Fur Is Fucked

Fur Free Friday

Below is a partial vid of fur free friday. Jon Gosselin 2.0 enjoyed spuing random facts at us about how B2 doesn’t sell real fur (see ), claimed we were always at this B2 location (we’ve never been there before), and then threatened us with some bylaw ticket.

Prior correspondence with B2:

Shame on B2/Brown’s shoe company for selling dog fur from China!

B2 Shoes has 2 locations in Vancouver, 1112 Robson St (604-687-3383) and 650 W 41st Ave, (604-261-2071).  Recently they have brought in men’s and women’s winter jackets with HUGE raccoon dog trims on them.  The jackets can be viewed at this website, http://www.mackage.com/.

The jackets are actually labelled ASIATIC RACCOON, and in fact there is no such animal, if you google asiatic raccoon the first thing that comes up is RACCOON DOG, a species of canine from China.
Click here to view footage of a fur farm in China where raccoon dogs are having their skin removed when they are not even close to being dead, or even unconscious, http://www.peta.org/feat/chineseFurFarms/index.asp .

The company claims that the jackets are in fact raccoon (not that it matters to us which species it is), this is the answer we got:

“I have attached the letter that my supplier has written you explaining your concerns about the fur trims used on his garments.    Also attached are Chinese appraisal reports confirming that the furs used are in fact Raccoon and not dog.”

Click here: b2, to read B2 further try to defend themselves.

A Shocking Look Inside Chinese Fur Farms:

When undercover investigators made their way onto Chinese fur farms recently, they found that many animals are still alive and struggling desperately when workers flip them onto their backs or hang them up by their legs or tails to skin them. When workers begin to cut the skin and fur from an animal’s leg, the free limbs kick and writhe. Workers stomp on the necks and heads of animals who struggle too hard in order to make a clean cut. When the fur is finally peeled off over the animals’ heads, their naked, bloody bodies are thrown onto a pile of other animals. Some are still alive, breathing in ragged gasps and blinking slowly. Some of the animals’ hearts are still beating five to 10 minutes after they have been skinned. Before they are skinned alive, animals are pulled from their cages and thrown to the ground. Workers bludgeon them with metal rods or slam them onto hard surfaces, causing broken bones and convulsions but not always immediate death. Animals watch helplessly as workers make their way down the rows.

Undercover investigators from Swiss Animal Protection/EAST International recently toured fur farms in China’s Hebei Province, and it quickly became clear why outsiders are banned from visiting Chinese fur farms. There is no national animal welfare law in China, which means that farmers can house and slaughter animals however they see fit. These animals suffer miserable lives and excruciating deaths. The investigators found horrors beyond their worst fears and concluded, “Conditions on Chinese fur farms make a mockery of the most elementary animal welfare standards. In their lives and their unspeakable deaths, these animals have been denied even the simplest acts of kindness.”

Living Hell

On Chinese fur farms, foxes, minks, rabbits, and other animals pace and shiver in outdoor wire cages, exposed to driving rain, freezing nights, and scorching sun. Mother animals—who are driven insane from rough handling and intense confinement and have nowhere to hide while giving birth—often kill their babies after delivering litters. Diseases and injuries are widespread, and animals suffering from anxiety-induced psychosis chew on their own limbs and throw themselves repeatedly against the bars of their cages.

Is There a Skeleton in Your Closet?

The globalization of the fur trade has made it impossible to know where fur products come from. Animal skins move through international auction houses and are purchased and distributed to manufacturers around the world. Finished goods are often exported. Even if a fur garment’s label says that it was made in a European country, the animals were likely raised and slaughtered elsewhere—possibly on an unregulated Chinese fur farm.

Because fur’s origin can’t be traced, anyone who wears any fur at all shares the blame for the horrific conditions on Chinese fur farms. The only way to prevent such unimaginable cruelty is never to wear fur.

Fuel Goes Down

3 Years of Business, 6 Months of Campaigning,

How Many More Lobes of Foie Gras?

Fuel Restaurant, the location of many recent protests against foie gras, has decided to close, the owners to open a more casual eatery in its place.

Because of the economy?

Because they no longer wanted the negative publicity of being associated with animal cruelty?

We won’t know until their new menu comes out.

Not Fuel for Anyone's Soul

Robert Belcham, owner and chef, has threatened to keep the foie gras on the menu:

“Please do not waste your time trying to talk to these fanatical zealots,”  Belcham says of the animal rights activists. “They can’t even see past their own propaganda. No one tells me what to put on my menu except my customers. And I can tell you none of these self righteous, single minded drones have ever dined at Fuel. If you all want Foie at the new restaurant, you got it.”

What a guy. He calls those who stand up for those who have no voice self-righteous, while admitting that he’ll do anything for money. He calls video footage, facts, and decisions made by 15 countries worldwide “propaganda”. Open your eyes, Belch. These “fanatical zealots” are standing up against violence and cruelty.

And for the record, foie gras is not an issue you can be fanatical about. You either support it or you don’t. You empathize with the creatures, or you profit from their suffering. There is no grey area. There is no element of “belief” involved. Foie gras IS force feeding.

