Pg County Show Cause Hearing: Fill & Download for Free

The CauseI was in elementary school in a Washington, DC suburb, in the 3rd Grade to be exact. I began to get notes sent home, pinned to my jacket, and written in the comment section of my report cards, that stated "Obie, finishes his work in class, leaves his desk and proceeds to interrupt other students trying to complete their work. A Parent /Teacher Conference is requested."Initially, I was scolded and told to make sure I learned to stay in my seat, and double check my own work instead of trying to go and help others. I did as I was told, but I was still too talkative, just from my own desk now, and across the room. My mom suggested they give me harder work to keep me busy. because this was becoming a problem. Eventually tests were performed to find out my reading comprehension and mathematical levels, to see if that might be the problem.​​​Phyllis E. Williams pictured today (It is now a Spanish Immersion School)After a battery of tests, my elementary school informed my mom that I, albeit in the 4th grade, was reading on a 10th grade level, and my Mathematical skills put me one year back of the reading comprehension tests, at the 9th grade level. My mom almost fainted. The school stated that they wanted to do "some more tests" and wanted to get them started immediately. My mom hung up the phone and said ' I knew my baby was smart! My baby is going to be an Attorney!". That is the first time I "learned" that I was exceptional.I tested 140 on an IQ Test that was administered by a private group in the Prince Georges County School system. I was deemed a "gifted child". That was term they used in the 80's. I wished I would have scored a 10 on the test, my life may have taken a different path. From that day forward, things would never be the same again.The EffectFrom that point forward, all I ever kept hearing was that I a gifted child. In elementary schools and middle schools, both in PG County School and Dallas Independent School Districts, it was TAG ( Talented and Gifted )classes. In high school it became AP (Advanced Placement, College Prep) classes. I was in the top classes in every school, but my grades were horrible. Not because all of a sudden I lost all my intelligence, but I developed somewhat of an elitist attitude. I could walk into a class, study the test the night before, and ace it. I could figure out the word problem in Algebra 2 and Trigonometry, before the other students could figure out the formula that was needed to solve it. I started realizing that no matter what I did, I could pass the test with flying colors without trying. So, I started hooking class. Leaving school. Looking for other things to past the time, and keep my interest. Teachers even came up with the "Obie" rule. If you missed X amount of days in class, you could not receive a passing grade. No matter what the test scores revealed.I remember my AP English high school teacher, Mr. Meehan, caught me in the hallway hanging with the "cool" kids cutting class, and he made a statement. "Mr. Chambers, you are so intelligent, young man. Maybe too intelligent. If you aren't careful you will find yourself in one of our "finer" universities. Like, Lorton University comes to mind." I remember saying to myself, "Heck, that's great! How can anybody be too smart?! Wherever that school is located, they'd better make sure it is a full ride!" Boy did they ever! And it wasn't for four years, but only one.​​​Lorton Reformatory "Hallways"After taking the initial summer off, instead of going straight to college for my freshman year, I got with the wrong crowd and got into the wrong things, was sent to a notorious prison that housed D.C's worst. I served a year in Prison, before all charges were dropped, for Narcotics Trafficking.I was in one of the most terrible prisons ever created, and I still could't get over or avoid being 'too smart'. When I first arrived, there was a form of an "IQ" test administered, whose purpose was to determine your rehabilitation level. Fail the test, and they may give you a 'little bit of time', thinking that you need more education as opposed to incarceration. Score too high on the test and they will think you are a jerk who was just doing what you did for fun and profit. That was the word among the inmates. So, what does Obie do? Fail the test miserably. The counselor pulled me into the office and stated, that if I tried to fail the test one more time, they would recommend me to stay at Lorton the maximum time allowed. I retook the test, and scored a perfect score. I was deemed a non-benefit. Someone who didn't need any education, but just jail time. Wow.I was damned if I did, as well as being damned if I didn't. No way to win. Seeing no way out of this situaiton, at least until some connections kicked in, if that would even materialize, I seized the opportunity to monetize my intelligence. We set up 'Jeopardy ' championships that coincided with the running of the show every night. My new nickname became 'Brains' and I became unstoppable. My 'new friends' and I made thousands of dollars in cash and commissary. On the inside, it wasn't Einstein's 'Theory of Relativity". No, it became more of Obie's "System of Survivability". And I had no choice but to pass with flying colors.My how the mighty have fallen.​​​After I was released, I pledged my allegiance to covert organizations, and vowed to make sure to use all my smarts and charisma for wrong. I had tasted what 'intelligence', combined with 'smarts' could accomplish. These groups would foot the bill for all my schooling, all my training, and all my refinement. Finally someone who appreciated the "gifted". It was a life-altering decision. See it here. Chambers' answer to What are some mind-blowing facts that sound like 'BS', but are actually true? I was bitter and upset. Upset at people telling me how smart I was. Upset that the Correctional Guards were always asking me, "What is a kid like you doing here?!. You are way too smart to be here". I was mad that the fact that I had ever been told that I was smart. What did it get me? What advantage did I create over the normal kid? Curse this intelligence and all the people who uttered those words!!"You can read my story here of how I 'used' my intelligence across the globe, and why I almost didn't make it past 30 Obie Chambers's answer to I'm 27 and a two time convicted felon. I screwed up my life. Long story aside, I have a love for technology and ironically law enforcement. I'm currently in school for Computer Science and will graduate next May. Is it too late?ConclusionGifted, Brilliant, or Genius, may be who you are as person, but it isn't a guarantee that those accolades will turn into accomplishments. Go to any prison, homeless shelter, or dark alley in any major city, and it will be obvious. You'll find thousands of brilliant homeless and imprisoned people. All thinking that it was automatic for their intelligence to translate into success. Natural talent does not promise you 'real world' success. In fact, if not nurtured correctly, and allowed to breathe, it can become suffocating and detrimental to growth. You see, intelligence, is much like an athlete having pure, raw speed. There are plenty of fast players in the NFL. They run these 4.12's, or they may run a 4.3 in the 40. But can they translate that into real game "speed"? Can they pull away from defenders when the equipment is on, and there are thousands of fans watching and screaming?Juxtapose that same scenario to that of the gifted MIT, Cornell, or brilliant student of any school, anywhere in the world. Can they turn those 'book smarts' into real world success? When the pressure is on, can they perform, and not for grades, but for life? 'Game speed' wits, versus "classroom intelligence".My advice? Acknowledge the gift, but always be humble. Keep that ace in the pocket. People will respect and admire you more when they know that you are the smartest in the room, but don't rub it in their faces. In fact, I would even go as far as saying to try and avoid being the smartest in the room. Surround yourself with those who can continue to further educate your mind, body, and soul. Learn how to "matriculate" (shout to Hank Stram) your 'intelligence' into 'smarts', all while being grounded. Stay focused and continue to grow. You will find it one of the most rewarding experiences you could ever imagine.​​​

