Turns out they’re in more difficult financial straights than I’d imagined. They’re running a voluntary donations campaign. As they wrote in a letter to readers:

As a completely independent company, Paste has struggled for the past nine months as advertisers have decided to wait out the recession. As most of you realize, magazines are heavily subsidized by advertising. Industry experts estimate that an average subscription for a monthly publication would cost $60-$80 per year without advertising support. But last month was brutal. Cash received unexpectedly reached an all-time low, and turned a tough situation into a short-term crisis.

Long-term, Paste will emerge in good shape. Even with the fall-off at the end of the year, 2008 was our best year yet—print subscribers, print ads, online readers and online advertising were all at record levels. Readers (print and online) remain strong. And new advertisers have come on board even in the recession, with more ready when their advertising budgets come back.

Regardless of what you donate, you get access to a vault of 70+ songs, many of them rare or unreleased tracks, from a broad variety of the kind of artists you’d expect to be friends of Paste.

I hope this does generate enough cash to support Paste through to long-term recovery.

Erik Marcus of Vegan.com

First, Erik Marcus, who you likely know as the person behind Vegan.com, as well as the author of Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating, Meat Market: Animals, Ethic, and Money, and The Ultimate Vegan Guide: Compassionate Living Without Sacrifice.

His new blog is An Activists Life. It’s a tumblr-based blog, so it is likely to be more microblog style, more conversational, and more focused on the personal than vegan.com. As Erik put it:

I’ve decided to start something new. I’m going to blog about my personal efforts for animals, and all the things in my life that I try to put in place to be as effective as I can be.

I could take the tried-and-true way out and do this as a book, and not publish a word until it’s fully baked. But that’s not what I want this time. I want to show you the process, the fear, the uncertainty, that comes with writing a shitload of words in real time.

There is no business model. There is no ultimate form I expect this work to take. Just the feeling that if I can give you some insight into the way I’ve structured my life, and the things I do day after day, some people might either be inspired to take action, or be able to act more effectively for animals.

So take a look. Everything’s in flux; everything’s not ready for prime time; this is my activist life. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

Given that on some days I think this blog could become nothing but a giant pointer to the RSS feed at vegan.com, I look forward to riding along with Erik over at An Activists Life.

Karen Dawn and Paula

Second, Karen Dawn, who you like know from Thanking the Monkey and Dawnwatch.

Karen’s started blogging at Thanking the Monkey and will focus, one assumes, on many of the same topics and Thanking the Monkey and Dawnwatch, but with more personality. (It is really possible I just put “Karen Dawn” and “more personality” in the same sentence?). Here’s how she described it in an email to Dawnwatch subscribers:

While my blogs, like DawnWatch, will include animal news, they will be lighter and more personal. They will generally have embedded video, sometimes of what the animal friendly celebs are up to. In honor of the release of a new little flick called Star Trek, the first one includes an interview we did with Bruce Greenwood who plays the captain, Captain Pike, in the new movie. (The movie is a prequel so Kirk is not yet the captain.) Greenwood has some lovely comments on animal cruelty, and the state of the oceans. My first blog also includes a wonderful Onion news piece on Star Trek, just for laughs. We need those. I hope you will check out my new blog and forward the link to all of your Trekkie friends. They might figure that if Captain Pike cares about the animals, maybe they should too.

Glad to hear and see more from both of these voices.

Molly (Photo from NY Times - click through for original)

It never ceases to amaze me how, when one cow (or goat, or pig, or chicken, or turkey) escapes from the slaughterhouse, the public at large want to save him/her, but then don’t recognize how their own eating habits put said animal in that position in the first place.

This week, Molly (so named by the workers at the Brooklyn shelter to which she was transferred) escaped from a slaugherhouse in Queens, running for her life, according to the NY Times:

After decamping from the slaughterhouse, the heifer made a mad dash along 94th Avenue, turned at 150th Street, and again at Liberty Avenue, witnesses said. She passed other slaughterhouses — for goats, lambs, chickens and turkeys.

Luckily for Molly, she’ll likely (the story suggested, but was inconclusive) be headed to Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, where she’ll receive excellent thoughtful care for the rest of her natural life.