Robert Belcham

Here is Fuel’s official teary Oprah goodbye:

Dear Friends and Fans,

Our 3 year anniversary is fast approaching and we have truly enjoyed the time we have had taking care of you all.  Our ultimate goal is to see you all more often, and in order to achieve that, we have decided to make a significant change to our landscape here at Fuel.

Sunday November 29th will be our last service as Fuel Restaurant. We will close for two days and re-open for business on December 2nd as a neighborhood restaurant and bar specializing in Casual Northwest Cuisine. Our philosophy towards quality ingredients and impeccable service will remain paramount. We simply want to offer these things to you at a more affordable price.

As you are among our loyal customers, we invite you to come and visit Fuel Restaurant one last time. We would truly love to see you this month. The Whole Hog Menu is still available for booking on November 25th, 26th, and 27th and Fried Chicken Fridays will also be available for lunch until the end of November. From the bottom of our hearts, Robert, Ted, Katharine and I would also like to thank you so much for supporting us over the years.  We have truly enjoyed serving you and look forward to seeing you soon.

Tom Doughty

But why, if Fuel has been so successful, wouldn’t they keep their name and just change their menu?

Name changes are usually synonymous with changes of identity, and we hope that Fuel realizes it’s time to change theirs.

Outta Sight, Outta Mind

To What Extent Does our Capacity to Commit Violence Correlate with our Level of Evolution?

So all the chimpanzee attack news that’s been circulating since Charla Nash recently revealed her disfigured face on Oprah has me thinking. Primarily with empathy for Charla, trying to understand the level of superficiality our society operates on… a face the pass card to normal everyday human life, though there is still a person inside her. But it also shocked me that chimpazees, the smartest primates, and the animal arguably the most similar to humans, could be so… animalistic.  Travis, the chimpanzee who attacked Charla, starred in commercials when he was young. He ate at the dinner table, brushed his teeth, watched TV. He was almost human, in terms of what we deem human, but (possibly due to his Lyme disease, or the Xanax he’d been given for it), he freaked the fuck out and ripped Charla’s face off (I won’t go into detail), as well as all her fingers. One thumb was able to be sewn back on.

Travis

Upon reading this article, I researched if this was normal behavior for chimps, and it occasionally is. It’s not uncommon for males to lash out at other males in the wild, and typically they go for the face and the hands. I also discovered that they engage in what could be classified as cannibalistic behavior, eating bush babies and red colobus monkeys. For some reason, I had thought that chimpanzee were herbivores, so hearing that they not only ingested other animals, but closely related species, I now saw them more as rabid beasts. (Don’t even get me started on the wack, though functional, lesbian dominated, orgy-loving Bonobo chimpanzees… who, though disturbing, are herbivores, I should add. {To do with the female domination??})

But if we can look in disgust and fear at Travis’s horrific outburt, then should we also look at ourselves as a species who commits acts just as mutilating and devastating every single day in our various systems of animal agriculture. We are killers, too. The vast majority of human beings consume the flesh of animals, which inevitably involves killing (other animal products also require killing, but many don’t make this connection because we are distanced from the process). Though most of us don’t eat primates, we kill many, many more living things on a daily basis without batting an eye. Which is more terrifying? Doing the killing one’s self, or allowing it to be done out of sight so that we are completely removed from the process of slaughter? So that we never smell the blood, or watch the being suffer. Though this is a more shrouded violence, it is none the less violence that we are responsible for.  Whether you kill your wife, or have her killed, you are still the murderer. What’s more terrifying than a human being capable of committing violence, is realizing that we have become a society so detached from the everyday killing that keeps our society afloat, that we will not even admit to being killers.

Of course, you could look at this the other way and say: well, if the chimpanzees consume flesh and are capable of violence and they are the closest thing to humans, then it must be natural for humans to engage in similar behaviour. It is up to the individual to decide if the behavior of a chimpanzee is model behavior.

Pssst…

Did you know that WTC Building 7 was never included in the official 9-11 investigative report? It’s no secret… not anymore

To Whom it May Concern:

Please carefully consider that WTC 7 was not hit by an aircraft on 9-11, was not attacked by terrorists, and only small fires that were not spreading and were contained on only one side of the building on the 12th floor were observed, yet the entire 47 story tall concrete and steel skyscraper building “buckled” in the center, penthouse first, then came straight down very quickly in a mere 6.5 seconds at free fall, not impeded in any manner whatsoever by any of the numerous floors below, imploding from within precisely into it’s own footprints, the concrete pulverized and vaporized into toxic dust and powder, resulting in huge, billowing, pyroclastic clouds, and the massive steel core columns (18) cut and hurled horizontally, a truly perfect, classic example of a building brought down with deliberate purpose, and with a very high degree of advanced professional skills and substantial expert experience in a controlled fashion.

The Twin Towers also came straight down into their own footprints very quickly in less than 12 seconds each in a similar controlled fashion.

Most certainly a scientific investigation is called for to examine the scientific facts surrounding the probable implosion of WTC 7.

Please carefully consider that scientific facts once officially revealed to the nation can free the American people, their Congress, and their President, from the constant  fear and terror generated by and since 9-11.

*Stay tuned for an upcoming vlog series: Winterland, featuring Isla and, she doesn’t know it yet, but, CL, and many other wacky characters. The series will document winter life in the Siberian trailer park of Calgary, Alberta.

