That means there will be an additional six weeks of winter.

Or it means there will be an early Spring.

It doesn’t make much difference. Phil has an accuracy rate of about 39 percent, according to the StormFax Weather Almanac. That’s probably about the same as TV weather forecasters.

StormFax has tracked Phil’s predictions since 1897, the year he (with the help of the Punxsatawney Spirit) made his first trip to Gobbler’s Knob, about two miles from the town in the northwest part of Pennsylvania.

The name, Punxsutawney, is probably derived from an Algonquin or Delaware Indian name which loosely translates as “village of sand fleas.” The name, Phil, is a tribute to Philip Freas, a staff writer for the Spirit, who wrote dozens of stories about what would become one of the most enduring tourism attractions in the country.

The festival is based upon a German superstition and a Celtic celebration. The superstition relates to hibernating animals; when they leave their den, if they see their shadow, it’s six more weeks of winter; if they don’t, it’s an early spring. The Celtic festival (known as Imbolc) was midway between the winter solstice (usually about Dec. 21–22), and the Spring Equinox (usually March 20). The date set for Phil’s annual prediction is always February 2, midway between the beginning of Winter and the beginning of Spring. This, of course, means that among the millions who now watch the ceremony in person, by webcam, or on the TV news, none are groundhogs. Except for Phil, they hibernate in well-constructed underground burrows from October to early Spring.

The name, woodchuck, an alternate for groundhog, is probably from “wojak,” a Native American word.

The second most famous ground hog is Gus. Unlike the furry Phil, who lives with his wife, Phyllis, in a library for most of the year, Gus is a cute little animatronic animal whose primary mission is to lure Pennsylvanians to spend money on the state lottery. Television commercials have assured Gus of his own celebrity. However, unlike Phil, he doesn’t make personal appearances.

Groundhogs in captivity have life spans that average 10–14 years. However, faced by several predators—including wolves, coyotes, foxes, owls, hawks, eagles and man—groundhogs usually live only two or three years in the wild.

Phil and Gus are just about the only two groundhogs that people feel any warmth for. The Pennsylvania Game Commission treats groundhogs as nuisance animals. Every day but Sunday is open season on the animals that weigh only about five to nine pounds. Even a cursory look at Google shows that several hundred thousand posts about groundhogs focus upon ways to kill them, with thousands of people bragging about how many they killed, and with what kind of trap, gas, or gun. There is no fur or meat value to humans.

Hunters and trappers kill groundhogs near roads and fields, and go from farm to farm. However, hunters and trappers often believe that in their own enjoyment of killing a gentle species that poses no threat to humans they may be doing some kind of a service to mankind. Many believe that killing groundhogs will keep them from overpopulating the environment. However, such is not the case. “Studies show that even when all the woodchucks are trapped out of an area, others from surrounding areas quickly move into the vacated niche,” says Laura J. Simon, field director for the Urban Wildlife Program of the Humane Society of the United States. But there is also another problem. In Spring and Summer, baby groundhogs live in the underground tunnels. Killing their mother will lead them to starve to death.

Natural predators keep the balance of nature to reduce overpopulation. Like most animals, groundhogs have a sense that allows them to breed to keep the species alive in areas of extreme danger; as the danger is removed, instead of breeding, groundhogs will actually stabilize population growth.  Hunters and farmers claim groundhogs leave holes that can damage tractors or cause injuries to horses and livestock. However, the perceived reality of that happening may be far greater than the actual risk, according to Simon.

The second major reason people kill groundhogs is because of fear. “At least half the calls we get,” says Simon, “is because people are afraid that groundhogs will attack them.” But, groundhogs, says Simon, “are benign shy animals that will retreat to their burrows when they see humans, even small children, coming close.”

The third major reason people want to kill groundhogs is because the animals, in search for food, will destroy gardens. Ironically, the deforestation of America has allowed groundhogs to flourish. They prefer to build their complex multi-level burrows on open ground at the edge of forests. This open view gives them protection from predators, while providing sources for their appetite for grub, grasshoppers, earthworms, berries, and various fruits and some vegetables; for water, they eat grasses and leaves. But as agricultural land is also destroyed to allow the construction of everything from parking lots to condos to supermarkets, groundhogs, like most species, are shoved from their own homes. That’s when homeowners see the holes in their lawns and some garden crops chewed up. Animal-friendly gardeners will plant extra so animals and humans can share the food.

Some of the methods to get rid of groundhogs cause more injuries to humans than to groundhogs. People have also used broken glass or poured concrete into the entrance and exit holes of the burrows. But, these methods, says Simon, don’t work.

There are several non-lethal humane ways to effectively discourage the animals. One of the best is to enclose the garden in a three foot high mesh fence, “with the top part left wobbly to discourage the animals from climbing,” says Simon. To discourage groundhogs from burrowing under the garden and then coming up to munch, the Humane Society advises homeowners to purchase a four-foot tall roll of green garden fencing. The lower 12 inches of mesh should be bent at a 90 degree angle and run parallel to the ground, away from the garden, to create a “false bottom,” and secured to the ground by landscaping staples. Homeowners can also discourage groundhogs by placing objects that reflect sunlight and continually move in the breeze, such as tethered Mylar party balloons. Simon says ones with big eyes “seem to work best because they create a predator image.”

Groundhogs and people can co-exist, with neither harming the other. Killing groundhogs just because we can is never a good reason.

•  Rosemary Brasch assisted with this article.

Butterball is certified by the British Retail Consortium, says the site, on “300 elements related to food safety and quality, as well as worker safety, environmental impact and management commitment.” The turkey processor practices “good citizenship” based on “self-governance,” “social responsibility,” and  “sustainability.”

But search for the words “welfare,” “Mercy For Animals” or “Shannon, North Carolina” (where a grisly Christmas-time expose took place) and you will get no results. Maybe you didn’t spell the words correctly.

Between November and December of 2011, while people were making their holiday plans, an undercover employee at a Butterball turkey semen collection facility in Shannon documented turkeys with open sores, infected eyes and broken bones, covered in flies and living in their own waste. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

“In the video, workers can be seen kicking and stomping on turkeys, as well as dragging them by their wings and necks,” reported ABC news. “The video also shows injured birds with open wounds and exposed flesh.”

Birds at the Butterball facility were left to slowly die from their injuries, some unable to even reach food or water, says the undercover employee. The “pain and the suffering that they’re experiencing,” is clearly visible she told NBS news.

Like scores of other gigantic food producers who have been exposed on undercover videos as harboring sadistic employees and sick and dying animals, Butterball pleads ignorance. It has a “zero tolerance policy for any mistreatment of our birds,” and has fired the proverbial “bad apple” employees it did not know about. Who knew?

Butterball is also “taking steps to help ensure that all new and existing associates have a clear understanding of our animal well-being policies,” said Rod Brenneman, president and CEO of Butterball. Maybe employees don’t know they aren’t supposed to stomp and kick birds, drag them by their wings and necks, not to mention bash them in the heads with metal bars, as the employee reports. Let’s tell them!

But, it wasn’t only Butterball management that enabled the agricultural hell for turkeys in the interests of cheap “holiday” food. Dr. Sarah Mason, head of animal health programs in the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, tipped off Butterball about a December 28 raid and managed to sabotage it.  Even as the Hoke County Sheriff’s Department sought to raid Butterball on the basis of videotaped evidence, Mason contacted “a friend and fellow veterinarian” who works for Butterball, which assured that the raid “never had a chance,” reports the Fayetteville Observer.

Hey, from one vet to another, we better hide the animal abuse we’re permitting!

Given that the state agency is in charge of regulating Butterball yet undermined the raid, was there a quid pro quo involved? “That’s a criminal matter, to be decided by the district attorney’s office,” opines the Observer.

The sordid collegiality between government and industry which makes a mockery of democracy, consumer rights and animal welfare, brings to mind the saga of egg don Austin “Jack” DeCoster, the salmonella king.

Despite the recall of half a billion salmonella-contaminated eggs from DeCoster-affiliated farms in 2010, his conviction on animal cruelty,  the same year and nine deaths and 500 illnesses traced to his eggs in 1987,  Iowa state agencies thought he was a pretty cool dude.

“One of the things I’ve always said about DeCoster is that when there’s a problem at his facilities, he acts fast,” enthused Kevin Buskins, a spokesman for Iowa’s Department of Natural Resources which shares oversight of egg operations with the state agriculture department.

Will Butterball get a pass like DeCoster did? So far no charges have been filed against the turkey processor and its state regulator “friend” still has her job. And there is even more good news for the turkey processor. The company and its communications agency, Howard, Merrell & Partners, received four public relations awards from the Virginia Chapter of the National Agri-Marketing Association, Carolinas, this month at an industry banquet.

Receiving honors were a celebration for the “millionth fresh bird produced during the 2010 holiday season,” a press release announcing  330,000 pounds of turkey products donated to the needy and a campaign in partnership with the Weekly Reader that demonstrates “how responsible agricultural practices lead to healthy animals and safe, high-quality food for consumers.”

We had wanted the U.S. Department of the Interior to stop the government-approved slaughter of wild horses and burros in the southwest, but were disappointed that the cattle industry used its money and influence to shelter politicians from Americans who asked for compassion and understanding of  breeds that roamed freely long before the nation’s “Manifest Destiny.”

We wanted to see the federal government protect wolves, foxes, and coyotes, none of whom attack humans, have no food or commercial value, but are major players in environmental balance. But, we knew that the hunting industry would prevail since they see these canines only as competition.

We wanted to see the Pennsylvania legislature stand up for what is right and courageously end the cruelty of pigeon shoots. But, a pack of cowards left Pennsylvania as the only state where pigeon shoots, with their illegal gambling, are actively held.

For what seems to be decades, we have written against racism and bigotry. But many politicians still believe that gays deserve few, if any, rights; that all Muslims are enemy terrorists; and publicly lie that Voter ID is a way to protect the integrity of the electoral process, while knowing it would disenfranchise thousands of poor and minority citizens.

We will continue to write about the destruction of the environment and of ways people are trying to save it. Environmental concern is greater than a decade ago, but so is the ignorant prattling of those who believe global warming is a hoax, and mistakenly believe that the benefits of natural gas fracking, with well-paying jobs in a depressed economy, far outweigh the environmental, health, and safety problems they cause.Ee will continue to write against government corruption, bailouts, tax advantages for the rich and their corporations, governmental waste, and corporate greed. They will continue to exist because millionaire legislators will continue to protect those who contribute to political campaigns. Nevertheless, we will continue to speak out against politicians who have sacrificed the lower- and middle-classes in order to protect the one percent.

We will continue to write about the effects of laying off long-time employees and of outsourcing jobs to “maximize profits.” Until Americans realize that “cheaper” doesn’t necessarily mean “better,” we’ll continue to explain why exploitation knows no geographical boundaries.

The working class successfully launched major counter-attacks against seemingly-entrenched anti-labor politicians in Wisconsin, Ohio, and other states. But these battles will be as long and as bitter as the politicians who deny the rights of workers. We will continue to speak out for worker rights, better working conditions, and benefits at least equal to their managers. We don’t expect anything to change in 2012, but we are still hopeful that a minority of business owners who already respect the worker will influence the rest.

There are still those who believe education is best served by programs manacled by teaching-to-the-test mentality, and are more than willing to sacrifice quality for numbers. We will continue to write about problems in the nation’s educational system, especially the failure to encourage intellectual curiosity and respect for the tenets of academic integrity.

Against great opposition, the President and Congress passed sweeping health care reform. But, certain members of Congress, all of whom have better health care than most Americans, have proclaimed they will dismantle the program they derisively call “Obamacare.”

During this new year, we will still be writing about the unemployed, the homeless, those without adequate health coverage—and against the political lunatics who continue to deny Americans the basics of human life, essentials that most civilized countries already give their citizens.

We had written forcefully against the previous president and vice-president when they strapped on their six-shooters and sent the nation into war in a country that posed no threat to us, while failing to adequately attack a country that housed the core of the al-Qaeda movement. We wrote about the Administration’s failure to provide adequate protection for the soldiers they sent into war or adequate and sustained mental and medical care when they returned home. The War in Iraq is now over, but the war in Afghanistan continues. The reminder of these wars will last as long as there are hospitals and cemeteries.

We had written dozens of stories against the Bush–Cheney Administration’s belief in the use of torture and why it thought it was necessary to shred parts of the Constitution. We had hoped that a new president, a professor of Constitutional law, would stop the attack upon our freedoms and rights. But the PATRIOT Act was extended, and new legislation was enacted that reduces the rights and freedoms of all citizens. At all levels of government, Constitutional violations still exist, and a new year won’t change our determination to bring to light these violations wherever and whenever they occur.

The hope we and this nation had for change we could believe in, and which we still hope will not die, has been minced by the reality of petty politics, with the “Party of No” and its raucous Teabagger mutation blocking social change for America’s improvement. We can hope that the man we elected will realize that compromise works only when the opposition isn’t entrenched in a never-ending priority not of improving the country, but of keeping him from a second term. Perhaps now, three years after his inauguration, President Obama will disregard the disloyal opposition and unleash the fire and truth we saw in the year before his election, and will speak out even more forcefully for the principles we believed when we, as a nation, gave him the largest vote total of any president in history.

We really want to be able to write columns about Americans who take care of each other, about leaders who concentrate upon fixing the social problems. But we know that’s only an ethereal ideal.  So, we’ll just have to hope that the waters of social justice wear down, however slowly, the jagged rocks of haughty resistance.

