New strawbale site where you can share photos, videos, links with others.
Novo site de fardos de palha, pode partilhar fotos, vidoes, links com outras pessoas.
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At the Anarchist book fair in Lisbon I was invited to Quinta do Castanheiro….lindissimo!
No feira do livro na Lisboã conhecei pessoas de Quinta do Castanheiro….lindissimo!
So what happened to the plastering? Well you can´t plaster over the winter since frost interferes with the plaster drying. And this year haven´t had many volunteers at all, and I still had to raise the west corner. Why because the back wall compress 20cm and the front 15cm due to the 4 window/door frames in the front wall. With the help of Jodie and Ray and the 3 tonne jack and some new posts and braces the back wall is now timber frame. Need to infill now. If anyone want to give me a hand next week to do this please get in touch.
Bem, agora a esquina está nivelada com o resto da parade atrás. Era preciso elevar a esquina com uma mucaco e pussimos novos postos e travesses que faz um framo de madiera. Este náo era o design original mas foi preciso porque a parade atrás baixou 20cm e a parade en frente 15cm por causa dos framos de janelas e portas que estão enfrente do sul. Na proxima semana tenho que enchear com mais palha. Se quer ajudar contacta-me! Vamos lá.
Diz aos supermercados Pingo Doce e Feira Nova que é urgente que comecem a implementar políticas responsáveis de compra e venda de peixe. Estes supermercados têm o dever de parar de vender as espécies ameaçadas, fornecer alternativas mais sustentáveis e informar devidamente os consumidores.
Ajuda-nos a garantir peixe para o futuro e a salvar os nossos oceanos.
“I hesitate to call ZCom the leading samizdat of our age, because it is also one of the great newspapers of the internet, print, and video. You get more in one visit than hours of thumbing through voluminous newspaper voices of rapacious power. The range of good journalism, writing and scholarship on ZCom is astonishing: from the pen of the well-known to eyewitness reporting of ‘citizen journalists’.”
John Pilger
Can´t recommend this highly enough!!! Link
Abril 2009 – Portugal é o país da Europa que mais come arroz, per capita. Este cereal representa um pilar central na nossa alimentação e cultura gastronómica. E até agora não havia arroz geneticamente modificado em circulação na União Europeia. Mas a paz acabou. Neste momento a Bayer, uma multinacional alemã, pretende importar para toda a União Europeia uma variedade de arroz geneticamente modificado, para consumo humano. Este arroz GM foi manipulado para aguentar elevadas doses de um herbicida (glufosinato de amónio) que mataria as variedades convencionais. Mas não há país nenhum no mundo que cultive arroz transgénico para fins comerciais e, além disso, o glufosinato de amónio é tão tóxico que já está oficialmente prevista a sua proibição na União Europeia. No entanto a Comissão Europeia quer a sua aprovação e está previsto que seja votado em Bruxelas (ainda não há data marcada) se este arroz LL62 da Bayer vai ou não poder chegar aos nosso pratos. Se houver aprovação, países como os Estados Unidos poderão começar a cultivá-lo. E a partir daí a contaminação vai liquidar o arroz não transgénico, como já está a acontecer com no milho e na soja, tornando o mundo irreversivelmente dependente de uma empresa cujo único objectivo é o lucro. É um mau negócio para todos, mas é um excelente negócio para a Bayer. Se não quiser assistir passivamente a este desfecho, assine a petição da Greenpeace contra o arroz transgénico. À medida que forem estando disponíveis, colocaremos mais informações aqui no site.
5th EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON GMO-FREE REGIONS
GMO- free regions are on the rise as 22 EU member states and 6 non-EU countries are now home to publically declared GMO-free areas. The organizers of the 5th European Conference of GMO-free Regions, starting today in Lucern, Switzerland, announced an increase to 196 GMO-free European regions compared to 167 in 2007. Sub-regional and local government increases in the GMO-free areas were also reported on the Network’s website with GMO-free provinces, prefectures and departments rising from 53 to 93 and GMO-free local governments adding 289 to their numbers swelling from 4.278 to 4.567. Membership in the Network of GMO free regional governments also increased from 42 to 49 in 8 countries. GMO free regions at all these different levels are defined as elected political entities which have adopted a decision to keep their territory free of cultivation of genetically modified plants, irrespective of the legal authority they have over this issue. In addition, 30.370 individual farmers and landowners are now committed to keeping their fields GMO-free compared to 27.100 in 2007.
In areas where no maize is grown commercially, the number of GMO-free regions remains small: for example, just one in Sweden and Norway and few in Finland. According to the GMO industry, GM maize (MON810, the only GM crop presently available for cultivation within the EU) was grown on approximately 107,700 hectares in Spain, Czech Republic, Portugal, Germany, Romania, Poland and Slovakia (2007: 110.000). This represents less than 0,1 percent of the total area of maize grown in Europe and is expected to further decline in 2009. 75 percent of GMOs were grown in Spain. Resistance is, however, growing. Between April 2007 and April 2009, the number GMO-free zones established in Spain was raised from 5 to 94.
At present, there is no legal European framework for establishing GMO-free regions. However, the European Union’s concept to centrally approve cultivation of GMOs throughout its territory has been a failure. Austria, Hungary, France, Greece and most recently Luxembourg and Germany enacted national bans under the safeguard clause (Article 23) of the European GMO Directive 2001/18. The clause allows provisional restriction or prohibition of the use of a specific GMO if new information indicates that the GMO constitutes a risk to human health or the environment. Attempts of the EU Commission to force the waiving of national bans were boldly rejected by two-thirds majority votes of all Member States.
In addition, Article 26a of Directive 2001/18 provides that Member States may take appropriate measures to avoid the unintended presence of GMOs in other products, including restrictions on cultivation as well as stringent liability rules. Such so called co-existence legislation, sometimes also under the authority of regional governments proved to be effective to prevent GMO cultivation in some Member States. In the Walloon region of Belgium, for instance, the government passed a decree in 2008 which allows for the definition of GMO-free zones by farmers, establishes the most restrictive coexistence rules in Europe and also enforces a “polluter pays” principle which holds GMO farmers financially responsible for any damages caused by contamination of non-GM crops. A similar deterrent to planting GMOs has been proposed in the Welsh Assembly where farmers and seed suppliers would be held accountable in any instances of contamination.
Many GMO-free regions in Europe are also founded on the basis of voluntary agreements between farmers and other landowners. They contractually agree not to use GM seed, ensure that precautions are taken against contamination and hold each other accountable. In Germany 188 farm based GMO-free zones now cover more than 1 Mio hectares. In addition, the majority of Catholic diocese and Protestant churches (one of the biggest landholders in the country) have forbidden tenants from growing genetically-modified crops.
Over the next two days, representatives of European GMO-free regions will meet in Lucerne, Switzerland during the 5th annual Conference of GMO-Free Regions. Under the motto “Food and Democracy”, the conference will explore and emphasize the people’s right to self-determination in the foods they eat as well as the agricultural products growing in their region. Daniel Amman of the Swiss Working Group on GMOs, primary organizer of this year’s conference, noted that “the battle for authorizations within the EU for the autonomy of member states and the creation of GMO-free zones is in full swing. In acknowledgment of these coming challenges, Food and Democracy will look at how member states and regions can more fully engage in the participatory process and initiate legislation.” Switzerland enjoyed a much publicized success in 2005 when voters approved a five year moratorium on the commercial planting of genetically modified crops, which the Swiss government recently proposed to extend.
A high resolution map and full list of GMO Free Regions in Europe is available at
www.gmo-free-regions.org