Speaking of the disappearing honeybees, one Dennis van Engelsdorp of the Apiary Inspectors of America says:

“For two years in a row, we’ve sustained a substantial loss. […] That’s an astonishing number. Imagine if one out of every three cows, or one out of every three chickens, were dying. That would raise a lot of alarm.”

Dude, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but somewhere upwards of 99.99999% of American cows and chickens are dying. To the rate of roughly 10 billion per year. To break it down even further, that’s about 9 billion chickens and 25 million cows. Per year. In America. America alone.

Dennis, you don’t even need to imagine such a thing. Look no further than your dinner plate.

(Crossposted from.)

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare food meat bees cows chickens clueless

[A] commenter asked me:

What root system does your concept of ‘animal rights’ come from?

My answer: They’re self-evident.

The fact that we need cages and fences to contain animals suggest they have wills of their own that that those wills do not match human desire. Moreover, having shared my life with plenty of creatures, I’ve gotten to know their personalities and can surely tell you that they are sentient beings who experience physical pain and emotional pain. I need no God or state to prove this to me. I know it from my experience and my capacity to think and empathize.

- Elaine Vigneault, What Are Animal Rights?

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Tagged: quotables rights animal rights Elaine Vigneault

SPEECH BY AL GORE ON THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
DECEMBER 10, 2007
OSLO, NORWAY

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Honorable members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen.

I have a purpose here today. It is a purpose I have tried to serve for many years. I have prayed that God would show me a way to accomplish it.

Sometimes, without warning, the future knocks on our door with a precious and painful vision of what might be. One hundred and nineteen years ago, a wealthy inventor read his own obituary, mistakenly published years before his death. Wrongly believing the inventor had just died, a newspaper printed a harsh judgment of his life’s work, unfairly labeling him “The Merchant of Death” because of his invention – dynamite. Shaken by this condemnation, the inventor made a fateful choice to serve the cause of peace.

Seven years later, Alfred Nobel created this prize and the others that bear his name.

Seven years ago tomorrow, I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harsh and mistaken – if not premature. But that unwelcome verdict also brought a precious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh new ways to serve my purpose.

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So I finished Aftershock almost a week ago now, but haven’t yet gotten around to writing a review. Sure, I’ve given it an inordinate amount of thought, but that’s as much as I’ve mustered. Shocker, eh? It’s a wonder how I ever graduated college, I tell ya, wut with my perpetual procrastinating and all.

I can tell you, though, that the book was unexpectedly awesome. I say “unexpectedly”, not because I thought it would suck (I didn’t!), but because I’m not usually a fan of the whole self-help genre. Particularly when I’m “assigned” the book (for lack of a better term, in this case), and thus am not in need of the type of help offered in said book. Rather than shooting for folksy and falling just short of readable, Aftershock is the rare self-help/advice tome that manages to make the material accessible without completely dumbing it down for the lowest common denominator.

I also love, love, love that author pattrice jones approaches the issue from a vegan / animal rights / feminist / queer / ecological / radical / progressive perspective. More often than not, veg*ns and ARAs are ridiculed by social conservatives and “progressive” “liberals” alike; much like atheists, us animal rights “fanatics” are the lone group that manages to inspire scorn on both sides of the political aisle. Browse enough liberal blogs while agitating for animals, and you start to feel awfully isolated from other so-called lefties. So it’s really freaking awesome to find the topic of post-traumatic stress and depression among activists discussed with a deference to the experiences of animal rights activists.

Anywho, this is starting to sound like a review, so I’ll shut up now. Instead, I thought I’d pull some quotes directly from the mouth of existentialist - eco/anarchafeminist - lesbian - dreamer/blamer pattrice jones herself. Much to my surprise, “Quotables” was the most frequently viewed category in May…so I may as well give y’all whatchawant.

After the jump, words of wisdom via pattrice jones. Who is currently blogging at SuperWeed. So go give her a shout out, is what I’m sayin.

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“Isn’t man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife by the millions to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billions and eats them. This in turn kills man by the millions, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year sends out cards praying for ‘Peace on Earth.’”

– C. David Coates

(Quote via; photo via.)

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare quotes C. David Coates flickr

Photo via Steve Rhodes

“The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says, ‘You need to intervene here,’ you don’t say, ‘Well, I read a science fiction novel that tells me it’s not a problem.’ If the crib’s on fire, you don’t speculate that the baby is flame-retardant. You take action. The planet has a fever.”

- Former Veep Al Gore, Urg[ing] Congress to Take Action on Climate Change

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Tagged: quotables al gore climate change global warming flickr stencils babycakes toeheads

“My six-year-old, Catherine, she said to me ‘Father, they came for those with cooties, and I said nothing. Then they came for those with boogers, and I said nothing. And then they came for me, a poopy-pants, and there was no one left to speak.’”

- Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Nebraska, on his precocious little poopy-pants, as interpreted by The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart.

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Tagged: the daily show tds jon stewart congress 110th congress iraq debate resolution crooks and liars comedy central quotables

As seen on the Second Chance Wildlife Sanctuary website:

In Maine they tell of an old man walking along the beach with his grandson, who picked up each starfish they passed and threw it back into the sea. “If I left them up here,” the boy said, “they would dry up and die. I’m saving their lives.”

“But,” protested the old man, “the beach goes on for miles, and there are millions of starfish. What you are doing won’t make a difference.”

The boy looked at the starfish in his hand, gently threw it into the ocean, and answered: “It makes a difference to this one.”

Joyce Smith, the founder of the sanctuary, was recently profiled in the Globe and Mail:

The life of a fanatic is a hard one, and Joyce Smith’s life is no exception. At 77, she’s locked into a schedule that could kill someone half her age. She rises at 6 a.m. after sleeping just a few hours, and immediately starts to work. There’s no time for breakfast. When you live with more than 100 cats, their needs come first.

The cats in the house are merely the overflow. Outside, there is a building with about 300 more, plus a sundry collection of pigeons, parrots, rats, raccoons, squirrels and a pair of feral dogs that look like an ill-advised union between the Queen Mother’s corgi and a hyena.

Welcome to Second Chance Wildlife Sanctuary.

Go read the whole thing; it’s a great article, and Smith sounds like one tough old broad, my kinda people. If you’ve got any change to spare, please consider sending some her way.

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare quotables Second Chance Wildlife Sanctuary Joyce Smith animal rescue Canada

“We, like the people of the early 1800s, could be living through a period of slow but profound ideological change. To the people of their own time, men like Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson — early abolitionists and the founders of the first human rights movement — seemed as impractical, as demanding, as self-righteous and as obsessed as many animal rights activists seem to us today. In the future, right-thinking people might look back at us meat eaters with the same disapproval we heap on those who considered slavery acceptable 200 years ago.”

- Laura Miller, in a Salon review of Tristram Stuart’s The Bloodless Revolution

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare The Bloodless Revolution Tristram Stuart Salon quote Laura Miller vegetarian vegetarianism slavery parallel oppressions

“The prospect of a virulent flu to which we have absolutely no resistance is frightening. However, to me, the threat is much greater to the poultry industry. I’m not as worried about the U.S. human population dying from bird flu as I am that there will be no chicken to eat.”

- The executive editor of Poultry magazine, in a 2005 editorial, as quoted by Michael Greger in Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching.

FYI: Review and discussion coming soon. I just finished reading it today, and want to do some additional research before jumping in. Great book, though - check it out online if you’ve got a chance!

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Tagged: quotes animals animal+rights animal+welfare poultry birds bird+flu avian+flu priorities capitalism

“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out.

“Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out.

“Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out.

“And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”

- Pastor Martin Niemoeller

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The House passed AETA yesterday afternoon; of all our elected sheeple Congresspeople, only one had the convictions to vote against this blatantly unconstitutional and unconscionable example of pandering: Dennis Kucinich, D-OH.

More on this later, but until then, you can find updates at NoAETA and GreenIsTheNewRed.

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Tagged: animals animal+rights aeta Animal+Enterprise+Terrorism+Act free+speech terrorism animal+terrorism eco-terrorism censorship

“Do you really want to know why I’m doing all this goodwill, and why I’m an ambassador for Habitat for Humanity and why I gave a million to [Hurricane] Katrina? It’s because I feel guilty about the huge hole in the ozone layer my haircuts created. It’s my responsibility to right the wrongs of the Eighties.”

- ’80s rawker Jon Bon Jovi, on his newfound greenness

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Tagged: bon+jovi jon+bon+jovi quotables

“Posing with a deer that you paid someone to keep on hand just so you could shoot at it is like taking a photo with your Big Mac before you eat it.”

- Amanda of Pandagon, on the “sport” of the canned hunt

“I saw a commercial on TV last night wherein a hot skinny woman in her 20s takes a tiny ladylike bite of an ice cream product and pretty much has an orgasm. She closes her eyes and is contorted by some kind of sexy rapture attack, presumably because the ice cream has unlocked the mysteries of her G-spot for the first time. Fatty frozen desserts made from tortured factory livestock have that power over women.

“I wish regender.com worked on video. The idea of a commercial where a male model ejaculates over a tiny ladylike bite of cheap ice cream makes me laugh and laugh.”

- Twisty Faster: gentleman farmer, spinster aunt, patriarchy-blamer