horses – Radio Free

Keir Starmer Tries to Ride Two Horses Simultaneously

Kenneth Surin — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 06:53:14 +0000

This equine fantasy has never been accomplished (as far as I can tell), but the UK prime minister is attempting to do its political equivalent by seeking to please Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy at one and the same time.

After his meeting in the White House with a truculent Trump and JD Vance, Zelenskyy headed to London for a summit of 19 leaders, including Justin Trudeau, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Nato chief Mark Rutte. This time there were no verbal fisticuffs, and with hugs all round, Zelenskyy basked in the company of friends.

Donald Trump criticised European leaders including Sir Keir Starmer on Monday, deriding their weekend talks over Ukraine and launching a furious new attack on Volodymyr Zelensky for saying a peace deal is still “very, very far away”.

In what could be a major setback in ending Russia’s war on Ukraine, the US president fired off a tirade just as the prime minister was on his feet in the Commons insisting America was vital, sincere and indispensable in the path to peace.

Sir Keir rejected calls from MPs for Britain to shun Mr Trump and America after last week’s extraordinary ambush on Mr Zelensky in the White House Oval Office.

However, in a hint the US could be prepared to withdraw military aid to Ukraine, the president said in a social media post: “This is the worst statement that could have been made by Zelensky, and America will not put up with it for much longer! This guy doesn’t want there to be peace as long as he has America’s backing.”

And in a sideswipe at Sir Keir and other European leaders, he added: “In the meeting they had with Zelensky, [they] stated flatly that they cannot do the job without the US – probably not a great statement to have been made in terms of a show of strength against Russia. What are they thinking?”

Trump says ‘no room left’ to avoid massive tax hikes on Canadian and Mexican importsTrump says ‘no room left’ to avoid massive tax hikes on Canadian and Mexican imports

Later on Monday night, Mr Trump warned Mr Zelensky “won’t be around very long” if he did not end the war soon.

At a press conference at the White House, Mr Trump told reporters: “The deal could be made very fast. It should not be that hard a deal to make. Now, maybe somebody doesn’t want to make a deal, and if somebody doesn’t want to make a deal, I think that person won’t be around very long.”

It was a deepening of the diplomatic crisis that began on Friday when Mr Zelensky was asked to leave the White House after being bullied in front of the world’s media by Mr Trump and vice-president JD Vance.

But he appears to be at odds with the French president Emmanuel Macron about the “coalition of the willing” that Britain and France are meant to lead.

When he came to the House of Commons to outline his proposals, the prime minister received praise for his diplomacy but also a number of awkward questions about his support for Mr Trump.

Starmer updated MPs following intensive diplomatic efforts around the Ukraine crisis

Starmer updated MPs following intensive diplomatic efforts around the Ukraine crisis (PA Wire)

The SNP and Tory shadow minister Alicia Kearns called for the invitation from the King for a second state visit – which Sir Keir brandished at the White House last week – to be rescinded.

The prime minister rejected those demands and warned MPs that any solution to Ukraine and European security would need to be achieved by working “more closely” with the US president.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said the UK needs to “reduce our dependency on the United States” as he fears “that President Trump is not a reliable ally with respect to Russia”.

He told the Commons: “We’ve entered a new era, one where the United States prefers to align itself with tyrants like Putin rather than its democratic partners. We need to reduce our dependency on the United States because I say with deep regret that I fear that President Trump is not a reliable ally with respect to Russia.”

Sir Keir said: “I welcome the understanding from our dialogue that our two nations will work together on security arrangements for a lasting peace in Ukraine. I also welcome the president’s continued commitment to that peace, which nobody in this House should doubt for a second is sincere.”

He added: “Our defence, our security, our intelligence are completely intertwined, no two countries are as close as our two countries and it’d be a huge mistake at a time like this to suggest that any weakening of that link is the way forward for security and defence in Europe.”

Emily Thornberry is critical of the decision to cut the overseas aid budget

Emily Thornberry is critical of the decision to cut the overseas aid budget (PA Archive)

He also avoided answering a question about Britain’s ambassador to the US, Lord Mandelson, making statements in support of Mr Trump that defence minister Luke Pollard said did not reflect government policy. The diplomat claimed that Mr Trump’s mineral deal initiative to end the war was “the only show in town”.

Sir Keir said: “The plan is clear, we’re working, particularly with the French, I’ve had extensive conversations with President Macron over the last week, intensively over the weekend, talking to Ukraine as well, those are going on at the moment.”

