DO NOT BUY LEATHER FROM CHINA

The Chinese are slaughtering dogs for leather in the manufacture of items like leather gloves. Photos of these dogs, cruelly confined and treated, are heart-breaking. According to PETA, these dogs can be skinned while still alive. Please spread the word and boycott all Chinese leather.

http://www.voanews.com/content/rights-groups-critize-use-of-dog-skin-in-china/2562508.html

TURN OFF YOUR OUTDOOR LIGHTS--AND SOME OF THE INDOOR ONES, TOO!

According to the International Dark Sky Association, there are five appalling facts about light pollution you may not have known:

1. Exposure to artificial light at night, particularly light with blue in it like that from TVs and computer screens, puts your health at risk.

2. Light pollution kills millions of birds a year, both from collisions into lit buildings and by disrupting their migratory instincts, as birds navigate at night by starlight and moonlight.

3. Light pollution contributes to climate change by using energy that heats our atmosphere.

4. The seasonal cycle of trees and plants is disrupted by artificial light.

5. Light in the skies from Los Angeles at night can be seen in an airplane from 200 miles away.

Read more about this by going to http://darksky.org/resources/434

CASCADIAN FARMS, GENERAL MILLS, GREEN WASHING, AND BEES

In a sickening example of green washing, Cascadian Farms, a food group owned by General Mills, has recently begun a media blitz dedicated to saving the bees.

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This is hypocrisy at its worst, like slave-owners having an enormous plantation with thousands of slaves, setting aside one small field where there are no slaves, and then proudly proclaiming that they are abolitionists! 

The bulk of food General Mills sells now contains genetically modified ingredients, including many of those nostalgic cereal brands we all grew up with. Anything that has non-organic sugar, cornstarch, canola oil, corn syrup, corn oil, milk (cows may be fed GMO alfa), soy (including soybean oil and soy lecithin), and even eggs (as chickens are fed soy) most certainly contains genetically modified (GMO) ingredients. There is good reason, based on solid studies, showing that GMOs might have dangerous and unwanted consequences in our bodies. But that's not what this article is about. 

Genetically modified food was altered so that it could withstand huge doses of toxic pesticides--the pesticides that are killing our bees, and are the source of Colony Collapse Disorder, killing 30% of our bees and other pollinators each year!

While the fast disappearance of our honeybees is one of the biggest disasters on this planet, Cascadian Farms' bee-saving blitz is blatant green-washing. People need to become aware of what is really going on at General Mills, where 90% of the company is involved in selling us products implicated in killing our bees. Cascadian Farms: if you really want to save bees, start with your parent company!

Note: General Mills has spent over 2 million dollars to defeat GMO labeling in the USA, even though such labeling is standard in other countries. Here are some General Mills brands, all of which almost certainly contain some GMO ingredients: Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Bisquick, Fiber One, Chex cereals, Wheaties, Kix, Old El Paso, Haagen Dasz Ice Cream, Yoplait. They own many other groups, including Macaroni's Grill.

NEWSCASTERS, BIMBOS, AND SOULS

We live in a whacko world. You never see a gray-headed female senior citizen wearing glasses as a television newscaster; we see primarily young, blonde, skinny bimbos with Valley-girl accents giving us the news (co-hosting with an older guy, of course). Yet who is going to be more astute in their grasp of world events? What the hell is WRONG with us?!?

Once I was at a large conference, sitting in the dining hall and people watching. I suddenly realized that my attention was naturally grabbed by those who looked really attractive, with nice bodies, or those who had something unique about them. The people catching my eye were nearly all younger people.

It occurred to me that there were a great many plain, dumpy, gray-haired, average-looking people in this dining hall whom I was overlooking, and some of them had extraordinary souls.

So I played a little experiment, which I pass on to you to try. I decided that I would shine my full attention and notice primarily on the older, more weary, but doubtlessly soul-rich folks. I would ignore the young and beautiful, and instead focus my gaze on these plain folk with the mindset that they were profoundly interesting people and super stars!

It was fascinating. I met some wonderful people that way. It was an awakening.

