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“Another bacon burger, anyone?”

Friday, March 30th, 2007

Jason Miller

“If my competitor were drowning, I’d stick a hose in his mouth and turn on the water.”–Ray Kroc“….a funny, jowly, canny, barbarous guy who lives in a multimillion-dollar condo on Park Avenue in Manhattan and conveys himself about the planet in a corporate jet and a private yacht. At sixty-seven, he is unrepentant in the face of criticism. He describes himself as a “tough man in a tough business”…..”The animal-rights people,” he once said, “want to impose a vegetarian’s society on the

U.S. Most vegetarians I know are neurotic.””

–Jeff Tietz’s description of meat processing magnate, Joseph Luter III (from his Rolling Stone article, “Boss Hog”)

Despite the obvious signs that our nation is declining rapidly and despite the increasing global animosity against us for our greed, excesses, hypocrisy, and belligerence, we US Americans are defiantly “staying the course”. Neither harsh reality nor the ire of the world community has shaken our foundations. Mouthing hollow platitudes about freedom and liberty while supporting a war machine perpetrating genocide in

Iraq, we mindlessly buttress a socioeconomic system some of history’s most notable fascists would envy.

While many of us mollify ourselves with the belief that the malevolence of the Bush administration is merely an anomaly in American government, the reality is that the current administration has simply become emboldened enough to dispose of the false mask of benevolence worn tightly by its predecessors.

Let’s face it. We are obsessed with American Capitalism, a system so rotten that it actually encourages, enables, legalizes, and richly rewards pathological degrees of narcissism, greed, competitiveness, and ruthlessness. While millions suffer and die because of us, we cocoon ourselves in impenetrable bubbles of denial and continue feeding our pathetic addictions to fast food, gas guzzling automobiles, American Idol, military domination, video games, the NFL, “righteous” Christianity, and the acquisition of material possessions. Yet we actually expect human beings who are not mentally incapacitated to believe that the

United States is a beacon of hope for humanity on a noble quest to spread “freedom and democracy”?

How could one maintain a straight face while asserting that a

Constitutional

Republic (alleged to be premised on Enlightened principles) could co-exist with such a deeply depraved socioeconomic system?

We’re talking about the system that made the “successes” of men like Ray Kroc and Joseph Luter III possible. Those eager to assuage their guilt or avoid the mental exercise of critical thinking can simply embrace the inane mythology that those who rise to the top of the economic hierarchy in the

United States are harmlessly enjoying the fruits of their labor they so richly deserve. Yet for truth seekers, this conclusion reeks with a stench that rivals the pungent stink of Boss Hog’s factory farms.

Since the meat industrial complex represents such a rich example of the abject inhumanity of American Capitalism, corporations like Smithfield Foods and McDonald’s were so instrumental in the growth of this complex, and men like Kroc and Luter profited so handsomely from such a massive entity’s existence, let’s scrutinize the devastation this abominable entity is wreaking upon our fur, feather and scale-bearing cousins, the Earth, and humanity.

According to muck-raking journalist Eric Schlosser, US Americans spent over $110 billion on fast food in the year 2000, more than they did on higher education. Aside from being a tragic indicator of our grossly misplaced priorities, this shocking statistic is an indictment of McDonald’s and its ilk. Ubiquity, affordability, convenience, laboratory-developed great taste, and a capacity to manipulate public opinion that puts Bernays to shame enable fast food giants to spread like noxious weeds, annihilating hapless “mom and pop” competitors like so much “collateral damage” in a US imperialistic invasion.

And what red-blooded American would leave the drive-thru without a Big Mac, chicken nuggets, sausage biscuit, bacon burger, fish sandwich, or some other delightful victual containing meat?

To keep up with the sky-rocketing demand for meat caused by the mass-production and mass consumption of fast food, men like Luter jumped to the fore to pioneer factory farming and “vertical integration” of the industry.

Thanks to corporate behemoths, livestock producing family farms are all but extinct. In the

United States, 54% of cattle are raised by 5% of the nation’s farms and corporate entities produce a staggering 98% of our poultry.

While many pets in our country receive better care than billions of deeply impoverished humans in developing countries, we consume the flesh, fat, and muscle of sentient beings merely to satiate our carnivorous desires. Compounding this barbarism is the fact that this behavior enriches those who condemn millions of pigs, cattle, fish, and chickens to abbreviated and miserable existences.

