Organic Farmer Wins $1 Million Suit Over Pesticide Contamination - Organic Food News Today - News Media Monitoring

Organic Farmer Wins $1 Million Suit Over Pesticide Contamination - Organic Food News Today - News Media Monitoring: Organic Farmer Wins $1 Million Suit Over Pesticide Contamination

December 27, 2010

EINNEWS, December 27---A California court has upheld a $1 million award to a farmer who claimed his organic crop was contaminated by pesticides from a neighboring farm.

Larry Jacobs, president of Jacobs Farm/Del Cobo, fought a four year battle to win compensation for organic dill that tested positive for pesticides and was turned down by Whole Foods.

Jacobs has a 120-acre herb farm north of Santa Cruz. Pesticides applied in liquid form to a nearby Brussels sprouts crop apparently migrated to Jacobs' dill.

California's Sixth Appellate District Court upheld Jacobs' right to sue the pesticide applicator, Western Farm Service and the court let stand the $1 awarded him by a jury two years ago.

The decision is significant, say agriculture and law experts, because it strengthens the case for organic farmers or anyone else harmed by pesticides to seek legal recourse — even if the pesticide, as it was here, is legally applied.

While state law restricts pesticides from being sprayed on neighboring properties, which is known as pesticide drift, the law doesn't deal specifically with pesticides that disperse into the air after application and end up someplace else.

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Root Simple: Our Rocket Stove

Root Simple: Our Rocket Stove: Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Our Rocket Stove Video: http://www.aprovecho.org/web-content/media/rocket/rocket.htm

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Staring at the bricks we had scavenged to build the base of cob oven, we realized that we could re-purpose them for a permanent backyard rocket stove that we would actually use. Furthermore we realized that our rocket stove could burn some of the palm fronds that regularly tumble down from the iconic palm trees that line our old L.A. street.

Here's the materials we used:

36 bricks
4-inch aluminum stove pipe elbow
4-inch stove pipe
ash (scavenged from park BBQs)
1 tin can
50 pound bag of premixed concrete for the base
mortar mix
grill (scavenged)

The first step was to make a small foundation for the rocket stove. We fashioned a 18 by 18-inch by 4-inch slab with 2 x 4 lumber and a bag of premixed cement. Folks in cold places will need to make a deeper foundation to avoid frost heave.

Next we built a brick cube, leaving a small hole for the bottom of the stovepipe. For advice on how to build with brick we recommend taking a look at this. As you can see our masonry could use some more practice, but the results are not too bad--we like to think of our stove as being a bit "rustic". You can avoid the hassle of brickwork by making a simpler rocket stove--check out these two instructional videos, one for a metal model, and another version using bricks. We chose brick largely for aesthetic reasons and we're satisfied with the results.

Drawing from Capturing Heat

The next step is to put the pipe together fitting the elbow up into the longer pipe, and sized so that the top of the pipe is just below the bottom of the grill. Check out our earlier post for a video that can help with this part of the assembly. Serendipitously, on a bike ride, we found a grill in the middle of Sunset Boulevard that fit the opening in our brick rocket stove exactly.

You pour the ash into the completed brick cube to fill the space between the pipe and the inside wall. The ash acts as insulation to increase the efficiency of the stove. You could also use vermiculite but note that sand or soil will not work. Insulation works because of small pockets of air between particles, hence the need for ash or vermiculite, which are also non-combustible. We used a piece of scrap sheet metal with a 4-inch circular hole cut in it to keep the ash from spilling out the gap between the pipe and the squarish opening at the bottom.

Lastly you use a tin can sliced down the side and flattened out to form a shelf which you insert into the elbow at the bottom of the stove. Note the drawing above for the shape of the shelf. You put your twigs and kindling on this shelf and start the stove up with newspaper underneath the shelf. As the twigs burn you push them in over the edge to keep the fire going.

Our first test run of the stove was very successful--we boiled a pot of water and cooked some eggs in a a pan. The fire burned cleanly with little smoke except during start up. For more info on rocket stoves check out the Aprovecho Research Center.

How do I publish my web page for a class?

