Saturday, May 2, 2009

Mmm....Alicia Silverstone!

Awesome vegan celeb interviewed about being a vegan.

Be sure to read the comments. Amazing how blind people are. The ideology of meat has blinded them...

Thursday, April 30, 2009

More on pig killers

The following is written under the headline: 'Swine' flu a headache for pork producers.
Ah, poor pig killers! I bet it is not as much a "headache" for them as it is/was for the slaughtered animals in the photographs.

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MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (CNN) -- The disease that most people in the United States and worldwide have come to know as "swine flu" has caused a less-publicized rumbling among the nation's hog farmers and producers.

China and Russia have banned imports from some U.S. states and Mexico, and stock prices for the nation's leading pork companies, Smithfield Foods Inc. and Tyson Foods Inc., took a hit. In addition, hog futures took a rare dive after initial news of the outbreak broke.

The negative news, seen in a market that had already been suffering, is something the industry says could have been prevented had a more accurate name been chosen for the human disease.

"This flu is being called something that it isn't, and it's hurting our entire industry," said Dave Warner, communications director for the National Pork Producers Council. "It is not a 'swine' flu, and people need to stop calling it that ... they're ruining people's lives."

Warner said exact dollar figures on the pork industry's losses nationwide are not yet available. But he pointed out that the industry was already suffering before the flu outbreak.

"The real issue is that anything is bad now because producers for the past 19 months have already lost money," Warner said. "On average they've lost about 20 dollars a pig. So even if they lose two dollars more, it's hard on them.

"I've had producers say, 'Look, we're dying out here, already we're hurting and now this on top of it.' " Video Watch a pig farmer talk of hard times »

Brian Buhr is a professor at the University of Minnesota whose emphasis is in livestock markets. He says that pork is a $1.8 billion industry annually in Minnesota.

On Tuesday of this week, Buhr said, the state's pork industry took an $18 million hit.

Minnesota is the nation's third-largest pig farming state, and its health experts said Wednesday they would be calling the illness "H1N1 novel flu" from here on out.

" 'Swine flu' gives a connotation that really it shouldn't have, and makes people wonder about eating pork," said Minnesota Health Commissioner Dr. Sanne Magnan.

The European Union has followed suit.

"In order not to have a negative effect on our industry -- especially under this crisis situation -- we decided to call it 'novel flu' from now on," said Androulla Vassiliou, the European commissioner for health.

The World Health Organization announced Thursday it would stop using the term "swine flu" to avoid confusion over the danger posed by pigs. WHO will instead refer to the illness as "H1N1 influenza A." Map: Where the flu is today »

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed to CNN that it would begin officially calling this particular influenza strain "H1N1." However, the CDC's Web site is still largely "swine"-centered, and the media continue to discuss "swine flu" -- much to the dismay of the hog industry.

Minnesota's hog farmers and veterinary scientists say the term "swine flu" gives the impression that hogs, and thus pork products, aren't safe.

"There's a large concern over the name [from the hog farmers' perspective], said David Preisler, executive director of the Minnesota Pork Producers' Association. "They just wanted it to be accurate."

Professor Marie Gramer's primary focus is swine disease at the University of Minnesota, and she says "H1N1" is a more appropriate label for this flu, because it's important to remember that a direct link from a pig to a human has not been established.

"Swine flu" was "an unfortunate name for everybody involved in swine production, implying that the pigs were the source of this current outbreak," Gramer said.

Peter Davies, professor of epidemiology and swine medicine at the University of Minnesota, said the name "swine flu" had the potential to be misleading -- and that we've already seen the negative effects.

"We've seen a huge drop in the price of pork," Davies said. "We've seen a lot of interruptions to commerce."
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He added that even though the name has changed from officially being called "swine flu," it may be too little, too late for the industry.

"I think it'll take quite a while, if at all, before it trickles into the media or in the general public's conversation."

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Thank you for eating bacon...

Examining the way the world's population massively imprisons, tortures, and kills animals in inhumane and unnatural conditions, can we say that this actually surprises us? Factory farms breed viruses and bacteria. And with the way they feed the animals antibiotics et al it is NOT surprising that we get killer drug-resistant illnesses from them.

