Here at Vegan Reader, I have spoken extensively about how aerial spraying without consent violates our constitutional rights to life and liberty. Enforcing pesticide-induced illness is so obvious a threat to life and liberty, you’d think we wouldn’t need to be talking ourselves hoarse trying to get CDFA, OEHHA, USDA and Governor Schwarzenegger to realize they are breaking the law.

But what about that third element in the American guarantee - the right to pursue happiness?

Through this blog, I have been attempting to voice many of the things I have discovered that all of you are concerned about. In this article, I’ve decided to become more personal. I am going to tell you how the threat of aerial spraying is affecting my life and the happiness of my own family.

This year, I turned 35. Veganreader.com was my idea of making an effort to celebrate my own life and to try to share with others the basic tenets of compassion which are the root of what is called the ‘vegan’ diet. I wanted to make this blog a place where people would be inspired to live lives of kindness, of consideration, of appreciation for the gift of life and a beautiful planet.

I have been a vegan for more than half my lifetime, now. It is no longer a ‘choice’ for me, really. It is just who I am and how I go about my day. And, basically, what that involves is a way of eating and shopping that strives not to support my own life at the expense of others’ lives. But, it involves more than that. I believe that true veganism revolves around a deep thankfulness for creation and a sincere wish to keep the world in usable shape for future generations. By attempting to cause as little suffering to others as possible, I am expressing my care for all life, and trying to be a good guest on the planet.

The Vegan Path

Since I was a very small child, I have been keenly aware of the suffering of others. It hurts me deeply. When I first learned about things like the suffering of the Jewish people in World War II, or the indignities suffered by Black Americans throughout the history of the United States, or the genocide of this country’s earlier inhabitants, some of whom are my family’s ancestors, I began to suffer with them. How could people behave this way to one another, I wondered? I began having nightmares in childhood about these terrible truths, and images of these horrors continue to appear in my dreams in adulthood.

As I got older, I began to discern that there is a difference between incidental and intentional violence. Surely, deer suffer agony when they are killed by mountain lions, but this is nature. Surely, human beings suffer when they are the victims of natural disasters such as tornadoes or floods. But, again, this is nature. While I can see the pain of these things as great and tragic, they do not signal in my spirit the kind of abhorrence I feel when suffering is caused by human intention. Many world religions believe that some suffering is a necessary part of life, but few see this as an invitation to knowingly cause harm. When there are two choices before a person, and one will cause harm and the other will avoid harm, and that person chooses the former, we are witnessing sin, evil, immorality, or whatever word you might use to describe such a choice.

It was this realization that put me on the vegan path as a young girl - a path of choices made under the agreement with myself that my life was not more valuable, inherently, than the life of a neighbor being, and so I would not demand that someone else suffer so that I could live, if I could possibly help it. What does this mean? It means I won’t take an animal’s life to promote my own. It also means that I will not demand that a fellow human live the way I do. I assume that each of us is on our own path, and that the craving of all our hearts, man and beast, is to be left in freedom to make our own choices.

I sincerely respond to the teachings of humanitarians like Gandhi, like Jesus, like Native American elders which proclaim us all to be children of God, and I have come to understand sin as being a willful act which interferes with our ability to enjoy that safety, that assurance, that freedom of belonging to a Creator and living in a way we feel would please that Creator. When people murder, when they assault, when they harm others, they are acting as though the children of the earth are for their use rather than God’s. I think this is a grave error.

My Pursuit of Happiness

Life has been tough. I have survived many encounters with violence, with immorality, with evil. Like so many women in America, I have had to fight for my survival in a society that has little care for the rights or safety of female people. And, like so many of you, the toxicity of the environment has caused great damage to my health. In my twenties, I acquired 4 environmental/autoimmune illnesses, to the bafflement of doctors who could not understand how a woman with a diet as optimum and conspicuously free of toxins as mine could possibly have become so ill. Something in the air? Something in the water? No one could give me an answer.