Okay folks, fair warning…this is gonna be long.I just served this jury duty a few months back, and it’s taken me a long, long time to process everything in my mind, as very little about this case made sense, and I’m still rather disturbed about some aspects of it.When we empaneled, there were 100 prospective jurors to hear the case. The judge began his spiel and said that the case was going to be about illegal possession of a firearm, which indicated a firearm in possession of a convicted felon; okay, that’s fine, but…for such a minor crime, why did the prosecution have the county district attorney present for jury selection? This raised red flags for me immediately.By the end of the day, we’d been whittled down to a much smaller group, but they said they still weren’t comfortable with the jury panel; we were instructed to return the following Monday.Monday morning, there was another group of 20 jurors brought in, and then they finally sat a jury of 10 Monday afternoon for opening arguments.Right off the bat, this seemed like an open-and-shut case: a man on parole, living with his girlfriend, had an altercation with 3 people in a parking lot of his apartment complex. During the altercation, it was revealed he had a gun in his possession, and he went back to his apartment. The 3 people called the police, the police went to the apartment, the girlfriend tried to stall them from entering, then when they entered, the felon was hiding in the attic.Really…this seems like a no-brainer.But…one never knows what great achievements in stupidity can be achieved.Let’s go ahead and get a couple things out of the way: first, our jury was made up of 8 white men and women, and two Latino women, both of whom were very, very far removed from Central America…like, several generations removed, and 50% or less Latina. Next, the man on trial was a full-blooded Latino, his girlfriend was African-American, and the 3 folks from the parking lot were a white guy, a Latino man and his Latino girlfriend.We weren’t exactly the best jury to hear this case, is what I’m getting at.Just to make this a little easier, I’ll assign everybody a brief name:BG: the “bad guy” in this whole adventure, Latino male, about 30-years-old, very presentable in court but his mugshot showed that he had gang tattoos all over. About 5′10″ to 6′ tall, and lanky.GF: his girlfriend, also about 30-years-old, African-American. Has three kids, not with her current boyfriend. She’s tiny.“Tweeter”: a tough guy from the parking lot altercation, Caucasian, maybe 25-years-old. About 5′5″ or so, scrawny. And yes, he actually was called “Tweeter”.ND: the “nice dude”, a Latino kid, all of 18 or 19-years-old. This kid seemed like the nicest kid on the planet. Looked about the same size and build as Tweeter.PG: the “pregnant” girl. Latino woman, also about 18 or 19. In court, she was a good 7–8 months pregnant, so she would have been about 3–4 months at the time of the incident.It’s also important to note that this happened in November in Arizona…so, while the sun is setting at 6pm, it’s still rather warm…in fact, on the night in question, the high temperature was still right around 90 degrees, it was uncharacteristically warm.And, for reference, here’s some totally awesome artwork:I also must point out that this apartment complex is alongside a main road and backs up to a large plot of farmland.So, testimony begins, and we first hear from ND who relays his tale (note: I’m combining both the examinations and redirects so I don’t bore you with back and forth):Tweeter, ND and PG were all sitting in a car in the parking lot, “talking”, right before sunset, with the windows up so they couldn’t hear very well, when they noticed BG and GF having an argument off in a corner of the parking lot. ND doesn’t know their names but recognizes GF from seeing her around the apartment complex. It looks like it’s getting rather heated, so they get out of their car to interject and prevent any violence.When Tweeter, ND, and PG get to where the argument is happening (in the configuration from my awesome drawing), BG and GF shift their anger towards the three newcomers. ND notes that GF is holding a cell phone in her hand, as it lights up from time to time. It’s very obvious to ND that BG is extremely drunk. Immediately, Tweeter gets into a stare-down with BG, eyes-locked; ND says their faces are just inches away from each other, so Tweeter is looking at an upward angle. GF says, “I’m outta here, come on baby” or something similar and starts to walk away. She immediately returns, stands between ND and BG with her back to Tweeter and PG, reaches into BG’s front-right pocket with her left hand, pulls something out that he didn’t see, says, “This is mine,” wraps it up with a jacket or sweater she had with her, then walks away, with BG following on the path drawn with the arrow. ND says that the shape under the jacket implied something about 7–8″ long.Seconds after they vanish, BG comes running towards them, stopping just at the edge of the parking lot about 10 feet from them, and says something like, “You’re lucky!” then turns and runs back. At this point, Tweeter says, “He had a gun” and PG calls the police from her cell phone because they think the drunk guy with the gun is liable to hurt somebody.Next to the stand was PG.Tweeter, ND and PG were all sitting in a car in the parking lot, “talking”, just after sunset, so it was dark out. It was still hot, so they had the windows down, so they easily heard the argument. She could tell BG was drunk from that far away, both by his voice and by the fact that GF pushed BG and he fell to the ground. PG doesn’t know their names but recognizes GF from seeing her around the apartment complex. The 3 interject, as they’re worried it’ll escalate.PG says the configuration is the same. As ND said, the anger shifts to the newcomers. PG does not see a cell phone, though. Immediately, Tweeter gets into a stare-down with BG, eyes-locked; PG says their faces are just inches away from each other, so Tweeter is looking at an upward angle. GF says, “I’m outta here, come on baby” or something similar and starts to walk away. She immediately returns, stands next to BG on the opposite side from ND with her back to Tweeter and PG, reaches into BG’s front-right pocket with her right hand, pulls something out about 5–6″ long and black (no jokes) that may have been a cell phone, says, “This is mine,” then walks away, with BG following on the path drawn with the arrow.Tweeter says, “The thing she took from his pocket was a gun, we should call the police.” Immediately, PG calls, and while 911 is ringing, BG comes running towards them, stopping just at the edge of the parking lot about 10 feet from them, and says something like, “You’re lucky!” then turns and runs back. 911 answers and they explain what happened.Tweeter was next.Tweeter, ND and PG were all sitting in a car in the parking lot, “talking”, just after sunset, so it was dark out. It was still hot, so they had the windows down, so they easily heard the argument. When BG pinned GF up against the apartment building with his hand on her throat, Tweeter knew they had to get involved. Tweeter doesn’t live there, so he had no idea who either was.Tweeter says the configuration is the same. As ND and PG said, the anger shifts to the newcomers. GF, standing behind BG, is very animated, waving her cell phone around. Tweeter gets into a stare-down with BG, eyes locked, inches away from his face, and he’s very clear that he never breaks eye contact. GF says, “I’m outta here, come on baby” or something similar, stands next to BG on the opposite side from ND with her back to Tweeter and PG, reaches into BG’s front-right pocket with her right hand; Tweeter can see, entirely from his peripheral vision (a point made clear by defense attorneys and Tweeter), she