pElAgUS' 

    Sunday 09 September 2007
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092807P.shtml

    People should avoid using Wi-Fi wherever possible because of the risks it may pose to health, the German government has said.

    Its surprise ruling - the most damning made by any government on the fast-growing technology - will shake the industry and British ministers, and vindicates the questions that The Independent on Sunday has been raising over the past four months.

    And Germany's official radiation protection body also advises its citizens to use landlines instead of mobile phones, and warns of "electrosmog" from a wide range of other everyday products, from baby monitors to electric blankets.

    The German government's ruling - which contrasts sharply with the unquestioning promotion of the technology by British officials - was made in response to a series of questions by Green members of the Bundestag, Germany's parliament.

    The Environment Ministry recommended that people should keep their exposure to radiation from Wi-Fi "as low as possible" by choosing "conventional wired connections". It added that it is "actively informing people about possibilities for reducing personal exposure".

    Its actions will provide vital support for Sir William Stewart, Britain's official health protection watchdog, who has produced two reports calling for caution in using mobile phones and who has also called for a review of the use of Wi-Fi in schools. His warnings have so far been ignored by ministers and even played down by the Health Protection Agency, which he chairs.

    By contrast the agency's German equivalent - the Federal Office for Radiation Protection - is leading the calls for caution.

    Florian Emrich, for the office, says Wi-Fi should be avoided "because people receive exposures from many sources and because it is a new technology and all the research into its health effects has not yet been carried out".

    Are Your Cell Phone and Laptop Bad for Your Health?
    By Stan Cox
    AlterNet

    Tuesday 31 July 2007

    In the wee hours of July 14, a 45-year-old Australian named John Patterson climbed into a tank and drove it through the streets of Sydney, knocking down six cell-phone towers and an electrical substation along the way. Patterson, a former telecommunications worker, reportedly had mapped out the locations of the towers, which he claimed were harming his health.

    In recent years, protesters in England and Northern Ireland have brought down cell towers by sawing, removing bolts, and pulling with tow trucks and ropes. In one such case, locals bought the structure and sold off pieces of it as souvenirs to help with funding of future protests. In attempts to fend off objections to towers in Germany, some churches have taken to disguising them as giant crucifixes.

    Opposition to towers usually finds more socially acceptable outlets, and protests are being heard more often than ever in meetings of city councils, planning commissions, and other government bodies. This summer alone, citizen efforts to block cell towers have sprouted in, among a host of other places, including California, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, North Dakota and north of the border in Ontario and British Columbia. Transmitters are already banned from the roofs of schools in many districts.

    For years, towers have been even less welcome in the United Kingdom, where this summer has seen disputes across the country.

    Most opponents cite not only aesthetics but also concerns over potential health effects of electromagnetic (EM) fields generated by the towers. Once ridiculed as crackpots and Luddites, they're starting to get backup from the scientific community.

    It's not just cell phones they're worried about. The Tottenham area of London is considering the suspension of all wireless technology in its schools. Last year, Fred Gilbert, a respected scientist and president of Lakehead University in Ontario, banned wireless internet on his campus. And resident groups in San Francisco are currently battling Earthlink and Google over a proposed city-wide Wi-Fi system.

    Picking Up Some Interference?

    For decades, concerns have been raised about the health effects of "extremely low frequency" fields that are produced by electrical equipment or power lines. People living close to large power lines or working next to heavy electrical equipment are spending a lot of time in electromagnetic fields generated by those sources. Others of us can be exposed briefly to very strong fields each day.

    But in the past decade, suspicion has spread to cell phones and other wireless technologies, which operate at frequencies that are millions to tens of millions higher but at low power and "pulsed."

    Then there's your cell phone, laptop, or other wireless device, which not only receives but also sends pulsed signals at high frequencies. Because it's usually very close to your head (or lap) when in use, the fields experienced by your body are stronger than those from a cell tower down the street.

    A growing number of scientists, along with a diverse collection of technology critics, are pointing out that our bodies constantly generate electrical pulses as part of their normal functioning. They maintain that incoming radiation from modern technology may be fouling those signals.

