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Bush Brother Joins Ted Cruz’s Finance Team

by YolandaFoust Posted on March 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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While the political world speculates on whether Jeb Bush will endorse his onetime protege Marco Rubio ahead of the Florida primary, another Bush brother has thrown his support to Rubio’s rival, Ted Cruz. According to the Cruz campaign, Neil Bush, Jeb and George W.’s younger brother, has signed on as member of its national finance team.

Neil has a colorful business background, dating back to his role in the spectacular collapse of the Silverado Savings and Loan in 1988. Bush, who served on the bank’s board of directors, was singled out by regulators for engaging “in unsafe and unsound practices involving multiple conflicts of interest,” according to an administrative law judge (who nonetheless recommended mild disciplinary action against the Bush brother). Neil, who denied any wrongdoing, allegedly failed to mention to other board members that two of the bank’s biggest borrowers were also his business associates. Bush’s partners ultimately defaulted on more than $100 million in loans, helping to sink the bank, whose implosion cost taxpayers more than $1.3 billion. Bush and the other directors of the bank were later personally sued for “gross negligence” by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; he settled his portion of the case for $50,000.

Here’s a quick summary of Bush’s alleged involvement:

At the center of the allegations against Bush were his relationships with two Colorado developers, Bill L. Walters and Kenneth M. Good. The two developers ultimately defaulted on more than $100 million in loans from Silverado, which helped bring about its collapse, according to regulators.

The regulators charged that Neil Bush failed to disclose adequately to his fellow directors that he had extensive business dealings with the developers at a time that they were receiving loans from Silverado.

According to the charges, Neil Bush violated his duties by voting to approve loans to Walters without disclosing the extent of his business deals with Walters and he personally arranged for Walters to receive a $900,000 line of credit from Silverado.

The regulators also accused Bush of failing to tell his fellow directors that Good was preparing to invest $3 million in Bush’s oil drilling firm at a time Good told Silverado he was broke and could not make his loan payments. Good also loaned Bush $100,000 that was never repaid.

While Cruz has won Neil Bush’s backing, his brother George, whose 2000 campaign Cruz worked for, doesn’t seem likely to throw his support to the Texas senator. “I just don’t like that guy,” he told donors last year.

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Bush Brother Joins Ted Cruz’s Finance Team

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Watching coal plants crumble to a Tchaikovsky score is insanely satisfying

by MohammaBraddon Posted on February 24, 2016

Watching coal plants crumble to a Tchaikovsky score is insanely satisfying

By Melissa Croninon 23 Feb 2016comments Share

Hearing the news that a coal plant, a facility that once belched CO2, mercury, sulphur, nitrogen oxides, and other hazardous chemicals into the air, is shutting down is certainly a cause to celebrate. Seeing it explode in glorious high definition and set to lively classical music is another thing altogether.

Duke Energy, the largest electric power holding company in the U.S., released a video this week showing the death of four of its old coal power plants, giving environmentalists an awesome soundtrack to the death of the coal industry.

The video shows the demolition of Weatherspoon, H.F. Lee, Cape Fear, and Cliffside, all facilities in North Carolina. The demolitions, set to a rousing rendition of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, are nothing short of transfixing.

A spokesperson for Duke Energy told Grist that the plants were mainly operated from the 1930s to the ’60s, and were destroyed as a way to celebrate “modernizing the way we generate power for the past decade.” But as the company transitioned away from coal, it looked to natural gas as its main money-maker and maintained its spot atop the country’s worst carbon emitters in 2015.

Thanks in large part to cheap natural gas, many of America’s coal plants have been reduced to rubble — or are about to be. As of last November, over 200 coal-fired stations had been retired or were scheduled for retirement. According to an analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance last year, about 17 percent of U.S. coal-fired power generation is expected to disappear over the next few years. It’s been said that the coal industry is “in terminal decline,” and there’s no better way to visualize that than the crumbling of an enormous, dirty power plant.

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Watching coal plants crumble to a Tchaikovsky score is insanely satisfying

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The American State of Teenage Sex, in 3 Charts

by ValentiBernstei Posted on February 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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Back in 2002, the government funded a study that showed there was no evidence that abstinence programs increased a kid’s likelihood of abstaining from sex. In fact, no studies have found evidence that teaching abstinence works to prevent teenage pregnancies. And yet this year, the federal government will fund abstinence-only education to the tune of $85 million.

