The Veggie Pride Parade Is Coming!

VEGGIE PRIDE PARADE 2010! in NEW YORK CITY!:
SUNDAY, MAY 16, 2010 info@vivavegie.org....•....212-242-0011
http://www.veggieprideparade.org/

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Living Near Green Lowers Anxiety, Depression

From our friend Madhava Ghosh's blog "View From a New Vrindaban Ridge"

“In all directions of Dvaraka City, wherever one would turn his eyes he would find green parks and gardens, each of them filled with trees and plants laden with fruits and flowers. Because there were so many nice trees of fruits and flowers, all the sweetly chirping birds and buzzing bumblebees joined together to make sweet vibrations. The city of Dvaraka thus fully displayed all opulences. “

Krishna Book 90: Summary Description of Lord Krsna’s Pastimes

Living Near Green Lowers Anxiety, Depression Rates, Study Finds

By Kristen Hallam

Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) — People living near gardens, parks and other green spaces have lower rates of anxiety, depression and poor physical health than those living in urban areas, Dutch researchers found.

The scientists reviewed the medical records of more than 345,000 people in the Netherlands and calculated the percentage of green space near the patients’ homes. For those with 10 percent of green space within a 1-kilometer radius of their homes, the prevalence of anxiety disorders was 26 out of 1,000 people, according to the study. In a residential area that was 90 percent green, the prevalence was 18 out of 1,000.

Better health may stem from access to fresher air and more opportunities to relax, socialize or exercise, though more research is needed to confirm those theories, said Jolanda Maas and colleagues at VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam. Expanding green spaces may help prevent chronic illnesses that cost billions of dollars to treat each year, they said.

“The role of green space in the living environment for health should not be underestimated,” they wrote in the study published in the British Medical Journal’s Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. “Most of the diseases which were found to be related to the percentage of green space in the living environment are highly prevalent in society and in many countries, they are the subject of large-scale prevention programs.”

The study also found fewer cases of depression, heart disease, back pain and asthma among those living near green spaces. The link between green space and health was strongest for children and people with low incomes, who are less mobile and spend more time closer to home, the study found.

The research was funded by a grant from the Netherlands Organization forScientific Research.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aaVDXmgskQmg

World's Healthiest Food

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: January 2, 2010 in the New York Times

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras

So what’s the most scrumptious, wholesome, exquisite, healthful, gratifying food in the world?

It’s not ambrosia, and it’s not even pepperoni pizza. Hint: It’s far cheaper. A year’s supply costs less than the cheapest hamburger.

Give up? Here’s another hint: It’s lifesaving for children and for women who may become pregnant. If you know of a woman who may become pregnant, make sure she gets this miracle substance.

A final hint: It was a lack of this substance that led to a tragedy that I encountered the other day at a hospital here in the Honduran capital. Three babies lay in cots next to one another with birth defects of the brain and spinal cord.

In the first cot was Rosa Álvarez, 18 days old and recovering from surgery to repair a hole in her spine. She also suffers from a brain deformity.

In the next cot was Ángel Flores, soft tissue protruding from his back.

Closest to the door was José Tercera. His mother unwrapped a bandage on his head, and I saw a golf-ball-size chunk of his brain spilling out a hole in his forehead.

The doctors believe the reason for these deformities, called neural tube defects, was that their mothers did not have enough micronutrients, particularly folic acid, while pregnant. These micronutrients are the miracle substance I’m talking about, and there’s scarcely a form of foreign aid more cost-effective than getting them into the food supply.

“It’s unnecessary to have these kinds of problems,” Dr. Ali Flores, a pediatrician and expert on these defects, said as he looked over the three babies.

If a pregnant woman does not have enough folic acid (also known as vitamin B9) in her body at the very beginning of her pregnancy, then her fetus may suffer these neural tube defects. That’s why doctors give folic acid to women who plan to become pregnant.

