[LAAMN] Gaza rejects Greek government charity
From: Free Gaza Movement freegazamedia@...Date: July 14, 2011 6:41:32 PM CDTSubject: Gaza rejects Greek government charity Having trouble viewing this email? Click here JULY 14, 2011 CIRCULATE WIDELYGaza rejects Greek government charityThe following letter was delivered to the Greek Government on July 12, 2011 making it clear that the people of Gaza seek freedom and respect for their human rights, including their right to lead a dignified life, not charity. Seemingly deaf to their call, yesterday a spokesman for the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Delavekouras, repeated the Greek Government's generous offer to deliver limited humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza - instead of helping them gain the freedom that is rightfully theirs.We, members of Palestinian civil society in Gaza, have been watching the actions your government has taken to block Freedom Flotilla 2 from setting sail towards the biggest open air prison - the Gaza Strip - to challenge Israel's criminal blockade. Israel's closure of Gaza has deprived us of things that most people take for granted, first and foremost, our freedom of movement. We are not allowed to pursue adequate health care or educational opportunities because we cannot travel freely. We are cut off from our families in other parts of the occupied territory and abroad; and we are not allowed to invite people to visit us in Gaza. Now, you have imported this restriction on the people whose main mission is to stand in solidarity with us.The people of Gaza are not only in need of humanitarian aid because we are prevented from building our economy. We are not allowed to import raw materials or to export; our fishermen and farmers get shot at when attempting to fish or to harvest their crops. As a result of deliberate Israeli policy, 80% of our people have become food aid dependent, our infrastructure is in shambles, and our children cannot imagine a day when they will know freedom.Your offer to deliver the cargo of the Freedom Flotilla entrenches the notion that humanitarian aid will solve our problems and is a weak attempt to disguise your complicity in Israel's blockade.We are so sorry not to accept your charity. The organizers and participants of the Freedom Flotilla recognize that our plight is not about humanitarian aid; it is about our human rights. They carry with them something more important than aid; they carry hope, love, solidarity and respect. Your offer to collude with our oppressors to deliver aid to us is totally REJECTED.While it is clear that you have been under enormous political pressure to comply with the will of the Israeli regime, to collaborate with Israel in violating international law and legitimizing the siege, we refuse to accept your breadcrumbs. We crave freedom, dignity and the ability to make choices in our daily lives. We urge you to immediately reconsider and to let the Freedom Flotilla sail.Finally we recognize the historical relations between our people and your country's support for our legitimate rights. With this history in mind and your previous acknowledgment of the freedoms denied to us, we are calling on you to allow the freedom flotilla boats to leave for Gaza, thus challenging Israel's illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip and illegal occupation of Palestinian land.Sincerely, Palestinian Network of NGOs (PNGO) Representing over 60 non-governmental organizations in Gaza www.pngoportal.netPalestinian International Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza General Society for Rehabilitation Deir Al-Balah Cultural Centre for Women and Children Maghazi Cultural Centre for Children Al-Sahel Centre for Women and Youth Rachel Corrie Centre, Rafah Rafah Olympia City Sisters Al Awda Centre, Rafah Al Awda Hospital, Jabaliya Camp Ajyal Association, Gaza Al Karmel Centre, Nuseirat Local Initiative, Beit Hanoun Beit Lahiya Cultural Centre Al Awda Centre, Rafah Middle East Children's Alliance - Gaza office Alshomoa Club for Women General Union for Public Services Workers General Union for Health Services Workers General Union for Petrochemical and Gas Workers General Union for Agricultural Workers General Union of Palestinian Syndicates General Union of Palestinian Women Palestinian Congregation for Lawyers Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) Union of Health Work Committees Union of Synergies-Women Unit Union of Women's Work Committees Palestinian Association for Fishing and Maritime Palestine Sailing Federation Fishing and Marine Sports Association Palestinian Women Committees Progressive Students' UnionFor further information go to: freegaza.org Free Gaza Movement | PO Box 5891 | Greensboro | NC | 27435-5891 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles
[LAAMN] Egypt vs. the IMF: Time to Default?