Phat Joke

No fat jokes intended. Only phat ones.

The Importance of Protein

Protein is essential to human health. Our bodies—hair, muscles, fingernails, and so on—are made up mostly of protein. As suggested by the differences between our muscles and our fingernails, not all proteins are alike. This is because differing combinations of any number of 20 amino acids may constitute a protein. In much the same way that the 26 letters of our alphabet serve to form millions of different words, the 20 amino acids serve to form different proteins.

Amino acids are a fundamental part of our diet. While half of the 20 can be manufactured by the human body, the other 10 cannot.1 These “essential amino acids” can easily be provided by a balanced vegan diet.

How Much Protein?

As babies, our mothers’ milk provided the protein we needed to grow healthy and strong. Once we start eating solid foods, non-animal sources can easily provide us with all the protein we need. Only 10 percent of the total calories consumed by the average human being need be in the form of protein.2

The Recommended Dietary Daily Allowance for both men and women is 0.8 grams of protein for every kilogram (2.2 pounds) of body weight.3 People with special needs (such as pregnant women) are advised to get a little more.

Vegans should not worry about getting enough protein; if you eat a reasonably varied diet and ingest sufficient calories, you will undoubtedly get enough protein. Protein deficiency, or “kwashiorkor,” is very rare in the U.S. and is usually diagnosed in people living in countries suffering from famine.4 By contrast, eating too much animal protein has been directly linked to the formation of kidney stones and has been associated with cancer of the colon and liver.5,6 By replacing animal protein with vegetable protein, you can improve your health while enjoying a wide variety of delicious foods.

Protein Sources

While just about every vegetarian food contains some protein, the soybean deserves special mention, for it contains all the essential amino acids and surpasses all other food plants in the amount of protein that it can deliver to the human system. In this regard, it is nearly equal to meat. The human body is able to digest 92 percent of the protein found in meat and 91 percent of that found in soybeans.7

The many different and delicious soy products (such as tempeh, soy “hot dogs” and “burgers,” Tofutti brand “ice cream,” soy milk, and tofu) available in health and grocery stores suggest that the soybean, in its many forms, can accommodate a wide range of tastes.

Other rich sources of non-animal protein include legumes, nuts, seeds, yeast, and freshwater algae. Although food yeasts (“nutritional yeast” and “brewer’s yeast”) do not lend themselves to forming the center of one’s diet, they are extremely nutritious additions to most menus (in soups, gravies, breads, casseroles, and dips). Most yeasts get about 50 percent of their calories from protein.8

Here are some examples of vegetarian foods with high sources of plant protein:

PROTEIN IN LEGUMES: Garbanzo beans, Kidney beans, Lentils, Lima beans, Navy beans, Soybeans, Split peas

PROTEIN IN GRAINS: Barley, Brown rice, Buckwheat, Millet, Oatmeal, Quinoa, Rye, Wheat germ, Wheat, hard red, Wild rice

VEGETABLE PROTEIN: Artichokes, Beets, Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Cucumbers, Eggplant, Green peas, Green pepper, Kale, Lettuce, Mushrooms, Mustard green, Onions, Potatoes, Spinach, Tomatoes, Turnip greens, Watercress, Yams, Zucchini

PROTEIN IN FRUITS: Apple, Banana, Cantaloupe, Grape, Grapefruit, Honeydew melon, Orange, Papaya, Peach, Pear, Pineapple, Strawberry, Tangerine, Watermelon.

PROTEIN IN NUTS AND SEEDS: Almonds, Cashews, Filberts, Hemp Seeds, Peanuts, Pumpkin seeds, Sesame seeds, Sunflower seeds, Walnuts (black)

One excellent ingredient to look for is hemp seed protein. Hemp seed is an nutritious dietary source of easily digestible gluten-free protein. It provides a well-balanced array of all the amino acids, including 34.6 grams of protein for each 100 grams. The fatty acid profile of the hemp seed is extremely beneficial, containing omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids in a virtually ideal ratio. Other beneficial aspects of hemp seed include a strongly favorable unsaturated-to-saturated fat ratio; a high content of antioxidants; and a wide variety of vitamins and minerals.

I Can’t Watch This

Can You?

The HSUS uncovers veal calf abuse as newborn babies are put to slaughter.

 

Carnivores and Herbivores Agree…

…Factory Farming is a Black Mark on the Human Soul

It would seem that at a very basic level, both meateaters and vegans agree that factory farming is not good for anyone. The churning out of animals as products hits a little too close to The Matrix for people, and even those who cherish their steak and burgers would prefer their dinner came from a happy farm – not a filthy, crowded Cowschwitz.

Whether it’s the development of widespread diseases such as H1N1, the chronic digestive problems caused by consuming animal products full of anti-biotics, the extreme impact that animal waste is having on our environment, or the massive amounts of fossil fuels generated by the animal industry, people of all diets are becoming critical of the current systems we have in place before even looking at the issue of animal suffering.

In Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book, “Eating Animals”, he writes from the perspective of a new father concerned about what he’s feeding his child. Initially a fiction writer, Foer decided to take on the “controversial” subject because the drive was in him to get the information not provided to us by the animal industry in circulation. The following article was written for CNN:

Eating Animals is Making Us Sick

Like most people, I’d given some thought to what meat actually is, but until I became a father and faced the prospect of having to make food choices on someone else’s behalf, there was no urgency to get to the bottom of things.

