The Viciousness Of Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin
VeganReader.com is not a political blog, nor do we find it correct to attempt to dictate the political views people should hold. Such choices are very personal. Rather, we speak here out of concern for the safety and well-being of all of Earth’s animal tribes and, at present, we are staring in a sort of pained horror at one of our fellow creatures - Vice Presidential Candidate, Sarah Palin.

As governor of the State of Alaska, Sarah Palin has sincerely frightened both local and national neighbors with her unconcealed bloodthirstiness. Thousands of individual wild wolves and bears will owe their brutal deaths to this misguided woman’s fixation on the execution of animals. This is not the story of an Inuit hunter spearing a Caribou for his family’s dinner. This is the gruesome spectacle of an unhealthy woman seizing power and using it to incite a massive, barabaric slaughter of some of the world’s last wolves and bears who are being gunned down by deranged, wealthy people from airplanes. These people pay for the opportunity to kill. In addition to mother and father wolves and bears being brutally destroyed in this manner, Palin’s followers have been violating the dens of wolves, hauling out 2 week old babies and shooting them dead. Governor Palin also set a paid bounty on wolves in 2007, offering $150 for the foreleg of each butchered wolf hauled in, and spent $400,000 on a marketing campaign intended to indoctrinate the public as to the wisdom of gunning down wildlife from planes.

Media and citizens are linking the adjectives ‘cruel’, ‘insane’, ‘cold’ and ‘psychotic’ to the character of this candidate for the Vice Presidency. She is causing a reaction of both fear and revulsion in observers around the world. What is the matter with Sarah Palin?

A Family History Of Animal Cruelty

The Humane Society of the United States has this to say about the pathology of children who commit acts of animal cruelty:

“If allowed to harm animals, children are more likely to be violent later in life…Cruelty is often associated with children who do poorly in school and have low self-esteem and few friends. Children who are cruel to animals are often characterized as bullies and may have a history of truancy, vandalism, and other antisocial behaviors. Researchers say that a child’s violence against animals often represents displaced hostility and aggression stemming from neglect or abuse of the child or of another family member. Animal cruelty committed by any member of a family, whether parent or child, often means child abuse occurs in that family. Calculated animal cruelty is motivated by a desire to harm…It is particularly important to intervene when a child is insensitive to the obvious distress of an animal, repeats a harmful behavior, or derives pleasure from causing an animal pain.”

I do not know much about the childhood or personal life of Sarah Palin beyond that she frequently killed animals with her father as a child. Could it be that, as a little girl, Palin thought wild creatures were beautiful, but had to deny her own feelings in order to go along with her father’s belief in the worthlessness of animals? Could it be that Palin had to shut something vital off in order to remain functional in her family unit, in order to fit in with the ethics of a family whose home is literally so festooned with the carcasses of slaughtered animals that it looks like some evil morgue out of a black nightmare? As an adult, Palin has also strewn the remains of once-living beings around her home. Could it be that these garish ‘trophies’ are actually the outward symbols of a mind that has grown diseased from having to adopt a shell of callousness around what may once have been a beating heart sensible to the majesty of wild creatures?

As the Humane Society of the United States relates, acts of cruelty against animals indicate a genuine intent to harm. Perhaps the tragedy of Sarah Palin is that the pathology of her rage has become so deep-seated that the thought of any wild creature still running free and un-killed in Alaska is too painful a reminder of the humanity she had to destroy within herself in order to be one-of-the-family. Normal, healthy children respond with joy to animals. Something has gone terribly wrong when an adult can only derive joy from their bloody and agonizing deaths.

When we watch videos like the terribly disturbing one above, created by the Defenders of Wildlife, our natural reaction may be one of outrage, even an impulse to retaliate with like violence. But I am suggesting to you that you give further thought to the disturbed psychology of this woefully violent woman, and realize that what we are witnessing in her is a genuine human tragedy.

Who Are Govenor Palin’s Defenseless Victims?