The House voted 124–69, December 13, to send an animal welfare bill back to committee, in this case the Gaming Oversight Committee. The bill, SB 71, would have banned simulcasting of greyhound races from other states. Pennsylvania had banned greyhound racing in 2004. Among several of the current bill’s amendments were ones that would also have banned the sale of cat and dog meat, increased penalties for releasing exotic animals, and stopped the cruelty of live pigeon shoots.

It’s the pigeon shoot amendment, sponsored by Rep. John Maher (R-Allegheny), that caused legislators to hide beneath their desks, apparently in fear of the poop from the NRA, which lobbied extensively against ending pigeon shoots. The unrelenting NRA message irrationally claimed that banning pigeon shoots is the first step to banning guns. The NRA even called the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) a radical animal rights group.

The House action leaves Pennsylvania as the only state where pretend hunters, most of them from New Jersey and surrounding states where pigeon shoots are illegal, to come to Pennsylvania and kill caged birds launched in front of spectators and the shooters.

Most pigeon shoots are held in Berks County in southeastern Pennsylvania, with one in the nearby suburban Philadelphia area. Scared and undernourished birds are placed into small cages, and then released about 20 yards in front of people with 12-gauge shotguns. Most birds, as many as 5,000 at an all-day shoot, are hit standing on their cages, on the ground, or flying erratically just a few feet from the people who pretend to be sportsmen. Even standing only feet from their kill, the shooters aren’t as good as they think they are. About 70 percent of all birds are wounded, according to Heidi Prescott, HSUS senior vice-president, who for about 25 years has been documenting and leading the effort to pass legislation to finally end pigeon shoots in the state.

Birds that fall outside the shooting club’s property are left to die long and horrible deaths. If the birds are wounded on the killing fields, trapper boys and girls, most in their early teens, some of them younger, grab the birds, wring their necks, stomp on their bodies, or throw them live into barrels to suffocate. There is no food or commercial value of a pigeon killed at one of the shoots.

The lure of pigeon shoots, in addition to what the participants must think is a wanton sense of fulfillment, is gambling, illegal under Pennsylvania law but not enforced by the Pennsylvania State Police.

The International Olympic Committee banned the so-called sport after the 1900 Olympics because of its cruelty to animals. Most hunters, as well as the Pennsylvania Game Commission, say that pigeon shoots aren’t “fair chase hunting.” Almost every daily newspaper in the state and dozens of organizations, from the Council of Churches to the Pennsylvania Bar Association, oppose this form of animal cruelty.

On the floor of the House, Rep. Rosita C. Youngblood (D-Philadelphia), usually a supporter of animal rights issues, spoke out against voting on the bill, and asked other Democrats to go along with her. Youngblood is minority chair of the Gaming Oversight committee.

Youngblood’s chief of staff, Bill Thomas, emphasizes that Youngblood’s only concern was to protect the integrity of the legislative process. Although some members truly believed they voted to recommit the bill for procedural reasons, most members were just simply afraid to vote on the bill. Voting to recommit the bill were 52 Democrats, many of them opposed to pigeon shoots; 35 voted to keep it on the floor for debate. Among Republicans, the vote was 72–34 to send the bill to committee.

The Arguments

Germaneness: The Republican leadership had determined that all amendments to bills  in the current legislative session must be germane to the bill. “You can’t hijack a bill,” many in the House, including key Democrats, claimed as the major reason they voted against SB71.

However, the Republicans, with a majority in the House and able to block any bill in committee that didn’t meet their strict political agenda, raised “germaneness” to a level never before seen in the House. For decades, Democrats and Republicans attached completely unrelated amendments to bills. Even during this session, the Republicans, in violation of their own “rules,” attached amendments to allow school vouchers onto several bills, many that had nothing to do with education. But, the Greyhound racing bill was considered under both gambling and animal cruelty concerns. Thus, the amendment to ban pigeon shoots could also be considered to be an animal cruelty amendment and not subject to the Judiciary Committee, where it was likely to die.

Separate bill. Several legislators believed the attempt to stop pigeon shoots should have been its own bill, not tacked onto another bill.

However, only twice have bills about pigeon shoots come to the floor of the House. Most proposed legislation had been buried in committees or blocked by House leadership, both Democrat and Republican, most of whom received support and funding from the NRA, gun owner groups, and their political action committees (PACs). In 1989, the Pennsylvania House had defeated a bill to ban pigeon shoots, 66–126. By 1994, three years after the first large scale protest, the House voted 99–93 in favor of an amendment to ban pigeon shoots, but fell short of the 102 votes needed for passage.

The bill would duplicate or repeal a recently-signed law:

Rep. Curt Schroeder (R-Chester Co.), chair of the Gaming Oversight committee, sponsored the House version of the Senate’s bill. If it was truly an unnecessary bill, he or the leadership could have previously sent it to committee for reworking or killed it. According to sources close to the leadership, despite his concern for animal welfare, Schroeder was not pleased about the amendments tacked onto his bill.

Short time to accomplish much: Several Democrats believed that by spending extraordinary time on the bill, necessary legislation would not be brought to the floor and the Republicans could then blame the Democrats for blocking key legislation.

However, both parties already knew how they would vote for redistricting (the Republicans had gerrymandered the state to protect certain districts), school vouchers, and other proposed legislation.  Further, the Republican leadership could have blocked putting the Greyhound bill into the agenda or placed it at the end of other bills. Even on the floor of the House, the leadership could have shut down debate at any time. Thus, the Democrats’ argument about “only four days left” is blunted by the Republicans’ own actions. During 2011, the House met only 54 days when the vote on SB 71 was taken. If the House was so concerned about having only four days left in the year to discuss and vote upon critical issues, it could have added days to the work week or increased hours while in session. Speaker Mike Turzai (R-Allegheny), to his credit, wanted a vote, although he personally opposed the pigeon shoot amendment. “Let’s put this issue to rest,” he told the members. Taking the time to debate the bill, says Bill Thomas, “wasted taxpayer money and time.” However, “the amount of time spent avoiding the bill,” counters Prescott, “wastes far more time and resources than voting on it.”

Nevertheless, no matter what the arguments, sending the bill to committee was a good way to avoid having to deal with a highly controversial issue. It allowed many legislators to pretend to their constituents that they still believe in animal welfare, while avoiding getting blow-back from the NRA or its supporters. Conversely, it allowed many of those who wanted to keep pigeon shoots to avoid a debate and subsequent vote, allowing continued support from pro-gun constituents who accept the NRA non-logic, while not offending constituents who believe in animal welfare.

Whatever their reasons, the failure of the many of the state’s representatives to stand up for their convictions probably caused legislation to ban this form of animal cruelty to be as dead during this session as the pigeons whose necks are wrung by teenagers who finish the kill by people who think they’re sportsmen but are little more than juveniles disguised in the bodies of adults.

In June, Pfizer announced it was ending arsenic-containing chicken feed which no one realized they were eating anyway but its arsenic-containing Histostat, fed to turkeys, continues. Poultry growers use inorganic arsenic, a recognized carcinogen, for “growth promotion, feed efficiency and improved pigmentation,” says the FDA. Yum.

And in August, Cargill Value Added Meats, the nation’s third-largest turkey processor, recalled 36 million pounds of ground turkey because of a salmonella outbreak, linked to one death and 107 illnesses in 31 states. Even as it closed its Springdale, Arkansas plant, steam cleaned its machinery and added “two additional anti-bacterial washes” to its processing operations, 185,000 more pounds were recalled the next month from the same plant.

Since the mad cow and Chinese melamine scandals of the mid 2000′s, a lot more people think about the food their food ate than before. But fewer people think about the drugs their food ingested. Food animal drugs seldom rate Capitol Hill hearings which is just fine with Big Pharma animals divisions since if people knew the antibiotics, heavy metals, growth promotants, vaccines, anti-parasite drugs and feed additives used on the farm, they would lose their appetite. Besides, people aren’t Animal Pharma’s primary customers anyway and the long term safety of animals drugs isn’t an issue, since patients are supposed to die.

One of the late Sen.Ted Kennedy’s last legislative fights was about the overuse of livestock antibiotics. “It seems scarcely believable that these precious medications could be fed by the ton to chickens and pigs,” he wrote in a bill called the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2007 (PAMTA) which has yet to pass. “These precious drugs aren’t even used to treat sick animals. They are used to fatten pigs and speed the growth of chickens. The result of this rampant overuse is clear: meat contaminated with drug-resistant bacteria sits on supermarket shelves all over America,” said Kennedy.

Because antibiotics make animals use feed more efficiently so they eat less and control disease in confinement farming’s packed conditions at the same time, they are practically the fifth food group. On a turkey farm with five million hens, antibiotics would save almost 2,000 tons of feed a year says an article in a poultry journal.

And when the FDA tried to ban cephalosporins in 2008, one type of antibiotic crucial for treating salmonella in children, it became apparent just what Kennedy was up against. Two months after the FDA announced a hearing about a cephalosporin “Order of Prohibition” in agriculture, the regulatory action had morphed into a “Hearing to Review the Advances In Animal Health Within The Livestock Industry” thanks to lobbyists from the egg, chicken, turkey, milk, pork and cattle industries.

“Order of Prohibition”… “Hearing to Review the Advances In Animal Health Within The Livestock Industry,” same idea, right?

At the House Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry hearings, the National Turkey Federation’s Michael Rybolt defended antibiotics as a cost savings to consumers. “The increased costs to raise turkeys without antibiotics is real,” he said. “Today at retail outlets here in the D.C. market, a conventionally raised turkey costs $1.29 per pound. A similar whole turkey that was produced without antibiotics costs $2.29 per pound. With the average consumer purchasing a 15 pound whole turkey, that would mean there would be $15 tacked on to their grocery bill.”

Conventionally grown turkeys are even a better deal when you consider the cost of antibiotics!

And antibiotic-based turkey farming is downright green, said Rybolt, calling 227 acre turkey operations, “small family farms.” Without them, more land would be needed to grow crops and house the animals because of the “decrease in density.” And, with 175,550 more tons of feed needed, there would be “an increase in manure.”

When the FDA capitulated to industry and turned the cephalosporin prohibition into a salute to animal “advances,” former Kansas governor and former dairyman John Carlin, asked, “What changed in less than five months? Certainly the problem hasn’t gone away.”

This month, the FDA also rejected petitions to ban human antibiotics like penicillins, tetracyclines and sulfonamides in livestock filed by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Environmental Defense, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT), and the Union of Concerned scientists, some filed over 12 years ago. Why?  “FDA cannot withdraw approval of a new animal drug until the legally-mandated process,” said an FDA spokesman. The process includes an “evidentiary hearing,” perhaps like the cephalosporin advances.

Of course. germs in turkey and other meat, even antibiotic resistant germs, are neutralized by cooking–but drug residues are not. A report last year from the USDA’s inspector general accuses U.S. slaughter houses of releasing products to the public with excessive drug levels in them and charges that, “The effects of these residues on human beings who consume such meat are a growing concern.”

Nor are the antibiotics just in the meat! Scientists at the University of Minnesota found antibiotic residues in corn, green onions and cabbage after growing them on soil fertilized with livestock manure. The drugs siphoned right up from the soil in just six weeks.

A quick look at the Code of Federal Regulations for turkey drugs does not whet you appetite for Thanksgiving. There are several arsenic turkey drugs approved to provide an, “increased rate of weight gain and improved feed efficiency,” say the official guidelines. But they are also “dangerous for ducks, geese, and dogs,” and must be discontinued,  “5 days before slaughtering animals for human consumption to allow elimination of the drug from edible tissues.” Whew.

Halofuginone, another drug given to turkeys to kill pathogens, “is toxic to fish and aquatic life” and “an irritant to eyes and skin,” says the Federal Code. “Avoid contact with skin, eyes, or clothing” and “Keep out of lakes, ponds, and streams.” Bon appetit.

Drug-based farming has cut the time to “grow” an animal almost in half while doubling the market size of the animal itself.  For example, chickens were once slaughtered at fourteen weeks, weighing two pounds and are now slaughtered at seven weeks, weighing four and six pounds.

But the brave new food techniques come at a price because the animals’ organs can not always keep up with the metabolic frenzy. Birds “fed and managed in such a way that they are growing rapidly,” are at risk of sudden death from cardiac problems and aortic rupture, say poultry scientists.

Growth drugs in turkeys may also “result in leg weakness or paralysis,” says the Federal Code, a side effect that a turkey slaughter house worker reports firsthand. Many turkeys arrive at the House of Raeford, in Raeford, NC with legs broken or dislocated, he told me in an interview and, “When you try to remove them from their crates, their legs twist completely around, limp and offering no resistance.” The turkeys, “must have been in a lot of pain,” says the worker, but they don’t cry out. “In fact the only sound as you hang them, he says, is the “trucks being washed out to go back and get a new load.”

The undercover employee’s reports of the “live hanger” culture at the House of Raeford, in which workers pulled the heads and legs off turkeys when they were stuck in crates and worse, led to Denny’s suspending its business from Raeford, the nation’s seventh largest turkey producer. The slaughter house is also infamous for a chlorine spill that killed a worker in 2003, an ammonia spill that evacuated  two towns the next year and a murdered worker in 2006.

Still, the mother of all turkey drugs is the asthma-like drug ractopamine, marketed as the “Medicated Tom Turkey Feed” Topmax. Approved for turkeys only two years ago, figures for Topmax use in turkeys are not yet available but the same drug is now used in 45 percent of U.S. pigs and 30 percent of ration-fed cattle.

