Cruelty to cats! Another reason to boycott Beijing Olympics . . .

[Brigid]

I got onto this story because it was mentioned in Cat Fancy magazine. Chinese officials are cruelly murdering feral cats to supposedly clean up the city before the Games in August -- rounding them up and putting them in cages and letting them starve to death! They won't even euthanize them! :grr:

Still think we should have anything to do with these Olympics? :grr:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-528694/Olympics-clean-Chinese-style-Inside-Beijings-shocking-death-camp-cats.html

[King Bacon Fat]

1. There's still time to call a boycott...

Fuck China. Fuck the Olympics.

You can tell me about how cultures can be different, but that's just fucking sick. There's not one good thing about the People's Republic.

[OwnedByFerrets]

2. Kicked

[damntexdem]

3. Forget the stupid cats -- focus on Tibet.

[Kool Kitty]

4. Can't we do BOTH?????

Supporting one thing doesn't mean non-support of the other. Christ, we're not republicans-we can hold two separate thoughts in our head at the same time, you know. We're great multi-taskers!!!!

[Eurobabe]

6. seriously

:eyes:

[Arugula Latte]

11. "Stupid cats" -- fuck you. They are innocent animals and do not

deserve to be starved in a cage.

I wonder how you'd fare locked in a cage with no food or water. Your callous disregard of extreme cruelty sickens me.

Yes, of course, Tibet is important. But it does not cancel out the legitimacy of animal cruelty issues.

:grr:

[B.S. Lewis]

5. I agree, killing cats is terrible

and a good enough reason for a country that has murdered 650,000+ Iraqis to boycott the olympics in indignation.

Is this a joke...?

[Brigid]

7. I have always been in favor of a boycott.

This just adds to it. And I don't consider this a joke at all. there is nothing funny about animal cruelty.

[B.S. Lewis]

12. Well let me clarify then (I should have been more clear anyway)

I am not supporting cruelty to animals. I'm not even supporting euthanasia.

But to use the U.S. to boycott another country is to imply that the U.S. is somehow better. There is no getting around that. And such an implication could only be willingly made as a result of a profound ignorance about the recent history of U.S. foreign policy.

Furthermore, if the U.S. boycotted the Olympics, it would be for economic reasons - not because of some stupid (in the minds of U.S. political string-pullers) cat campaign. A boycott for any reason related to human or animal rights would be an *imagined* victory for those respective movements.

So, it's not opposing cat cruelty that is the "joke", it's using the U.S. to do so, as though the U.S.' hands are or ever have been or ever will be cleaner.

An animal rights activist pushing for the U.S. to boycott the olympics out of outrage over certain Chinese actions toward cats, would be like the Free Tibet people supporting the Dalai Lama's complicity with CIA-funded plans to engage in anti-Chinese guerrilla war in Tibet.

[Warpy]

8. I wonder how they're going to cope with rodent borne diseases

Remember the Black Death in Europe began when churchmen decreed cats to be the familiars of witches and ordered them all killed.

The subsequent boom in the rat population and the plague ridden fleas they carried managed to kill off at least a third of the people on the continent.

[jakem]

9. um. the cat story is 3 months old yo-

now about those Tibetans...

[roody]

10. I have boycotted the Olympics my whole life.

I will continue to do so.