Climate change is rapidly bringing about disaster in Alaska, known as one of the last habitations of some America’s most beloved large mammals. These animals, the ancient inhabitants of North America, are now facing almost-certain extinction because of the combined realities of global warming and habitat loss. As if they were not already clinging for life to the weakest of final threads, these are the very creatures whom Palin has fixated upon for vicious, mass execution.

Palin’s State is the Last Refuge of North America’s Largest Grey Wolf Clan

Over the past five years, 800 of these individual wolves have been sniped from airplanes by the wealthy.

Brought to near extinction time and time again by the hand of man, wolves are struggling to remain in the web of life on earth.

Vice Presidential candidate Palin wants them dead.

Global Warming is Already Affecting the World’s Last 20,000 Polar Bears

It is expected that there will only be some 13,000 polar bears left by 2050 solely as a result of rising temperatures.

The survival rate for polar bear cubs grows less and less every year.

Vice Presidential candidate Palin wants Polar Bears dead.

98% of Grizzly Bears Have Already Been Exterminated by Man in the Contiguous United States.

Governor Palin’s state is the last real stronghold of this magnificent species of bear in the world.

Vice Presidential candidate Palin wants Grizzly Bears dead.

When Their Parents Are Brutally Gunned Down by Wealthy Gunmen, Black Bear Cubs Like This One Die of Loneliness and Starvation.

Vice Presidential candidate Palin wants Black Bears dead.

98% of America’s Brown Bears Call Governor Palin’s State Home.

Vice Presidential candidate Palin wants Brown Bears dead.

It is, in fact, a very lucky thing that Sarah Palin is so far gone in her mania for the killings of wildlife that she has let all the world see the symptoms of her disturbing mental problems. Just as we know that no sane person would willingly kill off the last members of a dwindling species, we know that when we look at Palin, we are not seeing the light of human reason. She has shown herself to be an extremely violent and dangerous woman who should certainly not be holding the office of governor. And, she has failed to hide the bloodbath the country would have to expect were she to become Vice President or the emergency President of the United States of America.

If anyone knows when the ability to respect and cherish life was lost to this poor wreck of a human being, it is only herself, or, perhaps her family. In her gory rage, Sarah Palin has tragically excluded herself from participating in the great thanksgiving many more fortunate people feel for the breathtaking glimpse of a wild wolf or bear, still roaming free in a natural setting. To us, it is a great comfort and spiritual support just to think of the white polar bear traversing his arctic domain, or the solemn song of the wolf families rising up to meet the glory of the northern lights. Only a very pitiable person would fail to respond to such noble images from our planet and want to destroy them with grotesque bloodshed. It is very disturbing to me, and to so many other Americans, to contemplate the state of Sarah Palin’s mind.

I will end with a final quote from the Humane Society of the United States:

How can I teach my child to respect animals?

Teach by example; use real-life situations to instill a sense of respect for all life. Invite your child to help you feed the birds or rescue a bug. With older children, discuss animal-cruelty cases publicized in the news. Encourage children to speak up for animals.

With all my heart, I wish that some kind adult had thought to help Sarah Palin in this way when she was young. I can only hope that there is yet a chance for her to acknowledge that creation was not created for her personal use, and that her place in the grand scheme of things ought to be the very humblest one.

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For more information about the need to keep this unhealthy-minded person out of high office for which she is clearly and unfortunately unfit, you will find very thorough documentation at these websites:

Grizzly Bay This is the best documentation I found of Gov. Palin’s disturbed personal character.

Defenders of Wildlife - This group has leapt to the defense of the helpless animals whom Vice Presidential candidate Palin has determined to kill.

If I tell you that Sloths are people, how do you respond?

Likely, you think, “no, human beings are people. Animals are not people.”

That is how most humans are raised to think about all species other than their own, but naturalists like John Muir, who spent the majority of his life in the wilderness, came to feel differently about the class of creatures we refer to as ‘animals’. He came to think of his fellow beings as other tribes of people, with lifeways and heritages, with purposes and important places in the story of Earth.

