“Looking through rose colored glasses enables you to see the hope and possibilities for a better future.
You can then look back through the lens of your present-day reality with greater confidence and determination to change what you once thought to be impossible – because you’ve already seen what that change looks like.”
~ Sharon Lee Davies-Tight
I’m not here recommending a product, since I haven’t tried it.
However, when back home on a trip to Massachusetts, I saw in a grocery store something that caught my eye.
If you didn’t guess it, by the photo of Abe Lincoln with rose colored glasses, plus a reality lens – the blue one – then I’m here to show you.
American Farmer Popcorn has been in business for two years, according to their video. They started out by popping two different types of corn kernels for maximum flavor, then added sugar and salt to it. They then developed other flavors that I’m going to assume contain animal products. I’m also going to assume that the sugar and salt variety doesn’t.
The website doesn’t work very well – couldn’t click on “click here for more info”, nor “click here to read more”. I was able, however, to view the videos. I didn’t take the time to read the ingredient labels in the grocery, because I was with family who were doing shopping and didn’t want to delay anybody. But really, I didn’t care about the ingredients; I just cared about the glasses.
Anything look familiar here?
Take a look at their site to learn more about their mission > http://www.afpopcorn.com/
The RNC (Republican National Committee) recently told the Republican presidential candidates to sign a pledge whereby the candidates promise to vote for whomever ultimately became a candidate from the Republican field.
I thought in the USA a vote is a private matter and that no one has a right to demand of anyone that they vote in a certain way – or that they vote at all – especially by making them sign a document to that effect.
Voting for whomever we like is one of the cornerstones of our democracy. To demand publicly that the candidates pledge to vote a certain way – by putting their John Hancock on the document – should be scorned by all Americans and citizens worldwide as voter tampering.
It is a bad example the RNC just set to the rest of the world – a world that Republicans especially, have gone to extraordinary lengths to convert to their brand of democracy through nation building.
All the candidates signed it. I would have liked if at least one of them had objected on the grounds that the demand violated the democratic principles that they claim to hold so dear, then a dialogue regarding appropriateness could have ensued.
> A study found that the bones of women who drink beer regularly are stronger, making them less likely to suffer from osteoporosis.
It is thought that the high level of silicon in beer slows down the thinning that leads to fractures and boosts the formation of new bone, the journal Nutrition reports.
Beer is also rich in phytoestrogens, plant versions of oestrogen, which keep bones healthy…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/6014310/Beer-could-stop-bones-going-brittle.html
We’ve been brought up to think that drinking milk is good for our bones, but new research suggests that not only is this false, but the sugars in it may actually be accelerating the ageing process…
http://www.sciencealert.com/study-suggests-milk-doesnt-strengthen-your-bones-it-ages-you-instead
Published on MAY 07, 2015
Washington, DC – The National Congress of American Indians President Brian Cladoosby released the following response in reaction to Governor Mike Huckabee’s quote:
“This week I learned about Governor Huckabee’s speech announcing his candidacy for U.S. President and was dismayed to hear him compare Native Americans to jihadists.
“When I hear our current president say he wants Christians to get off their high horse so we can make nice with radical jihadists, I wonder if he can watch a Western from the ‘50s and be able to figure out who the good guys and the bad guys really are,” Huckabee said.
President Cladoosby continued, “There are many things we have left behind from the 1950’s, including overt racism and sexism. We hope that the old trope of the Indians as the bad guys in Western movies is also left behind. It is hurtful when public officials use stereotypes of Indians as the “bad guys.” Even if it is a metaphorical expression, racial stereotypes should be avoided. It is particularly hurtful to suggest that Americans should reflexively identify images of Native people defending our homelands as the “bad guys.”
“But this is an opportunity to educate. Native Americans are the most committed to our shared homeland. Nearly 24,000 American Indians are currently serving in the U.S. Military, and there are an estimated 383,000 American Indian and Alaska Native military veterans. According to the Oxford Companion to American Military History, American Indians have the highest record of military service per capita compared to any other group in the United States.
“Governor Huckabee is at the beginning of his campaign, and one of the great things about political campaigns is that they are an opportunity for all of us to learn. It is the exchange of ideas that makes our democracy great. I hope to add to that effort in a small way by encouraging the candidates to respect Native Americans and our contributions to the history and culture of the United States, both past and present.”
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COMMENTARY:
If you cut the work week to forty hours, which is still full-time, the associated health risks reduce significantly, plus to fill the void employers will have to hire more people, which will reduce unemployment. It’s a win-win.
Employers have taken advantage of workers for far too long by requiring them – especially salaried employees – to do the work of two people, even three people. Even though the workers often get paid well, it is a form of forced labor, thus enslavement. Understand that the employer doesn’t pay one employee working the jobs of three employees, what three employees would make combined. There’s a savings in the practice for the employer; that’s why they do it.
Sure, if the employee doesn’t like it, they could find a forty hour a week job. But even then, the job description is such that the employer requires way too much work in a forty hour period – essentially, again, requiring the employee to do the work of more than one person. If they don’t like it, there are lots of other people lining up to take their job. That’s often the reason for call offs. The employee is just too tired. Not to worry though, the other employees pick up the slack till it’s their turn to call off.
