Waste = Food

An inspiring documentary on the Cradle to Cradle design concept of the chemist Michael Braungart and the architect William McDonough. Winner of the Silver Dragon at the Beijing International Science Film Festival 2006. OUTLINE: Man is the only creature that produces landfills. Natural resources are being depleted on a rapid scale while production and consumption are rising in na­tions like China and India. The waste production world wide is enormous and if we do not do anything we will soon have turned all our resources into one big messy landfill.
But there is hope. The German chemist, Michael Braungart, and the American designer-architect William McDonough are fundamentally changing the way we produce and build. If waste would become food for the biosphere or the technosphere (all the technical products we make), produc­tion and consumption could become beneficial for the planet. A design and production concept that they call Cradle to Cradle. A concept that is seen as the next industrial revolution.
• Design every product in such a way that at the end of its lifecycle the component materials become a new resource.
• Design buildings in such a way that they produce energy and become a friend to the environment.
Large companies like Ford and Nike are working with McDonough and Braun­gart to change their production facilities and their products. They realize that economically seen waste is destruction of capital. You make something with no value. Based on their ideas the Chinese government is working towards a circular economy where Waste = Food. An amazing story that will definitely change your way of thinking about production and consumption.

Chomsky at Woods Hole, Ma.

Here's three videos that I found on Vimeo
Noam Chomsky (MIT Emeritus Institute Professor of Philosophy and Linguistics) answers ZMI student questions at Woods Hole part 1

Noam Chomsky answers ZMI student questions from Permaculture Cooperative on Vimeo.
Noam Chomsky ZMI student questions part 2

Noam Chomsky ZMI student questions p2 from Permaculture Cooperative on Vimeo.
Genesis to End Times and Everything Between

Chomsky v2: Genesis to End Times and Everything Between from Permaculture Cooperative on Vimeo.

Lieberman's War on the Press and the First Amendment

Constitutional law and national security scholars testified on the constitutionality of prosecuting Wikileaks founder Julian Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act. [The Espionage Act was passed by Congress in 1917 after the United States entered the First World War. It prescribed a $10,000 fine and 20 years' imprisonment for interfering with the recruiting of troops or the disclosure of information dealing with national defense. Additional penalties were included for the refusal to perform military duty. Over the next few months around 900 went to prison under the Espionage Act.] Among the topics addressed were the nature of journalism, the extent of constitutional protections of the press in protecting the divulgence of classified information, and the amount of information that is categorized as classified. Below we have Ralph Nader and Geoffrey Stone, two of a number speakers addressing the House Judiciary Committee. You can watch all of these videos here.

In response to the actions of Julian Assange and his organization, U.S. Senators Joe Lieberman, John Ensign, and Scott Brown "introduced a bill to amend the Espionage Act in order to facilitate the prosecution of folks like Wikileaks." Critics have noted that "leaking [classified] information in the first place is already a crime, so the measure is aimed squarely at publishers," and that "Lieberman's proposed solution to WikiLeaks could have implications for journalists reporting on some of the more unsavory practices of the intelligence community."Legal analyst Benjamin Wittes has called the proposed legislation "the worst of both worlds," saying:

It leaves intact the current World War I-era Espionage Act provision, 18 U.S.C. 793(e), a law [with] many problems . . . and then takes a currently well-drawn law and expands its scope to the point that it covers a lot more than the most reckless of media excesses. A lot of good journalism would be a crime under this provision; after all, knowingly and willfully publishing material 'concerning the human intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government' is no small part of what a good newspaper does.

We are fighting for the life of the First Amendment. Thanks to all those who have joined the fight.

Nobody Wastes Like America

Iraq war spending vs. spending on renewable energy. The same amount of money could have been invested to supply 2/3 of of current energy consumption

The Elephant in the Room

See more at http://www.caglecartoons.com/

Military Geoengineering Since 1990 - The Smoking Gun?

(above, man-made clouds above western Europe)

I've been following this story (and watching the effects) since 1997. I discovered this video at a conservative website (which I would normally not visit but was curious to see what they were discussing) and was surprised to discover (though many conservatives [and lefties] would shudder to think so) that "left" and "right" actually share a fair bit of common ground (gasp!). The trick, of course, is to find and focus on those areas of shared interests and concerns rather than the differences. We simply cannot afford to be divided as we face the enormous challenges of climate weirding, economic upheaval and peak oil.

