Well this is yet another bit of highly disappointing information I learned today. The Path To Freedom Blog posted today that Monsanto owns about 40% of all the fruit and veggie seeds sold in the U.S. and they are growing. It’s not bad enough that they’ve taken over grain production and made it into frankenfood and are destroying many family farms in the process but now they are invading the fruit and veggie seed market, too.
Here is what the PTF folks have to say about this:
We aren’t talking genetically modified seeds here were are talking about who is supplying the seeds. Even if you purchase non gmo seeds from a seed company who touts a ‘Safe Seed Pledge’ that variety may still be OWNED by Monsanto. Sorry to break the bad news to you, but that’s the facts folks. We, yes even PTF, is supporting the big M by purchasing seeds from our favorite seed companies and you probably are too.
Out of the 2,500 varieties that Monsanto has acquired from the Seminis takeover, here are a few of the published veg varieties that we know that Monsanto owns:
Beans: EZ Gold, Eureka, Goldrush, Kentucky King, Lynx, Bush Blue Lake 94
So what to do? Start saving fazing out listed Monsanto owned varieties, reach where your seeds come from and or save your own.
Taking Back Our Food Supply
Before agriculture became an industry, every gardener, farmer was responsible for the availability of seed for next years crop. With this recent merger and marketing tactics that has allow a certain “M”-onopoly to take over over the majority of the seed population. Seed-saving is one among many tactics of reclaiming our power (and freedom) to grow our own food, and an indispensable step towards fully sustainable and secure future.
I kept having insights and dreams about saving seeds before this growing season started. I was shown a local seed bank happening in my area and really, I’m not that skilled at seed saving and all it entails even though we have owned the book, “Seed To Seed” for many years just for this reason that one day we would have to rely on ourselves for ensuring our food production. Needless to say, we’ve slacked in that department over the past few years what with moving to the ‘burbs, major home renovations and having a kid and all. I’ve even discussed this a few times this past spring with different people in my area (including my friend Julie, a master gardener) to find out if there was a seed bank already happening where I live – there isn’t. Clearly why I’ve been shown this over and over again before we started growing anything this season was for a reason and we have been diligently saving heirloom organic seeds this summer the way my husband learned from his homesteading mom and step-dad.
This is bad news, people. Being more self-sufficient even with your own garden is becoming increasingly more important everyday. I recommend that you read up a bit on this topic if you don’t already know about what’s going on. It’s a big deal and I’m not kidding. Those who control the seeds of life control everything and they definitely do not have our best interests at heart.
Btw, which political party do you think they are affilitated with? Just saying.
Well this really will show you the level of racism and discrimination still alive and well in the USA. When you see it written out like this, it really makes you wonder why anyone would back a not too bright and low integrity person to be elected as the next leader of the free world. I want an Ivy league intelligent person (and being the editor of the Harvard law review doesn’t hurt, either) to be my next president not someone who graduated at the bottom of his class, thanks. (And just to clarify – I mean ivy league intelligent as in really earned it, took out student loans to pay for it not get in on daddy’s connections and money and still be dumb like Bush did).
From Letters to the Editors @ Fort Worth Star-Telegram 9.17.08
What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said ‘I do’ to? What
if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer
measured up to his standards?
What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain
killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard? What if Obama were a member of
the ‘Keating 5′? What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?
If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election
numbers would be as close as they are?
This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive
qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when
there is a color difference.
I’ve been thinking of writing about this for a long time. I don’t talk much about preparedness on this blog but it is something I am very well informed on and we have been prepared for anything since the late 90’s. I’ve been reading many different preparedness blogs for the past year and I always get a sense of urgency when I read those posts and that urgency for me is based from fear. I won’t live my life in fear mode but I do live by the old saying of “tie the camels” which means to be prepared for anything but live your life normally.
Here is where I’m at with all of this: yes, we all need to have some preparedness skills in our tool box of life skills and supplies at our homes in case there are going to be food shortages or if there’s even a chance you or your spouse will be laid off from your job while prices are rising and winter will be here soon.
