Saving the world feels like a losing game of whack-a-mole.

Climate Change taking the drinking water from billions in Asia alone. Trump sending 6,000 troops to the border to block an unarmed, weak caravan of 3,000 (that won’t reach the border, if at all, for months) that’s full of women and children (and some men) escaping persecution, used as fake news by those who accuse real news of fake news. Politics sickened by voter suppression and online hate and trolling. Bees killed by pesticides?

How do we save the world?

The answer is surprisingly simple: education. Truth. Awareness. We humans are fundamentally good, no matter how stressful and sick things might feel at times.

We learn about bears being tortured, we instinctively want to help.

If we don’t want to help, it’s because we’ve buried our caring beneath a lifetime of hurt. We can heal. We can open. We can be brave. ~ Waylon

Read: Pangolins, Tigers & Bears, Oh My! China has a New Policy on Poaching. ~ Kathryn Muyskens

Update: “Experts said the move was probably related to the government’s efforts to encourage the growth of traditional Chinese medicine, an industry valued at more than $100 billion, with more than 500,000 medical practitioners.

While leaders of traditional Chinese medicine have officially discouraged the use of rhino horn and tiger bone for years, an underground trade has continued.

Rhino horn is used in Chinese medicine to treat a variety of conditions, including fevers, gout and food poisoning. Tiger bone, often turned into tiger bone wine or so-called glue, is thought to boost health, cure a range of ailments and increase virility for men. Endangered animal parts are not widely used in traditional Chinese medicine, but folk remedies incorporating them form a small but profitable market…” ~ NY Times.

From the Annals of Good God Please No: Chinese Tiger Bone Farms.

What’s really in your Traditional Chinese Medicine? 

TCM = Torture.

“Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been practiced as a part of Chinese culture for thousands of years but has only recently become available as supplementary or as an alternative to Western medicine. TCM includes dietary therapy, acupuncture, massage and herbal medicine and accounts for up to 40% of healthcare administered in China. As a result of the rise of this industry (specifically herbal remedies, valued at hundreds of millions of dollars annually), concerns have been raised regarding the efficacy, safety and legality of these teas, powders and tablets.”

Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners, please Boycott Bear Bile. And anything from tigers, nearly extinct. What else is inhumane and comes from endangered species?

Inhumane doesn’t even come close to describing this.

Worst story ever. Excerpt:

The Chinese media has reported on an extraordinary account of a mother bear saving her cub from a life of torture by strangling it and then killing itself.

The bears were kept in a farm located in a remote area in the North-West of China. The bears on the farm had their gall bladders milked daily for ‘bear bile,’ which is used as a remedy in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

It was reported that the bears are kept in tiny cages known as ‘crush cages’, as the bears have no room to manoeuvre and are literally crushed.

The bile is harvested by making a permanent hole or fistula in the bears’ abdomen and gall bladder.

As the hole is never closed, the animals are suspect to various infections and diseases including tumours, cancers and death from peritonitis.

The bears are fitted with an iron vest, as they often try to kill themselves by hitting their stomach as they are unable to bear the pain…

Should we protect basic animal rights in the US and the world over?

I wish this weren’t real:

Teddy Bear: Don’t be Cruel: