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He no longer heard the cries of the animals or saw the flowing blood….
Jason Miller
“The physiologist is not a man of the world, he is a scientist, a man caught and absorbed by a scientific idea that he pursues; he no longer hears the cries of the animals, no longer sees the flowing blood; he sees only his idea: organisms that hide from him problems that he wants to discover. He doesn’t feel that he is in a horrible carnage; under the influence of a scientific idea, he pursues with delight a nervous filament inside stinking and livid flesh that for any other person would be an object of disgust and horror.”
–Claude Bernard
Vivisection, the anachronistic practice of condemning nonhuman animals to the sterility, isolation, and confinement of laboratory cages and subjecting them to slicing, jabbing, sticking, shocking, burning, poisoning, and addicting, bears a much closer resemblance to medieval torture than to 21st century scientific research. Fittingly, vivisection’s history is rooted in medieval religious edicts that forbade the dissection of human cadavers.[1] And anthropocentrism is so deeply inculcated into our psyches that despite living in an “enlightened” age, we continue with our collective barbarism based on a church doctrine that held that rotting human corpses were more sacred than living, breathing sentient beings.
Obama’s Drug Czar Nominee Approved a Potential Break From the Past, Is the U.S. Finally Going to Get Pragmatic About Drug Policy?
Kevin Zeese
This week, Obama’s drug czar nominee was approved by the senate. Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, has the potential to be the best drug czar ever appointed to that position. We may finally get a pragmatic solutions-oriented approach to drug control rather than drug war rhetoric that prevents real solutions.
While drug policy reformers were advocating for a public health professional as drug czar, President Obama went with a police chief. He made a potentially ground-breaking pick as the former police chief of Seattle has been good on needle exchange, medical marijuana, treatment and health services for addicts and he ushered in a new law to make marijuana the lowest prosecution priority in Seattle. He is a pragmatist who could shift the United States away from continuing to make the same mistakes over and over when it comes to drug policy.
The Thriving Fear Based Prison Industrial Complex
Allen L Roland
While the nation flounders economically a for-profit prison firm, The GEO Group Inc, rakes in millions from the US Government detaining undocumented immigrants and other federal inmates amid increasing charges of negligence, civil rights violations, abuse and even death:
As I have recently pointed out ~ America has less than 5% of the world's people but almost 25% of its prisoners. We imprison 756 people per 100,000 residents, a rate nearly five times the world average. About one in every 31 adults is either in prison or on parole. Black men have a one in three chance of being imprisoned at some point in theirs lives. http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13415267
Mother's Day Manifesto 2009
eileen fleming
The number Of Iraqis slaughtered since the U.S. invaded Iraq is 1,320,110. [1]
The number of U.S. military personnel whose mothers will never see them again live has been officially acknowledged at 4,284. [2]
So far, the War in Iraq has bled $667,095,136,653.00 from USA tax payers wallets.
The genesis of Mother's Day in the U.S.A. began when Anna Jarvis, an Appalachian homemaker, organized a day to raise awareness of poor health conditions in her community and fifteen years later, Julia Ward Howe, a Boston poet, pacifist, suffragist, and author of the lyrics to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," organized a day encouraging mothers to rally for peace.
Seeds of Truth
Sheila Samples
"Monsanto, which gave us the deadly Agent Orange
and the toxic weed killer Roundup, is not alone in its
quest to manipulate, or to control the world's order."
I have learned over the past decade if I want to know what's really going on in the United States, I have to cruise through the foreign media to see what's creating a furor or causing a stink. So, while searching for the status of Spain's on-again, off-again criminal proceedings against six Bush Administration war criminals, this headline in Der Spiegel caught my eye -- "Frankenfood Ban is Neither Populism nor Panic-Mongering."
A closer look at the article revealed it wasn't a Norm Coleman ploy to get folks in Minnesota to quit eating burgers and fries, nor a menu for the genetically obscene monster in Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein," but an announcement by Germany's Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner that Germany is banning the cultivation of MON 810, a genetically modified (GM) corn produced by US biotech giant Monsanto.
