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tagged w/ Morality
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Interview with Meredith Alexander: Olympics sustainability "tzar" who resigned over DOW sponsorship
Last week, the London Olympics were wrapped in fresh embarassment and controversy as Mayor Boris Johnson’s ‘ethics Tzar’ resigned live on BBC Newsnight over fears that her ethics and sustainability concerns with regards to sponsors simply weren’t being listened to. In an interview with Jeremy Paxman she announced that her position at the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 (CSL) was no longer tenable in light of the LOCOG’s continued relationship with and defence of the Dow Chemical Company.
The moment: Meredith Alexander appears live on the BBC's Newsnight with Jeremy Paxman to announce her resignation from the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012
“By coming on air tonight, I’m taking the decision to resign my position and stand up for my principles… I feel that I was part of a body that has been used to legitimize Dow’s involvement in the games.” Dow took over Union Carbide Corporation in 2001, but neither company have addressed the ongoing issue of water and soil contamination in Bhopal that continues to kill thousands and afflict even more with chronic illnesses.
Coverage of the ongoing Bhopal tragedy, and the controversy over Dow and London 2012, went through the roof and Meredith acquired overnight celebrity status in India. Her resignation live on British television resulted in an outpouring of hope, gratitude and optimism from those still living in Union Carbide and Dow’s toxic shadow.
This week, the Bhopal Medical Appeal caught up with Ms. Alexander for a chat…
BMA: What were the main reasons for your resignation from the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 (CSL) ?
MA: All the evidence I have read has convinced me that Dow Chemicals is responsible for the deaths of more than 20,000 people in the aftermath of the Bhopal gas leak. The assets and liabilities of the company involved at the time – Union Carbide – are in Dow’s hands. Londoners, and other people, who are rightly excited about the London games, should not have this toxic legacy on their conscience.
BMA: At what point did your position became “untenable” and why?
MA: The tipping point for me, was the correspondence between Amnesty International and Lord Coe [Chair of LOCOG]. The latest response from Amnesty, just last week, pointed out how LOCOG have become apologists for Dow, falsely legitimising Dow’s stance that it bears no responsibility to the victims of the disaster and their families. I feel that the Olympic bodies are supporting Dow’s line and have failed to take the victim’s views into consideration.
BMA: Last week, Sebastian Shakespeare published a controversial column in the London Evening Standard with the bold headline “The Olympics should be no place for ethics.” Have you read it, and if so, what did you think?
MA: I have read it. And I actually submitted a letter to the editor yesterday about it. I think most Londoners share my view that ethics and sport can and must go hand in hand. Yet as things stand, the enjoyment of the Games risks being hampered by the toxic legacy of one of the sponsors: Dow Chemicals. When London bid to host the 2012 Games, we made a promise to the world that it would be most sustainable Games ever. [Read Meredith's whole letter to the ES newspaper here.]
BMA: Based on your resignation, can you further tell us why you think that ethics, morality, and sustainability are an important part of the Olympics? Why shouldn’t we just accept that commercial sponsorship is inevitable and ‘get over it.’
MA: I think it’s important to remember that there was absolutely no need for the London 2012 organisers to award anyone the contract for this wrap. It’s a completely optional item that is not essential to the design of the stadium. It will not help a single athlete run faster nor will it help spectators have a better view. Dow’s connection to the Olympics is a slap in the face to the victims of Bhopal, but the fact that this wrap is unnecessary makes this particular deal even more galling for those who have spent decades fighting for justice.
More of the interview at the linkLast week, the London Olympics were wrapped in fresh embarassment and controversy as... more-
- JanforGore
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- 6 days ago
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Dead Cow Walking: The Case Against Born-Again Carnivorism
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The Atlantic
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Dead Cow Walking: The Case Against Born-Again Carnivorism
By Marc Bekoff
Dec 27 2011, 8:53 AM ET 614
Pigs, chickens, and other animals raised for food are sentient beings with rich emotional lives. They feel everything from joy to grief.
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"Eating Animals," by Nicolette Hahn Niman, a livestock rancher, with help from deer hunter Tovar Cerulli and butcher Joshua Applestone, caught my eye because, at first, I thought this essay was authored by Jonathan Safran Foer, who wrote a best-selling book with the same title. While Niman and her friends do rightly argue against consuming factory-farmed animals -- who live utterly horrible lives from the time that they're born to the time that they're transported to slaughterhouses and barbarically killed -- these three born-again carnivores, all former vegetarians or vegans, now proudly eat animals and think that it's just fine to do so. They gloss over the fact that even if the animals they eat are "humanely" raised and slaughtered, an arguable claim, they're still taking a life. These animals are merely a means to an end: a tasty meal.
