6 Reasons You Should Avoid Dairy at all Costs (Video)

Here’s an alternative view and very interesting. Tho Dr Mark Hyman opposes dairy, he concedes that raw dairy is better than that pesticide-laden, chemically adulterated, genetically modified crap the USDA and FDA allow to be sold as “milk” — which it clearly is not.  (Oh, that’s the base ingredient, for sure, but what those cows are forced to eat, endure and be medicated with should make all humans run in the opposite direction.)

Agro terrorism: The next false flag

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False flag operations are covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is flying the flag of a country other than one’s own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and can be used in peace-time. Wikipedia

By D. Evans

Senator Pat Roberts just warned that an agro terrorism attack is likely, comparing the potential catastrophe to 9/11.

Terrorists?  Baloney.  Baloney.  Baloney.

This is little Pat saying “Mommy, cookies are going be missing from the cookie jar soon – it’s not an ‘if’ but a ‘when’ – and that kid across town, Abdul, is going to be the one who took them,” after he had already, inch by inch, moved the kitchen step stool into place near the jar.

Terrorists?  Who pushed the Kansas germ lab near the cookie jar?  Who’s behind little Pat suddenly putting out his “I know it’s going to be Abdul” warning?  Who pays little Pat’s allowance?

Hemp History Week May 2-8

By Wonder Knack

With Hemp History Week from May 2-8, I painted this image to help shine a light on the benefits, uses and history of industrial hemp.

It is time to cut away the stigma that has been placed on hemp for many years. Look at the role industrial hemp has played in the history and development of mankind to see how much it has to offer. Please take some time to educate yourself with the facts of the situation, start a dialog, ask questions and help others to learn about this valuable renewable resource. Did your family farm hemp at one time? Please delve into your family farming history and share your stories on our Facebook page.

Hemp has carried humans through the ages and deserves an identity and future based on reality. American farmers deserve to continue this symbiotic relationship that is as old as agriculture itself.

Upcoming docufilm, Fall and Winter, promises paradigm shift

By Matt Anderson
FallWinterMovie.com

FALL AND WINTER is a feature-length documentary that investigates humanity’s enduring struggle with catastrophe. The film peers into our ancient past, surveying the fall of civilizations to better comprehend our current situation and attempt to untangle the complexity of cultural, ecological, technological and economic threats emerging all around us. It also presents unique and important insight from a vast spectrum of individuals about the causes of – and solutions to – our current global crisis.

Using the concept of seasons, we demonstrate that these changing conditions we face are not an apocalyptic finale, but simply the end of a cycle. We’ve interviewed scientists, survivalists, Aboriginal elders, anarcho-primitivists, Amazonian natives, philosophers, cultural theorists and historians.

Monsanto-tied scientist abruptly quits key USDA research post

By Tom Philpott
Grist

On a slow Friday afternoon, a surprising bit of news came down the pike: Roger Beachy, head of  National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), the main research arm of the USDA, has officially resigned his post, effective May 20.

Who is Beachy? When Obama hired Beachy in 2009, I got a case of policy whiplash, because it seemed to me that the administration kept whipping back and forth between progressive food-system change and agribusiness as usual. Beachy, you see, came to the post from the Danforth Plant Science Center, where had he served as the organization’s president since its founding in 1998. Nestled in Monsanto’s St. Louis home town, Danforth has long and deep ties to Monsanto.

Another FDA shut down of raw milk that sickened no one

FDA Seeks Permanent Injunction Against Amish Farmer Dan Algyer

By Deborah Stockton
National Independent Consumers & Farmers Assn.

On Tuesday, April 26, the FDA revisited Pennsylvania Amish farmer Dan Algyer, serving notice that they have “filed a complaint for permanent injunction against [him], for distributing unpasteurized (or “raw”) milk for human consumption in interstate commerce,” according to the FDA press release.

What Dan Algyer does is as much a right as breathing. He has done nothing unlawful in conducting direct private trade with other individuals.  He is not engaged in interstate commerce as the FDA accuses. Aside from the Constitutional guarantees of right to contract, food sovereignty, of which Dan’s trade is a perfect example, is a God-given inalienable right.  No state has the right to proscribe the food choice of an individual. It might have the power through enforcement agents to hinder it, but it does not have the right.

Great Seed Robbery

By Vandana Shiva
Deccan Chronicle

Seed sovereignty is the foundation of food sovereignty. Seed freedom is the foundation of food freedom.

The seed, the source of life, the embodiment of our biological and cultural diversity, the link between the past and the future of evolution, the common property of past, present and future generations of farming communities who have been seed breeders, is today being stolen from the farmers and being sold back to us as “propriety seed” owned by corporations like the US-headquartered Monsanto.

Canada mines Ecuador with violence, protected by courts

A corrupt judicial system enforces the notion that transnational corporations outmatch indigenous people politically, legally, and militarily. So, how do Earth’s people protect the land from corporations?

