Black Friday is over for another year, and Bill Simon, new CEO for Wal-Mart, declared that more than 22 million shoppers showed up on the day before Black Friday (in the past, called Thanksgiving). They may have come, but they didn’t buy that much more than last year. Wal-Mart’s increase was 0.10 percent. Macy’s and Target’s sales were both down from last year although they opened on Thanksgiving Day.
The frenzy over Thanksgiving Day shopping brought in an additional 2.3 percent income on Thursday and Friday, but sales dropped 13 percent on Black Friday. Even traffic that day was down 11 percent from last year.
Here are a few examples of shopping intensity from this past week with more visuals available:
Shooting in Las Vegas. After a shopper bought a large television, he was shot as he carried it home. Warning shots caused the buyer to drop the television, and…
Three days after domestic violence victim, Marissa Alexander was released on bail, after spending ‘over 1,000 days’ in prison, MSNBC’s host, Melissa Harris-Perry, decided to write and open letter to Angela Corey – Marissa’s prosecuting attorney.
Corey helped send Alexander to prison for 20 years – for firing a warning shot at her abusive husband who was coming at her. (Husband, Rico Gray, admitted his intentions in his sworn deposition, and had admitted abusing her physically and emotionally prior to that incident as well).
Here is Melissa Harris-Perry’s intro followed by her letter to Corey:
There is nothing like being home for the holidays with your loved ones. So I can only imagine that this Thanksgiving is particularly bittersweet for Marissa Alexander, who was granted a special pre-trial release at 10:30 PM on Wednesday – Thanksgiving Eve – after spending more than 1000 days in jail…
Getting to zero: Zero new HIV infections. Zero discrimination. Zero AIDS-related deaths
World AIDS Day is celebrated on 1 December every year to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and to demonstrate international solidarity in the face of the pandemic. The day is an opportunity for public and private partners to disseminate information about the status of the pandemic and to encourage progress in HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care around the world, particularly in high prevalence countries.
Between 2011-2015, World AIDS Day has the theme: “Getting to zero: zero new HIV infections. Zero discrimination. Zero AIDS-related deaths”.
The WHO’s focus for the 2013 campaign is improving access to prevention, treatment and care services for adolescents (10-19 years), a group that continues to be vulnerable despite efforts so far.
WHO will release new guidance for HIV testing and counselling and care for adolescents living with HIV on World AIDS Day 2013.
On World AIDS Day, we come together as a global community to honor the many lives we have lost, and to reaffirm our support for the millions of individuals and families who are still living with and affected by HIV/AIDS around the world.
On this day, we also gain strength by celebrating the important strides that we have taken over the past year, and recommit ourselves to the work still ahead to achieve an AIDS-free generation.
This year marks an extraordinary decade of progress.
Ten years ago, when the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was launched by President Bush and with strong bipartisan support of the U.S. Congress, an AIDS diagnosis was a virtual death sentence in much of Africa. The epidemic was threatening the very foundation of societies – creating millions of orphans, stalling economic development, and leaving countries stuck in poverty.
Today, landmark scientific advances, coupled with success in implementing effective programs have put an AIDS-free generation within sight. In sub-Saharan Africa, where the epidemic has hit the hardest, new HIV infections are down by nearly 40 percent since 2001, and AIDS-related mortality has declined by nearly one-third since 2005. This progress is thanks in large part to the unique efforts of and partnership between PEPFAR, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and host countries.
The Act reaffirms the United States’ continued commitment to this historic health program and to the fight against global AIDS.
Achieving an AIDS-free generation is a shared responsibility. Partnerships with host government, civil society, the faith community, the private sector, and multilateral organizations are vital to a robust and sustained global AIDS response.
On this World AIDS Day, as we reflect on the extraordinary progress we have made together, it is important to remember that our work is far from finished.
With a sustained focus on strengthened results and shared responsibility, we can get there.
World AIDS Day
Published on Nov 25, 2013
The AIDS epidemic, a crisis that engendered widespread hysteria and suffering, strongly impacted the literary world. Authors Martin Duberman, Ned Rorem, Joseph Caldwell, Christopher Bram, and Joseph Olshan explain the extent to which AIDS affected their communities, revealing the key role literature played in spreading understanding and awareness.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 28 2013 (IPS) – The number of femicides – gender-related murders – in Brazil has reached civil war-like proportions. In just 10 years 40,000 women were killed in this country merely for being women.
NOW THAT THANKSGIVING AND BLACK FRIDAY ARE OVER … IT MAY BE A GOOD TIME TO KNOW WHERE THE TURKEY ON YOUR TABLE CAME FROM
Every year in the United States, almost 300 million turkeys are killed for their flesh. Virtually all spend their entire lives on factory farms and have no federal legal protection.
Turkeys raised on factory farms are hatched in large incubators and never see their mothers or feel the warmth of a nest. When they are only a few weeks old, they are moved into filthy, windowless sheds with thousands of other turkeys, where they will spend the rest of their lives.