    But with hundreds of billions in sales at stake, the communications industry (and more than a few scientists) insist that radio-frequency radiation can't have biological effects unless it's intense enough to heat your flesh or organs, in the way a microwave oven cooks meat.

    It's also turning out that when scientific studies are funded by industry, the results a lot less likely to show that EM fields are a health hazard.

    Low Frequency, More Frequent Disease?

    Before the digital revolution, a long line of epidemiological studies compared people who were exposed to strong low-frequency fields - people living in the shadow of power lines, for example, or long-time military radar operators - to similar but unexposed groups.

    One solid outcome of that research was to show that rates of childhood leukemia are associated with low-frequency EM exposure; as a result, the International Agency for Research on Cancer has labeled that type of energy as a possible carcinogen, just as they might label a chemical compound.

    Other studies have found increased incidence of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (commonly called ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease), higher rates of breast cancer among both men and women, and immune-system dysfunction in occupations with high exposure.

    Five years ago, the California Public Utilities Commission asked three epidemiologists in the state Department of Health Services to review and evaluate the scientific literature on health effects of low-frequency EM fields.

    The epidemiologists, who had expertise in physics, medicine, and genetics, agreed in their report that they were "inclined to believe that EMFs can cause some degree of increased risk of childhood leukemia, adult brain cancer, Lou Gehrig's disease, and miscarriage" and were open to the possibility that they raise the risks of adult leukemia and suicide. They did not see associations with other cancer types, heart disease, or Alzheimer's disease.

    Epidemiological and animal studies have not been unanimous in finding negative health effects from low-frequency EM fields, so the electric-utility industry continues to emphasize that no cause-and-effect link has been proven.

    High Resistance

    Now the most intense debate is focused on radio-frequency fields. As soon as cell phones came into common usage, there was widespread concern that holding an electronic device against the side of your head many hours a month for the rest of your life might be harmful, and researchers went to work looking for links to health problems, often zeroing in on the possibility of brain tumors.

    Until recently, cell phones had not been widely used over enough years to evaluate effects on cancers that take a long time to develop. A number of researchers failed to find an effect during those years, but now that the phones have been widely available for more than a decade, some studies are relating brain-tumor rates to long-term phone use.

    Some lab studies have found short-term harm as well. Treatment with cell-phone frequencies has disrupted thyroid-gland functioning in lab rats, for example. And at Lund University in Sweden, rats were exposed to cell-phone EM fields of varying strengths for two hours; 50 days later, exposed rats showed significant brain damage relative to non-exposed controls.

    The authors were blunt in their assessment: "We chose 12-26-week-old rats because they are comparable with human teenagers - notably frequent users of mobile phones - with respect to age. The situation of the growing brain might deserve special concern from society because biologic and maturational processes are particularly vulnerable during the growth process."

    Even more recently, health concerns have been raised about the antenna masts that serve cell phones and other wireless devices. EM fields at, say, a couple of blocks from a tower are not as strong as those from a wireless device held close to the body; nevertheless many city-dwellers are now continuously bathed in emissions that will only grow in their coverage and intensity.

    Last year, the RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia closed off the top two floors of its 17-story business school for a time because five employees working on its upper floors had been diagnosed with brain tumors in a single month, and seven since 1999. Cell phone towers had been placed on the building's roof a decade earlier and, although there was no proven link between them and the tumors, university officials were taking no chances.

    Data on the health effects of cell or W-Fi towers are still sparse and inconsistent. Their opponents point to statistically rigorous studies like one in Austria finding that headaches and difficulty with concentration were more common among people exposed to stronger fields from cell towers. All sides seem to agree on the need for more research with solid data and robust statistical design.

    San Francisco, one of the world's most technology-happy cities, is home to more than 2400 cell-phone antennas, and many of those transmitters are due to be replaced with more powerful models that can better handle text messaging and photographs, and possibly a new generation of even higher-frequency phones.

    Now there's hot-and-heavy debate over plans to add 2200 more towers for a city-wide Earthlink/Google Wi-Fi network. On July 31, the city's Board of Supervisors considered an appeal by the San Francisco Neighborhood Antenna-Free Union (SNAFU) that the network proposal be put through an environmental review - a step that up to now has not been required for such telecommunications projects.

