How cruel are you?

Could you do it? Kill 100 seals and return home, proud of your work?

How proud will your children be. “Gee, dad got the most!”

• stopthesealhunt.com

This seal clubbing just seems so cruel, so inhumane.

The Meatrix

Some of you know I’ve been a (wannabe*) vegetarian for some time now. This has a lot to do with two previous posts: Answers: No Logo and Vote with your euros.

I just stumbled upon this very cool animation about animal welfare, antibiotic resistant bacteria, pollution and destroyed communities.

*) A term a real vegetarian used for my eating behaviour. What would you call the behaviour of eating a vegetarian diet 96.5% of the time?

Vote with your euros

The message I would like to pass is that you have power. Every day, you vote with your euros for our future.

Every time
you buy the cheapest eggs, you vote for chickens to be caged
you buy Eco eggs, you vote for chickens to have some space outside

Every time
you buy at one large superstore, you vote for this single store
you buy at several unique, local stores, you vote for diversity

Every time
you buy the cheapest meat, you vote for factory farming
you buy biological meat, you vote for organic farming

Isn’t that democratic? You can vote every day.

Do not expect politics to change the world in one way, if you vote differently with your money.

Answers: No Logo

Recently I’ve been reading a very interesting book titled ‘No Logo’ by Naomi Klein. The books tells the story of how we shifted from buying ‘products’ to buying ‘brands’ at the end of the 20th century.

No Logo is about the negative side effect of this trend: brands claiming more and more public space.

See also nologo.org (Too bad the site is not very accessible)

No Logo really made me understand my discomfort with multinationals. No Logo strengtens me in my habit of buying daily products at local, small shops.

The nice, small retail shops will disappear, if we continue to strive for cheap when buying our daily products. Bakeries, vegetable shops, shops with regional products, unique cafés, handmade furniture will be replaced by brands. Brands like IKEA, AH, McDonalds, Blokker, Trekpleister, Hema, V&D, H&M, Free Record Shop, etcetera.
Maybe I should say have been replaced. Whether you walk through the city centre of Amsterdam, The Hague or Groningen. You will find the same shops.

Maybe that’s not a bad thing. I, for sure, do not like it.

It is not only that cities have lost some of their diversity, what bothers me. It’s also that cheaper products come at a price:

• The craftsmen and individuals who once were the faces of these shops have been replaced by cheaper personnel. More people are at home, unemployed. We all pay for that.
• The origin of the product became less transparant. We all know the concept of sweat shops. How can you know if the clothes you wear are child-labour free? How do you know if the woman who stitched your t-shirt received a fair salary? Do you even care?

Maybe in the past, we never knew for sure if the tailor got a fair price.
We do know now that our clothes come from far, that the price we pay is lower, that a large part of the price goes to marketing and that the company shareholders demand profit.
How much money is left to pay the people who actually produce?