Category Archives: Environmentalism & Animal Rights

Precious Oscar-Wood Pacifies Himself

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Family, Ilana Mercer, Morality, Parrots, Relatives

Does it get more adorable than this little parrot? Like a baby would, Oscar-Wood, my Un-Cape parrot (Poicephalus fuscicollis), pacifies himself. An infant will suck on a finger or a pacifier (dummy in British English). Oscar-Wood sucks on a bit of wood he breaks off, and tickles his head and neck with pink, dexterous, hand-like claws, at the same time. He will fold one magical toe over the other three to create an ideal tickling implement. (Click on images to enlarge.)

I’ve tried to Google about the remarkable claw-eye-beak (“fine motor”?) coordination displayed by the parrot (watch this genius macaw), but can’t find much. (Help? Here is The Smart Bird Page, more anecdotal and amusing than scientific.) When I first became a parront, I was unaware of the remarkable claw- structure and dexterity the parrot possesses. Unlike most ordinary birds who have one back- and three front claws , the parrot has two in front and two at the back. These he cups when he eats, as the parrot will delicately hold a piece of food in his claw and pick at it with his beak. The parrot will also use these delicate appendages to manipulate objects. For example, Oscar-Wood stabilizes this barrel-of-fun with his pink claws, and then uses his mother-of-pearl beak to twist the thing in the right direction and then pull the barrel to pry a nut from within.

The human being’s fantastic facility with his digits is one indication of his great intelligence. In addition to their hand-like structure, the parrot’s claws, similarly, are huge in proportion to his little body—approximately a fifth of the size of his body when stretched out. This relationship is surely mirrored in the area given over in the parrot’s brain to the claws.

As I’ve reported here before, there has been good, if not sufficient, research into the great intelligence of the parrot, especially of the African Grey (who easily trumps the primates). But I have not seen specifics about the adroit claws that so fascinate me.

So too are the language-acquisition skills of the parrot remarkable. Human beings have often, conveniently, explained the parrot’s speech as pure mimicry. Just as a child would, however, the parrot absorbs the language he is capable of acquiring through imitation, behavioral conditioning, reinforcement, all in context. As is the case with toddlers, the orphaned parrot (who has been in a shop or shelter for too long) will have often missed the crucial, optimal period during which language is learned. I find that Oscar-Wood, who spent the first 4 years of life in a shop, caged, mostly, has fewer language skills than little T. Cup, who arrived in our home as a 7 month old baby. T. Cup uses words in context. If I’m out of the room, he’ll call, “Mommy, mommy.” He has just learned the great benefits that come with demands for “Daddy, daddy.”

As I type, he is muttering to himself (after causing a racket by bashing his water bowel): “Stop it, stop it.” Around food time, it’s “Yummy-yummy.” When caged, he’ll emit cries of “Outside, outside.” Should T. Cup become very noisy, Oscar-Wood will scold him in his cute little voice: “Step-up, step-up,” which is the command parronts give their parrots to step-up onto them.

Humans love to watch Disneyfied, talking dogs, pigs, spiders—all animals that DON’T TALK, and have very few human attributes. Indeed, the parrot is the most proper object of Anthropomorphism.

However—and I know I’ll anger the wonderful woman bird-breeder who sold us these two characters—I don’t think parrots are suitable pets for most people. They are far too labor-intense, needy, sensitive and sentient. A constantly caged, lonely, unattended parrot will immediately become a “problem bird” (the owner being the real problem), who will soon be the object of abuse.

I am oh-so-very fortunate to work from home. Thus, my parrots are seldom caged; talk to me constantly, and have a flock-like arrangement with us. Cage these social creatures and deny them the one-on-one bond formation their biological blue-print dictates—and you have a tragic, depressed, feather-denuded little bird.

Think about it: Many parrots pair for life, create creches in which they raise their young; and when a Hyacinth Macaw, for example, loses a partner, the widow/widower is then adopted by an intact pair. This rather advanced social life precludes adaptation to a lonely, caged existence.

