Factory Farming, Fracking, & 49ers - The point

Welcome to The Point. I’m Michael Shure, and we are joined today by three fantastic guests on the Point. An we have two amazing points and then one little letter from a seven year old that I think you will find to be a special point. I’m grateful to be seated beside tonight Mariana Tosca who I would say is an actress, a writer, a producer, and an advocate. A social advocate. We have Armaiti May. Armaiti, you are a veterinarian and an animal rights activist as well. And Adam Sakellarides. Adam is a graphic designer, and an animator, right, who has made what is, what seems is the number two video according to Time Magazine. According to Time, yeah. According to Time Magazine the number two video last year so congratulations on that. Thank you very much. Our points tonight are really interesting. We have Wayne Pacelle who is the CEO and president of the Humane Society of the United States. We have Lee Camp, a comedian and activist himself. And as I told you before we have a special seven year old who will contribute to our show in his own way tonight. But first we’re going to start with Wayne Pacelle. Wayne Pacelle as CEO and president of the Humane Society of the United States. This is our environmental show so remember, this is all about being green, about being an activist when it comes to the environment and animals, and we’re gonna set it off right now with Wayne Pacelle. Here’s Wayne Pacelle. Hi I’m Wayne Pacelle, President and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States. Thanks for having me on the show. My point today is that if we care about animals, we have to be concerned about the biggest issue of them all, factory farming. You know, we in our society are opposed to animal cruelty. I mean you can’t find but a handful of people who would say this is not a universal value. Malicious, exploitative, abusive activity towards animals is wrong and every state has prohibitions on that broader concept and behavior. The problem is, we’re not living that principle in the real world. You know, we get a pet if we’re a pet loving household every few years, we buy products in the marketplace you know every couple of weeks that may or may not be tested on animals. But every single day, we’re making a choice to be for animal cruelty, or against animal cruelty with our food selection choices. Because the vast majority of animals raised for food in America, and it’s ten billion a year, are raised on industrialized factory farms where the animals have been genetically manipulated for hyper rates of growth, for enormous body mass which leads to chronic pain and suffering. And then many of them are jammed into warehouses, and then within those warehouses they’re confined in small cages and crates, barely larger than their bodies. Now again, if we’re concerned about animal welfare, we must be concerned about our dietary choices because there’s no category of animal use and harm that’s bigger than factory farming. You don’t have to be a vegetarian. You can be an omnivore or a vegetarian and still make sounder choices with respect to animal protection. So that’s my point for the day. And we thank Wayne Pacelle for that point. You know it’s so interesting. We spend our lives, at least I do anyways so I shouldn’t bring you into the royal we with me there, as such a hypocrite you know. I am an omnivore as he said, and I’m heavy on the omni lately. But truthfully, the idea that I really love animals. I own dogs. I’ve had them my whole life. I get them more than every few years, or I’m actually trying to space it out a little more than Wayne. Wayne’s not really taking care of his animals it doesn’t seem if he gets a new pet every few years. But the idea that we spend so much of our time loving animals in this country, in this society, yet we talk about and we are witness to daily cruelty. We’re not witness to it, and that’s where the hypocritical part of me comes in. I’m not witness. I didn’t read the books that everyone was enraged about. The Fast Food Nation books, and all of the books about factory farming, because I sort of turned a blind eye to it. But I wanna start with Armaiti because Armaiti is a veterinarian. I think when you’re talking about animals and you have a veterinarian in the room, that’s where you start. Where does what Wayne Pacelle said about how we have a universal love for animals in this country, and then theres a break with that. Why are we so cruel to them so often? Yea, it’s a question that I ponder frequently, and as a veterinarian in practice, on a daily basis I see people coming in, wanting to take care of their animals, usually dogs and cats. And I see their tremendous love and compassion they have for these animals, and how they struggle financially to meet obligations to meet their pets’ needs. And yet, there’s this cognitive dissonance that exist in people’s minds where they don’t