Today is Armed Forces Day, though surely it’s ‘Unarmed Forces’ Day… soldiers back from war, who ought be celebrated also… treated with decency to mend up psychic wounds they carry… ones who display injuries just as much in need of healing as a shattered arm, loss of hearing, a leg no longer all there. Same symptomatology in many Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder injuries: shattered; loss of; no longer there in the way one once was…

Borrowing an image from welding, PTSD can also be seen this way: One or more strong welds have come undone; not from weakness in the welds or in the metal, but from the angles the strong welds have been bent to… the tonnage of stress-weight placed on the those welds–- far more bow and weight than this ’strongest of metals known to humankind’ can sustain.

The word ’stress’ in this diagnosis, is not what we feel when driving in gridlocked traffic, nor when competing for a job, nor when we have ten kidlettes discharging candy in the back seat. PTSD stress means, among other things, the psyche has been injured in a sustained way by horrific experiences …so that deeply instinctive elements of psyche are overwhelmed or disabled ….as though they never existed, or have become unreliable for us to put full weight on, /or exist only in an unrelieved black set of memories and griefs.

Shaun Mullen, veteran, writes at Kiko’s House:

PTSD SCANDAL GETS WORSE
I went pretty deep the other day in “Exposed: A Silent Epidemic Is Killing Our Iraq & Afghan War Vets” I urge you to read both this article and accompanying think piece on the anatomy of PTSD if you care about the kind of homecoming the emotionally wounded veterans are receiving.
If the sense of anger and frustration I feel didn’t come through, then I wasn’t doing my job. But then neither is Dr. Norma Perez, physician in charge of PTSD program at a medical facility for veterans who told her staff to refrain from diagnosing the disorder because too many veterans were seeking government disability payments for the condition.

From a shocking article in the Washington Post:
” ‘Given we are having more and more compensation seeking veterans, I’d like to suggest you refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out,’ Norma Perez wrote in a March 20, 2008 e-mail to mental-health specialists and social workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Olin E. Teague Veterans’ Center in Temple, Tex. Instead, she recommended they ‘consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder.’

“VA staff members ‘really don’t . . . have time to do the extensive testing that should be done to determine PTSD,’ Perez wrote.”

In case you’re wondering, adjustment disorder is a less severe reaction to stress than PTSD. Adjustment disorder has a shorter duration, hence is ‘easier’ and cheaper to treat.

Might I add there is a special place in hell for doctors who violate the Hippocratic Oath to save not tortured souls, but money.

This stunning memo from Dr. Perez, seeming to aim to ‘fix’ diagnoses the way horse races are ‘fixed’ in order to keep money in ‘fixer’s’ own pocket, suggests PTSD diagnosis be ‘downgraded’ to “Adjustment Reaction.”

In my experience as a shrink these past three-plus decades, Adjustment Reaction is a diagnosis for a child suddenly changing schools and having a hard time. Adjustment Reaction is a diagnosis belonging to a person going through a garden-variety, uncontested divorce.

Adjustment Reaction is not a diagnosis for men and women who have been to war, and who suffered serious ongoing or sudden trauma. Perhaps most telling in this shell game of diagnoses, treatment for diagnosis of Adjustment Reaction is most often not covered by insurance.

This means, injured vets of this war, would be thrown down into the same trench dug for previous vets, wherein government whistles and pretends agent orange exposure, for instance, is a figment of imagination, instead of a serious incremental illness. This means vets would be encumbered to pay for much needed medical help, from their own meager funds. This means vets will be left on their own -–for life– to deal with catastrophic injuries suffered while in employ of their own government.

Can a person, any person, feign PTSD? Yes, of course. There are scammers of welfare, there are scammers for Social Security benefits, people who are actually fit but lazy. However, most are not scammers. Our soldiers didn’t just slip in an aisle of the grocery store and become disabled. They went to war, a fighting, shooting, deadly war. They managed to come home.

Not all vets with PTSD are invisible to us: those men you see wandering on the streets in their cammies after their war service, they were no scammers either. If anything, the military system A.W., after war, has scammed many of them out of righteous and timely effective treatments for their most serious war wounds long ago.

Some observers might say, Yes, but they’re drug addicts and alcoholics. I’d say, Yes, many are. Now.

