Saturday, May 21, 2016

JUST WAR DOCTRINE NEWSLETTER #2

OMNI
JUST WAR NEWSLETTER #2, May 20, 2016.
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace and Justice.
(#1, Oct. 15, 2013)

Contents Just War Doctrine Newsletter #2, May 20, 2016
Principles of the Doctrine: last resort, legitimate authority, redress a wrong, chance of success, re-establish peace, proportionality, discriminate combatants from non-combatants. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pol116/justwar.htm
2 Articles in The Free Weekly on Vatican Just War Conference
     Erica Chenoweth, “Did the Vatican Just Throw Out the Just War Doctrine?” 4-21
     John Dear, “The Church’s Turn Toward Nonviolence”  4-28
Recent Critiques of Just War Doctrines 2013-16
Meagher, Killing from the Inside Out: Moral Injury and Just War
    Editor’s Comment
    Dick, LTE on Chenoweth, Dear, Meagher
    Reviews, Google Search
President Obama on Just War, Including His Nobel Peace Prize Speech
Newsletter #1 Contents

Editor’s Corkscrew:  Our two most urgent concerns for the planet are nuclear war and CO2(and methane)/warming.   The Just War Doctrine is used to justify the former and in ceaseless wars to distract us from the latter.
Ironical Corkscrew long in use: In contrast, the principles of the Doctrine can function to critically examine a specific war.


2 ARTICLES IN THE FREE WEEKLY ON VATICAN JUST WAR CONFERENCE


RECENT BOOKS AND ARTICLES on Just War Doctrine 2013-16

MEAGHER, KILLING FROM THE INSIDE OUT: MORAL INJURY AND JUST WAR
     Publisher’s Statement, Sept. 12, 2014
meagher
I’ve just completed work on an important new book on war by Robert Emmet Meagher titled Killing from the Inside Out: Moral Injury and Just WarThe book includes a foreword by Stanley Hauerwas, who extols Meagher’s transgression of standard disciplinary boundaries in his pursuit of the roots of our collective failure to address the profound moral injuries experienced by warriors:
I am convinced [Meagher’s] emphasis on what war does to combatants is a decisive intervention that helps us better understand the morality of war. As a person committed to Christian nonviolence, I fear that many assume a commitment to nonviolence carries with it a negative judgment against those who participate in war. Meagher challenges that presumption by helping us see that those who dissent from war and those who have participated in war share more in common than the stereotype of either would suggest. That war wounds us morally is not only true of those who prosecute the violence of war; it is true of all whom war touches.
One of the most provocative arguments, pursued by Meagher throughout the book, is that the Christian church’s widely celebrated doctrine of just war, though conceived honestly enough as a way of constraining the evils of war, has functioned in the main to conceal from us the troubling injuries suffered by those who sacrifice their normal unwillingness to kill. Such a claim turns by no means on the naive suspicion of an ivory-tower academic squeamish about bloodshed, but rather on testimony after testimony of decorated soldiers who, having returned from war, have shown extraordinary courage in writing honestly about their wounds. This is an anti-war book that is underwritten by a life’s work of honoring the experience of soldiers.
Meagher begins the book’s conclusion in typically incisive and eloquent fashion:
Just war theory is a dead letter. This is the argument advanced, if not proven, in the preceding chapters. It was never more than a theory, and at its worst it was a lie, a deadly lie. It promised at least the possibility of war without sin, war without criminality, war without guilt or shame, war in which men would risk their lives but not their souls. At its headiest, it promised war in which men would win eternal life, and now, in the fullness of wartime, these same promises have been extended to women. Whether or not these promises were first or ever made in good faith is something we can never know, and it doesn’t matter. What we can know is that they have not been kept. We know this from experience, the experience of war, the killing lab in which the theory of just war has been tested for sixteen centuries. It is time to declare its death and to write an autopsy.
Meagher’s book deserves a very wide reading, and I’m happy to report that it has already received significant pre-orders, and more endorsements than any book I’ve ever had the privilege to edit.