Last week, for the third year in a row, President Barack Obama’s budget proposal included cuts to some $10 million of that abstinence-only education funding. Obama has consistently taken an anti-abstinence-education stance over the course of his political career. Back on the campaign trail in 2008, he said he believes contraception should be part of sex education curricula. He wasn’t alone: In 2010, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) took a poll and found that 88 percent of parents of junior high school students and 85 percent of parents of high school students believe information about how to use and where to get contraceptives is an appropriate topic for sexuality education. Even Obama’s first budget as president aimed to make similar cuts to abstinence education funding. GOP members of Congress fought it, and the attempt ultimately failed. The same happened in 2010 and is pretty likely to happen this time, too.

All this means that over the past two decades, more than $1.8 billion in federal dollars have been funneled into abstinence-only education.

The Obama administration has had some victories. In 2010 and 2011, Obama and Congress agreed to eliminate two-thirds of funding for previously existing abstinence programs, and then allocated almost $190 million in new funding to initiatives aimed at preventing unintended teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Meanwhile, as the various wings of the government have been fighting over what dollars go where, teen pregnancy rates have plummeted to record lows over the past three years. What’s more, rates fell 51 percent between 1990 and 2010. The reasons for the decline are complicated and hard to pinpoint; some studies give credit to better contraception and more precise use of it.

But when it comes to American teens and sex, we still have a lot of problems to fix: According to a report by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 41 percent of 18- and 19-year-olds admit to knowing little or nothing about condoms. And more young people than ever—aged 15 to 24—are getting sexually transmitted diseases. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 65 percent of chlamydia cases in 2014 were in 15- to 24-years-olds, as were 53 percent of gonorrhea cases. We don’t know which kids sat through abstinence classes, but this is the age group that received the most federal funding for abstinence education. (Although perhaps it’s fair to note that abstinence groups would attribute the increase in STDs to the rise of hookup culture and media representations of sex.)

From 2000 to 2014, the number of schools that required kids to learn about STD prevention dropped by 10 percent. To combat the rising rates of STDs and the lack of education, different states are taking different approaches. A Utah lawmaker is trying to persuade his colleagues to pass a law that allows kids to learn comprehensive sex education in schools—a tall order, considering the moral code of the state. To the west, California passed a law last year that requires comprehensive sex education in schools for 2016. San Francisco schools are considering making condoms available to students as early as sixth grade. They would not be the first California schools to do so; Oakland Unified schools implemented a similar policy in 2014. On the opposite end of the spectrum, last year Texas took $3 million from its state budget for HIV and STD prevention and reallocated it to abstinence education.

For a quick look at where the United States stands on abstinence education and teen sex, here are three charts from an upcoming Mother Jones feature story on abstinence education:

From:

The American State of Teenage Sex, in 3 Charts

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Big Donors Have Fled Jeb Bush’s Super-PAC

by XavierFrewin634 Posted on February 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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This summer, Jeb Bush’s warchest seemed unbeatable. In July, the pro-Bush super-PAC, Right to Rise, announced a record haul of $103 million. Bush insiders said at the time that this staggering total was meant to “shock and awe” the former Florida governor’s competitors and pressure uncommitted donors to either climb on the bandwagon or stay the hell out of the way. Now it’s Right to Rise’s fundraisers who must be feeling shocked and awed: According to just-released disclosures, they managed to raise just $15.1 million during the second half of the year, as Bush fell from presumptive favorite to Donald Trump’s favorite punching bag.

In July, when the super-PAC’s first-half numbers were released, we counted at least 23 donors who gave $1 million or more to Right to Rise. This time, there was just one donor who gave more than $500,000—former AIG chairman and CEO, Hank Greenberg, who donated a whopping $10 million. And where during the first half of the year Right to Rise had 9,400 donors, it reported just 155 contributors in its latest disclosure.

Last spring, the super-PAC was so worried about appearing elitist and hurting Bush’s “man-of-the-people” image that it instructed donors to hold off on making any donations larger than $1 million. According to its latest filing, the super-PAC still has $54 million in cash (after having blown more than $58 million), but still, Right to Rise officials must be regretting that decision now.