Given their lack of a required and timely medical care upon return from deployments, in many ways, since these soldiers didn’t have best medicine, they’ve been primed to settle for the poorest.

Even now, after so long, were they offered good medicine, solid compassionate treatment, many street soldiers might not accept it. Daily i.v. drip of cheap anesthesia can seem enough. To their minds, others on the street often understand more and better than any cleaner, better-dressed, well-fed outsider.

Too, a most poignant feature of severe PTSD is prevalent in the men who wander: they no longer have consistent touch with a core self. They might try but then refuse help, because the spirit and soul of the soldier is in some way still on duty, back on the Mekong delta or outside of Baghdad, or still in some way, marching NPD, Night Perimeter Defense… to keep all of us and their buds safe from harm.

A fine welder does not throw broken welded metal onto the slag heap, and especially does not re-deploy it back into use, pretending OSHA made up its hazards and safety rules just for the heck of it. The rules about fatigued materials, even at the level of OSHA, are about preserving health and saving lives.

A fine welder repairs the welds that have come undone, often cleaning out most the old material and replacing it with new material that can and will hold well… there’s often a phase too, of ‘letting the metal rest’… but assuredly never again bending the strong metals under extreme pressures which are already well known to break the strongest welds.

The military arm of our government ought have no lesser standards, no less ethos.

President George Bush has made another comment from foreign soil (Egypt) that doesn’t specify who he’s criticizing but it’s again clear who he means: he says don’t blame Saudi Arabia for America’s oil problems, blame Congress (which just happens to be controlled by the opposition party):

US President George W. Bush said on Saturday that a hike in oil output by Saudi Arabia would not solve American energy problems.

“It’s not enough, it’s something but it doesn’t solve our problem,” Bush told reporters in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Bush said he was “pleased” with a Saudi decision taken on May 10 to increase its oil production by 300,000 barrels per day in response to customers, but said that he was “also realistic” about what the Americans should do.

“Our problem in America gets solved when we aggressively go for domestic exploration. Our problem in America gets solved if we expand our refining capacity, promote nuclear energy and continue our strategy for the advancing of alternative energies as well as conservation,” he said.

Fair enough. And how could he open himself to criticism for that? It’s what comes next that could cause some ripples, although not as much as earlier in the week when he used the same rhetorical technique to swipe at Democratic Senator Barack Obama from Israel:

“One interesting thing about American politics these days is those who are screaming the loudest for increased production from Saudi Arabia are the very same people who are fighting the fiercest against domestic exploration, against the development of nuclear power and against expanding refining capacity.”

Who do “those” refer to? Bush often uses this rhetorical device (which Richard Nixon used quite frequently) of saying “there are those” without naming them.

What’s notable about Bush is that he is one of the few Presidents in American history who seemingly rejects the idea of the virtue of seriously working to build genuine bipartisan consensus on solving national problems. It’s almost as if he views bipartisan consensus and problem solving as weakness. It’s all divide and rule hot-button politics.

In fact, BOTH parties are to blame for not coming together over the years and putting aside differences and hammering out a short term plan and a long term strategy. Just insisting that ANWAR must be drilled doesn’t cut it.

Deng Coy Miel, Singapore

Today the noble polar bear was listed by the US Government as a threatened species because the icy environs in which it thrives are diminishing. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said this step did not denote a policy shift to lessen ‘global warming.’ It appears to be the government’s first use of the Endangered Species Act to note the loss of animal habitat caused by dramatic man-made or naturual climate changes.

But far away from the world of argument about what or who causes what, in the world of dreams and ideas, the bear carries ancient names: La Osa, El Oso, in Spanish, and in the Latin, Ursa (female bear), and Ursus (male bear).

Throughout folktales and mythos of people who live anywhere in the world wherein also live bears, there are myriad stories about the bear as an enchanted human being…

…one who is destined to wander as a bear in survivor mode, until a challenging and magical event takes place. Sometimes, the bear is transformed back into human form again– if and when the bear is loved by a human being of great heart.

Thus sometimes bear stories are called in variation: The Old Man In the Black Fur Coat. Or white, brown, yellow or red fur coat.

