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So You're an Environmentalist; Why Are You Still Eating Meat? |
Current rating: 0 |
by VeganLove
(No verified email address) |
02 Jun 2002
Modified: 08 Jun 2002 |
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Go Vegan! its really fun and you Feel alot better! on all levels :-) |
 Go Vegan! its really fun and you Feel alot better! on all levels :-) |
So You're an Environmentalist; Why Are You Still Eating Meat?
Jim Motavalli, E Magazine
January 3, 2002
There has never been a better time for environmentalists to become vegetarians. Evidence of the environmental impacts of a meat-based diet is piling up at the same time its health effects are becoming better known. Meanwhile, full-scale industrialized factory farming -- which allows diseases to spread quickly as animals are raised in close confinement -- has given rise to recent, highly publicized epidemics of meat-borne illnesses. At press time, the first discovery of mad cow disease in a Tokyo suburb caused beef prices to plummet in Japan and many people to stop eating meat.
All this comes at a time when meat consumption is reaching an all-time high around the world, quadrupling in the last 50 years. There are 20 billion head of livestock taking up space on the Earth, more than triple the number of people. According to the Worldwatch Institute, global livestock population has increased 60 percent since 1961, and the number of fowl being raised for human dinner tables has nearly quadrupled in the same time period, from 4.2 billion to 15.7 billion. U.S. beef and pork consumption has tripled since 1970, during which time it has more than doubled in Asia.
Americans spend $110 billion a year on meat-intensive fast food, and its growing popularity around the world may be a factor in dramatic increases in global meat consumption. © Jason Kremkau
One reason for the increase in meat consumption is the rise of fast-food restaurants as an American dietary staple. As Eric Schlosser noted in his best-selling book Fast Food Nation, "Americans now spend more money on fast food -- $110 billion a year -- than they do on higher education. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos and recorded music -- combined."
Strong growth in meat production and consumption continues despite mounting evidence that meat-based diets are unhealthy, and that just about every aspect of meat production -- from grazing-related loss of cropland and open space, to the inefficiencies of feeding vast quantities of water and grain to cattle in a hungry world, to pollution from "factory farms" -- is an environmental disaster with wide and sometimes catastrophic consequences. Oregon State University agriculture professor Peter Cheeke calls factory farming "a frontal assault on the environment, with massive groundwater and air pollution problems."
World Hunger and Resources
The 4.8 pounds of grain fed to cattle to produce one pound of beef for human beings represents a colossal waste of resources in a world still teeming with people who suffer from profound hunger and malnutrition.
According to the British group Vegfam, a 10-acre farm can support 60 people growing soybeans, 24 people growing wheat, 10 people growing corn and only two producing cattle. Britain -- with 56 million people -- could support a population of 250 million on an all-vegetable diet. Because 90 percent of U.S. and European meat eaters' grain consumption is indirect (first being fed to animals), westerners each consume 2,000 pounds of grain a year. Most grain in underdeveloped countries is consumed directly.
Somalian famine victims line up for food handouts. Producing a pound of beef requires 4.8 pounds of grain, and critics of our modern agricultural system say that the spread of meat-based diets aggravates world hunger. © David & Peter Turnley / Corbis
While it is true that many animals graze on land that would be unsuitable for cultivation, the demand for meat has taken millions of productive acres away from farm inventories. The cost of that is incalculable. As Diet For a Small Planet author Frances Moore Lappé writes, imagine sitting down to an eight-ounce steak. "Then imagine the room filled with 45 to 50 people with empty bowls in front of them. For the 'feed cost' of your steak, each of their bowls could be filled with a full cup of cooked cereal grains."
Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer estimates that reducing meat production by just 10 percent in the U.S. would free enough grain to feed 60 million people. Authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich note that a pound of wheat can be grown with 60 pounds of water, whereas a pound of meat requires 2,500 to 6,000 pounds.
Environmental Costs
Energy-intensive U.S. factory farms generated 1.4 billion tons of animal waste in 1996, which, the Environmental Protection Agency reports, pollutes American waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. Meat production has also been linked to severe erosion of billions of acres of once-productive farmland and to the destruction of rainforests.
McDonald's took a group of British animal rights activists to court in the 1990s because they had linked the fast food giant to an unhealthy diet and rainforest destruction. The defendants, who fought the company to a standstill, made a convincing case. In court documents, the activists asserted, "From 1970 onwards, beef from cattle reared on ex-rainforest land was supplied to McDonald's." In a policy statement, McDonald's claims that it "does not purchase beef which threatens tropical rainforests anywhere in the world," but it does not deny past purchases.
Circle Four Farms, a Utah-based pork producer, hosts a three-million gallon waste lagoon. When lagoons like this spill into rivers and lakes as happened in North Carolina in 1995, the result can be environmentally catastrophic. © AP Photo / Douglas C. Pizac
According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), livestock raised for food produce 130 times the excrement of the human population, some 87,000 pounds per second. The Union of Concerned Scientists points out that 20 tons of livestock manure is produced annually for every U.S. household. The much-publicized 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska dumped 12 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, but the relatively unknown 1995 New River hog waste spill in North Carolina poured 25 million gallons of excrement and urine into the water, killing an estimated 10 to 14 million fish and closing 364,000 acres of coastal shellfishing beds. Hog waste spills have caused the rapid spread of a virulent microbe called Pfiesteria piscicida, which has killed a billion fish in North Carolina alone.