connect where they get the food on their plates. How it gets there. Yea, the cognitive dissonance is a really important thing because as I understand that, it’s a separation from what is real, and what is happening in your life. Mariana, what do you think when you sit down, and I don’t know if your a pet owner or not but I’m guessing you are. I have companion animals and I consider myself a guardian, not an owner. Right. And I just wanted to say something. You should not feel like you’re a hypocrite. You’re just uninformed. And most of the people in America are. I wanna interrupt you for a second. Oh sure. I feel like I’m consciously uninformed. I feel I’m uninformed because I choose not to want to know about factory farming, and in preparing for this show for example, I think we all read some things that were really disturbing. And I just...why do I eat a hamburger ever? Why do I do that? But I love hamburgers. But Michael, there are products that taste just like hamburgers that you can get that are plant based so you can still satiate that need that you have for whatever taste. You’re right expect for the “taste just like hamburger” part. O no no no no. After the show I will give you a list of products. Ok, that’s fine. But continue. I interrupted. That’s ok. There is a socialization, a desocialization process that occurs throughout our lives. It’s from the media, it’s from advertising. It’s at every meal, from the moment we are born all through our lives what we eat at every meal desocializes us to what is happening to these animals. Most people don’t understand that. I’m gonna sidetrack here for a second. There’s something called the Animal Welfare Act, and it’s a law that was enacted to. It’s not perfect but it does afford some protection for the animals that we are the steward of on earth. What most people don’t know is that farm animals are exempt from the Animal Welfare Act. That means it’s a free for all with them. And with the Humane Slaughter Act, birds are exempt from that law which means, if you’re a chicken, if you’re one of the ten billion chickens or 300 million turkeys that are being processed through our factory farms over the course of a year, you’re really in trouble. Well yes, you’re clearly in trouble. You know, everything that you hear about that. Adam, tell me what you think when you hear Humane Slaughter Act. Isn’t that just an oxymoron? I’ve never personally experienced slaughter before so i wouldn’t know, but I understand what it’s like to be an omnivore and feel very guilty and be like “Oh, it’s just so convenient. There’s a burger stand right over there.” And I feel most of it is actually about convenience. If you were to put a Whole Foods Express on every single... if there were just as many locations right across the street from a McDonalds, people would open up to that and gradually move the other way. We’ve seen that as time marches on, people end up coming around to a certain way of thinking. It was interesting because with the industrialization in the fifties, it would be like, “Oh, eat your meat.” That made actually a very strong generation. But now we have an imbalance where we’ve gone too far the other way and it’s too meat heavy. I agree with that. We’ve gone too far the other way but it’s also the way we’ve gone too far. When you’re talking about farming verses factory farming, I find it so interesting. I don’t know if any of you have seen these new McDonalds ads. And what McDonalds is doing is they’re talking about the farmers. There’s a man sitting on a pile of potatoes talking about how lucky he is, these potatoes are that they will one day be at McDonalds and taste a whole lot better than they do right now, etc. The same thing with the beef farmer. When in fact that’s a ruse because these farmers, eighty percent of the farming that’s done in this country is owned by four major companies when it comes to creating beef. Yea. And so this whole idea that we fancy that Whole Foods on every corner. We fancy the family farmer out there. That’s gone with factory farming. This is an industry right now. So as animal lovers, I mean you’re a veterinarian. Where do you draw that line? You have to say at a certain point the welfare of the animal has to be taken into consideration, but we are a carnivorous society. We have big business. What is humane slaughter? I mean, I don’t understand that. Yea, the Humane Slaughter Act is grossly misunderstood unfortunately and the vast majority of animals raised for food are not covered under this act. Birds for example, who comprise over ninety five percent of the animals slaughtered for food are not even protected under this law at all. And the mammals who are protected presumably are not really protected because it is not enforced. And time and again, undercover investigations have shown terrible mishandling and gross abuses of these animals which baffles everyone. How does this happen? But