pulls out a black pistol (he could clearly see a trigger and trigger guard), says, “You don’t see this,” puts it in her purse, then walks away, with BG following on the path drawn with the arrow.Tweeter tells the other two, “They had a gun, we should call the police.” Immediately, PG calls, and while 911 is ringing, BG comes running towards them, stopping just at the edge of the parking lot, about 10 feet from them, and says something like, “You’re lucky!” then turns and runs back. 911 answers and they explain what happened.Please pay attention to some of the stark differences between those three pieces of testimony.We were able to listen to the 911 recording that was made. PG did the talking and was very calm, very collected on the phone. About 2 minutes into the call, after describing the man and woman and what happened, repeatedly saying that he was drunk and threatening people, the operator asks PG, “Did he have any weapons.” The response:PG: “Yeah, he was holding a beer bottle in his hand.”Tweeter: (background) “Tell them he had a gun, too.”PG: “Oh, he had a gun, too.”Operator: “He had a gun?”PG: “Mmm-hmm.”Now, in light of all that, I want you to ask yourself some questions:With this many discrepancies, what is accurate?If they were calling the police about the presence of a gun, why was there no mention of a gun present until 2 minutes in, and then, it takes a backseat to a beer bottle?How is Tweeter, locking eyes with somebody 5–7″ taller than him, able to see what’s removed from the taller man’s pocket without ever looking down?Imagine you’re Tweeter. You just saw a gun move away from a tense, near-violent situation. There’s a pregnant woman standing next to you. The man who’d HAD the gun comes running back towards you. Why, based on all three sets of testimony, do you not do anything? No running, no standing in front of the pregnant woman, no “GUN!”, nothing?A gun that is between 5″ and 8″ in length doesn’t normally fit in a pants pocket all that well.None of this was making sense to me.We next hear from police officers at the scene, who I feel pretty confident are telling as accurately as possible what happens next, both because I tend to give cops the benefit of the doubt, and because they were wearing body cameras.Two uniformed officers arrive at the scene and knock on the apartment door (they had apparently been told by the three which apartment belonged to BG and GF…who they didn’t know). When there’s no answer, they talk to the landlord and get GF’s phone number, as well as ask him to prepare to unlock the door. They call GF repeatedly and she finally answers after 20 minutes or so, says she’s not in the apartment, she left, and her boyfriend went home. They tell her that they suspect the boyfriend is still inside the apartment and they’ll be entering soon. She proceeds to tell her that she lied, she is inside with her kids, but her boyfriend did go home already. By this time, there are now approximately 40 uniformed police officers, including a SWAT team and a German Shepherd.Inside the apartment (we were shown body cam video), we can see that this is a fairly standard 3-bedroom apartment. We see a small family room, a kitchen, GF’s bedroom, her brother’s bedroom (who was not there), and a room her three kids share; the kids’ room is exactly what you would expect a small room shared by 3 kids would look like: a disaster area.But, there’s no sign of BG…except that one officer notices a small amount of spray-in attic insulation on the floor of GF’s bedroom, right by a closet, and he notices that this apartment, oddly, has an attic in it.About a dozen SWAT team members move into the bedroom with the attack dog and poke a camera on a pole into the attic; after looking around a bit, they find BG, pinned far into a corner of the attic. They tell him to come out or they’ll send the dog after him, so he finally comes down.They find no gun on him, so they begin badgering him and GF (we only see video of GF, though): “Where is the gun, we know there’s a gun here.” Even on the body cam footage, she seems very surprised and confused. She finally fesses up: a friend had given her a gun a while back, and it was currently hidden in an empty backpack in the kids’ room.The police find the gun and it’s shown in court. It’s a fairly large .32 semi-auto…camo green and about 5–6″ long. It’s found to be stolen from, of all things, the local National Guard base.Next up is GF.BG came over to her apartment (he doesn’t actually live there, he lives with his mother, per terms of his parole) and they had an argument. In a huff, GF drives down the street to “someplace” (yeah, she couldn’t remember where) and when she came back, BG was waiting for her in the parking lot with her phone in his pocket. The topic of the fight? She doesn’t remember that either. What she does remember is that, while they were arguing, three people from the apartment complex came up and interjected, causing her boyfriend (who she admits was drunk) to get pretty aggressive.As she realized that she needed to get her drunk boyfriend out of the situation, she moved to BG’s side, reached into his pocket, pulled out her cell phone, said, “Let’s get out of here, baby,” and they left.At the apartment, they had an argument about how BG was on parole, and the terms of his parole are clear: he couldn’t be out in public drunk and disorderly, and he couldn’t be threatening people. She told him to go lay down and try to sober up a little.Then, her phone rings, and she quickly realizes that things are escalating. So, they discuss their options and decide that he’ll hide in the attic; after he climbs in and hides, she remembers the gun that’s hidden in the closet (beneath, I kid you not, a large bag of sex toys); thinking that they’ll look in the closet, and knowing he can’t be near a gun, she decides to move it as far from BG as possible.She’s asked where she got the gun and she says it was given to her by a friend for protection. She’s never fired it.The prosecutor asks her if she still had the same cell phone as that night; she says yes, and produces it: it’s a very small cell phone, in a pink case. She’s asked if that’s her only phone and she says yes, it’s her only phone.The prosecution introduces two jailhouse telephone recordings into evidence. The first has been clearly edited to remove a large portion of the call, as we go from a very sweet beginning to a “click” sound, followed by a shouting match between the two. She’s very upset with BG for “having it in the first place, causing this whole mess,” and BG is mad at her about wasting their time arguing. The second has them discussing how this entire mess is the result of him having her phone and being drunk, and includes the curious line, “You know we have to make these calls, you know why we have to do this.” Oddly, the tone of both calls makes it seem as if GF didn’t even know he had “the phone”.In their closing arguments, the prosecution insists that the telephone calls were using code words, replacing “gun” with “phone”. It was clear that the gun belonged to him, and that he knew he wasn’t allowed to possess one, and everything from there was an attempt to get away with it. The disarray in the children’s room was clearly a staged attempt to hide the backpack with the gun, something that seems opposed to any experience with children.The defense insisted that no case had been made proving that he ever had possession of the gun or even knew where it was, and that the only thing he had done wrong was get drunk and be an ass in public, neither of which was a charge he was facing.So, here are some more things that I found troubling:If he DID have the gun on him, and he thought somebody had seen it, why would he go into the apartment, hide the gun in a kid’s backpack, then hide in the attic? I mean…it’s night. You have a HUGE amount of farmland behind the building (right outside your front door), and a shopping center across the street. He could have thrown the gun into the field, buried it, dropped it down a culvert, ran across the street and tossed it in a trash can…hell, he could have even just buried it