PETA: Pledge to Be Vegan for 30 Days

PETA: Pledge to Be Vegan for 30 Days

Some people go vegan after looking an animal in the eye and realizing that there’s a “who,” not a “what,” looking back. Others avoid meat, eggs, and dairy foods to ditch unwanted pounds or because they want to help the environment. Whatever the reason, there’s never been a better time to cut the meat and other animal-derived products out of your diet.

Change your life for the better and save the lives of animals by pledging to be vegan!

Sign the pledge to follow a vegan diet, and we’ll send you an e-mail with our top tips on the best places to eat out, our favorite recipes, the tastiest animal-friendly snacks, and the most delicious prepackaged vegan meals. PETA has all the information you need to adopt a healthy and humane vegan diet!

With the huge selection of delicious vegan meats and alternatives to dairy foods and eggs available, there’s no excuse not to give a vegan diet a try.

If you’re already vegan, you can still help animals by becoming a “pledge recruiter.” Ask your friends and family to take the pledge to be vegan!

Sign the pledge to be vegan now!

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Pledge to Be Vegan

Full Petition Text:

I want to eat better, feel better, and stop supporting cruelty to chickens, pigs, cows, and other animals raised for food. By signing my name, I pledge to be vegan for 30 days starting March 22, 2012.

Signed,
Skytalker

From Hunger Tales by Daniel Orozco

“Let’s say you’re in a room,” he said. “In one corner there’s a dog, and in the other corner a man. A man who has killed without remorse.” He sipped from his glass. She waited, her mouth slightly open.

“You have a gun,” he said. “Which one do you kill? The dog? Or the man? One of them has to die.”

“If we have an animal and a human being, I would have to shoot the animal. That’s the only choice, really.” She turned to him. “Isn’t it?”

He was still smiling, but blinking rapidly. “This man is a killer. He will kill again. He has vowed to kill again.” He leveled a finger at her. “You have to stop him from killing again.”

Near the wine bottle, a yellow Lab pup mewled adorably, gnawing on a bedroom slipper. Slouched against the candlestick, a man watched indifferently. He was, of course, a child killer, slackjawed and cruel, with cracked lips and stains on his pants and evil in his black, greasy heart. He was the Last Child Killer. Shoot him, and all children would be safe, but let him live and he would somehow breed and multiply. Shoot the dog, and beloved Labs everywhere would vanish, never to return.

Ignorance should be insufferable, not blissful.

The Florida Family Association is boycotting a reality TV show called All-American Muslim because, according to the FFA’s executive director, the show is “harmful… education-wise… [to their] belief structure.” Their belief, of course, is that all Muslims are terrorists. The show does not depict this belief of theirs, because, obviously, it is not correct.

I resent the fact that I share this planet with people who hold beliefs like that. They remind me of a quote from House: “Natural selection, excellent system. Made us who we are today. But then we invented seat belts and grocery stores, things that keep idiots and weaklings alive.”

I realize I have a latent, but always near-surface, frustration toward idiots — people who live their lives carrying false beliefs, like that one above, which is nothing more than a stereotype. The FFA executive director is walking around believing all Muslims are terrorists, and he represents an entire association of other people who probably think the same way he does.

I hate that ignorance (or idiocy, since the two often come together) is bliss. Ignorance should be insufferable. And then, if someone chooses to remain ignorant — stands up for ignorance, even — he should be, like, stoned to death.

My frustration over the proliferation of people like our dear FFA executive director is causing me to be annoyed over smaller idiocies. It’s annoying when someone is being idiotic but he thinks he is being smart.

Classroom Socialism anecdote

(Source: Some unknown person from the Internet)

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked, and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism.” All grades will be averaged, and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A (substituting grades for dollars — something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged, and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset, and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less, and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D. No one was happy.

When the third test rolled around, the average was an F.

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings, and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, all failed, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great; but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Suheir Hammad – First Writing Since

Better than Hello, Goodbye or Mabuhay

Namaste: “I honour the place in you in which the entire universe dwells; I honour the place in you which is of love, of integrity, of wisdom and of peace. When you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, we are one.”

We are one.

“Squeeze a fraction of the galaxy into your mind and then you’ll have a better idea of what you’re looking for. To even partially comprehend the scale of a single galaxy is to almost disappear. And when you remember all the other galaxies, you shrink 100 billion times smaller still. But then you remember what you are. The same facts that made you feel so insignificant also tell you how you got here. It’s like you become more real. Or maybe the universe becomes more real. You suddenly fit. You suddenly belong. You do not have to bow down. You do not have to look away. In such moments, all you have to do is remember to keep breathing.”