There are two reasons ractopamine has raised safety questions. One is that its label reads:

WARNING: The active ingredient in Topmax, ractopamine hydrochloride, is a beta-adrenergic agonist. Individuals with cardiovascular disease should exercise special caution to avoid exposure. Not for use in humans. Keep out of the reach of children. The Topmax 9 formulation (Type A Medicated Article) poses a low dust potential under usual conditions of handling and mixing. When mixing and handling Topmax, use protective clothing, impervious gloves, protective eye wear, and a NIOSH-approved dust mask. Operators should wash thoroughly with soap and water after handling. If accidental eye contact occurs, immediately rinse eyes thoroughly with water. If irritation persists, seek medical attention. The material safety data sheet contains more detailed occupational safety information. To report adverse effects, access medical information, or obtain additional product information, call 1-800-428-4441.

The other reason is that ractopamine is not withdrawn at slaughter. In fact, it is begun as the animals near slaughter and started during turkeys’ last 14 days. It is actually pumping through their systems as they arrive on the killing floor.

Like antibiotics and arsenic, ractopamine is given to turkeys to make them grow faster. It is similar to clenbuterol, a performance enhancing sports drug that is banned in the US, for both humans and livestock, and elsewhere. But ractopamine is also banned in Europe, Taiwan and China, where 1,700 ractopamine “poisonings” were reported and ractopamine-produced pork was seized in 2007. (You have to worry when China calls a food unsafe.)

Ractopamine caused actual riots in Taiwan in 2007 when 3,500 Tawainese pig farmers, some carrying pigs, threw dung and rotten eggs at police and military soldiers over the rumor that a ractopamine ban would be lifted.  “Get out, USA pork” and “We refuse to eat pork that contains poisonous ractopamine,” they chanted for hours according to Taiwan News.

Reports of ractopamine’s lack of safety are not hard to find.  In 2009, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) termed ractopamine a cardiac stimulator. Ractopamine residues “represent a genuine risk to consumers,” wrote a medical  journal article, citing “long plasma half-lives, and relatively slow rates of elimination.” And a report from Ottawa’s Bureau of Veterinary Drugs says that rats fed ractopamine developed a constellation of birth defects like cleft palate, protruding tongue, short limbs, missing digits, open eyelids and enlarged heart.

The FDA is well aware of ractopamine’s downside. In 2003, three years after the drug was approved for use in U.S. pigs, the FDA accused its manufacturer, Elanco, of withholding information about ractopamine’s “safety and effectiveness” and “adverse animal drug experiences” in a fourteen-page warning letter.

Elanco, said the FDA, failed to report furious pig farmers phoning the company about “dying animals,” “downer pigs,” animals “down and shaking,” “hyperactivity” and “vomiting after eating feed with Paylean,” and also suppressed clinical trial information. But, thanks to same probable lobbying that reversed the cephalosporin ban, the FDA approved ractopamine for cattle the following year and for use in turkeys in 2009! Last year, the FDA enlarged the approval for cattle.

Turkey meat produced with ractopamine is not the same as normal meat by Elanco’s own admission! “Alterations” in muscle were seen in turkeys fed ractopamine like an increase in “mononuclear cell infiltrate and myofiber degeneration,” says its 2008 new drug application documents. There was “an increase in the incidence of cysts,” and differences, some “significant,” in the weight of organs like hearts, kidneys and livers. (“Enlarged hearts” had been seen in test rats feed ractopamine in the Canadian studies.)

Still, ractopamine, like antibiotics, is being hailed as “green” and for lowering the carbon footprint. It has “positive environmental benefits for livestock producers in terms of decreased nitrogen and phosphorus excretions,” extols one journal article. It results in a “reduced amount of total animal waste,” unless, of course, you count the manure coming from Big Pharma.

Dr. Are Nylund at the University of Bergen, Norway confirmed the ISA virus detection by Canadian lab, Dr. Fred Kibenge, in Rivers Inlet sockeye smolts. Dr. Nylund reports he only got a positive in one of the fish and this result was close to the detection limit for the test that he used. In the report below, the higher the value, the lower the amount of virus. He said the sample was poor quality. We are on a steep learning curve here, having never dealt with viruses, keeping the samples in a home-type freezer was not optimal.

Download Report (22.0K)

I also received the report from Dr. Kibenge, of the World Animal Health reference lab for ISA virus in Province Edward Island, on salmon a small group of us collected in the Fraser River on October 12. Late last week results from this group of tests was leaked to the New York Times and we heard that a Coho salmon tested positive for ISAv. Now that I have the complete report we learn that, similar to the sockeye from River’s Inlet, the Coho in the Fraser River was infected with the European strain of ISA virus. But we see from this report that a chinook salmon and a chum salmon also tested positive.

Download Alexandra Morton Samples (SOCKEYE CHINOOK and COHO) (45.9K)

What does this mean?

While this continues to raise the level of concern that ISA virus is going to cause significant problems in wild salmon in the eastern Pacific, a lot more work is required. Someone has to culture the virus. Once that happens we can learn how long it has been here, and exactly where it came from.

The good news is that the levels of ISA virus detected in all these salmon has been low. While the salmon in my latest collection died before spawning, it is possible that ISA virus was not the cause of their death. Because ISA virus was only detected in the gills of the chum and chinook, it is possible they were only recently infected. The chum was silver-bright and likely just arrived in the river. The Chinook was severely jaundice. Did these two fish just become infected and is that why it was only detected in their gills? Two possible sources would be salmon farms off Campbell River that they had just been exposed to on their in-migration into the river, or did they become infected by sharing the river with the Coho which had ISA virus in her heart suggesting a more system-wide longer infection period – I don’t know. The Segment 6 probe is less sensitive than the segment 8 probe, so while we learned the Chinook and Chum were infected with ISA virus, we don’t know what strain.

If the virus is this contagious that it infected other salmon that had just arrived into the river this does present concerns.

I am not presenting myself as an expert in ISA virus, but I feel strongly there should be no secrecy when it comes to European strain ISA virus in wild salmon. I am on a steep learning curve and feel it is essential that we move forward to:

1 – establish an international board to make sure testing is done in a highly and scientifically defensible manner
2 – establish a BC lab that can culture and test for ISA virus and report publicly
3 – test widely for the virus in the ocean, rivers and lakes and include other possible species such as herring
4 – mandate tests on every Atlantic salmon facility, especially the lake-rearing facilities by more than one lab so that no one lab bears the brunt of this and so the public can take full confidence in the tests

There has been an incredible response from many of you. So many of you have provided funds in small donations that we are able to move forward with revealing where ISA virus is hiding. Thank you. Thank you also for the people reporting back as to what is happening in your rivers and lakes. I am not at all interested in handing this over to Fisheries and Oceans [DFO] or the Province of BC. I have asked the provincial salmon farm vet, Dr. Gary Marty several times what ISA virus test he did on all the Atlantic salmon he found ISAv lesions in. He has not answered, he had the province of BC’s lawyer answer instead providing me with no information. I was hoping I could send samples to him, but I won’t without knowing what test he is doing.

There is an astonishing silence from government. How is it possible they have never found ISA virus?

I think we need to step into this void and seriously apply ourselves to understanding what is going on here. I don’t know why we would leave this up to DFO.

Fraser Coho infected with European ISA virus

The Iowa legislature last year approved a dove hunting season, the first in more than nine decades. However, the state’s Department of Natural Resources and the Natural Resources Commission (DNR) banned the use of lead shot and bullets.

That led to a massive all-out assault by the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the U.S. Sportsman’s Alliance (USSA).

In a letter to Gov. Terry Branstad, the NRA underscored its opposition by waving a veiled threat that banning lead ammunition is an “attack [on] our freedoms.”

“Absurd,” replied Robert Johns of the American Bird Conservancy, who explained that “the NRA continues to deliberately miscast the lead-versus-non-lead ammunition issue as an attack on hunting.” There is nothing in the Constitution or in any federal court decision that would prohibit the banning of any specific kind of ammunition.

The NRA blatantly suggested the ban on lead shot “is designed to price hunters out of the market and keep them from taking part in traversing Iowa’s fields and forests.” For its “evidence,” it pointed out the cost of non-toxic ammunition is higher than ammunition made of lead. However, the use of non-toxic shot results in only a 1-2 percent increase in total costs for hunters, according to a study conducted by the National Wildlife Research Centre, certainly not enough to justify the NRA’s paranoid panic that non-toxic bullets will lead to a decrease in hunting.

Iowa’s DNR, the NRA claimed, was echoing not just environmental extremism but “the unscientific battle cry of the anti-hunting extremists.”

Contrary to NRA and USSA statements, there are several hundred scientific studies that conclude that lead shot is a health and environmental danger. Lead can cause behavioral problems, learning disabilities, reduced reproduction, neurological damage, and genetic mutation. For those reasons alone, the U.S. bans lead in gasoline, water pipes, windows, pottery, toys, paint, and hundreds of other items.

“Wildlife is poisoned when animals scavenge on carcasses shot and contaminated with lead-bullet fragments, or pick up and eat spent lead-shot pellets[,]mistaking them for food or grit,” the Center for Biological Diversity points out. As many as 20 million birds and other animals die each year from lead poisoning, says the CBD.

Humans can be poisoned by eating animals that have eaten the pellets from the ground or which have eaten decaying carcasses of birds that have been shot with lead ammunition. Iowa is one of only 15 states that doesn’t have some regulation that bans lead in shot and ammunition. Most European countries ban the use of lead shot for hunting.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1991 banned the use of lead shot in all waterfowl hunting. The NRA screamed its opposition at that time. However, the ban didn’t lead to a reduction of hunting or hunters, nor did it violate any part of the Constitution.

R.T. Cox, in his column, “The Sage Grouse,” notes that “bird hunters can leave 400,000 pellets per acre of intensely hunted areas.” About 81,000 tons of lead shot are left on shooting ranges each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Part of the reason for so much lead shot on the ground is that doves, which can fly up to 50 miles per hour and make sharp turns, are difficult to hit. While hunters may claim they shoot the birds as a food source, such claims are usually blatant lies meant to hide the reality that the 20 million doves killed each year are nothing more than live targets. The five ounce mourning dove, hit by shot, provides little usable meat. The NRA even advises hunters that for health reasons, they should “cut away a generous portion of meat around the wound channel.”

Lead on the dove killing fields isn’t the only problem. An investigation by the North Dakota Dept. of Health in 2007 revealed that 58 percent of venison donated to food banks by the Safari Club contained lead fragments. During the past decade, 276 California condors were found to have had lead poisoning; there are fewer than 400 in the state. A ban on lead shot was enacted in 2007.

There are alternatives to using lead. Non-toxic bullets and shot are made from tungsten, copper, and steel, without the negative health problems. While some hunting advocates maintain that lead bullets are significantly better in the field, there is no evidence to suggest that “green” ammunition results in fewer kills.

Nevertheless, disregarding scientific evidence and facing NRA wrath, Branstad said he agreed with a legislative panel’s decision to ignore the findings of the state’s professional wildlife conservationists, who he said exceeded their authority, to restore lead shot hunting.

Andrew Page, a senior director for the Humane Society of the United States, has another opinion, one far more logical than the NRA/NSSA rants: “If hunters are conservationists as they say they are, they should be the first to stand up and say they won’t poison wildlife or the ecosystem.”

In a study that reveals the GOP pledge to protect business interests at all costs, the Center for Media and Democracy recently analyzed 800 bills supported by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). This secretive group consists of big businesses and conservatives who influence state legislatures around the country to lower wages and taxes on business, and weaken environmental protection that could crimp profits.

Undoing efforts to address climate change is a major priority of ALEC sponsors such as Koch Industries, Exxon Mobil, Wal-Mart, AT&T and Peabody Energy. For example, they created a model law – State Withdrawal from Regional Climate Initiatives – that is being introduced by state lawmakers to curb carbon reduction mandates and overturn cap-and-trade deals.

The GOP’s efforts don’t stop here. Because they believe private property should be the basis for environmental policy, owners become the only protection for the environment. According to the GOP, only self-regulation and a laissez-faire market can provide protection. Toward this end, House Republicans created a rider for the 2012 appropriations bill (H.R. 2584), consisting of items to weaken environmental regulations by cutting funding and rolling back rules.

While the Senate would have to confirm the changes and President Obama would have to sign the bill, it’s unlikely that such changes will pass. The bill continues to change; nevertheless, the attempt reveals GOP plans to roll back environmental protections agreed upon by both parties over the past 40 years. The GOP promises more jobs and recovery from the current depression as a reward for such actions.

“Many of us think that overregulation from the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is at the heart of our stalled economy,” said Mike Simpson, Republican from Idaho. The bill cuts up to 18 percent of the funding from the Forest Service, the Department of the Interior and the EPA, and was voted out of committee by House Republicans.

The bill is loaded with a promise to business to end regulation and leaves only the profit motive to determine the use of land, water and wildlife.

By blocking regulations the GOP would allow:

– Automobiles to stop increasing gas mileage after 2016, and allow them to spew fine particles that cause cancer into the air.

– Pesticide manufacturers to use false and misleading information on their labels, and chemical companies and agriculture to dump pesticides into the waterways.

– Uranium mining in the Grand Canyon.

– The cement industry to pump cancer-causing dust into the air.

– Increased levels of arsenic, formaldehyde and other cancer-causing substances in the air, soil, drinking water, and sediment, as well as allow increased ammonia emissions from power plants.

– Oil conglomerates to ignore health-based air quality standards offshore, and make it more expensive for citizens to challenge government actions regulating oil extraction companies.