More than a third of all raw materials and fossil fuels consumed in the U.S. are used in animal production. Beef production alone uses more water than is consumed in growing the nation's entire fruit and vegetable crop. Producing a single hamburger patty uses enough fuel to drive 20 miles and causes the loss of five times its weight in topsoil. In his book The Food Revolution, author John Robbins estimates that "you'd save more water by not eating a pound of California beef than you would by not showering for an entire year." Because of deforestation to create grazing land, each vegetarian saves an acre of trees per year.
"We definitely take up more environmental space when we eat meat," says Barbara Bramble of the National Wildlife Federation. "I think it's consistent with environmental values to eat lower on the food chain."
The Human Health Toll
There is some evidence to suggest that the human digestive system was not designed for meat consumption and processing (see sidebar), which could help explain why there is such high incidence of heart disease, hypertension, and colon and other cancers. Add to this the plethora of drugs and antibiotics applied as a salve to unnatural factory farming conditions and growing occurrences of meat-based diseases like E. coli and Salmonella, and there's a compelling health-based case for vegetarianism.
The factory-farmed chicken, cow or pig of today is among the most medicated creatures on Earth. "For sheer overprescription, no doctor can touch the American farmer," reported Newsweek. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, the use of antimicrobial drugs for nontherapeutic purposes -- mainly to increase factory farm growth rates -- has risen 50 percent since 1985.
Ninety percent of commercially available eggs come from chickens raised on factory farms, and six billion "broiler" chickens emerge from the same conditions. Ninety percent of U.S.-raised pigs are closely confined at some point during their lives. According to the book Animal Factories by Jim Mason and Peter Singer, pork producers lose $187 million annually to chronic diseases such as dysentery, cholera, trichinosis and other ailments fostered by factory farming. Drugs are used to reduce stress levels in animals crowded together unnaturally, although 20 percent of the chickens die of stress or disease anyway.
One result of these conditions is a high rate of meat contamination. Up to 60 percent of chickens sold in supermarkets are infected with Salmonella entenidis, which can pass to humans if the meat is not heated to a high enough temperature. Another pathogen, Campylobacter, can also spread from chickens to human beings with deadly results.
In 1997, more than 25 million pounds of hamburger were found to be contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7, which is spread by fecal matter. The bacteria are a particular problem in hamburger, because the grinding process spreads it throughout the meat. E. coli, the leading cause of kidney failure in young children, was the culprit when three children died of food poisoning after eating at a Seattle Jack in the Box restaurant in 1993.
Business as usual at the animal farm: From left: chicken debeaking, cow confinement, poultry transport and hog crowding.
The British epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, which began in 1986 and has affected nearly 200,000 cattle, jumps to beef-eating humans in the form of the always-fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD). The CDC reports that an average of 10 to 15 people have contracted CJD from meat in Britain each year since it was first detected in 1994. In 1998, the British Medical Association warned in a report to Members of Parliament, "The current state of food safety in Britain is such that all raw meat should be assumed to be contaminated with pathogenic organisms." In 1997, it added, Salmonella or E. coli infected a million people in Britain. BSE spreads through cattle that are fed contaminated central nervous-system tissue from other animals. "Its future magnitude and geographic distribution...cannot yet be predicted," the CDC reported. In the U.S., deer have been affected with chronic wasting disease, which has many similarities to British BSE, though a definitive link to humans has not been established.
In the book Eating With Conscience, Dr. Michael W. Fox reports that what is known as "animal tankage" -- the non-fat animal residue from slaughterhouses -- is used in a wide variety of products, from animal feed and fertilizer to pet food. Dr. Fox adds that hundreds of cats in Europe (and several zoo animals) that ate tankage-laced food have contracted forms of BSE. The Japanese outbreak is believed to have originated in BSE-contaminated feed imported from Europe.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), more than 10 million animals that were dying or diseased when slaughtered were "rendered" (processed into a protein-rich meal) in 1995 for addition to pig, poultry and pet food. Animals that collapse at the slaughterhouse door or during transportation are called "downers," and their corpses are routinely processed for human consumption. A 2001 Zogby America poll conducted for the group Farm Sanctuary found that 79 percent of Americans oppose this practice, which could be an entry point for BSE into the U.S. meat supply. Farm Sanctuary petitioned the USDA in 1998 to end processing of downer meat for human consumption, but its petition was denied.
Europe will spend billions of dollars bringing a virulent epidemic of yet another animal-borne disease -- foot-and-mouth -- under control. In the last two years, 60 countries have had outbreaks of foot-and-mouth, which kills animals but does not spread to people.
One of the major western exports is a taste for meat, though it brings with it increased risk of heart disease and cancer. Clearly, there is something seriously wrong with a diet and food production system resulting in such waste, endemic disease and human health threats.