I was bedridden for some five years with very painful conditions and my former life and former hopes for the future vanished, almost overnight, because of an onslaught of some invisible enemy. My existence became monk-like, and my acquaintance with the reality of suffering grew daily more intimate. When I think back now to those years when I was barely able to cook for myself, groom myself, get from one room of my house to another, I am filled with amazement that I survived.

Yet, here I am, writing this article, and very much alive, and much of this I owe to the man who came into my life, offered to become my husband and take care of me. Though it is unlikely that I can ever expect to be free of pain and other physical sufferings, under the devoted care of my husband, my quality of life began to improve. In solidarity, he adopted a vegan diet, I taught him to cook, and he has helped put many healthy pounds on my once-wasted body. He feeds me constantly! What a blessing when I am too unwell to be standing at the stove. In his company, I am confident once again in being out in nature, not having to fear that I will become unwell somewhere on my own, far from help. He has given me hundreds and hundreds of days in the healing sunshine, time to rest, and permission to be sick when I am sick and opportunity to make the most of my good days.

Those precious good days began to mount up and at last, I realized that I could begin to make plans again for my future - something I had given up on during those dark days of unremitting pain. My husband and I searched our hearts and found a shared dream there. Our dream for our life may sound rather plain to some, but we decided that as soon as we could, we would find a little home with some land around it and begin to grow our own food. We have talked endlessly, now, about our tiny organic farm and the sustainability this would bring to our lives, freeing us of dependence on agribusiness and its devastating pollution of the planet.

All last year, we poured over craigslist and the classifieds looking for a small country home to rent where we could start pursuing our very best ideas of happiness.

And Then Came The Spray

If I were a fatalist, I’d be saying, “I knew this would happen the minute I started trying to make plans for my future!” It seems a very cruel sort of irony that the moment the first chance in my adult life arrives for me to begin realizing a dream, a plan comes along which says:

1) You will suffer toxic assault
2) Organic farming will no longer be possible

If I had a greater idea of my own importance, I would be suspicious that the California Department of Food and Agriculture devised their aerial spray ‘program’ to try to wipe me out, personally. I am to prepare to slip back into utter debility? I am not to grow edible food?

But I know it isn’t personal. It isn’t about what this attack has done to my burgeoning dreams after a difficult life, or your dreams after whatever kinds of struggles you have known. It is completely impersonal, this attack, and is being instigated out of a brother’s private greed and misunderstanding of the value of life. These brothers don’t even see us in their pursuit of wealth and professional advancement. They are that blind.

And this is why VeganReader.com completely shifted purposes. As I stood amongst the imminent wreckage of my own life, I looked around and saw that all of you were suffering. Nothing has hurt me more in this than to see each one of you ignored, devalued, checked off a list as worthless. I know that, like me, each of you has been trying to live your life, but that all of your plans are being derailed by CDFA’s insistence that only its plan counts. 7 million of us are being told to step aside so that one misguided man can pursue his idea of happiness.

And, of course, that is against the law.

The United States constitution guarantees every one of us at least the pursuit, the chase, the endeavor. But how can I follow my star when pursuing health and organic sustainability is my goal in a land where poison coats every inch of my body and my environment? How can I be happy being poisoned? How can I have anything for myself and my family if some other person has determined to deprive me?

What I want to do with my life will not hurt anyone. In point of fact, it will help heal our wounded environment and take money away from the very people in agribusiness who are poisoning us. But now I have to face evil again - face the fact that someone thinks I belong to them for their use instead of my Creator’s. Face the fact that a man like A.G. Kawamura believes all of California and all of its people were created for his special use, to the exclusion of the rights of all others.

The world has seen this type of arrogance before, this audacity and ignorance. This is the mentality that made the Jews, the African Americans, the Native Americans, expendable in the name of progress and private fortune. Here is evil, again.

And what about my organic farm? What about my one chance to live my life here on planet Earth? As a person with a compromised immune system, I work very hard to make the most of my time here. But where is the point in being given this time in California when happiness is stolen away from my family, in utter violation of the law? Life, without the pursuit of happiness, has just become very bleak.