Today, the majority of human problems come from human failure to recognize the humanity in members of their own species. Bigotry, greed, fear, deceitfulness and the hunger for power cause humans to turn against one another once the decision has been made that some other person is of less value than one’s own self, and can therefore be abused or disregarded.

Here in California, millions of humble families have been living under the threat of men who hold jobs with agencies who wish to spray pesticides on their fellows. Despite the fact that this will cause disease and death amongst their own species, the job-holders have managed to overlook the basic rights and value of their neighbors in pursuit of their own goals. If they were to recognize the inviolate worth of each living human, they would never do such a thing, for any offered prize.

It is little wonder, then, that if human men are unable to recognize the fragile humanity in one another, that they would be hard put to see the personhood in a being like the Sloth.

For just a moment, would you try with me to forget the conventions you have been taught about humans and animals, look at the picture below, and tell me if you can see a person in this picture:

Look at this face, these wise and tender eyes, holding secrets we humans have yet to share in because we do not know how to communicate verbally with the Sloth People.

Maybe, someday, human beings will evolve far enough to begin understanding the language spoken by some of the many other tribes who inhabit our planet, but for now, we can only look into the faces of these beings and see if we are un-prejudiced enough to recognize the bond of personhood that unites us.

In the United States, it is illegal to put people in zoos, circuses, theme parks or other entertainment venues. Most humans would be repulsed by the idea of putting toddlers or elders in displays from which they cannot escape so that others can look at them. Since the abolition of slavery, it became illegal to buy and sell other people, or to compel them to work without pay. It is likewise illegal to perform medical experiments on humans, and this is one of the things that families in Santa Cruz and Monterey used to try to defend themselves from corporations and government agencies who sprayed them with untested chemicals in 2007. They pleaded that their human rights be recognized, though they were unable to make their aggressors do so, just as I am pleading with you now to recognize the personal rights of groups like the Sloth People.

What Are Rights?
If I were to ask you to articulate what it means to have human rights, you might answer somewhat like this:

“It means I’m a person who has my own purposes for my life, and no one else has the right to act in ways that prevent me from pursuing my own purposes. That means no one has to right to possess me, control me, harm me, use me or destroy my home. It means I belong to ME.”

You’d be quite right, of course, and the authors of the U.S. constitution felt the same way. They also felt that these kinds of rights can’t be given or taken away. They are something that are inherent to persons, just because they have the gift of life in them. It’s when humans pretend such rights don’t exist that trouble happens.

And this trouble extends to human failure to recognize that our fellow tribes of species are likewise imbued with their own purposes, and their own rights to belong to themselves. No one wants to be accused of being a racist. But racism means classing others as somehow different and less than one’s self, and this is precisely how most American children are raised to think of the beings we have classed as ‘beasts’. We are, without ill-intent, burdened with the hand-me-down of bigotry.

Yesterday, I wrote an article about a Proposition that is trying to decide whether humans should recognize that farm animals have the right to be able to move their limbs, or whether it is perfectly reasonable to keep them in cages so small, they cannot move at all. This is the fruit of the bigotry hand-me-down: humans who are so far gone to the power of recognizing the rights of others that they believe they are authorized to immobilize beings for all of their days spent on Earth before slaughter. This is how unobservant our tribe has become about every other family of beings but our own.

Today, I want to tell you the little I know about the shy Sloth People, in hopes that you will ask yourself whether what this family of creatures does here on the planet should be up to you to dictate.

