CAT HOLOCAUST IN CHINA

We already knew the Chinese government were a bunch of freedom denying, liberty hating, collectivist scumbag Communist sons of bitches. But it is still shocking to realize how deep their cruelty truly goes.

For years, the Chinese government turned a blind eye to the infanticide of female children – a direct result of the forced “one child per family” (OCPF) that the benighted savages in Beijing forced upon the populace. A sample of “scientific socialism” at work:

Whether Moore is correct is not the point. The problem is with an ideology that sees life as a statistic rather than a precious entity, born with the right to life, liberty, and other natural rights that the Chinese government neither celebrates nor acknowledges.

So it should come as absolutely no surprise that this same government that sees nothing wrong with parents murdering their own children (until international pressure forced them to do something about it in 2001), should see the problem of controlling the feline population in such beastly and inhumane terms:

Even if you despise cats – and I know that there are many of you out there – you cannot help but be struck dumb with outrage over this completely unnecessary, draconian, and positively medieval method of controlling the cat population. Any western nation could have helped the Chinese with this problem and it could have been done much more humanely and without the government using deliberate scare tactics to jack up the citizenry and turn them against cats.

When I wrote of the medieval methods used against cats by the Chinese I was not using allegory. Whipping up a frenzy of emotion against cats was a favorite ploy of the church in the middle ages. In something of a delicious irony (from the cat’s perspective) when our ancestors had killed off most of the cats in Europe, invading rats overran the continent. They bore fleas that carried bubonic plague that killed of a third of its population. In their frenzy to burn witches and murder their “familiars,” Europeans were unwittingly sealing their doom by eliminating their only salvation against the plague carrying rats – cats.

But the Chinese efforts at eliminating cats are not just being done for health reasons. These Communist bozos are so intent on making a good impression for the Olympics this year that they don’t want a bunch of stray cats wandering around the venues:

I apologize to you dog lovers out there. If I had known of that barbarism, I would have been just as outraged I assure you.

You might ask are there no cat lovers in China? Of course there are. Here’s an example of what they are up against:

If you are a cat lover, the more you read of this article in the Daily Mail the more you will feel like organizing a military expedition to free the animals from their confinement.

The cat lovers are up against the cruelest of human institutions; dead ass communist bureaucracy. They have begged the government to offer cut rate spaying and neutering all to no avail. Indeed, the government has mandated spaying and neutering but few can afford the 200 yuan pricetag. (Most American cities and towns also require spaying and neutering but with many clinics offering cut rate or installment payment plans it is relatively easy to comply with the laws.) Couple that with a dearth of no-kill shelters or shelters of any kind and you have the makings of this man made holocaust.

I do not dispute the necessity to control the feline and canine populations – especially in big cities. And I might point out that our own efforts in this regard are not always the model of humane behavior. But we have made a vast improvement from even just 10 years ago. Controlling the feral cat population in US big cities now includes a wide range of actions including “trap, neuter, and release” as opposed to simply trapping and killing the animals.

Feral cats tend to congregate in the same area when the food supply is reliable. These “colonies” are made possible by legions of cat lovers across the country who volunteer to watch and care for their charges. New arrivals are immediately caught and, usually in cooperation with a kindly vet, fixed for free or a nominal cost. The colony manager also watches for outbreaks of disease and tries and keep track of any predations the cats might engage in – especially against birds. Kittens are removed from the colony and sent to adoption centers.

Such managed colonies could never occur in China, however. The movement began at the grass roots and demanded that government support them. If you start demanding anything from government in China, you will most likely end up in prison.

No matter. There are more humane ways to kill the animals than simply not feeding them and allowing them to die horribly. But to the Chinese bureaucrats intent on projecting a squeaky clean image to the rest of the world for the olympics, there is only a problem that needs to be solved as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Sounds like they’re setting themselves up for a return of the Black Plague. No cats = neck-deep in rats (and their fleas).

They'll eat them, too.

Relative to this thread, remember a couple of years ago, they were selling these "toy" stuffed cats to our stores? People brought them home, and their cats were sniffing them, etc.

The "Toys" were made of real cat fur. One cat owner (employee) posted that she buried hers, more or less giving the "Toy" a funeral.

It is hard to realize that in other cultures, people have little value for the things we cherish. A person I met from Eastern Europe once told me, "You Americans just do not know that in many places, your life is not worth ~~shit~~ anything!". How, then, will they treat their animals? As well as humans are treated in Zimbabwe or North Korea?

