Did you know that once he took an actual real life nuke into the Capitol?
Oh, what a joker that guy is …..
(Hat tip Chicken Yogurt)
Mmmm. Kitteh-Fingers
If like me you watched the BBC’s Pacific Abyss programme last night you’ll be aware of the glory that is the South Pacific’s fish population. Also like me, you probably felt impotent fury at the expedition’s discovery of destruction of fish habitat and species decimation.
But if the fish disappear, it’ll be, paradoxically, partiallybecause of our love of animals – specifically our cats:
Spoilt Western cats endangering global fish supply
Cats with a fondness for gourmet meals are threatening fish supplies, an Australian scientist says.
Deakin University scientist Dr Giovanni Turchini has discovered an estimated 2.48 million tonnes of forage fish – a limited biological resource – is consumed by the global cat food industry each year.
“That such a large amount of fish is used for the pet food industry is real eye-opener,” Dr Turchini said.
“What is also interesting is that, in Australia, pet cats are eating an estimated 13.7 kilograms of fish a year which far exceeds the Australian average (human) per capita fish and seafood consumption of around 11 kilograms.
“Our pets seem to be eating better than their owners.”
I can’t even feel slightly smug; although I don’t eat fish at all, wild or farmed, and don’t buy fish for the cats, except for the occasional farmed-salmon, offcut-based wet food, even then I’m not off the hook, so to speak. Many dry catfoods contain fishmeal and bone, even the ones labelled things like ‘100% Fresh’ or ‘100% Natural, Human Grade’, or ‘100% Organic and Oven-Baked!’, or any of those other little codewords that appeal to the middle-class, ecologically aware cat lover. Like me.
Whole populations of wild forage fish like sardines and herrings are hunted almost to extinction by giant factory ships for this stuff. Buying these foods also adds to the enormous profits of giant international feed and commodity corporations – and commercial foods can kill.
The only ethical course I suppose is to feed them what I eat. Here kitteh, have a nicey mint imperial…
No, won’t work.
Last week I found myself paying 25 euro, twenty quid, for a bag of renal catfood for our Monty, who’s somewhere around 15 and slowly tottering towards eternity. I didn’t enquire what was in it: he’s our cat, he’s sick, we love him. And that’s the problem right there. Even someone who’s silly about fish, like me, is inadvertently contributing to their destruction in many different ways, inadvertent and not so inadvertent (see above).
There seems no way out of this dilemma – except to try and develop less self-indulgent, more utilitarian attitudes towards our pets. We can go aaah at tiny baa-lambs can’t we, and then happily eat a slice of the leg with a helping of mint sauce, or a kebab with extra shish, so why can’t we farm cats when the fish runs out? We’ll have to find something else to cover in breadcrumbs and feed to small humans when the oceans are empty – so why not the kitteh-finger?
Wapping, We Have A Problem
From Sit Down Man You’re A Bloody Tragedy, I learned that last week
….in W.H Smiths …., that each copy of The Times was bundled with a free ‘Celebrations’ edition of Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival.
How very odd.
The Audacity of More Of The Same
So much for the netroots and the go-ahead, modernist Obama presidency.
CNet’s Declan McCullagh has taken a look at Obama’s new BFF Joe Biden’s voting record on matters digital, and it’s not what you’d call enlightened.
An excerpt:
On privacy, Biden’s record is hardly stellar. In the 1990s, Biden was chairman of the Judiciary Committee and introduced a bill called the Comprehensive Counter-Terrorism Act, which the EFF says he was “persuaded” to do by the FBI. A second Biden bill was called the Violent Crime Control Act. Both were staunchly anti-encryption, with this identical language:
It is the sense of Congress that providers of electronic communications services and manufacturers of electronic communications service equipment shall ensure that communications systems permit the government to obtain the plain text contents of voice, data, and other communications when appropriately authorized by law.
Translated, that means turn over your encryption keys. The book Electronic Privacy Papers describes Biden’s bill as representing the FBI’s visible effort to restrict encryption technology, which was taking place in concert with the National Security Agency’s parallel, but less visible efforts. (Biden was no foe of the NSA. He once described now-retired NSA director Bobby Ray Inman as the “single most competent man in the government.”)
On technology Biden is firmly in the corporate camp. In the 1990s he supported the deregulation of the telecommunications industry – cheers for that – and currently he’s right up the the arse of the recording and media industries in championing the prosecution of downloaders.
nobody in Washington was surprised when Biden was one of only four U.S. senators invited to a champagne reception in celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act hosted by the MPAA’s Jack Valenti, the RIAA, and the Business Software Alliance. (Photos are here.)
The prospective veep is company guy personified when it comes to online civil liberties, in stark contrast to his running mate’s supposed embrace of the netroots. How the Democrats will square that circle remains to be seen, but if their candidate had to choose between Viacom and the EFF I somehow doubt the EFF would win. Viacom and friends have bigger PACs.
But it’s not just technology on which he harks back to the last century.
Obama certainly didn’t pick him to get the youth vote; Biden doesn’t do modern or nuance on drug policy either. He’s declared war on party-goers and minor intoxicant users as sponsor of the RAVE Act, while at the same time bolstering drug crime and corruption by his creation of the office of Drugs Czar in the nineties and of the massive legal/security bureaucracy that supports it and profits from it.
He’s also a cradle Catholic who while nominally pro-choice and liberal (lookit that 100% NARAL rating!) nevertheless voted strongly for the partial-birth abortion ban, and for abstinence-only education.
Biden attended Catholic school, considered becoming a priest, attends a parish in Wilmington, Delaware, met with Pope John Paul II four times and attended his funeral.
Blimey, they really are going for the working-class antedeluvian white guy, get off my lawn vote, aren’t they?
Add to all this the fact that this is the man with vaunted foreign policy experience who yet was also a sponsors of NATO expansion legislation that kicked off the current troubles with Georgia. Well played! More proof that this is not a man not really in tune with the modern world or 21st century politics. He’s still fighting the bloody Cold War.
I suppose we should be glad that he is at least absolutely, positively against torture. Plus he’s not Cheney.
These days that seems to be qualification enough for the White House.
