Thursday, July 30, 2009

Sustainable Blather

Scott McGuire

For most of my grown life I’ve been a plant person; farmer, gardener, tree-planter, landscaper… and for quite a while now have been beating the sustainable-living drum as a “food-supply activist”. For the past few years, in addition to growing a backyard demonstration garden (www.greentownaction.tv/sustainable-garden), I’ve been teaching classes on plant-craft, as well as going to meetings and organizing activities like the Neighborhood Garden Project, matching folks wanting to expand their gardens with others without any space for one. The Transition Towns movement is well underway in our small Oregon town, which is quickly becoming a haven for retirees and other equity immigrants from California.

But I’m burnt out on all the blah-blah. Sometime last spring I stopped going to these kinds of meetings due to the lack of focus and distracting blather that never seems to get grounded in any compounding action (oh, and it was also time to sow seeds, so seeya). One symptom of denial around the immensity of the changes required/pending, is the invisible goo that fills a room causing everyone to think and move as if they were underwater, or in a dream where you can’t run away fast enough or find where you left your backpack… It’s absolutely surreal, the effective slow-motionizing of cognitive dissonance.

Some of the suggestions for action steps, coming from otherwise intelligent and informed people, I find either unworkable or outright absurd; I’m drawn into conversations I’ve concluded years ago, which is frustrating and useless and costs a baby-sitter. Here’s an example:

If neighborhood gardens could become a retail business I think that more people would have the incentive to spend their time and effort to make more neighborhood gardens happen.

The idea is that with promotion and education 'lawn care' professionals could become market gardeners. Are there city regulations that would make this difficult?

I would love to see a meeting organized with lawn care professional and gardeners to see if there was any consensus that produce production could be profitable.

And another:

I suggest that we design and implement The Ashland Front/Back-Yard & Community Edible Gardens Project (ACEGP).

I'm talking about a very focused project: to accomplish a 5-year goal of utilizing 30% of existing front-yards, back-yards, vacant lots, a larger portion of neighborhood parks, every school campus, and businesses with the space, to implement organic methods for edible plant gardening. And, have a longer-term goal to reach 80% by 2020.

First of all, I can’t muster much respect for “lawn care professionals” otherwise known as mow-blow-and-go guys. Setting aside my personal political prejudices is difficult, because for over three decades of doing landscaping projects as well as “maintenance” work (some weekly m-b-g), I’ve been continually under-cut in the bidding by illegal immigrant “landscapers” who know very little about plants and basic English, but can sure wail those small, loud 2-stroke engines. Yet these idiots get hired by the Wal-Mart minds of even the wealthiest, conscious townies, neither of whom will ever call each other neighbors (but they have so much in common!). And of course the work is seasonal, while the bills aren’t. Trying to support a family from this scenario leaves a sour taste. Time for something new!

It is not an exaggeration to say that lawn care horticulture is utterly saturated in the repugnant toxicities of the worst chemicals ever cooked up to make a profit. Chemicals exist to replace work (herbicides; weed-pulling, ferticides; composting, etc.). No such thing as soil-building, recycling nutrients, or deep digging in the perverted universe of ToxoLawnChemGreenCorp. Educating these guys about organic food growing when they can’t read the labels on their own buckets of poison is definitely the long way home.

There are a zillion regulations in every jurisdiction that hinder making money off your back-yard. Business license? Sanitation? Worker’s Compensation? Parking? These are off the top of my head, there are surely more, and are all possible hurdles to bureaucratic legitimacy. Just try to cut down an ornamental shade tree for more sunshine for food growing. The Tree Commission will crawl up your alley and slap you with a big fine faster than you can say “persimmon”.
I believe that the one most effective thing our city could do to promote backyard food production is to create parity within the water billing. If your property sprouts nothing but worthless shrubs and lawns, you pay the top rate. Demonstrate a substantial transition to edibles and receive a discount. The devil’s in the details as always, and spirals back to a core revenue glitch: the City needs the receipts from the water usage to function. How do we incentivize home food production without choking the flow of dollars back to the City?

Now who actually owns all those nice lawns? The people who live behind them? Not always. Not even mostly. It’s my impression that owner/residents are the minority, and that at least half the homes in town are rentals, or possessed by an absentee owner. Insert the Property Management Company into the equation, many of whom operate their own Mow Blow and Go divisions to make another cut off the properties they manage.

