What would you have them do. over a million strays in a city of 7 million. its not like they could get them adopted. 

I always find it absurd when people who will gladly eat pigs (more intelligent) suddenly care about dogs- one particular species out many, which happens to be seen as more cute.  IMO, only vegetarians really have a place to complain about non-human animals being killed. 

Are any of you complainers vegetarians?  Eh?

 

I'm sure the people would love to be "proactive" if they had time machines, and the available veterinary resources in the country to devote to such a task.

Stray dogs are wild and dangerous; they can't just be adopted, and they will readily hunt and kill pet cats and other dogs, and even humans.  I'm in no place to judge people for protecting themselves and their children.

But is there a feasible alternative? If there isn't, i guess you'll just have to use whatever bad feelings arise out of doing what is necessary to make sure we are never again in this situation. Do you feel bad enough to do something about it in Iraq?

 

Oh, but raising and killing a billion pigs a year is absolutely fine- as long as it's all deliberate, for sake of human pleasure, instead of cleaning up after a mistake to protect human lives.

Good to know trivial human pleasure is a great reason to harm animals without  a shred of guilt, but self defense isn't.

 

Either you're some kind of psychopath who really believes that, or you're a hypocrite.

 

 

It's very like you to completely miss the point.  I'll try to be more explicit.

 

Here's an idea: stop judging other people for killing animals you think are cute out of defense of themselves and their children while you chow down on and order the deaths of even more intelligent animals (ones that certainly plenty of other people think are cute) out of mindless gluttony.

ants are fukin bugs, I step on them with glee

Trivial human pleasure? Where do you get this stuff? You realize we have made these animals what they are today? I don't think they should be stabbing bulls either, but I don't want one for a fukin pet.

You tellin me 58,000 dogs were attacking people? It's a fukin warzone huh.

Uh, okay, I just asked that weird question because you said you would feel the same way if people kept pigs as pets.

Do you feel any guilt over factory farms? Would it be okay if people ate those dogs after they killed them?

Meh, yeah, maybe I agree. Just killing them all is like a I-give-up-I-don't-give-a-*uck-anymore solution.

 

 

Yes, taste is a trivial human pleasure.

 

Anybody who orders the killing of animals up for food in any first world country is indulging in just that.  There are no arguments from necessity or nutrition in any first world countries.  It's no different than dog fighting for the trivial human pleasure of visual entertainment, rather than your culinary entertainment.

Only vegetarians, and possibly only vegans, have the ability to criticize animal cruelty without being hypocrites.  You, sir, are a hypocrite.

 

Focus less on criticizing others, and more on your own actions.

 

 

 

What animals are you talking about?  The dogs or the pigs?

 

We're responsible for both; it doesn't excuse our harm of either of them.

Self defense, though, as a reason for action against a mistake is much better than entertainment as a reason for perpetuating an industry.

 

I've tried to be as unambiguous as possible, but you're avoiding my point:  Unless you're advocating entertainment as a better reason to hurt animals than self defense (that is, if you're some kind of psychopath), you're being a hypocrite.

 

You *could* avoid the hypocrisy entirely by either living up to your own values, or just not judging other people so much.

 

 

 

If this is some kind of red herring or straw man of an argument, I don't even know what you're referencing.

 

 

58,000 dogs are at risk of attacking people; only some of them have already done so, but they all need to be removed as a matter of self defense.

That's like saying we shouldn't try to eliminate malaria because only some of them attack people.

 

 

 

You're honest for an instant, but then you regress into bad rationalizations:

 

 

Yeah, and we bred blacks in captivity as slaves- that made it O.K.?

The purpose some random human ascribes to a birth is absolutely irrelevant to the morality of what is done to the creature.  We are not gods, and you can't make the argument that 'that is the meaning to their lives' as a justification.

 

If, unbeknownst to you, you were born to be brutally experimented upon at the time you reached the age of 40, that would be A-O.K.?

Because, after all, you were born for it...

 

What one person wants to do with another upon the inception of the other (even if that desire is causative) does not impose that initial desire as absolute moral good.

 

 

Then I suppose you never support any of them by buying or consuming their products?  Oh, what's that?  It's too inconvenient?  Yeah...

