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January 5th, 2007Thanks PS!
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Related: Hosting with Blue Host via Cryptogon
Thanks to All December Cryptogon Supporters
January 5th, 2007Cryptogon readers poured on the support in December. I want to take a moment to thank, and acknowledge, all of you.
Becky and I had to buy, what was for us, some very expensive fencing supplies for some avocado trees that we’re planting out in one of our paddocks. Without failsafe protection from the cows, the young trees would be gone in seconds. We’re glad we didn’t have to make a choice between the cows and the trees. Thanks to the handful of you who support our efforts, we can have both.
It’s weird, money. While the love of it is “the root of all evil” it sure comes in handy when you want to produce your own organic avocados and drink raw, whole milk. And it’s astonishing how cool things could be if just a tiny bit of the money out there was used for non evil purposes, like clean food and energy projects. I look at PHBs launching themselves to the stars and the pit of hell that is Iraq and I personally can’t allow myself to dream about the alternate realities that could have been built with those funds.
On the one hand, I don’t know if it would be a good idea to suggest that people like you and me should go out and earn millions of dollars—assuming that was possible—but on the other hand, what’s standing between where we are today and building a reality that makes sense? I know a lot of people want to sit around in circles, hold hands and say that it’s not about money, but that’s bullshit. Actually, it’s ALL about money; and the right use of money. Power is the ability to allocate resources to values. Without the ability to allocate resources to values, you have no power. I tried to believe this wasn’t the case for a LONG time. I get “it” now.
Becky and I are managing to make our dreams a reality, but it seems weird that a couple of hundred dollars worth of fencing supplies should require concerned looks at each other in RD1 as we debate whether we can afford the proceed with the project, or not. Worrying about money is much more exhausting than back breaking labor.
I keep having thoughts that go something like this, “We bought the farm, now we need to get jobs to pay for the stuff we need to fire it up.” I think these things as Becky and I seem to be working ourselves numb, as our money supply ranges from flat to down each month. Digging the trenches for the underground wire that will power the electric fences around the avocado trees, crawling around in the dirt, getting bitten by insects, I thought, “The potential payoff of all of this time and effort and money is something like four years away, assuming everything goes perfectly.” The property tax, bills, etc. don’t wait for the trees to mature. (Humorous note: Watch for comments from someone who suggests something like, “Why not build a fence out of twigs, vines and shrubs, etc.?” Permaculture requires years to decades. Organics is hard enough for the moment. Thanks.)
We heard a joke a while ago, when someone in New Zealand won an especially large lottery prize. Becky’s mom said, “He’ll be able to keep farming for a years now!” We all had a good laugh about that one.
Is it going to come down to Bex and me getting day jobs to support our farming habit? Maybe. But thanks to all of you for buying us a bit more time to figure out this self-sufficiency ever-less-reliant-on-The Machine thing:
achingsatori.com $65
AH $25
Anonymous $101
EP $17.77
JG $23
KB $3
KL $20
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Thanks also to Cryptogon sponsors Survival Acres and Join the Solution.
Now, to you Amazon shoppers… I don’t know who you are, but you bought stuff that referred a total of $49.09. I think that breaks the previous record by $6. This includes twenty six, yes, 26 copies of Peak Oil Survival: Preparation for Life After Gridcrash by Aric McBay at the blow out price of $2.99. You guys like a bargain! Someone also bought a toy called a WowWee Robosapien Version 2 Humanoid Robot. HA! While I didn’t know such a toy even existed, here’s what I do know: Buying that thing via Cryptogon kicked $9.75 my way! Anyone in the market for a Canon EOS 1DS Mark II? 😉
Again, sincerest thanks to all of you!
U.S. Government Can Open Your Mail Without a Warrant
January 4th, 2007Via: Seattle Times:
President Bush quietly has claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant.
Bush asserted the new authority Dec. 20 after signing legislation that overhauls some postal regulations. He then issued a “signing statement” that declared his right to open mail under emergency conditions, contrary to existing law and contradicting the bill he had just signed, according to experts who have reviewed it.
Rehnquist’s Hallucinations About the CIA?
January 4th, 2007I’ll wait for Jeff’s comments on this one.
Via: CNN:
The FBI’s file on former Chief Justice William Rehnquist — made public more than a year after his death — offers insight into hallucinations and other symptoms of withdrawal that Rehnquist suffered when he was taken off a prescription painkiller in 1981.