Most homeowners simply want to maintain their market value without a hassle (good luck with that). Who wants the garden? Often it’s the renter, who in these days of depressed home sales and increased availability of rentals might actually have some clout, as in, “let me make a garden here, or I’ll rent somewhere else”. Yet most rational renters are justifiably hesitant to invest tons of work and manure into a place they could be asked to vacate within a single cycle of the moon.

A lot of homeowners have not yet figured out that a garden might actually increase the appeal of their house for sale. Even so, in growing numbers are the home/owner/dwellers who in order to grow their own food either must be able to afford the moderate expense of hiring someone with the skills, tools and muscle to help (that’s me!), or face a much more expensive and steep learning curve with fresh blisters and too many trips to the rental yard.

Maybe one solution is to start an alternative landscape company, offer to take over existing contracts, rip out the junk and plant food. Could this company make money doing this for the same amount, trading chemicals for the serious labor and know-how required? I’m not reaching for a pencil and calculator right now, but someone else just might…

Besides, how much money is made from growing food in the first place? These days, based on the cheap chemicals, cheap gas and massive cheap transportation, not much. Food’s pretty cheap for what you get, staying alive and all. Sometimes really good food fetches dollars per pound, but it’s mostly still cents, two digits on the wrong side of the decimal.

Next door, the neighbors are calibrating their checkbooks with a scale that matches their participation in the real estate market/investment realm of dollars, 5 or 6 digits way over on the other side of the decimal and much closer to the dollar sign. As long as property is valued according to “dollars per square foot”, how will cents-worth of food ever compete in the same market for the same grid of earth-space? These two economies of scale may as well be on different planets.

Food will become precious again when the true value of a meal re-asserts itself in the minds and bellies of our neighbors. When the Centralized Machine of Big Ag begins to creak and croak from all of this not being so cheap anymore, we’ll begin to snap out of our complacent grocery store trance and recall the deep worth of a dependable local food supply. Blink, blink, where are all the farmers?

Of course, we can all grow more food in our backyards to share the value of its nutrition and goodwill bonding, without requiring that it make us a buck. The simplest tried-and-true formula for community building has always been Feed One Another. What is the point of “community building games and exercises” without a food supply? No food, no community, because everyone has left to go where they think the food might be.

Even if a household couldn’t make decent money (what a concept) from growing food, it could offset some material costs like I’m doing this year with a garden CSA or CSG where I feed 7 households for 5-6 months for less than $20 per share per week. This isn’t enough dollars to make a big impact on a modern household budget, and only makes sense if the household is already mad enough to grow significant amounts of food for themselves anyway.

In my case, this small group serves to absorb the excess produce and cover some expenses. But unlike most tiny city lots, I’m in an old farmhouse with 2/3’s of an acre and a well for the gardens, so no water bill for growing, only household use. Still, more and more versions of home production could expand this niche, somewhere between community gardens and farm CSAs.
But if you want to make some money in your backyard, get a medical marijuana card and grow six plants. You’ll make thousands, enough to invest in local agriculture in any way you see fit. I’m not kidding. Of course, this is recommended only if you’re fortunate enough to live in one of the 15 states (and rising) that have passed such sensible legislation that challenges the rapidly eroding federal Prohibition. In the process we’ll be un-demonizing one of the most useful agricultural plants ever to exist, because we’ll need fibers and oils as much as foods when we finally take stock for ourselves. (And a little safe plant medicine can’t hurt as much as Big Pharma’s billion dollar mind-numbing boondoggle…).

And then it comes down to the biggest hurdle, the re-skilling. Who really knows how to do any of this food production stuff? Within the general population, about the same percentage as locally grown food itself; 5-10% at best. The vast majority is clueless, and without a clue they need to get a clue. This is the true bottleneck when awareness finally turns.

I’ve spoken at length with our mayor (who was elected on a sustainability platform) about an educational farm facility, cutting out some Parks Dept. land to develop an ongoing learning center. Because truth is, even the best class or workshop is woefully inadequate, being only a slice. The essence of plant-craft is not only knowing what to do, but when to do it. Timing is everything, and learners need a seasonal context into which they can grow a consolidated understanding of how all the pieces fit together.

