Keep on fighting

Fight for those who have no voice. That's why I am vegan.
Fight for yourself. That's why I am straight edge (I will write about this).
Fight for a better world.
And believe that you can make the difference. Every single day of your life.

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"'Cos we are the new kids,
We've got our heads,
We'll keep on fighting,
'Til old ways are dead"

(7 Seconds)

Global warming

I had planned this post for the Vegan MoFo but my internet didn't help and I couldn't download the images that will illustrate this post. But the good (or bad) thing is that this is a theme that we need to talk about every day. It is urgent, it is important and this week the richest countries in the world are not doing their best to help. But we can, with big or small steps, we can help to save the planet, to save ourselves.

My uncle Nani is a famous cartoonist in Brazil and he has been drawing and writing about various serious issues (national and global) for the last decades. Last year he published a book called "Aquecimento Global: Cartuns Inconvenientes" (Global Warming: Inconvenient Cartoons) that put together his recent work about the issue. In Portuguese we use to say when somebody doesn't understand what you talking about something like that: "Did you understand or should I draw it for you?". As a lot of people seems not to understand some important and serious issues like the global warming, Nani decided to draw them :P And he allowed me to publish here some of the cartoons of his book. I chose the ones with no words, so everybody can enjoy them and not just the ones who speak Portuguese.









I have faith in the world and I'd like to have faith in the people too!

PS. Se você é um leitor brasileiro, o livro pode ser comprado aqui!

If you care...

Change Your Diet - Change the World!

MeatOut is an international event, organized by FARM (Farm Animal Reform Movement):

"On (or around) March 20 — the first day of spring — thousands of caring people in all 50 U.S. states and two dozen other countries get active to host educational Meatout events. Activities include colorful festivals, lectures, public dinners, feed-ins, cooking demos, food samplings, leafleting, information tables and more.

The occasion is Meatout, the world's largest and oldest annual grassroots diet education campaign. This year is the 25th annual observance! Every spring, thousands of caring Meatout supporters educate their communities and ask their friends, families, and neighbors to pledge to "kick the meat habit (at least for a day) and explore a wholesome, compassionate diet of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains."

This year's theme is Change Your Diet - Change the World!"

(Font: FARM)



How about changing your diet today and start changing the world?

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Um pouco mais de informação em português: Cantinho Vegetariano


(Pic: FARM E-card - Send one to your friends!)

"We are what we are till the day we die"

My post today starts with a piece of a Rise Against song in the title. I didn't write here about how music is important to me and that it was going to hardcore shows that I learnt everything I know about veganism. But this is a long history, for another post.

Today I'd like to just write a little about this band and share one lyric with everybody that comes here. They are an American punk rock band, from Chicago, formed in 1999. I saw them live at the beginning of February in Berlin and it was awesome. Two thousand people singing their songs. I Didn't know that they were so big.


The group members are vegans and active supporters of Peta2. There was a group of Peta2 people at the show in Berlin too. “Their video (below) for the single “Ready to Fall” addresses environmental degradation and its effect on animals, as well as animal cruelty inherent in factory farming and sport hunting.” (thanks Wikipedia). They support other political causes too and have really awesome lyrics.

These days I'm listening too much their last album, “Appeal to Reason”, and it's off it the lyric that I want to share with you. As I always say, being vegan is try to make the world better too. I'm not perfect but I'm doing the best I can.

Collapse (Post-Amerika)

When our rivers run dry and our crops cease to grow
When our summers grow longer and winters won't snow
From the banks of the ocean and the ice in the hills
To the fight in the desert where progress stands still

When we've lost our will
That's how we'll know
This is not a test, oh no
This is cardiac arrest
Of a world too proud to admit our mistakes
We're crashing into the ground as we all fall from grace

When the air that we breathe becomes air that we choke
When the marsh fever spreads from the swamps to our homes
When your home on the range has been torn down and paved
And the buffalo roam to a slaughterhouse grave
What more will it take

For us to know
This is not a test, oh no
This is cardiac arrest
Of a world too proud to admit our mistakes
Kissing the ground as we all fall from grace

This is a chance to set things straight
To bend or break the rules back into place
There is no middle ground, no compromise
We've drawn the line
With perfect aim, we stand back and throw
Glass windows break and it's all about to blow
Lights go out as we pass the torch again
In hope that is stays lit

Neutrality means that you don't really care
Cuz the struggle goes on even when you're not there
Blind and unaware

That's how we'll know
This is not a test, oh no
This is cardiac arrest
Of a world too proud to admit our mistakes
We're crashing into the ground as we all, yeah we all, all fall from grace

PS. This post is also to an amazing friend that always helps me to see the good side of everything and she loves Rise Against. Cinthia, thanks for being part of my life!

