The death of a man who evidently caught bird flu by jogging in a wetland (!) prompts me to remind us all that, unless we radically change our orientation to animals, it’s merely a matter of when (not if) the next influenza pandemic will strike. Say what? Yes: The 1918 influenza epidemic that killed more [...]
Wangari Maathai (1 April 1940 – 25 September 2011) Derrick Bell (November 6, 1930 – October 5, 2011) Marti Kheel (August 25, 1948 – November 19, 2011) Legal scholar Derrick Bell called his 1987 book on the persistence of racial inequality “And We Are Not Saved,” prefacing the text with this Old Testament quotation: “The [...]
The Huffington Post reports that Glen Beck and other conservative media personalities are blaming undocumented immigrants from Mexico for the spread of swine flu into the United States. Given that the true vector — tourists returning from Mexican vacations — has been widely publicized, there’s no way to read this other than as racism and [...]
Original entry here. I’ll add updates below as relevant news becomes available. 27 APR UPDATES: U.S. declares public health emergency; swine flu confirmed in Spain; global stock markets plumet due to fears of pandemic; European Union health officials warn against travel to the U.S. and Mexico. Tip to veg/AR organizations: Pork producers are already on [...]
Mexico City is in the grip of an influenza epidemic that the World Health Organization says has pandemic potential. [See pandemic updates below.] Like the bird flu virus H5N1, the deadly strain of the H1N1 virus now sickening (and killing) people in Mexico and Kansas is a virulent “mixture of swine, human and avian flu [...]
I recently read a remarkable book about local legacies of lynching. Please visit the new Political Media Review to read my review. PMR is a project of the Transformative Studies Institute; the purpose of the project is to provide an independent clearinghouse of reviews of social justice media. There are only a couple of reviews [...]
Violence is nonsense. While people often deploy violence for rational purposes, violence itself is the opposite of sense. Every abused child and battered woman knows this. You’re arguing with your parent or partner, pressing your point, trying to make yourself understood, working to reach agreement. Then — slam! — comes the slap or the kick [...]
I heard about the vicious gay-bashing of Mercy for Animals founder Nathan Runkle a few days ago but didn’t want to write anything until I was sure Nathan wanted the attack to be publicized. Now that Mercy for Animals has put out a press release about the incident, I guess it’s safe to speak of [...]
Scientists are terrorists. That’s the word from Feedstuffs, the leading weekly trade paper for U.S. agribusiness. Responding to a UN Food and Agriculture Organization report on Industrial Livestock Production and Global Health Risks, Feedstuffs published an editorial stating that “FAO claims to use scientists to generate its reports, but I wonder if those scientists don’t [...]
What do anarchist cooking collectives, decadently healthy deserts, and the sniveling excuses of leftists who give into their own greed under the guise of solidarity with the masses have in common? They’re all featured in the latest action-packed edition of the Abolitionist Online. Yes, Australia’s indefatigable Claudette Vaughn has done it again, pulling together an [...]
