Monthly Archives: August 2007

NADA

Brutal ‘Dog Men’

A Blood Sport Exposed – washingtonpost.com

“Dog men,” they call themselves, the untold numbers of breeders and fighters. With their pastime illegal everywhere in the country, they stay in touch through secret networks and underground magazines. They say they love to compete. They tell themselves the pit bulls love it, too.

“The reason for the Michael Vick thing . . . is because athletes have a keen insight into courage and determination, which is what pit bulls possess,” said Bill Stewart, a breeder in Romance, Ark., who publishes the Pit Bull Reporter. “Athletes understand better than anyone what dogfighting is about. It’s about two highly conditioned athletes going at each other with everything they have to try to win. It’s the purest form of combat on earth.”

To dog men, all dogs are curs except the American pit bull terrier, descended from canines used in English blood sports centuries ago.

Animal-protection workers and others who have infiltrated the underworld of pit bull fighting say dog men train their animals for weeks before bouts, perverting the dietary and fitness sciences to build ferocious canine maulers.

They perform unlicensed veterinary surgery on the grievously wounded and stud their battle-scarred champs, often for fees in the hundreds of dollars. A pit bull in its prime with a string of victories can fetch $10,000 or more. To save on upkeep and preserve the breed, weaklings are destroyed, either painlessly or with a vengeance.

The illegal bouts, in carpeted 16-by-16-foot pits surrounded by four-foot walls, are staged in hidden venues, usually with no more than a few dozen spectators allowed. Elaborate, decades-old rules are followed. Bets are posted in cash, sometimes five figures. Afterward, dog men tend to their pit bulls’ injuries, provided the animals fought gamely. They won’t tolerate dogs that quit.

Young pit bulls that survive training become “match dogs,” weighing 35 to 55 pounds and fighting in weight classes. With a pile of cash riding on the outcome, a regulation match is officiated by a referee. A typical bout lasts 45 minutes to an hour, usually ending when one of the bloodied combatants is too torn and gouged to go on.

Dog men have too much invested in their animals to let them fight to the death, so fatalities in the pit are rare. But grave, disfiguring wounds are the norm.

“At the top level, there are probably several thousand guys,” said John Goodwin, manager of animal-fighting issues for the Humane Society of the United States. “When you include the guys who are part of organized dogfighting but don’t have quite as sophisticated an operation as we saw in Surry County, we’re talking about upwards of 40,000.” …

About 15 years ago, after it became fashionable in the urban thug life to be seen with a menacing pit bull, spur-of-the-moment street fights became common. [One gang member strutting with his nasty pit bull sees another, egos swell, and soon they’re in a vacant building, the dogs ripping into each other while still on leash chains. “Street fighting,” these impromptu bouts are called.]

In this realm, to train them, owners often whip their pit bulls, burn them with cigarettes, feed them gunpowder and jalapeño peppers until they turn unremittingly vicious. Authorities said a dog man’s pit bulls normally are safe for people to handle, while a street dog usually will attack anything that moves, except the “alpha male” who abused it. …

Because urban pit bull fights usually are spontaneous, police said, making arrests is difficult unless owners are caught in the act. Based on the dozens of battered and scarred pit bulls abandoned or seized in the Washington area every year, however, animal-protection advocates say street fighting is common. …

Generally, the process of turning a well-bred pit bull pup into a fighter begins when the dog is 16 months old, said Sakach, who witnessed a dozen organized dogfights as an undercover investigator in the 1980s and 1990s. He now trains enforcement agencies on how to root out dog men.

The “prospect” is pitted in bouts against an over-the-hill fighter in the kennel, sometimes with filed-down teeth, a dog unable to do much damage.

“These are short combats, about 10 to 15 minutes,” said Sakach, “during which the prospect is going to get lots and lots of lavish praise. The point is, you want the dog to start associating praise with what its master wants it to do, which is fight.”

After a few months, this “schooling” process turns deadly serious, as the dog begins preparing for its “game test,” a full-fledged bout with a kennel-mate in its prime, to measure how much punishment the young pit bull can take. The prospect trains for six to eight weeks, hour upon hour — running, swimming, jumping, chomping — until test day arrives.