Hey! You want to save the world? Be a true political radical? Be green? Do what's best for yourself and everybody else on the planet? Go vegan, the only true "Green" lifestyle. Don't give me excuses and platitudes, "I only eat free-range, organic blah blah..." You are still killing, imprisoning, torturing. See what happens.

Also:
http://www.peta.org/feat-climate-change.asp

From the AP:

WHO Chief: Swine Flu Has "Pandemic Potential"

MARK STEVENSON | April 25, 2009 10:58 PM EST | AP

MEXICO CITY — Mexico's president assumed new powers Saturday to isolate people infected with a deadly swine flu strain as authorities struggled to contain an outbreak that world health officials warned could become a global epidemic.

New cases of swine flu were confirmed in Kansas and California and suspected in New York City. But officials said they didn't know whether the New York cases were the strain that now has killed up to 81 people in Mexico and likely sickened 1,324 since April 13, according to figures updated late Saturday by Mexico's health secretary.

Tests have confirmed swine flu as the cause of death in 20 of the cases.

Mexican soldiers and health workers patrolled airports and bus stations as they tried to corral people who may be infected with the swine flu, as it became clearer that the government may have been slow to respond to the outbreak in March and early April.

Now, even detaining the ill may not keep the strain _ a combination of swine, bird and human influenza that people may have no natural immunity to _ from spreading, epidemiologists say.

The World Health Organization on Saturday asked countries around the world to step up reporting and surveillance of the disease and implement a coordinated response to contain it.

Two dozen new suspected cases were reported in Mexico City alone, where authorities suspended schools and all public events until further notice. More than 500 events, including concerts and sports games, were canceled in the metropolis of 20 million.

Mexican authorities ordered schools closed in the capital and the states of Mexico and San Luis Potosi until May 6, and the Roman Catholic Church announced the cancellation of Sunday masses in the capital.
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The Mexican government issued a decree authorizing President Felipe Calderon to invoke special powers letting the Health Department isolate patients and inspect homes, incoming travelers and baggage. But officials said it was designed to free health workers from possible legal reprisals and to speed disease control efforts.

A team from the Centers for Disease Control had arrived in Mexico to help set up detection testing for the swine flu strain, something Mexico previously lacked.

The U.S. Embassy said the U.S. has not imposed travel constraints to and from Mexico but is suspending the processing of visas and other services through Wednesday to avoid creating crowds.

It issued an earlier message advising U.S. citizens to avoid large crowds, shaking hands, greeting people with a kiss or using the subway.

While suspected swine flu cases have been reported in about 16 Mexican states, Health Secretary Jose Cordova said "it has not spread to the entire country."

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said the outbreak of the never-before-seen virus has "pandemic potential." But she said it is still too early to tell if it would become a pandemic.

WHO lays out three criteria necessary for a global epidemic: The virus is able to infect people, can readily spread person-to-person and the global population has no immunity to it.

Early detection and treatment are key to stopping any outbreak. WHO guidance calls for isolating the sick and blanketing everyone around them with anti-viral drugs such as Tamiflu.

Now, with patients showing up all across Mexico and its teeming capital, simple math suggests that kind of response is impossible.

Mexico appears to have lost valuable days or weeks in detecting the new virus.

Health authorities started noticing a threefold spike in flu cases in late March and early April, but they thought it was a late rebound in the December-February flu season.

Testing at domestic labs did not alert doctors to the new strain, and Cordova acknowledged Mexican labs lacked the necessary profiling data to detect the previously unknown strain.

The first death occurred in southern Oaxaca state on April 13, but Mexico didn't send the first of 14 mucous samples to the CDC until April 18, around the same time it dispatched health teams to hospitals looking for patients with severe flu or pnuemonia-like symptoms.

Those teams noticed something strange: The flu was killing people aged 20 to 40. Flu victims are usually either infants or the elderly. The Spanish flu pandemic, which killed at least 40 million people worldwide in 1918-19, also first struck otherwise healthy young adults.