– Increased storm water discharge from commercial and residential construction sites, mountain top removal water to run off into streams, and prohibit the EPA from forcing Florida to enforce the state’s Water Quality Standards.

– Increased ash from the burning of coal, and methane from manure piles.

– Lawsuits over grazing on public lands to proceed more easily, livestock to move freely across government grazing land, and prevent reviews of grazing permits.

– Alaskan western red and yellow cedar to be cut and sold for shipment overseas.

– Unlisted endangered animals to be hunted and killed, and wolves to be de-listed from protection.

– Endangering of bighorn sheep by allowing more livestock to graze in their habitat.

In addition, the GOP would:

– Eliminate the regulation of livestock waste runoff or disposal.

– Allow greenhouse gas producers, such as coal plants, to continue emitting for one year, and bar lawsuits during this time.

– Prohibit funding for listing or protecting any new animal species under the Endangered Species Act.

– Block any updates to the Clean Water Act, and prevent regulation of cool water intake facilities.

– Limit public appeals of Forest Service timber harvest plans.

– Provide financial breaks for mining companies, and prevent any new hard rock mining regulations.

– Allow Texas to implement its own cap-and-trade system without Federal input.

– Prevent boat inspection safety checks on the Yukon River.

– Prevent the EPA from adopting water ballast requirements that stop the intrusion of invasive species into the Great Lakes.

– Force the EPA to ignore Clean Air Rules for power plants, and ignore the public health benefits of the Clean Air Act.

– Block the designation of Federal land to be set aside as wilderness areas.

– Require detailed records to be kept and quarterly reports on any gas or oil permits not allowed.

These efforts make it clear that Republicans ignore the role of deregulation of financial institutions that sunk the economy and robbed millions of Americans of their jobs and their savings.

They hope voters will forget President Bush and the Republican role in this disaster, blame the depression on Obama, and give them the presidency in 2012. They destroyed the economy once and they can do it again-this time taking the environment with it.

In his debut book, Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement under Siege, independent journalist Will Potter  details one such assault on freedom and democracy, the targeting of environmental and animal-rights activists. In recent decades, corporations whose profits depend on degrading the ecosphere started to worry that those activists posed a real threat to their operations. Politicians and law-enforcement agencies responded with laws and tactics targeting not only the illegal actions of some of those groups but also the constitutionally protected speech and association of a wider range of groups. The fear-and-smear campaigns take their toll on the activists.

In a book that alternates between reporting and reflection, Potter not only details the strategy and tactics of corporations and the state, but also gives readers a feel for the human costs for the activists. In an interview, I asked Potter to explain the threat posed by these campaigns.

[Full disclosure: Potter was a student in two of my classes at the University of Texas at Austin. Since his graduation, I have followed his work and now think of him as a colleague rather than a former student.]

Robert Jensen: Let’s start with what you don’t mean by the title, Green is the New Red. You say in the book that you aren’t suggesting the environmental/animal-rights movements are directly analogous to the left/radical/socialist/communist movements that were targeted in the Red Scares of the 20^th century in the United States. If the scope of those Red movements was wider and the repression faced much more severe, what is the title intended to communicate?

Will Potter: Although I make clear that what’s going on now is not the same or worse than the Red Scare (nor is it the same or worse than what Arab and Muslim people have experienced since September 11), these current events need to be understood in a historical context. Coordinated campaigns to target and repress dissident voices have taken place throughout U.S. history, and foremost among them is the Red Scare. For most Americans, of all political stripes, that term is synonymous with using fear to push a political agenda — it is a dark era of U.S. history where lives were ruined, and freedoms chilled, in the name of national security. Beyond those big-picture similarities, though, there are eerie parallels between the Red Scare and this Green Scare, in terms of the specific tactics used by corporations and politicians to instill fear and silence dissent.

RJ: Whatever the size or current influence of these radical environmental movements, you write that they are challenging core notions of what it means to be a human being. Based on your experience as an activist and your reporting, how do you assess these movements?

WP: These movements, like all social justice movements, have diverse components. Although it has become fashionable to “go green,” the true nature of the environmental and animal rights movements goes much deeper than promoting hybrid cars and energy-saving light bulbs. They are about more than promoting a quick-fix or advocating environmentalism through consumerism.

These movements are challenging deeply held religious and cultural beliefs that the interests of human beings are always paramount, and that we have the right to use the earth and other species in whatever ways we see fit, costs be damned. These movements recognize that behaving as if human beings are the only species on the planet is destructive, but their critique is more than an appeal to self-interest. It is about critically examining our relationship with the natural world, and all other species on the planet, and questioning what it means to be a human being.

RJ: Do you think that is the reason those movements are being targeted, because people in power in government and corporations understand how fundamental that challenge is, and want to suppress it?

WP: Absolutely. In fact, that’s how the threat is often described by these individuals themselves in Congressional hearings, internal corporate documents, FBI memos, Homeland Security reports, and in the media. At first I dismissed much of this as political theater — exaggerating the threat in order to justify the crackdown. For instance, it was hard not to laugh when the CEO of Yum Foods (KFC’s parent company) testified before Congress that PETA represents the threat of a “vegetarian world.” He called them “corporate terrorists.” But this culture war rhetoric stops being funny when you see how it plays out in real life. PETA, along with other mainstream groups like the Humane Society of the United States, have been attacked as “terrorists” by corporations and politicians, and investigated by the FBI. The only way we can explain that groups like the Humane Society are being investigated as terrorists alongside the Animal Liberation Front is that all of it — the aboveground and the underground, the mainstream and the radical — represents a cultural threat.

RJ: Let’s go back to your reference to the specific tactics used, by both government and corporations, in this campaign. What are some of the most common tactics, and what is the strategy behind them?

WP: The comparison of today’s political climate to the Red Scare was particularly useful in identifying and classifying the tactics used in this campaign. The tactics, then and now, can be grouped into three main areas: legal, legislative, and a third I would call extra-legal, or scare-mongering. The courts have been used to push the limits of what constitutes “terrorism,” and to hit activists with disproportionate penalties and prison sentences. In this realm the word terrorist is used early, and used often, to skew public opinion against defendants before they ever set foot in a courtroom. At some point these legal tactics have limitations, though, and so corporations and politicians have lobbied for new laws that go even further. Federal laws like the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, coupled with state-level legislation, are being used to single out activists based on their political beliefs. The intention with these legislative efforts is not only to enact new laws, but to use Congressional hearings and political theater to shift cultural perceptions of these movements. The final element is perhaps the most dangerous of them all. During the Red Scare, court cases and legislation sent people to prison, but scare-mongering tactics (PR campaigns, press conferences, ads, reckless use of language to demonize people) leveraged the weight of fear and incarcerated many more.

The strategy behind these tactics is fragmentation. In discussing this, I think it’s helpful to visualize social movements as having a “horizontal” and “vertical” component. The intention is to separate these movements horizontally, and create rifts between them and the broader left. Animal rights activists and environmentalists are therefore depicted as ideological extremists who, if they have their way, will stop you from eating meat and driving cars and having pets. There are, of course, already tensions between these movements and the more traditional left, but campaigns by corporations and politicians intend to exacerbate them. If these movements are not seen as part of a broader social justice struggle, it is easier for other leftist and progressive groups to turn their backs on their repression.

Similarly, there is a campaign to fragment these movements vertically. Aboveground lawful groups are told that they must condemn underground groups, and if they do not, they will also be treated as terrorists. This two-prong strategy — breaking these movements away from other social movements, and breaking the aboveground away from the underground — isolates those who are being targeted and intensifies the repression.

RJ:  Whatever one thinks of the specific analyses or tactics of groups such as the Earth Liberation Front, the accelerating pace of ecological collapse suggests their call to consciousness about the larger living world is more important than ever. After your investigation into the Green Scare, what is your assessment of the likelihood the culture will listen?

WP: As the scale of the ecological crisis we are facing becomes more apparent, and as the backlash against social movements that are challenging our self-destructive culture intensifies, it is difficult to not feel dark, to feel helpless. I certainly feel that way quite often — not just because of the content of my own work, but from the near-blackout in the mainstream press. Unfortunately, I do not see any of this changing anytime soon. As the ecological crisis accelerates, the accompanying crackdown by corporations and people in power will intensify as well. The people who have the most to lose will cling desperately to that culture as it is threatened, and this includes not just CEOs but much of the overwhelmingly privileged United States and so-called First World.

After all of that, this will probably sound quite odd, but in the face of this I would argue that there are reasons to be inspired. Through my work, and in particular through book and media tours, I have been fortunate to meet people all over the country from diverse backgrounds. What has been striking to me is that, even if people are unfamiliar with the Green Scare or the targeting of political activists, they are rarely surprised. People may not know the specifics, but they know that corporations have more power than people. They know the scope of ecological destruction is increasing. They know we have no choice but to change but that people in power will not change willingly. I’m not convinced that the question at hand is whether or not the culture will listen, because I think that so many people already feel this. I think the question is: Will we find the courage to be heard?

I went out to Echo Bay a few days ago and examined a bucket of herring caught near the Burdwood salmon farm. One fifth of these herring were bleeding at the base of their fins. There is not one lab in Canada that will take a viral sample from me, because they are afraid of losing work with government and industry and the last samples I shipped to Washington State were left to rot, so there is nothing I can do to figure this out. Read this and consider taking the action listed at the end. I can’t fix this; it is too big, reaching deep into the bowels of government.

The history of ISAv</p>

Infectious salmon Anemia is a fish influenza virus that originated in the rivers of Norway. Like sea lice, it was benign and did not kill salmon. It was unknown until 1984 when it appeared in Norwegian salmon feedlots. When salmon farmers captured brood stock from Norwegian rivers they transported this virus out of its isolated mountain strongholds and released it around the world.

ISAv became lethal in farm fish because there is no reason for it to live lightly in fish destined for slaughter. ISAv attacked Norway and the industry learned to be careful. But the shareholders demanded more income than 1000 Norwegian feedlots could generate and so the industry spread and ISAv hitched a ride.

The non-lethal form of ISAv is hard to detect and so it slips into countries undetected and then every time it replicates there is a small chance some section of the RNA will be copied imperfectly – and it mutates. Scientists call its change from non-lethal to lethal a “stochastic event” depending only how many times it replicates. Think ticking bomb… all it takes is time for it to “go viral”.

Unfortunately shareholder demand and ISAv were incompatible and so despite research to the contrary (Vike et al., 2009; Nylund et al., 2007) it was important to ignore that the virus was spreading in eggs. Because there are about 92 identifiable strains of ISAv from the different rivers, scientists are tracking ISAv just like we tracked swine flu. They found the same strain of ISAv in farms 1000 km apart in fish from the same parents. This was exceedingly inconvenient. If ISAv was passing from one generation to the next, valuable brood lineages should have been destroyed. So industry decided to ignore this, and governments helped them. As a result, Atlantic salmon eggs are being flown all over the world trying to satisfy those insatiable shareholders.

When ISAv appeared in Marine Harvest farms in Chile in 2007 the myth was that it was less virulent than in Norway and would not become a problem. But two years later and millions of dead fish, with no scientific reporting on wild fish, Marine Harvest’s Chilean CEO wonders whether they could have stopped the epidemic if they had eliminated the first farm with the first infected fish (Intrafish, 2009). Research suggests the Chilean ISA strain is most closely related to a fish farm egg facility in central Norway (Vike et al., 2009), Chilean media points out that most of the epidemic began in and hit hardest in Marine Harvest fish farms. Aquagen confirms ISAv in a Marine Harvest egg facility

in central Norway. Chileans feel Norwegian salmon farms bring illness and leave them with the problems.¹

In 2008 Chile got serious, ending industry self-monitoring and passed Resolution # 2638 – a Sanitary program for controlling ISAv with very strict and real measures that include 48 hour mandatory reporting if a farm even suspects ISAv.

I began writing to the Department of Fisheries – Canada about ISAv in 2008, asking ex-Minister Gail Shea to close the border to Atlantic salmon eggs to protect the North Pacific. ISAv is also known to infect herring and one of the symptoms is bleeding at the base of the fins, though several diseases can also cause this. But who knows? No one! Letting loose a lethal virus into the North Pacific is a very, very bad idea.

In response to me and others the ex-Minister of Fisheries Gail Shea, Member of Parliament Randy Kamp of the Fisheries Committee, Andrew Thomson, Aquaculture Director and DFO Regional Science Director Laura Richards have all responded:

In reference to your concern over the spread of the infectious salmon anemia virus (ISAV), I assure you that measures are in place to deal with not only ISAV, but all fish pathogens of concern

Last week I decided to ground-truth their statements and found there are no visible regulations in Canada to prevent ISAv contamination. Was this an oversight? Absolutely not!

The Manual of Compliance is a federal fisheries document written in Ottawa. On the cover page it announces:

“Scientific Excellence * Resource Protection and Conservation * Benefits for Canadians”

But on page 54 the form that is used to clear a foreign hatchery for egg import into British Columbia has only 3 viruses listed, and the wily globe-trotting, lethal, inconvenient ISAv is not there.

Is it possible they forgot? No! Two pages later there is another form and ISAv is there.

There is an explanation for the second form: “…use this Laboratory Report form for fish health certification purposes other than the FHPR, e.g. for OIE-based trade requirements”

So this manual, written in Ottawa, promising excellence, protection and benefits to Canadians does not protect wild fish from ISAv. The form that certifies foreign hatcheries does not request information on ISAv. But the form used to keep international trade flowing does have ISAv on it because the world community demands it. And yet a Member of Parliament, a Minister, the head of fisheries science for BC and the head of aquaculture assured me there were measures in place! No, they are not; and worse, they recognized it should be reported and still omitted it.