the reality is, animals are going through this line at such a rapid pace. The workers may stop to sneeze and in that time, three animals can go by the line and not be properly stunned before their throats are slit. And when you say that Armaiti, I’m thinking, how in the world can i buy into this? Because I do, you know. How in the world can I be a part of what goes on? And I think at certain times all of us have been, whether as children. And it doesn’t sound as if there’s a lot of meat eaten at the middle of this table, but maybe at the end. You know it’s funny. I’m gonna tell a quick anecdote Last year, two years ago I found a baby sparrow that had fallen out of it’s nest into my little yard. I made a bunch of phone calls, and I found somebody about an hour away from me. And I drove this little baby sparrow to this woman’s house who had this bird sanctuary on a Sunday. And I went and this story ends poorly. You can nod and say how cute and great but it isn’t cute and great. And then I came home and I went to a Japanese restaurant and I had chicken. And everything that happened to me in that moment when I took this bite of chicken. What did I just do? I mean I spent two hours of my life saving this sparrow and eating this chicken. I think we all have this kind of hypocrisy who eat meat in this country, do we not? Yea, and the same with the treatment of animals in the farms compared to how we treat our animal companions in our homes. I mean, I do spades and neuters on dogs and cats, and we always take the upmost care to not only anesthetize the animals, but give them proper analgesics or pain control medications. Yet pigs, who are just as conscious and capable of feeling as dogs are get castrated without anesthesia. It’s extraordinary. You’re absolutely right. These animals have no protections under the law. And whenever somebody goes to a restaurant and buys a piece of meat, they are entering into a relationship of complacency. They are allowing someone else to do to these animals what they themselves. Even if they are the most compassionate person on the planet and you’re still engaging or buying into the product of this industry, you are allowing someone else to do what you yourself would not do. And as Armaiti was describing, the way these animals are killed is really extraordinary. The way they’re kept on factory farms, not just slaughtered but the way they’re housed there is really egregious. They’re denied basic instincts. They’re denied the ability to move around. They’re denied space. Exactly. I mean, the injuries that these animals sustain, just from not being strong enough is incredible. Now ok. So let’s say we know these things, right? What would you say, and very quickly, like what is one thing that one person can do to make a difference? It’s gonna sound trite but I would highly recommend going to farmsanctuary.org. It’s a non-profit organization that’s been trying to raise education about these specific issues for decades. Farm sanctuary. Personally, I don’t like to say, “Stop eating meat.” I don’t think that will help the problem. Educate yourselves on the. Grains and legumes are so much more cost effective for us to grow, and in terms of health. They’re much better for us than the meats that we’re eating. Right, but if I opened a legume restaurant and I wanted to make a living. I would be there. You would be there and you would be dining alone I would imagine. No I’d be there with her. Alright, that’s fine. But if we were in Debuque, Iowa, I would. Yea but then you’d be getting those legume subsidies. You know, we also heavily subsidize the meat industry and corn to feed all these animals to the point where it’s not even practical monetarily to be a vegetarian. Not to mention to feed them corn which is not part of their natural diet in the first place. You’ve done your homework. There’s that whole trickle down for this. In any case, you’ve all made good points. Wayne’s point was interesting and it does make us think, and we will be back with another point shortly. Welcome back the The Point. Michael Shure with you. We have a fantastic panel. We’re going to go right to our next point. Our second point, it comes to us from Lee Camp. A comedian and activist. And we’re going to be talking on this environmental show about the dangers, or perhaps not if you think it’s that best thing in the world of fracking, which is i would say a subject that is causing a lot of controversy in the energy and environmental work right now. Without further talk, here’s Lee Camp. Hey guys, Lee Camp here. I’m just gonna rant for a minute about fracking, and hopefully at some point I’ll have a point. For those who don’t know, hydraulic fracking is the process by which total *** stick their massive shafts into the earth, even though the earth has clearly stated she doesn’t want anything to do with their shafts. They then *** a massive load of chemical cocktail into