I mean, this is my research, so most of my ranting takes place in a confined academic setting where I can't actually 'rant' more like humbly share my opinion in 10 to 15 second intervals (yes I'm a grad student).  I'm finding this all overlapping with my freakishly fucked up life and I'm just in the need to write a rant that covers the gamut of what I do each fucking day.  This morning, I woke up to this
article, "Do Self Breast Exams Do Any Good?":

Trying still to get attention to rBGH milk, this petition is going around:

http://action.foodandwaterwatch.org/...

For those who don't know about it, rBGH is a genetically engineered bovine hormone approved during the Clinton administration when Clinton appointed Monsanto-connected-employees to run the FDA and they then approved Monsanto's own product over scientific objections about increased cancer risk.  Despite those links to cancer, the Clinton administration did not withdraw the hormone or warn the public or label the milk.

To learn how Monsanto pushed its genetically engineered hormone on the American public:  http://video.google.com/...

To learn more about Monsanto, you can see Vanity Fair's green issue this month:  http://www.vanityfair.com/... features/2008/05/monsanto200805

Cross posted from The Liberal OC

I attended the amazing Faces of Fullerton event yesterday and learned about some of the great organizations that we have in Orange County.  My favorite was the YWCA booth where I took some time to speak with Diane Masseth-Jones who is the Executive Director of the North Orange County chapter of the YWCA.

The YWCA of North Orange County provides free early detection exams for women over forty who do not have health insurance. This is so very important since according to the American Cancer Society, those who are uninsured are more likely to be diagnosed in the later stages of cancer.

The breast cancer analysis showed that just 8% of women with private insurance had stage III or IV breast cancer at diagnosis, compared to 18% of uninsured women and 19% of women on Medicaid. Advanced stage disease was also more commonly diagnosed in African-American and Hispanic women compared to white women.

Cancer.org

On Friday - April 25, 2008, in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Mark Nolt, a Wenger Mennonite (Horse and Buggy Mennonite) dairyman, threatened for months with arrest for selling raw milk without a permit was removed from his property by state troopers.  

Jonas Stoltzfus, a friend, fellow farmer, and Church of the Brethen, was asked by Mr. Nolt to speak for him, and said of the raid yesterday - "Six state troopers and Bill Chirdon of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture trespassed onto his property, and stole $20-25,000 of his product and equipment."  

Mr. Stoltzfus explained that Mr. Nolt did not have a permit because "he chose to turn his permit back in because it did not cover all the products he was selling.  He felt he was being dishonest selling stuff that was not covered by the permit.  He is a man of great integrity."  

Hillary Clinton got away with an amazing feat in Pennsylvania.  In a dairy state, one in which there are two looming bans on milk - one to ban labeling of milk associated with a 7 times increased risk of breast cancer in order to promote it without anyone knowing about it, and one to ban good plain raw milk - her own disturbing connection to milk remained a secret.  In a state where dairy farmers (and other farmers) are living in literal fear of Monsanto, the fact that Monsanto has been running her campaign (even with Penn in the shadows now), remained a secret.

The Ride For Farmers www.rideforfarmers.org (wishes to extend its full support and strong encouragement to all those in California fighting a ban on Raw Milk.

For information on Raw Milk, go to http://www.realmilk.com/...

The Ride for Farmers sees the push to ban Raw Milk, as part of a larger corporate push to control all milk sales in the country and to destroy family farming communities.

The Ride for Farmers believes the bans and the threat of bans are a corporate mean (via its corruption of agricultural departments across the country and at the federal level) effort to break the link between farmer and his neighbors and customers, a natural link independent of government/corporate intervention.  Using "raw milk scares" and "food safety" as the argument, the state departments of agriculture are destroying farming communities' well-being financially, as well as the interconnection between neighbors with their customer base.

I am not a farmer.  I didn't even pay much attention to farming issues until last year when I found out about Monsanto using Bollywood actors to trick illiterate Indian farmers into buying extremely expensive genetically engineered seeds.  Big yields promised.  No word that the heavy loans for the seeds would need to be followed by more heavy loans for Monsanto fertilizer and Monsanto pesticides.  No word that the seeds needed irrigation.  The package said so but the farmers couldn't read.  And besides, the small print was in English.  The farmers were Marathi.  

Crops failed.  

THURSDAY NIGHT IS HEALTH CARE CHANGE NIGHT, a weekly Daily Kos Health Care Series.  

The Thursday healthcare series is intended to help you make meaningful changes and choices in your life.

I hope in some small way, my contribution this evening will help achieve this noble goal.

Sadly, I'm going to be discussing the choices we all may face in dealing with a terminal illness.

If you can bear to read everything, you'll find at the end several resources which may help you assist someone facing imminent death.

This diary is not meant to depress or scare you. Just to let you know that whatever problems you're dealing with, and God knows, we're all facing daily challenges, be grateful that your reality does not resemble what I'm about to descibe.

I'm going to tell you about a very young woman who is dying of breast cancer. Yes, I know, it's not pleasant to write and it won't be easy to read. But please stay with me. Maybe it will give you a renewed passion for life, no matter the problems you are facing.

The Ride for Farmers, to accommodate requests now coming in from riders in other parts of Pennsylvania, and even from other parts of the country, is expanding the "trail".

For all those concerned about our farmers, our food, NAIS, silence around labeling, diseases we are being exposed to, loss of vitamin companies, control on our own property and in our communities, and corporate greed overwhelming all that matters to us ... saddle up.

Spreading the word of impending harm, just as Paul Revere did, is democratic down to its core.