By Carlos Zorrilla and Cyril Mychalejko
The Peoples Voice

Intag residents lose much more than a lawsuit against the Toronto Stock Exchange and Copper Mesa.

On December 2, 2006, 14 paramilitaries armed with 38-caliber guns and pepper spray fired into a group of unarmed Ecuadorian campesinos from a community that has been resisting a copper mining project for over a decade. Thankfully no one was killed, but there were several injuries, not to mention the psychological suffering caused by such a vicious attack.

This assault led three of the local campesinos from Intag, Ecuador to file a lawsuit against the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and Copper Mesa Corporation, the Canadian mining company responsible for hiring the “security firm” that sent the paramilitaries to intimidate the anti-mining residents of the region.

Maimouna Youssef sings Hell No to GMO

Parodying other songs, she happened to finish this with my all time favorite of the decade, Black Eyed Peas’ I Gotta Feeling… but instead of being about drinking and dancing, Maimouna gets to the heart of life: FOOD.

The Sacred and the Dead

I will be reading from my book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound, at the Lake Forest Friends Meeting House at 6:30 p.m. Friday, May 6. A potluck supper will precede the reading. Please come if you can! The meeting house is located at 101 West Old Elm Road, a block west of Route 41, in Lake Forest, Ill.

By Robert C. Koehler

How do values enter politics?

The Bolivian national legislature, pressured by a movement of indigenous people and small farmers, may be about to birth a stunning global precedent in the creation of an environmentally sane future: establishing legal rights for Mother Earth.

On the one hand, huh? How can we reduce nature itself — the entirety of the universe beyond humanity’s small outpost of self-importance — to an entity that requires bureaucratic recognition? On the other hand, Mother Earth — Pachamama, in indigenous Andean parlance — is humanity’s vulnerable context, without which, though the universe will go on, we will not. As Bron Taylor, author of Dark Green Religion: Nature, Spirituality and the Planetary Future, put it: “Ecologically maladaptive cultural systems . . . eventually kill their hosts.”

So how’s the Food Patriot Act working out so far?

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By Rady Ananda

Another armed food raid – this time on a company that provides nutritional supplements primarily for autism spectrum disorders and Alzheimer’s disease – another day under the Food Safety Modernization Act. As predicted, the FSMA is turning out to be a deliberate plan to wipe out small (under a million dollars a year in sales) and medium-sized (under $10 million a year) producers of natural, wholesome food and supplements. This is what happens when corporations run governments.

The concept of “food safety” in corpogov-speak is really just food fascism, according to Vandana Shiva:

“Risk Assessment in the hands of centralized corruptible agencies is no protection for consumers as the disease and health epidemic in the U.S. linked to over processed, industrial foods show. Even while the U.S. is at the epicenter of the food related public health crises, the U.S. government is trying to export its Food laws which deregulate the industry and over regulate ordinary citizens and small enterprise. This deregulation of the big and toxic and over regulation of the small and ecological is at the core of Food Fascism.” [emphasis added]

Small scale producers of meat, raw dairy and veggies, and dietary supplements are under continual attack by food giants who have placed their former employees in positions of power and authority.

How to Remove Radioactive Iodine-131 from Drinking Water

Use a water softener, carbon filter, reverse osmosis system, and boil the water in a way that blows the radioactive steam out of your environment.

By Jeff McMahon
Forbes

The Environmental Protection Agency recommends reverse osmosis water treatment to remove radioactive isotopes that emit beta-particle radiation. But iodine-131, a beta emitter, is typically present in water as a dissolved gas, and reverse osmosis is known to be ineffective at capturing gases.

A combination of technologies, however, may remove most or all of the iodine-131 that finds its way into tap water, all available in consumer products for home water treatment.

Open Source Ecology: Permaculture and Local Food Systems

By Marcin Jakubowski
Open Farm Tech

We are proposing the integration of perennial agriculture, living gene bank, open source equipment, and agroecology – or what we call open source agroecology - towards a replicable package of providing healthy, local food for everybody. We propose community supported production as a means of linking the urban and rural landscapes in a mutual inter-independence for providing food, biofuels, lumber, and other products. Can this become a viable and mainstreamable model for providing needs from local resources? What items of local production can be included in this? If our program is insufficient, what are we missing?