The defensive and apologetic tone of this essay also caught my eye, as did the conveniently utilitarian framework of the argument. The animals they eat were raised simply to become meals because Niman and others choose to eat meat. I like to say that whom we choose to eat is a moral question, and just because these three now choose to eat animals doesn't mean that other people should make the same choice. Note that I wrote "whom" we eat, not "what." Cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals raised for food are sentient beings who have rich emotional lives. They can feel everything from sheer joy to deep grief. They can also suffer enduring pain and misery, and they don't deserve to have the good and happy lives provided by Niman and others ended early just so that their flesh can wind up on what really is a platter of death.
Wolves, lions, and cougars are not moral agents and can't be held accountable for their actions. But most humans know what they're doing and are responsible for their choices.
Cows, for example, are very intelligent. They worry over what they don't understand and have been shown to experience "eureka" moments when they solve a puzzle, such as when they figure out how to open a particularly difficult gate. Cows communicate by staring, and it's likely that we don't fully understand their very subtle forms of communication. They also form close and enduring relationships with family members and friends and don't like to have their families and social networks disrupted. Chickens are also emotional beings, and detailed scientific research has shown that they empathize with the pain of other chickens.
Raising happy animals just so that they can be killed is really an egregious double cross. The "raise them, love them, and then kill them" line of reasoning doesn't have a meaningful ring of compassion. And this isn't mercy killing (euthanasia) performed because these animals need to be put out of their pain. No, these healthy and happy animals are slaughtered, and if you dare to look into their eyes, you know that they're suffering. If you wouldn't treat a dog like this, then you shouldn't treat a cow, a pig, or any other animal in this way.
As a field biologist who studies animal behavior, I feel that the authors' appeal to what happens in the natural world -- "life feeds on life" -- is an illogical justification for their food choices. I've seen thousands of predatory encounters. I cringe when I see them, but I would never interfere. Wild predators, unlike us, have no choice about whom or what they eat. They couldn't survive if they didn't eat other animals. And indeed, many animals are vegetarians, including non-human primates, who eat other animals only on very rare occasions.
Jessica Pierce and I wrote about how appeals to nature are misleading and illogical in our book Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals. We argued that wolves, lions, and cougars, for example, are not moral agents and can't be held accountable for their actions. They don't know right from wrong. On the other hand, most humans do know what they're doing and are responsible for their choices. When it comes down to whose flesh winds up in our mouths, we can make choices, and in my view, eating animals is wrong and unnecessary, even when they are "humanely" raised and slaughtered. Let me add a caveat here because, as a world traveler, I do know that many people do not have the luxury of making a choice about their meals and must eat whatever is available to them. However, those who do have that luxury can easily eat an animal-free diet. And we can work to show others that a vegetarian or vegan diet can be very economical and healthy.
Niman and her friends also note that vegetarian and vegan diets have "never really taken hold." So what? This hardly means that we shouldn't try to do the right thing. They write, "The vast majority of Americans who do try vegetarianism or veganism -- about three-quarters of them -- return to eating meat. Rather than urging people to consume only plants, doesn't it make more sense to encourage them to eat an omnivorous diet that is healthy, ethical, and ecologically sound?" No, it doesn't. What it means is that these people should try harder and not give up just because it might seem difficult to change their meal plans. Perhaps they just need more time and encouragement from other vegetarians who can show them how easy it is to stop eating animals.
It's easy to add more compassion to the world and to expand our compassion footprint. Excuses such as "Oh, I know they suffer, but don't tell me because I love my burger" add cruelty to the world, even if the animals people are eating weren't raised on factory farms and killed in slaughterhouses. You're eating a dead animal who really did care about what happened to him or her. When I ask people how they can dismiss the fact that an animal was killed for their pleasure, they usually fumble here and there and offer no meaningful answer. When I ask them if they'd eat a dog, they look at me with incredulity and emphatically say, "No!" When I ask them why they wouldn't eat a dog, they can't really tell me, offering statements laden with dismissive phrases, such as "Oh, you know...." Because I often travel to China to help in the rehabilitation of Asiatic moon bears who have been rescued from the bear-bile industry, people sometimes ask me, "How can you go there? Isn't that where they eat dogs and cats?" I simply say, "Yes, it is, and I'm from America, where they eat cows and pigs, who are no less sentient and emotional beings." Animals really are very much like us.
No matter how humanely raised they are, the lives of animals raised for food can be cashed out simply as "dead cow/pig/chicken walking." Whom we choose to eat is a matter of life and death. I think of the animals' manifesto as "Leave us alone. Don't bring us into the world if you're just going to kill us to satisfy your tastes."
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Image: Kurt De Bruyn
.. The Atlantic . Dead Cow Walking: The Case Against Born-Again Carnivorism... more-
- EthicalVegan
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Who Says Science has Nothing to Say About Morality?