Consider what our fellow living beings endure that we might indulge ourselves with burgers, filets, chops and such:

“Unfortunately, this trend of mass production has resulted in incredible pain and suffering for the animals. Animals today raised on factory farms have had their genes manipulated and pumped full of antibiotics, hormones and other chemicals to encourage high productivity. In the food industry, animals are not considered animals at all; they are food producing machines. They are confined to small cages with metal bars, ammonia-filled air and artificial lighting or no lighting at all. They are subjected to horrible mutilations: beak searing, tail docking, ear cutting and castration. Even the most minimum humane standards proposed are thwarted by the powerful food conglomerates.” The 9 billion chickens raised each year for their meat are packed into horribly over-crowded, filthy and under-ventilated sheds. Pharmaceuticals and genetic manipulation accelerate their body growth to the extent that their internal organs often fail or they become severely crippled. Denied their natural inclinations to roost, nest, and bathe in the sun, their wretched lives end with a slash of their throats by a mechanical razor.85 million cattle die each year to put beef on our tables. Four corporate conglomerates account for 80% of this massive slaughter. Ravaged by diseases and metabolic disorders caused by unnatural diets, over-crowding, and cocktails of growth-enhancing hormones and antibiotics, cattle fare little better than their feathered counter-parts. Branding, castration, waddling, and dehorning are often performed without anesthesia. In spite of the Humane Slaughter Act, many cattle are improperly stunned before their throats are slit to bleed them in preparation for the final mutilation of their remains. “Pigs have the cognitive ability to be quite sophisticated. Even more so than dogs and certainly [more so than] three-year-olds,” says Dr. Donald Broom,

Cambridge

University professor and former scientific advisor to the Council of Europe.” Yet each year in the

United States we torture and kill 100 million of them. Factory “farmers” keep sows confined in tiny spaces and in perpetual states of impregnation for several years until they are eventually slaughtered. Hogs are “fortunate” in that their sentence to a life of profound misery is a “mere” six months before they “nobly sacrifice themselves” to provide us with ham, sausage, and bacon. As with cattle, pigs are subjected to multiple mutilations without pain-killers, including tail and tooth removal. Cursed by their own intellect, the porcine “farm” experience is perhaps the cruelest. Packing them into claustrophobic enclosures causes them serious mental distress, often leading to cannibalism, self-mutilation, and repetitive, compulsive behaviors.

Commercial fishing has decimated fish populations to the extent that nearly 30% of the seafood we consume now needs to be raised on aquafarms. Aside from driving some varieties of fish to near extinction, commercial fishing techniques cause the deaths of over 100,000 marine mammals each year. Fish raised on aquafarms face many of the same horrors as their terrestrial cousins. Over-crowding, disease, and injury kill approximately 40% of farm-raised fish before they reach market. Aquafarming also has disastrous environmental consequences resulting from the release of “tons of fish feces, antibiotic-laden fish feed, and diseased fish carcasses.”

What does our overwhelming support for this systematic torment and massacre of millions of our fellow creatures say about our society? Patrice Greanville, board member of Animal People Magazine, editor and publisher of Cyrano’s Journal Online, and renowned Leftist radical, put it like this:

“This moral blindness is inexcusable for those who rightly see themselves as the moral vanguard of humanity. For the bottom line is that speciesism—a surreptitious form of human fascism applied to animals and nature in general—is by far the oldest and most pervasive form of brutal tyrannization encountered in the sorry annals of human history. I don’t use the word “fascism” as hyperbole in this context or for dramatic effect. I wish it were hyperbole. But the fact is that fascism is noted for its unilateral proclamations of superiority by a certain race or breed, endowing said race with the “right” to dominate, exploit, and annihilate at will any group deemed “inferior.” If that pretty much doesn’t describe eloquently our despicable behavior toward non-human animals, I don’t know what does.” Speciesism is yet another ugly manifestation of the hubristic narcissism that has infected our collective psyche here in the

United States. While tormenting and butchering “lesser beings” simply to please our palates is reprehensible behavior, there is a less obvious but equally sinister component to the meat industrial complex. Let’s explore it, shall we?

Consuming meat is a luxury that comes with an extremely high human cost. While dated, agricultural economist Rene Dumont’s observation rings even more true in 2007 than when he made it in 1974:

“The overconsumption of meat by the rich means hunger for the poor. This wasteful agriculture must be changed - by the suppression of feedlots where beef are fattened on grains, and even a massive reduction of beef cattle.”