I’m a novelist and never had it in mind to write nonfiction. Frankly, I doubt I’ll ever do it again. But the subject of animal agriculture, at this moment, is something no one should ignore. As a writer, putting words on the page is how I pay attention.

If the way we raise animals for food isn’t the most important problem in the world right now, it’s arguably the No. 1 cause of global warming: The United Nations reports the livestock business generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined.

It’s the No. 1 cause of animal suffering, a decisive factor in the creation of zoonotic diseases like bird and swine flu, and the list goes on. It is the problem with the most deafening silence surrounding it.

Even the most political people, the most thoughtful and engaged, tend not to “go there.” And for good reason. Going there can be extremely uncomfortable. Food is not just what we put in our mouths to fill up; it is culture and identity. Reason plays some role in our decisions about food, but it’s rarely driving the car.

We need a better way to talk about eating animals, a way that doesn’t ignore or even just shruggingly accept things like habits, cravings, family and history but rather incorporates them into the conversation. The more they are allowed in, the more able we will be to follow our best instincts. And although there are many respectable ways to think about meat, there is not a person on Earth whose best instincts would lead him or her to factory farming.

My book, “Eating Animals,” addresses factory farming from numerous perspectives: animal welfare, the environment, the price paid by rural communities, the economic costs. In two essays, I will share some of what I’ve learned about how the way we raise animals for food affects human health.

What we eat and what we are

Why aren’t more people aware of, and angry about, the rates of avoidable food-borne illness? Perhaps it doesn’t seem obvious that something is amiss simply because anything that happens all the time — like meat, especially poultry, becoming infected by pathogens — tends to fade into the background.

Whatever the case, if you know what to look for, the pathogen problem comes into terrifying focus. For example, the next time a friend has a sudden “flu” — what folks sometimes misdescribe as “the stomach flu” — ask a few questions. Was your friend’s illness one of those “24-hour flus” that come and go quickly: retch or crap, then relief? The diagnosis isn’t quite so simple, but if the answer to this question is yes, your friend probably didn’t have the flu at all.

He or she was probably suffering from one of the 76 million cases of food-borne illness the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated happen in America each year. Your friend didn’t “catch a bug” so much as eat a bug. And in all likelihood, that bug was created by factory farming.

Beyond the sheer number of illnesses linked to factory farming, we know that factory farms are contributing to the growth of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens simply because these farms consume so many antimicrobials.

We have to go to a doctor to obtain antibiotics and other antimicrobials as a public-health measure to limit the number of such drugs being taken by humans. We accept this inconvenience because of its medical importance. Microbes eventually adapt to antimicrobials, and we want to make sure it is the truly sick who benefit from the finite number of uses any antimicrobial will have before the microbes learn how to survive it.

On a typical factory farm, drugs are fed to animals with every meal. In poultry factory farms, they almost have to be. It’s a perfect storm: The animals have been bred to such extremes that sickness is inevitable, and the living conditions promote illness.

Industry saw this problem from the beginning, but rather than accept less-productive animals, it compensated for the animals’ compromised immunity with drugs. As a result, farmed animals are fed antibiotics nontherapeutically: that is, before they get sick.

In the United States, about 3 million pounds of antibiotics are given to humans each year, but a whopping 17.8 million pounds are fed to livestock — at least, that is what the industry claims.

The Union of Concerned Scientists estimated that the industry underreported its antibiotic use by at least 40 percent.

The group calculated that 24.6 million pounds of antibiotics were fed to chickens, pigs and other farmed animals, counting only nontherapeutic uses. And that was in 2001. In other words, for every dose of antibiotics taken by a sick human, eight doses are given to a “healthy” animal.

The implications for creating drug-resistant pathogens are quite straightforward. Study after study has shown that antimicrobial resistance follows quickly on the heels of the introduction of new drugs on factory farms.

For example, in 1995, when the Food and Drug Administration approved fluoroquinolones — such as Cipro — for use in chickens against the protest of the Centers for Disease Control, the percentage of bacteria resistant to this powerful new class of antibiotics rose from almost zero to 18 percent by 2002.

A broader study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed an eightfold increase in antimicrobial resistance from 1992 to 1997 and linked this increase to the use of antimicrobials in farmed chickens. As far back as the late 1960s, scientists have warned against the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in farmed-animal feed.

Today, institutions as diverse as the American Medical Association; the Centers for Disease Control; the Institute of Medicine, a division of the National Academy of Sciences; and the World Health Organization have linked nontherapeutic antibiotic use on factory farms with increased antimicrobial resistance and called for a ban.

Still, the factory farm industry has effectively opposed such a ban in the United States. And, unsurprisingly, the limited bans in other countries are only a limited solution.

There is a glaring reason that the necessary total ban on nontherapeutic use of antibiotics hasn’t happened: The factory farm industry, allied with the pharmaceutical industry, has more power than public-health professionals.

What is the source of the industry’s immense power? We give it to them. We have chosen, unwittingly, to fund this industry on a massive scale by eating factory-farmed animal products. And we do so daily.

The same conditions that lead at least 76 million Americans to become ill from their food annually and that promote antimicrobial resistance also contribute to the risk of a pandemic.

