Paper or Plastic? Or Your Own Re-usable Bag?

You’re standing in line at the grocery store when you realize that you don’t have your reusable bag. You’ll have to get a plastic bag. Again. You feel bad for a moment and then think that it’s just one bag. But it isn’t …
In the U.S. alone, 280 billion plastic bags are used each year, which is enough to stretch around the earth nearly 30,000 times. Making and using plastic bags has more repercussions than you might think. Check out the following infographic to see how exactly plastic bags affect our cities, our environment and even our economy.

Sorry, this graphic doesn't fit into the allotted space and I don't know how to fix it. If you want to see all of the facts, go here: http://www.learnstuff.com/suffocating-the-world/

When You Need to Survive You Go Back to the Land

For years we have been encouraging people to return to the land to protect themselves against difficult times. The Greeks are learning the same lesson, and many, against their will, becoming a labor of angst. But when the same move is taken voluntarily it can be a joyful adventure. 


Watch the accompanying video and see the original post here.

As another difficult year for the battered European economy ends, many Greeks are returning to the land to survive.

At the end of another year of painful austerity and mouting debts, Greece's battered economy is seeing over 1,000 workers lose their jobs every day. On the surface, many cities still looks prosperous, but the nation's deep crisis is clearly reflected in the windows of hundreds of empty shops.

More than one million Greeks are unemployed, which is one-quarter of the workforce, and the country is facing a youth unemployment rate of 58 percent.

But while many are struggling to survive in this harsh financial climate, others are returning to the land from the towns and cities that onced promised so much.
 
Up until a month ago, Kostas Bozas was a city banker. Now he is unemployed and has moved to his father's house in a village outside Thessaloniki, going back to his roots in search of a future.
 
"I come a from a steady job, and now at the age of 50 it's the right opportunity to become a farmer ... my father will teach me the things he knows from his father."
 
Thousands have taken the road back to farming in recent years - while the rest of the economy is in free fall, the farming sector is actually adding jobs.
 
[Ladies please take note of what this woman says!] "The work is labour work, it was very difficult for me. I'm a girl, I was raised in Athens, I was having everything done for me. And now I have to dig. I feel like Scarlett O'Hara - the land is my strength, I think that when you have the land you can feed yourself, you can produce anything, you can be happy ....We can't expect anything from the government, they have proven so many years that they are useless, so we have to do it ourselves," says Alexandra Tricha, a former scientist. When she left the city to start a company growing gourmet snails everybody thought she was crazy, but now business is booming.
Not everyone fleeing the cities is doing it willingly. Some are making a strategic retreat, taking refuge in family villages just to get by - hoping that one day they will return to urban careers.
 
Christos Kozakis always thought he would return to his mother's house one day, but when his business selling luxury cars in Athens collapsed, he and his wife felt they had no choice but to move back.
 
"You feel connected, you feel that you have roots here, that's one of the good things .... The only thing that makes me bitter is that somebody else decided that for me, I was forced to come here earlier .... Don't get me wrong, work is not a problem, I would wash cars, I don't care, just let me do it, just let me make a living to support my wife and my kid. It's breaking my heart .... This is my country, we are not thieves, we are not people who don't pay their taxes, and we are not lazy."
 
The steady shift to the farms and villages appears to be an unstoppable force fuelled by desperation in the cities, inspired by hope for a better, less anxious life. Some will flourish, others may fail. But all have taken a bold decision not to wait for the government or anyone else  - their futures are now in their own hands.
 
So, as Greeks are trying to turn their loss into a new way of life, is economic salvation to be found in Greece's rich and fertile soil?

Is Michelle Obama’s “natural food” campaign designed to hide the White House attack on organic food?

IS MICHELLE OBAMA’S “NATURAL FOOD CAMPAIGN” DESIGNED TO HIDE A COORDINATED WHITE HOUSE ATTACK ON ORGANIC FOOD?

By Jon Rappoport
December 2, 2012
www.nomorefakenews.com

This article follows up on Mike Adams’ devastating pieces exposing Dr. Oz and a coordinated high-level assault on organic food.

http://www.naturalnews.com/038172_Dr_Oz_organics_propaganda_campaign.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/038157_Dr_Oz_organic_food_sellout.html

How high does this assault on organic food go?

Soon after her husband’s 2008 inauguration, Michelle Obama announced her “First Lady do-good project” to the press and public.

Every First Lady picks one.

It’s mandatory. Better education, some charity, a worthy cause. It’s designed PR, aimed at creating good will for the husband sitting in the Oval Office.

That’s the First Lady’s job. She’s a PR agent.

Michelle chose an organic vegetable garden and the health of children. More than her work with military families or her personal fashion/style interests, the organic garden and the bee hives she installed on the South Lawn of the White House became her signature.

The White House vegetable garden was the first planted on the grounds since the days of Eleanor Roosevelt.

As the press trumpeted, Michelle instructed the White House kitchen to order organic food for meals.

We were told produce and honey from the South Lawn garden were served up for the First Family and even at State dinners.

The title of Michelle Obama’s 2012 book is American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America.

She has tied the issue of childhood obesity to deteriorating eating habits and unhealthy food.

