Category Archives: Ethics

UPDATE II: ‘Dead Birds Flying’: Help Steve Boyes Help The Cape Parrot

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Intelligence, Pseudoscience, South-Africa, The Zeitgeist

Birds in flight are the very symbol of liberty. Yet what do people do to the most sentient, socially and intellectually evolved among them? We cage them and maim them by clipping their wing feathers.

And what a heart has Dr. Steve Boyes!

He has dedicated himself to reversing the destruction humans have wrought on the Cape Parrot. What a heroic commitment he and his team (including Cape communicator Rodnick Biljon, who captures the Cape Parrot on film) have pledged to rescuing the Cape Parrot from extinction, brought about by the decimation of the Yellowood forests of the Eastern Cape. (Your host hails from Cape Town.)

The Cape Parrot Project is one of my favored charities. Owned as I am by an Un-Cape Parrot (a genetic relative to the wild Cape Parrot), I’ve had the privilege of experiencing first-hand the intense brilliance of these precious Pois (mine is Poicephalus fuscicollis; the Cape Parrot is Poicephalus robustus). We rescued Oscar-Wood from a cage in a store, where he had languished for 4 years, plucking his feathers down to the pink skin beneath. This, after having been sold into the trade by a well-known breeder in Hawaii.

LOOK at him then (2009):

Another heartbreaking image (2009):

Here Oscar-Wood is today (2012), fully flighted, nesting in a bag of tortillas. This state of relative well-being has come about only because I work from home and am able to give him the attention and freedom he requires to thrive. And still he plucks; once acquired, this neurotic habit is hard to eliminate.

Oscar-Wood has a facility with … wood (all parrots require wood, preferably from a tree, in the wild):

WARNING. Do not try the above at home. By all means, rescue an abandoned and abused parrot, but do not fuel the wicked pet parrot trade, which everywhere and always involves breeding mills, inhumane by definition. As to wild-life traffickingg … words fail.

Those who’ve bothered to get to know a parrot in flight, if hobbled horribly by the walls of a house (the Cape, for example, can fly hundreds of kilometers in a day), know this: Out of a cage, free to be adorable and impossible as only hookbills are—parrots are so much smarter than any of the domesticated animals (and than some of your neighbors).

Even showmen such as parrot whisperer Clint Carvalho attests that the larger parrots are “twenty times smarter than dogs.” I’m not sure how Carvalho quantifies his findings, but these sound about right.

Know a politician with this magic macaw’s problem-solving skills? Tan’s Japanese admirers are enthralled. As well they should be. Watch Tan solve an impossible magic-cube like puzzle:

What’s positive about Carvalho is that, unlike your average avian dabbler, he has realized that parrots acquire rudimentary language (often greater than those acquired by the bumper crops of illiterates US public schools produce) through conditioning and cognition, just as kids do.

The cognitive capacities of the parrot, however, match his emotional needs.

Unlike dogs and cats, birds are wild animals, ill-suited to captivity. Moreover, they’re flock animals who wither without the physical proximity of a feathered family with which they fly, forage, communicate and mate, often for life.

The trade is fueled by consumer demand.

Being slaves to authority and convention, the mass of humanity doesn’t much like or appreciate the independent-minded individuals among them. Imagine the fate of a creature as smart, as independent-minded and as individualistic as the parrot?

Consider the cruelty of excluding parrots from assorted public-awareness campaigns. Funds are invariably solicited for and awareness raised over the airwaves about abused and needy dogs and cats. Not so for parrots. Despite their popularity as pets and their prevalence in American homes, natural disasters come and go without any mention of the plight of the Psittacine victims.

Coveted. “Consumed.” Discarded.

That is the fate of parrots bred for the pet trade. Break the cycle. Adopt a neglected and abused animal from a shelter. Support your community based shelters.

AND donate to save the Cape Parrot.

Writes Dr. Boyes:

Most people know about the popular African Grey parrots of central and western Africa, but very few people know about Africa’s most endangered parrot, South Africa’s Cape parrot. Today, there could be as few as 800 Cape parrots remaining in the wild and they are considered Critically Endangered due to continued habitat loss, poor nesting success due to lack of nest cavities, a severe Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease epidemic, historical persecution as a crop pest, and illegal capture for the wild-caught bird trade. If Africa was to lose this “green and gold” ambassador of some of our last-remaining Afromontane forest patches, it would be a sign of very bad times to come… We would have lost one of the last Afromontane endemics clinging onto these forests through their own ingenuity and collective intelligence. Intensive logging in their forest habitat, persecution (e.g. being shot or caught in nets and clubbed to death), nest poaching and mist-netting adults for the wild-caught bird trade, and very little or no conservation intervention, has left the Cape Parrot in ruins with an aging populations in declining physical condition. We need to intervene now and stimulate positive change for Cape parrots in the wild

UPDATE (3/25): Following the Facebook thread.

JP: Point taken, but parrot are picky about friends and partners. The chances of a friendship being struck up are greater when the other parrot is of the same species. Personally, I recommend against taking on two parrots. That’s much like planning for one toddler and learning that you’ll be giving birth to twins. It’s never easier. Better that you be a good parront to one parrot than shortchange both and yourself. Of course, if you do not work, or your work is not too demanding (because parrots are), have a large enough house and homestead (maybe even place for an outdoor aviary)—by all means. Caring for parrots under the right conditions is rewarding. There is nothing like the love of a parrot, once earned.

Baby is currently doing lapse from his cage to kitchen cupboard (or what’s left of it; our kitchen has not been renovated and we’re delaying that job until we can think of how to parrot proof Sean’s planned maple-wood cabinetry).

