Everything i want to do is illegal

Everything I want to do is illegal. As if a highly bureaucratic regulatory system was not already in place, 9/11 fueled renewed acceleration to eliminate freedom from the countryside. Every time a letter arrives in the mail from a federal or state agriculture department my heart jumps like I just got sent to the principal's office.

And it doesn't stop with agriculture bureaucrats. It includes all sorts of government agencies, from zoning, to taxing, to food inspectors. These agencies are the ultimate extension of a disconnected, Greco-Roman, Western, egocentric, compartmentalized, reductionist, fragmented, linear thought process.

On-farm Processing

I want to dress my beef and pork on the farm where I've coddled and raised it. But zoning laws prohibit slaughterhouses on agricultural land. For crying out loud, what makes more holistic sense than to put abattoirs where the animals are? But no, in the wisdom of Western disconnected thinking, abattoirs are massive centralized facilities visited daily by a steady stream of tractor trailers and illegal alien workers.

But what about dressing a couple of animals a year in the backyard? How can that be compared to a ConAgra or Tyson facility? In the eyes of the government, the two are one and the same. Every T-bone steak has to be wrapped in a half-million dollar facility so that it can be sold to your neighbor. The fact that I can do it on my own farm more cleanly, more responsibly, more humanely, more efficiently, and in a more environmentally friendly manner doesn't matter to the government agents who walk around with big badges on their jackets and wheelbarrow-sized regulations tucked under their arms.

OK, so I take my animals and load them onto a trailer for the first time in their life to send them up the already clogged interstate to the abattoir to await their appointed hour with a shed full of animals of dubious extraction. They are dressed by people wearing long coats with deep pockets with whom I cannot even communicate. The carcasses hang in a cooler alongside others that were not similarly cared for in life. After the animals are processed, I return to the facility hoping to retrieve my meat.

When I return home to sell these delectable packages, the county zoning ordinance says that this is a manufactured product because it exited the farm and was reimported as a value-added product, thereby throwing our farm into the Wal-Mart category, another prohibition in agricultural areas. Just so you understand this, remember that an on-farm abattoir was illegal, so I took the animals to a legal abattoir, but now the selling of said products in an on-farm store is illegal.

Our whole culture suffers from an industrial food system that has made every part disconnected from the rest. Smelly and dirty farms are supposed to be in one place, away from people, who snuggle smugly in their cul-de-sacs and have not a clue about the out-of-sight-out-of-mind atrocities being committed to their dinner before it arrives in microwaveable, four-color-labeled, plastic packaging. Industrial abattoirs need to be located in a not-in-my-backyard place to sequester noxious odors and sights. Finally, the retail store must be located in a commercial district surrounded by lots of pavement, handicapped access, public toilets and whatever else must be required to get food to people.

The notion that animals can be raised, processed, packaged, and sold in a model that offends neither our eyes nor noses cannot even register on the average bureaucrat's radar screen - or, more importantly, on the radar of the average consumer advocacy organization. Besides, all these single-use megalithic structures are good for the gross domestic product. Anything else is illegal.

On-farm Processing and 'Agritainment'

In the disconnected mind of modem America, a farm is a production unit for commodities - nothing more and nothing less. Because our land is zoned as agricultural, we cannot charge school kids for a tour of the farm because that puts us in the category of "Theme Park." Anyone paying for infotainment creates "Farmadisney," a strict no-no in agricultural zones.

Farms are not supposed to be places of enjoyment or learning. They are commodity production units dotting the landscape, just as factories are manufacturing units and office complexes are service units. In the government's mind, integrating farm production with recreation and meaningful education creates a warped sense of agriculture.

The very notion of encouraging people to visit farms is blasphemous to an official credo that views even sparrows, starlings and flies as disease threats to immunocompromised plants and animals. Visitors entering USDA-blessed production unit farms must run through a gauntlet of toxic sanitation dips and don moonsuits in order to keep their germs to themselves. Indeed, people are viewed as hazardous foreign bodies at Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs).

Farmers who actually encourage folks to come to their farms threaten the health and welfare of their fecal concentration camp production unit neighbors, and therefore must be prohibited from bringing these invasive germ-dispensing humans onto their landscape. In the industrial agribusiness paradigm, farms must be protected from people, not to mention free-range poultry.

The notion that animals and plants can be raised in such a way that their enhanced immune system protects them from kindergarteners' germs, and that the animals actually thrive when marinated in human attention, never enters the minds of government officials dedicated to protecting precarious production units.

