Miss Amy Rings A Warning Bell of Animal Cruelty On the Other Side of the World...Should It Matter?

The Spooky One and others, in this forum, have rightly "counseled" that we be proportionate in our attention to human and animal rights...and how morally we conceive, derive and enforce those rights.
With modern-day genocides having occured, most egregiously in Rwanda & Darfur and continuing elsewhere, what role, as global citizens, among warring tribes, do we play? Is it enough to say, in the restive silence of our thoughts, that we would never abide such atrocities where we live or have representative power to "claw" back to some more civilized norm?

The Ten-Year 9-11 Memorial Observation has refreshed our minds of the disbelief, terror and fear that led to quickly shattered unity in diversity and the slippage as familial, personal urgencies of living re-asserted.

Many, in the TB community, have latched onto the cause of protecting sea turtles and their eggs...out of a sense of what?
Evolved empathy for our fellow creatures with feelings and cognition...or an anthropomorphism, which recognizes the continuous struggles of a land/sea-farer slowly, trudgingly, swimming the oceans, navigating currents, buffeted by gale-force waves and predator threats to return to a "home beach" umteen years later to lay her eggs and further the survival of her species.
In Western mythology, human version, Homer came up with Odysseus' hardships to get home to Ithaca and family in his epic poem, Odyssey. If only Momma Hawksbill could tell her story!

Miss Amy, a former Peace Corp volunteer in TB worked here as environmental educator, community developer, and an AIDS awareness campaigner. Big Ups to her for having introduced the triathlon, as a new sport on the annual calender.
She is now Dr Gottlieb, and according to her Bio is working for USAID/Vietnam in their Office of Public Health.
She recently came back into this village's awareness with some strong, direct, mutually-trusting photo-portraits of individuals from her travels and in tributes to her friend Miss Berry, who perished in one of the planes that terrorists crashed into the WTC towers, as Miss Berry was on her way to California to hear one of her son's musical performance.

On Miss Amy's Blog, we happened to find a Video about the Asiatic Moon Bear and the extraction of their bile, thought to be a health tonic in traditional Asian medicine, exposed by the Animals Asia Foundation, to be performed under barbaric conditions.

If you can watch the YOUTUBE VIDEO, linked below, without armouring yourself with thoughts of hype-o-cracy and prop-a-ganda, which can oft cloud these honest efforts, we might come out on the other side deeply moved by another one of our animal companions, in their resemblance to our personalities & emotions, that we may never have given thought to...then, perhaps a meteor shower of ideas may connect a web-of-life condition in Vietnam with the sand trail of a mother marine turtle, in the cover of night, struggle, scraping with her flippers, inch-by-torturous inch, to what is hoped to be a safe depository for her eggs and the continuum of her species...with a little help of protection, if needed, from her human allies.

Moon Bear Rescue:
The philosophy of our profession is about balance and harmony between humans and Nature. Humans have a close relationship with Nature.
We also say Humans and Nature are One.
So, no matter whether hunting or farming bears for bile, I think both are not good.
This is against the principle of Balance & Harmony....there are alternatives. Bear bile is not a necessity...
Prof. Liu Zheng Cai (Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioner)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4N3eZyHv6M

Sea Turtles and Their Eggs: No Longer Safe Food:
Stopping the harvesting and consumption of sea turtles and their eggs is important not only to contribute to the health of marine eco-systems, but also to preserve our own health. Sea turtles have been a traditional food supply for many peoples in the Caribbean, but recent research has shown that turtle meat is often heavily contaminated. By eating turtle meat or eggs we can put ourselves at risk of serious permanent health damage and even death.

Our oceans have been massively polluted with heavy metals, mercury in particular, for the past 40 years, due to chemical industrialization. Yearly, up to 6,000 tons of mercury are released into the environment. Coal-burning and chlor-alkali industries use mercury for producing chlorine (used in plastics, pesticides and PVC pipes). Incinerators burning waste, including our popular backyard burning of garbage containing plastics, release mercury into the air, land and water, ending up in our oceans.

Turtles, in their long migratory lives, accumulate in their bodies elevated levels of contaminants present in the marine environment...
Reported globally, cases of poisoning and deaths (especially among children) from eating sea turtle meat, organs and eggs and drinking turtle blood, reveal the seriousness of the problem...
Based on the mortality statistics related to turtle poisoning, the public — in particular women of childbearing age, nursing mothers and small children — should be discouraged from consuming any sea turtle products. Though turtles may appear healthy, there is a high risk that they carry internal tumors or dangerous bacteria and are contaminated with methyl-mercury, cadmium, POPs and pesticides...

Common sense and deep concern for public health, as well as basic environmental conservation, suggest that authorities in charge need to establish a moratorium for hunting sea turtles in each Caribbean state, banning the trade and consumption of turtle products. It is also strongly suggested that authorities and the media duly inform the public of the health hazards associated with the consumption of sea turtles and eggs, as well as of other contaminated ocean creatures, which may expose us and future generations to serious health hazards.}

Aphrodisiac or Impaired Sexual Function?
Sea turtle products have been prescribed over the centuries as remedies for anemia, asthma and respiratory problems and, in the Caribbean, sea turtle eggs are traditionally claimed to be an aphrodisiac, consumed mainly by males hoping to boost their sexual performance.
According to doctors, the opposite is true: the high concentrations of cholesterol and pollutants in turtle eggs may impair sexual performance and lower fertility; namely, it is the very consumption of turtle eggs that likely caused the embarrassing physical failure in the first place!

by Marina Fastigi, Ph.D., Director of Kido Foundation, a not-for-profit organization in Carriacou, Grenada.
LINK:
www.caribbeancompass.com/seaturtles_2010.html

A Moslem (one of the three "related" Abrahamic Religions--Judaism, Christianity, Islam) Reflects on Nature and Her Faith:
"I perceived faith as something we needed to enter into with eyes closed, without rationale, analysis or intellect. To my surprise as I investigated Islamic teachings more thoroughly, I realised that it was through the acquisition of knowledge and use of reason and logic that certainty of God's existence becomes most palpable."--Daliah Merzaban
www.huffingtonpost.com/daliah-merzaban/faith-in-nature_b_955503.html