There’s an idea in archetypal psychology– the study of symbols and the psychological catalysts they seem to represent in the human psyche– that some ancient stories can mimic the human condition in such a timeless way that the ancient stories are as relevant to our inner lives today… as they once were to peoples who lived thousands of years ago.

There is an old Greek story that qualifies as such, I think. This story has remained alive since time out of mind, and concerns a young woman who is transformed into the Mother of all bears… ironically — as in our own times– this ancient being was endangered, for she was driven out of her original habitat, and in the midst of being hunted to extinction…. but at the last moment she was saved and protected in a most stunning way.

The story goes like this…

Read the rest of this entry »

The word endure is from the Latin, indurare, and the Spanish, duro, meaning ‘hard’ or to ‘harden.’

But to endure, to develop endurance doesnt mean to be inert nor immovable nor brittle. Quite the contrary.

To endure means to be hardened, as in being passed through the fire… as a steel blade is passed through fire to harden it… so that thus tempered, one remains limber: bendable, but not breakable.

_________
CODA
The photo is of a tiny one-man outpost in Antarctica.

According to my contact in Yangon, what pitiful supplies are on the ground, have no distribution whatsoever to any of the thousands of villages and tributaries in Burma hit into utter devastation by the tsunami/ cyclone. The Burmese, most poorer than poor before the tsunami, are going on their 6th sunrise without clean water, food, or shelter or medicines.

Meanwhile, it is certain, while the military government gets down their fiddles, the infants and newborns and toddlers grow dehydrated. Without adequate water and food, their mothers’ breasts will have run out of milk, and the children will die from dehydration, an entire generation of young will be gone within a week.

Than Shwe: You cannot keep others from knowing about the mayhem of your country. Burma is on satellite. The floods and the people and the animals can be seen dead and floating and bloated. The living can be seen by satellite also, picking through ruins, entire villages wiped out with no survivors.

Than Shwe, delaying allowing aid workers in, makes you only look more and more unleaderly.

Than Shwe, animals survive by adapting. Animals who can learn new behavior, survive the unforeseen.

Than Shwe, animals who do as they have always done, die.

Than Shwe, open your heart, if not your mind. Be known as a ruler who took care of his people in every way possible, rather than going down in history as the leader who stood by paralyzed and allowed holy people and helpless people, his own kith and kin, to die in misery.

CODA
I hear from my contact in Yangon, that the people on the ground in Burma are begging that international aeroplanes please fly over and drop supplies.

Than Shwe, if they fly, let them fly unmolested. Add no more horror to horror. It’s within your power. Choose honorific over horrific.

Than Shwe, the new respect you would receive then, would be remarkable.

This is our deepest prayer for you Than Shwe, and for the people of Burma… the Central Buddhist Precept:

Deprive no living thing of its life.

Various news reports say there are over 200,000 dead in the cyclone and tsunami that hit Burma… now five days ago.

Other reports say over 500,000 will be dead if the thousands of bodies floating in water and lying in mud are not burnt or buried, and the injured given help, and the vulnerable given clean water.

This is after the government originally said there might be a total of 10,000 dead. Maybe not even that many, they said.

This from The Sun, U.K., by Nick Parker, Chief Foreign Correspondent at Mae Sot on the Burmese border
and James Clench

The UK has so far pledged more aid than anyone, announcing a £5million package to be channelled through the UN.

Charities Save the Children, Oxfam and the British Red Cross have also swung into action.

But most of the aid is yet to be distributed because of the secretive Burmese junta, led by ruthless General Than Shwe.

His isolationist regime is paranoid an influx of foreigners might have a political impact on a national referendum due tomorrow, set to strengthen the army’s grip still further.

Three days ago, the dictatorship’s Health Minister went on TV, in what was called a rare appearance, and he said aid was on its way to the Burmese people. Right away.

It’s not. Aid is not on its way. Five days later, world aid is not present in Burma.

General Than Shwe, dictator of Burma, has 400,000 soldiers at his behest.

And as I wrote at TMV earlier, hopefully Than Shwe would stand out of the way and allow the experienced international teams of aid workers to bring equipment and supplies, and the means to both unload it and distribute it.

It didn’t happen.