The difference between Facts and Fiction...-
- BRAVATRAVELS
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- 1 month ago
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CO2: turning the knob on climate
CO2 is termed the Earth's biggest control knob. It hadn't been until now, because a knob implies something that someone can turn to control things. In a normal, natural world and on relatively short timescales, say tens of thousands of years, carbon dioxide is interlocked with global mean temperature and other variables. Temperatures can drive carbon dioxide levels up or down, which in turn drive temperatures further up or down.
Carbon dioxide acts as a feedback that enhances temperature changes.
This is most obvious during the transitions between glacial and interglacial periods, when temperatures rise or drop and CO2 seems to follow along like a happy puppy. What is not obvious when looking at the readings is that while orbital forcings cause the initial change in temperatures, and CO2 levels rise or fall in accordance with that initial change, the subsequent temperatures themselves also rise and fall in accordance with the changing CO2 levels.
The basic formula behind a glacial termination is that something (orbital forcings) starts the increase in temperature. Actually, what really starts it is a change in the length and severity of northern hemisphere summers, without changing the overall amount of radiation reaching the planet at all. That stays fairly constant.
These seasonal changes in turn cause the ice sheets covering the northern hemisphere land masses to begin to melt. This reflects less sunlight back into space, and that really does change the amount of energy that the planet receives from the sun, which leads to warming. It also results in the release of methane, another powerful greenhouse gas, which warms the planet even further.
Then CO2 kicks in. The oceans warm. Warmer water cannot hold as much dissolved carbon dioxide and so the oceans release some CO2 into the atmosphere. CO2 in the atmosphere causes warming. The increased warming causes the ice sheets to retreat further, and the oceans to warm further, and more CO2 to be released.
This continues, but with limits. There is (or had been) only so much CO2 that could make its way into the atmosphere. The system only pushes this cycle so far. The many previous glacial terminations in the past 2.5 million years (a period known as the Pleistocene Epoch) have seen lows of about 180 ppm of CO2, and highs between 250 ppm and 300 ppm.
The main point is that temperatures and CO2 are interlocked, or at least had been until now. Temperature changes had to get the ball rolling, so on a graph they will lead the way, but the two work in concert. One is not pulling a leash to drag the other along. They each push and pull the other, working their way from low to high, or high to low, as an integrated system.
CO2 does not "lag" temperature. That's a simplistic, inaccurate and indiscriminate view of a complex interaction.
Turning the Knob
Unfortunately, contrary to recent natural history, man has learned how to remove the regulator and to dial up a far higher level of CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 has become the climate's biggest control knob in the last two centuries or so, in the sense that it is in fact a control that mankind can twist, turn, tweak and, sadly, overdo.
A glacial termination happens on very, very long timescales relative to man. What we have done in the past two centuries, however, applies a change to CO2 levels — implying an equivalent change in climate — that would otherwise take nature 10 to 12 thousand years.
CO2 was once interlocked with temperature. In the past 200 years we have instead taken 337 gigatonnes of carbon out of the ground and injected it into the atmosphere and the oceans. Nature spent the better part of several hundred million years converting that carbon into new forms (coal, oil, gas) and sequestering it deep under the surface of the earth.
Man will be able to undo in 200 years what took nature hundreds of millions of years to accomplish, and in so doing, in that same time frame, we are duplicating a feat that normally takes nature 10,000 years to accomplish (i.e. increasing atmospheric CO2 levels by two thirds).
And, as an important point, we have no idea if we are capable of duplicating nature's feat of again sequestering that carbon underground. We have far too easily turned the knob in one direction, but with no capacity whatsoever to turn it in the other.
More at the linkCO2 is termed the Earth's biggest control knob. It hadn't been until now,... more-
- JanforGore
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- 1 month ago
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The View On The Streets: ethical shopping & fair trade
In the run-up to Christmas, many charities are encouraging us to shop ethically. By making moral choices about what you put in your shopping trolley, these charities say, you will not only have a guilt-free shopping experience but you will be helping millions to escape the worst excesses of poverty. But what exactly are these ethical principles which underlie the fair trade label and what do we really know about it? In this revealing report, we ask the public if they buy into fair trade and the response is a mixed bag. Many base their purchasing decisions on price and need and plenty of people who know the score in the developing world see it as far from fair.In the run-up to Christmas, many charities are encouraging us to shop ethically. By... more-
- worldwrite
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President Obama: say NO to the Keystone XL pipeline
We need more than sound bytes in an election year. Now, I am really not too hopeful considering that BP will once again be allowed to drill in the Gulf and Shell is going to be allowed to drill the Arctic. So while this action alone even if it isn't approved won't actually stop the tarsands, or stop BP, or stop Shell, or stop Chevron, it will stop a catastrophe waiting to happen to our water, agriculture, climate balance and health. And President Obama, I don't really think you have any other choice. You need to make the right one, and not because it is close to an election year, but because you meant what you said in 2007 when you were running the first time. Actions speak louder than words.