“The idea here is, you want your prospect to get hurt,” Sakach said. “You don’t want it hurt so bad that it’s going to die. But you want it hurt badly enough so that it really understands pain and exhaustion. Because you want to know if your dog’s going to quit.”

For a prospect that fails, life is short. “If they’re not going to make money for you,” Sakach said, “then you don’t want them around.”
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mjh’s blog — “Barbaric! Hear me!”

photos

Avis Habilis

I’ve written about the peanut-loving scrub jays in our backyard (mjh’s blog — m jay h). This week, I watched a young grackle use a respectable level of ingenuity. Following the lead of the scrub jays, the grackle landed on the patio table and picked up a nut. It pecked at the shell briefly. Then it carried the shell over to a bowl of water and dropped it in. It pulled the shell out, shook it, dropped it in again. The grackle repeated this a few times until the shell began to open. Voila! This may explain the empty shells in the birdbath. mjh

smart grackle

(Two more photos with this one on Flickr.)

Letters-to-the-Editor

I found a way to agree with Samuelson

The gist of Robert Samuelson’s message on Global Warming seems to be: We’ve done nothing so far, so let’s not start doing something now! And stop picking on the naysayers!

That last part is hard to take. Mercifully, I don’t recall anything Samuelson has written about Iraq. Did I miss him saying we’ve accomplished nothing in the Middle East, so why start (a war) now? Was he singing in praise of dissent when others of his ilk were raging against the traitors in their midst?

To find a way to agree with Samuelson, I’ve replace “climate change” and “global warming” in this essay with “the War on Terror.” mjh

Robert J. Samuelson – Global WarmingWar on Terror Simplicities – washingtonpost.com

If you missed Newsweek’s story, here’s the gist. A “well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around the War on Terror.” This “denial machine” has obstructed action against the War on Terror and is still “running at full throttle.” The story’s thrust: Discredit the “denial machine,” and the country can start the serious business of fighting the War on Terror. The story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading.

The War on Terror debate’s great unmentionable is this: We lack the technology to get from here to there. Just because Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to cut terrorism 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 doesn’t mean it can happen. At best, we might curb the growth of terrorists.

Consider a 2006 study from the International Energy Agency. Using present policies, it projected that the War on Terror would more than double by 2050; developing countries would account for almost 70 percent of the increase. The IEA then simulated an aggressive, global program in the War on Terror Under this admitted fantasy, the War on Terror in 2050 would still slightly exceed 2003 levels.

Even the fantasy would be a stretch. In the United States, it would take massive regulations, higher energy taxes or both. Democracies don’t easily adopt painful measures in the present to avert possible future problems. Examples abound. Since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, we’ve been on notice to limit dependence on insecure foreign oil. We’ve done little. In 1973, imports were 35 percent of U.S. oil use; in 2006, they were 60 percent. For decades we’ve known of the huge retirement costs of baby boomers. Little has been done. One way or another, our War on Terror is likely to be symbolic, ineffective or both. …

But the overriding reality seems almost un-American: We simply don’t have a solution for this problem of terrorism. As we debate it, journalists should resist the temptation to portray the War on Terror as a morality tale — as Newsweek did — in which anyone who questions its gravity or proposed solutions may be ridiculed as a fool, a crank or an industry stooge. Dissent is, or should be, the lifeblood of a free society.
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Samuelson is impressive for how much mendacity he can fit into just one column.  See Mary’s excellent Global Warming Naysayers for a discussion of other areas where we should say, “Robert J Samuelson, J’Accuse”.  

  • Samuelson, sadly, often merits being called out.  Just over a year ago, J’accuse! Distorting reality in “Global Warming’s Real Inconvenient Truth”, which was about a Samuelson OPED that “has factual errors, misleading statements and conclusions, and provides a counterproductive path for thinking about and achieving change for a better future.”
    – – – – –

    [mjh: I feel closest to Samuelson when I read the following.]