    In support of the appeal, Magda Havas, professor of environmental and resource studies at Trent University in Ontario submitted an analysis of radio-frequency effects found in more than 50 human, animal, and cellular-level studies published in scientific journals.

    Havas has specialized in investigating the effects of both low- and high-frequency EM radiation. She says most of the research in the field is properly done, but that alone won't guarantee that all studies will give similar results. "Natural variability in biological populations is the norm," she said.

    And, she says, informative research takes time and focus: "For example, studies that consider all kinds of brain tumors in people who've only used cell phones for, say, five years don't show an association. But those studies that consider only tumors on the same side of the head where the phone is held and include only people who've used a phone for ten years or more give the same answer very consistently: there's an increased risk of tumors." In other research, wireless frequencies have been associated with higher rates of miscarriage, testicular cancer, and low sperm counts.

    Direct current from a battery can be used to encourage healing of broken bones. EM fields of various frequencies have also been shown to reduce tissue damage from heart attacks, help heal wounds, reduce pain, improve sleep, and relieve depression and anxiety. If they are biologically active enough to promote health, are they also active enough to degrade it?

    At the 2006 meeting of the International Commission for Electromagnetic Safety in Benevento, Italy, 42 scientists from 16 countries signed a resolution arguing for much stricter regulation of EM fields from wireless communication.

    Four years earlier, in Freiburger, Germany, a group of physicians had signed a statement also calling for tighter regulation of wireless communication and a prohibition on use of wireless devices by children. In the years since, more than 3000 doctors have signed the so-called "Freiburger Appeal" and documents modeled on it.

    But in this country, industry has pushed for and gotten exemption from strict regulation, most notably through the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Libby Kelley, director of the Council on Wireless Technology Impacts in Novato, California says, "The technology always comes first, the scientific and environmental questions later. EM trails chemicals by about 10 years, but I hope we'll catch up."

    Kelley says a major problem is that the Telecommunications Act does not permit state or local governments to block the siting of towers based on health concerns: "We'll go to hearings and try to bring up health issues, and officials will tell us, 'We can't talk about that. We could get sued in federal court!'"

    High-Voltage Influence?

    Industry officials are correct when they say the scientific literature contains many studies that did not find power lines or telecommunication devices to have significant health effects. But when, as often happens, a range of studies give some positive and some negative results, industry people usually make statements like, "Technology A has not been proven to cause disease B."

    Michael Kundi, professor at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria and an EM researcher, has issued a warning about distortions of the concept of cause-and-effect, particularly when a scientific study concludes that "there is no evidence for a causal relationship" between environmental factors and human health. Noting that science is rarely able to prove that A did or did not "cause" B, he wrote that such statements can be "readily misused by interested parties to claim that exposure is not associated with adverse health effects."

    Scientists and groups concerned about current standards for EM fields have criticized the World Health Organization (WHO) and other for downplaying the risks. And some emphasize the risk of financial influence when such intense interest is being shown by huge utilities and a global communications industry that's expected to sell $250 billion worth of wireless handsets per year by 2011 (that's just for the instruments, not counting monthly bills). Microwave News cited Belgian reports in late 2006 that two industry groups - the GSM Association and Mobile Manufacturers Forum - accounted for more than 40 percent of the budget for WHO's EM fields project in 2005-06.

    When a US National Academy of Sciences committee was formed earlier this year to look into health effects of wireless communication devices, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and Sage Associates wrote a letter to the Academy charging that the appointment of two of the committee's six members was improper under federal conflict-of-interest laws.

    One of the committee members, Leeka Kheifets, a professor of epidemiology in UCLA's School of Public Health, has, says the letter, "spent the majority of the past 20 years working in various capacities with the Electric Power Research Institute, the research arm of the electric power industry."

    The other, Bernard Veyret, senior scientist at the University of Bordeaux in France, "is on the consulting board of Bouygues Telecom (one of 3 French mobile phone providers), has contracts with Alcatel and other providers, and has received research funding from Electricite de France, the operator of the French electricity grid." The NAS committee will be holding a workshop this month and will issue a report sometime after that.