This is the philosophy of my being. We are one — each person, each animal, each plant and everything in the universe. This philosophy does not discount spirituality; it sees organized religion for what it is. It sees every thing for what it is. We are one. From this philosophy stems my convictions toward peace, toward human development, toward taking care of the planet, toward knowledge. This is who I am. This is who we are.

Recommended documentaries

1. The Cove

Excerpt from an old post:

I saw The Cove, just tonight. And I think that after my groceries run out, I’ll become vegetarian. It could be difficult to let go of seafood because I love seafood, especially sushi, but it’s so heartbreaking to see what people are doing to the planet. I’m not exactly standing up for animal rights; my convictions have more to do with the balance of nature in the planet. I think that it’s not wrong to kill animals for food, per se, but the process is just horrendous sometimes, and there’s more killing going on than necessary for human survival. There’s such a lack of respect for other beings we’re sharing the planet with.

I watched The Cove with my sister. At one point I said, “holy shit,” and she said, “Language!” But the issue deserves way more than vulgar exclamation from people. That cove in Taiji, Japan, is where dolphin slaughter happens in hundreds daily. The water is bright, blood red in the mornings. At the end of the film, my sister asked me, “Do you even like dolphins?” And I honestly didn’t know what to say. I don’t like injustice, and I thought that what they’re doing is unjust. But like I said, I’m not exactly an animal rights fighter. I think it’s amazing that my roommate got a cat from the SPCA, and I love the cat, but when I hear my roommate talking about things like the cat’s stress levels, and I think of the amount of effort that she has to put toward caring for the cat, all I can think of is that I can’t do that to a non-human being. It won’t sit well with me that I’m caring for a pet while children are dying of starvation, war or disease somewhere in the world. I think that that’s unjust, too. But I’m not saying that everybody should stop fighting for animal rights; it’s great that some people do. I’m just not sure I’d spend my lifetime doing that.

Education

I will expand on this later. In the meantime, watch this video. RSA has other cool stuff about other things, too.

Exchange rates

My brother was reading a Philippine paper the other day, and he said that current President Aquino of the Philippines is personally soliciting investments from Filipinos in the United States. The president apparently aims to bring the U.S. dollar exchange rate down. Investments are good; they create jobs. However, I hope that people are not missing the whole picture here. An increase in the value of the peso will make Philippine products more expensive to countries that the Philippines exports to. This will affect sales. For example, something that costs P500 would be $10 at an exchange rate of $1=P50, but it would be $20 at an exchange rate of $1=P25. On the other hand, imports would be relatively cheaper, so Filipinos would be tempted to buy more foreign goods. Using the same exchange rate examples, the peso price of something that costs $1 would go down from P50 to P25. See the danger here? It doesn’t matter that there’s more money coming into the country from investments and that there are more jobs — neither would matter if the products made are not sold. And since it would be more difficult to sell abroad, Filipinos should buy local, even if it’s potentially more expensive. Over the long run, once Philippine industries become (theoretically) as competitive as foreign industries, prices (in dollars, pesos, whatever) should stabilize. That would be the mark of true growth, once we get there. But before we get to that point, Filipinos should understand that the appreciation of the peso (i.e. an increase in its value against the dollar) would have some negative effects in the short run. Take the above sample exchange rates again for the following: (1) The $1,000 remittance from that relative in the U.S. would be worth less when translated to peso — formerly P50,000 and now just P25,000. (2) There would be fewer call centre jobs outsourced to the Philippines because peso salaries wouldn’t be as cheap as they used to — a P10,000 salary, formerly $200, would now be $400. Of course, those sample rates are exaggerated, but you (should) get the point. (Actually, they’re not very exaggerated. The rate was $1=P26.24 on Nov. 16, 1995. It was $1=P54.54 on Nov. 16, 2005. That’s a difference of just 10 years.)

Heartbreak

Prof. Winnie Monsod’s last lecture

I aced her Econ 11 class in 2002. But I guess in real life I failed.

Solidarity

A child moans under the rubble, ruins of the apartment building where his family lived. Another child waits for food in a tent shared with hundreds, a tent without proper sanitation and health care.

