John McCain on Arizona's New Law

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Arizona's New "Reform"

Would you call the subject of immigration "reformed" if the idea has already been used before? I would not. It's more of a backwards step. Arizona's new law incorporates methods used by oppressive governments when they needed to round up a certain ethnic group for safety purposes. A prime example is the obligation of Jews during World War 2 to wear arm bands identifying their religion. Now immigrants must carry identification of their citizenship on them at all times while being subject to a law that no whites have to comply with. Of course, we aren't sticking our immigrants in ovens and rooms of poison gas, but the requirement is the same: if you can not prove that you are who you say you are, you will be taken into our custody.
So now the question is, is this really a reform? Or just citizens making an angry statement at the expense of darker skin and the constitutionality of our country.

Community Service: Going Beyond People

Part I. The Issue

Did you know that every day shelters around the country are putting down cats and dogs because no one will adopt them and space is very limited? The first ones to go are the hostile animals who have been mistreated by abuse and/or neglect. There are only a few reasons to abuse an animal, the most common being displacement of anger. This means that when a person gets upset at either himself or another person he takes out the blame—and unfortunately, the violence—on the one thing that can not fight back: their animal. Next in line on this list of reasons is entertainment. Some twisted minds actually get pleasure from seeing two dogs rip each other apart fighting—to the point of death. Of course, occurrences like these are illegal and fall under the category of animal abuse, but that doesn’t stop them. Ask yourself this: if your neighbor held dog fights in his or her basement late at night, do you think you would know about it? In most cases, the answer is no. So how does the police find these criminals? The truth is, I have no idea. Maybe if I spoke with an expert…but however the investigation goes, I think the police should, somehow, step up their game. Animal cruelty has been around for centuries, and it isn’t going away any time soon. Perhaps one of the main reasons is that the public is not as involved as they should be. Granted, there are many issues to be concerned about in the modern world, but because the issue of animal cruelty is not staring most citizens in the face, it primarily goes unnoticed.

Unfortunately, the government is in the same position as the public. There is virtually no attention focused on the subject by people with a political stature. In fact, the laws related to the welfare of animals only include domestic pets, allowing the widespread mistreatment of livestock to continue. The only real media attention received by defenseless animals comes from celebrities like Brigitte Bardot, who played a big part in the production of synthetic fur, and films like Fast Food Nation, who’s main focus was taking action against the treatment of animals in the food industry. However, there are organizations like PETA and the Humane Society that, although they can be extreme, help the situation by focusing on animal abuse and torture within industries such as fast food and cosmetics. One such extreme case would be a situation concerning the ALF (animal liberation front). This small group of extremist vegans was determined to end animal testing, but made the mistake of fighting fire with fire and went to different universities bombing their testing centers and even sent a bomb by mail to one of the instructors at UC Santa Cruz. Of course, there are radicals on every issue, but those fighting for animal equality tend to get more bad press. Fortunately, there are organizations like the Humane Society focus their attention on building animal shelters and taking care of stray, abused, and neglected animals.

My main concern with the well being of animals, besides the obvious reason that they don’t deserve to be in pain, is the moral center of humanity as a whole. I know not everyone is a “bunny terrorist”, but if this is the way that we treat defenseless beings who are prone to pain, how will we treat other people, for example, prisoners of war?

Part II. Government Response

As I mentioned above, there is not a whole lot that the people in Washington are doing to help the situation at hand. However, a few of the states have taken some form of action to help the situation. Last year in California, there was a proposition on the ballot that changed the required size of chicken cages to give hens more room to lay eggs and to live. This is but a minor victory in the land of livestock where the door to a chicken’s cage only has to be open 15 minutes each day for it to be considered free-range.

While the federal government is taking any change regarding animal welfare very slowly, more and more animals are being born to suffer continuously as future food. Now, I’m not trying to turn the entire population vegetarian, but I do believe that reducing consumption of meat would in turn decrease the amount of animal suffering in the merciless food industry.