Collaborative Marketing

I have several neighbors who produce high-quality food or crafts that complement our own meat and poultry. Dried flower arrangements from one artisan, pickles from another, wine from another, and first-class vegetables from another. These are just for starters.

Our community is blessed with all sorts of creative artisans who offer products that we would love to stock in our on-farm retail venue. Doesn't it make sense to encourage these customers driving out from the city to be able to go to one farm to do their rural browsing/ purchasing rather than drive all over the countryside? Furthermore, many of these artisans have neither the desire nor time to deal with patrons one-on-one. A collaborative venue is the most win-win, reasonable idea imaginable - except to government agents.

As soon as our farm offers a single item - just one - that is not produced here, we have become a Wal-Mart. Period. That means a business license, which isbasically another layer of taxes on our gross sales. The business license requires a commercial entrance, which on our country road is almost impossible to acquire due to sight-distance requirements and width regulations. Of course, zoning prohibits businesses in our agricultural zones. Remember, people are supposed to be kept away from agricultural areas - people bring diseases.

Even if we could comply with all of the above requirements, a retail outlet carries with it a host of additional regulations. We must provide designated handicapped parking, government-approved toilet facilities (our four household bathrooms in the two homes located 50 feet away from the retail building do not count) - and it can't be a composting toilet. We must offer x-number of parking spaces. Folks, it just goes on and on, ad nauseum, and all for simply trying to help a neighbor sell her potatoes or extra pumpkins at Thanksgiving. I thought this was the home of the free. In most countries of the world, anyone can sell any of this stuff anywhere, and the hungering hordes are glad to get it, but in the great U.S. of A we're too sophisticated to allow such bioregional commerce.

Employing Local Youngsters & Interns

Any power tool - including a cordless screwdriver - cannot be operated by people under the age of 18. We have lots of requests from folks wanting to come as interns, but what do we call them? The government has no category for interns or neighbor young people who just want to learn and help out.

We'd love to employ all the neighboring young people. To our child-awning and worshiping culture, the only appropriate child activity is recreation, sitting in a desk, or watching TV. That's it. That's the extent of what children are good for. Anything else is abusive and risky.

Then we wonder why these kids grow up unmotivated and bored with life. Our local newspaper is full of articles and letters to the editor lamenting the lack of things for young people to do. Let me suggest a few things: digging postholes and building a fence, weeding the garden, planting some tomatoes, splitting some wood, feeding the chickens, washing eggs, pruning grapevines, milking the cow, building a compost pile, growing some earthworms.

These are all things that would be wonderfully meaningful work experience for the youth of our community, but you can't simply employ people anymore. A host of government regulatory paperwork surrounds every "could you come over and help us . . . ?" By the time an employer complies with every Occupational Safety & Health Administration requirement, posts every government bulletin requirement, with-holds taxes, and shoulders Unemployment Compensation burdens and medical and child safety regulations - he or she can't hire anybody legally or profitably.

The government has no pigeonhole for this: "I'm a 17-year-old home-schooler, and I want to learn how to farm. Could I come and have you mentor me for a year?"

What is this relationship? A student? An employee? If I pay a stipend, the government says he's an employee. If I don't pay, the Fair Labor Standards board says it's slavery, which is illegal. Doesn't matter that the young person is here of his own volition and is happy to live in a tee-pee. Housing must be permitted and up to code. Enough already. What happened to the home of the free?

Build a House the Way I Want

You would think that if I cut the trees, mill the logs into lumber, and build the house on my own farm, I could make it however I wanted to. Think again. It's illegal to build a house less than 900 square feet. Period. Doesn't matter if I'm a hermit or the father of 20. The government agents have decreed, in their egocentric wisdom, that no human can live in anything less than 900 square feet.

Our son got married last year and wanted to build a small cottage on the farm, which he now oversees for the most part. Our new saying is, "He runs the farm, and I just run around." The plan was to do what Mom and Dad did for Teresa and I - trade houses when children come. That way our empty nest downsizes, and the young people can upsize in the main family farmhouse. Sounds reasonable and environmentally sensitive to me. But no, his little honeymoon cottage - or our retirement shack - had to be a 900-square-foot Taj Mahal. A state-of-the-art accredited composting toilet to avoid the need for a septic system and sewer leach field was denied.

When the hillside leach field would not meet agronomic standards and we had to install it in the floodplain, I asked the health department bureaucrat why. He said that essentially the only approvable leach fields now are alongside creeks and streams, because they are the only sites that offer dark-enough colored soils. Sounds like real environmental steward-ship, doesn't it?