DICK, LTE on Chenoweth, Dear, and Meagher
From Just War to Just Peace
Dick Bennett
     Thanks to The Free Weekly for publishing two articles on Just-War Theory (Erica Chenoweth, 4-21; John Dear 4-28: www.freeweekly.com).   They inform us of an extraordinarily significant new initiative to create a peaceful world—the rejection of the Just War Theory by the Catholic Church, and the creation of a Just Peace Theory.  The problem?  The old Theory, intended to prevent wars, increased them in number and ferocity, and offered little guidance for the conduct of war or for life after war, particularly regarding  “moral injury.”
      Pope Francis, via the Catholic Church’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, along with Pax Christi International, hosted a conference on the theme of  “Nonviolence and Just Peace: Contributing to the Catholic Understanding of and Commitment to Nonviolence.”   The conference members recommended: 1) rejection of Just War Doctrine, and 2) a new encyclical committed to the nonviolence of Jesus.   The Vatican’s conference to critique its 1700 years-old doctrine was surprising to most; its recommendation to the Pope for a drastically new encyclical was astonishing.   Together they will inspire radically new thinking about war and violence not only by Catholics but by all Christians, and perhaps many others.  A new encyclical asserting the nonviolence of Jesus as central Catholic doctrine will be astounding, for it will possibly lead Catholics and millions of Christians for the first time to search seriously for nonviolent alternatives to armed aggression.  
     The conference and recommendation arose I expect also from a new criticism of  Just War doctrine.   The 2014 book by Robert Meagher, Killing from the Inside Out: Moral Injury and Just War, would, the author writes, “pull up, from its roots, the just war tradition, to reveal its deadly legacy [“the deceptive and destructive core of the Christian just war doctrine”], and to point to a future beyond just war” to “just peace,” for “a planet ever smaller, more precious, and more imperiled” by nuclear war and atmospheric warming.
      Meagher employs an aspect of war as old as war itself and yet seeming new by its long neglect: “moral injury.”  He opens his book with facts of 20th century war slaughters and US military suicides today.   During WWI 420,000 British killed, a million French, two million Germans.  In 2012 an average of 33 US soldiers on active duty killed themselves each month;  discharged soldiers in February 2013 killed themselves 22 a day, in “the lamentable legacy of a long tradition of justified war and inevitable moral injury.”  His point is that no war can be justified; no war is “good and right, even virtuous and meritorious, pleasing in the sight of God.”  Just War theory functions as a rationalization for war, and what war does to the combatants further exposes its failure.
      To make his case Meagher spends five of his eight chapters “tracing the roots and branches of our Western understanding of war and, more pointedly, of just war and moral injury” in order to say how we might end our ceaseless wars. 
    The author is Professor of Humanities, Hampshire College, and his most recent book is Herakles Gone Mad: Rethinking Heroism in an Age of Endless War.


REVIEWS OF KILLING FROM THE INSIDE OUT, Google Search, May 20, 2016, first page [plus some additions from Dick]

www.moralinjuryandjustwar.org/
Robert Emmet Meagher · Home · Author · Excerpts/Reviews · Interview ·
CHAPTER OUTLINE AND SYNOPSES         COMMENTS
 Just war doctrine was never more than a theory and at its worst it was a lie, a deadly lie. It promised at least the possibility of war without sin, war without criminality, war without guilt or shame, war in which men and women would risk their lives but not their souls or their humanity. This theory has been tested for sixteen centuries, and has failed. It is time to declare its death, write its autopsy, reveal its deadly legacy, and point to a future beyond just war. 
https://syndicatetheology.com/symposium/killing-from-the-inside-out/
“Just War Theory is a dead letter” (129)—this is the claim that Meagher boldly makes and seeks to defend in his book. [a panel of four examine the book theologically—Dick]
usacac.army.mil/.../MilitaryReview_20150430_art01...
United States Army
Apr 30, 2015 - REVIEW ESSAY -. KILLING FROM THE. INSIDE OUT. Moral Injury and Just War.   [Lt. Col. Douglas A. Pryer, U.S. Army, praises the book.  –Dick.]    Pryer currently serves as a J-5 planner in the Middle East Directorate of the Joint Staff. He holds a Master of Military Art and Science (Military History) from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and has published one book and numerous essays regarding warfare’s human domain.
Killing from the Inside Out: Moral Injury and Just War by Robert Emmet ...  www.goodreads.com/.../23330715-killing-from-the-inside-ou...
Goodreads    Rating: 4.4 - ‎11 votes
Killing from the Inside Out has 11 ratings and 2 reviews. ... by Robert EmmetMeagher, Jonathan Shay (Afterword), Stanley Hauerwas (Foreword).
 4.42  ·   Rating Details  ·  12 Ratings  ·  2 Reviews
Armies know all about killing. It is what they do, and ours does it more effectively than most. We are painfully coming to realize, however, that we are also especially good at killing our own "from the inside out," silently, invisibly. In every major war since Korea, more of our veterans have taken their lives than have lost them in combat. The latest research, rooted in...more
https://www.lewrockwell.com/.../just-war-theory-im...
Llewellyn Rockwell
Apr 5, 2016 - Review of Robert Emmet MeagherKilling from the Inside Out: Moral Injury and Just War (Cascade Books, 2014), xxi + 161 pgs, paperback.
https://iamloganmi.org/.../killing-from-the-inside-out-book-review-with-...
Sep 4, 2015 - Bob Meagher is a professor of Humanities at Hampshire College who has been a good friend to me ever since we served together as ...
104.196.18.230/killing-from-the-inside-out-moral-injury-and-just-war-r...
Killing From The Inside Out Robert Emmet Meagher 3.99, Killing From The Inside Out. Wipfandstock, Adding Insult To Moral Injury And Just War From The, ...
130.211.184.41/killing-from-the-inside-out-moral-injury-and-just-war-r...
Killing From The Inside Out: Moral Injury And Just War -. Robert Emmet Meagher. Libertarianchristians - Your #1 Christian Libertarian, Robert Emmet Meagher ...


