Sticky Postings
The solutions we are offering to our readers here at Sensibly Eclectic, are diverse. We hope to encourage a rapid shift into new, (or old) technologies that can help lead to less centralization in regards to the fulfillment of our basic needs. From there, we feel that a better World could possibly grow out of the old, (pun intended).
As we search around, interesting things crop up, (another pun). So far, you have seen some basic, common sense on growing your own food, being prepared, and moving towards an increasing, more secure, self-sufficiency. There are choices to make now, and it seems clear that when you see the signs of change, the actions you take now are better than regrets you might have later.
There are the practical and money-saving aspects of the various methods we are exploring, but there are also other benefits to be had, like the enjoyment of doing things yourself, a greater sense of independence and a sense of accomplishment. You can also consider sharing your knowledge, experience, and even the fruits of your labor, with others.
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Wednesday, May 7. 2008
"If a widespread pattern of [knock-and-announce] violations were shown . . . there would be reason for grave concern."
—Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, in Hudson v. Michigan, June 15, 2006.
During his State of the Union address, President Bush spoke about the horrifying torture techniques Saddam Hussein has inflicted on prisoners in Iraq. He described the use of electric shock, burning with hot irons, acid, and rape. He said that the Iraqi government tortured children to get their parents to confess to crimes. President Bush concluded: "If this isn't evil, then evil has no meaning."
| ... the memorandum may indicate a specific intent by administration officials to engage in torture, which is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, a breach of several international treaties by which the United States is bound, and a serious crime under domestic U.S. law. The Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Convention against Torture, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights—treaties to which the United States is a party—forbid torture under any and all circumstances.
"Senior administration officials tried to drape a thin veneer of legality over abuse that has been unconditionally prohibited, even during war, throughout modern times,” said Roth. “If this legal advice were accepted, dictators worldwide would be handed a ready-made excuse to ignore one of the most basic prohibitions of international human rights law."
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Tuesday, May 6. 2008
Most Americans know Monsanto because of what it sells to put on our lawns— the ubiquitous weed killer Roundup. What they may not know is that the company now profoundly influences—and one day may virtually control—what we put on our tables.
Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination.
The Square Deal is a fixture in Eagleville, a place where farmers and townspeople can go for lightbulbs, greeting cards, hunting gear, ice cream, aspirin, and dozens of other small items without having to drive to a big-box store in Bethany, the county seat, 15 miles down Interstate 35.
Everyone knows Rinehart, who was born and raised in the area and runs one of Eagleville’s few surviving businesses. The stranger came up to the counter and asked for him by name.
“Well, that’s me,” said Rinehart.
As Rinehart would recall, the man began verbally attacking him, saying he had proof that Rinehart had planted Monsanto’s genetically modified (G.M.) soybeans in violation of the company’s patent. Better come clean and settle with Monsanto, Rinehart says the man told him—or face the consequences.
Rinehart was incredulous, listening to the words as puzzled customers and employees looked on. Like many others in rural America, Rinehart knew of Monsanto’s fierce reputation for enforcing its patents and suing anyone who allegedly violated them. But Rinehart wasn’t a farmer. He wasn’t a seed dealer. He hadn’t planted any seeds or sold any seeds. He owned a small—a really small—country store in a town of 350 people. He was angry that somebody could just barge into the store and embarrass him in front of everyone. “It made me and my business look bad,” he says. Rinehart says he told the intruder, “You got the wrong guy.”
When the stranger persisted, Rinehart showed him the door. On the way out the man kept making threats. Rinehart says he can’t remember the exact words, but they were to the effect of: “Monsanto is big. You can’t win. We will get you. You will pay.”
Scenes like this are playing out in many parts of rural America these days as Monsanto goes after farmers, farmers’ co-ops, seed dealers—anyone it suspects may have infringed its patents of genetically modified seeds. As interviews and reams of court documents reveal, Monsanto relies on a shadowy army of private investigators and agents in the American heartland to strike fear into farm country. They fan out into fields and farm towns, where they secretly videotape and photograph farmers, store owners, and co-ops; infiltrate community meetings; and gather information from informants about farming activities. Farmers say that some Monsanto agents pretend to be surveyors. Others confront farmers on their land and try to pressure them to sign papers giving Monsanto access to their private records. Farmers call them the “seed police” and use words such as “Gestapo” and “Mafia” to describe their tactics.
Bang a gong, folks. I'm just a jeepster for your love!
Some of us are now acutely and astutely aware that this is it. Make no mistake where you are!
There is a monster and it WILL NOT obey. However, we have to account for the monster and see it as a negative, mirror image of what we conceive of as not-monster before we get anywhere other than endless, mindless, repetitive circular existence.
