Dressage Star Booted From Olympic Games Over Alleged Horse Abuse

jeffw@lemmy.worldmod to News@lemmy.world – 104 points –
Dressage Star Booted From Olympic Games Over Alleged Horse Abuse
thedailybeast.com
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So they'll boot a woman for smoking, and they'll boot a woman for animal abuse, but they won't boot a man for being an irredeemable groomer pedophile?

Cool, cool. Good to know.

but they won’t boot a man for being an irredeemable groomer pedophile?

What are you talking about?

“A Dutch beach volleyball player who served time in prison for raping a child 10 years ago will represent the Netherlands at this year’s Olympics.

Steven van de Velde, who is now 29, was sentenced to four years in prison in 2014 for raping the girl who was aged 12, according to British media. He was released in 2017.”

Thanks, saved me the effort 😂

Edit, although I do want to add: he spent TWO YEARS grooming this little girl online. Started when she was 10. Then, after 2 years of online pedo fuckery, fucking flew himself to the UK to rape the poor girl. This was not "dumb 19 year old does dumb 19 year old things", as gross as that would be on its own. This was TWO FUCKING YEARS OF PREMEDITATION PRIOR TO RAPING HER.

Sentenced to 4 years, only actually served about 1 if I recall correctly. Disgusting.

Oh fuck off. This happened 10 years ago. He was arrested, sentenced, made to serve his sentence, put through therapy and rehabilitated. He makes constant efforts to avoid being with young girls (alone or otherwise), despite him believing he wouldn't reoffend anyway. He exhibits an abundance of caution to make sure he won't do that shit again. He has repeatedly publicly stated that what he did was wrong and that he should never have done it. The NOC-NSF has extensively researched him and found he matches all the stricter criteria for participating as an olympic athlete after a conviction. There's zero reason to believe he's still a risk.

What message are you sending by claiming he's irredeemable? That we don't care if a pedophile makes one victim or if he makes 100? Not giving these people a way back to society and allowing them to safely rehabilitate puts more people at risk due to a higher chance of recidivism.

It's ridiculous how tabloid media has dug up this case and claimed sudden moral outrage. Said outrage has been mostly met in the Netherlands by confusion. Almost no one cares here.

If we're only allowing people who don't abuse animals at the olympics, does that mean it'll be all vegan this year?? 🤞

eating animals isn't abuse

Riiiiight, it's just paying someone else to abuse an animal.

Taking a life for pleasure is abuse, and I'd bet a lot of money that nobody reading this actually needs to eat animals to survive

Well done, everyone reading this thread is vegan now thanks to your heroic efforts above and beyond the line of duty.

🫡 I'm doing my part!

You're literally harming our cause, you fucking imbecile

Calling people murderers and abusers is a really, REALLY good way to make people think you're a preachy cunt

Some people need to hear reality without the sugar coating

Taking a life for pleasure is abuse

I don't think this is axiomatic. I don't think anyone does, actually.

It's not an axiom, but it's pretty obvious and easy to derive.

Many people take "live and let live" as axiomatic, but don't let the animals live.

Many people see the golden rule as axiomatic, but would not have people pay for the things done to animals to be done to them.

You obviously need some animal protein in your diet if these are the kind of leaps in logic you make.

Killing is bad

Is this the leap of logic you're claiming to be evidence of brain damage?

what about the 100s of thousands of small vermin and critters that are killed when a field is tilled to plant a nutrionally useless soy monoculture? or do they not meet your threshold for photogenicity and cuteness like normal farm animals do?

The specific leap in logic I was referring to was equating killing for nutrition to killing for 'pleasure'. Equating the two is usually the strawman behind most vegan arguments.

It's not a strawman. Being a meat eater is a choice. If you just want nutrition, you're a vegan. You choose meat if you like the taste of corpse better than the efficiency of plants.

If you're a carnist, then your food needs food. In the US, your food's food is typically a corn monoculture. Your cows need to eat many times as much corn as their meat is worth, in terms of kilojoules. We could just feed a tenth of the corn to people and get rid of the cows, and let the other 9/10 corn fields return to nature. But, you people want a hamburger because it tastes good. This ain't about nutrition or the environment.

We could just feed a tenth of the corn to people and get rid of the cows

except that the field corn fed to cattle is not human-digestable, either.

Ridiculous conclusions once again. Why the fuck are cows being fed corn? Cows should be eating grass, something humans cannot process, in order to provide something that we can. While we are at it, corn isn't all that nutritious either. It will suffice if you are starving but it will never provide long term nutrition needs for any population.

Humans are omnivores, get over it. Being a meat eater isn't a choice, look at all the emaciated Auschwitz looking mfers that eventually resort back to meat eating after decades of being vegans. Animal products, especially organ meat, are the best source of maximally bio available nutrients and minerals you will find anywhere in nature. Your precious plants do not want to be eaten and in fact contain anti nutrients and such to discourage you from doing so.

If you want to talk environment at more than the spoon-fed surface level narrative that you are regurgitating, look at what planting monocrops is doing to top soil quality all over the world, not to mention the extreme disruption tilling and such cause to the local ecosystem. Don't strawman me again by talking factory farming, that is a cruel practice that ought to be outlawed. Responsible cattle rearing improves the local ecosystem due to the fertilising and soil-churning action of the animals, they eat what we can't and covert them into things we can and even plants benefit from grazing action. Animals can even graze in areas not suitable for crop growing.

It is obvious you have too much soy clogging up your brain to actually apply your own thinking to this subject and not just be spoon fed like a momo.

https://www.worldanimalprotection.us/latest/blogs/what-do-cows-eat/

However, the vast majority of cows in the United States live on factory farms. Factory farms depend on cheap and unsustainable animal feed, such as corn and soy, to maximize profits at the expense of animal welfare.

In 2019, beef cows’ feed consisted of 57% corn and 21% DDGs. Adding DDGs to corn’s share represented roughly 80% of all feed tonnage given to beef cows in 2019.

Like dairy cows, beef cows are given some hay and grass. It also makes up a smaller percentage than corn, soy, and DDGs. In 2019, beef cows consumed 59.7 million tons of alfalfa and hays compared to 107.7 million tons of corn products, 2.5 million tons of soybean products, and 13.9 million tons DDGs.

Hey it's a source with hard numbers that cows be eating corn and soy more than grass.

Ridiculous conclusions once again. Why the fuck are cows being fed corn? Cows should be eating grass,

They ain't though. You eating corn-fed cows. Why are you choosing the environmentally irresponsible option? Just have some roast potatoes for dinner and save the trouble of shoving corn down a cow's throat.

the soybean products fed to livestock are, by and large, the byproducts of pressing soybeans for oil. feeding industrial waste to animals is a good use and actually a conservation of resources.

corn fed beef cattle aren't fed exclusively corn. they're grass-fed grain-finished. they spend about a year grazing before going to a feedlot for around 6 months.

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Either fully vegan games with only vegans allowed to compete and spectate, or allow this incident of abuse to go unpunished. Any other stance is unacceptable. It's not possible to make progress without doing it all at once. I find this article about a single incident to be so insulting to me as a vegan, because it doesn't address a more global issue.

Hey

I’m so sorry to inform you, but you failed your reading test.

I’d recommend starting from the beginning, reading more slowly, and avoiding skimming.

It happens to the best of us! Don’t feel too down about it. Have a good day!

That would be hilarious. Now I want to see a Vegan Olympics kinds like the Special Olympics or the Paralympics, only they wouldn't do as well.

I doubt half of the participants would be able to make it across the finish lines in most of the events.

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