Censorship

“Wau Holland, the founder of Chaos Computer Club, said something funny: "You know, filtering should be handled in the end user, and in the end device of the end user." ... In the end device of the end user, that's this thing you have between your ears. That's where you should filter and it shouldn't be done by the government on behalf of the people. If tyhe people don't want to see things, well, they don't have to, and you do have the requirement these days to filter a lot of things anyhow.”

—And Müller-Maguhn, Cypherpunks, by Assange, Appelbaum, Müller-Maguhn, and Zimmermann (2012, OR Books)

human rights, anarchism

Veganism & the Environment: By the Numbers

GREENHOUSE GASES

• 1 calorie from animal protein requires 11 times as much fossil fuel as one calorie of plant protein.
• The diets of meat eaters create 7× the greenhouse emissions as the diets of vegans.

Carbon Dioxide (CO₂)

• If one person exchanges a "regular" car for a hybrid, they'll reduce CO₂ emissions by 1 ton per year.
• If one person exchanges eating meat for a vegan diet, they'll reduce CO₂ emissions by 1.5 tons per year.
• If every American dropped one serving of chicken per week from their diet, it would save the same amount of CO₂ emissions as taking 500,000 cars of the road.

Methane (CH₄)

• Methane is 20× more powerful at trapping heat in the earth's atmosphere than CO₂.
• Chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows are collectively the largest producer of methane in the U.S.

Nitrous Oxide (N₂O)

• Nitrous oxide is 300× more powerful at trapping heat in the earth's atmosphere than CO₂.
• The meat, egg, and dairy industries produce 65% of worldwide nitrous oxide emissions.

WATER

• Nearly half of all water used in the United States goes to raising animals for food.
• It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat vs. 25 gallons to produce 1 pound of wheat.
• You'd save more water by not eating 1 pound of meat than you would by not showering for 6 months.
• A meat-eating diet requires 4,000 gallons per day vs. a vegan diet which requires 300 gallons of water per day.
• Animals raised for food create 89,000 pounds of excrement per second, none of which benefits from the waste-treatment facilities for human excrement. This creates massive amounts of groundwater pollution.
• Chicken, hog, and cattle excrement has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 American states.

LAND

• Raising animals for food uses 30% of the earth's land mass, or 17 million square miles. That's about the same size as Asia! The moon (at 14.6 million square miles) has less area than that.
• More than 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to create cropland to grow grain to feed farmed animals.
• The equivalent of 7 football fields of land are bulldozed every minute to create more room for farmed animals.
• Livestock grazing is the number one cause of plant species becoming threatened or going
• extinct in the U.S.

FOOD

• Animals eat large quantities of grain, soybeans, oats, and corn; however, they only produce a comparatively small amount of meat, dairy products, or eggs in return.
• It requires 16 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of meat.
• It requires 5 pounds of wild-caught fish to produce 1 pound of farmed fish.

Source (with references):  http://www.culinaryschools.org/yum/vegetables/

environment, environmentalism, vegetarianism, veganism

Unnecessary Death on the Farm

Death and the Oxen

To the Editor, Valley News (Lebanon, N.H. & White River Junction, Vt.):

In offering his perspective on killing as part of animal farming (“Death Is Always on the Farm Schedule,” Dec. 23), Chuck Wooster retold the story of Green Mountain College and their oxen Bill and Lou.

Wooster neglected to mention the actual issue in the matter — namely, at least two sanctuaries offered to take Bill and Lou to live out the rest of their lives in peaceful retirement with veterinary care that was not compromised by considerations of future edibility.

The issue became Green Mountain College’s adamant refusal to let Bill and Lou, whom they claimed to love, thus retire to a sanctuary.

There was no necessity driving that decision — neither economic, medical, nor dietary. Given a choice between life and death, the college chose needless death.

Eric Rosenbloom

environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism, veganism, Vermont

The internet and economics

“We have the impression with the copyright wars that the legislator tries to make the whole of society change to adapt to a framework that is defined by Hollywood, say, "Ok, what you're doing with your new cultural practice is just morally wrong, so if you don't want to stop it then we'll design legal tools to make you stop doing what you think is good." This is not the way to make good policy. A good policy looks at the world and adapts to it in order to correct what is wrong and to enable what is good.”