In honor of the non-existers who have truly taken the time and effort to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous non-fortune, I bow to the light that is within you that is within me = Namaste!
Now, in your contemplations of the important jazz of existence versus its opposite, surely you have wandered along some common philosophical highways and byways that have led your awareness to amusing, ring-pass-naughts as well as frustrating, even maddening, personally apocalyptic dead-ends. If you have sincerely been following this trademarked brand of incredible, anarchistic madness, then you may be ready for the big bang of potential that awaits your naked, shivering, potentially reluctant sense of self, (that product of nothing more than retained memory). Hopefully, you have gone from a seeker to a sucker back to being a seeker who sucks, at this stage. It is hoped that you have been jaded enough to know that enough of knowing is not about knowing enough and are ready to jump off that proverbial cliff into the abyss of freedom that ever beckons like a fancy prostitute on the corner of Nothingness St. and Eternity Av.
Continue reading "Forcing the State"
Monday, May 5. 2008
“Both political parties are good-to-go with waging the current radioactive wars - using Depleted and non-Depleted Uranium both - upon dying nations while outraged Americans in an ever-sinking economy devoted to wars everlasting lose, first, their vacations, then eventually their jobs, their homes, their medical coverage, and their ability to put wholesome, non-genetically modified, non-irradiated food on their dinner tables.”
Interview with “Building A New World Conference” Organizer, Garda Ghista
By Cathy Garger
To anyone who reads anything more than whatever phony “news” the Associated Press puts out, it will certainly come as no surprise that the US political system has failed its own citizens and perpetrated irreparable harm and destruction throughout the world. US national elections have been rigged, the Constitution, civil rights, and human rights laws have, for all intents and purposes, been trashed and burned, while an increasingly brutal, militant Police State watches our every move while committing unthinkable crimes of injustice…primarily targeting those of darker skin, indigenous peoples, the poor, and Muslims.
Starting in 1991, those in power have been resolute in perpetuating eternal genocide on entire nations in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North
Sunday, May 4. 2008
The Potential Power of the Purified Mind
By Michael Goodspeed and Michael Armstrong
AUTHORS' NOTE: This article has no copyright. It is
intended for duplication and re-distribution, so long as credit is given,
and so long as no alterations are made to the contents herein including the
authors' bylines and all hyperlinks and cited URL's.
Most spiritual aspirants have some familiarity with the concept of acceptance.
The word permeates much of the spiritual literature as a corollary to the themes
of "surrender" and "forgiveness." The popular prayer/adage "I must accept what I
cannot change and change what I cannot accept" seems a noble and reasonable
policy in this tumultuous and/or indifferent Universe. Bad things happen to good
people and we accept it because, we tell ourselves, it's all part of God's great
plan, it's "for our own good," and in any event, we don't have any other choice.
Acceptance is surely a valid mental exercise insofar as it helps one experience
life in a manner that is more lighthearted and friendly. We can't change other
people, we can't undo the past, and we can't predict every trial and travail
looming over the horizon. But what if man's tacit "acceptance" of his general
helplessness and victim hood in a dangerous, troubled world is itself a major
barrier to doing something about it?
From the day we are born, we are taught to accept the unacceptable as a matter
of course. We all learn quickly that illness, disease, injuries, pain, trauma,
aging, loss, and finally death are a fair price to pay for the privilege of
"living." And neither scientific, nor most religious or spiritual literature
ever contradicts these expectations. Mainstream biology and medicine tell us
that we are mechanistic organisms born by chance and destined to die in a
hostile, disconnected universe.
Continue reading "The Potential Power of the Purified Mind"
Friday, May 2. 2008
Americans unload prized belongings to make ends meetNEW YORK -- The for-sale listings on the online hub Craigslist come with plaintive notices, like the one from the teenager in Georgia who said her mother lost her job and pleaded, "Please buy anything you can to help out." Or the seller in Milwaukee who wrote in one post of needing to pay bills - and put a diamond engagement ring up for bids to do it. Struggling with mounting debt and rising prices, faced with the toughest economic times since the early 1990s, Americans are selling prized possessions online and at flea markets at alarming rates. To meet higher gas, food and prescription drug bills, they are selling off grandmother's dishes and their own belongings. Some of the household purging has been extremely painful - families forced to part with heirlooms.
