Wild Horses and the Right to Live Freely--Even in Montana

From Horserace Insider

Saturday, September 05, 2009

The elimination of the innocents began on September 3, 2009. The helicopter's blades thwap-thwap-thwap as the large mechanical insect swoops down to inspire terror in hearts of its intended victims. The frightened citizens run helter-skelter, unsure which direction will lead them to safety. They attempt to stay together, but the fear in each individual heart overcomes their natural instinct to travel as one. A lone soldier oversees the terror project, following the helicopter's path in a large pickup truck at breakneck speed. His rifle is at the ready, loaded and prepared to shoot at the first sign of insurrection among the victims of the round-up. This soldier has been indicted by the government in the past, and is still under investigation—but his relationship with another branch of the establishment is so firmly entrenched and so lucrative for all parties concerned that he brazenly continues his terrorist work openly, and with official approval.

The intruders have become the victors, the inhabitants, victims. The sole crime committed by those who inhabited this land, which is being stolen from them as they are driven from their ancestral home by means that are intended to inflict pain, suffering and confusion, is that these quiet souls lived and thrived on land that, deep within the breast of the Earth, holds vast stores of materials necessary to make bombs.

The victims, hearts pounding, legs breaking, run screaming down the hills. Many of the little ones and elders become victims of their own kin: the inability to catch up makes them targets of their own family's fears. Those who are strong and young will probably trample the babies and oldsters in order to save their own lives. They will grieve later, and deeply, as they realize that those who represented their past and their future are now gone.

The scene described above is not taking place under the aegis of some oxygen-deprived dictator north of the 38th Parallel. It is not the extermination work of a crazed old man, bent on keeping an iron hand firmly on the jugular vein of his Asian countrymen. It is not the work of an egomaniac bent on building plutonium bombs and pointing them at America from his secure position in the North Pacific.

The round-up of fear and agony, death and blood, is the work of none other than the United States' government, in particular, the Bureau of Land Management. The tribe losing their land and their lives are the group known as Cloud's Herd, an extended family of wild horses who've dwelled on their land in Montana for generations. The land on which they bore their babies; found food and refreshment, and trees for shade; and committed their dead to the natural graveyard of the Earth—happens to sit on uranium fields.

For the sake of uranium—an element which is used primarily and almost exclusively in the 21st century for the purpose of creating bombs—for the sake of the deposits of this element, a herd of wild horses, innocents who have done no wrong—are being herded and put into pens.

The foals and older horses will no doubt die during this journey of confusion and pain. The fearful sound of the helicopter, a noise with which the peaceful animals are utterly unfamiliar, raises heart rates and—because horses are prey—they run violently and wildly in any direction that may take them from the sound above their heads. Those too weak, small or confused to keep up will be trampled to death.

The reaper cares not. David Cattoor—let's name names—is the government-contracted executioner for whom guilt is a non-existent concept. Cattoor was indicted in 1992 by a federal grand jury, for hunting wild horses, aiding and abetting. He pled guilty to these charges. Cattoor rounded up federally protected American mustangs, corralled them into pens and loaded them into trucks bound for a Texas slaughterhouse. “Since that time we suspect that he has received at least $20,000,000,” says wild horse advocate, Julianne French. “And we know for sure, from the Federal Register website, that Cattoor has earned over $12,000,000 in the past nine years alone.”

This man, this murderer, is the contractor paid $7,000 a day—read that again, $7,000 a day, of your tax dollars—by the Bureau of Land Management to round up the wild horses. This man who has a taste for blood, a sadistic serial horse killer—is paid by your federal taxes to round up horses on behalf of the uranium industry.

Cattoor gets entirely too much pleasure from his job. He makes a healthy living rounding up and killing horses on behalf of whomever will pay. He's an equal-opportunity gun for hire, with a thirst for the blood of innocent horses—even better if the United States' government, themselves, are willing to pay the fee. The government pays its bills, more than can be said for killerbuyers and others in the slaughter industry.

The Bureau of Land Management, whose job it is to protect these horses, appears to have a deal with the U.S. Department of Energy. Why else would they run wild horses off their land because uranium sits beneath? Why is the Bureau of Land Management willing to overlook its job as caretakers of America's wild horses, if not in the name of filthy mammon? Why, if not for uranium's sultry allure, would the BLM be willing to shirk its responsibilities, and sell out the very beings they're paid to protect? Why would they pay $7,000 a day to a man who is still being watched by other branches of the federal government?

When money and nuclear war shake hands, the union is explosive in more than one way. Innocents die, they are of no consequence to a bloodthirsty government agency that's sleeping with another government agency. America's wild horses are part of the very fabric of American history. Their ancestors worked and served our human parents as this country was forged. If anything, the United States owes reparations to the wild horses—not death and destruction.

The BLM claims that they have an adoption center, and that the horses of Cloud's Herd will be adopted out. That potential adopters will have to fill out paperwork, and be approved.

But how, I must ask, can a feral animal be adopted? If you've ever tried to nurture a feral cat, you know that it's nearly impossible. You may spend years trying to get the cat to trust you. One out of perhaps 1,000 feral cats can be convinced to trust a human, and become domesticated. If a cat, which weighs about seven pounds, cannot be domesticated simply because a human decides it will be so—how does the BLM think that they can domesticate a 1,000-pound animal whose very genetic structure is designed to flee? Who has never known the confinement of a stall or a bit and bridle? Who has 4" hooves, and teeth that can tear off a child's hand? Does the BLM really think that these beautiful, wild, feral animals can become pets to little girls in Montana?

Or is the adoption program a ruse? The horses who are "adopted"—are they going to slaughterhouses, and cattlemen who will kill them? (The cattle industry, as we know, is campaigning to convince the American public that horse is "the other red meat.")

However it's played out, at this very moment in time—even as you read this—horses in Montana, gorgeous, long-maned, wide-eyed, innocent-of-any-wrongdoing horses—are being herded by a criminal and a helicopter. Some will die, others will live to be confined, and "adopted out"—those who live through the process will wish they were dead.

And it's all done in the name of money, and progress. The Bureau of Land Management, which was created to guard and protect America's wild lands and the inhabitants thereof—have sold out. Someone's brother is making a ton of cash, someone very high up the food chain at the BLM is raking it in—this must be so, in order to convince the BLM to completely ignore its own reason for being. All the uranium on Earth—mined to make war and kill anything in its path—is not worth one soul of a single wild horse.

On one end of the spectrum, we have the magnificent Rachel Alexandra. The best horse in America, at least one of the best in the world. She represents all that's good, and right, and beautiful in the world of horses. On the other end of the stage stands a wild horse foal, whose mother has been torn from him by the thwapping of a helicopter, its pilot screaming as the family is torn to shreds. If you love Rachel Alexandra, if you love the sport of Thoroughbred racing—surely, you must care about the wild horses of Cloud's Herd and all other wild horses who are threatened—today, and every day—by the Bureau of Land MisManagement and the murderous felons whom they contract to do the work of decimating a tribe that's as old as America, itself.

Please contact your congresspeople, and the White House. Tell them that the round-up in Montana must stop—and that all of America's wild horses deserve to be saved, right now. Do it for Rachel Alexandra, and all the joy she gives you. Do it for that nameless foal, whose little heart, if it's not crushed beneath the hooves of his family running for cover—will be irrevocably broken by the memory of this horrific day, this blot on the history of our once-great country.