I refuse to concede
To follow up on the Veteran’s Day Post…
“And all Iraqi military and civilian personnel should listen carefully to this warning. In any conflict, your fate will depend on your action. Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people. Do not obey any command to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, including the Iraqi people. War crimes will be prosecuted. War criminals will be punished. And it will be no defense to say, “I was just following orders.”" - George W. Bush, 03/17/03
Giving thanks for a genocide eh?
“Well, here in the US it’s the holiday known as Thanksgiving. It got started when the governor of Massachusetts wanted to celebrate the massacre of 700 Pequot women, children and old men by English and Dutch religious zealots, racists, mercenaries and other assorted scum. The governor wanted to give thanks for this massacre. And now, without ever having recognized the origins of this holiday as a society, with our schools still teaching about the “meeting of two cultures,” the televisions, radios and newspapers are full of stories about how thankful we Americans are about one thing or the other.
No one on CNN or NPR will be speaking about the elephant in the living room. No one will be uttering the words, thank you, Native America, for your stolen land. Thank you for this great commons which we have privatized and sold. Thanks for your forests which we are decimating. Thanks for these mountains which we are mining. Thanks for these prairies which we are drowning in pesticides. Thanks for these coastlines and deserts and river valleys which we are covering with highways, malls and nuclear reactors. Thanks for these blue skies which we have turned gray. So yes, happy Thanksgiving, all. Happy Iraq War. Happy climate change.” - David Rovics (www.davidrovics.com)
Let’s think about the upcoming Veteran’s day, shall we?
During the Nazi Nuremberg trials, the defense of “simply following orders” was clearly proven invalid. Given the blatantly illegal nature of the Iraq war, what possible grounds are there for supporting the people who are today, just like the Nazis, “simply following orders” ?
It is time to end the charade. Let us be blunt in accepting a very basic fact — the American troops carrying out illegal orders in Iraq today could (and ought) be tried for war crimes by the international legal system. To simply call someone with a gun a ‘victim of ignorance’ is to spit in the face of international law and basic notions of justice. It isn’t just the leaders that are criminal, but also the people who willingly choose to carry out those orders — whether out of agreement or ignorance. Claiming to simply follow orders is NOT an excuse for committing genocide.
If you want to support a soldier this veteran’s day, how about supporting the true American patriots, the soldiers who are engaged in active refusal of orders. And perhaps the Palestinians, the Afghanis, the Iraqis who are actively engaged in fighting for their freedom against the American onslaught also deserve support more so than those who are engaged in blatant terror against them. After all, who is the terrorist - the guy fighting to protect his home and his country, or the one who aiming to destroy it?
Veterans day, as celebrated in the United States, is one of the most macabre Orwellian holidays that could ever have been invented. Maybe it is worth stopping to think what we’re celebrating and honoring — mass genocides, mass murder, and all the tremendous suffering our armed terrorist forces have inflicted on so many nations in so many places?
Regardless history will, no doubt, judge harshly those who supported these criminal wars. Claiming to simply “be following orders” will not be accepted any more a legitimate defense for the American soldiers than it was for the German ones.
The time has come for some real truth telling. Enough is enough.
I’m surprised they didn’t cut off the microphone…
Organic really is better…
Wow. Finally a study clearly proves that organic food is (shockingly) more nutritious.
Did we really need a study to tell us that removing pesticides, rotating crops and taking care of the earth from which our food comes makes for better food? Really.
Blackwater did what?!
From Newsweek: “The colonel was furious. “Can you believe it? They actually drew their weapons on U.S. soldiers.” He was describing a 2006 car accident, in which an SUV full of Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee on a street in Baghdad’s Green Zone. The colonel, who was involved in a follow-up investigation and spoke on the condition he not be named, said the Blackwater guards disarmed the U.S. Army soldiers and made them lie on the ground at gunpoint until they could disentangle the SUV. His account was confirmed by the head of another private security company.”
How on earth are these guys still allowed to operate in Iraq? I mean really. What are we going to find out next, that they were behind 9/11 too? After all, they sure have made an erm, killing, off it!
This, I Believe: Why I Choose to Eat Vegan.
This, I Believe: Why I am a Vegan.
I have gradually come to firmly believe that the “why” is often more important than the “what” or “how”. Whether in business or personal matters, I try to make it a point of living my life with real intent. It is no accident that I chose to both eat a strictly vegan diet and run my bicycle touring company as a vegan one - something that is hardly good for one’s bottom line given that the majority of our potential clients aren’t vegan!
Reading “A Language Older than Words” (Derrick Jensen) forced me to really evaluate and confront my own views on why I choose to eat strictly vegan and mostly organic. I firmy believe in treading as lightly as possible on the earth.
The reality is that death is as much part of life as life is part of death. What is true and real is that everything in life is very cyclical, a circle where death gives way to life and life gives way to death as part of the Universal of life. To say that eating vegan minimizes death is simply a false argument — but it is very true that eating vegan does minimize unnecessary suffering.
I am vegan because I choose to live lightly upon the Earth and one of the most responsible, most significant things I can do on my own level (next to choosing not to have kids) to minimize my impact. From a sustainability perspective, a local, organic, healthy, vegan diet is without a doubt the most sustainable diet.
Eating meat causes unnecessary, untold suffering, much of that unnecessary suffering caused not by the meat eating itself, but the evil (and I do not use that word lightly) factory farming system we’ve come to depend upon which distances us from the source of our food, and the process of taking life, required to source that food.
The reality is that eating is inherently requiring taking life of some other source of life, whether plan or animal. But I still need not cause unnecessary suffering in order to meet my basic needs.
The simple reality is I choose to live consciously. I choose to eat consciously — and doing so begins with being very conscious of the source of my food. I do not want to eat I would not feel comfortable killing myself, and I am not comfortable killing anything that has a face and more important that which has the full capacity and awareness of truly feeling pain.
My committment is simple — I will not eat anything the life of which I am not comfortable with taking — that, which will suffer in the process of me doing so. It is really that simple. I do not want my life to cause unnecessary suffering — and eating meat is simply unnecessary. Same goes for dairy — never mind how unhealthy it is.
I don’t wish to “use” living beings. I want to have a relationship with the world around me. I want to know where my food comes from, and I want to know that in the creation of that food suffering was minimized. An apple will not suffer by being pulled from the tree, but a chicken will definitely feel it’s throat being cut.
What happened to our country?
“The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptable of official policy, but a love of one’s country deep enough to call her to a higher standard.” -George McGovern
Speaks for itself…
“It is true that polls repeatedly show that large numbers of Americans reject evolution, but this reveals the weakness of our educational system, not the weakness of evolutionary science. Polls have also repeatedly shown that large numbers of Americans cannot locate countries like Spain on a map; this does not mean that the location of Spain is in doubt’
-Prof. Panko’s letter to the Daily