This would become a destination place, where locals and visitors spend dollars to learn Big Sustainable Skills. This would be an excellent project for the Transition Towns movement, as it blends many an agenda into a purposeful creation that is both achievable and politically possible right now.

The number of backyard food gardens is growing, and will continue to increase, although in increments necessarily defined by the growing season itself. People can decide to grow their own any time, but that decision can only be applied during the next turn around the sun. Living on plant time requires a deep personal commitment, because it’s so at odds with cubicle time. Getting “the public” to focus on “projects” (ACEGP above) is like herding cats, but a shining beautiful farm for teaching will draw and inspire and educate at once. And it might just break even before all the banks are broken.

When the City Parks Dept. starts ripping out ornamentals for edibles, citizens will do the same. (Or is it the other way around?). Then we can start in on the School District (which I believe has more farmable land and water rights than the City), kick out the venal corporate nugget-pusher currently holding the cafeteria contract, and start feeding our own children our own food. Then get the re-skilling into the curriculum, and boot the little buggers out into the field!

Just kidding. Once the kids know how to grow it, we’ll be on our way to hopeful.

Scott McGuire is an organic farming and permaculture master based in Ashland, Oregon.
**************************************************************************
From Jenna Orkin:

US/Economic Collapse
Incredible Shrinking Boomer Economy
Geithner Assures a `Concerned' China the U.S. Will Shrink Record Deficit
"Concerned" is the new, "scared out of our gourds."
Real Treasury Yields Highest In History
U.S. to conduct record long-dated Treasury sales -- $115 billion (from Rice Farmer)
But China's still concerned:
China to hasten dollar dump to buy resources, energy (from Rice Farmer)
June U-6 Unemployment Rate Topped 20% (25% SGS) in Michigan, Oregon, Nevada, California, South Carolina and Rhode Island
U.S. Jobless Claims Rise More Than Expected
States Where the Unemployed Are Giving Up (from Rice Farmer)
Caterpillar: Second Quarter Down 66%
Foreign cash for U.S. jobs
Reappoint Him
Roubini endorses Bernanke.
U.S. Home Vacancies Hit 18.7 Million; What's the Real Story?
Detroit Heads For Bankruptcy; 50 Cities Must "Shrink to Survive"
Hotel Hell - Luxury Hotels Foreclosed
UN Group Gets Look at Post-Katrina Housing Woes
US prepares major terrorism readiness exercise (from Rice Farmer)
High Frequency Trading and Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs Says Attempts to Reduce Speculation Could Disrupt Markets
Video: We Now Have A Total Gangster Government (from Rice Farmer)
And if no government, we'll still have gangsters:
GOP Candidate: If We Lose Elections, We Still Have Guns (from Rice Farmer)
Dow Chemical Loses $486M In Q2
Short Range Missiles Biggest Threat

Swine Flu
Swine flu cases doubled to 100,000 in one week
Who should get the swine flu vaccine?

Energy/Environment/Science
Hydrocarbons in the Deep Earth
Can the Military Find the Answer to Alternative Energy? (from Rice Farmer)
"The U.S. forces deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq are voracious consumers of energy. As a result they have become perilously dependent on long, costly, and vulnerable convoys of diesel-fuel tankers. More vehicles are used to transport and guard the fuel than are deployed in actual combat."
World temperatures set for record highs
World Will Warm Faster Than Predicted in Next Five Years, Study Warns
Insects to be brought in to control Japanese Knotweed
Swiss Scientists Aim to Create Synthetic Brain Within Decade

Europe
Jobless Youth: Will Europe's Gen Y Be Lost?
The Pain in Spain: Recession Hits Hard
Drawing up the Drawbridges: Europe Falls Out of Love with Labor Migration
Counterfeiters Target the Euro
Defiance as Pound Crashes: Brits Own Up to Euro-Phobia
Massive Fraud in France: Societe Generale Hit By €4.9 Billion Crime
The Banks that Wouldn't Lend: Experts Warn of New Credit Crunch in Germany
Put the Champagne Away: Too Soon for Optimism on German Economy, Survey Reveals Criticism Grows Over Banking Data Deal
Germans Hoarding Traditional Light Bulbs

China:
New 1 Plus 1 Child Policy

21 comments:

Paul said...