Hopefully you caught Foster Gamble of CASS on KGO Radio today. I would love it if KGO would start publishing Permalinks to their radio broadcasts, because otherwise they seem to be archived for no more than a week, unless I am missing something. Because I apparently can’t create a permanent link (one that won’t break eventually) to the broadcast, I want to recap some really important data presented by Foster Gamble.

CASS is intending to release a report soon, documenting the predicted damage that will occur to 3 of California’s most important economic factors: tourism, real estate, and organic farming. Using a 1-10% ratio of expected damage, Gamble gave these numbers.

Tourism
200 Million - 2 Billion in losses due to LBAM spray.

Real Estate
25.7 Billion - 257 Billion in losses due to LBAM spray.

Organic Farming
23 Million - 230 Million in losses, annually, in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties alone.

I wasn’t clear whether the first 2 figures were projected over a span of a year, five, years, ten years, etc., but I am sure CASS’s report will make this all concrete. Basically, at the least we are looking at hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and at the worst, we are looking at hundreds of billions of dollars in damages.

California has historically been the #1 tourist destination in the United States.

Real Estate accounts for the majority of private citizen wealth in California. In other words, most Californians invest the bulk of their money in their homes.

Organic Farming is the only food option available to Californians who do not want to eat toxic contaminated food.

LBAM aerial spraying will either drastically harm or decimate all three of these vital industries.

Foster Gamble’s Suggested Path For Getting Us Out Of This Ludicrous Situation

I thought this was so clear, so simple, so brilliant, it needed to be paraphrased in print.

Step 1: Honor American’s Constitutional rights to safety and privacy so that no one gets sprayed without their consent.

Step 2: Declassify the moth based on modern science such as the findings of the New Zealand study which prove this moth is kept in check by natural predators.

Step 3: Lift the quarantines so that farmers do not suffer financial losses.

Step 4: Monitor the moth. If things get out of balance, use manual, non-toxic practices such as weeding and attracting birds and bats to the land so that the environment becomes re-balanced.

Step 5: Even the individuals who were hoping to benefit monetarily or professionally from the spraying win in this scenario of the halting the spray because they will be protected from costly and damaging lawsuits.

Isn’t that beautiful? So simple. So right. Let’s make it happen!

This is very important!

If you haven’t already seen it, please read this article regarding the new analysis of the particulate microcapsules in Checkmate which shows that CDFA has made an egregious mistake in their calculations.

From the article:

“They based their computations on particle volume, not number of particles, which is simply incorrect,” said Haferman.

“We find the average particle size to be about 17 microns with significant numbers of much smaller particles,” Knepp said.

“Our analysis shows that the small particle sizes from the Checkmate spray can cause significant health issues, and the CDFA needs to seriously re-examine their findings.”

For the sake of relief, you are hereby permitted to laugh at A.G. Kawamura imploring us all to base our judgments on sound science, when his department can’t seem to get a handle on basic math.

I guess this goes in the ‘what else is A.G. Kawamura confused about’ file.

Nervous laughter aside, Knepp and Haferman’s finding only further support the cause of the severe respiratory damage that was done to the poor people of Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties. We know that people inhaled the plastic spheres. We know it impaired their lungs. It would appear that the spheres permanently damaged the lungs of baby Jack Wilcox who is now being kept breathing with potent corticosteroids. We know this, but Joan Denton of OEHHA can’t figure it out.

I want to take this moment to vigorously applaud Knepp and Haferman for stepping forward to bring this terrible error to light. They have acted with integrity and deserve our thanks.

Joan, Mary-Ann and Mark:
Please forward this link to an interview with Air Force Major Tim Wilcox to everyone involved with your “Illness Report”

http://youtube.com/watch?v=YxXFZkVd0To

If you are caring human beings, you will watch this 15-minute video and reconsider your actions before 7 million people (many more if you include tourists) are impacted rather than 300,000.

I’ve gotten to know Tim Wilcox and his family. He and his wife are honorable people serving our country. Their child is precious. If the rest of this brief message is a bit harsh, it is because I care about them, and others who have gotten sick, too.