I pass on the challenge to all of you, especially as I myself begin to enter the stage inevitable for all of us where my aging appearance does not always reveal the soul that lies underneath! Look for the gray heads. Look for the soul that shines through the eyes instead of the designer dress. You will, I assure you, open up to a whole new world.

THE MINNESOTA VIKINGS' PLAN TO KILL THOUSANDS OF SONGBIRDS EACH YEAR

GOOD NEWS: The Minnesota Vikings are building a new glass stadium. Hooray!
BAD NEWS: Unfortunately, their stadium will kill thousands of birds each year...more than any other building in their state. Boo.
WORSE NEWS: AND...there are options for building it with a type of glass that will NOT cause bird deaths, but they have just rejected those options Outrageous.

Millions of birds are killed each year in collisions with buildings, particularly those covered in glass like the proposed stadium. The Vikings knew about the option of selecting a type of glass that, while being a little more expensive, would have prevented these bird deaths. They recently rejected this option.

Please follow the below link to send them a letter asking them to change their minds. It will only take a few seconds. Next, spread the word. We need this information go viral! People in the USA love football, but we also love our songbirds.

LINK FOR SENDING A LETTER

TO READ MORE DETAILS ABOUT THIS OUTRAGE

WHY FIREWORKS ARE AWFUL FOR DOGS, CATS, BIRDS AND WILDLIFE

It is nearing the 4th of July, and there have been articles online that have laughingly talked about training your dog not to become phobic or frightened of fireworks.

 

Dogs hate fireworks because it HURTS their ears! Their hearing is four times more acute than the hearing of human beings.This hurt goes beyond the physical. Deafening noise sets off extreme stress and panic. 

The insensitive yahoos and rednecks who set off fireworks in their neighborhoods forget (or don't care) that animals, including birds and wild animals, have a sense of hearing that is many times more acute and sensitive than ours. Animals and birds also have a far broader range of frequencies that they can hear. We have seen creatures, include birds, go into frenzied hysteria and high stress when fireworks were exploded nearby. Many of our friends actually spend the 4th of July with their animals in their basements, trying to soothe them.

The worst places to set off fireworks are in the countryside. This does damage to the songbirds, with their incredibly delicate sense of hearing, who cannot flee in the night. Neither do the wildlife have basements to which they can retreat.

Imagine the world of dogs, cats and birds, where the noise of fireworks sounds not just double, but four, five or six times louder. It hurts. It stresses. 

When armies or terrorists take people as prisoners, they sometimes use loud music as a form of torture, because noise creates immense, inescapable stress. Some human beings are tremendously sound sensitive; their hearing does not become as badly damaged as a bird's or cat's or dog's hearing will become from being exposed to fireworks, but the emotional stress is awful for them. 

While a community fireworks celebration on the 4th of July is always entertaining, it is sad to see increased sales of private fireworks and to hear them year-round, for cruel and thoughtless backyard explosions impact every living creature for miles around. 

Your Bee-Friendly Plants May Be Killing Honeybees

Quite a number of plants, even purportedly bee-friendly plants, that were bought from big-box store garden departments such as Lowe's, Home Depot, and Walmart, have been found to be coated in neonicotinoids, the pesticides that kill bees. These pesticides, by the way, do not wash off.

We are losing 30% of our honeybees each year, but profit apparently comes before the planet, even in the face of such devastating losses. These stores are well aware of the problem, but thus far have refused to do anything about it.

Our own EPA has a revolving door with executives at Monsanto, and is tremendously corrupt. The EPA, whose mandate is to protect the environment, continues to permit neonicotinoids to be used, despite irrefutable evidence that they are responsible for massive die-offs of our pollinators, and are also harmful to birds and butterflies.

Read more about this problem here: http://www.wired.com/2014/06/garden-center-neonicotinoids/

MONSANTO AND BAYER: BEE KILLERS

Do you like food? Did you know that every third bite of your food--and the most delicious food we have--comes as a result of bee pollination?

We are losing 30% of our honeybees EACH YEAR due to what is called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

Did you know that the most dangerous place for a beehive in today's world is to be situated in an agricultural community?

