Animal cruelty and family violence making the connection
EXCERPT:

Pets are part of the family in the majority of American households, where nearly three-quarters of families with school-age children have at least one companion animal. These animals are often treated like members of the family, but if the family is experiencing violence they can become targets as well. Pets are often an important source of comfort and stability to the victims of abuse, particularly children. But abusive family members may threaten, injure, or kill pets, often as a way of threatening or controlling others in the family.

SWINE FLU WAS MAN MADE IN A USA LABORATORY WITH FBI DOCUMENT

Animal abuse causes recall youtube

Bear Baying in South Carolina w/video


HSUS investigators recently attended several bear baiting (also known as bear baying) events in South Carolina. What they found will shock you.

In each event, a captive bear—claws and many teeth cut down or removed—is tethered in an arena. Team after team of dogs is released into the arena to bark at, jump on, and bite the frightened, defenseless bear for hours at a time. These events are billed as training exercises for hounds but are nothing more than public spectacles.

Please sign the petition asking the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources to prohibit bear baiting (which they call bear baying) and revoke the permits for people who torment bears so cruelly.

» South Carolina residents: your DNR needs to hear from you especially!

Your messageStop cruel bear baying

To: S.C. Department of Natural Resources

The undersigned ask the state of South Carolina to end the barbaric practice of bear baying. Captive bears, with claws and many teeth cut down or removed, should not be used as live bait for dogs in a cruel spectacle for human entertainment.

We ask that you 1) revoke possession permits from anyone who uses bears in these cruel spectacles, and 2) inspect all captive bears to ensure they are not used for bear baying.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your Address]
[City, State ZIP]

The Meatrix interactive (Teach and Learn)

Meet your meat video

Pig farm horrors exposed youtube

Cattle Abuse video and text (video doesn't work)
February 19, 2008
Recall Recoil
It was President's Day yesterday. But from my perspective, it was also a day of false assurances.

See the undercover video that led to the recall.
Arguably the top story across the country for the last two days has been the nation's largest ever recall of beef, prompted by The HSUS’s long-term undercover investigation at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Co. in Chino, Calif. A hidden camera investigation at the plant exposed downed dairy cows being struck with paddles, extensively prodded with electric shocks to the eyes and other highly sensitive areas, rammed with forklifts, and abused in other deplorable ways in order to get these animals to stand. The poor cows were bellowing in response to these assaults, but their cries generated not a hint of mercy from their abusers. They wanted to squeeze every last dime out of these ailing dairy cows, and they were ruthless in subjecting these creatures to an astonishing array of tools of torment.

The HSUS has been telling the story to America, with me and several other spokespersons appearing on many of the major media outlets. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association have been offering their own perspectives and also talking to the American people. There's no denying the cruelty, and spokespersons from the federal government and the Cattlemen's Association concur that the inhumane treatment of these “spent” dairy cows was unacceptable. Good for them, and let's hope that the USDA continues with a vigorous investigation and has more news for us. We at The HSUS are particularly pleased that the new Agriculture Secretary called in the USDA's Office of Inspector General—the agency's semi-independent law enforcement arm—to investigate, since it has been a powerful and positive force on a number of animal protection issues.

But what I can't agree with are the claims by the USDA and the Cattlemen's Association that this plant represents an isolated case and all else is well with the regulation of slaughter plants in America. In an interview with PBS yesterday, the USDA's Kenneth Petersen said the incident is "an aberration," while a Cattlemen's Association representative told the Associated Press that most cattle bound for slaughter are treated humanely and the documented abuse is "something we don't condone and don't tolerate."

Now, I presume that if the Cattlemen's Association knew about the abuses at the Chino plant, it would have spoken up about it. Right? But the leaders of the group didn't speak out, so we must assume they had no knowledge of what was occurring.

If they did not know what was happening at that plant, they probably also don't know what's happening at the 900 other cattle slaughter plants in the United States. Their statement that this is an isolated case is a statement of faith, not fact.

The USDA has been trotting out the same line of argument. But let's concede two related points: First, the abuses at the Chino plant would not have come to light without the undercover operation by The HSUS. And second, these abuses occurred, as U.S. Rep. George Miller told USA Today, "right under the USDA's nose." In fact, the USDA honored this company as its 2004-05 Supplier of the Year to the National School Lunch Program.


If the USDA could not see abuses occurring at a plant where it had its full force of inspectors, how can it assure us that these terrible abuses are not happening elsewhere?