    A paper published in January in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found that when studies of cell phone use and health problems were funded by industry, they were much less likely to find a statistically significant relationship than were publicly funded studies.

    The authors categorized the titles of the papers they surveyed as either negative (as in "Cellular phones have no effect on sleep patterns"), or neutral (e.g., "Sleep patterns of adolescents using cellular phones"), or positive, (e.g., "Cellular phones disrupt sleep"). Fully 42 percent of the privately funded studies had negative titles and none had positive ones. In public or nonprofit studies, titles were 18 percent negative and 46 percent positive.

    Alluding to previous studies in the pharmaceutical and tobacco industries, the authors concluded, "Our findings add to the existing evidence that single-source sponsorship is associated with outcomes that favor the sponsors' products."

    By email, I asked Dr. John Moulder, a senior editor of the journal Radiation Research, for his reaction to the study. Moulder, who is Professor and Director of Radiation Biology in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Wisconsin, did not think the analysis was adequate to conclusively demonstrate industry influence and told me that in his capacity as an editor, "I have not noted such an effect, but I have not systematically looked for one either. I am certainly aware that an industry bias exists in other areas of medicine, such as reporting of clinical trails."

    Moulder was lead author on a 2005 paper concluding that the scientific literature to that point showed "a lack of convincing evidence for a causal association between cancer and exposure to the RF [radio-frequency] energy used for mobile telecommunications."

    The Center for Science in the Public Interest has questioned Moulder's objectivity because he has served as a consultant to electric-power and telecommunications firms and groups. Moulder told me, "I have not done any consulting for the electric power and telecommunications industry in years, and when I was doing consulting for these industries, the journals for which I served as an editor or reviewer were made aware of it."

    A year ago, Microwave News also reported that approximately one-half of all studies looking into possible damage to DNA by communication-frequency EM fields found no effect. But three-fourths of those negative studies were industry- or military-funded; indeed, only 3 of 35 industry or military papers found an effect, whereas 32 of 37 publicly funded studies found effects.

    Magda Havas sees a shortage of public money in the US for research on EM health effects as one of the chief factors leading to lack of a rigorous public policy, telling me, "Much of the research here ends up being funded directly or indirectly by industry. That affects both the design and the interpretation of studies." As for research done directly by company scientists, "It's the same as in any industry. They can decide what information to make public. They are free to downplay harmful effects and release information that's beneficial to their product."

    Meanwhile, at Trent University where Havas works, students using laptops are exposed to radio-frequency levels that exceed international guidelines. Of that, she says, "For people who've been fully informed and decide to take the risk, that's their choice. But what about those who have no choice, who have a cell-phone tower outside their bedroom window?

    "It's the equivalent of secondhand smoke. We took a long time to get the political will to establish smoke-free environments, and we now know we should have done it sooner. How long will it take to react to secondhand radiation?"

    ----------

    For more information, visit Environmnental Health Perspectives; Microwave News; the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

Vegetarians have more fun -- in California, anyway

By Nicholas Boer

CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Erin Bishop decided she wanted to be a vegetarian when she was 10. It wasn't until after enrolling at Tulane University, however, that she discovered how fortunate she had been.

"You can't be a vegetarian in New Orleans," Bishop says. "I had bagels every day. It was horrible."

Things got better after she moved out of the dorm and into her own apartment. Her mom, a from-scratch cook, never indulged Bishop's vegetarianism, so she has been cooking for herself for a long time.

Now that she's back in the Bay Area, Bishop shops at the Danville farmers market every Saturday. "This is the best place to be," she says.

Signature dish: She created the samosa recipe just for this column. The granola recipe is one she's been playing with for years.

Why vegetarianism?: Mostly for health reasons (her family has a history of high cholesterol), but also for moral reasons. Reading PETA's Web site sealed the deal.

Birthday cake: Bishop gave up eggs and dairy for Lent, so, to celebrate her 23rd birthday, she made a batch of vegan cupcakes. To her surprise, the four kids that she baby-sits, most of them picky eaters, happily ate them all up.