In a further clash, he accused Nigel Farage of “fawning over Putin” when the Reform UK leader asked him how many British troops would be stationed in Ukraine.

The prime minister also faced a backlash from senior Labour MPs over his decision to cut the overseas aid budget to fund an increase in defence spending.

The post Keir Starmer Tries to Ride Two Horses Simultaneously appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kenneth Surin.

Rewriting the Story of Horses and Human History

William T. Taylor — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 05:03:43 +0000

In our world today, it’s pretty unusual to see a horse riding down the street. In most cities and towns around the world, horses have retreated to the edges of daily life – appearing more often in sporting events or novelty tourist trips than in daily commutes for most of us. But it was only few decades ago that horses formed the fabric of life all over the world, functioning in everything from transportation to communication, agriculture, trade, and culture. How did this tremendously important relationship between humans and horses first emerge? And where is it headed?

To answer this question, archaeologists around the world have been seeking clues in the artifacts left behind by ancient people, and especially in the bones of ancient horses themselves. New scientific techniques, from archaeozoology to ancient DNA, are starting to shed light on when, where, and how horses were first domesticated, and how they spread across the ancient world–shaking the foundations of what we thought we knew about the human-horse past.

Ancient horse remains melting from the ice near a glacier
in western Mongolia. Discovered during the author’s
2024 summer fieldwork in western Mongolia.

In my own fieldwork in the Mongolian steppes, archaeologists and herders alike still mount astride horses to traverse the mountains and prairies that hold important archaeological clues to the first human-horse relationships. In my new book, Hoof Beats, I draw together ground-breaking scientific discoveries from the Eurasian steppes and across the ancient world, to tell a new story about how ancient people began using horses for both herding and riding, giving rise to new lifeways, cultures, and empires across the grasslands of Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

The author conducting fieldwork in northern Mongolia.

A modern ovoo, or ceremonial cairn, where horse heads
and hooves are adorned with prayer scarves in Mongolia.

An open sky over the ruins of Khar Balgas, which once
was the capital of a great steppe empire in the 8^th century CE.

A sunrise illuminates horse burials around monuments
known as deer stones, built by Mongolia’s first horse
herders in the second millennium BCE.

This piece first appeared on the Unversity of California Press’s blog and is reprinted with permission.

The post Rewriting the Story of Horses and Human History appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by William T. Taylor.

Goodbye Horses – The Grayzone live

The Grayzone — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 17:51:54 +0000

This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

Biden Is Fulfilling Trump’s Cruel Policy on Wild Horses

Christopher Ketcham — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 13:00:17 +0000

The Biden administration was supposed to have been a reprieve from the Trump years, but for conservationists who want the wild horses of the American West to live long and prosper, this didn’t happen. The anti-horse policies formulated under Donald Trump have been dutifully carried out by his liberal successor.

“We feel betrayed, because we thought this was an administration that really believed in wildlife protections,” Manda Kalimian, president of the wild horse and environmental advocacy group Cana Foundation, told me recently. “For all the hope we placed in Biden, it turns out he’s almost worse than Trump when it comes to wild horses.”

The protections for horses are enshrined in federal law. The 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act mandated that the animals “are to be considered … as an integral part of the natural system of the public lands,” and as such, they “shall be protected from capture, branding, harassment, or death.”

Under Trump in 2018, the Department of the Interior adopted a bold new program for the management of horses that exploited loopholes in the 1971 law. The program, Path Forward, was the brainchild of Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah, a longtime friend of public land livestock grazers who consider horses to be their cows’ competitors on western rangelands.

Path Forward was a wholesale gift to the livestock industry. It directed the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, to expand roundups on federal herd management areas where the animals were alleged to have overpopulated. The benefit to livestock interests was obvious: Cows also use these same management areas, and the fewer horses in them, the better for stock-growers dependent on public forage to fatten their herds.

With Path Forward, the BLM began holding horses in “off-range” facilities in larger numbers than ever before, exposing the animals to rampant disease and extremes of cold and heat. It offered $1,000 a horse to would-be adopters, a much-ballyhooed “adoption incentive.” The agency promised that once the number of horses on the open range had been sufficiently reduced, it would begin widespread fertility control through darting of mares with contraceptives.

By 2020, Congress had fully funded Path Forward, and Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, whom Joe Biden celebrated as the first Native American to hold the post, did not hesitate to implement it. Haaland’s BLM has overseen the largest increase in roundups of wild horses on record. It should be remarked as one of the minor ironies of history that a woman whose appointment was supposed to represent a break from the past has ended up perpetuating a violent and cruel status quo.

