Wisconsin Farmer Faces Jail for Selling Unadulterated Milk

By FTCLDF

Food rights activists from around North America will meet at the Sauk County Courthouse in this tiny town on May 20 to support Wisconsin dairy farmer Vernon Hershberger and food sovereignty. Hershberger, whose trial begins that day, is charged with four criminal misdemeanors that could land this husband and father in county jail for up to 30 months with fines of over $10,000.

How Congress let Monsanto off the hook

By Michael Collins
COTO Report

Not many people like the messes Congress makes but everybody should see how they’re made.

This article takes a close look at the legislation just passed by Congress and signed by President Obama allowing the Secretary of Agriculture to issue executive orders that bypass regulations, safety, and science for the purpose of speeding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and genetically engineered seeds (GE) and crops to market.  The way the law is written, Secretary Tom Vilsack can lift restrictions on GMOs for a set period and, it appears, do so without hindrance from the courts.

Comprehensive Survival Food Storage Guide

By Rady Ananda
Activist Post

Survival food storage practice doesn’t require Mormon membership, but the tradition, wrought from their first Utah winter, is worth emulating should disaster strike or technology fail, two survival books by Mat Stein. This guide, Part 2 of my survival series, relies on Stein’s books, and websites dedicated to survival preparedness.

Organic Food Debunker was Tobacco Institute Researcher in 1976

By Michael Collins

A widely publicized study claiming that there is no demonstrated difference in nutritional value between organically and conventionally grown foods just appeared in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Broad mainstream media coverage produced headlines like Stanford Scientists Cast Doubt on Advantages of Organic Meat and Produce. The media failed to mention one point that may be of major interest.

The study relied on a statistical technique called meta-analysis. Over 200 plus scientific journal articles were combined as the data set for the study. The article co-author with recognized expertise in meta-analysis, Ingram Olkin, applied for a grant from Council of Tobacco Research (CTR) in 1976.

Survival tips for the urbanite: Part 1 – Nuclear Radiation

By Rady Ananda
Activist Post

Though many survivalists like to prepare for TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it), joblessness and homelessness have led me to the end of the world as I know it.  With coffee in hand, I opened the warehouse door of my temporary digs to greet the dawn.  Only, it’s noon, there’s a downpour, and the smell of rubber from a pile of decomposing tires greets me.  This marks Month 4 in New Orleans and two years since I was laid off.

In this vein, I finally started reading Mat Stein’s two survival books, When Technology Fails (2008) and When Disaster Strikes (2011).  I also headed over to Jim Rawles’ Survival Blog and Mat’s website, whentechfails.com.

Instead of a lone-wolf, Mad Max world which plays well on film, Stein reasonably argues that individual survival relies on a community of like-minded folks.  So plan your survival migration or shelter with room for your core group.  The essential wisdom from both books and most survival websites is to plan a strategically sound survival budget, taking into account the climate of where you expect to be after you hit the road.

California public to vote on GMO Label Act; Biotech lies begin

By Rady Ananda
Food Freedom News

Stroller-pushing mothers delivered nearly a million signatures in Sacramento on Wednesday, for an initiative to put to populist vote The California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act.

The ten-week signature drive collected nearly double the amount needed to put the R2K Act on the November 6, 2012 ballot.

The state will take between five and seven weeks to validate the signatures, and then certify the results. Of the 555,236 needed, thousands of volunteers collected 971,126, just shy of the hoped-for million.

Pamm Larry

“In ten weeks, nearly a million registered voters signed the ballot initiative,” said Pamm Larry, who single-handedly started the drive on January 20, 2011. “Even biotech engineers gathered signatures for us.”

Having founded LabelGMOs.org, Larry then coordinated with other pro-labeling civic groups across the state and nation.

Victory celebrations were held in Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego today, reported CA Right to Know in a press conference.

If voters approve the measure this fall, beginning July 1, 2014, food makers will be required to label those products that contain genetically modified ingredients.

NOLA’s Eyes in the Sky

By Aubrey Holiday
Food Freedom News

April 13, 2012 NEW ORLEANS: My second night in town, the host showed me an artificial light in the sky. It’s clearly not natural, and may be one of NOLA’s Eyes in the Sky, which transmit images to the Fusion Center located on Tchoupitoulas. Big Brother in real time.