How can we make you realize that the spraying is the cause of people’s illnesses, not something else, as you have presumed? And that the likely culprits are the toxic inert ingredients and plastic microcapsules that people breathed into their respiratory systems and lungs, and that possibly entered their bloodstream? (Search “particulate matter” on the American Lung Association site.)

You cannot know that the spraying is safe based on a statistical analysis of just 10 percent of the illness complaints, and without interviewing a single victim or doctor. On some level, you must know this.

You cannot say the spraying is safe when there have been no inhalation studies whatsoever, since that is how we were exposed to it.

You cannot out of one side of your mouth say, “No link,” and then say, “We can’t be certain.” The former is a lie in the context of the latter.

I really believed when I sent you the hundreds of complaints (the smoke) that you would want to find the cause (the fire) and put it out. I thought that was your job – not to throw most of the complaints out and then to make pie charts and graphs of the others by illness type, location, timing and complaint source. A high school student could do what you did!

Do you have any sense of the harm you have already caused in the first three rounds of spraying by not stopping this aerial assault on people’s health, and the much greater harm you will likely cause t in months and years to come, if the state continues to crop dust highly populated cities with pesticides that we have already proven to be dangerous to many?

Who in state government is putting an emphasis on public health and safety, and on protecting the most vulnerable in our society?

Why should we have confidence that you will monitor the health impacts of further spraying when you have totally failed in your responsibility to investigate the hundreds of illnesses we have pleaded with you to investigate in recent months?

Why are you not going the extra mile for the citizens of this state who rely on you to protect them?

Why are you biased toward exonerating the spray rather than honoring people and upholding their right to safety, as defined in the California Constitution?

How can you tolerate a health experiment on millions of people without their informed consent, when civilized countries around the world condemn that type of experimentation?

Please step up!

Mike Lynberg

By my count, we are looking at up to 450 nights of aerial pesticide spraying over the next decade. That’s up to 5 nights a month, 9 months a year for 10 years. 5×9=45×10= 450. What are some of the things duty, pleasure or plain old life might have you doing on any one of those 450 nights over the next decade?

1) Perhaps you’re an expectant mother and the night you have to go to the hospital is a spray night. Your husband tries to rush you out the car, but the spray falls on you, into your mouth and lungs. By the time you get to your doctor, you’re vomiting and can’t breathe. And what about the baby, taking his/her very first breaths of plastic-coated air? Will doctors sadly telling you that infant mortality has become oddly high in the city lately be any consolation?

2) Perhaps you’re watching your son’s little league game and it’s run a little over time. Suddenly the planes rush over the ball field and 40 ten-year-old boys become disoriented, nauseous. Some of the parents go into respiratory failure or think they are having heart attacks. Who calls 9-1-1?

3) Perhaps your apartment building gets evacuated suddenly one night because of a gas leak. 100 residents are hurrying out of the building with a few treasured possessions, planning to try to find a hotel if they can so late at night. Standing on the sidewalk, you and all your neighbors are doused with spray. Many people’s eyes are so damaged that they can’t drive, but they have to leave the building any way. Who will help you or them to find a place to stay for the night?

4) Perhaps you’re a night worker. You drive a cab, you’re a janitor, an ER nurse, a graveyard shift engineer, a truck driver. The confusion and sickness caused by the aerial spraying is causing terrible car accidents all over the cities. Getting to work and back has become like a game of Russian Roulette.

5) One of the 450 spray nights just happens to be a night one of your loved ones gets in a serious car accident. You get a call from the hospital. In order to rush to your loved one’s aid, you’ve got to run out under those planes. By the time you get to the ER, you may need to be hospitalized yourself with pesticide poisoning.

6) It’s your 25th anniversary and you’ve planned to take your wife out for a big night on the town. The CDFA has promised they aren’t spraying that night, but, as they did in Monterey, they change their minds at the last minute and panic ensues in downtown Oakland as people rush blindly from concert halls, restaurants and theaters trying to escape the rain of pesticide that is falling on their heads, searing into their skin and eyes.