How do I publish my web page for a class?: It is my understanding that USF students have webspace where they can upload personal webpages. How do I access this webspace and upload my website to it?

In order to upload your webpage you will first need to download and install a secure file transfer client. You can find and download suggested software such as WinSCP for PCs or FUGU for Macs at https://security.usf.edu/software/suggest.php.

After you have installed the secure file transfer software, you will need to open a connection to the web server:

The server name you are connecting to is: ssh.myweb.usf.edu

Use your NetID as the username

Leave the port number and profile settings as they are

Click Connect.

A box will come up asking you for your password, enter the password you use with your NetID

Before uploading files for a webpage, you must first open the "public_html" folder in the myusf.usf.edu pane by double-clicking the folder. Any file not inside of the "public_html" folder will not be accessible for your webpage.

The web server expects your main page to be named index.html and the index.html file must be located in the "public_html" folder.

Once your files are copied to the "public_html" folder using the secure file transfer client, your website can be accessed by using your web browser to go to http:// yournetid.myweb.usf.edu. The contents of index.html will be automatically displayed.

If you are having trouble uploading your website please contact the Help Desk at (813) 974-1222.

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Liberal Education | Current Issue

Liberal Education | Current Issue: President’s Message
Civic Learning in College: Our Best Investment in the Future of Our Democracy
By Carol Geary Schneider
General education has long been regarded as part of American higher education’s responsibility to the success of our democracy. Throughout the twentieth century, the rationale for general education was that higher education educates citizens, and educated citizens need a rich understanding of the larger context in which they live, work, and contribute. Unhappily, many college students get no such thing.

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Van Jones/MoveOn 'Rebuilding the Dream' coalition

The Icebergs Cometh: Retaking the USA Titanic Before the 2012 Elections: "

he Icebergs Cometh: Retaking the USA Titanic Before the 2012 Elections

• By Victoria Collier and Ronnie Cummins
  August 8, 2011
  
  

In the wake of a super-nova of exploded hope in President Obama, a power vacuum is now spinning in our political universe. A desperate need to fill the void (lest it someday be filled with the unthinkable; a babbling Bachmann or weeping Boehner) has led to a frenzy of organizing among mainstream Democrats and Progressives.

Some, like the Van Jones/MoveOn "Rebuilding the Dream" coalition, are attempting to rekindle that obliterated Obama flame before the 2012 elections. To accomplish this they are strategically pointing the blame finger at "evil corporations," while carefully avoiding drawing a direct line from corporate headquarters (like those of Goldman Sachs, GE, and Monsanto) to the White House. Others, like the New Progressive Alliance (NPA), led by activists such as Cindy Sheehan, Cornel West and David Swanson, are taking a more honest and radical position, boldly calling out the Democratic Party leadership as sold-out corporate shills, incapable of reform and unworthy of further support. In other words, the power vacuum of the Left has a deeper split within - a true black hole that threatens to pull all of us into oblivion between now and November, 2012.

Free-floating in the void are record numbers of left-leaning Americans who lost all hope after what they perceive as Obama's Great Betrayal, followed by the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision, unleashing an unfettered free market for the rich to buy our candidates. (We may now envision them as a far less cool version of NASCAR drivers, slathered with the logos of their corporate sponsors). Many activists have likewise despairingly turned their efforts away from the grim spectre of national politics toward non-electoral campaigning, movement building, and direct action.

Yet we all realize that the 2012 elections will have major consequences for every aspect of our accelerating Crisis: global warming, permanent war, redlining economic and ecological collapse, and the growing power of the National Security State.

We cannot, in the end, afford to drift into personal oblivion, no matter how the Pharmaceutical Industry offers help in doing so. Too much is at stake.

The NPA and a large number of organizations such as RootsAction and Progressive Democrats of America have been hard at work on developing a body of comprehensive new Progressive platforms. This, ostensibly to galvanize Americans to rally again for the values that once defined the Democratic Party. All well and good, but we've got to have inspiring candidates to rally around, don't we? The lesson learned from Obama is that pretty words do not action make - and the Establishment Democrats and their Wall Street backers tell us what we want to hear in order to keep themselves in power. We also know that our two-party system is walled like a fortress against a third party uprising.

