last updated 25th November 2009
 
 

Kazakhstani online petition

Kazakhstani online petition

By Radha Mohan Dasa

Please visit http://www.krishnatemple.com NOW and click the link to the new petition, or go straight to the petition webpage:

http://harekrishna.epetitions.net

Please sign it soon as you can, and please tell as many people as you can about it.

Background: Workers and police arrived on 15th June at the village near Almaty, Kazakhstan, where the embattled Hare Krishna commune is based to demolish twelve more Hare Krishna-owned homes. “The houses were literally crushed into dust. By ten o’clock it was all over,” said ISKCON spokesperson Maksim Varfolomeyev.

The temple, which the devotees have been ordered to destroy, has not been touched but the devotees fear it could be the next target. Human rights activist Yevgeny Zhovtis is outraged at the continuing destruction. “The authorities are showing that they will do what they want, despite the international outrage at the earlier demolitions of Hare Krishna-owned homes.” He believes the local administration chief “doesn’t care about the political damage to Kazakhstan’s reputation – or to its desire to chair the OSCE.”

ys Radha Mohan das

THE KRISHNA COMMUNITY NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT This Krishna community may be driven away from their property and homes at any moment. To assist in relocating dozens of faithful and their temple,

This Video is a "Must see"

Jai Shri Radhe

The MLA of Kaman, Rajasthan Zahida Khan has taken her own delegates to Smt. Sonia Gandhi Ji to force and threaten her to reverse the decision taken by chief minister of Rajasthan, to make the holy hills of Braj area a reserved forest.
Zahida Khan is doing so as her husband and her relatives are owners of such mines which is destroying our Heritage.

As you all know about the Mass Agitation led by 1000's of Sadhus, Saints and devotees on Nov. 10th in Kaman. Shri Ramesh Baba Ji Maharaaj himself sat for hunger strike along with 1000's of devotees and after 26 hours, Rajasthan Govt. declared  holy hills of Braj area as a reserved forest.

To make sure that we stand together and will not tolerate this, we need to apply pressure to Govt. in next 48 hours. We need to do the same thing that we did last time.  You have following options:
 

 Please cut and paste the letter below and fax directly to Sonia Gandhi at 91-11-23018651 / 23018650. We highly encourage you to fax directly as this will have greater impact on them. If you cannot do it, you may have following options.
If you are in USA and do not have international fax service, you can send you fax to us locally at  001-270-458-1894 and we will forward it on your behalf.
If you represent an organization in any capacity, please use your official letter head for fax purpose. Again you can send your fax to us locally or directly to Sonia Gandhi.
If none of the options above are practical for you, please send us a scanned copy of your letter at info@brajdhamseva.org. We will fax it on your behalf.
 

Letter to Sonia Gandhi Ji
 

To,
Smt. Sonia Gandhi Ji,

Firstly,we wish to compliment you on the firm decision taken by your esteemed Party as regards to saving and preserving the Sacred and Environmentally fragile hills of Kaama – Bharatpur in Rajasthan by showing their genuine intention to declare the area as reserved forest.

However, we also want to bring to light the unholy nexus between some members of your party who in active collusion with illegal miners are heading a misleading crusade in favor of mining.

This team is lead by the local MLA Zahida Khan. Her husband and relatives own 6 big  leases.

She is allegedly involved in heavy illegal mining in Kaama Tehsil in Bharatpur particularly in Garh, Hazaari Baas, Dholawas, Chindawata, Nagra Mukharib.
She also holds a crusher setup under the name Braj Mewat Crusher which is owned by her husband where entire illegal mined material is being processed.
The issue of unemployment which Zahida Khan is advocating doesn't have any ground as hardly 1700 people are employed in business of illegal mining. Most of them are daily waged migrant labors that belong from Bihar & Madhya Pradesh.

The entire campaign against declaration of holy hills of Braj as reserved forest is being plotted by few money centric people who are involved in massive destruction of ecology and religious topography of the area. Their claims about unemployment do not have any sanctity and are far from reality.

Fabricated issues raised by mining mafia and Zahida Khan doesn’t have any gravity in front of more global, wider and vital agenda of protection and preservation of holy hills of Braj  as millions of devotees  &  environmentalist  worldwide are associated with it and have shown serious concern over restoration of these marks of ancient religious heritage.

As per Government order, all mining leases were canceled  dated 8-2-2008 and entire area measuring 5232 hectare was transferred to forest.

 Sadly, the mining is still going on (on a larger level) despite the blanket ban and High Court and Supreme Court Orders.
You might recall how senior functionaries of your party had supported action against mining in the Parliament.

The area concerned attracts 60 -80 million tourist and pilgrims every year. The hills have immense reverence in the sacred scriptures.

We urge you not to fall prey to the misleading facts presented by the greedy miners and unscrupulous party people.

 The Rajasthan government had already converted the entire area into forest land two years ago. The current Congress government has already begun the process of converting it into a Reserved Forest, thanks to the balanced approach of the chief minister of Rajasthan Mr. Ashok Gahlot.

Thanking you in anticipation, we remain, sincerely your subjects

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INDIA, September 13, 2009: A day in the life of an murti maker is marked by strict self-discipline, both physical and mental. “We bathe at dawn, get into fresh clothes and say a small prayer before embarking on murti making as often our work require us to stand/ stamp/ climb the murtis. We also try and abstain from all worldly addictions in this period,” says Biswajeet Pal, one of Vishwanath’s chief helpers.

Stretched over many months, the procedure of making murtis for Nvaratri is an elaborate one. It involves creating a basic structure with straw or jute and applying wet clay onto this. Fleshing out the body comes next followed by paring and patting the limbs into shape. The entire body surface is then smoothed. A coat of flesh-colored paint is applied and the lips and nails painted a bright red. “The sacred texts describe the goddess as having ‘a complexion like unbeaten gold or morning sunshine and long eyes that stretch till the ears.’ We religiously follow these specifications,” says Vishwanath explaining the distinctive features of the mother goddess.

With budgets running into lakhs of rupees and organizers vying with each other for the awards announced by local sponsors, artisans have gone to extraordinary lengths to get noticed, but for Shashi Pal there are other things that are more important. “When a devotee looks up at the image, unless he is filled with a sense of awe and wonder about the tremendous power of the divine, I have failed as an artist,” he says.

courtesy of Hinduism Today  http://www.hinduismtoday.com

MERCED, CALIFORNIA, September 20, 2009: At Mercy Medical Center in Merced, where roughly four patients a day are Hmong from northern Laos, healing includes more than IV drips, syringes and blood glucose monitors. Because many Hmong rely on their spiritual beliefs to get them through illnesses, the hospital’s new Hmong shaman policy, the country’s first, formally recognizes the cultural role of traditional healers like Va Meng Lee, a Hmong shaman, inviting them to perform nine approved ceremonies in the hospital, including “soul calling” and chanting in a soft voice.

The policy and a novel training program to introduce shamans to the principles of Western medicine are part of a national movement to consider patients’ cultural beliefs and values when deciding their medical treatment. The approach is being adopted by dozens of medical institutions and clinics across the country that cater to immigrant, refugee and ethnic-minority populations.

Certified shamans have the same unrestricted access to patients given to clergy members.

A recent survey of 60 hospitals in the United States by the Joint Commission, the country’s largest hospital accrediting group, found that the hospitals were increasingly embracing cultural beliefs, driven sometimes by marketing, whether by adding calcium- and iron-rich Korean seaweed soup to the maternity ward menu at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, or providing birthing doulas for Somali women in Minneapolis.

In Merced, about 120 miles southeast of San Francisco, the Mercy hospital shaman program was designed to strengthen the trust between doctors and the Hmong community. It tries to redress years of misunderstanding between the medical establishment and the Hmong, whose lives in the mountains of Laos were irreparably altered by the Vietnam War.

courtesy of Hinduism Today  http://www.hinduismtoday.com

TORONTO, CANADA, September 24, 2009: The new game “Yoga” for Wii incorporates specialized hatha yoga routines for health.

“In designing Yoga for Wii, we wanted to make sure that players are walking away with not only a great workout for the body but also for the mind,” says Markus Reutner, Marketing manager JoWood Productions. “We’ve done extensive research about yoga and the way it can affect different pains and incorporated that into Yoga for Wii.”

Players are able to participate in routines that target a specific ailment or pain. For instance, a back pain routine would consist of related poses - the cobra, locust and corpse - all of which help strengthen back muscles.

courtesy of Hinduism Today  http://www.hinduismtoday.com

UNITED STATES, October 24, 2009: The Department of Homeland Security has amended its uniform and grooming policies after a Sikh man lost his job for wearing a turban and refusing to shave.

Federal standards had required security guards to be clean-shaven and to wear a specified uniform and hat, two things that conflict with Sikh requirements to wear a turban and leave their hair uncut.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the component of the Department of Homeland Security that handled the case, said it is “committed to accommodating the religious practices of FPS security guards, provided these accommodations are consistent with current legal and constitutional standards and meet FPS’ essential mission requirements ­ particularly those affecting employee and public safety.”

courtesy of Hinduism Today  http://www.hinduismtoday.com

[HPI note: Hindu leaders have long been among the most outspoken defenders of natures balance. For the Hindu, nature is sacred, to be respected and cared for.

The last few weeks saw a growing momentum worldwide for initiatives that gather religious leaders to discuss climate change's causes, consequences and possible solutions. This edition of HPI brings you news about the Hindu world and climate change.]