7) Your dogs manage to get out of the house on one of the spray nights, despite your efforts to keep them inside. In the morning, you find them lying dead on your doorstep, and you remember those crazy-sounding stories you heard about this happening in Santa Cruz to a whole bunch of pets.

8 ) A murder happens on your street and the killer is loose somewhere in the neighborhood. Your neighbors are frantically trying to get help from the police, but the police are so tied up dealing with dozens of pesticide-induced episodes of respiratory failure that they simply can’t get to the crime scene quickly. The police force has become critically understaffed because 1/3 of the officers are sick from pesticide poisoning. The killer gets away.

9) Your friend is dying in the Bay Area and you want to be at their bedside to say a last goodbye, but you learn that the pesticide spraying is happening this week in the City and you’re trying to recover from cancer. You have to make a choice. Go to the City and risk your own life, or let your friend die alone. How can you choose?

10) A disaster happens in the Bay Area - a fire, an earthquake, the collapse of a hillside. Thousands of people are homeless, but the pesticide planes have to keep on flying in their obsessive pursuit of a bug. You step out the flap of a Red Cross tent and feel the pesticide mist cover your face as you stand amidst the wreckage of your life.

These kinds of things happen to someone just about every night in a place as populous as the SF Bay Area. The vagaries of life pretty much guarantee that something unexpected is going to happen to you on 1 of 450 nights.

And that is one of the great evils of assault, of war. It happens to everyday people who are just trying to go about their normal lives. Like pawns in a game of chess, we are seen as the most expendable factors while official people and their corporate friends are engaged in making fortunes. Programs, plans and systems have no care for the needs, the hopes, the dreams, the emergencies, the fears or the life of the individual.

We can see the spraying as affecting a mass - millions - but really, it will affect us one by one, in millions of ways.

I have just gotten off the phone with Jessie Walker, Customer Information Specialist and assistant to Kate Lowerty, Director of Public Relations, Whole Foods Global Headquarters, Austin, Texas who was returning the message I left yesterday for Kate Lowery. Apparently, Ms. Lowery is out of town.

Jess said,

“You probably heard that it was incorrect that we’re pro-spray. We are neutral at present. We don’t have enough information to make a decision about this yet.”

He invited me to please send any relevant information, including PDFs and attachments, to the following email address for their Quality Standards Team:

customer.questions@wholefoods.com

While I had Jess’s ear, I urged him to please get Whole Foods to research what is happening. We are only weeks away from the spraying. I made the following points to him:

• This is a situation of the rulings of all our local government officials being overruled by the State
• Our doctors and scientists have stepped forward to state the spraying is unnecessary and will create chronic pesticide exposure diseases
• People currently regard Whole Foods loyally, thinking of them as a good center of health and organics in our neighborhoods in California
• People are counting on Whole Foods to live up to their standards of health for the environment and people. We are depending on them to do this.
• Both Californians and out-of-state residents will no longer trust the organic label and will not buy produce or other food products from California if the aerial spraying isn’t stopped- this makes this issue a major concern for Whole Foods and their suppliers
• CCOF is against the spraying
• Whole Foods needs to stand for human and environmental rights, not special interest profits
• If spraying isn’t stopped in California, it is our understanding that the spraying of pesticides on human beings is about to become a new U.S. policy as USDA intends to continue their hunt for the moth across the nation. We must stop this here and now.

I told Jess I was sorry to know that misinformation regarding Whole Foods’ position had gotten onto the Internet, but that maybe this was like the pebble at the start of the avalanche, warning this International company that what is happening in California is a huge issue and definitely deserved of their attention. Jess said that prior to the misinformation being published, they had received, perhaps, one letter regarding this.

Clearly - one letter to Whole Foods is not enough.

Jess went on to say,
“I understand you are very emotional about this. I have 2 little ones. I feel you.”

Please, readers, get writing to the address above. Send Whole Foods every well-researched, well documented article and report you can think of. Jess said that the address he gave me will get that information in front of their whole Quality Standards board.

