by Blogbot

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by Aaron Colter

Hang on, before getting bent out of shape over the title, let me first explain that I’m not condoning or approving the haphazard looting of small businesses in England. The reason I like the London Riots this week, however, is two fold.

For starters, seeing pictures of people with their brooms held highly in the air is about as British as I can imagine as an American. Shit, it’s damn near Mary fucking Poppins. It’s also inspiring.

The fact that people will come together to clean up their community following the events earlier this week is a positive thing, despite the circumstances that lead to the effort. I sincerely hope people get to know one another better, speak with local shop owners, and don’t forget how important working together as a neighborhood can be, even when there’s not a disaster to overcome.

Second, I hope the riots in England teach us all something – society has to change or it will destroy itself.

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by Secretary

This past Sunday, I woke up in a different London to the one I know and love. On Saturday night, a peaceful protest about the shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham had turned into a violent riot. The riots morphed into looting and violence, and it spread like a virus.

That Saturday, I’d been at two fellow SG member’s apartment in North London. We’d heard of the Tottenham riots, but had assumed it would die down once the police got there. Since we were also in the company of an SG member living in Germany, talk turned to what we loved about London. We talked about how it is truly a diverse city in every sense of the word; about how people from every walk of life live side by side, and about how this makes the city feel so alive.

Earlier in the day, I’d briefly dived through the Brixton Splash, an annual community street festival that’s a celebration of diversity in an area famed for past troubles and tensions. Free food was cooked and handed out, there was rap, reggae and people drinking and dancing in the streets under the blazing sunshine. It was happy and relaxed, and it had ended peacefully at around 7 PM.

As myself and SG member Vermin made our way back from North to South London that Saturday night, we passed again through Brixton. We had no idea that just two hours later a gang of 200 youths would descend on the place, looting businesses and starting huge fires as they rampaged down the high street

We awoke on Sunday morning to find shops had been broken into. The police had cordoned the affected area off, tube stations were closed, busses were diverted, and the air was thick with a shared sense of unease. Shops closed early and people hurried home in the daylight. Rumors started to spread, of looting and riots planned in other areas.

Nobody was quite prepared for just how out of hand it became.

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by Blogbot

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by Nicole Powers

The people of Venice, CA slept soundly last night after authorities broke up a major criminal cartel that had been operating in their midst. Raw milk and cheese lord, James “Rawesome” Stewart, and his accomplices, Sharon Ann Palmer and Eugenie Bloch of Healthy Family Farms LCC, were arrested yesterday following a raid on premises in the predominantly metro-hippy, hipster-hippy, genuinely hippy, and wannabe hippy beach district.

The multi-agency action –– a collaboration between the FDA, the FBI and the LAPD –– is part of a major government crackdown on healthy food. Agents had successfully scored illicit cheese and dairy products on several occasions during a year-long undercover sting operation centered around Rawesome, a members-only organic produce speakeasy operated by Stewart out of a location at 665 Rose Ave. After consuming the goods they obtained, the reduction in allergy and asthma symptoms in the operatives involved provided probable cause for the warrant required for Wednesday’s armed raid.

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by Blogbot

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By Nicole Powers

America devotes an inordinate amount of resources to its wars on controlled substances; namely its wars on drugs – and raw milk. Yep, you read that right. The prohibition of alcohol may have ended in the US in 1933 with the passage of the Twenty-First Amendment, but it’s still alive and kicking when it comes to unpasteurized milk.

The retail sale of raw milk for human consumption is illegal in the vast majority of states, and though some states do permit direct farm sales and/or herd shares, federal laws prohibit the sale and transport of raw milk across state lines. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers unpasteurized milk or cream –– and any uncooked products made from it, such as cheese, yogurt, and ice cream –– to be categorically unsafe. Their official line is that “raw milk can harbor dangerous microorganisms that can pose serious health risks to you and your family.”

However, by their own figures, a mere “800 people in the United States have gotten sick from drinking raw milk or eating cheese made from raw milk since 1998.” When you compare those numbers to the statistics on alcohol and cigarettes – which can be bought legally in all 50 states – the government’s position on the sale of raw milk appears to be inconsistent to say the very least. And the discrimination against raw dairy is even more profound when the health benefits are taken into consideration. But while the fight to decriminalize other controlled substances grabs headlines and galvanizes support, few are even aware of the prohibition against real milk. Kristin Canty, a small farm advocate from Massachusetts, hopes to change that with her compelling new documentary, Farmageddon: The Unseen War on American Family Farms.

Canty didn’t set out to make a film, merely to heal her son, who suffered from asthma and severe allergies. When traditional medicine failed to help, she embarked on a voyage of discovery that led her to raw milk. While fighting to heal her sick child, she also had to fight the seemingly unreasonable and intransigent attitude our government has towards healthy-minded boutique farmers who produce this hard to come by commodity in the face of much adversity. Frustrated and angered by reports of raids, and shocked at the increasing ferocity of the persecution of those who were doing nothing more than producing fresh food, Canty was compelled to expose the truth. For her, it wasn’t just about the disparity in treatment between big agriculture (whose factory methods have actually been responsible for the majority of serious food scares in recent years) and the mom & pop organic and sustainable operations, but an issue of a mother’s right to choose healthy food.

Read our exclusive interview with Kristin Canty on SuicideGirls.com.

**UPDATE**
Following the multi-agency armed raid on Venice Beach, CA fresh food collective Rawesome, which resulted in 3 arrests (see story), there will be a series of special screenings of Farmageddon at the Electric Lodge cinema on Saturday, August 20 (see details). Proceeds will go to the Rawesome Community Fund.