Our government is working to protect international trade between corporations that are not based here, not us.

The federal Canadian Food Inspection Agency also got worried about those trade deals and wrote a “Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement” and made ISAv reportable in Jan. 5, 2011. (scroll 2/3 way down page)

Canada’s aquatic resources are vulnerable to devastation by the introduction or spread of diseases and exporters cannot meet foreign export requirements….These Regulations are therefore intended to control aquatic animal disease introduction and spread, thereby meeting international standards.

So as a result of threatened foreign export of farm fish product from Canada the CFIA finally made ISAv reportable Jan. 5, 2011. We don’t know if this is working.

And it gets worse. In 1995, the Province of BC ran the lengthy and expensive Salmon Aquaculture Review (SAR). Recommendation #16 called for transparent fish farm disease reporting open specifically to First Nations and Fishermen.

In response BC drafted a 2002 “Letter of Understanding” signed between Bud Graham, ADM, Ministry of Agriculture, Food & Fisheries and Odd Grydeland, BC Salmon Farmers mandating that the fish farmers must report disease to a database so secret not even the Ministry’s compliance officers are allowed to see it and we, the public, paid $70,000 to create a database we are not allowed to see to satisfy a million dollar government process that called for transparency. I feel like I am standing on an M.C. Escher staircase. No one knows which way is up — except those shareholders look like they keep coming out on top. When all the fish in the sea are dead what kind of meal will those shares make? All I can say to the shareholders is remember ISAv appears to be traceable to source.

If You Want Wild Salmon

It just gets clearer and clearer. If you want wild salmon it is up to you. This whole thing is corrupted. The province is currently reviewing a new salmon farm application in Clayoquot Sound. A group of us got together to send a camera down to the site and found far more life than Mainstream said was there.

But it is not just government. The environmental groups of BC are deciding whether or not to support World Wildlife Fund Certification of net pen salmon farms! David Suzuki is even considering this, despite no mention in the certification of real protection from disease. Please contact your environmental organizations. They are trying to survive in a corporate world of funders and really need your guidance. If they support WWF in certifying net pen salmon feedlots BC will further its role as a doormat to corporate schemes. You can oppose the World Wildlife certification of net pens salmon farms here. These companies are following their own laws failing to recognize the biological world they use. ISAv has demonstrated it’s capabilities and for our government to prop the door open to this marine influenza C with a meaningless certification is criminal.

Voices for Wild Salmon

So once again Salmon Are Sacred has thought of a way to help you be heard and we are volunteering again to do the heavy lifting. Just Download our paper fish at the top of the webpage fill it out, get you friends and family to fill them out and when the mail strike is over send them to us at the address on card, or create your own beautiful fish. We have to show government how many of us there are.

If 100,000 of you decide to take a stand for wild salmon we will carry these fish on a migration through government that won’t stop until reason is brought to us.

Visit us at www.salmonaresacred.org so we can continue.

Join our email list, be a voice for wild salmon, show up as we move through this.

Show up for the Cohen Inquiry Aquaculture Hearings set for late August (no time on the water this year); I will update my site when firm dates are set.

It’s a rigged game folks and we have been played for fools.

1. “Salmon Virus Indicts Chile’s Fishing Methods,” New York Times, 27 March 2008.

Fast forward to the 21st century. Today we have the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) passed in 2006. AETA is a beefed up version of the Animal Enterprise Protection Act (AEPA) that was passed in 1992.

Under AETA, “Whoever travels in interstate commerce…. for the purpose … of interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise, intentionally… causes the loss of any … personal property [or] intentionally places a person in reasonable fear … of serious bodily injury … by a course of conduct involving … harassment or intimidation or conspires or attempts to do so” shall be subject to massive fines and many years in prison. In plain English, if you organize a group of people to take action that results in a financial loss to an animal enterprise or scares the employees of that company then you can go to prison for a very long time. That’s today’s law, and so far, the one prosecution I’m aware of that the government initiated under it, was dismissed without its constitutionality being tested.

However, seven people went to prison for organizing against Huntingdon Life Sciences under the AEPA, the older, “gentler” version. AEPA created the new crime of “animal enterprise terrorism,” but you had to cause physical disruption to violate this law. It was designed to counter the growing underground movement of animal rights and environmental activists who damaged property to disrupt the activities of corporations that tormented animals and despoiled the environment.

But the young people who organized Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), and have become known as the SHAC 7 were not part of an illegal underground campaign. Instead they organized a very public and successful effort to shame and harass a large corporation, Huntingdon Life Sciences. In post-9/11 America, prosecutors developed a new legal theory by expanding the “physical disruption” language in AEPA to include loss of profits. The SHAC 7 were convicted of being animal enterprise terrorists under that interpretation of physical disruption. In 2006 the judge sentenced the “conspirators” to up to six years in prison.

This movement isn’t about being nice to kittens and puppies. It’s about torture of animals on a massive scale, in pursuit of corporate profit. Huntingdon Life Sciences kills at least 71,000 and possibly as many as 181,000 animals annually to test cleaners, cosmetics, drugs, pesticides and other ingredients. Hidden camera videos have recorded employees beating animals and dissecting live monkeys.

Will Potter, in his new book Green is the New Red, describes a particularly horrific experiment at another laboratory: “[O]ne infant primate [was] named Britches. Experimenters had taken Britches from his mother on the night of his birth and sewn his eyes shut with thick black sutures. They attached a sonar device to his head that let off a screeching sound and placed him in a steel cage, alone; the isolation and sensory deprivation caused neurological disorders. Britches would lurch and shake, shrieking.”

What’s this got to do with United States v. Dennis? Just as in Dennis, the courts in the SHAC 7 case have criminalized organizing. And if that can be done under AEPA, you can imagine the result under AETA, which could be considered as AEPA on steroids!

I know there are RFC supporters who feel that fighting for animal rights is a somewhat trivial pursuit compared to trying to prevent the horrific crimes against humanity carried out by multi-national corporations and the many governments they influence or control. But the behavior against which these activists are organizing, is part of the same culture that permeates the military industrial complex, the energy companies, the private prison corporations, and so on. These are the same foes we all face every day. The rights the corporations and their political flunkies seek to curtail belong to us all. And the sensibilities these heroic young militants seek to spread are the same values to which other progressives aspire.

Let’s not look down our noses at a new generation of activists whose causes vary from our own and who are doing things a little differently from what our generation did. Instead, let’s emphasize our points of convergence. We need as much solidarity as we can get in taking on the corporate juggernaut.

Five hundred wolves were shot that year in Idaho and Montana by hunters and federal agents under the “livestock protection” banner.

One legal defender of wolves was a federal judge whose subsequent rulings blocked wolf hunting proposals created by government bureaucrats.

Although there are thought to be only 1,500 wolves in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, these states championed their ranchers’ and elk hunters’ interest in removing wolves from the ESA and legalizing public wolf hunts.

Since the ESA passed in 1973, no species has been delisted — stripped of their legal protections — in political bargains, despite the Bush administration’s repeated attempts to weaken the Act. Scientific reasons prompted delistings. But in April 2011’s budget bill, a deal was cut.

“Science has been subordinated to political instrumentalism, setting a dangerous precedent for the future,” warned David N. Cassuto, Professor of Law at Pace University School of Law, in an April 19, 2011 editorial in the Christian Science Monitor.

On Friday, April 8, 2011, Rep. Mike Simpson (R, ID) and Senator Jon Tester (D, MT) conspired to overturn Judge Donald Molloy’s ruling in U.S. District Court last summer which returned wolves to the endangered species list, thus safeguarding their lives in the western region.

Simpson’s and Tester’s trigger fingers attached an irrelevant rider into the federal budget bill pending before Congress to remove federal protections from the wolves of most of the Northern Rockies. They threw the wolves’ fates to Idaho and Montana hunters.

Jay Tutchton, an attorney at WildEarth Guardians, told High Country News that the actions of Tester and Simpson were “cowardly…because slipping wolves into a ‘must have’ budget bill pre-empts the legislation from being open to full scrutiny, and from being argued on its own merits.”

The wolves were in a particularly weak position at this point, as several environmental groups had just attempted to cut a settlement deal to remove ESA protections from wolves. Molloy refused to accept that settlement—on two main grounds. First, Malloy had already ruled that the 2009 delisting was legally flawed, and declined to go back on that ruling. Second, the settlement wouldn’t satisfy all the parties, especially the four environmental groups and Attorney Tutchton, who rightly wanted to keep their original court victory.

Immediately after Judge Molloy’s ruling against the delisting scheme, Montana’s Senator Tester started talking about delisting wolves as part of his political campaign. Tester, a cattle rancher, is battling Rep. Denny Rehberg (R, MT) in the upcoming 2012 election, and apparently thinks the state’s biggest wolf-hater will garner the most votes.

Congressional leaders and the White House gambled that wolf hunting might save Tester’s seat in the Senate, so with a wink and nod, the rider had few votes to slow it down.

Settlements and Sell-Outs

As noted above, ten of the 14 plaintiff groups that sued Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to block them from delisting wolves made a strange decision in March 2011. They moved to settle the lawsuit, and place wolves under state management in Idaho and Montana. This would have exposed wolves in two states to public hunts. The groups said such a settlement would protect more wolves than a delisting that eliminates wolf protections in five states.

Most oddly of all, the ten groups claimed anti-wolf sentiment would grow if they held the line. They were offering political (not ecological) reasons to compromise.

How could “anti-wolf sentiment” get any worse? Idaho’s Gov. Butch Otter already claims “respect” can be the same as “hate” for wolves, and has boasted about joining a wolf trophy hunt.

Judge Molloy sided with the four non-settling parties and rejected the settlement on the day Tester and Simpson imposed the wolf rider.

A week later, on April 14th, Congress, as expected, approved the budget deal, including the rider that directs Ken Salazar to reinstate the 2009 decision that delists wolves in five states: Idaho, Montana, Washington, Utah and Oregon. Wyoming is expected to follow.

“This is more than a victory for Montana,” chirped Tester, who chairs the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus, “and it’s what’s right for the wolves themselves.”

Denise Boggs, the Executive Director of the Montana-based Conservation Congress, has a sobering view of Tester: “He’s a consummate liar who has gone back on virtually every environmental promise he made while running for the Senate.”

Jay Tutchton warns that once Obama signs the bill, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service will re-publish its 2009 delisting rule in the Federal Register and then that rule delisting wolves will be in effect.

Ask not why Congressional leaders felt they had read the tea leaves on how environmentalists would react to their reckless, revolting deal-making that preserved the wolf rider in the 2011 budget. Ten groups — a few of them extremely wealthy — showed their disinterest in wrangling with Congress, crafting an unnecessary “settlement” to heave wolves to hunters in Montana and Idaho.

Here is a list of the Plaintiff groups that offered a settlement, effectively asking a federal judge to reverse a previous hard-won decision for wolves:

Cascadia Wildlands
Center for Biological Diversity
Defenders of Wildlife
Greater Yellowstone Coalition
Hells Canyon Preservation Council
Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance
Natural Resources Defense Council
Oregon Wild
Sierra Club
Wildlands Network

Once again Big Food is “appalled” by the video — which shows sick and injured calves killed with hammers, workers standing on calves’ necks and barely alive calves on “dead piles” — while working to make publicizing such videos illegal.

And once again farm owners blame employees and play innocent, while video clearly shows them sanctioning the violence and verifying that the suffering crossbreed calves depicted should get no medical care.

Like most factory farm owners whose operations have been investigated by Mercy For Animals, Kirt Espenson, owner of the 10,000 calf E-6 Cattle Company in Hart, TX, both denies condoning the abuse and defends it.

The animals denied medical care for their open sores, swollen joints and severed hooves are actually E-6 Cattle Company’s wholesome meat initiative he says: they were not given medicine so that people wouldn’t get drug residues! (And the ones not going to be eaten by people are given drug$? Right!)

Many others were sick from the cold weather and had to be eliminated, says Espenson — as if cold weather were an untreatable disease and sentient mammals are a walnut crop.

While Big Food, law enforcement officials and government regulators continue to view videos like E-6 as isolated events, no farm that Mercy For Animals has investigated has lacked such atrocities. From the DeCoster egg farms, finally investigated by Congress, to the Hy-Line Hatchery in Spencer, Iowa where newborn male chicks are ground up alive, to the Conklin Dairy Farms in Plain City, Ohio where cows are stabbed with pitchforks, Mercy For Animals continues to show that abuse is the order of the day when animals are nothing but economic units.

Nor do perpetrators pay. No charges were filed against the Conklin Dairy owner, Gary Conklin, for example, because “in context, Mr. Conklin’s actions were entirely appropriate,” said Union County prosecuting attorney David Phillips.

While condemning animal cruelty depicted in videos like this week’s and stressing that welfare guidelines exist, Big Food is also currently trying to make such videos, shot by undercover employees, illegal. After the E-6 video broke, June delivery for live cattle at the Chicago Mercantile exchange fell to $1.15 per pound, down over one percent. That’s real money.

The video.

Beware of these eyes. … I’m the devil in disguise.

Take all you can get… and give as little as possible.

– Mae West (in I’m No Angel)

Dear William and Kate,

A thousand apologies for this tardy response to your late-arriving invitation! (I must confess, after my first question, “Why me—a humble-as-kippers American poet?,” my second question was: “In this era of girdle-tightening austerity, why the gilded note; would some churls think that ‘bad form’?”)