Ships from many nations are still fully loaded all over the world waiting orders to turn the wheel and steam toward Burma. Cargo planes are loaded and waiting. They are filled with medical supplies At various airports outside Burma, aid workers are sitting on their packed duffels and backpacks ready to go: parameds, post trauma specialists, doctors, engineers, health care workers, and heavy equipment, such as back hoes, trailers. All waiting.

And waiting

And waiting

Than Shwe, hugely well fed dictator of the ancient Burmese people, he who has suffered no personal loss from this disaster for he is ensconced more than 200 miles away from where the tsunami/ cyclone hit… and it is Than Shwe, who wanted to be king of everything and who wanted to control everything, it is he who has publicly failed the world soul, failed the world heart that cries out for a humane response…

Than Shwe has failed publicly and utterly by keeping aid workers out of Burma, by putting no real teeth behind his health minister’s claim that help was coming, big help was coming, right away, huge help was coming.

Than Shwe is merely keeping all aid workers on strings… without cutting the red tape.

The dictatorship’s excuse? Than Shwe and his merelings continues to parrot that they “cannot let aid workers into the country out of concern for the workers own safety.”

Than Shwe, NEWS ALERT: to aid workers, a disaster site wouldn’t be a disaster site if it weren’t unsafe.

Than Shwe’s huge lie will not hold water, not even a drop left behind by the tsunami.

We’ve seen our last First Lady of a certain kind. Genteel, always attempting to be background instead of foreground or middle ground. Laura Bush will likely be the last of a long line of smart women who stayed behind the scenes for the most part, or else led lives ‘out there’, like Eleanor Roosevelt who most of the time seemed as though she wasn’t married to the President, but rather to ideas.

We have seen the signs of the remarkable transition from genteel little lady with little to say, and certainly never anything controversial, to efforts to act as a fuller human being… for instance, First Lady Hillary Clinton. She had an idea and thought to bring it to the fore. But, she was bashed for carrying the notion that she should/could/ would dare to be involved in policy; health care. “You’re not a player, you’re just a figurehead; go put your hoop skirt back on and act right.’

Nancy Reagan was smarmed for ‘advising’ her husband; many thought she had ‘too much power’ over him and should just go back to pouring tea for be-medaled dignitaries. Mrs. Reagan’s bold interruption of Raisa Gorbachev who appeared to be hogging the camera during an interview of the Russian and US First Ladies, prompted Mrs. Reagan to intervene clearly and loudly. “I want to talk now,” said Mrs. Reagan. This breach of ‘ladylike’ protocol was hailed by many as a high-fiver for Nancy.

It used to be, and was vehemently expected by many in the electorate, that First Ladies, whether wives of Presidents or Governors, were supposed to remain like the curtains; be backdrop, to concern themselves only with ’safe, feminine’ interests (feminine as defined by softness and sweetness… forgetting that many women are also inventors, innovators and often, warriors ).

The short list below is not to trivialize, for First Ladies’ attendance on under-served populations and ideals that might never have more than a hoot and holler amongst male politicians, has been critical.
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PETA is demanding changes after Eight Belles’ death.

From Game On page:

Because of the Kentucky Derby collapse and death of filly Eight Belles, the horse racing world is about to find out what PETA’s spurs feel like.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has called for the suspension and investigation of Eight Belles jockey Gabriel Saez, and also has started an online petition to change the rules of thoroughbred racing.

Flatly ignoring PETA’s suggestions could be risky for a sport where interest has steadily waned, and which is under siege after a succession of high-profile horses dying on the track.

PETA flexed considerable muscle in the sports world last year, raising the outrage about the Michael Vick dogfighting charges that sent the Atlanta Falcons quarterback to prison.

PETA’s four demands are:

1) No racing or training for a thoroughbred until it turns 3 years old. The organization contends the animals’ legs aren’t fully developed until then.

2) No more racing on dirt tracks. The group says the synthetic surfaces now used at Keeneland in Lexington, Ky., and at California tracks are far safer and result in fewer equine breakdowns and fatalities.

3) Cap the number of times a horse races each year.

4) Ban whipping. PETA says that when jockeys flail horses with a riding crop the animals can be forced beyond their physical limits.

_______
see also A Lost Story About Why Horses Came to Earth, by Dr. E, here. Also see Shaun Mullen’s piece at Kiko’s House, “Why It’s Long Past Time To Clean Up U.S. Thoroughbred Racing” here

Barbaro. Now Eight Belles.