INDIA, November 4, 2009: The Himalayan glaciers are the largest body of ice outside the polar caps, and they are under threat from global warming. The warning comes from experts, among them Dr. R K Pachauri, head of the UN’s Intergovernamental Panel on Climate Change and Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 2008.

According to the BBC, “The Himalayan range the area most affected by global warming in recent years.” This short video focuses on the Ganges; see it here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8337207.stm

courtesy of Hinduism Today  http://www.hinduismtoday.com

Fri Nov 13, 2009

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A plant that converts cow dung into energy for homes opened in the Netherlands Friday.

Manure from cows at a nearby dairy farm will be fermented along with grass and food industry residues, and the biogas released during the process will be used as fuel for the thermal plant's gas turbines.

The heat generated will be distributed to around 1,100 homes in the area around Leeuwarden in the north of the Netherlands, the plant's operator Essent said in a statement.

Firms in Europe and elsewhere have been investing in biogas plants and this is the second of its scale running on cow manure in the Netherlands. It follows another plant that Essent opened in January.
(Reporting by Catherine Hornby; Editing by Charles Dick)

LONDON, UK, October 28, 2009: An extract found in the bright yellow curry spice turmeric can kill off cancer cells, scientists have shown. The chemical ­ curcumin ­ has long been thought to have healing powers and is already being tested as a treatment for arthritis and even dementia. Now tests by a team at the Cork Cancer Research Centre show it can destroy gullet cancer cells in the lab. Cancer experts said the findings in the British Journal of Cancer could help doctors find new treatments.

Dr Sharon McKenna and her team found that curcumin started to kill cancer cells within 24 hours. The cells also began to digest themselves, after the curcumin triggered lethal cell death signals.

Dr McKenna said: “Scientists have known for a long time that natural compounds have the potential to treat faulty cells that have become cancerous and we suspected that curcumin might have therapeutic value.”

Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK, said: “This is interesting research which opens up the possibility that natural chemicals found in turmeric could be developed into new treatments for oesophageal cancer.

Hinduism today

Curry spice 'kills cancer cells'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8328377.stm

The yellow spice gives curries their bright colour

An extract found in the bright yellow curry spice turmeric can kill off cancer cells, scientists have shown.

The chemical - curcumin - has long been thought to have healing powers and is already being tested as a treatment for arthritis and even dementia.

Now tests by a team at the Cork Cancer Research Centre show it can destroy gullet cancer cells in the lab.

Cancer experts said the findings in the British Journal of Cancer could help doctors find new treatments.

Dr Sharon McKenna and her team found that curcumin started to kill cancer cells within 24 hours.

'Natural' remedy

The cells also began to digest themselves, after the curcumin triggered lethal cell death signals.

Dr McKenna said: "Scientists have known for a long time that natural compounds have the potential to treat faulty cells that have become cancerous and we suspected that curcumin might have therapeutic value."

Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK, said: "This is interesting research which opens up the possibility that natural chemicals found in turmeric could be developed into new treatments for oesophageal cancer.

"Rates of oesophageal cancer rates have gone up by more than a half since the 70s and this is thought to be linked to rising rates of obesity, alcohol intake and reflux disease so finding ways to prevent this disease is important too."

Each year around 7,800 people are diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in the UK. It is the sixth most common cause of cancer death and accounts for around five percent of all UK cancer deaths.

By Gillian Murdoch for Reuters on 23 Oct 2009

THEY'RE faithful, friendly and furry - but under their harmless, fluffy exteriors, dogs and cats, the world's most popular house pets, use up more energy resources in a year than driving a car, a new book says.

In their book Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living, New Zealand-based architects Robert and Brenda Vale say keeping a medium-sized dog has the same ecological impact as driving 10,000km a year in a 4.6 litre Land Cruiser.

Calculating that the modern Fido chows through about 164kg of meat and 95kg of cereals a year, the Vales estimated the ecological footprint of cats and dogs, based on the amount of land needed to grow common brands of pet food.

"There are no recipes in the book," Robert Vale said, laughingly.

"We're not actually saying it is time to eat the dog. We're just saying that we need to think about and know the (ecological) impact of some of the things we do and that we take for granted."

Constructing and driving the jeep for a year requires 0.41 hectares of land, while growing and manufacturing a dog's food takes about 0.84 ha - or 1.1 ha in the case of a large dog such as a German shepherd.

Meat-eating swells the eco-footprint of canines, and felines are not that much better, the Vales found.

The average cat's eco-footprint, 0.15 ha, weighs in at slightly less than a Volkswagen Golf, but still 10 times a hamster's 0.014 ha - which is itself half the eco cost of running a plasma television.

By comparison, the ecological footprint of an average human in the developing world is 1.8ha, while people in the developed world take 6ha.

With pets' diets under the control of owners, how can their unsustainable appetites be trimmed?

Convincing carnivorous cats and dogs to go vegetarian for the sake of the planet is a non-starter, the Vales say.

Instead they recommend keeping "greener", smaller, and more sustainable pets, such as goldfish, hamsters, chickens or rabbits.

The book's playful title, and serious suggestion that pet animals may be usefully "recycled", by being eaten by their owners or turned into petfood when they die, may not appeal to animal fans.

Offputting as the idea may be, the question is valid given the planet's growing population and finite resources, Robert Vale said.

"Issues about sustainability are increasingly becoming things that are going to require us to make choices which are as difficult as eating your dog. It's not just about changing your lightbulbs or taking a cloth bag to the supermarket," he said.

"It's about much more challenging and difficult issues," he added.

"Once you see where (cats and dogs) fit in your overall balance of things - you might decide to have the cat but not also to have the two cars and the three bathrooms and be a meat eater yourself."

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, October 6, 2009: In an unprecedented move, Australia’s Victorian state will this year light up major installations including its parliament, airport and Indian consulate during Diwali.

Under a seven-day long lighting competition being organized by Celebrate India Inc. and beginning from October 10, prime buildings in Melbourne will be lit up, event coordinator of the organization Arun Sharma said.

“For the first time Melbourne departure lounge and Indian Consulate will be decorated apart from the state parliament building, Horsham council, museums and other parts of the city, and cultural programs like dhol and rangoli events will be held there,” he added.

courtesy of Hinduism Today  http://www.hinduismtoday.com

WASHINGTON, DC, USA, October 12, 2009: U.S. President Barack Obama will personally join members of the Asian American community to celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights, at the White House next week, as announced on Friday.

While it was former president George W Bush who started the tradition of celebrating Diwali at the White House, he never personally participated in the celebrations, leaving his top administration officials to grace the occasion. Also, Diwali was not celebrated in the main White House, but in a building attached to the it. This is the first time America’s president will attend the Hindu ceremony.

The White House also announced that Obama will also sign an Executive Order Oct 14 restoring the White House Advisory Commission and the Interagency Working Group to address the issues concerning the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.

courtesy of Hinduism Today  http://www.hinduismtoday.com

Devotion to God is attained by associating with those who serve both Him and His devotees. They have made service to God the very essence of their life. They have made the narrations of the names, appearance, attributes and sports of God the mainstay of their existence and they are always engaged in discoursing about them.

Not only is there a great difference between how the common man deliberates upon God and how the devotee deliberates upon Him, but the very natures of these two kinds of deliberation are quite opposite. Among the common people, many are inclined to worship God, whom they know to be the giver of mundane and celestial pleasure and happiness. Those who are more intelligent however   that is, those who outwardly present themselves as renunciants but remain the topmost enjoyers at heart   pretend to worship God with the purpose of becoming equal to God, who is the Supreme Enjoyer, and merging in Him.

Those situated midway between these two classes worship God with the intention of acquiring the eight modes of supernatural power, such as the power to become smaller than an atom and the power to become weightless, in order to fulfil their own desires. Although they pretentiously show themselves to be:worshippers of God, they never admit the eternality of God's names, appearance and so forth. They regard the Supreme Master of all to be governed by karma. These so-called worshippers do not serve God with the particular aim of serving and pleasing Him. On the contrary, they make the Lord serve them.

The nature of true devotees is different from theirs. They do not expect, nor do they regard as necessary, the attainment of pleasure for the body and home in this world or in the next. Nor do they regard as important the attainment of emancipation, which is so highly praised as the ultimate attainment for man. True devotees serve God by their very nature, by every thought and by every sentiment of their heart. This strong propensity in them does not yield to any obstruction but runs with impetuosity, forcibly removing all the obstacles before it. It is just like the swift and turbulent current of the river Ganga, which rapidly runs towards the sea inundating all high and low resistance, undergoing no disaster and never abating, at any point, to take rest.

The devotees are ever engaged in the service of God. No tendency towards anything else, no other thought or deed besides that service, finds any opportunity to cast its shadow over the souls of those bhakti-yogis, who are incessantly communing with God and are entirely dedicated to Him. Out of pure love, the devoted servitors of God are ever engaged in offering service to Him and to His devotees. They have no vitality to devote to their bodies; to those who are related to their bodies like their wives or sons; to their home; to all those who are related to these; to domestic beasts and birds; or to their occupation, class and so forth.

Having fallen in love with the Lord of their life, who is the very life of their lives and the life of all, they have surrendered themselves to Him, with all their energy. Such devotees, dedicating their very selves to God, have made Him alone the quintessence of all their ambitions. And He, too, having been arrested by their devotion, has made them His essential companions, even though He Himself is the most essential Being for all.

Adapted from The Gaudiya Volume 25, Number 5
Posted by the Rays of The Harmonist team

Read more on Chanting Hare Krishna HERE:

Sudha Murthy is chairman of Infosys Foundation which supports many social welfare activities and she and her husband Narayan Murthy also support Akshaya Patra.

http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=x1Cp4qta4bU& feature=related

This is a one hour and 20 minute long video.