Open Source Ecology: How to make a better world

Video of Marcin Jakubowski
Open Farm Tech

Presentation by Marcin Jakubowski, TED Fellow and Founder of Open Source Ecology. Marcin was visiting Oberlin and Cleveland to present his Global Village Construction Set- Low Cost Tools for Skill-Based, Eco-Agricultural Community Builidng. Addresses new ideas about merging manufacturing with regenerative agriculture, creating local models for flexible fabrication to power local economies. To see his full 32-minute talk at Oberlin, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKCJWltJzUc

Gulf Coast Fisherwoman ‘Breaches the Peace’ at BP Shareholder Meeting

By Renee Feltz
Democracy Now

Security officers at BP’s shareholder meeting [on April 14] in London blocked the entrance of a delegation of four fishermen and women from the Louisiana and Texas Gulf Coast area heavily damaged by last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Among them was Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation fisherwoman from the Texas Gulf Coast. She was there to present BP executives with the Ethecon Black Planet award for companies who represent a danger to the planet.

Wilson is a past recipient of the the group’s Blue Planet Award and author of Diary of an Eco-Outlaw An Unreasonable Woman Breaks the Law for Mother Earth. She confronted BP’s former CEO Tony Hayward when he testified before Congress last June. She told Democracy Now! what happened when she tried to enter the BP meeting.

Keeping the Church Potluck Legal and Free

Here’s an intelligent discussion of the burgeoning food sovereignty movement in the U.S., especially the comments by Deborah Evans, a Maine farmer who was instrumental in these ordinances being raised in Sedgwick, Penobscot, Blue Hill and Brooksville. Keep in mind PA Church Ladies Raided by ‘Food Safety’ Cops back in 2009; and all the raids on the raw dairy industry since then (detailed in David Gumpert’s book, The Raw Milk Revolution). It’s nice to see Progressives discussing this issue, even if still caught up in the fear of Libertarians. Rather than anti-government, food sovereignty laws are more anti-corporate. ~Ed. [Image: Maine food rights activists Liz Solet, Deborah Evans, Larissa Curlik, Heather Retberg, and Kevin Ross, by David Gumpert]

By Kyle Curtis
Blue Oregon

You probably missed it, but the opening salvo of a nation-wide food revolution may have been fired on March 5th, 2011. Or maybe not. It all kinda sorta depends on how you view these things.

The Law of Mother Earth: Behind Bolivia’s Historic Bill

A new law expected to pass in Bolivia mandates a fundamental ecological reorientation of the nation’s economy and society

By Nick Buxton
Yes! Magazine

Indigenous and campesino (small-scale farmer) movements in the Andean nation of Bolivia are on the verge of pushing through one of the most radical environmental bills in global history. The “Mother Earth” law under debate in Bolivia’s legislature will almost certainly be approved, as it has already been agreed to by the majority governing party, Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS).

The law draws deeply on indigenous concepts that view nature as a sacred home, the Pachamama (Mother Earth) on which we intimately depend. As the law states, “Mother Earth is a living dynamic system made up of the undivided community of all living beings, who are all interconnected, interdependent and complementary, sharing a common destiny.”

The law would give nature legal rights, specifically the rights to life and regeneration, biodiversity, water, clean air, balance, and restoration.

Taste of Slovenia: A Real Food Experience

By Sylvia Onusic
Taste of Slovenia

“My Homeland, when God created thee, he blessed thee with both Hands and
said, Merry People will live here.” –Ivan Cankar, Slovenian poet and writer

Taste of Slovenia: A Real Food Experience is a unique food tour like no other — a food odyssey of rich, sensual culinary experiences and a hands-on introduction to the best of Slovenia’s traditional culinary heritage, as well as the latest culinary achievements in the areas of Slow Food and wine.

The first question is, where is it, and why Slovenia?

Genetic labeling easily doable, despite claims

By Dr. Chris Viljoen
Business Day (South Africa)

It was with interest that I read recent press articles about calls to label modified foods. I was most interested in the comments on the perceived link between the threshold for labelling and the cost of labelling.

First, whether the threshold is 5% or 1%, there is no cost difference in laboratory testing — I should know as I run the GMO Testing Facility that performs routine genetic modification detection in South Africa.

Further, the regulations make provision for companies to assume an ingredient contains genetically modified matter if it was derived from a crop for which there is a genetically modified equivalent being produced in SA, such as maize or soybean. In such a case, no laboratory testing would be required, with no additional cost to the company. Compared to this, companies that want to indicate an ingredient has not been genetically modified would be required to verify this using laboratory tests — but this is no different to what is being practised.

How naturopaths can survive states criminalizing alternative medicine

By Rady Ananda

An amendment to North Carolina’s Unauthorized Practice of Medicine Act would have changed the original bill (SB 31) from making alternative medicine a felony to a Class 1 Misdemeanor.  Violators would face jail time after a first conviction. However, on April 14, the amendment failed. The bill has gone back to committee for further clarification and possible redraft.

Section 90-19, Practicing without license; penalties of NC’s General Statutes provides a list of exemptions. The only section potentially relating to homeopaths, naturopaths, and herbalists, by my lay reading of it, is (c)(5), which exempts:

“The treatment of the sick or suffering by mental or spiritual means without the use of any drugs or other material means.”