UPDATE VIII: Lessons About Wicked TSA Appied To WikiLeaks (Patriotism Or Statism?)

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Free Speech, Intelligence, Journalism, Just War, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Military, Propaganda, Republicans, The State, War

You’ve already been designated a terrorist at the nation’s federally controlled airports. As you go about your business, trying to make a living, and pursuing familial and professional contacts around the world—you ought to have an inkling, by now, of what being at the mercy of this accreting evil is all about. I hope you are able to extend these lessons and sensibilities to the persecution of an admittedly far more courageous opponent of the Federal Frankenstein than you and I: Julian Assange, proprietor of WikiLeaks.

First up, here are my reservations about hailing Assange as a folk hero: I suspect that Assange’s opposition to the oppressive impetus of the American state is reserved for causes dear to the Left. Witness the posting by Assange’s WikiLeaks, on 18 November of 2008, the name, address, age and occupation of many of the 13,500 members of the rightist British National Party. This is a wee bit of a give-away. Does he not respect this small group’s rights to live unmolested? Apparently not.

UPDATE II: WikiLeaks was, likewise, nowhere to be found when the Climagedon emails were exposed.

The fascist Fox News is leading its reports on the latest leaks with headlines calling to “designate WikiLeaks a ‘foreign terrorist organization.'”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seconded the sentiment: “Leaks ‘tear at fabric’ of government,'” she lamented. Good.

Let me focus the story for you. Far more serious than the gossipy prattle among diplomats about Iran, revealed in the 250,000 classified State Department documents, leaked on Monday, are the exhortations issued at Foggy Bottom to SPY ON THE WORLD:

The leaks cited American memos encouraging U.S. diplomats at the United Nations to collect detailed data about the U.N. secretary-general, his team and foreign diplomats — going beyond what is considered the normal run of information-gathering expected in diplomatic circles.
Le Monde said a memo asked U.S. diplomats to collect basic contact information about U.N. officials that included Internet passwords, credit card numbers and frequent flyer numbers. They were also asked to obtain fingerprints, ID photos, DNA and iris scans of people of interest to the United States, Le Monde said.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley played down the diplomatic spying allegations. “Our diplomats are just that, diplomats,” he said. “They collect information that shapes our policies and actions. This is what diplomats, from our country and other countries, have done for hundreds of years.”

The fabric of such a government must be torn and shorn; it’s the stuff of society that needs rebuilding.

UPDATE I: I repeat the observation made in “Warbot Wants to Kill WikiLeaker” (08.07.10):

“The politicos, and now even the generals, preach the practice of left-liberalism at its most extreme in every structure of the military and the government. And then, when it appears that their affirmative recruits are crappy—they can’t abide by a code of secrecy (or by a contract); or are unable to refrain from killing their colleagues—then their bosses suddenly turn bigoted and want to kill them.

“These are the same generals and politicians who campaign for free and open sex for hets and homos in the military. What do they expect? Disciplined buttoned-up soldiers?!”

“You can’t run a liberal organization—structurally and philosophically—and expect your members to behave themselves. Left-liberalism is about license and lenience.”

UPDATE III: TRUER WORDS WERE NEVER SPOKEN. Julian Assange’s, that is. The Australian who heads the secret-sharing Web site” said that “the documents will skewer ‘lying, corrupt and murderous leadership from Bahrain to Brazil.'”

UPDATE IV (Nov. 30): CLIMAGEDON. Although WikiLeaks’ proprietor did not break the climagedon story, he did “host the full 120MB archive.” I’m not quite sure what this cryptic, Wikipedia statement means. Is Assange committed to exposing power irrespective of ideology? I still don’t know. There is no doubt that he has done liberty a tremendous service so far by pulling back the curtain to reveal the affairs of state we fund.