At a remarkable 2004 conference, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) put their tremendous resources together to evaluate the available information on “emerging zoonotic diseases” or those spread by humans-to- animals and animals-to-humans.

At the time of the conference, H5N1 and SARS topped the list of feared emerging zoonotic diseases. Today, the H1N1 swine flu would be the pathogen enemy No. 1.

The scientists distinguished between “primary risk factors” for zoonotic diseases and mere “amplification risk factors,” which affect only the rate at which a disease spreads. Their examples of primary risk factors were “change to an agricultural production system or consumption patterns.” What particular agricultural and consumer changes did they have in mind?

First in a list of four main risk factors was “increasing demand for animal protein,” which is a way of saying that demand for meat, eggs, and dairy is a “primary factor” influencing emerging zoonotic diseases. This demand for animal products, the report continues, leads to “changes in farming practices.” Lest we have any confusion about the “changes” that are relevant, poultry factory farms are singled out.

Similar conclusions were reached by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, which brought together industry experts and experts from the WHO, OIE and USDA. Their 2005 report argued that a major impact of factory farming is “the rapid selection and amplification of pathogens that arise from a virulent ancestor (frequently by subtle mutation), thus there is increasing risk for disease entrance and/or dissemination.”

Breeding genetically uniform and sickness-prone birds in the overcrowded, stressful, feces-infested and artificially lit conditions of factory farms promotes the growth and mutation of pathogens. The “cost of increased efficiency,” the report concludes, is increased global risk for diseases. Our choice is simple: cheap chicken or our health.

Today, the factory farm-pandemic link couldn’t be more lucid. The primary ancestor of the recent H1N1 swine flu outbreak originated at a hog factory farm in America’s most hog-factory-rich state, North Carolina, and then quickly spread throughout the Americas.

It was in these factory farms that scientists saw, for the first time, viruses that combined genetic material from bird, pig and human viruses. Scientists at Columbia and Princeton Universities have actually been able to trace six of the eight genetic segments of the most feared virus in the world directly to U.S. factory farms.

Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science, that something terribly wrong is happening. We know that it cannot possibly be healthy to raise such grotesque animals in such grossly unnatural conditions. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film.

We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory — disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat, we live on tortured flesh. Increasingly, those sick animals are making us sick.

Coffee? Tea? Inside Job?

The Dead Know All Y’all

They said our plane crashed into the Pentagon. Flight 77 was a giant fucking  jet. Think it might have done a little more damage? Wingspan, people – wingspan!

That’s right y’all, they took us down mid-air. Not Nawaf al-Hazmi, Salem al-Hazmi, Majed Moqed, and Khalid al-Mihdhar, the American fucking government yo! I’m dead, so what are y’all going to do about it?

 

This Just In

Spooktacular

Wal*Mart Wishes You a “Haunting” Halloween

Contrary to the word on the street, Wal*Mart says they’ll take you down if you shoplift (granted it doesn’t lose them any significant amount of time or profits…)

So… if shoplifting is stealing, what is it called when you shut down main streets all over the continent and pay your employees minimum wage?

 

PS Shoplifting may not be a prank or a joke, but it is and will always be a thrill.

Anarchy is for Lovers

What Is the Opposite of Victim?

Anarchist

Anytime you start down that road of Poor Me, consider what part the profoundly sick society has played in your sorrow – dead end jobs, confining systems, souless workers, poisonous air, disconnected relationships, mindless obligation, destructive greed, etc. – and ask yourself: what would an anarchist do?

What I Forgot To Tell You

What Is The One Component Essential in Achieving Rebirth?

You Guessed It:

In order to begin anew, we must let the past die.

It is over. It cannot touch us.

However sometimes we’re holding onto the past so tightly that it must let go of us.

In order for new selves within our self to be born, we must allow other selves that do not serve us (eg. victim), to die. We are constantly new people. Every seven years the cells in our body fully regenerate. Aren’t you glad?

Second chances all around. Third chances. Fourth.

*Okay, Healing Week can be over now. But you never know when it might experience a rebirth… Watch your back.

Work Less = Wear Less?

Liberation BC supplied a human petting zoo to the Work Less Masquerade Party this year, offering consensual petting to an array of happy animals (unlike the scared animals who get fondled at your regular petting zoos – inaccurate examples of the rest of their kind, that’s for sure.)

The Work Less Party is basically what you might think: individuals who agree that we all need to chill the fuck out.

It’s our own anxiety and rushed stress that’s killing the planet and ourselves, so if we produce less, consume less, and take more time to enjoy what we love, the Earth’s natural balance can fall back into order.

However, the Work Less Party has a few secrets up their sleeve – scroll down to see.

Move over Brad and Angelina – we’ve got a new It Couple. Joanne helps spread Woody Harrelson’s milk message, and no, Glenn’s not an anemic scarecrow – look closer.

This looks like the cover of a Watchtower pamphlet. One day…

G-Rated Jenny, and Isla – representing Procter and Gamble’s many victims

R-Rated Jenny taking home a 1st place prize for best costume.

