By Dan Paden

Most of us — even those of us who eat meat — know that life on a factory farm is no picnic for animals. Chickens are crammed together with thousands of others inside dark sheds that reek of ammonia. Piglets are castrated without being given any painkillers. Terrified calves are torn away from their mothers within hours of birth.

Here’s what you may not know: While for most animals, this life of misery will end with a terrifying death in a slaughterhouse, many will be injured or killed in a traffic accident on their way to slaughter. That’s because the meat industry has a history of hiring drivers with records that read like rap sheets. And until industry officials enact strict safe-driver policies, all of us—humans and animals alike—are at risk.

Just last month, for example, a truck loaded with pigs ran off U.S. 258 in Isle of Wight County, Va. Several pigs were ejected, and 55 were killed. Others were left to suffer in the hours following the crash. PETA discovered that the driver involved in this accident has been charged with at least 15 traffic offenses in North Carolina since 1995, including reckless driving, speeding (five violations) and seeking to evade federal safety regulations.

Also last month, a tractor trailer carrying nearly 1,000 turkeys for a company called Circle S Ranch, Inc., crashed in Henry County, Va., killing hundreds of the birds. And again, PETA found that the driver had an abysmal driving record, including a conviction for driving while impaired and driving while his license was revoked. His past charges also include felony manufacture of a controlled substance.

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By Rosalie Tirella

Three cheers! Massachusetts may create a new rule for folks on food stamps – the SNAP program, as it’s called today. Soon poorer folks who have a SNAP card to pay for their groceries may not be able to spend their federal/state benefit on soda. You know Mountain Dew, Pepsi, Coke, etc. I say HOORAY to this development!

The SNAP program is a government program that is all about keeping poorer families, struggling families, healthy and strong. Why should tax payer money be used to subsidize soneone’s stupidity? Or ignorance? Or thoughtless parenting? People need to be more mindful of what they are putting into their bodies and do the best they can with the resources they have.

My Polish and Italian immigrant grandparents were poor, but their families ate so well! Gardens supplied fresh veggies. Everything was made from scratch. My mom used to love to tell me stories about how she and her dad, my Grandpa, used to leave their Green Island tenement to go mushroom and berry picking in the wilds of Worcester. My grandpa even kept rabbits on the back porch which he butchered for my granny to make into stew. That is until the Worcester Board of Health shut his little operation down! My relatives were people of the earth, in the Old Country. They knew good food when they saw it. They knew how to grow it, nurture it, prepare it, even, sadly, slaughter it.

If you are a parent or guardian and you want to feed your family food that will keep them alert, capable, etc, you buy milk, low sugar cranberry or orange juice, V-8 (low salt), even. But for Christ’s sake you don’t feed them Dr. Pepper!

We won’t go into the fact that 90% of the stuff you buy at the grocery store is already pumped up with enough sugar for millions of sugar rushes. Why make things worse with a can of soda?

We can hope to educate families on SNAP, but that’s a process we may not have time for, seeing every other person in America seems obese/pre-diabetic/diabetic and/or suffering from the sclorosis of some vital organ. Depressing.

I have seen four year olds with cavities galore because their parents put soda or sweet juice in their milk bottles. By sucking on that thing, all day, the little ones’ teeth were exposed to sugar, the #1 cause of tooth decay, FOR HOURS ON END. My heart broke when a friend, who fed her little son juice in his baby bottle, told me her little sweetie had to go to the dentist to have many of his baby teeth filled with silver. Cavities that were causing pain for her little cutie.

Kids need fresh fruits and veggies and whole grains and eggs and other kinds of protein to grow. Grow their brains, as well as their bodies.

Poor people are born behind the eight ball. By making it easier for them to buy more good food, and less bad food, ie soda pop, the state of MA is improving lives, using public money for the public good.

When we were young we adored Sean Connery as 007. Today, more Betty Friedan (no! make that Gloria Steinem!) than Octopussy, we love to watch Connery in MARNIE, a great Hitchcock flick, and THE UNTOUCHABLES, another very good movie, with an excellent performance by Connery. We do, however, adore these dustjackets, specially created over the years for Ian Fleming’s first James Bond book, CASINO ROYALE.  Big guns aside, we love this swinging sixties cover! To see more art, click here! - R. Tirella

Many courts have ruled peaceful panhandling is protected under the First Amendment, and selective enforcement has targeted the poor and homeless.

WORCESTER — The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit today in federal court in Worcester on behalf of three Worcester residents to block two anti-panhandling laws enacted by the City of Worcester, claiming the laws are unconstitutional and violate the right to peacefully solicit donations in public and to engage the public in political and other speech.

“The laws are intended to prevent so-called ‘aggressive’ begging, but in fact prohibit a great deal of peaceful conduct which is protected expression,” said Kevin Martin, a volunteer attorney from the law firm Goodwin Procter LLP, which is handling the case for the ACLU of Massachusetts.

One of the new anti-begging laws prevents people from doing such things as holding a sign asking for help starting a half-hour before sunset, or performing music while having a hat or cup for donations, or soliciting donations for any cause if they are within 20 feet of the entrance to a bus stop, theater, ATM machine, or any other “place of public assembly.”

“Numerous courts throughout the country have ruled that peaceful panhandling is protected expression under the First Amendment,” said Martin. “Whatever legitimate concerns exist concerning truly criminal conduct by a few individuals can be addressed using existing laws.”

The second law prohibits standing on traffic islands, a location favored for years by people soliciting donations and engaging in protected speech, including many Worcester-area politicians and their supporters, various churches, the Salvation Army, and firefighter organizations raising funds for charity.
The lawsuit contends that this law too is not justified by any safety concerns significant enough to override the constitutional protection for expression.

