Thank you world
See here – www.milkmovie.com

We, I, me, us, nous… each individual has the power to force government into taking the actions it should have done yesterday, not by marching or doing corporate sponsor marathons. Sorry I don’t see this effective, because government and large corporations work according to market trends and who creates those marketing trends we do!!! So who has the power?

If we as a community, a group or maybe even a majority were to create the following market trends, what a wonderful world this could be.

• Refuse to take plastic bags from the grocery stores; grocery stores would eventually cease to purchase them.
• Compost. Give back to mother earth. Your food scraps are wonderful for creating new soil, soil that is amazing to grow new crops on your balcony. Throwing them away makes them go to waste in a land field as they become as toxic as the garbage they are with.  http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/11/18/san-franciscos-goal-zero-waste/
• Take-out food – come to the restaurant with your containers from home.
• Cycling is cool – you meet people, enjoy the day, get your vitamin D and depending on your distance – a great work out. http://green.weekendrush.com/eco-family/family-bicycle-rides-save-car-fuel-money/
• Recycling plastic is good but reducing your plastic purchases is even better. http://www.perc.ca/waste-line/rrr/plastic/pvcreport.pdf

Setting an example is sometimes the biggest impact you can have on a person.

Shira Lane
Unleashed Productions
A Green Media Production Company

Milk Girl,

I am beginning to find it amusing how many people are beginning to recognize me as the milk girl. I guess it comes with the territory of making the first feature documentary that questions the ever so publicized health benefits (cough..BS) of milk and dairy.

www.milkdocumentary.com Got the facts on Milk?

The Milk Documentary

By Zeke Barlow (Contact)
Sunday, July 19, 2009

There were 100 gallons of acetone, styrene and other flammable chemicals dumped into an Oxnard street after a 2007 tractor-trailer crash.

More than 200 gallons of sulfuric acid emptied into Ventura’s storm drains after a spill at a linen supply company in 2006.

A few cups of cyanide after an unsuccessful suicide attempt in Oxnard had to be dealt with. And then there are the more than 15,000 gallons of gas and diesel spilled after car accidents, 10 million gallons of sewage that flowed into the county’s streams and more than 540,000 gallons of crude oil that spilled onto the ground during oil production.

All told, more than 13 million gallons of pollutants have spilled on the ground and into the waterways around Ventura County in the past five years.

A Star investigation that compiled all the spills reported to the county in those five years shows an array of chemicals often make their way into the environment. More than 90 different materials spilled on the roads, front yards and beaches around the county.

The majority are single incidents of spills, though there are some patterns.

Oil spills are a regular feature in the oil fields around the county.

The old Santa Paula wastewater treatment plant dumped nearly 300,000 gallons of sewage and chlorinated water into the Santa Clara River. After the city negotiated a deal to avoid millions in fines for pollution, a new plant is being built.

“It’s a disturbing picture, and it’s one of the problems with an industrialized society with all these chemicals,” said Ron Bottorff, executive director of Friends of the Santa Clara River. “Undoubtedly there is an impact but we don’t understand what it is.”

While the spills are cleaned up by the individuals who spilled them, those who deal with such spills acknowledge it’s impossible to retrieve 100 percent of the spilled material.

“We are shooting for 100 percent but there is not such thing as absolute zero,” said Ventura Fire Marshal Brian Clark.

The data show what spills were reported to the county under Proposition 65, which is a public right to know law of potentially dangerous chemicals in the environment.

Greg Smith, manager of the Ventura County Environmental Health Division Hazardous Materials Program, said he believes the majority of the spills are reported, but not all. Smaller businesses that use the chemicals don’t have the manpower to deal with spills so they likely go unreported, he said.

Paul Jenkin, environmental director with the Surfrider Foundation’s Ventura chapter, said while a gallon of antifreeze or a few barrels of crude oil may not seem like much, the numbers can add up quickly.

“It’s not just one thing, it’s everything added up all together cumulatively,” he said. “We don’t have a good idea of how it’s affecting our ecosystem and our oceans because you add it all up and it’s a lot more than one sewage spill. This is what I call legalized pollution.”

Smith said hazardous materials have been a part of society since the days of hunting and gathering stopped. Romans had lead; other societies polluted the air with coal.

He says society is slowly moving away from the very noxious materials in favor of easier to handle ones that don’t pose such a threat to the environment, but the impacts are still there.

“While we are doing a good job, we can do better,” he said.

But according to students, the first-ever vegan Shabbat at the Brighton home of Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Zalman and Shterna Lewis went off this past weekend without a hitch, Einhorn’s protestations notwithstanding.

Dubbed by some as the “San Francisco of Britain,” the seaside town of Brighton is renowned for its liberal, laidback atmosphere. It’s a haven for vegetarians and vegans – who shun all manner of fish, meat, dairy and egg products – boasting more than 50 establishments that cater to the community, from restaurants and cafes to pubs, specialist retailers and even a hotel.

Jewish Student Center provided guests with a completely vegan Shabbat dinner.

A report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has found the presence of toxic chemicals known as flame retardants in all American coastal waters. The study found elevated levels of polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, near urban and industrial centers and at more places than in previous years. PBDEs are used in electronics, furniture and other goods since the 1970s. They have been associated with impaired liver and thyroid function.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/science/earth/02brfs-TOXICCHEMICA_BRF.html?_r=1

Shira Lane

The economy is chomping down on every sector, everyone is getting hit one way or another- I too have lost properties, cut back significantly and finding myself just barely keeping my head afloat, yet the harsh truth is we NEEDED this breakdown as a big time wakeup call.