Caring About Animals
The average meat eater is responsible for the deaths of some 2,400 animals during his or her lifetime. Animals raised for food endure great suffering in their housing, transport, feeding and slaughter, which is something not clearly evident in the neatly wrapped packages of meat offered for sale at grocery counters. Given the information, many Americans -- especially those with an environmental background -- recoil at knowing they participate in a meat production system so oppressive to the animals caught up in it.
The family farm of the nineteenth century, with its "free-range" animals running around the farmyard or grazing in a pasture, is largely a thing of the past. Brutality to animals has become routine in today's factory farm. A recent article in the pig industry journal National Hog Farmer recommends reducing the average space per animal from eight to six square feet, concluding "Crowding pigs pays." Morley Safer reported on the television program 60 Minutes that today's factory pig is no "Babe": "[They] see no sun in their limited lives, with no hay to lie on, no mud to roll in. The sows live in tiny cages, so narrow they cannot even turn around. They live over metal grates, and their waste is pushed through slats beneath them and flushed into huge pits."
Beef cattle are luckier than factory pigs in that they have an average of 14 square feet in the overcrowded feedlots where they live out their lives. Common procedures for beef calves include branding, castration and dehorning. Veal calves, taken away from their mothers shortly after birth, live their entire lives in near darkness, chained by their necks and unable to move in any direction. They commonly suffer from anemia, diarrhea, pneumonia and lameness.
Virtually all chickens today are factory raised, with as many as six egg-laying hens living in a wire-floored "battery" cage the size of an album cover. As many as 100,000 birds can live in each "henhouse." Conditions are so psychologically taxing on the birds that they must be debeaked to prevent pecking injuries. Male chicks born on factory farms -- as many as 280 million per year -- are simply thrown into garbage bags to die because they're of no economic value as meat or eggs.
Some 95 percent of factory-raised animals are moved by truck, where they are typically subjected to overcrowding, severe weather, hunger and thirst. Many animals die of heat exhaustion or freezing during transport.
Some of the worst abuse occurs at the end of the animals' lives, as documented by Gail Eisnitz' book Slaughterhouse, which includes interviews with slaughterhouse workers. "On the farm where I work," reports one employee, "they drag the live ones who can't stand up anymore out of the crate. They put a metal snare around her ear or foot and drag her the full length of the building. These animals are just screaming in pain." He adds, "The slaughtering part doesn't bother me. It's the way they're treated when they're alive." Dying animals unable to walk are tossed into the "downer pile," and many suffer agonies until, after one or two days, they are finally killed.
The threat to slaughterhouse workers' safety is largely underreported or ignored in the media. For example, Mother Jones magazine, in an otherwise admirable story on slaughterhouse workers, barely mentions the frequent injuries caused by pain-wracked animals lashing out inside the slaughterhouses. Despite the existence of the Humane Slaughter Act and regular USDA inspection, animals are often skinned alive or -- in a major threat to worker safety -- regain consciousness during slaughtering.
The Vegetarian Solution
Vegetarianism is not a new phenomenon. The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras was vegetarian, and until the mid-19th century, people who abstained from meat were known as "Pythagoreans." Famous followers of Pythagoras' diet included Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, George Bernard Shaw and Albert Einstein. The word "vegetarian" was coined in 1847 to give a name to what was then a tiny movement in England.
In the U.S., the 1971 publication of Diet For a Small Planet was a major catalyst for introducing people to a healthy vegetarian diet. Other stimuli included Peter Singer's 1975 book Animal Liberation, which gave vegetarianism a moral underpinning; Singer and Jim Mason's book Animal Factories, the first expose´ of confinement agriculture; and John Robbins' 1987 Diet for a New America. In the U.S., according to a 1998 Vegetarian Journal survey, 82 percent of vegetarians are motivated by health concerns, 75 percent by ethics, the environment and/or animal rights, 31 percent because of taste and 26 percent because of economics.
Is the vegetarian diet healthy? The common perception persists that removing meat from the menu is dangerous because of protein loss. Lappé says there is danger of protein deficiency if vegetarian diets are heavily dependent upon 1) fruit; 2) sweet potatoes or cassava (a staple root crop for more than 500 million people in the tropics); or 3) the particular western problem, junk food.
But Reed Mangels, nutrition advisor to the Vegetarian Resource Group (VRG), says vegetarians can meet their protein needs "easily" if they "eat a varied diet and consume enough calories to maintain their weight. It is not necessary to plan combinations of foods. A mixture of proteins throughout the day will provide enough 'essential amino acids.'"
Although meat is rich in protein, Vegetarian and Vegan FAQ reports that other good sources are potatoes, whole wheat bread, rice, broccoli, spinach, almonds, peas, chickpeas, peanut butter, tofu (soybean curd), soymilk, lentils and kale.
Supermarket shelves overflow with soy- or seitan-based meat substitutes. The soybean contains all eight essential amino acids and exceeds even meat in the amount of usable protein it can deliver to the human body. (It should be noted, however, that some people are allergic to soy, and the "hyper-processing" of some soy-based foods reduces the useful protein content.) Animal rights advocates also claim that, contrary to the urging of the meat and dairy industries, humans need to consume only two to 10 percent of their total calories as protein.