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/11/04/361628/keystone-xl-pipeline-ad/We need more than sound bytes in an election year. Now, I am really not too hopeful... more-
- JanforGore
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- 3 months ago
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Developing countries doing more to check emissions than rich ones: report
New Delhi: Developing countries have pledged greater levels of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions than the rich nations despite the developed world being responsible for a large part of the historical emissions.
This conclusion by the Stockholm Environment Institute has stirred debate about how far India would now be willing to go with the US and Europe lagging behind on substantial actions to prevent climate change but asking for greater commitments from the developing world.
"There is broad agreement that developing country pledges amount to more mitigation than developed country pledges," a report by the institute said.
Countries provided these pledges under the Copenhagen Accord with developing countries such as India pledging to take actions to reduce emissions voluntarily despite not being required to do so under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The SEI report is based on four detailed studies from different reputed institutions including UNEP and McKinsey and Company.
The four independent studies used different parameters and assumptions to bring the different kinds of pledges into a comparable format and all four came to the same conclusion though the difference between promised goals of the rich and developing countries varied.
The authors of the SEI report concluded that unless the UN accounting system shut the loopholes, the rich countries would be able to meet their pledges "with very little actual mitigation, and possibly with none at all".
It also noted that the rich countries had not decoupled their consumption patterns from emissions but rather they had shifted many of those emissions to developing countries. In other words, the fossil-fuel driven consumption levels of the rich countries have not reduced over time and the actions taken by them to reduce emissions have been only those which brought net-benefit to their economies.
The report said the developed countries held three-quarters of the world's GDP and were responsible for 75% of the historical emissions. "It seems self-evident that the developed world should take responsibility for much more mitigation effort than the developing world, and that this effort must have both a domestic and an international dimension," it said.
"The developed world must raise their level of ambition to the levels demanded by science and equity. And, of course, they must fulfill those ambitions through actual mitigation, not through accounting loopholes," it added.
The report noted that even after the rich countries agreed to do so, it would still require actions by the developing world to prevent dangerous climate change.New Delhi: Developing countries have pledged greater levels of reduction of greenhouse... more-
- JanforGore
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- 3 months ago
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The ethical dimension of tackling climate change
The global challenge of climate change poses a perfect moral storm — by failing to take action to rein in carbon emissions, the current generation is spreading the costs of its behavior far into the future. Why should people in the future pay to clean up our mess?
by stephen gardiner
Sometimes the best way to make progress on a problem is to get clearer on what that problem is. Arguably, the biggest issue facing humanity at the moment is the looming global environmental crisis. Here, the problem is not that we are unaware that trouble is coming. After all, the basic science is both well known and continually being reiterated in major national and international reports. Rather, the core problem is that thus far effective action seems beyond us. We seem at best paralyzed, and at worst indifferent. Put starkly, there seems little place within our grand institutions and busy lives for what may turn out to be the defining issue of our generation.
Why? In my view, at the heart of the matter is the fact that humanity is in the grip of a profound ethical challenge that our current institutions and theories are ill-equipped to meet.
Sebastian Junger’s book The Perfect Storm tells the story of a fishing boat caught at sea during the rare convergence of three independently powerful storms. Similarly, the global crisis of climate change brings together three major challenges to ethical action — and in a mutually reinforcing way. It is genuinely global, profoundly intergenerational, and occurs in a setting where we lack robust theory and institutions to guide us. Neglect of this perfect moral storm leads us to underestimate the climate problem and fail to appreciate the wider implications in predictable ways.
Conventional wisdom identifies climate change as primarily a global problem. Wherever they originate, emissions of the main greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide) quickly become mixed in the atmosphere, affecting climate Those least responsible for past emissions are likely to suffer the most serious impacts.everywhere. According to the standard analysis, this makes climate change a traditional “tragedy of the commons,” played out between nation states that represent the interests of their citizens in perpetuity. In Garrett Hardin’s tragedy, each herdsman prefers the collective outcome where none over-consume — so that the commons is not overburdened. Nevertheless, when acting individually each prefers to over-consume himself, no matter what the others do — with ruinous results for all.
In climate change, we are often told, states reason in the same way. Each prefers the collective outcome where none over-consume with carbon emissions — so that dangerous climate change is avoided. Yet, when acting individually, each prefers to over-consume, no matter what the others do — so overconsumption is rife. In both cases, then, we are led to an outcome that no one wants, and which is severe enough to seem tragic.
Unfortunately, this traditional model is at best dangerously incomplete. To begin with, it ignores one central spatial aspect of the climate problem. Those least responsible for past emissions are likely to suffer the most serious impacts (at least in the short- to medium-term). This is partly because the poorer nations are disproportionately located in more climate-sensitive regions, but it is also because, being poor, they lack the resources available to the rich to address negative impacts. Since it ignores this basic problem of fairness, the traditional model underestimates the nature of the relevant “tragedy.”