There are many blogs and websites to read up on all the details of what to store and how much, etc so I’m not going to go into all of that here. One thing I will touch on that those sites do not is to add sprouting seeds to your food storage because many sprouts are so easy to do in just a couple of days and only require a glass jar with mesh screen lid or even cheesecloth with a rubberband and water and only cost you pennies. The vitamins, enzymes and just life force energy you will get from sprouts is very important in my opinion. You could live on sprouts if you had to.
What I wanted to really talk about is actual skills. What can you do? What do you want to learn about but rely on others to do for you instead? This comes up for me a lot because my husband is one of those renaissance men that really can do anything – he’s got mad skills both the blue collar and white collar type. I, on the other hand, have learned many things from him over the years in terms of developing my own sustainability life skills and being pretty much a city girl, this was big for me. I always have a little fear of what if he’s not around and I have to take care of everything myself for me and my son in bad times? This drives me to keep learning even the stuff I don’t really like but it’s all good because it makes me more confident and feel self-reliant and like I can survive anything but in a good way!
So, can you work with power tools or even manual hand tools? Can you make a fire in a fire pit or a wood stove or even a fireplace? Can you cook basic foods like grains and beans correctly and store them properly? Can you sew? Do you have camping skills/basic wilderness skills? Can you fix a flat tire on a car or a bike? Can you grow food? Do you know CPR and basic first aid? I can go on and on but you get the idea. I still have more to learn in different areas but I try to watch and observe as much as I can and try to practice some things or just file it away in case I need to use it by myself or get someone to help me if for some reason he’s not around. That is a gloomy thought, I know but anything could happen and we all need to be responsible for ourselves.
When I first moved to Colorado to transform my life and become an Herbalist 14 years ago, I became obsessed with permaculture and self-sustainability and medicine making, too. I did not know my husband then but I read and learned and surrounded myself with others on this same path and learned more from them. For my graduating final project (almost like a mini-thesis, we worked on it for a long time) I did an entire very detailed permaculture design for a piece of land my friends and I wanted to buy in the mountains of CO. Once I graduated, I went right into getting a permaculture certification and worked for a year with a landscape designer that also did xeriscape and permaculture designs in her work so I got hands-on training, too which taught me even more.
At the time, many people I knew thought this was fringe and unnecessary – everything in our country was going so well, life was easy, etc. I felt differently, kept having visions of a different way of life and also felt that it was the most natural way for a human to live in harmony with all of nature. I still feel this way and thankfully, so does my husband. I kept expanding my skills and knowledge and still to this day I keep pushing myself to learn more and more – even if I don’t really like what I’m learning! I feel that bartering for goods and services is going to become something big in the not too distant future and people with needed skills will be in high demand.
The first book that I bought for myself when I went to herbalist school to start learning the “old ways” of self sufficiency was Reader’s Digests’ “Back To Basics” book. I highly recommend this book as a good place to start to learn if you are just getting started and you can usually find a copy in a used bookstore – that’s where I got mine. My husband got to grow up with a mother that basically embodies this book – she is a real homesteader and this is where he’s learned the majority of his life skills. Not a bad way to raise your children and something we are trying to slowly teach to our son in our daily life. I was raised the exact opposite way and really felt like a fish out of water a lot of times. So much about our consumeristic society always bothered me and feels shallow and pointless, really.
So, if you are starting to feel worried about the economy or natural catastrophies possibly happening in your area, let that fear drive you to prepare with the basics in taking care of yourself and your family better. If nothing happens then great, you can still use all of your stored vegan foods which are healthier for you anyway, having extra warm clothes, blankets, flashlights, solar-rechargeable batteries, water, firewood, etc is all going to be used and you have saved money in the long run, too. The life skills you aquire will always be put to good use, too and makes you feel better about yourself. If nothing else, it will give you more to talk about at a party!