Facts We Have Learned About Sloths

• 6 different types of Sloths live in Central and South America
• They are leisurely, quiet creatures, living in societies in the treetops of the rainforest
• Each family of Sloths has different eating preferences. The children of each family grow up appreciating the kinds of foods their parents most enjoy. They then pass these gustatory preferences onto the next generations
• Sloths often make a single tree their home for several years at a time
• For sleeping, they seem to prefer coconut trees as they provide a good camouflage for these very furry people
• No humans have ever understood how closely 3-toed and 2-toed Sloths are related to one another. It may be that the Sloths may have legends amongst themselves on this subject, but we do not know what they are.
• They are powerful swimmers, but mainly, they prefer the quiet safety of their treetop villages
• Owing to human destruction of the rainforest, Sloths face the loss of their homes, their lifeways and their lives

Because no human being has ever been able to learn to speak to a Sloth, we remain ignorant of their cultural beliefs or their world views. We can only hope that we may some day be able to communicate with Sloths, who are very ancient beings, and that they might share some of their wisdom about the wonderful rainforest with us, but until that time, our main moral obligation to them is to ensure that our actions do not disrupt their culture or their personal needs.

Learning To Respect The Sloth People’s Rights
Just like your father, you brother, you aunt or your child, Sloths have individual needs. Living in an apartment may suit your sister but your cousin feels depressed living anywhere but the country. Each of your loved ones is free to make their choice of home and activities. Were someone to force one of your dear ones to live in a concrete cage, who would call such an arrangement fair or adequate?

It is a great evil to kidnap and imprison sentient beings like the Sloths. Holding them hostage, with no hope of ransom, in zoos, circuses or amusement parks is truly immoral because it takes away their freedom of choice. Until the day that we learn to communicate with Sloth tribes and they can volunteer to come and show themselves to us, we have no right to enforce them to be seen, either for our amusement or monetary gain. The Sloths have chosen the rainforest as their home, and if Americans would like to go visit them, they must make the long journey south. Perhaps, in such circumstances, a quiet and respectful human might be allowed to take some pictures of the Sloth families in their beautiful home, in order to celebrate the value of this race of beings and to share this with other humans back in their own chosen home.

The second photograph in this article was taken in a national preserve in Costa Rica, where the Sloth families move about freely and live their lives unobstructed. You have only to look at the image to see how right and perfect it is. Sadly, the first photograph was taken at the U.S. Dallas World Aquarium and Zoo, Dallas, Texas - the only U.S. institution which has so utterly failed to recognize the individual rights of this Sloth that they are keeping the being in captivity. Are you able to see, as I believe I can, a person who is homesick when you look at that picture? Imagine what it would mean to this small, furry person to be taken home again, to the green forests where all the family is waiting. Imagine.

The Very Best Thing You Can Do To Honor Sloths
If you could take just one action to assert that you believe in the rights of the Sloth People to go on living their lives in their own way, it would be this: stop eating beef. Grazing cattle is the number 1 cause of the destruction of the land where these people live - the irreplaceable rainforest. Simultaneously, the production of beef for human consumption is one of the key causes of global environmental pollution and world hunger. By refusing to purchase beef, you are making the most powerful statement you can regarding the inherent rights of the Sloth Tribe. No hamburger is worth the loss of so ancient and beautiful a culture.

Honoring All
When I look at the news, I am inundated with examples of humans having lost their ability to recognize the rights of others. Assaults, killings, robberies and deceptions are rife in our own society which appears to have lost its way. I believe that the most meaningful effort you can make to counteract this evil and dismaying force in our society is to extend your generous recognition of rights beyond your own species. Let go of prejudice and look deeper than the labels of ‘human’ and ‘animal’, just as all people of good faith do to get past labels like ‘black’ and ‘white’. Extending your love and care for all of the other peoples, the ones we cannot yet understand, can only result in an expansion of the human heart.

Perhaps, if we taught the young to seek out the value in our fellow species, they would become better able to see the worth in our own.

The USDA and Big Ag (the people who brought California the plan of spraying pesticide on human beings in the 2007 LBAM debacle) have conspired in order to pour millions of dollars in funding into blocking California Proposition 2, up for the vote in November 2008. What is it that Prop 2 proposes that factory farmers object to? Here is a summary of the proposition:

The California Secretary of State’s summary from the Official Voter Information Guide of Proposition 2 is as follows:[1]
“STANDARDS FOR CONFINING FARM ANIMALS. INITIATIVE STATUTE. Requires that certain farm animals be allowed, for the majority of every day, to fully extend their limbs or wings, lie down, stand up and turn around.