in the insulation in the attic, if we want to be honest.Why would he just stay in the attic in the first place? If I’m going back to prison for the mere possession of something that I know somebody just saw, I wouldn’t stay, even if it’s just as simple as going across the street to a sports bar and just hanging out for a bit.Deliberations begin. Two jurors are sent home, determined to have been the alternates. I’m selected as the jury foreperson because I was the only one who had done jury duty in the past.I, honestly, did not feel that he had been found guilty. I found the story as given by GF to have filled in many of the holes nicely. I could not get past the bizarre inconsistencies of the testimony of the three, particularly the fact that nobody seemed even remotely fazed by the fact that a man who they all thought had a gun came running at them. It also should have concerned everybody that the only person who truly had a good view of the “gun” reported it as being a black object, and the gun ended up being khaki-green.I will also honestly say that GF, ND, Tweeter, and PG…were some of the dumbest human beings on this planet. None of them seemed like a functional member of society, which is really quite sad.I decided to do a quick polling to figure out where we stood before any arguing took place, so I pull a deck of cards from the bookshelf in the jury room and pass out cards to everybody, one red, one black: if you thought BG was guilty, you put out a red card, not guilty was a black card.The vote was 6–4, guilty in the lead.The deliberations begin, and I start to grow increasingly concerned. Three of the women are openly hostile…about GF, the single African-American involved in the case. “She’s a hoodrat”, “I hope she gets her kids taken away from her”, “I know she’s lying about everything”. It was very worrisome, as it was clear that BG was being tried not only on the facts of the case, but also because of his girlfriend.I was also finding myself repeatedly admonishing one woman from discussing the facts of the apartment complex; apparently, she had once lived there, so she felt it her responsibility to tell us that the area around where this incident took place, in that corner of the parking lot, was very darkly lit, and she knew that there was a lot of drug use in those apartments. I found myself repeatedly telling her, “We can’t enter our own testimony into this case,” something the judge had just warned us about.We all shared concerns about the inconsistencies of the stories, across the board, but as we continued deliberating, the women who were so angry at the hoodrat steadily began turning jurors to their side; they portrayed the girlfriend as both an absolute moron and a Machiavellian criminal with a long history of crime on the streets, without us knowing anything about her criminal history. They knew she was practiced enough to speak in code, replacing “gun” with “phone” without any sort of stutter…yet, she had been dumb enough to admit, on the phone, that they had to make these calls in an effort to trick the prosecution and jury. It’s very scary and disheartening to know that this woman was being raked over the coals like this…and to know that if she’d been white, she wouldn’t have been receiving this type of commentary. That was very clear to me.I held out, demanding that we vote based on the rules from the judge, that a guilty vote had to be “beyond a reasonable doubt.” At the end of day one, the vote was 7–3.The next day, by lunch, my arguments were falling on mostly deaf ears. We all went our separate ways, and the vote was 8–2.I asked to see the gun. We demonstrated, in the jury room, that it could not fit entirely into a pocket. We listened and re-listened to the 911 call, and I continued pointing out that the first mention of the word “gun” was 2 minutes into the call, after prompting by the 911 operator and by Tweeter; up until that moment, the most dangerous weapon was a beer bottle.We listened to the jailhouse recordings. We sent questions back and forth to the lawyers and the judge.That day, we went home…9–1.I held out the entire next day. I couldn’t believe that I was the only person in that room who found these inconsistencies to be so troubling. I repeatedly brought up my concern that nobody in the altercation was concerned about the gun; nobody said, “OH MY GOD A GUN!” Nobody told the pregnant woman to run. When the guy came running back towards them, possibly with a gun, nobody panicked or budged. The other jurors simply said, “In this apartment complex, they’re used to seeing guns on a daily basis, it’s nothing to them.”We again went home, 9–1.That night, I made the decision: if there was anything in the stories of the three witnesses that matched up, I should accept it as fact. And two out of the three stated the same thing:Throughout the altercation, the girlfriend was holding a cell phone in her hand. And she stated, on the stand, that it was her only phone.Which meant she couldn’t possibly have been pulling her cell phone out of her boyfriend’s pocket.I was now beyond a reasonable doubt…it was clear she had taken something out of his pocket that shouldn’t have been there, and since no drugs were found in the apartment, I had to accept that it was a gun.We turned in our guilty verdict, and were asked to go to lunch, then return…we weren’t done.Lunch was far, far less tense than in days prior.When we returned, we were presented with a new charge: conspiracy to possess. In Arizona, there’s a law that if you’re a felon and you convince somebody else to help you possess a gun for you, then it’s an extra charge.I thought this was stupid for the prosecutor to pursue. Their case was based on the idea that it was BG’s gun the entire time, and he had it in his pocket during the altercation. We had no evidence of a conspiracy to possess the gun at all, and our guilty plea hinged on us believing that the jailhouse conversations were a code, replacing “gun” with “phone”, in which case, we have to believe that his girlfriend didn’t know he had a gun and didn’t understand why he had it on him.We went into the jury room and the three women didn’t even hesitate: “Guilty”. It was sickening because they clearly believed that the girlfriend was facing this charge, and they saw no problem with proclaiming her immediately guilty.The seven other jurors immediately turned on them. This was so clearly not a valid charge that one man said, “Are you fucking kidding me?” I did point out that finding him guilty of this new charge would mean we had absolutely botched the first charge, which settled them down.We found him not guilty of the additional charge.During the trial, I was able to put two-and-two together. Clearly, the county District Attorney being there meant that this was a much larger case than it appeared, and the knowledge that the defendant had gang tattoos all over him combined to make it obvious that he wasn’t the real target, they were hoping to have a chance to send him to prison in an attempt to turn him.I will admit to feeling…clear…after watching him react to the verdict. When he was found guilty, I didn’t see shock, I didn’t see anger, or even sadness. What I saw was acceptance; I realized, in that very moment, that yes, he did have a gun on him, he knew he wasn’t getting out of this one.I sincerely believe we did the right thing in convicting him. With every fiber of my being, I wish it hadn’t gone down the way that it did, though. The fact that 6 people truly did not view these inconsistencies as being at all disconcerting worries me to no end, because I can see that I’m the rarity, and that if I hadn’t been there, this case would have been settled on the first day, based primarily on a very clear bias that three women held.I wonder how many convictions in this country are the result of juries that are more them and less me.