Live your life with joy and consciousness in harmony with nature but always remember to tie the camels, just in case.
On this United Nations’ International Day of Peace, may all of your lives be happy and blessed with peace. I really and truly hope that our next president really be committed to serving the betterment of the people and truly believes in peace and peaceful actions first and foremost. Our world really can’t take much more. May they embrace the idea of serving the greatest good for all.
The Child Nutrition Act includes legislation for the National School Lunch Program, which provides federal assistance for school lunches. This act is being reauthorized in 2009, and theUSDA would like your input on what needs to change. Submit your recommendations for improving vegetarian options by fax at 703-305-2879, or online. They are accepting comments until October 15, 2008.
Well you don’t have to twist my arm to get me to give my two cents to the USDA on what needs to change for the school lunch program! I am really hoping that many people will take action and give their comments to the USDA to help all of our children receive better nutrition and more whole, unprocessed foods in every school across America.
If we can get foods with high fructose corn syrup and other additives and preservatives removed from the menu as well as adding more vegetarian food options and non-dairy fortified drink options, our children could only benefit. They would be eating more fiber, vitamins, minerals have stable blood sugar for many hours of the day and will be eating more plant based foods and less processed foods which can only help them. It will also assist in lowering the childhood obesity rate that is skyrocketing here in our country and cutting down on consuming so much pasteurized dairy will reduce congestion issues (sinus, ear infections, sore throats) and constipation, too.
Last year, the PCRM published a “School Lunch Report Card” based on their criteria for healthy, whole foods and non-dairy options in some of the larger school district cafeterias. There is a lot of good information on this report, they did a really thorough job and it’s worth it to check it out.
Another great website on this school lunch issue to check out is also researched by the PCRM and is called Healthy School Lunches.org.
Appropedia – a new wiki for all things sustainable and green.
Here is their description of who they are and what they do:
Our vision is that all of humanity is able to work together developing and realizing rich, sustainable lives. We build the infrastructure, and help make the connections and populate free content to effect that vision. We provide the living resource library of individuals and organizations working towards a sustainable, healthier future, so that efforts can be spent evolving instead of duplicating past efforts.
We briefly capture our vision and mission in this way:
Sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives.
Appropedia began in April of 2006. Six other similar sites have joined Appropedia since its inception:
Sustainable Development Wikia
WinWinWiki
Wikigreen.org
Village Earth’s ATwiki
HowToLiveWiki, home of the Hexayurt
sgoals, the site for sustainable business
So far, there are 12,569 pages of information on all things sustainable. Wow. I for one think this is awesome that a site like this is growing fast on the web. Now if someone wants to know more about any area of living sustainably, there is this great resource to go to and learn more or if you have a lot of knowledge in a related area, just log in and post your info or add to what’s already there about a sustainable topic.
The time has come for the masses to start learning how to embrace more sustainable lifestyles and this wiki site is proving that it’s happening. Yeah!
I Tivo the Oprah show and usually watch the shows that interest me when I work out. Yesterday, I watched probably the most difficult episode ever and I wanted to delete it after the first few minutes and not watch because it was so horrific and upsetting. But I didn’t, I made myself watch it to learn what I could do to help stop such heinous acts from repeatedly occurring.
The show was all about pedophiles in America called “Fighting Internet Predators.” It is unbelievable how many there are online (over half a million) and how they network with each other everyday and what they do. Oprah was very explicit in this show, no sugar coating at all. The experts interviewed on the show that work with tracking these men online, seeing the videos and dealing with the abused children -some of who are just INFANTS – well these people said they even need some therapy to deal with all the horribleness they have to witness everyday at their jobs. One man , Flint Waters of the Wyoming Internet Sex Crimes Against Children Task Force created software that is able to track the men who are sending out the images (whether videos or photos) to their homes and go in and arrest them. The problem they are having is they are underfunded so there is not enough police to assign to jobs like this. He said when he goes home at night, the unfinished work on his desk are innocent children that will still be raped by these men and probably that night, too. He has trouble with that everyday. I’m sure some women are involved as well but this show didn’t focus on that.
