Treading lightly upon the Earth is at the heart of veganism: a choice so odd that WordPress does not recognize “veganism” in its rather large dictionary.. Somehow that makes me feel important, centered and focused.
What did you do that for, Bill? Like the über odd man out, boat rocker tree hugger? If you like fruit salad so much why don’t you marry it?
Well it’s more like finding a life. Being or not being a vegan? There’s an interrogative! And here is a declarative: inimitably skilled pharmacists in anticoagulants Amanda and Rachel are now following my progress, and have been since I gradually began improving my food-chemical choices.
I guess it really is odd: the one not eating chicken when there are twice as many chickens on Earth as there are people, and with the planet not running low on the homo sapiens at the moment. Will check on this and come right back.
I’m back. Right, there are a few billion or so consumers as of this evening on the sun’s third planet.
Yeah, but you’re not going to make a difference so what’s the deal then?
Feeling important, centered and focused I realize that it’s only me twisting my own arm here, not yours. Just saying.
Meat and meat byproducts, mechanically separated or otherwise, start to deliver chemicals to your body at first chew. They combine with other chemicals in your system to produce a replacement body.
Reuters sent out a press release on a new stance by the World Health Organization WHO today, noted in The Guardian. WHO proposes including processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen, a group shared by asbestos, alcohol, arsenic and tobacco. I’m going to listen for a response from the meat industry. This opposition may relate to sales volume. The economic significance of products derived from the sale of animals is far from negligible. There could be economic repercussions caused by negative publicity. Jury is still out on that one, they may look at the same data as the WHO and agree with them. Your guess is as good as mine. Or they may torture the data until it produces the desired result. We’ll just have to wait and see.
That’s nice Bill but I wanted you to write about nut butters. When are you going to write about nut butters?
Anthropologist Jeff Halper and the geography of the matrix.
Making the inexplicable explicable, anthropologist Jeff Halper has authored an expression for a phenomenon: The Matrix of Control. I’ve sought to study both sides of the Palestine/Israel conflict; I find Halper’s well documented publications insightful and pertinent. And “The Matrix” is already in our cultural lexicon.
The geography of the occupied territories
Not for the first time do I refer to hasbara (from the Hebrew “to explain”). WordPress’ auto-correct database is large but hasbara is not yet there).
The following is at the Palestine Poster Project. You’ll find some worthy media. A great project, timeless work:
Multiple cards permitted
Both the Arab and the Jew are semitic. Why limit antisemitism to anti-jew? What then is the word for anti-arab? How about “antisemitism.”
From the blog Displaced Palestinians
Hate speech
Where did the inhabitants of the world’s largest open-air prison come from?
This infographic visually represents the untold story of Gaza’s refugees. Created by Visualizing Palestine in collaboration with four Palestinian human rights organizations, Al-Haq, the Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, the Palestine Centre for Human Rights, and Al-Dameer Association for Human Rights, who launched a joint campaign to document Israel’s attacks during the 2014 offensive against the Gaza Strip. http://visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/gaza-refugee-deaths
I found an obscure op-ed dated 9 July 2015. The opinion by an editorial board: Gaza and Greece are comparable. Offhand I can think of two points for comparison: both border the Mediterranean, both begin with the letter “G.” GAZA NEEDS WHAT GREECE IS GETTING. thePretty much published on the first anniversary of the 51 Day War, also known as Operation Protective Shield.
The fantasyland of eternal bailouts. The fantasyland of eternal hatred.
The ultimate lesson about Greece is not economic, it’s about Fantasyland. Greece has lived in Fantasyland — just like Gaza.
Greece’s fantasyland is the free lunch. Gaza’s fantasyland is the attitudinal free lunch: hatred without consequences.
The Greek fantasy is the supply of money as automatic as the laws of nature.
The Gaza fantasy is the end of Israel despite the laws of nature.
The Greek fantasy is pensions, wages, holidays, insurance, subsidies, welfare, all based on funds from outside Greece, without limit.
The Gaza fantasy is the destruction of Israel based on random missile fire and terror tunnels.
The Greeks fight the laws of production. The Gazans fight the laws of decency and self-interest.
The Greeks are finding out the hard way that big bailouts are not forever.
The Gazans need to find out that hatred forever will not destroy Israel.
The Greeks are finding out that there is no way to economic strength other than work, discipline and the end of ridiculous policies, such as huge pensions tied to early retirement.
The Gazans need to find out that there is no path to social achievement other than tolerance, political pluralism and religious freedom.
The Greek bluff was called.
Excellent symbol.
Now the Gaza bluff needs to be called: no more “humanitarian assistance” when it is basic humanitarianism, i.e., the end of the hatred of Jews and Israelis, that Gazans need to cultivate.
Greece banked on the fear of others to let Greece fail. For this, Greece is failing.
Gaza banks on the blindness of others to the true cause of their suffering: themselves. For this, Gaza wins sympathy around the world, yet continues its suffering.
Greece is now getting a dose of reality. Gaza is long overdue for a dose of reality.
Greece turned its good people against the necessary pain and pleasure of hard work, economic reform and national self-reliance.
Gaza turns its people toward the unnecessary pain of dead Gaza children as the inevitable consequence of placing them in harm’s way.