What do we learn from this? Here’s what the NY Times article concludes:

Adam Khan, 47, a truck driver who lives in a house near where the calf was captured, said the episode “tells you something.”

The heifer, he said, “didn’t want to get killed.”

You know what? None of them do. If more people would eliminate animal products from their diet, we wouldn’t need any more “rescue” stories. I love a good rescue too (and hope to meet Molly on our next visit to Farm Sanctuary) but we have to remember that for every rescue billions of other animals arrive “successfully” at slaughter.

The choice you make with every meal is whether you are on Molly’s side or you are subsidizing her slaughter. It’s that simple.

In it, he describes the efforts of Louise Slaughter (we’ll ignore the irony of her name) to pass legislation in congress to “ban the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock.” The issue? Feeding antibiotics to healthy animals – as U.S. livestock companies do on an alarmingly consistent basis – increases the odds of developing antiobiotic resistant viruses:

Seventy percent of the antibiotics used in the U.S. are fed to healthy animals — well, animals that would be healthy if they weren’t overcrowded and improperly fed. These antibiotics are used on animals that are not sick in order to prevent disease from erupting in these facilities. Such massive prophylactic use of antibiotics encourages bacteria to develop resistant strains, and now medicine is on the verge of running out of drugs that haven’t been rendered useless for human health by being misused to allow animal abuse.

The Infectious Disease Society of America calls it a public health crisis; the president of the American Farm Bureau says there’s no public health threat. Which are you going to believe – the guy whose job it is to protect profits by “pork producers,” or the doctors whose job it is to keep epidemics controlled?

Pope adds:

Why do doctors and agribusiness disagree so vehemently? Well, if you read what the Farm Bureau says carefully, they argue that the superbugs in pigs don’t survive cooking your pork chop — which is technically true but fatally flawed. First, the bugs in uncooked meat end up on cooking surfaces and inadequately washed hands and can contaminate consumers indirectly in a host of ways. But more importantly, the issue is not whether we are exposed to superbugs through eating meat — it’s where we breed them. Because once these bacteria take hold down on the farm, they spread on their own, not just through the meat counter.

Which, of course, is exactly the point of the current H151 aka Factory Farming Flu. At least its not (yet) antibiotic-resistant.

Go express your support of the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act.

Related:

• Pew Campaign on Health and Industrial Farming

Here’s video from CNN with Dr. Michael Greger from the HSUS:

Related links:

• What You Should Know About Swine Flu (HSUS)
• CDC Confirms Ties to Virus First Discovered in U.S. Pig Factories (HSUS)
• Charge Smithfield Foods: Pork Producers Should Pay for Swine Flu (PCRM)
• Swine-flu outbreak could be linked to factory farming (Grist)
• Doth Smithfield Protest Too Much? Swine Flu Brings Focus to Factory Farm Practices (Huffington Post)
• And After Much Effort, Man Created Swine Flu (Times Online)
• The true cost of eating meat (The Guardian)

Here’s another video from the HSUS site, more broadly talking about the impact of factory farming on human-impacting viruses:

This Tuesday, May 12th, the Boston Vegetarian Society is hosting a screening of Seeing Through the Fence, a film by Eleni Vlachos (who blogs at Binge Cafe), including a pre-screening vegan buffet with the the filmmaker herself.

Details:

• RSVP to info@BostonVeg.org
• 5:30 PM – Vegan Buffet Dinner (arrive whenever you can.) Buffet will remain open during the program. (Buffet: $13 + tax and service = $15.60 total. Cash only, no credit cards.)
• 7:00 PM – Program (FREE)
• Location: MyThai Vegan Cafe, 3 Beach St. 2nd Floor, Boston MA (map)

About the film (from Porch Life Productions):

Through a series of humorous and poignant interviews conducted across the US and in Greece with “random people,” the documentarian’s family, and activists, Seeing through the Fence explores the role of food in modern society and our connection, or lack of connection, with both the processes and animals from which our food originates.