Rosalind Peterson of California Skywatch was a certified U.S.D.A. Farm Service Agency Crop Loss Adjustor working in more than ten counties throughout California. She now spearheads a watchdog group that monitors uncontrolled experimental weather modification programs, atmospheric heating and testing programs, and ocean and atmospheric experimental geoengineering programs Peterson is at the forefront of the chemtrail research field and how the unexplained patterns that scar our skies are “causing detrimental human health effects and environmental degradation.”

After studying water quality samples for the state of California stretching back some 30 years, Rosalind Peterson found that starting from 1990, water sources were all registering unusual spikes in certain chemicals at precisely the same time, namely arsenic, barium, aluminum, calcium, manganese, magnesium, lead and iron. By measuring the spikes in these chemicals in the water supply with similar spikes in these chemicals in air quality samples, Peterson was able to conclude that the cause was airborne and that it had to be coming from the atmosphere. Peterson notes that mixing aluminum and barium creates clouds and that NASA experiments based around this concept were coinciding with the spikes in such chemicals measured in water and air quality samples.

This is an enlightening, detailed and documented explanation of how chemtrailing is being conducted, who is responsible for it and what the consequences are for our health and the environment.










This last video shows lab results of testing for aluminum and barium in northern California. The tests show as much as 61 times the amount of aluminum. Also very high barium and strontium.
"Aluminum greater than 400 ppm is a problem for most growing plants.  The primary target for aluminum is the root cap.  Therefore, it has a major impact on root growth and efficiency." (BTW, Monsanto is developing aluminum-resistant GMO crops. http://farmwars.info/?p=2927 , )
This may be the New World Order's "solution" to overpopulation.

Reaping Whirlwinds: Peak Oil and Climate Change in the New Political Climate - By Sharon Astyk :: ASPO-USA: Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas

Political prognostication is a dangerous game, but one of the certainties of the latest election was that the US will not be enacting any significant federal climate legislation. One could be forgiven for wondering what the election has to do with anything. In the two years previously during which the Democrats controlled Presidency, House and Senate, the US had failed also to enact any climate legislation, but we have moved from the faintest possible hope to none at all.
If inaction is certain on climate change, it may be that all is not entirely hopeless if we reframe the terms to addressing our carbon problem.
Peak-oil activism could accomplish many of the goals of climate activists. Unlike climate change, peak oil doesn’t carry the ideological associations with the left that climate change does. Could peak oil provide a framing narrative for political action to address both climate change and peak oil? Certainly, a great deal would have to happen in order to accomplish this. But peak oil is a sufficiently powerful and pressing issue that its profile could be raised, particularly if current climate activists were willing to change their focus from the means of achieving consensus on climate change to the end of achieving emissions reductions.
Read the rest: Reaping Whirlwinds: Peak Oil and Climate Change in the New Political Climate - By Sharon Astyk :: ASPO-USA: Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas

Sharon Astyk: Can We Fill The [Food] Gap?

Since Vimeo did not allow me to embed this video here please take a look at it, with its accompanying slides, here:
http://aspo.tv/2010-peak-oil-conference/sharon-astyk-can-we-fill-the-gap/

MN Dept of Agriculture Steals People's Milk

The USDA says that we are not entitled to choose our own food. If we do so we, or our farmers, can be prosecuted. This is an outrage. We all need to document and expose these aggressive acts. At a time when we need millions more small farmers the corporate ag folks are criminalizing it.

Some sources for more info: 
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/factoryfarms/
http://www.factoryfarmmap.org/
http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/factoryfarming/
http://www.animalwelfareapproved.org/
http://www.wspa-international.org/wspaswork/factoryfarming/default.aspx
http://www.aspca.org/fight-animal-cruelty/farm-animal-cruelty/
http://www.care2.com/greenliving/factory-farming-101.html
Read these books and educate yourself before soul-less non-persons take it all away. 

Couldn't have said it better...than Calvin & Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes

America: The Silence of a Nation

Excerpts from a speech by: Chris Hedges.

The author spoke at the Revolution Books Town Hall Meeting at Ethical Culture Society on January 13, 2009 condemning Israel and USA complicity in Israel's murderous destruction and genocide of the innocent men, women and children of GAZA and the West Bank.