Oscar-Wood is also talking up a storm. Singing his musical repertoire; knocking, and then demanding, “Hello, hello”; asking if I’m going, “Bye-bye-bye?” and if he’s been a “bad bird?” He’s also doing his raspy chest cough, because he knows the sound worries me. Should I dare to attempt to bathe him (parrots bath themselves pretty thoroughly), it’s an indignant, “Hey, hey!” Tell me that’s not a very decent attempt to communicate.

Only Following Orders

Ethics, Healthcare, Law, libertarianism, Morality

Forgive the hyperbole, but the, “I was only following orders” excuse for evil action or inaction comes with hefty historical baggage.

It also conjures the nurse at Glenwood Gardens, a California retirement home, who refused to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on an “87-year-old woman who had collapsed in the home’s dining room and was barely breathing.”

The woman was later declared dead at Mercy Southwest Hospital, officials said.

At the beginning of the 7-minute, 16-second call on Tuesday morning, the nurse asked for paramedics to come and help the 87-year-old woman who had collapsed in the home’s dining room and was barely breathing.
[the 911 operator] pleads for the nurse to perform CPR, and after several refusals she starts pleading for her to find a resident, or a gardener, or anyone not employed by the home to get on the phone, take her instructions and help the woman.
“Can we flag someone down in the street and get them to help this lady?” [the 911 operator] says on the call. “Can we flag a stranger down? I bet a stranger would help her.”

The relationship between the parties—the ruthless healthcare worker and the deceased—is governed by contract. By following her cruel heart, the nurse was also following the law—and this includes the libertarian law. There is no duty to act, as far as I know—all the more so if the contract by which the two parties were bound stipulated this pathetic policy: We don’t do CPR.

One can only hope that other elderly residents up and leave Glenwood Gardens, if they can, and that the facility is forced to change its policies for fear of bankruptcy.

Listen to the pitiful 911 call and you hear a 911 dispatcher (Tracey Halvorson) with a heart; a healthcare worker without one.

There is not much you can do to change someone without a heart. Name and shame says I.

UPDATED: Rand Paul: Action Hero, Or Political Performance Artist?

Ethics, Labor, libertarianism, Morality, Paleolibertarianism, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Republicans, Ron Paul, Taxation

“Rand Paul: Action Hero, Or Political Performance Artist?” is the current column, now on WND. Here’s an excerpt:

“Rand Paul is front-and-center in mainstream media, showing what some call ‘leadership.’ Not a week goes by when the son of Ron Paul—the legendary libertarian legislator from Texas—is not introducing one Act or another, ostensibly to lighten the incubus of government.

This week it’s the REINS Act (‘Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2013’). Last week it was the ‘Sequester Alternative Plan.’

I like the Senator from Kentucky’s energy. The question is: Is this political Brownian motion—the case of activity substituting for achievement—or real Randian energy in furtherance of liberty? …

… Rand Paul’s latest political song and dance saw the senator return $600,000 in savings, accrued in the course of running a cost-efficient office, to the US Treasury, where it does not belong.

The savings belong to taxpayers. Stolen goods stuffed down the maw of the federal beast will disappear without trace. For all we know, and given the fact of fungibility, these savings could be diverted into the domestic drone program.

Yes, Sen. Paul followed legal protocol in returning taxpayer property to the Treasury. However, the positive man-made law is not a libertarian loadstar. From the son of Ron more is expected.

But should this be the case? Perhaps Rand Paul deserves a break.

All too familiar is the libertarian type that has nothing to say about policy and politics for fear of compromising theoretical purity. Suspended as he is in the arid arena of pure thought, this specimen has opted to live in perpetual sin: the sin of abstraction.

The ‘ideal of liberty,’ philosopher-pundit Jack Kerwick has urged, must be ‘brought down from the clouds to the nit and the grit of the history and culture from which it emerged.’

But should the command to lead an earthbound existence push us into political compromises? …”

The complete column is “Rand Paul: Action Hero, Or Political Performance Artist?” Read it on WND.

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UPDATE (Marc 1): “On the heels of Barack Obama’s Las Vegas run-on ramble on the necessity of immigration ‘reform,’ this week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced that he too had ‘evolved’ overnight on the issue. “I’m … open-minded enough to say that it is an issue that we do need to evolve on,” the senator vaporized.”

The Republicans found religion on immigration, and so did Rand Paul “evolve” along with them.

President Pain

Barack Obama, Constitution, Ethics, Government, IMMIGRATION

It is “almost an impeachable offense for Obama to make specific spending cuts to hurt us,” contended Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox And Friends.

“The key word is PAIN. If the president is deciding how to spend money in order to hurt us,” said Judge Napolitano, “rather than in order to provide us with the services for which we have paid, and for which we have hired him—he is doing the opposite of what he has taken an oath to do.”

He has taken an oath faithfully to uphold the laws. In other words, to make the government work; don’t make it painful. Find a way to make it work on 2 percent less. He has, absolute, leeway as the chief executive. Leeway is integral to his office. As the head of the Executive Branch, the president can prioritize money and cuts. … Instead, he wants to cut in away that’ll make us stand inline five hours at the airport, and teach the Republicans a lesson. That’s the way the Constitution [should] work.

(VIA Myron Pauli.) The president’s first priority in causing you pain, just so you know who’s boss—he and family, after all, have a security detail for life—is to spring criminal aliens from jail.

Not only is this president an ass with ears, but he is also pain in the ass.