Veggies reasoning: lack of proteins

This Mexican guy might look slightly mad, but I fully agree with his unorthodox review of veggies' arguments. I'll translate them into English (let him know previously through a comment to his post).

Veggies and vegans may do whatever they like as long as they don't bother with their arguments. Here it is what I would say if they tried to convince me:

1. Oposition to the treatment given to animals at farms.

So much that veggies turn their noses up at the ill-treatment given to animals. Are you concerned when your neighbours, your brothers are ill-treated? Are you concerned with the ill-treatment to the poor children in South West Africa?
Why on Earth are you so concerned about the animals? If they don't evolve, it is their issue. We are the "thinking" species and we evolved that way to survive. No other species minds whether we exist or not. Is the cow going to live forever if I don't eat it? If left to its own fate in the Nature, any other animal would have it as prey.

It is Nature's Law. Mankind have developed a Civilisation's Law, more generous with the weakest fellows of the species than the Nature's Law. This Civilisation's Law have developed into the Universal Declaration of HUMAN Rights. These rights are for, only for, Human Beings, because Human Beings are the only ones that can comply with the correspondent Musts and Obligations.

One has rights to the extent that has musts (the first must being to respect the rights of others).

2. Killing is bad.

Do those holy heads kill not even a mosquito or a flea? When they have their pets wormed by the vet: they are killing animals. Indeed, tapeworms, and other nice beings in the guts of our dog are animals as well. Then, wouldn't the moral conviction that killing is bad mean that the worms shouldn't be exterminated?

The statement #2 should be refined at least to say something like: killing human beings is bad.

3. Don't eat cat or dog, discrimination against other animals does not make sense.

Does that mean that if I'm shipwrecked in a desert island and the only other survivor is a puppy, I'm not going to eat it? Of course I will. My life comes first and then the life of the bag of bones. There you have the Chinese eating their portions of rats and cockroaches, and look at them, so well fed. :D

Would a wild animal have compassion for another being? They are not set to behave in an discrimate way further than "I can eat it, I can't eat it, it can eat me, it can't eat me", and precisely for that reason they don't expect anything different, indeed, they don't expect anything else. Life for a puppy does not have any transcendental shade, life for them is just a dog's life. They do not think!!!

4. It's missing in the original!! Please insert yours here.

5. Being vegetarian is healthier than eating meat.

Er, and the ham sandwich? This is the most stupid reason of all.
Let's do an exercise together: please open your mouth, now touch the two central incisors with your right hand, there is another couple of incisors next to those, y to both sides of the latter ones, there are other two teeth with a somewhat different shape (if they are not deformed). Can you feel them? They are conical and sharp, those teeth are called canines and, guess what they are for?, exactly, to tear meat, you what why? Because the human beings are carnivores as well.
We are swallowing meet since the beginning of the time and here we are. If it wasn't healthy, it wouldn't be that way. Veggies mention how good it is to refrain from meat, when the truth is the opposite: the human body needs proteins. Not only for the conservation and repairing of the muscles, proteins have lots of functions in the organism, even some at neuronal level, so veggies not only take the risk of being undernourished and decompensated, but also they may become a bit mad.
Even if they claim that there are vegetable supplements, it isn't enough. If eating meat isn't healthy, why do we get stuffed with pills and other nonsense?

6. You wouldn't kill an animal by yourself.

Does that mean that we shouldn't dress and live in houses that hadn't been done by ourselves?

7. They don't like the meat's taste or texture.

That would be the only valid excuse, apparently. But there are some that haven't tasted the meat and they are already crossing themselves.

8. Their religion promotes a vegetarian lifestyle.

The religions promote a hell lot of things. If we did everything the Holy Books say, we would be living a second Middle Age.

9. Vegetarian since he was born, doesn't want to change.

It is unlikely that a vegetarian baby could subsist without the meat's nutrients.

10. They are worried about the impact on the environment of the animal farms
for consumption by humans.

If they are really so worried about the environment, stop buying animal-tested products, stop throwing your rubbish onto the street. Animals are better off at a farm than left free: have you seen a cow surviving in the street?

This is the weakest counter-argument of the nine. However, the reason number 10 can be refuted by a number of ways. Firstly, the animal species that populate the farms have their survival ensured by the man's interest; animal species that aren't useful but put problems to the human development are in danger of extintion. That is what happens to any other struggle between similar living being species: the strongest and fittest survive.

Secondly, the impact of animal farms on the environment is lower than the impact of the crop fields or the scale of hunting needed to feed the current human population. Unless you went to the extreme of banning hunting, farming and cropping, and provoke the death of several thousands of millions of people. We would have created a world where the human being has fewer rights than the animals and other living beings!!

I guess that veggies would propose more reasons, but they would be refuted.

Love and freedom.

Taking the piece of himself, joking about his own handicap, this crippled wheelchaired dandy, Toño, delivers one of the most impressive lessons ever.

I look up to this guy. I wonder how we may complain about our lives?

Thank God for everything you have given to me.

Love and freedom.

Catalan government's TV station TV3 bans Spanish commentators.

TV3's goal is to spread the Catalan language. Fair enough, but should TV3 reach the level of banning reporters speaking in Spanish? It looks like censorship, doesn't it? At least it is what Cataloonies said when TV3 was banned from Valencia Region. Let me recap what that Scotland-based blogger said at that time:

The regional government of the PP has finally decided to close down the transmissions of TV3 in the Valencian area. More proof, if it was needed, of the neo-fascist attitudes of the PP.