Going vegan: While she says it's been easy to go vegan, and that she has more energy than she used to, Bishop is glad that Lent is over. She's even thinking she might celebrate with some sushi.

Shopping: Aside from the farmers market, Bishop gets most of her groceries from Whole Foods in Walnut Creek and Open Sesame in Lafayette.

On grains: "I love lentils," Bishop adds. "I get most of my protein from beans and grains." Quinoa and brown rice are on the A-list.

Favorite veggies: "I'm huge on butternut squash," Bishop says. She also loves kale, arugula and sweet potatoes. What doesn't she like? Raw spinach.

Staying ahead: "It takes 40 minutes to cook brown rice, so I'll do a big batch," she says. One night she'll have brown rice with roasted vegetables another night a burrito or maybe a rice salad.

Breakfast. Homemade granola with soy yogurt or a fruit smoothie with Whole Foods protein powder.

Kids food: The kids she baby-sits survive mainly on hot dogs, pasta, or mac and cheese. They also love McDonald's, but Bishop says they just care about the toys in their Happy Meals.

Food philosophy: "I don't have an agenda, but it's important to be aware of what you're putting in your body and what you're supporting with your dollars that go to food."

Questions? Contact Erin Bishop at erinbish@gmail.com.

MANGO-ORANGE RAW CHUTNEY

Makes about 11/2 cups

1 mango, preferably the small, sweet ataulfo variety (sometimes called Champagne)

1 large navel orange

1 tablespoon red onion, minced

2 tablespoons mint, roughly chopped

• Peel and cut the mango into a small dice. Place in a small mixing bowl. Cut off the bottom and top of the orange, lay it flat and remove the peel, including the pith, by making curved cuts with a sharp knife. Use a paring knife to section the orange, leaving behind the membranes. Chop the orange into a small dice. Add the orange, minced red onion and mint to the mango. Lightly mix. Serve at room temperature or chilled.

Per 1/4-cup serving: 20 calories, 1 g protein, 4 g carbohydrates, 0 fat, 0 cholesterol, 0 sodium, 1 g fiber. Calories from fat: 0 percent.

-- Times analysis

SWEET BAKED SAMOSAS

Makes about 20

5 cups unbleached white flour

11/4 cups water

1 cup canola oil, plus more for brushing

2 teaspoons salt

2 cups peeled butternut squash, peeled and cut into small dice

1 small sweet potato, about 2 cups, peeled and cut into small dice

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup minced yellow onion

3/4 cup frozen or canned green peas

1/2 teaspoon curry powder

Salt and pepper to taste

Mango-Orange Chutney (see recipe)

1. Place flour in large bowl. Add the water and oil and stir until mixture becomes crumbly. Place dough on a floured work surface. Knead dough until becomes smooth and elastic. Add more flour if dough is too sticky or a little more water if it is too dry. Let the dough rest in a bowl while you make the samosa filling.

2. In a medium sauce pan, bring the butternut squash to a boil. Boil 5 minutes, and then add the sweet potatoes. Boil the butternut squash and sweet potatoes for an additional 10 minutes.

3. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Meanwhile, heat 2 tablespoons of canola oil in a large sauce pan on medium-high heat. Add the garlic and onion and saute for about 5 minutes, stirring often, until soft. Add the sweet potatoes and butternut squash, peas, curry powder, and salt and pepper. Remove samosa filling from heat.

4. Place the dough on a lightly floured work surface. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough into a narrow rectangle about 41/2-inches wide. Put the dough through a pasta press until it is Þ-inch thick. If you do not have a pasta press, you can roll the dough out by hand. Cut the dough into 4-inch squares.

5. Place a square of dough so that a corner is pointing toward you. Fill the dough with a heaping tablespoon of the samosa filling. Use a brush or your index finger to moisten the edge of the dough with water. Seal the samosa and use a fork to decorate the edges.

6. Place samosas on a lightly oiled baking sheet and brush the tops with canola oil. Bake 20-25 minutes or until samosas are lightly browned. Serve warm with Mango-Orange Chutney.