Look, if I want to build a yurt of rabbit skins and go to the bathroom in a compost pile, why is it any of the government's business? Bureaucrats bend over back-wards to accredit, tax credit, and offer money to people wanting to build pig city-factories or bigger airports. But let a guy go to his woods, cut down some trees, and build himself a home, and a plethora of regulatory tyrants descend on the project to complicate, obfuscate, irritate, frustrate, and virtually terminate. I think it's time to eradicate some of these laws and the piranhas who administer them.

Opting Out of the System

I don't ask for a dime of government money. I don't ask for government accreditation. I don't want to register my animals with a global positioning tattoo. I don't want to tell officials the names of my constituents. And I sure as the dickens don't intend to hand over my firearms. I can't even use the "U" word.

On every side, our paternalistic culture is tightening the noose around those of us who just want to opt out of the system - and it is the freedom to opt out that differentiates tyrannical and free societies.

How a culture deals with its misfits reveals its strength. The stronger a culture, the less it fears the radical fringe. The more paranoid and precarious a culture, the less tolerance it offers.

When faith in our freedom gives way to fear of our freedom, then silencing the minority view becomes the operative protocol. The Native Americans silenced after Little Big Horn simply wanted to worship in their beloved Black Hills, use traditional medicinal herbs to cure diseases, educate their children in the ways of their ancestors, and live in portable homes rather than log cabins. By that time these people represented absolutely no threat to the continued Westernization and domination of the North American continent by people who educated, vocated, medicated, worshiped, and habitated differently.

But coexistence was out of the question. Just like the forces that succeeded in making it illegal for me to use the "O" word, the Western success at Wounded Knee quashed the little guy. What does the Organic Trade Association have to fear from me using the "O" word? If society really wants government certification, my little market share will continue to deteriorate into oblivion. If, however, the certification effort represents a same-old, same-old power grab by the elitists to exterminate the fringe play-ers, it is merely another example of fear replacing faith.

Faith in what? Faith in diversity. Faith in each other. Faith in people's ability to self-educate, thereby making informed decisions. Faith in seekers to find answers. Faith in marketplace dynamics to reward integrity and not cheating. Faith in Creation to heal. Faith in healthy plants and animals to withstand epizootics. Faith in earthworms to increase fertility. Faith in communities to function efficiently and honorably without centralized beltway interference. Faith in Acres U.S.A. to arrive every month with a cornucopia of insight and information.

Our culture's current fear of bioterrorism shows the glaring weakness of a centralized, immunodeficient food system. This weakness leads to fear. Demanding from on high that we irradiate all food, register every cow with government agencies, and hire more inspectors does not show strength. It shows fear.

Indeed, official policy views all these minority production and marketing systems that have been shown faithful over the centuries to be instead things that threaten everyone and everything. As a teepee dwelling, herb healing, home educating, people loving, compost building retail farmer, I represent the real answers, but real answers must be eradicated by those who seek to build their power and fortunes on a lie - the lie being that genetic integrity can be maintained when corporate scientists begin splicing DNA. The lie that, as Charles Walters says, toxic rescue chemistry is better than a balanced biological bath. The lie that farms are disease-prone, unfriendly, inhumane places and should be zoned away from people.

Those of us who would aspire to opt out - both consumers and producers - must pray for enough cleverness to circumvent the system until the system cannot sustain itself. Cycles happen. Because things are this way today does not mean they will be this way next year. Hurrah for that.

Often, the greatest escapes occur at the moment the noose becomes tightest. I'm feeling the rope, and it's not very loose. Society seems bound and determined to hang me for everything I want to do. But there's power in truth. And for sure, surprises are in store that may make

society shake its collective head and begin to question some seemingly unalterable doctrines. Doctrines like the righteousness of the bureaucrat. The sanctity of government research. The protection of the Food Safety and Inspection Service. The helpfulness of the USDA.

When that day comes, you and I can graciously offer our society honest food, honest ecology, honest stewardship. May the day come quickly.

Corporate Profit v Life on Earth

The last year has been especially catastrophic for life on Earth, while at the same time, corporate profits have jumped a staggering 36.8%, setting all-time records. Is this a coincidence, or are the long-term implications as sinister as they might seem?

How many disasters like the massive poisoning of the Gulf of Mexico, or gushing of radiation from multiple reactor-core meltdowns in Japan can the biosphere take? Or, perhaps a more apropos question is: How much more profit will the biosphere survive?