CRITIQUES OF JUST WAR DOCTRINE, GOOGLE Search, May 20, 2016, first page.  
www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/war/just/against.shtml
BBC
Some people argue that the Just War doctrine is inherently immoral, while others suggest that there is no place for ethics in war. Still others argue that the ...
ncronline.org/.../challenging-just-war-theoryational Catholic Reporter
Sep 1, 2014 - But later, St. Augustine in response to armed aggression against the innocent set the Catholic church on the road to the "just wartheory -- quite ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war_theory
Wikipedia
Just war theory (jus bellum iustum) is a doctrine, also referred to as a tradition, of military ethics .... Preventive war against a tyrant who is about to attack. War to ...
againstbombing.com/justwar.htm
... Just War Iraq and Kosovo. Americans Against World Empire, Inc. Homepage ... A jewel of these writings is the doctrine of Just War. To pacifists the phrase Just ...
www.catholic.com/documents/just-war-doctrine
Catholic Answers
The most authoritative and up-to-date expression of just war doctrine is .... of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, ...
https://www.ewtn.com/.../just_war.htm
EWTN Global Catholic Network
Called the Just War Doctrine, it was first enunciated by St. Augustine of ... Provoked by this offense against His Father, Jesus formed whips and drove them from ...
opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/.../rethinking-the-just-war-part-...
Nov 11, 2012 - The “just war theory” has influenced the ethical positions on violent conflict ... Within the United States people hold radically opposing views on ...
www.academia.edu/.../Three_Problems_for_Just_War_Th...
Academia.edu
By Steven P. Millies in Just War Theory. ... destruction, to what extent is a preventive war against those that acquire weapons of mass destruction a just one?
https://peacetheology.net/pacifism/just-war-thought-a-pacifist-analysis/
From the time of Augustine until now, the so-called “just war theory” has been .... Therefore, a nuclear war must always be opposed—as should preparation for ...
www.iep.utm.edu/justwar/
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Just war theory deals with the justification of how and why wars are fought. .... Against these two ethical positions, just war theory offers a series of principles that ...


PRESIDENT OBAMA and JUST WAR THEORY, Google Search, May 20, 2016
https://consortiumnews.com/2013/05/.../obama-distorts-just-war-principl...
May 24, 2013 - In his address on terrorism and America's counterterrorism policy,President Barack Obama invoked the “just war” theory to justify the continued ...
nationalinterest.org/.../obama-the-military-just-war-t...
The National Interest
Mar 31, 2016 - In his recent interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, President Obama specifies some key elements of his 'theory' on the use of military ...
www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-22653473
BBC
May 24, 2013 - Barack Obama stated that the conflict against al-Qaeda is a "just war", ... The just war theory was largely concerned with the reasons for going ...
kirbyhopper.com/obamas-war-not-qualify-just-war/
Dec 31, 2014 - According to Just War TheoryPresident George Bush Sr.'s war to expel Iraq from Kuwait would qualify as a just war under Just War Theory ...
www.academia.edu/.../Barack_Obamas_foreign_policy_ju...
Academia.edu
Barack Obama's foreign policy, just war, and the irony of political geography .... of the selective application of just war theory in the rationalization of conflict.
www.realclearworld.com/.../the_president_drones_and_just_war_theory...
Jul 6, 2012 - The most startling revelation was that President Obama personally ... If Obama acquiesces to such deceits, all the just war theory in the world ...
blogs.ssrc.org/.../obama-christian-realism...
Social Science Research Council
Dec 15, 2009 - As President Obama noted in his speech, there are criteria involved in the “just war” concept. It isn't just a matter of proclaiming that a war is ...

PRESIDENT OBAMA, NOBEL PRIZE SPEECH, AND JUST WAR
www.wsj.com/articles/SB126043857319785183
The Wall Street Journal
Dec 11, 2009 - OSLO -- President Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize Thursday ... of armed might in the service of a "just war," a sharp change in emphasis from ... core principles of a more traditionally conservative foreign policy.
Remarks by the President at the Acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize ...https://www.whitehouse.gov/.../remarks-president-acceptanc...
White House
Dec 10, 2009 - the WHITE HOUSEPresident Barack Obama ... Remarks by the President at the Acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize ... The concept of a "just war" emerged, suggesting that war is justified only when certain .... by the false suggestion that these are somehow Western principles, foreign to local cultures or ...
www.usnews.com/.../in-nobel-speech-obama-...
U.S. News & World Report
Dec 10, 2009 - Who would have guessed that President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize ... In his speech today in Oslo, Obama invoked "just wartheory early on, ...