How many vegetarians are there in the U.S.? It depends on whom you ask. A PETA fact sheet asserts that 12 million Americans are vegetarians, and 19,000 make the switch every week. Pamela Rice, author of 101 Reasons Why I'm a Vegetarian, puts the number at 4.5 million, or 2.5 percent of the population, based on recent surveys. Older counts, from 1992, put the number of people who "consider themselves" to be vegetarians at seven percent of the U.S. population, or an impressive 18 million. A 1991 Gallup Poll indicated that 20 percent of the population look for vegetarian menu items when they eat out.
Actual vegetarian numbers may be lower. VRG got virtually the same results in two separate Roper Polls it sponsored in 1994 and 1997: One percent of the public, or between two and three million, is vegetarian (eats no meat or fish, but may eat dairy and/or eggs), with a third to half of them living on a vegan diet (eschewing all animal products). Roughly five percent in both studies "never eat red meat." A 2000 poll was slightly more optimistic, putting the number of vegetarians at 2.5 percent of the population. Women are more likely to be vegetarians than men; and -- surprisingly -- Republicans are slightly more likely to abstain from meat than Democrats.
The American Dietetic Association says in a position statement, "Appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, are nutritionally adequate and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases." Vegetarians now have excellent opportunities to put together well-planned meals. The sale of organic products in natural food stores is the highest growth niche in the food industry, according to Nutrition Business Journal, and it grew 22 percent in 1999 to $4 billion. The natural food markets of today are not the tiny storefronts of yesteryear, but full-service supermarkets, with vigorous competition among giant national chains. Diverse veggie entrees are now available in most supermarkets and on a growing list of restaurant menus.
It's never been easier to become a vegetarian, and there have never been more compelling reasons for environmentalists to make that choice. It's not always easy to do -- most environmentalists still eat meat -- but the tide is beginning to turn.
For resources about vegetarianism, contact:
International Vegetarian Union (www.ivu.org)
North American Vegetarian Society (www.navs-online.org)
Vegetarian Resource Group (wwwv.vrg.org)
This article originally appeared in E, The Environmental Magazine.
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See also:
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12162
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Comments
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meat is good to eat yum!! |
by fuck you
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
02 Jun 2002
|
you arogant bitch,
people have been eating meat for hundreds of thouusands of years
why dont you climb in a tiger cage and convence him to stop eating meat try it around diner time, dont forget your seasoning |
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Your Parents Sure Know How to Pick a Name |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
02 Jun 2002
|
Hey fuck you,
Your parents sure named you appropriately enough. I, too, am a meat-eater, but there is no need to get upset about those who choose not to eat meat. Some of them are my good friends and nice people to boot.
Very unlike you, in any case. |
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well ML |
by ok MML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
02 Jun 2002
|
WHAT KIND OF MEAT DO YOU LIKE TO EAT HUMMMM.*
HERES A SNACK:
What does it mean to say we have freedom of speech? Many of us think free speech is a right enjoyed by everyone in our society. In fact, it does not exist as an abstract right. There is no such thing as a freedom detached from the socio-economic reality in which it might find a place.
Speech is a form of interpersonal behavior. This means it occurs in a social context, in homes, workplaces, schools, and before live audiences or vast publics via the print and electronic media. Speech is intended to reach the minds of others. This is certainly true of political speech. But some kinds of political speech are actively propagated before mass audiences, and other kinds are systematically excluded.
Ideologically Distributed
In the political realm, the further left one goes on the opinion spectrum, the more difficult it is to gain exposure and access to larger audiences. Strenuously excluded from the increasingly concentrated corporate-owned media are people on the Left who go beyond the conservative-liberal orthodoxy and speak openly about the negative aspects of big capital and what it does to people at home and abroad. Progressive people, designated as "the Left," believe that the poor are victims of the rich and the prerogatives of wealthy and powerful interests should be done away with. They believe labor unions should be strengthened and the rights of working people expanded; the environment should be rigorously protected; racism, sexism, and homophobia should be strenuously fought; and human services should be properly funded.
Progressives also argue that revolutionary governments that bring social reforms to their people should be supported rather than overthrown by the U.S. national security state, that U.S.-sponsored wars of attrition against reformist governments in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Angola, and a dozen other countries are not "mistakes" but crimes perpetrated by those who would go to any length to maintain their global privileges.
To hold such opinions is to be deprived of any regular access to the major media. In a word, some people have more freedom of speech than others. People who take positions opposing the ones listed above are known as conservatives or rightwingers. Conservative pundits have a remarkable amount of free speech. They favor corporations and big profits over environmental and human needs, see nothing wrong with amassing great wealth while many live in poverty, blame the poor for the poverty that has been imposed upon them, see regulations against business as a bureaucratic sin, and worship at the altar of the free market. They support repressive U.S. interventions abroad and pursue policies opposed to class, gender, and racial equality.
Such rightists as Rush Limbaugh, William F. Buckley Jr., John McLaughlin, George Will, and Robert Novak enjoy much more exposure to mass audiences than left liberals and populists like Jim Hightower, Jerry Brown, or Ralph Nader. And all of them, conservatives and liberals, enjoy more exposure than anyone on the more "radical" or Marxist Left.