Greece is learning: It is not someone else’s job to fix the mess it created.
Gaza needs the very lesson that Greece is learning: Its poverty is of its own making, not someone else’s responsibility to fix.
Greece is learning: Fantasyland cannot last forever. The day of reckoning inevitably arrives.
Ditto, Gaza.
Greece’s fantasyland is the free lunch
Gaza’s fantasyland is the attitudinal free lunch: hatred without consequences.
Greece is learning: It is not someone else’s job to fix the mess it created.
Gaza needs the very lesson that Greece is learning: Its poverty is of its own making, not someone else’s responsibility to fix.
No. It’s not OK to place Greece and Gaza in the same headline
I am a supporter of Palestinian independence and a foe of apartheid: the dramatic separation of “the other” by a privileged people. A de jure and de facto status quo is brutally enforced upon the other. I have followed Palestine and Israel for a long time. I stand on the side of justice and human rights as defined by the United Nations. Palestine is a people whose culture is constantly threatened. Israel enjoys independence, Palestine does not.
Contemporary movements arise in unexpected ways. They blossom in this era as related hashtags: #OneStruggle
Olive trees are an immortal theme in the land of Palestine.
A Palestinian grandmother or mom and her children protecting their olive trees from demolition
Metaphor: olive branch in Genesis 8:11
When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth.
South Africa was another victim of British Empire. It was divided and conquered. Upon attaining independence from Britain, the State of South Africa adopted the divide and conquer technique. It was called Apartheid.
Apartheid (Afrikaans pronunciation: [ɐˈpartɦɛit]; an Afrikaans word meaning “the state of being apart”, literally “apart-hood”) was a system of racial segregation in South Africa enforced through legislation by the National Party (NP), the governing party from 1948 to 1994.
This painting on the separation wall dividing Israeli and Palestinians employs the vehicle (metaphor) of art. Simple but powerful. It reminds me of all the graffiti that adorned the west side of the Berlin Wall (some might have called it the Berlin Fence between 1961 and 1989) until both the west and the east sides of that wall finally fell in 1989.
News item:
The Defense Ministry resumed construction on Monday of the separation barrier near Beit Jala, south of Jerusalem, even though the High Court of Justice had invalidated the building of the barrier in that region and ordered the state to reconsider it.
(August 17, 2015 Haaretz)
India gained its independence from the British Raj in 1947.
British Raj (rāj, lit. “rule” in Hindi) or British India, officially the British Indian Empire, and internationally and contemporaneously, India, is the term used synonymously for the region, the rule, and the period, from 1858 to 1947, of the British Empire on the Indian subcontinent.
The British relinquished their imperial hold on Palestine the following year. In 1948 truth became a victim of war.
There is a worn slogan: “a land without a people for a people without a land.” But Palestine was not an uninhabited region.It was the home of three (3) cultures in 1948: three adherents of a monotheistic faith, secular and others, such as Bedouin nomads.
When the British left the three cultures remained. 700,000 Palestinians began a diaspora (67 years so far) that relocated them to the West Bank of the Jordan River, a small segment along the Mediterranean known as Gaza and throughout the world.
Many Palestinians lived on the Mediterranean coast in 1947. Certainly this would be my choice too, the climate is that of Southern California. Californians prefer the coast, but they also live elsewhere in their state. They live in Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego, i.e. all over the state of California. Many Israelis enjoy the Mediterranean coast, but some prefer Jerusalem, a divided city similar to the previously divided Berlin: capital city of the German Democratic Republic and largest city of the German Federal Republic at the time of Nakba.
During the 1947 creation of the state of Israel, the homeland of the Palestinian people for more than a thousand years was taken from them by force. All subsequent crimes–on both sides–inevitably follow from this original injustice. Yet a peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has continued over the years despite the ongoing violence which has prevailed since the very beginning.
Was the event of 1948النكبةم Nakba Catastrophe) or Israel Independence Day יום העצמאות (Yom Ha’atzmaut)?
Catastrophe number two: the event of 1967: النكسة يوم (The Naksa World Turned Upside Down).
Below, Moriarty as metaphor for the poorly understood victims of great crimes: the Palestinian people:
Picture to yourself the pilot fish with the shark, the jackal with the lion—anything that is insignificant in companionship with what is formidable: not only formidable, Watson, but sinister—in the highest degree sinister. That is where he comes within my purview. ‘You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?’
‘The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks -‘
‘My blushes, Watson!’ Holmes murmured in a deprecating voice.
‘I was about to say, “as he is unknown to the public”.’
‘A touch! A distinct touch!’ cried Holmes. ‘You are developing a certain unexpected vein of pawky humour, Watson, against which I must learn to guard myself. But in calling Moriarty a criminal you are uttering libel in the eyes of the law…
from A. Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story The Valley of Fear.
![Apartheid (Afrikaans pronunciation: [ɐˈpartɦɛit]; an Afrikaans word meaning "the state of being apart", literally "apart-hood") was a system of racial segregation in South Africa enforced through legislation by the National Party (NP), the governing party from 1948 to 1994.](https://billziegler1947.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/apartheidsignenglishafrikaans.jpg)
billziegler1947 