Jabba

So you are a vegan in Germany? What do you think of U.L.? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Life Only the first part of the German Wikipedia article has been translated into English, so feel free to translate the rest of the German article into English (I'm dying to read about the VOICE magazine conflict!) Also, if you could add the [[en:Universal Life]] to the "edit" page of the German page, the Polish page, and the Hungarian page. That way, maybe someone who is only aware of the existence of the German page would see the link to the English page in the "Andere Sprachen" ("in other languages") box and say to themselves, "I never knew there was an English page for U.L.! (He or she then clicks on it). Oh! Only the first few paragraphs have been translated. I better translate the rest out of the goodness of my heart". Also, if someone could add more links pointing to the English article on U.L. on other article pages on Wikipedia, that would help let other Wikipedia surfers now of the U.L. page's existence. Then it would stop being an "orphaned article". Maybe someone who was surfing English articles speaks German as a second language, and can translate the rest of the article. You can be unilingual in English to do this.

There are a few cults that support animals and vegetarianism for animal protection reasons (ie. 7th Day Adventists are not vegetarian for animal protection reasons, but Hare Krishnas are). Suma Ching Hai http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ching_Hai is one, but she only promotes lacto-vegetarianism and her followers don't seem to do much animal activism, at least not in the way PETA does. I've never seen a bunch of Ching Hai'ists marching in the street holding banners with gory images of foxes and yelling anti-hunt slogans. Universelles Leben (in English: Universal Life) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Life seems to be much more activist-oriented (or should I say activism-oriented, or activist-oreintated?). They held a vigil for Bruno the bear and give away buttons with slogans like "Don't Eat Meat / Save a Life!", to name just a few examples. By the way, I hope some of you who are more knowledgable about Wikipedia and computer-language savvy than I can add more to that article, because as of now it is still a stub. It's also an orphaned article, meaning there are no links to it on other Wikipedia pages. There also is no link to the English page on the German, Hungarian, and Polish pages. It would be great if someone here is bilingual in German and English, and could translate some of the controversy sections into English, particularly as it concerns to the animal/veg aspect of U.L. One woman told me, I suspect, that U.L. maybe is not against eating cow's butter, but is against other animal products. I can't remember the reason; it was sort of illogical sounding. I couldn't really decipher what she was saying because her English grammar was poor.

runner, Did you mean "Polish" instead of "posih"? Yes, I know some vegan who live in Poland too, but I still think that Poland probably wouldn't send as many vegan athletes off as, say, England. Yes, if there were any vegans in the Olympics (like in Vancouver 2010), I would be happy about that, but I'm not sure if a vegan athlete has ever competed in the Olympics. I know vegetarians have (like Mohini Bhardwaj), but vegans? I would be curious to find out. Do you know of a website for this Swedish vegan sports week? I would be interested to see it. If our movement had an infinite amount of money and resources, and there was no ecological or labour damage involved, it would be fun to participate in an event like that! Even though I am near beginner level, and most of the vegans at such an event would be beginners (since professional vegan athletes are in the single digits, I'm assuming), it would be fun to perform in front of an audience! Here's another example of an "Olympics-with-a-focus" event: Maccabi Games for Jewish athletes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maccabiah_Games http://www.jccmaccabi.org/index_home.php

I got this idea from hearing about the Commonwealth Games and the Gay Games. http://www.gaygames.com/en/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_games These are olympic-type events that cater to a certain demographic, so maybe we could have an olympics of our own, just for us vegans? Though I think I read that the Gay Games does not restrict heterosexuals from competing. I understand that there wouldn't be many competitors, since vegans are such a tiny percentage of the population, and that certain countries would be overrepresented (eg. England, USA, Israel, Netherlands would probably have more vegans than, say, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Poland) http://www.ivu.org/news/95-96/general.html We would have it so that there wouldn't be a minimum standard of difficulty. For example, the gymnasts wouldn't have to have completed Level 10 in order to compete. If the gymnast was just at Level 4 or Level 6, they would be allowed to come. Heck, so few competitors would show up for the event that I'd even allow Level 1's! Since it would occur in one city, most athletes would probably not have the money for plane tickets to attend, so we could start up a charity to raise money to help pay for the athlete's hotel bill and plane tickets. On the other hand, this would probably be a bad idea, because not only would we probably not get many donations, and the money we raise would probably do the animals more good if we spent it on spaying or on copies of "Why Vegan?" booklets. We'd also probably have a disproportionately high number of cyclists and an underrepresentation of target shooters/biathlon people. That is just my guess though. Discuss the pros and cons of this idea.

I know that Mohini Bhardwaj is a vegetarian, but I'm guessing she's a lacto-ovo vegetarian and not a vegan. http://www.goveg.com/feat/pamgold/ Pam Mayer is a lacto-ovo http://www.fatfree.com/archive/1998/dec/msg00058.html Kathy Johnson http://www.soystache.com/famousel.htm I'm just assuming Kathy was lacto-ovo, since I have never heard of her being referred to as a vegan. Does anyone know of any COMPETITIVE gymnasts who are VEGAN? I know of vegans who do gymnastics recreationally, but I don't know of any who do competitions (even if it's just competing collegiate, provincially, regionally, sectionally, invitationally, level 4, etc.). P.S. Any road lugers, or ice luge people who are vegan?