 

Well, there are other solutions to this wild dog population that would be inconvenient too... hypocrite.

    I am a vegetarian.  I always find it absurd ( and arrogant ) when vegetarians assume that no one else is also a vegetarian.  

 

 

  Yes I understand the situation in Iraq must now be dealt with as an emergency and they are past the point of prevention, I never contested that.  Did I ?    

 Incidentally, this whole pathetic stray animal scenario reminds me of the massive f**k up being experienced by BP in the Gulf of Mexico   ....ignore potential problems until it becomes a huge natural disaster then fall back onto some hastily thought out, half-assed "solution".  How rational is that ?

   Besides, why are you condescending to me ?     I simply offered my opinion on how to avoid the whole mess before it happened ( which is preferable, no ? )  and where does my alleged hypocrisy come into play ?

 

 

Our species has always had a tendency to be reactive vs proactive, on just about every subject, not just this. This is a bad situation for dogs, but what are humans going to do when we get over populated. Our planet is already over polluted, imagine what it will be like if we get to 20 billion or 4O billion people. Hopefully I wont be around when we get to that point.

Who exactly am I criticizing? You seem to be doing a fine job of that as usual. I do what I can btw, I donate $ to the spca and $ and time on occasion to the local humane society shelter. Take your hypocrite and shove it.

Your self defense thing is funny, once again, you say 58,000 dogs were all attacking people. I would guess it would be a minimal percentage of actual aggressive dogs and they are probably hungry. The foolish carelessness of people has caused this problem now the animals must suffer for it and you seem to imply that it's ok, just shoot them when they get out of hand.

You go to far with the slave thing, thats ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as the indoctrination of children into religion. If you are born and told slaves are ok you will probably go with the flow though I like to think I would not have been one of those and you can't prove otherwise, *burn slave strawman burn*

There is no problem with eating meat it is a natural thing for humans we have done it since who knows when. Science has determined it is possible that the mix of protein from meat and plant stuff could have had an impact on our development. However nowdays we have the means to be more humane about it. I don't care if a cow dies, I begin to care when it suffers unnecessarily.

There is no good solution to the problem now it's too late, they fucked up and they don't even seem to care. I have not even touched on their religion making dogs "unclean" animals which is a repulsive notion to me considering once again, humans have made dogs what they are today and humans have made them what they are in Iraq as well.

The real problem is that humans are not spayed and neutered.

 

Who in their right mind gives a damn about hounds anyways, esp. the stray ones? Slice the damn strays up and use them to feed the poor of impoverished nations.

We could slice up stray Kapkao's to feed the hungry but I doubt it would be any more cost effective.

You really have a hard time with me huh

 

Whether it is slaughtered dogs, pigs or aborted fetuses, this evokes a natural negative emotional response of revulsion amongst most humans. And based on those innate emotions, it is easy to assume that the perpetrators are evil. And of course religion amplifies these emotions. So IMO there does seem to be a commonalities among pro-lifers and animal rights activists (both religious and secular). Furthermore, it is very easy among them to equate abortion and sacrificing animals to the following:

 

It is when human emotions are irrationally displaced that many make moral equivalences to all of these images. Are atheists capable of developing superior moral peaks and valleys? I don't know. I have no qualms about swatting a fly, experimenting on a mouse for a cancer cure, eating a complex multicellular lifeform such as a tomato or giving a woman the choice to abort after rape. And all things considered, if killing life is for the sake of safety and survival of human beings, I'm all for it. What atheists should strive for is a secular moral philosophy that prevents the wanton killing, torture and subjugation of life that our theistic cousins will justify in the name of their sky daddies.

I did not assume that you weren't, and I'm not surprised that you are- based on your writing I guessed that you had a 50-50 chance at being.

The first half of my post was primarily directed at the OP, the latter half generally at your comments.

Proactive is great in theory.

The thing is that it isn't always practical to be proactive instead of reactive.  We can't always guess which pile of shit is going to hit the fan until it does- if we addressed everything that might possibly go wrong, we'd be spending all of our time cleaning up that shit, and not much time doing anything else.

Proactive is only practical and wise in hindsight- before the problem occurs, there's no way to know it was going to get so out of hand without a kind of prescience (Maybe Luminon could help us out with that ) or extremely organized intelligence that human communities simply lack.  There is a limit to how much people can learn and process.


