Dateline: Onslow County, North Carolina

Dateline:   Onslow County, North Carolina
(While this may focus on Onslow County, this blog will emcompass North Carolina and some federal and international problems with the invasion.) 

The “Animal Rights” brigade has invaded and people don’t realize what is going on…….

Some Background Info:  

While I wasn’t born here in Onslow County, or even in N.C., I grew up here as a military brat.  Went to school and graduated from high school here.  Made friends and knew my first love here.   Went to colleges and joined the USN and came back for visits.  In 1993 I returned to live here again.  Onslow County, you might say, is in my blood.  I grew up knowing how to shoot a rifle, hunt, which leaves not to touch and how to tell the differences between a poisonous and non-poisonous snake.  I grew up learning how to fish.  I grew up recognizing that farmers and commercial fishermen are as needed and as much a part of the community and our history as Camp LeJeune and before the military bases.  I grew up understanding dogs are dogs, cats are cats, horses are horses and critters like these do NOT have the same rights as a human being.  I grew up understanding humans are omnivores.   Some choose to be vegetarians while a few others choose a vegan “lifestyle”.  However, just don’t force your beliefs on me. 

Some Current Info: 

I have issues.   Hell, we ALL have issues.  I have medical issues.  For one reason or another they prevent me from doing many things.  One of my loves is dog showing.  While I can’t go to one anymore and show a dog myself, I have had dogs shown to their championships.  Two champion show dogs that I owned, unfortunately, died within this past year.  I will buy another potential show dog again and I will have it shown to its championship.  NOTICE:   I said “BUY”.  Not adopt.  That is my prerogative  and my right.  I choose to buy a puppy from a reputable breeder.  There is nothing wrong with adopting a pet or rescuing a dog.  I have rescued dogs and adopted dogs, but I choose to buy a puppy that has a health history I know, understand, can see the genetics from the sire and dame and comprehend what goes along with my choice in breed of dog. 

I am a member of the local all-breed kennel club which is recognized by the AKC (American Kennel Club).  Jacksonville NC Kennel Club (JNCKC).   Due to those previously mentioned issues, I haven’t made it to a meeting in a year.  I am a member of the Central Carolina Dachshund Club (CCDC), the National Miniature Dachshund Club (NMDC) and the Dachshund Club of America (DCA).  Now, can you tell which breed of dog I prefer??

I was the legislative person for the JNCKC for a number of years.  Recently, I was the co-chair of the Legislative Committee for the DCA until September 2011 when those damnable issues made it very difficult for me to focus and keep abreast of legislative situations for the DCA.  So, I needed to resign my position.  It was a very difficult decision but needed to assist in my health.  Resting. Recouping.  Regaining a foothold within these issues.  And just as I am continuing to regroup, all Hell breaks loose right here in Onslow County. 

Education 101:  The Differences between Animal Rights vs. Animal Welfare.

There is a difference and many don’t understand the danger of the differences until it smacks them in the jaw with a left hook.  How many care about the differences?  Oh, you hunters will….   You who breed a couple of litters of dogs or cats or guinea pigs will….  You pig farmers and ranchers and 4-H’ers will and you people who want to buy a specific breed of dog as a puppy and know its history will……  and hopefully by then, it won’t be too late.  

Melodramatic?   Not at all.  Let’s look at the differences between animal rights and animal welfare. 

Animal Welfare means you care about animals.  You care about their treatment.  You care they are used in a respectful and safe manner.  You understand we, as humans, have a responsibility to care for animals.   Animal welfare means ensuring that animals are humanely treated regardless of how we use them.  Animal welfare means being responsible for animals we use whether it is for food, education, research or kept in zoos and especially being responsible for our pets in our home. 

To reiterate:    As animal welfare advocates. . .
1.   We seek to improve the treatment and well-being of animals.
2.   We support the humane treatment of animals that ensures comfort and freedom from unnecessary pain and suffering.
3.   We believe we have the right to "own" animals -- they are our property.  We are not pet guardians. 
4.   We believe animal owners should provide loving care for the lifetime of their animals.