Contents Newsletter #1 Just War Doctrine
Mac Bica, A Partial Defense of Drones
Leroy Walters, Five Classic Just-War Theories: Aquinas, Vitoria, Suarez, Gentili, and
     Grotius.
Four Christian Critiques of Just War Theory
  McSorley, New Testament Basis of Peacemaking
  Wells, The War Myth
  York and Barringer, A Faith Not Worth [Killing] For
  Trzyna, Blessed Are the Pacifists
Dick, Just Cause and Just Means, Iraq and Afghan Wars
No Just US Wars?
Engelhardt, US Bombings of Iraq
Grayling vs. WWII Area Bombing

For research purposes, specific subjects can be located in the following alphabetized index, and searched on the blog using the search box.  The search box is located in the upper left corner of the webpage.
Newsletter Index:  http://omnicenter.org/dick-bennetts-peace-justice-and-ecology-newsletters/dicks-newsletter-index/



END JUST WAR DOCTRINE NEWSLETTER #2



Wednesday, May 11, 2016

VEGETARIAN ACTION NEWSLETTER #28, MAY 11, 2016

OMNI 
VEGETARIAN ACTION NEWSLETTER #28, May 11, 2016.

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology.
 (#4 Feb. 12, 2014; #5 March 12, 2014; #6 April 9, 2014; #7 May 14, 2014; #8, June 11, 2014; #9 July 9, 2014; #10, August 11, 2014; #11 September 10, 2014; #12 October 8, 2014; #13, November 12, 2014; #14, December 10, 2014; #15, January 14, 2015; #16, Feb. 11, 2015; #17, March 11, 2015; #18, April 8, 2015; #19, June 10, 2015; #20, August 12, 2015; #21, September 9, 2015; #22, Oct. 14, 2015; #23, Nov.    ; # 24, Dec. 9, 2015; #25, Jan. 13, 2016; #26, Feb. 10, 2016; #27, April 13, 2016).   1576 OMNI Newsletter posts as of Apr 12, 2016.    Thank you Marc.


If you need to be removed from this list or want it to go to another address, just reply to this email and I'll get you fixed up.


Veggie and Vegan Potluck
Wed, May 11, 6:00 pm @ OMNI
A food-friendly event with delicious dishes every second Wednesday. .  If you wish, provide your recipe, or at least its name and main ingredients. Make a special sign or announcement if your dish is vegan or gluten free.  
 We want to meet you, at a place and time where we can talk with others not only about recipes, nutrition, and health, but about care for other species, for the environment, and the climate.     Hope to see you!

As always, folks who don't identify as vegetarians are welcome at our potlucks.
Car directions to OMNI: Take College to Harold St (at Flying Burrito), turn east (right if you're heading north). Go one block to Lee and turn left.  Go one block to Bertha and we’re the gray brick on the corner, 2nd house south of Liquor World. 

OMNI CLIMATE CHANGE LOBBY meets at 7pm also at OMNI.  This group is pushing hard for the “fee-dividend” solution to fossil fuels emissions. 


VEGETARIAN ACTION NEWSLETTER
What’s at stake:  “What began as a desire to improve my health opened the door to realize the tremendous positive impact that veganism has on the environment and animal lives.   There’s no single life choice that creates such massive benefits for human health, environmental sustainability, and relieves the suffering of animals.”  Jason Wrobel, author of Eaternity: More Than 150 Deliciously Easy Vegan Recipes for a Long, Healthy, Satisfied, Joyful Life, in VEGNEWS (April 2016).
This newsletter especially focuses on the significant connections of vegetarianism/veganism to education, industrial meat production, nutrition, health, animal rights, overpopulation, wars, the 6th extinction, and most of all, to which all other factors either contribute or resist, the catastrophe of climate change.   As in all of OMNI’s activities, we seek a culture of peace, justice, and ecology, to make the changes necessary to end wars and slow warming.

MAY IS:  International Respect for Chickens Month


VEGETARIAN SUMMERFEST 2016
University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown, PA, July 6-10.
NAVS North American Vegetarian Society

I.             NUTRITION, HEALTH

VEGETARIAN RECIPES
Free Arkansas Food & Farm, Food Issue 2016, picked up at Harp’s, contains 19 pages of attractively illustrated veg recipes (except for one with some bacon which can be omitted).   www.Arkansasfoodandfarm.com   The magazine is “brought to you by Arkansas Times and Arkansas Grown” in “partnership with the Arkansas Agriculture Department.”


Almost all American Grains Are Contaminated with Glyphosate Herbicide
Glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, is recognized as the world’s most w...
Wiebe believes the use of glyphosate on wheat may be connected to the rise in celiac disease. “We’ve seen an explosion of gluten intolerance,” he said. “What’s really going on?”
Charles Benbrook, Ph.D., who published the paper on the mounting use of glyphosate, says the practice of spraying glyphosate on wheat prior to harvest, known as desiccating, began in Scotland in the 1980s.
“Farmers there often had trouble getting wheat and barley to dry evenly so they can start harvesting. So they came up with the idea to kill the crop (with glyphosate) one to two weeks before harvest to accelerate the drying down of the grain,” he said


True?  Or scaring us?