It is a must watch video for every one - young, old, or middle aged.

Watch it few times and let it sink in your heart and mind.

HYDERABAD, INDIA, September 25, 2009: The great Indian divide along north-south lines now stands even more blurred. A pathbreaking study by Harvard and indigenous researchers on ancestral Indian populations says there is a genetic relationship between all Indians and more importantly, the hitherto believed theory that Aryans and Dravidians signify the ancestry of north and south Indians might after all, be a myth.

“This paper rewrites history… there is no north-south divide,” said Lalji Singh, former director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) and a co-author of the study.

Senior CCMB scientist Kumarasamy Thangarajan said there was no truth to the Aryan-Dravidian theory as they came hundreds or thousands of years after the ancestral north and south Indians had settled in India.

The study analysed 500,000 genetic markers across the genomes of 132 individuals from 25 diverse groups from 13 states. All the individuals were from six-language families and traditionally diverse castes and tribal groups. “The genetics proves that castes grew directly out of tribe-like organizations during the formation of the Indian society,” said Thangarajan, who noted that it was impossible to distinguish between castes and tribes since their genetics proved they were not systematically different.

The study was conducted by CCMB scientists in collaboration with researchers at Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. It reveals that the present-day Indian population is a mix of ancient north and south bearing the genomic contributions from two distinct ancestral populations - the Ancestral North Indian (ANI) and the Ancestral South Indian (ASI) ­ both indigenous to the sucontinent.

“The initial settlement took place 65,000 years ago in the Andamans and in ancient south India around the same time, which led to population growth in this part,” said Thangarajan. He added, “At a later stage, 40,000 years ago, the ancient north Indians emerged which in turn led to rise in numbers here. But at some point of time, the ancient north and the ancient south mixed, giving birth to a different set of population. And that is the population which exists now.”

This finding could challenge the prevailing view of a northern route of migration of man out of Africa via Middle East, Europe, south-east Asia, Australia and then to India.

courtesy of Hinduism Today  http://www.hinduismtoday.com

[HPI note: this is the study published on Nature Magazine, referenced in the article above.]

INDIA, September, 2009: To test the concepts of Central Asian introduction of the Indian caste system by Indo-Aryans, who plausibly and predominantly would have appointed themselves to castes of higher rank to legitimize and maintain their power on land, labor and resources; and to test the rank-related West Eurasian admixture, we chose the Brahmin class, occupying similar socioeconomic upper-most caste positions, and the schedule castes and tribals, occupying the lower-most positions in the Indian caste hierarchy, for an ideal comparative study.

We report our analyses based on Y-chromosomal data of 621 Brahmins and schedule caste/tribal samples and its extension with the compiled data of Brahmin, scheduled caste/tribal populations from published sources. We also attempted to assess the affinities among Brahmins from different regions speaking different languages, and evaluated the hypothesis of large migration of IE people and introduction of the caste system to India with the purpose of elucidating their genetic relationship with other Indian and worldwide populations, using the data available in the literature.

[The findings] supported the autochthonous origin and tribal links of Indian Brahmins, confronting the concepts of recent Central Asian introduction [Aryan invasion] and rank-related Eurasian contribution of the Indian caste system.

courtesy of Hinduism Today  http://www.hinduismtoday.com

HUE, VIETNAM, September 29, 2009: The remains of a 1,200-year-old Cham sanctuary unearthed in Phu Vang District in Hue, Vietnam, will undergo major protection works costing US$32,000. The Chams, who practiced Hinduism, are now a minority group in Vietnam.

The sanctuary will get a security post, equipment to safeguard the structure and a stele providing information about it. Its foundation will be strengthened, and two guards will be posted permanently to protect it from vandalism, according to Cao Huy Hung, director of the province’s Historic and Revolutionary Museum and the project co-ordinator.

Subsequent excavations by archaeologists revealed the foundation of another structure nearby besides many religious artifacts belonging to the ancient Cham people. The main tower has been dated between the eighth and ninth centuries, making it among the earliest Cham relics discovered so far.

courtesy of Hinduism Today  http://www.hinduismtoday.com

Vedic World Heritage links:

See our pages supporting these views HERE:
http://www.hknet.org.nz/VWH.html (Vedik World Heritage)
Western Indologists been exposed page:
http://www.hknet.org.nz/WesternIndologists-page.htm
How British Misguided the World on Vedic History
http://www.hknet.org.nz/MotiveBritishRajMissionaries.html

After 16 bitter years, the banana wars between Europe and America are ending. But what on earth were they and why does it matter?

The banana wars could be about to end. "Thank the Lord," I hear you say. Get the bunting out for the street parties! This dreadful war is finally at an end!

Well, maybe not. In fact, you're probably thinking: "Banana wars? What?"

But you'd be amazed at the trouble the humble banana has caused in its time. On this occasion, we're talking about a trade spat that goes back to 1993.

That makes it the world's longest-running trade dispute. The roots and causes of the banana wars go far deeper than this, but people have written whole books on this topic, so I'll not get into that right now (check out a site such as Bananalink http://www.bananalink.org.uk/).

Banana wars redux
Here's what the current dispute comes down to. The European Union gives favourable terms to banana growers in its former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific region (ACP).

Basically, it charges import tariffs (taxes) on bananas imported from everywhere else, to protect prices for the ACP region. The idea was to help Europe's ex-colonies using favourable trade terms so they wouldn't need direct overseas aid.

The US complained to the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The US doesn't export bananas to Europe, but Latin America does and the banana crop there is controlled by US multinationals. The US reckoned this subsidy was unfair on the Latin American producers, and the WTO - which polices world trade - agreed. It told the EU to stop it in 1997.

Tit for tat tactics
The EU changed its rules. The US didn't think it had gone far enough. The WTO has been forced to rule against the EU on this topic six times since the dispute kicked off.

Now it looks as if - although it's not certain - the EU and Latin America have come to an agreement. Tariffs will be lowered over the course of seven years, to the point where Europe's former colonies are no longer given favourable terms.

Cheap bananas for all
So there'll be more competition in the banana market and consumers will end up getting cheaper bananas - good news, right?

In theory, yes. Anyone who reads my columns even occasionally will know that I believe in capitalism, free markets and all the rest.

That's not because I'm a viciously competitive borderline psychopath who thinks the weak should be crushed under the jackboot of the strong, which is the vague impression that I think some people get of capitalism.

It's because I think it's the best way we know to help everyone in the world improve their standard of living. It's like democracy - it's got plenty of faults, but it's better than all the other systems we've tried so far.

Why's free trade a good thing?
The basic idea behind free trade is this: you want to eat oranges and apples, I want to eat oranges and apples. We could each grow our own supply. But my garden is great for growing apples and rubbish for growing oranges. Yours is great for oranges, but a nightmare for apples.

So rather than me wasting valuable time and money struggling to grow oranges, I just devote my whole garden to apples. You do the same with oranges. Then we trade our surplus with each other.

That way we both benefit from a higher standard of living: we've saved ourselves time and energy by focusing on what we're good at and we still have all the apples and oranges we need. Broaden the theory out to countries, and that's pretty much the idea behind free trade.

And it does work. It's one of the main reasons why China and emerging markets have managed to get a lot richer in recent years. It's not a panacea, and it does have losers - just ask your average blue-collar American worker - but as whole, the global standard of living improves.

So this "victory" in the banana wars is a good thing, right?
Well, not necessarily. For capitalism to work most effectively, the rules should apply to everyone. Unfortunately, they don't. Trade across the world is rife with protectionism and special interests and it's particularly bad in the agriculture sector.

I'm not saying this represents a failure of free trade or capitalism. You can free markets up bit by bit, increase the size of your trading blocs and gradually spread the benefits across larger areas. But this deal doesn't strike me as being the right place to start.

The EU imports about four million tonnes of bananas a year. Of that, 3.4 million already comes from Latin America. So the big companies already control a vast chunk of the banana trade. Meanwhile, a vast chunk of the Caribbean islands' economies relies on banana farming, for example.

Tough, you might think, that's competition for you. They should be growing something else. Well, that'd be fine, but it's not that simple.

Because although we might be looking at scrapping tariffs on bananas, the big protectionist measures still around - the European Common Agricultural Policy being a prime example, although US biofuel subsidies are another one - are still in place and heavily defended by their beneficiaries.

So whatever this is, it's not a level playing field.

Supporting the needy
Now to be fair, seven years is a fairly long time to get to adapt to these changes, and they've been on the cards for a long time. The ACP countries will also get about €190 million in aid to sweeten the deal.

However, the ACP countries may have another ace up their sleeve - Fairtrade, which sources many of its bananas from the Windward Islands in the Caribbean.

Now, I think that Fairtrade is a sticking plaster rather than a solution. Ultimately, it's just another subsidy, paid for by the consumer, and it's a bad idea for these countries' economies to be so reliant on one crop - particularly given that it is vulnerable to destruction by disease and weather. They should diversify in any way they can.

However, if you want to exercise your freedom of choice as a consumer to buy a banana which includes an element of charitable giving and, dare I say it, ethical shopping, then I'm certainly not going to discourage you from doing so.

And while European farmers are still being given huge subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy, effectively robbing developing world farmers of their livelihoods, I can't really describe the end of the banana wars, with the potential impact on poor farmers in developing markets, as a real victory for free trade.

John Stepek is the editor of MoneyWeek

People will need to turn vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming.