The fact is, I am rather certain this invitation is a mistake; that it was, in fact, meant for Gregory Corso, a renowned “Beat” poet with whom I’ve been confused for decades, thanks, no doubt, to similar assonance and consonance in our names. If it was so intended, that would also be a mistake, since Gregory is no longer whinnying with us.

Frankly, I wonder why you’d bother to invite any sort of “literary type” at all—especially a pariah type like me? Why not stick with the safer bets: a Thomas Friedman, say, worth some $50,000,000 of married-into loot–a bloviating bloke who thinks your flat little world just fine?

Why me? Did I win some sort of lottery? Each day I’m deluged with news from Nigeria, Liberia and Malaria, congratulating me for winning billions in lotteries I had no idea I’d entered. To claim my prizes, I merely must send my birth certificate, finger prints, foot prints and certified eye scans. (Obama-type birth certificates will not do.)

And now, as I have declined the lottery invites, I must also decline your kind invitation.

The fact is: I don’t know you. What I’ve seen of you on the inescapable mass media—the covers of magazines spying on me as I check out my Raisin Bran, the flashy images on CNN ad nauseum–quite honestly, I do not like. William is far too toothy, seems a bit serpentine, and Kate is too pretty to be with him–except for all that loot!

I mean: What did that guy do to deserve such luchre? (What does anyone do to “deserve” it?) Cause, you see, it’s getting kind of tight around here—and where you are, too—and a lot of us peasants are beginning to think: there’s an inverse proportion between money and democracy. The bigger the palace, the greater the malice!

I think it was Balzac who said, Behind every great fortune, there’s a crime. Thomas Paine went even further: he showed how the fortunes of the monarchies were based on the accumulated spoils of war; or taxing peasants into penury; outright theft from other “nobles,” and on and on. Why grovel before such ciminals? he wondered.

So, in 1776 and 1789, in 1848 and 1914, in 1948 and 1959—in America, in France, all over Europe, in Russia, China, Cuba, and at other times and in other places around this hurting world, we’ve thrown your kind into the sea or under the guillotines, or stood you before firing squads—to make you stop! Stop the thievery, stop the lies, stop the wars that line your bottomless pockets. (Okay. … Sometimes, as in Russia, we’ve gone over the top. No need ever to hurt children! If only your side felt the same way! Because you’re hurting children exponentially worse—all the time!)

Every time we think we’re done with you, you come back like radish indigestion, repeating some unpleasant taste, worse each time belched up.

Sharing the tabloid covers with you in recent weeks: British-born Liz Taylor. A fair actress blessed with physical beauty in her 20s and 30s and increasingly unpleasant to look at from her 50s on when her bad habits caught up with her. It’s said she died a billionaire. (A lot of innumerate Americans don’t actually “get” that that’s a thousand millionaires’ worth of dough!) It’s said she gave generously of her time to causes like AIDS, that she raised millions of dollars for AIDS. I wonder: if she was so “generous,” how did she manage to amass a billion? Let’s get this straight: It’s obscene to be a billionaire in a world where children starve! Nobody needs a thousand million dollars! Let’s start drawing some lines and figure out what kind of differentials might make sense. (Absolute equality doesn’t seem to work: humans just aren’t that good! So what will work? It’s a question evaded for centuries!) Liz Taylor managed to convince a lot of people who had less than she—many far less—to give proportionately much more than she. People in the “upper brackets” call this “philanthropy.” Christ called it hypocrisy. Somehow I don’t think Liz Taylor will make it through the eye of a needle any easier than a camel!

What’s the “royal family” worth—$50,000,000,000 (I like to write out the numbers!)? There’s Balmoral Castle with its 40,000 acres!–and Buckingham Palace and holdings in Ireland and God knows what else. Rolls Royces and hunting lodges… and meanwhile half a million Brits show up to protest the “austerity” measures of kiss-ass Cameron…, but William and Kate are looking cutesy and planning their nuptials. Charles and Camilla were caught in the last ruckus and you can see the disdain on their royal pusses. (They ought to call those “austerity” measures “asperity” measures because it feels like the people are being rubbed raw with a rasp!).

To be fair, we have our royal asses here as well. We’ve learned from you. We’ve got money to cut taxes for our super-rich—top 1 or 2 percent–, but no money to pay teachers in Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey—you name it. A mere three years ago, we had plenty of tax-payer money to bail out bankers and Wall Street fatcat-fast-talkers; but now: no money for schools; or to repair our roads and bridges; no money for health care. No money to replace our aging fleet of torn-up aircraft, opening up like cans of sardines! Money to keep the endless wars going, to plunder the oil. Money for nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs; money for mediocre actresses and trumped up candidates like, er, Trump—and Gingrich, Obama, et. al.; but no money to educate the masses about the meaning, power, responsibility and beauty of real, down-home democracy. We’ve got money to burn—so long as G.E. is making that money. They can build faulty nuke reactors at Fukushima and across the U.S., make $14,000,000,000+ in profits and get a $3,500,000,000 tax credit to boot! We’ve got plenty of dough to send up the smokestacks, but not enough for mental health programs to get to a guy like Loughner before he gets to a US Congresswoman and a 9-year old kid.

A couple of months ago I heard that 20% of American adults are suffering from mental illness! Which raises a chicken-or-egg question: Did a crazy populace create this inane government/society… or was it the other way around?

The late, great Joe Bageant saw modern America as a “simulacrum”—a false image of reality; or a hologram—something projected. We’ve been living with these projections for as long as I can remember—and I imagine the Greeks, Romans, ancient Isreaelites, Egyptians and Persians did plenty of projecting, too. I guess it’s in our DNA to want out of our own skins; to project onto a screen or a sky images of gods and goddesses, heroes and villains, archetypes of evil or goodness—a Christ or a Satan.

It occurs to me that maybe you’re both just dumb and you really don’t know what’s cooking. Maybe you’re that insulated in your bubble universe—or maybe you just don’t give a damn. (Tell me: Do you shit gold bricks?) Here’s a few items you really shouldn’t miss.

Formidable truth-warrior James Petras, at DV, reflecting on the 1210 billionaires who run the world, who are running this world into a putrid grave. Here’s another one that my writer-friend, Emily Spence, sent me.

You’ll find info like this therein: “Mass extinction, rainforests rapidly disappearing, clouds of pollution spreading across the globe and whopping carbon footprints are only a few of the incredible environmental quandaries we’re facing today, and the numbers will blow your mind. We produce enough trash to circle the globe hundreds and hundreds of times, and the amount of money wasted on the Iraq war could have solved many of the world’s problems. It’s not all bad news, though: we’ve got thousands of years worth of geothermal power at our fingertips, and the potential of renewable energy is amazing indeed. Here are 15 of the most mind-boggling green facts and statistics:

“Oxygen-starved dead zones [in the oceans] that cannot sustain life now cover an area roughly the size of the state of Oregon.”

“1% of Australia’s untapped geothermal power potential could provide enough energy to last 26,000 years.”

“Only 1% of China’s 560 million city residents breathe air that is considered safe by the European Union.”

“The Wall Street bailout is costing taxpayers around $700 billion and growing. Yet, just 4% of the Wall Street bailout could end world hunger.”

“Less than 1% of the world’s freshwater is readily available for human use.” Despite these problems, many people… are wasting water as if it will always be plentiful. … The average American household uses 300 gallons of water daily, with many wasting thousands of gallons every year on lawn irrigation.

“Every day in the U.S., we produce enough trash to equal the weight of the Empire State Building.”

“The Iraq War has cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 trillion. … A website called 3trillion.org lets you go on a shopping spree with that money, and EarthFirst.com found that we could have spent that money on all of the following and much more: universal health care for every American, switching all of the U.S. to run on solar power, building a national rapid transit system, cleaning up pollution in major cities, achieving universal literacy, repairing the damage done by Hurricane Katrina, providing non-violent leadership training for 10 million leaders across the world and buying new clothing, shoes, coats and school supplies for 10 million. …”

“Within 10 years, wind power could provide 20% of America’s power. … as T. Boone Pickens points out, ‘If the government commits to modernizing our nation’s power grid in the same fashion that we modernized our highways, we can make some serious progress in a relatively short time.’”

“Recycling one ton of paper saves 17 trees, 2 barrels of oil, 4,100 kilowatts of energy, 3.2 cubic yards of landfill space and 60 pounds of air pollution.“

Kate and Willian: How many tons of paper will your nuptials generate? Not just the gilded invitations…, but the reams of periodicals? A tsunami of wasteful confetti!

Here’s a little more to ponder:

“The human population on earth has grown more in the last 50 years than it did in the previous 4 million.

“One in four mammals is at risk of extinction.“

“At least 50 million acres of rainforest are lost every year, totaling an area the size of England, Wales and Scotland combined.“

“Average temperatures will increase by as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the 21st century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at the current pace.“

“If the entire world lived like the average American, we’d need 5 planets to provide enough resources.“

Now, with all this going on in the world, Kate and Bill, is it really fair that you Europeans have dragged the world’s policeman—yeah, US—into a neo-colonial, neo-liberal war in Africa? It’s not enough that we’re fighting our own imperialist wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and helping Israel for decades to fight its wars of occupation and expansion–now you want us to save your oily asses in Libya? To “save civilians”?

That reminds me: I’m having a bit of trouble getting my next book of poems published. The esteemed publishing houses here suggest that I should change the title. It’s now called:

BOMB THE BILLIONAIRES! F*CK THE CELEBRITIES! SAVE THE CIVILIANS!

What do you think? Should I leave the “u” out, or put it back in?

Look, guys, I really don’t mean to come down so hard on you. You’re probably just a couple of spoiled kids and you’re probably no worse than ten million other spoiled kids in this gaga world… but that’s the problem. We can no longer afford to indulge you. We’re sick of your moats and your draw-bridges and your gated communities while our unspoiled kids are digging in the dung heaps looking for a few scraps of KFC chicken wings.

The fact is, Bill… I liked your mama. She not only looked good, but all the pomp and circumstance and all the attempts of the royal family to keep her caged could not disguise the fact that she had a heart, could relate to “commoners”–who genuinely liked her. Mostly I liked her because she had guts. She walked through a minefield to spotlight the danger of such unexploded ordnance—especially to children (who are still getting crippled or killed by such every year in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc.) I’d still like to know what really happened to your mom on that fateful night in the Paris tunnel.

Well, I’d like to know about a lot of things: the Kennedy assassinations, MLK’s, Malcom’s, 9-11, the BP oil spill, HAARP and so forth. It seems the more I know, the less I know. I’m only sure of my ignorance.

And maybe this: This is my home. … I live here with 7,000,000,000 other souls… and there are only 1210 of your kind here. This is my home… and you and your kind have been messing it up and strutting around like you own it since the pharaohs, since Angra Mainyu, since the time of Huang Ti. …

This is our home, all that we have—all 7,000,000,000 of us… and you… you are the guests in our home, and not the other way around!

That scientist-poet Carl Sagan said it as well as anyone:

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

William and Kate: Get over yourselves! This culture of excess must end… or we shall all end soon “on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

Human Resources begins with the psychological research on animal behavior, how rat, dog, pigeon behavior might be shaped. Behaviorist scientists John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner applied the behavior-shaping experiments to humans.

The human experiments turned even more sinister with an emphasis on eugenics, which is based in the notion that there are superior and inferior humans, superior and inferior races. Academia was very much involved in this movement, and as the documentary points out, it went to the highest levels of government, as president Calvin Coolidge supported eugenicist notions. Corporations funded the research, with the Rockefellers playing “a particularly devious role,” said historian Sharon Smith.

Rebecca Lemov, author of World as Laboratory, said the Rockefeller largesse made for the most funded social science project in history.

Taylorism and the Disempowerment of Workers

Even though moral philosopher Adam Smith had warned against the division of labor, another man, Frederick Taylor, disagreed. He atomized the workplace and work tasks. He set target times for worker tasks. This increased efficiency but at a cost of de-skilling workers and disempowering them.

Skilled labor was undermined by the atomization of tasks, the result being a loss of power and control by skilled workers. The exemplar is the assembly line instituted by anti-worker Henry Ford, which consolidated hierarchical control.

Human Resources calls it dehumanizing.

Labor does not need to be dehumanizing though. Human Resources interviews Michael Albert who, with Robin Hahnel, espouses an economy called participatory economics – or parecon. Albert says the corporation is pathological.¹ The pathology is the drive for profit without concern for people or the environment. The parecon workplace is egalitarian.

Paradoxically, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin supported Taylorism’s scientific management although it was disliked by workers. Human Resources quotes Lenin: “Socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly.” If this is the case, then the state has merely replaced the corporations in the economic system, and the Marxist refrain of a dictatorship of the proletariat becomes a meaningless slogan.

Human Resources argues that Lenin and Trotsky destroyed socialist institutions and waged a war against anarchists. They forced industrialization, leading to totalitarianism.

Thus, argues anarchist professor, Noam Chomsky, the term “socialism” became degraded.

Mikhail Bakunin, an anarchist opponent of authoritarian Communism, had foreseen the dangers of the state. Consequently, hierarchical political systems became entrenched worldwide.

Political scientist Stephen M. Sacks discusses the Hawthorne experiments, which looked at the quantity of work and worker satisfaction. It found that having discussions with workers, regardless of whether or not workers concerns were taken into consideration, increased productivity. Sachs says it doesn’t have to be that way. The workplace can be democratized.

Why should the economic system not be rational, for example, like a parecon?