the earth and it forces out billions of dollars of unnatural gas. And according to them, there’s no ill effects of fracking whatsoever. It doesn’t contaminate the water table or the land, or cause massive earthquakes, except when it does. There are a few cases of people finding out that their tap water is now flammable, but haven’t you ever heard of the expression, if you can’t handle the heat of your tap water, then get out of the kitchen. Clearly the easy solution is to get out of the kitchen forever. And don’t think the tap water. Or any water. On second thought, you should probably condemn the entire building just to be safe, or move to another county in Spain. See, easy answers. And yes, fracking is now causing earthquakes. There’s been eleven earthquakes in Ohio alone, some as big as 4.0. And I don’t know if everyone’s aware of this, but earthquakes are not so good for living. Yea, living and earthquakes often butt heads. They very rarely get along. Something tells me nobody’s going to be fracking thrilled about their affordable natural gas when their goddam apartment is coming down on their heads. And I bet soon enough these companies will come out with a positive spin on all this. They’ll go, “Those weren’t earthquakes. Those were love snuggles from mother nature. You know women. After being fracked, they always wanna snuggle.” That’s right. This is greed so immense, it’s literally causing fracking earthquakes. What the fracking fracking frack of a fracked up situation is this? So anyway, I hope you see my point. Lee Camp is really fracking good. That was an unbelievable video, but come on. We need energy. We need energy in this country. We need it in this world. Every single way of deriving energy has it’s problems, whether it be wind and solar, whether it be you know fossil fuel. Adam, come on. What do we do? Do we need energy bad enough we’re gonna frack? Well we shouldn’t necessarily do all the fracking that we’re fracking doing, but what the frack, why not. Ok, you get one frack joke and you get one frack joke. And it ain’t no more frack jokes. I’m apologize. It’s fine. I’m sorry. You have to. I know. It’s called fracking. It’s too fracking fun. It’s fracking called fracking. No we don’t necessarily need to frack and when I was involved in this animation that I made, it was based on a song written by a friend, David M. Homles. And he wrote this wonderful song about the effects of. Actually just explaining what fracking is. And it blew up on the internet. You should go see it. Plug plug plug. It’s called my water’s on fire tonight. And I animated it with my coworker Lisa Rucker. And when I researched this I discovered that it’s so much more dangerous than anything we should be doing. It’s polluting water all over the place, and it’s just a really big problem in general. Here’s the thing. We have all this natural gas in this country, and we have the ability to cut through the shale and send that pipe down there, blow through. And they’re saying that the dangers are limited. That they’re really minor dangers. They’re saying the dangers are limited because there are two different types of drilling. There’s conventional and unconventional drilling. So when you’re hearing these statistics from the industry, they’re using conventional drilling statistics to push their agenda. With conventional drilling, you have a well. You bore a hole, you go down, you stick a casing in, and when you get to a joint in the Marcellus shale layer, if there’s gas in it, you’re great. You’re in business. If not you move a mile down. You drill another well. With unconventional drilling, what happens is, you down down and they need four different types of new technology that’s just been developed over the last sixteen years. The first of it is directional drilling. So now they can go diagonally, latterly, and vertically. So what happens is they drill it down, and they get to that shale layer. Now they’re going to be going out a mile or two in that shale layer to make sure they are absolutely grabbing as much of that inventory as possible. That’s where the problem lies. Cause when they’re forcing all of this fluid, essentially giving the earth an anema over and over and over again, that is busting these fissures in that shale layer. And everything is manmade here so you’ve got potential dangers from the casing itself. Yea, that’s the whole thing. That it’s all manmade, and all these dangers exist. And you know, in 1974, Gerald Ford said, “Ah. We’re gonna have the Safe Water Act.” And as they signed the Sage Water Act, and then what happened? 