Time to Default? Egypt vs. the IMF By ERIC WALBERG It is no secret that Egypt has put all its faith in the US and Western international institutions since the days of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, contracting a huge foreign debt, a process that was increasingly corrupt, despite being careful watched over by those very agencies. This debt is financed by foreign banks, and must be repaid in dollars -- with interest. If much of the money they create and then lend is siphoned off into Swiss bank accounts, that is Egypt's problem. No one is trying to charge the people who gave Mubarak or his henchmen their money and then let them re-deposit it with them, but it takes two to tango. Whether or not a fraction of it actually helps the Ahmeds in the meantime, it is the Egyptian people who are held responsible for it all and must comply with IMF adjustment programmes, involving privatisation, deregulation, regressive taxation, an end to subsidies to the poor, and much more unpleasant tough love. Egypt's revolution momentarily shattered the complacency of this devilish scenario. The explosion under the weight of the grinding poverty the system produced caught the Western bankers and political leaders by surprise and they hurried to embrace the revolution and co-opt it when they realised it was inevitable. This culminated in the IMF's offer of the loan to cover the yawning gap in Egypt's first post-revolution budget, which will double the lowest salaries, improve social services and introduce a progressive income tax. This unusual gesture of generosity by the IMF (a low interest rate and supposedly no strings attached) was really intended to keep Egypt from straying from the orthodox monetary fold, as other countries have done in the past in similar situations. It was enthusiastically supported by Egypt's elite, largely trained at US universities in the arcana of monetary theory. Otherwise, Egypt was about to be considered in default, Hani Genena, senior economist at Pharos Holding for Investments told Al-Ahram Weekly. This is precisely what countries such as Russia, Argentina and Ecuador have done in the past. The Higher Council of the Armed Forces, Egypt's de facto ruler, was not impressed with assurances that the loans were without conditions, and General Sameh Sadeq told the government to cancel the loan, with its five conditions that totally went against the principles of national sovereignty which would burden future generations. Finance Minister Samir Radwan complied and hastily negotiated funds from Qatar and Saudi Arabia (countries with their own agendas for Egypt's revolution) to plug the remaining hole. The spurned lover, the IMF, and its sidekick the World Bank, were not pleased. The latter said it would have to review its financial plans for Egypt. As news of the loan tiff was breaking, US Senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman and John Kerry visited Cairo to offer their gift to the revolution: a bill in Congress to create economic assistance funds for Egypt and Tunisia. Recall McCain's presidential campaign slogan to Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!, and his and Lieberman's militant support of Israel. If anything, their visit merely confirmed to Egypt's military leaders the need to keep the IMF and its henchmen at bay. Another visitor to Cairo last week was Mahatir Mohamed, who turned Malaysia into an economic powerhouse after extricating it from its colonial past. When his tiger economy was subverted by speculators in 1997, he stopped the run on the Malaysian currency and stabilised the economy without going to the IMF cap in hand, and Malaysia survived the crisis much better than the other Asian tigers who bowed to IMF pressure. Malaysians refused the IMF and World Bank's assistance because we wanted our economic decisions to be independent, he told reports in Cairo this week proudly -- music to Field Marshall Mohamed Tantawi's ears. In fact, many observers are convinced the army's decision was in response to the same popular anger and national pride that allowed Mahatir to successfully defy the bankers in his day. I felt a surge of pride when I heard the loan was rejected, University of Cairo employee Mohamed Shaban told the Weekly. Egyptians intuitively understand Mayer Rothschild's principle: Give me control of a nation's currency and I care not who makes her laws. Egypt's military leaders understand this too. The process of petitioning the grudging financial centres of Zurich and London to recover at best a tiny fraction of the stolen billions that were stashed abroad and thus are responsible for an outsize part of Egypt's foreign debt will take decades and yield precious little besides huge legal costs, as the experience of the Philippines and Indonesia shows. Egypt indeed could consider defaulting on what is called in financial jargon an odious debt, referring to the national debt incurred by a regime for purposes that do not
[LAAMN] Katha Pollitt: Talk the Talk, Walk the SlutWalk