“Path to Destruction”

Occasional horse roundups, conducted humanely, are not out of keeping with the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act. The legislation stated that when the animals exceed the carrying capacity of management areas, the federal government should step in to regulate their numbers.

The problem is that the BLM has no scientific understanding of the carrying capacity of western rangelands where horses and burros roam free. This was the conclusion of a National Academy of Sciences report in 2013. The NAS investigators found that the BLM had failed to use “scientifically rigorous methods to estimate the population sizes of horses and burros,” failed “to model the effects of management actions on the animals,” and, pivotally, failed “to assess the … use of forage on rangelands.”

When I reported on wild horse controversies for my book on the fate of federal public lands under capitalism, I found that carrying capacity for these persecuted animals was mostly determined by the needs of cattle corporations. In every herd management area, there are cows, and they outnumber horses by orders of magnitude. Allotted the majority of the forage, the cattle do well, and the horses are left to survive on what pittance remains.

The BLM captured and placed in holding facilities some 21,000 horses and burros in 2022.

From the moment the 1971 legislation to protect horses and burros passed, the number of herd management areas, along with the total acreage included in them, has been continually declining. Horses today don’t enjoy full access to the meager acreage federal regulators designate for their survival. Livestock operators dominate even those parcels, while fences bar the horses from moving freely across the landscape. Maltreatment of horses is only one facet of a long historical process in which the BLM has treated wildlife with barely disguised contempt.

None of this appeared to be a consideration when, in 2022, the BLM decided to capture and place in holding facilities some 21,000 horses and burros, nearly twice the number of the last highest capture year, 2012. More horses and burros were rounded up and sent to holding between 2018 and 2022 — a total of 55,000 — than in any four-year period since passage of the 1971 act.

“It’s been year after year of pain and suffering,” Kalimian told me. “So much for the federal law that’s supposed to protect our horses.”

What we’re witnessing today with Path Forward, she said, is “a path to destruction.”

Mustangs captured on federal rangeland roam a corral at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s holding facility north of Reno, Nev., on Sept. 4, 2013.

Photo: Scott Sonner/AP

Secretive Holding Facilities

One of the necessary components of the new program is that the BLM had to massively expand its contracts with private holding facilities to accommodate the rise in the number of animals removed from the range. These operators have the option to bar public access and oversight, a sea change from public processing corrals that are open to visitation.

It’s smart PR to hide behind closed doors because capture and transfer into holding can be mortal events for the animals. Take, for example, the 804 burros rounded up in the summer of 2022 in Nevada’s Blue Wing Complex, 60 miles northwest of Reno. Ten died immediately. After the BLM shipped the remaining burros into private holding, 45 more died from “capture stress,” according to records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. The BLM will not allow the public to see those burros and check on their conditions in captivity.

Laura Leigh, executive director of Wild Horse Education in Reno, has been fighting the BLM’s wild horse policies for close to two decades. Path Forward, she told me, is only the latest iteration of the agency’s longtime effort to undermine the survival of wild horse herds so that profiteering interests, primarily stock growers and mining companies, are free to seize resources on public lands.

“The smoke-and-mirrors science from the BLM is all to protect cattle grazing.”

The Blue Wing roundup was so badly planned that Leigh joined with Kalimian’s Cana Foundation to file suit in federal court decrying “the antiquated and unscientific” environmental assessment the BLM used to justify the operation. The suit accused the BLM of lacking any long-term management plans for horses and burros in the Blue Wing Complex. “The smoke-and-mirrors science from the BLM is all to protect cattle grazing,” Kalimian told me.

Capture stress can trigger immune system failure, according to Leigh. Horses thrive in family groups, and when those groups are shattered — as they are in every roundup — this causes psychological distress that can lead to physical compromise. Being moved to a pen is a trigger as well. The BLM claims death rates from roundups are around 1 percent, but the true cost, Leigh says, is much higher: Some 12 percent of horses and burros die within six months of capture, according to her team’s research. That’s an estimated 6,000 deaths between 2018 and 2022. Many have perished of disease, though exact numbers are unknown. Equine influenza and streptococcus, ringworm, pigeon fever, papillomavirus, and salmonella have swept through the populations in holding.

Filth and inadequate sanitation are now the norm with the huge influx of animals. The BLM and its private contractors use the same capture alleys and pens repeatedly, without sufficient cleaning, and do not maintain expert staff who can handle sound sanitary practices, according to horse advocates who have investigated holding facilities. A typical boarding barn has a quarantine process for new arrivals; advocates charge that the BLM process, by contrast, allows disease to run rife.

