Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
....
Sepp Holzer...

his main property is upland enough that he can
work with microclimates and extending seasons of
harvest by using the warmer downhill areas and
cooler areas uphill along with using rocks, sun
catchers and ponds.

also the film mentioned: _The Agricultural Rebel_.

Film? What film? You didn't say anything about no stinkin' film. You
using Cliff Notes too? ;O)

i should have written that "also a film was mentioned".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yScINihX_z8

??? i'm banned for the evening offline so i
can't look this up.


...
The term is borrowed from the
militaryindustrial complex President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of in
his famous 1961 farewell address.

he was a smart guy.

And he seemed to be human.

I wonder what the U.S. would have been like if Major General Smedley
Butler, USMC had been President.

Ike was a politician,
Certainly not in a contemporary context. Just look at his quotes. These
days politicians just keep their heads down, and continue taking the
money. Not a squeek about the Military-Industrial-Complex.

of course not, it is unpatriotic.


i think Butler rubbed too many
the wrong way.

He wasn't good at playing games.

"War is a Racket", by Smedley D. Butler.

"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil
intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the
National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping
of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall
Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua
for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I
brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in
1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way
unmolested."

lovely...


Such groups include corporations that
contract prison labor, construction companies, surveillance technology
vendors, lawyers, and lobby groups that represent them. Activists have
argued that the Prison-Industrial Complex as perpetuating a belief that
imprisonment is a quick yet ultimately flawed solution to social
problems such as homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental
illness, and illiteracy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_complex

More specifically see "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age
of Colorblindness" by Michelle Alexander and Cornel West.
http://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-I...dness/dp/15955
86431/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369114986&sr=1-1&keywords=The+New+J
im+Crow

gah! no, i'm not going there. it's all around me
already, i don't need to read more about it.

We have that option, for the time being, but people of color don't. It
gets shoved into their faces, like it or not.

unfortunate and worth fighting against.

I find it despicable and worth fighting against.
There are no more countries to colonize, so we are colonizing America.
The outrageous treatment of people of color in America, will boon be
visited on our paler citizen. The chickens will come home to roost.

at the moment around here most are more
interested in killing each other. when i was
a kid i learned hard lessons about racism.
it may matter what people say, but i also
pay attention to how they act. in my own
family it breaks my heart often enough.
i see a lot of "Christians" but not enough
Christians, so it goes.


...
Who would know, it has never been tried.

the first few years of Christianity were
supposedly communist in organisation and
sharing of resources, but that devolves like
any other system as soon as you put money
in any large amounts into the hands of a
few "leaders" or "organizers".

Ah, communist with a lower case "c", not an uppercase "C". In the middle
ages, at least in England, you would live in a village, and behind your
house you would have your garden, but beyond the garden was the
"Commons". There would be fields that were worked in common by the
inhabitants of the town for the good of everyone. There were also
forests where a person could hunt for game. Then came the closure laws,
and everyone was forced into the factories (more or less). Capitalism
seems like an extension of feudalism. Both require infinite resources.
Socialism (We the People) can be corrupted, as all can see, but it is
doable. First we have to get campaign financing out of private hands,
and everything else should flow from that, not that vigilance won't
still be required.


capitalism does not require infinite resources,
i dunno where you get that idea from.

As I noted in a different post, it is intrinsic to capitalism.

yeah, well i'll just say i disagree, but it
doesn't matter if i disagree or not, because
it's highly unlikely capitalism disappears.


The
difference is now we are running up against the finite limit of
resources in the physical world (cyberspace is something different).
As with agriculture, we ran out of arable land, and now we are reaching
the yield limits of our new cultivars. The only resource that we have
plenty of is people. That said, keep one eye open when you take that nap.

i'm a light sleeper.


socialism is fine in some parts. i still believe
that freedom should be primary in that many systems
should be allowed under a broader form of government
and those that wish to form socialist organizations
and societies within should be allowed as long as
their members are allowed freedom to leave if they
wish. an age of consent. some written bylaws and
a coming of age ceremony would be good. i still
haven't had much of a chance to see how the Amish
have managed to become the society they have in the
USoA and how they are treated in terms of taxes and
such, but an interesting side topic for the future...

The thing is that it's not the institutions. The most efficient, and
beneficial government would be a benevolent dictator. The results of the
institutions of government depend on the love in the hearts of those who
direct them. If citizens are simply a crop to be harvested for their tax
dollars, like wheat, the results will be different than if there was
real concern for the welfare of the people.

some people in government do actually care.
i don't see the current system set up to
select caring people though.


....
...huge snip, too many tangents...
The world is full of Asymptotes. Don't let them wear you down.

what are Asymps and why does they need
a tote? anyways, my basket is full, time
to hit the space bar and answer the next
post.


as to how to regulate banking, i don't see any good
coming from the government being directly involved.
i already am having severe dislikes to the feds
current practices of transferring wealth from the
responsible to the irresponsible, but put the fed in
the government's direct control and it would be even
worse as then they'd have no check on their abuse of
the money supply. not that there seems to be one
right now anyways. if i had a better place to put my
money i'd be doing it, but the rest of the world is
not looking much better either.

Credit Unions keep the money local.

i have a fair amount of my savings in a few
credit unions. unfortunately, they can bloat
just like any other organization.

Yeah, but they bloat locally, not in Charlotte, New York, or San
Francisco.

so you're biased against the big cities?


....
My plan is trying to squeeze the last drop of pleasure out of this life.

grab each day by the balls... gently...

I'd settle for an afternoon lunchmeat and cheese plater, a fresh
baguette, and a $10 bottle of French wine from TJ's.

It's good for my spirit, but anathema to my body. Classic double bind.

some things are comfort foods even if they
are bad for us. as a child of the tv-dinner
generation about anything smoked, nitrated,
salted or sugared used to be danger food to
me. i've gotten away from most of it except
a few weaknesses, but they are no longer regular
or staple foods. luxuries a few times a year.
funny how times change. in the old days hotdogs
sausages were what was made from scraps (all but
the squeal) and leftovers and sold for little.
now a lot of these sell for as much as a steak...


I'm down to the hard part now, which only makes it tougher.

hang in there and try to ignore the BS. sometimes
happiness comes in small victories and unexpected
places. like seeing a sundog or a pea plant sprouting
and flowering.

And sometimes it comes from being in on the joke ;O)

heheh, much humor around here is rather
raw/earthy -- about anything is fair game.


In any event,

Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
- Plato

and God needs a vacation...


songbird