The NPA, for its part, is undaunted by this Corporate citadel that was once our government. They are planning the long-needed coup - an electoral insurgency of true Progressive candidates to challenge the compromised Democrats, and if that doesn't work, redoubling strength and charging forward as a new party.

Do they have the right positions?

Definitely!

Do they have the support numbers?

Yes!

Can they win?

No.

Not yet, anyway. The problem is that some of the changes the NPA - or any true Progressive coalition - will make once in power, need to be made before they can take power.

The reason we now suffer a ruthless Corporatocracy is because we no longer control our own democratic system. Puppet candidates have rigged themselves into office and manipulated our government to hand corporations the keys to the kingdom. We the People are now the rabble outside the gates, reduced to begging the rulers within to please be just a little less ruthless. Funny how they don't listen.

Our elections have been bought or stolen for decades, but the People are only now waking up. Most of the public (including Al Gore) knows that George W. Bush stole the Presidency in 2000, and many are aware (including John Kerry) that he stole it again in 2004. Republican operatives apparently decided not to steal the White House in 2008 once it became clear that Obama was headed for a landslide. But whether elections - or politicians - are literally stolen, or simply bought (including Barack Obama), the outcome is the same.

The democratic system itself is rigged against us - and this rigging is not just another Progressive issue, like ending the Wars on Terror and Drugs, or securing universal healthcare, or getting the 100,000 toxic chemicals out of our bodies, or preventing Monsanto from taking over our food and seed supply. To offer a descriptive metaphor; these issues and many more are where our ship of state is heading. The democratic process is who is controlling the ship.

Until not only Progressives, but also Radicals and Populists, unite and organize strategically, en masse, to take control of our ship of state, we are unlikely to ever wrest power from the super-wealthy elite and their global military-industrial complex.

So, how is the system rigged against us?

* Corporate campaign finance. Unless you are willing to be sponsored by the mega-corporations, you will never get out of the political gate. That's why it actually makes no sense to say Obama "betrayed" his constituency, or that he's a naive political player (from Chicago? Are you kidding?) Like the rest at the top, Obama is beholden to his powerful corporate backers. Reports from the Center for Responsive Politics indicate he's raising more money than ever from Wall Street in preparation for 2012 - as he must! You pay to play. Is Obama a good guy? Is he naive? Is he a Manchurian Candidate? It doesn't really matter. It's not about him. It's about the System.

* Corporate media control of elections. Unless you're saying what the small cadre of uber-powerful corporate media controllers want to hear, you'll be relegated to late-night Public Access and online blogs. And if you are a serious contender, you may not make it within a stone's throw of top-level televised debates (Ralph Nader wasn't even allowed in the audience of the 2000 Presidential Debates, blocked by three state troopers). The corporate media actively maintain the status quo with unrivaled power. Until there is free, fair and equal coverage of every candidate, there will be no real freedom of information within the sphere of elections - and no real democracy.

* Corporate control of computerized voting machines. If the good guys and gals manage to make it far enough to pose a real threat to the corporate Establishment, the voting booth is where they'll get the knife in the back - though most of them won't even know it. Over 40 years of citizen investigation has proven that our votes are regularly stolen within secretly programmed "black box" computerized voting machines. These Trojan Horses are owned by a handful of incestuous corporations with long criminal histories and strong ties to extremist, right-wing groups. Their machines now count about 99% of American ballots. Many of the Touchscreens don't even produce a paper audit trail to check the veracity of the totals (though even this audit is not sufficient - every ballot must be counted by hand, at the precinct on election day, not days or weeks later).

Combine the above with a laundry list of now-standard dirty tricks, from purging the voter lists and voter intimidation to phony robo-calls giving voters the wrong information on how to cast a ballot.

See our list of resources below for more information on how our elections are undermined.

