Posted on 01/11/2006 6:43:42 AM PST by boris
The Alito testimony you won't hear
By Stephen R. Dujack, Writer/editor STEPHEN R. DUJACK
graduated from Princeton and covered CAP for the university's alumni magazine from 1976 to 1986.
[snip]
Late last Thursday, Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued a list of witnesses to testify for the Democrats on Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s nomination to the Supreme Court. I was on that list — a mere writer with a bachelor's degree — among all the distinguished household names. But by the end of the day Friday, I wasn't on the list anymore.
I had been scheduled to testify as an expert on an organization called Concerned Alumni of Princeton. In 1985, on an application for a promotion in the Reagan Justice Department, Alito had touted his membership in CAP, which had opposed coeducation at Princeton and asked for strict quotas limiting the numbers of women and minorities at the university. Alito's membership in the group thus could shed light on his respect for civil rights.
[snip]
In my case, it was an L.A. Times Op-Ed article I wrote. In "Animals Suffer a Perpetual Holocaust" (April 21, 2003), I defended People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for using a quote of my grandfather's. Unlike me, my grandfather was a famous man, Isaac Bashevis Singer, who had escaped anti-Semitism in Europe in 1935 and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1978.
My grandfather, a principled vegetarian, famously wrote: "In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis. For [them], it is an eternal Treblinka."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
We of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy refer to writers like Dujack as "moonbats". He says (or his grandfather said) that eating meat causes animals to suffer the equivalent of Treblinka. I wonder how he feels about carnivores such as lions and cheetahs.
Lifelong Vegans (people who eat only vegetables) will eventually go blind because they are deficient in vitamin B-12, which comes only from animals. I suppose it could be synthesized. But dietary supplementation is vital for Vegans. This implies that a "normal" diet for humans includes the flesh of animals.
A possibly apocryphal story about Gandhi's parents, who were Jains, says that they concluded that even consuming vegetables was immoral--and starved themselves to death. Perhaps this is the solution for Mr. Dujack.
--Boris
Bump to the top.
I, as a vegetable rights activist, take offense to that remark.
POWER TO THE POTATOES!
I am watching Turban Durbin question Alito now . And Durbin sayign he is so troubled over Alito;s views. Wouldnt it be great if Alito just said : Mr Durbin you have no intention of voting for me anyway no matter what I say so why dont you just stop trying to get me in a slip and let us get out of here early.
No More Veggies For Me!
by Michael B. Fulstone
I have stopped eating any vegetables and fruits. I have stopped using paper and other plant products. I will wear only synthetic clothing like polyester. I would be living in a plastic tent if my age and physical condition didn't prevent it.
My friends tell me I am crazy and my doctor is really worried, but I don't care. I would go stark, raving mad if I went back to veggies. Yes, mad - I had endured night after night of horrible nightmares and long days of crushing guilt before I made the change. I can't bear the thought of those evil dreams returning.
What happened? I have learned that recent research reveals that plants think, they have feelings, they have a sense of self. They may even feel pain.
The more I studied the research papers, the more it began to sink in. That's when the dreams started. On the first night, I was a dandelion growing in a crack in the sidewalk. I couldn't move. I was rooted to the spot - paralized, unable to move - and people were stepping on me, crushing my leaves, flowers and stem. The pain was unbearable and nobody heard my screams but the grass.
Then the guilt dreams began. I was watching myself tear carrots, sobbing, from the ground. I brutally ripped tomatoes from the vine, corn from the stalk. I heard a tree's screams and heartbreaking sobs as I ravaged it with axe and chainsaw.
By the end of two weeks the dreams turned to the ultimate horror. I would no sooner go to sleep than a darkness would descend upon me and I would hear the wails of all the poor plant souls that had been tortured to death by uncaring humans like me, It took a superuman effort to awaken, shaking uncontrolably, in a cold sweat, from the paralysis that engulfed me.
I had to change my evil ways to obtain rest for my body and absolution for my soul.
So now I am asking for people of conscience, compassionate people, people who really care to join me in starting an activist organization to stamp out plant cruelty and wanton herbicide! I will call the organization "PETOV" - "People for the Ethical Treatment Of Vegetables."
The need is urgent! We have to get the word out. Posters and fliers need to be printed. Ad space in the major media must be purchased. Cool PETOV bumperstickers need to be ordered. All this takes money - please give - one person can't finance this alone.
Please send all (cash only, non-deductable) donations to me at this publication. Together, we will fight the evils of wanton herbicide. Thank you and God bless!
~~Mike Fulstone
==========================================================
Just a few (of many) references:
* Anthony Trewavas Plant intelligence, Publication: Naturwissenschaften, Issue: Volume 92, Number 9, Pages: 401 - 413* Trewavas A (2005) Green plants as intelligent organisms, Trends Plant Sci 10(9), 413-419
* Baluska F, Volkmann D, Menzel D (2005) Plant synapses: actin-based domains for cell-to-cell communication, Trends Plant Sci 10(3), 106-111
* Trevor Stokes (2005) Plant Neurobiology Sprouts Anew, The Scientist 19(14), 24
* Baluška F, Mancuso S, Volkmann D, Barlow PW (2004) Root apices as plant command centres: the unique ’brain-like’ status of the root apex transition zone, Biologia (Bratislava) 59, 7-19
* Trewavas A (2003) Aspects of plant intelligence, Ann Bot 92, 1-20
When they ask about his membership in CAP, why doesn't he say, "I was not aware that actions from the distant past were that important, as Ted Kennedy is a US senator."