Even though U.S. labs detected the swine flu in California and Texas before last weekend, Mexican authorities as recently as Wednesday were referring to it as a late-season flu.

But mid-afternoon Thursday, Mexico City Health Secretary Dr. Armando Ahued said, officials got a call "from the United States and Canada, the most important laboratories in the field, telling us this was a new virus."

"That was what led us to realize it wasn't a seasonal virus ... and take more serious preventative measures," Cordova said.

Asked why there were so many deaths in Mexico, and none so far among the 11 cases in the United States, Cordova noted that the U.S. cases involved children _ who haven't been among the fatal cases in Mexico, either.

"There are immune factors that are giving children some sort of defense, that is the only explanation we have," he said.

Another factor may be that some Mexican patients may have delayed seeking medical help too long, Cordova said.

Some Mexicans suspected the government had been less than forthcoming. "They always make a big deal about good things that happen, but they really try to hide anything bad," Mexico City paralegal Gilberto Martinez said.

Airports around the world were screening travelers from Mexico for flu symptoms. But containing the disease may not be an option.

"Anything that would be about containing it right now would purely be a political move," said Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota pandemic expert.

Scientists have warned for years about the potential for a pandemic from viruses that mix genetic material from humans and animals.

This swine flu and regular flu can have similar symptoms _ mostly fever, cough and sore throat, though some of the U.S. victims who recovered also experienced vomiting and diarrhea. But unlike with regular flu, humans don't have natural immunity to a virus that includes animal genes _ and new vaccines can take months to bring into use.

A "seed stock" genetically matched to the new swine flu virus has been created by the CDC, said Dr. Richard Besser, the agency's acting director. If the government decides vaccine production is necessary, manufacturers would need that stock to get started.

Mexican authorities did lay to rest one persistent doubt, after Mexican museum director Felipe Solis died this week, just days after accompanying U.S. President Barack Obama on a tour of National Anthropology Museum on April 16. Cordova said Solis had a pre-existing illness and died of pneumonia unrelated to influenza.

___

Associated Press Writers David Koop in Mexico City; Frank Jordans in Geneva; Mike Stobbe in Atlanta; Malcolm Ritter in New York; and Maria Cheng in London contributed to this report.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Of course Obama won't

Obama and his team brightened my day when they decried Wall Street bonuses. But then I realized, they were just empty episodes of name calling. Will they follow up with action? Probably not.

_________________
From Reuters:
Obama unlikely to toughen Wall St. pay rules

Sat Jan 31, 3:37 am ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration is not likely to impose tougher restrictions on executive pay on most firms receiving aid under the government's $700 billion financial rescue program, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.

Citing a source familiar with the administration's deliberations, the Post said officials are concerned that harsh limits could discourage some firms from asking for aid.

President Barack Obama and some members of Congress have strongly criticized recent bonuses given out to executives at Wall Street companies that received government assistance.

The issue of executive compensation is part of Obama's plan to rescue financial markets. While some details need to be hammered out, the strategy is likely to be laid out publicly in about a week, the paper said.

While relatively healthy firms are unlikely to face stiff restrictions on executive compensation, companies that need more dramatic government assistance would face more punitive terms under the plan, it said.

Under the original rescue program approved by Congress in October, executives at financial firms faced federal limits on their multimillion-dollar pay packages. But those restrictions are unlikely to significantly reduce executive pay, analysts say.

(Writing by Eric Beech; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

More OpenSecrets.org

Hey Obama, you're number one!
(Data taken from OpenSecrets.org at 9:15pm, Nov 12, 2008)