*Jenny is tame example of the nudity at the Masquerade. Conrad Schmidt himself donned a red military jacket with no pants. Prizes were offered to those who could get naked the fastest, there was a Spank Bank in the corner where spankings were being doled out, and on one table a naked lady was being somehow not set on fire as a man rubbed a flame over her body. Work Less  – Kink More.

Another stellar costume. He went as “Touch Sensitive” lighting up only when touched, but we affectionately referred to him as “Fork Face”

Who Done It?

How do you say… de-groovy, de-with-it, de-fine?

These handsome young men are somehow made more debonair by their mysteriousness. I need to get on lobbying some kind of Afghani law that makes men hide their faces in public…

The Genius’s Guide to SpellCasting

Spells Can Only Be Cast in a Magical World,

but Take Heart:

We Live in a Magical World…

In day-to-day life, we are bombarded with magic – to be more precise, with the surprise intersections of people feelings, and events sometimes called coincidences. We do not even notice the great majority of these, but life is absolutely overflowing with them. Life is also full or patterns, symmetry, foreshadowing, symbolism, irony, dramatic lighting, indispensable props, crucial characters, and moments of truth. One can shrug all these off as accidents, but in so doing one loses all the benefits to be gained from investing them with meaning. Deciding to view the world through a frame that accounts for magical developments makes aspects of life visible that would otherwise ‘not exist’, and prepares one to work in the medium they provide.

Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook

So What Spell Do You Choose to Cast..?

Revenge of the Dumpster

The dumpster is no longer just for diving.

First day of the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh…

Win Win

Good News Y’all – No Matter What You’ve Done,

You’ve Still Won!

How is this possible?

And how is it still Healing Week when the week is ova?

Well, it’s healing week because, like I said, the internet is a fantasyland that crosses all the boundaries of time.

Now for the harder question…

How is it possible that no matter how bad you fuck up, or have been fucked, you’re still on the right track??

The minute a problem arises, the solution for that problem also simultaneously comes into existence.

“Thoughts are like data programmed into a computer, registered on the screen of your life. If you don’t like what you see up on the screen, there’s no point in going up to the screen and trying to erase it.  Thought is cause; experience is effect. If you don’t like the effects in your life, you have to change the nature of your thinking.”

So on the most basic level, the events of our lives may hold emotional charge, but it is us who has the power to interpret situations and transform them.

“Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. They reflect a shift in how we think, releasing the power of correction to the mind to the process of healing and correction. A miracle is not a rearrangement of figures in our dream – it is an awakening from the dream.

Old Newtonian physics claimed that things have an objective reality separate from our perception of them. Quantum physics, and particularly Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, reveal that, as our perception of an object changes, the object itself literally changes.”

Marianne Williamson

So what does it matter then whether we start out optimally, or we transform shit into the optimal? With miraculous thinking (surrendering our judgemet of an unpleasant situation and being open to viewing the situation through a new perspective), we can always flip it. Sound easy? Well, miracles aren’t meant to be difficult, that’s why they’re called miracles.

Step One: We Can Have Lots of Fun

…by Helping Others to Heal Ourselves

With the heartless systems in place in our world, it’s no surprise that we nurse a constant unnamed pain in our hearts.

In order to heal from the inside out, we can all take a moment to question the food we eat and the products we buy, and acknowledge who suffered in their making.

Happy Healing Week

It’s Healing Week on Dawn of A New Era

…because I decided it is because the internet is a fantasyland ~booya~

…and because Misery Loves Company.

We all have our crosses to bear. Or do we? *Snap* Some people just seem so frickin’ happy all the time. Well okay, we may not all have our crosses to bear, but I certainly do.

Dawn of a New Rebecca Dawn

Summer Love

You know it, you’ve mourned it…

Rising hip hop star, Rebecca Dawn, sings and rhymes about the sweet sadness of lost love in “Summer Love.”

Now here is an It Girl who can do no wrong. Well, we’re sure she’s done some wrong at some point, like the rest of us…

Rebecca Dawn lives Campeche, Mexico where she is currently saving the rainforest and conquering academia.

Cuteness of the Nth Degree

Move Over Kate Gosselin – We’ve Got A New Mother of the Year

An 8-year-old Rhodesian Ridgeback, Katjinga, took a liking to Paulinchen, a little pot-bellied piglet after she was abandoned by her family in Germany. Katjinga’s owners breed a pair of Vietnamese pigs and rescued the runt of the litter after seeing she had been rejected by her parents and the rest of her litter.

Property developer, Roland, found the weak and struggling piglet after she was abandoned by the rest of her family one evening after she was born. “The pigs run wild on our land and the sow had given birth to a litter of five in our forest.
“I found Paulinchen all alone and when I lifted her up she was really cold.”

Katjinga had puppies of her own 10 months ago so her owners thought she might take on the responsibility to care for little Paulinchen the Pig and sure enough the two are now inseparable. Katjinga even started nursing again for the little piggy!

“I felt sure some local foxes would have taken the little pig that very night so I took it into my house and gave her to Katjinga. She had just finished with a litter of her own, who are now 10 months, so I thought there was a chance she might take on the duties of looking after her. Katjinga is the best mother you can imagine. She immediately fell in love with the piggy. Straight away she started to clean it like it was one of her own puppies.”

“Days later she started lactating again and giving milk for the piggy. She obviously regards it now as her own baby.”