Equally important is another micronutrient, iodine. The worst consequence of iodine deficiency isn’t goiters, but malformation of fetuses’ brains, so they have 10 to 15 points permanently shaved off their I.Q.’s.

Then there’s zinc, which reduces child deaths from diarrhea and infections. There’s iron, lack of which causes widespread anemia. And there’s vitamin A: some 670,000 children die each year because they don’t get enough vitamin A, and lack of the vitamin remains the world’s leading cause of childhood blindness.

“In the early stages of life, the die is cast,” said David Dodson, the founder of Project Healthy Children, an aid group that fights micronutrient deficiencies in Honduras and other poor countries. “If a child is not getting the right micronutrients, the effect is permanent.”

Nine years ago, Mr. Dodson was simply an American businessman running a 300-employee waste company that he had founded. Then he happened to visit Honduras and, in a hospital, encountered a mother whose newborn baby had a hole in the skull. He learned that negligible amounts of folic acid would prevent such heartbreaking defects — and his life was transformed.

“I had never seen anything in my life that could have so much impact for so little money and be sustainable,” Mr. Dodson said. He and his wife, Stephanie, sold their company and used some of the proceeds to start Project Healthy Children.

The most cost-effective way to distribute micronutrients isn’t to hand them out. Mary Flores, a former Honduran first lady who is active in nutrition, notes that impoverished women can be hard to reach, and even if they are given folic acid pills they sometimes won’t take them for fear that they actually are birth control pills. So micronutrients instead are often added to such common foods as salt, sugar, flour or cooking oil.

Adding iodine, iron, vitamin A, zinc and various B-complex vitamins including folic acid to a range of foods costs about 30 cents per person reached per year. Groups focusing on micronutrients also include Helen Keller International and Vitamin Angels.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has required that flour be fortified with folic acid since 1998. Even in America, with better diets, medical care and widespread fortification, not all women get enough micronutrients, but the problem is far worse in poor countries.

Mr. Dodson notes that it is much cheaper to prevent birth defects than to treat them.

“It’s not a sexy world health issue, but it’s about the nuts and bolts of putting together a healthy population,” Mr. Dodson said. “Putting small amounts of iron, iodine and folic acid in the food supply hasn’t drawn attention the way it does when you treat someone who is sick or in a refugee camp. Until recently, this has been off everybody’s radar screen.”

As the United States reorganizes its chaotic aid program, it might try promoting what just may be the world’s most luscious food: micronutrients.

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As The World Burns

Click here to read the full piece at Rolling Stone

Our collective response to the emerging catastrophe verges on suicidal. World leaders have been talking about tackling climate change for nearly 20 years now — yet carbon emissions keep going up and up. "We are in a race against time," says Rep. Jay Inslee, a Democrat from Washington who has fought for sharp reductions in planet-warming pollution. "Mother Nature isn't sitting around waiting for us to get our political act together." In fact, our failure to confront global warming is more than simply political incompetence.

Over the past year, the corporations and special interests most responsible for climate change waged an all-out war to prevent Congress from cracking down on carbon pollution in time for Copenhagen. The oil and coal industries deployed an unprecedented army of lobbyists, spent millions on misleading studies and engaged in outright deception to derail climate legislation. "It was the most aggressive and corrupt lobbying campaign I've ever seen," says Paul Begala, a veteran Democratic consultant.

Sacred Cows or Sacred Cars?

Click here to read the full piece from Dandavats

by Bala Krsna Das

I would like to take you on a journey, and am going to ask you to please fasten your seat belts.

We are going to time travel a few years into the future, to a small village, to take a little tour.
As we arrive in the village we are struck by its serenity and cleanliness, and the vitality of its residents, including the children, the women, the elders, and the cows. Oxen pull carts and cows graze within the village, and other oxen pull farm implements in the nearby small fields. We discover that the village is inhabited almost entirely by devotees of Krsna.