Finance/Insurance/Real Estate: Top Recipients
Top 20 Recipients
Rank Candidate Office Amount
1 Obama, Barack (D) Senate $27,866,622
2 McCain, John (R) Senate $25,177,854
3 Clinton, Hillary (D-NY) Senate $18,888,564
4 Romney, Mitt (R) $13,656,977
5 Giuliani, Rudolph W (R) $13,522,309
6 Dodd, Christopher J (D-CT) Senate $5,786,368
7 Richardson, Bill (D) $3,472,962
8 Coleman, Norm (R-MN) Senate $2,186,923
9 Edwards, John (D) $2,144,162
10 Thompson, Fred (R) $1,941,899
11 McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) Senate $1,863,004
12 Warner, Mark (D-VA) $1,729,151
13 Cornyn, John (R-TX) Senate $1,722,942
14 Biden, Joseph R Jr (D-DE) Senate $1,634,298
15 Baucus, Max (D-MT) Senate $1,496,165
16 Sununu, John E (R-NH) Senate $1,439,060
17 Paul, Ron (R-TX) House $1,341,072
18 Huckabee, Mike (R) $1,325,031
19 Rangel, Charles B (D-NY) House $1,291,044
20 Durbin, Dick (D-IL) Senate $1,255,620


For Auto manufacturing? Only number 4?
Maybe a bailout would get you to number one?

Automotive: Top Recipients
Top 20 Recipients
Rank Candidate Office Amount
1 McCain, John (R) Senate $1,011,998
2 Romney, Mitt (R) $469,930
3 Giuliani, Rudolph W (R) $369,666
4 Obama, Barack (D) Senate $349,550
5 Clinton, Hillary (D-NY) Senate $294,916
6 Knollenberg, Joe (R-MI) House $180,700
7 Levin, Carl (D-MI) Senate $162,849
8 Buchanan, Vernon (R-FL) House $156,920
9 Cornyn, John (R-TX) Senate $148,141
10 Graves, Sam (R-MO) House $134,900
11 McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) Senate $113,600
12 Thompson, Fred (R) $106,150
13 Coleman, Norm (R-MN) Senate $92,958
14 Bee, Timothy (R-AZ) $92,500
15 Huckabee, Mike (R) $88,900
16 Richardson, Bill (D) $87,300
17 Pryor, Mark (D-AR) Senate $74,200
18 Paul, Ron (R-TX) House $70,488
19 Dole, Elizabeth (R-NC) Senate $66,431
20 Baucus, Max (D-MT) Senate $64,850

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Palin says she might run for high office again

Quotes From the AP, my comments in italics:

WASILLA, Alaska (AP) — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says she wouldn't hesitate to run for the presidency in four years if it's God's will, even though she never thought Campaign 2008 would be "as brutal a ride as it turned out to be."

The US version of the Taliban: Christian fundamentalism. People who validate their behavior outside of themselves and their society via the idea of God. There is NO accountability for actions validated this way. "God told me to" (and its variant, "God's will") remains a terrifying sentence.

"I think the economic collapse had a heckuva lot more to do with the campaign's collapse than me personally," the governor said in an interview broadcast Tuesday on NBC's "Today" show.

She may be ambitious, but she is uneducated. "heckuva?" I'll bet she winked when she said it.

"I'm like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I'm like, don't let me miss the open door," Palin said in an interview with Fox News on Monday. "And if there is an open door in '12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plow through that door."

Why not, "like," just walk through the door? Maybe God will be ok with NOT "plowing" through it. The thought of someone like this even running, with a chance, is terrifying.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Rewards for corporate irresponsibility

Decades of economic (and environmental) irresponsibility and failure to look to a future where gasoline might not be affordable have helped along the collapse of the auto industry in the US, GM in particular. While making offensive and grossly decadent vehicles for the consumption of the American market (morbidly obese vehicles such as Hummers), they were not ready for a market that would turn on them. And now they want the government to pay for their irresponsibility. They (the auto corporations) don't want to be regulated by the government, but they want to be paid by them. This is all so incredibly abhorrent and absurd. Where would the money really go? They say it is about the workers, but it seems more about the bottomline for the bigs on top.

In 1979 when the government loaned money to Chrysler, it brought about the creation of SUVs and mini-vans. Let's hope this time would not be about dressing up old styles with 30 mpg, re-tooling to make "efficient" SUVs and vans, but about creating a new generation of vehicles that will truly have a low-impact on the environment.

You can read about it the proposed auto bailout in the Washington Post.