Mickey Z

Cool Observer

Sunday, October 25, 2009

What's happening while you read this blog post (Part III)

As you read this, I’d like you to contemplate just a tiny sampling of what’s happening elsewhere:

A mink is being prepared to be skinned for its fur. Almost three million of them (also foxes, chinchillas, and raccoons) are raised on so-called fur farms where they are imprisoned in cages often as small as 2.5 square feet for four animals. Since no federal law protects the animals on these farms, the conditions are predictably horrifying. The animals display the behavior of any creature under incredible duress: pacing, climbing, self-mutilating, cannibalism. After a life of misery, death does not come swiftly. The preferred method of execution is anal or genital electrocution. Described as experiencing “the intense pain of a heart attack while fully conscious,” the animals literally are burned from the inside out…to prevent damage to the coat, of course. Alternate fur farm approaches include suffocation or neck-breaking—however, this often results in the animals only being stunned and therefore skinned alive.

While anyone can comfortably wear fur in public, our culture remains criminal…

Such posts often provoke questions as to why I focus on the “bad stuff” about America, the “bad stuff” about capitalism, the “bad stuff” about industrial civilization. I’ll let Dick Gregory reply for me.

As James Baldwin sez: “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”

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Enigmatic fruits