Yes, opponents of Prop 2 do not want farm animals to be able to move around and are going so far as to claim that enabling animals to perform simple functions such as standing up, sitting down, lifting a wing or stretching a leg will endanger public health and put the ‘industry’ out of business.

Anyone who was sprayed with Checkmate in 2007, or lived under the threat of being sprayed with Checkmate, already has a good acquaintance with the way Big Ag operates and will likely be unsurprised to learn that they would be opposed to more humane treatment for farm animals. After all, they couldn’t even manage to understand that human beings deserve humane treatment when they exposed thousands of Central Coast families to an aerial pesticide assault which left hundreds of innocent people gravely ill and nearly killed two small children. You know how these people operate. You know the money deals and the lies and the robotic response to all requests for humane treatment of fellow beings. You aren’t really surprised.

What May Surprise You
Trillions have been spent in ad campaigns over the years which have left the American public with the vague and comfortable idea that meat, milk and eggs come from ‘happy cows’ and chickens living on ’sunshine farms’. This pretty picture is in contrast to the real lives of today’s farm animals, and in the spirit of telling the truth which we have always upheld here at Vegan Reader, I present these facts for you about the real lives of some of California’s most innocent and voiceless creatures.

Where Do My Eggs and Chicken Meat Come From?

-99% of the eggs eaten by Americans come from caged chickens.

-7-8 hens are typically crammed into 18″x20″ wire cages

-The birds cannot lift even one wing at a time in these conditions. The normal wingspan of a single chicken is 30 inches

-Cages are stacked layer upon layer to the ceiling of warehouses holding tens of thousands of birds. Droppings from the birds fall on the birds below, with each successive lower layer of birds becoming more encrusted with filth than the layer above it.

-Their claws often grow fast to the wires beneath them - the Big Ag solution to this is to cut off their feet

- They never see actual daylight but are kept for prolonged periods in total darkness or relentless bright lights in order to disrupt their normal hormonal patterns and induce them to shed their feathers

- Because these conditions drive the birds mad, they begin to peck one another in their insanity

- In order to prevent pecking, female chicks are forced through an assembly line where machines cut off their beaks (a process called de-beaking)

- Because male chicks are seen as valueless to egg farmers, when the babies emerge from their shells they are tossed into a plastic bag in heaps where they suffocate or are thrown live into a huge meat grinder. The number of baby male chicks killed in this way every year is greater than the number of human beings living in the United States. The remains of the dead baby chicks are then fed back to their mothers as ‘feed’.

- The terms ‘free range’, ‘natural’ and other happy euphemisms are not regulated in any way. They are advertising terms created to deceive the public. Again, if you eat eggs, there is a 99% chance that they were taken from chickens kept in this way.

- Chickens raised for their meat endure the same conditions from day one of their lives.

- Chicken manure is one of the main components of the feed given to chickens. Other components include factory wastes and euthanized pets obtained from kill-policy animal shelters and vivisection labs

- At the time they are slaughtered, 90% of chickens in the U.S. are infected with Leukosis (chicken cancer)

- Estimates for the number of US chickens contaminated with salmonella range from 20%-80%

- At slaughter, chickens are gutted with hooks which often break the linings of their intestines, contaminating the carcasses with fecal matter. At this point, the carcass is placed in a tub of water for an hour where it basically stews in the fecal matter and takes on water weight to bring higher market prices. The chicken is then packaged for sale.

Where Does My Beef and Milk Come From?