The hour is more than late. We can now say with very little hyperbole that Fascist boots can be heard in the hall, and if we don't want them on the back of our necks, we have to think strategically. It's not enough that we are right - we have to win. This extremist corporatist junta is ruthless, and if you think things are bad now, just wait and do nothing. Only two things will stop them: a violent revolution, or a non-violent revolution. We prefer the latter.

Currently a number of Progressive leaders are issuing calls for major gatherings, conferences, protests and uprisings in the coming year. So far, these efforts are unaligned, and not focused on a strategic recapture of our democratic process before November, 2012. Many of the leadership say they believe it's impossible to achieve.

It is not impossible.

We - the Progressives, Radicals, and Populists, who constitute the majority in America - must focus on aligning strategically to win by stunning landslides in 2012, running candidates on the newly revised Platforms that truly represent the Will of the People. We must first outlaw the use of riggable computerized voting machines and institute a public paper ballot count with appropriate procedure and oversight. We must demand full media access for candidates. And we must threaten a full-blown Egypt-style revolution if Citizen's United is not immediately overturned.

It is not impossible.

Now is the time for fierce honesty and foresight, a recognition that business as usual is no longer acceptable. We've got to abandon the "my issue is more important than your issue" mentality that has so long divided and crippled the Movement.

If we begin now, immediately - today! - we just might be able to turn the USA Titanic around before the madmen at the helm slam us all into the icebergs ahead.

* To discuss and plan strategy for overthrowing the Corporatocracy and reclaiming democracy for the People before 2012, please join the discussion at the People's Congress.

* To support the powerful, vibrant movement for clean recall elections in Wisconsin, visit WI Citizens for Election Protection and Election Integrity on Facebook.

* Register to attend the upcoming Democracy Convention in Madison, Wisconsin on August 24-28.


Victoria Collier is Editor of www.votescam.org
Ronnie Cummins is National Director of the Organic Consumers Association


Further Resources on election fraud and citizen movements:

www.votescam.org
www.bradblog.org
www.blackboxvoting.org
www.handcountedpaperballots.org
www.voterescue.org
www.electionintegrity.org
www.voteraction.org
www.reclaimdemocracy.org
www.thealliancefordemocracy.org
www.poclad.org

so-called leaders

Alt_News : Message: Fw: Elites "Shocked" at Violent UK Riots: "No one expected this. The so-called leaders . . . thought that after thirty years of soaring inequality, in the middle of a recession, they could take away the last little things that gave people hope, the benefits, the jobs, the possibility of higher education, the support structures, and nothing would happen. They were wrong. And now my city is burning, and it will continue to burn until we stop the blanket condemnations and blind conjecture and try to understand just what has brought viral civil unrest to Britain. Let me give you a hint: it aint Twitter.

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What I see here is the end of the corporation... the elite have all incorporated themselves into LLC's to control more with less liabilities and less responsibilities. Governments across the Globe are now all Corporate Cartels to exploit resources and avoid further responsibilities at the expense of citizens and the environment. We will see the end of this during this next generation. The next British revolution is coming. The ruling class that has destroyed all hope and education to create soldiers for continued exploitation and imperialism will soon find these troops are more inclined to "string them up."

Serves them right. . .

Why We Can Thank Republicans for a Double-dip Recession

Republicans repeatedly assured the nation that once the debt-limit deal was done, the economy would bounce back. Just the opposite seems to be happening.

August 5, 2011 |

John Boehner said Tuesday the Republicans got "90 percent of what we wanted" from the budget deal. So presumably he and his colleagues are willing to take responsibility for some 450 points of today's mammoth 513-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

I'm being a bit facetious – but only a bit. It's always dangerous to read too much into one day's move in the stock market.

Yet the stock sell-off -- not just today's, but that of the last days -- cannot be easily dismissed. It marks Wall Street's largest losing streak since 2008.

Republicans repeatedly assured the nation that once the debt-limit deal was done -- capping spending, cutting the budget deficit, and getting "90 percent" of what they wanted -- the economy would bounce back.

Just the opposite seems to be happening.

Call it the Republican's double-dip recession.

Wall Street investors aren't ideologues. They don't obsess about budget deficits ten years from now, or the size of the government. One day doesn't make a trend, but a giant sell-off like this is motivated by hard, cold realities.