Hi; I remind you of today's terrific show with Swing Riots, an exotic, top-notch musical trip, from the Gypsy Balkans thru N. Africa to New Orleans, and more. 2-5p, at Tropico de Nopal, 1655 Beverly Bl., at Union. Check out www.ashgrovemusic.com BTW, freeways and roads are near empty. -Ed http://www.thenation.com/article/161728/talk-talk-walk-slutwalk Talk the Talk, Walk the SlutWalk Katha Pollitt In the July 18-25 edition of The Nation For decades now, older feminists have been griping about young women. They take their rights for granted. They don't feel sisterhood. They're not politically active. Now comes SlutWalk, taking the world by storm, with boisterous demonstrations of young women protesting sexual violence and the way victims are blamed for it. Starting off in Toronto, where a police officer told law students at York University that if they wished to avoid rape they shouldn't dress like sluts, these grassroots protests, featuring thousands of women dressed in everything from lingerie to sweatpants, have been held in more than seventy-six cities in Canada, the United States, Europe and beyond; there have been SlutWalks in Mexico (sign in Morelia: My Tiny Skirt Does Not Make Me an Easy Woman), and one is planned for Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Here at last is that bold, original, do-it-yourself protest movement we've been waiting for, a rock-hard wall of female solidarity-an attack on one is an attack on all!-presented as media-savvy street theater that connects the personal and the political and is as fresh as the latest political scandal. And what do older feminists say? Frankly, I expected a lot more griping. Naturally, there was some, most vigorously from the antiporn scholar Gail Dines (Pornland), who sees SlutWalkers as man-pleasers embracing a false Girls Gone Wild empowerment. But mostly, feminists of all ages are cheering from the sidelines. Apparently feminists have a sense of humor after all and grasp the concepts of irony, parody and appropriation. Further proof that the evergreen narrative about feminist generation wars tends to fade away whenever feminists actually get out and do something. Much of the media criticism of SlutWalk centers around the notion that its central purpose is to reclaim the word slut. I have my doubts that slut is ever going to be a compliment, since its history has always been negative and associated with uncleanness, whether literal or figurative (originally, a slut was a dirty kitchen maid). But who knows? Political struggles have affected language in unexpected ways before: queer and gay, once slang, are now standard; black used to be crude and negro and colored polite; redneck, once dismissive, is now a badge of pride; kike may be unredeemable, but there's a Jewish magazine called Heeb. Maybe someday people will get it through their heads that sexually active females are not demons, morons, destroyers of men or fair game for rapists, and slut will either fade from the language or mean something else, like woman who sleeps with people she wants to sleep with, and only those people. In any case, redeeming the word is a side issue. What matters is the central message: rape is not the victim's fault. What she wears. What she drinks. How late she stays out. If she's on a date. Walkers aren't saying, Please call me a slut, big boy; they're saying, I am Spartacus-the molested hotel worker, the murdered prostitute, the student whose rapist is protected by her college because he's a star athlete. Even more, they are attacking the very division of women into good girls and bad ones, madonnas and whores. Don't be misled by the fishnet stockings and miniskirts. These women are making a radical challenge to foundational ideas about women's sexuality-and men's. The fact is, almost any raped woman but a nun can be tarred as asking for it (and, actually, there's a rich line of dirty jokes about happily violated nuns)-Lara Logan in Tahrir Square; the 11-year-old Cleveland, Texas, girl violated by eighteen boys and men. Even as I write this, you can be sure Dominique Strauss-Kahn's lawyers are combing his accuser's history to find some crumb that will suggest to one person on the jury that she was really a prostitute, a nymphomaniac, a liar, a nut, a cock tease, a blackmailer. And it could work. After all, a New York jury recently exonerated a policeman who admitted to a woman on tape that he had in fact had sex with her while she was too drunk to remember much of what happened-but not to worry, he had worn a condom. The jury found it easier to believe that he was fibbing to reassure the woman about STDs and had actually returned three times that night to her apartment to counsel her about her drinking problem (faking a 911 call to explain his presence in the area) than that he had taken sexual advantage of an incapacitated woman. Which, to the continued surprise of many, is legally rape. Bristol Palin, unfortunately, has added to the confusion
[LAAMN] Obama's Big Deal: Wallowing with Pigs in Search of a Grand Center-Right Coalition