The reason why employers say they lose money when people call off is because they don’t hire enough people. They keep forgetting that people aren’t machines. They set their productivity projections way too high, so they can get bigger loans. They don’t take into consideration that people’s bodies and minds break down. ‘So what, we’ll hire somebody else, if they’re too weak’, thus perpetuating the forced labor cycle.
Increased rates of stroke and heart disease associated with working long hours coupled with family discord as a result of Mom and/or Dad rarely being home, and when home distracted by catch-up personal business and chores they need to do, increases costs to health insurance companies that have to pay out on health related claims.
It would be in the interest of these health insurance companies to lobby congress for a shorter work week. Employers are not going to do it on their own, since they’ve enjoyed for such a long time the fruits of forced labor.
It’s obvious that the days of the sweat shop are not over – it’s just that the employees get paid more to sweat. The results are the same, whether it’s in a factory or in a white-collar job. Working long hours, which creates a never-ending stressful condition, is injurious to the worker’s health.
Political candidates need to address workers rights, because the employers won’t do it, and the employee is afraid of losing their livelihood if they do it. Employer recommendations are important to the worker – so in essence there’s a gun to their head that prevents them from raising work-related issues. The health of the nation is at stake here.
Working longer hours increases stroke risk by up to 33%: study – Yahoo Finance.
“Doxxing is never okay, no matter how repugnant you believe the target might be.”
I agree.
Terrorizing an individual or their families through social media, by providing their addresses, telephone numbers etc.(called doxxing) online, that may encourage unstable individual(s) to commit crimes against that person and/or their families is unacceptable. It’s called terrorism.
Protesting in peaceful ways is the only way to effect positive, long-term change. Animal rights organizations need to disavow themselves from supporting terrorist tactics. Such tactics hurt the animals as well as negate all the accomplishments that peaceful activists have worked so hard to achieve.
We’ve come so far. Working to change hearts and minds is a slow process, but it is the only process – when executed in a multitude of ways – that will change their world and ours for the better.
~ Sharon Lee Davies-Tight
via Cecil the Lion’s Hunter Becomes the Hunted | Al Jazeera America.
MY COMMENT: Murdering someone who has murdered somebody else is a contradiction in values. It really doesn’t matter if it has deterrent value, or if people are convicted who didn’t commit the crime, or if it satisfies the vengeance desires of family, church or state.
If you pass a law that outlaws murder, then the state murders the person who committed the murder, then the state is essentially saying that murdering people is okay as long as it’s the state doing it. If we aspire to live in civilized societies, then those ruling those societies, or those elected to govern those societies, must set the example of civility.
The USA can’t very well protest the cutting off of heads in the Middle East, when Americans put people to death, in different ways, for similar crimes.
Finding new ways to execute people – after botched attempts using the injection method – will never be the solution to what drives citizens to murder other citizens. It seems easier to simply kill the person who killed others, than to problem-solve and fix the reasons why people are driven to do what they do.
Politicians and law enforcement prefer to lock somebody up and throw away the key, or kill them if need be, to wipe that problem off the face of the planet. Politicians and law enforcement need to start using their brains instead of their power to destroy, if their goal really is a more peaceful society. Prisons need to be places of rehabilitation and not business enterprises or rape chambers.
Our entire penal system needs to move away from the punishment/vengeance definition of justice and move toward easing non-violent criminals back into society where they have an actual chance of success, and treating violent criminals in new and progressive ways.
Being raped every night as part of every person’s prison sentence, when rape is outlawed outside of prison walls, is a contradiction in values. It doesn’t matter if it has deterrent value, or if people are convicted who didn’t commit the crime, or if it satisfies the vengeance desires of family, church or state.
If you pass a law that outlaws rape, then the state rapes the person who committed a crime, any crime, then the state is essentially saying that raping people is okay as long as it’s the state doing it. If the state can’t keep people inside of locked doors safe, then how can the state say that everybody on the outside is safe?
If societies can’t move away from the barbaric methods of the past, then societies have no hope for a better future. There is a way, many ways. Use your brains to figure that out. Slow down, dump the anger and frustration and your brains will find the solutions that are already there. All you have to do is recognize them.
Overhauling the penal system needs to be a foundation of every political candidate’s platform when running for office – any office.
One can’t sanitize the garbage that comes out of Donald Trump’s mind by calling it politically incorrect, as Donald himself has claimed it to be. Garbage in, garbage out. So I’m guessing that his so-called politically incorrect speech is his way of clearing out everybody else’s garbage that enters his space – immediately without hesitation, without debate, without any kind of internal consideration he hurls it right back at them – or waits a few hours, then attacks.
And he’s vicious doing it; he’s mean as all get out in comparison to the insult or inaccurate blurb hurled at him in a semi-politically correct manner. And he doesn’t let up. He buries the person in insults. He sees something, hears something that’s inaccurate to his way of thinking, and he jumps in protest – a long, drawn-out protest. Counter-punching he calls it. Problem is, he’s almost always in that mode. Here we go again, Rosie O’Donnell all over again.
Politically incorrect implies gaffes, social type gaffes, that everybody seems to want to avoid like the plague, and for good reason. We’ve all seen how people’s careers and lives get ruined by saying something that is identified as politically incorrect. The vengeance that comes out of the group offended toward the individual who spoke in a politically incorrect way, is just plain vicious. It tears the politically incorrect statement or word an individual uttered, into shreds of human flesh, burning at the pit, devoured by the offended in orgasmic satisfaction. It is repulsive.
