Scott Long writes:
... It’s true, as Salman Rushdie says, that “Nobody has the right to not be offended.” You should not get to invoke the law to censor or shut down speech just because it insults you or strikes at your pet convictions. You certainly don’t get to kill because you heard something you don’t like. Yet, manhandled by these moments of mass outrage, this truism also morphs into a different kind of claim: That nobody has the right to be offended at all.
I am offended when those already oppressed in a society are deliberately insulted. I don’t want to participate. This crime in Paris does not suspend my political or ethical judgment, or persuade me that scatologically smearing a marginal minority’s identity and beliefs is a reasonable thing to do. Yet this means rejecting the only authorized reaction to the atrocity. Oddly, this peer pressure seems to gear up exclusively where Islam’s involved. When a racist bombed a chapter of a US civil rights organization this week, the media didn’t insist I give to the NAACP in solidarity. When a rabid Islamophobic rightist killed 77 Norwegians in 2011, most of them at a political party’s youth camp, I didn’t notice many #IAmNorway hashtags, or impassioned calls to join the Norwegian Labor Party. But Islam is there for us, it unites us against Islam. Only cowards or traitors turn down membership in the Charlie club.The demand to join, endorse, agree is all about crowding us into a herd where no one is permitted to cavil or condemn: an indifferent mob, where differing from one another is Thoughtcrime, while indifference to the pain of others beyond the pale is compulsory.
... To defend satire because it’s indiscriminate is to admit that it discriminates against the defenseless.
... Of course, Voltaire didn’t realize that his Jewish victims were weak or powerless. Already, in the 18th century, he saw them as tentacles of a financial conspiracy; his propensity for overspending and getting hopelessly in debt to Jewish moneylenders did a great deal to shape his anti-Semitism. In the same way, Charlie Hebdo and its like never treated Muslim immigrants as individuals, but as agents of some larger force. They weren’t strivers doing the best they could in an unfriendly country, but shorthand for mass religious ignorance, or tribal terrorist fanaticism, or obscene oil wealth. Satire subsumes the human person in an inhuman generalization. The Muslim isn’t just a Muslim, but a symbol of Islam.
This is where political Islamists and Islamophobes unite. They cling to agglutinative ideologies; they melt people into a mass; they erase individuals’ attributes and aspirations under a totalizing vision of what identity means. A Muslim is his religion. You can hold every Muslim responsible for what any Muslim does. (And one Danish cartoonist makes all Danes guilty.) ...
This insistence on contagious responsibility, collective guilt, is the flip side of #JeSuisCharlie. It’s #VousÊtesISIS; #VousÊtesAlQaeda. Our solidarity, our ability to melt into a warm mindless oneness and feel we’re doing something, is contingent on your involuntary solidarity, your losing who you claim to be in a menacing mass. We can’t stand together here unless we imagine you together over there in enmity. ...
January 14, 2015
January 12, 2015
Cui Bono?
Pepe Escobar writes:
... Who profits?
US Think Tankland, also predictably, is busy spinning the drama of an “intra-Muslim” split which provides jihadis a lot of geopolitical space to exploit – all this sucking the Western world into a Muslim civil war. This is absolutely ridiculous. The Empire of Chaos, already during the 70s, was busy cultivating jihadi/Kalashnikov culture to fight anything from the USSR to nationalist movements all across the Global South. Divide and Rule has always been used to fan the flames “intra-Islam”, from the Clinton administration getting cozy with the Taliban to the Cheney regime – helped by Persian Gulf vassals – advancing the sectarian Sunni/Shi’ite schism.
Cui bono, then, with killing Charlie [and not just the cartoonists and staffers, but also the policemen and kosher grocery workers and shoppers, and the killers themselves]? Only those whose agenda is to demonize Islam. Not even a bunch of brainwashed fanatics would pull off the Charlie carnage to show people who accuse them of being barbarians that they are, in fact, barbarians. French intel at least has concluded that this is no underwear bomber stunt. This is a pro job. That happens to take place just a few days after France recognizes Palestinian statehood. And just a few days after General Hollande demanded the lifting of sanctions against the Russian “threat”.
The Masters of the Universe who pull the real levers of the Empire of Chaos are freaking out with the systemic chaos in the racket they so far had the illusion of controlling. Make no mistake – the Empire of Chaos will do what it can to exploit the post-Charlie environment – be it blowback or false flag.