Not the aftermath of an earthquake, but a bombing. Affecting not Haitians, but Afghans.

I praise the relief efforts for Haiti, surely. But it doesn’t sit well with me when people get together in “solidarity with the human race” by pledging donations for victims of natural disasters, but then don’t realize that casualties of war are victims in the same way. I can’t think of one without thinking of the other. Perhaps some people rationalize war as an entirely different thing — a necessity for fighting terrorism or some other evil, real or invented for whatever purpose.

We should look past the information being fed to us. It is very easy for the media to portray Haiti as a helpless innocent, or Afghanistan as decisively malign. But aid organizations are now learning that we can’t look at disaster victims as passive; the most effective rebuilding efforts are the ones that recognize local capacities and include the locals in the rebuilding process. Donors are not gods to them, we are not gods to them. On the other hand, if you can’t figure out what’s wrong with describing all Afghans (or all Iraqis or all Serbians or whoever) as unequivocally malign, I’m not even sure what to start saying to you.

We can’t stop an earthquake from happening, but we can help stop war. If we truly acted in solidarity with the human race, preventing man-made disasters would be on equal footing for us as helping victims of natural disasters.

For you and for me and the entire human race

Check this out: 10 Ways to Reduce Your Environmental Footprint. It’s just ten sentences, yo. Read it! And if you want more info, here are two websites you can check for green tips and responsible consumerism: Good Stuff and Good Guide. They don’t just look into how eco-friendly or non-toxic products are; they also consider if companies employ child labour, run sweatshops, etc. There’s a third website, Go Green, although frankly I liked it more when it was Ideal Bite. These three websites have the usuals—reduce reuse recycle, buy organic, buy energy-efficient, buy fair trade—and they also have tips like using latex balloons, which take six months to decompose, instead of mylar balloons, which take hundreds of years.

I’ll be moving into an apartment with two friends soon. We’re going to furnish it with all second-hand stuff. No additional trees chopped, no additional energy used for making new furniture and other new things. I’m stoked about that. And it’s perfect because one of my roommates is taking on a Buy Nothing New challenge (the link is to her blog for the cause).

Hey, have you seen the movie Blood Diamond about how the diamond industry is fuelling war in Sierra Leone (and Angola), turning children into soldiers? Here’s some info on it: Conflict Diamonds. And here’s a slightly similar website for gold: No Dirty Gold. You see, you don’t have to be an ascetic to live sustainably. You can have balloons and diamonds and gold and stuff. You just have to be aware of which ones to get.

Atlas Shrugged

Two views of money are presented in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: Money is something that a person would want to either make or have. James Taggart claims that “any grafter can make money.” In response, Francisco d’Anconia says that Taggart “ought to discover some day that words have an exact meaning” (94). Taggart does not understand the difference between the two views. Grafters have money, but they do not make it. They merely get it. Making money entails producing goods of value—goods that can be exchanged for as much money as they are worth. Thus, if a person wants to make a lot of money, he has to produce goods of great value. In contrast, a person whose only motivation is to have money may resort to non-productive means, such as looting.

www.offsetters.ca

Putting my money where my mouth is apparently costs $285 (plus 5% tax). The Offsetters website calculates how many tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions you contribute when you fly and stuff. Mine added up to 14.3 tonnes for all the flying I’ve ever done. They also calculate how much you can pay to offset your emissions by giving financial support to their carbon offsetting projects. Here’s a list of all flights I’ve taken, the amount of emissions, and the cost of offsetting them:

1. Manila-Bangkok-Manila, 1.0 tonne, $20
2. Manila-Puerto Princesa-Manila, 0.2 tonnes, $4
3. Manila-Caticlan-Manila, 0.1 tonnes, $2
4. Manila-Tagbilaran & Cebu-Manila, 0.4 tonnes, $7
5. Manila-Vancouver, 2.4 tonnes, $49
6. Vancouver-Los Angeles & Las Vegas-Vancouver, 0.7 tonnes, $14
7. Vancouver-Hong Kong-Manila-Hong Kong-Vancouver, 5.3 tonnes, $105
8. Seattle-Los Angeles-Seattle, 0.6 tonnes, $13
9. Seattle-Houston-Guatemala-Houston-Seattle, 2.2 tonnes, $44
10. Guatemala-Panama-Havana-Panama-Guatemala, 1.4 tonnes, $27

To everyone who’s in Copenhagen now, you guys better do the right thing.