Dr. Aaron Altshul, author of Proteins: Their Chemistry and Politics, concluded that the foods cultivated to sustain a vegetarian diet provide enough calories per acre to support twenty times more people than the meat produced by raising livestock. Altshul further observed that the Earth could support up to 20 billion people if available agricultural land was devoted to cultivating vegetarian sustenance.

So while we savor our succulent T-bones, relish our tender pork loin, and feast upon our marinated chicken breasts, over 35,000 of our fellow human beings starve to death EACH DAY. 30,000 of them are CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF FIVE.

Consider these disturbing facts (most of which can be found here):

–80% of starving children live in countries where there is actually a grain surplus, but farmers use the grain to feed livestock in order to sell meat to wealthier nations

–Due to its profitability, cattle ranching is rapidly replacing the cultivation of essential crops in Central and

South America (where millions of people are malnourished or starving). Deforestation to create cattle pasture is also occurring at an alarming rate.

–Over 70% of the grain that we grow goes to feed livestock. Of the calories animals derive from this grain, only a small percentage yields meat for human consumption.

–In a world in which potable water is becoming increasingly scarce, the

United States devotes 50% of its supply to livestock production.

–Raising crops to feed humans requires far less land than producing meat. Today there is 2/3 of an acre of arable land per person on the Earth. Within 40 years that figure is expected to drop to 1/3 of an acre.

–Typically, 60 gallons of water will yield one pound of wheat. It takes about 2500 gallons to produce a pound of beef. While water is a fairly renewable resource, the meat industrial complex does its best (or more appropriately, worst) to ensure that such renewal is seriously compromised. The EPA has determined that livestock waste, 1.4 billion tons of which were released into our water supply in 1996 , is the principal water pollutant in the

United States.–“Vegfam, a British non-profit organization also claims that 10 acres can support 60 people when growing soybeans, 24 when growing wheat, 10 when growing corn, 2 when raising cattle. Also, PETA claims, “because of deforestation for cattle land, each vegetarian saves 1 acre of rainforest a year.””

Pork chops, fried chicken, bacon, and KC strip steaks are delectable in a way that defies description. Yet like so many of the tantalizing offerings dangled before us by our corporate masters, they are contributing to the demise of the human race, our animal brethren, and the Earth itself.

The system we have been conditioned to accept, support, and adore is unsustainable, vile, exploitative, and, frankly, murderous. American Capitalism is little more than an “evolved” form of feudalism in which corporations have replaced lords and the working class has been condemned to economic serfdom. The concomitant symptoms of this global malignancy, including runaway industrialization, imperial conquest, technological advances sans ethical considerations, environmental destruction, fascism, racism, speciesism, neoliberalism, and rampant consumerism, are straining the Earth and its inhabitants beyond reasonable limits.

Don Robertson, the American Philosopher, has concluded that “we are all moral barbarians today.”

If we wish to evolve into more civilized human beings and perpetuate life on Earth, we need to put some serious effort into embodying Robertson’s moral imperative:

“The moral imperative of life is to live a life that detracts not at all from the lives available to those who will follow us into this world.”While not easy, shunning the egregiously deleterious meat industrial complex is a simple first step. (To learn more, go to http://www.goveg.com/)Disclosure Statement: The author of this essay converted to vegetarianism two months ago. As a result, he has experienced spiritual, physical, and mental invigoration. He highly recommends it.
Jason Miller is a wage slave of the American Empire who has freed himself intellectually and spiritually. He writes prolifically, his essays have been widely published, he is an associate editor for Cyrano’s Journal Online, and he volunteers at homeless shelters. He welcomes constructive correspondence at willpowerful@hotmail.com or via his blog, Thomas Paine’s Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/

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British marine ‘apologises’ to Iran

Friday, March 30th, 2007

Al Jazeera and agencies

Iranian television has broadcast an interview with a captured British marine in which he admitted to entering Iranian waters illegally and apologised to the Iranian people.

The Arabic-language Al-Alam television channel showed an interview with the marine on Friday in which he said: “I deeply apologise for entering your waters.”

Footage of three of the 15 captured British navy personnel was shown by Al-Alam.

“The treatment has been very friendly,” the marine - identified as Nathan Thomas Summers - said on the state-run channel.

Tony Blair, the British prime minister, said people would be disgusted by the broadcast.

“I don’t know why the Iranian regime keeps doing this. All it does it heightens people’s sense of disgust.

“Captured personnel being paraded and manipulated in this way, it doesn’t fool anyone.”

