DOUBLE DIPPING DANGER

Want a pesticide factory in your intestines or increase abortions? Eat GMOs or animals that eat them. 

DOUBLE DIPPING DANGER from NO GMO on Vimeo.

IT'S TIME FOR A FOOD FIGHT from NO GMO on Vimeo.

$14.3 Trillion

The US Debt Ceiling is $14.3 Trillion. This video will help you visualize that.

The Story of Cosmetics

The Story of Cosmetics, released on July 21st, 2010, examines the pervasive use of toxic chemicals in our everyday personal care products, from lipstick to baby shampoo. Produced with Free Range Studios and hosted by Annie Leonard, the seven-minute film by The Story of Stuff Project reveals the implications for consumer and worker health and the environment, and outlines ways we can move the industry away from hazardous chemicals and towards safer alternatives. The film concludes with a call for viewers to support legislation aimed at ensuring the safety of cosmetics and personal care products.

TEDxBloomington -- Keith Johnson -- "Food Security and Resilence"

I have never prepared more for a 10 minute talk than I did for this TEDx Bloomington event. Even so I was a bit nervous and stumbled over my words but overall I'm pleased with the results. The TED experience was wonderful and I got to play with some fine folks.


Here are the rest of the talks: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD67656A7D72F7D9A

Dr Huber's Warning

(From Food Democracy Now)

On January 17, internationally recognized plant pathologist Dr. Don Huber, wrote a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack warning of the discovery of a new pathogen and a possible link between Roundup Ready® (GMO) corn and soybeans and severe reproductive problems in livestock as well as widespread crop failure.

Less than 3 weeks later, the Obama administration approved 2 new Roundup Ready® GMO crops, set to be planted this spring... Read on about Dr. Huber's discovery. If it gives you pause, sign the petition to ask Sec. Vilsack to stop these seeds from being planted until further research is done.

In 2010, more than 365 million acres were planted worldwide with genetically engineered (GMO) seeds.

The U.S. leads the world with more than 165 million acres of GMO crops, mostly Roundup Ready® crops.

Monsanto owns patents on the genes of more than 93% of soybeans, 80% of corn, and 95% of sugar beets planted in the U.S. -- all genetically modified to be resistant to the weed killer Roundup.

In 2007, more than 185,000,000 lbs. of Roundup were applied to U.S. crops, the year the Bush administration halted reporting of the herbicide's application rates.

In 1992, U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle announced that GMO foods would not be "hampered by unnecessary regulation", freeing Monsanto of the burden of independent testing or labeling of GMO foods for the American public.

Are you eating GMOs?

Tell the Obama administration to stop the planting of GMO alfalfa & sugar beets

Dr. Huber Explains Science Behind New Organism and Threat from Monsanto's Roundup, GMOs to Disease and Infertility from Food Democracy Now! on Vimeo.

COMMUNITY EVALUATION CRITERIA in the Design Process

1. Resource Evaluation. Does the pre-design study:

• Evaluate the terrain, flow of water, plants and wildlife?
• Analyze the climate?
• Research the history of the area?

2. Site Design. Does the development/design project:

• Preserve fragile ecosystems?
• Use natural grades to contain new run-off?
• Ensure that a minimum of earth & vegetation are disturbed during development/construction?

3. Circulation. Does the layout:

• Minimize distances between points of destination?
• Cluster medium and high density areas while leaving other areas undisturbed?
• Include non-residential functions within residential areas?
• Provide safe paths for self-powered means of transportation?
• Include paths that are as direct as or more direct than routes provided for motor vehicles?
• Provide the self-powered paths on a separate grade where possible to enhance safety?
• Have paths (such as sidewalks) ramped to street level to allow easy access for wheelchair pedestrians and bicyclists?
• Provide routes for connecting with the mass transit system and facilities for encouraging ridership?
• Provide a way to upgrade nearby road facilities to accommodate self-powered transportation?
• Provide the least maintenance to roads by keeping their slope under 11%.

4. Infrastructure. Is your development/design project:

• Designing roads and utilities to minimize energy costs?
• Using the most efficient types of outdoor lighting only where needed?
• Integrating infrastructure into natural habitat?

5. Power. Are you taking an approach that:

• Exhausts all biological and non-tech solutions first?
• Uses the most energy-efficient method of performing tasks?
• When possible, uses renewable energy directly instead of indirectly?
• When renewables are not available, uses fuel (eg natural gas) directly instead of through the production of electricity?
• Generates power within the development from co-generation or renewable sources?
• Contracts for maintenance with a utility or renewable energy equipment specialist?
• Minimizes lengths of distribution lines?

