Archive for the ‘Companies & Projects’ Category

Wow. Finally a study clearly proves that organic food is (shockingly) more nutritious.

Did we really need a study to tell us that removing pesticides, rotating crops and taking care of the earth from which our food comes makes for better food? Really.

From Newsweek: “The colonel was furious. “Can you believe it? They actually drew their weapons on U.S. soldiers.” He was describing a 2006 car accident, in which an SUV full of Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee on a street in Baghdad’s Green Zone. The colonel, who was involved in a follow-up investigation and spoke on the condition he not be named, said the Blackwater guards disarmed the U.S. Army soldiers and made them lie on the ground at gunpoint until they could disentangle the SUV. His account was confirmed by the head of another private security company.”

How on earth are these guys still allowed to operate in Iraq? I mean really. What are we going to find out next, that they were behind 9/11 too? After all, they sure have made an erm, killing, off it!

This, I Believe: Why I am a Vegan.

I have gradually come to firmly believe that the “why” is often more important than the “what” or “how”. Whether in business or personal matters, I try to make it a point of living my life with real intent. It is no accident that I chose to both eat a strictly vegan diet and run my bicycle touring company as a vegan one – something that is hardly good for one’s bottom line given that the majority of our potential clients aren’t vegan!

Reading “A Language Older than Words” (Derrick Jensen) forced me to really evaluate and confront my own views on why I choose to eat strictly vegan and mostly organic. I firmy believe in treading as lightly as possible on the earth.

The reality is that death is as much part of life as life is part of death. What is true and real is that everything in life is very cyclical, a circle where death gives way to life and life gives way to death as part of the Universal of life. To say that eating vegan minimizes death is simply a false argument — but it is very true that eating vegan does minimize unnecessary suffering.

I am vegan because I choose to live lightly upon the Earth and one of the most responsible, most significant things I can do on my own level (next to choosing not to have kids) to minimize my impact. From a sustainability perspective, a local, organic, healthy, vegan diet is without a doubt the most sustainable diet.

Eating meat causes unnecessary, untold suffering, much of that unnecessary suffering caused not by the meat eating itself, but the evil (and I do not use that word lightly) factory farming system we’ve come to depend upon which distances us from the source of our food, and the process of taking life, required to source that food.

The reality is that eating is inherently requiring taking life of some other source of life, whether plan or animal. But I still need not cause unnecessary suffering in order to meet my basic needs.

The simple reality is I choose to live consciously. I choose to eat consciously — and doing so begins with being very conscious of the source of my food. I do not want to eat I would not feel comfortable killing myself, and I am not comfortable killing anything that has a face and more important that which has the full capacity and awareness of truly feeling pain.

My committment is simple — I will not eat anything the life of which I am not comfortable with taking — that, which will suffer in the process of me doing so. It is really that simple. I do not want my life to cause unnecessary suffering — and eating meat is simply unnecessary. Same goes for dairy — never mind how unhealthy it is.

I don’t wish to “use” living beings. I want to have a relationship with the world around me. I want to know where my food comes from, and I want to know that in the creation of that food suffering was minimized. An apple will not suffer by being pulled from the tree, but a chicken will definitely feel it’s throat being cut.

“The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptable of official policy, but a love of one’s country deep enough to call her to a higher standard.” -George McGovern

“It is true that polls repeatedly show that large numbers of Americans reject evolution, but this reveals the weakness of our educational system, not the weakness of evolutionary science. Polls have also repeatedly shown that large numbers of Americans cannot locate countries like Spain on a map; this does not mean that the location of Spain is in doubt’
-Prof. Panko’s letter to the Daily

Wow

I guess the FBI has decided that it wasn’t enough to spy, it was time to drive some more fear by openly telling people they are spying. Go figure.

Relativity, LA Times Style (http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/relativity.html)
Alison Weir (Also in Electronic Intifada and CounterPunch) – Friday, February 25, 2005, 9:30 p.m.

Well, I just got hung up on again. This time by an editor on the Los Angeles Times foreign desk. He didn’t give me his name.

I had called and attempted, as politely as possible, to give him a correction for the story on the Times’ website tonight. This will probably be their front-page lead news story tomorrow morning.

The trouble is, their headline and lead paragraph are just plain wrong. And now, of course, they’ll stay wrong in the paper tomorrow.

The headline proclaims: “Palestinian Suicide bomber Shatters Calm of late.” The lead sentence then goes on to state that this bomber “shattered a months-long period of relative calm…”

The fact is, however, that the truce and this “calm” were shattered long before this. The last suicide bombing against Israeli civilians was Nov. 1, 2004. It took three Israeli lives. Since that time, while Israelis have basked in “relative calm,” 170 Palestinian men, women, and children have been killed.
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Ward Churchill — Press Release — Monday, January 31, 2005

In the last few days there has been widespread and grossly inaccurate media coverage concerning my analysis of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, coverage that has resulted in defamation of my character and threats against my life. What I actually said has been lost, indeed turned into the opposite of itself, and I hope the following facts will be reported at least to the same extent that the fabrications have been.

The piece circulating on the internet was developed into a book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens. Most of the book is a detailed chronology of U.S. military interventions since 1776 and U.S. violations of international law since World War II. My point is that we cannot allow the U.S. government, acting in our name, to engage in massive violations of international law and fundamental human rights and not expect to reap the consequences.

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Wow. This is one beautiful document… about freaking time.

Resolution on University of Wisconsin Investments and Social Responsibility
Adopted by UW-Platteville Faculty Senate, January 25th, 2005

WHEREAS, American principles, values, and traditions emphasize the right of the individual to basic freedoms without regard to ethnic origin or religious affiliation and support the protection and extension of these freedoms to all peoples around the globe, and where the systematic denial of these freedoms prompted the University of Wisconsin System to take action by divesting its holdings in Apartheid era South Africa, in accordance with investment policy 78-1;
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Condi’s bizarre justification/dismissal of the problems in Iraq in her Senate hearings today:

“So far I have not seen the Iraqis or for that matter the Afghans make compromises as bad as the one in 1789 that declared my ancestors to be three-fifths of a man.”

Umm…. okay. Apparently as long as modern oppression isn’t exactly the same as good old fashioned slavery, everything’s peachy.