Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The site is a sister to Atlantic Free Press and Brick Ogden an American Expatriate in Amsterdam has been a key supporter of this project.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
When you dwell in a heavily conditioned society such as ours, those who spout conventional wisdom are rarely asked for evidence. This goes for the left or the right. Take Michael Moore... (please). He's done a fair amount to infuriate the status quo media, sure, but when he writes "vegetarian is unhealthy" or "humans need protein, and lots of it" or "put down those sprouts and pick up a T-bone!" his flesh-eating exhortations would fit neatly between commercials and have all the talking heads nodding in unison. Of course, if he appeared on TV and declared that cow's milk is only for calves, he wouldn't even have enough time to address the raucous and mocking demands for reams of documentation.
Here's another bit of conventional wisdom (sic): Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian.
In his 2004 book, Hitler: Neither Vegetarian Nor Animal
Lover, author Rynn Berry boldly dispenses with any protocol by getting
his unconventional declaration out of the way right up front in the
book's title: "neither vegetarian nor animal lover." There, he said it.
Now what...and why does/should it matter?
Hitler's dietary
choices may not be of vast historical importance...but instead they do
hold polemical value.
Belligerent meat-eaters often toss off the "But
Hitler was a vegetarian" line as a method of allegedly discrediting a
plant-based diet. After all, their "logic" goes, if the epitome of evil
himself eschewed meat, what possible good could come from such a
lifestyle? While this premise obviously lacks even a shred of
intellectual validity, one cannot discount the emotional power invoked
by associating Nazism with vegetarianism.
Rynn Berry himself has dealt
directly with this phenomenon. As the author of Famous Vegetarians and
Their Recipes, he tells of facing "at every bookstore signing, at every
lecture, on every phone-in talk show, at least one person (who) has
asked...half-mockingly: 'Is Hitler in your book?'" Thus, in the name of
setting the record straight, Berry has marshaled the evidence necessary
to take on the Hitler-as-veggie dogma.
Most of what Berry has
dug up displays an even more variable use of the label "vegetarian"
than we endure today. Robert Payne, a Hitler biographer, explains that
the German dictator "had no fondness for meat except in the form of
sausages, and never ate fish, he enjoyed caviar." (Is sausage
considered a vegetable in Germany?) A second biographer wrote:
"Hitler's vegetarianism was quite strict... He avoided any kind of
meat, with the exception of an Austrian dish he loved, Leberknödl."
For those of you scoring at home, Leberknödl are liver dumplings.
Even
the venerable New York Times fell prey to the amazing elasticity of the
term "vegetarianism." In a May 30, 1937 article entitled, "At Home with
the Führer," the newspaper of record found this passage fit to print:
"It is well known that Hitler is a vegetarian and does not drink or
smoke. His lunch and dinner consist, therefore, for the most part of
soup, eggs, vegetables, and mineral water, although he occasionally
relishes a slice of ham and relieves the tediousness of his diet with
such delicacies as caviar."
That revealing description-veggies
are tedious, flesh is a delicacy-is pretty much how the Times portrays
a plant-based diet to this day. It also helps illustrate why Nazis like
Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels attempted to portray Hitler as a
veggie lover. As the Times cleverly hinted at, the tedium of
vegetarianism (even with the occasional slice of ham to relish) would
require a man of remarkable discipline to adhere to it.
In a
culture less inundated by propaganda, Hitler's non-vegetarian status
would be apparent and even if the Führer didn't eat meat, few would
regard this as a judgment on vegetarianism. However, this is America,
the land of denial...and that means books like Hitler: Neither
Vegetarian Nor Animal Lover are required reading.
Mickey Z.
is the author of five books, most recently "50 American Revolutions
You're Not Supposed to Know: Reclaiming American Patriotism"
(Disinformation Books). He can be found on the Web at www.mickeyz.net
Writings 
When you dwell in a heavily conditioned society such as ours, those who spout conventional wisdom are rarely asked for evidence. This goes for the left or the right. Take Michael Moore... (please). He's done a fair amount to infuriate the status quo media, sure, but when he writes "vegetarian is unhealthy" or "humans need protein, and lots of it" or "put down those sprouts and pick up a T-bone!" his flesh-eating exhortations would fit neatly between commercials and have all the talking heads nodding in unison. Of course, if he appeared on TV and declared that cow's milk is only for calves, he wouldn't even have enough time to address the raucous and mocking demands for reams of documentation.
Berry boldly dispenses with any protocol by getting
his unconventional declaration out of the way right up front in the
book's title: "neither vegetarian nor animal lover." There, he said it.
Now what...and why does/should it matter?
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