It is the economic power of the rich corporate media owners and advertisers that provides rightwingers with so many mass outlets, not the latter's wit and wisdom. It is not public demand that brings them on the air; it is private corporate owners and sponsors. They are listened to by many not because they are so appealing but because they are so available. Availability is the first and necessary condition of consumption. In this instance, supply does not merely satisfy demand; supply creates demand. Hence, those who align themselves with the interests of corporate America will have more freedom of expression than those who remain steadfastly critical.
People on the Left are free to talk to each other, though sometimes they are concerned their telephones are tapped or their meetings are infiltrated by government agents and provocateurs-as has so often been the case over the years. Leftists are sometimes allowed to teach in universities, but they usually run into difficulties regarding what they say and write, and they risk being purged from faculty positions. Likewise, they are free to work for labor unions, but they generally have to keep their politics carefully under wraps, especially communists.
People on the Left can even speak publicly but usually to audiences that seldom number more than a few hundred. And they are free to write for progressive publications, which lack the promotional funds to reach mass readerships, publications that are perennially teetering on the edge of insolvency for want of rich patrons and corporate advertisers.
In sum, free speech belongs mostly to those who can afford it. It is a commodity that needs to be marketed like any other commodity. And massive amounts of money are needed to reach mass audiences. So when it comes to freedom of speech, some people have their voices amplified tens of millions of times, while others must cup their hands and shout at the passing crowd.
The Freedom of Power
We are taught to think of freedom as something antithetical to power. And there is something to this. The people's hard-won democratic rights do sometimes act as a restraint on the arbitrary power of rulers. But to secure our freedom we have to mobilize enough popular power to check state power. In other words, freedom and power are not always antithetical; they are frequently symbiotic. If one has no power, one has very little freedom to protect one's interests against those who do have power. Our freedoms are realities only so far as we have the democratic power to make them so.
People on the Left have freedom only to the extent they have rallied their forces, have agitated, educated, and organized strikes, boycotts, and demonstrations, and have fought back against the higher circles. They have no freedom to reach mass audiences because popular power and iconoclastic opinion have not penetrated the corporate citadels that control the mass communication universe.
We were never "given" what freedoms we do have, certainly not by the framers of the Constitution. Recall that the Bill of Rights was not part of the original Constitution. It was added after ratification, as ten amendments. When Colonel Mason of Virginia proposed a Bill of Rights at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, it was voted down almost unanimously (Massachusetts abstained). Popular protests, land seizures by the poor, food riots, and other disturbances made the men of property who gathered in Philadelphia uncomfortably aware of the need for an effective central authority that could be sufficiently protective of the propertied classes. But such popular ferment also set a limit on what the framers dared to do. Belatedly and reluctantly they agreed during the ratification struggle to include a Bill of Rights, a concession made under threat of democratic agitation and in the hope that the amendments would ensure ratification of the new Constitution.
So the Bill of Rights was not a gift from that illustrious gaggle of rich merchants, land and currency speculators, and slaveholders known as our "Founding Fathers." It was a product of class struggle. The same was true of the universal franchise. It took mass agitation from the 1820s to the 1840s by workers and poor farmers to abolish property qualifications and win universal White male suffrage. Almost a century of agitation and struggle was necessary to win the franchise for women. And a bloody civil war and subsequent generations of struggle were needed to win basic political rights for African Americans, a struggle still far from complete.
During the early part of the twentieth century a nationwide union movement in this country called the Industrial Workers of the World (the "Wobblies") struggled for the betterment of working people in all occupations. To win gains, the Wobblies had to organize; that is, they had to be able to speak out and reach people. To speak out, they had to confront the repressive tactics of local police who would beat, arrest, and jail their organizers. The Wobblies discovered that if they went into a town with five hundred people instead of five, then the sheriff and his deputies could do little to stop them from holding public meetings.
The right to free speech was established de facto during the course of class struggle. The Wobblie free speech fights were simultaneously a struggle for procedural democracy impelled by a struggle for substantive economic democracy. This fight continued into the Great Depression, as mass organization and agitation brought freedom of speech to hundreds of local communities, where police had previously made a practice of physically assaulting and incarcerating union organizers, syndicalists, anarchists, socialists, and communists.
So it went with other freedoms and democratic gains like the eight-hour day, Social Security, unemployment and disability insurance, and the right to collective bargaining. All such democratic economic rights, even though they may be seriously limited and insufficiently developed, exist to some degree because of popular struggle against class privilege and class power.
Freedom for Criminal Intelligence Agencies?
Like other freedoms, free speech is situational. It exists in a social and class context, which is true of democracy itself. Once we understand that, we can avoid the mistaken logic of a news columnist like Nat Hentoff who repeatedly attacks left activists who commit civil disobedience protesting CIA campus recruiters and military recruiters. Hentoff says they interfere with the freedom of speech of those students who want to talk to the recruiters (as if students had no other opportunity to do so). Hentoff also is worried that the CIA was having its rights abridged.
Such a view of freedom of speech has no link to the realities of human suffering and social justice, no connection to the realities of class power and state power, no link to the democratic struggle against the murderous force of the CIA, no acknowledgment that the CIA routinely suppresses the basic rights of people all over the world in the most brutal fashion. With a $25 billion yearly budget, with its tens of thousands of operatives unleashing death squads and wars of attrition against democratic forces and impoverished peoples around the world, with its control of hundreds of publications, publishing houses, and wire services, with thousands of agents pouring out disinformation, the CIA has more "free speech" than all those who protest its crimes-because it is backed by more money and more power.