The Obama administration is already mobilizing the UN Security Council. The FBI is “helping” with the French investigation. ... The Obama administration is already mobilized to offer “protection” – Mob-style – to a Western Europe that is just, only just, starting to be diffident of the pre-fabricated Russian “threat”. And just as it happens, when the Empire of Chaos most needs it, evil “terra” once again rears its ugly head.
... Who profits?
US Think Tankland, also predictably, is busy spinning the drama of an “intra-Muslim” split which provides jihadis a lot of geopolitical space to exploit – all this sucking the Western world into a Muslim civil war. This is absolutely ridiculous. The Empire of Chaos, already during the 70s, was busy cultivating jihadi/Kalashnikov culture to fight anything from the USSR to nationalist movements all across the Global South. Divide and Rule has always been used to fan the flames “intra-Islam”, from the Clinton administration getting cozy with the Taliban to the Cheney regime – helped by Persian Gulf vassals – advancing the sectarian Sunni/Shi’ite schism.
Cui bono, then, with killing Charlie [and not just the cartoonists and staffers, but also the policemen and kosher grocery workers and shoppers, and the killers themselves]? Only those whose agenda is to demonize Islam. Not even a bunch of brainwashed fanatics would pull off the Charlie carnage to show people who accuse them of being barbarians that they are, in fact, barbarians. French intel at least has concluded that this is no underwear bomber stunt. This is a pro job. That happens to take place just a few days after France recognizes Palestinian statehood. And just a few days after General Hollande demanded the lifting of sanctions against the Russian “threat”.
The Masters of the Universe who pull the real levers of the Empire of Chaos are freaking out with the systemic chaos in the racket they so far had the illusion of controlling. Make no mistake – the Empire of Chaos will do what it can to exploit the post-Charlie environment – be it blowback or false flag.
The Obama administration is already mobilizing the UN Security Council. The FBI is “helping” with the French investigation. ... The Obama administration is already mobilized to offer “protection” – Mob-style – to a Western Europe that is just, only just, starting to be diffident of the pre-fabricated Russian “threat”. And just as it happens, when the Empire of Chaos most needs it, evil “terra” once again rears its ugly head.
January 10, 2015
“Free Speech” hypocrisy
David North writes:
The attack on the editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo has shocked the public, which is horrified by the violent deaths of 12 people in the center of Paris. The video images, viewed by millions, of the gunmen firing their weapons and killing an already-wounded policeman have imparted to Wednesday’s events an extraordinary actuality.
In the immediate aftermath of the shootings, the state and media are seeking to exploit the fear and the confusion of the public. Once again, the political bankruptcy and essentially reactionary character of terrorism is exposed. It serves the interests of the state, which utilizes the opportunity provided by the terrorists to whip up support for authoritarianism and militarism. In 2003, when the Bush administration invaded Iraq, French popular opposition was so overwhelming that the government led by President Jacques Chirac was compelled to oppose the war, even in the face of massive political pressure from the United States. Now, 12 years later, as President François Hollande is striving to transform France into the United States’ principal ally in the “war on terror,” the attack in Paris plays into his hands.
In these efforts Hollande can rely on the media, which in such circumstances directs all its energies toward the emotional manipulation and political disorientation of the public. The capitalist media, skillfully combining the suppression of information with half-truths and outright lies, devises a narrative that is calculated to appeal not only to the basest instincts of the broad public, but also to its democratic and idealistic sentiments.
Throughout Europe and the United States, the claim is being made that the attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo was an assault on the freedom of the press and the unalienable right of journalists in a democratic society to express themselves without loss of freedom or fear for their lives. The killing of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and editors is being proclaimed an assault on the principles of free speech that are, supposedly, held so dear in Europe and the United States. The attack on Charlie Hebdo is, thus, presented as another outrage by Muslims who cannot tolerate Western “freedoms.” From this the conclusion must be drawn that the “war on terror” — i.e., the imperialist onslaught on the Middle East, Central Asia and North and Central Africa — is an unavoidable necessity.
