Tag: factory farms

Forked Tongues

It’s always a good day to learn something you did not know before, but it’s a better day when you learn things that confound your complacency and introduce you to post-Santa compassion.

There is a soundbite for every event taught in American classrooms — 90% of history curricula are either grossly twisted, are outright sanctified falsehoods, or are events not complimentary to sensitive Whiteous feelings: the eighth deadly sin.

Genocide on American soil is slathered over with sugary white icing before it can meet publishing standards established in Texas. Before Columbus, Indigenous Americans were a tapestry of tribes. Should they be thankful for Western Evilization?

Blacks lived in the tapestry that was Africa before the Europeans arrived. Should they be thankful for being saved by the generous very nice plantation system that offered better? Better Lives Through Slavery?

Somehow most White genealogies trace back to families that were very very nice to their slaves. Who the hell ever learns about the Black Stock Market of Greenwood, OK that was burned to cinders in 1921? What of their American dream?

“According to eye-witness accounts, the scope of the attack was equal to warfare: homeowners shot dead in their front yards, planes dropping turpentine bombs onto buildings, a machine gun firing bullets on a neighborhood church. It was a living nightmare, and for many decades Tulsa treated it as such, a dark apparition of the mind that might fade from memory so long as it was repressed.”


Fox News doesn’t have to be your only source for faux news, you can turn the channel, change the dial, read a “newspaper of record” and mislearn about current regime changes in the process. Perhaps you watch, perhaps you hear, perhaps you think you know about what happens in Venezuela. Here is something by Greg Palast that inspired me, something I promised to post: In Venezuela, White Supremacy is a Key Driver of the Coup.


Additional unnerving, disturbing, real-time coverage is available at Shelby Courtland dot com. Truth can be unsettling sometimes.

…”The New York Times, NPR and other mainstream outlets in the US reported on marches against the Chavez government, describing the tens of thousands of Venezuelans calling for Chavez’s removal. The light-skinned protesters were overwhelmingly wealthy — and they wanted you to know it. Many of the women marched in high heels, the men peacocking in business suits, proudly displayed in the uniforms of their privileged class. The Chavistas wore patriotic yellow, blue and red T-shirts, sneakers, jeans.”

Most people do not even participate in their own lives, life happens in an autonomic way — if you prefer that the cranium function as autonomically as breathing, it will do so. Existing-While-Black, Existing-While-Palestinian, Existing-While-LGBQT+, Existing-While-Living InMyNeighborhood? Cognitive dissonance happens. I think myself a cognitive dissonancer because I am a lightning rod for the cognitively dissonanced. You must learn to expect such when you speak for the most exploited among us, and I even include all sentient animal beings among the most exploited. Factory farms really are death camps. It’s always a good day to eschew blood-laden “resources” — for all parties involved, both the muncher and the munched.

Avoiding television frees up the time to think independently, in my opinion. The tube/screen has always been a popular passive way to address boredom, a popular alternative to thinking, a stress-reducing mechanism. Propagandists, marketers and people like DJT know how to direct their messages to target audiences by any means possible, such as eye-scanning apps that detect minute movements in a supermarket, process the scanned data at the checkout, and follow you home. Technology is very good. Technology is very bad.

Thanks for reading.

Relax and Eat Clean

I wish the NYT had asked Andrew Kirschner to write this post on their editorial page. Aaron Carroll’s opinion piece should never have been approved by a media giant that proclaims itself the newspaper of record. I could not have done a better addressing the false statements myself — actually I would probably have lost myself to rants and ravings, so my grateful appreciation goes to Kirschner’s Korner for countering so much misinformation.

Solidarity for Sustainability

My thanks to all and each who inspire this blog 🙂

I appreciate my readers and am ever grateful for each of you — including those who disagree with some (or all) content here, or those who have tripped into my blog by entering a type O graphical error in a Google search bar. Say you’re interested in discovering something germane and find German instead. Many (most) might feel that nothing I write is germane to many (most) surfers’ interests.

sustain.pakistan

Today’s comment of the day is from Robert, creator of Words for Breakfast, a worthwhile blog I recommend to your attention on the basis of its inherent interest and merit:

“…Vegans, Vegetarians and proponents of sustainable living should work together more, be more receptive to each other instead of trying to convince each other of the rightness of their opinion…”

Please allow me to quote from my reply:

“… You are absolutely right about the need to work together with as many fellow travelers as possible. I believe in joining with others in solidarity, even if you disagree with them on many other issues. Creating enemies by edict solves nothing and poisons the soil… — crap drains no sewer…”

Vegans are not the only planetary inhabitants who recognize that a sustainable environment is not a luxury or a fantasy. Solidarity for sustainability unites many with whom you may disagree: mildly or vehemently. We have no Plan B Planet.

meatrix

I believe that sustainability is a rock-solid rule of Mother Nature, a rule enforced by her forces of evolution and devolution. You break the rules by stacking the deck in your favor, resulting in expulsion.