“The BLM is committed to the health, welfare, and safety of all wild horses and burros, including those in BLM and contractor operated off-range facilities,” a spokesperson said in response to questions about the bureau’s sanitation practices. “Assessments are conducted to determine compliance or identify any corrective actions necessary to ensure proper care is provided.”

Unknowing citizens sometimes stumble on these holding sites and are horrified. Such was the experience of Vicki Cameron, a barber in Wheatland, Wyoming, in the state’s eastern high plains. Ten miles outside Wheatland, the BLM contracted with a company called Zimmetal and Welding LLC to operate a for-profit holding facility, the Wheatland Off-Range Corral. The BLM reports that approximately 2,850 animals from multiple states are now in captivity at Wheatland.

“I’m just an ordinary person driving along one day and saw these corrals full of horses,” Cameron said of her discovery of the Wheatland site in December. “This winter has been brutal, with extreme cold, snow, and wind. The corrals are on an open space with no shelter or break from the wind.”

Wheatland is closed to the public, but Cameron has been spying on its operations from nearby hilltops with binoculars. She told me that horses stand in eight inches of manure and muck in midwinter thaw events. Then the temperature drops abruptly, the wind kicks up, and the wind chill plummets to 60 below. “No human could withstand this weather,” Cameron said.

A Gold Mining Rush

Meanwhile, Path Forward’s vaunted adoption incentive program has gone off the rails. Multiple reputable organizations report that kill-buyers are posing as adopters, pocketing the $1,000 in taxpayer subsidy. The kill-buyers then sell horses and burros into a profitable slaughter pipeline in Mexico and Canada, at the end of which the animals are turned into canned meat for dogs. The BLM has noted that while adopters must pledge not to resell the horses to slaughterhouses, the bureau has no authority to enforce those agreements.

And fertility control has devolved into a second-rate initiative that has only involved a small number of horses, roughly 6 percent of the more than 20,000 captured off the range in 2022 — and an even smaller percentage of those horses allowed to remain on the range. Worse, the BLM has embraced invasive and often dangerous treatments to prevent horses from breeding. The agency, for example, has now proposed using lasers to burn mare’s oviducts, a painful process that causes tubal scarring to prevent conception but comes with serious risk of complications and death.

“Fertility control has turned into a vehicle for just more funding for roundups without regard for the real welfare of the animals,” Leigh said.

This broken system of management has its origin in the BLM’s policy of ever-widening fragmentation of horse habitat. Cattle-growing operations and industrial development on public lands are given priority. Especially worrisome is the breakneck growth in mining on the parcels of public domain reserved for horses, development that has produced more roads and more fences. Mining companies secure water rights on these arid landscapes to supply water-intensive hard-rock exploration, lowering the water table and drying up springs and seeps that horses depend on.

Leigh used to camp in one of the management areas in central Nevada, called the Pancake Complex, where the BLM has fast-tracked the construction of two new gold mines and condemned horse herds to make way for the mining concerns. In a 30-day period in early 2022, the BLM rounded up more than 2,000 horses in the Pancake Complex.

During her most recent visit last autumn, Leigh found new roads on previously unroaded landscapes. There was industrial-scale traffic and the constant noise of machines where previously the Pancake was a place of immense silence. Gone were not only the horses, but also the badger and pronghorn antelope she used to see and the sage grouse that came out at dusk to meet her.

So it goes. The last wild places of the American West are subjugated to money-making interests, and the last inhabitants of those marvelous landscapes are pushed aside.

In her constant and seemingly fruitless rebukes of the BLM for its failure to uphold the 1971 law, Leigh has asked the obvious question: Do we actually care about wild horses? Or are we just pretending to protect the ecosystems where these animals live? If the mandate of the BLM is truly to protect wild horses and burros, as the 1971 legislation tells us it is, the only way to make the program sound is to address the long-ignored issue of habitat preservation — a prospect that seems to be nowhere on the agenda under Joe Biden.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Christopher Ketcham.

Imported white horses burnish Kim’s image and tie him to Korea’s mythical past

By Jinwoo Cho for RFA Korean — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 22:46:00 +0000

The image of Kim Jong Un ascending the snowy peaks of Mt. Paektu atop a majestic white stallion is meant to stir patriotism among North Koreans and solidify his place in the three-generation Kim dynasty alongside his father and grandfather.