But then comes Donald Trump and does a turn about. He’s the one tearing to shreds the ones who usually tear everybody else to shreds via the nightly news and cable news channels. They sit in judgement of everybody else, day after day, night after night; they get it their way, because they not only have the last word, they have every word. There’s no rebuttal by the masses. The opinion of the masses never gets heard – unless it’s through a government agency pretending to be the person on the street, or the person on social media, speaking on behalf of the street.
Well, you know what? Donald Trump is saying what the populace is thinking, and everybody is shocked. Even the government agencies who thought all along that they were getting it ‘right on’ reading the thoughts of the average American somebody – only to find out they couldn’t have been more wrong. Edward Snowden, NSA whistle-blower, gets it right again. And Donald Trump is getting away with it. And everybody is loving every second of it. They want more. They don’t really care who he insults, just keep doing it.
I don’t believe that’s his strategy; that’s just him. He can’t help himself. And by him not being able to help himself, he is helping everybody else by raising issues, whereby he is the offending person; he is putting himself out there as the offender, so issues that nobody talks about get talked about. Not on purpose. It’s just happening that way. Immigration (rapists and drug dealers coming across the borders), calling out Senator John McCain for exploiting his military service for personal gain – year after year after decade, [then voted for torture] (my insert); using the rape word to describe some immigrants coming across the southern border, then to be accused of rape himself by a previous wife in a divorce proceeding, who then retracted it, but it raised the issue of spousal rape. And everybody talked about it. And now that he’s going at it with journalist, Megyn Kelly, over sexist comments he made to and about women, the sexist word is being bantered about. People are taking a stand, though it might be short-lived, against disparaging comments made toward women by men. It’s front and center in the news.
Donald Trump is again saying what everybody’s thinking, or what people are saying privately away from the camera and microphone. What he says about women, are views that most of the male population hold towards women. The way he talks about women is the way men talk about women, when women aren’t around – and often even when they are.
The other candidates weren’t so offended by his sexist comments; they were more concerned about Trump poisoning the pool of nominees, that could hurt each individual’s chance of becoming that nominee, based on how much the public thought each nominee to mirror Trump’s thoughts. But of course the greater concern is being able to win an election in 2016 with the sexist label pinned on the lapel of the Republican party, even though they are sexist. Being against an equal rights amendment for women, against equal pay for equal work, being against a woman’s right to choose to do what she wants to do with her own body, then taking away the right to purchase birth control pills under certain health insurance policies all add up to sexism.
The Democrats are sexist too, so don’t anybody kid themselves here. Half the human race and most of the female race is sexist toward women. Is that the women’s own fault. No.
I spoke about it for years, everybody laughed, said be a good sport, laugh at yourself, don’t take life so seriously, you create your own problems in life, if somebody doesn’t give you a promotion, it’s because you didn’t fight like a man, or you could get pregnant and need time off, or the most damaging: it makes a woman look weak to be pointing out sexism where sexism breeds.
Sexism is a problem in all people’s lives. But it’s not a problem caused by women or that can be fixed by women. It’s like telling the tortured person to stop their own torture by compliance, but even if the tortured person complies, the torture continues. It is the offender that must change, not the one victimized. Well, consider yourself a victim and sure you’re going to get victimized. They always have a smart answer don’t they? Always a way to blame the person they’re bullying for the reason why they got bullied. Fight back, be like they are. Rosie O’Donnell did that and the fight went on forever. I don’t know who finally won, but Donald Trump got the last word in on the night of the Republican debate just by mentioning her name, and everybody had a big laugh at her expense.
Jeb Bush said that pregnant girls should be publicly shamed for getting pregnant. Here comes that scarlet letter directed only at the ‘evil’ girl for letting herself get pregnant. How about the ‘evil’ boy, that played a greater than fifty-percent role in that pregnancy? No public shaming for him? Herein lies the bias. The prejudice. The sexism. The problem is, I don’t think Jeb Bush was just shooting his mouth off. I think he believes what he said, even though he’ll have to at some point back pedal that thought.
Donald Trump may have a sizzle over substance strategy, and it might work. But the second the populace thinks that he’s playing them, it’ll be over before Trump can open his mind to speak.
Donald Trump keeps saying that he doesn’t have time to be politically correct, but he seems to have an inordinate, endless amount of time to be politically incorrect. Therein lies the contradiction – massive detail regarding every insult, offense, vengeance generated tit for tat, but slow and low on the details of any comprehensive or substantive plan on any issue that concerns Americans.
Build a wall, bomb ISIS, make deals with China, Russia, Mexico, and now he loves women is all I’ve gotten out of all he has said to date. The tit for tat drowns out everything else. The tit for tat is what people remember. And for a while maybe it’s best to address these other issues brought to the forefront by Donald Trump, and to keep them in the forefront. It’s time that women’s rights become a foundation of the platform of both parties – and not just reproduction rights, all rights.
In the afternoon debate, nearly all candidates, maybe all, firmly stated that they would undo every single executive order by President Obama immediately upon taking office. What mind are they pandering to? Obviously not the mind that they thought was the mind of the average Republican American, otherwise they wouldn’t all be so shocked at Donald Trump’s popularity.