EAT MEAT SAYETH THE RULERS
David Orr
7:47 AM (8 hours ago)
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to me, David  4-4-16
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This is why you crave beef: Inside secrets of Big Meat's billion-dollar ad and lobbying campaigns

EAT SPROUTS
[I haven’t tried to verify all these claims.  Comment?]
10 Reasons Eating Sprouts Should Be a Part of Your Daily Diet
Michelle Schoffro Cook, Care2 | April 6, 2016 
Don’t miss out. Stay Informed. Get EcoWatch’s Top News of the Day.
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Sprouts truly are the best locally-grown food, yet not enough people eat or grow them. Considering their many health and environmental benefits, it’s time to consider adding sprouts to your diet.
Sprouts truly are the best locally-grown food, yet not enough people eat or grow them.
Here are 10 reasons to eat more sprouts:
1. Experts estimate that there can be up to 100 times more enzymes in sprouts than uncooked fruits and vegetables. Enzymes are special types of proteins that act as catalysts for all your body’s functions. Extracting more vitamins, minerals, amino acids and essential fatty acids from the foods you eat ensures that your body has the nutritional building blocks of life to ensure every process works more effectively.
2. The quality of the protein in the beans, nuts, seeds or grains improves when it is sprouted. Proteins change during the soaking and sprouting process, improving its nutritional value. The amino acid lysine, for example, which is needed to prevent cold sores and to maintain a healthy immune system increases significantly during the sprouting process.
3. The fiber content of the beans, nuts, seeds or grains increases substantially. Fiber is critical to weight loss. It not only binds to fats and toxins in our body to escort them out, it ensures that any fat our body breaks down is moved quickly out of the body before it can resorb through the walls of the intestines (which is the main place for nutrient absorption into the blood).
4. Vitamin content increases dramatically. This is especially true of vitamins A, B-complex, C and E. The vitamin content of some seeds, grains, beans or nuts increases by up to 20 times the original value within only a few days of sprouting. Research shows that during the sprouting process mung beansprouts (or just beansprouts, as they are often called) increase in vitamin B1 by up to 285 percent, vitamin B2 by up to 515 percent and niacin by up to 256 percent.
5. Essential fatty acid content increases during the sprouting process. Most of us are deficient in these fat-burning essential fats because they are not common in our diet. Eating more sprouts is an excellent way to get more of these important nutrients.
6. During sprouting, minerals bind to protein in the seed, grain, nut or bean, making them more useable in the body. This is true of alkaline minerals like calcium, magnesium and others that help us to balance our body chemistry for weight loss and better health.
7. Sprouts are the ultimate locally-grown food. When you grow them yourself you are helping the environment and ensuring that you are not getting unwanted pesticides, food additives and other harmful fat-bolstering chemicals that thwart your weight loss efforts.
8. The energy contained in the seed, grain, nut or legume is ignited through soaking and sprouting.
9. Sprouts are alkalizing to your body. Many illnesses including cancer have been linked to excess acidity in the body.
10. Sprouts are inexpensive. People frequently use the cost of healthy foods as an excuse for not eating healthy. But, with sprouts being so cheap, there really is no excuse for not eating healthier.

NEW MAGAZINE:  NOURISH
Nourishing News - Real farming, the Amazon, essential fats and eating less meat
Nourish Network news.nourishnet@gmail.com via madmimi.com 
1:50 PM (1 hour ago)
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to me  4-15-16
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What's up Real farming and true food culture is what’s up, in the first issue o
This is only a sample of the advertising I received from this new magazine.  --Dick
What's up
Nourish. Columnist Brooke Aksnes writes: ‘Now when I go to buy meat or animal products, I look for locally grown, small-farm, organic products, where fuel used on feed and product transport is kept to a minimum and where humans and animals involved are treated with dignity and respect. I play my own part in combatting climate change while protecting those without voices in our societies. Personal food choices have effects far beyond personal nutrition. Also, however, there are times when it is not possible to eat up to the highest standards because of politeness or practicality. Jonathan Safran Foer sums this up: “Our response to the factory farm is ultimately a test of how we respond to the powerless, to the most distant, to the voiceless – it is a test of how we act when no one is forcing us to act one way or another. Consistency is not required, but engagement with the problem is”.’
Join us please! Details of what this means and how to get in touch with us are at the end of this NN.
Not subscribed yet to the Nourish Network? Click here!


The Cornucopia Institute
Top of Form
Report Exposes Food Industry Cover-up
April 14th, 2016
[Click here to read the updated carrageenan report]
Toxic, Carcinogenic, Degraded Carrageenan:
Widespread Contamination Present in the Common Food-Grade Ingredient
A just-issued report by The Cornucopia Institute summarizes research on the common food additive carrageenan, exposing the industry’s hidden data demonstrating that all food-grade carrageenan contains a carcinogenic contaminant—low molecular weight poligeenan.
Carrageenan, harvested from specific species of red seaweed, is a highly effective thickener/stabilizer found in processed foods including infant formula, plant-based beverages, deli meats, and some dairy products, including cream. The controversy over carrageenan has existed between food industry representatives and public health researchers for years, but it is now flaring up again over its use in organic food.
Cornucopia’s report, Carrageenan: New Studies Reinforce Link to Inflammation, Cancer, and Diabetes, will be formally released in Washington, on April 25, at the upcoming meeting of the USDA’s National Organic Standards Board. The board will be debating whether to remove carrageenan from its list of approved materials for use in organic food.  MORE
You might also like: 
Forwarded by David D