To put things into perspective, one of the main fast food chains in the country, Kentucky Fried Chicken, has been maliciously mistreating their livestock (mainly chickens) for as long as they have been in business. Their chickens are delivered to them in cages (often broken or dented) on the back of a truck that then tips the entire contents of itself backwards and all the cages come crashing down to the ground, injuring many of the chickens. The next step in the process is to bloat the chickens so full of food that their legs literally cripple beneath them, leaving them immobile. As these chickens come closer to the end of their miserable lives, they are shackled upside down to be beheaded and cooked. Faulty machinery causes some of the chickens to not be properly beheaded, keeping them alive during the cooking process. This gruesome occurrence is called a “red birds.” The issue here is not only the fact that flagrant abuse is occurring, but the fact that in order to save some cash here and there on new, working machinery, executives at KFC are letting almost one third of their livestock die before it gets to their consumers. In addition to this, multiple protests are constantly going on, but nothing can be done as this is not technically classified as animal abuse since it pertains to chickens.

The thing that baffles me is that the federal government has consistently not done anything to help situations like these concerning living beings that do not have the ability to stand up for themselves. Now if we as a nation are not willing to help those who are most defenseless, will we be willing to treat those who have a voice similarly? This brings up the concept of morality and where we are willing to draw the line on issues like these.

If you look at some horrible instances such as what happened at the prison Abu Ghraib, you see how our own American soldiers—our “heroes”—treated those who were defenseless. Yes, those servicemen were perhaps just a few bad apples, but the way they treated Iraqi men was not too much better than the way that KFC treats their chickens. It’s all on the same playing field. Yet the government intervened as soon as they got word of the atrocities that went on in the Iraqi prison, but they do not treat the defenseless in our own country with the same respect. You are probably now thinking that this is irrelevant because a chicken and a human being are nowhere near equal. Yet, I believe that we were blessed with large brains and a conscience to be able realize that purposely inflicting pain is wrong; be it on another human or a rabbit. If only animals could talk…there would be a huge increase in lawsuits.

Part III. Help wanted

Throughout the course of this year, I chose to help these poor creatures in any way I could. As you can see by my signed letter of service, I have spent time working in an art gallery in order to raise money to help cats through the Kitty Foundation. In addition to this, I spent some time working in the Kitty Corner at a shelter in Pleasant Hill to help socialize cats so they could be adopted. I have a cat at home, and so this work was familiar to me, and I felt a connection to the animals I was working with. Unfortunately it took me an extended amount of time to be able to help an organization such as the shelter in Pleasant Hill. After waiting a month to be able to attend an orientation at the Humane Society establishment in Berkeley, I was locked out of the building and unable to offer my help. Another long process took place for my acceptance to work in Pleasant Hill. Because of this, I haven’t been able to do as much hands-on work as I would have liked, but I did raise a good amount of money that I know will go to good use. Of course, one person can not do too much to help the situation by just volunteering or donating, but there are many steps the government could take to help resolve the issue at hand.

Funding is critical for shelters to be able to provide more paying jobs to those willing to help. Without proper capital, shelters can not supply an adequate amount of food for all the animals that they don’t even have enough space for. In addition to the shortage of food and space, shelters have to perform medical procedures on certain animals and cuts in funding can result in the death of an animal that would have only needed a small amount of medical attention. Donations can help tremendously for needs such as these, but ultimately what animal shelters need is a steady flow of money which could be provided by government funding. These are only a few of the things that would help in animal shelters, but there are even more steps to protect animals in other areas.

The food industry is in dire need of better regulation and inspection to ensure that livestock is being treated humanely. In the fast food industry, cows are packed into such confined spaces that they are constantly standing knee-deep in feces. Not only is this both disgusting and very uncomfortable, but it poses health issues for the cows as well. Now that’s just one example of a wide array of things that are wrong in the food manufacturing, but there are many other problems dealing mainly with pigs and chickens. As I have mentioned above, a proposition on California’s 2009 ballot passed a law that establishes a new regulation for the dimension of a chicken’s cage. I believe this is a good step forward; however, we still have a long ways to go in order to get everything up to a level at which we will not be appalled to see how our meat is prepared.

Most noticeable in dog fighting, in-home abuse and neglect has become an unfortunate circumstance in the issue of animal welfare. I know that the government can not solve all of the predicaments that animals face, but the police department should have a sector of investigation dedicated to finding flagrant animal abusers just as they have workers dedicated to finding online predators. Of course this would take lots of extra funding which we can definitely not afford with today’s economy, but ideally, this would be large improvement on exposing criminals.