Bernie Exposes Parasite Capitalism

Bernie Sanders: Today as the Middle Class Collapses

It should come as no surprise that the consolidation of wealth is occuring among the more affulent members of our society. Bernie Sanders comments on this, in the video below, in an address to the Senate regarding an extension of the Bush Tax cuts. While figures and statistics could be derived to support either side of this argument, let's analyze some information that's fairly commonplace knowledge.
It is easier to gain wealth, when wealth is already present in your life. Conversly, if you come from a less fortunate socio-economic background, it is rather difficult to aquire wealth. While there are anomalies in the system, it is difficult to aquire wealth without dragging yourself up out of the grave dug through student loans and credit cards. So then, why would we ever attempt to lessen the budget deficit by cutting social programs, such as education, a fundimental building block of society that benefits all classes, as opposed to reinstituting previously held taxes on the wealthest few percent?
By Brett Mullins at http://www.seismologik.com

Recall Toxic Lawmakers to Prevent Toxic Food

US Recall News
Interview with Joel Salatin
November 26, 2009
http://www.usrecallnews.com/2009/11/interview-with-joel-salatin.html

Food recalls seem out of control these days. We’re not just seeing a few sporadic cases of food poisoning here and there anymore. I regularly publish recall alerts for hundreds of thousands of pounds of beef and poultry. Here’s a recent one for half-a-million pounds of beef possibly contaminated with E. coli O157:H7. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg if you factor in the pages upon pages of salmonella recalls.
It’s enough to make you scared of eating anything. In fact, it is enough to make us call our legislators and demand action! The problem is – we don’t ask ourselves, or our legislators, if we’re taking the “right” action. What we end up with are misguided attempts at regulation and laws written by academia and corporate agriculture, such as NAIS. Perhaps we need to take a step back and ask ourselves if we’re treating the symptom or the problem. One man who has done just that is Joel Salatin. I have been granted the honor of asking Mr. Salatin a few questions about our nation’s food supply – especially in regard to food safety – and without further digression I’d like to share his responses with you.

Q.
Do you think there are more cases of food-borne illnesses per-capita these days, or are we just hearing about more of them due to the media and better reporting by government agencies?
A.
    I believe we’re having far more per capita. While it’s true we’ve always had food issues, from botulism poisoning to undulant fever, the historic figures are very, very low. If you add obesity and Type II diabetes into the mix – in a way, they are pathogenically caused as well because the food is not real food; it’s pseudo food. Amazingly, we’ve become a culture that considers Twinkies, Cocoa Puffs, and Mountain Dew safe, but raw milk and compost-grown tomatoes unsafe. The fact that we have an entirely new lexicon of salmonella, listeria, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, campylobacter, E. coli, etc. speaks to the new generation and penetration of the current food borne pathogen situation. Furthermore, it’s hard to empirically measure secondary results of tainted food, like the things that occur when people eat genetically modified organisms, irradiated foods, or pasteurized milk. Some of these things take a while to develop into problems, just like infertile frogs, three-legged salamanders, and crippled eagles did not happen immediately when DDT was developed. The long lag between cause and effect is hard to measure, and very hard to quantify in today’s fast-paced data and news system.

Q.
Do you see a legitimate, defensible role for state and federal government agencies to play in protecting American consumers from food-borne illnesses? If so, what would that be?
A.
    No. This side of eternity, a perfect system does not exist. To assume that government agents are more trustworthy than business, or journalists, or farmers, is inherently ridiculous. Unscrupulous people exist in all vocations. That is why we have third-party independent accreditation that works fairly well in many areas, from certified General Motors mechanics to schools to Triple A to Underwriters Laboratories. Every time the government gets involved with these things, rather than being voluntary, they move into the realm of force, and that completely changes the dynamics. When the Sheriff shows up with an arrest warrant and a gun, that’s a very different dynamic than Triple A sending me a letter telling me they will drop my two star hotel status because their inspection found wrinkled sheets in Room 129. And that extra force allows the independent certification status to assume inordinate power, which ultimately attracts more unseemly characters to its model – both the regulators and the regulated. It all boils down to trust. Indeed, on my end I see incredible abuses from regulators, especially toward small operators. When people say we just need to create more honesty in the government program, they are speaking from incredible naïveté, in my opinion. We have more dirty food, more centralized mega-processing facilities, and less nutrition now than we did in 1906 when Teddy Roosevelt railed against the packing industry exposed by Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Both Sinclair, and to a great extent Roosevelt, wanted much bigger government and far more intrusion into the marketplace. Within six months after The Jungle hit America’s shelves, meat sales dropped nearly 50 percent. Rather than waiting for this marketplace spanking to have its effect, Roosevelt and the industry created the Food Safety and Inspection Service. That organization and the incredible power it wields have systematically banished the embedded butcher, baker, and candlestick maker from America’s villages. We’ve had three overhauls of the system: 1947, 1967, and 2000 – and each time, within 18 months, the US lost half of its smaller abattoirs. People must realize that giving that power to the government is inherently flawed because it will inevitably attract abuses that more gentle, voluntary, privately-operated systems do not.