To keep the birds from killing one another in such stressful, crowded conditions, parts of the turkeys’ toes and beaks are cut off, as are the males’ snoods. (The snood is the flap of skin under the chin.) All this is done without any pain relievers. Imagine having the skin under your chin chopped off with a pair of scissors.
Millions of turkeys don’t even make it past the first few weeks of life in a factory farm before succumbing to “starve-out,” a stress-induced condition that causes young birds to simply stop eating.
Turkeys are bred, drugged, and genetically manipulated to grow as large as possible as quickly as possible to increase profits. In 1970, the average live turkey raised for meat weighed 17 pounds. Today, he or she weighs 28 pounds.
According to one industry publication, modern turkeys grow so quickly that if a 7-pound human baby grew at the same rate, the infant would weigh 1,500 pounds at just 18 weeks of age. Turkeys are now so obese that they cannot reproduce naturally; instead, all the turkeys who are born in the United States today on factory farms are conceived through artificial insemination.
Their unnaturally large size also causes many turkeys to die from organ failure or heart attacks before they are even 6 months old. According to an investigative report in the Wall Street Journal on the miserable conditions on turkey farms, “It’s common in a rearing house to find a dead bird surrounded by four others whose hearts failed after they watched the first one ‘fall back and go into convulsions, with its wings flapping wildly.’”
Factory farm operators walk through the shed to kill the slow-growing turkeys (so that they don’t eat any more food), such as those who fall ill because of the filthy conditions or become crippled under their own weight.
~~Newborn Turkeys Search And Call For Their Mothers, Never Get To Be With Them~~
Turkeys are very family oriented. In natural conditions, turkey hens are devoted mothers who care diligently for their babies. Young turkeys, known as poults, learn crucial survival information from their mother, including what to eat, how to avoid predators, the layout of the home range, and important social behaviors. But on commercial farms, turkeys are hatched in incubators and crammed into warehouses with thousands of other motherless poults. It is confusing and hard on baby turkeys to never know a mother figure. It is also very sad. Check out this amazing clip of a hatching newborn turkey immediately searching for, and bonding with, his adoptive mother—who just so happens to be a man.
Many turkeys, even those who have known great cruelty at human hands, will happily sit for hours having their feathers stroked. Loving Beatrice, above, a former factory farm turkey rescued by Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary, is a huge snugglebug despite having been mutilated by humans as a baby. And Clove the turkey hen (pictured below) loves to cuddle with her rescuers at Animal Place sanctuary.
~~Turkeys Form Deep Friendships And Emotional Bonds~~
~~Turkeys are Sexually Molested And Abused~~
Modern day turkeys have been bred to be so grotesquely large that they can’t even mate naturally. Commercial turkeys are “artificially inseminated”: the industry euphemism for roughly restraining female turkeys, turning them upside down, and violently shoving tubes or syringes of semen into their vaginas. To collect the semen, workers known as “milkers” restrain male turkeys and forcibly masturbate them until they ejaculate.
~~Young Turkeys Are Brutally Mutilated Without Painkillers~~
Debeaked turkey poults. Image courtesy of Farm Sanctuary.
The extreme and unnatural crowding of turkeys on commercial farms is highly stressful, and causes them to be abnormally aggressive. Rather than make improvements to the birds’ environment, producers instead subject turkey poults (baby turkeys) to excruciating mutilations without anesthetic, simply cutting off “non-essential” body parts that could inflict or sustain injury.
De-snooding involves cutting off the snood, the fleshy red protuberance that dangles over turkeys’ beaks and is used to attract mates. De-toeing, or toe-clipping, is a painful debilitation inflicted with shears or microwaves, and is practiced despite the fact that it is associated with lameness and higher early mortality. Debeaking is performed using sharp shears, a heated blade, or a high-voltage electrical current.
Turkeys’ beaks are loaded with sensory receptors, much like human fingertips, and this painful procedure severs and exposes nerves. Some turkeys starve to death before they are able to eat again; others die of shock on the spot.
~~Life On Factory Farms (Including Many “Free Range” Farms) Is Living Hell~~
Modern turkey farms, including many farms whose products are sold under “free range” labels (see Deciphering Humane Labels and Loopholes), crowd up to 75,000 individuals into a single shed, meaning each turkey is given as little as 2.5 square feet of space in which to move around. Turkeys can barely move past one another, and must wade through layers of excrement and urine, which causes painful ulcers on their feet and breasts.
The air in these sheds is so polluted with dust, pathogens and ammonia that most birds suffer from painful respiratory diseases and eye disorders, including swelling of the eyelids, discharge, clouding and ulceration of the cornea, and even blindness.
There is a high rate of viral and bacterial infections, and sick or injured individuals frequently languish unnoticed. When found, they are typically killed via “cervical dislocation or the crushing of the head or vertebrae by striking the birds against a wall or with an object.”
