thoughts on environment, politics, health, life issues
It’s curious that there are so many people choosing not to look for work these days. I see many signs for help wanted throughout the community, practically begging for applicants. I can certainly empathize with the non workers. In my career as a worker, I found, generally, businesses were intent on screwing workers…
To continue reading this post, please go to breakablenews.substack.com. Thank you.
…toward Donald Trump and these inhumane and immoral pardons he feels justified to impart like a fake monarch surveying his realm. His pardon of four thugs from Blackwater who murdered 14 completely innocent Iraqis, including men, women and children, during the invasion was particularly deplorable. One was in jail for first degree murder and life, the other three were serving 30 year sentences. Trump released them with one swirl of his sloppy signature, slapping the face of an entire nation who still mourns.
Beyond anger, I feel a deep embarrassment at the actions of this immoral so-called human being, Donald Trump. I am embarrassed to be connected with him as an American, embarrassed that I’ve lived here under his rule during these last four years, embarrassed to be connected, even remotely, with those that voted for him and those in Congress who enabled his reign of his attempt to dismantle our democracy. I am embarrassed that some 74 million people voted for this charlatan. I am embarrassed that a significant number of those voters still think he was not legally elected. I am embarrassed that though Trump lost, Republicans gained seats in the House, and held their majority, so far, in the Senate.
A better word still, is distraught. I am distraught that over 315,000 people have died due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and there are still a significant number of Republicans who [Read more…] about I awake this morning with a deep anger…
Let Lab Animals Free
by
Stephen Altschuler
A song written in the 1980s and, in many ways, still applicable today
In the primate laboratories
I can tell you many stories
of thousands of baby chimpanzees
who are maimed and mutilated, tortured and castrated
and taken from their mother’s arms.
Chorus
They’ve got no voices, they’ve got no names
They make no charges, they lay no blame,
yet their hearts feel suffering just the same.
Let lab animals free, if not you and me, who else will set lab
animals free.
In the name of research and science
with tax money and government compliance
with an arrogant, heartless defiance,
Monkeys are maimed and mutilated, tortured and castrated
and taken from their mother’s arms.
Primate studies get repeated,
no anesthesia, surgically mis-treated.
Is this blood bath really needed?
As they’re maimed and mutilated, tortured and castrated
and taken from their mother’s arms.
Wild monkeys bound with steel and leather,
trapped in the tropics, shipped to northern weather,
screams of anguish, like slaves together.
for they’re maimed and mutilated, tortured and castrated
and taken from their mother’s arms.
From today’s Guardian:
In recent years the US government has started to phase out the use of primates in research, with the National Institutes of Health making a landmark decision in 2015 to retire all chimpanzees used in biomedical studies. Critics of the practice argue it is immoral and cruel to subject highly intelligent, social creatures so similar to humans to such conditions.
However, other labs continue to use monkeys in large numbers – a record 74,000 were used in experiments in 2017 – with scientists claiming they are far better than other animals, such as mice, for studying diseases that also afflict humans.
Even when monkeys are retired from research purposes, the task of rehoming them in appropriate sanctuaries still proves haphazard.
“What tragic afterthoughts these lives were,” said Mike Ryan, spokesman for Rise for Animals, the group that obtained the freedom of information documents on the Ames primate deaths. “Nasa has many strengths, but when it comes to animal welfare practices, they’re obsolete.”