My father comes from a place where the old men and old women still consider horses to be gods who came to earth.

In Hungary, every tiny village had a council of elders: the old men in their szurs, long wooly white shepherd’s capes, the old women in their red boots with the black heels, the fine leather pleated and stitched with red thread all the way up to the knees… the old men who smoke pipes with drawing bows 18 inches long… the old women who if need be, could still swing up into the saddle of a stamping stallion…

These one of a kind people, these last-of-their-kind people in our family, say this about horses: “Never force a horse to run relentlessly, for a horse is made of Love and Courage on four legs …

…and the horse will literally love you so hard, it will run its heart out for you until it is dead.”

This is not just a saying. The old ones are serious. Descendents of the Huns and Swabians, the horse tribes of mountains and plains, they have their own ancient forms of knowing.

The old people have another saying, jokingly said…but not really:

–“You want to know the secret of the determination of the Hungarians? They are in all their dreams, fully human, and fully horse.”

–”You want to know the secret of the determination of the horse? They are in all their dreams, fully horse and fully god.”

In the United States this weekend, at the Kentucky Derby, a horse race of long standing… Eight Belles, a filly, was running against the boys.

Coming out of the race, she suddenly dropped her heavy body to the ground. Two broken ankles. She was ‘euthanized’ where she lay.

From a piece by Beth Harris: Louisville, Kentucky.

“Winning jockey Kent Desormeaux and Big Brown galloped by Eight Belles in her waning moments.

“This horse showed you his heart[Big Brown], and Eight Belles showed you her life for our enjoyment today,” he said. “I’m deeply sympathetic to that team for their loss.”

Big Brown, the favored horse, had won the race.

But so much was not won. So much that is not about horse races and horse owners, but about Equus, the god of the horses…

Those as ancient as the Greeks, but unrecorded by stylus, are said to have held that the god-horse, the king of the horses of heaven, arrived on earth when time was still only fog… that the godly horse arrived on earth with the silver reins made of nebula on him, and with the bit made of stars in his mouth.

He who is known by many ancient names, came in order to teach humans the beauty of the world beyond their small and squalid ways of life.

Thus, the oldest Hungarian horse people say the horse god came to earth out of

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Eschew comparing political horseraces with actual horsy-horseraces:

Not only did an inexperienced stallion named Big Brown just win the Kentucky Derby, but 2nd place went to the filly Eight Belles who collapsed immediately after the race and had to be euthanized. You may recall that Sen. Clinton supported the filly.

MSNBC

It seems that the Iraq invasion has doomed the United States to being an object of suspicion for many nations, and for some time to come.

A case in point is this article written by a member of the Brazilian lower house, the Assembly of Deputies.

After describing how the United States invaded Iraq under false pretexts and pointing out his perception that the U.S. actually invaded for the sake of the region’s oil resources, Eliene Lima, a member of parliament from a Brazilian state bordering Amazonia, writes for Brazil’s Jornal Nortao:

As we all know, this is the country with the largest reserves of drinking water in the world. And where is the water? In the Amazon! Read the rest of this entry »

“–Wherever the land is dry and hard, you could be the water …
–or you could be the blade disking the earth open;
–or you could be the acequia, the ditch that carries water from river to fields;
–or you could be the just engineer mapping dams that must be taken down, and those which would serve the venerable all, instead of only the very few;
–or you could be the battered vessel for carrying water by hand;
–or you could be the one who stores the water, protects it, blesses it or pours it;
–or you could be the tired ground that receives it;
–or you could be the scorched seed that drinks it;
–or you could be the vine green-growing overland in all your wild audacity …”

“If there is an ancient secret to caring for and mending the significant lacerations to this “Oh-my-dear-God-beautiful” earth we’ve been given, by soul’s light it might be just a tiny four-word prayer from Creator to humanity:

““Please, just start anywhere.”

”
(from “The Rainmakers: Beer Bottle Old Woman, Tin Can Old Man” by Dr.E, see here)

The Pope, this morning, in response to President Bush’s welcome at the White House sprang up from his ceremonial chair with the vitality of a young man, no ooofs or ehhhs, (the Pope is 81 years old as of today, April 16, 2008).