—Jérémie Zimmermann, Cypherpunks, by Assange, Appelbaum, Müller-Maguhn, and Zimmermann (2012, OR Books)

human rights, anarchism

The militarization of cyberspace

“[T]here is now a militarization of cyberspace, in the sense of a military occupation. When you communicate over the internet, when you communicate using mobile phones, which are now meshed to the internet, your communications are being intercepted by military intelligence organizations. It’s like having a tank in your bedroom. It’s a soldier between you and your wife as you’re SMSing. We are all living under martial law as far as our communications are concerned, we just can’t see the tanks — but they are there. To that degree, the internet, which was supposed to be a civilian space, has become a militarized space. But the internet is our space, because we all use it to communicate with each other and with the members of our family. The communications at the inner core of our private lives now move over the internet. So in fact our private lives have entered into a militarized zone. It is like having a soldier under the bed. This is a militarization of civilian life.”

—Julian Assange, Cypherpunks, by Assange, Appelbaum, Müller-Maguhn, and Zimmermann (2012, OR Books)

human rights, anarchism

“We need new, draconian gun access restrictions.”

What My Grandfather Would Do

By Ann Aikens, “Upper Valley Girl”, Vermont Standard (Woodstock), Dec. 20, 2012

When my mother's father died, she was a teacher in Wausau, Wis., a gorgeous young twenty-something that resembled Ingrid Bergman. She was close to her father, a big Irish motorcycle cop with a big laugh. While the details of the story she told me in high school are now hazy, and it is much too early as I write this to call her to confirm, I recall her being in a hospital room with him while her mother was walking briskly on the sidewalk outside. Her father was making terrible sounds, dying, and my mother was hoping against hope that her tiny, tough Swede of a mother would get inside quickly because it seemed he was hanging on for her arrival. I don't remember if my grandmother made it. In my mind it was snowing. I do know for sure that at his funeral it snowed, and this made my mother happy because my grandfather loved snow.

My guess is there will be a lot of arguments, in coming weeks, surrounding the notion, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people," when it is plainly obvious that it is people with guns that kill people. Many more people a lot faster with greater certainty than if the killer didn't have a gun. This is why I have been for gun control since my youth. Then, I didn't live in an area where people hunted for meat. I have since shot guns myself at targets in the woods and at indoor ranges.

I don't know the answer, but I do know this: if I was hunting and a magical wood sprite promised, "If you give up your gun right now, there will never be another mass murder in the U.S.," I would trade it in for another "sport" in a heartbeat. I can't think of a single thing I wouldn't give up for that. Some argue that the bad guys will always have guns. That may be true, as it is in New York City where it's extremely difficult even for even a sane business owner in a high-crime neighborhood to legally procure a handgun, much less an assault rifle with a high-capacity magazine designed to kill many as quickly as possible. But regarding the black market gun argument, I doubt the mentally ill who fire upon schools or movie theaters would find much access to guns in a gunless America. Nor do I believe that all angry psychotics can be cured or neutralized by "early detection."

Guns are illegal in other countries, yet their citizens seem to live perfectly satisfying lives without them. They find other things to do there. Their murder rate is a fraction of ours, which is astonishing and shameful. At the very least, and I do mean the very least, immediate renewal of, the horrifyingly, inexplicably expired assault weapon ban is beyond discussion. We need new, draconian gun access restrictions. We've proven that, as a nation, we cannot be trusted with guns.

Here in rural America, I will make enemies by advocating for gun control. That's fine with me. I am unafraid to take a stand, take abuse, defend my position, get into a barn burner over it. But maybe I will carry as my silent weapon a photo of my friend's youngest child, Daniel, who will now remain forever and ever seven years old, with his wide, brown, little-boy eyes and unruly auburn hair and his two front teeth missing. If someone questions my stance on gun control, I will aim at them this photo. I couldn't care less what they say after that. But I suspect they won't say much. To me, anyway.

Without getting up, I open the blinds to look outside my window as I do after staring at the computer for hours, and think of my grandfather the motorcycle cop. He carried a gun. But he adored his children. And I wonder, if he'd seen what happened in Connecticut this week, to Daniel and the others, if he would give up his right to carry a gun if it would end these senseless massacres. I ask him this, the grandfather I never knew, as I peer up into the dark of winter's morning. In a cold December strangely devoid of the white stuff, it begins to snow.

human rights, Vermont

A couple of book reviews

1. Review of "The Vegetarian Myth" by Lierre Keith — Ginny Messina

2. The Omnivore’s Dilemma [by Michael Pollan]: My Review — Adam Merberg

environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism, veganism