Filed under: Human Rights
Photo: Jeremy McBride/Creative Commons
It looks like the debate over abstinence-only education is rearing its ugly head once more. As reported in USA Today, Utah lawmakers have passed a law mandating that public schools teach abstinence and more abstinence as the only path to safe sex before marriage:
The Utah Legislature has passed a controversial bill mandating an abstinence-only sex education curriculum for Utah public schools or allows schools to drop the subject altogether.
The bill, which passed Tuesday largely along party lines, defines sex education as abstinence-only and bans instruction in sexual intercourse, homosexuality, contraceptive methods and sexual activity outside of marriage.
The bill’s advocates argue that sex education should take place in the home, and that the Government has no place in instructing kids on the finer points of sexual intercourse.
From state schools spreading anti-gay literature to how to appropriately approach the topic of teen sexting, sex education is always likely to be a difficult and politically loaded subject. But to abandon the notion of sex education in schools – except from a very narrow, ideologically-informed perspective – is, to this author at least, a dangerous precedent.
Besides betraying those kids who need advice on safe sex the most (many kids do not have parents who will discuss sex at all; others may not be able to approach family if their sexual preferences don’t fit in with the heterosexual “norm”), it is also a step away from both science and common sense. We don’t need research to tell us that teenage boys masturbate a lot, that teens have strong sexual urges, or that we are biologically programmed to act on those urges.
Some of us may wish that wasn’t so, but it is. To simply ask kids to wait until marriage, and assume that everyone will, is wishful thinking in the extreme. As reported in OnlineAthens last year, research suggests that abstinence-only education may even be counterproductive:
The researchers also looked at the influence of other factors on teen pregnancy, such as socioeconomic status, education level, access to Medicaid waivers and ethnicity. Those factors can influence teen pregnancy rates, but the researchers still found that the more abstinence is emphasized in a state’s official sex education programs, the higher teenage pregnancy and birth rates are.
The states with the lowest teen pregnancy rates were those that prescribed comprehensive sex and/or HIV education, covering not only abstinence, but also proper contraception and condom use, said Stanger-Hall, a professor of plant biology and biological sciences in the Franklin College.
To be fair, there have also been some studies – as reported in this US News story on the abstinence-only debate – that have shown some students wait slightly longer before having sex if they attend an abstinence-only program. But to measure how long teens wait before having sex as the primary unit of success is, to my mind, a little simplistic. Unless abstinence-only education can encourage the vast majority of kids to abstain until married, then we still need to address the safety, well-being and health of those who do not choose to wait.
Abstinence has a clear place in the broad toolbox of sex education – and i hope my own kids wait until they are truly ready. (I am not hypocritical enough to hope that they will be married.) Other parents, with different beliefs or religious perspectives, may encourage their kids to wait until they are indeed married – that is both their right and their responsibility. But the only way that absinence-only education in schools can be justified is from an ideological perspective. And as shown in thereligious battle over a faith-based banner, state schools have no place picking ideological sides.
A Great post from 
Sustainable Economies Law Center/Video screen capture
From sharing your storage space to renting out your dog, there’s a renewed interest in sharing, borrowing, and lending. And while some of it is profit-motivated, some—like these neighbors who removed their fences and started a garden—is done purely for the purpose of building community and pursuing mutual self-interest.
In either case, though, folks are doing things a little differently than our mainstream economy has taught us to do. And as demonstrated by the recent news that Air BnB now owes hotel tax in San Francisco, or the citizens forced to pour bleach on a farm-to-table dinner, doing things differently can create legal gray areas which can get in the way of more sharing.
To Read More- CLICK HERE.
Filed under: Environmental Issues, Food and it's Impact on Our Health, Gardening, Going Green; How and Why..., Human Rights, Non-Toxic Choices
Posted on January 21, 2012 by Sabra
In a thread of hack events from the Anonymous group, the most recent target has been Monsanto.com. Anonymous, which briefly knocked the FBI and Justice Department websites offline as well as Music Industry websites in retaliation for the US shutdown of file-sharing site Megaupload, is a shadowy group of international hackers.
Click here to see the videos- http://www.organiccommonsense.com/organic/anonymous-takes-down-monsanto-com/
Anonymous Message To Monsanto: We fight for farmers! – Video Transcript
To the free-thinking citizens of the world: Anonymous stands with the farmers and food organizations denouncing the practices of Monsanto We applaud the bravery of the organizations and citizens who are standing up to Monsanto, and we stand united with you against this oppressive corporate abuse. Monsanto is contaminating the world with chemicals and genetically modified food crops for profit while claiming to feed the hungry and protect the environment. Anonymous is everyone, Anyone who can not stand for injustice and decides to do something about it, We are all over the Earth and here to stay.
To Monsanto, we demand you STOP the following:
- Contaminating the global food chain with GMO’s.
- Intimidating small farmers with bullying and lawsuits.
- Propagating the use of destructive pesticides and herbicides across the globe.