This morning President Bush ritually asked that the Pope keep the USA in his prayers. But the Pope in response, said with verve, that in addition he would exhort the people of the USA to be in spirit and “even more responsive/responsible to the life of their nation,” the USA.

This does not mean, “There there, nice people, just separate paper from plastic, and you’ll be doing your part.” It means to unleash convenings, meet to ask questions, to plan, to think of how to bring to bear, to implement, in millions of ways, and sustainedly.

The Pope’s heartfelt “God Bless America” at the end of his address at the White House today, held a sincerity and timbre not seen for years in the usual GodblessAmericabyrote at the end of many politicos’ speeches here in the USA.

President Bush noticed, and in one of his best traits when well aimed, which is a very sweet boyish enthusiasm, he leaned toward the Pope and said of the prelate’s speech, “…that was an awesome speech.”

The contrast between predictable official welcomes, and a rather startling vitality in the Pope’s opening volley, is becoming an increasing part of this Pope’s pronouncements publicly. Just as such was when the Pope recently began to describe for the first time… the debt of honor earth’s people have toward caring for the planet.

Recently, in L’Osservatore Romano, an interview entitled “New Forms of Social Sin,” offered Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti’s remarks about “ecological” sin, which undergirded Pope Benedict XVI’s now ongoing public expressions of concern about global Read the rest of this entry »

Tierneylab Blog at The New York Times: Are Carbon Cuts Just A Fantasy?

What if there’s no way to cut greenhouse emissions enough to make a real difference?

That’s the question raised by a commentary in Nature arguing that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been too optimistic in its projections for the technological possibilities of reducing greenhouse emissions. Their calculations are called “a bombshell” in a separate news article in Nature about the paper. My colleague Andy Revkin analyzes it at DotEarth. The commentary was written by the political scientist Roger Pielke Jr., the climatologist Tom Wigley, and the economist Christopher Green.

This is a Guest Voice post by journalism professor and author Walter Brasch who is also a syndicated newspaper columnist and radio commentator, and president of the Pennsylvania Press Club. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Moderate Voice or its writers.

Murder in an Alaskan Forest

by Walter Brasch
No one—at least no human—knows his name, or even if he had a name.

We don’t know where or when he was born. We know nothing about his life.

But we know a lot about his death. A politician/trapper from northeast Pennsylvania went to Alaska and killed him. We know this because the local newspaper opened almost a full page to tell us about the glorious hunt.

The story included two pictures. One three-column picture showed Mighty Trapper, smiling and in heavy cold winter clothing, holding the dead lynx by his back legs, his life cut short by at least 10 years. The other picture showed Mighty and his brother, a biologist with Alaska’s Fish and Game Department, each holding a dead lynx. One of the animals appears to be a young female, possibly not even past puberty.

The article tells us that the politician/trapper, who began trapping and killing animals while in elementary school, went to Alaska to “live a lifetime dream of running a trap line in the Alaska interior.” He said he hoped his lines would ensnare not only lynx, but wolves and wolverines as well.

However, traps are indiscriminate devices that not only capture their intended victim, but also other animals as well, including dogs and cats if they’re in the area. He didn’t get wolves or wolverine, and only killed one mink.

“My first thought,” he remembers, “was we should be able to catch dozens every day.” Unfortunately for the trapper, the mink traveled beneath the snow and ice.

The average Canadian lynx (Lynx Canadensis), a close relative to the bobcat, weighs 18 to 30 pounds, has acute sight and hearing, has long legs and large furry feet but can’t run fast except for short distances, and survives primarily on a diet of snowshoe rabbits. Their only major predator is the human.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists the Canadian lynx as “threatened species” in the 48 contiguous states; the Humane Society of the United States is pursuing litigation to change the status to “endangered.” The primary habitat of the lynx is the boreal forests of Montana, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming, with a presence also in New England, Minnesota, Utah, and Colorado. But, Alaska allows unlimited killing during a three to five month season, depending upon region, beginning about Nov. 1 each year, and Mighty Trapper was there to kill lynx. “The state says to capture as many as you can,” he told others after returning to his home.

“Trapping is the greatest sport there is,” this politician told the outdoors reporter, and pointed out, “I’m so very proud to be a part of this real American heritage.”