Inspiring post - thank you Scott. A timely reminder to myself not to focus on the unfolding conspiracies in this artificial digital world that I spend far too much time in and to go and get my hands dirty with some real soil...!

I read the One child plus one post with very mixed feelings. My (adopted) daughter was born in China - to a mother who (we assume; we will never know) was forced to abandon her on the day she was born - because of the one child policy. She will carry the emotional scars from living in an institution for her first 18 months for the rest of her life. As will all the other little girls we met at the orphanage. It would have been far far better if she could have lived her life with her natural parents - as poor as they assuredly are. But then we would not have her beautiful spirited funny amazing soul in our family.

And without the one child policy - there would be so many more mouths in the world which will not be able to get food in the coming times....

Robert said...

Indeed, Thank you Scott. Around here, the urban farming revolution is coming out of the once heavily industrial, "wastelands" of places like West Oakland. Check here.
http://www.cityslickerfarms.org/
This is one of several here. I'd say forget about the upscale 'burbs. They ain't gonna get it until it's way past too late. They're still way too hung up on their asthetics and money.
Meanwhile, the "ghetto" is transforming itself into a garden. Take heart!

gamedog said...

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Scott, I have had similar experiences trying to get my community to grow some food in our 3 acre plot. Ironically it is probably a good thing I could not drum up enthusiasm for the project as surely I would have put people off for ever as events turned out this week.

After soil building, improving our hard clay into something starting to look good, for the last 4 years over here in the UK using permaculture principles, sheet mulching etc. I thought I was finally getting there, until I brought in some manure contaminated with Aminopyralid weedkiller this season (around 12 tons of it).

Not only have I lost the potatoes, legumes, and tomatoes from this years crop, but I'm told that after rotivating in the manure, and covering with expensive sheeting, I'm advised not to grow in the soil again for a further two years! I can hardly face the work let alone the loss of land use. This has crippled my food supply and destroyed our moral.

It's ironic the "Dow Chemical Loses $486M In Q2" link was posted today, I hope the company goes bust so it can't poison our land any further!

The chemical is a selective weedkiller used on pasture land to remove broad leaf weeds, it bonds to the grass so is eaten by horses/cows, passes straight through and remains in the ground for 2 years, further contaminating silage crops and spreading the poison further as manure.

If you have any of these products by Dow Chemical in the US, you might want to ask a few questions of the manure supplier before you repeat my woe in your own plots, make sure the supplier has not imported contaminated winter feed/bedding also. Here are some of the UK trade names containing aminopyralid.

* Banish
* Forefront
* Halcyon
* Pharoah
* Runway
* Synero
* Upfront

This UK site has further info: http://www.muckinthemuck.com/about-aminopyralid

more from the RHS http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles0708/Weedkiller-manure.asp

Small mercy this happened now, post fall this could have cost lives!

Paul said...

Blackout: Heinberg on dwindling coal reserves and the siren song of “clean coal”

A review of Richard Heinberg’s latest book on Peak Coal....

Gamedog - sorry to hear of your disaster! It’s a real bugger! (for our American cousins that’s an English expression meaning mishap or misfortune!)

Rice Farmer said...

Brother, I feel for you. Right now, I personally don't sell any of my surplus, just give it away. Thanks to Big Ag and imports, the money I would make would not be worth the trouble. So I give bales of rice and bags of veggies to charity, neighbors, and relatives.

But the times are changing. We have started a new project here in the village to bring in young people and have them reclaim farmland, much of which has been abandoned for decades. Fortunately, someone talked the local government into subsidizing this effort, otherwise it would be impossible. So when the food system collapses, as it surely will in the near future, we'll be a little better positioned to ride it out. And then I will be selling rice and vegetables for respectable sums.

So in my view, what we should be doing now is preparing for the food system collapse so that we have something in place to help feed people during the painful transition period.

businessman said...

Scott...Thanks for the great post.

Your ability to generate solid income from your business may have more to do with the overall timing, than it does with a lack of opportunity. As long as people can buy their food easily and affordably in their local supermarket, there's relatively little need from them for someone with your own skills to assist them. But the big wave for your skills will definitely be coming...

Much like the idea of Starbucks trying to open coffee houses en masse nationwide in the 1960s, or someone trying to convince business people of going full-out with Internet marketing for their own businesses in the 1980s, in both situations the timing would have definitely been wrong...but the huge wave of opportunity for both was still coming.