Juxtaposed with the party atmosphere is the sense of living in a dystopian scifi novel, with these overhead spy drones filming our every move. These aren’t Obama’s drones hovering between 50-150,000 feet; these are much closer — perhaps 10-20,000 feet. They look like triangular hovercraft and twice I saw them shoot a burst of flame out of the bottom corner. Scientific American reports that with “arrays of high-resolution cameras on their undersides” they “record the daily comings and goings of the population of entire cities.”

France bans GM corn amid mass US protests against Monsanto

French activists rip open bags of MON 810, a variety of Monsanto's genetically modified corn after entering a Monsanto storehouse. (AFP Photo/Eric Cabanis)

By Rady Ananda
Global Research

Amid mass US protests against Monsanto yesterday, France imposed a temporary moratorium on the planting of Monsanto’s genetically modified corn, MON810.

“Due to the proximity of the planting season,” said Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire along with Francois Fillon, Minister for Ecology and Sustainable Development, in a press release on Friday, authorities “decided to take a precautionary measure to temporarily prohibit the cultivation of maize MON810 on the national territory to protect the environment.”

­All prior plantings of MON810, trade name YieldGard, become illegal on March 20.

Thyroid cancer, fracking and nuclear power

By Rady Ananda
An Activist Post Special Report

Thyroid cancer cases have more than doubled since 1997 in the U.S., while deadly industrial practices that contaminate groundwater with radiation and other carcinogens are also rising.

New information released by the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimates that 56,460 people will develop thyroid cancer in 2012 and 1,780 will die from it.

That’s up from 16,000 thyroid cancer cases in 1997 – a whopping 253% increase in fifteen years, while the US population went up only 18%.

FDA sued over lack of Nanotech oversight, labels

By Rady Ananda
Activist Post

The first ever lawsuit concerning risks of nanotechnology was filed in federal court last month when several groups jointly sued the US Food and Drug Administration for its lack of response to a 2006 petition demanding that products with nanomaterials be labeled and their affects tested for safety. [Image]

Frito-Lay sued for labeling its GMO-filled snacks as “All Natural”

By Rady Ananda

Less than a year after Frito-Lay announced plans to make half their products without “any artificial or synthetic ingredients,” the $13 billion company was sued last week in federal court for fraudulently marketing the snacks that contain genetically modified ingredients.

Somehow, “artificial” and “synthetic” doesn’t include “genetically modified” in Frito’s mind.

Stocking stuffers for foodies (5-book review)

By Rady Ananda

Need a last minute gift for your beloved locavore? Several books would make excellent holiday gifts, so this review covers a few of them on the environment, as it relates to local food sovereignty, food security and palate delight. There’s even one for kids, which starts the set:

Avatars of Gaia: Escape from Hazard Hollow
Professor Heart (self-published: 2009, 210 pp.)
Website: www.avatarsofgaia.org

Charlotte Purin of Los Angeles decided one of the best ways to save Mother Earth is to get kids involved. So she wrote Avatars of Gaia: Escape from Hazard Hollow for preteens. The tale educates as it entertains, integrating the concepts of sustainability, healthy-eating, and environmental consciousness into a fantasy adventure story.

Oops, We’re Doomed!

By Michael Collins

We don’t have a substantial cushion between today’s climate and dangerous warming. James E. Hanson

The head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James E. Hansen, announced the results of break through global warming research last week. The earth’s temperature is rising at a much quicker pace than previously anticipated according to research by the nation’s preeminent climate scientist. We have little time to reverse the trend. (Image)

An example of the dangerous pace of change is emerging on Russia’s Eastern Siberian Arctic Shelf. Long-frozen permafrost is beginning to melt due to global warming. This threat was identified years ago due to the potential for highly toxic releases of heat-trapping methane gas. Recent changes are both a surprise and a cause for alarm. There is more methane gas released from the Russian cauldron “than the CH4 emissions estimate for the entire world ocean.” Methane is a “far more potent GHG [greenhouse gas] than CO2″ with a greater potential to cause “abrupt climate change.”

ClimateGate 2.0: New emails confirm temps not rising; science being manipulated AGAIN

By Corbett Report and Media Monarchy

Story #1: Fresh Round of Leaked Emails Called Climategate 2.0
Related: Background and Context
Related: New Batch of Emails Released in Climategate 2.0
Related: More Emails Leaked From Climate Researchers

Some of the emails:

“Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary [...]”