Educating Workers

Educator John Taylor Gatto, author of Dumbing Us Down, illustrated how the education system makes people unable to think in context. Initially, he says, compulsory schooling was resisted by parents (who battled for control) and enforced by state militia.

Corporations, however, feared educated workers, and students were converted into “obedient tools.”

Educational theorist Alfie Kohn extolled on the paucity of critical thinking and debilitation of forced competition. He argues against grading because grades 1) cause a loss of interest in learning; i.e., it is no longer learning for the sake of knowledge, 2) lead to shallower thinking, and 3) lead students to choose easier tasks (the logical choice).

Competition, says Kohn, undermines character and destroys relations. He points to research which shows that competition isn’t necessary for excellence and tends to impede excellence at most tasks. Competition disrupts more difficult tasks and problem solving.

“Excellence,” he says “pulls in one direction and competition in another.”

If the system is one of competition, then that system must have winners and losers of competition. What does that mean for a society?

The Origins of Violence

Noble segues into causes of violence. He turns again to behaviorist psychology (which really does not have that much sway in contemporary psychology) and the frustration-aggression hypothesis which states that thwarting people from achieving their just rewards frustrates them and leads to aggression.

Human Resources portrays rampant hatred of the other in American society that is promulgated by the media. Historian Howard Zinn, in one of his last interviews, saw an intentionality in design; the hatred of others is scapegoating — deflecting the anger onto to others so the system can perpetuate itself.

Anthropologist Elliot Leyton even implied the system as being partially responsible for mass murders. He saw multiple murderers as “alienated individuals … that represent central cultural themes” that “are relatively ignored by government institutions…”

Governments, said Leyton, focus much more on control of public than serial and mass killers. “Governments and politicians are the main killers.” The state is a mass murderer.

Human Resources holds that modern military training best encapsulates the frustration-aggression hypothesis. The military funnels frustration into hatred and fear of a group.

Fear was used to manipulate human behavior.

Mind-control Experimentation

The CIA’s mind-control project MKULTRA “abandon[ed] any pretense to morality, leading to a nightmarish search for the holy grail of social engineering: a fully controlled, fully obedient human being.”

Projects included Artichoke, Bluebird, MKULTRA (truth serum, mind wipes) etc. Since 1973 these projects remain classified.

Under the auspices of the government, military, CIA, academia (universities and “leading professors”) drug, electroshock, brain surgery, noise manipulation, and other experiments were carried out on animals, patients, soldiers, citizens, and even children as “unwitting guinea pigs” for various drugs. Among the outcomes were psychosis and death. Compensation is denied for many cases.

Psychiatrist Colin Ross says authorities typically deny human experimentation, or when undeniable blame the laxer restraints of the time period. In the case of children used in mind-control experiments, national security was proffered as a justification.

MKULTRA was deemed a failure except that it produced Kubark, in essence a “torture manual.” It detailed deprivation experiments, stress positions, and electric shock – all used by US personnel on humans at Abu Ghraib, as horrific video shows.

How is that humans can live in a system that subjects them unwittingly to dangerous experimentation? How is it they can allow their country to terrorize people in other countries in a “war on terror”?

Human Resources points to TV and its fear-based programming which becomes reality. TV entertains but it also induces passivity and suggestibility in people.

Eugenics underlies Human Resources. Yet, a capacity for cruelty has been demonstrated in supposedly learned people, even by those who might consider themselves superior: management, politicians, commanders, and doctors.

Human Resources is another excellent documentary by Noble – a documentary that should cause all people to question the nature of the society they live in, who the authorities serve — and even more — should society have authorities, should it exist as a hierarchy? The film causes us to ask who we should fear – the authorities who pursue the development of weapons of mass destruction, who develop and implement the practice of torture, who use their own citizenry as unwitting guinea pigs? Who is the genuine terrorizer? Who is the genuine enemy?

1. The thesis of another excellent documentary, The Corporation.

Dr. Don M. Huber, who coordinates the Emergent Diseases and Pathogens committee of the American Phytopathological Society, as part of the USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System, warned Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, that this pathogen threatens the US food and feed supply and can lead to the collapse of the US corn and soy export markets. Likewise, deregulation of GE alfalfa “could be a calamity,” he noted in his letter (reproduced in full below).

On January 27, Vilsack gave blanket approval to all genetically modified alfalfa. Following orders from President Obama, he also removed buffer zone requirements. This is seen as a deliberate move to contaminate natural crops and destroy the organic meat and dairy industry which relies on GM-free alfalfa. Such genetic contamination will give the biotech industry complete control over the nation’s fourth largest crop. It will also ease the transition to using GE-alfalfa as a biofuel.

“My letter to Secretary Vilsack was a request to allocate necessary resources to understand potential nutrient-disease interactions before making (in my opinion) an essentially irreversible decision on deregulation of RR alfalfa,” Huber told Food Freedom in an email.

But he cautions:

Although the organism has been associated with infertility and spontaneous abortions in animals, associations are not always evidence of cause in all cases and do not indicate what the predisposing conditions might be. These need to be established through thorough investigation which requires a commitment of resources.

I hope that the Secretary will make such a commitment because many growers/producers are experiencing severe increases in disease of both crops and animals that are threatening their economic viability.

On Feb. 16, Paul Tukey of SafeLawn telephoned Dr. Huber who told him, “I believe we’ve reached the tipping point toward a potential disaster with the safety of our food supply. The abuse, or call it over use if you will, of Roundup, is having profoundly bad consequences in the soil. We’ve seen that for years. The appearance of this new pathogen may be a signal that we’ve gone too far.”

Tukey also conveyed that while Huber admits that much further study is needed to definitively confirm the link between RoundUp and the pathogen, “In the meantime, he said, it’s grossly irresponsible of the government to allow Roundup Ready alfalfa, which would bring the widespread spraying of Roundup to millions of more acres and introduce far more Roundup into the food supply.”

Huber, who has been studying plant pathogens for over 50 years and glyphosate for over 20 years, has noticed an increase in pathogens associated with the herbicide. In an interview with the Organic and Non-GMO Report last May, he discussed his team’s conclusions that glyphosate can, “significantly increase the severity of various plant diseases, impair plant defense to pathogens and diseases, and immobilize soil and plant nutrients rendering them unavailable for plant use.”

This is because “glyphosate stimulates the growth of fungi and enhances the virulence of pathogens.” In the last 15-18 years, the number of plant pathogens has increased, he told the Non-GMO Report. “There are more than 40 diseases reported with use of glyphosate, and that number keeps growing as people recognize the association (between glyphosate and disease).”

In his undated letter to the USDA, Huber highlighted “the escalating frequency of infertility and spontaneous abortions over the past few years in US cattle, dairy, swine, and horse operations.” He reported that spontaneous abortions occurred in nearly half the cattle where high concentrations of the pathogen were found in their feed. Huber notes that the wheat “likely had been under weed management using glyphosate.”

Other Research Supports Huber’s Warning

Last year, Argentine scientists found that Roundup causes birth defects in frogs and chickens. Publishing their paper, “Glyphosate-Based Herbicides Produce Teratogenic Effects on Vertebrates by Impairing Retinoic Acid Signaling,” in Chemical Research in Toxicology, Alejandra Paganelli et al, also produced a large set of reports for the public at GMWatch:

In Argentina and Paraguay, doctors and residents living in GM soy producing areas have reported serious health effects from glyphosate spraying, including high rates of birth defects as well as infertility, stillbirths, miscarriages, and cancers. Scientific studies collected in the new report confirm links between exposure to glyphosate and premature births, miscarriages, cancer, and damage to DNA and reproductive organ cells.

One of the researchers, Andrés Carrasco, told GM Watch, “The findings in the lab are compatible with malformations observed in humans exposed to glyphosate during pregnancy.”

When trying to present these findings to the public in August of last year, Dr. Carrasco and the audience were attacked by 100 thugs who beat them and their cars with clubs, leaving one person paralyzed, Amnesty International reported. Local police and a wealthy GM rice grower were implicated in that attack.

In a 2009 study, researchers linked organ damage with consumption of Monsanto’s GM maize, based on Monsanto’s trial data. As we reported last year, Gilles-Eric Séralini et al, concluded that the raw data from all three GMO studies reveal that novel pesticide residues will be present in food and feed and may pose grave health risks to those consuming them.

In a 2005 paper published in Environmental Health Perspectives, Sophie Richard et al, compared the toxicity of Roundup with that of just glyphosate, its active ingredient. They found Roundup to be more toxic, owing to its adjuvants. They also found that endocrine disruption increased over time so that one-tenth the amount prescribed for agriculture caused cell deformation. Citing other research, they also reported that Roundup adjuvants bond with DNA.

Such negative findings probably explain why Monsanto and other biotech firms so vociferously block independent research.

Tom Laskawy at Grist estimated that in 2008, nearly 200 million pounds of glyphosate were poured onto US soils. But he notes that “exact figures are a closely guarded secret thanks to the USDA’s refusal to update its pesticide use database after 2007.” This figure more than doubles what the EPA estimates was used in 2000.

Below is Dr. Huber’s full letter, graciously provided to me by Paul Tukey:

Dear Secretary Vilsack:

A team of senior plant and animal scientists have recently brought to my attention the discovery of an electron microscopic pathogen that appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals, and probably human beings. Based on a review of the data, it is widespread, very serious, and is in much higher concentrations in Roundup Ready (RR) soybeans and corn—suggesting a link with the RR gene or more likely the presence of Roundup.  This organism appears NEW to science!

This is highly sensitive information that could result in a collapse of US soy and corn export markets and significant disruption of domestic food and feed supplies. On the other hand, this new organism may already be responsible for significant harm (see below). My colleagues and I are therefore moving our investigation forward with speed and discretion, and seek assistance from the USDA and other entities to identify the pathogen’s source, prevalence, implications, and remedies.

We are informing the USDA of our findings at this early stage, specifically due to your pending decision regarding approval of RR alfalfa. Naturally, if either the RR gene or Roundup itself is a promoter or co-factor of this pathogen, then such approval could be a calamity. Based on the current evidence, the only reasonable action at this time would be to delay deregulation at least until sufficient data has exonerated the RR system, if it does.

For the past 40 years, I have been a scientist in the professional and military agencies that evaluate and prepare for natural and manmade biological threats, including germ warfare and disease outbreaks. Based on this experience, I believe the threat we are facing from this pathogen is unique and of a high risk status. In layman’s terms, it should be treated as an emergency.

A diverse set of researchers working on this problem have contributed various pieces of the puzzle, which together presents the following disturbing scenario:

Unique Physical Properties

This previously unknown organism is only visible under an electron microscope (36,000X), with an approximate size range equal to a medium size virus. It is able to reproduce and appears to be a micro-fungal-like organism. If so, it would be the first such micro-fungus ever identified. There is strong evidence that this infectious agent promotes diseases of both plants and mammals, which is very rare.

Pathogen Location and Concentration

It is found in high concentrations in Roundup Ready soybean meal and corn, distillers meal, fermentation feed products, pig stomach contents, and pig and cattle placentas.

Linked with Outbreaks of Plant Disease

The organism is prolific in plants infected with two pervasive diseases that are driving down yields and farmer income—sudden death syndrome (SDS) in soy, and Goss’ wilt in corn. The pathogen is also found in the fungal causative agent of SDS (Fusarium solani fsp glycines).

Implicated in Animal Reproductive Failure

Laboratory tests have confirmed the presence of this organism in a wide variety of livestock that have experienced spontaneous abortions and infertility. Preliminary results from ongoing research have also been able to reproduce abortions in a clinical setting.

The pathogen may explain the escalating frequency of infertility and spontaneous abortions over the past few years in US cattle, dairy, swine, and horse operations. These include recent reports of infertility rates in dairy heifers of over 20%, and spontaneous abortions in cattle as high as 45%.

For example, 450 of 1,000 pregnant heifers fed wheatlage experienced spontaneous abortions. Over the same period, another 1,000 heifers from the same herd that were raised on hay had no abortions. High concentrations of the pathogen were confirmed on the wheatlage, which likely had been under weed management using glyphosate.

Recommendations

In summary, because of the high titer of this new animal pathogen in Round Ready crops,[sic] and its association with plant and animal diseases that are reaching epidemic proportions, we request USDA’s participation in a multi-agency investigation, and an immediate moratorium on the deregulation of RR crops until the causal/predisposing relationship with glyphosate and/or RR plants can be ruled out as a threat to crop and animal production and human health.

It is urgent to examine whether the side-effects of glyphosate use may have facilitated the growth of this pathogen, or allowed it to cause greater harm to weakened plant and animal hosts. It is well-documented that glyphosate promotes soil pathogens and is already implicated with the increase of more than 40 plant diseases; it dismantles plant defenses by chelating vital nutrients; and it reduces the bioavailability of nutrients in feed, which in turn can cause animal disorders. To properly evaluate these factors, we request access to the relevant USDA data.

I have studied plant pathogens for more than 50 years. We are now seeing an unprecedented trend of increasing plant and animal diseases and disorders. This pathogen may be instrumental to understanding and solving this problem. It deserves immediate attention with significant resources to avoid a general collapse of our critical agricultural infrastructure.

Sincerely,

COL (Ret.) Don M. Huber
Emeritus Professor, Purdue University
APS Coordinator, USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System (NPDRS)

Howling Dog Tours Whistler, a division of Outdoor Adventures Whistler (OAW), had added hundreds of dogs prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics, anticipating a significant increase in tourists who wanted to experience sled dog racing. Its advertising claimed that for $169 tourists could experience “a once in a lifetime experience [with] your team of energetic and loveable Alaskan Racing Huskies.” However, the tourism interest, combined with a lack of seasonal snow, collapsed after the Olympics.