After much hard research, scientists discovered that pesticides called neocotinoids, primarily manufactured by Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer, are the primary cause of Colony Collapse Disorder. Because of this devastation, these pesticides have been banned in the European Union...but not in the United States, where money trumps science, and where the future of our planet is decided by money and lobbyists from huge corporations. The CEOs of Monsanto and of the Food and Drug Administration are interchangeable. One of our Supreme Court justices even worked for Monsanto, but is still allowed to rule on cases involving this company, and naturally rules in their favor. The corruption that endangers the future of our food supply is staggering, and nobody in power is doing a thing to stop it.

In what is called "a massive disinformation campaign," Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer are pouring great amounts of money into a programs where they are trying to spin the story of the bees, pretending that they are bee friendly. They have the gall to deny the hard science that shows the devastation to bees from the pesticides they manufacture, and are trying to blame bee deaths instead on a certain mite that causes problems for bees called the Varoa Mite, this despite the fact that the way the bees disappear and die from CCD is very different from deaths due to mites.

These corporations, in their desperate need to deny their role in the extinction of the honeybee, have even held conferences purportedly concerned with saving bees, while continuing to deny the true toxic causes of the bees' collapse and their responsibility for this devastation. One of these corporations even wrote a children's book shrugging off bee deaths and attributing them to the Varoa mite, instead of the real cause. Propaganda targeting children and attempting to brainwash them against the truth is, in our minds, a grave and serious evil.

At Grumpy Cherub, we are beekeepers. We know the truth. And we are outraged. Please let your elected officials know that it is imperative to save the bees, and plead with them not to buy into the spin of these corporations who believe profits surpass truth.

Below is a link to an excellent article providing more information about this:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/04/28-3

SMOKING POT IS LOUSY FOR THE BRAIN

The below article states that there are changes in the brain when teenagers smoke pot even on a casual basis. I have known this for a long time, and I have seen these effects firsthand since the late 60s. You don't need to be a brain scientist to make such an observation. Obviously people are messing with their brain wiring when they smoke pot. (And we do that when we drink as well.)

People don't like to admit that they are damaging their brains when they smoke pot. It is quite trendy these days to get extremely defensive about marijuana. Some people even like to think smoking pot is equivalent with leading a pure, spiritual life. It's not.

This isn't a judgment about people who use pot or alcohol; it's simply time to face the truth here. Getting stoned is the escape, not the answer, and there are consequences to pay.

READ THE ARTICLE IN THE BOSTON GLOBE

THE ENORMOUS COST OF EATING SEAFOOD

Seafood comes at a cost, and it is not only the frighteningly fast depletion of our ocean's fish. It is also the tragic cost of deaths of countless dolphins, sea turtles and whales.

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20140323/hidden-cost-us-seafood-trillions-pounds-bycatch

FIVE FOODS YOU SHOULDN'T EAT IF YOU CARE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT

Please check this out. The rampantly spreading use of palm oil, even by otherwise responsible companies, is particularly important to note:

http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/5-foods-you-shouldnt-eat-if-you-care-about-environment.html

THINK THE JAPANESE SLAUGHTER OF DOLPHINS IS HORRIBLE? WHAT DENMARK IS DOING IS WORSE.

Please share this link.

Denmark has a bloody rite of passage for teens where they slaughter friendly, intelligent and endangered dolphins. It makes what is happening in Japan look mild in comparison. Please check out this link, share it, and take whatever action you can to stop this outrage:
http://news-hound.biz/please-keep-this-going-around-the-world/

THEY TOLD US AGENT ORANGE WAS SAFE FOR HUMANS

Back in the Vietnam War, we were assured repeatedly that Agent Orange, which destroyed living cells, was perfectly safe for human beings. Decades later, our own soldiers who were exposed to Agent Orange are getting a series of cancers so common that its progression is predictable.

Now Dow and Monsanto want to bring onto our tables corn and soy that have been genetically modified to withstand huge doses of a chemical nearly identical to Agent Orange. They claim it is perfectly safe! Not only is this devastating in terms of the food we ingest (nearly all processed foods have corn or soy in some form or another), but it is also a horrendous thing to unleash on our planet.

Here is a petition to try to get people in power to stop this horrendous assault. Please sign.
http://dow-watch.org/