In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.”

Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas.

Lord Stern, the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming, said that a successful deal at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December would lead to soaring costs for meat and other foods that generate large quantities of greenhouse gases.

He predicted that people’s attitudes would evolve until meat eating became unacceptable. “I think it’s important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating,” he said. “I am 61 now and attitudes towards drinking and driving have changed radically since I was a student. People change their notion of what is responsible. They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food.”

Lord Stern, a former chief economist of the World Bank and now I. G. Patel Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, warned that British taxpayers would need to contribute about £3 billion a year by 2015 to help poor countries to cope with the inevitable impact of climate change.

He also issued a clear message to President Obama that he must attend the meeting in Copenhagen in person in order for an effective deal to be reached. US leadership, he said, was “desperately needed” to secure a deal.

He said that he was deeply concerned that popular opinion had so far failed to grasp the scale of the changes needed to address climate change, or of the importance of the UN meeting in Copenhagen from December 7 to December 18. “I am not sure that people fully understand what we are talking about or the kind of changes that will be necessary,” he added.

Up to 20,000 delegates from 192 countries are due to attend the UN conference in the Danish capital. Its aim is to forge a deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to prevent an increase in global temperatures of more than 2 degrees centigrade. Any increase above this level is expected to trigger runaway climate change, threatening the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Lord Stern said that Copenhagen presented a unique opportunity for the world to break free from its catastrophic current trajectory. He said that the world needed to agree to halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to 25 gigatonnes a year from the current level of 50 gigatonnes.

UN figures suggest that meat production is responsible for about 18 per cent of global carbon emissions, including the destruction of forest land for cattle ranching and the production of animal feeds such as soy.

Lord Stern, who said that he was not a strict vegetarian himself, was speaking on the eve of an all-parliamentary debate on climate change. His remarks provoked anger from the meat industry.

Jonathan Scurlock, of the National Farmers Union, said: “Going vegetarian is not a worldwide solution. It’s not a view shared by the NFU. Farmers in this country are interested in evidence-based policymaking. We don’t have a methane-free cow or pig available to us.”

On average, a British person eats 50g of protein derived from meat each day — the equivalent of a chicken breast or a lamb chop. This is a relatively low level for a wealthy country but between 25 per cent and 50 per cent higher than the amount recommended by the World Health Organisation.

Su Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Vegetarian Society, welcomed Lord Stern’s remarks. “What we choose to eat is one of the biggest factors in our personal impact on the environment,” she said. “Meat uses up a lot of resources and a vegetarian diet consumes a lot less land and water. One of the best things you can do about climate change is reduce the amount of meat in your diet.”

The UN has warned that meat consumption is on course to double by the middle of the century.

UNITED KINGDOM, October 27, 2009: People will need to turn vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming. In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.”

Lord Stern, a British economist and academic, is the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming. He said that a successful deal at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December would lead to soaring costs for meat and other foods that generate large quantities of greenhouse gases.

Up to 20,000 delegates from 192 countries are due to attend the UN conference in the Danish capital. Its aim is to forge a deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to prevent an increase in global temperatures of more than 2 degrees centigrade. Any increase above this level is expected to trigger runaway climate change, threatening the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

UN figures suggest that meat production is responsible for about 18 per cent of global carbon emissions, including the destruction of forest land for cattle ranching and the production of animal feeds such as soy.

courtesy of Hinduism Today  http://www.hinduismtoday.com

USA, November 4, 2009: [HPI note: This is an excerpt from the opinion piece published by the admin of the Animal Right's Blog, a widely-read blog on the subject. Unequivocally condemning the animal sacrifices in Nepal, it warns against blindness and hypocrisy.]

Let us not be too blind. It can be difficult to argue against this clearly horrifying ritual without first looking ourselves in the mirror. Every year, 46 million turkeys in the United States are slaughtered for what appears to be a ritualistic celebration of life - Thanksgiving.

On a scale, certainly the American slaughter of turkeys is far greater than the Gadhimai Mela festival. The brutality is no different. And, there is no denying it, American consumers pay for the slaughter of 10 billion land animals every year. That’s 320 animals every second of every day–many more than those who perish per minute at the brief and bloody two-day Nepalese festival.

The blog suggests writing to local Nepalese Embassy to protest against the sacrifices.

courtesy of Hinduism Today  http://www.hinduismtoday.com

WHERE'S THE GRAIN? The 7 billion livestock animals in the United States consume five times as much grain as is consumed directly by the entire American population.

HERBIVORES ON THE HOOF. Each year an estimated 41 million tons of plant protein is fed to U.S. livestock to produce an estimated 7 million tons of animal protein for human consumption. About 26 million tons of the livestock feed comes from grains and 15 million tons from forage crops. For every kilogram of high-quality animal protein produced, livestock are fed nearly 6 kg of plant protein.

FOSSIL FUEL TO FOOD FUEL. On average, animal protein production in the U.S. requires 28 kilocalories (kcal) for every kcal of protein produced for human consumption. Beef and lamb are the most costly, in terms of fossil fuel energy input to protein output at 54:1 and 50:1, respectively. Turkey and chicken meat production are the most efficient (13:1 and 4:1, respectively). Grain production, on average, requires 3.3 kcal of fossil fuel for every kcal of protein produced. The U.S. now imports about 54 percent of its oil; by the year 2015, that import figure is expected to rise to 100 percent.

THIRSTY PRODUCTION SYSTEMS. U.S. agriculture accounts for 87 percent of all the fresh water consumed each year. Livestock directly use only 1.3 percent of that water. But when the water required for forage and grain production is included, livestock's water usage rises dramatically. Every kilogram of beef produced takes 100,000 liters of water. Some 900 liters of water go into producing a kilogram of wheat. Potatoes are even less "thirsty," at 500 liters per kilogram.

HOME ON THE RANGE. More than 302 million hectares of land are devoted to producing feed for the U.S. livestock population -- about 272 million hectares in pasture and about 30 million hectares for cultivated feed grains.

DISAPPEARING SOIL. About 90 percent of U.S. cropland is losing soil -- to wind and water erosion -- at 13 times above the sustainable rate. Soil loss is most severe in some of the richest farming areas; Iowa loses topsoil at 30 times the rate of soil formation. Iowa has lost one-half its topsoil in only 150 years of farming -- soil that took thousands of years to form.

PLENTY OF PROTEIN: Nearly 7 million tons (metric) of animal protein is produced annually in the U.S. -- enough to supply every American man, woman and child with 75 grams of animal protein a day. With the addition of 34 grams of available plant protein, a total of 109 grams of protein is available per capita. The RDA (recommended daily allowance) per adult per day is 56 grams of protein for a mixed diet.

OUT TO PASTURE. If all the U.S. grain now fed to livestock were exported and if cattlemen switched to grass-fed production systems, less beef would be available and animal protein in the average American diet would drop from 75 grams to 29 grams per day. That, plus current levels of plant-protein consumption, would still yield more than the RDA for protein.

From "Livestock Production: Energy Inputs and the Environment"
By David Pimentel

source: Cornell University Science News http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/aug97/livestock.hrs.html

Change your lightbulbs? Or your car? If you want to fight global warming, it’s time to consider a different diet.

Full disclosure: I love to eat meat. I was born in Memphis, the barbecue capital of the Milky Way Galaxy. I worship slow-cooked, hickory-smoked pig meat served on a bun with extra sauce and coleslaw spooned on top.

My carnivore’s lust goes beyond the DNA level. It’s in my soul. Even the cruelty of factory farming doesn’t temper my desire, I’ll admit. Like most Americans, I can somehow keep at bay all thoughts of what happened to the meat prior to the plate.

So why in the world am I a dedicated vegetarian? Why is meat, including sumptuous pork, a complete stranger to my fork at home and away? The answer is simple: I have an 11-year-old son whose future—like yours and mine—is rapidly unraveling due to global warming. And what we put on our plates can directly accelerate or decelerate the heating trend.

That giant chunk of an Antarctic ice sheet, the one that disintegrated in a matter of hours, the one the size of seven Manhattans—did you hear about it? It shattered barely a year ago “like a hammer on glass,” scientists say, and is now melting away in the Southern Ocean. This is just a preview, of course, of the sort of ecological collapse coming everywhere on earth, experts say, unless we hit the brakes soon on climate change. If the entire West Antarctic ice sheet melts, for example, global sea-level rise could reach 20 feet.

Since the twin phenomena of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Gore, most Americans have a basic literacy on the issue of climate change. It’s getting worse, we know, and greenhouse gases—emitted when we burn fossil fuels—are driving it. Less accepted, it seems, is the role food—specifically our consumption of meat—is playing in this matter. The typical American diet now weighs in at more than 3,700 calories per day, reports the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, and is dominated by meat and animal products. As a result, what we put in our mouths now ranks up there with our driving habits and our use of coal-fired electricity in terms of how it affects climate change.

Simply put, raising beef, pigs, sheep, chicken, and eggs is very, very energy intensive. More than half of all the grains grown in America actually go to feed animals, not people, says the World Resources Institute. That means a huge fraction of the petroleum-based herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers applied to grains, plus staggering percentages of all agricultural land and water use, are put in the service of livestock. Stop eating animals and you use dramatically less fossil fuels, as much as 250 gallons less oil per year for vegans, says Cornell University’s David Pimentel, and 160 gallons less for egg-and-cheese-eating vegetarians.

