Category: vegan

Zoocide, Genocide & Passenger Pigeon Martha

This morning I tried to find the right word for the large-scale destruction of animals by humans and for humans. Universal rights ignores the innocent elephant in the room: animal rights.

whaaat

A couple centuries ago there were more passenger pigeons than there are chickens in the slaughter-house chain today. The last passenger pigeon (Martha by name) is preserved and on display at the Cincinnati Zoo, the final victim of zoocide. They were edible, guns were available. So were bison. Hey, mistakes are made. No, specious arguments are made.

100.years.ago.the.last.passenger.pigeon

When multi-trillion dollar production is at stake you direct attention to a splendid table (I cite the website because of its rather more conventional approach toward food). Comfortable and cozy, but too complicit for me as a vegan. Marginal movements like veganism irritate meat eaters. Just saying.

I haven’t heard about pink slime lately, the stuff that nano technology makes available. Let us capture each molecule and direct it to a consumer. Hey, don’t mention pink slime in polite company. We are nice people.

The enormity of sentient suffering is as great as the consumer demand for the ultimate insatiable decadence. There are no articles on animal trafficking via slaughter house in the NYT Magazine this week.

animal.trafficking

Climate change may just be the only thing that jolts homo sapiens to attention. We are a species intelligent enough to discover the existence of six extermination events in the history of the planet, but arrogant enough to shrug at the prospect of another.

How comparable are extinction events? Even the possibility of an errant asteroid does not direct attention to preventive measures. We’re too busy feeding military, prison and industrial-slaughter=complex obsessions.

By the way, vegan diets are healthy, inexpensive and planet-friendly. But as trolls are ever ready to counter: they are cruel to plants. Specious arguments never end.

Recommended website: Crows Head Soup

Thanks for reading.

Crows Head Soup & Vegan Anarchist

I recently discovered Crows Head Soup, a site for the perplexed among us who do not view fellow sentients as simply human resources. What happens when every molecule of flesh and bone is exploited at a mega scale? Does it even rate a half-hearted shrug?

crows-head-soup-original-recipe

Poetry strums and strikes here, it’s what poetry does.

Crows Head is a site gracious enough to allow rants that dare question the horror of the status quo. The Vegan Anarchist is a related site that is quite new, it appears on FB: a shorter vegan venue.

vegan.anarchist

This evening I read one of many pieces here that pierces the heart. It encapsulates the reality of daily existence in the confines of Butchertown, an historic town near Louisville. Some thoughts:

Visiting any supermarket in the country suggests the enormity of this flesh industry and the banality of its volume. How many tons today? How rapidly are the store shelves emptied? How many shelved products contain factory extermination camp content?
Twice as many chickens on earth as people. I won’t do the math here, but more than one in every pot by rough estimate.
Yes, man’s inhumanity to man sadly exceeds the ability to imagine, but fatalities among homo sapiens does not run into the multiple tens of billions per year of fellow sentients today.

bison.skulls.1870s
Bison skulls on the fruited plain

 

 

 

Remain humane, and thanks for reading.

USAUSAUSA? Looks like Sausage to me.

As the sage dictum suggests, don’t inquire into its contents. As a vegan I now enjoy reading the ingredients in such no-animal tube meats as Field Roast, produced by artisans who sign off on their work.

field.roast

Genuine big-deal topics are not covered in this depressing election year.

Smallish asteroids are reported only after they slip by our planet. I hear that extinction events occur regularly, perhaps half a dozen of them since the planet sphered together over a few billion years or so.

extinction.event

Or is it 6,000 years ago? I’m told that your guess is as good as mine. Have I mentioned that I live close (geographically) to the Creation Museum and to that other Ken Ham production? 

Climate change is associated with extinction events but it wasn’t in keeping with the alternate reality show in Cleveland, the progressive pole of electoral Ohio. Cincinnati, at the conservative pole, get noticed every four years. I’m just south of the Ohio River. We don’t decide elections here, but there is no dearth of demagogues in Frankfort. Hell, we couldn’t even ditch Mitch.

poll.tax.now

Woody Guthrie knew fascism, synchronistically well. Guthrie’s father fell victim to the father of today’s favorite fascist. That word is not used on right-wing calling cards, but by their actions do we know them. Our fascist du jour might just give it an Ayn-Randian shrug. Where is John Galt when we don’t need him?

woodytrump

Veganism is another threat to capitalist society as we know it. Death is a great job creator. Trillion dollar enterprises thrive on the death sector in our capitalist cornucopia. I sit on a man’s back… Cheers!

A vegan diet is a planet saver. It provides no answer for impending meteor strikes, but it means taking a potent step toward addressing climate change.

A vegan diet grants benefits to all and to each. You can even read about the vegan choice in one or two posts here. I leave them to your discretion; in fact, I leave everything to your discretion.

every-time-you-eat-or-drink-you-are-either-feeding-disease-or-fighting-it-quote-1

Fascism is a disease.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Better Living through Buycotting

I am updating this post from June 2016 to focus upon the cows, chickens and fish excluded from non-vegan conversation — the other sentient beings on this planet.

Tomato farming in Florida relies on the most exploited and marginalized. Working conditions are among the worst in the US: each workday brutally slams workers’ bodies. Everyday existence means pesticides, bugs, heat, humidity, humiliation, hopelessness. Consumers who could give less than a crap will wait in long lines at a drive-through

Celebrating the Women of Fair Trade

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A few cents can be the difference between bitter privation and mere privation.  A slice of tastelessness for the harried in the land of freneticism is a cost of production, it’s also a joke to consume.

Tomato-message

“As Chairman of Wendy’s Board of Directors and one of the company’s largest shareholders, Mr. Peltz is also one of Wendy’s top decision makers.  And Wendy’s is the only one of the country’s top five fast-food companies to decide — in 2016, after five years of unprecedented progress for farmworkers in Florida under the Fair Food Program — that it is better to fight than to join the FFP and help lift the farmworkers who pick their tomatoes out of generations of grinding poverty.”

nelson.peltz.protest

E.F. Schumacher wrote of “economies of scale” in 1974. I still own a copy of Small is Beautiful. Its message speaks to its subtitle: “Economics as if People Mattered.” I would add “animals” to that.

small.is.beautifulI am also one who believes that Jimmy Carter‘s grasp of economics is as strong as his understanding of the proper use of the word “apartheid.”

Bill Ziegler Empties A Room

I haven’t mentioned my ability to clear a room of human occupants before. To paraphrase someone I don’t appreciate “You work with the skill set you have.”

Speaking candidly places you in the disturbing position of H.G. Wells’ protagonist in “The Country of the Blind.” Having an ability not shared by the company you share is taken as a threat by the opposing viewpoint. I’ve discovered that vegans are not always greatly valued. Vegans are welcome here.

Adventures in a state of vegan

Replacing your body’s molecules one at a time. What gives?