When not serving as one of three county commissioners, he works every morning for several months a year killing muskrats, raccoons, fox and, reports the newspaper, “other fur bearing animals.” He often jokes around—with individuals and in public meetings—that he’s a member of PETA. Not the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, but People Eating Tasty Animals. It gets a laugh, and lets everyone know what he thinks of animal rights organizations.

As “thrilling” as setting lines and killing lynx may be to some people, it isn’t all that difficult. “Because they’re curious, not as wary of humans, lynx are one of the easier animals to trap,” says Doug Larsen, director of wildlife conservation for the Alaska Fish and Game Department.
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This is an astonishing—and moving—thing to witness. Watch it till the end: you’ll see this formerly abused (now rescued) animal carefully and delicately use his trunk to paint an absolutely recognizable picture of an elephant holding a red flower in his trunk.

[youtube][/youtube]

I’ve posted more footage of elephants painting (and some background about the painting ‘Starving Elephant Artisans’ ) here.

Cross-Posted at Buck Naked Politics

This is another Guest Book Review by fiction writer Jessica Schneider who also writes for the highly-visited site Cosmoetica, is Book Editor for Monsters and Critics and is the only contributor to her own blog.

Book Review: Paws & Effect by Sharon Sakson

by Jessica Schneider

I admit that I am a dog liker but a cat lover. Still, despite my like for dogs I was interested in reading Paws & Effect because as an animal lover, I have always been curious in knowing more regarding their “healing power”. It has been observed that dogs have an uncanny ability to not only sense physical danger (as in natural disasters) before it happens, but also an ability to detect cancers and illness in people.

Paws & Effect provides readers numerous anecdotes where not only dogs detect illness but also the book details the ways in which the physical comfort of an animal can have a healing power on the person. In the beginning of the book, the author discusses how after the death of her mother she had suffered a depression so severe that she contemplated suicide. But ultimately it was the presence of her dog that forced her to push past it and live on, since the human-canine bond had made her realize that her dog needed her and so therefore she must stay alive because of that.

Several of the other examples include one dog that began to scratch and bite at its owner’s mole (which turned out to be cancerous) as well as another dog that went up to a man with heart trouble and rested on his chest. There are even dogs that are trained to respond to those humans suffering from seizures, and one of the other points the book mentions is the importance of that human-dog bond and how more often than not, it is the dog which chooses the person and not the other way around.

One man who was ill and dying of AIDS was at least comforted by his dog snuggling up against him while the man shivered with fever. Then, upon falling so ill, the man had to be rushed to the hospital.
Read the rest of this entry »

What is common between Kelesau Naan of Malaysia, Sister Dorothy Stang of America, Kinkri Devi of India, Chico Mendes of Brazil, and Aldo Zamora of Mexico? The real heroes who laid down their lives to protect the forests from loggers and miners. Except for Kinkri Devi, who died of natural causes recently, others were allegedly murdered by those who thought that they were providing obstacles in the rape of the forests.

Although armchair environmentalists/NGOs play a crucial role in highlighting conservation/Global Warming/other issues and raising them at the national and international fora, the sacrifices made by grassroots heroes usually goes unsung. The Times of London has done a fine job in bringing into focus the contribution of some such people…

“Kelesau Naan (of Malaysia) never went to school. He signed his name with a thumb print and spent his entire life living in the jungles of Borneo. But among his tribe, the Penan, he was a visionary and an inspiration.

“Now he is dead, possibly murdered, allegedly by agents of the loggers whose lucrative business he was putting in jeopardy. His broken skeleton was found last month – two months after he was reported missing – and yesterday 100 relatives and neighbours lodged a police report demanding an investigation. Micheal Ipa, his nephew, said: ‘We believe he has been killed by people involved in logging’.

“For years, he had organised his people in a desperate defence of their home and heritage: the pristine rain-forest in the deep interior of the Malaysian state of Sarawak.

“Similar accusations were made in 2000, when Bruno Manser, a Swiss shepherd who became a prominent campaigner on behalf of the Penan, disappeared without trace while travelling alone through the forest. His remains were never recovered and he was declared dead by a Swiss court two years ago.”

