Saturday Morning Confusion About Thirsty Pigs! (And other stuff)

Dear friends:

As usual there are a lot of things going on that make absolutely no sense to me and leaves me in a state of utter confusion!

First case: Some woman near Burlington happened across a livestock truck that was taking pigs to the slaughterhouse, and since it was a hot summer day she did her duty and stopped to give the porkers some water to drink so they wouldn't suffer on their way to being killed!!!

Enter the owner of the pigs, who for some strange reason called the cops, who for an even stranger reason charged her with public mischief!

O.K. So now this woman is in court, and we will let the National Post take it from here.

A trial for a woman charged with giving water to a pig on its way to slaughter took on grand proportions Thursday with the treatment of pigs equated to the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany and the accused being compared to some of history’s greatest human rights champions: Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Susan B. Anthony.

In making closing submissions in the case against Anita Krajnc, who is charged with mischief after giving a roadside drink to a pig packed in a truck outside a Burlington slaughterhouse in 2015, her lawyer Gary Grill evoked the Holocaust.

He told a story from a supporter whose parents were in Hungary in 1944, he said. They “had to witness helplessly as the Jews of that town were herded by gendarmes into cattle cars and how the gendarmes threatened and drove off local citizens, including his mother, who were trying to give them water,” Grill said in court.

“The Nazi forced Jews and gays and gypsy and those they saw as others, into trains and trucks and carted them off to slaughter. Is it the same right that the Crown now argues that (the farmer) has, that it was legal?”

As Grill spoke, Assistant Crown Attorney Harutyun Apel sat shaking his head and looking bewildered.

Grill continued: “It is the same justification for the historical mistreatment of others,” and humanity “consistently forgets or ignores these hard-fought lessons of the past.”

Outside court, Krajnc, 49, said the story about the Holocaust was “really, really moving.”

“I really respect that comparison,” she said. “Everyone knows that giving water to thirsty Jews on a cattle train is a small act of charity and what really should have happened is they should have been saved, you know, from being gassed and murdered. And what I did was a small act of charity to that pig who was slaughtered.

“I feel guilty. If I’m guilty of anything it’s for not doing enough and I’m sure the people who didn’t do enough for the Jews and for others, that’s the guilt that they feel.”

After court, Grill said the Holocaust argument was important.

“There are many important parallels that we can draw from the two things. One is our inability to have emotional contagion, somehow. Why don’t we feel the suffering of others? How do we close ourselves out to that, whether it be Jews being herded into a train or whether it be pigs?” he said.

And then there was this story:
"A politician proposed a seat-belt law for dogs. You could hear the howls."

 

A Maine lawmaker recently proposed a bill that would require dogs to be harnessed or tethered in moving vehicles.
In other words: No more dogs joyously hanging out the window, jowls and ears flapping in the breeze. No more small pooches perched on drivers’ laps like mini co-pilots.
If comments on local news stories about the idea are any guide, this proposal did not go over particularly well.
“My dog’s going to be so pissed when he finds out,” Andrew Hesselbart wrote on the Facebook page of the Portland Press Herald. “Stop trying to control everyone,” wrote Jeremy Collison. “Opioids destroying lives across the state and these people are wasting time on legislation like this?” Robert Alan Parry asked.
On Wednesday, one day after the newspaper’s story on the bill ran, state Rep. Jim Handy (D) withdrew the bill he had sponsored, which was soberly titled “An Act Concerning the Transporting of Dogs in Passenger Vehicles.” In a statement, Handy said the constituent who had suggested it had changed his mind.

More stupid pet tricks coming!