A doctor was cited as saying that Rehnquist, an associate justice of the Supreme Court at the time, tried to escape the hospital in his pajamas and imagined that the CIA was plotting against him.
The FBI on Wednesday released 1,561 pages of documents on Rehnquist to news organizations and scholars in response to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act following Rehnquist’s death in September 2005. An additional 207 pages were withheld under the federal disclosure law, and the FBI said an entire section of his file could not be found.
Much of the FBI’s file on Rehnquist appears to have been compiled almost exclusively for his two Senate confirmations — his initial nomination to the court by President Nixon in 1971 and his nomination as chief justice by President Reagan in 1986. Administration officials apparently hoped to prevent any surprises from sinking his nominations.
In 1971, Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst directed the FBI to conduct investigations of witnesses who were planning to testify at a Senate hearing against Rehnquist’s confirmation.
Fifteen years later, during the Reagan administration, the FBI was enlisted to conduct background checks on witnesses who were scheduled to testify against Rehnquist’s nomination to become chief justice.
The DNA So Dangerous it Does Not Exist
January 4th, 2007Commentary?
This is the most frightening story that I’ve ever posted on Cryptogon.
Via: New Scientist:
Could there be forbidden sequences in the genome – ones so harmful that they are not compatible with life? One group of researchers thinks so. Unlike most genome sequencing projects which set out to search for genes that are conserved within and between species, their goal is to identify “primes”: DNA sequences and chains of amino acids so dangerous to life that they do not exist.
“It’s like looking for a needle that’s not actually in the haystack,” says Greg Hampikian, professor of genetics at Boise State University in Idaho, who is leading the project. “There must be some DNA or protein sequences that are not compatible with life, perhaps because they bind some essential cellular component, for example, and have therefore been selected out of circulation. There may also be some that are lethal in some species, but not others. We’re looking for those sequences.”
…
Whether these sequences have any biological significance in living organisms is not yet known – the next step is to test 20 of the peptoprimes in bacteria and human cells to see whether they have any effect such as causing death or provoking an immune reaction.
Hampikian believes the applications of his work could be wide-ranging. He has already received a $1 million grant from the US Department of Defense to develop a DNA “safety tag” that could be added to voluntary DNA reference samples in criminal cases to distinguish them from forensic samples. Such tags would not necessarily have to consist of lethal sequences, but could be based on primes that would be easy to detect using a simple kit.
Further down the line there is the possibility of constructing a “suicide gene” to code for deadly amino acid primes. It could be attached to genetically modified organisms and activated to destroy them at a later date if they turned out to be dangerous, Hampikian suggests.
The Private Arm of the Law
January 4th, 2007Yes, corporate pigs.
Via: Washington Post:
With the sleeve patch on his black shirt, the 9mm gun on his hip and the blue light on his patrol car, he looked like an ordinary police officer as he stopped the car on a Friday night last month. Watt works, though, for a business called Capitol Special Police. It is one of dozens of private security companies given police powers by the state of North Carolina — and part of a pattern across the United States in which public safety is shifting into private hands.
Private firms with outright police powers have been proliferating in some places — and trying to expand their terrain. The “company police agencies,” as businesses such as Capitol Special Police are called here, are lobbying the state legislature to broaden their jurisdiction, currently limited to the private property of those who hire them, to adjacent streets. Elsewhere — including wealthy gated communities in South Florida and the Tri-Rail commuter trains between Miami and West Palm Beach — private security patrols without police authority carry weapons, sometimes dress like SWAT teams and make citizen’s arrests.
…
“You can see the public police becoming like the public health system,” said Thomas M. Seamon, a former deputy police commissioner for Philadelphia who is president of Hallcrest Systems Inc., a leading security consultant. “It’s basically, the government provides a certain base level. If you want more than that, you pay for it yourself.”
The trend is triggering debate over whether the privatization of public safety is wise. Some police and many security officials say communities benefit from the extra eyes and ears. Yet civil libertarians, academics, tenants rights organizations and even a trade group that represents the nation’s large security firms say some private security officers are not adequately trained or regulated. Ten states in the South and West do not regulate them at all.
Some warn, too, that the constitutional safeguards that cover police questioning and searches do not apply in the private sector. In Boston, tenants groups have complained that “special police,” hired by property managers to keep low-income apartment complexes orderly, were overstepping their bounds, arresting young men who lived there for trespassing.