People will need your skills the more we get into experiencing the ramifications of Peak Oil, and the more it affects the availability of food for the average family. So if you prepare for the coming wave and carefully position yourself as the expert at what you do, you could generate a ton of business for yourself. You could do this locally, or you could even consider being the guy who teaches people how to run a business at doing this in their own local areas all over the country. And if you don't like the idea of running the business end of things, you could team up with someone who has great business development and management skills, and you could then handle the teaching part to the individual new business owners of how to properly handle the agricultural end of the business.

RayLeeUS said...

Mark Thoma's article about reappointing Bernanke for Fed Chair is one of the most shallow and downright corny analyses of our financial crisis that I believe I have read to date. Mark, your approach "makes me ill" as you clearly show no regard for "diagnosing" the actual "disease." Your logic is "ill" advised: that anyone else who has not been in a leadership position during an economic "emergency" and who didn't participate in the recent "resuccisitation" of the economy (which still is on "life-support" by the way) must therefore be inferior to Bernanke. Should he therefore be appointed for a life term because of the "intensive care" he has provided?

I guess there's a sort of Stockholm Syndrome that has kicked in now with some of these nuts. "Yeah, they gave us poison and we almost died, but hey - they came through with an antidote that is letting us live a little longer." Yeah, I guess so, as long as Obama's "independent board of doctors and health care experts" determine that this patient is still worthy of receiving health care. After all, the quality of life for a patient that is in the hole for $23 trillion of bail-out money alone is not so great, and that has to be taken into account by the "new T-4 panel."

Medical metaphors aside, I suppose Thoma would also favor appointing actual former Nazis to serve on Obama's new panel considering that they have the real-life experience in helping determine who deserves to get life-saving medical treatment and who doesn't. Would you want those decisions being made by someone inexperienced in coordinated population reduction?

businessman said...

It Is Now Official: The World Health Organization (WHO) Recommends Mandatory Injections to Almost 200 Countries.

Click Here for the Article

greenjean said...

We are city farmers in Western Washington, where the presence of city farmers is growing fast, and we are in the process of starting an urban farming school to train people not only in how to farm successfully in an urban setting, but also to recruit others and help them do it too. We will include a strong marketing component in the school, as a recruiting incentive and to serve the non-farming segment of the community. City farmers must have a market and the city must have a local food supply, and we can't start to build it on the day the Safeway goes empty.

We like-minded folks need to be talking to each other, sharing information and encouragement. We don't need to wait for government support, and better not, since governments at all levels are heavily invested in denying that the current industrial food system is in death throes, or anything else that would impinge upon our belief in "full recovery." Call your stock broker right away, don't miss out.

We know what we're doing, and why, and we know it's right. That's enough to keep me going.

Sebastian Ernst Ronin said...

Scott, but has the clampdown not started, as of to-day with the passage of HR 2749?

Yet on another "Green tangent" for anyone who might be interested to see how things go politically when a Peak Oiler goes up against Greens, then by my guest (see link). I've already been called a cartoon caricature, delusional, paranoid, Nazi and intellectual succubus. I actually like "intellectual succubus." =:-D

Green Party of Nova Scotia Forum

SpanktorTheGreat said...

this is invaluable thanks!

RanD said...

What WE're Doing - #4

I fully empathize with folks' unfortunate experiences attempting to grow their own food on their own plots. I too have experienced disasters when trying to live right in a world interlaced with human wrongs. After being forced by enough stings from this extremely technologized world of which we're all variously co-creator-user-participants, however, I eventually came round to realizing that the problem can only be successfully approached as something systemically rooted throughout the naive fibres of our collective human selves; and rather than lose heart or curse the ever convenient A to Z Chemical Co.'s, the Bilderbuggers, the Rathschilds, the Fedys, the Republicrats, the honkies, illegal aliens, terrorists, Powers That Be etc as the culprits to string and quarter for offending "US", "WE" need to expand our collective consciousness paradigm. (You know, typical "RanD" stuff.)