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Big Donors Have Fled Jeb Bush’s Super-PAC

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The Best Food Trends of 2015

by TabathaBandy Posted on December 29, 2015

Whereas 2014 brought us the ramen burger and a full fledged quinoa craze, 2015 brought a whole new set of tasty trends. Let’s run through a few of our faves, shall well?

Overall Trends

The death of dairy. With more non-dairy options entering the market at a fast clip, dairy consumption was down in 2015. Through the first seven months of the year,U.S.dairyexports shrunk 11 percent.So what is moving in instead? A larger variety of dairy-free options.Ben & Jerry’s announced their first non-dairy line, and larger coffee houses continued to move past soy milk, with additions of coconut, almond and hemp options.

Plant-foods. In 2015, vegetable-based cuisine continued its steady march toward the new normal. More high-end restaurants began adding creative vegetarian options to their menus (sayonara, simple side salad) and the National Restaurant Association noted an overall 5 percent increase in vegan and vegetarian dining options. However, the increase in plant fare doesn’t necessarily exclude meat. Omnivorous spots are also kicking up their use of local, fresh produce, pairing them with meaty accents. This brings us to…

Local. The focus on going local only increased in 2015, with more emphasis on environmental sustainability and hyper-local sourcing, the National Restaurant Association reported. Farm-to-table restaurants, neighborhood co-ops and CSA shares continued to rise in popularity as more consumers wise up to sustainable farming methods.

Less processed foods. More and more consumers are choosing to skip processed foods, with whole foods skyrocketing in 2015, according to the National Restaurant Association. Some tops favorites: sweet potatoes, avocado and leafy greens.

Specific eats

Cold brew coffee. Cold brew coffeecoffee and espresso prepped with cold water instead of the traditional hot varietysaw an uptickin 2015. Starbucks launched a cold brew line and FourSquare recorded over 200 independent shops serving the chilly beverage.

Fancy ice cream sandwiches. Ice cream between brownies, cookies, waffles oh my! Although dairy was down this year, the ice cream sandwich had a bit of an uprising, with revamped versions of the childhood favorite gracing menus across the country. The trend could possibly be traced back to LA’s trendy Coolhaus, which features ice cream stuffed between a load of strange architecturally inspired options, including fruit pebble cookies.

Avocado toast. According to Eater, 2015 was the year of the Avocado Toast. On Foursquare, mentions of “avocado toast” increased 270 percent from 2014, and overall internet searches for the nibble spiked greatly.

So what will we see in 2016? Experts and top chefs alike are expecting an uptick in seaweed consumption, African-inspired flavors and pulses, aka legumes. Bring on the lentils!

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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The Best Food Trends of 2015

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This Crazy Belgian Law Allowed One of the Paris Terrorists to Escape

by AlfieEoy45 Posted on December 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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A case of deadly international terrorism wasn’t enough to convince Belgian police to make an exception to an unusual law that appears to have prevented them from arresting one of the suspects in the Paris attacks. Two days after the ISIS attacks that killed 130, Belgian police received information that suspected attacker Salah Abdeslam was inside a home in the Molenbeek district of Brussels. But they did not raid the house because of a legal ban on conducting police raids between 9pm and 5am.

Law enforcement officers waited until the morning to conduct the raid, but by then, Abdeslam had managed to evade capture by being smuggled out of the house inside a wardrobe, according to reports. Sources close to the investigation told local news outlets that the police found evidence that Abdeslam was in the house on the night in question. “We had reason to believe Salah Abdeslam had been in that house, so we carried out a search on November 16 at 5 a.m., but he was not there,” a police spokesman said.

The law dates back to 1969, and was intended to protect Belgians’ civil rights. According to El Mundo, it cannot be circumvented except in cases of “flagrant crimes or fire.” Apparently, the coordinated attacks in Paris didn’t make the cut for such a designation. Abdeslam is still at large.

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This Crazy Belgian Law Allowed One of the Paris Terrorists to Escape

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Ohio Attorney General Accuses Planned Parenthood of Illegally Dumping Fetal Remains

by BlancaChau Posted on December 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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Ohio officials on Friday accused Planned Parenthood affiliates in the state of disposing of fetal tissue in violation of state law, saying that the health care organization sent the remains to companies that dumped the tissue in landfills.

