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Tagged ‘Speciesism‘

Cowspiracy: The Film that the World’s Most Powerful NGOs Don’t Want You To See

 

“When Cowspiracy was being made none of the major conservation or environmental groups would cooperate or support the position that the meat industry is the major contributor to climate change, to the wastage of water, to the pollution of groundwater and to the destruction of bio-diversity in the oceans.” – Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd

 

COWSPIRACY: “The Sustainability Secret (http://cowspiracy.com) is a groundbreaking feature-length environmental documentary following an intrepid filmmaker as he uncovers the most destructive industry facing the planet today, and investigates why the world’s leading environmental organizations are too afraid to talk about it.”

 

EcoWatch

October 10, 2014

by Ward Pallotta

Cowspiracy Exposes the Truth About Animal Agriculture

A recent documentary, Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, asks why most leading environmental organizations are ignoring a leading cause of environmental damage.

In 90 minutes, co-producers Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn argue that our institutional and individual attention to selected environmental issues will not make a collective difference unless we also confront the realities of animal agriculture. Animal agriculture’s environmental effects are so pervasive that apparent progress elsewhere cannot counter its destructive and growing impact.

The film suggests why protection for expanded areas of the ocean will not protect oceans or ocean animals. Growing food organically, even on a commercial scale, will not protect the land. Keeping lumber operations out of the Amazon will not save the rainforest.

Making homes more water efficient and taking short showers will not make more water available. Driving electric cars will not solve the carbon emissions problem. Installing LED lights and converting to renewable energy will not stop global warming.

Here is some of the data gathered by the producers and woven into this powerful film.

Animal agriculture uses 55 percent of the water in the U.S. American homes use five percent. One thousand gallons of water are needed to produce 1 gallon of milk. Two thousand five hundred gallons of water are needed to make one pound of beef. Growing water shortages make animal agriculture unsustainable.

Livestock uses 30 percent of the Earth’s total land mass, including nearly 50 percent of the U.S. mainland. The growing demand for animal farmland is responsible for 80 percent of Amazon rainforest destruction. (Palm oil production is second). With 160-million acres cleared or degraded annually for the animal industry, 40 percent of the rainforest will be destroyed in 20 years, affecting species survival and carbon sequestration.

Animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. All forms of land, air and ocean transportation total 13 percent. Transportation industry air pollution is overshadowed by animal agriculture air pollution.

Seventy billion animals are raised annually worldwide. Everyday 144 million animals are killed for food. U.S. farm animals produce 7 million pounds of excrement every minute. Our lakes, oceans and psyches cannot sustain animal agriculture.

Too many environmental groups are dodging this issue, but the cattle industry is steaming. One cattle association blogger reminds its members that it also takes a lot of water to make a T-shirt or produce a car.

Seventy-five percent of Americans consider themselves environmentalists. Only 5 percent of Americans are vegetarian or vegan, however their percentage has quintupled in five years.

The average American consumes 209 pounds of meat each year. Everyday, a person that eats a plant-based diet saves 1,100 gallons of water, 45 pounds of grain, 30 sq. ft. of forested land, the equivalent of 20 lbs. of CO2 and one animal’s life.

This issue is an environmental advocate’s dream come true. It requires no political action money, no corporate boardroom decisions, no re-negotiated food policy, no tax incentives. When we eat meat, dairy and eggs, we feed this growing catastrophe. Change will happen as quickly as we convince each other to change what we eat. While producing his film, Kip Andersen became a vegan.

Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret was self-funded by the producers and crowdfunded via Indiegogo. The marketing efforts for the film depends on community organizations to sponsor the film, promote ticket sales through their networks and fill a local theater. They bear no cost, only effort, and it is working. Cowspiracy showings are accelerating all over the country—during the last two weeks in October, the film will be seen in 35 locations.

Click here for a list of upcoming events or to host a screening.

 

[Ward Pallotta is retired from social justice, nonprofit fundraising in Cleveland, Ohio. He and his life partner, Ann Urick, are members of VegSarasota and Transition Sarasota in Sarasota, Florida, and are advocates for safe and healthy food. Nine years ago they realized they were eating dangerously and switched to a plant-based diet.]

 

WWF SHARES CULPABILITY FOR MASS KILLING OF ORANGUTANS

Panda Leaks

October 13, 2014

The WWF raises money across the globe to save the orangutan. The organization does, in fact, act to preserve existing national parks that are home to the likeable, funny-faced apes. But at the same time, the WWF – a strong proponent of plant-based energy production worldwide – is aiding its agribusiness partners in annihilating much larger areas of rainforest in the name of sustainability. A years’-long globe-spanning investigative journey took journalist and filmmaker Wilfried Huismann to the Indonesian part of Borneo. There he discovered that in Central Kalimantan alone the company Wilmar International, one of the world’s biggest palm oil players, had already cleared almost 200,000 hectares of rainforest using ruthless slash-and-burn methods. In 2007 the WWF concluded a “Memorandum of Understanding” with Wilmar, pledging support for the company’s Central Kalimantan palm oil operations, which the WWF deems “sustainable”.