In the midst of this orgy of democratic hypocrisy, no reference is made to the fact that the American military, in the course of its wars in the Middle East, is responsible for the deaths of at least 15 journalists. In the on-going narrative of “Freedom of Speech Under Attack,” there is no place for any mention of the 2003 air-to-surface missile attack on the offices of Al Jazeera in Baghdad that left three journalists dead and four wounded.
[Nor has mention been made of attacks on journalists in Palestine, 77% of them by Israeli forces, 17% by the Palestinian Authority and 2% by the Gaza government in 2014: 17 journalists killed during Israel’s summer attack on Gaza and 58 others injured while covering events in occupied Palestinian territories; 25 arrested and 53 detained while practicing their journalistic work; 42 prevented from covering the events in Palestine, 23 prevented from leaving the country; 9 subjected to threats, 23 attacked; 21 cases of media institutions destroyed by Israeli forces, 24 stormed. Nor of Chris Hedges being disinvited by the University of Pennsylvania because of an article he wrote. Nor ...]
Nor is anything being written or said about the July 2007 murder of two Reuters journalists working in Baghdad, staff photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh. Both men were deliberately targeted by US Apache gunships while on assignment in East Baghdad.
The American and international public was first able to view a video of the cold-blooded murder of the two journalists as well as a group of Iraqis — taken from one of the gunships — as the result of WikiLeaks’ release of classified material that it had obtained from an American soldier, Corporal Bradley Chelsea Manning.
And how has the United States and Europe acted to protect WikiLeaks’ exercise of free speech? Julian Assange, the founder and publisher of WikiLeaks, has been subjected to relentless persecution. Leading political and media figures in the United States and Canada have denounced him as a “terrorist” and demanded his arrest, with some even calling publicly for his murder. Assange is being pursued on fraudulent “rape” charges concocted by American and Swedish intelligence services. He has been compelled to seek sanctuary in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which is under constant guard by British police who will seize Assange if he steps out of the embassy. As for Chelsea Manning, she is presently in prison, serving out a 35-year sentence for treason.
That is how the great capitalist “democracies” of North America and Europe have demonstrated their commitment to free speech and the safety of journalists!
The dishonest and hypocritical narrative spun out by the state and the media requires that Charlie Hebdo and its murdered cartoonists and journalists be upheld as martyrs to free speech and representatives of a revered democratic tradition of hard-hitting iconoclastic journalism.
In a column published Wednesday in the Financial Times, the liberal historian Simon Schama places Charlie Hebdo in a glorious tradition of journalistic irreverence that “is the lifeblood of freedom.” He recalls the great European satirists between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries who subjected the great and powerful to their withering scorn. Among their illustrious targets, Schama reminds us, were the brutal Duke of Alba, who in the 1500s drowned the Dutch struggle for freedom in blood; the French “Sun King,” Louis XIV; the British Prime Minister William Pitt; and the Prince of Wales. “Satire,” writes Schama, “became the oxygen of politics, ventilating healthy howls of derision in coffee houses and taverns where caricatures circulated every day and every week.”
Schama places Charlie Hebdo in a tradition to which it does not belong. All the great satirists to whom Schama refers were representatives of a democratic Enlightenment who directed their scorn against the powerful and corrupt defenders of aristocratic privilege. In its relentlessly degrading portrayals of Muslims, Charlie Hebdo has mocked the poor and the powerless.
To speak bluntly and honestly about the sordid, cynical and degraded character of Charlie Hebdo is not to condone the killing of its personnel. But when the slogan “I am Charlie” is adopted and heavily promoted by the media as the slogan of protest demonstrations, those who have not been overwhelmed by state and media propaganda are obligated to reply: “We oppose the violent assault on the magazine, but we are not — and have nothing in common with — ‘Charlie.’”
Marxists are no strangers to the struggle to overcome the influence of religion among the masses. But they conduct this struggle with the understanding that religious faith is sustained by conditions of adversity and desperate hardship. Religion is not to be mocked, but understood and criticized as Karl Marx understood and criticized it:
The cynically provocative anti-Muslim caricatures that have appeared on so many covers of Charlie Hebdo have pandered to and facilitated the growth of right-wing chauvinist movements in France. It is absurd to claim, by way of defense of Charlie Hebdo, that its cartoons are all “in good fun” and have no political consequences. Aside from the fact that the French government is desperate to rally support for its growing military agenda in Africa and the Middle East, France is a country where the influence of the neo-fascist National Front is growing rapidly. In this political context, Charlie Hebdo has facilitated the growth of a form of politicized anti-Muslim sentiment that bears a disturbing resemblance to the politicized anti-Semitism that emerged as a mass movement in France in the 1890s.