Rob Kall at OpEd News wrote today:

I try to do SOMETHING every day to make a difference. I write, I do all kinds of things related to OpEdNEws. I volunteer with several non-profit organizations. I write to influential people. I call members of congress.

What do you do each day? It's not necessarily easy to find something to do every day. You have to think about it, plan, come up with alternate things to do when there's screaming need to call any legislator. You can write letters to the editor, to corporations that are not behaving well.

Of course, there are books listing things to do. What do you do? ...

Chazelle, a computer scientist at Princeton University, writes:

"There is palpable excitement out there on the left. A pity there is no there there. America has lefties but no left."

Think "Milk."  
Think Monsanto pushing rBGH in cows, with no labeling of the milk.  
Think farmers being sued for saying their milk is rBGH-free.
Think farmers in Pennsylvania facing prison for selling normal raw milk.

Think a 7 fold increased risk of breast cancer from the unlabeled rBGH milk.  http://www.sustdev.org/...

Think when it all began.
Think Clinton administration when Monsanto ran the FDA.
Think Monsanto altering the numbers in the studies.
Think FDA scientists fired telling congress about the fiddle of numbers.
Think Monsanto approving its own product - first GMO ever approved by FDA.
Think Monsanto hiring Burson-Marsteller to clean up the split milk. http://www.corporatewatch.org/...
Think pus in the milk and sick and dead cows and no labeling.

Disclaimer:  In all these diaries, I speak as a mother.  I am horrified by what I am learning about Monsanto and about what it is doing to farmers and to food.  Harking back to women's role over millennia, I have a familial and a societal (society being the larger family) obligation to warn.  In that role, I am free to err in the direction of too much caution but I may NEVER err in the other direction - acceptance of things as safe if there is ANY signal at all that suggests there even MIGHT be a problem. Common sense trumps the nitpicking parsing of science in this obligation.  Illogical things, greedy things, cruel things, massively controlling things,  send up flares.  And for those, mothers warn.  

Monsanto is pushing the USDA to institute NAIS, the National Animal Identification System, which is a global tracking system for every farm animal in the country. http://goexcelglobal.he.net/...  

How should anyone who loves animals feel about this?

Looking closely at what Monsanto is doing to animals already may help add some clarity.

This is just so much more evil than one can imagine.

The breast cancer information I had came from a citizens petition by this group:  http://www.sustdev.org/...  

But now there is a law making it harder to file any citizens' petitions:

http://www.fdalawblog.net/...

It was pushed by this law firm

http://www.fdalawblog.net/...

which is connected to Rumsfeld and Searle and Monsanto.

http://www2.wabash.edu/...

And it is part of a law is one that threatens access to Big Pharma's competition: supplements, which Kennedy pushed:

http://www.lef.org/...

Last week, I posted a diary about how The Little Rock, Arkansas Catholic Diocese stated that Catholics should not support the Susan G. Komen Foundation, because it provides grants to fund Planned Parenthood's mammogram cancer screening programs, thus freeing up Planned Parenthood funds that can be used for birth control or abortions.

Now there is an update:  The Little Rock Catholic Diocese has retracted its call for banning donations to the Komen foundation and has apologized.

Dear Hispanic Community,

I went to college with Hillary Clinton, voted twice for Bill.  I don't feel positively now.  

After I learned 166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide since Monsanto went in there (other corporations did, too, but it's the biggest), I began reading about Monsanto and saw they are connected to the Clintons.

Monsanto used to make Agent Orange and PCBs and nuclear weapons parts - all things that kill.  Now they "do" food.  They do "genetic engineering," meaning they tear into the soul (DNA) of plants and animals, shifting things around - the most drastic change in biology since the beginning of life on earth.  

When they make those changes, Monsanto says the new seed or animal is their "invention," and patent it.  They have 4 patents on "the pig."  

If farmers buy  GE-seeds, grow plants and then collect seeds from those plants, Monsanto sues them for stealing Monsanto's "intellectual property."  In this way, Monsanto turn farmers into seed-renters, tenant farmers on their own land, never owning anything, a fundamental change in the structure of agriculture.

The Little Rock, Arkansas Catholic Diocese has stated that catholics should not support the Susan G. Komen Foundation, because it provides grants to fund Planned Parenthood's mammogram cancer screening programs.

Remember the name Patsy Bates. It should be the rallying cry to end all that is wrong with the repubican culture of life, death, hate, and corporate greed.

Patsy Bates, 52, a hairdresser from Lakewood, had been left with more than $129,000 in unpaid medical bills when Health Net Inc. canceled her policy in 2004.

Health Net, Inc of California has been ordered to pay $8.4 million in punitive damages for cancelling a woman's policy while she was undergoing treatment for breast cancer.

I couldn't even imagine how she felt after being persuaded to switch policies to Health Net based on cost savings for the policy.

There's a little bit more...

I received an email today with a list of very positive views of Hillary Clinton.  I believe those are the main strengths that people see in Hillary and I would like to address them, hoping I am not wronging the person in allowing their views to be seen in this way.  Perhaps they and my response, even, may help sway some voters to Hillary Clinton.  Also, I consider the email to be a response to my Open Letter to Hillary Clinton and feel my response to it should also be public.

The ten most important reasons why I am voting for Hillary

1. It's not the "35 years of experience" that she has frequently mentioned during the presidential campaign. It's what she has done in those 35 years that matters to me. She has a record that shows that she cares deeply about human needs and will work doggedly and tirelessly to change our society and make it better.