All candidates from both parties need to rethink the individual and collective mind of America. Know that they think like you think, not how you speak (except for Donald). Come up with something new for a change. Give a condensed, detailed plan, not a bumper sticker. I think the public is telling the candidates that they have a brain, even though nobody is believing it – yet. They want clarity. They want truth. They’re sick and tired of being lied to and treated as if they’re brainless, and couldn’t figure out anything on their own.
Right now, people think pretty much how I think. After all the talking dust settles, it doesn’t matter who gets into office, or what party wins, they’re all basically the same; the only difference being the temperament of the individual.
Represent the people, not what you think is best for the people, because they’re too dumb to know what you know is in their best interest. How arrogant and self-serving is that?
Make policy plans that will help all Americans soar, not suffer because of your policy mistakes of the past. The one percent may pay for your run, but you can’t win with one percent of the vote.
The smooth talking political candidate isn’t working anymore. Unfortunately, or fortunately, repulsive now attracts. Repulsive raised some issues that are indeed repulsive and need to be worked on in every sector of society. Had someone come forward and just been honest, absent the insults (and everybody is hurling them), I believe the people would have put their energy behind that person. People want raw (and in this case, raw became repulsive), because raw they can at least understand as real, and then they choose to agree or disagree – based on facts, not rhetoric. It is not the candidate’s job to choose for them. That’s exactly what people don’t want.
All you can do as a candidate is to choose to be the best candidate that you can be for ‘we the people’ by thinking like they think, which is like you think! People across the board, are more informed than they’ve ever been. Know that, understand that going forward. Nobody likes being talked down to, so talk up.
Big soul hug to all candidates from all parties from yours truly.
SEE? A BEAR allegedly KILLS a human, and when they catch and ID the bear, the bear will immediately get the death penalty. No judge Nor jury.
Yet a sleezy serial killer dentist kills a FAMOUS lion in a foreign country and nothing happens. It’s all in the name of sport – like ISIS killing people in cages to the sound of music, and video taping it.
Maybe that bear (if it was a bear) saw that man as an existential threat. You know, like Israel assassinating nuclear scientists in Iran. Maybe there was no actual threat. Maybe the bear was just paranoid and wasn’t going to take any chances – given the past behavior of humans.
I thought it was illegal to use bear traps. How humane is that? Maybe we should set some human traps to catch all the serial killers of other species in the world.
(“Wildlife biologists have set bear traps in the area and if any captured beasts are identified as having been involved in the attack, they will be killed.”)
http://news.yahoo.com/us-hiker-killed-grizzly-bear-attack-094922414.html?soc_src=copy
by Abigail Geer from CARE2
August 2, 2015
After 20 years as award winning goat cheese farmers, Carol and Julian Pearce have decided to give it all up and make vegan cheese instead.
Still in the transition phase from farm to sanctuary, these two compassionate farmers decided that there was simply no way they could continue to justify bringing more life into the world while there were so many being mistreated and murdered, and in desperate need of a new home.
The No Kill Goat Cheese Farm
Having always identified themselves as being animal lovers and compassionate carers, their goat cheese business was a ‘no kill’ farm, where the animals were not slaughtered after their production days were over, but instead would live out the rest of their natural life on the farm.
As well as the no kill farm, the couple had already been taking in abused and abandoned goats, pigs, cows, horses, chickens, ducks and dogs for many years, and this is what ultimately led to the decision to halt their profitable farm business, in order to pursue an altogether more ethical cheese making venture.
MY COMMENT: This is just the beginning. The future that’s running to meet us tells us that farming animals for food or any other reason is not sustainable planet-wide for much longer. There needs to be an alternative, and the alternative is growing plants to make from that form of nature whatever we choose. Farming living beings is not the answer.
Enslaving, torturing and slaughtering is not the correct choice for those who suffer the enormous, almost unfathomable, pain of it; it is not the correct choice for those who eat their suffering, only to sustain long-term illnesses from ingesting it; and it’s not the correct environmental choice for the preservation of the billions of humans who inhabit the planet. The costs all the way around are simply too high.
Transforming cruelty-based farming to plant-based farming can be done, it must be done, it will be done – by somebody. The possibilities of what we can make out of plants is limitless! It’s time to change the world, before the world changes us – in maybe not such a nice way. We’ve seen and heard all the warning signs. Now it’s up to us to heed them.
Thank you, Carol and Julian Pearce, for lighting the way for the rest of us through your noble journey – a transformation in lifestyle that makes good common sense, good ethical sense, good business sense and good scientific sense.
Palestine by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – new book
Amir Taheri wrote a book report on Palestine that appeared in the New York Post on August 1, 2015 | 3:00pm
He was sent a copy of the book from a friend in Iran.
Reading Taheri’s abstract of the book, it struck me that what Ayatolla Ali Khamenei wants for the region is almost the same that Israel wants, right down to the strategies used to get there, only in the reverse – except for one thing. “All Palestinians and their descendants, wherever they are [in the world], would be able to vote, while Jews “who have come from other places” would be excluded.”