Obama’s “Big Deal”: Wallowing with Pigs in Search of a Grand Center-Right Coalition Wed, 07/13/2011 - 11:23 — Glen Ford by BAR executive editor Glen Ford Barack Obama is salivating at the prospect of concluding his Big Deal with the Republicans, the one that will move the center robustly – even transformatively – to the Right, where this president really lives. The debt-limit deadline is Obama’s big chance to panic a significant part of the Democratic Party into joining in the rape of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. “When the debt-limit showdown arrives, pray for gridlock, which would at least mean there is still resistance to Republican extortion.” Obama’s “Big Deal”: Wallowing with Pigs in Search of a Grand Center-Right Coalition by BAR executive editor Glen Ford “Obama’s Big Deal is actually the coup de grace for Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.” President Obama says he’s determined to make the “big deal” with the Republicans – not like the little, piddling deals he has been cutting all along to benefit the corporate classes, but the BIG deal, the grand consensus he believes he was born to forge with the GOP. Although it’s true that it will take a whopper of a deal to outclass the bipartisan joint venture that transferred $14 trillion to Wall Street, the vast bulk of it on Obama’s watch, the First Black President is nothing if not ambitious. Obama’s Big Deal is actually the coup de grace for Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society – relics, like Black activism, standing in the way of a post-everything world. Obama has been savoring the big moment since last November, when the Republicans seized control of the House and sidelined the president’s main opposition: the left wing of his own party. Delusional Obamites, especially Blacks, are fond of saying their guy really wants Democrats and activists to force him to take a more progressive path – to “make him do it.” It’s actually the other way around. Obama depends strategically on Republicans to “make him do it” – to push him inexorably rightward with their brinksmanship and constant threats of gridlock. It is an intricate and intimate dance, with Obama and the GOP moving and grooving to the same music. Obama often gets so caught up, he mouths the Republicans’ lyrics. “The reason to do Social Security” – by “do,” Obama means “cut” – “is to strengthen Social Security to make sure that those benefits are there for seniors in the out-years,” says Obama, an exact echo of the apocalypse-soon Social Security scare propaganda perfected over the years by the GOP. Obama has been promising to “do” Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid since just before he was sworn into office in January, 2009, when he announced that these entitlements would be “on the table” in his administration. His deficit reduction commission last year did indeed put the programs on the operating table, with Obama’s corporate surgeons tracing dotted lines around the organs to be excised under the irresistible imperatives of austerity – the Republicans’ copyrighted anthem. “Obama depends strategically on Republicans to push him inexorably rightward with their brinksmanship and constant threats of gridlock.” Last November 3, I wrote: “The best outcome that could result from Tuesday’s Democratic debacle is that the Republicans overreach and, in their white nationalist triumphalism, make it impossible for President Obama and congressional Democrats to reach an accommodation with rampaging reaction and racism.” In other words, when the debt-limit showdown arrives, pray for gridlock, which would at least mean there is still resistance to Republican extortion. The showdown is nigh, although Obama is squeezing every Democratic arm and groin in reach to ensure that he and the Republicans are able to walk down the dusty street arm-in-arm at high noon, so that the outcome can be billed as a grand consensus, a Big Deal for Obama. This requires that he gather Democratic accomplices in the gang rape of entitlements. “So we might as well do it now,” says Obama, while people are panicked by the prospect of a technical U.S. “default.” “Pull off the Band-Aid, eat our peas,” he commands, as if the death blow to the last vestiges of the New Deal and the Great Society is just a short, sharp pain, after which the boo-boo will heal just fine. The real Obama is a cold, cynical bastard. He is not a wimp, but rather, has plenty of spine to face down and brow-beat the remaining defenders of the social safety net in his own Democratic Party, who have always been the most immediate dangers to his grand
[LAAMN] LA support vigils for prison hunger strikers and background info, resources
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Thandisizwe Chimurenga, 213-321-0575 FAMILY MEMBERS, CONCERNED CITIZENS DEMAND AN END TO TORTURE IN CALIFORNIAâS PRISONS Monday, July 18 · 9:00am - 5:00pm Ronald Reagan State Building 3rd and Spring Sts., Los Angeles, CA Delegation to meet with Gov. Jerry Brown, Press Conference @ 11 a.m. Family members and concerned citizens will convene on Monday, July 18, 2011, at the Ronald Reagan State Office Building, 3rd and Spring Sts., from 9 a.m to 5 p.m. The all-day vigil will bring attention to the more than 6,000 prisoners across the state who have participated in an indefinite hunger strike since July 1, especially those in the Pelican Bay and Corcoran Security Housing Units facing severe medical consequences. There is also a 7:00 PM vigil planned at the County Jail, 441 Bauchet Street, L.A. The prisoners are on strike to bring much-needed attention to the conditions of their confinement, conditions that many consider torture. A delegation representing family members of the striking prisoners will also go to CA Governor Jerry Brownâs office at 11 a.m. They demand that the Governor order the CA Dept of Corrections to meet the strikersâ demands to end inhumane treatment in the stateâs Security Housing Units (SHUs). U.S. and international human rights organizations have condemned SHUs as