Per samosa (not including chutney): 230 calories, 4 g protein, 28 g carbohydrates, 12 g fat, 0 cholesterol, 240 mg sodium, 2 g fiber. Calories from fat: 43 percent.

-- Times analysis

GRANOLA

Makes about 10 cups

4 cups rolled oats

1 cup whole almonds

1 cup shredded sweetened coconut

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

1/4 cup ground flax seed

1/4 cup orange zest, optional

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

-1/3 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup agave nectar (or 1/4 cup honey for a non-vegan version)

1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3/4 cup dried cranberries

3/4 cup dried figs, chopped

3/4 cup dried apricots, chopped

1. In a large bowl, combine the oats, almonds, coconut, sunflower seeds, flax seed, orange zest (if using), salt and cinnamon. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Lightly coat a large baking sheet with nonstick spray.

2. Combine the vegetable oil and agave nectar or honey and juice in a small sauce pan and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Remove the pan from heat and add the orange juice and vanilla extract.

3. Quickly pour the liquid over the dry ingredients and mix just until the oats are coated. Evenly spread the granola on the prepared baking sheet. Bake until golden, about 30 minutes. Gently stir the granola two or three times. Add the chopped dried fruit to the cooked granola. Granola can be stored for about two weeks in an airtight container.

Per cup: 490 calories, 11 g protein, 59 g carbohydrates, 25 g fat, 0 cholesterol, 90 mg sodium, 8 g fiber. Calories from fat: 47 percent.

-- Times analysis

Veggie Pride : May 20th 2006 in Paris

Are you veggie for the animals ? Come to the Veggie Pride !

http://www.veggiepride.org/en/

Meeting in Paris, Saturday the 20th of May 2006 at 2 pm, in front of the Beaubourg Centre
(Centre G. Pompidou, Paris 4th city district ; Subway station Rambuteau, Line 11).

Details on the course of this day are at the end of this message!

-------------------------------------------------------------------


Manifesto of the Veggie Pride

Veggie Pride, festival of vegetarian and vegan pride

Our aims :
To declare our pride at refusing to have animals killed for our consumption
To refuse to rob sentient beings of their sole possessions, of their very flesh, of their very lives; to refuse to take part in a concentration camp system which turns their short lives into perpetual torment; to refuse to do all of this for the mere pleasure of the palate, for the satisfaction of a habit, of a tradition: To refuse to do such things should be just plain decency.

However, history does show how difficult it is, when barbarity is the social norm, to simply say No.

We wish to declare our pride at saying No.

To denounce vegephobia
Instead, they want us to feel ashamed. Vegetarianism is concealed, ignored, mocked, marginalized and even defamed.

Vegetarianism challenges the legitimacy of the confinement and slaughter of billions of animals. Just by existing it breaks the law of silence. This is the reason behind vegephobic mockery and hatred.

Of course vegetarianism is tolerated when it is the harmless sort that claims to be no more than a private choice, a matter of distaste for meat or of concern for personal health or the environment. But woe betides us if we openly challenge the barbarous order!

At first we are laughed at. Caring about chickens and cows is supposed to be ridiculous. Laughing at a disturbing idea is a way to get rid of it without having to find logical arguments against it.

But if we do not give in, the laughter turns sour. At first they found us funny, now they call us monsters. We are traitors to the human species since we would limit its rights. We are unworthy parents for not teaching our children the joys of dead flesh. If we care for animals we must be Nazi sympathizers since Hitler too loved dogs. Our ideas are those of an intolerant cult since they are different from what others believe.

We are called terrorists; accused of worshipping nature or of breaking its laws. No argument is too farfetched when it comes to misrepresenting our ideas, putting us to shame and symbolically
rejecting us from society.

We refuse to apologize for our compassion. We are proud to declare that we are vegetarians. We are no longer willing to feel shame for refusing to kill. We are here; we are well alive and thinking and
will speak out.

To proclaim our existence
All over the world we are millions of humans saying No to this carnage. Few civilizations have actually taken for granted that eating animals is justified. But when do you hear about those debates? Mentions of vegetarianism are systematically missing in textbooks and biographies.