UPDATE V: Via Fjordman, of the Brussels Journal: “… in 2001, … two out of Norway’s three largest newspapers, Aftenposten and Dagbladet, reported that most … rape charges involve an immigrant perp, which again mostly means Muslims. Both newspapers have since then conveniently ‘forgotten’ about this, and have never connected the issue to Muslim immigration although the number of rape charges has continued to rise to historic levels. They are thus at best guilty of extreme incompetence, since their former articles about this issue are still available online. Norway’s Minister of Justice from 2001 to 2005, Odd Einar Dørum, mentioned the problem in 2001 but has later gone quiet about the issue. The reported number of rapes in Oslo is now six – 6! – times as high per capita as in New York City, yet the media keeps warning against Islamophobia.”

Swedish women, at least, can at last feel safe. The Swedish government is finally getting serious about their rape problem.?!!

“Interpol, at the request of a Swedish court looking into alleged sex crimes from earlier this year, has put WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on its most-wanted list.
The Stockholm Criminal Court two weeks ago issued an international arrest warrant for Assange on probable cause, saying he is suspected of rape, sexual molestation and illegal use of force in August incidents.”

Now what a coincidence this trumped up charge is, don’t you think?

UPDATE VI (Dec. 1): It is interesting how the collectivist impulse has kicked in among so many so-called defenders of freedom. A single man exposes the wicked workings of the US empire—an arm of which is the terrorist TSA—and that individual has become the enemy of the good.

The use of the term “anti-American,” vis-a-vis Assange, moreover, is so childish and utterly inaccurate. Assange is anti-American only if one equates America with her government. Proceeding from this error, the people who can-can for the criminalization of Assange’s speech draw the conclusion that by opposing state criminality, Assange is anti-American. So far, the one Assange action to qualify as unpatriotic and awful is his exposing of the home addresses of members of the rightist British National Party. That was a bully-boy tactic; it certainly qualifies as an ideological stand; a show of hatred to rordinary, peaceful citizens.

This is not a neoconservative site. Yes, we despise the Obama regime, but we despised the rule of Genghis Bush just as much—and almost from its inception.

People confuse statism with patriotism. This is how this classical liberal writer has defined patriotism (which is why Bad Eagle is wrong: American Indians can be patriotic):

“Patriotism in my view is a very modest thing. I feel patriotism when I encounter many people in my immediate community, or among my readers. The arborist who came to trim my trees the other day told me he was not a Republican or a Democrat. He said he hated the war in Iraq and loved his guns as well as keeping what he earned. This independence of mind is quintessentially American. I feel patriotic when I encounter such an American. Ditto the gentleman who installed my alarm system recently. He too expressed his disdain for politics, and moved on to discuss his gun collection. The sight of the Jeffersonian arborist swinging heroically at the top of my giant cedars, giving them a trim, and the cowboy-clad alarm installer makes me patriotic. People like Dr. Yeagley make me patriotic. There are quite a few Americans such as these around. Not enough, but enough to make me want to fight the good fight for them. …”

So what is patriotism? Here’s what it’s not: It’s not an allegiance to the government of the day, or to its invariably wicked, un-American policies. It’s an affinity for your community; it’s an understanding of the great principles upon which this country was founded—which have been excised by successive governments, Republican and Democratic alike. And it’s a commitment to restoring the republic of private-property rights, individual freedoms, and radical decentralization.”

UPDATE VII:

“I miss the old WND,” writes Clay Smith, at the Letters section on WND:

I was sadden to read Mr. Farah’s article, “Nobody asked, nobody told.” I remember under President Clinton, WND would be a beacon of liberty, questioning government on everything. Back then WND even honored the “informer” by naming its magazine “Whistleblower.” I really miss that old WND.
Who cares if Pfc. Bradley Manning is a deviant, godless homosexual? The message is what I’m looking at, not the messenger. An individual tells me my house is on fire … I don’t stop and ask him whether he is a godless homosexual. I check his sincerity and validity of the information. In the case of WikiLeaks, the information has showed us numerous forms of government abuse.
There are no secrets in a free and open society – only with governments that keep their citizens in the dark, dictatorships, empires and those who engage in black ops. This is the root cause of terrorism in the first place. Ron Paul was right when he said, “Truth is treason in the empire of lies.”