The accusation was the result of the Ohio attorney general’s investigation into Planned Parenthood over the organization’s donation of fetal tissue from abortions. Attorney General Mike DeWine said in a statement on Friday that his office concluded its investigation of Planned Parenthood and found that the organization had not illegally sold fetal tissue.

But DeWine said his office did find that Planned Parenthood had violated an Ohio regulation requiring that a “fetus shall be disposed of in a humane manner.” According to the attorney general’s investigation, the health care organization sends fetal remains to disposal companies, which then dump the tissue in landfills.

Stephanie Kight, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, has denied all wrongdoing and says her organization handles fetal tissue legally and in the same manner as other health care providers. Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio is one of the state affiliates mentioned by DeWine.

“We take our responsibility as a health care provider seriously, and if we ever thought that one of our vendors wasn’t handling fetal tissue properly, we would take swift action,” Kight told reporters on Friday.

DeWine’s new accusations are the result of his failed investigation into the sale of fetal tissue, she added. “He has dug up another set of accusations that are equally false.”

Ohio is one of a handful of states that launched investigations into Planned Parenthood following the series of widely debunked sting videos purporting to show the organization’s staff discussing fetal tissue donation. None of the investigations have found evidence that Planned Parenthood illegally sold fetal tissue.

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Ohio Attorney General Accuses Planned Parenthood of Illegally Dumping Fetal Remains

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The New, Ugly Surge in Violence and Threats Against Abortion Providers

by TrentLangston11 Posted on November 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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Firefighters battle a blaze at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Washington September 4, 2015. KREM.com/AP Photo

Three people were shot dead and nine others were injured Friday at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic, the first time since 2009 that anyone has been killed in an incident linked to activity at an abortion clinic. The attack comes amid an exponential increase in threats and violence against abortion providers since the release of a series of viral—and widely debunked—videos.

While police have not discussed the alleged motives of the suspect, who has been arrested, the attack began at the clinic. According to authorities, the gunman entered the facility Friday afternoon and began shooting. During an hours-long standoff, he exchanged fire with police, killing one officer.

Since the release of the Center for Medical Progress’ videos that purport to show Planned Parenthood selling fetal issue, harassment, threats, and attacks against abortion providers, their staff, and facilities have surged dramatically across the country, according to new numbers from the National Abortion Federation.

The clinic attacked on Friday is part of the Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains affiliate, which was featured in the Center for Medical Progress’ videos.

“Since the series of highly edited, misleading anti-abortion videos was released in July, we have seen an unprecedented increase in hate speech and threats against abortion providers,” says Vicki Saporta, the president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation, which has been tracking violence against providers since the 1970s.

“We have been quite worried that this increase in threats would lead to a violent attack like we saw” on Friday, she added.

The Federation is suing Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress for allegedly setting up a sham biomedical organization and misrepresenting their identities in order to gain access to and record a federation meeting.

Abortion providers have grappled with harassment and threats for years, but the tide of vitriol began rising dramatically in July, after the first video was released. Soon after that, an anonymous reader posted a message on Fox Nation’s website.

“I’ll pay ten large to whomever kills Dr. Deborah Nucatola. She should be summarily executed. I’ll do it myself if no one else does.” A month later, another physician, Dr. Savita Ginde, came home to find 50 people protesting outside her door. They left fliers around her neighborhood that said, “Savita Ginde Murders Children.”

Nucatola and Ginde both work for Planned Parenthood and were featured in videos surreptitiously recorded by the Center for Medical Progress. They are among a handful of abortion providers who have been catapulted into the public eye by the group and its public face, David Daleiden. But harassment has not been limited to the providers spotlighted in the series—the first video of which has received more than 3 million views on YouTube.

Clinics targeted

Violence against reproductive health clinics dates back to at least Roe v. Wade, when anti-abortion animus swelled in reaction to the 1973 landmark Supreme Court case. In 1982, an Illinois-based provider and his wife were kidnapped, and three clinics in Florida and Virginia were bombed in the same year. In 1984 there were more than 25 cases of bombings and arson attacks across the country.

Coordinated attacks reached a fever pitch in the early 1990s. Anti-abortion activists, led by Operation Rescue—a group whose president, Troy Newman, is also currently the secretary of the Center for Medical Progress—created large-scale human blockades in major cities across the United States. These protests prevented anyone from leaving or entering clinics, which led to hundreds of arrests by law enforcement.