Two things the catastrophes in the Gulf and at Fukushima have in common is that both were at the hands of corporations, and both involved extensive disinformation, misinformation, and severe suppression of information. Just like governments, which are virtually all corporate “assets”, corporations themselves shun the light of day.

Dangerous creatures, corporations, obviously one of the deadliest things ever sprouted from hell. Of course they are not creatures in any biological sense, but thanks to corporate chicanery beginning in 1886 especially, they have more rights than you do.


You might be rather dismayed if you challenge a corporation in our for-wealth court system; if the corporation is big enough, and the case goes high enough, it is conceivable that the ultimate verdict will orbit the concept that by eating, breathing, drinking…by all the things you must do to stay alive, you are endangering corporate profit. Sound far-fetched? Well, check out exactly how corporations became “artificial people”. (1) Also, please consider last year’s Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruling that handed absolute control of elections to corporations. SCOTUS ruled that any restriction on the amount of money corporations may spend to influence elections is a violation of their right to free speech under the First Amendment. Should the Book of Revelation be amended to read: In the beginning of the end, God created corporations?

Some say money is the root of all evil; it could also be said that corporations are the root of the most malignant money; vicious and biocidal entities more powerful with every tick of the (doomsday) clock, and all that matters to them is profit. Corporations represent the perfect means for the wealthy to grow ever wealthier by destroying the biosphere and not being held accountable; isn’t that a decent definition of “malignant money”?

Einstein warned us by saying that unleashing the power of the atom changed everything except our modes of thinking…which carry us toward unparalleled catastrophe. And now, unparalleled catastrophe is ours, made in Japan; notice how it has mostly disappeared from the news? Forget Three Mile Island, forget Chernobyl—which has killed a million people, so far, and has touched the entire northern hemisphere…Fukushima is worse by far, and still out of control. The multiple meltdowns in Japan have the potential to render much of the northern hemisphere uninhabitable, and mangle the gene pool of countless species, including humans. We’re talking effectively forever. But apparently an even more important reason for severe suppression of information, suppression of truth: vast corporate profits are at stake.

Nuclear energy corporations are wealthy enough to afford extensive political influence. In fact, when Fukushima became a volcano of radioactivity, president Obama was (he still is!) pushing heavily for $36 billion in taxpayer “loans” for the construction of more reactors. Insurance companies and financiers treat nuclear reactors like the red-hot radioactive potatoes they are, so the nuke good ol’ boys need help from the poor to increasingly threaten life on Earth. The last thing they want is people to be aware of, well, reality. Also, imagine the hit to profits of Tokyo Electric Power Company if they didn’t have the Pacific ocean to pour their radionuclide lava into. “Hey,” they might say, “it’s a big ocean.” Well, it’s a small planet in terms of the amount radioactivity gushing from Fukushima.

We can thank energy corporations for irradiating half the planet already (there is no “safe” dose of internal radiation—and radiation is not “good for you” as certain hardright “pundits” trumpet). We can thank energy corporations for poisoning the Gulf with oil and toxic dispersants; but above all, for so diligently suppressing alternative energies all these years. Eight energy giants are among the world’s top eleven corporations on the power of filthy biocidal energies…monster fossil-energy corporations with a virtual monopoly on enormous fossil profits. And they like to kill the competition. In terms of life on Earth, their ultimate protection of profits—potentially their all-time greatest crime against humanity—came in 1943, the year they murdered Tesla.

Nikola Tesla’s was among the most brilliant minds every to bless humanity. He once wrote: “Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity….”

In 1988, at the International Tesla Symposium in Colorado Springs, astrophysicist Adam Trombly noted that if society had followed up on the inventions Tesla envisioned at the turn of the century, “…we wouldn’t have a fossil fuel economy today. And J.P. Morgan, Rockefeller and a number of others wouldn’t have amassed extraordinary fortunes on the basis of the fossil fuel economy.”

The sheer scope of Tesla’s genius seems unfathomable to normal people. Gifted with uncanny memory and powers of visualization, he was able to fully construct, develop and perfect inventions in his mind before committing anything to paper. In his own words: “When I have gone so far as to embody in the invention every possible improvement I can think of and see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form this final product of my brain. Invariably my device works as I conceived that it should, and the experiment comes out exactly as I planned it. In twenty years there has not been a single exception.”