My cats are friends of mine: Best Friends. So this post is written with a lot of restraint...There is much I would say over a beer, at 90 decibels.

Cat holocaust huh? Can massive human starvation be far off in China?

....................

The Chinese Famine: 1958 to 1962

China has traditionally been a ‘land of famine’. The extent of the 1958-62 famine dwarfed previous famines, however, and yet it remained a secret for over 20 years. The scale of the famine only became internationally known in the mid-1980s when American demographers were able to examine Chinese population statistics. The findings were shocking: at least 30 million people had starved to death making it the worst famine in human history.

The great Chinese famine took place during Mao’s Great Leap Forward which was launched in January 1958. The ‘two generals’ that Mao said would modernise China were steel and grain production. Mao, therefore, initiated a crash industrialisation programme, in which steel output would be doubled or trebled within a year. The entire country set up smelters to create steel in backyard furnaces. Everyone had to meet a quota by handing over their metal possessions ranging from bicycles, iron bedsteads and door knobs to iron griddles, woks and pans. To fire the furnaces, huge numbers of trees had to be cut down. The lumps of metal which emerged from the backyard furnaces were to be used in the mechanisation of agriculture. Unfortunately they turned out to be useless.

Enforced collectivisation of agriculture and the obligatory procurement of grain harvests at low prices by the state had been started in the mid-1950s. In 1958, ‘people’s communes’ were established, private plots abolished and communal kitchens set up. State grain procurements were also increased as were grain taxes on peasants. Mao drew up an eight-point blueprint for all Chinese agriculture which every farmer had to follow. The results were disastrous including the campaign to reduce pests. The whole country was turned out to make a noise, beating drums and pans, to prevent sparrows from landing anywhere until they fell down dead with exhaustion. Without the birds to prey on them, however, insects multiplied causing damage to crops. The situation was exacerbated during the period 1959 to 1961 by several natural disasters. As a result, agricultural production dropped dramatically and despite wildly exaggerated claims of bumper harvests reported by Party cadres, there were huge food shortages. Per capita grain supply fell from 307 kg/year in 1956 to 235 kg/year in 1961 while the daily food energy availability fell to an estimated national average of 1,535 calories in 1960.

By the autumn of 1958, conditions, especially in the predominantly rural areas of the northern provinces, had begun to deteriorate drastically. The grain in the collective granaries began to run out and food from the collective kitchens became sparser and sparser. Leaves, ground corn stalks, wild grasses and anything else that the peasants could gather were added to the communal pot.

In the autumn of 1959, the grain harvest dropped by at least 30 million tonnes over that of 1958, but officials reported that it was much higher. The state procurement target was set at 40 per cent of total output and in many places the entire harvest was seized together with all livestock, vegetables and cash crops. Party leaders were sent to villages to search for hidden grain reserves. The peasants were not permitted to cook at home and the ‘internal passport’ was introduced banning peasants from travelling without permission. It was a brutal and violent campaign.

One of the famine survivors was Mrs Liu who recalled the winter of 1959-60: “On the muddy path leading from her village, dozens of corpses lay unburied. In the barren fields there were others; and amongst the dead, the survivors crawled slowly on their hands and knees searching for wild grass seeds to eat. In the ponds and ditches people squatted in the mud hunting for frogs and trying to gather weeds. It was winter, and bitterly cold, but...everyone was dressed only in thin and filthy rags tied together with bits of grass and stuffed with straw...Sometimes she saw her neighbours and relatives simply fall down as they shuffled through the village and die without a sound... The dead were left where they died because... no one had the strength to bury them... She remembered, too, the unnatural silence. The village oxen had died, the dogs had been eaten and the chickens and ducks had long ago been confiscated by the Communist Party in lieu of grain taxes. There were no birds left in the trees, and the trees themselves had been stripped of their leaves and bark. At night there was no longer even the scratching of rats and mice, for they too had been eaten or had starved to death.”

Out of 300 people who had lived in Mrs Liu’s village at the start of the famine, only 80 survived.

China’s leaders appeared to have been unaware of the severity of the famine until it was too late to prevent a catastrophe. Grossly exaggerated harvests were reported and those brave enough to suggest that there was a problem were labelled as ‘right-wing opportunists’. As a result, China continued to export grain while the famine raged. Over a three year period from 1958, China doubled grain exports and cut imports of food. It was only in 1961 that China stopped exporting grain and international supplies of grain were called on to compensate for food shortages inside the country.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.