We have supported Whole Foods in our California communities. Now it is their turn to determine whether they support us.

My parents often say, “if only Carter were still president.” No other U.S. president made such valiant efforts to begin converting our country to alternative energy, and unfortunately, so many of his good plans were abandoned once his presidency ended. If Carter were in office now, I have no doubt we’d all be living in solar powered homes and driving planet-friendly cars.

This evening, I visited the website of The Carter Center and their mission statement brought tears to my eyes: advancing human rights and alleviating unnecessary human suffering. Join us in creating a world in which every man, woman, and child has the opportunity to enjoy good health and live in peace. To a Californian, living under the threat of chemical assault by my government, these sound like words from heaven. I was inspired to write to Mr. and Mrs. Carter, and I want to share my letter with you.
——

Dear Mr. & Mrs Carter,
I was only a young girl when you were President and First Lady of the United States, but my parents have always spoken with great respect for the environmental efforts you made during that period.

I am writing to you this evening because I am so moved by the mission statement of the Carter Center: Creating a world in which every man, woman, and child has the opportunity to enjoy good health and live in peace.

I am very sorry if the following information is difficult and upsetting to read, but it is true, and I am certain you will both want to know about it.

The health and peace of the people of California is being egregiously threatened by the actions of three parties: Gov. Schwarzenegger, the California Deparment of Food and Agriculture and the pesticide manufacturer, Suterra LLC. These three parties have joined forces in a plan to subject some 7 million Californians to aerial spraying of a pesticide compound which contains documented carcinogens, mutagens, endocrine disruptors, breast-cancer-causing xenochemicals and synthetic pheromone mimics. This compound is encapsulated in microscopic spheres which are classified by the American Lung Association as small enough to be deemed particulate pollution - they enter the deep lung and cannot be expelled.

The spraying began in the fall of 2007 in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties. Hundreds of families were sickened and their symptoms matched, point for point, the known effects of the disclosed ingredients of the spray compound, Checkmate. These counties desperately tried to halt the spraying, but the state has declared an emergency which has allowed them to bypass all safeguards which are in place to protect human and environmental health. There has been no EIR done or anything that would normally occur to protect Americans from harm. The compound has never been tested on human beings - it has only been sprayed on crops. CDFA’s target - the Light Brown Apple Moth - has done zero damage to California agriculture, native plants or ornamentals and is considered an unimportant bug elsewhere in the world. However, because this bug was originally incorrectly classified as a Class A pest, trade restrictions apply to farmers where the moth lives. Because of this, CDFA and the USDA are being funded by Homeland Security to aerially spray 9 counties in the state, including the densely populated SF Bay Area. Never before has urban spraying of this kind been done in our nation, and we have been coldly informed that we have no vote in the matter.

Senators, representatives, civic governments, superintendents, town mayors and the people of California have come out in adamant opposition to the aerial spraying of human beings. UC Scientists and doctors are trying to rush to our aid with facts which prove both that the moth does no real damage and that the pesticide will do tremendous damage to us. Unfortunately, our governor has received tremendous documented donations from both the Ag. Secretary and the spray manufacturer and he is being accused of grave corruption by local government officials.

My loved ones, friends and neighbors are living in terror of their own public servants, and residents are becoming refugees in an attempt to flee to safety before the spraying recommences June 1, 2008. We will be sprayed 3-5 nights a month, from 8 PM - 5 AM, every 30 days, 9 months a year for up to ten years or more. The chronic pesticide exposure this will create is, frankly, terrifying, and because the pesticide is manufactured to remain in the environment for 30-90 days, there will never be an all-clear. There will never be a day with fresh air again in California if the spraying is not halted.

In addition to the serious health harm to humans caused by the 2007 spraying, it is important to add that at least 600 sea birds died in Monterey Bay, washing up in a thick scum of yellow foam which covered the ocean and watershed. Pets died. Songbirds stopped singing. Beekeepers reported that their honeybees became disoriented, struggling on the ground before dying. The microcapsules are deadly to our endangered honeybees and their contents are poisonous to aquatic life.