II.          ANIMAL SENTIENCE, COMPASSION, ANIMAL PROTECTION AND RIGHTS

Consequences of Consciousness: Sy Montgomery on Human Treatment of Other Animals.  Tuesday, 19 April 201 By Leslie Thatcher, Truthout | Interview.  Montgomery is author of The Soul of an Octopus and The Good Good Pig.
"The 2012 Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness said all mammals and birds and octopuses specifically have the neural substrates necessary to generate consciousness -- ultimately, the world is far more alive, intelligent, thinking and feeling than we have wanted to admit for a long time."
Consideration of other creatures' agency becomes ever more urgent as we learn more about cognition across species. Now that we absolutely know that lobsters can feel themselves being cooked to death, it seems self-evident to me that we should never put a lobster in a pot of boiling water, but many other people still feel their own pleasure in eating the lobster is more important than the lobster's suffering -- a view grounded in the long history of denial of other animals' sentience. In other instances, what we do with what we know about animal consciousness seems more complex. The forms our own empathy should take can be deeply at odds with current cultural norms.
Additional reading:

Claire Williams.  “6 Bids on Ballot for Shareholders at Tyson Foods: Transparency among issues; Execs Urge ‘No’ Across Board.”  AD-G (Feb. 1, 2016).  For example, Green Century Funds that advocates for environmental policies asked Tyson “to disclose the risks of using gestation crates.”  The Tyson board of directors urged shareholders to vote against the proposal, citing its “Office of Animal Well-Being and Farm-Check program.”  Also, the word “cruelty” never occurred in Ms. Williams’ report.

Stephen Brown.  “Arkansas Should Do Better by Animals, Decrease Cruelty.”  AD-G (LTE, March 17, 2016).  Denounces the unregulated, uninspected, often cruel “puppy mills.”   Ethical sensitivity toward domesticated animals may influence attitudes toward farm and particularly toward industrial “farming” leading to mass torture and killing.

HENRY SALT
www.ivu.org/history/salt/
Henry S. Salt is probably not well-known today but he wrote nearly 40 books most of which cogently argued and urged for some much needed humane reforms ...
www.all-creatures.org/articles/an-tpr-darla-salt.html
Henry Stephens Salt was a prolific English writer, biographer, and literary critic, the author of nearly 40 books. He was also an avid campaigner for social reform.

The Silence without Animals
CURSE OF THE CARNIVORES
By Gerry Sloan (April 2016)
As the summer waned, a bullfrog
harrumphed each night on the rim
of the pond, a vaguely reassuring
sound. Then, foolishly, I took a gig
and flashlight down to dispatch him,

undressed for his dance in the pan.
We dined frugally on the fried legs,
just one for each of us, then sat
in the gathering darkness
listening only to the crickets.