According to the British Columbia review decision, issued Jan. 25, the man, unidentified by name in the document but later revealed to be Robert Fawcett, general manager and founder of Howling Dog Tours Whistler, “was tasked to cull the employer’s herd by approximately 100 dogs.” OAW denies it issued any such orders. Fawcett claims he was under orders to significantly improve the financial performance, and that killing about one-third of the pack was the last resort. However, a statement posted on the OAW website says “there were no instructions given to Mr. Fawcett as to the manner of euthanizing dogs on this occasion, and Mr. Fawcett was known to have very humanely euthanized dogs on previous occasions.” Thus, it seems entirely plausible that OAW expected Fawcett to eliminate about one-third of the pack. OAW has suspended all dog sled operations.

According to the Review Board, Fawcett claimed he made extraordinary efforts to adopt out the dogs, but told the Board there was only limited success. He said he contacted a veterinarian to humanely euthanize the dogs, but the veterinarian refused to kill healthy animals.

In a summary of testimony, the Compensation Board noted that Fawcett previously “euthanized dogs due to old age, illness, injury and where there were unwanted puppies.” Killing dogs for population control is not acceptable, according to Mush With PRIDE, an industry-wide organization for dog sled owners. The Review Board noted Fawcett experienced stress in previous kills, many done by gunshot, but did not experience PTSD until after the killings in April 2010.

Peter Fricker of the Vancouver Humane Society, said that his experience “in every case where people use animals to make money and when there are financial difficulties the animals’ lives are put at risk.”

On April 21, 2010, Fawcett began the executions, using a shotgun, rifle, and knife to kill 55 dogs. Two days later, he killed 45. Most of the kills were not “clean.” The workers’ compensation board reported that dogs suffered as much as 20 minutes after first being shot before dying, and that some were shot and put alive into a mass grave. The dogs were forced to watch others being killed before they, too, would be killed. In panic and fear, they began to attack their executioner who wrapped his arms in foam to prevent his own injuries. By the end of each day of killing, Fawcett was covered by the blood of his victims.

The compensation board noted Fawcett’s family physician “indicated that [following the mass killings] the worker [complained] of poor appetite, inability to cope, poor memory and concentration, agitation, anger and hopelessness after the mass culling.” A psychologist, according to the board’s report, “noted that he [Fawcett] complained of panic attacks, nightmares, sleeps disturbance, anger, irritability and depressed mood.”

Almost all references to the killings—by official documents and on the OAW website—use the word “euthanized” to describe what happened to the dogs and not the more accurate, “murdered.”

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Vancouver Humane Society are now investigating the killings, and criminal charges may be filed.

Fawcett may believe he was ordered to get rid of the animals to improve cost effectiveness. He may also believe he had no other option but to kill them to meet financial demands of his employer. But, there is always an option, and nothing can excuse what he did or how he carried out the executions.

The “Superior Orders Doctrine,” informally known as the “I was only following orders” defense, is no defense at all. The first time it was recorded was probably in 1476 when Pietro diHagenbach, a knight in the Holy Roman Empire, claimed that atrocities and torture committed under his direction, but not personally conducted by him, was ordered by his superior, the Duke of Burgandy. For allowing such heinous crimes, DiHagenbach was beheaded.

The Nuremberg Defense by Nazis following World War II that they couldn’t be held accountable for the Holocaust and its atrocities because they were only following orders was dismissed by the court. The Nuremberg Principle IV is clear: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”

In U.S. v. Keenan (1969) a Marine private claimed he was not guilty of a war crime when he killed an unarmed elderly Vietnamese civilian because he was following the direct order of his superior. However, the Court of Military Appeals ruled “the justification for acts done pursuant to orders does not exist if the order was of such a nature that a man of ordinary sense and understanding would know it to be illegal.” The rejection of the “following orders defense” to commit illegal and immoral acts in a non-military setting, when the terror of war isn’t imminent, is even more appalling and inexcusable when a person’s life isn’t in jeopardy.

Robert Fawcett may actually be experiencing PTSD as a result of the torture and murder of 100 huskies. He may need long-term physical and mental care. But, by he also cruelly and brutally killed animals, for whatever reason he thought he had to do so. For that alone, there can, and should be, no defense.

Shot by Mercy For Animals (MFA), employees at Catfish Corner, near Mesquite, skin and dismember catfish that clearly fight for their lives to the very end.

In one incident filmed on September 13, 2010 and conveyed to David Alex, Administrative Chief of the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office in a petition for enforcement of Texas cruelty to animals statutes at the facility, a completely skinned but conscious catfish escapes from an employee’s hand and flails around the sink until the employee retrieves the animal and puts him or her back on the tabletop.

In an incident filmed on September 26, 2010, a catfish being slaughtered never stops opening and closing his or her mouth and trying to escape, as blood runs down the side of the sink and skin is removed. Eventually the camera view is blocked.

In other incidents, animals open and close their mouths to breath and tense and move their caudal fins in vain struggles to escape their circumstances, right up until the time their heads are removed. In some cases the animals’ bodies are visibly shaking.

No attempt is made to render the animals unconscious or to reduce their suffering in the 66 incidents of cruelty documented for authorities, says the animal welfare group, based in Chicago.

The 55-acre Catfish Corner breeds and stocks in artificial ponds as many as 12,000 pounds of captive fish at one time. The animals are slaughtered and sold to the public as food. MFA also believes fish from Catfish Corner are used to stock State of Texas lakes like Lake Ray Hubbard and lakes near Grand Prairie.

In recorded video, the owner of Catfish Corner states on film that he skins and dismembers the animals alive, despite the government’s instruction to “electrically shock them.” MFA says it has documented other Texas facilities which electrically stun fish prior to skinning the animals in order “to render them unconscious and reduce their suffering.”

In a letter to MFA declining prosecution of Catfish Corner, Assistant Dallas County District Attorney Melinda Edwards writes that “Texas animal cruelty law lacks precedent that would support criminal prosecution for the conduct you brought to our attention.”

The ability of fish to feel pain is no longer in dispute.

The skin of the fish “contains sensory receptors for touch, pressure and pain,” says the Standing Committee of the European Convention for the Protection of Animals Kept for Farming Purposes and is the “first line of defence against disease and provides protection from the environment.”

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh’s Division of Biological Sciences say the fact that fish “can learn to avoid an adverse stimulus such as electric shock … and hooking during angling,” proves their responses are not “simply a nociceptive reflex.”

And Dr. Temple Grandin, the leading farmed animal welfare expert and an advisor to the US Department of Agriculture, says “Research shows that fish respond to painful stimuli in a manner that is not just a simple reflex.” Upon viewing the Catfish Corner video she added, “People processing live fish should first render the fish insensible before skinning, removing meat, or other invasive procedures.”

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

- Hippocrates

Back in the Cold War days, a useful myth was that of extreme Soviet supremacy. Surely, if the godless communists, hell bent on world domination, were allowed to surpass US military might…well, you get the picture. Author Edward Herman once defined the “Soviet threat” as “a large and formidable beast of prey, the size of whose claws and fangs varied with the demands of the Military-Industrial Complex.” As journalist Ken Silverstein explains: “It’s now virtually undisputed that the menace once attributed to the Red Army was greatly overrated.”

On the topic of overrated, I’m reminded of another America delusion: the protein myth. In the US, the typical adult ingests 100 grams of protein every day — roughly four to five times the amount recommended by scientists not affiliated with meat and dairy corporations. The average American — in his/her lifetime — will consume 12 sheep, 15 cows, 24 hogs, 900 chickens, and 1000 lbs. of assorted animals (like fish). How did we ever develop this idea that more is better when it comes to protein, especially animal protein?

Part of that answer is profit-related, of course, but another part of it is the result of a third popular American pastime: The irrational quest for size. While waif-like models inspire shame, anxiety, guilt, and eating disorders among the female population, those artificially-tanned, oiled-from-head-to-toe, chemically-enhanced bodybuilders smiling at you from the pages of your favorite magazine have the power to wield considerable influence. This is what a real man looks like, they seem to be saying. Envy me. I am a powerful man who commands the sexual attention of others.

“The gyms you go to are crowded with guys trying to look like men,” writes author Chuck Palahniuk in his novel, Fight Club, “as if being a man means looking the way a sculptor or an art director says.” In order to reach that sculpted ideal, the men (and women) Palahniuk refers to are usually doing too many reps using far too much weight while taking way too long of a break in-between sets as they walk around in a permanent lat pose. Add in the wallet-draining habit of downing powders, pills, and potions, and you have yourself an industry founded on the illogical pursuit of mass.

Much like the Military-Industrial Complex…

“Military history is full of trumped-up threats,” Business Week columnist Stan Crock wrote in late 2002. “Time and again in military preparations, fears are raised that later prove unfounded.” Crock calls this gap-ology. A gap, according to Herman, is “a frightening but mythical deficiency relative to some foreign power.”

First there was the 1955 bomber gap. “The Soviets flew Bison bombers repeatedly in a loop over visitors at an air show, giving an exaggerated notion of their numbers,” says Crock. “A worried US military proceeded to build up its air-defense system.”

Another example of taking action based on a wholly manufactured basis is the hyper-ingestion of protein due to the scientifically useless and morally indefensible institution of animal experimentation. Since trying to discern biological trends from human to human is often impossible, what makes us think testing done on a rat will lead to any knowledge about our anatomy and physiology? The breast milk of rats, for example, derives nearly half of its calories from protein. Human breast milk is 5.9 percent protein. Obviously, there’s little useful information to be gained from monitoring the protein needs of rodents. However, many of today’s “experts” are still relying on protein requirement studies done on rats…in 1914.

What about those who believe we need extra protein because we want to run faster, jump higher, or grow bigger and prettier muscles? “Although in the past it was thought that vegetarian and vegan diets might impair athletic performance,” explains Natalie Digate Muth, MPH, RD, “scientists, coaches, and athletes alike now agree that with proper planning a diet without animal products can effectively fuel peak performance.” In addition, the decidedly mainstream National Academy of Sciences has declared, “There is little evidence that muscular activity increases the need for protein.”

But evidence is rarely the primary guiding factor inside a gym. After all, when was it decided that muscular hypertrophy was the ideal and is there even a shred a proof that such over-development has any correlation to health and fitness? The human body has evolved over millions of years to support muscle mass similar to that of, say, a swimmer. Until the Industrial Revolution, humans had little time to use solely for the sake of gaining size. Today, however, we are surrounded by men and women who have piled up enormous muscles on bodies not designed to bear such a burden. Also, the type of training needed to promote and maintain such unnatural mass is not exactly conducive to joint health.

Look around the gym. How many people do you see lifting more weight than they can handle? You know the type: usually men, big arms and chest, equally big gut, thin legs, and not a shred of muscular definition. Not to mention the aching shoulders, elbows, knees all covered in an assortment of Ace bandages. All of them chasing what cannot be caught because it doesn’t exist…like the missile gap.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy gave America the infamous “missile gap” when he claimed the U.S. nuclear arsenal had fallen behind the Soviet stockpile. Upon his election, JFK revealed that a gap indeed existed but it turned out that it was the U.S. that had the advantage. “That didn’t stop Kennedy from launching a nuclear-arms buildup,” adds Crock.

Presidents Carter and Reagan combined to make a late 70s/early 80s contribution to the Soviet threat: the “window of vulnerability.” Based on the faulty assessment of a group of conservative defense analysts, Reagan announced that the Soviets had the ability to knock out America’s land-based nukes in a first strike. “The claims were based on faulty assessments of the Soviet weapons’ power and accuracy — to say nothing of Moscow’s intentions,” Crock explains.

If we chose, we wouldn’t have to rely on “faulty assessments” to figure out how much protein we actually need. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition says 2.5 percent of our daily calories should come from protein. According to the World Health Organization, it’s about 5 percent. How does that work out in grams? A lot lower than the US average of 100 grams a day, that’s for sure.

“An adult male on a fast only puts out 4.32 grams of urinary nitrogen per day,” says William Harris, M.D., author of The Scientific Basis for Vegetarianism. “Each gram represents 6.25 grams of broken down protein, so under conditions in which some protein is actually being catabolized and used for fuel, only about 4.32 x 6.25 = 27 grams/day are actually needed.” Twenty-seven grams.

Which brings us back to human breast milk. Humans undergo their most rapid growth during infancy and human breast milk has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to become the perfect food to facilitate that growth. As stated earlier, it derives only 5.9 percent of its calories from protein. So here’s a question for everyone working two jobs just to afford their expensive protein supplements: If we need less than 6 percent of our calories from protein during a time of intense growth, why are we consuming so much protein as full-grown adults?

That’s naturally fully-grown adults…not juiced-up bodybuilding freaks. We look back now and laugh at what once passed for entertainment. Stuff like gladiator contests or even Vaudeville. What will future generations have to say about the artificially-inflated, tanned, and oiled bodies of men and women trying to impress us with their flexing in tiny outfits under the glare of klieg lights — all pretending to represent health? It’s not natural. It’s overkill…just ask that unrepentant Cold Warrior, Caspar Weinberger.

US Secretary of Defense from 1981 to 1987, Weinberger remained unfazed by any evidence of US deception. “In the end, we won the Cold War,” he declared, “and if we won by too much, if it was overkill, so be it.”

A slice of life on Planet Overkill…