Q.
Is there another country in the world that has a safer, more equitable food production system that allows for corporate agribusiness to thrive without putting small farmers out of business and without endangering consumers? If so, what can we learn from them?
A.
    My sense is that most developing countries have far more food freedom. Whether it’s safer or not, I don’t know. But it’s certainly no worse. The point is that you can’t define safety necessarily. I consider pastured livestock and poultry safe; the poultry industry considers me a bioterrorist because the Red-winged Blackbirds commiserate with my chickens and will transport their diseases to the since-based, environmentally- controlled Tyson chicken houses, endangering the entire planet’s food system. We’re seeing studies coming out of land grant colleges now saying that meat laced with antibiotic residues due to subtherapeutic antibiotic feeding in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations is safer for consumers than meat carrying no drug residues. The fact is that those of us promoting a heritage-based food system are under assault by the industrial-governmental fraternity just as surely as Native Americans were nearly annihilated by government policy in earlier times. Largely for the same reasons. They threatened the American way of life (read Wall Street there) or they jeopardized decent western contrivances like Roberts Rules of Order and cobblestone streets. Read what the founders of our country said about the Naive American – “just barbarians”. By whose standard? And read what the government-industrial food complex says about heritage food – it endangers the world food supply because it’s not science-based; it plays to ignorant and duplicitous consumers; it’s a waste of land because we can’t afford these low production numbers, etc.

    Historically, respecting an indigenous view while allowing techno-innovation has not been possible. The technology conquers and subjugates the heritage-based. The European Union is attacking heritage-based Polish sausage and Swiss artisanal cheese with a passion. My friends in China tell me that a thriving local food system exists there that would put America to shame. And people not far removed from the land know the difference between the good local stuff and the junk. They export the junk and eat the good stuff themselves. Oh that Americas would have such discernment.

Q.
What would a “sane” Food Bill look like to you? Or would there even be one?
A.
    We wouldn’t even have a Food Bill if I were in charge. The first response to that is: “But then the big corporations would just take over and it would be worse than today. After all, the free market is why we’re in the mess we’re in.” On the contrary, the U.S. has not had anything resembling a free market for well over a century. You could argue that ever since that big-governmenter Abraham Lincoln created the US Department of Agriculture, we’ve had inappropriate government agents meddling in the food system. The fact is that the terrible food things that have been developed have come at the financing, either directly or through research, of the government. Why does Monsanto get to park their recruitment bus on the campus of Virginia Tech for several days each year – for free? I personally have had numerous professors from Virginia Tech visit our farm and express great interest in researching some of our environmentally-friendly practices, but lament that they can only get seed funding from multi-national corporations so they can’t do this kind of research. Again, the framers of the Constitution very carefully spelled out the duties of the government, and they were extremely minimal. The reason was that as soon as an area of the culture comes under the authority of the government, that area quickly develops cronyism, a big business agenda, and lack of respect for dissenters, which is now what the local food movement represents. I would call it a freedom of food choice movement.

    In my book Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal, I quote at length from the written testimony of government food police who make no secret that they believe consumers cannot be trusted to make their food decisions. If choosing how to feed my internal three-trillion member bacterial community that is responsible for my health and energy doesn’t represent the most basic Malthusian desire for personal autonomy, I don’t know what does. The Constitution guarantees the Right of Contract, and yet the food police routinely waltz between the farmer and consumer, waving thousands of pages of regulations, and bringing along agents carrying big badges and sidearms to interfere with the right of contract. If we truly allowed unfettered right of contract, the entrepreneurial explosion of creative heritage-based food offered to the local marketplace would topple America’s industrial food complex.
    The only reason America’s food is as industrial and non-local as it is, is because government force encourages such a system. Absent that meddling, thousands and thousands of local food entrepreneurs would spin circles around the subsidized, corporate-welfared food system.

Q.
Why don’t small farmers band together to lobby Washington? Could the combined power of thousands of small farmers compete with the centralized power of a few corporate interests?
A.
    Lobbying takes time. Lots of time. And numbers. And money. I’ve been trying all my life to encourage this, but like everyone else, I don’t have the time, money, or numbers to get it done. And too many small farmers still believe the government is a sugar daddy. So more than half the potential supporters are lobbying to get subsidies for small farmers instead of big farmers. Why don’t we forget about subsidies? Period. But we’ve raised a generation acculturated to believe government candy is free, and justified. And then certified organics also split up the small farmer group. That probably more than anything splintered what could have been a significant block. Now much of the time and energy that could be devoted to just creating market freedom are being siphoned off in suits and protests against industrial organics. We just still have way too many people who trust the government and think business is inherently evil.

