Sunday, October 18, 2009

Progressive Passions Collide

The same week Finland made broadband Internet access a legal right, neighboring Sweden goes renewable at the expense of animal rights:
Stockholm's bunnies burned to keep Swedes warm

The bodies of thousands of rabbits culled every year from the parks in Stockholm’s Kungsholmen neighbourhood are being used to fuel a heating plant in central Sweden.

The decision to use Stockholm’s rabbit cadavers as bioenergy to warm Swedes living in Värmland doesn't sit well with Stockholm-based animal rights activists.

"Those who support the culling of rabbits surely think it’s good to use the bodies for a good cause. But it feels like they’re trying to turn the animals into an industry rather than look at the main problem," Anna Johannesson of Vilda kaniners värn (‘Society for the Protection of Wild Rabbits’) told the local Vårt Kungsholmen newspaper.

Every year, the city of Stockholm kills off thousands of rabbits in an effort to protect trees and shrubbery in the city’s extensive network of parks and green space.

According to Tommy Tuvunger with the Stockholm Traffic Office, the agency responsible for controlling the city’s rodent and wild animal population, part of the problem rests with delinquent pet owners who decide to release their rabbits into the city’s parks.

"Many of the released rabbits are tame," he told the newspaper.

Animal control authorities employ a special rifle to shoot the excess rabbits, with most of the culling taking place at dawn when the animals peek out from their holes.

The city usually steps up its rabbit hunting efforts in the autumn as leaves begin to fall from bushes and trees, making it easier to see the rabbits.

Tuvunger explained that it doesn’t take many newly released rabbits to do what rabbits are known for doing, much to the detriment of Stockholm’s efforts to control the size of its rabbit population.

"People who think that the bunnies are cute and cuddly suddenly don’t think they’re as fun anymore and put the animals outside. They think: ‘there they can play with the other rabbits’," he said.

Last year marked a new record for Stockholm’s rabbit cull, with nearly 6,000 rabbits, mostly from Kungsholmen, being removed from Stockholm’s parks.

But rather than simply disposing of the dead rabbits, the city instead froze them for eventual transport to a special heating plant in Karlskoga in central Sweden, where the bunny bodies are then burned as a form of bioenergy.
I hope this fight goes the full 15 rounds.

(via Planet Gore)

13 comments:

OBloodyHell said...

I can see the video now...

Bunnies hopping merrily along into burning furnaces like Swedish Lemmings...LOL.

suek said...

I have to wonder...did anyone do a comparison between the energy needed to freeze and store the carcasses for whatever length of time and the amount of energy given off by the carcasses when they were burned?

And how is it that the carcasses actually give off a net of energy, when all I've heard lately is that cremation requires some huge quantity of energy?

Don't they have a zoo that could use the dead bunnies as food?

By the way...rabbits are phenomenal as an efficient food source. At the USDA rabbit experimental station that used to be in Ontario, Calif, they had a commercial experimental herd. All experiments in the commercial herd had to be economically profitable or it didn't pass. In order for a doe to stay in the commercial herd, she had to produce 120 lbs of live weight (young rabbits of about 6-8 weeks of age) per year. The average doe weighed about 12 lbs, so that meant that she had to produce 10 times her body weight per year. A cow produces approximately 5-600 lbs per year, and weighs about 1000-1200 lbs, so about 50% of her body weight.

Lame-R said...

Perhaps domesticated bunnies are an efficient food source, but it's my understanding that wild ones are so lean that you're best off avoiding them if you're trying to survive in the woods.

The headline to this comment is profound: the conflicts inherent in liberal ideology are their weakest link. Some time ago you were wondering aloud how do you reason with people who don't respond to reason (i.e., the Left), and I think the best we can hope for is to catch them in their own conundrums.

suek said...

>>it's my understanding that wild ones are so lean that you're best off avoiding them if you're trying to survive in the woods.>>

Heh. I'd dispute that statement. You should see the ones that hang around my hay stack!

Other than that - that's a case by case thing. I'm sure there are fat wild bunnies and skinny ones - it undoubtedly depends on the available food supply.

People of old ate them - so I doubt that the statement of avoiding them is correct. Unless of course you're trying to keep everyone else from poaching your personal supply...

OBloodyHell said...

> Some time ago you were wondering aloud how do you reason with people who don't respond to reason (i.e., the Left), and I think the best we can hope for is to catch them in their own conundrums.

This is an intellectual fallacy, to believe that they are capable of reason.

You forget about the Libtard Reset Button®. It's the thing that really, truly allows them to be without reason or ration.

In the brain of every libtard, there is a small little switch. Around midnight every evening, the libtard brain examines all new information for permanent storage and future use. The first priority is to compare what has been "learned" with Officially Accepted Libtard Precepts® -- if such a concept is encountered, the libtard brain dumps/purges all the new information, and immediately performs a complete restore to the previous night's mental storage arrangement. All the new knowledge is gone -- erased to protect the purity of the OALP. The Libtard Reset Button® has been activated and done its work.


At about this time, you're laughing, thinking this is utterly facetious.

The ridiculous part is that it's only partway in jest.

I am dead serious -- go find an apparently reasonable lefty -- they do exist -- ones whose brain grants them the allowance of the idea that they might reason with YOU and bring YOU over to their viewpoint.

Now, using some previously considered train of simple, self-evident logic, start to reason with them: Begin with some cherished Officially Accepted Libtard Precept®, show how, step by step, carefully receiving acknowledgement each step that 'B' does clearly follow from 'A', and 'C' from 'B', and 'D' from 'C'... and so on, until you get to an endpoint which is clearly and blatantly in direct and indisputable violation with some other aspect of the Officially Accepted Libtard Precepts® -- show, say, how government collectivism inevitably leads to greater misery and harm in the long run, just as a possible topic.