6. Building. Is the development/design project being designed to:

• Orient streets on an east-west axis so that the predominant sides of buildingsʼ glass areas will face within 20 degrees of north and south?
• Incorporate natural ventilation, day-lighting and passive solar heating into building designs?
• Situate building so that they do not block solar access to adjacent buildings?
• Situate buildings in such a way that they do not block natural ventilation of adjacent units?
• Use renewable energy sources for water heating and space heating?
• Use architectural guidelines to ensure quality designs instead of imposing minimum square footage requirements?
• Minimize the use of incandescent lighting?
• Promote wall and roof surfaces that either reflect (in hot climates) or absorb (in cold climates) the majority of the sunʼs heat?
• Promote the use of locally available non-toxic materials for building components?
• Provide a low-cost method for upgrading to renewables at a later date. were renewable systems are not presently cost-effective?

7. Landscape. Does the design:

• Preserve natural landscape and habitats?
• Incorporate landscape design that provides shade from the summer sun?
• Employ landscape materials that will minimize long-term requirements for maintenance, irrigation, pesticides or herbicides?
• Use native vegetation?
• Use natural biological controls to reduce pests, avoid toxic chemical use?

8. Water. Do the design and facilities:

• Use drought-tolerant plants?
• Mandate low-water-use toilets (1.5 gallons/flush or less)?
• Reuse water (eg household greywater) for watering landscape?
• Where needed, distribute drinking water using solar energy?
• Use efficient hydraulic designs and pumps?
• Collect rainwater to serve as the water supply?
• Use groundwater only in quantities that can be replenished?
• Use natural means for water treatment and water disposal?

9. Food. Does the development/design project:

• Include food-producing landscapes sufficient to meet the needs of residents?
• Integrate tracts of food-producing lands throughout the design that can be gardened or farmed without excessive quantities of polluting machinery?
• Provide guidelines to grow crops organically?
• Offer methods to use solid and liquid wastes from the sustainable development as fertilizers?

10. Wastes. Does the property and management agreement regulations/guide lines:

• Include on-site recycling centers?
• Require separation of organic waste from other garbage?
• Provide for a community tool and appliance sharing/renting center?
• Allow only non-toxic, biodegradable and recyclable items to be sold within the development?
• Provide for periodic collection of toxic materials?
• Ensure the use of natural biological systems to treat sewage?

11. Education. Does the development/project design sales team:

• Offer literature on all aspects of sustainable developments?
• Offer “how-to” workshops on projects that enhance the sustainable community?

12. Miscellaneous. Do the regulations:

• Impose noise limits on regularly-used equipment and ensure good sound insulation in closelyspaced units?
• Permit clotheslines, solar collectors, and other items that reduce energy use?
• Encourage the use of natural ponds and lakes a “swimming holes instead of an energy-and chemical-intensive swimming pool”?
• Create a neighborhood association to help maintain the quality of development?

Scoring:

Record your score for each characteristic in the Score column, then multiply this score by the weight to get the weighed score. 5 Excellent! ! 4 Good! 3 Average! 2 Mediocre !1 Poor 0 Non-existent

The minimum weighted score points require for a viable permaculture design project/development is 400-420.

Characteristic                             Weight               Score             W/Score
Price                                               10
Water                                              10
Development ease                       10
(include political ease)
Commercial suitability                   8
Percent utilization                          8
Aspect (Solar)                               8
Privacy                                           8
Natural resources-local                8
Electric power                               7
Access                                          7
Proximity to service facilities      7
Comfort (max/min temps)           7
Size                                               5
Soil suitability                               5
Character (personal taste)         5
Natural features (views)              5
Natural boundaries                     5
Wind (good and bad)                 4
Tree cover                                   4
TOTAL:

INGREDIENTS FOR COMMUNITY GLUE
LOVE
Bonding to each other
Bonding to the community
Clear aims of the group
Membership processes
Decisions making protocols
Tolerance and generosity
Forgiveness/ability to let go
Optimis
Attunement
Bonding to the land
Spiritual connectedness
Connections and relationships with the outside world
Structure and processes
Reflection and evaluation
Persistence
FUN!
Clear communication
Clear philosophy
Courage
Conflict
Self-acceptance
Safety and trust
Hope

OMG, GMOs!

