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Right on Sedgwick, Maine!!! as fellow state of Maine residents we hope that our town is next!
The Sanctity Of Food: Conscious Eating As A Spiritual Practice
By Carolyn Baker
The earliest humans were hunter-gatherers who never knew exactly where their next meal might be coming from. In fact, their “meals” were probably eaten on the run as they stalked enough prey to constitute an actual meal, but it is unlikely that their meals were regular or even eaten daily. Given the conditions under which they secured food, it was impossible for them to take any of it for granted. Every morsel was hard-won and therefore, exceedingly precious.
When humans became sedentary, they transitioned from hunting and gathering to growing their own food, and while this made eating more predictable as a result of a more stable lifestyle, few ate mindlessly. Whether living in a small agricultural village along the Nile River in ancient times or growing food in one’s backyard garden in the twenty-first century, small-scale agriculture is labor-intensive, and appreciation for food is greatly enhanced by the energy expended in growing it.
Sedentary societies were dependent on the kindness of nature to provide the rain and sunshine necessary for growing food. Thus, many earth-based forms of spirituality evolved in which humans experienced a direct connection between the agricultural harvest and a particular deity such as Osiris in Egypt and Ceres in Rome. As part of their gratitude for what they believed the deity had provided, people offered food to the gods and goddesses of nature.
Read the full article here:
Tell President Obama: Don’t Appoint Pro-Fracking, Pro-Big Oil Scientist to Head the U.S. Department of Energy
According to Reuters, President Obama is poised to nominate ardent “fracking” supporter Dr. Ernest Moniz as the next head of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Moniz is the director of MIT’s Energy Institute, which boasts such Big Oil financial backers as BP, Chevron and Saudi Aramco.
Moniz isn’t only a true believer in the need to expand fracking infrastructure and development to serve as a “bridge” to low-carbon sources of energy; he’s on record as calling the controversial and toxic energy extraction method “paradigm shifting.”
Fracking is a highly polluting form of oil and gas extraction that requires blasting huge volumes of water, mixed with toxic chemicals and sand, deep into the earth to break up rock formations. There are more than 600,000 fracking wells and waste injection sites littering the United States. Worse are the state and federal plans to open up of huge new swaths of public land to this dangerous process in the months and years to come.
Blasting toxic chemicals into the same ground that gives us the food we eat and the water we drink not only fails to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also destroys farmland, contaminates groundwater, and endangers the health of people and animals alike. And without a sustainable farming system the safety of America’s food supply would be threatened.
Read the full article here:
Indian Man, Jadav “Molai” Payeng, Single-Handedly Plants A 1,360 Acre Forest In Assam
More than 30 years ago, a teenager named Jadav “Molai” Payeng began planting seeds along a barren sandbar near his birthplace in India’s Assam region, the Asian Age reports.
It was 1979 and floods had washed a great number of snakes onto the sandbar. When Payeng — then only 16 — found them, they had all died.
“The snakes died in the heat, without any tree cover. I sat down and wept over their lifeless forms,” Payeng told the Times Of India.
“It was carnage. I alerted the forest department and asked them if they could grow trees there. They said nothing would grow there. Instead, they asked me to try growing bamboo. It was painful, but I did it. There was nobody to help me,” he told the newspaper.
Now that once-barren sandbar is a sprawling 1,360 acre forest, home to several thousands of varieties of trees and an astounding diversity of wildlife — including birds, deer, apes, rhino, elephants and even tigers.
Read the full article here:
A concern for us all: 2012-13 Healthcare worker flu vaccine review
A concern for us all: 2012-13 Healthcare worker flu vaccine review
By Alan Phillips, J.D.
This past fall, I worked with about 150 healthcare workers in 26 states who were required to get a flu shot to keep their job. I’m happy to report that the vast majority were successful. But I gained some disturbing insights from this national perspective regarding flu shots that have implications for all adults in the U.S.:
1. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources’ Healthy People 2020 initiative has aggressive vaccine goals that include not only vaccinating 90% of healthcare workers, but also vaccinating all U.S. employees with the flu vaccine. Wake up, folks! Healthcare workers are just the front lines–we’re all in big pharma’s sites, and there’s no light at the end of this tunnel. In 2010, there were over 330 vaccines already on the market or in development. There will always be another vaccine to give a person, and always another person to give a vaccine. Meanwhile, states around the country are rapidly changing laws restricting access to exemptions, while adding laws to require more and more vaccines for more and more people, both children and adults. Join the NVIC Advocacy Portal to stay abreast of proposed vaccine laws around the country, and to support vaccine freedom of choice in your state.
Read the full article here:
Food Sovereignty: Think Globally, Eat Locally
By Beverly Bell
The first group of protestors at Occupy Wall Street publically delivered 23 complaints, outlining the ways in which corporations control our daily lives. Number four asserted, “They have poisoned the food supply through negligence and undermined the farming system through monopolization.”
How we feed ourselves and each other is the backbone of how, historically, we have organized our communities and societies. The ways in which we arrange our agricultural systems make evident our larger worldviews. Food literally and figuratively connects us to each other, to our ancestors, to our cultures, and to the earth. Maybe all food should be acknowledged as soul food (with a low bow to Southern cooking) because it is, in fact, that deep.
A movement is afoot to put food, land, and agricultural systems back in the hands of citizens. One element has long been considered the overarching essential around the world, though it is only beginning to make an appearance in this U.S. This is food sovereignty, a combination of farming practices, marketing systems, and policy choices which together allow every people to make decisions about, produce, and consume its own local, healthy, and culturally appropriate food. Food sovereignty calls for the democratic participation of the population in shaping food and trade policies. It promotes the right of small growers to have control over their land and production, to grow for domestic consumption under local control. It also promotes ecological agriculture.