Fascism: Satanic Christian Style
January 4th, 2007Becky and I watched Jesus Camp last night. Oh man… Believe me, you don’t want to miss this one.
The article below picks up where the film leaves off.
Via: AlterNet:
The drive by the Christian right to take control of military chaplaincies, which now sees radical Christians holding roughly 50 percent of chaplaincy appointments in the armed services and service academies, is part of a much larger effort to politicize the military and law enforcement. This effort signals the final and perhaps most deadly stage in the long campaign by the radical Christian right to dismantle America’s open society and build a theocratic state. A successful politicization of the military would signal the end of our democracy.
During the past two years I traveled across the country to research and write the book “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” I repeatedly listened to radical preachers attack as corrupt and godless most American institutions, from federal agencies that provide housing and social welfare to public schools and the media. But there were two institutions that never came under attack — the military and law enforcement. While these preachers had no interest in communicating with local leaders of other faiths, or those in the community who did not subscribe to their call for a radical Christian state, they assiduously courted and flattered the military and police. They held special services and appreciation days for all four branches of the armed services and for various law enforcement agencies. They encouraged their young men and women to enlist or to join the police or state troopers. They sought out sympathetic military and police officials to attend church events where these officials were lauded and feted for their Christian probity and patriotism. They painted the war in Iraq not as an occupation but as an apocalyptic battle by Christians against Islam, a religion they regularly branded as “satanic.” All this befits a movement whose final aesthetic is violence. It also befits a movement that, in the end, would need the military and police forces to seize power in American society.
Inuit Diet Touted as Health Tonic
January 4th, 2007Via: Vancouver Sun:
The Inuit traditional diet offers natural protection against two of the planet’s biggest killers — heart disease and cancer — according to a study that gives an unprecedented glimpse of the health of northern Canadians.
While accelerating environmental and social meltdown is putting huge stress on Arctic communities, the study of almost 1,000 Inuit in northern Quebec shows the diet rich in game continues to offer remarkable protection, says lead researcher Dr. Eric Dewailly of Laval University.
“The study shows that they still have huge benefit and protection,” says Dewailly. He and his colleagues presented the results of the on-going study here yesterday at the annual scientific meeting of ArcticNet, a northern research consortium.
Dewailly says the traditional Inuit diet is high in selenium, common to whale skin, and likely explains why prostate cancer is almost unheard of in the north, as are most other cancers. Cardiovascular disease is also rare, likely because the Inuit diet remains rich in wild game. “The traditional Inuit diet is fats and proteins, no sugar at all,” says Dewailly. “It is probably one of the healthiest diets you can have. The human body is built for that.”
While the study indicates Inuit are still protected by their traditional foods, he says the evidence shows the benefits are “growing weaker and weaker” as consumption of processed southern food increases.
Inuit teenagers drink on average one litre of pop a day, Dewailly says. And unhealthy trans fats, common to chips, cookies and refined foods, are being seen in the blood of young Inuit in levels up to three times those seen among Europeans.
The health survey results from northern Quebec show obesity has increased by 50 per cent compared to 1992, and now affects 28 per cent of the Inuit population. While women are most affected, the researchers say obesity is a rapidly growing problem for men. High blood pressure rates have more that doubled to 14.5 per cent of the population between 1992 and 2004.
Inuit leaders, several of whom are at this week’s conference to support the study, are working to promote consumption of wild game and fish and reduce junk food consumption.
Related: Nourishing Traditions
Related: Weston A. Price Foundation
666 the Mark of the Housing Bubble
January 3rd, 2007Without discernment, being awash in information can be just as confusing as having no information at all. Cryptogon readers want—and sometimes pay me cold, hard cash for—news and analysis they can trust and use. Less is more when it comes to these here internets.
So, while I’m always aware of stories like this and this, I don’t bother you with them.
Most of the time…
I am, however, going to post the one below, because, every once in a while, my dark sense of humor gets the better of me:
Via Daily Reckoning:
Remember that building that sold for $1.8 billion in New York recently? It was the most expensive single building ever sold in the city. Well, we looked it up…
Its number is 666 5th Avenue. Already, we sense there is the Devil’s hand in this thing. ‘666′ is the ‘mark of the beast’ in the Old Testament. It prefigures the coming of the Antichrist, if we remember right. But what it marks in the property market is probably the very peak of the biggest property bubble in American history…and perhaps the peak of the whole worldwide property bubble. Which is to say, it might herald the coming of something big and bad.