Here are the two hard, cold realities investors are most worried about:

First, the economy looks like it's dead in the water. The Commerce Department reports almost no growth in the first half of the year. And job growth is just about at a standstill. Far fewer jobs were generated in May and June than necessary just to keep up with the growth in the potential labor force -- meaning the employment picture is actually worsening.

Secondly, investors now know the federal government's hands are tied. The original stimulus is over; the Fed's "quantitative easing" is over.

This week's deal over the debt ceiling cinches it. The market is now on its own -- without enough rocket power get out of the continuing gravitational pull of the Great Recession.

Now that the deal is done, Obama and the Democrats will have a much harder time passing anything close to the stimulus necessary to breach the gap between what consumers (who are 70 percent of the economy) are willing to spend and what the economy can produce at or near full-employment.

Not incidentally, the Commerce Department's revised data for what happened to the economy in 2008 and 2009 shows the drop to have been far greater than had been supposed. The economy plunged 8.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 -- the steepest quarterly decline in more than half a century. And in 2009 household buying declined almost 2 percent (compared with a previous estimate of 1.2 percent). That's the biggest contraction in almost sixty years.

This means the original stimulus should have been much larger in order to offset the drop. With cash-starved state and local governments simultaneously scaling back their own spending, the federal stimulus needed to be even bigger.

So much for Republican claims that the original stimulus "didn't work." Of course it didn't, given the size of the slide.

It was never a debt crisis. The debt crisis was manufactured. It's been a jobs, wages, and growth crisis all along. And that reality has finally caught up with us.

Now that we're slouching toward a double-dip recession, the only hope is voters will tell their members of Congress -- who are now on recess back home -- to stop obsessing about future budget deficits and get to work on the real crisis of unemployment, falling wages, and no growth.

We need a bold jobs bill to restart the economy. Eliminate payroll taxes on the first $20,000 of income for two years. Recreate the WPA and the Civilian Conservation Corps. The federal government should lend money to cash-strapped states and local governments. Give employers tax credits for net new jobs. Amend the bankruptcy laws to allow distressed homeowners to declare bankruptcy on their primary residence. Extend unemployment insurance. Provide partial unemployment benefits to people who have lost part-time jobs. Start an infrastructure bank.

And more.

The jobs bill should be number one on the nation's agenda. It should have been all along.

Robert B. Reich has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He also served on President Obama's transition advisory board. His latest book is Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future. His homepage is www.robertreich.org.

America In Decline -- In These Times

America In Decline -- In These Times: "America In Decline
By Noam Chomsky

ws » August 5, 2011 » Web Only

America In Decline

By Noam Chomsky

The comic opera in Washington this summer, which disgusts the country and bewilders the world, may have no analogue in the annals of parliamentary democracy.

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“It is a common theme” that the United States, which “only a few years ago was hailed to stride the world as a colossus with unparalleled power and unmatched appeal is in decline, ominously facing the prospect of its final decay,” Giacomo Chiozza writes in the current Political Science Quarterly.

The theme is indeed widely believed. And with some reason, though a number of qualifications are in order. To start with, the decline has proceeded since the high point of U.S. power after World War II, and the remarkable triumphalism of the post-Gulf War ’90s was mostly self-delusion.

Another common theme, at least among those who are not willfully blind, is that American decline is in no small measure self-inflicted. The comic opera in Washington this summer, which disgusts the country and bewilders the world, may have no analogue in the annals of parliamentary democracy.

The spectacle is even coming to frighten the sponsors of the charade. Corporate power is now concerned that the extremists they helped put in office may in fact bring down the edifice on which their own wealth and privilege relies, the powerful nanny state that caters to their interests.

Corporate power’s ascendancy over politics and society—by now mostly financial—has reached the point that both political organizations, which at this stage barely resemble traditional parties, are far to the right of the population on the major issues under debate.

For the public, the primary domestic concern is unemployment. Under current circumstances, that crisis can be overcome only by a significant government stimulus, well beyond the recent one, which barely matched decline in state and local spending—though even that limited initiative probably saved millions of jobs.

