Freedom is Slavery in Poultry Country
Here in the USA, where “liberation” means occupation and a judge can’t hope to be named Attorney General unless he proclaims support for torture and disregard for the rule of law, Orwell’s Doublethink and Newspeak are alive and well in chicken country.
The fabulous Karen Dawn of the always useful DawnWatch service has alerted us to a remarkable article in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Published in the heart of Tyson territory, this mainstream newspaper has taken the bold step of parsing and challenging the language used by the poultry and egg industries to make cruel and unusual industry practices seem normal and humane. The article reports on an industry meeting at which executives openly discussed their reasons for adopting euphemisms, such as “knife operator” for the job previously known as “killer,” much in the manner that the Bush regime likes to call torture by partial drowning “waterboarding,” as if it were some kind of surfing.
Speaking of Arkansas, this is a good time to alert new readers that this blog was begun in honor of the memory of Arkansas poultry worker turned animal advocate Virgil Butler, whose death late last year left so many of us bereft. Follow the About SuperWeed link for information about Virgil and links to a few of his remarkable blog posts about his experiences within the industry.
Speaking of this blog, when I began I swore to myself that I would never be one of those bloggers who explains and apologizes for not posting, as if readers were waiting with bated breath for every word. But somebody actually called me “a lazy blogger” last night just because, for the first time, I let a couple of weeks go by between posts. So, for the record, I’ve not been a lazy blogger, I’ve just been in a phase of starting posts and then going off on tangents that took me so far from my original aims that I became dissatisfied and abandoned them. I was in an oddly indecisive frame of mind in general, so maybe that explains it. Anyway, the phase seems to have passed, so I guess I’m back.
September 30th, 2007 at 10:21 am
For the record, I don’t think you are a lazy blogger.