 

These last years have been a whirlwind of hot air, and now, creative ways of business need and should emerge to create a sustainable economy, planet and ecosystem. That, my friends, is what ought to be the focus in order to straighten out this financial disorder and not a stupid quick fix (Bailouts) that will burn bridges, tenfold, down the road. For obvious reasons let’s take the dairy industry as an example:

Dairy Industry is in trouble:

1.       The production cost of a gallon of milk is higher than the cost the dairy farmers sell it to the milk processors = farmer loss.  2008 production costs rose and the milk selling price has dropped = farmers loss even more and then some.

2.      Production costs are higher due to the increase of the feed, medications and quality control.

3.       The government has always subsidized the dairy farmers’ loss, creating an ongoing black hole for tax dollars.

4.      Throughout 2008 the dairy industry has requested an increase to the subsidized amount, to save a multitude amount of dairy farmers from closing down dairies. Due to the current economy state of affairs they have been turned down.

5.        Small family owned dairy farms are becoming extinct. Large corporations are overtaking and creating massive dairy farms of 5,000 – 15,000 cows per dairy.

6.      With so many cows, it becomes hard to tend to each cow individually, and so higher rates of transmittal diseases become present, increasing the requirement and quantity for additional drugs.

7.       These drugs lower the quality of the milk and in many cases unsellable to the American market.

8.      Therefore the beverage has lost its appeal to the public. Repetitive contamination warnings, artificial hormone injections, illegal amounts of antibiotic residue found in milk and constant up rise of studies linking milk to diseases like: Cancer, Childhood diabetes, heart disease and Osteoporosis, the public’s interest in milk alternatives amplified.

9.      More alternative choices (Soy, Almond, Hazelnut, Rice, Oat and Hemp milk) are now available in most stores.

10.   Lactose intolerance has found its way into mainstream familiarity. Now recognized and quickly diagnosed, has added weight to the fashionable stray from dairy products.

11.   International sales and exports plummeted.

Dairy industry is trying to fix the plunge the same way is has for years

1.       Increase lobbying for more lax policies for international trade and export.

2.      Persist to prohibit labeling milk that differences milk from cows injected by rBGH and those that haven’t.

3.       Convince developing countries, which have never been exposed to cow’s milk that they need to start drinking it.

4.      Amplify marketing, amplify marketing & amplify marketing.

5.       Escalate funding towards the ADA (Americans Dietician Association) to expand the command over the ADA curriculum and certification exams.

6.      Continue to enforce milk to be sold at schools, a requirement (placed by the dairy industry) to be considered for the School Lunch Program.

Dummies! Instead of realizing that this industry isn’t going in the right direction, not for the farmers, not for the economy, not for the environment, not for the government and certainly foremost not for anyone’s health, they are continuing to dig themselves deeper and deeper into it.

Farmers, people, citizens, aliens, government officials and all others – I am no genius, but here is an idea…Put all that money into changing the dairy industry into a sustainable industry where things can grow. We hit a wall sometimes because the universe wants us to take another direction. How about growing beans, nuts and legumes or building solar farms.

The options and technology are out there we simply need to engage our brain and make smart moves from this. We have lost a lot, let’s not lose the lesson.

Shira Lane

Director / Producer of
“Got the facts on Milk?”

To those who don’t know – I have been practicing Martial Arts for a number of years now, more precisely a martial art called Wushu which is a very special type of Kung-Fu. It includes swords, staff, spear, fan blades, wire work, darts and so on…which brings me to why I chopped my finger last week. Yep… and with my own sword, talented Shira Lane no?

My friend, Susan, who trains with me is a doctor and instead of going to ER, waiting for 3 hours, paying co-pay; all for just for a few measly stitches, Susan said “Why don’t we go to my house and I’ll stitch you up, I should have a stitching kit in the kitchen.”
GREAT I thought – that works.

So at her kitchen table we sat, I poured myself a glass of rum, like in the movies when they have no numbing capabilities … because like in the movies we had NOTHING to numb my finger. She told me that anyway it isn’t worth it only for a few stitches; mind you this is the girl I have been sword fighting with for years – now that I think about it – it could have been payback

The truth about drinking alcohol for pain – BS- A load of Cods Wallup! It doesn’t help at all!!!! NADA ZILCH !
Oy Givalt, I felt everything. It is extremely bloody painful, but at least I now have the reputation of being a real bad ass.

Good thing my sword fighting partner can always stitch us back together

Chopped Finger

Bobby's Bandages

First off: For all the amazing emails, text messages, IM’s FB wall notes, support and best wishes for Bobby and myself, Thank you they have been ever so sweet.

Spicing up his bandages as much as possible and getting artty farty, we themed. Needing to go to the vet on Xmas Eve –  they gave him a red sock with little green Christmas trees on it. After a few weeks I learned to change his bandages on my own and Bobbs & I demonstrated our support for Israel.

We are getting better day by day, I still have a bite mark scar on my thigh and Bobby got to take his bandage off today (1 month and a day later) and at long last got a very much needed bath. (yep…exceedingly stinky)

Tomorrow is a big day for America, Israel and the whole world. A day that gives each one of us hope, that out there, in places of position there are those who are noble, who will look out for us and make us proud to be who we are.