Saturday, September 04, 2004

Feeling Clinton's Pain

Posted by Mickey Z on 09/04 at 06:10 PM
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  1. You’re fighting an uphill battle Mickey. It’s cool to be self-destructive and selfish. When you point out that, no, it’s not, people will call you a killjoy and a scold. You can’t reach the god besotten because they have dominion. 

    All I can think of that might work is an advertsing campaign that would make it cool to be healthy and frightening to be a jerk. Or something like <a href=http://www.mickeyz.net/news/mickeyz/on_the_court>this</a>. That would have a great public service announcement on TV.

    Posted by harry from upstate  on  09/04  at  09:29 PM

  2. while it is true that if we stopped farming cows there would be more land to grow more food on..but the problem isn’t food.  there’s already enough.  in fact, growing too much would be even worse since the totalitarian agricultural revolution is what got us in to the population mess we’re in right now.  though it is a problem the amount of water is being used as well as the inefficency farming meat.  i’m not sure if it was you who said this (in yr article in the disinformation book, “fear of a vegan planet") or if i read it elsewhere, but meat is highly subsidized.  if meat represented the amount of food and water it took to produce it (based on market values, of course, as food is technically free.  it is only people who lock it up and charge for it) then meat would be far too expensive for anybody but the richest to afford.  if america really followed free-market capitalism and not the neoliberal agenda that is good for america and its corporate interests the environment might be a lot better off.  not that i support capitalism, but adam smith’s version of free markets are a lot different than what everybody thinks he wrote about free markets. 

    “‘regulation in favour of the workmen is always just and equitable,’ though not ‘when in favour of the masters’” - noam chomsky quoting adam smith.

    Posted by davidbilmas from hartsdale, ny  on  09/04  at  09:37 PM

  3. since when are dissenting voices allowed to advertise in the mainstream?

    some of you might find this interesting:


    Thursday9/30Peaceable Kingdom Loree Hall 024-7PM

    Peaceable Kingdom-Jenny Stein and James LaVeck
    Breaking generations of silence in the farm community, Peaceable Kingdom exposes the disparity between the “Old McDonald” fiction about farming that is taught to us as children and the stark reality of today’s industrialized factory farms. At the core of the film are the deeply disturbing disclosures of two men who were raised on farms; both are haunted by what they have seen and participated in, and separately made their way to a farm sanctuary where they reconnect with animals and make peace with their past. Shot in Watkins Glen, New York at the Farm Sanctuary, the nation’s largest refuge for abused and neglected farm animals, this documentary exposes the horrors of modern-day farming but also offers a humane alternative for the future. 2004, 70 min. Co-sponsored by the Rutgers University Students Concerned for Animal Rights and the Rutgers University Humanities and Communication Group.

    @rutgers university.

    there are plenty of good films playing on this festival including a double feature of control room and howard zinn: you can’t be neutral on a moving train.  also for those who didn’t catch it at the film forum or near you they are going to be showing the corporation.

    Posted by davidbilmas from hartsdale, ny  on  09/04  at  09:43 PM

  4. Dissenting voices do get picked up (and used) when the powerful realize that the status quo is untenable and their power is threatened. I don’t ever expect to see Mickey Z giving Bill O’Reilly what for, but some mainstream figure might plagiarize what he’s written. It takes a disaster, but concessions to reality happen.

    Thanks, David, for the info on the festival.

    Posted by harry from upstate  on  09/04  at  10:00 PM

  5. dissenting voices end up in the mainstream when either a) corporations can profit or b) it is no longer seen as a threat...usually both, actually.  why is the yes men being distributed by united artists?

    Posted by davidbilmas from hartsdale, ny  on  09/04  at  10:04 PM

  6. Sorry to say, Mickey is at his worst in such instances...the vegan puritan, d-class scientist and statistician. When in this mode, simply a cultural imperialist of a different sort…

    Posted by CK from   on  09/05  at  12:13 AM

  7. It’s sadly predictable that when I stray from bashing politicians, I risk personal attack from activists who are unable or unwilling to look at themselves and make changes.

    Posted by Mickey Z. from   on  09/05  at  06:43 AM

  8. Bullshit. Humanity has lived on meat, eggs, and dairy products since the beggining of time. Epidemics involving obesity and heart attacks, however, are a much more recent event. The real problem is the industrilization of the food supply and agriculture, man made chemicals, oils, processed and junkfood. Most cultures are meat centered, but lack America’s health care problems. (And by the way-My granny ate meat all her life and died in her mid-80s. I never hear of vegan health nuts living that long, they just collapse dead while still fairly young in the middle of a jog.)


    And as for comparing meat to murder-it is rhetoric like this coming from people like you that turns people off from animal welfare issues. Get a grip.


    It’s sadly predictable that when I stray from bashing politicians, I risk personal attack from activists who are unable or unwilling to look at themselves and make changes.


    You mistake honest critisism for personal attacks. You obviously are lacking in some B-vitamins from your tofu-addled head, that could explain why your rhetoric is so emotional, and you take critiques so personally.

    Posted by becky sharp from   on  09/08  at  02:37 AM

  9. Just for the sake of clarification, is it okay to take the comment below personally?

    “You obviously are lacking in some B-vitamins from your tofu-addled head, that could explain why your rhetoric is so emotional.”

    Thanks…

    MZ

    Posted by Mickey Z. from   on  09/08  at  04:50 AM

  10. A no-meat diet adds between 1 1/2 to 10 years to your life expectancy, depending on other measures you take to protect you health and when you start. Quality of life is another story, but manageable with some effort and luck.

    Consumption of dairy products is a relatively recent addition to the human diet and unnecessary for health. Large scale production of dairy products now requires such basically unhealthy conditions for the animals, and introduces so many seriously unhealthy additions to the consumers, that it’s a major risk.

    Inflicting suffering on any creature capable of experiencing it takes some vary fancy moral footwork and I have no idea how to get through to people who reject the enlightened self-interest of caring for themselves and minimizing their footprint.

    Posted by harry from upstate  on  09/08  at  09:38 AM

  11. I’m with you, Harry. Especially frustrating is how the Left (sic) suddenly becomes very trusting of the mainstream media when it comes to issues surrounding health, diet, science, etc.

    Posted by Mickey Z. from   on  09/08  at  09:41 AM

  12. aside from all the health risks associated with eating meat it’s important to note that we can’t follow the examples of other animals who eat animals because we are playing an entirely different game.  every other animal on earth lives in harmony with nature.  people, on the other hand, raise animals just to eat them and seek to keep food away from them.  that is the main problem i have with the meat-based diet.

    Posted by davidbilmas from hartsdale, ny  on  09/08  at  10:01 AM

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