It is superficially accurate until a lot more research and background uncovers the truth of just how full of bull-schitzen the film Cowspiracy really is. Then it's undoubtedly one of the most inaccurate films I've ever had to watch.The whole premise about the film was very single-minded and quite shallow with only one simple message heavily implied at the end: Go vegan. It only appealed to the abolitionist veganism goal to convert every single human being on the planet to go completely meat- and animal-product free, and in turn get rid of all the domesticated animals. There were no compromises offered, no alternate solutions, nothing. Just, go vegan or face the consequences of being responsible for killing the Earth. I have been challenged on many fronts on how it's "not a propaganda piece" but if a film only has one ultimate "solution" to the world-wide problem of feeding the world and climate change being a "plant-based diet" or veganism, then yes, it is a propaganda piece and not an open-ended documentary that allows further discussion once the film is done. Those are true documentaries. Cowspiracy is a mocking of those kind of documentaries.The remarkable superficiality of this mock-drama-doc is because of the quantity of facts, memes and graphics thrown out at the audience, not because of the quality. As long as there were a whole lot of facts against all aspects of livestock raising was thrown out there, regardless how out of date or erroneous they were, the producers knew that the inundation of such facts was going to overwhelm the audience so much to spring them into some kind of action. For me though, that action was to dig as deep as I could and pause the movie as often as possible to write notes. The more notes I wrote, and the more I paused, the more I could see just how much of a biased joke it was.The narrator/protagonist Kip Anderson's sudden "realization" that he couldn't affect climate change after doing all the things he was supposed to--like turning off the lights when not in the room, watching water consumption, walking or riding a bike instead of driving, etc.--because animal agriculture was causing all the problem was amusing. He was just one person out of 7 billion people trying to make a difference, he himself couldn't affect climate change just by doing all those "greener living" things, though he would be a small part of the solution. Even more head-shaking was his "eureka" moment with just one email from a friend about meat-eating, although legit, but the way that he and his producers went about to find out about it all was just simply wrong.Since the film was a cunningly deliberate means to pit the omnivorous "meat-eaters" against the hard-core vegans, it only created the facade that ONLY those who NEVER eat meat are "true environmentalists" and maligned anyone else who ate meat, no matter if it came from the ethical, far more sustainably-raised operations, as the environmental destroyers and greedy gluttons of the Earth. That, in itself, was a huge problem I had (and still have) a big beef with. Literally.It was really hard to ignore the talking heads were, not so coincidentally, vegan. Although diet really shouldn't have anything to do with what this film is trying to show, I ask the question, How is it not possible to notice that ALL of the expert were actually vegan themselves? Not one person of Kip's "expert panel" were NOT vegan, and yet Keegan Kuhn responded, in his response to the critic's response to the film, "The simple fact that their dietary choices would be used against their credibility is laughable. I would not consider them credible if they didn't respond to their research and experiences and make the necessary changes for living more sustainably." (more here: Response to Criticism of Cowspiracy Facts) Not that I have a problem with the diet itself, but it's really hard to shrug off how their diet choices suddenly made them better and more "credible" experts than some of the far more credible individuals out there that actually have a background in agriculture AND the environment.You see, the primary "expert" and "statistical advisor" (referred to as an "environmental researcher" in the film) that Anderson always was turning to is a vegan dentist by the name of Richard Oppenlander. (This whole "documentary" is actually based on his book "Comfortably Unaware", as are most of the "facts" and statistics used.) Other well-known vegan "environmental experts" included "Dr." William Tuttle, "Mad Cowboy" Howard Lyman, David Simon, and several others. Background checks on all revealed that literally none had any legitimate background nor experiences in agriculture and the environment. The only exception was Lyman, but I remain really skeptical of his stances because he literally went from one extreme from another: He went from industrial confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to abolitionist vegan, and didn't even bother considering dabbling in nor looking at what was in between. Their "research" didn't even cut it when they were mostly uttering the same rhetoric that I've heard uttered from other abolitionist activists in my lively discussions with them.What bothered me was how the non-vegans, including those from the environmental groups, were made out to be fearful of saying anything because the agricultural industry had some strong-hold on them, or keeping back "secrets" that really didn't even exist. Not only that but most were made to look more clueless than their "expert" counterparts.The FAO and World Watch GHG NumbersThe inaccuracies begin (and certainly don't end) with the erroneous data pulled from Livestock's Long Shadow (FAO, 2006). A graphic showed that animal agriculture was responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which was more than transportation, which was at 13 percent. Yet there was absolutely no acknowledgement that one of the authors from that book--Pierre Gerber--openly agreed that that their calculations were wrong and off-base after Associate Professor and Director of Agricultural Air Quality Dr. Frank Mitloehner pointed out their mistake (proof here: UN admits flaw in report on meat and climate change). The primary error made was that the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported only tail-pipe emissions from the transportation sector directly from the IPCC, not life cycle emissions of that same sector. The FAO created life-cycle analysis of all livestock animals in their report, so such a comparison was literally, as Stephen Zwick pointed out, an apple-to-basketball comparison. Simon Fairlie wrote "Are claims that meat is a climate crime a load of hot air?" on The Guardian which is worth checking out.Not only that but most people don't realize that, unlike how the media pinned it almost 10 years ago now, the FAO/UN is not anti-beef/cattle nor anti-animal agriculture. Most of the authors were pro-CAFO and against sustainable, pasture-raised production practices, including managed pasturing and holistic management.The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) has since corrected their calculations and released them in 2013 to 14.5%, which is actually less than the transportation sector (FAO Key facts and findings). I didn't see any sort of acknowledgement to to that change on the film, mostly because the number just didn't provide enough shock-value as the original percentage did.The other GHG-related numbers that Cowspiracy used came from one particular non-peer-reviewed "scientific article" by from the World Watch Institute authored by Goodland and Anhang (2009). This particular non-peer-reviewed report has been widely rejected by the real scientific community for the dubious methods and numbers that were calculated and used to bolster their outrageous conclusion that 51% of GHGs were created by livestock. Livestock and greenhouse gas emissions: The importance of getting the numbers right as a rebuttal report compiled by several environmental scientists that showed how G&A arrived at their numbers. For example, only half of the carbon cycle was used (the other half of carbon mitigation was completely ignored), and some scenarios were made up to maximize emission values. Not surprisingly, Cowspiracy didn't even bother mentioning how G&A really came up with their outrageous number. All it showed was that it came from calculating the amount of carbon