Animal Rights is a philosophy.   While animal rights individuals and groups talk about humane treatment of animals, they go further than that.  They believe animals are NOT ours to use as we please or as needed.  The most radical of them ascribe to a vegan lifestyle of absolutely no animals or animal by-products usage.   Animal rights is a belief that no species on earth is better than another and therefore, humans have no right to “enslave, dominate, use, breed or eat non-human species”.   Don’t believe it?  There is a leading animal rights professor at NCSU.  Yes, what was originally thought of as an agricultural college years ago has an AR professor.   Tom Regan is a Professor of Philosophy at NCSU and here is a short bio on him as well as others who fostered the AR movement in its earliest stages:   http://www.animal-rights.com/arpage.htm      

To reiterate:    As animal rights activists. . .
1.   They seek to end the use and ownership of animals, including the keeping of pets. 2.   They believe that any use of an animal is exploitation so, not only must we stop using animals for food and clothing, but pet ownership must be outlawed as well.
3.   They want to obtain legal rights for animals as they believe that animals and humans are equal.
4.   They use false and unsubstantiated allegations of animal abuse to raise funds, attract media attention and bring supporters into the movement. (The Inhumane Crusade, Daniel T. Oliver:  http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Rights-Inhumane-Crusade-Organization/dp/0936783230  )

No Exam!  The “Humane” Society of the U.S.  (H$U$) 

     The H$U$ is by far the wealthiest Animal Rights organization in the USA.  In fact, it is the wealthiest Animal Rights organization in the world.   So, you would think with that kind of money it would do a lot to help critters.  You would be wrong.  I choose to speak of this organization first because they have invaded Onslow County and are trying to “sway” the uninformed to their way of thinking.  AR groups, not just the H$U$, and individual AR ”Advocates” do this by a modality of tactics like emotional diatribes and just right/just timed “busts” on breeders and alleged dog fights and then riding in to the “rescue.”   (By the way, something to consider:  in all these busts the alleged perpetrator had been under investigation for some time.  Knowing animals are suffering, why are the various local law enforcement agencies …..  WAITING to go into the environment and help the animals??)   They do this by advertising with those sad faced little TV ads and by coming into an area and talking about the problems with animals in that area.  Pet Overpopulation?  Too many dog breeders?  To many chicken or pig farmers with farms they believe are substandard?   People are eager to help needy critters.  They come in with statically one-sided data that they  CANNOT substantiate.   Uninformed people believe them.   They come in with the smoothest talking people that have Never run for a political office. 

With the uninformed hooked, the requests for money begin.  The requests to report neighbors and family and friends who they believe might be mistreating animals, according to the AR “bible” begins.  Politicians begin thinking about changing laws that have been working because the AR group says the law really isn’t working.  People begin pushing lawmakers for changes for the “betterment” of the animals, NO matter the costs to humans.  The AR groups continue to push for more changes and more advancements of their beliefs.   NO matter the costs to humans.  The AR group doesn’t have to worry about paying for the costs.  It just keeps raking in the money. 

There you have it in a nutshell:  H$U$. 

The SEVEN (7) Things You Didn’t Know About the H$U$  (http://www.consumerfreedom.com/article_detail.cfm/a/184-7-things-you-didnt-know-about-hsus )

1.   The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is a “humane society” in name only. It isn’t affiliated with any hands-on “humane society” organizations, and it doesn’t operate a single pet shelter or pet adoption facility anywhere. During 2008, HSUS contributed barely $450,000— less than one-half of one percent of its budget—in grants to dog and cat shelters. By comparison, that same year it gave $2.25 million to a political campaign committee behind an anti-meat ballot initiative in California, and put $2.5 million into HSUS’s executive pension plan. HSUS is the wealthiest animal-rights lobbying organization on earth. It agitates for the same goals as PETA and other radical groups, but uses fewer naked interns.

2.   Beginning on the day of NFL quarterback Michael Vick’s 2007 dogfighting indictment, HSUS raised money online with the false promise that it would “care for the dogs seized in the Michael Vick case.” The New York Times later reported that HSUS wasn’t caring for Vick’s dogs at all. And HSUS President Wayne Pacelle told the Times that his group urged government officials to “put down” (that is, kill) the dogs rather than adopt them out to suitable homes. HSUS later quietly altered its Internet fundraising pitch. Vick now gives HSUS “sponsored” speeches. And most of his dogs have been rehabilitated—WITHOUT any help from HSUS.

3.   HSUS’s senior management includes a former spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), a criminal group designated as “terrorists” by the FBI. HSUS president Wayne Pacelle hired John “J.P.” Goodwin in 1997, the same year Goodwin described himself as “spokesperson for the ALF” while he fielded media calls in the wake of an ALF arson attack at a California veal processing plant. In 1997, when asked by reporters for a reaction to an ALF arson fire at a farmer’s feed co-op in Utah (which nearly killed a family sleeping on the premises), Goodwin replied, “We’re ecstatic.” That same year, Goodwin was arrested at a UC Davis protest celebrating the 10-year anniversary of an ALF arson at the university that caused $5 million in damage.