In its use of crude and vulgar caricatures that purvey a sinister and stereotyped image of Muslims, Charlie Hebdo recalls the cheap racist publications that played a significant role in fostering the anti-Semitic agitation that swept France during the famous Dreyfus Affair, which erupted in 1894 after a Jewish officer was accused and falsely convicted of espionage on behalf of Germany. In whipping up popular hatred of Jews, La Libre Parole [“Free Speech”], published by the infamous Edoard Adolfe Drumont, made highly effective use of cartoons that employed the familiar anti-Semitic devices. The caricatures served to inflame public opinion, inciting mobs against Dreyfus and his defenders, such as Emile Zola, the great novelist and author of J’Accuse.
The World Socialist Web Site, on the basis of long-standing political principles, opposes and unequivocally condemns the terrorist assault on Charlie Hebdo. But we refuse to join in the portrayal of Charlie Hebdo as a martyr to the cause of democracy and free speech, and we warn our readers to be wary of the reactionary agenda that motivates this hypocritical and dishonest campaign.
The attack on the editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo has shocked the public, which is horrified by the violent deaths of 12 people in the center of Paris. The video images, viewed by millions, of the gunmen firing their weapons and killing an already-wounded policeman have imparted to Wednesday’s events an extraordinary actuality.
In the immediate aftermath of the shootings, the state and media are seeking to exploit the fear and the confusion of the public. Once again, the political bankruptcy and essentially reactionary character of terrorism is exposed. It serves the interests of the state, which utilizes the opportunity provided by the terrorists to whip up support for authoritarianism and militarism. In 2003, when the Bush administration invaded Iraq, French popular opposition was so overwhelming that the government led by President Jacques Chirac was compelled to oppose the war, even in the face of massive political pressure from the United States. Now, 12 years later, as President François Hollande is striving to transform France into the United States’ principal ally in the “war on terror,” the attack in Paris plays into his hands.
In these efforts Hollande can rely on the media, which in such circumstances directs all its energies toward the emotional manipulation and political disorientation of the public. The capitalist media, skillfully combining the suppression of information with half-truths and outright lies, devises a narrative that is calculated to appeal not only to the basest instincts of the broad public, but also to its democratic and idealistic sentiments.
Throughout Europe and the United States, the claim is being made that the attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo was an assault on the freedom of the press and the unalienable right of journalists in a democratic society to express themselves without loss of freedom or fear for their lives. The killing of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and editors is being proclaimed an assault on the principles of free speech that are, supposedly, held so dear in Europe and the United States. The attack on Charlie Hebdo is, thus, presented as another outrage by Muslims who cannot tolerate Western “freedoms.” From this the conclusion must be drawn that the “war on terror” — i.e., the imperialist onslaught on the Middle East, Central Asia and North and Central Africa — is an unavoidable necessity.
In the midst of this orgy of democratic hypocrisy, no reference is made to the fact that the American military, in the course of its wars in the Middle East, is responsible for the deaths of at least 15 journalists. In the on-going narrative of “Freedom of Speech Under Attack,” there is no place for any mention of the 2003 air-to-surface missile attack on the offices of Al Jazeera in Baghdad that left three journalists dead and four wounded.
[Nor has mention been made of attacks on journalists in Palestine, 77% of them by Israeli forces, 17% by the Palestinian Authority and 2% by the Gaza government in 2014: 17 journalists killed during Israel’s summer attack on Gaza and 58 others injured while covering events in occupied Palestinian territories; 25 arrested and 53 detained while practicing their journalistic work; 42 prevented from covering the events in Palestine, 23 prevented from leaving the country; 9 subjected to threats, 23 attacked; 21 cases of media institutions destroyed by Israeli forces, 24 stormed. Nor of Chris Hedges being disinvited by the University of Pennsylvania because of an article he wrote. Nor ...]
Nor is anything being written or said about the July 2007 murder of two Reuters journalists working in Baghdad, staff photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh. Both men were deliberately targeted by US Apache gunships while on assignment in East Baghdad.