emitted from respiration, waste production, and clear-cutting of forests for grazing (Amazonian).Additionally, cattle grazing is not a carbon source like factory or vehicle emissions are. Cattle grazing is actually just a natural part of the carbon cycle where cattle are the main management tool for grasslands and for plants in grasslands to sequester carbon from the atmosphere--including the carbon and methane from their belches and flatulence--and put it back into the soil.Methane EmissionsMethane (CH4) is infamous for being the second most potent greenhouse gas after nitrous oxide (NO2) and having a global warming potential that is 25 times greater than carbon dioxide (CO2) over 100 years. It tends to be the most noticed because ruminants, including cattle, produce methane through enteric fermentation. Methane is also produced in significant amounts from confined systems and their manure management, which means manure being kept in lagoons and holding tanks.Cowspiracy claimed that methane comes primarily from cattle or enteric fermentation. This is not true. This paper (http://www.atmosresearch.com/NCGG2a%202002.pdf ) shows that waste and fossil fuels are the primary contributors to total anthropogenic methane emissions at 24 and 26 percent, respectively. Wetlands contribute a huge portion of natural methane emissions at 72 percent, via the same link. (Let's not forget oceans and melting sea ice also contribute quite a bit of methane to the atmosphere [New Study -- Risk of Significant Methane Release From East Siberian Arctic Shelf Still Growing].) The Environmental Protenction Agency (EPA) puts Natural Gas and Petroleum Systems at 29 percent (Methane Emissions via EPA). Enteric fermentation, via the EPA, only makes up 26% of all United States methane emissions, and in the first study above, ruminants only make up 23 percent. Bison are also significant methane producers just like cattle, and yet no heck is being raised for raising these critters for meat. (Study done on methane emissions of bison versus cattle here: Methane emissions from bison-An historic herd estimate for the North American Great Plains) (Note that methane, of the overall total greenhouse gas emissions, accounts for only 10% of the total [U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report: 1990-2013]). The World Resource Institute per the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; Navigating the Numbers - WRI) includes both livestock and manure in their methane numbers. The EPA separated enteric fermentation from manure management, which accounted for only 10 percent of methane emissions.The EPA clearly showed that dairy (total 1,271 kilotonnes) and swine (total 922 kilotonnes) production are the primary sources of methane from manure (http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/Downloads/ghgemissions/US-GHG-Inventory-2015-Chapter-5-Agriculture.pdf pg. 5-9). In these systems manure is primarily stored in lagoons and holding tanks. Manure from beef cattle is lower still than even poultry systems (129 kt versus 120 kt, respectively) because majority of beef cattle are on pasture, and the manure created from such animals in feedlots is in dry form, not wet or liquid. And the manure that hits the ground in pasture soils is quickly attacked by all sorts of organisms from flies to earthworms and bacteria, which carry nutrients down into the soil and are made available to plants as soil organic carbon. Liquid manure is only made available to plants if it's spread onto fields, but not when it's stored in storage tanks. (http://savory.global/assets/docs/evidence-papers/exploration-of-methane.pdf)Methane generally has a shorter half-life than carbon dioxide (12 years compared with 5 to 200 years, respectively), and is broken down fairly quickly in the trophosphere by hydroxyl radicals (OH) into water vapour and carbon dioxide, hence creating a methane sink in the atmosphere (Methane Sinks - Atmosphere). Methane sinks are also created in the soil via methanotrophs. These bacteria oxidize methane and puts it deep into the soil surface. Methanotrophs are present in both forest and grassland soils, and are part of the reason why manure from livestock on pasture are not such big methane emitters as commonly thought.Every livestock producer always makes sure that there is a relatively even layer of manure on the land over time, no matter if it's cropland or pasture land, spread by the animals themselves or via machinery. Manure contributes to increased organic matter in addition to the plant matter left behind after grazing, and increases the nutrient load of soil through the nitrogen and phosphorus content often found in manure. (Note that cattle aren't grazed so that everything is removed. Cattle are and should be grazed so that over 40 to 70% of plant matter is left behind when they're moved to the next pasture or paddock.) The only problem that manure will create is when it accumulates in piles or lagoons from confined intensive feeding operations and overflows during a storm, or when it's stored improperly, or accumulation comes so fast there's issues with what to do with it all. But when there's a lot of land available to put the manure on, and other producers may be willing to have the manure from that operation put on their land, these issues become considerably uncommon.But there really was no acknowledgement on how livestock manure is one of the best natural fertilizers to use for crops and pastures. Yet they tried to shock everyone by stating how the amount of manure produced per day would be enough to bury several large metropolitan cities. It was really sad to see that it wasn't in their interest to show how manure is incorporated into the soil to help plants grow. Instead they blatantly lied to everyone by showing how millions of tons of manure are leached into waterways which eventually flows into the ocean, and thus causing these massive oceanic dead-zones. They couldn't show how nitrogen-based fertilizers are the more significant cause of this, not so much animal manure.Water UsageCowspiracy numbers on water consumption by the livestock sector were inaccurate and just plain misleading. Especially with regards to Californian water usage, and that used by both dairy and beef production. Beef production was particularly concerning when they ignored that most of the water that is used to feed and raise beef cattle comes from the sky.California was made as an example for concerns with water shortage, and blame, of course, was placed on animal agriculture. According to the film, 55 percent of water was dedicated to animal agriculture compared with only 5 percent for domestic use. (Note: Even though California is the top fourth state for number of cattle and calves in the country, it's not the top for beef production. California is much more a dairy state than a beef one. See here: http://www.beefusa.org/beefindus....) Also stated in the film was that, "...1500 gallons of water was used by Californians per person per day, and close to half of that is associated with meat and dairy products." My research found this to be a bit misleading. According to the same link used on the Cowspiracy Facts page, the latter half of that statement is actually based on California's water footprint by sector, not by how Californian's water use amounts were associated with what they ate! The pie chart on this site (California's Water Footprint, Pacific Institute (2012) page three [3]) indeed showed that 47 percent of water use was dedicated to meat and dairy production (and 46 percent to other agricultural uses), but it clearly stated on that page that "...especially large water footprints [were] due to the amount of water-intensive feed required to raise the animals." Only 1 percent of water use goes into hydrating, washing and processing animals. The rest is for growing feed and fodder for livestock in the form of alfalfa, pasture, corn and grain crops for silage, and hay, in that order.What's interesting is that green water still makes up a majority, (69 percent green versus 30 percent blue, according to this link on pg. 16 