2005, they said “well we’re going to revisit this.” And a little company called Halliburton, I don’t know if you remember Halliburton. They’re a little outfit out of Texas. Never heard of them. And the president and the Congress decided that there’s going to be a little loop hole in that Safe Water Act allowing for the hydraulic fracturing that is going on. The fracking that we’re talking about today. But Armaiti, when that happens, sometimes it’s with a good reason, sometimes it’s not. Natural gas is very very expensive right now. We have a lot of it in this country and we need access to it. Why is it not ok, if it is largely safe, if we see a safety in this. On balance it is as safe or as dangerous as fossil fuels. Certainly more safe in a lot of people’s minds than nuclear energy. Why are we having such a problem with fracking? Well I think it goes back to regulation of safety and taking care of the environment to the extent that we are able to. Being responsible. Putting in place restrictions when, as Mariana eluded, when they’re getting to where it’s causing the earth to have it’s limitations, we need to put limits on that so it doesn’t get so out of hand. I mean, this is getting to the point where people’s water is flammable. That’s crazy. How can someone even. Ok, but then there’s always the extreme cases. I mean they’ve been fracking now for years. Not everybody who’s having a glass of water is having the water catch on fire. Michael, this statistic they’re using is 99.9 percent safe. That means one in a thousand wells will cause environmental damage. When you’re looking at an industry or company that has a hundred thousand wells, that’s a hundred instances of environmental damage. Right now there’s something close to half a million of these wells up. That’s a frack of a lot. I got mine in. Armaini’s the only one with a frack on the board. I hear what you’re saying and it does make sense, but listen. We gotta get our energy somewhere, don’t we? Up, go up. Go up into the sky and get all solar energy, but there’s a cost to that and yes, I think it would be terrific if we could use solar energy all the time. It is impractical. What is amazing though is that solar energy I’ve learned, can help make this fracking process a lot safer, because there’s a way to not have to frack, get the chemicals. By the way, the chemicals they use in fracking. They don’t even have to disclose what they are. Exactly. Unbelievable. They’re proprietary. They don’t have to say what the chemicals are that they send into the frack hole. We need transparency. We need transparency, we need to get the Frack Act passed. Once that happens, these industries. Another thing that needs to happen is fines. Substantial fines need to be imposed for contamination, for spills. Because what needs to happen is these really big numbers have to be slapped down on these people’s wrists so that it becomes a deterrent as opposed to just the cost of doing business. Right, well I understand that. The reason I’m bringing this up though is because we have to get our energy from someplace. Well if everything was plant based we wouldn’t need as much energy to being with. If I start eating plant based foods. Absolutely. Which brings it back around. All the way back to veggie burgers. It all just comes back to veggie burgers, doesn’t it? It does. Seriously Adam, we have to light our homes, we have to do this, and cost does become an issue. We live in a world where money does matter. I’m not defending the big people with the factory farms and the factory fracks and all that. I’m just saying that we need energy in this world. That’s the basic thesis. We’ve come to a point where solar energy is actually reaching the point where it’s actually a little bit cheaper than coal. And that means that it’s actually affordable because right now probably much of our energy is coal. It’s not worth the cost when the fracking companies say, “Oh don’t worry. We’ve put a concrete wall here that’s isolated from the aquifer.” Well you’re breaking the ground anyway. What makes you think that this concrete wall you’re creating isn’t breaking as well? There’s so many points of failure, and without the regulation because, you know. The Safe Drinking Water Act that Bush signed, wasn’t necessarily about making safe drinking water. The Safe Drinking Water Act though, it was at the time when Ford signed it, it was about safe drinking water. It was about preventing those things because Ford as we know probably would have been a democrat. It was a different kind of control that money had over politics. But forgetting the politics of it, I mean, you make a great point. There’s dangers all the way down the line. I disagree a little bit on solar energy. Yes, the solar energy itself is cheaper. The infrastructure for it is not there and would cost a lot of money over time and we all know that. And I’m not in favor of this hydraulic fracturing. But, it seems that there has to be a happy medium with a lot of this that will make the environmentalists happy and will make the fuel companies happy. I mean, natural gas would save a lot of money for a lot of people. A lot of poor people in America too if we had our supply of natural gas. Where do you start to say, ok we’re gonna be ok