Letter published

Summers was shown sitting with another male serviceman and the female British sailor Faye Turney - who was shown issuing a televised apology herself earlier this week - against a pink floral curtain.

The Iranian embassy in London also released a third letter it said was written by Turney on Friday, in which she said she had been “sacrificed due to the intervening policies of the Bush and Blair governments”.

The letter said: “It is now time to ask our government to make a change to its oppressive behaviour towards other people.”

The embassy also issued a statement criticising the British move to involve the UN in the diplomatic standoff.

“Attempts to engage the Security Council with this matter of purely bilateral nature are completely unacceptable, unwarranted and unjustifiable,” the statement said.

Official visit

Ali Reza Ronaghi, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Tehran, says that the broadcast was part of Iran’s attempt to prove that the British personnel were in Iranian waters.

“However,” Ronaghi said, “I’m not sure if the credibility of these pictures will be trusted by a global audience”.

Fifteen British sailors and marines were captured by the Iranian navy on March 23 while patrolling near the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway.

Britain has demanded their release, insisting that they were in Iraqi waters at the time they were intercepted.

Manouchehr Mottaki, the Iranian foreign minister, said that British officials would be able to visit the military personnel “in a consular framework.”

So far Iran has denied Britain access to the 15.

Apology

The interview was broadcast as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, demanded an apology by the British government, the Fars news agency said.

The Iranian leader made the statement in a telephone conversation with Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, Fars said.

The statement came as Margaret Beckett, the British foreign secretary, said a diplomatic note from Tehran did not contain a way out of the standoff.

“We have been looking for a way out of it for them, for us and particularly for our service personnel from the very beginning.

“I wish I saw any sign that this is what Iran is trying to do.”

The note is the first written communication from Tehran to Britain over the issue.

It appeared to resemble a statement used to resolve a similar standoff in 2004 when Iran seized eight British servicemen and held them for three days.

The note protests against what it describes as an “illegal act” by British personnel and urges the UK government to accept responsibility for it.

European Union foreign ministers said on Friday that they were considering backing London with practical measures to put pressure on Iran to free the 15.

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O’Donnell 9/11 Rant Reaches 30 Million Viewers

Friday, March 30th, 2007

Paul Joseph Watson

Rosie O’Donnell is certainly not backing away from her public stance about 9/11, and this morning on The View went on a 9 minute rant about the many questions surrounding the attack, reaching around 30 million viewers in the process.

This is the largest single exposure 9/11 truth has enjoyed to date and it represents a watershed moment in the quest to bring the truth to the masses.

Go here to watch

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Bush Administration Has Double-Secret Private Communication System

Friday, March 30th, 2007

Everybody smart knows you shouldn’t do questionable things on your work computer, whether sending out resumes or posting Casual Encounters ads or basically anything you might have a hard time explaining to your boss.

The scumbag criminals in the White House also practice this “cover your tracks” rule. Technically, they “work” for the “American people,” which means the White House computer network and affiliated websites, e-mail accounts, backups and archives are the property of the United States, as required by the Presidential Records Act.

Find out how they’re breaking yet another federal law, after the jump.

This U.S. Attorneys mess has again shown that White House senior officials are conducting all their dirty work using a privately owned secret computer system — White House e-mails sent to Jack Abramoff were also mailed from the private server, GWB43.com.

The secret server isn’t part of the government or officially part of the Executive Office. Karl Rove apparently does 95% of his e-mailing using the GWB43.com server. Bush claims his office doesn’t use e-mail at all, specifically because he doesn’t want to leave any evidence that could be subpoenaed — obviously, all presidential e-mail is also through the secret private mail server.

When they are put on trial, there will be no written record of their thievery and campaigns of horror, because there won’t be any e-mail archives.

Here’s the domain’s registration info:

Domain Name: GWB43.COMAdministrative Contact, Technical Contact:

Republican National Committee dns@RNCHQ.ORG

310 First Street SE

Washington, DC 20003

US

999 999 9999 fax: 999 999 9999

Record expires on 16-Jan-2008.

Record created on 16-Jan-2004.

Database last updated on 21-Mar-2007 17:45:46 EDT.

Ha ha, it’s also a federal crime to use false phone numbers in a domain registration.Ha ha ha, a political party accountable to no-one — okay, it is accountable to Halliburton executives — owns the domain for the secret private mail server the Bush Administration uses to evade the law. Ha ha. Ha.