Genetic engineering is a threat to food security, especially in a changing climate. The introduction of genetically manipulated organisms by choice or by accident grossly undermines sustainable agriculture and in so doing, severely limits the choice of food we can eat.

Once GE plants are released into the environment, they are out of control. If anything goes wrong - they are impossible to recall.

GE contamination threatens biodiversity respected as the global heritage of humankind, and one of our world's fundamental keys to survival.

Defining Characteristics

From the ever useful and information-rich Energy Bulletin

Published Mar 15 2011 by Resilient Homes blog,
Permaculture: Deconstructing a Definition

by Lisa Fernandes

The question “What is permaculture?” is notoriously difficult to answer in one sentence. It defies the “sound bite” culture we live in.

Let’s start with what permaculture is NOT. Seriously, it has nothing to do with permafrost. It is not sheet-mulching, though some may use that as a particular strategy. It is not a variant (or deviant:) of “organic,” though it may use many organic growing strategies. It is not getting a bunch of people together to stomp some mud in a kiddie pool and build a cob oven, though that’s a pretty darn good time in most permaculture circles. Finally, it is not some rarefied ivory tower of secret knowledge that only those who have worshipped at the church of the holy sacred PDC (permaculture design certificate) get to experience.

Permaculture, at its core, is a design process (1) and set of techniques (2) for creating resilient (3) and [truly] sustainable (4) human habitats and healthy ecosystems. (5) Now, I will footnote the daylights out of this definition, which is one of many definitions currently in use, all of which have virtues and drawbacks.



(1) Yes, you have to do design, even if it’s only in your own head, that helps chart a course from where you are today to where you want to be going. Permaculture design, unlike many other design disciplines, is informed by a set of design ethics and principles which are flexible and powerful. Think of the permaculture design as a really, really well-thought out “map” for creating the best possible chance of manifesting a particular vision or set of goals. As with most maps, a printed,visual version of that is often far more helpful (especially in group settings) than that map you keep in your head. And, as with most maps, they only work if you know where you are and can formulate an idea on where you want to go.

(2) The techniques are not the discipline. Sheet mulching, swaling, herb spirals, flowforms, de-paving, renewable energy, cordwood saunas (OK, this list could run into next week, but you get the idea) are NOT permaculture, they are techniques and strategies that we may employ in the service of good design based in real, articulated goals and visions. Those techniques and strategies may be invoked when needed, just like you choose the best tool for the job out of your tool box. Permaculture design is one of the most powerful ways to expand, organize and then intelligently use the toolkit available to you.

(3) Resilient: the ability to withstand shocks or disruptions and the ability to bounce back and/or rebuild with the least possible amount of distress or dysfunction. I would posit that resilience comes in a bunch of flavors: personal, household, neighborhood/community. There are more, but for the purposes of permaculture design, these are the most common types of resilience that need attention and can be enhanced with good design. Creating integrated, healthy, whole ecosystems (within which human habitats are embedded) calls for organizing ourselves in a way that is not beholden to unlimited cheap fossil fuels and not reliant on stable, unchanging climate patterns.

(4) Sustainable as a word gets put in the same bucket as “green” and “eco” for me. It’s like the hackneyed photo of the human hands holding soil and teensy weensy seedling. They are overused, examples of greenwashing and mean many different things to many different people. Technically, it means something that can be continued…what?…. indefinitely? As one of my students said recently, even “dysfunction can be continued indefinitely.” So, is that sustainable? I don’t have the new definition, so I use the word very sparingly and ask others what they mean when they use it.

(5) A sort of core, or common, view among permaculture folks is that humans are a part of, and not separate from, the non-human ecosystems around us. Therefore, our fate is embedded in the fate of the interconnected set of relationships and elements in the broader world. As such, many of us use the term “landscape” to include people, buildings, villages, etc. along with forests, fields and streams. It is one integrated whole and the designs we create do focus on the “landscape” which includes food production, ecosystem health, soil fertility, buildings, energy, waste, economic systems and much more. Permaculture also seeks to learn from and work far more closely with the patterns of organization found in parts of our ecosystems that have evolved over several billion years. So we often model our design work and strategies on “patterns in nature” and encourage something called “pattern literacy.“

Every single one of these footnotes is worthy of complete exploration in its own right, and I may get around to that via this blog and encourage others to do so as well.