The labels of the ingredients in Checkmate sternly warn that they must be kept away from children, not inhaled, not put on skin, not introduced into water. But CDFA is putting them on our children, in our lungs, on our skin, in our watershed. And everyone who is benefiting monetarily and professionally from the spray keeps telling us it is safe to do exactly what the labels warn you not to do.

The health and environmental damage, damage to tourism and the economy that will be caused by the spray are considerable, and each subject is being tackled by professionals concerned with each of these things - doctors, scientists, naturalists, business owners. But no matter what evidence, what research, what proof and documentation of damage we present, we are dismissed by the Governor and Ag. Secretary A.G. Kawamura. In violation of the California Constitution which guarantees our right to obtain safety and the Nuremberg Code which declares that human beings will never again be experimented upon without their consent, we are being told we have no rights, no choice. We are living in severe civil unrest with no peace and no prospects for a healthy future here in California.

I know that your foundation works all over the world to protect the rights of human beings and to help them obtain peace and safety. I am writing to implore you to investigate what is being done to us in California and to consider speaking against the aerial spraying of urban populations. It is our belief that California is the testing ground, and if agencies are allowed to spray here, it will become a new national policy to spray pesticides on human beings. We can hardly stand to think of our beloved nation going this way.

Please, hear our voices. We are desperately begging for help as we try to defend our dear ones from chemical assault. Please, take a moment to visit some of the following resources to learn about what is being done to Californians:

Here is an informative town hall meeting video from Berkeley:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=4Rlf9vns1uE

Here is an interview with Michael Lynberg, a private citizen who began documenting the pesticide illnesses:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=n7Q6pmLX3po

Here is a CBS news video on the spraying:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1uzxyhnLuyE

You can watch many other videos about this public health crisis here:
http://youtube.com/user/LBAMspray

Here is a document compiled by the Environment and Human Rights Advisory listing 23 Human Rights Violations the spray presents:
http://www.lbamspray.com/00_Documents/2008/EHRA.pdf

Here is a web page documenting the known health damages caused by the ingredients in the spray:
http://hopefortruth.com/

Here is a report compiled by two respected UC scientists documenting the Light Brown Apple Moth in New Zealand and its negligible effects:
http://lbamspray.com/00_Documents/2008/HarderNZReportFINAL.pdf

Here are several websites that are covering the anti-spray people’s movement:
http://www.lbamspray.com
http://www.cassonline.org
http://www.stopthespray.org

California remembers DDT. Our veterans remember Agent Orange. We are so insulted to hear officials telling us that exposing humans to pesticides is safe and acceptable for us. They have told us we need to ‘tolerate it’, but we believe that human health should always take precedence over the financial concerns of special interests groups, and I believe that you would agree with that, Mr. and Mrs. Carter. Please, I am imploring you to research this. Time is running out for us and only public outcry and pressure on our governor will stop the disaster before any further damage is caused to our air, water, land and people. Please, consider speaking out against this spray and asking Governor Schwarzenegger to cancel his plan of spraying untested chemical compounds on human beings.

I sincerely thank you for your time and consideration and am praying that you will be able to answer my letter.
Kind Regards,
& etc.
——

I urge my readers to please consider contacting the Carter Center.

Mailing Address:
The Carter Center
One Copenhill
453 Freedom Parkway
Atlanta, GA 30307

Phone:
(404) 420-5100 or (800) 550-3560

E-mail:
carterweb@emory.edu

Please, ask Mr. & Mrs. Carter to send a message to the governor asking him to stop the spray.

Watch Air Force Major Tim Wilcox explain how the aerial LBAM spraying almost killed his infant son, and join with me in expressing deepest sympathy for what the Wilcox family has suffered. The nightmare of watching their little boy, Jack, become delirious and go into respiratory arrest is one this family will carry with them for life, and the baby is now being kept breathing by means of extremely potent corticosteroids - not something any parent would willingly choose to be giving to a growing child.