But fossil fuel combustion is just part of the climate­diet equation. Ruminants—cows and sheep—generate a powerful greenhouse gas through their normal digestive processes (think burping and emissions at the other end). What comes out is methane (23 times more powerful at trapping heat than CO2) and nitrous oxide (296 times more powerful).

Indeed, accounting for all factors, livestock production worldwide is responsible for a whopping 18 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gases, reports the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. That’s more than the emissions of all the world’s cars, buses, planes, and trains combined.

So why do we so rarely talk about meat consumption when discussing global warming in America? Compact fluorescent bulbs? Biking to work? Buying wind power? We hear it nonstop. But even the super-liberal, Prius-driving, Green Party activist in America typically eats chicken wings and morning bacon like everyone else. While the climate impacts of meat consumption might be new to many people, the knowledge of meat’s general ecological harm is not at all novel. So what gives?

Roughly three percent of all Americans are vegetarians, according to the Vegetarian Resource Group, a nonprofit that educates people on the benefits of a meat-free diet. Part of the reason, I know, is the unfortunate belief that vegetarianism is a really tough lifestyle change, much harder than simply changing bulbs or buying a better car. But as a meat lover at heart, I’ve been a vegetarian (no fish, minimal eggs and cheese) for seven years, and trust me: It’s easy, satisfying, and of course super healthy. With the advent of savory tofu, faux meats, and the explosion of local farmers’ markets, a life without meat is many times easier today than when Ovid and Thoreau and Gandhi and Einstein did it. True, many meat substitutes are made from soybeans, a monocrop with its own environmental issues. But most soy production today is actually devoted to livestock feed. Only 1 percent of U.S. soybeans become tofu, for example.

One day I get carryout veggie Pad Thai. The next I cook stir-fried veggies at home with soy-based sausage patties so good they fool even the most discriminating meat connoisseurs. Bottom line: Of the most difficult things I’ve ever done in my life, vegetarianism doesn’t even make the chart.

Some folks, I realize, have a deep-down, gut-level (so to speak) reaction to vegetarianism as “unnatural.” We humans have canine teeth, after all. We evolved to include meat in our diets. To abandon such food is to break thousands of years of tradition and, in some cases, ritual behavior bordering on the sacred.

All true. But we also evolved as people who defecated indiscriminately in the woods and who didn’t brush our teeth. Somehow we’ve moved to a higher level on those counts. Now, with potentially catastrophic climate change hovering around the corner and with our briskets and London broil helping to drive the process, it’s time to evolve some more.

A compromise in recent years, of course, has been the idea of animals raised locally and organically. Becoming a “locavore” who eats regional fruits and vegetables in season as much as possible makes abundant sense, of course. And animals from your area can lower the environmental impacts of your diet in many ways while simultaneously saving cherished local farmland and progressive farm families.

But with global warming, here’s the inconvenient truth about meat and dairy products: If you eat them, regardless of their origin and how they were produced, you significantly contribute to climate change. Period. If your beef is from New Zealand or your own backyard, if your lamb is organic free-range or factory farmed, it still has a negative impact on global warming.

This is true for several reasons. Again, the biological reality of ruminant digestion is that methane is released. The feed can be local and organic, but the methane is the same, escaping into the atmosphere and trapping heat with impressive efficiency. Second, no matter the farming method, livestock makes manure that produces nitrous oxide, an even more awesomely impressive heat trapper. Livestock in the United States generates a billion tons of manure per year, accounting for 65 percent of the planet’s anthropogenic nitrous oxide emissions.

Even poultry, while less harmful, also contributes. Ironically, data released in 2007 by Adrian Williams of Cranfield University in England show that when all factors are considered, organic, free-range chickens have a 20 percent greater impact on global warming than conventionally raised broiler birds. That’s because “sustainable” chickens take longer to raise, and eat more feed. Worse, organic eggs have a 14 percent higher impact on the climate than eggs from caged chickens, according to Williams.

“If we want to fight global warming through the food we buy, then one thing’s clear: We have to drastically reduce the meat we consume,” says Tara Garnett of London’s Food Climate Research Network.

So while some of us Americans fashionably fret over our food’s travel budget and organic content, Garnett says the real question is, “Did it come from an animal or did it not come from an animal?”

Which brings us back to vegetarianism and why I live a meat-free life. The facts speak for themselves. If we really want to fight climate change, we should change our lightbulbs and purchase hybrid cars and, above all, vote for politicians committed to a clean energy future. But we should also eat less meat, a lot less, or none at all.

I believe consumer habits are starting to change similarly to the way they’ve shifted with compact fluorescent bulbs. Ten years ago people complained about the harsh quality of light from fluorescents and the hassle of switching them out. But the bulbs are now made to produce a much warmer quality of light and the price has come down. What’s more, in seven years of using only CFLs at my home, I’ve never had a guest make a single comment.

In the near future, as we increasingly discuss the climate “facts” of meat consumption, and as veggie cuisine gets still easier at home and at restaurants, we’ll see more and more people changing their diets in the same way they’re switching to CFLs in droves now. Of this I’m sure.

But when it comes to food, the facts are not enough for many people. Of this I’m also sure. A holistic nutritionist in my neighborhood says one’s ideas about food reside in the same part of the brain that houses our ideas and beliefs about religion. It’s not all rational, in other words. Facts abound about the harm of fatty, sugary foods, yet the obesity epidemic grows. And I can’t count the number of environmental conferences I’ve attended where meat was served in abundance. Even Michael Pollan’s 2006 bestseller The Omnivore’s Dilemma, wherein he dissects with encyclopedic thoroughness the eco-hazards and animal cruelty issues surrounding meat and egg production—even this book astonishingly mentions the words global warming only two times and climate change not at all. In 464 pages. That’s highly unreasonable, in my view.

All of which is to say that for people to care, the climate­food discussion must be about more than just facts, more than pounds of greenhouse gases per units of food. It’s got to be about morality, about right versus wrong. And I don’t mean the usual morality of environmental “stewardship.” Or even the issue of cruelty to farm animals. I’m talking here about cruelty to people, about the explicit harm to humans that results from meat consumption and its role as a driving force in climate change. Knowingly eating food that makes you fat or harms your local fish and birds is one thing. Knowingly eating food that makes children across much of the world hungry is another.

I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the mid-1980s, living in a tiny rural village where the staple crop was hand-tilled corn. It was harvested twice a year, in May and December. This meant the two annual “rainy seasons” had to begin right on time, in January and September, and continue for several months afterward. Any deviation from this rainfall pattern virtually guaranteed a lower corn harvest. And given the total absence of grocery stores, community granaries, or the money to buy extra food even if it existed, this meant hunger.

A signature impact of global warming, of course, is a dramatic shift in precipitation patterns worldwide, including longer and more severe droughts as well as extreme rainstorms and flooding in non-drought areas. Many scientists believe these impacts are already being felt by farmers worldwide and could spell future disaster, especially for subsistence farmers like those I lived with in Africa. Global wheat prices have jumped about 100 percent in the past year in part because a record drought in Australia—made worse by global warming—has devastated farmers across the continent. Food production in China alone could drop 10 percent as early as 2030, United Nations scientists warn.

The people I lived with in Africa contribute almost nothing to the problem of global warming, through their diet or otherwise. Coal-fired electricity versus wind power? They don’t have electricity. SUVs versus hybrid cars? They don’t have cars—none at all, or roads for that matter. And meat consumption? Tiny, tiny portions maybe twice a week.

If we in the West don’t alter course in the coming years, if we allow extreme global warming to become reality, an impact on the U.S. diet could very well be a great reduction in the amount of meat on our tables—a reduction imposed on us by nature instead of achieved by us through enlightened lifestyle changes. The wide and guaranteed availability of agriculturally productive land may simply cease. The crop yields we see now could shrink significantly, thanks to everything from weird weather to pest invasions. But it’s a safe guess to say we’ll have space for a national diet of plant-based foods (some crops are expected to benefit from global warming), just not the option of consuming all those animals.

But in the Congo and other poor countries, in places like Bangladesh and Peru and Vietnam, where meat consumption is already low, severe climate change means food off the table. It means hungry children. It means the rains don’t come on time or at all in tiny villages like the one I lived in. It means, in the end, cruelty to people.

Are we clear now on the raw facts and urgent morality of our present meat consumption in America?

We need much more than just a few magazine readers to voluntarily stop eating meat, of course. It’s a good start, but what we really need are national policies that encourage lower meat consumption by everyone. This could be achieved using fees or other market mechanisms that properly price greenhouse-gas emissions according to the harm they cause. The bad news, I suppose, is that the cost of meat could rise. The good news is we would finally have a fair and honest way to judge its danger, and thus more incentives to do the right thing, more incentives to switch to a healthy and convenient vegetarian diet of the sort I’ve joyfully embraced for years, despite my great appreciation for the taste of meat.

We could also, as a nation, just eat a lot less meat as an alternative to full vegetarianism. Anthony McMichael, a leading Australia-based expert on climate change and health issues, has crunched the numbers. He estimates that per capita daily meat consumption would need to drop from about 12 ounces per day in America to 3.1 ounces (with less than half of it red meat) in order to protect the climate.

I suppose I could measure out 3.1 ounces of meat per day, cook it, eat it, and still feel morally okay. But frankly I’d rather just go without. I’d rather be a vegetarian. It’s easier to explain. It’s easier to defend. And I just plain like it.
source: Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, is the author of The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Cities (Free Press).

Pound for pound, beef production generates greenhouse gases that contribute more than 13 times as much to global warming as do the gases emitted from producing chicken. For potatoes, the multiplier is 57

Beef consumption is rising rapidly, both as population increases and as people eat more meat.