With his tendency to treat rights as something apart from socio-economic realities, Hentoff would have us think that the CIA is just another participant in a campus democratic dialogue. In fact, the CIA is itself one of the greatest violators of free speech both at home and abroad. Those who take the one-dimensional Hentoff approach say nothing about the freedom of speech that millions might gain by shutting down the CIA and all such agencies of violence and repression, nothing about the lives that would be saved and the freedom salvaged in Third World countries that feel the brunt of the CIA onslaught.
By coercively limiting CIA recruitment, the campus demonstrators made a statement that goes beyond discourse and becomes part of the democratic struggle. By dramatically--through direct confrontation--questioning the CIA's legitimacy on college campuses and thereby challenging (even in a small way) its ability to promote oppressive political orders around the world, the demonstrators were expanding the realm of freedom, not diminishing it.
Of course, this has to be measured against the violations these same protestors commit, specifically the inconveniencing of some upper- and upper-middle-class students who don't want to have to travel off campus in order to ask CIA recruiters about pursuing a career of political crime. This latter right seems to weigh more heavily in Hentoff's mind than all the attendant misdeeds perpetrated by the CIA.
If we take Hentoff's position, then there can be no direct actions, no civil disobedience by the powerless against the established powerful because these would constitute infringements on the recruitment efforts of the CIA. Hentoff's failure to deal with the power and wealth context of most of free speech leaves him in the ridiculous position of defending the CIA's freedom of speech-and worse, its freedom of action. It is the same position that led to the overthrow of the Fairness Doctrine: the poor corporate media bosses were being limited in their free speech because they had to grant it to others.
Struggle for More Democracy
If the Reagan-Bush-Clinton years have taught us anything, it is that our freedoms are neither guaranteed nor secure--unless we agitate and show our strength. If democratic struggle has taught us anything, it is that our rights are not things that must be "preserved." Rather, they must be vigorously used and expanded. As with the physical body, so with the body politic: our capacities are more likely to grow if exercised and developed. Freedom of speech needs less abstract admiration and more militant exercise and application. Use it or lose it.
Democracy is not a "precarious fragile gift" handed down to us like some Grecian urn. Rather, it is a dynamically developing process that emerges from the struggle between popular interests and the inherently undemocratic nature of wealthy interests. Rather than fear an "excess of democracy," as do some of our media pundits and academic mandarins, we must struggle for more popular power, more victories for labor and human services, more victories against racism, sexism, and militarism, and against capitalism's apparent willingness to destroy the environment. And we need to muster more opposition to U.S. interventions around the world.
We must push for more not-for-profit economic development, more democratic ownership of productive forces and services, more ideological variety and dissidence in the mainstream media, more listener-controlled access to radio and television stations. In every field of endeavor we must learn to see the dimensions of the struggle that advances the interests of the many and opposes the interests of the outrageously privileged, overweening few; in other words, a struggle for more democracy, of the kind that brings an advance in social conditions for everyone, a socially conscious allocation of community resources for the sake of the community rather than for the greed of private investors, and an equalization and improvement of life standards that in effect brings less freedom for the CIA and the interests it serves but more freedom for the rest of us. Essential to such an agenda is a freedom of speech that is not limited to media moguls and their acolytes but is available to persons of all ideological persuasions.
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a tiger cage? |
by fuck you too, lol
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
02 Jun 2002
|
the difference between a tiger and a caged tiger
the difference between a tiger and a human
the difference between humans 1000 years ago and now
these are all things to think about.
and like Harvey Diamond said,
"You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I'll buy you a new car."
As a animal lover I must speak up for the creatures that are so very tortured and a human with desire to live as healthy as possible and a beleiver in science it is not hard to beleive in and follow a vegan diet.
lets keep on arguing! |
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WELL MEAT STILL TASTES GOOD |
by FUCK YOU THREE
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
02 Jun 2002
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FOR ONE THING BABIES NEED AND WANT BREST MILK ITS WHATS BEST FOR THEM TOO
FOR TWO THINGS GIVE A KID A BQ RIB AND A APPLE THEY'LL GO FOR THE RIB YUMMMI !!!!
FOR THREE THINGS MEAT HAS THE BEST SOURCE OF PROTIEN FOR PEOPLE AND IT TASTES SOOO GOOD FOR A REASON!!! |
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FactoryFarming |
by fuck you for mispelling wurds
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
02 Jun 2002
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Babies need breast milk from there mother
ALL BABIES!!!
In order for all of you milk consumers, whether it be milk, ice cream , and the cheese, to "enjoy" these tasty treats a baby cow is taken from its mother at day 3 of age.
Alternatives that are made with soy and rice taste just as good without the negative health effects and torture of animals.
Human babies should drink human milk
animal babies should be able to drink and be with their mother.