As we make inquiries we learn that this village was started by disciples of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada and that there are even a few of those pioneers still living in the village.

In the centre of the village is a temple, and we are invited to go there first to see Radha and Krsna. After seeing the Deities in the temple we are offered maha Prasad sweets made from milk from cows that live in the community. Continuing our tour, we are taken next to the community school where we see happy children in the playground.

A little further down the road we are shown an anaerobic composting digester that transforms biomass, including both human and animal manure, into high grade compost, methane, and CO2. The compost, we learn, is used to enhance the soil in the fields and gardens, and the methane is used for heating and cooking. The CO2 is harnessed to enhance growth in the adjacent greenhouses. Everything in the village gets recycled, including especially the biomass left from harvested fields, which is seen as a great asset.

We observe solar panels on the rooftops of most buildings. Our guide then shows us the microhydro turbines that are hooked into nearby streams.

Near the border of the village is a parking lot where there are several buses, cars, and small trucks. Two of the buses, we learn, have brought visitors to this now famous self-sufficient village. Another bus belongs to the village, and is used by the community for going to local towns for sankirtana, and for going to Rathayatra festivals in the big cities. Sometimes the bus is used by the village school for taking students on field trips. We also learn that the families in the village cooperatively own several cars and trucks to be used for their occasional trips outside the village. Using the hemp grown by farmers in the village, they are able to produce all the fuel needed to drive these vehicles.

This ends our short tour, and we prepare to return to the present. Hopefully we will return again to find out more about the history and dynamics of this wonderful place, but at least we have been able to observe some of the highlights. One of the deepest impressions we take with us is the presence and importance of cows in the village and how much they are obviously loved by all the villagers.

Pressure Rises To Stop Antibiotics In Agriculture

From our friend Ananda's blog "Servant Of The Servants"

FRANKENSTEIN, Mo. – The mystery started the day farmer Russ Kremer got between a jealous boar and a sow in heat.

The boar gored Kremer in the knee with a razor-sharp tusk. The burly pig farmer shrugged it off, figuring: "You pour the blood out of your boot and go on."

But Kremer's red-hot leg ballooned to double its size. A strep infection spread, threatening his life and baffling doctors. Two months of multiple antibiotics did virtually nothing.

The answer was flowing in the veins of the boar. The animal had been fed low doses of penicillin, spawning a strain of strep that was resistant to other antibiotics. That drug-resistant germ passed to Kremer.

Like Kremer, more and more Americans — many of them living far from barns and pastures — are at risk from the widespread practice of feeding livestock antibiotics. These animals grow faster, but they can also develop drug-resistant infections that are passed on to people. The issue is now gaining attention because of interest from a new White House administration and a flurry of new research tying antibiotic use in animals to drug resistance in people.

Researchers say the overuse of antibiotics in humans and animals has led to a plague of drug-resistant infections that killed more than 65,000 people in the U.S. last year — more than prostate and breast cancer combined. And in a nation that used about 35 million pounds of antibiotics last year, 70 percent of the drugs went to pigs, chickens and cows. Worldwide, it's 50 percent.

"This is a living breathing problem, it's the big bad wolf and it's knocking at our door," said Dr. Vance Fowler, an infectious disease specialist at Duke University. "It's here. It's arrived."

The rise in the use of antibiotics is part of a growing problem of soaring drug resistance worldwide, The Associated Press found in a six-month look at the issue. As a result, killer diseases like malaria, tuberculosis and staph are resurging in new and more deadly forms.

In response, the pressure against the use of antibiotics in agriculture is rising. The World Health Organization concluded this year that surging antibiotic resistance is one of the leading threats to human health, and the White House last month said the problem is "urgent."

"If we're not careful with antibiotics and the programs to administer them, we're going to be in a post antibiotic era," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, who was tapped to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this year.