with this if they put these measures in place. Or do you say absolutely not, goodbye. See you later. Frack you. I couldn’t say frack you because then that would be twice. That would be twice. I’ve already violated, yea. Um, what was your question Michael? My question Mariana is where do you say it’s ok? Where is the happy medium here? I don’t know if there is a happy medium to tell you the truth because people’s lives right now are being, significantly destroyed because of this practice. This I found astounding. The industry is being allowed to drill in our national parks. Why is that happening? Because the government does not have the mineral rights below the surfaces. They only govern the surface rights. It’s public and private land that is at risk when they do this and it’s all people everywhere that are at risk as well. And they are on schedule now to drill fifty million more of these wells and go in and frack the hell out of us. We need to lobby the frack out of our Congress people. There you go. She got it. And that is the point. Let’s lobby the frack out of our Congress people. I’m Michael Shure. We’ll be back with another point in just a moment. Welcome back to The Point, I’m Michael Shure, and we have a fantastic panel tonight. We’re joined, come in this way this time. Adam Sakellarides, Armaiti May, and Mariana Tosca. We have a point now that we’re not gonna show a video of necessarily. I’m gonna tell you what this is. Last week there was a football game played, and I know not all of you are football fans. The San Francisco 49ers played the New York Giants. In that game, a player from San Francisco, Kyle Williams, a wide receiver and punt returner, fumbled twice. But his last fumble was a devastating fumble for the 49ers and their fans because it allowed the other team to get the ball in overtime and then proceed to win. I happened to have been watching with my seven year old son and we are 49ers fans. My son Owen, it was his first sort of interaction with the devastation of being a sports fan. And there were tears, there was inconsolable crying, and I didn’t really know what to say. I should have expected it. I said to him, “Owen, imagine if you feel this badly, how Kyle WIlliams must feel right now.” And at that point, he said to me, “ Well I think I’m gonna write him a note. I wanna write a note to him.” Which was sweet and then of course any father would be proud and think it’s fantastic. This is the note he wrote. Dear Mr. Williams. We just watched the Playoff game. I feel really bad for you but I wanted to tell you that you had a great season. You should be very proud, so I wanted to say thank you. I am your #1 fan. Owen Shure. P.S. You’re awesome. And of course there are all the misspellings of a seven year old. And I’m not saying this to talk about what a great son I have. That is implicit because he’s great. But what I’m talking about is where we have come in this world of anonymity. Because what happened the next day, and that night, and that evening to Kyle Williams were death threats. I wanna kill your family. I wanna kill you. I hope your wife dies. You should jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. I hope somebody hands you the ball next year and it explodes. And here juxtaposed to my sweet son, and any sweet child who’s looking at this and saying, “I hope everythings ok and you’re still a good player.” The power of anonymity. Where does that...where have we come now where you can write a comment to somebody and be so cruel, and be so uncaring? Why is that happening now and is it one of the real faults of the internet? It’s a fault of the internet but it’s also one of the benefits of the internet. Like you know. Anonymous can go out and do their crazy activist things just as much as somebody unfortunately can say these horrible things and make a player feel really horrible about a screwup I’m sure they didn’t want to happen. But you know, there was activism Adam before there was Anonymous. There were people protesting wars and protesting civil rights. There were people protesting the Equal Rights Amendment. I mean there’s everything that we can think of until the internet had proud activists. People who were proud to oppose what they saw. But sometimes you need that anonymity for whistle blowers and stuff like that. And sometimes these people wouldn’t have been saying the things that they would be saying, these good things, if there wasn’t that anonymity. Well, you know Armaiti, I want you to continue on that subject a little bit because I don’t really agree with Adam here. Of course we can say that there are benefits to the internet. We know a lot more. We know a lot more quickly. Whistle blowers. All of these things that he’s listing, they were there already. I mean, we’ve had them already. And of course we don’t want to have an ID law on the internet that you have to be you, because that would be a violation of