Maybe Benjamin Netanyahu has already thought of this, and that’s why he isn’t worried that his one state solution – meaning Israel reigns – won’t result in a Palestinian majority by the year 2020. A Jewish state was formed originally so that all Jews worldwide would have a place they call home. So if all Jews worldwide can vote in Israeli elections, that would seal the deal for essentially keeping Palestinians out of the major political runs, excepting local elections. Palestinians would be a protected minority; whereas with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s plan, the Israelis would be the protected minority.
It’s strange how devious minds think alike, right down to the details.
Although the book is only sold in Iran now, I’ll bet a lot of people would love to read it, including me. Take a look at Tamir’s ‘book report’ – very interesting and well done.
http://nypost.com/2015/08/01/iran-publishes-book-on-how-to-outwit-us-and-destroy-israel/
by Sharon Lee Davies-Tight
Nick Pinizzotto, CEO of Sportsmen Alliance, appeared on CBS THIS MORNING SHOW 7-31-2015.
In an interview he said, “We believe in what would be an ethical hunt”.
It sounded too much like PETA saying, we believe in the ethical treatment of animals.
What does ethical treatment of animals mean?
It’s like they pretend to be these concerned environmentalists who want to be sure that the natural order of the planet, as they see it, is maintained by them – the hunters. They’ve taken on that task by eliminating whom they think needs to be eliminated. They hunt when a species is statistically determined to be overpopulating a region, until such time the species is threatened or endangered, whereby restrictions are put in place to increase their population, then the cycle starts all over again. They act as if they’re doing a job that nobody else can stomach – like the torturers in the CIA and military who claim the same. Fact is, they all enjoy it. Nobody is suffering except the target.
If they’re so concerned about the natural order of the planet, then one might think they’d be planning trips to India or China or the inner cities of the USA. After all, American hunters think they need to go to Africa to control the African population of wildlife. It looks like when the hunt gets dry in the USA, meaning certain animals are listed as threatened or endangered, they go someplace else in the world to satisfy their need to hunt and kill.
One could accurately say that we have an overpopulation of chickens, pigs, cows, etc. Over twenty billion a year get slaughtered, just in the USA. That’s true the hunters would say, but they’re “scientifically managed” through slaughter. But I say, it’s still overpopulation, because the numbers don’t go down, they go up, meaning they’re draining the planet’s natural resources, which puts the human animal in a position of being threatened or endangered. How about proper management of chickens, pigs, cows, etc. by not breeding so many?
1- Why if the USA Fish and Wildlife Service is so concerned about other species overpopulating the earth, aren’t they working to decrease the numbers of animals raised for slaughter?
2- And then, why do hunters – through the Wildlife Service – fight so hard to get other species off the endangered and threatened list? It seems they want the overpopulation of certain species, just so they can hunt and kill them.
Visit their website to see how they justify what they do. This is just one example below:
On June 30, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected a petition by the Humane Society of the United States concerning the listing of gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act. The petition requested that the status of gray wolves across the contiguous United States be changed from “endangered” to “threatened,” excepting Mexican wolves in the Southwest, which would remain as endangered status. HSUS couched this request under the guise of attempting to appear moderate and in search of compromise. Neither is true and the Sportsmen’s Alliance applauds USFWS for seeing it as an unwarranted smokescreen.
“This petition was nothing less than the radical HSUS trying to push its agenda on yet another wildlife management issue that they are in no way qualified to deal with,” said Nick Pinizzotto, Sportsmen’s Alliance president and CEO. “There is no room for misguided emotion when it comes to managing wildlife, and USFW clearly agrees.”
By proposing to list wolves as threatened, HSUS hoped to split the powerful alliance of sportsmen, agriculture and wildlife professionals. Under a “threatened” listing, more leeway exists to manage wolves preying on livestock. However, this “compromise” is not based on facts or science, and would, as a practical matter, would prevent proper wolf management that includes hunting.
With wolf populations rapidly expanding, and no other scientific reason to keep gray wolves listed under the protections of the Endangered Species Act, USFWS correctly rejected the petition.
“This petition is just another example of the tactics these groups will use to manipulate the Endangered Species Act,” said Evan Heusinkveld, vice president of government affairs for Sportsmen’s Alliance. “FWS has once again correctly found that there is no evidence that wolves outside the Southwest are either threatened or endangered.”
Not only has USFWS rejected the petition, in their evaluation of the evidence, they found that hunting is not a threat to wolves because state management plans put limits on hunting if population levels drop – just as with every other species of wildlife throughout the nation that enjoys scientific management.
In February, the Sportsmen’s Alliance and our partners appealed a misguided and shortsighted federal ruling made on Dec. 20 that put wolves back under federal protection.
“The court’s decision to reinstate federal protections until wolves recover across the entire country is not only misguided, it ignores years of policy to the contrary,” said Heusinkveld. “It’s clear to everyone involved that wolves have not only recovered, but are growing. But the real story here is that HSUS and their allies can’t stand the thought of a wolf hunting season. Instead, they are bound and determined to waste hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in legal costs to prevent proper management of wolves.”
MY FURTHER COMMENT: To make this complicated story more clear let me try to summarize. The Humane Society petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to move gray wolves “from endangered species to threatened species”. The Fish and Wildlife Service rejected it, saying essentially that they’re no longer threatened (most of them).
It seemed to me that if they rejected the threatened status, then the endangered status would stay. But I don’t think so, otherwise the hunters wouldn’t be so happy about it.
