What the hell is wrong with Hunan people?! :)
Was it not them who eat monkey brains, too?
They are like the french people of China!

This is just shameful and perverse. But of course, the really perverse part is that all of this is legal -- animals have no rights whatsoever in China (and certainly no form of enforcible protection).

But of course, while Shanghai is relatively modern and somewhat transparent, China's record on human rights and worker protection is extraordinarily dismal, and torture, summary executions, organ-trading, etc. remain among the Chinese government's activities, regardless of the bullshit you hear in the official media or glowing sound-bites from greedy western executives.

Ah, more hypocritical blog entries from the non-vegitarian 'animal lover'. LOL. Poor cute kitties, if only they were cows/sheep/chickens/fish/crabs/... being given a torturous death then we wouldn't feel so hurt!

"skinned one black and one white cat while they were ALIVE!"

Seems you really were as ignorant as we could see 6 months ago, despite your claims to the contrary. Good to see you're losing some of that ignorance. Better late than never, Zat. ;)

I wonder if this animal torture is some sort of manifestation of deeper psychological problems (no women, no good economic prospects, can't speak out, etc). The repressed animal torturers then go out and look for something alive and helpless to take their anger out on.

Akroyd, how dare you call me ignorant! Slut, I don't mind ;D

"Are you honestly suggesting that all meat eaters are pro animal torture?"

YAWWWWN, talk about an amateur attempt at straw manning. You didn't even bother searching for the thread from 6 months ago I was talking about, did you? Not surprising. Go search, doggie, go on, choo-choo.

Zat knows what I'm talking about, that's all that's important. My comment was directed at her, not everyone else, and certainly not you. :) I've shat more things that are more observant than you.

Good day.

I've shat more things that are more observant than you.

Awesome. Keep those quality observations coming, Bob.

I believe I posted plenty about my objection to cruelty to animals
^^^I think this line said pretty enough of where you stand and where I stand, Bobby.
Grow up.

Can anyone remember who said, "If you want to know the true character of a man, watch how he treats his dog?"

Something I think about when the "pet lover" next door to me here in Beijing leaves their dog in a little cage in our apartment stairwell without food or water for 6-7 hours at a stretch.

Great posts Zat.

Trev, glad you can admit you are a hypocrite, it's the first step towards real animal rights. Zat, on the other hand, thinks she's not a hypocrite, and actually thinks she's an animal lover and doesn't see the conflict in being a non-veggie. Not only is it short-sighted, it's head-in-the-sand stuff. Go visit them slaughterhouses and battery chicken farms, Zat, I dare you.

Alec,

Either way, I am pretty sure he's a jackass.

bob is being a jerk, but he's right.
the reason you can't be against animal torture and still eat meat is that raising and slaughtering animals for meat involves huge amounts of pain and suffering for those animals. (a possible exception is if you only buy "humanely" raised/killed meat, but often that claim is false, and as far as i know this kind of meat is not available in china.)

it's now well-established that humans do not need to eat meat to survive. there are thousands of people in every country proving that every day, and scientists say the same thing. so if you choose to create demand for an enormous industry that tortures millions of animals every day, doesn't that seem inconsistent with being opposed to animal torture?

Jake, don't let the idiot fool you, please, think about it, by this twisted logic no one should give a fuk of animals' tortured by psychos until we are ready to cover ourselves with leaves, only drink water and eat straw.
That actually reminds me a story I read a while ago that scientists just proved plants have feeling too.
I guess it's really a great news for bob right?

Jake and Chippens:

Would it shock you to know that plants have nervous systems that can feel pressure, hot, cold and even pain? Think about that next time you are ripping fruit off of a tree instead of letting natural processes making it drop off, removing a leaf from a plant or ripping a plant out of the ground.

trev, i was not talking to you. i have no desire to talk with people who can ignore the suffering of other beings. i was talking to zat, who seems to genuinely care about animals.

nanheyangrouchuan, plants do not have nervous systems, and there is no evidence that i'm aware of that they can feel pain (provide a cite if you have one). they *respond* to pressure, heat, and cold, but that's something very different from feeling them. we don't fully understand plants, and it's still possible that plants feel pain, but by becoming vegetarian you also reduce the number of plants you kill. it takes far more plants to raise animals to eat than if you just eat the plants in the first place.