And, while this is all very conceptual, one of the powerful things about permaculture is that it tends to attract real roll-up-your-sleeves and let’s-get-this-done kind of people. We do spend time thinking through design and learning new ways of working with and in the world, but almost to a one, permaculturists are actively changing the way we live, right now, starting at our own doorsteps and working out from there.

Editorial Notes

About the author:
Lisa Fernandes is the organizer and founding member of Portland Maine Permaculture and has been a student of permaculture and green design since 1992. She is a certified permaculture designer, team trainer and group facilitator and owned a training & consulting business for several years. She studied political science at Boston College and then environmental studies at The Evergreen State College while designing & implementing municipal waste reduction & recycling programs with a focus on organic waste recycling. Lisa is a gardener, certified Master Composter and has studied medicinal plants for nearly twenty years. She has worked in the public, private and non-profit sectors and currently brings her varied experience to developing & delivering sustainability and resilience-building events and permaculture designs for the local community. She currently serves on the Cape Farm Alliance and provides staff support to the Eat Local Foods Coalition of Maine (ELFC) and sits on the Southern Maine Partnership for Sustainable Communities. She is a proud member of the Portland Food Coop (Member-Owner #11) and the Slow Food Portland Convivium. Lisa serves on the board of the Permaculture Institute of the Northeast (PINE), helped launch The Pattern Factory design studio at Newforest Institute and is the principle permaculture designer in Resilient Homes, a solar hot water and permaculture design company. Lisa and her family are actively working to convert their 1/3 acre property into a demonstration site for resilient and sustainable “post-carbon” living.

The Second American Revolution Looks Like This

Democracy School online


Democracy School - Part I from Mari Margil on Vimeo.

The Daniel Pennock Democracy School is a stimulating and illuminating course that teaches citizens and activists how to reframe exhausting and often discouraging single issue work (such as opposing toxic dumps, quarries, factory farms, etc.) in a way that we can confront corporate control on a powerful single front: people’s constitutional rights.

Democracy School explores the limits of conventional regulatory organizing and offers a new organizing model that helps citizens confront the usurpation by corporations of the rights of communities, people, and the earth. Lectures cover the history of people's movements and corporate power, and the dramatic recent organizing in Pennsylvania by communities confronting agribusiness, sewage sludge, and quarry corporations. Included with enrollment in the Democracy School is a 300 plus-page notebook of background reading material. For a historical review of the Pennsylvania work through the end of 2003, see a feature article that appeared in Orion Magazine.

Created by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) and Richard Grossman, co-founder of the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy (POCLAD), Democracy Schools were launched with five weekend sessions at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania in 2003. Since then, the number of schools has grown rapidly. In 2006, there are over a dozen locations across the country offering Democracy Schools, so peruse our list and find a school near you!

The Schools are built around carefully designed readings, clear presentations and group discussions.

* Each School reveals how it came to be that the law enables corporate managers to dictate their values, and impose their projects on communities.
* Includes an intense, comprehensive history of the judicial bestowal of constitutional rights of persons on corporations.
* Learn the secret of how People’s Movements have cut to the essence and won their struggles to be “found” in the constitution.

* The Anti-Federalists
* The Abolitionists
* The Suffragists
* The Populists
* The Labor Movement

* And learn about earlier Movements, including the Levelers and the Diggers.
* Experience the story of Pennsylvania communities, and New England Town Meetings, as well as North Western city battles – in the ongoing struggle to take the power to govern out of the Corporate Boardrooms and put it back in our communities where it belongs.
* For people of all ages, interests and occupations
* Classes consist of small groups of 10-15 people like you.


"If you take no other training this year, do the Democracy School. It is a superlative unfolding revelation of how corporations have hijacked democracy. It meticulously deconstructs the historical arc that brought us to this precipice. But most importantly, it then departs into the highly pragmatic and inspiring work now underway that is slowly turning the tide . . . This Second American Revolution may be the most important political work going on anywhere in the country or the world."

-Kenny Ausubel ‘05, Founder and Co-Executive Director, Bioneers

"Democracy School was a mind-blowing experience. During the School, I was forced to come to grips with the understanding that I really knew very little about the true structure of law that controls our activism. Democracy School is a must for everyone who seeks to be liberated from our defensive, after-the-fact reactive organizing strategies."

Featuring Thomas Linzey Esq. and Mari Margil -- WATCH PARTS II - VI HERE