For the Earth, the Oceans and all form of life

Here I am to spread some great news: the Italian hardcore band TO KILL, from Rome, is releasing a CD with to songs to support the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society:


"Evoking the Maelström

The defense of the animal rights always had an essential place in every heartbeat in To Kill. We always tried to spread this value as much as we could with every tool we had. through our songs, talking at our shows, in the interviews we did..... this, together with some other ideals, was a key issue of the band, as important as our music.

During all these years involved in the enviromentalist movement we've got to know so many organizations and collectives, together with a huge amount of hearts filled with this passion that we also share.

Of all those organization there was one that always caught our interest and that always received our support as individuals: the SEA SHEPHERD CONSERVATION SOCIETY. Since 1977 these people fight every day putting their lives in danger for what they believe in, defending the oceans and the wildlife from the violence that sometimes (more and more often actually) mankind is able to create. With direct action and passion as their main weapons in reaching their goals,with the lead of Captain Paul Watson, this group of bravehearts deserves all of our support.
So We decided to release a mcd and devolve all the income to this organization to support them in their daily struggles so that we can help them in their endeavour with what we have: the chance to express through the hardcore scene.

So we are writing this announcing to all of you the release of MAELSTRÖM. 2 new heavy and honest songs which are 120% Tokill.

We are really happy to share with you the first material we have done for our new record which is coming out in fall. these 2 songs are, as usual, the result of everything we are, we tried to push ourselves to the best of what we can, putting our hearts and our blood into our music.

To these new songs we added and old "classic" re-recorded to which we also added something new: the song "1001 days" which was the first song off our first record. and since we wanted something more we will also have a bonus track with a spoken word from none the less than Greg from Trial and Between Earth and Sky and music from our friend Christian Di Vito (myspace.com/christiandivito). We are so happy Greg agreed to work with us since he has been with his band and his lyrics source of inspiration in our hc life, so with this occasion we also had the chance to get to know him better or, for some of us, to know him for the first time in our life, and we are really thankful of having him as a friend... Greg is also going to be our guest vocalist in one of the songs and this is simply amazing to us.

The recordings have been done with the help of our friend Alex JM @ HellSmell studio, and mixed and mastered from Riccardo Pasini @ Studio73 (Ephel Dual, Memoryes of Apocalypse, This is a Stand off).

We have to express our gratitude to Matteo@Nexus Enterprises and Lexi@Desperate Days Designworks for taking care of all the visual aspects of this release, lending their precious time to the cause and wanting nothing more in return than being a part of this project.

Special thanks go out to Theo and Rob@Gsr records for letting us do this release in complete freedom and for always being more than supportive with us.

The cd sounds amazing and we really had a hard time deciding which song to put on myspace due to the fact that to us they are both amazing, heavy and catchy even if they are different one another.

Maelström will be totally self produced just to be sure that all the money will go for the benefit and at our shows you can obviously decide to overpay it and we will make sure everything will go to Sea Shepherd.

Make sure you'll get your own copy, support them with all the help you can give them and if you don't know the sea shepherd conservation society, please check them out.



MAELSTRÖM will be released in the end of april but stay tuned to find out a preorder and an online way to get a copy. it will obviously be available at all of our shows as well.

For the Earth, the Oceans and all form of life."

Spreading the word

It's really amazing to see more and more people caring about veganism. The website RawPeople.com is a new virtual community that has a lot of good informative articles and recipes about not just the raw food, but a way of life. They asked me to write an article about cruelty free personal care products because they want to start a section for animal rights.

I feel so good writing about something I care every day in my life. Hope you enjoy it.