- Milk cows are kept in a permanent state of milk production by being constantly, artificially forced to bear children they are never allowed to care for

- Within 24 hours of being born, baby calves are taken from their mothers and confined in crates that do not allow them to move their limbs, stand up, or lie down in a natural manner. This is done to keep them from forming muscles so that their flesh can be sold as ‘veal’

- Calves are not given their mother’s milk. It is taken away from them to be given to the offspring of another species - human beings. Calves are, instead, fed a powdered formula. The truth on the other side of every glass of milk is a veal calf, kept immobile, and slaughtered without having ever known its mother or the natural light of day.

- Dairy cows are fed a constant diet of antibiotics and other drugs. These drugs are present in the milk they produce.

- At the end of her life, spent providing milk to humans, the humans respond to this relationship by slaughtering the dairy cow

- Most Americans assume that there is a law enforcing that cows must be dead before being cut into pieces in slaughterhouses. There is no such law. Fully conscious cows are routinely hung upside down, skinned and dismembered by slaughterhouse workers as has been documented by films aired on NBC News and Dateline.

- Ground beef is the #1 source of E. Coli infections, with some 200 people being diagnosed with the often-fatal pathogen every single day in the U.S.

Where Does My Pork Come From?

- Mother pigs are confined in cages little bigger than their bodies. Throughout their pregnancies they are not allowed to freely stand up, lie down, turn their heads or stretch their limbs. They are kept by the thousands in warehouses, much like chickens

- They are immediately deprived of their children which drives them insane, causing them to scream, groan and bite other pigs. Often, they are driven to cannibalism. Big Ag’s solution to this is to break their teeth.

- Baby piglets tails are cut off without any type of anaesthetic to prevent them from biting one another’s tails in the madness that ensues when they are confined in dark, factory warehouses, without any room to turn or move about - by the thousands.

- Pigs, whose sense of smell is so keen that they can detect the presence of edible roots under the earth, are forced to stand in their own fecal matter, day after day, week after week, until they are hauled out for slaughter

- Because they have been bred for obesity, many pigs have deformed spines and broken legs. If they are unable to walk in line to the slaughter house conveyer belts, the accepted method of killing them is to beat them to death with lead pipes or to hoist them up and smash their heads off the concrete floors. There is no law which requires pigs to be dead before they are dismembered, thus, many of them are cut up while still awake and alive.

- At slaughter, 75% of the pigs eaten by Americans have pneumonia. As with cows and chickens, the flesh of pigs is contaminated with pathogens and fecal matter when it is processed and packaged for sale

No One Likes To Think Of These Things
There have been times in my life when I have felt overwhelmed by the suffering of these trusting and totally defenseless animals who are owned, tortured and then slaughtered by Big Ag farmers by the millions every day. Who would want to think about this?

But, of course, it’s because we don’t want to think about it, and because such truths and sights are kept carefully hidden from the public by skilled marketers, that these horrific actions are allowed to take place, every day.

Humans have long kept and slaughtered domesticated animals, it’s true. But never before, in the history of man, has a system been created like the one currently operating across California and across the United States. This is a systematic process for confining, abusing and killing innocent creatures who live without ever knowing the earth. They know only the stench of the factory warehouse buildings, pain, terror, sorrow and death. Never before in history has such a shameful situation existed on such a scale, and anyone choosing to purchase the products of this industry is, sadly, supporting its continuance.

What Will California Proposition 2 Do?
You can read the full text of Prop 2 here. To my understanding, Prop 2 is simply asking for slightly larger confinement devices for chickens, pigs and veal calves. It doesn’t put an end to any of the other facts mentioned above, but it has some potential to slightly lessen the misery of these helpless animals by giving them the ability to stand up, sit down and extend their limbs. It does something for the animals.

Big Ag is pouring in their millions to stop the Proposition from passing, not because they can’t afford to buy larger confining devices, but because, I believe, the very existence of such a proposition might be the beginning of Californians learning the truth about the suffering of the animals who are ‘processed’ so that meat and dairy products can appear on the American table. Any proposition which suggests that farm animals might be deserved of humane treatment is a major threat to an industry which depends upon society viewing living creatures as mere objects.