Orangutan press

Hundreds of our “forest brethren” have been killed

Travelling by jeep through the Wilmar plantations Huismann bore witness to hundreds of kilometers of industrial monoculture – dead land offering no viable habitat for wildlife. According to surveys conducted by the Indonesian Greenomics Institute, six out of nine orangutan habitats in the new Wilmar plantation areas have already been destroyed. Hundreds of the photogenic great apes – our “forest brethren”, used to such great effect in WWF fundraising campaigns – have been killed as a by-product of forest clearance. The WWF bares partial responsibility for this crime.

In a filmed interview with Huismann WWF Palm Oil Officer Amalia Prameswari defended the collaboration with Wilmar. She said the aim was to encourage the agri-giant to produce “good bioenergy”. She pointed to the fact that the WWF had managed to enforce a measure by which 9,86% of the industrial land concessions would be designated as High Conservation Value (HCV) area and thus protected from deforestation.

Together with Indonesian conservationist Abah Nordin, author Wilfried Huismann drove to the newly laid out plantation Rimba Harapan Sakti, to evaluate the WWF claim. They did indeed find some patches of forest that had been saved from the flames. In one of them Nordin pointed to a treetop: there sat an emaciated orangutan, staring out across the barren land. Nordin summed up: “According to our last survey there are only two orangutans left living here. They’re caught in a trap and will die. There aren’t enough fruit trees in this forest for two apes.” This bit of token “forest” measured 80-hectares – about 900 by 900 meters –specialists say one orangutan family needs about 10,000 hectares to survive. When Huismann queried a group of local plantation laborers one of them said: “The company hires hunters to shoot them. The company protects its property.” It seems the orangutans, in their desperation, had been WWF shares culpability for the mass killing of orangutans “stealing” oil palm fruit.

According to Nordin the orangutans can expect no help from the WWF. A fact the organization affirmed to Wilfried Huismann: it does not have a single orangutan project in Indonesia and runs no rescue centers where the animals might find shelter.

Abah Nordin calls the sustainability label co-founded by the WWF and industrial interests under the banner of the RSPO (Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil) “fraudulent”. “There is no biodiversity in the plantations” He says “everything is dead. Rats are the only animals left there. The WWF greenwashes the environmental crimes of industry- and takes money for doing it.”

Read more in the book

 

WATCH: Animal Welfare v. Animal Rights Under Modern Capitalism

Uploaded July 16, 2014

“The sense of urgency is rising in proportion to the severity of the crisis. Increasingly, calls for legislative change, moderation, compromise, and taking the slow march through the institutions can be seen as grotesquely inadequate, as growing numbers of people gravitate toward more radical tactics of change. ‘Reasonableness’ and ‘moderation’ in the current situation seem to be entirely unreasonable and immoderate, as ‘extreme’ and ‘radical’ actions appear simply as necessary and appropriate.”- Dr. Steven Best

This is a video recording of the talk given by Dr. Steven Best in the opening plenary panel at the US National Animal Rights Conference, on July 10, 2014. Dr. Best was asked to speak on the meaning of animal rights, and he contrasted it to animal welfare, contextualized both in the setting of modern capitalism, and underscored the subversive and revolutionary nature of animal rights. We hope you enjoy it.

 

 

Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century by Dr. Steve Best

“The act of reading not only dramatized existing reality; it nourished the urge to implement alternative forms of social organization. In societies that were colonized, formally or informally, even the most fanciful tale inspired acts of rebellion simply because the story lent imaginative autonomy to reality. Fiction became the tissue of revolutionary spirituality. In the Argentine writer Liliana Heker’s novel The End of the Story, a torturer complains to a leftist guerrilla he has captured: “In every house we go into—Do you know what we find there? Books, thousands of books. You’d have to be Superman to classify them, to find out what those books did to you, why they messed up your brains like that.” The inseparability of books and revolution is axiomatic; no insurgent cell was complete without its manifesto—or its library.” Not Reading

Dr. Steve Best

Jan 28, 2014

A new publication by Dr. Steven Best: This concise, jargon-free, and highly readable work is soon to be published in three different languages: first, next month, in German, by Echo Verlag publishers; second, by mid-year, in Italian, by Ortica Editrice; and third, in English toward the end of 2014, by the major American academic press, Palgrave-MacMillan.