Thank you for promoting this argument as it easy to follow the logic of why one would and I will continue to argue should Choose to not eat anything derived from a animal.
to educate yourself and see images of the reality of todays "farming" methods check out this website,
http://www.factoryfarming.org
two websites regarding milk you should read are:
http://www.milksucks.com
http://www.notmilk.com
comments? |
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KILL COWS EAT MEAT YUMMI |
by HA HA YOU ADMIT IT
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
02 Jun 2002
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SEE YOU KNOW IT, PEOPLE CRAVE JUCEY YUMMI MEAT !!!
BABIES NEED BREAST MILK SEE THEY ARE SHOWING THE DISIRE FOR MEAT.!!
AS FOR BABY COWS THEY SHOULD BE CUT UP INTO VEAL STEAKS !!!
AND DONT FORGET ABOUT ROASTED CHICKENS !!
AND FISH YUMMMM !!!!!!
HOW ABOUT SUCHI |
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FUCK YOU FOUR |
by FUCK YOU FOUR
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
02 Jun 2002
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"not eat anything derived from a animal."
BABIES NEED HUMAN BREAST MILK !! HUMANS ARE ANIMALS OR ARE WE GODS OR SOMETHING ? WHY IS IT OK FOR OTHER ANIMALS TO GET TO EAT MEAT AND NOT US THATS DISCRIMINATION !!! |
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Protein Reccomendations are false |
by vegan4life
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
02 Jun 2002
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Who Sets Protein Recommendations?
Posted: May 27, 2002
I have been a vegan for two-and-a-half years and I’m very healthy. I wonder why you rely on the USDA protein requirements, which are backed by the meat and dairy industries. The truth about protein is that excess consumption leaks calcium stores and weakens bones. And cooking food reduces the assimilation of amino acids in foods. There are studies showing that 25 to 30 grams are enough for people but you say 70 grams are needed.
Protein requirements are not established by the USDA; they were established by the National Research Council and the new ones will come from the National Institute of Medicine. This is quite different from the USDA, which has close ties to agriculture and which makes recommendations about what foods we should eat, not about nutrient requirements. The requirements are based on clinical studies that look at how much protein it takes to maintain protein balance.
Because nutrient requirements vary quite a bit among individuals, there is a significant safety factor built into all of these nutrient recommendations. This means they are often on the high side. So most people who strive to meet these recommendations will get at least enough, and some will get more than they need. The recommendations are also intended for people who eat meat and dairy. Because quality of protein—based on digestibility and amino acid pattern—is different in different foods, vegans have higher protein needs than meat eaters. The standard recommendations will be enough for some vegans, but some may need more.
True, excess protein does, in effect, cause calcium to leach out of bones. This seems to be more significant when calcium intake is inadequate, however, not when people get enough calcium. It also appears to be more important with protein from animal foods and grains, not from beans. And, what many vegans fail to realize is that inadequate protein is also bad for bones. Some research shows that giving protein supplements to people improves bone health.
Cooking food at very high temperatures can denature proteins, but in general, cooking food enhances protein utilization.
Our knowledge about all of these nutrition issues is imperfect so it’s hard to give precise recommendations for nutrient needs. We have to look at what most of the studies say—rather than at what single studies show—and then make recommendations that will help the majority of people meet needs. And we also have to realize that nutrient needs are different on different kinds of diets. |
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FUCK U FIVE |
by SO MEAT STILL TASTES SOOO GOOOOD!!!
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 2
02 Jun 2002
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laying on your ass causes calcium to leach out of bones.
so try doing some mountain climbing then youll want a jucey steak yummi |
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Makes sense |
by lesforde
lesforde (nospam) gatewoodnet.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
03 Jun 2002
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Good article. Makes sense from an enviromental and
conservation points of view. Popped some fuses though.
What is it, meat provides 10% of the energy used to
make it. May become significant with population
growth and dwindling resources. |
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unique focus |
by jwaters
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
03 Jun 2002
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I am glad to see an article that focuses on the environmental side of being vegan, giving the animal cruelty issues time and space, but at the end of the article.
My spouse and I became vegans almost a year ago now. We found the transition much easier than we could have imagined and their have been marked health benefits with no added effort on our part. But, we didn't become vegans because of animal rights issues. On the grand scale of things, the issue of animal cruelty was far down on our list of issues to care about. We became vegans for health and environmental reasons. Since becoming vegans we've become more educated about animal cruelty and have come to believe that the treatment of farm factory animals is another worthy reason to give up all animal products but we still see it as far from the first reason to be vegan. More importantly, most Americans turn off their ears in a conversation about veganism the minute they hear 'animal rights' come into it. For better or for worse, self-interest comes first with Americans (and most humans, really) and if we are serious about encouraging large numbers of people to become vegetarian or vegan then we need to focus on sharing the benefits to personal health and the environment, two issues that most people at least think they care about, even if their actions don't follow. Dr. Dean Ornish and Dr. Neil Barnard are turning thousands and thousands of people to vegetarianism and veganism through people's interest in self-preservation (and this is a wave we should ride as the giant boomer force begins to feel their mortality.) John Robbins and Francis Lappe are turning thousands and thousands of people to considering vegetarianism and veganism by calling upon our love of the enviroment and our concern for our fellow humans. These are the people making the cover of major magazines, getting on talk shows and reaching millions with the message of veganism and vegetarianism.
