Want to help the environment and yourself at the same time? Eat less meat.

People should have one meat-free day a week if they want to make a personal and effective sacrifice that would help tackle climate change, the world’s leading authority on global warming has told The Observer.

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which last year earned a joint share of the Nobel Peace Prize, said that people should then go on to reduce their meat consumption even further.

And if you live in the US you should be more wary of American meat than ever considering how the US meat processors are driven by profit rather than placing human health at the highest priority. When mad cow disease was first discovered in US beef you’d think the US government would require all beef producers to test for mad cow disease. Instead, according to Creekstone Farms, a Kansas beef producer, the USDA won’t let Creekstone test all their cows.

When a vertebral column was detected in a veal shipment to Japan, Japan reinstated their ban on US beef imports. Sadly, Japan has suspended that ban and allowed American meat back in. Michiko Kamiyama from Food Safety Citizen Watch said about this: “The government has put priority on the political schedule between the two countries, not on food safety or human health.”.

When profit drives one’s work, you can look forward to more unsafe choices aimed at keeping the money flowing toward a business. It’s a matter of priorities. So isn’t your priority to enrich business even at risk to your health? Apparently that’s their view of you.

Democracy Now! Host Amy Goodman was arrested while questioning police about the unlawful detention of Producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, who were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention.

The American public is said to have a taste for mild rebukes like “Goodnight Bush” but there’s no strong outcry for principled action which require holding people’s feet to the fire: real investigation, trial, and punishment beginning with impeachment. There is little organized challenge aimed at elected leaders on issues you’d think would merit at least voting reconsideration and pointed questions. Where’s the outrage?

Obama is quite a hawk, voting for war funding and now Obama supports telecom immunity for what used to be considered illegal domestic spying. An Obama presidency means more war is on the horizon: The Chicago Tribune quoted him on his hawkishness toward Iran. Despite this he’s still getting campaign funding from ordinary people.

There’s no clear indication that Bush, Cheney, and the rest will suffer any sort of investigation, trial, and punishment for warrantless spying, lying to the public about the justification for the War on Terror (Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran is next), or any of the other things people hate them for. Obama never favored impeachment because it would be a dysfunctional distraction (“I think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breeches, and intentional breeches of the president’s authority,” [and,] “I believe if we began impeachment proceedings we will be engulfed in more of the politics that has made Washington dysfunction,” he added. “We would once again, rather than attending to the people’s business, be engaged in a tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, nonstop circus.”) and the US public isn’t holding him to account for that telling him that accountability and the rule of law are in no way a dysfunction. Obama and McCain are running neck-and-neck in a corporate-managed election that is designed to leave out third parties and independents with varying dissident views.

The so-called anti-war movement in the US is dead. Its continued inaction builds on a pattern of shutting down to make way for the latest pro-war Democrat: not a peep during Sen. Kerry’s run, no serious criticism for Rep. Pelosi (“impeachment is off the table“), and now not a peep during Sen. Obama’s campaign.

The nation is sowing unaccountability. Nothing good will come from that.

Cindy Sheehan writes clearly and without reservation—if you truly oppose war, you don’t vote for more war. The Democrats have a strong history of starting war, and there’s no reason to vote for them when they’re willing to help enable the Republicans continue occupation and kill. Sheehan is also continuing to stand by her promise not to support pro-war politicians.

First of all, we allow “anti-war” groups like MoveOn.org to set the dialogue and discourse. MoveOn.org is not so much “anti-war” as they are “pro-Democrat.” Tactics that MoveOn.org found outrageous under the Republican Congress, they find “frustrating” but understandable under Democratic leadership.

The “anti-war” issue is non-partisan in its scope by the very name “anti-war.” The Democrats are responsible for every war in the last 108 years, excluding the two Bush wars and the Reagan Grenada farce. Democrats are responsible for dropping, not one, but two atomic bombs on the innocent citizens of Japan. Democrats deserve no slack, and should be given none.

Secondly, during elections the “anti-war” movement loses its focus and works for candidates that promise peace or change, but previous actions, votes, or rhetoric do not match the campaign rhetoric. From Obliteration to Redeployment to Hundred Years, none of the duopoly candidates are promising anything different than BushCo.

After almost eight years of two-party collaboration that has undermined freedom, democracy, peace and prosperity, one would think that the US electorate would have developed some kind of sophistication regarding the throttlehold of sameness that the Republicrats or Demopublicans offer.

And then she names two clearly anti-war candidates:

We have a clear choice instead of the “lesser of two evils” politics. There are at least two candidates for President that present a clear alternative to violence and corporate oppression: Cynthia McKinney (Green Party and Power to the People Party) and Ralph Nader (Ind.).

Do you want someone who is a smidgeon less evil at the helm of our country, or do you want someone who is committed to true peace and true mastery over the corporations and true environmental integrity?

In 2004 we were told that we were seeing the most important election—the Democrat-supporting (pro-war, even if they didn’t want to admit it) Left wanted George W. Bush out of office and thought that it was wise and proper to join a candidate who merely offered better war management. No major anti-war protests were held in which one could present any organized opportunity to challenge Democratic Sen. John Kerry on the issues of continued war, no single-payer universal health care, and increasing separation between the richest and the poorest.

In 2008 there are more dead from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, more poverty, more displacement, more homelessness, and more uninsured and under-insured (with no real universal single-payer health care in sight). Yet where’s the outrage, the cries of how critical the 2008 election is? By these standards, we ought to understand what folly it is to call any US Presidential election the most important because as things get worse every election is more important than the last.

One would hope more people could come to connect policy and politics in the way Sheehan has without suffering Sheehan’s loss. One would hope that things don’t have to get worse before the folks who call themselves “progressive” dare to support politicians who agree with their take on the issues of the day.