Meat the Truth is a documentary that connects global warming with animal rights and vegetarianism. This from the website for the film: Did you know that transport makes up 13% of global greenhouse gases? No wonder we’re encouraged to drive less! So what about animal agriculture? It turns out livestock production makes up a whopping 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That’s right — livestock production is responsible for more greenhouse gases than every single car, bus, train, plane, tractor and scooter put together! So why didn’t Gore ask us to eat less meat..? Enter ‘Meat The Truth’, a new documentary revealing the startling…
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Video: Capitalism is the Crisis
This description for Capitalism is the Crisis comes from the website for the film: The 2008 “financial crisis” in the United States was a systemic fraud in which the wealthy finance capitalists stole trillions of public dollars. No one was jailed for this crime, the largest theft of public money in history. Instead, the rich forced working people across the globe to pay for their “crisis” through punitive “austerity” programs that gutted public services and repealed workers’ rights. Austerity was named “Word of the Year” for 2010. This documentary explains the nature of capitalist crisis, visits the protests against austerity measures, and…
Universities caught cheating
As this New York Times article makes clear, when universities are forced to compete for money and honors–exactly what their students are forced to compete for–they do exactly what they teach students never to do, namely, cheat. To climb the U.S. News & World Report rankings, universities have been caught twisting the meanings of rules, cherry-picking data or just lying. The most recent example involves Claremont McKenna, which apparently is “the highest-ranking school to have to go through this publicly and have to admit to misreporting.” It is becoming increasingly difficult for universities to provide any moral guidance for students when they…
What real journalism looks like
Just imagine how much better things could be if journalists like Vincent Browne and Amy Goodman were the norm rather than the exception.
Highlights from the Republican debate in Florida
Some selected highlights from the Republican presidential candidate debate, hosted in Florida on the 23.01.2012. Watch Mitt Romney declare that America is the natural leader of the world: http://youtu.be/D4BuTa6rE4I?t=4m5s And Newt Gingrich openly express his opinion that Fidel Castro will undoubtedly go to hell: http://youtu.be/D4BuTa6rE4I?t=40m2s While Rick Sentorum declares Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua to be working together with the Jihadists from Iran: http://youtu.be/D4BuTa6rE4I?t=43m43s Ron Paul then steps in and explains why he thinks, Iran’s actions are quite comprehensible: http://youtu.be/D4BuTa6rE4I?t=48m5s And exactly why has the “electability” of the Republican candidate become so much of an issue? Is it more important to…
Should consumers boycott Apple products?
The New York Times, rather surprisingly, published an interesting article recently on the inhumane and unsafe conditions in which Chinese workers are suffering while making products for high-profile, high-tech Western companies like Apple. The conditions there are so bleak that when workers there aren’t being killed by explosions or toxic chemicals they are killing themselves. And those who manage to survive don’t fare much better, working overtime, sleeping in crowded dorms, living effectively in conditions of slavery. The NYT article, and others like it, have received a lot of attention and caused a bit of an image problem for Apple–surprising because…
Advancing animal rights
It’s a small step, but a step in the right direction. All 27 countries of the European Union recently agreed to ban the inhuman practice of raising chickens in cages that are too small for them to flap their wings. Peter Singer provides a nice description of this modest but significant advance here.
Greenpeace gets China to drop GE rice
How they did it is an amazing story, with implications for other environmental causes and progressive movements. You can read about, straight from the horse’s mouth here.
Former pets become dog meat
If you think you can stomach it, take a look at this video below on the dog meat market in South Korea. If you want to do something about it, visit the website of the Korea Animal Rights Advocates and consider offering some support.
Video: Earthlings
Earthlings is considered by many to be the best animal rights film ever made. The website for the film contains quotes of praise from a number of animal rights activists, including the god-father of the movement, Peter Singer, who has apparently said “If I could make everyone in the world see one film, I’d make them see Earthlings.” The film can be viewed on-line for free here.
The Golden Rule in American politics
The Golden Rule, which is foundational to all virtually ethical thinking, has various formulations but the basic idea is easy enough to understand and is well understood by every human being with the capacity to think. Indeed, it is highly likely that the rule is hardwired into the human brain. The rule is to treat others as you would have them treat you and to not do to others what you would not want them to do to you. Jesus was committed to the rule, as was Confucius, and Hillel. Indeed Hillel described as the whole of the Torah. So…
Save Jeju Island
As this article by Matthew Hoey indicates, the protest movement against the military base on Jeju Island in South Korea is the “absolute front line of the struggle for international peace, and is increasingly gaining recognition as such in the minds of leading scholars, activists and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).” According to Hoey, peace activists see the Save Jeju Island campaign as an entirely winnable cause for peace with significant international implications. The following short video by Hoey gives some background on the military base and the resistance movement. To learn more about the movement and how you can contribute to it, visit…
Containing China
Recent headlines from Democracy Now describe the US plans to increase its military presence in the Philippines and the growing opposition movement there. Renato Reyes, spokesperson for the New Patriotic Alliance, states that: “We are very opposed to the plans to re-align and deploy more U.S. troops in the Philippines, and we are very aware that this is in line with the U.S. strategy to build up its armed forces in Asia to counter China. And we feel that the Philippines might be caught in the rising tension between the two countries if we allow the U.S. to base their troops in…
Ron Paul
Ron Paul is a very interesting figure in American politics. Progressives love his foreign policy but hate his economic plans and his positions on domestic issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and health care. Conservatives, on the other hand, love Paul’s domestic agenda of reducing the size of the government, lowering taxes, and abolishing the Federal Reserve, but they seem to hate his non-interventionist foreign policy. So Paul has been received differently by different political groups, but even among liberals and progressives, Paul has generated a significant amount of controversy. Consider Kathy Pollit’s recent essay, which outlines the reasons why…
Israel’s assassins
This article in The Australian claims to provide some of the facts and context surrounding Israel’s latest act of terrorism inside Iran. It reads in part like a crime novel, a murder mystery–except that there is almost no mystery. The act was carried out in broad daylight and everyone seems to know who committed the crime, or at least who is behind it. The authors of this article even seem to know to know precisely who gave the go-ahead orders. The most amazing thing about the story though is how insignificant it has been outside of Iran. The event was noted,…
Keeping the public in the dark about climate change
If enough people were well informed about the reality and likely consequences of climate change the political changes required to bring this problem under control would surely be happening a lot quicker than they are. An important question then is why this problem is still insufficiently appreciated. There are a number of well-known and documented causal factors contributing to public ignorance about climate change. In the first place, according to this recent study by the Daily Climate organization, media coverage of climate change is actually decreasing at the very time (2010, 2011) that it should be increasing. Here is a…
Just how stupid are Americans? (Interview with Rick Shenkman)
It’s a provocative title for a post, but it really just refers to a book entitled “Just How Stupid Are We?” (where “we” clearly refers to Americans) by Rick Shenkman, Associate Professor of History at George Mason University. A brief article by Shenkman on the same theme can be found here and the video clip below contains a relevant interview with Shenkman. His account of the causes, consequences, and solutions to American ignorance is highly interesting. Among the causal factors is the death of civics education in America and the introduction of the TV in 1965, which in turn has…
Cancer and economic development
The World Cancer Research Foundation has published a ranking of countries in terms of cancer rates. The list, and a brief discussion of it, can be found in this article published in the Guardian. Interestingly, the top twenty positions on the list are dominated by OECD nations and the full list suggests a fairly strong correlation between cancer rates and a country’s level of economic development: in general (and with few exceptions, such as Singapore), the greater the level of economic development in a country, the higher the incidence of cancer in the population. There is already an abundance of…
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