This is all so very Lambert…

Fuel Commits Assault

On Saturday evening, September 20, 2009, Chef Robert Belcham and another male chef made physical contact with two female activists. While chalking the sidewalk – a legal act on public property – Robert Belcham dumped an entire bucket of freezing water on a female activist, then proceeded to bodycheck her, while another male chef overtook a female activist half his size by grabbing her wrists and trying to take her chalk. This behavior is illegal. It is assault. And if it happens again, charges will be pressed.

Violence breeds violence.

When the cops arrived the next evening ready to conduct an “investigation” about the incident, they refused to proceed when the female activist pointed out her assaulter. Does this sound like an effective investigation?

Below is a video leading up to the assault. Next time we’ll have it on tape for you.

But no assault compares to a lifetime of this:

Poison for the Soul

“Suffice it to say it is difficult for me to eat factory raised pork because I can always smell the rotting piss when I eat it.”

Robert Belcham

This is why he finds it difficult to eat factory raised pork. Not because of the squalid living conditions endured by the animals.

This week, Robert Belcham chose to serve suckling pig stuffed with foie gras diseased liver for a $100 plate dinner.

A suckling pig is a newborn pig who has only been nursed on her mother’s milk and is slaughtered between 2 and 6 weeks old.

Yes, Belcham has shoved foie gras up her ass. And yes, that's a garbage bag sitting on the food prep surface.

“Because there are no handling facilities for such small animals, these piglets are left in chicken crates overnight on the cement landing at the yards of the abattoir. Even in the dead of winter, these tiny animals are left without food, water or warmth, squealing for hours for comfort from a mother that will never come. At such a tender age, piglets are not yet capable of regulating their own body temperature and will suffer in the cold. Such a long time for a newborn to be without liquids, its a wonder they make it to slaughter.”

Torn away from her mother and slaughtered alone, she cries tears of her own innards out of the empty sockets of her eyes.

The “food” that Fuel serves is not “Fuel From the Earth, Fuel for the Soul”. It is not natural to slaughter a baby, and it is not natural to shove 16-inch steel pipes down the throats of ducks to fatten their livers to ten times the size (but then Belcham clearly over-feeds himself so perhaps he is not aware that over-eating is not natural…) (low blow….! Shrug.) Robert Belcham talks about supporting the local farming community, yet he ships in his foie gras from Quebec. Hypocrite much?

LUCID DrEaMiNg!

8 Techniques to Wake Up in Your Dreams

I’ve been practising lucid dreaming now for awhile and finally was able to trigger myself out of a dream with the technique of screaming: Lucid Dreaming! to remind myself that I was in a world of my own creation. I was able to fly (which in my dreams is more like the swimming levels in Mario World…), but then I fell back into the dream and got sidetracked on some plotline of telling people I was from the future (hence the flying)…

How can we take lucid dreaming to the next level and learn the secrets of the dream world?

The experience of being in a lucid dream clearly demonstrates the astonishing fact that the world we see is a construct of our minds. This concept, so elusive when sought in waking life, is the cornerstone of spiritual teachings. It forces us to look beyond everyday experience and ask, "If this is not real, what is?"

In order to acquire that “rush” of knowing that we are dreaming (how nice would it be to have this option in real life…), to break the loop of reoccurring nightmares, and to re-map our neural pathways, here are some tricks for reaching a state of lucidity:

1. Dream Recall: write down your dreams as soon as you wake up in the morning. Not only are they educational to access the catacombs of your mind, but when you become familiar with their patterns it becomes easier to recognize them while you are dreaming.
2. Reality Testing: carry a piece of text with you in your waking life and read it from time to time. Read the text intermittently to test that you are in “reality”. If you are dreaming, chances are the text will change when you look twice at it.
3. Fly: visualize yourself flying or doing something that you would like to do in your next lucid dream.
4. Scream: practice saying the words: Lucid Dreaming! to yourself throughout the day. Or, yell them in your car for scream therapy. This will remind you to say them in your dream – a cue to remind yourself you’re dreaming.
   
5. Set the Intention: before bed, intend to wake up in your dream. Say to yourself: “tonight, I will wake up in my dream” and repeat it like a mantra.
6. Wake Up: lucid dreaming is more prone to occur during naps and other sleep interruptions (like puking!), so set the alarm (I have an ocean waves alarm so the wake up isn’t so rough) if you want to break on through to the other side.
7. Relax: once you wake up in the dream be like a poker player with a winning hand. Too much excitement will wake you up.
   
8. Spin: once you’re lucid, the motion of spinning (like a kid trying to get dizzy) can re-stimulate the dream into action if your realistic mind starts to buzz-kill the dream.
   

Oswiecim

These Little Piggies Didn’t Get to Go Home

Unlike Allister, these pigs never had a home and are most likely leaving the factory farm they’ve suffered in their entire lives to be crammed inside a truck (sometimes without food or water for up to 3 or 4 days), and left at the slaughter house.

I watched these pigs for a moment on the Highway 1 struggling for space in this crammed truck bed on the way to their deaths, then pressed an “Even if You Like Meat…” pamphlet against the window as I passed. But we are all so deeply embedded in the chain, aren’t we? From the truck drivers who need to pay their bills, to those of us veggies who come up a little short on rent and end up serving chicken at a wedding banquet… And if you speak up too loudly about the violence, you just might lose your job.