The GM Monster
It appears that MON 810 is also believed to be the "Frankenstein" of GM crops by at least five other European countries -- France, Austria, Hungary, Greece and Luxembourg -- all of whom have banned its use. MON 810 was approved by the European Union in 1998, and was the only GM crop approved for cultivation in Germany. Aigner said she had legitimate reasons to believe that the genetically modified Monsanto seed "presents a danger to the environment." The plant produces a toxin that not only destroys the larvae of the corn borer moth, but other, beneficial, insects as well.
The Big "Con": Taliban take Pakistan and its "Another 9/11"
Michael Collins
The Big "Con"
Taliban About to Defeat Pakistan,
Take Control of Nukes, and It's Another 9/11
A strange feeling of déjà vu arises while listening to the administration sell further U.S. military intervention in Pakistan (our Predator drones are already there).
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen claimed in late March that Pakistan's intelligence service has "close links with al Qaeda and the Taliban network." In fact, Mullen warned, the Pakistani intelligence service, ISI, is "offering logistical support to them (the Taliban)."
AlieNation and IsolNation
Link: http://ddjango.blogspot.com/2009/05/alienation-and-isolnation.html
The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself. ~ Saul Alinsky
In 1956, I was nine years old when the screen adaptation of Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit was released. These notes from Wikipedia ...
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, by Sloan Wilson, is a novel about the American search for purpose in world dominated by business. Tom and Betsy Rath share a struggle to find contentment in their hectic and material culture while several other characters fight essentially the same battle, but struggle in it for different reasons. In the end, it is a story of taking responsibility for one's own life ...
I'm not against religion, I'm against religious hypocrisy
Mary Shaw
From time to time I write articles and blog posts that are critical of religious hypocrisy.
That always generates hate mail to my inbox from Christians who seem to think I am criticizing their religion. I assure you that is not the case.
While I am not a religious person, I respect the right of every human being to subscribe to whatever religions/philosophies work for them. Indeed, as a human rights activist, I feel obligated to defend Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states:
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
IOUSA: “I would argue that the most serious threat to the United States is ... our own fiscal irresponsibility”
by chycho
“Premier Wen Jiabao is worried about the amount of debt that the United States owes China”, which is probably why “China has quietly almost doubled its gold reserves to become the world’s fifth-biggest holder of the precious metal.” As well, “five major trading cities have got the nod from the central government to use the yuan in overseas trade settlement - seen as one more step in China's recent moves to expand the use of its currency globally.”
When America’s top accountant, US Comptroller General and head of the GAO, David M. Walker resigned in 2008, the US national debt at the beginning of the year was $9.2 trillion. As of 2 May 2009 this debt is now over $11 trillion. These numbers, however, are a little misleading. The American public is largely unaware that the true deficit of the federal government is in fact “$65.5 trillion in total obligations”, exceeding the gross domestic product of the world.
The following 2008 documentary, “I.O.U.S.A. - One Nation. Under Debt. In Stress.,” does an excellent job explaining why the current fiscal policy in the United States is unsustainable, and recommends some very painful solutions to resolve the problem.
Reviewing Ellen Brown's "Web of Debt:" Part II
Stephen Lendman
This is the second of several articles on Ellen Brown's remarkable book titled "Web of Debt....the shocking truth about our money system, (how it) trapped us in debt, and how we can break free." It's a multi-part snapshot. Reading the entire book is strongly recommended - easily obtainable through Amazon or Brown's webofdebt.com site.
Bankers Capture the Money Machine - Fighting for the Family Farm
In the 1890s, "keeping the family homestead was a key political issue" given that foreclosures and evictions "were occurring in record numbers," much like today. The "Bankers Manifesto of 1892" spelled it out - a willful plan "to disenfranchise farmers and laborers of their homes and property," again like today except that now our very freedom and futures are at stake as sinister forces aim to steal them by turning America into Guatemala and lock it down by police state repression.
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