely from other inmates as well as outside contacts and communications. Segregating prisoners by race, national origin, or language violates the Supreme Court's February 2005 decision in Johnson v. California that affirmed 14th Amendment protection against racial discrimination. Specifically, the Court:
Durban II: Politicizing Racism
Ramzy Baroud
Many countries are set to participate in the Conference against Racism, scheduled to be held in Geneva, April 20-25. But the highly touted international meeting is already marred with disagreement after Israel, the United States and other countries decided not to participate. Although the abstention of four or more countries is immaterial to the proceedings, the US decision in particular was meant to render the conference ‘controversial’, at best.
The US government’s provoking stance is not new, but a repetition of another fiasco which took place in Durban, South Africa in 2001.
NYCLU Announces Findings about Statewide Impact of Rockefeller Drug Laws
from Jennifer Carnig
The New York Civil Liberties released a detailed report illustrating the disastrous effects the Rockefeller Drug Laws have inflicted on New York State. The report analyzes the drug laws’ economic and social impact on the entire state, and its largest cities: Albany, Buffalo, New York City, Rochester and Syracuse.
The report – The Rockefeller Drug Laws: Unjust, Irrational, Ineffective – presents overwhelming evidence that New York’s mandatory minimum drug-sentencing scheme has failed to improve public safety or deter drug use. It documents the grave harm the drug laws cause to low-income communities of color, and it calls on lawmakers to adopt a public health approach to addressing substance abuse.
Boehner Demagogues the Failing Economy
Len Hart
The GOP's most influential mouthpiece --John Boehner --has said that now is the time that the US government 'tighten' its belt' to show the people that the government 'gets it'. Boehner doesn't get it! And neither does his stupid party! The US economy is contracting and may slide off into another 'Great Depression'. Nevertheless, Boehner would rather push us off the cliff rather than allow a Democratic President a chance to undo eight years of GOP incompetence and criminality.
What’s insane about Boehner’s remark? He’s talking about the current economic crisis as if it were a harvest failure — as if we faced a shortage of goods, so that the more you consume the less is left for me. In reality — even most conservatives understand this, when they think about it — we’re in a world desperately short of demand. If you consume more, that’s GOOD for me, because it helps create jobs and raise incomes. It’s in my personal disinterest to have you tighten your belt — and that’s just as true if you’re “the government” as if you’re my neighbor.
Monetary and Fiscal Failure, Fraud, and Fear of What's Next
Stephen Lendman
Even the powerful are worried with the IMF on February 7 saying advanced economies are in "depression (and) the worst cannot be ruled out." Forecasting a 2010 recovery is "very uncertain" at this time as further financial turmoil may disrupt it regardless of policies adopted, and trouble is outpacing resources to alleviate it.
On March 10, its Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn forecast "below zero" 2009 global growth - what he termed "the worst performance in most of our lifetimes."
Saving Jackpot Capitalism: The Real Reason Why the Banks Are Being Bailed Out
Martha Rose Crow, M.S.
Regular return on investments is for the little people. The greedy elite and elite investor groups must have more. They must save their private, un- or under regulated way of making secret kings’ ransoms.
Shadow Financial Entities
They stay out of the light as much as they can because they don’t want the world to know how Big and Powerful they really are and they don’t want the public to know how ruthless they are to make high returns on investments for their elite masters.
Mr. Obama: Don’t let Israel destroy America
Khalid Amayreh
Two inseparable characters have identified Israeli behavior ever since the very inception of its existence in occupied Palestine: Criminality and mendacity.
As to the first, we all know that Israel itself is and has always been a crime against humanity. Israel’s very creation couldn’t have been effected had it not been for the numerous atrocities and terror committed by the legions of Zionism for the express purpose of driving the majority of the Palestinian population into exile.
Indeed, as the conscientious Israeli historian Illan Pappe asserts in his book, the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, the 1948-war was started by the Zionists in order to terrorize the Palestinians into leaving their homeland.
Challenging the right on national health care
Mary Shaw
Whenever I advocate for universal single-payer health care for all Americans, the right-wingers flood my inbox with all the predictable myths.
First, they tell me that health care is not a right. They say it's each citizen's responsibility to provide it for his or her family. I guess this myth gives them another excuse to look down on the poor who cannot afford the luxury of medical insurance. It makes them feel superior.
In response to that, I point out that health care is indeed a basic human right, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), to which the United States is a signatory.
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