CHICKENS AND MUSLIMS

The abuse of doomed animals at a West Virginia chicken plant suggests parallels with the treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib (and other US military cells?).

"Former workers at a chicken-processing plant caught on tape allegedly kicking and slamming chickens against a wall will not face criminal charges, a prosecutor said yesterday. Ginny Conley, head of a state prosecutors' organization, said the incident at the Pilgrims Pride plant in Moorefield, W.Va., did not warrant criminal charges because "these were chickens in a slaughterhouse."
"It needs to be handled more on a regulatory end than prosecuting someone criminally," she said. AP 1/11/05

Lynndie England worked at a chicken plant. She joined the reserves when she was still in high school and by the time she was out of her teens, she had been married and divorced within a year, lived in a trailer park and spent nights working in a chicken processing factory. (From Sunday Herald May 2004)

From parallel to linkages:

• roots in West Virginia
• the violent frustrations of the working class (or lumpen class?)
• the abuses of animals and dehumanized foreigners, the disregard for Others
• the answer is "to be handled more on a regulatory end than prosecuting someone", at least someone responsible

(Thank the goddess that Lynddie England is not a lesbian.)