every kind of civil right, but is there anything that we could do? Is there something wrong with our society and that’s just it? I think there’s definitely something wrong with our society, and when we see comments like these, it is alarming that...there is something very deeply troubling, first of all that we take a sports game so seriously to respond in this manner. And then to attack another human being in such a vile way. I mean it reflects something within ourselves that we need to address and in that way, hopefully we can turn it around and make it into something positive and heal ourselves. Because we’re clearly in trouble if this is the type of comment that’s being put out there. And I like the flagging aspect that websites have where comments can be flagged as inappropriate and people rate them. Yea, it’s a bandaid though. It’s a bandaid. I don’t have the cure but it’s a bandaid, and you know Mariana, I think that this just goes beyond sportsmanship too. There’s something that I think is fractured to continue a theme, but societally fractured when people feel that they have to vent their venom and anger online at a football player. But it’s not, we know it’s not just a football player. It’s a politician. It’s somebody in another class, and it goes to bullying. It’s all over the place. I cannot wrap my brain around this. I really can’t. I’ve don’t understand what would compel somebody to behave that way anonymously or otherwise. The anonymous internet use does embolden people to think that they can get away with a lot of stuff they would never have the courage to do face to face with someone. I think what it comes down to is that for a lot of people, myself included, our daily lives are things that just aren’t, they might dislike for whatever reason and so we need distractions to kind of pull us out of that. And entertainment, sports, music. Where the problem lies is when our identity becomes so immeshed with that outside activity that we have no control over. And when something goes awry in it, then we react personally as if it’s happening to us. And that’s what I see with this poor man Kyle. I mean he fumbled the ball. I’m not a sports fan but he fumbled the ball. Yea, no. I mean, this example is egregious. This is a terrible example but there are smaller examples, and there are bigger examples too when somebody really does screw something up. I remember writing a letter to the editor when I was young. Remember you would open the newspaper and there would be letters to the editor, and it would be Fred Smith in West Covina. And you knew where Fred Smith was. You knew where West Covina was. The idea that we now have to communicate using aliases. It’s scary man. I think it’s just scary that’s how this goes forward. And I don’t know what the cure is and my point here is that we have to take a look in the mirror at what’s going on. But it’s a pretty weak point I’m make. So we take a look in the mirror and realize we’re not doing it, but there’s still people out there doing it. There’s still people out there like seven year olds who actually get it. And that gives me hope for the future. And I know a lot of people agreed with you and it was flattering as his dad to hear that. But again, I don’t want to focus on Owen and Kyle. It’s more about the idea of being powered by our anonymity rather than being proud and taking a stand. You know Adam, you did bring up Anonymous, and there are good things to be said about that. There are good things to be said about a world where whistleblowers can thrive. But you know, a whistleblower can also type a letter, lick an envelope, and slip it under the boss’s door. And in many cases that was how whistle blowing was done before. Isn’t there a better way than anonymously being on a comment because what if we just got rid of the comment section of every website, of every blog. But then you would be repressing speech. We would be, right. And it’s always something, you know? I think this is just a necessary evil that we end up living with when it comes to free speech. Somebody says something you don’t like. How about having a moderator for removing objectionable comments. But again, that’s no different than saying...no comments to me is better than putting a moderator in there, because a moderator is a person presumably who has an opinion themselves. If somebody watches a video on youtube. They watch this video and say, “Michael Shure is long winded and boring and we don’t ever want to watch him again.” Well that’s his opinion. So then to progress to say something that is threatening. That is not acceptable. That is not acceptable. Or violates their privacy rights. Right. We don’t have any privacy anymore Mariana. I mean that’s the thing. Everybody knows my name is up there. I think, if you got rid of the comments section completely in life, it’s better than a moderator. Do you really think that because I have to tell you. I