Zat, thank you for posting about this, although this is the cruellest thing I've seen come out of China. I had two cats, a black one and a white one. The black cat died recently of pancreatic cancer at the age of 14, the white one is 17 so I don't know how long I'll have him. So I saw my cats in the two cats who were tortured. It's so frustrating that there is no avenue to prosecute the sadists involved in these acts, despite the video evidence and the faces of two of the tormenters being seen. The "killing white and black" case does not appear to have been widely publicized or discussed online in China, so I think a lot of people there don't know about it. Maybe just as well in a way since there is nothing at all that anyone can do. Anyway Zat, please keep posting about cases like this, and don't be put off by some of the strange comments people have left here. I'm a vegetarian but in China it's way way too soon for such niceties to be argued about at this time. Surely we all agree that the important thing is to have even a basic animal cruelty law in place for companion animals.

Here are my calculations especially on why my eating meat, especially in the long run, reduces pain on the earth

for both myself and the animals even if I do nothing special:

Foundations (without religion, others with):

1. Everything dies, no matter what, everything will die, sometimes in its sleep, sometimes in pain

2. Farming uses up large tracts of land, making it unhospitable to a wide range of animals

3. The increase in number of people who rely on farming uses up wide tracts of land, requires the death of large

numbers of animals in self-defence (sometimes justly, sometimes not) especially predators, which reduces the natural

health and capacity of wild (even vegetarian animals) to maintain reasonable populations in regard to their resources

which leads to their incredible pain and starvation and struggle

4. Taking animals captive, makes them slaves, rarely is what they need to eat comprehended, and what they are given

rarely sustains them in good health, and they forget who they are, and their lives are shrouded in unhappiness being

driven to and fro, not allowed to select their own mates. Even though it is possible that some of them ARE happy, even

more happy than they would be in the wild, MOST of them are miserable being slaves, and would like to be allowed to pursue

their own happiness in life. Also, taking them captive and herding them where they would not go, again also makes them

eat down to the ground areas they would not, and reduces all kinds of vegetation, and making passages to go with them

reduces the life of creatures in what would have been a forest if it wasnt mowed down to feed them, and takes away from

the variety of life by increasing the number of one creature unfairly in relation to its capacity to survive, thereby

even changing balances (like methane) of the earth's atmosphere, because variety feeds health, and variety feeds happiness

5. Even though I would seek, to the best of my ability to reduce the amount of pain an animal would feel to be eaten by me

in every way possible, and also to seek the most appropriate candidates for being consumed, the consumption of which will

strengthen and bring intelligence to the remainder, I feel very strongly from considering my own life, as I am a Viking

a Finn, a woman, and all that I am, that to live a good life, to be free, to be able to be honorable and righteous, to

be what I would, select my own partner, live in the directions I choose, would bring me more happiness, less pain, and

in the long run, also direct those around me best, rather than to be a slave, or driven around, even if to be free would

mean that I would have to get my own water and possibly die suddenly. If there are good hunters (not bad ones who do not

select, or who drive animals off cliffs, or who kill indiscriminately, there are always large healthy herds of animals, many

more than the ones that are eaten, for every good lion, there are twenty or thirty healthy deer that die in old age, while

without the lion there would be almost none because of how the world's balances work.

6. IN addition to this, my flesh runs ideally off of red meat. No vegetable I have ever eaten, no bean, nothing that I have

ever eaten keeps me healthy and alert. It seems that that is what I am meant to eat because when I eat beans or rice or vegetables

I am always hungry, always tired, mentally confused and easily shoved around. When I eat meat I am alert, a contributer to

a good direction, someone who considers the opportunity for happiness, and lessening of pain of all creatures across all

dimensions, under honor. When I eat vegetables I get stomachaches and have to take things or be uncomfortable and my stomach

is always violently churning and I never have the energy to respond to anything. When I eat vegetables I get sick whenever

people around me are sick and don't feel satisfied and have to struggle all the time. It really seems very abnormal. I think

the world is a better place when I am full of energy to do right and honorable things, and when I am healthy and fit. I think

that my mental solidarity contributes to my capacity to do right to be who I ought to be to the best of my ability.

Conclusion: When I count the cost in pain (death can never be counted as the cost because EVERYTHING DIES, DEATH cannot be

adjusted, PAIN is what can be adjusted, PAIN is what counts, DEATH IS), when I count the cost in pain, adding together the cost

of all the creatures moved out of the way for fields, the cost of the atmosphere, the cost of the increased population from

agrarians, the cost of the slavery of animals, the cost of the displaced creatures and plants, I believe that I reduce the

cost of pain by being a meat eater now and eventually a hunter as well. I believe that by choosing to promote the concept of

wild game I promote the freedom and right of happiness of a wide number of different wild animals, not only vegetarian animals

but also hunters and scavengers. I believe I encourage sustainable living by thinking in this way because with hunting there is

not much to move if you do it right. I strongly discourage any form of trophy hunting, and in fact think it is an abomination,