The various chairmen in Congress who maybe just maybe might be starting to grow teeny tiny leetle balls regarding Impeachment have already sent formal demands to the White House to stop deleting e-mail records. And we bet they’re really paying attention at the White House!

Source

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Giuliani Faces Questions About 9/11

Friday, March 30th, 2007

Larry McShane

Rudy Giuliani’s White House aspirations are inescapably tied to Sept. 11, 2001 — for better and for worse.

While the former mayor of the nation’s largest city was widely lionized for his post-9/11 leadership — “Churchillian” was one adjective, “America’s mayor” was Oprah Winfrey’s assessment — city firefighters and their families are renewing their attacks on him for his performance before and after the terrorist attack.

“If Rudolph Giuliani was running on anything but 9/11, I would not speak out,” said Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son was among the 343 FDNY members killed in the terrorist attack. “If he ran on cleaning up Times Square, getting rid of squeegee men, lowering crime — that’s indisputable.

“But when he runs on 9/11, I want the American people to know he was part of the problem.”

Such comments contradict Giuliani’s post-Sept. 11 profile as a hero and symbol of the city’s resilience — the steadfast leader who calmed the nerves of a rattled nation. But as the presidential campaign intensifies, criticisms of his 2001 performance are resurfacing.

Giuliani, the leader in polls of Republican voters for his party’s nomination, has been faulted on two major issues:

– His administration’s failure to provide the World Trade Center’s first responders with adequate radios, a long-standing complaint from relatives of the firefighters killed when the twin towers collapsed. The Sept. 11 Commission noted the firefighters at the World Trade Center were using the same ineffective radios employed by the first responders to the 1993 terrorist attack on the trade center.

Regenhard, at a 2004 commission hearing in Manhattan, screamed at Giuliani, “My son was murdered because of your incompetence!” The hearing was a perfect example of the 9/11 duality: Commission members universally praised Giuliani at the same event.

– A November 2001 decision to step up removal of the massive rubble pile at ground zero. The firefighters were angered when the then-mayor reduced their numbers among the group searching for remains of their lost “brothers,” focusing instead on what they derided as a “scoop and dump” approach. Giuliani agreed to increase the number of firefighters at ground zero just days after ordering the cutback.

More than 5 1/2 years later, body parts are still turning up in the trade center site.

“We want America to know what this guy meant to New York City firefighters,” said Peter Gorman, head of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association. “In our experiences with this man, he disrespected us in the most horrific way.”

The two-term mayor, in his appearance before the Sept. 11 Commission, said the blame for the death and destruction of Sept. 11 belonged solely with the terrorists. “There was not a problem of coordination on Sept. 11,” he testified.

Giuliani was also criticized for locating the city’s emergency center in 7 World Trade Center, a building that contained thousands of gallons of diesel fuel when it collapsed after the terrorist attack.

The lingering ill will between Giuliani and firefighters was resurrected when the International Association of Fire Fighters initially decided not to invite the former mayor to its March 14 candidates forum in Washington. Other prominent presidential hopefuls, including Republican John McCain and Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards, addressed the nation’s largest firefighters union.

According to the Giuliani camp, the contretemps with the union dates to tough contract negotiations in his second term as mayor. His critics deny any political motivation.

The IAFF drafted a membership letter — it was never sent — that excoriated Giuliani and promised to tell “the real story” about his role in handling the terrorist attack.

The then-mayor’s decision to change policy on the ground zero recovery effort was “an offensive and personal attack” on firefighters, the letter said, going on to say that Giuliani’s “disrespect … has not been forgotten or forgiven.”

Giuliani countered the attacks by releasing an open letter of support from retired firefighter Lee Ielpi, whose firefighter son was among the 2,749 victims on Sept. 11. “Firefighters have no greater friend and supporter than Rudy Giuliani,” Ielpi said.

A contingent of nearly 100 South Carolina firefighters also expressed their support for Giuliani and his White House hopes.

Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran political consultant, predicted the 9/11 criticisms could resonate beyond New York during the presidential campaign.

“These are very emotional people who will touch a responsive chord with a lot of the electorate,” he said. “The things that the 9/11 families say will wind up in television commercials used against Rudy Giuliani.”

The issues also have forced Giuliani to try to strike a balance to avoid the perception that he’s exploiting the attacks for his own personal gain. President Bush faced the same challenge in 2004 when he invoked the attacks to portray himself as a strong and steady leader in the face of terrorism. Some victims’ relatives criticized Bush for using the ruins of the World Trade Center in his campaign commercials, while others defended him.

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