WE -- i.e. all of us -- need to see and generally acknowledge that WE are the ones who are doing these things to ourselves. DOW Chemical Co isn't poisoning our land. They're merely legally making the poison that farmers legally use on their pastures to legally enhance their prospects of competing against each other for a bigger buck and passing on the by-products of their efforts to others so WE can all economically benefit ourselves via the life and lifestyle of modern man living in the dream world that our & our forebears' collective ambitions have created. Hell... all of us that can have been routinely up for getting as wealthy as fate allows doing this sort of stuff! Haven't WE?

WE are the ones that employ ourselves to produce & use all these machines, gadgets, chemicals, plastics, resources, ideas... chop off mountaintops, damn up all the rivers, over produce ourselves, eat all the fish, foul the air & water & soil etc. I mean -- Hey Wow! -- isn't this exactly what laissez faire ("don't pay too much 'tension to those damn labels, tree-huggers, 'vironmentalists etc") non-stop ever-going & ever-growing & ever-consuming profit oriented capitalistic enterprizing is all about? I mean hell!.. Damn sure gotta keep our economic system goin' no matter how many more meaningless numbers we gotta keep injecting into ourselves! Don't WE?

Obviously, with each day's passing, our having too long too gloriously waltzed to the mantra of mammon is now unveiling way more than we've heretofore been willing to look at, accept, understand, and do what we need to about. I don''t know better words to say it other than wake-up time is hollering at us loud & clear. As MCR so grandly put it: "IS[N'T] ANYBODY CATCHING ON YET?"

businessman said...

If you want a big laugh take a look at the cover of the August 3rd edition of Newsweek Magazine. In massive letters on the cover their headline story proclaims, "The Recession is Over!"

Chris Shaw, Australia said...

A direct collision between coal and arable land in Australia. The motive?... possibly the proximity of an existing rail corridor (video available):

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2009/s2628992.htm

...enjoy!

RanD said...

Erratum: The title of RanD's above post: "What WE're Doing - #4" -- should read: What WE're Doing - #5

Diaspora said...

“Who should get the swine flu vaccine? Robert Colvile reveals the ethical dilemma facing the Government over the coming months.”
The dilemma over getting the Swine Flu vaccine goes way beyond morals. What an oxymoron to use “ethical” and “Government” in the same sentence. I would urge all to carefully research these shots before rolling up your selves. We MCR devotees know well by now to ask those 6 big questions: Who?, What?, When?, Where?, How? and Why?
“Three-stage vaccinations may create perfect cytokine storm.
The vaccine is to be given by a series of three injections, meta-analyst and vaccine researcher Patrick Jordan: the first injection will be for the purpose of turning off the victim's immune system. The second injection will be for the purpose of loading people with deadly organisms. And the third injection will be to turn the immune system back on for the purpose of creating a cytokine storm that will deal a lethal blow to the body…Even if this described scenario does not develop, Jordan points out that the current "swine flu" vaccine is made with an adjuvant that may contain a material poison, salmonella, or typhoid fever toxin, along with squalene. Although not known with certainty, the second round of injections given to the soldiers in 1918 is believed to have contained typhus. Squalene produces auto-immunity and eventually death in everyone who takes it….Squalene contributed to the cascade reactions known as Gulf War Syndrome that left GIs with arthritis, fibromyalgia, lymphadenopathy, photosensitive rashes, chronic fatigue, chronic headaches, ulcers, dizziness, weakness, memory loss, seizures, mood changes, neuro-psychiatric problems, multiple sclerosis, lupus, and other diseases.” http://blogs.healthfreedomalliance.org/blog/2009/07/30/three-stage-vaccinations-may-create-perfect-cytokine-storm/

“Vaccinations: Deadly Immunity by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14510
From former Kansas State Trooper Greg Evensen: “Have you been made aware of the massive roadblock plans to stop all travelers for a vaccine bracelet (stainless steel band with a micro-chip on board) that will force you to take the shot? Refuse it? You will be placed on a prison bus and taken to a quarantine camp. What will you do when your children are NOT allowed into school without the shot? What will you do when you are not allowed into the workplace without the vaccine paperwork? Buy groceries? Go to the bank? Shop anywhere?? Get on a plane, bus or train? Use the toilet in the mall? Nope. Police officers will become loathed, feared, despised and remembered for their “official” duties.” http://newswithviews.com/Evensen/greg142.htm

Operation Fax to Stop the Vax website: http://www.thehealingpraxis.com/OperationFaxtoStoptheVax.html

agape wins said...