Even more importantly, the traditional model obscures the temporal aspect of the perfect moral storm. Once emitted, a substantial proportion of climate emissions typically remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, and some persist for tens — even hundreds — of thousands. This means that the current generation takes benefits now, but spreads the costs of its behavior far into the future.
Worse, many of these benefits are comparatively modest (e.g., those of bigger and more powerful vehicles), and many of the projected costs are severe, even catastrophic (e.g., severe flooding and famine). Worse still, the problem is iterated: The same temptation to take modest benefits now even Most victims of climate change cannot hold us to account, being very poor, not yet born, or nonhuman.in the face of severe costs to the future is repeated for subsequent generations as they come to hold the reins of power. Hence, there are cumulative impacts further in the future. Worst of all, such impacts may eventually provoke the equivalent of an intergenerational arms race. Perhaps some future generations will face such appalling environmental conditions that they are entitled to emit more in self-defense, even foreseeing that this behavior makes matters even worse for their successors. And so it goes on.
The third storm exacerbates the situation. Climate change brings together many areas in which our best theories are far from robust, such as intergenerational ethics, global justice, scientific uncertainty, and humanity’s relationship to nature. The problem here is not that we do not have any guidance at all. For example, the idea that imposing catastrophe on the future for the sake of our own modest benefits is not a defensible way to behave is a relatively secure basic ethical intuition. Rather, the problem is that it is difficult to move beyond those basic intuitions to deal with the details, and we are too easily distracted by counterarguments, especially from theories that have merits in other contexts, but fail to take the future seriously enough.
For example, some influential economists claim the current generation is justified in moving slowly on climate change because future people will be richer due to economic growth, and so should pay more. But are we entitled to assume that the future will be richer even in a climate catastrophe? And even if they are, why should they pay to clean up our mess?
More at the link
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The decisions we all make now have an effect on future generations. To leave this world this way for future generations is a moral crime.The environmental debt we leave our children is even more heinous a crime than the economic debt we leave them. I will never understand the mindset of the quick fix.
http://cugh.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/climate-change.jpgThe global challenge of climate change poses a perfect moral storm — by failing... more-
- JanforGore
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- 4 months ago
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As a candidate Obama stated GMOs should be labelled: time to speak up now as president
Four years ago Obama stated that GMOs need to be labelled because people have the right to know what they are eating. Since then as president however, nothing has happened and this has not even been mentioned.To the contrary, nothing but Monsanto insiders have been appointed by him with Monsanto and other bio.ag companies getting preferential treatment with no regulation of their products and no consumer disclosure. With more information coming out about the health dangers of GMOS and the reality of environmental/economic effects, it is imperative that Obama speak out on this as president when it matters most.
At the link you can tell Obama that GMOs need to be labelled now. It is time to stand up to the companies that use loopholes and vague references such as "substantial equivalence" to gain profit from these unnecessary untested organisms that threaten our health and environment.
I personally want to see them banned but until we can get momentum on that, labelling is the essential first step.Four years ago Obama stated that GMOs need to be labelled because people have the... more-
- JanforGore
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The Colorado River: Running Near Empty
Photographer Peter McBride traveled along the Colorado River from its source high in the Rocky Mountains to its historic mouth at the Sea of Cortez. In this Yale Environment 360 video, he follows the natural course of the Colorado by raft, on foot, and overhead in a small plane, telling the story of a river whose water is siphoned off at every turn, leaving it high and dry 80 miles from the sea.
In the video, McBride, a Colorado native, documents how increasing water demands have transformed the river that is the lifeblood for an arid Southwest.Photographer Peter McBride traveled along the Colorado River from its source high in... more-
- JanforGore
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- 5 months ago
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PETA starts a porn site, no joke!
I get that PETA objects to humans exploiting animals. But aren't women animals too? A cow, a chick, bunny or a bitch. Pick the name you call your nearest and dearest.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8772592/Animal-rights-group-PETA-to-launch-pornography-website.htmlI get that PETA objects to humans exploiting animals. But aren't women animals... more-
- EH_CBunny
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- 5 months ago
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Defend America. Defend the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2011/09/defend-america-defend-the-foreign-corrupt-practices-act.html
Last Friday several anti-corruption and oversight watchdog groups pushed back on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's campaign to undermine the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which for more than three decades has served as a deterrent to bribery.
We at POGO wrote a letter to lawmakers opposing the Chamber’s proposals to weaken the FCPA, which include:
* removing liability for subsidiaries that bribe;
* allowing mergers to provide immunity for past bribery;
* creating exceptions for companies that have a “compliance program;”
* requiring not only intention to bribe, but that it also be a “willful” act; and
* narrowing the definition of a “foreign official.”