Evidently, by saying that they were no longer threatened (and threatened means that they are likely to become an endangered within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range) meant that they weren’t endangered either. So, the Humane Society lost, and the hunters won. Well, the animals lost.
“Not only has USFWS rejected the petition, in their evaluation of the evidence, they found that hunting is not a threat to wolves because state management plans put limits on hunting if population levels drop – just as with every other species of wildlife throughout the nation that enjoys scientific management.”
So, ‘scientific management’ appears to be a nicer way of saying hunting/killing – like ‘enhanced interrogations’ is a nicer way of saying torture.
Still, why are hunters so anxious to get animals off the endangered or threatened list? It seems that they take responsibility for bringing back the herds (if you read the articles on their site), while they’re endangered (by not hunting them), and now that they’re not endangered, the hunters ‘ethically’ return to their serial killing sprees – until such time they become threatened or endangered again – then they go to Africa.
There are no ethics in hunting – no ethic in killing. There may be rules of the ‘hunt’, and following the rules may make them feel ethical. But there is a moral component to ethics, which all hunters conveniently block out of their psyche – as torturers and serial killers do.
The intricacy with which they form their warped collective moral views is evident throughout their website among all writers.
If you’re an animal rights activist/advocate it would be in your interest to at least read a couple of the articles. Or even if you’re not, it would be good to know how your relative, friend, neighbor, co-worker thinks. Hunters are a closed group of people. You really don’t know how they think until you read what they write. Most hunters share their killing fetish with other hunters, not with the general population.
The featured image was downloaded from Facebook.
serial killers basking in the glory of their kills – souvenirs, trinkets, trophies of murder
People often talk about the thrill of the hunt – overtaking another being and killing that being, sometimes torturing that being to prolong the thrill, before the final second of death arrives.
They don’t talk about the hunter seeking the experience of vicarious death.
They hunt. They thrill. They want to be hunted, so they hunt others.
They want to die, so they kill others.
They want to resurrect and they do. Just their prey dies.
They don’t want somebody else to do the killing for them.
They want to experience, vicariously, the death of themselves, through the death of another.
The nervous, boisterous laughter after the kill, suggests they made it to the other side of life via their victim and lived to laugh about it.
Mounting the head on the wall reminds them of that vicarious feeling of death, so it can be relived, until the memory and feeling fade, requiring them to experience it again.
How many heads on how many walls will it take before society wakes up to the mental illness of hunting?
When anybody else precalculates a murder and then commits it, they’re called mentally ill, but legally sane.
I believe that hunters are legally sane, but I also believe they suffer from a mental illness that’s a threat to other beings.
Vicarious death is the hunt.
~ Sharon Lee Davies-Tight
In Memoriam – 29 July 2015 – 4:50 PM
Cecil lives – as the most famous, world-changing lion who woke up the planet!
Thank you for your service.
CINCINNATI (AP) — A University of Cincinnati officer who shot a motorist during a traffic stop over a missing front license plate has been indicted on murder charges, a prosecutor said Wednesday, adding that the officer “purposely killed him” and “should never have been a police officer.”
Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters announced the grand jury indictment at a news conference to discuss developments in the investigation into the July 19 shooting of 43-year-old motorist Samuel DuBose by Officer Ray Tensing…
READ MORE >
via Ohio cop indicted on murder charge in traffic-stop shooting – Yahoo News.
MY COMMENT: Sure, this senseless act of violence that ended in the death of Samuel DuBose by Officer Ray Tensing over a simple traffic stop resulted in murder charges against the officer. Had the officer not been wearing a police body cam, chances are the murder charges never would have been considered, and the word of the officer regarding what happened at that routine traffic stop would have been accepted.
I believe like many others that all police should be required to wear them. A body cam should be as essential to the uniform as the badge and the gun. You don’t go out on a call without it. Cost should not be a factor, given the amount we allow yearly for the military budget. We need to protect both the police and the citizen – at home – from instances like the one described here. There has to be a way for congress to fund body cams for all officers.
Though the proof provided by the video gives the family some comfort and some relief, it will not bring back Samuel DuBois. An officer will likely spend the rest of his life in prison, but again a little comfort, a little relief for justice being served won’t bring back to life Samuel Dubois.
What I find striking is that the body cam seems to work only after the fact, to prove or disprove what actually happens in an encounter between a police officer and a citizen.
It doesn’t seem, at least in this case, to work as a deterrent for certain officers to commit acts of violence during encounters.
One would think, knowing that one is wearing a body cam ( after all, an officer puts it in place), that an officer would be more cognizant of their actions, knowing the camera is rolling.
I saw the video. You don’t shoot somebody in the head because he can’t produce a driver’s license, he has a bottle of gin in the car, and slowly rolls the vehicle forward. If anything, the officer should have told him ( if he thought he was drunk and unable to drive safely) to do a field sobriety test or leave the car behind and take him to be processed under a DUI charge.
But he wasn’t stopped for not driving safely. He was stopped for not having a plate on the front of the car. I’ve lived in places where a front plate wasn’t required. I don’t know why some states, at least back then, didn’t require it. It should be required in all fifty states to have a plate in the front and back of every vehicle. Somebody probably thought it would save somebody money. This time it cost a person his life, when the officer popped.