Big Ag has come up with all kinds of absurd claims that treating animals humanely will destroy their industry, and has even gone so far as to threaten public health hazards if, for example, chickens were allowed to live outside. They warn that by being outside, chickens might contract avian flu from wild birds. They are very careful not to state that factory farms are the actual health hazard. By confining thousands of animals in overcrowded enclosures where they are forced to stand in their own excrement and where every natural need is neglected, factory farms are breeding grounds for the very diseases which causes literally millions of cases of human illness every year. The arguments being put forth by Big Ag are self-serving, manipulative and unworthy of consideration.

Yes On Prop 2 is the citizen group spearheading the pro-vote for this proposition. You might like to visit their website to learn more about why so many people think this vote will be so important.

But, I would like to make a suggestion beyond simply voting Yes on Prop 2. I would encourage you to think about the fact that, living in California, not one of us needs to be dependent upon the torment and death of animals in order to find nourishment. We are not a small tribe of peoples living in the desert or near the north pole, reliant upon animal flesh as our only available means of sustenance. It just isn’t that way here any more.

It has been nearly 20 years now since I learned the truth about Big Ag and vowed I would never again derive sustenance from such needless misery. Yes, for nearly 2 decades now, I have lived by eating a plant-based diet, and I have eaten very, very well. If you could see the delicious, fragrant, colorful, nutrient-packed dishes I will be eating for dinner tonight, you would have no worry that I am living a deprived life because there is no meat, no milk, no eggs on my table. The only thing absent from my family’s table is the support of an industry that is willing to torture living animals with one hand while it is pouring pesticides on human children with the other. That is not something I can, in good conscience, give my money to. It is not something that most Californians would choose to support, if they only knew the truth about the lives of today’s farm animals and the true behavior of the modern agricultural industry.

It can take real courage to face hard truths like the ones I’ve listed for you in this article. Like most American children, I was raised by a loving mother who felt that animal products were essential to human health, and that she was taking good care of me by feeding me the output of this dreadful industry. Most people, especially parents, sincerely believe they are doing the very best for their children by feeding them meat and dairy products because they have been skillfully lead by the Meat and Dairy industries to believe in this firmly. No humane person would blame people for their loving attempts to nourish themselves and their loved ones well.

The blame, in my opinion, all belongs on the shoulders of an industry which makes righteous-sounding proclamations about dedication to humane treatment of animals while stealing newborns from mothers who are indentured to a life of producing milk for a completely different species while trillions of dollars are made. And, it only adds to the real evil of the situation when these ‘farmers’ hire PR experts to aid them in deceiving a trusting public who is looking for good answers to good nutrition.

The truth is that factory farming is robbing us of our health, destroying the natural resources of our endangered planet and engaging our participation in acts which are baldly inhumane. I know it does not deserve my family’s support and I am sharing these thoughts with you in hopes that you can take a serious look at whether it deserves yours.

So, while I believe that Proposition 2 is a step in the right direction in that it recognizes that living beings have an inherent right to be able to use their limbs, it is only a very tiny first step, and I am hoping, for the sake of your own respect for the gift of life, you may wish to take some further steps along that road.

If you would like to learn more about the hidden truth of the factory farm and its toll on America’s health and habitat, I highly recommend reading The Food Revolution by John Robbins.

John’s first book, Diet For A New America was pivotal in my decision to adopt a plant-based diet, and I would like to add for the benefit of all the LBAM veterans, John was deeply concerned about the spraying that happened last year in California. If you’ve lost your patience with CDFA after dealing with their tactics, you’re really going to ‘get’ John Robbins’ books. For so many Californians, the LBAM disaster was an introduction to the behind-the-scenes operations of our nation’s most powerful industries. I guarantee, if you read The Food Revoltion the whole situation of what’s going on in our country is going to become a whole lot clearer.

I hope that reading this article was worthy of your time.