At a briefing in the Capitol building on Friday sponsored by the Open Society Policy Center, Transparency International, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and other groups, a panel of experts discussed the fallacy of these proposed amendments, with the overall conclusion being that they would make it easier to get away with bribery. Harvard professor of law David Kennedy and Northeastern international law professor Dan Danielson, authors of Busting Bribery, a lengthy report on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s attempts to weaken the FCPA, argued that all of the Chamber’s proposed amendments would simply serve to limit corporate liability for bribery.
Perhaps the most egregious example of this is the Chamber’s proposal to add a “willfulness” requirement to the FCPA, wherein it would have to be shown not only that a company was guilty of bribery, but that they also knew they were violating the FCPA. Ignorance of the law is no excuse for violating it even for the most innocuous offenses (as anyone given a parking ticket can attest)—so why should it be an excuse for bribery? The law professors' report notes that this proposal “looks much more like a license to commit pervasive and intentional bribery than a modest attempt to eliminate the risk of prosecutorial over-reach.”
Pervasive bribery is not just morally and ethically wrong—it’s bad for business. As the “Busting Bribery” report notes:
Widespread corruption abroad imposes enormous costs on American business, damages the global business environment and undermines the integrity and effectiveness of governments. A culture of corruption raises the costs of penetrating foreign markets and undermines predictability and business confidence. It imposes particular hardships on small and medium sized American enterprises seeking to participate in the global economy. Fighting these obstacles to American business has required a long-term commitment by the U.S. government and by American companies to change the climate for global commercial activity and the culture of business-government relations in countries across the world.
In this economic climate, we cannot afford to undermine the ability of small- and medium-sized American businesses to compete in foreign markets. Allowing the largest corporations with the greatest resources available to bribe undermines the spirit of entrepreneurship. This crony capitalism is bad for business, investors, and consumers.
The FCPA is an invaluable tool in U.S. foreign policy that exports to the world the ideals of equal opportunity and free enterprise this country was founded upon. As Bennett Freeman, head of Calvert Asset Management’s Sustainability Research Department noted at the briefing, there would be a grave hypocrisy if we were to roll back our landmark anti-corruption law while we are promoting anti-corruption abroad. Today, President Obama will launch the Open Government Partnership, an international initiative with dozens of other countries designed to encourage governments to become more open and fight corruption. Now is not the time economically or politically to weaken the FCPA.
Ben Freeman is POGO’s National Security Fellow.http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2011/09/defend-america-defend-the-foreign-corrupt-prac... more-
- dliebelson
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- 5 months ago
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A Hell of a Way to Rally People to Your Cause
One man's immorality is another man's religion, even if the immorality of that religion is pointed out by atheists. The same is true for atheists and what they believe. People are what they are, sometimes inconsistent, narrow-minded, and disagreeable. But, there's the message and then there's the way you deliver the message.One man's immorality is another man's religion, even if the immorality of... more-
- omnipotentpoobah
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24 Hours of Reality: Earth definitely in the balance
This past Wednesday and Thursday there was an event that took place that once again reiterated the urgency of a crisis that scientists have been warning us about for the last five plus decades. 24 Hours of Reality started at 8pm EST culminating in 23 subsequent hours from around the world in relaying to the over 8 million viewers the urgency of a crisis that warranted our attention all of those years ago. And I personally think it succeeded in doing just that. While in my own personal opinion I think some of the presenters could have been a bit more passionate about the information, it nevertheless was an effective tool in showing the reality of the consequences of the human forcings upon our natural processes that are now pushing this planet to a tipping point. Although, some complained of the monotony of the same presentation over and over and over again and I can also see that point. It actually might have been better to do a documentary on the effects of climate change globally with us actually seeing testimonials from people experiencing its effects (like the Inuit in Alaska) then have Al with the help of the scientists tie it all together along with the information on the well funded denier movement and a special segment on solutions and their availability to us right now. However, I still think the point was made.
There is definitely a need to remove the doubt which has been paid for by entities such as the Marshall Institute which was also instrumental in sowing seeds of doubt about missile defense, acid rain, effects of smoking and now seeds of doubt regarding the established and settled science behind global warming. And the established science that was discussed by the scientists on the panels put together for this event that spoke the facts about a world on the precipice regarding food, water and humanity, but with solutions that can still be implemented and are being implemented by the most unlikely among us were also informative.
A boy in Malawi who made a windmill out of old bicycle parts and other materials that wound up serving the needs of his community. The rise of solar in places like Sierra Leone and Kenya, as well as the international shift towards renewable energy even here in the US where wind energy has soared made the message clear: This is not a political issue, but a human one. Our ability to survive the effects of what we have now brought upon ourselves is indeed in the balance in the greatest test of the human spirit.
In watching this these were the messages: that this transcends politics and all of the other stigmatisms placed on the human condition. That we now must finally see that it matters not where you live, or your culture, or your beliefs, or your color, or your biases because this is a real crisis that calls upon our moral courage as citizens of this planet to make it right as best we can now possibly do. And that finally we must bring out into the light of day those who have been slinking in the darkness doing all they could to keep this truth from being believed for what it is and thus delaying action on a crisis of our environment and conscience that now sees our work made even harder.