Below is the Table of Contents and the Introduction to the work. Please look for the book soon in German, Italian, or English versions. Other translated editions of the book will hopefully be available in the near future.

http://drstevebest.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/image.jpg?resize=478%2C763

Check Yo’self: Activism is Not a Popularity Contest

Mickey Z.

November 15, 2013

check-photo

Let me tell you about how hard I’ve worked to “convince” activists I’ve met via Occupy Wall Street that rejecting speciesism and embracing veganism/animal rights is a necessary and revolutionary choice. Never mind, you can probably imagine (or have already witnessed) how hard I’ve worked, how important this particular mission was/is to me (and the planet).

But that’s what it’s slowly become: a mission. And like most missions, it requires a hefty dose of ego to be sustained. Please allow me to explain…

After September 17, 2011, I saw so many new comrades getting it on so many levels, so many issues. Surely this was the fertile ground I’d been dreaming of.

Yeah, more than a few occupiers moved towards veganism partly or directly due to my influence but as I look around now—more than two years after Zuccotti Park—it seems almost all my radical comrades can do is throw pizza parties and make bacon jokes as they robotically repeat anti-vegan canards—all the while talking of “love” and “saving the world.”

FLASHBACK: The Real Weapons of Mass Destruction: Methane, Propaganda & the Architects of Genocide | Part III

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Spin Doctors | Spinning the Potential for Abrupt and Catastrophic Climate Change

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” – Aldous Huxley

It is now beyond obvious that those who control the world’s economy are hell-bent on burning all of our planet’s remaining fossil fuels – including those that not long ago, were considered impractical to exploit. Corporate-colluded states, corporate-controlled media and corporate-funded scientists will be red-lining the well-oiled engine of the propaganda machine as it works overtime.

WATCH: WWF SILENCE OF THE PANDAS | A Journey into the Heart of the Green Empire

HectorLaurenceWWFDorteWWFJasonClayWWF

Above: Three of many individuals creating mass-misery and ecological devastation via WWF. Clockwise: Dr Hector Laurence – WWF Argentina (also president of Agricultural Association AIMA and Director of two GMO companies (Morgan Seeds & Pioneer), Dörte Bieler – WWF spokesperson for Germany, Jason Clay – Senior Vice President, Market Transformation.

The WWF is the largest environmental protection organisation in the world. Trust in its “green projects” is almost limitless. Founded on September 11, 1961, it is the most influential lobby group for the environment in the world, thanks largely to its elitist contacts in both the political and industrial spheres and to its ability to walk a constant tightrope between commitment and venality.

This film will dispel the green image of the WWF however. Behind the organisation’s eco-façade, the documentary maker uncovered explosive stories from all around the world. This documentary reveals the secrets of the WWF. It is a journey into the heart of the green empire that will hopefully shatter public faith in such so-called conservation groups forever. [Synopsis below video.]

A film by Wilfried Huismann, Germany, 2011

Synopsis:

The WWF, the most famous and powerful environmental organization worldwide, is facing accusations of working too closely with industries that destroy the environment and of ‘greenwashing’ dubious companies. The Fund allegedly collaborates with companies that deforest jungles, displace farmers, destroy the habitat of animals and contaminate the environment, German journalist and documentary maker Wilfried Huismann reveals.

“Green Hill: A Story of Freedom” — Excerpt From a New Documentary

June 5, 2013

by Dr Steve Best

WKOG editor: Yes, Virginia, there are legitimate direct actions that actually achieve the stated goal …

On April 28 2012, in Montichiari Italy, at 16: 15, in broad daylight, amidst a crowd of over 1,000 protestors, animal activists broke into the compound of Green Hill laboratory animal breeders and liberated 27 beagles. It was a bold, brazen, defiant, and iconic act of defiance, resistance, and liberation. Soon after, the Green Hill compound was closed and hundreds of beagles were adopted to loving homes.

The British Bee Keepers Association Defense of the Pesticide Industry

The British Bee Keepers Association Defense of the Pesticide Industry

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bbka-bayer

MP’s Support Ban of Neonics, but BBKA Shows Abject Failure

Simple Bees

April 5, 2013

The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee today published the two volume report of its investigation into Pollinators and Pesticides.  The report focussed on the so-called neonicotinoid group of insecticides and the conclusions are clear. The report recommends that that the government department responsible (Defra):

WATCH: This is What Activism Looks Like

This is What Courage Looks Like…

This is What Direct Action Looks Like…

This is What Civil Disobedience Looks like…

A short documentary portrait of Jonathan Paul, former Animal Liberation Front member who was sentenced to 51 months in federal prison for his part in the 1997 Cavel West arson.

A Dog Park Production.

For more information on Jonathan Paul read: “My brother is in prison. He is my hero…” at this link:

http://alexandrapaul.com/alexandras-corner/my-brother-is-in-prison-he-is-my-hero/