Westminster Kennel Club’s ugly business
AMNESTY International calls it the “human slaughterhouse”: a Syrian prison where thousands of civilians have been killed “after being repeatedly tortured and systematically deprived of food, water, medicine and medical care”. Allegations of atrocities against civilians are nothing new for the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which has subjected entire towns to starvation sieges, dropped barrel bombs full of nails or chlorine on hospitals, supermarkets and schools, and pulverised a UN aid convoy. But the story of the Saydnaya military prison deserves attention, if only because it shows the regime’s calculated sadism.
Amnesty’s report, based on a year of research and 84 interviews with former Saydnaya prisoners, guards, judges, doctors and others, estimates that between 5,000 and 13,000 civilians were extrajudicially executed at the facility outside of Damascus between September 2011 and December 2015. These were not rebel fighters, but civilians perceived to oppose the government in some way: participants in demonstrations, dissidents, human rights advocates, journalists.
The victims were mostly abducted by security forces, tortured into confessions and rushed through “trials” that often lasted only two or three minutes, according to Amnesty. They were secretly executed in groups of 20 to 50: First blindfolded and then badly beaten, they were told only at the last moment that they were to be hanged. Many died before execution from the horrific conditions in the prison, including starvation and rape. Amnesty said it had concluded that the detainees had been subjected to a policy of “extermination”,defined in international law as measures “calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population”.
Amnesty said it collected information on officials who sat on the execution panels and others involved in the executions. That gives reason for hope that some will eventually be brought to justice. In the meantime, the Saydnaya report should be considered by all those who believe that the Syrian civil war – with its endless carnage, breeding of terrorism and waves of refugees – can be brought to an end while the Assad regime remains in power.
The abuses inflicted on tens of thousands of Syrians ensure that it will never be tolerated by the vast majority of the population. Its barbaric practices render it unable to compromise with people it has attempted to murder. A decision by the Trump administration to tolerate or even support the butchers of Damascus will only result in more warfare, more recruits for the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, and more unconscionable murders .
WHEN actor and supermodel Brigitte Bardot was asked why she never got a facelift, she is said to have replied that her dogs didn’t care what her face looked like. Dogs don’t move out if your hair starts thinning or snarl at you if your ears protrude. Unlike human beings, they don’t judge us by our looks; they love us for who we are.
Some humans don’t afford dogs the same courtesy. For two days beginning on Tuesday at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, more than 3,000 dogs will be paraded around New York’s Madison Square Garden so that judges can scrutinise every inch of their bodies – from their inbred, squashed-in noses and surgically sculpted ears to their coiffured coats and stubby, amputated tails. The judges will look for “faults” much like internet trolls look for flaws in a celebrity’s injected lips.
Dogs deserve better than this outdated beauty pageant, which is why we should refuse to watch it.
It’s all about the owners and their egos, not the dogs, who are reduced to living mannequins to be tweaked and primped into something that they aren’t. They are often denied a normal life, lest they step out of their crates and get dirty. And to increase the odds of producing a winning dog, breeders bow to the “breed standards” of the American Kennel Club, which values arbitrary physical traits over health and well-being. Breeders are like rats following the Pied Piper – except it’s the dogs who end up in the river.
This is why dachshunds have such long spines and short legs that they’re susceptible to excruciatingly painful disc disease. It’s also why many Great Danes, bred for long necks and large heads, often develop “wobbler syndrome” – including a wobbly gait, pain and sometimes paralysis as a result of compression of the spinal cord in the neck area.
Cavalier King Charles spaniels who suffer from syringomyelia scream in agony because their brains are too large for their unnaturally flattened skulls. One veterinary neurologist, interviewed for the BBC documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed, described the brains of dogs with this condition as being “like a size 10 foot that’s been shoved into a size 6 shoe”.
English bulldogs, who are bred to have flat faces and unnaturally short airways, labour to fetch a ball, walk or even breathe. There’s a name for this problem – brachycephalic airway syndrome. Pugs, Boston terriers, French bulldogs and Pekingese (the breed of the 2012 Best in Show winner) suffer from it, too.
To ensure that these favoured traits remain in a dog’s bloodline, breeders have arranged canine incest, forcing mothers to mate with sons and daughters with fathers. The consequences have been dire: Inbreeding increases the likelihood that recessive genes will be passed down to puppies, resulting in a host of serious congenital defects including epilepsy, hypothyroidism and elbow dysplasia, a disease that can cause lameness and arthritis.
The AKC freely admits that one of the main purposes of televised shows such as Westminster is to drive up business for breeders, and they often succeed in getting people to buy the same breeds in the show on impulse.
But buyers soon discover that dogs are not props – they shed, make messes and require time, patience, walks, medical care, love and attention. They also learn that animals are expensive to care for properly: According to a 2015 survey by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, more than 25 percent of respondents who gave up animal companions for a reason related to the animal said that they could not afford veterinary care.
When the “puppy love” phase wears off, many who bought purebreds on impulse end up leaving them at an animal shelter. As long as breeders churn out litter after litter of puppies – many of whom will go on to have litters of their own – and dog shows such as Westminster guarantee that more