http://pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ca_ftprint_full_report3.pdf) related to that exact statement above. Goods and services produced in CA, has 63 percent blue water and 36 percent green. The graph on pg. 19 shows animal feed (irrigated and non-irrigated pasture, and other feed crops) as 15.2 million acre-feet, and alfalfa, straw and hay at 5.5 million acre-feet. The former is 32 percent blue and 65 percent green; the latter is around 80 percent blue water. I know it doesn't prove much, but it still shows the real data on how the numbers are attained.The host of the film had also claimed that it *supposedly* takes 2,500 gallons of water to make one pound of beef. Per my calculations and answer to another Quora question asking "How much water is needed to raise a cow for slaughter?" I calculated that number out to be only between 140 to 200 gallons to make a pound of beef. And that was really only for the finishing phase. Some calculations for the rest of the animal's life were a lot more complex than what it seemed, especially since the larger an animal grew, the more water it would drink.The water footprints over the entire nation were really taken out of context. The report on farm animal water footprint as done by Mekonnen and Hoekstra (2012), now not exactly the best report for showing water usage, had laid out the numbers in metric measurements, not imperial. It divided water use into three different categories: Green (precipitation), Blue (surface and ground water) and Grey (waste water). The beef footprint had actually 96.7% weighted average that comprised of green water. Three percent, in total, only comprised of blue and grey water. Thus the attempt to show how unsustainable beef is in respect to water consumption is a huge fail, especially since over 96 percent of the water that goes into producing beef (90% which is what cattle eat, not drink) comes from the sky. And here's another hard reality which many find hard to accept: All beef cattle are grass-fed, most are just not grass-finished."Grass-fed" cattle, or cattle that are simply on a forage-based ration that includes both grazing and/or hay, does not necessarily mean cattle are grass- or pasture-finished. However, sadly the marketing labels them as that even though "fed" is just past-tense for "feeding" and feeding encapsulates ALL aspects of raising and feeding cattle, from birth to fattening. Grass-FINISHED, on the other hand, directly tells you that cattle have been finished and fattened on standing forage, which includes standing corn, an 80% alfalfa-mix stand, crop-residue, or even grazing annual wheat that hasn't headed out yet.Sadly Cowspiracy gave a pretty huge implication that all beef cattle are born and raised in the feedlot up until slaughter. Very. NOT. True! ALL beef cattle are born on a "grass-fed" or pastured-cattle operation (note the non-market-label definition I had above), and raised on such before they get fattened on a 80- to 90-percent high-energy ration. That means for 12 to 18 months of their lives, beef cattle are grazing and/or eating hay before the commercial grain-finishing begins. And finally, cattle are held in the feedlot for only 4 to 6 months before being sold to slaughter. They are fed feedstuffs which include grains (not only grain like many suggest) that may or may not have been irrigated, depending on their source.Those that are finished on pasture may take more land and more time to finish, but the fact that they're unsustainable is still not true.Controversy over "Grass-Fed" CattleThe film tried to claim that "grass-fed beef" or grazing cattle is bad for the planet--"more damaging than feedlot beef"--using, ironically, facts and statistics straight from the conventional/industrial cattle industry against those cattle producers that utilize holistic management practices and managed grazing to conserve biodiverse grasslands and feed cattle at the same time.Yet it completely misses the point that there has been grazing animals on the planet for eons, and much of the land that is being used for grazing has been adapted to be utilized by grazing animals for millions of years. Over 200+ years ago there was estimated that between 30 to over 70 million bison were present roaming and grazing much of the US and Canada. Let's not forget the vast elk and pronghorn herds that numbers in the tens of millions of well, both which were (and are) grazing animals.There is currently over 98.4 million cattle, 9.3 million of that which are lactating dairy cows (plus 4.2 million are replacement dairy heifers), and 12 million currently finished in feedlots, leaving over 70 million beef cattle (via USDA Cattle Inventory as of July 24, 2015) that would more than likely be on pasture and range in the United States alone. As I mentioned above, all beef cattle are grass-fed, most are just not grass-finished.Cattle are no different at being as good grazers as bison were (and are), and bison are just as likely to severely overgraze an area as cattle are. Bison prefer grasses over forbs (or "wildflowers") and when subject to a small area to graze for some time, their selectivity can overwhelm grass growth and allow the more weedy forbs to come in. Cattle do not have such negative effects as bison do, tending to select for a broader forage base than bison and able to help manage both grass and forbs growing in a pasture. Bison, then, are best suited for large tracts of land than smaller fragmented areas, the latter best suited for cattle. Cattle need to be controlled more like bison on large areas to prevent them from spreading out too much and creating uneven grazing patches.Cattle grazing, when properly managed (cattle movements are controlled so that they graze one area for a short period of time, then are moved to allow that area to rest for a long period of time), actually assists in maintaining and even increasing biodiversity of a rangeland than simply leaving it be. Also, Cowspiracy only showed the extremes: From a ranch with well-managed, very lush grassland managed by the Markegard Family Grass-fed in the Sonoma and San Mateo counties of California, to the severely overgrazed and denuded public lands of Nevada that is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and used by the few ranchers that continue to hold a grazing lease to these lands for their cattle. Ironically, we are forced to believe that almost all lands in the US, if not the entire world (which is undoubtedly implied) are as abused and devoid of biodiversity as the example they made of BLM-managed rangelands. From my own experiences, and from what I have seen of other pictures shared by other ranchers around the US, Canada, and the world, that is the biggest blatant lie I've ever heard.I have personally visited several rangelands and grasslands in Alberta, Canada, for example, that are as biodiverse as they can ever get with well-managed grazing practices. This is from working with a rangeland research team in performing range health assessments on various sites, and having to identify numerous plant species on several sites in just a small area. The areas I visited were anything but denuded and overgrazed. I've no doubt that there are indeed areas in the world that are desertified and denuded from poor grazing practices, but there are also many areas that are incredibly biodiverse. The one area (pictured below) that I helped perform a range assessment on was so beautiful I was completely blown away by what I saw. And it was all managed using cattle.This one is down at Cypress Hills, Alberta.This is another area I have to share, which is in the dry mixed prairie grassland of Southern Alberta, near Brooks. Pronghorn and other wildlife were not uncommon on this ranch, as a matter of fact every day there was always wildlife to see, whether it was water fowl, deer, or song birds. And of course if I didn't see them, I could hear them, and that included coyotes. This ranch had cattle, plenty of them, and they were all managed and used to maintain these native grasslands (which covered about 95 percent of that entire ranch) as nothing else could.I