The American and international public was first able to view a video of the cold-blooded murder of the two journalists as well as a group of Iraqis — taken from one of the gunships — as the result of WikiLeaks’ release of classified material that it had obtained from an American soldier, Corporal Bradley Chelsea Manning.
And how has the United States and Europe acted to protect WikiLeaks’ exercise of free speech? Julian Assange, the founder and publisher of WikiLeaks, has been subjected to relentless persecution. Leading political and media figures in the United States and Canada have denounced him as a “terrorist” and demanded his arrest, with some even calling publicly for his murder. Assange is being pursued on fraudulent “rape” charges concocted by American and Swedish intelligence services. He has been compelled to seek sanctuary in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which is under constant guard by British police who will seize Assange if he steps out of the embassy. As for Chelsea Manning, she is presently in prison, serving out a 35-year sentence for treason.
That is how the great capitalist “democracies” of North America and Europe have demonstrated their commitment to free speech and the safety of journalists!
The dishonest and hypocritical narrative spun out by the state and the media requires that Charlie Hebdo and its murdered cartoonists and journalists be upheld as martyrs to free speech and representatives of a revered democratic tradition of hard-hitting iconoclastic journalism.
In a column published Wednesday in the Financial Times, the liberal historian Simon Schama places Charlie Hebdo in a glorious tradition of journalistic irreverence that “is the lifeblood of freedom.” He recalls the great European satirists between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries who subjected the great and powerful to their withering scorn. Among their illustrious targets, Schama reminds us, were the brutal Duke of Alba, who in the 1500s drowned the Dutch struggle for freedom in blood; the French “Sun King,” Louis XIV; the British Prime Minister William Pitt; and the Prince of Wales. “Satire,” writes Schama, “became the oxygen of politics, ventilating healthy howls of derision in coffee houses and taverns where caricatures circulated every day and every week.”
Schama places Charlie Hebdo in a tradition to which it does not belong. All the great satirists to whom Schama refers were representatives of a democratic Enlightenment who directed their scorn against the powerful and corrupt defenders of aristocratic privilege. In its relentlessly degrading portrayals of Muslims, Charlie Hebdo has mocked the poor and the powerless.
To speak bluntly and honestly about the sordid, cynical and degraded character of Charlie Hebdo is not to condone the killing of its personnel. But when the slogan “I am Charlie” is adopted and heavily promoted by the media as the slogan of protest demonstrations, those who have not been overwhelmed by state and media propaganda are obligated to reply: “We oppose the violent assault on the magazine, but we are not — and have nothing in common with — ‘Charlie.’”
Marxists are no strangers to the struggle to overcome the influence of religion among the masses. But they conduct this struggle with the understanding that religious faith is sustained by conditions of adversity and desperate hardship. Religion is not to be mocked, but understood and criticized as Karl Marx understood and criticized it:
“Religious distress is … the expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.One has only to read these words to see the intellectual and moral chasm that separates Marxism from the unhealthy milieu of the ex-left political cynicism that has found expression in Charlie Hebdo. There has been nothing enlightening, let alone edifying, in their puerile and often obscene denigration of the Muslim religion and its traditions.
“To abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand their real happiness. The demand to give up illusions about the existing affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs that needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of tears, the halo of which is religion.” [Contribution to Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law, in Marx and Engels Collected Works, Volume 3 (New York, 1975), pp. 175-76]
The cynically provocative anti-Muslim caricatures that have appeared on so many covers of Charlie Hebdo have pandered to and facilitated the growth of right-wing chauvinist movements in France. It is absurd to claim, by way of defense of Charlie Hebdo, that its cartoons are all “in good fun” and have no political consequences. Aside from the fact that the French government is desperate to rally support for its growing military agenda in Africa and the Middle East, France is a country where the influence of the neo-fascist National Front is growing rapidly. In this political context, Charlie Hebdo has facilitated the growth of a form of politicized anti-Muslim sentiment that bears a disturbing resemblance to the politicized anti-Semitism that emerged as a mass movement in France in the 1890s.