Among others who died for the cause:

— Sister Dorothy Stang, a 73-year-old American nun, was shot dead in Brazil in 2005 while fighting to protect the Terra do Meio region from loggers. Within days, the area was declared a protected site

— Chico Mendes, a rubber tapper and environmental activist, became a posthumous icon in Brazil after he was murdered in 1988 by ranchers opposed to his campaign to protect the Amazon from deforestation

— Aldo Zamora was collecting data on illegal logging for Greenpeace in Great Water forest, Mexico, when a logging gang ambushed his car and killed him in May 2007

— Kinkri Devi went on hunger strike against a court’s refusal to hear her case against a mining project in Himachal Pradesh in India. She won her case and an award for her efforts. She died this week (To read her Obituary in The Times of London please click here…)

(Sources: Amnesty International; Times archives)

Photo above, courtesy The Times: Tied logs are hauled through the forests by bulldozers.

As someone said in a lighter vein that elections have become a near monkey business (although its outcome affects us all!!!), and generate a strange frenzy. While the US is in the grip of frenzy generated by presidential election primaries and results, the people in North India suffer from a frenzy caused by real monkeys!!!

“In recent months, the deputy mayor of New Delhi was killed when he fell from his balcony during an attack by wild monkeys, and 25 others were injured when a monkey went on a rampage in the city,” reports Gavin Rabinowitz, Associated Press Writer.

I have seen with my own eyes the Prime Minister’s, and other ministers’ and officials’, office having protective wire screens to keep the monkeys out. The simians have in the past raided the interiors of the civil secretariat and trashed even important officials files. The security guards postd to keep the mlitants/terrorists at bay find themselves helpless in the face of monkey attacks.

Many homes in North Indian towns now have protective wiremesh around the entire house to keep the monkeys away. The cities, towns and farms are infested with rhesus macaque monkeys, who have been driven to these places after losing their natural forest habitat.

In my mountainous home state of Himachal Pradesh, the first assurance the newly-elected Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal gave was that his administration would fight thousands of monkeys on a “war footing”. Monkeys have been turning farms into wastelands and attacking people, according to a statement from his office.

” ‘Affected districts would be identified and local youth involved in the process, who would be provided training in capturing and sterilization by the experts,’ the statement quoted Dhumal as saying, adding that they would use ‘laser sterilization’. Mr Dhumal’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) recently won the regional election in the north-India state of Himachal Pradesh.

“The capacity of zoos in the area would be expanded to accommodate captured monkeys, and camps may be set up for them in order to protect crops and other farmland from being encroached upon, the statement said.”

More here…

India’s leading conservationist, Iqbal Malik says: “Of the 15 species of non-human primates present in India, only 3 are commensal, the Rhesus (M. mullatta), Bonnet (M. radiata), and the Common langur (Seminopithecus entellus). Of these, only the Rhesus macaque is the most aggressive, while Bonnets and langurs are comparatively less aggressive. Thanks to its wide distribution in North India, the Rhesus macaque is the reason for a majority of the attacks that have been reported from people living in the urban centres.

“People from urban areas are more likely to be bitten than those living in rural areas, largely due to fact that they are ignorant of primate behaviour, and states like Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh are the worst affected, reporting the maximum number of cases. The reasons for this are many, namely: (1) Extensive urbanization (2) Increased encroachment of forests (3) Haphazard trapping of forest monkeys for biomedical research leading to chaotic fissioning and the related dispersal of monkeys to nearby human habitations (4) Decrease in the number of forest trees, that provide natural food to monkeys (5) Decreased availability of water in the monkey’s natural habitat (I have observed monkeys moving between areas in search of water especially during the summer months) (6) Decreased human tolerance to other life forms in the same enironment (7) Increase in the population of Rhesus monkeys…”

To read her full article “Monkey Menace—Who is Responsible?” please click here…

AP:

Presidential contender Mike Huckabee bagged a pheasant Wednesday, offering Iowa voters the image of an experienced outdoorsman on the hunt, shotgun blasting and dogs braying.

AND:

Of four birds flushed by the party, three were felled. Huckabee claimed the third with his .12-gauge shotgun. He proudly displayed the birds and said jokingly, “See that’s what happens if you get in my way.”

He also jested about Vice President Dick Cheney’s hunting accident in which a fellow hunter was shot. Asked why Cheney hadn’t been invited, Huckabee chuckled, “Because I want to survive all the way through this.”