Wow!! I believe that, after TV3's decision, fair-minded Cataloonies should say that the Spanish oppressors aren't the only neo-fascists. There are many more in the Catalan government. The decision taken by the Valencian Government was silly (it limits choice), but it is similar to TV3's decision, so both should deserve the same name. However, let's leave for another time the explanation of why the word "fascism" is applied misleadingly these days.

Catalan people (as other Spaniards) are mostly lively, sensible people. There are, as well, some Catalans who are idiots (as in any other part of the world). The problem in Catalonia is that they have their whole portion of idiots governing them.

Love and freedom.

Con los biocombustibles no se ahorran emisiones de dióxido de carbono.

Hartmut Michel, El Pais (12/09/2007)

Hartmut Michel, a German biochemist laureated with the Nobel Prize of Chemistry, is ridiculously interviewed by a Spanish journalist from El Pais. He explains her that the fact that the biofuels are called with a name that contains the prefix "bio-" blessed by the progres does not turn them into any better source of energy. Did she grasp the idea at the end?? I'm not sure.

Please do not miss the sui-generis transcription of that interview by the Spanish paper, El Pais.

When will these progres learn to think reasonably before believing in new, absurd mottos? And when will the journalists start to make good the name of their profession? Where are the knowledgeable, fair reporters?

Vamos España!

That scream of support intends to encourage more than 45 million of people. Is there anything wrong with it?

I did my exams at last!! The control of my life (its risks and rewards) has been given back to me again!

Thank God the turmoil is over now. I don't know whether I passed them, but it didn't matter today. Just went to Green Park with some classmates and stripped my shirt off, got tanned under a lovely sunshine, got pissed, got a football and played. That made my day!!

Love and freedom.

What should we do in relation to Zimbabwe?

Zimbabweans have long since given up hope that the South African leader - Thabo Mbeki - will put pressure on his old friend, Robert Mugabe, to reform.

Sue Lloyd-Roberts, BBC News (08/09/2007)

It's apparent that Robert Mugabe's dictatorship has produced a disaster for the Zimbabweans (black and white). These are starving, dying or fleeing the country. Do we care about Zimbabweans' agony?

What should Western developed countries do?

a) Ignore them (it's not our problem).

b) Send more (and much more!) money to Zimbabwe (which will help R.Mugabe remain in office as explained in the article).

c) Send a UN peaceforce (which will do what they know best: get rich taking advantage of the weapons European and American taxpayers have provided them with).

d) Talk and express our regret about the situation, and forget it straigth away because we are watching Al Gore's An Incovenient Truth while we have South Africa's organic vegetables for dinner (what most progres will do).

e) Send a military force to oust Mugabe from the office and try to organise the most democratic elections that can be attained in a bankrupted country (what it was attempted in Irak by (gosh!!) G.W. Bush).

You may decide. Remember that it should be in congruence with your stance in relation to other wars (even the ones that the US takes part in).

Love and freedom.

What's wrong with tall women dating short men?

The underlying thinking is not about height, therefore; it is "Who can overpower whom?" Weirdly, we still require men to be able to dominate their partner physically, even though there is no place for that in a modern relationship.

Zoe Williams, The Guardian (06/09/2007)

I don't have much problem with my height, but it's a true comment, nevertheless, about a topic that interests me most. Modern days have come (to Western-culture countries), and yet our women miss something from the old, wild times.

Following the thread about the silliness that Socialist regions feature.

I have found a survey by the CIS (Spanish Social Studies Centre) suggesting that almost all Spaniards are in favour of some sort of Communism/Socialism. Please have a look at the results of the survey (click in Resultados and please do not cry) and some comments on it.

I expected the results to be in that line, but I didn't forecast such a wide majority that holds no doubt that the Government should control prices, industry, employment, raise taxes and force the reduction of the income gap between rich and poor.

No doubt!! My godness, after litres of ink spent discussing this economic dilemma for ages, a couple of wars and millions of deaths because of the argument, disaster after disaster of each of the Communist countries... and still more than half of the Spaniards are fully convinced that the Government is the solution to all problems.

Don't they have any doubt, not even the smallest doubt after History has shown that all attempted ways of Communism have been a complete failure?

However, if this survey reflected the truth, I don't understand why the Spanish United Left party (IU) is voted by only 5% of the electorate.

I might start thinking that P.J. O'Rourke was right: Spaniards can't count above twenty.

Definitely, a Institucion Liberal de Ensenanza (Libertarian Education Institution) is urgently required in Spain.

Love and Freedom.

Spanish guts

To honour O'Rourke's description of Spanish, here you have a picture of what I have been doing this summer.



(Obviously I'm the guy running away from the cow.)

These two pics below show my courageous Grandma, 86, trekking up the Cabeza de Araya, the highest summit around her village.





(She has 4 broken vertebrae, a hip prosthesis and usually walks with crutches. Ole, esa abuela!)

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

P.J O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores

This sarcastic description of Spaniards by an American called PJ O'Rourke is pretty funny (and he was born in Toledo!!).

I don't agree with some bits (I can count up to 21 -twenty-one, veintiuno), but it's just a joke.

Or should we kill him as though I were a Maoist (in the 20th century), Stalinist (in the 20th century), Nazist (in the 20th century), Muslim fundamentalist (in the 21st century), or Cristian extremist (in the 16th century)?

Love and freedom.