“I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.”

“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out.”

Suffolk Co. NY to hear proposal to ban chemtrails

By Rady Ananda

On Dec. 6, New York’s Suffolk County government will hold a public hearing on a proposal to ban aerial spraying of aluminum oxide, barium, sulfur, and other salts into the air over the county without first filing an Environmental Impact Statement with and receiving approval from the county’s Department of Health Services, Division of Environmental Quality.

Exempted from the proposed ban are aerosol spraying operations for agriculture, and for lyme disease, Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), West Nile virus (WNV), and other disease vector control operations.

Global milk war ramps up as citizens face off with regulators

By Rady Ananda

The battle for food freedom intensifies across the planet as citizens assert their right to raw dairy products unadulterated by drugs and genetically modified ingredients – in the face of authorities seeking to restrict our food choices and to criminalize entrepreneurs who operate outside the monopolized factory food system.

The State of Maine recently sued farmer Dan Brown for selling food and milk without State licenses, despite a local law that permits it. “Blue Hill is one of five Maine towns to have passed the Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinance,” explains Family Farm Defenders.

Hemp Warrior: Marijuana Activist Dies, Revives, and Beats Pot Rap

By Anthony Papa
AlterNet

Talk about dying to get your freedom.  Dana Beal, a well-known drug war activist, literally did just that on his way to the slammer.   Beal — one of the founders of the Yippee movement and chief organizer of the Global Marijuana March was busted in Wisconsin for possessing 169 pounds of medical marijuana.  Earlier this year he was sentenced to five years, half to be served in prison and half on probation.

He had served 9 months, but soon after being sentenced and on his way to prison, a strange thing happened to him; he had a heart attack and claims he died.  Miraculously he was revived and treated and then the authorities calculated the consequences of keeping Dana in prison.  He needed heart surgery and they decided it was too costly and voided the remainder of his prison sentence.

Public Enemy No. 1: Review of Cannabanomics

By Robert C. Koehler

“Play faster!” he cried, wildly, over and over. “Play faster!”

The dame who was tickling the ivories complied, out of control herself. The music revved to a dangerous velocity — oh, too fast for decent, sober, well-behaved Americans to bear — and . . . well, you just knew, violence, madness, laughter were just around the corner. The year was 1936 and, oh my God, they were high on marijuana, public enemy number one.

The scene is from Reefer Madness, arguably the dumbest movie ever made — but smugly at the emotional and ideological core of American drug policy for the last three-quarters of a century. The policy, which morphed in 1970 into an all-out “war” on drugs, has filled our prisons to bursting, created powerful criminal enterprises, launched a real war in Mexico and presided over the skyrocketing of recreational drug use in the United States. The war on drugs just may be a bigger disaster than the war on terror.

Jailbirds add life to UK prison famous for torturing suffragists

By Rady Ananda

The British Hen Welfare Trust re-homed 20 commercial hens at HM Prison Holloway on Oct. 3, as part of the staff’s garden program offering educational and therapeutic projects to its women inmates. This is a far cry from the days when Holloway imprisoned women for agitating for the right to vote, and then tortured them.

Volunteer re-homer at the British Hen Welfare Trust (BHWT), Jean Gill, delivered the hens and spoke to prisoners about the work of the charity and advised them on hen care.

“This is a really interesting experiment and a real opportunity from the charity’s point of view,” said Gill in a press release. “It is apt and extraordinary on so many levels that some of the prisoners will be able to take care of something as vulnerable as a battery hen that has had a restricted start in life, that has been kept, literally behind bars in a small cage without access to sunlight or fresh air.”

BP gets Gulf oil drilling permit amid 28,000 unmonitored abandoned wells

“Stage Two” of the BP Gulf of Mexico Environmental Disaster

24,486 permanent and 3,593 temporarily abandoned wells in the Gulf of Mexico

[Image]

By Rady Ananda

Since BP’s catastrophic Macondo Blowout in the Gulf of Mexico last year, the Obama Administration has granted nearly 300 new drilling permits [1] and shirked plans to plug 3,600 of more than 28,000 abandoned wells, which pose significant threats to the severely damaged sea.

Among those granted new permits for drilling in the Gulf, on Friday Obama granted BP permission to explore for oil in the Gulf, allowing it to bid on new leases that will be sold at auction in December.