Consider The Chicks

I READ recently about the 28th annual worldwide observance of World Farm Animals Day, dedicated to exposing and mourning the suffering and death of 58 billion land animals in the world's factory farms and slaughterhouses.

We're certainly much more aware of the devastating impacts of animal agriculture than we were 28 years ago. Several well-publicized studies have linked consumption of animal products with elevated risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and other chronic killer diseases.

A 2007 United Nations report blames meat production for 18 percent of greenhouse gases, and the animal waste "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico was found to be larger than that from the BP oil spill. Undercover investigations show male baby chicks suffocated in plastic garbage bags or ground to death, their female counterparts crammed for life in tiny wire-mesh cages, pigs clobbered by metal pipes and killed by hanging, and assorted farm animals skinned and dismembered at the slaughterhouse while still conscious.

Some of us saw the handwriting on the wall early on and made the shift to a plant-based diet. I hope it won't take another 28 years for the rest of us to get the message.

Steven Alderson,

Santa Rosa

The Green Menace

WE NOW have ecofascists, i.e., environmental communists (coined by Glenn Beck), lurking within the borders of the US of A. You can spot them a mile away; they're cleaning up the beaches, protesting new construction in forested areas or along pristine beaches or tightening the rules of industrial and agricultural pollutants. They have red teary eyes for lack of sleep, laugh and talk to themselves since no one will listen, and stagger when they walk for lack of help to clean up ongoing oil spills.

Kathy Cheer,

Santa Cruz

Dictatorship Due Any Moment

I AM writing that I am horrified that there is a bill going through Congress regarding muscling and censoring our Internet and other forms of media, not to mention access to our email accounts as to protect us from terrorists. This makes us one step away from dictatorship. And if the word doesn't get out that this is happening the mass population may never know the truth or at least have access to it after it passes.

Luna Tattersfield,

Santa Rosa

Don't Forget The Nukes

THE UNITED STATES, led by President Obama, must do all in its power to stop the threat of a nuclear armed Iran. Iran already, without fully developed nuclear capabilities, is a threat to stability in the mid-east, to the viability of Israel, and eventually a threat to the global community.

Sandy Stern,

Mill Valley

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