These are messages we must take to heart, and to our pens, and our modems, and our voices, and our votes. There is no contestation of these facts. Every national scientific academy in the world agrees that this is happening and that we humans are primarily responsible for these shifts and changes by our actions. Every scientific institution whose scientists publish in the peer reviewed journals agrees that this is happening and is primarily driven by human activity.
The Earth revolves around the sun, gravity keeps you grounded and CO2 traps heat. And when more of it goes into our atmosphere than is within the natural envelope that keeps our temperature comfortable for our existence and the balance of our ecosystems, it traps more of the sun's infrared rays thus warming the lower atmosphere and raising temperature. This combines with other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere such as water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, land usage, deforestation etc. and it amplifies the effects of the forcings upon the atmosphere resulting in patterns that lead us to water evaporation, droughts, sea level rise, glacier melt, floods, storms, as well as species invasion, extinction and the spread of diseases. And the more we continue to treat the atmosphere as an open sewer the more we amplify these effects now to the point where we have actually managed to oversaturate the hydrologic cycle which explains in part the severity and frequency of the global events that we have experienced costing us lives, agriculture, water quality, economies and biodiversity.
The atmosphere like our water is a public trust, a public commons if you will. Not to be used as a dumping ground at the whim of those who have the money to do so. We all need to be able to breathe the air and be confident that we and other species will all be assured equality in the quality of our air, water and other life sustaining resources. However, this is not happening presently and it needs to be addressed now.
And for me the one man who has been able to articulate this message in the way it needs to be articulated is Al Gore. For over thirty years he has been out here telling us about the findings of scientists like Roger Revelle, Charles Keeling and the world we would find ourselves in if we did not heed these findings and warnings. It was why he decided to seek public office all those years ago hoping that once this was seen it would be of primary importance. And here a bit over thrity years later here we are still at that fork in the road.
Only now, it is not just some faraway scenario of the future that we can afford to place at the bottom of the pile. It is a present danger to our continued existence because it is not just a rainstorm here and there or a heatwave every once in a while. It is about the total shifting of the patterns of the climate system that sustains our ability to feed ourselves, house ourselves and provide for our sustenance. It is about our morality, our humanity and our ability to come together without seeing the labels that have to this point restricted our humanity. It is about providing a cleaner healthier environment for us and for those to come in order to preserve that climate system and the other systems that depend on it as we do.
But as we all know, certain interests with their money and political ties have been working overtime to keep their status quo at any cost and work to smear anyone who dares challenge it, but challenge it we must if we are to have a future. And this is just one reason why I love this man so much. His unwavering passion, perseverence and courage to do what is right in the face of what seems like insurmountable odds and hatefilled rancor. It is truly a testamount to a man who has transcended it because he sees the higher purpose to it. This is what we all must strive for. For this is not an illusion, it is reality. A reality of our making and a reality we can make even better in seeing at last our true purpose on this planet.
This is my comment which can be found here:
http://progressivesforgore.blogspot.com/2011/09/earth-definitely-in-balance.html
Videos of the event can be seen on the Climate Reality Project site since it seems they are not allowing sharing outside of the site.This past Wednesday and Thursday there was an event that took place that once again... more-
- JanforGore
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- 5 months ago
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from EX TIMES: The War on SIN: Educating parents about the LGBT agenda
They just want to 'keep GOD's people informed' about: There is an unprecedented attack on morals coming from the school.
Particularly in the area of sexuality, so-called public morality has moved outside of the realm of life-and-family-affirming principles to such an extent that a veritable anti-morality is being fed to our children. And this year there is a concerted effort to restrict parents from countering the efforts of the school to promote this anti-morality.
http://tinyurl.com/3znelflThey just want to 'keep GOD's people informed' about: There is an... more-
- LOrion
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- 5 months ago
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TVO.ORG | Video | The Agenda - Patricia Churchland: Neuromorality
Talk on the neurobiological basis of morality.-
- mollymew
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- 6 months ago
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Deportation is Inhumane
The National Day Labor Organizing Network tries "TO IMPROVE THE LIVES OF DAY LABORERS IN THE UNITED STATES. NDLON UNIFIES AND STRENGTHENS ITS MEMBER ORGANIZATIONS TO BE MORE STRATEGIC AND EFFECTIVE IN THEIR EFFORTS TO DEVELOP LEADERSHIP, MOBILIZE DAY LABORERS IN ORDER TO PROTECT AND EXPAND THEIR CIVIL, LABOR AND HUMAN RIGHTS."
http://ndlon.org/
Families are torn apart when immigration officials take parents away from their children. We in the U.S. benefit from day labor in the inexpensive produce we all eat to stay healthy. Is it too much to ask that the people who put food on our tables be treated like human beings?The National Day Labor Organizing Network tries "TO IMPROVE THE LIVES OF DAY... more-
- Progresshiv
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- 6 months ago
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Gallup poll: Americans want all or most abortions illegal
I won't be offering any opinions, I just find this poll rather interesting.