have more to share on my blog: Cattle Grazing Makes for some Beautiful Alberta Country! on The Bovine PracticumA commonly held misconception about how there's not enough land to produce enough grass-finished beef for everyone in the United States, if not the world, was certainly exacerbated by the film with Anderson's attempts to come up with the calculations for this presumption. Yet, I found these calculations to be heavily flawed for three obvious reasons.1) The number he came up with--3.7 billion acres--was only based on one single ranch (the Markegard's), which had a stocking rate of "1 cow per 10 acres." Now I'm not sure what Doniga Markegard meant by that, whether that was their true stocking rate, or whether that was based on an edited-out question of how many cattle they graze on their land, not animals collectively. See, the Markegards had a lot more than cattle (Belted Galloways) to manage, they also have sheep, pigs, and chickens that are pasture-raised. That means they have four species to manage. If Doniga indeed was answering a question about her cattle herd alone and not the rest of their animals, then one full-grown cow per 10 acres would be sufficient because they still have enough room for grazing sheep and feeding pigs and chickens without running over-stressing the plants and the land of their ranch and thus running out of enough forage for all their animals.2) There was absolutely no mention of stocking rates or how they are determined, nor was Anderson even interested in how they come up with their stocking rate (and if they even mentioned anything it was carefully removed). There wasn't even a mention of how stocking rates (or stocking densities) vary widely across the entire country, all based on influential factors like location, climate, soil, vegetation, cow size, herd size, time of year, and many others. Stocking rate is X number of animals grazing a certain size of land (Y) over a grazing season (usually 4 or 6 months long). Stocking densities is the same except the time spent on pasture or a paddock is also a variable (Z). And that single stocking rate he used for his calculation is not an accurate representation of the stocking rates or densities over the entire US.3) Land is not fungible. As mentioned in 2) stocking rates vary because of climate, soil and location, but also because of topography and soil type. Later in the film they tried to show how much more "sustainable" vegan diets were because of less resources needed to feed a vegan human, and how much more land is needed to feed cattle. Yes, more land is needed to feed cattle, but much of that land contains plants that are inedible to humans and which are grown in areas where crop production cannot occur. The Markegards are no exceptions. There isn't much land suited for crop production, so the rest is used for feeding and/or grazing livestock, especially ruminants like cattle.These alone made his calculation completely moot and worthless overall.I feel sorry for the Markegards because of how they were treated and how they were made to look in the film. Personally I felt that they were doing an outstanding job on their ranches with four species to manage. But even though they tried to be transparent with their own operation, neither Kip nor the producers were interested in how they managed their land nor their animals. If Doniga or Erik even had mentioned anything, it was completely edited out to continue to try to show just how ridiculous pasturing or even Holistic Management is, even though it is truly anything but.Allan Savory and Holistic ManagementAllan Savory and his holistic management practices weren't even covered in the film, just irately dismissed because Anderson considered Savory to, "definitely be not someone [he] would take ecological advice from." This is all because Savory made the mistake of thinking that culling elephant herds by the tens of thousands would improve the already degraded land some 40 years ago.And that was the only "explanation" given to not bother with his practices anymore. I consider that quite pathetic. See, Savory more than just admitted to his wrongs and apologized, which he has done openly and numerous times. He has since learned from his mistakes and done something about it. One commenter below tried to parallel him with a convicted pedophile. The problem with that analogy is that while the pedophile was said to be regretful for his actions only, and so forgiven allowed to be near children again, Savory has gone far beyond anything parallel to that. He has created the Savory Institute and Holistic Management and has done a lot more research to discover that what he had believed as a young man was the wrong way to go, and went about to prove it. Since then he and his several partners had influenced 40 million acres of land all over the world with holistic management, all with successful results, and also over 2 million acres of grassland. (See http://savory.global/assets/docs/evidence-papers/holistic-management-overview.pdf and http://savory.global/assets/docs/annual-reports/2013-2014-ar.pdf)I said it and I'll say it again: Allan Savory practices what he preaches. Not only has he recognized his mistakes, but he has moved on since and proved to the world that what he thought was right in the past is in fact wrong and has proven why. That is someone worth trusting with ecological advice. There's no excuse not to believe him nor to dwell in the past simply because of a mistake he made that resulted in thousands of lives lost. I cannot understand how someone will not trust a man like Savory when he deliberately has gone out of his way to provide the evidence that less animals on grazing lands is NOT good for the planet.And you know what's even more ironic about this? Cowspiracy and its like-minded followers is actually pushing for the exact same thing that Savory is being vilified for. They aren't doing it exactly (although PeTA is infamous for killing 99% of all animals that come through its doors, just as an example) as how Savory had done it, the way they are going about their "rescues" is by slowly, yet surely, ensuring the eventual extinction of all domestic animals, from the rangy, self-reliant beef cows to the intensively-raised, high-maintenance chickens.ConclusionsMany, many other things were not even mentioned in the film. There was no mention of anything about soil, nothing about impact of monoculture crops on native rangelands, no mention of how wild lands are going to be impacted by no more livestock or unmanaged wildlife, and many others. There wasn't even a mention of how manure from livestock is needed or used to help gardeners. (I suspect those three guys that were looking after their garden were lying about where they were getting their soil nutrients, just by the suspiciously guilty-look on their faces when they looked at the camera.) But it's all a facade to support the ideology of a vegan agricultural system and ignore the obvious importance of animals to all ecological systems, man-made or natural.Overall, I found Cowspiracy to be a film that pushes a single, uncompromising, fundamentalist ideology already predetermined by its creators. It doesn't leave any open-ended questions that engages and encourages discussion about food, agriculture, and the environment, nor about what to eat, how to produce it, and why. All it did was provide a seemingly easy solution all prettied up with rhetorical shock-value facts and statistics, as well as create an even deeper and wider crevasse between two different yet similar interest groups--the ethical omnivores and the vegans/vegetarians choosing not to eat meat because of how animals are treated in CAFOs--which, as Caroline Watson put it in her review, "closes down sensible and productive dialogue that may just help us save the planet and feed the world." And in doing so, it has also done nothing than to add fuel to the out-of-control fire of many commonly-held misconceptions, misperceptions and misinformation about a large sector of agriculture that so few truly understand and really know about thanks to the media-savvy extremists.