What we do know is that in the limited number of slaughter plant investigations conducted by The HSUS, PETA, Farm Sanctuary, Humane Farming Association, Compassion Over Killing, Mercy for Animals, and other animal protection groups, we see time and again that there have been gross abuses. PETA found workers slamming chickens against the walls of a slaughter plant. Other groups found animals being dismembered alive.

In 2006, the USDA’s own Office of Inspector General found that downers were getting into the food supply. In one case in Iowa, a USDA inquiry found that inspectors were sleeping and playing computer games on the job, while cows were being abused. This past week, Tyson fired several plant employees who were implicated in a chicken abuse scandal. Are these all also isolated incidents?

So let's leave the false assurances aside. We'd be grateful just to have the federal government do its job, and for the Cattlemen's Association and other industry groups to hold its colleagues to a basic standard of decency and begin to police its ranks. Their spin may make a few people dizzy, but I find it hollow and entirely unconvincing.


Obsolete Americans and their dead dream
EXCERPT:
Paula Hay - Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Yes I know I said light posting for the next couple of weeks, but two articles have crossed my path which bear attention.

The first is an article from a couple weeks ago at Salon: Are The American People Obsolete? The author makes a compelling case that the elites have broken the social contract between themselves and the rest of us, and that they no longer need us:

Have the American people outlived their usefulness to the rich minority in the United States? A number of trends suggest that the answer may be yes.

In every industrial democracy since the end of World War II, there has been a social contract between the few and the many. In return for receiving a disproportionate amount of the gains from economic growth in a capitalist economy, the rich paid a disproportionate percentage of the taxes needed for public goods and a safety net for the majority.

In North America and Europe, the economic elite agreed to this bargain because they needed ordinary people as consumers and soldiers. Without mass consumption, the factories in which the rich invested would grind to a halt. Without universal conscription in the world wars, and selective conscription during the Cold War, the U.S. and its allies might have failed to defeat totalitarian empires that would have created a world order hostile to a market economy.

Globalization has eliminated the first reason for the rich to continue supporting this bargain at the nation-state level, while the privatization of the military threatens the other rationale.

The offshoring of industrial production means that many American investors and corporate managers no longer need an American workforce in order to prosper. They can enjoy their stream of profits from factories in China while shutting down factories in the U.S. And if Chinese workers have the impertinence to demand higher wages, American corporations can find low-wage labor in other countries.

This marks a historic change in the relationship between capital and labor in the U.S. The robber barons of the late 19th century generally lived near the American working class and could be threatened by strikes and frightened by the prospect of revolution. But rioting Chinese workers are not going to burn down New York City or march on the Hamptons.

What about markets? Many U.S. multinationals that have transferred production to other countries continue to depend on an American mass market. But that, too, may be changing. American consumers are tapped out, and as long as they are paying down their debts from the bubble years, private household demand for goods and services will grow slowly at best in the United States. In the long run, the fastest-growing consumer markets, like the fastest-growing labor markets, may be found in China, India and other developing countries.

This, too, marks a dramatic change. As bad as they were, the robber barons depended on the continental U.S. market for their incomes. The financier J.P. Morgan was not so much an international banker as a kind of industrial capitalist, organizing American industrial corporations that depended on predominantly domestic markets. He didn't make most of his money from investing in other countries.

In contrast, many of the highest-paid individuals on Wall Street have grown rich through activities that have little or no connection with the American economy. They can flourish even if the U.S. declines, as long as they can tap into growth in other regions of the world.

. . .

If much of America's investor class no longer needs Americans either as workers or consumers, elite Americans might still depend on ordinary Americans to protect them, by serving in the military or police forces. Increasingly, however, America's professional army is being supplemented by contractors — that is, mercenaries. And the elite press periodically publishes proposals to sell citizenship to foreigners who serve as soldiers in an American Foreign Legion. It is probably only a matter of time before some earnest pundit proposes to replace American police officers with foreign guest-worker mercenaries as well.

Offshoring and immigration, then, are severing the link between the fate of most Americans and the fate of the American rich. A member of the elite can make money from factories in China that sell to consumers in India, while relying entirely or almost entirely on immigrant servants at one of several homes around the country. With a foreign workforce for the corporations policed by brutal autocracies and non-voting immigrant servants in the U.S., the only thing missing is a non-voting immigrant mercenary army, whose legions can be deployed in foreign wars without creating grieving parents, widows and children who vote in American elections.

If the American rich increasingly do not depend for their wealth on American workers and American consumers or for their safety on American soldiers or police officers, then it is hardly surprising that so many of them should be so hostile to paying taxes to support the infrastructure and the social programs that help the majority of the American people. The rich don't need the rest anymore.