Thanks, RawPeople.com!

A little bit about… Christmas

We’re in Italy since December 24th and I can say I’m having a great time. I got a bronchitis but I am really happy to be here. As I wrote on the post about my grandma, I was a little bit worried about this first Christmas far from home, but we had a great time.

We had an awesome Christmas lunch. Just us, me and Matteo’s family. And a lot of food, as I wrote before too! My sister-in-law cooked everything she said she would and much more. We spent almost 4 hours eating, talking and having fun together.

Thinking about all the food we ate, one is definitely my favourite: the vegan salty muffins. She cooked some with peas and others with black olives. I could eat them forever!


And this wasn’t everything. In Europe they have the Saint Stephen holyday on December 26th, so we had two days of party and a lot of food. And one more time, my sister-in-law did her best with an amazing vegan menu. And she’s not vegan, not even vegetarian, so, my dear friends, don’t think it is that hard to have a vegan meal. All you need is some vegan recipes in your hands and creative ideas!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I wish all my friends here a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I have a wish...

Christmas time is coming and I really like the end of the year. I don't know exactly why because I am not religious, don't believe in Santa Claus anymore and don't agree with all the kindness and goodness that come magically with these celebrations and go way the same way. But I have just great memories of Christmas and New Year (well, just one bad memory but I will write about it in another occasion).


Thinking about the celebrations and everything we wish for next year, I understood that I have a special wish this year. A big wish, I can say... I really wish a better world. That's it. Not simple at all. And a better world to me involves more people thinking about the well being of human beings, animals and the planet. I know, we are far from this. But I think we can always do something. Day by day, step by step. So, why not start with a vegetarian meal in your Christmas day? There are a lot of vegetarian and vegan options to make your meal delicious and free from cruelty. Save a turkey and change your life a little bit.

I know that is hard to think about a tasty vegetarian meal, but you see here that we, vegan people, can eat a lot of good food and it's not different at the end of the year. We are going to spend some days in Italy and my sister-in-law is already thinking about our vegan meal! And an Italian Christmas meal includes a lot of food. And this year she will try to make a special dessert, called Pandoro. We will get her a vegan cream cheese from here that she will use to make the mascarpone. It will be the first time I eat this dessert and the first time Matteo will eat the vegan version. I still don't know about the complete menu, but I'm sure my sister-in-law will do great.


If you think it's difficult to prepare vegan food, here there are some great blogs to give you some ideas: in Portuguese, Brazil Nut and Cantinho Vegetariano, in English, What The Hell Does a Vegan Eat Anyway, and in Italian, Vegan Blog. Hope that my vegan and vegetarian friends that read this blog can help me with more tips.

This is what I suggest you: try the vegetarianism/veganism for one day! As I said before, small differences can change everything in the future.

Suitable for vegetarians and vegans

Some people might think I'm crazy to feel like this, but I swear: being a vegan or vegetarian person in Brazil is not that easy and sometimes we get stocked when we see that things can be easy and do work around the world. I will explain better. Since we moved to Dublin, I feel like living in heaven. Everything here is easier when we talk about vegetarian/vegan food (and lifestyle). There are a lot of reasons but I will talk about just one today.

Most of the products we buy here are from UK (yes, the vegan paradise) and EVERYTHING we buy has “suitable for vegetarians” or “suitable for vegetarians and vegans” written on the packaging. Even an orange juice. This is so amazing to me! If you think this is stupid, let me show you how it is in Brazil: you have to read ALL INGREDIENTS of everything you buy and sometimes you are not sure if something is 100% vegetarian or not. Sometimes you have to come back home with a doubt and call the costumer service or write an email to know what exactly is used in the product. Sounds bad? Can be worse. When you go to a place, like a restaurant, you have to ask about everything to know if you can eat anything. And people lie to you. We started to tell everybody that we have allergy to convince them that we don't want meat or cheese or eggs in our food.

So, to me, it's really a big deal to see all informations (besides the “suitable...” sentence all products have an “allergy advice” too) written in all products I want to buy and see menus with vegetarian options in most of the places we go to eat. It is a step ahead from my Brazilian reality.

I really hope that one day in the (near) future we can see this kind of thing everywhere.