Self preservation is the first motivation of human behavior. Preserving our health, avoiding meat borne diseases and preserving our environment will interest people - I don't believe animal rights will ever be a motivation for a large shift in the American people about their relationship to animal-based products. In fact, as I've said, most decide you are just a loopy extremeist when the words 'animal rights' come out of your mouth and don't listen to another word. So why is it that almost everything out there on veganism is about animal rights? I've tried sending curious friends and family to vegan websites when they've show interest in the health benefits and environmental benefits of veganism, only to have them come back to me and say, 'there wasn't anything but pictures of bloody farm animals and people hugging sheep.' I thought they were being unfair so I checked it out. Nope, they are right. Very little is on the main vegan sites about the real health benefits and I could find almost nothing about the environmental impact of a meat-based diet. I did eventually find some of this information on some of the sites, far down the navigation bar under all the information on animal rights and animal cruelty and the pages were mostly anemic. So the info was there, but most mainstream Americans are going to switch off long before they find it when they see all the pictures of the most recent Mc Donalds protest on the front page and graphic photos of the inside of a meat factory.
So am I saying we should baby them? Yes and no. Maybe some with see it that way, but what I am actually advocating is patience and understanding. We can all be ignorant, we can turn away from that which we don't understand and miss the point. If we want to see real change in America's meat consumption, let's approach them with what they can understand and what interests them - ways to improve their health and their environment. Besides, even if I don't agree with you about the importance of animal right issues, does that mean my veganism benefits your cause any less? Of course not, it still leads to less animals tourtured and fewer animals slaughter. We all win.
So thanks to the author of this article for an article that I can share with interested meat-eaters that will illustrate how their behaviors affect our invironment and health above all other issues. I hope to see more of them because I hope to someday live in a world where veganism and vegeterianism are the norm. |
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veganism |
by wideboy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
05 Jun 2002
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there is only one correct answer to this tired argument:
Sustainable Agriculture. The problem is not with meat eating, but with the environment and the cruelty. Factory Farms must be dismantled-small farms raising small herds organically are the solution. It will completely revitalize rural america as a side benefit. Then those who choose not to eat meat on philosophical grounds can do so without worry. And those that choose to eat meat can do so secure in the knowledge that the animals were ethically raised, and do not contain any of the poisons prevalent in todays meat industry. And there will be no more agricultural pollution. The rivers will flow full again. The salmon and steelhead will return. The climate will begin to heal itself, maybe forestall global warming a bit. Cancer rates would drop astronomically. Migrant workers would be paid a living wage. There would be no unemployment. Much less crime. Much less drug abuse. ad nauseum.
Now you know why they will never let it happen.
ps. as a former vegetarian, (5 years) i was horrified at my hipocrisy when i learned than the vegetables i was eating were fertilized with animal-turd compost. you see this made me realize that my lifestyle of organic vegetarianism was only possible because of the waste products of agricultural livestock. livestock that eventually see the dinnertable. you see the conundrum? now i eat meat sparingly, only freerange organic. those who laugh at vegetarians are just as extreme and wrong. who cheerleads for a system that will eventually poison us all? think about it. |
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Extreme Measures? |
by vegan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
05 Jun 2002
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to call Veganism Extreme is hypocracy in the sense that to me as a animal lover it seems Quite extreme to kill a animal when i can get the same benefit and what i am realizing better health with less extreme measures. |
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McDonalds Warns "do not eat too much of our food" |
by vegan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
05 Jun 2002
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31/05/02 . by Julia Day . Guardian . UK
'Don't eat too much of our food' warns McDonald's
McDonald's in France has been testing an unusually frank marketing ploy - running adverts advising people not to eat too much of its food.
The American fast food giant has run "advertorials" in women's magazines in France featuring comments about diet from two independent nutritionists.
One of the experts said eating too much McDonald's food was not recommended, especially for children, as it would not constitute a balanced diet.
The comments go against the line McDonald's has always put forward - that its food is a nutritious part of a balanced diet.
To put across the company's point of view, the ads include descriptions of what McDonald's sees as the health benefits of its products - that its burgers are 100% meat, that no fat is added in the grilling of meat, and orange juice was being offered as an alternative to fizzy drinks.
"The advertorials talk about McDonald's, children and nutrition and the need for a balanced diet and exercise. There is nothing new or dramatic in this," said a McDonald's spokeswoman.
"The key part of the message was that you shouldn't do anything too often and it was one nutritionist's personal opinion.
"We printed it because it was that nutritionist's opinion and they wanted to open up the debate," she said.
McSpotlight Comment: Reminds one of Phillip Morris, which is required to run anti-smoking ads as part of its court-ordered settlement with smokers in the U.S., and has been running ads that actually increase teen smoking by appealing to their contrary nature: www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=34933 Proof that PM knows exactly what it is doing: www.tobacco.org/Documents/001127capmltr.html |
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somewhere between |
by hatezealots
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
08 Jun 2002
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So the debate is heated on both sides..
why the heck doesnt anyone defend the middle??
Meat only is extreem..
Vegan is the opposite extreem..
some of us simply dont eat mammals often!
I might eat meat more than once a week if
i could find a morally responsible source of meat.
Conserve and be considerate.. the middle CAN be sustainable!
Peace,
HZ |
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