having cruel, inhumane, and torturous conditions. CA SHU prisoners are kept in windowless, 6X10-foot cells, 23½ hours a day, for years on end. The CDCR operates four SHUs in its system at Corcoran, Ca. Correctional Institution, Valley State Prison for Women and Pelican Bay. The demands of the prisoners, many of whom are in now in medical crisis since going without food or water since July 1, are: 1. End Group Punishment Administrative Abuse; 2. Abolish the Debriefing Policy, and Modify Active/Inactive Gang Status Criteria 3. Comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in Americaâs Prisons 2006 Recommendations Regarding an End to Long-Term Solitary Confinement 4. Provide Adequate and Nutritious Food 5. Expand and Provide Constructive Programming and Privileges for Indefinite SHU Status Inmates. Prisoners at the Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, CA initiated the hunger strike on July 1, but have since been joined by prisoners at Corcoran, Tehachapi, Calipatria and others. The prisoners have also stated that they are willing to give up their lives unless their demands are met. Press coverage of this significant development and humanitarian crisis has been inadequate up to this point. TODAY!!! 12:00PM-3:00PM PROTEST at San Bernardino County Central Detention Center (CDC) 630 East Rialto Avenue San Bernardino, California 92415 According to Prisoner Solidarity Blog: âThis afternoon leaders of the Pelican Bay hunger strike unanimously rejected a proposal from the CDCR to end the strike. In response to the prisonersâ five, straightforward demands, the CDCR distributed a vaguely worded document stating that it would âeffect a comprehensive assessment of its existing policy and procedureâ about the secure housing units (SHUs). The document gave no indication if any changes would be made at all Despite the promises from the federal Receiver overseeing the CDCR, no one has received salt tablets or vitamins hundreds of prisoners at Pelican Bay remain on strike, with thousands more participating throughout the CAâs 33 prisons.â Go here to read the whole article: http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/pelican-bay-hunger-strikers-reject-proposal-the-strike-continues/ These are updates we have from letters, posts, facebook messages, conversations, emails. Tehachapi A mother went to go visit her son in the SHU and was told that all the men on B yard are not eating, except for one who is a diabetic. Her son had lost about 20 lbs. and she reported that he looked extremely skinny, his skinned looked sucked in and eyes really big. She said he came out to visit with this very ugly dirty suit and believes they are not allowing them to do laundry. He was told about the protest that will be taking place tomorrow in San Bernardino and broke down crying. He thanked everyone who has been involved in organizing efforts. He said it is becoming very challenging but he is going to hold on and keep going strong. He said they had heard almost nothing about the strike. They had only managed to get ahold of one article, but it had no mention that Tehachapi was also on hunger strike and they have been going since July 1st. He urged to bring awareness to the fact that they are still on hunger strike and will continue to be. Donovan I received a letter from my man today letting me know the inmates in the hole at Donovan are participating in the hunger strike there is absolutely no news coverage in the San Diego area. All I know is he's telling me the men are eating canteen
[LAAMN] U.S. Begins Drone Strikes in Somalia
U.S. Begins Drone Strikes in Somalia Written by Michael Tennant On June 23 the United States conducted an unmanned aerial drone attack in Somalia, killing at least one person and wounding others. The targets of the attack were members of the Somali militant group al-Shabaab, which for several years has been fighting the U.S.-backed Somali government. Recently, however, the group began “planning operations outside of Somalia,” a senior U.S. military official told the Washington Post. “A Pentagon official said … that one of the militants who was wounded had been in contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical cleric now hiding in Yemen,” according to the New York Times. Awlaki himself was the target of a U.S. drone strike in May but escaped unharmed. “From the territory it controls in Somalia, al-Shabaab continues to call for strikes against the United States,” asserted John O. Brennan, chief counterterrorism adviser to President Barack Obama. Whether it can carry out such strikes is another matter. The details of the drone attack remain unclear. But one thing that is clear is that the Somali government, such as it is, was not notified of the attack in advance. Knowing on which side his bread is buttered, Somali Defense Minister Mohamoud Haji Faqi said the government was “not complaining about” the lack of advance warning. In fact, he added, “We urge the U.S. to continue its strikes against al-Shabaab because if it keeps those strikes up, it will be easier for us to defeat al-Shabaab.” The June 23 incident may be the first U.S. drone strike in Somalia, but it is far from the first American attack inside that country. Alex Thurston, blogging at the Christian Science Monitor, observed: I see the drone strikes not as something brand new, but as a continuation of earlier