~~Domestic Turkeys Still Share Much In Common With Wild Turkeys~~
Wild turkey, wikimedia commons.
Much has been made by farmers and food writers (namely, those who profit from exploiting farmed animals) about the vast differences between the noble, intelligent, wild turkey, and domesticated turkeys on industrial farms — whom, we’re told, are stupid, clumsy, and so cognitively deficient they could never survive in the wild. In fact, domestic turkeys display the same instincts as their wild counterparts, and it is only because of frankensteinian genetic interference by humans that they cannot fulfill certain instinctive behaviors.
Domestic turkeys suffer much shorter lifespans than wild turkeys because selective breeding for rapid growth of breast tissue (“meat”) means their organs and skeletons cannot keep up with their outsized exteriors; rescued turkeys frequently die within the first couple of years because their hearts cannot produce enough oxygen for their unnaturally large bodies. Their heavy-chestedness is also why they cannot fly or mate naturally, and why they often move with a difficult waddle, many eventually succumbing to total lameness.
Domestic turkeys maintain complex vocabularies, social structures, cognitive abilities, and emotional lives. They are still closely related, genetically, psychologically, and neurobiologically, to their wild cousins. Whatever “deficiencies” they may exhibit by comparison are entirely the result of their ruthless manipulation by profiteering humans.
~~Turkeys Suffer Horribly During Transport And Slaughter~~
Nearly 46 million turkeys are killed for Thanksgiving every year in the U.S. alone. Slaughtered between 4 to 6 months of age, turkeys suffer unspeakable cruelty during their final hours of life.
“Loading and transport to slaughter are extremely traumatic. “Catchers” enter the sheds in darkness to collect the birds as quickly as possible, grabbing them roughly by their ankles, carrying them upside down and stuffing them into crowded crates which are thrown onto flatbed trucks. In the process, many of the turkeys suffer broken wings and legs.
Turkey carcasses are often downgraded or condemned in post-slaughter processing as a result of bruises and injuries sustained during transport. In addition, birds are legally transported for up to 36 hours without food or water, in open-sided crates where they are exposed to weather extremes from scorching heat to freezing sub-zero temperatures. Many birds do not survive. In 2007, of the 260 million turkeys slaughtered in the U.S., an estimated 988,000–nearly 1 million birds–died during crating and transport to slaughter.”
~~Nearly 1 Million Turkeys are “Accidentally” Boiled Alive Every Year In U.S.~~
Nearly one million turkeys and chickens are boiled alive every year in the U.S. Photo courtesy of PETA.
According to a new article from The Washington Post, nearly 1 million chickens and turkeys are unintentionally boiled alive every year in U.S. slaughterhouses, where fast-moving lines often fail to kill the birds before they are dropped into the scalding tank.
~~“Humane” Turkey Slaughter Isn’t~~
When we have no need to kill animals for food, there’s no such thing as humane slaughter — just as there’s no such thing as humanely mugging someone in order to steal their sunglasses.
~~Compassion toward all animals doesn’t have to be taught; it is only untaught~~
Which lesson are you teaching your kids this Thanksgiving?
To honor their compassion?
Photo by Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary
Or to destroy it?
The Reuben R. Sallows Digital Library: “Killing turkey” by Reuben R. Sallows, Huron County, Ontario (Canada), 1912.
Delicious vegan holiday main dish ideas. Collage: Ashley Capps.
From frozen faux-turkeys that taste like the real thing, to mouth-watering, protein-packed grain roasts, there are tons of tantalizing Turkey Alternatives that can take center stage at any Thanksgiving table. Whether you’re looking for store-bought, order-online, or make-your-own options, it’s easy and delicious to veganize your favorite holiday main dishes.
~~FROM THE FARM, THROUGH ALL THE PROCESSING, TO THIS~~
We ALL are ONE!!
Hidden Camera: Butterball Turkey Abuse (Mercy for Animals)
Published on Dec 15, 2012
~~WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES~~
Before carving into a Butterball turkey on Thanksgiving, everyone must watch this video.
A new Mercy For Animals hidden-camera investigation gives a shocking look behind
the closed doors of Butterball factory farms—revealing the heartbreaking cruelty
and neglect animals face at the hands of the world’s largest turkey producer.
~~This is the ongoing culture of cruelty at Butterball~~
• workers kicking and stomping on birds, dragging them by their fragile wings and
necks, and maliciously throwing turkeys onto the ground or on top of other birds;
• birds suffering from serious untreated illnesses and injuries, including open sores,
infections, and broken bones
• workers grabbing birds by their wings or necks and violently slamming them into
tiny transport crates with no regard for their welfare.
“Sei vorsichtig mit dem, was Du weisst. Damit beginnen Deine Probleme” 🍀 “Be careful of what you know. That’s where your troubles begin”
🌷
Wade in The 3 Body Problem
It Is What It Is 