Meanwhile, the number of violent incidents also increased, and in 1993 Dr. David Gunn was shot and killed in the parking lot of a clinic he worked at in Pensacola, Florida. Gunn had been the subject of wanted-style posters distributed by Operation Rescue. In 1994, an abortion doctor, a clinic escort, and two receptionists were killed in two separate incidents.

Congress enacted the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act in 1994, making it a federal crime to injure, intimidate, or interfere with abortion providers or those seeking their care. But in January 1998, an abortion clinic security guard was killed during a bombing at his workplace. And in October, abortion doctor Barnett Slepian was murdered in his home.

Two weeks after Dr. Slepian’s death, Attorney General Janet Reno created the Task Force on Violence Against Health Care Providers, led by the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and staffed by investigators from the FBI and other federal agencies. Violence plummeted in the years following the clinic access law and the creation of the task force. According to the FBI, in 2012 violations of the clinic access act made up only 2 percent of the bureau’s civil rights cases.

A new surge

But harassment, threats of violence, and attacks against clinics have gone up again following the release of the Center for Medical Progress’ videos in July, according to recent National Abortion Federation court filings. That month, incidents of harassment against Planned Parenthood facilities increased ninefold compared with June, and those numbers continued to rise through August.

In the four months following the release of the videos, there have been at least four suspected arsons that targeted abortion clinics, compared with just one in all of 2014 and none in 2013. There have been at least five cases of vandalism since August. In comparison, there were 12 total cases of clinic vandalism in all of 2014 and just five cases in 2013, according to federation figures.

In one of the recent vandalism cases, a young man entered a Planned Parenthood in New Hampshire and destroyed medical equipment, phones, and computers. This month, an unidentified person smashed the windows of Kentucky’s only full-time abortion provider, twice in three weeks.

Anne, the executive director of the clinic, who declined to give her last name for security reasons, told Insider Louisville that in its 20 years of operation, the clinic had never before been vandalized.

The deaths of three people at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood on Friday were the first slayings linked to an abortion clinic in six years. The last was in 2009, when the abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was murdered at his church in Wichita, Kansas. Scott Roeder, who was found guilty of Tiller’s murder, said he shot the doctor because “preborn children’s lives were in imminent danger.”

The FBI has also reported an increase in the number of attacks on reproductive health care facilities across the country since the videos were released in July. A spokesperson from the FBI was not immediately available for comment.

“It’s a concerning time,” says duVergne Gaines, director of the National Clinic Access Project.

The project, which is a program of the Feminist Majority Foundation, has trained clinic escorts and helped clinics increase security with surveillance cameras, alarm systems, bulletproof glass, and vests. When Gaines spoke with Mother Jones earlier this month, she said “the trifecta of efforts excoriating, and inspiring individuals to go out and target providers by demonizing them” leaves providers vulnerable, and that they were lucky no one had yet been hurt.

“But we fear that may be around the corner,” Gaines said at the time.

The violence is intended to silence providers and drive them away from their jobs, but officials from the National Abortion Federation and the National Clinic Access Project say women should feel safe going to clinics. Law enforcement agencies are aware of the issue, they added.

Indeed, the number of abortion providers decreased 38 percent between 1982 and 2000 and continues to decline today. According to research from an anti-abortion group, the number of surgical abortion clinics dropped to 582 in 2013, down from more than 2,000 clinics in the early 1990s. And in the last two years, surgical abortion clinics have been closing at a rate of 1.5 clinics every week.

And though it’s hard to pinpoint every cause for the decline, “stigma and fear of violence…are powerful barriers to abortion provision,” according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

For some abortion doctors, violence only deepens their resolve to provide abortion care. LeRoy Carhart quit doing surgery and opened his abortion practice in 1991 after a massive fire on his family’s 65-acre Nebraska farm. The day after the fire, Carhart said he received a letter that said the abortions made his property a target for the fire. No one was ever convicted.

The physician now operates a clinic in Nebraska and travels to Maryland each week to perform abortions. For security reasons, he says he avoids staying in the same hotel twice and tries to take different routes to work.

“After the fire, it totally changed everything. That’s when we decided to just do abortions full time,” Carhart said, “It was my way of getting back.”