4.   A 2008 Los Angeles Times investigation found that HSUS receives less than 12 percent of the money raised on its behalf by California telemarketers. Professional fundraisers keep the rest. If you exclude two campaigns run for HSUS by the “Builda-Bear Workshop” retail chain—which consisted of the sale of surplus stuffed animals (not really “fundraising”)—HSUS’s yield shrinks to just three percent. This is typical. In 2004, HSUS ran a telemarketing campaign in Connecticut with fundraisers who promised a return of “zero percent” of the proceeds. The campaign raised over $1.4 million. Not only did none of that money go to HSUS, but the group paid $175,000 for the telemarketing work. Similar filings exist in Massachusetts, New York, and other states. In 2008 HSUS collected more than $86 million in contributions, but spent more than $24 million on fundraising.

5.   HSUS’s heavily promoted U.S. “boycott” of Canadian seafood—announced in 2005 as a protest against Canada’s annual seal hunt—is a phony exercise in media manipulation. A 2006 investigation found that 78 percent of the restaurants and seafood distributors described by HSUS as “boycotters” weren’t participating at all. Nearly two-thirds of them told surveyors they were completely unaware HSUS was using their names in connection with an international boycott campaign. Canada’s federal government is on record about this deception, saying: “Some animal rights groups have been misleading the public for years … it’s no surprise at all that the richest of them would mislead the public with a phony seafood boycott.” A documentary director also caught an HSUS film crew abusing a dying seal while they shot a 2007 fundraising video on the ice floes of Atlantic Canada.

6.   HSUS raised $34 million in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, supposedly to help reunite lost pets with their owners. But comparatively little of that money was spent for its intended purpose. Louisiana’s Attorney General shuttered his 18-month-long investigation into where most of these millions went, shortly after HSUS announced its plan to contribute $600,000 toward the construction of an animal shelter on the grounds of a state prison. In 2009, Atlanta ABC affiliate WSB-TV reported that public disclosures of the disposition of the $34 million in Katrina-related donations added up to less than $7 million.

7.   After gathering undercover video footage of improper animal handling at a Chino, CA slaughterhouse during November of 2007, HSUS sat on its video evidence for three months, even refusing to share it with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. HSUS’s Dr. Michael Greger may have perjured himself before Congress, testifying that the San Bernardino County (CA) District Attorney’s office asked the group “to hold on to the information while they completed their investigation.” The District Attorney’s office quickly denied that account, declaring that HSUS refused to make its undercover spy available to investigators if the USDA were present. Ultimately, HSUS chose to release its video footage at a politically opportune time, as it prepared to launch a livestock-related ballot campaign in California. Meanwhile, meat from the slaughterhouse continued to flow into the U.S. food supply for months.

Money.  Money where is the H$U$ money? 

According to HumaneWatch.com:   We studied HSUS’s IRS Form 990 for 2010, and found that just two-fifths of one percent (0.42%) of HSUS’s $126 million budget was spent on grants to support pet sheltering. This “Humane Society” spent a whopping $47 million on fundraising—almost 90 times what it spent on these shelter grants. HSUS also stuffed $32 million away in hedge funds and put over $2.5 million in its executive pension plan.
What’s another HSUS priority? Supporting lobbyists. We found that HSUS spent 86 times more on its Ohio political front group attacking farming in 2009 than it did on Ohio pet shelters. In Missouri, HSUS spent 32 times more on its political front group in 2010 than it did on shelter-support in that state. 

The Humane Society of the United States would like Americans to believe it provides significant monetary support to local hands-on shelters, but their financial records tell an inconvenient truth. As local shelters struggle to keep their doors open, HSUS is raising millions of dollars a month from unwitting donors to bankroll an animal rights agenda and fund a huge staff of lawyers and lobbyists, a bloated executive pension plan, and exorbitant fundraising expenses. Meanwhile, HSUS doesn't run a single shelter for the abandoned dogs and cats that are so plentiful in its ads.   http://www.consumerfreedom.com/news_detail.cfm/h/4545-hsus-still-not-a-real-humane-society 

So, Why did I Give You This Information?

Truth is a powerful weapon.
Reality is a powerful weapon.