Now, the clear and obvious result is that the Lefty is forced to acknowledge that their Officially Accepted Libtard Precept® is somehow inherently wrong. And they WILL do this. As they leave you, now, they will ack that "they have to do some thinking about this".

Now, wait. Give it a couple days.

Begin a conversation with them. Bring up the defective proposition once again. They will be as enthusiastically supportive of it as they were before the above discussion took place. They will have no particular recollection of the reasoning you went through together, there will be, in particular, utterly no recollection of the resulting disconnect. The Libtard Reset Button® has done its job.

This will work even if you use their own experiences as a part of the whole reasoning process.

...(continued)...

OBloodyHell said...

I've seen it work on my aunt, a 30-year veteran elementary school teacher who brought a child (late in life) through the system and has fought with them to accomplish her job for much of that time -- she's seen the boatload of incompetent, irrelevant and useless administration hired by the local school system, the supid spending on things that don't help HER do her job at all and usually don't do the things they are supposedly gotten for EITHER, and understands first hand that "more money" isn't going to do anything as useful as making sure that the money already available is better spent.

But you cannot dislodge her from the position that public schools don't get enough money, that school vouchers aren't wrong, or that excessive bureaucracy inherent in government-run schools are the worst part of the problem. She's not one of those individuals who would even be threatened by an elimination of public education... she's one of the best elementary teachers in the county and everyone who knows her well grasps this. She could get a job in a private school in minutes.


With me, she's even gotten to the point of seeing how I'm going to make it necessary to use the button, and switches the topic within seconds of that recognition.

My point is -- "catching them in their own conundrums" will not accomplish a thing. They'll get reset every night, as many times as need be, until their heads explode or until they die.

That's what being a "postmodern liberal" is all about: No connection to the bad side of reality.

That's its appeal... You don't have to deal with messy, ugly things like evil people, no-win situations, and choosing between two objectives the both of which you want.

"Grow up?" Why?

suek said...

OBH...

May I copy, paste, save and use other places? (I can think a few where it would be appreciated)

I can attribute or not as you prefer...

Besides, reading it over and over would probably be better than beating my head against the wall...

Lame-R said...

@suek: you can rest assured I'll be eating any rabbit I can get my hands on if it ever came down to that. Even if it were true, I'd rather die full than die hungry.

@OBH: Your narrative matches similar experiences I've had; unfortunately I keep relapsing into the idea that they can be reasoned with. Sadly, my conversational skills are not good enough to ever get them to the point of having to reset; dialoges with them invariably result in me getting yelled and cursed at. Oh well, at least it's entertaining for me!

suek said...

>>unfortunately I keep relapsing into the idea that they can be reasoned with.>>

Maybe _we_ have reset buttons as well? Hmmmm.

>>I'd rather die full than die hungry.>>

I have recipes...!

For both the wild and domesticated type.

Hasenpfeffer is almost a pickling process the Germans use for their wild hares. And hares are not rabbits - though both belong to the same genera - and both can be cooked with the same recipes! But what a difference in size! Look up "Flemish Hare" and see if you can find some photos that give you a size perspective - I think they run in the 20 lb category. Do you know what a Belgian Draft horse is? about the same ratio to the standard horse as the Flemish hare is to our domestic rabbit.

They'd feed you _and_ the family!

@nooil4pacifists said...

Let the record reflect that I love rabbit, and that I grew up eating Hasenpfeffer.

suek said...

Flemish giant breeder site - with photos...

http://www.nffgrb.com/

suek said...

My mistake...the Flemish Giant is a rabbit, not a hare. Not much difference, but for the sake of accuracy...!

The european hare is large compared to the cottontail, but apparently average weight is about 10-12 lbs, the same as that of meat rabbits. I think they put it on a much longer frame, though.

OBloodyHell said...

Suek: Feel free to use, attribute as/where/how you think appropriate.

Lame-r: That's not an uncommon response, enough so that I don't often worry about being honest, and often use an approach I know will twit them off... but that's a bit gauche -- not to say difficult -- to do with relatives you have to associate with :oP

Hint: If you want to really get them ticked off, start by asking them how they can associate with such blatant racists as the Dems. When their mouth drops open, don't give them a chance, prove to them that the Dems gained major power as racists, were racists in the forties (and had a major schism, "Dixiecrats", in 1948 -- they were Dems in 1944 and again in 1952. Contrast that against the GOP 1940 party platform, which specifically mentions negros). Show how they specifically disenfranchised duly elected southern black representatives at the 1964 convention, on orders from the very top of the Dem leadership. Note how their "social help" policies relentlessly lead to blacks in most ways being far worse off since the 1950s in every way that matters, and are inherently racist in nature, by assuming that blacks cannot help themselves, unlike EVERY OTHER single racial grouping or creed (and when they try "slavery!" ask them about the treatment of "coolies" in the west. When they say "lynching!" ask them about what happened to an "oriental" who appeared in the company of white women.) Then ask them what party was in power when the Nisei were tossed into internment camps in WWII.

Finally, ask them where was the hue and cry when the two highest black appointees in American history -- each of them at times 4th in line of succession, were called names that, if applied to, oh, Obama, would instantaneously bring forth cries of "racist!" (yeah, granted, you ask "Is that a cough, Mr President?" and you're either in the GOP or on Fox news, it will be a racist allegation... but that's beside the point). Ask them about certain blatantly racist cartoon depictions of those two top appointees (who was it, btw, who appointed them?), and what was the political and social affiliations of those cartoonists?

Ask them where the Dem support for black people was then...