For financial institutions the primary concern is the deficit. Therefore, only the deficit is under discussion. A large majority of the population favor addressing the deficit by taxing the very rich (72 percent, 27 percent opposed), reports a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Cutting health programs is opposed by overwhelming majorities (69 percent Medicaid, 78 percent Medicare). The likely outcome is therefore the opposite.

The Program on International Policy Attitudes surveyed how the public would eliminate the deficit. PIPA director Steven Kull writes, “Clearly both the administration and the Republican-led House (of Representatives) are out of step with the public’s values and priorities in regard to the budget.”

The survey illustrates the deep divide: “The biggest difference in spending is that the public favored deep cuts in defense spending, while the administration and the House propose modest increases. The public also favored more spending on job training, education and pollution control than did either the administration or the House.”

The final “compromise”—more accurately, capitulation to the far right—is the opposite throughout, and is almost certain to lead to slower growth and long-term harm to all but the rich and the corporations, which are enjoying record profits.

Not even discussed is that the deficit would be eliminated if, as economist Dean Baker has shown, the dysfunctional privatized health care system in the U.S. were replaced by one similar to other industrial societies’, which have half the per capita costs and health outcomes that are comparable or better.

The financial institutions and Big Pharma are far too powerful for such options even to be considered, though the thought seems hardly Utopian. Off the agenda for similar reasons are other economically sensible options, such as a small financial transactions tax.

Meanwhile new gifts are regularly lavished on Wall Street. The House Appropriations Committee cut the budget request for the Securities and Exchange Commission, the prime barrier against financial fraud. The Consumer Protection Agency is unlikely to survive intact.

Congress wields other weapons in its battle against future generations. Faced with Republican opposition to environmental protection, American Electric Power, a major utility, shelved “the nation’s most prominent effort to capture carbon dioxide from an existing coal-burning power plant, dealing a severe blow to efforts to rein in emissions responsible for global warming,” The New York Times reported.

The self-inflicted blows, while increasingly powerful, are not a recent innovation. They trace back to the 1970s, when the national political economy underwent major transformations, ending what is commonly called “the Golden Age” of (state) capitalism.

Two major elements were financialization (the shift of investor preference from industrial production to so-called FIRE: finance, insurance, real estate) and the offshoring of production. The ideological triumph of “free market doctrines,” highly selective as always, administered further blows, as they were translated into deregulation, rules of corporate governance linking huge CEO rewards to short-term profit, and other such policy decisions.

The resulting concentration of wealth yielded greater political power, accelerating a vicious cycle that has led to extraordinary wealth for a fraction of 1 percent of the population, mainly CEOs of major corporations, hedge fund managers and the like, while for the large majority real incomes have virtually stagnated.

In parallel, the cost of elections skyrocketed, driving both parties even deeper into corporate pockets. What remains of political democracy has been undermined further as both parties have turned to auctioning congressional leadership positions, as political economist Thomas Ferguson outlines in the Financial Times.

“The major political parties borrowed a practice from big box retailers like Walmart, Best Buy or Target,” Ferguson writes. “Uniquely among legislatures in the developed world, U.S. congressional parties now post prices for key slots in the lawmaking process.” The legislators who contribute the most funds to the party get the posts.

The result, according to Ferguson, is that debates “rely heavily on the endless repetition of a handful of slogans that have been battle-tested for their appeal to national investor blocs and interest groups that the leadership relies on for resources.” The country be damned.

Before the 2007 crash for which they were largely responsible, the new post-Golden Age financial institutions had gained startling economic power, more than tripling their share of corporate profits. After the crash, a number of economists began to inquire into their function in purely economic terms. Nobel laureate Robert Solow concludes that their general impact may be negative: “The successes probably add little or nothing to the efficiency of the real economy, while the disasters transfer wealth from taxpayers to financiers.”

By shredding the remnants of political democracy, the financial institutions lay the basis for carrying the lethal process forward—as long as their victims are willing to suffer in silence.

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of dozens of books on U.S. foreign policy. He writes a monthly column for The New York Times News Service/Syndicate.