In addition to raising First Amendment claims, the lawsuit says that the City is violating the right to equal protection of the laws, by enforcing the two laws only against the homeless and other poor people who seek help for themselves.

“When these laws were being considered, the City Solicitor suggested police would ignore violations by politicians and focus enforcement on those begging,” said Chris Robarge, a Worcester-based organizer with the ACLU of Massachusetts. “And since the laws were enacted, the police have ignored traffic median protesters who were acting in violation of the law, yet they have arrested homeless people who did the same thing.”

For more information about the ACLU of Massachusetts, go to:

http://www.aclum.org

For a copy of the lawsuit, go to:

https://www.aclum.org/sites/all/files/legal/worcester_antipanhandling/aclu_worcester_complaint.pdf

WUMB 91.9 FM

Been listening to it since yesterday, while driving around town. Fabulous! Heard Lucinda Williams today, singing one of my favorite songs from her wonderful album,  ”Car Wheels on a Gravel Road”! How cool it that? The station, run out of the University of Massachusetts /Boston campus, seems to favor rootsy rock, blues, folk with some bite (yesterday they dedicated a show to Robert Johnson!!!). DJs very knowledgeable! Check them out! Here is Lucinda singing one of my favorite songs off Car Wheels! Buy it today! – R. Tirella

… Bill Randell could use this letter! … Billy, or anyone in town, PLEASE feel free to print out and USE! Mail this letter out to Claude Dorman (Wonderland blogger) 38 Sever St., Worcester, MA 01609. If Dorman has enough folks taking him to court, mailing out lets to the DA, he may have to continue to hire his lawyer – some guy from Spencer that Paul Collyer says looks like a mob guy – to defend him. Let’s make Dorman, a notorious cheap-skate, spend $$$. – “Rose”

Here is the letter:

District Attorney Joseph. E. Early
225 Main Street
Worcester, MA 01608

Police Chief Gary Gemme
9-11 Lincoln Square
Worcester, MA 01608

Dear Sirs:

Recently a Worcester man used, without my permission, my business email address to send out emails in my name to a number of Worcester city officials. I believe that the individual who did this was Claude Dorman of 38 Sever St., Worcester, MA.

This is not the first time Mr. Dorman has used my business email to send out negative email about me. I have consulted with an attorney and have been advised that Mr. Dorman has violated Mass. Gen. L. c. 266 Section 37E regarding identity fraud. This statute defines “pose” in the context of identity crime as “to falsely represent oneself, either directly or indirectly, as another person or persons.”

Mr. Dorman in doing this has caused me both financial and emotional harm. I request that me Dorman be charged with violating Mass. Gen. L. c. 266 Section 37E.

Sincerely yours,

name

CC: Claude Dorman
**************

Claude Dorman, outside the Worcester Courthouse this past March. It was Dorman vs. Paulie Collyer.

By Jeff Mackey

If you’re like most people, you’ll no doubt treat your mom to brunch or dinner on Mother’s Day. But this year, while you are saluting your own mom, please honor all mothers by celebrating with a meal that doesn’t include meat, eggs or dairy products. Some of the best mothers in the world are found in the animal kingdom, yet few animal moms on today’s farms are ever allowed to nurture their babies as nature intended.

For mother cows and their calves, for example, it’s love at first sight. The first minutes after birth are spent developing a bond that will last a lifetime. Their attachment and affection for each other is so deep that both mother and baby become extremely distressed if they are forced apart. Mother cows bellow in vain and their calves wail inconsolably; they cry out for each other for days. Some mother cows have even been known to escape their enclosures and travel for miles searching for their babies.

Sadly, such pitiful scenes are common on dairy farms. Mother cows are allowed to bond with and care for their calves for only a few hours before the babies are torn away so that we can have the milk that was meant to nourish them. Wide-eyed and terrified, the calves are desperate to suckle but instead are given a bottle of milk “replacer” and a short life in a veal crate (for males) or a life just like that of their sad mothers (for females). Meanwhile, the mother cows will soon be impregnated again, only to endure the same heartbreak nine months later.

If allowed, mother hens would turn their eggs as many as five times an hour and cluck softly to the chicks inside, who chirp back from within their shells. Once hatched, the chicks are shielded from predators by their protective mother’s wings. Click to continue »

Billy Breault left a message on my cell phone … says he has collected enough money to ship the dead terrorist to Russia. Good! Let’s get rid of his body ASAP. If his parents, who live in Russia, have second thoughts and decide not to take him, then the body should be cremated and deposited in the ocean a la Osama bin Laden. That way no extremist of any political strip will make it his or her mission to FIND THE BODY. If the body gets stuck in Worcester, Cambridge, Massachusetts  - or America – the burial site will be a shrine for jihadists the world over. More guns, more bombs, more violence on American soil.

Dispose of this nightmare ASAP.

- R. Tirella

Slots,  dead terrorists and now … the circus! Worcester just keeps getting shit on! I was driving down Southbridge Street today and lo and behold … up on the railroad tracks were all the Barnum and Bailey circus cars. The circus has come to Worcester – again! Scores of box cars, all brightly painted, all containing beautiful wild animals – like ovens on wheels. NO air conditioning in these box cars! No windows even. Lions and tigers etc have been known to cook to death in these death traps.

STOP TORTURING WILD ANIMALS!!!

WHY CAN’T THE WORCESTER CITY COUNCIL GROW THE BALLS NEEDED TO BAN EXOTIC ANIMALS FROM THE CITY?! Not circuses, just wild animals that do not belong in tu tus, costumes, pens, chains, city hall common!

We will be working on protests, articles, etc … LIKE WE HAVE BEEN DOING for more than 10 years.

THIS BREAKS MY HEART!

- R. Tirella

LEARN MORE! From PETA:

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