Seeing Through the Fence also explores the role of activism, as well as the stereotypes surrounding both activists and alternate lifestyles separate from, yet connected to, mainstream markets. The documentary asks the question: what prevents ethical principles from advancing into action?

The documentary is 84 minutes in length, complete with a soundtrack from several local (Durham) bands, as well as Greek, German, and other US musicians, all friends or family of the documentarian.

Trailer:

Related:

There’s a good article about the film and its maker in the Durham Indy: Eleni Vlachos’ Veganism documentary, as well as an interview on Animal Voices: Seeing Through the Fence: An Interview with Eleni Vlachos.

It can all be a bit overwhelming, packing the Reggie Lewis Athletic Center seemingly beyond capacity – but I wouldn’t miss it.

This year (2009 that is), it will be 2 days – Saturday October 31st and Sunday November 1st – same location. Thanks to the Boston Vegetarian Society for continuing to run this festival – I look forward to the fall.

see more dog and puppy pictures

(And yes, I have purebred dogs myself, but no, I wouldn’t get another dog from a breeder. Our next family member will be from a shelter or a rescue).

You’ve almost certainly seen one-click activism: you get an email, click on a link, and send a pre-written message to a pre-selected legislator or other politician. It’s activism made easy, but if it is so easy to do, can it possible be effective? Don’t the folks receiving those verbatim form letters treat them with a respect proportional to the effort it takes to send them?

He called Dianne Feinstein’s office to ask:

I spoke with David Hantman, an aide in Senator Feinstein’s office. “I would say those emails are very effective,” he says. Hantman explains that when such emails come into their office, they are forwarded to the person in charge of the issue, who then discusses it with the senator. “They will then work on a response with the senator.” If it’s an individual sending the email, the senator will know that one person wrote about an issue. “But if it’s a campaign of 10,000 emails, she won’t go through them all; she’ll see that 10,000 people emailed her on one issue.” Does it make any difference if she receives thousands of emails on a single issue versus, say, five? “Definitely,” says Hantman. “She knows that that many people care about that issue. If she were to receive five emails on any given issue, she may say, ‘This may not be as important to my constituents — only five people have written me — compared to 10,000 people on this other issue.’”

While both PETA and Farm Sanctuary insisted these kinds of outreach efforts were definitely effective, others were a bit more cautious in their endorsement:

“These emails do work, but as part of a larger campaign,” says Grace Markarian, HSUS’ manager of online communications. HSUS combines these alerts with information on its Web site and on social-networking sites or even direct mail.

And

Kim Sturla of Animal Place agrees one-click activism can be effective, but she warns that you can’t generalize. “Some aides don’t tally, for example.” Kim says her organization has struggled with the e-alert issue as technology and communication methods have evolved, but the results are still positive.

I guess in the end it all boils down to the simple notion that getting people to act, even if it is just virtually raising their hand in support or opposition to something – is better than not getting people to act. But if you really want to broaden your personal impact, hopefully you can treat one-click activism as just the beginning and not the end of your activity.

I’ve also never seen him really acknowledge – perhaps he does so in the book – the predecessors in Diet for a Small Planet, Diet for a New America, Food Revolution, and others.

Nevertheless, he’s getting lots of attention and helping spread the message that animal products in your diet – including not only meat and byproducts but also dairy – has a harmful effect on your health and on the environment.

Here’s two recent videos of Bittman’s interviews promoting the book.

The first is from the Colbert Report and is about six minutes. Colbert, predictably, wants to eat things which used to be conscious, rather than eating consciously:

Colbert distracts him a bit, but he still gets a good explanation of the climate change story out – he gets to the point (and references the UN report) pretty clearly.

The second is from ObsessedTV, and is a bit longer – 26 minutes – but still delivers a pretty clear message about the direction in which the standard American diet needs to head. I especially liked the bit about 12:30 in where he says “organic and local are basically red herrings” in the food policy realm when compared to plant versus animal-based (on that topic see also Mother Jones’ Organic and Local is So 2008):

The host Samantha Ettus is a vegetarian, and Bittman does a good job pointing out that substituting dairy for meat isn’t much of an improvement, in terms of health or environmental impact.