All in all, her presentation has been quite effective and convincing. She’s done a first-rate job.

The all-important impression is unmistakable: the White house stands for “healthy eating.”

But meanwhile…

Her husband is the most powerful enabler of Monsanto in America.

Despite his hints that he would support labeling of GMO food, Barack Obama has done herculean work to destroy true natural food.

The details are undeniable. They include his mind-boggling political appointments of Monsanto operatives to key government posts, and a parade of new GMO crops into the food supply, during his first presidential term.

Monsanto and their allies couldn’t have wished for a better partner. The president has given them everything they’ve asked for.

The new president filled key posts with Monsanto people, in federal agencies that wield tremendous force in food issues, the USDA and the FDA:

At the USDA, as the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto Danforth Center.

As deputy commissioner of the FDA, the new food-safety-issues czar, the infamous Michael Taylor, former vice-president for public policy for Monsanto. Taylor had been instrumental in getting approval for Monsanto’s genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.

As commissioner of the USDA, Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack. Vilsack had set up a national group, the Governors’ Biotechnology Partnership, and had been given a Governor of the Year Award by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include Monsanto.

As the new Agriculture Trade Representative, who would push GMOs for export, Islam Siddiqui, a former Monsanto lobbyist.

As the new counsel for the USDA, Ramona Romero, who had been corporate counsel for another biotech giant, DuPont.

As the new head of the USAID, Rajiv Shah, who had previously worked in key positions for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of GMO agriculture research.

We should also remember that Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, once worked for the Rose law firm. That firm was counsel to Monsanto.

Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court. Kagan, as federal solicitor general, had previously argued for Monsanto in the Monsanto v. Geertson seed case before the Supreme Court.

The deck was stacked. Obama hadn’t simply made honest mistakes. Obama hadn’t just failed to exercise proper oversight in selecting appointees. He wasn’t just experiencing a failure of short-term memory. He was staking out territory on behalf of Monsanto and other GMO corporate giants.

And now let us look at what key Obama appointees have wrought for their true bosses. Let’s see what GMO crops have walked through the open door of the Obama presidency.

Monsanto GMO alfalfa.

Monsanto GMO sugar beets.

Monsanto GMO Bt soybean.

Coming soon: Monsanto’s GMO sweet corn.

Syngenta GMO corn for ethanol.

Syngenta GMO stacked corn.

Pioneer GMO soybean.

Syngenta GMO Bt cotton.

Bayer GMO cotton.

ATryn, an anti-clotting agent from the milk of transgenic goats.

A GMO papaya strain.

And perhaps, soon, genetically engineered salmon and apples.

This is an extraordinary parade. It, in fact, makes Barack Obama the most GMO-dedicated politician in America.

You don’t attain that position through errors or oversights. Obama was, all along, a stealth operative on behalf of Monsanto, biotech, GMOs, and corporate control of the future of agriculture.

From this perspective, Michelle Obama’s campaign for gardens and clean, organic, nutritious food is nothing more than a diversion, a cover story floated to obscure what her husband has actually been doing.

Nor is it coincidental that two of the Obama’s biggest supporters, Bill Gates and George Soros, purchased 900,000 and 500,000 shares of Monsanto, respectively, in 2010.

Now in 2012, we are seeing, as Mike Adams reveals, a new attack on organic food: organic is an elitist fetish, a nonsensical preoccupation of the 1%, as against the 99%. We are told that conventionally grown, pesticide-laden, genetically engineered food is just as good, is no problem, and patriotic Americans should be loyal to it.

In other words, we should be loyal to the corporate giants who are taking over the food supply, are exercising patent rights on food ownership, are doing whatever they can to squeeze small farmers out of business, are giving us nutritionally deficient food, are lying through their teeth about the heavy health risks of eating this GMO food.

We should be loyal to the police who are ordering homeowners to rip out their vegetable gardens on their lawns.

Yes, this is a coordinated attack on clean nutritious unpoisoned food, and it reaches all the way up into the White House, does a quick detour around Michelle Obama’s smokescreen operation, and arrives in the Oval Office, at the desk of Barack Obama.

Why isn’t Barack out there on the White House lawn picking a few delicious organic vegetables from the garden?

Why isn’t he posing in front of a hundred media cameras taking a bite out of an organic non-GMO tomato?

Why isn’t he leading the way on a campaign to have people in inner cities plant more community organic gardens, to fend off hunger, ill-health, and poverty?

Why isn’t he?

Because he’s working for Monsanto.

Monsanto, the same company, by the way, who took the advice of Mitt Romney, many years ago, to stop overtly promoting chemical pesticides and, instead, get into genetics.

Sources:

http://redgreenandblue.org/2012/02/02/monsanto-employees-in-the-halls-of-government-part-2/

http://redgreenandblue.org/2011/02/09/monsanto-employees-in-the-halls-of-government/

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/10/fda-labeling-gmo-genetically-modified-foods

http://fooddemocracynow.org/blog/2011/feb/15/update-obama-goes-rogue-gmos-tell-him-say-no-monsa/

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/genetically-engineered-foods/

http://news.yahoo.com/not-altruistic-truth-behind-obamas-global-food-security-174700462.html

Jon Rappoport
The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com