Before going any further, let me recommend a recent review and summation of a recent symposium in Sheffield UK by Mira Lieberman, a scholar who combines voice and verve at a sustained level of competence. Thorough and well written? Yes, indeed.

Sometimes the rules are blatantly not caused by planetary inhabitants. Sizable meteors are also a force of nature, as is a dying sun. The dinosaurs had been around far longer than mammals, for example. Extinction Event Number 5 was not of their doing. Sometimes being in the wrong place at the wrong time just happens. Sorry ’bout that.

Venus became enshrouded by clouds, setting hypothetical Venusians up for the heartbreak of The Greenhouse Effect. Your assignment: write an essay (50,000 words or less) on the topic: what I think happened to Venus.

greenhouse.smithsonian

Extinction Event Number 6 may be well on the way to completion, I’ve heard that nothing is completed until it is finished, or something. Unfortunately most other innocent fellow species are thus endangered. Many species have already disappeared through a process known as ‘extinction’ — something as natural as getting hit by a largish meteor or squeezed into a cul-de-sac by a human crave for lebensraum or some other geopolitical impulse.

Extinction events usually take millions or billions of years to complete. Leave it to the self-appointed kings of the hill, self-named topper of the food chain to deserve an “anthropocentric” geological era.

Perhaps robots invented by homo sapiens will begin a “cene” of their own after their creators leave the scene.

Vegan Venn Diagram o’ the Day

Venn diagrams are useful heuristics. Here is one from VeganStreet.com that departs from the conventional Meatist perspective. I’m calling it the Venn diagram o’ the day.

vegann.diagram.veganstreet

Hoping that you like the idea of complimenting a comment with a complementing commentary. 🙂

Thanks for reading.

 

The Green Sheep in the Family

Herewith a set of considerations introduced more than four year ago. It is, therefore, well-neigh time to tie a few strings in the midst of many threads. Encouragement  from the inimitable Katrina of New Zealand.

A Bold Woman who has brought us a grand thought issued by David Bowie: Katrina.

“Aging is an extraordinary process, where you become free to be the person you always should have been.”

— David Bowie

Full disclosure first — I am the green sheep in the family: one of “those vegans” who have the temerity to speak up for “others” — more similar to us than not — who have no voice in determining their own destiny. Today I focus on the multiple billions  living in camps

green.sheep

By this time next year 70 billion will have lived from birth to death in one of those facilities. Factory friendly farms.

Well there must be a good reason then.

Many reasons, but each is specious, spurious and tawdry. We deny inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to “the others.” Is that ethical behavior? Do animals volunteer their own destruction?

Bill, they outnumber us 10 to 1. So it looks like we are the ones endangered here. Do you call that fair? Let us tell you something. life isn’t fair and freedom fries aren’t free. It’s a wonder that any of us are left standing, actually. So it’s self-defense, us or them.

But can we talk about something a little less depressing?

Sorry. Let’s talk about optimal health, vibrance and well-being. In short: those habits that produce a healthy body. There are many ways to become ill: some involve luck, some are viral/bacterial, some are self-induced. I’ve tried many ill-advised styles of life.

Vegan protein icons

To quote my own father “I would rather be rich and healthy than sick and poor.”

Majority rule then. You vegans comprise 3% of the eating public. Why force bunny-salads down our throats? We are not geese. We are designed to eat meat. Some call it stewardship in a dominion over all life. What’s wrong with being top dog? Beats low dog.

3% of human eaters are vegan, 3% of human scientists deny climate-change, 3% is a good guess at the percentage of lifeforms that would survive an extinction event — asteroidal, nuclear or climatological.

Detox is tough because meat is a powerful addiction that is socially acceptable and culturally sanctioned. Secreting toxins is wearying — so is withdrawal from other addicting chemicals. We are living and breathing chemical factories, walking bags of chemicals.

Some very good news: craving for meat and meat byproducts metamorphoses into revulsion.

Why are you vegans always so negative?

We aren’t. And being a green sheep is a very good thing.

Thanks for reading.

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