Producing the annual beef diet of the average American emits as much greenhouse gas as a car driven more than 1,800 miles.

Most of us are aware that our cars, our coal-generated electric power and even our cement factories adversely affect the environment. Until recently, however, the foods we eat had gotten a pass in the discussion. Yet according to a 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), our diets and, specifically, the meat in them cause more greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and the like to spew into the atmosphere than either transportation or industry. (Greenhouse gases trap solar energy, thereby warming the earth's surface. Because gases vary in greenhouse potency, every greenhouse gas is usually expressed as an amount of CO2 with the same global-warming potential.)

The FAO report found that current production levels of meat contribute between 14 and 22 percent of the 36 billion tons of "CO2-equivalent" greenhouse gases the world produces every year. It turns out that producing half a pound of hamburger for someone's lunch a patty of meat the size of two decks of cards releases as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as driving a 3,000-pound car nearly 10 miles.

In truth, every food we consume, vegetables and fruits included, incurs hidden environmental costs: transportation, refrigeration and fuel for farming, as well as methane emissions from plants and animals, all lead to a buildup of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Take asparagus: in a report prepared for the city of Seattle, Daniel J. Morgan of the University of Washington and his co-workers found that growing just half a pound of the vegetable in Peru emits greenhouse gases equivalent to 1.2 ounces of CO2 as a result of applying insecticide and fertilizer, pumping water and running heavy, gas-guzzling farm equipment. To refrigerate and transport the vegetable to an American dinner table generates another two ounces of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases, for a total CO2 equivalent of 3.2 ounces.

But that is nothing compared to beef. In 1999 Susan Subak, an ecological economist then at the University of East Anglia in England, found that, depending on the production method, cows emit between 2.5 and 4.7 ounces of methane for each pound of beef they produce. Because methane has roughly 23 times the global-warming potential of CO2, those emissions are the equivalent of releasing between 3.6 and 6.8 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere for each pound of beef produced.

Raising animals also requires a large amount of feed per unit of body weight. In 2003 Lucas Reijnders of the University of Amsterdam and Sam Soret of Loma Linda University estimated that producing a pound of beef protein for the table requires more than 10 pounds of plant protein with all the emissions of greenhouse gases that grain farming entails. Finally, farms for raising animals produce numerous wastes that give rise to greenhouse gases.

Taking such factors into account, Subak calculated that producing a pound of beef in a feedlot, or concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) system, generates the equivalent of 14.8 pounds of CO2 pound for pound, more than 36 times the CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emitted by producing asparagus. Even other common meats cannot match the impact of beef; I estimate that producing a pound of pork generates the equivalent of 3.8 pounds of CO2; a pound of chicken generates 1.1 pounds of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases. And the economically efficient CAFO system, though certainly not the cleanest production method in terms of CO2-equivalent greenhouse emissions, is far better than most: the FAO data I noted earlier imply that the world average emissions from producing a pound of beef are several times the CAFO amount.
Solutions?What can be done? Improving waste management and farming practices would certainly reduce the "carbon footprint" of beef production. Methane-capturing systems, for instance, can put cows' waste to use in generating electricity. But those systems remain too costly to be commercially viable.

source: Scientific American http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-greenhouse-hamburger

U.S. could feed 800 million people with grain that livestock eat, Cornell ecologist advises animal scientists. Future water and energy shortages predicted to change face of American agriculture.

Grain-fed livestock consumes resources far out of proportion to the yield, accelerates soil erosion, affects world food supply and will be changing in the future.

"If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million," David Pimentel, professor of ecology in Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, reported at the July 24-26 meeting of the Canadian Society of Animal Science in Montreal. Or, if those grains were exported, it would boost the U.S. trade balance by $80 billion a year, Pimentel estimated.

With only grass-fed livestock, individual Americans would still get more than the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of meat and dairy protein, according to Pimentel's report, "Livestock Production: Energy Inputs and the Environment."

An environmental analyst and longtime critic of waste and inefficiency in agricultural practices, Pimentel depicted grain-fed livestock farming as a costly and nonsustainable way to produce animal protein. He distinguished grain-fed meat production from pasture-raised livestock, calling cattle-grazing a more reasonable use of marginal land.

Animal protein production requires more than eight times as much fossil-fuel energy than production of plant protein while yielding animal protein that is only 1.4 times more nutritious for humans than the comparable amount of plant protein, according to the Cornell ecologist's analysis.

Tracking food animal production from the feed trough to the dinner table, Pimentel found broiler chickens to be the most efficient use of fossil energy, and beef, the least. Chicken meat production consumes energy in a 4:1 ratio to protein output; beef cattle production requires an energy input to protein output ratio of 54:1. (Lamb meat production is nearly as inefficient at 50:1, according to the ecologist's analysis of U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics. Other ratios range from 13:1 for turkey meat and 14:1 for milk protein to 17:1 for pork and 26:1 for eggs.)

Animal agriculture is a leading consumer of water resources in the United States, Pimentel noted. Grain-fed beef production takes 100,000 liters of water for every kilogram of food. Raising broiler chickens takes 3,500 liters of water to make a kilogram of meat. In comparison, soybean production uses 2,000 liters for kilogram of food produced; rice, 1,912; wheat, 900; and potatoes, 500 liters. "Water shortages already are severe in the Western and Southern United States and the situation is quickly becoming worse because of a rapidly growing U.S. population that requires more water for all of its needs, especially agriculture," Pimentel observed.

Livestock are directly or indirectly responsible for much of the soil erosion in the United States, the ecologist determined. On lands where feed grain is produced, soil loss averages 13 tons per hectare per year. Pasture lands are eroding at a slower pace, at an average of 6 tons per hectare per year. But erosion may exceed 100 tons on severely overgrazed pastures, and 54 percent of U.S. pasture land is being overgrazed.

"More than half the U.S. grain and nearly 40 percent of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans," Pimentel said. "Although grain production is increasing in total, the per capita supply has been decreasing for more than a decade. Clearly, there is reason for concern in the future."

source: Cornell University Science News http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/aug97/livestock.hrs.html

The U.S. beef industry is worth an estimated $175 billion with cattlemen conducting business in all 50 states and operating 800,000 individual farms and ranches.

In July 2003, there were 104.3 million cattle in the United States.

35.7 million cattle were harvested in 2003.

2002 data shows there were 805,080 cow/calf operations and 95,189 feedlots in the United States according to CattleFax.

While the United States has less than 10 percent of the world's cattle inventory, it produces nearly 25 percent of the world's beef supply according to 2002 USDA data.

The U.S. produced 27.1 billion pounds of beef in 2002.

There are 1.4 million jobs attributed to the beef industry.

The cattle industry is a family business. Eighty percent of the cattle businesses have been in the same families for more than 25 years; 10 percent fore more than 100 years.

Cattle are produced in all 50 states and their economic impact contributes to nearly every county in the nation and they are a significant economic driver in rural communities.

America’s demand for beef has increased more than 15 percent since 1998.

Consumer beef spending has grown $14 billion compared to the 1990s according to CattleFax.

Beef is the number one protein in America according to USDA consumption data. In 2002, the average per capita consumption of beef was 64.4 pounds according to USDA consumption data.

Steak is the single most popular beef dish in-home, eaten more than once a month by the average person. Hamburger is the second most popular in-home item (8.9 percent of all eating occasions) - NPD/National Eating Trends, 2002.

Beef exports, during 2003, were worth approximately $2.664 billion, variety meat exports were worth $601 million and tallow exports were worth $325 million.

During 2002, beef exports represented 9 percent of U.S. domestic beef production (2.45 billion pounds vs. 27.1 billion pounds).

source: Beef USA - Beef Industry Fact Sheet http://www.hsgpurchasing.com/Product%20Information/Beef%20Facts.htm

Flesh of Your Flesh - Should you eat meat?

by Elizabeth Kolbert for The New Yorker, November 3, 2009

"Americans love animals. Forty-six million families in the United States own at least one dog, and thirty-eight million keep cats. Thirteen million maintain freshwater aquariums in which swim a total of more than a hundred and seventy million fish.

Collectively, these creatures cost Americans some forty billion dollars annually. (Seventeen billion goes to food and another twelve billion to veterinary bills.) Despite the recession, pet-related expenditures this year are expected to increase five per cent over 2008, in part owing to outlays on luxury items like avian manicures and canine bath spritz.

“We have so many customers who say they’d eat macaroni and cheese before they’d cut back on their dogs,” a Colorado pet-store owner recently told the Denver Post. In a survey released this past August, more than half of all dog, cat, and bird owners reported having bought presents for their animals during the previous twelve months, often for no special occasion, just out of love. (Fish enthusiasts may bring home fewer gifts, but they spend more on each one, with the average fish gift coming to thirty-seven dollars.)

A majority of owners report that one of the reasons they enjoy keeping pets is that they consider them part of the family.

Americans also love to eat animals. This year, they will cook roughly twenty-seven billion pounds of beef, sliced from some thirty-five million cows.

Additionally, they will consume roughly twenty-three billion pounds of pork, or the bodies of more than a hundred and fifteen million pigs, and thirty-eight billion pounds of poultry, some nine billion birds. Most of these creatures have been raised under conditions that are, as Americans know—or, at least, by this point have no excuse not to know — barbaric."

...read the entire very confronting 4 page article
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/11/09/091109crbo_books_kolbert

BARIYAPUR, NEPAL, November 6, 2009: Plans to sacrifice more than 500,000 animals during the two-day Durga Puja festival in Nepal have met with the wrath of animal rights activists, who called for the ancient ritual to be banned.