Tesla’s inventions include radio (recognized by the SCOTUS eight months after Tesla died), X-rays (three years before Roentgen), the Tesla coil, fluorescent light, lasers, bladeless turbines, vertical take-off aircraft, wireless transmission of electricity, the particle beam (“death”, or “peace” ray), the whole system of AC that powers the world…. At the time of his death he held over 700 patents. And the fields Tesla greatly contributed to, such as computer science, robotics, remote control, radar, ballistics, nuclear physics…a comprehensive list would be astonishing.

One invention Tesla was elusive about, sometimes offering teasers but no specifics, had the potential to eclipse all of his and anyone else’s breakthroughs—perhaps even cost him his life, and is behind the perpetual drive to minimize public awareness of Tesla. He had long prophesied that mankind would someday hook their machinery up to the energy of vacuum space—to “the very wheelworks of nature”. The theoretical basis for energy from the vacuum has now been part of “mainstream” physics literature for over fifty years. But as Tesla long intimated, any kind of “free energy” device would never be allowed to reach the market.

In 1943, Tesla had an appointment to discuss with FDR that it was possible for us to get all the energy we need simply by tapping the space we’re in. But he never made it to the meeting with FDR; Tesla was found in his apartment, dead of “natural causes”. Officially, it was a heart attack. But information leaked by investigators indicates that for reasons of “national security” the coroner’s report was to be kept secret because it revealed that Tesla died of arsenic poisoning.

Take that, competition! Take that, life on Earth. Free energy available to everyone would devastate corporate profits—almost to the extent that our global fossil fuel economy has devastated the biosphere. Tesla gave humanity so much, promised so much more, and corporations not only murdered him, they have even all but lifted him clear out of mainstream history…tried their best to make him an unperson. They have proven, and always will, that nothing is more dangerous than threatening corporate profits.

How does that bode for life on Earth? The most dangerous of advanced human endeavors are development of alternatives to entrenched modes of energy that are powering the biosphere straight to hell…sure sounds like a nightmare. Accelerating destruction of Earth’s ability to sustain life, brought to you by corporations. A living planet dominated by “artificial people” that care only about profit, nothing but, profit.

Imagine waking up to find there never was a fossil fuel economy, that all the war, pollution, climate disruption, murder, cancer, slavery, impoverishment, obscene concentration of wealth—all the lethal threats to life on Earth stayed in the nightmare because half a century ago, thanks to Tesla, we plugged in to “the very wheelworks of nature”, and became an advancing civilization.

Chernobyl and Fukushima never happened….

Imagine life on Earth being more important than corporate profit.

If only we could wake up.

Legless man planted 3,000 trees in 10 yrs

Ma Sanxiao,a 62-year-old man who lost both feet, has spent 10 years planting more than 3,000 trees in a remote mountainous area in North China's Hebei province.

Retired from the army in 1974, Ma Sanxiao lost the lower part of his right leg in 1985 due to blood poisoning and the same part of the other leg for the same reason in 2004.

He started to make a living by planting trees in 2001 but gradually he considers planting trees as a career to improve the environment.

Since the mountain road is too hilly to walk with crutches, Ma has to crawl on his hands and he wears out a pair of gloves every five days.

"There is a road in the mountain grinded by my buttocks, my keens and my hands," according to Ma.

Once he dropped down from the hill and hurt his hands. Because of blood poisoning, his wound couldn’t heal. Unfortunately, his wound infected and he lost the little finger on his right hand.

Even though, he continues to plant trees with the belief that the trees are more important than his life.

"I've been in hospital for four times and had seven operations in the past 20 years, but I never cried. As soon as I saw this tree died, I couldn't hold my tear any more since I was so heart-broken," said Ma.

Getting hurt is very dangerous to him and it may lead to amputation, so he has to wear many protection pads on his legs every day on his way to plant trees.

Reporter asked him: “How often do you change your gloves?”
He answered: “Every ten days.
Reporter asked: “The gloves are very thick, aren't they?
Ma said: “Yes, its leather gloves but it can only last for ten days.”


Reporter asked: “How much money have you saved?”
Ma answered: “No, I don’t have any bankbook.”
“Do you think you are rich now?” asked the reporter.
Ma said: “Yes, I feel I'm very rich.”
“What do you have?” asked the reporter.
"This green forest is precious for me and you can call me a billionaire," answered Ma.

Ma also told the reporter that when he heard visitors say the environment on the hill is so good because of the trees; he felt so happy and forgot the hardship he has experienced.

"I heard some people, who came to this mountain, said the environment is so great and there are so many trees. I was very happy!”

Ma has over 3000 trees now and plans to dig another 300 holes to plant more trees no matter how hard it may be.