I read Joseph’s column. I did not take away that he opposed whistle-blowing. What I deduce is that he thought the military appointed the wrong people, a point I made earlier in this post: “You can’t run a liberal organization—structurally and philosophically—and expect your members to behave themselves. Left-liberalism is about license and lenience.”

UPDATE VIII: Vox day writes this on On the heroics of WikiLeaks:

“If WikiLeaks meets the legal criteria of a “U.S.-designated terrorist organization” then so does Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica. Governments always want to operate in the dark and keep their subjects in ignorance, which is why Julian Assange should not be assailed by the American people, he should be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, regardless of whatever his motivations in making all of this information available to the public might be.

WikiLeaks is nothing more or less than a technological blow for American freedom. Assange is no traitor; the accusation doesn’t even make sense considering that he has absolutely no connection with the United States. But it should come as no surprise to the readers of this blog that the verbal attack against the organization is being led by one of those freedom-loving Republicans.”

Picnic Time For Teddy Bears

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Propaganda

The following is from my new WND column, “Picnic Time For Teddy Bears”:

“A man from my neck of the woods was mauled by a bear. A politician, to be more accurate. John Chelminiak, who is alive but disfigured for life, is a Bellevue City Councilman. Bellevue is a wealthy suburb of Seattle. When he was attacked, the councilman was at his ‘vacation cabin’ at Lake Wenatchee, in central Washington.

Chelminiak described the sounds of his cranium cracking as the black bear chomped down on it. Bears eat their prey alive. At least Chelminiak spared us the familiar, ‘No one knows why she attacked.’ ‘Bears rarely attack human beings.’ Or, ‘Before taking ‘measures’ against him, the bear community had issued fair warning about the Timothy Treadwell nuisance factor.’

Before he was gobbled up by an Alaskan brown bear, Treadwell had been pursuing a career as a bear whisperer. He had Hollywood ambitions too. Treadwell spent 13 seasons in the Alaskan Katmai National Park. There he whiled the days away filming himself crawling around with grizzlies. His bleach-blond locks were always carefully coiffed for the camera, or covered with a bandana. The brown bears seemed indifferent to Treadwell’s cooing and clucking routine.

Unbeknown to Timothy, who was usually able to read the minds of bears, one, not-so little teddy had made a mental note to himself: ‘if the porridge pickings are slim, come winter, come back for Goldie Locks.’ And that’s precisely what Ursus Arctos Horribilis did. For good measure, the bear consumed Timothy’s girlfriend, who had come to the park to break-up with bear boy.” …

The complete column, now on WND.COM, is “Picnic Time For Teddy Bears.”

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Shifty Specter On Solid Ground

Bush, Democrats, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, John McCain, Politics, Republicans

Sean Hannity wants to know how Arlen Specter could go from supporting Genghis Bush, in some years 80-90 percent of the time, to supporting BHO 96 percent of the time considering the two mens’ principles, their core values, their belief system are diametrical opposition?”

They are? How so? Specter is a politician’s politician who amply proves that “The Democratic and Republican parties each operates as a necessary counterweight in a partnership designed to keep the pendulum of power swinging in perpetuity from the one set of colluding quislings to the other, and back.”

Speaking of a politician’s politician, do you remember once-upon-a-time when McCain supported Cap and Trade?

And, of course, some Repbulicans voted with Obama on “Cap and tax.”

The 2008 Republican energy platform hammered away about “reducing our petroleum dependence.”

Although only Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine voted for BHO’s print-and-spend stimulus; the rest voted against it—Repbulicans did pitch in for Bush’s Stim—only 16 voted “No.”

Jump in and help us go over all the other policy points of convergence between the parties. But I think slimy, shifting Specter is on solid grounds.