I don't think I could have foreseen this out of the mire (although if put to it I could have identified it as one of thousands of potential problems); if you think you could have known the magnitude of this problem, I find *that* a little arrogant- hindsight is 20/20, and there was a lot of shit well ready to hit the fan in the region (and still is).


Yes, the situation sucks.  It is important to neuter and spay one's cats and dogs- but in an impoverished medieval nation (one that was already struggling with wild dogs anyway), that isn't always practical (if people even had the necessary education to do it anyway).

I can't really see anybody to actually get angry at here.  Uneducated people failed to do something responsible that they barely had the means to do anyway.  And those jerks in Zimbabwe keep spreading AIDS?  People can only do what is within their means.

I'm not sure if the OP even knows who or what he's angry at- tends to be the case.

 

 

 

All I'm getting out of that is that you arbitrarily care about dogs.

 

 

If you would pay attention, that's not what I said.

 

 

I don't think it's O.K., but I'm not going to criticize them for self defense.  I probably like it even less than you do.

Yes, stupid people did something irresponsible at some point in the past (and quite a bit of that was probably the war itself); it's what people do when they are apathetic and uneducated.

 

 

I'm surprised that you couldn't grasp the oh so complicated analogy.

 

You say it's A-O.K. to use and harm others if those were bred/born for that purpose.  I provided a counter-example (or at least something that you might consider a counter example).

 

And yet you were born into a society that uses and kills cows, and you were told it's O.K., and you go with the flow.

We have evidence that you are one of 'those' now... whether you would have been then- probably- but you can fantasize if you want.

 

 

Where did this come from?

 

Another strain of bad reasoning from you to defend something you want to do so you don't have to feel bad about it.  Rationalize away, and likely ignore the refutation:

 

'Natural therefore right' is bunk.  Rape is a natural thing and humans have been doing it since who knows when.  The penis itself is an appendage evolved to make rape an efficient means of copulation.  The majority of copulations in our near relatives, Oragutans, are rapes, and in many primitive countries virginity is almost always lost by rape.

Hey, but rape is natural- so it's must be A-O.K.  That's right Rob, go ahead and let yourself run wild- no reason to feel guilty about raping any girl you see now!  Just don't get caught, since it's inconveniently illegal (pesky laws, illegalizing things which are so obviously right and natural like rape!).

That is, unless you don't actually agree that "natural means right"... but in that case, it would just be silly to use it as an argument, don't you think?

 

 

 

What relevance, at all, does that have today?

 

Even you should understand evolution well enough to know that an environmental condition that contributed to a certain trait doesn't need to persist to maintain that trait provided that the trait is useful and not damaging to the reproductive success of the organism.

The argument you are likely referring to was that the increased amount of fats and proteins in the diet provided an overabundance of nutrition and building blocks to allow the development of a larger brain and higher intelligence.  If true, it is only an argument for good nutrition, not an argument for meat. 

By the way:  In respect to the nutritional needs and dietary content of near relatives, and the vast diversity of prehistoric human diet, the theory is relatively unfounded.

 

 

Yeah, such as eating plants and supplementing nutrition with that which is provided by modern technology and food processing!

 

 

Any suffering that cow experiences is unnecessary.  You choose to delude yourself into believing some small amount of that suffering is necessary for one bad reason or another- when all it comes down to is a matter of your culinary entertainment that demands that suffering.  No different from enjoying the suffering of dogs in a dog fighting ring for visual entertainment.

Animals are suffering for your entertainment- you have no place to criticize any animal suffering, whether it's shooting dogs for self defense, or kicking them across the living room for a good laugh.

Hi Ragdish, I appreciate your post,

 

I have certainly noticed those commonalities too.  Both also tend to think that if you make something illegal, people will magically obey the law and stop doing it instead of moving it underground where it is unregulated, and more dangerous.

 

I hope you aren't suggesting that I made the equivocation; I only make analogies where they are apt.  E.g. in dispelling the bad reasoning that having been born for something makes it right (I don't suggest that it makes it wrong either).  I don't draw parallels where there are none.

 

 

I agree. 

In addition, I think it's important- even crucial- in that pursuit to recognize more universal priorities- e.g. self defense, survival, health, freedom, efficiency/economy, on down to entertainment.