- Using “Terminator Technology”, which renders plants sterile.
- Attempting to hijack UN climate change negotiations for your own fiscal benefit.
- Reducing farmland to desert through monoculture and the use of synthetic fertilizers.
- Inspiring suicides of hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers.
- Causing birth defects by continuing to produce the pesticide “Round-up”
- Attempting to bribe foriegn officials
- Infiltrating anti-GMO groups
Monsanto, these crimes will not go unpunished. Anonymous will not spare you nor anyone in support of your oppressive illegal business practices.
AGRA, a great example:
In 2006, AGRA, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, was established with funding from Bill Gates and The Rockefeller Foundation.
Among the other founding members of, AGRA, we find: Monsanto, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis, GlaxoSmithKline, Procter and Gamble, Merck, Mosaic, Pfizer, Sumitomo Chemical and Yara. The fact that these corporations are either chemical or pharmaceutical manufacturers is no coincidence.
The people of the world see you, Monsanto. Anonymous sees you.
Seeds of Opportunism, Climate change offers these businesses a perfect excuse to prey on the poorest countries by swooping in to “rescue” the farmers and people with their GMO crops and chemical pesticides. These corporations eradicate the traditional ways of the country’s agriculture for the sake of enormous profits.
The introduction of GMOs drastically affects a local farmers income, as the price of chemicals required for GMOs and seeds from Monsanto cripples the farmer’s meager profit margins.
There are even many cases of Monsanto suing small farmers after pollen from their GMO crops accidentally cross with the farmer’s crops. Because Monsanto has a patent on theri brand of seed, they claim the farmer is in violation of patent laws.
These disgusting and inhumane practices will not be tolerated.
Anonymous urges all concerned citizens to stand up for these farmers, stand up for the future of your own food. Protest, organize, spread info to your friends!
SAY NO TO POISONOUS CHEMICALS IN YOUR FOOD! 
SAY NO TO GMO!
SAY NO TO MONSANTO!
We are Anonymous
We are legion
We do not forgive
We do not forget
Expect us
Like this:
CNN ran this article this morning;
Child slavery and chocolate: All too easy to find
In “Chocolate’s Child Slaves,” CNN’s David McKenzie travels into the heart of the Ivory Coast to investigate children working in the cocoa fields. (Premieres Friday January 20, 8 p.m. GMT, 9 CET on CNN International.)
By David McKenzie and Brent Swails, CNN
Daloa, Ivory Coast (CNN) – Chocolate’s billion-dollar industry starts with workers like Abdul. He squats with a gang of a dozen harvesters on an Ivory Coast farm.
Abdul holds the yellow cocoa pod lengthwise and gives it two quick cracks, snapping it open to reveal milky white cocoa beans. He dumps the beans on a growing pile.
Abdul is 10 years old, a three-year veteran of the job.
He has never tasted chocolate.
During the course of an investigation for CNN’s Freedom Project initiative – an investigation that went deep into the cocoa fields of Ivory Coast – a team of CNN journalists found that child labor, trafficking and slavery are rife in an industry that produces some of the world’s best-known brands.
It was not supposed to be this way.
After a series of news reports surfaced in 2001 about gross violations in the cocoa industry, lawmakers in the United States put immense pressure on the industry to change.
“We felt like the public ought to know about it, and we ought to take some action to try to stop it,” said Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who, together with Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, spearheaded the response. “How many people in America know that all this chocolate they are eating – candies and all of those wonderful chocolates – is being produced by terrible child labor?”
More about the Harkin-Engel Protocol
But after intense lobbying by the cocoa industry, lawmakers weren’t able to push through a law. What they got was a voluntary protocol, signed by the heads of the chocolate industry, to stop the worst forms of child labor “as a matter of urgency.” One of the key goals was to certify the cocoa trade as child-labor free.
“It was meant to achieve the end of child slave labor in cocoa fields,” Engel said.
It didn’t.
UNICEF estimates that nearly a half-million children work on farms across Ivory Coast, which produces nearly 40% of the world’s supply of cocoa. The agency says hundreds of thousands of children, many of them trafficked across borders, are engaged in the worst forms of child labor.
A recent study by Tulane University says the industry’s efforts to stop child labor are “uneven” and “incomplete” and that 97% of Ivory Coast’s farmers had not been reached. But the industry’s main representative in the country disagrees with the assessment.
“I think the situation has improved exponentially,” said Rabola Kagohi, country director for the International Cocoa Initiative, the chocolate industry’s answer to fighting child labor and trafficking. “Today, the message is physically getting through.”
Kagohi works out of a basement office with one other permanent employee.
“There are some results,” he said. “I wish that you had spoken to some planters.”
None of the farmers CNN spoke to in the heart of the cocoa production region said they had ever been reached by the International Cocoa Initiative, the government or chocolate companies about child trafficking.More……
How Can You Help?
Bu voting when you shop, with your choices. There are two options that I found easy to use; And here are a few websites to check on the brand you are choosing while shopping;