and encourage no hunting of predators except in self-defence (which I have no problem with at all). I believe in the encouragement

of animal populations to be increased, in the expanding of their areas and in the encouragement of releasing some of their natural

supplies back into the enviroment for their use so that they can pursue their own goals in life, whether they be right or not in

my eyes. I believe I reduce pain in the enviroment and increase pleasure because I believe that the free deer who has control

of her own life bounding in the woods, free to mate with whom she wishes and have her own children and her own home, is happier

and more understanding than almost all milk cows, than almost all sheep, than most creatures that people keep as slaves. I think

that the fifteen minutes of pain she feels when I strike is NOTHING compared to the lifetime of misery she would feel when fenced

in by farms, or kept as a pet on some ranch, or when locked down in a zoo, or when her whole people was reduced to nothing but a

few creatures because of human encroachment, or when she had to watch her children starve to death before dying herself if things

were left without anyone. I base that on every animal I have ever known, on the mournful cries of creatures crying for their starving

dead around them, and on my own life, knowing that death, if it is fast, is less important than how you live your life and whether

you enjoy it and whether it is a good life that contributes to your surroundings. I think that anyone who thinks about it long enough

will see that I am right, and that the people who think otherwise are ridiculous people who have not thought things out, and who

are superficial in thought, caring nothing about opening the ways for all creatures to succeed each for themselves in their own way

and in fact have no comprehension of other dimensions and have no willingness to look at the world around them and compare the

message in the eyes of the bright shiny wild deer in the wildwoods, in contrast to the dull, sad eye of the fed deer in the park.

They are masachistically desiring to increase the pain of all the animals and all the humans for no reason other than their own

ignorance.

This is not to say that people cannot be vegetarians or eat mostly vegetables or only fish, i HAVE a great deal of respect, especially

for the tree forest farmers who are learning how to grow things without utterly demolishing the balance of a region by growing things

under trees, and for those who use organic farming methods, and for those who, as the god of abraham said to do, allow their fields

to rest and restore balances instead of using them up. I dont have respect for many other things and wish that many others would

cease to increase pain in the world and instead consider what they do, they act like demonsnakes in the pits of hell seeing how many

creatures they can keep alive in unnatural hell, pumping their bodies full of chemicals, pumping the ground full of chemicals, exterminating

whole sets of creatures in multispecie genocide, tormenting mothers and children of other creatures, only to feed the poisonous scum

they make to their own kind and make even them sick in turn, as though living in a parking lot was a good thing. And then, sitting intheir

heap of poison they claim that THEY are "helping the animals" even as thousands of lions, antelopes, deers, elephants, sheep, and every

other kind of creature are killed and driven away homeless in pain, to make room for their "vegetarian bean farms". Where do you think

these creatures go? Where is an elephant or herd of antelopes and deer going to go when the farmers come in? They have no place left,

driven from their homes, their caretakers killed by the everincreasing number of people, they are driven into parks to waste away with

no place to hide to die in misery eating mcdonalds handouts of antibiotic ridden potatoes from hormone laced children, or they wander

into the woods, mixing in the fields of domestic cattle who are full of diseases from the food that people have unnaturally fed them

and full of medications, and then carry those diseases that no wild animal would have had into the woods where there is no lion left

to defend their children, until the wander sick-eyed to the forest rangers and collapse into the feed stands of the farmer-killers who

shoot them like pets in a chute when they come to eat farmers corn. IN a region of mostly hunters (I say mostly hunters because I would

take food that was good to me and of all the seeds I would plant it in fertile places, by rivers, or in other places even better than

a squirrel so it would grow itself) these animals would ALL be free, they would ALL have homes, they would not be displaced, instead of

a thousand mothers watching their offspring die of diseases, or starvation even as they themselves were sick, most of them would live

happy and healthy lives surrounded by their loved ones, enjoying all that the planet has to offer. Huge populations of people who are

like this makes the world a smaller place, a more crowded place, a place with very little freedom for any living thing, ESPECIALLY the

animals they claim they are so worried about. Reduce the pain of all creatures and open their paths to understanding and happiness and freedom.

Make the world a better place by giving everyone and everything freedom and the room to interact and learn to communicate and live in accordance

with balance. Everything dies, everything lives. What you can reduce is pain, what you can increase is contentment and happiness. Everything

else is nothing but a superficial joke. There is room for every kind of people, there is room for every kind of animal, there is room for

everyone to have what they need to be contented, to have what they need to reach for understanding and happiness, to have what they need

to be able to feel the balance without fear. The potential of all creatures goes unrecognized when unthinking man lashes out without understanding

and balance. To serve life you must bow to death.