Lastly, animal testing needs immediate reform. Most animals are discarded or dead after being used for testing—technically classified as animal abuse, only we don’t use that term when there is an off chance of making a scientific or cosmetic break-through. I understand testing in order to find cures for cancer, but to genetically modify a mouse to hold so much excess skin that it can not see just to test an anti-wrinkle cream does not make sense to me. There are four hundred alternatives to testing on animals and even so, no more than twenty five percent of the data gathered is compatible with human results. So why do we continue to use living, breathing, feeling creatures that will never benefit as test subjects? It simply does not make any sense, financially as well as morally.

There are so many areas of animal welfare that could be improved with a few simple laws—yet, as we’ve seen with the health care reform, bills do not have the best survival rate in Washington D.C. It is rather distressing that a nation as great as ours is not available to help those most in need, but I suppose we can just wait for climate change to kill us all.

The Unfortunate Truth

Just because certain animals are cuter doesn't mean the other ones should get the shaft.

If you can't read what it says:
Deer are ruining your garden.
I can't stand hurting them.
You don't mind bashing squirrels, smashing slugs and trapping groundhogs.
But deer are sooo adorable!
Oh, great.
Survival of the cutest.

Testing at a Utah University

I know that a lot of the things that PETA does can be argued to be very one-sided, but things like this are just not okay.

Humane Society Wrong?

Mike Rowe from the Discovery Channel's hit TV show, Dirty Jobs, gives an insight to the castration of sheep.

How Big is Animal Cruelty, Really?

There are numerous forms of animal cruelty in the world. The most talked about are in-home abuse/neglect (like dog fighting), and animal testing. Not many people stop to think about all those animals that are harmed in the food industry(that link has some eye-opening information about slaughter).

Have you ever stopped to think about all those traditional bull-fights in Spain? Those bulls have a prolonged, agonizing death--and worst of all, it's public.

When was the last time you gave so much as a fleeting thought to all the animals that are purposefully raised for their skins? Yes, we have synthetic fur nowadays, but there are companies who claim their fur is fake while using the real deal because consumers of the fake stuff want something that looks and feels real. In China, even cats and dogs are abused for fur.

Did you ever go to the circus and wonder how they get the animals to jump through fiery hoops and balance on balls? Through a process that includes painful punishments if they do not perform as expected as well as throughout the training process.

What about the killer whales that are forced to live in confined spaces at different theme parks? They become so distressed that they actually attack their trainers--those who are closest to them.

There are animals that are abused and go without any attention every day. Think about it.

Just because I like cartoons...

Funny?

Bad Break-up Turns to Animal Abuse

Anthony Spindle, 21, broke up with his girlfriend several months ago. I know that break-ups can be hard, but this is the way you definitely do NOT react:
Spindle left his ex-girlfriend voice messages. On these messages, he would speak about how she did not love him anymore and he can be heard severely abusing her puppy. Two people who lived with Spindle at the time witnessed the abuse and told authorities

"[Spindle] grabbed the puppy by the legs, swung him around and threw him against the wall. He then beat the dog with a skateboard and tennis racket."

Spindle's ex-girlfriend explains that he took the dog because she was not able to keep it anymore and admits that the relationship was abusive at times, although she did not know what exactly initiated the attack, but Temma Martin, with the Utah Animal Adoption Center, was not surprised to hear this at all.

"It's the last piece of control the abuser has over that victim. It's been shown that this often happens when a victim gets out of a situation, then the pet takes the brunt of the violence."

In 2007, Spindle was charged with assault and later with domestic violence. Both of these cases were dismissed, but this latest one will not go unpunished.

Pet Abuse/Neglect in Massachusetts

On Thursday, March 11 of this year, two ten-week-old pitbull puppies were found with serious health conditions in a ditch by the side of the road in East Longmeadow, MA. Unfortunately, police have no leads as to who could have abandoned the two dogs and the case goes unsolved.

Things like this really get me upset. How could someone just abandon such an adorable, sweet little thing? At least give it to a shelter so that perhaps a child might adopt it and grow to love the dog as his or her pet. What happened to the old saying of dogs being man's best friend? Clearly the feelings are not reciprocated.