Q.
Are house bills H.R. 875 (NAIS) and H.R. 759 (FDA Globalization Act) still a threat to small farmers and sustenance farmers or are people overreacting?
A.
    First, let me be clear that the industrial food agenda, along with its complicit government fraternity, is evil. These folks lie, steal, cheat, kill, whatever. It’s an evil agenda, with evil planners, evil strategists, and evil execution. Certainly some sincere-minded and honest folks are caught up in it, but it behooves us to appreciate the evil ambition of these people. When Monsanto purposely used geriatric rats in their GMO feeding trials for the FDA, or cleverly falsified data to receive rBGH approval and infected and afflicted hundreds of thousands of dairy cows with mastitis, and then used crooked judges to agree that placing rBGH-free on milk labels on artisanal milk actually harmed consumers – that bespeaks an evil, deceptive company and agenda. And the rest of their cohorts are just like them. So nobody should think that these outfits have a benign, population-friendly agenda. And nobody should underestimate their connivances to advance their agenda.

    That said, here’s my rule for legislation: if Monsanto is for it, I’m against it. If Monsanto is against it, I’m for it. Ditto large meat packers, the USDA, etc. A person is known by the company he keeps. These outfits aren’t Jesus spending time with sinners to bring them to repentance. They are Devils trying to dupe and destroy ecological, economic, and social wholesomeness. This test for legislation can save you lots of time and consternation trying to figure out all the details. I don’t have enough to time to read it all or understand the legalese. I listen to people I trust and assume the enemy hasn’t suddenly converted.

    Thanks for asking these questions, and I hope my answers aren’t too rambling, but in today’s world, you can’t take these positions without some fleshing out and context.

    Happy Thanksgiving.
    Best regards,
    Joel Salatin
    Polyface Farm

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Sacred Demise - Interview w/ Carolyn Baker

From Peak Moment Television
Quoting Janaia Donaldson, interviewer...
"Carolyn Baker is the author of Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse, and principal of Speaking Truth to Power website. I first read one of her essays three or four years ago in Michael Ruppert’s From The Wilderness site, and was impressed by her attention to our psychological and emotional experience as collapse touches our lives (and that was before the mortgage meltdown and 2008 financial crash!).
In our conversation, Carolyn shared a concise, well-thought-out summary of her perspectives. As a historian with ten years of college-level teaching, she has a sharp eye for current events that are leading indicators of the collapse we’re feeling and seeing, but which is mostly absent from mainstream corporate-owned media.
But, as she pointed out, the recognition of these times is coming into the mainstream. Commentators are using words like “collapse” and “unprecedented.” Even the New York governor recently stated that “we’ve crossed the Rubicon” and “we’re dealing with something much bigger than a recession.”
I think of Carolyn as a premier collapse-watcher. Her daily email digest is an ongoing chronicle with links to multiple changing collapse indicators — economic, political, financial, homelessness, greed, corruption, spin, inequality. They’re examples of what she calls the Old Story that is no longer working, a story based in separation from nature and each other, a story in which the vision of endless economic growth is now hitting the wall.
If this were all her digest included, it could be pretty dark and depressing as a steady diet. But she also includes links to those preparing for the collapse — like the Transition movement, local food producers, permaculturists, communities creating alternate currencies and more.
Such people are living out aspects of the New Story, a culture based on reconnection to nature, including a reclaiming of our indigenous selves. We may not live to see that new culture in its fullness, but many people are finding it meaningful to plant seeds for it.
She provides her perspective on why the demise is sacred, starting with a definition of sacred as “set apart, part of something greater.” This big picture can help counterbalance watching institutions crumble all around us. We are in a process unlike any that humans have experienced. Part of something greater.
But Carolyn is not just a historian. She’s also a psychologist. The heart of Sacred Demise is psychological and emotional preparation. She asserts, with support from Carl Jung and Victor Frankl, that having meaning is essential for humans. In the book she provides reflective exercises to enable our seeing how we’ve responded to prior losses, initiations, and challenges in our lives, and how to carry that learning into what lies ahead. Perhaps my favorite aspect of the book are the well-chosen, soul-touching poems sprinkled throughout.
Like Psyche sorting all the seeds, Carolyn shines as a discerning sifter of information, sharing the essential and life-giving seeds with her readers.
Check out her website Speaking Truth to Power, where you’ll find plenty of essays, her books, daily email digest subscription (my primary information source for what’s going on in the world), transition counseling services, and online courses for navigating the collapse. I think you’ll find a seed or two worth pursuing there."