III.        CLIMATE CHANGE

POPULATION GROWTH
Human Population Growth and Climate Change
HOME  >  PROGRAMS  >  POPULATION AND SUSTAINABILITY  >  CLIMATE  >  HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH AND CLIMATE CHANGE
CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
“HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH AND CLIMATE CHANGE”
The largest single threat to the ecology and biodiversity of the planet in the decades to come will be global climate disruption due to the buildup of human-generated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. People around the world are beginning to address the problem by reducing their carbon footprint through less consumption and better technology. But unsustainable human population growth can overwhelm those efforts, leading us to conclude that we not only need smaller footprints, but fewer feet.
Portland, Oregon, for example, decreased its combined per-capita residential energy and car driving carbon footprint by 5 percent between 2000 and 2005. During this same period, however, its population grew by 8 percent.
2009 study of the relationship between population growth and global warming determined that the “carbon legacy” of just one child can produce 20 times more greenhouse gas than a person will save by driving a high-mileage car, recycling, using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs, etc. Each child born in the United States will add about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent. The study concludes, “Clearly, the potential savings from reduced reproduction are huge compared to the savings that can be achieved by changes in lifestyle.”
One of the study’s authors, Paul Murtaugh, warned that: “In discussions about climate change, we tend to focus on the carbon emissions of an individual over his or her lifetime. Those are important issues and it's essential that they should be considered. But an added challenge facing us is continuing population growth and increasing global consumption of resources. . . . Future growth amplifies the consequences of people's reproductive choices today, the same way that compound interest amplifies a bank balance."
CO2 Emissions by Country
The size of the carbon legacy is closely tied to consumption patterns. Under current conditions, a child born in the United States will be responsible for almost seven times the carbon emissions of a child born in China and 168 times the impact of a child born in Bangladesh.
The globalization of the world economy, moreover, can mask the true carbon footprint of individual nations. China, for example, recently surpassed the United States to become the world’s leading greenhouse gas emitter. But a large portion of those gases is emitted in the production of consumer goods for the United States and Europe. Thus a large share of “China’s” greenhouse gas footprint is actually the displaced footprint of high-consumption western nations.
The United States has the largest population in the developed world, and is the only developed nation experiencing significant population growth: Its population may double before the end of the century. Its 300 million inhabitants produce greenhouse gases at a per-capita rate that is more than double that of Europe, five times the global average, and more than 10 times the average of developing nations. The U.S. greenhouse gas contribution is driven by a disastrous combination of high population, significant growth, and massive (and rising) consumption levels, and thus far, lack of political will to end our fossil-fuel addiction.
More than half of the U.S. population now lives in car-dependent suburbs. Cumulatively, we drive 3 trillion miles each year. The average miles traveled per capita is increasing rapidly, and the transportation sector now accounts for one-third of all U.S. carbon emissions.
Another one-fifth of U.S. carbon emissions comes from the residential sector. Average home sizes have increased dramatically in recent decades, as has the accompanying footprint of each home. Suburban sprawl contributes significantly to deforestation, reducing the capacity of the planet to absorb the increased CO2 we emit. Due to a dramatic decrease in household size, from 3.1 persons per home in 1970 to 2.6 in 2000, homebuilding is outpacing the population growth that is driving it. More Americans are driving farther to reach bigger homes with higher heating and cooling demands and fewer people per household than ever before. All of these trends exacerbate the carbon footprint inherent in the basic energy needs of a burgeoning U.S. population.
Globally, recent research indicates that assumptions regarding declining fertility rates used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to develop future emissions scenarios may be overly optimistic. While fertility rates have generally declined over the past few decades, progress has slowed in recent years, especially in developing nations, largely due to cutbacks in family planning assistance and political interference from the United States. And even if fertility rates are reduced to below replacement levels, population levels will continue to climb steeply for some time as people live longer and billions of young people mature and proceed through their reproductive years. Per-capita greenhouse gas emissions may drop, but the population bulge will continue to contribute to a dangerous increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Time is short, but it not too late to stop runaway global warming. Economy-wide reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to a level that brings atmospheric CO2 back from 386 parts per million to 350 or less, scaling back first-world consumption patterns, and long-term population reduction to ecologically sustainable levels will solve the global warming crisis and move us to toward a healthier, more stable, post-fossil fuel, post-growth addicted society.   [I could not find the date of this article.  –Dick]