U.S. actions in Somalia, such as a helicopter raid in September 2009…. The idea of using drones in Somalia, moreover, has been under consideration since at least March 2010. The vehicle may have changed, but the underlying U.S. objective of assassinating key figures linked with the rebel movement Al Shabaab has not changed. The United States has long been involved in Somalia, allegedly to keep the threat of terrorism at bay. The Times writes: For several years, the United States has largely been relying on proxy forces in Somalia, including African Union peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi, to support Somalia’s fragile government. The Pentagon is sending nearly $45 million in military supplies, including night-vision equipment and four small unarmed drones, to Uganda and Burundi to help combat the rising terror threat in Somalia. During the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2007, clandestine operatives from the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command initiated missions into Somalia from an airstrip in Ethiopia. It is not surprising, then, that al-Shabaab’s one successful attack outside its borders consisted of suicide bombings in Uganda that killed 76 people. Nor would it be surprising if al-Shabaab were indeed interested in mounting attacks against the United States for the same reason, which raises the question of whether U.S. intervention in Somalia is protecting Americans from terrorism or opening them up to even more attacks. Many Somalis consider their government to be a U.S. puppet, and drone strikes against those opposing the government “will only serve to increase the local support of the militants,” Dr. Omar Ahmed, an academic and Somali politician, told Somalia Report. There is no reason for the western countries to use airstrikes against al-Shabaab. It will only increase the generations supporting al-Shabaab. For example, when the Americans killed [al-Shabaab leader] Aden Eyrow, the capability of al-Shabaab was very low. From that day forward, the militia increased in size day-after-day. They recruited many youths, persuading them that infidels attacked their country and want to capture it. The Obama administration has faced a similar quandary, according to the Times: Over the past two years, the administration has wrestled with how to deal with the Shabaab, many of whose midlevel fighters oppose Somalia’s weak transitional government but are not necessarily seeking to battle the United States. Attacking them — not just their leaders — could push those militants to join Al Qaeda, some officials say. “That has led to a complicated policy debate over how you apply your counterterrorism tools against a group like Al Shabaab, because it is not a given that going after them in the same way that you
[LAAMN] Veganism: for the Animals, the Planet, and Ourselves
Veganism: for the Animals, the Planet, and Ourselves It takes from 8-15 pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat. That grain could be feeding starving people (and sparing animals from short, miserable lives and brutal, unsung deaths). The consumption of animal products is now definitively known to contribute to heart disease, stroke, and cancers of the breast, stomach, prostate, ovary, colon, rectum, and liver (as a secondary metastatic site of colorectal carcinoma). By the way, plant foods contain the enzymes we need to digest them and offer phytonutrients that protect against malignancy. Our species is designed to be herbivorous (plant-eating). We have flat molars to grind plant fibers, not the long, pointed canines of obligate carnivores. We have round nails for digging up roots - not sharp claws for catching, holding, and tearing prey. (Our prey is stationary.) We do not have the strong stomach acidity of the obligate carnivores to kill the parasites in rotting flesh. (Putrefaction begins at the moment of death.) And we do not have their short, straight intestines for rapid transit and elimination of the toxins associated with decomposition. Ours are long and looped for slower transport and maximum extraction of nutrients from plant material. Animal husbandry also contributes to air and ground pollution, aquifer depletion, desertification, and deforestation. Part of the reason the rainforests are being razed is to graze cattle for burgers for the fast food chains. Every time we eat a Quarter Pounder at McDonald's, we have theoretically deprived 2-4 hungry people of grain. Not to mention added a little more cholesterol to our arteries or helped to prime a vulnerable organ for cancer. And last - but by no means least - the animals whose dead, rotting bodies sit on our dinner plates went through unimaginable hell to get there. They were living, feeling, intelligent beings who were tortured for weeks or months and then murdered in horrific ways so that we could mack on their skin, muscles, and organs. (When you refrain from eating meat for a while, your nose will become sensitive to the odors of decay. They will make your stomach roil. The smell from fish is particularly offensive.) Will eating vegan make you live longer? Here's my take on that: If you're meant to live to 70, it won't extend your life to 90. However, it may prevent you from dying at 50. Who wins from our consumption of animal products? The meat, dairy, and medical industries! The latter gets to perform triple coronary bypass operations, nuke us with chemo, and provide long-term care after we're permanently disabled by a stroke. Yeah, I know, we all die from something. But why die prematurely and in agony? It's claimed that the consumption of animal products confers a 50% chance of ultimately experiencing a heart attack, stroke, or cancer. With veganism, the chance is allegedly 4% - that which would be attributable to personal genetics. Ah, you demur. 50% means that I have an equal chance of not getting a heart attack, stroke, or cancer. Correct. But here's the rub: You do not know into which 50% camp you will fall. - Lindy Greene lindygre...@roadrunner.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] MUST READ: You Can't Kill a Planet and Live on It, Too
