White House Mafia Blog

Article: Laying Waste to the Deep Sea

From the Thursday, Dec. 13, 2007, Time Magazine:

Laying Waste to the Deep Sea
By Ken Stier

Far out on the high seas, on any given day, hundreds of fishing vessels drag huge nets, big enough to snag a 747 jumbo jet, across the ocean bottom, vacuuming up 150-year-old fish, flattening ancient reefs and destroying everything else in their paths.

Only the biodiversity of tropical rainforests rivals that of the deep sea — our planet's largest wilderness — an aquatic wonderland that is now being systematically razed by what is likely the world's most environmentally destructive business.

Article: Ominous Arctic Melt Worries Experts

Article: Pig Out (animal rights)

From the March 14, 2007, New York Times

Pig Out
By NICOLETTE HAHN NIMAN

WITH some fanfare, the world’s largest pork producer, Smithfield Foods, recently announced that it intended to phase out certain cages for its breeding females. Called gestation crates, the cages virtually immobilize pigs during their pregnancies in metal stalls so narrow they are unable to turn around.

Numerous studies have documented crated sows exhibiting behavior characteristic of humans with severe depression and mental illness. Getting rid of gestation crates (already on their way out in the European Union) is welcome and long overdue, but more action is needed to end inhumane conditions at America’s hog farms.

Part II: The Great Gates Contradiction

Part 2 of 2 of the LA Times serries. See here for Part 1 of 2.

The Great Gates Contradiction

This is an interesting article from the LA Times. With one hand Bill Gates spends money improving lives and with the other he invests money destroying them. Until more of this type of contradictory behavior is exposed, people like Bill Gates, who has the power to influence major corporations such as those discussed in this article, will continue their contemptible behavior, donning their black ties at fancy dinners to accept charity awards when the source of their philanthropy is polluted.

Ediorial: Meat and the Planet

From the December 27, 2006, New York Times:

Meat and the Planet

When you think about the growth of human population over the last century or so, it is all too easy to imagine it merely as an increase in the number of humans. But as we multiply, so do all the things associated with us, including our livestock. At present, there are about 1.5 billion cattle and domestic buffalo and about 1.7 billion sheep and goats. With pigs and poultry, they form a critical part of our enormous biological footprint upon this planet.

Just how enormous was not really apparent until the publication of a new report, called “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Very Interesting Article (non-george bush related): An Elephant Crackup"

This is an incredible story... You should read it end to end, at least skimming through to all the parts about elephant culture and society, the disruption/breakdown in that society, it's effects, allomothers, human-elephant interaction, neuroscience, the elephant sanctuary, trans-species psyche, etc.

From the October 8, 2006, New York Times (NYT):

An Elephant Crackup?
By CHARLES SIEBERT

‘We’re not going anywhere,” my driver, Nelson Okello, whispered to me one morning this past June, the two of us sitting in the front seat of a jeep just after dawn in Queen Elizabeth National Park in southwestern Uganda. We’d originally stopped to observe what appeared to be a lone bull elephant grazing in a patch of tall savanna grasses off to our left. More than one “rogue” crossed our path that morning — a young male elephant that has made an overly strong power play against the dominant male of his herd and been banished, sometimes permanently. This elephant, however, soon proved to be not a rogue but part of a cast of at least 30. The ground vibrations registered just before the emergence of the herd from the surrounding trees and brush. We sat there watching the elephants cross the road before us, seeming, for all their heft, so light on their feet, soundlessly plying the wind-swept savanna grasses like land whales adrift above the floor of an ancient, waterless sea.