Also this year, the three federal agencies tasked with protecting public health — the Food and Drug Administration, CDC and U.S. Department of Agriculture — declared drug-resistant diseases stemming from antibiotic use in animals a "serious emerging concern." And FDA deputy commissioner Dr. Joshua Sharfstein told Congress this summer that farmers need to stop feeding antibiotics to healthy farm animals.

Farm groups and pharmaceutical companies argue that drugs keep animals healthy and meat costs low, and have defeated a series of proposed limits on their use.

Read rest of the story here - link

Devotees Pray For Yamuna's Future With Global Kirtan

Devotees Pray for Yamuna’s Future With Global Kirtan

Written by Madhava Smullen and originally posted at the ISKCON News website on January 27th, 2010.

Hundreds of thousands of devotees, holy men and pilgrims will gather for the Vrindavana Kumbha Mela, taking a ceremonial dip in the sacred Yamuna River at Keshi Ghat on Saturday January 30th.

The event is held once every twelve years, alongside the official Kumbha Mela, which rotates between the holy places of Prayag, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nashik.

The Vrindavana Mela, held in the village where Lord Krishna appeared on earth 5,000 years ago, and at the river where He once bathed, is always special. But in recent times, there has been an added urgency to the participants’ prayers.

Devotees say that the sanctity of Vrindavana, and especially of the Yamuna River, is in danger. Among other efforts, ISKCON’s second-generation—known as “Kulis”—have launched “Global Kirtan for the Yamuna River,” a prayer which is offered with the intention to save the future of the Yamuna River and Vrindavana in general, and which they will synchronize with ISKCON Vrindavana’s 24-Hour Kirtan chanting program.

This year’s event is the second in a series of Global Kirtans. Organizer Krishna Devata McComb introduced the first in November 2008 after a trip to Vrindavana revealed how much the sacred village had changed since her childhood.

“I was born a Krishna devotee and first bathed in the Yamuna when I was five years old, with my two-year old brother Bala Gopal,” she says. “I have very precious memories of that time.”

The next time Krishna Devata returned to the Yamuna in 1998, it was to offer Bala Gopala’s ashes into its waters. The sacred river offered her solace in her grief at her brother’s passing, as she offered incense, flower garlands, and petals into it and then bathed in the water herself.

“Bathing in the Yamuna is a tradition of transformation, rejuvenation and purification,” she says. “Yet today, we see this place of deep personal prayer and meaning under heavy construction, with its waters diverted, and sewage and garbage being dumped into it. When I visited the river recently with my own daughter and son, who were the same ages as Gopal and I had been when we first bathed there, it was shocking to see how much had been lost in only one generation.”

According to Krishna Devata, many holy sites related to the Yamuna have been covered and displaced from its banks. The tree at Chir Ghat, where Krishna is said to have enacted His pastimes with the Gopis, is now hundreds of yards from the Yamuna, and the view of the holy river has been replaced by the on-ramp of a by-pass highway. The focus of development in Vrindavana, Krishna Devata says, has become service to the automobile rather than to God.

Perhaps the development currently taking the most prominence is a bridge being constructed alongside the Yamuna. Started back in May 2008, the project is intended to facilitate a 130km pipeline through Vrindavana, Mathura and Agra, which will provide water in areas that have been battling a shortage for decades.

It’s essentially a good cause. However, local and international devotees and environmental activists, working under the Save Yamuna to Save Vrindavan campaign, are saying that the implementation needs to be rethought. “They are destroying nature and culture,” said environmentalist Swami Sewak Sharan. “Ordinary folks in Vrindavan have no voice while the ‘developmentalists’ are out to murder a rich heritage.”

Mathura-Vrindavan Development Authority Vice Chairman R.K. Singh denied the charges and claimed they had been raised by people who do not understand development or environment. “They are just obstructing,” he said. “We have got proper studies done. The Keshi Ghat was any way crumbling. The bridge is a little distance away from the ghat. Pointless controversies are being raised.”