In its use of crude and vulgar caricatures that purvey a sinister and stereotyped image of Muslims, Charlie Hebdo recalls the cheap racist publications that played a significant role in fostering the anti-Semitic agitation that swept France during the famous Dreyfus Affair, which erupted in 1894 after a Jewish officer was accused and falsely convicted of espionage on behalf of Germany. In whipping up popular hatred of Jews, La Libre Parole [“Free Speech”], published by the infamous Edoard Adolfe Drumont, made highly effective use of cartoons that employed the familiar anti-Semitic devices. The caricatures served to inflame public opinion, inciting mobs against Dreyfus and his defenders, such as Emile Zola, the great novelist and author of J’Accuse.
The World Socialist Web Site, on the basis of long-standing political principles, opposes and unequivocally condemns the terrorist assault on Charlie Hebdo. But we refuse to join in the portrayal of Charlie Hebdo as a martyr to the cause of democracy and free speech, and we warn our readers to be wary of the reactionary agenda that motivates this hypocritical and dishonest campaign.
December 24, 2014
‘not just climate denialists who are anti-science’
This letter in the Dec. 21 New York Times Magazine, in response to Rebecca Solnit’s Dec. 7 essay “Are We Missing the Big Picture on Climate Change?”, deserves its own post:
‘The climate-change angle we usually ignore is the apocalyptic side of the human “success story” — our phenomenal growth in population to seven billion from one billion in little more than two centuries. But our cleverness in transforming fossil-fuel energy into labor-saving technology and high-yield agriculture has gone to our heads. It’s not just the climate denialists who are anti-science; it’s also those renewable-energy optimists who ignore basic laws of thermodynamics and entertain the fantasy that it will be possible for seven billion to live in the style of the American middle class. The new story we need to tell is “managed degrowth” — gradually but significantly paring down our demands for resources and learning to live within the ecological budget of the earth.’ —Ando Arike
December 22, 2014
Violence against women seen in both Sydney siege and Brooklyn police murderers
While Australia hypes up a war on Islamic terrorism, and New York City hypes up a police war on (not-so-) minority communities, there is another element that links the recent murders in Sydney and Brooklyn: Both gunmen had already exhibited violence against women.
The New York murderer of two policemen had that day already shot his ex-girlfriend in a town near Baltimore and had a history of violence (including to himself) and mental instability.
The Sydney murderer of two of the hostages that he held for 18 hours also had an established history of violence, including being an accessory to the brutal murder of his ex-wife a year and a half earlier. He was let out on bail. Two months ago, he was charged with 40 counts of sexual assault. He was again let out on bail.
The New York murderer of two policemen had that day already shot his ex-girlfriend in a town near Baltimore and had a history of violence (including to himself) and mental instability.
The Sydney murderer of two of the hostages that he held for 18 hours also had an established history of violence, including being an accessory to the brutal murder of his ex-wife a year and a half earlier. He was let out on bail. Two months ago, he was charged with 40 counts of sexual assault. He was again let out on bail.
December 21, 2014
Animal agriculture is the most destructive industry on the planet today
Animal agriculture is the most destructive industry on the planet today. Here's why.
Climate Change
Global greenhouse gas emissions:
• 13% due to transport (road, rail, air and sea)
• 51% due to livestock and their byproducts
Livestock is responsible for 65% of nitrous oxide emissions, a greenhouse gas 296× more destructive than CO₂.
A person who follows a vegan diet produces 1/2 as much CO₂ as a meat eater.
Deforestation
1-2 acres (4,000-8,000 m²) of rainforest are cleared every minute.
Animal agriculture is responsible 91% of Amazon destruction.
Area of rainforest cleared:
• palm oil: 105 billion m²
• animal agriculture: 550 billion m²
A person who follows a vegan diet uses 1/11 as much oil as a meat eater.
Species Extinction
110 animal and insect species are lost every day from rainforest destruction.
Animal agriculture is the leading cause of:
• species extinction
• ocean dead zones
• water pollution
• habitat destruction
Fisheries
80.4 million metric tons of fish are pulled from the oceans each year.
(1 metric ton = 1,000 kilograms ≈ 2,200 pounds)
3/4 of the world's fish habitats are exploited.
For every 1 kilogram of fish caught, 5 kilograms of unintended species are caught and discarded as by-kill
(1 kg = 2.2 lb; 5 kg = 11 lb)
Water Use
1 hamburger = 3,000 liters of water = 2 months' showering
(1 liter ≈ 1 quart; 3,000 liters ≈ 800 gallons)
The meat & dairy industry use 1/3 of the earth's fresh water.
