We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Chemical Warfare in the Cornfields as the EPA Reconsiders the Controversial Herbicide, Atrazine

 from Politics of the Plate.
University of California, Berkeley. Prof. Hayes [who] worked as a consultant for Syngenta stated:
 “People are starting to realize that it’s not just a frog issue and that it’s not just my data. I can stack up thirty, forty, one hundred papers showing adverse effects of atrazine. We’re looking at sexual problems and cancer problems in rats, and fish, and alligators, and now there is new data coming out about birth defects in humans. All these different effects are showing up independently.”