Read the full article here:
http://newtribeearth.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/food-sovereignty-think-globally-eat-locally/
Back to the land again: Folk schools teach skills for modern-day survival
By Lori Rotenberk
With mounting school loans and the uncertainty of finding a job after graduation, 26-year-old Jenny Monfore decided to leave college early and look for alternative education. At the Driftless Folk School in Wisconsin, the Bozeman, Mont., native and massage therapist studied organic food preparation, blacksmithing, and mushroom identification — skills she hopes will augment her income and allow her to live a more independent lifestyle.
“We no longer have practical skills, we don’t know how to feed ourselves, and we’ve basically become lost,” Monfore says. “So we’re slowly building new, thoughtful communities.”
Folk school: The phrase calls to mind cloggers, birch bark hats, and strains of “If I Had a Hammer.” But these craft schools of yore are experiencing a resurgence of late, drawing young do-it-yourself homesteaders and restless baby boomers to the woods to learn about everything from organic farming to electric cars.
The folk school movement originated in Denmark in the 1800s as an alternative educational system steeped in religion, culture, and community. In the U.S., the schools’ focus on “togetherness” morphed into the ’60s and ’70s hippie and Foxfire awakenings. They were relegated to the fringes by the subsequent corporatization of nearly everything, however, and aside from long-established schools such as the craft- and music-centered John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina, they disappeared.
Read the full article here:
http://newtribeearth.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/back-to-the-land-again-folk-schools-teach-skills-for-modern-day-survival/
U.S. dairy industry petitions FDA to approve aspartame as hidden, unlabeled additive in milk, yogurt, eggnog and cream!
By Mike Adams
You probably already know that the FDA has declared war on raw milk and even helped fund and coordinate armed government raids against raw milk farmers and distributors. Yes, it’s insane. This brand of tyranny is unique to the USA and isn’t even conducted in China, North Korea or Cuba. Only in the USA are raw milk farmers treated like terrorists.
But now the situation is getting even more insane than you could have imagined: the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) have filed a petition with the FDA asking the FDA to alter the definition of “milk” to secretly include chemical sweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose.
Importantly, none of these additives need to be listed on the label. They will simply be swept under the definition of “milk,” so that when a company lists “milk” on the label, it automatically includes aspartame or sucralose. And if you’re trying to avoid aspartame, you’ll have no way of doing so because it won’t be listed on the label.
Read the full article here:
http://newtribeearth.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/u-s-dairy-industry-petitions-fda-to-approve-aspartame-as-hidden-unlabeled-additive-in-milk-yogurt-eggnog-and-cream/
Jeremy Hammond: Statement from prison
Jeremy Hammond has issued a statement from prison on the eve of his next court appearance. This statement is published below. A rally will take place outside the courthouse at 9:30am, Feb. 21st, Foley Sq. NYC. Statements will be given by the following: Jason Hammond, Jeremy’s twin brother; Alexa O’Brien, founder of the US Day of Rage and exceptional journalist covering the Wikileaks Gitmo files and trial of Bradley Manning; Heidi Boghosian, the Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild; Micheal Ratner, the President of the Center for Constitutional Rights; Andrew Blake, from the news agency RT will be there to report on the days events; Luke Rudkowski, from We Are Change will be live streaming video.
Introduction
In his own words, Jeremy Hammond is… ‘currently facing multiple computer hacking conspiracy charges due to my alleged involvement with Anonymous, LulzSec, and AntiSec, groups which have targeted and exposed corruption in government institutions and corporations such as Stratfor, The Arizona Department of Public Safety, and HB Gary Federal… if convicted at trial I am facing a sentence of 30-years-to-life.’
Statement by Jeremy Hammond (20/02/203)
The following is a statement by Jeremy Hammond in his own words, written from solitary confinement at The Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in New York City…
The tragic death of internet freedom fighter Aaron Swartz reveals the government’s flawed “cyber security strategy” as well as its systematic corruption involving computer crime investigations, intellectual property law, and government/corporate transparency. In a society supposedly based on principles of democracy and due process, Aaron’s efforts to liberate the internet, including free distribution of JSTOR academic essays, access to public court records on PACER, stopping the passage of SOPA/PIPA, and developing the Creative Commons, make him a hero, not a criminal. It is not the “crimes” Aaron may have committed that made him a target of federal prosecution, but his ideas – elaborated in his “Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto” – that the government has found so dangerous. The United States Attorney’s aggressive prosecution, riddled with abuse and misconduct, is what led to the death of this hero. This sad and angering chapter should serve as a wake up call for all of us to acknowledge the danger inherent in our criminal justice system.
Aaron’s case is part of the recent aggressive, politically-motivated expansion of computer crime law where hackers and activists are increasingly criminalized because of alleged “cyber-terrorist” threats. The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, whose office is prosecuting me and my co-defendants in the Lulzsec indictment, has used alarmist rhetoric such as the threat of an imminent “Pearl Harbor like cyber attack” to justify these prosecutions. At the same time the government routinely trains and deploys their own hackers to launch sophisticated cyber attacks against the infrastructure of foreign countries, such as the Stuxnet and Flame viruses, without public knowledge, oversight, declarations of war, or consent from international authorities. DARPA, US Cyber Command, the NSA, and numerous federally-contracted private corporations openly recruit hackers to develop defensive and offensive capabilities and build Orwellian digital surveillance networks, designed not to enhance national security but to advance U.S. imperialism.
Read the full Statement here:
http://newtribeearth.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/jeremy-hammond-statement-from-prison/