"The man who eats meat or the hunter who agrees with the cruelties of Nature, upholds with every bite of meat or fish that might is right." - Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nobel prize in Literature.

By stepping forth we also prove that it is possible to live without meat. We live without eating cows or pigs, chicken or fish or prawns. And we are as alive and healthy as anyone else, despite those media-promoted "specialists" whose science consists of denying the facts. Neither vegetarianism nor Veganism (which rejects all animal products, including milk and eggs) has any particular negative effects on health - indeed; current studies tend to show the opposite!

There is no spell that says that to live one must kill. We are not obliged to do so, neither individually nor collectively. Animal husbandry does not provide food, since farm animals eat much more than their dead flesh can render. Despite this, massive public funding supports animal farming and fishing.

To defend our rights
No rights are granted to the animals that are raised and killed for food; but we who stand on their side do have rights, in principle. We are determined to exercise our rights in full, because they are our rights, and because they are theirs - the only rights that they may today, indirectly, enjoy.

We have the right to receive decent meals at school, at work and wherever meals are served to groups of people. We have the right to raise our children without forcing upon them the products of the
slaughterhouse.

We are not willing to have our taxes used to support the raising and killing and the fishing for the tastes of others.

We are no longer willing for our actions and our ideas to be systematically silenced. We no longer accept that the only public voices should be those of the corporations and intellectuals who defend the consumption of flesh.

We demand an open debate.

"We are the mirror of your guilty consciences
and this mirror will no longer hide"

Faced with images of heaps upon heaps of animals "destroyed" for case of bird flu, BSE or foot-and-mouth disease, we alone felt no shame. We were not shameful for ourselves. But we felt shame for all
others.

Above all, we were sad. However much we insist on asserting our pride in saying No to barbarity, this brings us no satisfaction. The animals are slaughtered by the billions. They are held to be dumb, their cries do not count. We shall speak out for them until the massacre halts.

We are animals
and stand in solidarity with all animals!

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Practical details and other informations


The Veggie Pride is a demonstration open to any person who does not eat the animals. Concerning this restriction, check out our Frequently Asked Questions.
http://www.veggiepride.org/en/faq.php#23

• 2.30 pm : start of the demonstration
We ask that the slogans, signs and streamers be exclusively centred on the vegetarianism or vegetarianism for the animals. The Veggie Pride being a demonstration of individuals expressing their pride to be vegetarians or vegans for the animals, we ask that no initials or name of organization be reproduced on the streamers and signs.

• 4 pm : Arrival at the « Fontaine des Innocents » (fountain of the innocent ones).
End of the procession and installation of a "happening" symbolizing the ocean of suffering and death imposed daily on the animals.

• 4.30 pm - 5 pm : Happening.
The demonstration and the happening will be declared in prefecture in accordance with the law.

• From 5.30 pm : Various activities.

• 7.30 pm : Start of the after-pride.
A party will take place, further details will be given subsequently on our website. Possibility of accommodation or housing amongst inhabitants of Paris.


To come to the Veggie Pride :

The SNCF (the French Railway company) proposes worthwhile tariffs for the tickets taken two months in advance.

To know if a grouped departure is planned from your area, you can contact our regional delegates.

A small ads service is also at your disposal for your requests of car sharing, accommodation, etc. Do not hesitate to use it.


Sign the Manifesto of the Veggie Pride ! Independently of your participation in the Veggie Pride, we invite you to read the text of the Manifesto (see below) and, if you agree with it, to declare that
by signing it.


You can sign it on the Web:
http://www.veggiepride.org/en/signer.php
You will also be able to sign it yonder, during the demonstration.

To make a donation to the Veggie Pride:
http://www.veggiepride.org/en/dons.php
Any donation, even minor, will be very welcome.


You can also subscribe to the circulation list by sending a blank email to vp-Fr-subscribe@yahoogroupes.fr or on the website http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/vp-Fr

Help us to make known the Veggie Pride by broadcasting this message to your contacts!

By wishing you numerous with us on May the 20th,

The organizers of the Veggie Pride.