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By a 24 percent margin, 61-37 percent, Americans take the pro-life view that abortions should either be legal under no circumstances or legal only under a few circumstances. Although Gallup doesn’t specify those “few” circumstances, polling data has consistently shown that, when asked about cases such as rape, incest, or the life of the mother, a majority of Americans want all or almost all abortions made illegal — leaving only life of the mother or rape and incest as the exceptions.
“Americans are rather conservative in their stance on abortion, with 61% now preferring that abortion be legal in only a few circumstances or no circumstances. By contrast, 37% want abortion legal in all or most circumstances,” Gallup analyst Lydia Saad writes. “Over the past two decades, Americans have consistently leaned toward believing abortion should be legal in only a few or no circumstances, although less so in the mid-1990s than since about 1997, when combined support for these has averaged close to 60%.”I won't be offering any opinions, I just find this poll rather interesting.... more-
- maasanova
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- 9 months ago
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Robin Hood Tax: “Morally Right”
Robin Hood Tax: 1,000 economists urge G20 to accept Tobin tax-
- joeeddy
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- 10 months ago
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GMO Report: A glimpse into the future
It's 2031. Biodistress is taking its toll on our planet as many islands in the Pacific and the Indian Oceans have now succombed to the rising seas while drought is now "normal" in many parts of Africa, Asia and the Western and Southeastern United States. The great rivers of the world, the Yellow, the Ganges, the Indus, the Brahmaputra, the Amazon, the Mekong, the Thames, the Colorado to just name a few all with continuing falling water levels as population increases have brought about migrations from areas where drought and water scarcity can no longer support growing food, and where the great glaciers of the world such as the Himalayas, Alps and Patagonia are now melting to the point where water is scarce and in many areas non existant.
Great forests that once spanned South America and the U.S. were levelled to grow BT corn, GM soy and the fuel that takes our food and water, giving us back diseases, deforestation and pollution as people continue to starve in our world as access to food is but a dream in a world where markets over value that which has no value while ignoring what has the greatest value. Our food is also now part of this vast monoculture world of the biotech companies that stole our seeds and our right to save them. And through their greed we now hunger not just for sustenance, but for justice.
It was in 2020 that the great famine occurred. It started in Africa where the GM seeds had been forced upon the people there with stories of high yields, little pesticide usage and a promise of bringing people out of poverty, failed. With the coercion of government agencies however, including and most prominently the U.S. these terminator seeds made their way around the world, eventually blowing their transgenic pollution onto organic crops and perpetuating a death spiral of biodiversity that now seeks to bring an end to the richness and beauty of a planet that was once thriving.
This particular famine was unlike any other, as it was started by a gene that was placed in the GM crop shutting off and producing a toxic mold that could not be controlled, as the companies had not tested these new "climate change" seeds properly before releasing them upon us all. Biodistress was actually the catalsyt as warming temperatures interacting with other environmental factors attributed to soil nutrient depletion had affected the capacity of the seeds to perform as was claimed they could. All who had purchased those seeds saw their crops yellow, wither and die globally. Economies across the world were scrambling to cover their losses as the hungry crowded streets in anger demanding restitution as many died. Farmer suicides increased not only in India, but in Asia and Africa where they had lost everything not only to the crop collapse but to the drought, deforestation and lack of water that dessimated their livestock as well.
We had warned the world that entering into this too fast and too deeply without knowing all of the consequences could lead to this result. We demanded restraint and disclosure from governments. We fought for sustainable agriculture, saving seeds and a world where farmers not corporations that made war chemicals grew our food. But we were overruled and finally in 2015, it was deemed illegal to grow any other seeds but those GM seeds of these companies. We were essentially told, you eat what we provide or you die... only, people are now dying in greater numbers as monoculture has proven to be a failure as it has dessimated our forests, polluted our water, killed our biodiversity and brought about new diseases we were not prepared to deal with.
However, we keep on fighting. Underground seed distribution centers are now coming into place by those who foresaw this disaster and saved organic non GMO seeds. Imagine that. We who simply wish to grow healthy food, now considered outlaws. But it is a badge we wear with honor as the fight for our right to grow food, save seeds and preserve agriculture continues.
Next installment: How we take our food back.
I have written this to illustrate what can happen if we continue on the road we are on. The good news in this is that we have a choice. We have a voice. It doesn't have to be this way. Let's raise our voices. Let's make that choice. Let's take back our food, our water, our planet! More to come.It's 2031. Biodistress is taking its toll on our planet as many islands in the... more-
- JanforGore
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- 10 months ago
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