8,01,09. Try again.
Why would I pay $200, allow myself to be closely restrained
to a total stranger, to be totally Dependent, if not to
experience/prove that even with extreme freedom there is
still dependency?
Can Amae bring about a greater sense/realization of being
Dependent less?

Can we ever be truly FREE and still Alive?
I can't decide for you!
My explanation follows in a few days.
More dreams to follow.

RanD, your latest is spot on!!

Paul said...

Catherine Austin Fitts’ blog: Swine Flu: what I believe

quote

I believe one of the goals of the swine flu vaccine is depopulation. Perhaps it is the goal of a swine flu epidemic as well, whether bio-warfare or hype around a flu season

and...

As trillions of dollars were shifted out of America by legal and illegal means to reinvest in Asia and emerging markets and to build a global military empire, we left a sovereign nation economic model behind. Finally, the expense and corruption of empire resulted in bailouts of $12-14 trillion, delivering a new financial war chest to the people leading the financial engineering. Now we have exploding unemployment, an exploding federal deficit, an Inspector General for the TARP bailout program predicting that the ultimate bailout cost could rise to $23.7 trillion and a Congressional Budget Director who is concluding that we can no longer afford the social safety net.

That is, unless you change the actuarial assumptions in the budget – like life expectancy. Lowering immune systems and increasing toxicity levels combined with poor food, water and terrorizing stress will help do the trick. Review the history of vaccines rushed into production without proper testing and peer review - it is clear about the potential side effects. In addition, a plague can so frighten and help control people that they will accept the end of their current benefits (and the resulting implications to life expectancy) without objection. And a plague with proper planning can be highly profitable. Whatever the truth of what swine flu and related vaccines are, it can be used as a way to keep control in a situation that is quickly shifting out of control.

unquote

There is also a VERY lively debate about the flu and vaccination following her post (212 comments at last count!)

businessman said...

Diaspora...Thanks for the links to the vaccination information.

Paul...Thanks for the article by Catherine Austin Fitts. It's always great to have articles like that to pass along from people who have already become well respected from within the business community.

Dan Barker said...

Curiouser and curiouser. I go to the World Food Garden site and ask “Giving Away Vegetable gardens to poor people; building free vegetable gardens for poor people.” and find there is no category founded in that substance. Not even among the Garden Guerillas are people building free gardens for their neighbors. I am appalled at the depth of our collective selfishness. Then Scott McGuire’s colloquial rant righteously inquires after what is actually valued: the money, or the means to spend the money? The fate of the world rests with a human and its dibbler, a notion capitalized upon so relentlessly the talk becomes the fragrance of fertilizer, but provides not actual nutrient. He is also absolutely right: the very few of us who have a faint understanding of natural processes diminish beneath the digital tsunami, subsuming to a numbed slavery rather than accreting the pride of free people. The only way to make this not so is to consciously pick up the shovel, or wait until the reek of the dystopian collapse fades and the arduous struggle for survival is again resumed, though not so heavily numbered.
Its not that the compassionate phenomena hasn’t persisted since its inception in ‘84. People in Victoria, Olympia, Oakland, Flint, even WDC, are conducting life generating programs. What they do works. Thousands upon thousands of free vegetable gardens have been built in order to help lift the suffering of those among least able to help themselves. The begging question is why is this such rare strange ground, and why capital developments such as CSAs are seemingly touted as panacean. I’ll bet its that word “community”. A pleasant concept but hardly a reality. On the other hand, real work in the real world, real action taken upon accurate acceptance of that reality - that constitutes genuine progression. It also seems cautiously selfless service for those awake to the realities of co-evolution with the flora to help those numbed and dumbed so profoundly that they fail to see the credence of McGuire’s cogencies and hence pick up the shovel and get to work. Making money is important, and the community that is supported by the well being infused by building free vegetable gardens should in hand support that work. As Pres. Obama noticed, real change is generated from the bottom. For a recipe for Transcendental Squash, you can call.

Anonymous said...

Hey guys, take a break from all this doom and gloom and watch a spectacular Alaska nature film featuring glacial calving, ice bergs, humpback whales, orcas, bears, and more:

http://www.filmbaby.com/films/4148