Following repeated trips to the ER with baby Jack, Major Wilcox began placing phone calls to anyone he could think of, including Governor Schwarzenegger and his wife. Seven months later, no one has had the decency to acknowledge the permanent damage that has been done to little Jack who is likely to spend his life coping with the debility of asthma.

To my knowledge, not one of any of the other hundreds of families who were grievously sickened by the spray has received a single call or letter regarding the damages they have suffered. We know for a fact that the OEHHA didn’t bother to speak to a single victim or doctor in their ‘investigation’ of the public health crisis caused in 2007 by the aerial spraying of Monterey and Santa Cruz counties.

Governor Schwarzenegger and his associates have made it very clear that they do not care about what they have done to this baby or to any of the babies, children, men and women who have been harmed by the profit-driven spraying of California.

In my mind, I have an old-fashioned picture…a picture of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger standing at the throne of grace one day, explaining to God why Jack Wilcox’s hopes for a healthy future were expendable so long as buddies Kawamura and Resnick were happy, wealthy and ,seemingly, above constitutional law. Will any amount of money convince the Great Spirit that pouring pesticides on a baby is reasonable? I don’t believe so.

Try telling Major Willcox that the aerial spraying is safe. I’d like to see Kawamura and Schwarzenegger say this to this man’s face. The Wilcox family have had to become refugees, despite the ’safety’ of aerial spraying. And they are just one family amongst millions who will be sprayed.

The Wilcox’s do have one lucky benefit, however, that so many California’s lack - health insurance. Doubtless, military insurance will help with the ER bills. But what about all of the families without insurance, when setting foot inside a hospital automatically starts adding thousands to your bill? Imagine being an uninsured couple with 5 children, all of whom go into respiratory arrest. Imagine that.

I sincerely hope this heartbreaking testimony of this father will be widely distributed, and may even put an end to newspapers describing the opponents of this egregious abuse as ’some environmental activists.’ That’s hardly a title anyone would use to describe a military man, a father who has watched his baby be poisoned by the government he serves. No, this isn’t about environmental activism. This is about child abuse, human abuse. What is happening here in California is a crime.

Definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance
2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success and power
3) believes that he or she is “special” and unique
4) lacks empathy
5) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

Definition of Megalomania:

An unrealistic belief in one’s superiority, grandiose abilities, and even omnipotence. It is characterized by a need for total power and control over others, and is marked by a lack of empathy for anything that is perceived as not feeding the self.

Definition of Entomophobia:

Obsessive fear of insects.

Definition of an Idée Fixe:

An idea that dominates the mind; a fixed idea; an obsession a person cannot seem to let go of.

Definition of Amorality:

Lacking moral sensibility; not caring about right and wrong.

Defintion of Psychopath:

A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse.

Note from the Author -
I’d like to see California go green, go back to a much more natural state than it currently is in, but I get it that I’m not allowed to burn down San Francisco in order to achieve my personal dream for a more natural California. My sense of my own importance isn’t quite that grand.

People with the above problems deserve our sympathy and pity. They can often get help. They need to receive special care. But they shouldn’t be in office. They shouldn’t be in charge of the State of California. Do you agree?

Here is a link to the first news on the bills that were proposed in Sacramento today

I have to figure out from this which ones passed.

I will update this shortly but wanted to get this link out there asap.

Update:
Just so we all know which bills were supposed to be presented, they were these:

AB 2982 (Swanson) – Community Votes
AB 2763 (Laird) – Invasive Species Planning and Disclosure
AB 2764 (Hancock) – Emergency Powers
AB 2765 (Huffman) – Public Participation and Disclosure
ACR 117 (Laird) – A call to state agencies to answer our unanswered questions on science and health

Update: Okay, we now know that it was Laird’s 2 bills that passed. There is good coverage of this here.

It would seem that Swanson’s definitely did not pass, but I am still not clear on whether it was Hancock’s or Huffman’s that also didn’t pass, as the news clip said 2 out of 4 passed. Was one of these bills not heard today?

Please, if you have any further information or links, feel free to post.

Update: Here is good coverage of what happened in Sacramento.