have learned so much information through comments sections on you know videos and blogs and stuff, that I would not have found otherwise. It just seems to me a forum of vitriol. I agree with that. And it’s extreme what I’m saying. It’s never gonna happen. Oh isn’t this a forum of vitriol though? Well no, but we know you’re Adam Sakellarides, and we know you live at 314 Oak Street. But the truth is, we’re out here with out opinions sharing them with each other. That’s a risk we’re taking. And I guess that’s a good point you make saying isn’t that what this is and don’t we want to hear someone who disagrees with us. We’re not putting our feet down here and saying this is the way it is but. At the same time you want to make somebody look in the mirror, but how can you stop someone form taking something a little too seriously. We all want to belong to something, and sports fans want to belong to the team, you know. It gives them some meaning, whether it’s belonging to a particular group of people who like to own really shiny computers with a certain fruit logo on the back or whatever. You like to belong to something and when something happens, you just can’t help but take it a little too seriously. Right, but Armaiti, when you’re belonging to something, we’re going along with what Adam was saying. When you belong to something, and you wanna defend that, or you just want to put it out there and not have it be torn to pieces, whatever it is. Isn’t that a right too? Why are we risking so much all the time just by having things out in society? You know what I’m saying? Why do we take such risks? We wanna be recognized. Oh, very well said. Very well said. I completely agree with that. I didn’t mean to cut you off but when you said that, it resonated because I do agree. I think a lot of people that are perpetuating this kind of behavior are people who don’t feel empowered in their lives. They’re insecure in the inside and they feel they have to lash out in order to make themselves feel more important. Are these all the shy people that were just too afraid to stand up in public speaking class and say what they’re saying? And now that they have this area that they can go into and say these hateful things? It’s so much more tempting to, on twitter, pick up 140 characters of “This is exactly what is on my mind at this very moment.” And you don’t give it a second thought, you hit send, and there you go. Then you say maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Well there is regret, but there doesn’t seem to be a ton of regret when so many people are doing this. There’s regret in an individual, anecdotal way, but in a broad sweeping way, people are still doing it constantly. I guess my only question is, I wonder if the people who were tweeting, they were tweeting this to Kyle? They were tweeting this to Kyle and I guess there were other comments in other places. I wonder if they would continue their train of thought or actually have the courage to say that to him in person or if their opinion would change. That’s my point. If you’re sitting next to somebody, your opinion is definitely gonna change. You can scream at the driver next to you and say “You have no idea. You can’t drive. You’re terrible.” and any other things you might say to them. They get out of their car and come up to you and they come up to your window and start screaming. Well Ahhh. Sorry sorry sorry. So it is very different. It’s that distance, it is that anonymity and that’s exactly what I’m talking about. That’s what I think is so scary about where we’re going with these things. And again, there’s nothing short of a FIrst Amendment violation that would stop it. But there has to be some kind of awareness that we instill in people because this is the way that kids are growing up now. This is how people are communicating. This is what’s going on. Not your kids. Well not my kid but he is. He’s gonna be twelve years old and he’s gonna be tweeting. And somebody could be bullying him or he might even be a bully. Who knows? Bullying is a very serious issue in schools these days and I think we do need to address it. Educate people, especially educators who are themselves teaching these kids and instilling them with values they’re going to carry for the rest of their lives. You know what Armaiti. Bullying is a big issue. When we were in school or when I was in school anyway, bullying happened in the yard or in the classroom. Now it’s happening from Bullier 463 @ so and so. So people don’t know where it’s coming from. In any case, it is not something that we have been able to solve here, but the truth is, and this is my point. The solution is in the discussion of it and it doesn’t get discussed enough. So there. We made our point. I’m Michael Shure. Thanks for watching the show tonight, and I thank Adam Sakellarides, Armaiti May, and Mariana Tosca for being with us tonight. And we hope you make your point.