Methane Emissions Are Spiking, But It Might Be More Cow Than Car
BY NATASHA GEILINGhttp://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/plugins/cap-byline/bird_blue_16.png MAR 17, 2016 8:00 AM, CLIMATEPROGRESS.
Since 2006, atmospheric levels of methane — a greenhouse gas 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period — have steadily been on the rise. For years, scientists weren’t sure what was behind the rising levels of methane, but they had a few ideas: namely an increase in fossil fuel-related emissions.
Now, a new study is pointing to a different culprit: agriculture-related methane emissions, especially from livestock and rice production.
Published last week in the journal Science, researchers from New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) found that the majority of methane released into the atmosphere since 2006 was produced by bacteria, pointing to sources like agriculture — rather than sources like fossil fuel production or the burning of organic material — as the culprit behind the increase in methane levels.
A unique signature for methane
The researchers were able to discern agricultural methane from other sources of methane by looking at the gas’ isotopic signatures — or the ratio of various carbon isotopes — using data from atmospheric monitoring stations around the world. By looking at the distinct isotopic signatures, the researchers could differentiate between methane produced from fracking, for instance, and methane produced from agriculture, because they each have different signatures.
The data also suggested that the increase in methane came from regions including India, China and Southeast Asia, suggesting that the rise was due to agriculture, not the growth of fracking in North America.
“That was a real surprise, because [around 2006] the U.S. started fracking and we also know that the economy in Asia picked up again, and coal mining increased,” NIWA atmospheric scientist Hinrich Schaefer told Phys.org. “However, that is not reflected in the atmosphere.”
Livestock production in Asia has been expanding rapidly since the middle of the 20th century, and is expected only to increase as economies in the region become more developed.
Livestock production accounts for about 35 percent of total anthropogenic methane emissions
Around the world, livestock production has been increasingly under scrutiny in recent years, as animal agriculture’s carbon footprint has grown clearer. Ruminants, like cows, produce methane as they digest their food, through a process known as enteric fermentation. But livestock manure also produces methane as it decomposes in closed-air containers known as lagoons, which factory farming operations often use to store the massive amounts of manure produced by their farms. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that livestock production accounts for some 2.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gases annually, or about 35 percent of total anthropogenic methane emissions.
But it’s not just livestock production that researchers say is behind the rise in methane. Rice production is also a methane-intensive activity, because root systems in rice plants secrete carbohydrates during photosynthesis. When rice paddies are flooded, the oxygen-devoid environment creates the perfect place for bacteria to feed off of those carbohydrates, creating methane as a byproduct. That’s a problem, because rice is one of the most important staple crops on Earth — more than 3.5 billion people depend on rice for at least 20 percent of their daily caloric intake. In an effort to curb rice’s methane production, scientists have actually been working to create a lower-methane strain of rice (and have had some success).
But what about fossil fuels?
Still, not everyone is convinced by NIWA’s analysis. Speaking with InsideClimate News, Robert Howarth, a Cornell University professor who studies methane emissions, said that the isotopic ratios in methane are too broad to confidently attribute to a single source.
“When you have eight or nine or 10 different sources of methane, each with a range of ratios, there is no way to calculate where it is coming from,” he said. “If you had a little bit of melting of permafrost and a big increase in natural gas production, you could get a pattern that these people are interpreting as cows in India.”
Many other studies point to an increase in fossil fuel production, especially oil and gas production in the United States, as another key factor behind the recent increase in methane production. A recent study conducted by climate scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) found that as much as 40 percent of the recent increase in methane could be due to fossil fuel production.
In a press release, the KIT scientists said that their findings were actually congruent with the NIWA study, stressing that “increasing emissions from the oil and natural gas sector, combined with emissions from wetlands and maybe animal husbandry increasingly appear to have caused the renewed increase in methane concentration in the last decade.”
An unregulated industry
The Obama administration has taken some unprecedented steps in the recent months to regulate methane from oil and gas production. Most recently, the EPA announced that it would begin regulating methane from existing oil and gas facilities, with the ultimate goal of cutting methane from the oil and gas sector by 40 to 45 percent below 2012 levels by 2025.
But methane from the agricultural sector is still largely unregulated, despite the fact that greenhouse gas-related emissions from livestock manure management systems grew 54 percent between 1990 and 2013.
Quite the opposite of imposing regulations on livestock producers in the United States, Congress has actually explicitly forbidden the EPA from collecting greenhouse gas emission data from livestock producers, making it the only major source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States that enjoys such an exemption.
“The EPA’s methane strategy is completely ignoring agriculture,” Tarah Heinzen, an attorney with Food & Water Watch, told ThinkProgress. “We’re not dealing with it as a regulatory issue as we are with other sources of methane.”
Decarbonizing what we eat is just as important as decarbonizing what we drive or what we use to heat our homes
California, which is one of the most livestock-heavy states in the country, has made moves to begin regulating short-lived climate pollutants, like methane. According to Brent Newell, legal director for the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, methane from livestock accounts for about 5 percent of California’s total greenhouse gas emissions. The state’s Global Warming Solutions Act, passed in 2006, mandates that the state reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent — and yet agriculture is the only sector not subject to regulation.
In 2014, the California Senate mandated that the state’s Air Resources Board (ARB) come up with a plan to regulate methane from livestock operations. But thus far, the ARB has decided to achieve reductions only through voluntary measures, which Newell argues allows the livestock industry to effectively continue with a business-as-usual approach to methane production.
“It’s acting like it’s doing something, it’s pretending like it’s doing something, but voluntary controls for a massive greenhouse gas emitter is a crazy regulatory response and it exemplifies the political power that the dairy industry has over the Air Resources Board,” Newell said.
The plan is expected to be finalized later this month, when it will be seen whether environmental groups’ calls for mandatory regulations for the California livestock industry have been heard by the ARB, or whether such calls have fallen on deaf ears.
“It is really shameful that this industry continues to enjoy an exemption, while others are forced to comply,” Newell said. “Decarbonizing what we eat is just as important as decarbonizing what we drive or what we use to heat our homes.”

REDUCING WASTE AND CONSUMPTION
Jaime Adame.  “Food Talk Focuses on Cutting Waste: Fayetteville Campus Hosts Conference.  Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (April 17, 2016).   “’…in the U.S., nearly a third of all the food that’s produced is wasted.’”
The US School of Law has established a Food Recovery Project.

Vegetarian Action Newsletter #27, April 13, 2016
NUTRITION, HEALTH
     Local Restaurant News
     Local Food
     VegNews Magazine
     Junk Food and Calories
ANIMAL PROTECTION, COMPASSION, RIGHTS, LIBERATION
A Trend Away from Cruelty?  SeaWorld Changes
VegNews
         An Undercover Investigator of a Factory “Farm”
            Several Advertisements of Cruelty-free Products
             Why One Cook Changed to Vegan
    New book by David Pellow, Total Liberation:  Oppression, Animal Liberation, and the Radical Earth
       Movement
CLIMATE CHANGE
   Carnivores
   Cowspiracy Against Eating Meat Endorsed by Unitarian Universalist Association
POPULATION
    Human-driven factors forcing regional and global environmental change:
    Negative Population Growth/NPG
CONNECTING THE DOTS, THE COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH
   Dick, Vegetarianism/Veganism, Perceiving Patterns and Systems for the Earth’s Habitability
   Nourish, a Comprehensive Perspective


END VEGETARIAN ACTION NEWSLETTER #28, MAY 11, 2016


 [DB1]  

Dick's Wars and Warming KPSQ Radio Editorials (#1-48)

Dick's Wars and Warming KPSQ Radio Editorials (#1-48)