Cooked Alive: China is an earthly hell for dogs

dogs cooked alive

Ernest Dempsey with Carol Forsloff —If you think the treatment of dogs in America, Brazil and Eastern Europe are nightmarish, think again.  There is another place where it is even worse and quite literally an earthly hell for dogs, according to bloggers and the alternative press in China

Today's economic giant China has places where dogs are baked alive. For any civilized individual, it will be hard to find the right words for this practice, for it is so terrifyingly that it is difficult to find words to describe just how awful it is.

The practice of cooking dogs while they are alive is being reported occasionally from China. Last year, Green Prophet published a story on stray dogs being cooked alive in Eastern China. The post had photos of a small homeless puppy being lured toward a woman who was shown in the next photo to be holding the dog by its neck in tongs and cooking it over fire.

A post in the Data Lounge noted that this kind of cooking, which obviously is extremely cruel, dates back thousands of years in Chinese history – a kind of culinary tradition. The Eastern  Chinese city of Kengkou is particularly infamous for this, as the photos of the story making the news were taken from there. But the practice exists, as a sore on the burdened existence of insensitive human hunger.

The writer of the Data Lounge post noted that while in places where consuming dogs for food is taboo, such practice indeed sounds cruel. Yet, when reviewed in the context of all the animal bloodshed and cruelty to animals in the West and other parts of the world, it will become difficult to condemn the Chinese alone for what they do to dogs. In a world where a living, breathing animal, capable of feeling pain and emotions and as much part of nature in that sense, according to science, as humans in response to that pain, animal activists tell us it is important to examine what happens to cattle, pigs, poultry, and other animals that are killed for consumption around the world. Many people maintain they are also treated cruelty.  Therefore, one may ask why indict just China for animal cruelty? Still China's particular way of treating dogs is a high profile example of the worst in preparation of meat for eating. Animal activists object to these practices that are worldwide. While many people eat meat, most would not want animals to be subjected to cruelty in the process of preparing that meat.

Animal activists see cruelty to animals and the killing of them as a "source of protein" to justify their killing as insensitive.  But burning dogs alive is especially cruel and a reminder that the practice goes beyond the ordinary.  And what has been China's response? According to CNN reporter Anna Coren who covered a dog meat festival in China this past June, the participants there declared, as noted in her headline, "It's our culture, and we won't change."

Activists are asking that President Obama persuade China to end the cooking of dogs alive, a particularly cruel way to kill an animal for food, and petitions are available, including one by Linda Camac, for readers and activists to express their outrage that in the modern world animals are treated so badly.  It is a matter of humanitarian concern.

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The above represents substantially the original author's point of view, edited for grammar and usage, but also with an insertion of the Editor of this publication that offers the meat eaters concerns as well, especially in response to animal cruelty.  The article has also been updated with facts from 2014, after the original writer left this publication.

Getting rid of titular science in Pakistan

Ernest Dempsey – Yesterday was some notable time in the history of Pakistan’s communication technology when a first ‘advanced’ geostationary communication satellite was launched into the space by China on behalf of Pakistan. The satellite, called PAKSAT-1R, was launched from China’s Xichang Satellite Launch Center and it’ll provide communication services to more than 45 clients, including Pakistan’s army and some popular private TV channels as well as cell phone communication companies. Undoubtedly, the credit goes to President Asif Ali Zardari who signed the agreement for this satellite with his Chinese counterpart in 2008. There is but one note of concern the good news evokes: when it can, and does, revert to its technologically advanced neighbor, why is Pakistan spending hundreds of millions on its so-called scientific research?

The question raised in The Express Tribune post was whether the country’s space science program is on the right track. Right on the mark, however, will be the question “why waste millions on science institutes and projects that are simply insignificant and, at worst, not even scientific?” Spending on research is justified only if the research is carried out by competent, learned, well-trained, and intelligent scientists. These qualities are, sadly, lacking in Pakistan’s so-called scientists. In all provinces and institutions of the country, science has been reduced to cramming text and reproducing it in exams. Rehashed versions and imitations of research carried out abroad decades ago are printed as ‘research papers’ by degree-holders who, through back doors and other underhand methods, have occupied high academic designations. For feasting on government funds, this titular ‘research’ has enjoyed the lack of accountability through fair audits and competent, objective evaluation. And all this has been going on for decades, growing year after year.

The results are disastrous and obvious: in times of disaster, Pakistan’s geological/environmental hazards are managed by China; its missile technology and air defense system are developed by China; its mineral reserves are explored by the developed west; and its satellite communication technology is developed by… good guess, China. For all scientific and technological solutions, Pakistan pays China and other developed countries while at the same time producing science rotes under the supervision of PhD-degree holders who each gets 5 to 10 times that of an average Pakistani citizen’s monthly income. This pay is only a small part of the hundreds of millions spent annually on buying scientific equipment for whose use to learn, foreign trainers are hired or incompetent rotes are sent abroad, again spending a lot of government funds. And the outcome? Recently, a drone developed domestically crashed to the ground after it collided with a bird!

It is almost unimaginable what financial (and intellectual) horrors have been and are being planted by this waste of public funds in the land where people kill themselves on account of extreme poverty. True that arts and humanities are as dead as science here, but the country doesn’t have to pay huge amounts to China or the west to publish poetry, decorate buildings, or compose music. If there is one failed pursuit the nation has been burdened with, repeatedly, it’s that of science. Whether it’s nuclear physics, earth science, engineering, or space science, Pakistan has been sucked of funds by parasitic academia that are worth little but get all.

The current democratic government is doing a lot of good stuff in public interest. Devolving ministries to provinces and increasing cooperation with neighboring countries for collaboration are a few of its big positives. It already has assigned the education sector to provinces and substantially reduced funds for higher education—funds that would be wasted on producing more inept degree-holders. It will be a great step toward progress if President Zaradri’s government also puts an end to the ‘science fraud’ that this country has been a victim of for decades. Minimizing foreign scholarships to foreign lands, eliminating the nonsensical tenure-track scheme of payment, and cutting all titular-scientific expenses to bare minimum would help the nation a great deal in coping with the debt/financial crisis that is looming large over its shrinking economy.