    Robert J. Samuelson – Farewell, Comma, He Said – washingtonpost.com

    • other voices

    Point Proved

    ABQjournal Opinion: Letters to the Editor
    NCLB Goes Against Laws of Statistics
    I JUST READ the Journal article providing dire warnings that “most schools fail” because they aren’t meeting the standards set by the Republicans’ fiendishly clever No Child Left Behind Act. Have you really not figured it out or is this just sensationalistic journalism?
    For one thing, the statute should be called the “Repeal the Laws of Statistics Act.” Every year, no matter how well a school does, it has to do better next year or it “fails.” If 100 percent of Sandia High students meet the goals for 2007, then Sandia will “fail” every year after that, even if they do exactly as well each year because they aren’t “improving.” How do you improve from 100 percent?
    The act has 37 measures and if a school misses even one measure, it “fails.” Think about that. A school meets 36 goals, misses one, for an overall percentage of 97.3 percent. That’s an “A” in most grading scales, but under No Child Left Behind the school “fails!” …
    Every year, as more and more schools inevitably “fail” to meet the act’s ridiculous criteria, gullible newspapers like the Journal will tell all their readers “your schools are failing!” Seen as a recruitment strategy for convincing voters to distrust the school system generally and the teachers’ union specifically, the act finally makes a little bit of sense. Cynical, vicious, Karl Rovian sense, that is.
    Enough of this and maybe the voters will eventually be more receptive to spending their tax dollars to subsidize expensive private schools for the rich. Oh, I’m sorry, the Republican label is “school vouchers”— what was I thinking. …
    MIKE DANIELS
    Albuquerque
    http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/letters/587798opinion08-21-07.htm

    ABQjournal Opinion: Speak Up!
    OUR SECRETARY of education has the same old solution to failing schools— deny there is a problem, dumb down the grading, blame the messenger. Another failing grade for the high paid educational bureaucrats.— J.L.P.
    http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/speak/587799opinion08-21-07.htm

    Uncategorized

    Grasp Gaps

    I took an online IQ test today. I usually avoid such things — they threaten the delicate balance between arrogance and shame. I will say that the verbal stuff — analogies, in particular — was easy. The math was harder. The SATs told me that years ago. But there were several spatial/graphical examples that I never grasped. I truly had no clue what was expected of me. At times like that, my left brain punts to my right brain: Here, you figure this out! Perhaps I should have used my left hand to make those selections. For all I know, my right brain pulled it off — he can’t say, really. My left brain is still miffed. He’ll be in his room for hours throwing books and toys to let the whole house know he’s suffered a grave injustice. Ah, but nothing coaxes him out of his corner quite like a tasty metaphor. mjh

    other voices

    Around the ‘sphere

    1 Comment

    Been catching up on some blog reading and, in the custom of our cohort, have some recommendations for you.

    I feel for the sense of injustice over at ABQrising (http://abqrising.wordpress.com/). As one listed twice (in your face!) in the Alibi’s recent list of local blogs, I extend a welcoming hand to another local blog with potential. This, even though none of my blogs appear in its blogroll. (Is there a blogroll big enough for me and Mario Burgos?)

    It says something that I enjoyed the cartoons more than anything else at irReligion.org (particularly, Jesus – Meet Prometheus from russellsteapot.com). Unlike Believers, atheists don’t seem to congregate, even virtually. This site looks like it gets a lot of visits, FWIW.

    This one is just too cool and I wonder how long it can keep it up: strange maps (hat tip to my homie jfleck).

    Harry Potter: Pronunciation Guide | Scholastic
    http://www.scholastic.com/harrypotter/books/pronunciation.htm

    GRE Vocabulary Word Scramble

    National Novel Writing Month – National Novel Writing Month
    http://www.nanowrimo.org/

    Finally, via Albloggerque, a Sunday Poem. I was ready to forget this until I read the last 4 lines. Damn, that’s fine. mjh

    Found Letter, by Joshua Weiner

    What makes for a happier life, Josh, comes to this:
    Gifts freely given, that you never earned;
    Open affection with your wife and kids;
    Clear pipes in winter, in summer screens that fit;
    Few days in court, with little consequence;
    A quiet mind, a strong body, short hours
    In the office; close friends who speak the truth;
    Good food, cooked simply; a memory that’s rich
    Enough to build the future with; a bed
    In which to love, read, dream, and re-imagine love;
    A warm, dry field for laying down in sleep,
    And sleep to trim the long night coming;
    Knowledge of who you are, the wish to be
    None other; freedom to forget the time;
    To know the soul exceeds where it’s confined
    Yet does not seek the terms of its release,
    Like a child’s kite catching at the wind
    That flies because the hand holds tight the line.