For such propaganda purposes – and for horseback riding around Kim’s vacation villas – North Korea imports horses from Russia, and last year brought in 51 Orlov Trotters, according to Russian media outlet RIA Novosti, the largest number since 61 were imported in 2015.

In early 2020, North Korean authorities purchased two such horses for US$23,400 according to a Moscow Times report, meaning each horse costs the regime almost $12,000 – a huge expense for a country facing food shortages.

“The residents are getting hungrier and hungrier,” Jihyun Park, a North Korean escapee who now lives in the United Kingdom, told RFA’s Korean Service. “On top of making nuclear weapons and missiles, the North Korean authorities buy expensive horses. This is really infuriating.”

And while some might consider the horses luxury items exported in violation of U.N. Security Council sanctions on the country over its nuclear program, that’s not necessarily the case, Eric Penton-Voak, coordinator for the U.N. Security Council’s Panel of Experts told RFA.

That’s because the definition of “luxury goods” is up to the interpretation of individual U.N. member states, he said. “As horses are not mentioned specifically in the sanctions regarding luxuries, it is not possible for the panel to impose an alternative interpretation on any member state.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (center) rides a horse as he visits battle sites in areas around Mount Paektu, North Korea. Credit: KCNA via Reuters file photo

But Troy Stangarone, senior director and fellow at the Korea Economic Institute, said that the horses are clearly luxury items – although Russia would likely not allow them to be added to the list of prohibited luxury goods.

“If there is a push for additional restrictions on North Korea, either in response on a 7th nuclear test or continued ballistic missile tests, I would expect there to be a focus on North Korea’s newer revenue generating items such as tungsten and molybdenum, rather adding [horses] to the list of prohibited luxury good items,” he said. The two elements are valued for their metallurgic applications.

Symbol of Power

The white horse has been closely associated with the Kim dynasty, often called the Paektu bloodline after the Korean Peninsula’s tallest mountain, considered sacred in Korean culture and mythology.

White horses have been used in North Korean propaganda since the days of the country’s founding more than 70 years ago. National founder Kim Il Sung is said to have ridden a white horse while he was leading Korean guerillas against Japanese colonizers before and during World War II.

Imagery of Kim Jong Un riding on horseback has been prevalent in state media propaganda in recent years, likely to connect him with his grandfather. Footage from a 2021 state-media documentary, hosted on the "푸웅Phuong DPRK Daily" YouTube account, shows several scenes of Kim riding a white horse, including in a full sprint.

The horse also serves to connect the dynastic family to the chollima, the winged horse of Korean and East Asian folklore capable of traveling 1,000 ri (about 244 miles) in a single day, Jonathan Corrado, Policy Director at The Korea Society,” a New York-based nonprofit that promotes mutual understanding between Korea and the United States.

“The chollima myth is used on North Korean stamps, money, websites, propaganda, and slogans, often appearing in conjunction with the concept of juche, or self-reliance,” said Corrado.

“North Korea’s propaganda often shows Kim Jong Un climbing Mt. Paektu on a white horse, or riding his horse with snowy mountains in the background,” said Lee Hyun Seung, a former member of the North Korean elite who escaped and is now a research fellow at the Maryland-based Global Peace Foundation, which is aimed at peacebuilding.

Beyond the propaganda, the horses are likely sent to Kim Jong Un’s various vacation villas for the first family’s enjoyment, Lee said.

“There are equestrian centers in their villas in Wonsan [in Kangwon province], Changsong in North Pyongan province and Kangdong in Pyongyang,” he said. “The horses are probably located there and Kim Jong Un’s family can enjoy horseback riding as a hobby whenever they visit.“

Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jinwoo Cho for RFA Korean.

Why Are Wild Horses Brutally Uprooted From Public Lands While Private Livestock Can Stay?

Ginger Fedak — Thu, 22 Sep 2022 05:59:19 +0000

Every year, thousands of wild horses and burros are chased by helicopters and ripped from their native land in terrifyingly brutal, and often deadly, roundups. After capture, they are corralled in crowded dry lot holding pens, where many contract diseases or injuries and some then die or are killed. Some of the captured wild horses and burros are adopted out or sold to questionable buyers. Many of these horses are in turn sold to slaughterhouses. These horrendous actions are perpetrated by the U.S. government while using taxpayer dollars to protect the vested interests of cattle and sheep ranchers. More

The post Why Are Wild Horses Brutally Uprooted From Public Lands While Private Livestock Can Stay? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ginger Fedak.