But the consumer choices we make on a daily basis do matter. So do the letters we send, the demos we attend, the alternatives to old patterns we dream up, and the information we share.

Tempeh Bacon

Tempeh Bacon Recipe

• 3 Tbs. Bragg’s liquid aminos or soy sauce
• 1/3 cup apple cider
• 1 tsp. tomato paste
• 1/4 tsp. liquid smoke
• 1 8-ounce package tempeh
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 Tbs. peanut oil or vegetable oil

1. To make the marinade combine the soy sauce, cider, tomato paste and liquid smoke in a wide, shallow bowl or pan and mix with a fork until the tomato paste is fully dissolved.
2. Cut the tempeh into thin strips (less than 1/4 inch thick) lengthwise. You should be able to get about 12 strips. Rub the strips with the crushed garlic, then toss the garlic cloves into the marinade. Submerge the tempeh strips in the marinade and let sit, for at least an hour and up to overnight. After marinating, discard the garlic.
3. Heat the oil in an 11 or 12 inch skillet over medium heat. Add the tempeh strips and cook for 4 minutes on one side; the bottom should be nicely browned. Flip the strips over and pour the remainder of the marinade over them. If there isn’t much marinade left add a splash of water. Cover and let cook for 3 more minutes, or until the liquid is absorbed. Uncover and check for doneness; if necessary keep cooking uncovered until all sides are nicely browned. Remove from heat and serve.
   

   

   Once intended for Polish Jewish inmates, P is now for pig.

An Open Letter to Perez Hilton on 9/11

On the eve of the 8th “anniversary” of 9/11, Perez Hilton posted this on his blog:

Charlie Sheen Must Be Bored, Yaps Away About 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

Talk about vying for attention!

Charlie Sheen has written an open letter to President Barack Obama asking him to reopen the investigation about 9/11. Charlie is convinced that “the official story behind 9/11 is a fraud” and by pulling this stunt just a few short days before the eighth anniversary, we can only imagine he is attempting to get some other crackpots to jump on the bandwagon. In his letter to the President, Charlie claims that “9/11 has been the pretext for the systematic dismantling of our Constitution and Bill of Rights.” Charlie also believes the “Bush/Cheney regime” and the CIA orchestrated 9/11 as a ploy to invade Iraq.

Let it go, Charlie. Concentrate on your career, something you can control and will get paid to talk crazy for.

Before I begin this letter let’s get two things straight:

1. I’m by no means a Charlie Sheen fan past Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
2. I read Perez Hilton for the following reasons:
a) to spin any celebrity stories related to animal rights, and
b) the pink crack factor. Credit where credit is due, when one feels like turning off one’s brain for a moment, Perez
somehow has the best sources in the biz, combined with an apt for narrative commentary (although his own
self-promotion tends to taint his “opinions”).

Dear Perez:

The official story behind 9/11 is a fraud.

This can be proved with the simple fact that Building 7, the third building to collapse during the terrorist attacks controlled demolition, was NOT EVEN MENTIONED  in the official 9/11 commission report. Not to mention that this investigation was not conducted by an independent party outside the government. If this does not raise a red flag for you – that a 47 story building that collapsed to dust due to several small fires was so callously left out of this supposedly meticulous report – then what in Britney’s nipple tassles could?

Damage to the other surrounding WTC buildings was much worse, and yet they did not magically disintegrate in 6.5 seconds (a textbook controlled demolition speed) as Building 7 did. Building 7 is the first steel-beamed building to collapse due to fire EVER in history. Not only this, but firefighters and news crews predicted this collapse (..?)  What pretense did these individuals have for this revelatory prediction when Building 7 was the first ever of its kind to collapse?

In this open letter, I will only ask you to meditate on the scam of Building 7, although there are buildings and buildings more evidence regarding 9/11 that are worth re-examining.

To fully honor those who perished in 9/11, their families, and those of us who still reside on this planet, what is so crazy about re-questioning the incongruous information gathered to explain the events of 9/11? We all have the right to our opinions, but more importantly, we have a duty to research those opinions before deciding upon them, and if we are afraid to question conclusions that we have arrived at – this is the true indicator that those conclusions cannot hold steady in the face of evolving truth. Millions of people now believe that the government had minimal to full implications in the 9/11 attacks, with a larger percentage of the population growing every day as new information surfaces, and as engineers and  architects help us to understand the nature of controlled demolition. The true definition of a “conspiracy” is that of a ploy orchestrated by a small group of people. Does a small group of military-trained men with no access to the WTC fit the bill? Or does a think-tank with a skeleton key, mass warfare, and a financial greed that has already attacked most corners of the world fit the bill?

It may have taken us a while, but now is the time to re-question why these events occurred. We are still at war, we are still at the mercy of terrorist-labeling governments, and we are still targets for further economic ammunition.

So maybe, Perez, you should concentrate on your stating-the-obvious career and get back to calling the whory ‘whory’ and the unpretty ‘unpretty’, something you can control and will get paid to talk crazy about.

Pissed-offedly,

Isla Kay, and all those who support a new investigation into 9/11

The following presentation is a collaboration of scientific findings presented by The Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth

…Worth 2 Hours of Your Life!