Monday, April 28. 2008
Wild Times AheadWaiting for the End of Civilization with Anarcho-Primitivist Kevin TuckerOn a Sunday afternoon in Frick Park, Kevin Tucker abandons the trail. He lopes across a trickle of a creek and climbs a scantly wooded hillside, searching for a spot he knows. He crouches beside a rotting log, tipping it to look for the kind of food he hopes to survive on someday. The lion's mane mushroom can grow bigger than a human head, but what's memorable is its texture: spongy and moist, its fibers oozing with rich golden jelly. Tucker touches it. "It feels weird," he muses. "It feels like some kind of Hostess thing." Tucker edits Species Traitor: An Insurrectionary Anarcho-Primitivist Journal, whose goal is to predict, and promote, the imminent collapse of civilization. Anarcho-primitivism holds that we should respond to that collapse by becoming nomadic hunter-gatherers ... the way of life that defined human history until the (relatively recent) advent of agriculture. Snip ... The !Kung inhabited marginal lands ... the most fruitful real estate having been seized by agriculturalists ... and lacked electricity, metal tools and permanent homes. But Sahlins argued that they were affluent because all their needs were met. The !Kung spent only a few hours each day gathering food. The rest of the time they played, socialized or slept. "The research suggests that the more complex socially organized society you live in, the more you have to work," says Pitt anthropology professor Richard Scaglion, who in the 1970s spent a year-and-a-half living among the Abelam people of the New Guinea highlands. Snip ... And if the primitivist worldview is part prescription for the good life, it's also part prediction ... a forecast supported, once again, by history and science. Diamond's 2005 book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, for instance, offers case studies ranging from the Maya to modern Rwanda, each demonstrating how societies can doom themselves by living beyond the means their environment can support.
Eat locally, survive globallyOur mothers always told us to eat our greens. Today, the injunction should be to eat green. Eating is many things – a necessity, a pleasure, part of our culture – but it is also an environmental act. Industrial agriculture, the current structure of the North American food system, is based on low prices to farmers, high usage of chemicals and copious amounts of oil. These factors must be altered if Canada is to have plentiful, safe and nutritious food in the future. With oil now costing $120 (U.S.) a barrel, we are entering an era of peak oil prices. Gas is approaching the record of $1.26 (Canadian.) a litre in Ontario and many forecast it will reach $1.40 by the summer. This surge in the cost of fossil fuels will have profound impacts in a host of areas, not least in the way we organize our food supply. Strawberries in December will soon become a luxury few can afford. It takes 35 gallons of oil, or the equivalent of a barrel, to raise a steer to go to market. Twenty per cent of American petroleum is consumed in the producing and moving of food.
The food crisis begins to biteRioting in Haiti. Rationing in America. Queues in Egypt. Protests in Afghanistan. As the price of food continues to soar, the impact is being felt by people around the globe Comment: The simulation now projects famine upon the masses, poverty on the middle class, utter destitution on the poor, and the rich will inherit the Earth.
Since many of us grow up in a reality that is largely an illusion based on delusions that are the product of historical hallucinations, both ancient and recent, it is no wonder that solutions and consensus are hard to discern. Our house is well divided and so it looks like it must fall.
The fractured fariy tale born of elitist capitalism and corporate government functions as a control mechanism that, diabolically speaking, is both precise and highly effective. This clockwork orange World is now at a threshold and those of use who are not in the upper percentile can be certain that life as we knew it will be changing drastically from here on in. That is regardless of a passive, sheeplistic, deer in the headlights response or a more intelligent, give me liberty or give me death reaction.
Of course, it should be obvious that the best investment people who are looking for a hedge on this crisis can make is food. Without food, the rest of your ideas, possessions and investments are totally worthless and you are certainly more vulnerable to the chance cards that are going to be dealt to you in the end game being played by your masters. Or are you still taking easy to procure and food supplies for granted?
For those who can put aside the exaggerated form of personal responsibility that, like Atlas with the World on his shoulders, gives them a distorted view that they are totally responsible for their fate and their reality, there is a rude awakening to be had. All theory and speculation aside, you simply have to have a sense of proportion. How far will you go before you walk away from it, regardless of the outcome? Just watch the meter of your own expectations and see how low it starts to go. Simply keep track of your overall returns for what you put into your life, needs, and desires, and pay attention to how much the returns diminish. That is the best gauge for judging how your participation in the system is functioning and it can be a good wake-up call that counters the incessant barrage of propaganda that effectively cajoles you to stay yolked to the Beast of Civilization, even when you can smell the carcass starting to rot.
If you are not the Captain, why go down with the ship? If things are going sour as we speak, why let intangible coercions in the form of hope and faith serve as opium that numbs you against your own survival and functions? Any living creature is going to have a self interest in its own viable continuity, but that does not mean that our personal realization of freedom has to vie with common interests. Self interest and even individualism are not necessarily synonymous with selfishness. Reasonably speaking, it is easy to see that strong unions between those who wish to survive pragmatically can be in one's own interest. That is a simple and reasonable approach, but fear and panic with a helping of greed based on modern thought can easily turn that potential into mutual destruction and chaos.
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