[HPI note: The form of Hinduism practiced in Nepal is influenced by "left-handed" Shakta tantric practices, which includes extreme rites inexistent in mainstream Hinduism, including animal sacrifice.]

Every five years the tiny village of Bariyapur, near Nepal’s southern border with India, is inundated with hundreds of thousands of Hindu devotees who flock to the local temple where the sacrifices happen. This year it is expected that about 500,000 animals, including about 25,000 buffaloes, will be offered to Gadhimai, a form of Durga.

The local authorities support the practice. Most observers think it is unlikely that the Nepalese Government, which has pledged about $60,000 for the festival, will intercede. An influx of tourists are expected from India, where such practices are banned. But this year temple authorities face a more powerful set of opponents than ever before. Pramada Shah, of Animal Welfare Network Nepal, said, “By perpetuating this we are projecting Nepal as barbaric.”

courtesy of Hinduism Today  http://www.hinduismtoday.com

What happened? Juliet Gellatley, director of the vegan and vegetarian group Viva, is clear on the issue of whether fish eaters can use the term vegetarian. “They cannot. The definition is very clear. It’s someone who doesn’t eat anything from a killed animal. It does cause confusion if someone who calls themselves a vegetarian goes into a restaurant and orders a prawn cocktail.”

Part of the confusion comes from the growing popularity of vegetarianism and the hesitant or gradual steps taken by newcomers to the fold.

Many of the fish-eating vegetarians will be making a dietary exception for health reasons. The government advises the consumption of at least two portions of fish a week, one of which should be oily fish. This intake is thought to help fight heart disease. Vegetarian organizations have to counter by noting that some nutritional benefits of eating oily fish can be gained from elsewhere. They recommend things like flaxseed oil and walnuts.

The definitions of vegetarians now include - the classic vegetarian who eats no part of any dead animal. The vegan who eats no animal product. The meat-avoider who tries not to eat meat but has occasional lapses. The meat-reducer who is trying to eat less meat, probably for health reasons and last, the green eater who avoids meat because of environmental impact

“More than a quarter of people say they eat less meat than they did five years ago. There is a shifting change in the diet,” says Ms Gellatley. “A third of our membership are meat reducers.” Many people will start by giving up red meat for health reasons, then give up white meat, and so on. Despite initially doing it for non-ethical reasons, these people can then take on the philosophical mantle, says Ms Gellatley.

courtesy of Hinduism Today  http://www.hinduismtoday.com

By Finlo Rohrer
BBC News Magazine

Vegetarianism used to be simple - its protagonists foreswore the flesh of any dead animal. Today there are "veggies" who eat fish, and people who eat no meat but don't call themselves vegetarians. What happened?

The conversation usually goes something a bit like this:

"Yeah, I'm a vegetarian."

"But that looks like fish you're eating."

"Oh yeah, I eat fish."

Confusion, perplexity and occasionally heated debate can follow as the "vegetarian" and their interrogator cover the issue of what is an animal and whether fish feel pain. But the Vegetarian Society, which has acted as the custodian of British vegetarianism since 1847, has a simple definition.

"A vegetarian does not eat any meat, poultry, game, fish, shellfish or crustacean, or slaughter byproducts," it says. They can make that even more pithy: "We don't eat dead things."

The society tackles the issue of fish-eating vegetarians with a page headed in red capitals: "VEGETARIANS DO NOT EAT FISH."

Juliet Gellatley, director of the vegan and vegetarian group Viva, is also clear on the issue of whether fish eaters can use the term vegetarian.

"They cannot. The definition is very clear. It's someone who doesn't eat anything from a killed animal.

"It does cause confusion if someone who calls themselves a vegetarian goes into a restaurant and orders a prawn cocktail."

Many of the fish-eating vegetarians will be making a dietary exception for health reasons. The government advises the consumption of at least two portions of fish a week, one of which should be oily fish. This intake is thought to help fight heart disease. Vegetarian organisations have to counter by noting that some nutritional benefits of eating oily fish can be gained from elsewhere. They recommend things like flaxseed oil and walnuts.  VARIANTS
Classic vegetarian: Eats no part of any dead animal
Vegan: Eats no animal product
Meat-avoider: Tries not to to eat meat but has occasional lapses
Meat-reducer: Is trying to eat less meat, probably for health reasons
Green eater: Avoids meat because of environmental impact

There may also be a tendency among some fish-eating vegetarians to assign a different ethical equation to the consumption of fish. It is something that is vehemently rejected by vegetarians.

"There is ample evidence in peer-reviewed scientific journals that mammals experience not just pain, but also mental suffering including fear, anticipation, foreboding, anxiety, stress, terror and trauma," says Revd Prof Andrew Linzey, director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and author of Why Animal Suffering Matters.

"The case for fish isn't so strong, but scientific evidence at least shows that they experience pain and fear. Anyone who wants to avoid causing pain should give up eating fish."

But there is a wider problem of identification.

"Fish don't invoke the same compassionate response that a calf, lamb, piglet, or duck does," says Ms Gellatley. "We are mammals, we relate much better to other mammals. When we see a pig in a factory farm and you can see that animal is in pain that has a very direct effect on people."

Vegetarian escalator

And then there's the issue of depleted fish stocks.

Fish-eating vegetarians used to have their own term - "pescetarian" - although it seems not to be in common use today. But, Ms Gellatley says, there is a rise in the use of a new term for the part-vegetarian.
Eschew on that - vegetarians typically start by giving up red meat

"The name 'flexitarian' is coming into use. It's fairly meaningless really."

But for vegetarian activists, anybody taking on the vegetarian badge can be a positive, even if they fall short of the strict definition, says Ms Gellately, alluding to a virtual vegetarian escalator.

"People are moving along a pathway - the positive thing is that they see vegetarianism as aspirational."

While activists might offer anecdotal evidence for trends like fish-eating vegetarianism, concrete numbers are not easy to come by.

There is a view that after a period of healthy growth in the 1990s, classic vegetarianism is now stagnant. It rose from 0.2% of the population during World War II to 1.8% in 1980, according to the consumer research company Mintel.

The firm's most recent survey suggested 6% concurred with the statement "I am a vegetarian". But the Food Standards Agency's recent Public Attitudes to Food Issues survey found just 3% of the population was strictly vegetarian, and 5% partly vegetarian.

Viva cites a survey done on behalf of the Linda McCartney vegetarian food brand which suggested a figure of 10%.

Easy label

Kate Sibley is one example of the more complex definitions of vegetarian these days.
Vegetarian food has had some powerful backers
 

She was raised mostly as a vegetarian, but given fish for health reasons. She became an orthodox vegetarian at university but then returned to eating fish later. It's now the only meat that she eats.

"I was brought up as a vegetarian. We were given the choice when we were young. It was all about animal rights and how animals were factory farmed. [My parents] told us the the reasons and we agreed with them.

"We were fed fish. It's important for your brain to have oily fish [when young]. When I became a proper vegetarian I started to get quite ill and tired."

Her objection is mainly to the way meat is produced, not to the idea of eating an animal. She uses the term "vegetarian" almost for the sake of convenience. If she is dining with people for the first time, it makes things simpler.

One of the reasons it's so hard to assess the level of vegetarianism is because of the multiple definitions of the term.

It is clear, however, that meat-free and meat-substitute meals make up more and more of what we eat. The marketers and the activists are dealing with new groups of people, known as meat-avoiders and meat-reducers. Outside those who have a clear philosophical platform for eschewing meat, there are increasing numbers of these people, either cutting down on meat or trying not to eat it where possible, but without necessarily ever calling themselves "vegetarian".

Mintel categorises 23% of the population as meat-reducers, people attempting to eat less meat, probably mainly for health reasons. Another factor is climate change - livestock rearing produces methane, which is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in global warming terms, according to Lord Stern. It identifies 10% as meat-avoiders, people who plan to eat little or no meat but sometimes lapse, and who might well accept the ethical basis of vegetarianism.

"More than a quarter of people say they eat less meat than they did five years ago. There is a shifting change in the diet," says Ms Gellatley. "A third of our membership are meat reducers."

Many people will start by giving up red meat for health reasons, then give up white meat, and so on. Despite initially doing it for non-ethical reasons, these people can then take on the philosophical mantle, says Ms Gellatley.

But despite the health messages about certain kinds of meat, and the arguments over the amount of energy it takes to produce meat, the vast majority in the UK still eat meat. And one-fifth, according to Mintel, like to have meat every day.

October 30, 2009, 10:08 am
Filed under: Environmental Politics, Global Warming, Vegetarianism

The Economic Times

LONDON: Going the vegetarian way can help to tackle the problem of global warming apart from its known health benefits to human, according to a climate expert.

“Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better,” Lord Stern of Brentford said.

“Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas,” he said.

Lord Stern, author of the 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming, said that a successful deal at the upcoming Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen would lead to soaring costs for meat and other foods that generate large quantities of greenhouse gases.

“I think it’s important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating,” he said.

A former chief economist at the World Bank, Stern warned that British taxpayers would need to contribute about £ 3 billion a year by 2015 to help poor countries to cope with the impact of climate change.

Speaking on the eve of an all-parliamentary debate on climate change, Lord Stern admitted that he himself is not a strict vegetarian.

WASHINGTON D.C., November 16, 2009: James E. McWilliams, is an associate professor of history at Texas State University at San Marcos and a recent fellow in the agrarian studies program at Yale University.