If I had to name one article that sums up what I have been thinking most of my life, it would be this one. Romi You Can't Kill a Planet and Live on It, Too Saturday 16 July 2011 by: Frank Joseph Smecker and Derrick Jensen, Truthout | Op-Ed (Image: LP / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Bruce Irving, Paul Bratcher) Let's expose the structure of violence that keeps the world economy running. With an entire planet being slaughtered before our eyes, it's terrifying to watch the very culture responsible for this - the culture of industrial civilization, fueled by a finite source of fossil fuels, primarily a dwindling supply of oil - thrust forward wantonly to fuel its insatiable appetite for growth. Deluded by myths of progress and suffering from the psychosis of technomania complicated by addiction to depleting oil reserves, industrial society leaves a crescendo of atrocities in its wake. A very partial list would include the Bhopal chemical disaster, numerous oil spills, the illegal depleted uranium-spewing occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan, mountaintop removal, the nuclear meltdown of Fukushima, the permanent removal of 95 percent of the large fish from the oceans (not to mention full-on systemic collapse of those oceans), indigenous communities replacement by oil wells, the mining of coltan for cell phones and Playstations along the Democratic Republic of the Congo/Rwanda border - resulting in tribal warfare and the near-extinction of the Eastern Lowland gorilla. As though 200 species going extinct each day were not enough, climate change, a direct result of burning fossil fuels, has proved not only to be as unpredictable as it is real, but as destructive as it is unpredictable. The erratic and lethal characteristics of a changing planet and its shifting atmosphere are becoming the norm of the 21st century, their impact accelerating at an alarming pace, bringing this planet closer, sooner than later, to a point of uninhabitable ghastliness. And yet, collective apathy, ignorance and self-imposed denial in the face of all this sadistic exploitation and violence marches this culture closer to self-annihilation. Lost in the eerily comforting fantasy of limitless growth, production and consumption, many people cling to things like Facebook, Twitter, Jersey Shore and soulless pop music as if their lives depended on it, identifying with a reality that's artificial and constructed, that panders to desire rather than necessity, that delicately conceals the violence at the other end of this economy, a violence so widespread that we're all not only complicit in it to a degree (e.g., if you're a taxpayer, you help subsidize the manufacturing of weapons of mass destruction), but victims of it as well. As Chris Hedges admonished in his books, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, any culture that cannot distinguish reality from illusion will kill itself. Moreover, any culture that cannot distinguish reality from illusion will kill everything and everyone else in its path as well as itself. As the world burns, as species die off, as mothers breastfeed their children with dioxin-tainted breast milk, as nuclear reactors melt down into the Pacific while the aerial deployment of depleted uranium damages innocent lives, it is perplexing that so few people fight back against a system that has horror as a reality for most living on the planet. And those who fight back, who stand in opposition to the culture behind such wholesale abuse and call it what it is - a genocidal mega-state (especially if you believe that the lives of nonhumans are as important to them as yours is to you and mine is to me) - are met with hostility and hatred, scoffed at, harassed, even tortured. With so much at stake, why aren't more people deafening their ears to the nutcases who preach a future of infinite-growth economies? And why do so many people continue to put the economy first, to take industrial capitalism as we know it as a given and not fight back, defend what's left of the natural world? One of the reasons there aren't more people working to take down the system that's killing the planet is because their lives depend on the system, author and environmental activist Derrick Jensen told me from his home in California when I interviewed him on the phone recently. If your experience is that your food comes from the grocery store and your water comes from the tap, then you are going to defend to the death the system that brings those to you because your life depends on them, Jensen explained. If your experience, however, is that your food