USA water use:
• domestic: 5%
• animal agriculture: 55%
A person who follows a vegan diet uses 1/13 as much water as a meat eater.
Waste
Waste from a farm of 2,500 dairy cows = waste from a city of 411,000 people.
Every minute, 3.2 million kilograms of excrement is produced by animals raised for food in the USA.
(3.2 million kg ≈ 7 million lb)
Land Use
1/3 of land desertification is due to livestock.
30% of the earth's land is used for livestock.
1.5 acres (6,000 m²) = 16,800 kg (37,000 lb) of plant-based food OR 170 kg (375 lb) of meat
Land needed to feed 1 person for 1 year:
• meat eater: 12,000 m² (3 acres)
• vegan: 675 m² (1/6 of an acre)
A person who follows a vegan diet uses 1/18 as much land as a meat eater.
Click here for nonmetric original by Luke Jones.
See: Cowspiracy references and calculations.
December 14, 2014
A Dairy/Veal Farm
These photos and their captions are all taken from Jo-Anne McArthur's "We Animals" web site.
Ears are clipped and tagged without anesthetic or painkillers.
These young calves will either be raised for veal or put into the milk production system. Both outcomes involve lives of exploitation and a premature death.
Veal calves are taken away from their mothers within minutes of being born. Their first food is colostrum from a bottle.
Unless veal crates are thoroughly cleaned on a daily basis, they can be breeding grounds for flies which plague the calves.
These cows know no pasture. Their days are spent standing on hard surfaces and as a result their hooves grow to painful lengths.
Born with ropes around her legs, she is literally enslaved to us from birth.
Other dairy cows, who have had their calves taken away, watch as the new mother cleans her baby.
The bond between mother and babe is obvious and immediate.
Dairy cows who have had their babies removed from them so that we can drink their milk, watch the new mother bond with her calf.
As the calf takes her first steps, the cows watch the humans warily.
The calf is dumped in barrow and wheeled to her home, a veal crate.
Still wet from birth, she will be added to the rows of other calves and crates, and raised in this confinement.
A lonely existence.
Painfully overgrown hooves are a result of sedentary days and the cement they stand on their whole lives.
Overgrown hooves, anxious looks.
Meanwhile, the mothers are milked through a meticulously motorized and computerized system.
The sickly, fly-covered calf we saw earlier in the day is now dead.
A calf's life.
The dead are wheeled away.
She will be reimpregnated until her body becomes exhausted from the years of giving birth and milk production. At that point, she will be sent to slaughter and sold as low-grade beef. Outside this system, she could live 20+ years but here, she will be slaughtered before her eighth birthday.
Ears are clipped and tagged without anesthetic or painkillers.
These young calves will either be raised for veal or put into the milk production system. Both outcomes involve lives of exploitation and a premature death.
Veal calves are taken away from their mothers within minutes of being born. Their first food is colostrum from a bottle.
Unless veal crates are thoroughly cleaned on a daily basis, they can be breeding grounds for flies which plague the calves.
These cows know no pasture. Their days are spent standing on hard surfaces and as a result their hooves grow to painful lengths.
Born with ropes around her legs, she is literally enslaved to us from birth.
Other dairy cows, who have had their calves taken away, watch as the new mother cleans her baby.
The bond between mother and babe is obvious and immediate.
Dairy cows who have had their babies removed from them so that we can drink their milk, watch the new mother bond with her calf.
As the calf takes her first steps, the cows watch the humans warily.
The calf is dumped in barrow and wheeled to her home, a veal crate.
Still wet from birth, she will be added to the rows of other calves and crates, and raised in this confinement.
A lonely existence.
Painfully overgrown hooves are a result of sedentary days and the cement they stand on their whole lives.
Overgrown hooves, anxious looks.
Meanwhile, the mothers are milked through a meticulously motorized and computerized system.
The sickly, fly-covered calf we saw earlier in the day is now dead.
A calf's life.
The dead are wheeled away.
She will be reimpregnated until her body becomes exhausted from the years of giving birth and milk production. At that point, she will be sent to slaughter and sold as low-grade beef. Outside this system, she could live 20+ years but here, she will be slaughtered before her eighth birthday.
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