Officers popping, then, is the real issue.
And that’s where the education and counselling of officers needs to begin. It needs to be a nationwide effort (none of this ‘let the states decide’ mentality). We are not fifty nations under one flag – we are fifty states under one flag.
So in sum, body cams need to work 2 ways : as proof of what really happened, and as a deterrent to both the officer and the citizen. This time, the citizen did not appear in any way to be a threat to the officer. He obviously didn’t have a driver’s license on him; he did not become belligerent; and he handed over the bottle of gin. Maybe even, the citizen had his foot on the brake, whereby the car was not secured stationary (in park), which resulted in a ‘slow roll’ forward. The officer should have noted that and instructed the citizen to secure the car. Instead he popped – and that’s where we are now. One dead and another likely to spend the rest of his life in prison. The families of two people shattered – all because one cop couldn’t control his rage.
Personally I think that post 9-11, cops in the USA began treating every individual like an enemy combatant. Businesses of all types, including hospitals and clinics all started using the same method, whereby the consumers are always wrong; they don’t have a right to ask questions or have their questions answered, all meant to control the individual to their benefit. It all needs to change.
While we’re talking about body cams on all officers, how about body cams on all surgeons and operating room personnel? It could save billions of dollars paid out for insurance claims over loss of limbs and lives.
WriterJuly 24, 2015
Stewart Parnell, the former owner of Peanut Corporation of America, who knowingly sold truckloads of salmonella-tainted peanut butter that resulted in nine deaths and 700 illnesses. (Photo: Getty Images)
Prosecutors are recommending a sentence of life in prison for a peanut executive convicted in a deadly salmonella-poisoning case.
Stewart Parnell, the former owner of Peanut Corporation of America, was convicted last September of knowingly selling truckloads of peanut butter contaminated with salmonella from his plant in Georgia to food processors.
The recommendation for his sentencing, which a lawyer for one of the victims called “unprecedented,” was revealed on Wednesday, the Associated Press reports.
The contaminated peanut butter caused a salmonella outbreak that spanned 46 states and lasted from 2008 to 2009, sparking a massive recall by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It killed nine people and left more than 700 ill.
After a seven-week trial, Parnell and his brother, food broker Michael Parnell, were both charged with 76 federal counts linked to intentionally shipping peanut products that tested positive for salmonella, CNN reports….
READ MORE >
MY COMMENT: According to this article, quoting the Center for Disease Control, there are an estimated 1,000,000,000 salmonella cases, 19,000 hospitalizations and 380 deaths each year in the USA.
Salmonella is commonly found in raw animal products – eggs, meat and unpasteurized dairy, and some plant foods, including peanuts.
The animal-abusing industries leave it up to the consumer to cook their own salmonella out of their animal products, because they choose/want to sell their animal products raw.
Because peanut butter is already processed, meaning ready to eat, people consuming peanut butter containing salmonella get sick and some die. Most people don’t refrigerate peanut butter (except me) and most people don’t cook with it (except me). But I also eat it right out of the jar.
The meat, dairy and egg industries all know before they sell their product, that chances are a lot of it contains some level of salmonella. It’s like a crap shoot – maybe yes, maybe know. Nobody tests every animal or every egg or the milk coming out of the cow. So they knowingly expose the public to salmonella.
Obviously, leaving it up to the consumer to cook thoroughly the animal products isn’t working, otherwise there wouldn’t be 1,000,000,000 cases of salmonella yearly. So where’s the liability here? Nobody tells the restaurants to serve only hard-cooked eggs. Nobody outlaws the sale of unpasteurized milk. Nobody demands that restaurants serve only well-done meats. Laws imposing those restrictions would hurt the profit/loss margins of all the animal-abusing industries.
There seems to be a double standard here. Of course this peanut executive went too far, the first time he went to far, thinking more about his profit/loss margin than selling a healthy product.
But so do the sellers of raw food known to have salmonella contaminants in it. You can’t just say it’s up to the consumer and up to the restaurants to do the right thing – not where public health and safety are concerned.
All food needs to be free of toxins, contaminants, poisons, bacteria and viruses… that pose an elevated health risk to the public.
Consumers assume that if they buy a product at a store or restaurant, that it is not going to make them sick, or worse, kill them – as long as it isn’t out-dated. That’s the public trust. That trust needs to be respected.
One million cases a year is a lot of salmonella. It’s an epidemic.
We, as a nation, need to rethink what we sell, how we sell it, what we should and should not be consuming. Governments are involved in the animal-abusing industries. They make the laws that give these industries a free pass to do whatever they want to do – always placing the liability on the backs of the consumers. That needs to change.
EAST ISLIP, N.Y. (CBSNewYork/AP) — Animal cruelty investigators are looking into what they believe is the fourth ritualistic animal killing on Long Island in a month.
Suffolk County SPCA Chief Roy Gross said Friday that investigators believe the incidents are the result of religious rituals.
He said an 18-inch cow tongue was found nailed to a tree in an East Islip park Thursday morning. It was wrapped in fabric.
Gross believes the ritual is typically meant to stop rumors or stop someone from testifying in a court case. He said detectives are looking into the possibility that gang members are responsible.