"Of course, he's equally (in)famous for penning the shorter, more direct manifesto 'JEWS = HAMBURGERS' as well, which -- inexplicably -- never quite caught on the way his other musings did."
When they ask about his membership in CAP, why doesn't he say, "I was not aware that actions from the distant past were that important, as Ted Kennedy is a US senator."
But by noon the Drudge Report runs a shotgun blast of half-truths and innuendoes, and by evening pundits are sifting through your entrails on CNN and Fox.
So Dujack was prohibited from using half-truths and inuendos based on a 21 year-old job application to supposes that Alito was a racist and sexist.
After one has attained a bachelor's degree, he should have garnered a sense of irony. It doesn't seem that he has.
Flashback: Campaign by PETA's Stephen R. Dujack Profanes Holocaust (Alito Basher is Insane)
The Jewish Journal Of Greater Los Angeles ^ | September 19, 2003 | Joel Geiderman
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) took its campaign equating factory-farm animals to Holocaust victims to the streets of Los Angeles this week with a protest in front of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Tuesday at noon (see story on page 12).
The protest speaks to PETA’s well-earned reputation for disordered priorities and its utter lack of sensitivity in promoting its cause, whatever the merits of that cause are. For the record, I am all for treating animals ethically and humanely.
But PETA’s exploitative campaign that expropriates photographs of starving victims of the Holocaust in Nazi concentration camps and compares them to chickens that are waiting to be slaughtered for food is abhorrent. On its Web site, PETA justifies this campaign, in part, because the late Jewish author Isaac Bashevis Singer, a vegetarian, once took the literary license of stating that, "in relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for [them] it is an eternal Treblinka."
Of course, whether or not the Nobel Prize-winner would have actually lent his name to PETA’s outrageous effort is open to question, at best.
In an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, ("Animals Suffer a Perpetual Holocaust," April 21, 2003), Singer’s grandson, Stephen R. Dujack, a Washington-based environmentalist, professed to speak for his deceased grandfather and proclaimed, "My grandfather would have been proud of PETA’s bold campaign."
If that is the case, then in the face of such obscenity, I must speak for my grandfather, whose ashes lie buried somewhere in the dust of Auschwitz.
To begin with, attempts to genericize the term Holocaust are generally misguided. The Holocaust was a unique historical event and describes the attempt by Hitler and the Nazis to systematically destroy and physically eliminate European Jewry. To be sure, there were also other victims, including homosexuals, the disabled, the psychiatrically disturbed, political dissidents, Gypsies, Poles, Slavs and others who were targeted for elimination.
For the record, Dujack’s assertion in his article that lampshades were made from bodies of Holocaust victims is also historically inaccurate, because no evidence for this has ever been produced.
While it is tempting to compare all acts that we may individually find abhorrent to the Holocaust and while the event itself has become the benchmark for abject evil in the world, wholesale use of the term desecrates the memory of what actually happened during those terrible years.
Whatever the arguments are for or against animal slaughter for food, it is simply not the Holocaust. Dujack may as well call it the Crimean War.
Why can’t PETA and Dujack let the victims of the Holocaust rest in peace and leave them out of it? How do the Jewish people (as usual) get dragged into the middle of this argument?
The irony is that in Jewish law there are numerous examples of mitzvot (praiseworthy deeds) that advocate for the humane treatment of animals. An example is that a young bird should never be removed from the nest in the presence of its mother so as not to hurt the latter; indeed, the prohibition against eating milk together with meat derives from a similar sensibility.
In fact, the laws of kosher slaughter of animals are far more humane than was the slaughter of Jews by the Nazis, which was notable for its excessive and intentional cruelty.
Human consumption of animal products as food appears to be instinctual, has occurred for millions of years and is the accepted norm in most societies. The systematic suspension of human rights, imprisonment, torture, experimentation on and murder of a people that went on in full view of the world for 12 years in the middle of the 20th century is, thank God, an inexplicable aberration in human behavior that is so far out of the norm that it had to be given its own name — the Holocaust.
To conflate the two activities is absurd. To examine just how absurd and dangerous this game can be, we just need to turn it inside out a couple of times. If killing of animals for food is the same as exterminating Jews, then how convenient would it be the next time someone wants to commit a pogrom against the Jewish people just to turn it around the other way with the reply, "They kill chickens, don’t they?"
In the name of my grandfather and all other victims of the Holocaust, I call on PETA to retract and apologize for its shameful campaign. The shock value and attention have already been wrung dry.
Whatever the arguments for or against vegetarianism, in the interest of decency, let us leave the memories of the unfortunate victims of the Holocaust out of it.
Dr. Joel Geiderman is a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council in Washington, D.C.
He considers himself the famous grandson ? I think Jews have a word for this...
"Here's a little blurb I wrote for the Fall River Reader."
Fall River, Mass? The Gateway to New Bedford? I was born and raised there. You, too?
Yeah: "putz." :)
A fascinating group for psychiatric study. When walking, they would gently sweep the path before them with a soft broom so as not to harm any insects. Their final act was to seal themselves in a cave and meditate until they achieved "oneness".
Ah, but this is the L.A. Times. Ne-VER-mind.
Congressman Billybob
Latest column on Newsbusters.org: "AP Poll Biased: Anti-Bush, Anti-Republican"
God and Mary Jo Kopechne are waiting for you on the OTHER SIDE Teddy. SMALL WONDER you don’t want to retire!
I encourage all meat-eaters to join my public interest group P.E.T.S. - People for the Ethical Treatment of Soybeans
Maybe you vegans can ignore the millions of silent screams from soybeans across America, but I cannot. I abhore what you are doing in slaughtering the innocent soybeans of America.
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