They said that it’s such a big market for these addicts that they are now going into filming live, on demand videos of the rapes happening and it’s becoming increasingly more brutal. One expert said you would hear the little girls giggling from the man tickling and playing and then she’d start screaming from the pain of the rape &/or torture. Some of the perps were the fathers, a close relative, family friends, the child’s friend’s father or a coach or teacher. Only a very small percentage were stranger abductions.
There are now instruction manuals these pedophiles put out teaching the men on how to groom both the family as well as the child you want to molest to get away with it and “desensitize” them. One part Oprah read said to use the pacifier for the under 2 year olds or a pencil for the 3-5 year olds and have them try to draw or write with it in them to make it go in further. There are also animated and cartoon videos using familiar characters produced by the child predators to show to the kids to teach them about molestation and “keeping it a secret.”
Needless to say, I was horrified and angry and bawling my eyes out. I want to do as much as I can to help save these kids from being subjected to further abuse and torture for no other reason than for mentally sick men to get off on.
Here is what we all can do right now to help these innocent victims – contact our senators who will be voting on this act on September 26th, 2008. We don’t have much time so please call both of your senators and just ask them to vote “YES” on passing Senate Bill 1738—The PROTECT Our Children Act. We can also spread this message to everyone we know to help get this act passed and stop these brutal attacks on children.
Here is some more info from Oprah.com about this Act:
The PROTECT Our Children Act will:
Authorize over $320 million over the next five years in desperately needed funding for law enforcement to investigate child exploitation.
Mandate that child rescue be a top priority for law enforcement receiving federal funding.
Allocate funds for high-tech computer software that can track down Internet predators.
Act Now!
Your U.S. senators will be voting on the bill soon, so it is crucial you contact them immediately.
Go to www.senate.gov to find contact information for the senators in your state. Search for your senator by name or state by clicking on the arrow from either dropdown menu. Contact information is provided here. To send an e-mail, click on “Web Form” below his or her name, and e-mail your letter to make a difference!
Call Your Senators
If you choose to contact your senators by phone, be sure to tell them, “Vote yes on Senate Bill 1738—The PROTECT Our Children Act.”
Write to Your Senators
If you choose to write a letter, fax, telegram or e-mail, you may use the following sample letter—and modify it how you see fit.
Dear Senator:
I know that you believe, like I do, that we must do everything possible to protect children from sexual predators. That is why I am asking for your help.
Last year alone, U.S. law enforcement identified over 300,000 criminals who were trafficking in movies and pictures of young children being raped and tortured. Experts say that one in every three of these criminals has local child victims. Child pornography trafficking over the Internet has given us a trail of evidence that leads straight to their doorsteps, but the vast majority of these children will never be rescued because investigators are overwhelmed, outnumbered and underfunded.
As your constituent, I urge you to do everything in your power to pass the PROTECT Our Children Act (S. 1738, Biden-Hatch). This bipartisan legislation passed the House 415-2, but it is now the victim of petty partisan politics.
Now that we know where these children are and how to protect them, there is no excuse for the Senate to fail to take action this session.
(Your name here)
Instructions for How to Copy and Paste the Letter
To copy and paste the letter into your senator’s web form at www.senate.gov, point your mouse arrow at the beginning of the text that you want to copy. Click your left mouse button and hold it down. While holding the left mouse button, drag your arrow to the end of the text that you want to copy. Release the button. The text should be highlighted. Place your mouse arrow over the highlighted text, click your right mouse button once and let go. A new menu should appear. Select Copy from the drop down menu. When you get to the message form field for your senator at www.senate.gov, point your arrow at the beginning of the message field that you want to copy your text to and right click with your mouse. Click Paste from this menu. Submit your form and help our children!