Another cow’s tongue was found affixed to a tree nearby earlier this month. Three goats were also found dead in June…
READ MORE >
via Suffolk County SPCA Investigating 4th Possible Ritualistic Killing « CBS New York.
by Joan Walsh
Jeb Bush was quick to denounce Donald Trump after the reality show host-turned-presidential candidate made his ugly claim that Sen. John McCain was “not a war hero” last weekend. “Enough with the slanderous attacks. @SenJohnMcCain and all our veterans – particularly POWs have earned our respect and admiration,” he tweeted Saturday.
But journalists quickly saw a problem for Bush: he had signed on to a similar attack on a decorated war hero: 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry, when he was running against Jeb’s brother George. Unbelievably, Bush reiterated his support for those ugly attacks on Kerry Tuesday afternoon in South Carolina.
To recap: Bush backed the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’s shameful attacks on Kerry, writing a letter to the group’s founder, Col. Bud Day, thanking him and the “other Swifties” for their “support of my brother in his re-election.” It went on: “I simply cannot express in words how much I value their willingness to stand up against John Kerry.” That “willingness,” of course, involved claiming Kerry lied about the military service that won him the Purple Heart.
MY COMMENT:
Thank you for pointing out the hypocrisy, Joan Walsh. My only wish is that John McCain (and all the others who served) had spoken out more loudly against torture and that their actions within the policing making apparatus of the USA government supported those words.
Let’s see if Guantanamo Bay will indeed get closed forever. And let’s see if both sides (the Republicans and the Democrats of the USA) will choose a diplomatic rather than a war path with Iran – and all other nations for that matter.
Instead of running on being tortured, captured, or wounded, the heroes of the future will be those who serve in an intellectual capacity to calm the waters and make reasonable agreements that lead to peace not war.
In the future they will be called peace heroes, not war heroes.
READ MORE > from article on salon.com
I was watching CNN the other day where different people were talking about El Chapo, the once top drug kingpin, who recently escaped from a maximum security prison in Mexico.
I’m listening to this one guy talk and thought, oh my goodness, it’s like an ad appealing to young men, almost recruiting them to go into the drug business.
It went something like this:
Talking about El Chapo:
‘…a man who has been at the heart of the drug trade industry since the 1970’s…since eight years old taking opium…he was fifteen years old dealing with cocaine…now he’s a billionaire…this is a massively powerful person.’
I’m sure that guy didn’t mean for it to sound the way it sounded, but anybody thinking about a career in the drug trade industry had to take note. Whoa.
Whatever happened to “this is your brain on drugs?” Looks like the drugs didn’t do his brain any harm. Somebody who can be on hard drugs his whole life and amass a billion dollars to where he is a ‘massively powerful person’ had to be thinking with something.
Update: Somebody asked me once, how do you catch a terrorist? I said as I have always said, “I bring them out into the open”.
Sorry Sean Penn, didn’t mean to bring you into this. But as long as Hollywood is CIA controlled, then you knew the risk, and they backed you on it. You’ll be okay.
Researchers from Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center say they’ve created and patented a new type of seaweed that has the potential to be sold commercially as the next big superfood.
The reason? It tastes just like bacon, they claim…READ MORE > http://time.com/3960421/seaweed-bacon-dulse-kale-super-food/
No nation on earth would allow any other nation, especially one proud to be its forever enemy, unfettered access to its military bases/installments, no matter what the reason.
The Israeli demand via USA Secretary of State John Kerry, at the Austrian talks in Vienna, is purposely made knowing that no country worth its salt would comply. The USA and Israel would laugh at the notion that an enemy state demanded of them unfettered access to their military bases. And the USA and Israel are the most active participants in spreading terror by keeping their own use of nuclear weapons on the table during any and all negotiating processes, and acting as the world’s go-to mafia boss nations, to solve the problems of other nations for a price.
Israel is the nation preventing an agreement, because they don’t want an agreement – any agreement. They want to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability in total, putting any dreams of peaceful nuclear power usage on hold for at least another decade. Israel further wants the economic sanctions against Iran to stay in place. If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had his way, they would never be lifted.
Look at the billions of dollars that Iran will amass if the sanctions are lifted, talking heads in the Israeli controlled USA press shriek in defense of Israel! (What this is really about is Jewish Jealousy. Israel’s envy of Arab/Persian oil).
Look at the billions of dollars the USA and Israel amass through their joint war machines, bombing, then leaving in shambles nations they deem unfit to compete in the world against their special brand of economic terrorism – meaning let us own you or we bomb you.
Remove Israel from the ‘table of talk’ and sign a deal before it’s too late. Israel does not and never will deserve a seat at that table, whether it be in person or behind the shadow of the USA-Israeli curtain, while it remains an occupier of any other nation.
Trying to control in the present what will or won’t happen thirteen years down the road of evolution, considering the rapid pace at which the planet is changing in all directions, is futile. Trying to keep a nation poor forever is futile. It won’t work. It hasn’t worked. It will never work. Forces unseen now, will rise up against the oppressor and their names will not be ISIS and ISIL. Their names will be quite familiar.
Enslaving nations for any reason, using any method, needs to end.
The USA and Israel went way to far with Iran. Any other nation would have pummeled both the USA and Israel by now. That they didn’t, will be recorded now and historically to their credit.
HAPPY WHITE HORSE™