PWD Chief Engineer C.D. Rai added, “The bridge on the river does not affect environment in any manner, nor does it obstruct the flow of the river. We will later take up the renovation of the Keshi Ghat.”

But devotees and Vrindavana residents say that the developers have not revealed the full plans of their project to the community and show no sensitivity to the historic sacred site. The bridge will facilitate traffic to Delhi, Agra, and the Taj Mahal, and they fear that the noise, dirt and pollution will render Keshi Ghat a place that’s no longer peaceful for spiritual reflection.

“Some solutions include restoring water flow to ancient ghats, garbage management and water-treatment, although it will take collaboration and care from tourists and residents of Vrindavan to create lasting change,” Krishna Devata comments.

She admits that much of this is beyond her understanding or capacity to impact. However, what she can do is bring people together to make them aware of Yamuna Devi’s plight, and to unite their voices in prayer—in a Global Kirtan.

The January 30th event is backed by the Kuli Mela Association, which organizes ISKCON second-generation festivals and projects around the world, and which Krishna Devata is a founding member of. Other entities lending their support include World Prayer and Kirtan Day, Mandala Publishing, World Vaisnava Association, UNESCO, Sri Sri Radha Raman Temple, Save Yamuna to Save Vrindavan campaign, and many participating ISKCON Temples.

The Global Kirtan concept is that people “think globally and pray locally.” So far over one hundred locations around the world—in India, Canada, the United States, Europe, South America, South Africa, the Carribean, and Russia—have confirmed their participation, holding kirtans which will coincide with the Vrindavana Kumbha Mela and 24-Hour kirtan at the Yamuna River.

Many of these participants are ISKCON temples and preaching centers, while some are home programs, yoga studios, book-stores, and sanga groups. Some 24-hour kirtan events—such as those in Radhadesh Belgium, Hillsborough North Carolina, and one hosted by Radhanatha Swami in Mumbai—were prescheduled, yet their organizers decided to dedicate their prayers to the Global Kirtan cause.

“Because this is about calling attention to the current condition of the Yamuna River, which affects many people from many different lines and faiths, this is a call-out to all who will answer,” says Kuli Mela Association member Chaitanya Mangala. “The mood is one of openness and inclusiveness—this is an opportunity for everyone to come together and share in a time of solidarity.”

Those participating will include many well-known kirtan singers: Gaura Vani and As Kindred Spirits will perform at the ISKCON temple in Brooklyn, New York; Karnamrita will perform in Durban, South Africa; The Kirtaniyas will perform in Los Angeles; and the Mayapuris will perform in San Francisco.

“At this auspicious time of Vrindavana Kumbha Mela, sadhus, yogis and pilgrims of all kinds and from all traditions will gather to honor the Yamuna River,” says Krishna Devata. “On the full moon, thousands will simultaneously bathe in the river in a huge act of devotion and peace—chanting, dancing, and honoring Yamuna Devi together.”

Already, she says, kirtans are sounding in tents along the Yamuna, and puja and prayer offerings are being made.

And it looks like the prayers are already being answered. On January 21st , an Uttar Pradesh High Court Order was issued stating: “Until further order of the Court, the respondents are directed to stop further constructions over the bridge which is being constructed along side river Yamuna and other illegal constructions on the land which falls between the ghats and river Yamuna on both the sides and to stop dumping of garbage in river Yamuna or its bank. Respondents are further directed to ensure that no constructions are raised in the aforesaid area by any person.”

Devotees are preparing themselves for a further hearing at the High Court on February 23rd. Until then, their prayers for their beloved Yamuna River will resound across the globe.

The Global Kirtan organizers can be contacted at: thedancingmama@gmail.com.

Or join the Global Kirtan Facebook group here.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=245684587045&ref=search&sid=1096860333.4131406006..1

Add your name to the petition against building a bridge at the Yamuna below:

http://bvhalliance.org/guestbook/gbook.php