Defenders of Wildlife, a non-profit organization that I’ve been a member of for many years came out with this commercial recently regarding Sarah Palin’s record as governor regarding wildlife in her state. Mind you, the wolves were still on the endangered species list when she approved this. What I want to know is – Why???
As governor, Sarah Palin…
Proposed paying a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf.
Approved a $400,000 state-funded propaganda campaign to promote aerial hunting.
Introduced legislation to make it even easier to use aircraft to hunt wolves and bears.
Please consider helping Defenders of Wildlife get this powerful TV ad shown in more swing states by donating even a small amount. Every bit can help save the lives of many animals.
I must admit, I’ve been having issues with blogging this week because every time I sit down to write a post about anything, all that I really feel like doing is ripping into Sarah Palin and John McCain. So, I’ve decided to not post until I could get over it. My friend Jyoti sent me this piece written by Eve Ensler for the Huffington Post and it really got at how I felt and being that she’s a playwright and a feminist – she summed it up better than I ever could.
*******************
I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it’s their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.
I don’t like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.
But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story — connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.
I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.
Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God’s plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin’s view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, “It was a task from God.”
Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist’s baby or not.
She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.
Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.
Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.
Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God’s name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.
I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.
If the Polar Bears don’t move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, “Drill Drill Drill.” I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.
Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?
Right now I am in the midst of one of the biggest detoxes I’ve ever undertaken. And that’s saying something since I’ve done many different things over the years. Ten years ago, my husband and I followed “The Body Ecology Diet” for several months to clean our bodies from candida and parasites. We didn’t have any major problems but Michael did have pretty bad seasonal and some pet allergies. And some food ones, too. All of that warranted a good internal cleansing and we did that together. This was also our first attempt at making lacto-fermented saurkraut (as recommended by the book) which came out badly and we haven’t tried it again until this summer and we are lacto-fermenting veggies like crazy! We had excellent results from doing this program which really is a good cleansing and very healthy way to live. Michael’s allergies were almost totally gone!
Along with that particular cleanse, we did some colonics as is also recommended in the book. We really didn’t like the “closed circuit” colonics that we did so I’ve never gone back for them even though I am aware of how important it is to keep your colon clean. There is a quote from the Royal Academy of Physicians of Great Britain that says, “90 percent of all disease and discomfort is directly or indirectly related to an unclean colon.” Now that is really saying something. 90 percent. That’s a lot.
Being on a raw vegan diet is very deeply cleansing in itself. I thought I was doing enough sufficient exercise to sweat out the toxins that were being dredged up by this cleansing diet but I guess not since I’ve been having weird rashes come out on my skin the past few months. This is basically past prescription meds I’ve taken and heavy metals, solvents, etc that I’ve been exposed to over the years trying to make a quick exit through the largest elimination organ we have – the skin. It all gets stored away in the liver, one of our most important organs in the body that performs over 500 tasks everyday. Most skin problems are related to liver congestion or stagnation and the body trying to rid itself from it. I’ve known this and have done many liver flushes and herbal liver tonic blends over the years to try to keep mine in good working order.
A liver flush is generally a concoction blended in the blender every morning and drank on an empty stomach for 10 days then a 3 day break then do it again. Clearly this was not enough to get at the deep seated stuff for me. I also have been having visions of colonics so I knew it was a message and that I needed to do them again but I just didn’t like the kind I did before and didn’t realize there was another way until I started to read about it in some of my books.
I investigated this other type of colonic that has been recommended by many health experts and this one is called the “gravity feed” method. It is the most gentle way and very effective at cleaning you out. I found a practitioner in my area (that cured herself of liver cancer) and she is highly knowledgeable of many rather unpleasant facts and stories relating to sickness caused by toxed out people that she has treated over the years. I loved her right away and knew she was the person for me!
Well you don’t have to twist my arm to get me to give my two cents to the USDA on what needs to change for the school lunch program! I am really hoping that many people will take action and give their comments to the USDA to help all of our children receive better nutrition and more whole, unprocessed foods in every school across America.
