This will serve as a back up to the current events posting on the site.

Visit

http://redforyou.yolasite.com/zeitgeist-movement.php

and just scroll down a bit, you can’t miss it

I can see why doing fund raisers for benevolent causes can give people a wonderful feeling and is a wonderful idea in the intention but, there is something terribly wrong happening here.

Look at the total health spending and compare that to the new cases of breast cancer in the US. Also compare that to the Asian countries on the left. Although this problem has several factors that go unexplored in this example, I hope you can see the value in what this shows.

The NYU Coalition To Keep Coca-Cola Off Campus

April 26, 2010:  The NYC Premiere of “The Coca-Cola Case” at NYU School of Law

Please join us for the New York City premiere screening of:

The Coca-Cola Case

Monday April 26 at 7:00PM – Doors open 6:30PM

Tishman Auditorium, NYU School of Law – 40 Washington Sq South, New York, NY 10012

The Coca-Cola Case, an award-winning documentary, focuses on the Coca-Cola Company’s human rights abuses and the powerful legal and organizing efforts to hold Coke accountable for its assassination of union activists in Colombia.

Coke has tried to censor this film and suppress its distribution.  Barry Diller, a prominent NYU Trustee, is a member of Coke’s board of directors.

The film will be followed by a reception with filmmakers Germán Gutiérrez and Carmen Garcia, Corporate Campaign boycott activist Ray Rogers, SINALTRAINAL de Colombia union member Camilo Romero, and NYU student activists working to reinstate the Coke ban at NYU.

Please RSVP at our facebook page:  http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=114104688613831&ref=ts

Sponsored by: The NYU Coalition To Keep Coca-Cola Off Campus in conjunction with Campaign to Stop Killer Coke; Coalition for Legal Recruiting (CoLR); Earth Matters; Graduate Student Organizing Committee — GSOC/UAW Local 2110; Law Students for Economic Justice (LawSEJ); North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA); Students Creating Radical Change; Trade Unionists in Solidarity with Colombia; The Union of Clerical, Administrative and Technical Staff at NYU — UCATS/AFT Local 2882; National Lawyers Guild; Oxfam NYU; LUCHA; Law Students for Human Rights; Por Colombia NYU.  As of 4/18/10.  List in formation.

Film Trailer:  Coca Cola Case

Free admission.  Public attendance is welcome.  For more information on this and future events: boycottcokenyu@gmail.com

April 18, 2010
Op-Ed Contributor

Cows on Drugs

By DONALD KENNEDY
Stanford, Calif.

NOW that Congress has pushed through its complicated legislation to reform the health insurance system, it could take one more simple step to protect the health of all Americans. This one wouldn’t raise any taxes or make any further changes to our health insurance system, so it could be quickly passed by Congress with an outpouring of bipartisan support. Or could it?

More than 30 years ago, when I was commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration, we proposed eliminating the use of penicillin and two other antibiotics to promote growth in animals raised for food. When agribusiness interests persuaded Congress not to approve that regulation, we saw firsthand how strong politics can trump wise policy and good science.

Even back then, this nontherapeutic use of antibiotics was being linked to the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria that infect humans. To the leading microbiologists on the F.D.A.’s advisory committee, it was clearly a very bad idea to fatten animals with the same antibiotics used to treat people. But the American Meat Institute and its lobbyists in Washington blocked the F.D.A. proposal.

In 2005, one class of antibiotics, fluoroquinolones, was banned in the production of poultry in the United States. But the total number of antibiotics used in agriculture is continuing to grow. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, 70 percent of this use is in animals that are healthy but are vulnerable to transmissible diseases because they live in crowded and unsanitary conditions.

In testimony to Congress last summer, Joshua Sharfstein, the principal deputy commissioner of the F.D.A., estimated that 90,000 Americans die each year from bacterial infections they acquire in hospitals. About 70 percent of those infections are caused by bacteria that are resistant to at least one powerful antibiotic.

That’s why the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Pharmacists Association, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Public Health Association and the National Association of County and City Health Officials are urging Congress to phase out the nontherapeutic use in livestock of antibiotics that are important to humans.

Antibiotic resistance is an expensive problem. A person who cannot be treated with ordinary antibiotics is at risk of having a large number of bacterial infections, and of needing to be treated in the hospital for weeks or even months. The extra costs to the American health care system are as much as $26 billion a year, according to estimates by Cook County Hospital in Chicago and the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics, a health policy advocacy group.

Agribusiness argues — as it has for 30 years — that livestock need to be given antibiotics to help them grow properly and keep them free of disease. But consider what has happened in Denmark since the late 1990s, when that country banned the use of antibiotics in farm animals except for therapeutic purposes. The reservoir of resistant bacteria in Danish livestock shrank considerably, a World Health Organization report found. And although some animals lost weight, and some developed infections that needed to be treated with antimicrobial drugs, the benefits of the rule exceeded those costs.

It’s 30 years late, but Congress should now pass the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, which would ban industrial farms from using seven classes of antibiotics that are important to human health unless animals or herds are ill, or pharmaceutical companies can prove the drugs’ use in livestock does not harm human health.

The pharmaceutical industry and agribusiness face the difficult challenge of developing antimicrobials that work specifically against animal infections without undermining the fight against bacteria that cause disease in humans. But we don’t have the luxury of waiting any longer to protect those at risk of increasing antibiotic resistance.

Donald Kennedy, a former commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration, is a professor emeritus of environmental science at Stanford.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/opinion/18kennedy.html

This is a bit of a re-post but, i think its helpful for our next activity

—->   You know what would be cool and we could do it on the move but it may be pricey so its just an idea for the future. http://www.andymartinentertainments.co.uk/

and i never used the makeshift signs after our Times square meet so I think next time i make another bunch we should leave them in strategic places. Also other than the laser thing, there is a way to project light image form vehicles but the device may be pricey as well I forgot what its called but its dope as hell. I think the cheapest thing to do is a roll of drawing paper it can be as long as you need and then just tape it on something and when are we meeting again…like in person? You know thats what im all about.

Also if we chip in for big ass boards like i used at my event (http://www.youtube.com/myscanner), I already bought some fresh markers – we just walk around with while the rest of the group gives out cards flyers movies etc and take turns. We would be come a moving interactive billboard on a budget.

AS A MATTER OF FACT … After we do the NYU thing

Diego lets make that the next project. I’ll do more of the coordinating on that one. Let me know your thoughts. Make change and have fun when you can