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The New, Ugly Surge in Violence and Threats Against Abortion Providers

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Israeli military offers a death-free experience — for soldiers’ diets, at least

by RoderickTinline Posted on November 17, 2015

Israeli military offers a death-free experience — for soldiers’ diets, at least

By Suzanne Jacobson 17 Nov 2015comments Share

It sounds like the plot of a Portlandia sketch: Vegans have invaded the military and are demanding soy-based meat, leather-free combat boots, and wool-free berets. The scenario is just begging for a three-minute clip of Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen earnestly telling their superior officers why the army would benefit from a violence-free existence. But it turns out, vegans are invading the military — just not ours.

According to The Atlantic, the Israeli army is, indeed, offering vegan-friendly foods and animal-free clothing to its soldiers. The move came after a group of those soldiers protested last year over the lack of vegan options in the mess halls. Unlike the U.S., Israel has a mandatory military service policy, so trends among its citizens are likely to become trends among its soldiers, and turns out, veganism has become quite the trend over there. Here’s more from The Atlantic:

Veganism has surged in Israel in recent years. According to Israeli news sources, nearly 5 percent of Israelis now forgo meat, dairy, and eggs, making the Jewish state the most vegan nation, per capita, in the world. Vegan activists point to a 2012 visit from Gary Yourofsky, an American animal-rights crusader, as a turning point. One Yourofsky YouTube video with Hebrew subtitles racked up 1 million views, a substantial number in a country of 8 million people. Israeli restaurants soon jumped on the bandwagon, with Tel Aviv brasseries and Domino’s franchises alike rolling out special vegan menus.

Vegan or not, nobody should be eating Domino’s, but it’s still great that a major pizza-peddling chain is willing to offer animal-free products. It’s even more impressive that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has his entire staff observe meatless Mondays:

Support for reduced-cruelty meal plans appears to go all the way to the top. The Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed support for Israel’s “Meatless Monday” movement, adopting a vegetarian day for his staff, security guards, and family at his residence in Jerusalem each week. According to Haaretz, Netanyahu has been reading up on the topic. “[I] understood that animals are more conscious than we thought, which is bothering me and making me think twice,” he said at a cabinet meeting.

If a similar trend infiltrated the U.S. military, it could have a major impact on our country’s eating habits. Earlier this summer, NPR’s The Salt spoke with Anastacia Marx de Salcedo, author of Combat-Ready Kitchen: How The U.S. Military Shapes The Way You Eat, about how much the foods that feed our soldiers influence the foods that the rest of us eat. According to Marx de Salcedo, we have the military to thank for things like the “cheese” in goldfish crackers and Cheetos and the high-pressure cooking technique that brought us preservative-free deli meats. Here’s more from the interview:

I literally realized that everything in my kids’ lunchboxes had military origins or influence — the bread, the sandwich meat, juice pouches, cheesy crackers, goldfish and energy bars. Even if we look at fresh items like grapes and carrots, the Army was involved in developing packaging for fruits and vegetables. In a larger sense, I estimate that 50 percent of items in today’s markets were influenced by the military.

… One thing they’re working on is shelf-stable pizza. What I mean by that is the vision of the future is really a place where we don’t need refrigeration. This pizza could just be left in your pantry for a long time, like as long as you leave [canned goods].

They’re also working on shelf-stable sandwiches, wraps and bagels. In fact, it seems like the military is moving to a system where they want to reduce or eliminate regular hot meals like breakfast, lunch and dinners. Instead, they’d just provide day-long grazing options for soldiers. I think we could definitely see this affect the consumer market in the future.

For a glimpse at the food and atmosphere of early U.S. army mess halls, check out this charming, old-timey video. “The new concept,” the narrator says, “involves preparation of food in a central location, where maximum quality and uniformity can be better ensured.” The design, he says, came out of Natick Labs, an army research complex in Massachusetts that, according to Marx de Salcedo, was responsible for much of today’s army-derived food technology.

Who knows, maybe if our soldiers ate tofu, hummus, and veggie burgers, instead of all that meatloaf, fried chicken, and sausage, we wouldn’t be the complete meatheads that we are today. Regardless, it’s never too late to start feeding our soldiers the healthy, sustainable food that they deserve. It’s also never too late to bring back those cold beer dispensers. What happened to those?

Source:

Big in Israel: Vegan Soldiers

, The Atlantic.

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