 

That's why I'm hard pressed to criticize any animal testing on moral grounds; because for the ones doing much of the testing, it's for preservation of human life.  We all have our priorities. (criticizing some unnecessary tests, though, done for economy does seem more reasonable)

I can understand that the priorities of some might differ from others, but when people violate that hierarchy in some extreme way- such as criticizing animal testing done to save human lives while indulging in harm of animals for entertainment- I find that reprehensible. 

Preferring entertainment over health, survival, and even self defense?  It's either the mark of a nutcase or a hypocrite- maybe both.

 

I will repeat:  probably the only long term solution is to starve them out.  Get the human garbage and shit under control with waste collection and sewer systems.  Teach your children how to not be dog food.  The adult dogs will either move on or starve and the bitches will go into estrus less often so there are fewer puppies. 

In the meantime, shooting the more obvious dogs predating on lousy sanitary conditions will at least cause people to feel something useful is being done - regardless of the actual consequences of increased numbers and size of litters.  They might also want to hunt out the dens and drown the puppies.  Sorry, Rob.

People can be exceedingly short-sighted and stupid.

They are apparently short sighted enough to not have one single dog pound. Actually once again I believe it is "care", they don't. Complete lack of care is a destructive force in some cases.

 

I wonder what will be the consequences of the dog massacre. In Egypt they slaughtered population of pigs, reputedly to not spread swine flu. Eventually the bureaucracy found out, that the heaps of garbage suddenly piling up on streets might have something to do with that. So now when urban Egyptians are without their only way of disposing of garbage, the government might find out that classical diseases like typhus can be much worse.

I have no idea where I first heard about that, it might even be on this forum, but here is the report.
It seems to me that both pigs and dogs were so readily slaughtered, because they're considered unholy animals in Islam. I'm not sure about dogs.

 

  Edit: fixed   ( ...sorry cj )

  What an appropriate metaphor for the human brain, and not just regarding it's dimensions....

 

I'm in the middle ground- it's called being rational and consistent.

 

 

We can expect people who will endorse animal suffering for entertainment (as you do), to be accommodating of animal suffering for more important or noble causes, such as human health, survival, and self-defense.  It seems we can only expect that of sane people, though.

You seem to be suggesting that you find entertainment to be more important than human health, survival, or self defense.  If that's your priority, I consider you a psychopath of some kind, but that's your prerogative.

 

 

You refuse to accept responsibility for your choice to harm animals in those cases where animal suffering doesn't need to be accepted.

And you persistently use poor reasoning to rationalize your choices so you don't have to feel guilty about them- all the while criticizing others for harming animals in cases which are much more justified than your actions.

 

Stating extreme cases as just another bad excuse and rationalization: it doesn't change your responsibility and choice in this matter- there are things we don't have the practical ability or technology to avoid, and then there are things we do.  When we choose not to prevent suffering we could prevent- particularly of conscious beings, and particularly when that is an choice to perpetuate that suffering through our demands- that is on us.

 

Just because we can't eliminate all harm, doesn't mean we shouldn't bother moderating ourselves or eliminating the harm we do have power over, especially when it is easily viable and within our means- that is and remains a choice, no matter how much you try to pretend that it isn't.

 

Just take responsibility for your own choice to harm the extra animals you do, and recognize that it isn't necessary- that you do have a choice in the matter, and you have made the choice to harm animals for sake of your entertainment.

 

 

 

 

Absolutely- I agree with you that the ultimate solution needs to be holistic; it's a red queen's race to swat the fruit flies coming out of a garbage bin.  However, those things take serious infrastructure- something that has been damaged, and needs time to be rebuilt after the war.

Shooting and poisoning the dogs is definitely a quick fix that won't last, but of course it does still do something.

 

It would seem more practical to me to replace the dogs with another species- such as a breed of pig (of course, Muslims don't like them either)- which would be less dangerous to humans (though still potentially dangerous) and would be able to out-eat the dogs and starve them out in the mean time (while infrastructure is being replaced and improved).

After all, the best way to get rid of roaches in your house, next to actually cleaning things up, is to have a strong population of ants or centipedes; the food rubbish has to go somewhere.