McWilliams spoke in South Texas recently on the environmental virtues of a vegetarian diet. He noted: “The livestock industry, as a result of its reliance on corn and soy-based feed, accounts for over half the synthetic fertilizer used in the United States, contributing more than any other sector to marine dead zones.”

He continues, “It consumes 70 percent of the water in the American West ­ water so heavily subsidized that if irrigation supports were removed, ground beef would cost $35 a pound. Livestock accounts for at least 21 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions globally ­ more than all forms of transportation combined. Domestic animals ­ most of them healthy ­ consume about 70 percent of all the antibiotics produced. It takes a gallon of gasoline to produce a pound of conventional beef. If all the grain fed to animals went to people, you could feed China and India.”

McWilliams is also the author of “Just Food.” For the full article see source above.

Bellying up to environmentalism
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/15/AR2009111502210.html

By James E. McWilliams
Monday, November 16, 2009

I gave a talk in South Texas recently on the environmental virtues of a vegetarian diet. As you might imagine, the reception was chilly. In fact, the only applause came during the Q&A period when a member of the audience said that my lecture made him want to go out and eat even more meat. "Plus," he added, "what I eat is my business -- it's personal."

I've been writing about food and agriculture for more than a decade. Until that evening, however, I'd never actively thought about this most basic culinary question: Is eating personal?

We know more than we've ever known about the innards of the global food system. We understand that food can both nourish and kill. We know that its production can both destroy and enhance our environment. We know that farming touches every aspect of our lives -- the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the soil we need.

So it's hard to avoid concluding that eating cannot be personal. What I eat influences you. What you eat influences me. Our diets are deeply, intimately and necessarily political.

This realization changes everything for those who avoid meat. As a vegetarian I've always felt the perverse need to apologize for my dietary choice. It inconveniences people. It smacks of self-righteousness. It makes us pariahs at dinner parties. But the more I learn about the negative impact of meat production, the more I feel that it's the consumers of meat who should be

making apologies.

Here's why: The livestock industry as a result of its reliance on corn and soy-based feed accounts for over half the synthetic fertilizer used in the United States, contributing more than any other sector to marine dead zones. It consumes 70 percent of the water in the American West -- water so heavily subsidized that if irrigation supports were removed, ground beef would cost $35 a pound. Livestock accounts for at least 21 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions globally -- more than all forms of transportation combined. Domestic animals -- most of them healthy -- consume about 70 percent of all the antibiotics produced. Undigested antibiotics leach from manure into freshwater systems and impair the sex organs of fish.

It takes a gallon of gasoline to produce a pound of conventional beef. If all the grain fed to animals went to people, you could feed China and India. That's just a start.

Meat that's raised according to "alternative" standards (about 1 percent of meat in the United States) might be a better choice but not nearly as much so as its privileged consumers would have us believe. "Free-range chickens" theoretically have access to the outdoors. But many "free-range" chickens never see the light of day because they cannot make it through the crowded shed to the aperture leading to a patch of cement.

"Grass-fed" beef produces four times the methane -- a greenhouse gas 21 times as powerful as carbon dioxide -- of grain-fed cows, and many grass-fed cows are raised on heavily fertilized and irrigated grass. Pastured pigs are still typically mutilated, fed commercial feed and prevented from rooting -- their most basic instinct besides sex.

Issues of animal welfare are equally implicated in all forms of meat production. Domestic animals suffer immensely, feel pain and may even be cognizant of the fate that awaits them. In an egg factory, male chicks (economically worthless) are summarily run through a grinder. Pigs are castrated without anesthesia, crated, tail-docked and nose-ringed. Milk cows are repeatedly impregnated through artificial insemination, confined to milking stalls and milked to yield 15 times the amount of milk they would produce under normal conditions. When calves are removed from their mothers at birth, the mothers mourn their loss with heart-rending moans.

Then comes the slaughterhouse, an operation that's left with millions of pounds of carcasses -- deadstock -- that are incinerated or dumped in landfills. (Rendering plants have taken a nose dive since mad cow disease.)

Now, if someone told you that a particular corporation was trashing the air, water and soil; causing more global warming than the transportation industry; consuming massive amounts of fossil fuel; unleashing the cruelest sort of suffering on innocent and sentient beings; failing to recycle its waste; and clogging our arteries in the process, how would you react? Would you say, "Hey, that's personal?" Probably not. It's more likely that you'd frame the matter as a dire political issue in need of a dire political response.

Vegetarianism is not only the most powerful political response we can make to industrialized food. It's a necessary prerequisite to reforming it. To quit eating meat is to dismantle the global food apparatus at its foundation.

Agribusiness has been vilified of late by muckraking journalists, activist filmmakers and sustainable-food advocates. We know that something has to be done to save our food from corporate interests. But I wonder -- are we ready to do what must be done? Sure, we've been inundated with ideas: eat local, vote with your fork, buy organic, support fair trade, etc. But these proposals all lack something that every successful environmental movement has always placed at its core: genuine sacrifice.

Until we make that leap, until we create a culinary culture in which the meat-eaters must do the apologizing, the current proposals will be nothing more than gestures that turn the fork into an empty symbol rather than a real tool for environmental change.

James E. McWilliams, an associate professor of history at Texas State University at San Marcos and a recent fellow in the agrarian studies program at Yale University, is most recently the author of "Just Food."

The Stepping Stones to Real Cow Protection (Part 1)
http://nvclub108.blogspot.com/2009/01/stepping-stones-to-real-cow-protection.html

The Stepping Stones to Real Cow Protection (Part 2)
http://nvclub108.blogspot.com/2009/01/stepping-stones-to-real-cow-protection_30.html
 

See our World Vegetarian Day Newsletters 2004 - 2005 - World Vege Day

See similar articles at Vegetarianism & Beyond:
http://turn.to/Vegetarianism

THE CAT IN THE BASKET

When it was time for her daughter's marriage, one woman made many elaborate arrangements for a smooth wedding ceremony. However, in the middle of the proceedings a cat ran out into the middle of the assembly.
"Oh no!" thought the mother. "What to do?" She spied a basket and promptly grabbed it, trapping the cat underneath. Relieved, they carried on the marriage ceremony undisturbed.
Some years later, when the bride was grown up and had her own family, it was time for her daughter's marriage ceremony. All elaborate arrangements were made, but the mother still felt something amiss. Then she remembered, "Ah, I remember that at my wedding my mother had a cat in a basket placed there." So she fetched a cat, put a basket on it and carried on the proceedings. And it became a tradition in that family.

MORAL: Due to a poor fund of knowledge, people accept certain theories as truth, but never stop to question why those theories exist. This story criticises the tendency to follow blindly.

See similar inspirational snippets HERE:
http://www.hknet.org.nz/parables.htm

The phaomnneil pweor of the hmuan mnid: Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig!
Mybae the I can sotp slpel ckchenig?

Topical Articles:
Abortion - http://www.hknet.org.nz/index-abortion.htm
Genetic Engineering ( GE or GM ) - http://www.hknet.org.nz/GE.html
Environment - http://www.hknet.org.nz/Environment.htm
Encroachment - http://www.hknet.org.nz/WE-Day2004.html
Cloning - http://www.hknet.org.nz/cloning.htm
Science - http://www.hknet.org.nz/science2KC.html
Cow Protection - http://www.hknet.org.nz/Cow-protection.htm
The Four Regulative Principles of Freedom - http://www.hknet.org.nz/Regs-4page.htm
seX-files - http://www.hknet.org.nz/seX-files.htm
Mundane Knowledge - http://www.hknet.org.nz/mundaneknowledge.html
Death (Yamaduttas - Terminal Restlessness etc)- http://www.hknet.org.nz/death.html
Near Death Experience - http://www.hknet.org.nz/NDE.htm
Ghosts - http://www.hknet.org.nz/ghosts.htm
Reincarnation again here - http://www.hknet.org.nz/Reincarnation-page.htm
Gain some insights in the TV culture  - http://www.hknet.org.nz/television.html
The aweful Truth about softdrinks - http://www.hknet.org.nz/theREALthing.html
Changing the face of the Earth - http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/1390/index.html
UFOs - http://www.hknet.org.nz/UFOs.html
Vegetarianism & Beyond - http://turn.to/Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism in the major Religions - All manner of religions
Articles for newcomers to Krishna consciousness - http://www.krishna.com/newsite/main.php?id=87
Self Help and Motivational pages - Deals and Affiliate programs: - http://www.hknet.org.nz/index-selfhelp.html
Myth of the Aryan invasion by Dr. David Frawley: - http://www.hknet.org.nz/Aryan-invasion-mythDF.html

The Peace Formula - (By HDG Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada) http://www.hknet.org.nz/PeaceFormula.html

.........many other articles - http://www.hknet.org.nz/index-articles.htm

and from there go to the Main Index http://www.hknet.org.nz/index.htm

Iskcon News Articles now available - many topical insights
http://www.iskcon.com/new/index.html

Paradigms - where things are not all they seem

 The Peace Formula
http://www.hknet.org.nz/PeaceFormula.html

The Real Peace Formula
http://www.hknet.org.nz/PeaceRealF.html

See more on Yoga and Meditation HERE:
http://www.hknet.org.nz/index-yoga.html

World Vegetarian Day October 1st yearly &
World Vegetarian Awareness Month of October yearly
...please visit our links and see what you can do to help

World Smoke Free Day
31st May Every Year 

http://www.be-free.org/b-media/market-bfree03/cinema.php

yeah kick the butt
...and remember from 10th December 2004 no more smoking in public places in New Zealand by law