Professor Glen Chase comes to the defense of the American people again with his second report of egregious acts of fraud and child endangerment committed by the California Department of Food and Agriculture in their pursuit of the light brown apple moth.

Read the press release and download the report here.

Our sincere thanks go out to Glen Chase for continuing to shed light on this gravest of issues.

-Meanwhile-

In a continued effort to attach an appearance of legitimacy to their claims that the LBAM is a dangerous insect, the ‘US’ has decided to destroy the livelihood of flower growers in New Zealand by banning the importation of their products into the country. I cannot discover who authored this decision. News refers only to the ‘US’, but my guess is that it’s the USDA.

Here’s the scoop on this.

Apparently, it isn’t enough for Big Ag to poison humans and wildlife, foul water and deceive the public. They need to destroy the economy of other people in other lands, too. All so that they can keep collecting those salaries every month which depend on their continued abilities to perpetrate falsehoods about a harmless moth which lives quietly, doing no damage.

It is CDFA and their USDA big brothers who are causing the damage, and as the above article mentions, New Zealanders are smelling a rat. Apparently, bad odors carry all the way there from California.

Corrupt governments depend on an apathetic people. Our own, here in a America, seems to believe that so long as we have our ’stuff’ from the big box stores, owned by their corporate cronies, and can watch our 4 1/2 hours of television daily, produced by their corporate cronies, we will be satisfied with the quality of our lives, even as planes fly over our homes, turning simple oxygen into a potion for disease and death.

And, when you look around, you see that, with some people, the government has gotten the equation right.

But then there are the tough nuts to crack. The ones who killed their TVs (after all, Internet news is more likely to be real). The ones who avoid the Big Box stores like the plague (after all, supporting China’s economy hasn’t worked out very well for our family). The ones who haven’t forgotten that in September of 2007, the California Department of Food and Agriculture began flying planes over the homes of the people of Santa Cruz and Monterey counties spraying the innocent men, women and children with pesticides and PM10 pollution as they sat quaking in their homes.

No, we have not forgotten the sickness of the people. The deaths of the animals, birds, insects. The mornings without birdsong. No, we have not forgotten the yellow scum on the water.

No, we have not been placated by CDFA’s plan B for spraying our parks and rural lands instead of our towns and cities. No, we still don’t believe pesticides are ’safe’.

I know I will never forget the conversations I began having last year with the families who were sprayed by our government. I will never forget the faces of the parents whose children nearly died. I will never forget the emotionless sound of Ag Secretary Kawamura droning endlessly about the safety of spraying pesticides on children. The trauma of these things is with me yet.

Tonight I am thinking of the thousands of families who were abused last September by the CDFA. I am hoping that they are recovering, and I want them to know that their sufferings have not been forgotten.

The people who remember are still working to stop the governmental and corporate chemical assaults on humans, wildlife and habitat that are happening every day, across our state. We will not give up.

STOP THE SPRAY REMEMBERS
Writing our own history and demanding accountability

SAVE THE DATES

October 25, 6 – 8 PM, Downtown Santa Cruz
Commemorative events and candlelight march to remember the aerial
sprayings over the Monterey Bay area in fall 2007.

November 8, 7:45 PM – 4 AM, Santa Cruz
Vigil and reading of Stop The Spray petition comments.

All are welcome. Satellite events throughout the larger Bay Area are
being planned.

More details coming soon!

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

Send in images and reminiscences for the creation of a memory wall, a
wall that will exist both physically and online. We are soliciting
images and objects that represent you or anyone close to you (people,
pets, wildlife, and the environment) affected by the aerial sprayings.
Examples might be a dog collar, photos of the red tide, and portraits
of people who had to move away or were hurt. Even if your symptoms were
mild, such as a scratchy throat, we invite your participation: contact
ij@stopthespray.org

If you would like to volunteer in the efforts leading up to the events
or at the events themselves please contact ij@stopthespray.org

Many thanks to LBAMspray.com for capturing this on video!