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.

Natural Economics

New Economics for the 21st Century: Natural Economics

There are two aspects about the term Economy.

(1) Economy means household management---societys household or the household of earth. The basic building block of any strong state is a strong household, strong family.

(2) Sound economy includes the avoidance of waste and is built on a sense of frugality. In many daily terms such as to economize or even the term fuel economy---to improve fuel economy does not mean using more and more gasoline for every new car you buy, it means the opposite. An improved economy is one that uses and wastes less, and yet today we are all urged to spend more, year by year by year.

What is needed today is a reformulated economics, which takes Nature as its framework, measure and model. We need a new discipline of Natural Economics which in detail spells out the why�s and how�s of a sound economy operating within the basic framework laid down by nature. It is not only possible to create such an economic system; it is also our only choice.

A few basic principles of Natural Economics.

(1) The acceptance of natural systems as the primary systems.
(2) Living off Natural Income, not Natural Capital.
(3) A re-evaluation of Value in modern society.
(4) Active reinvestment in the health of natural systems.
(5) A realization of the prime importance of resource productivity in production.
(6) A realization that consumption and accumulation of wealth cannot produce human happiness.

1. The acceptance of natural systems as the primary systems.
Nature is always the main system, other man-made systems such as, for example, economic systems, can only be sub-systems. If main system and sub-system collides, the sub-system cannot win, it will lose. If the mother company/Nature goes bankrupt, all subsidiaries will go bankrupt along with it. We cannot win a fight against Nature; we can only win the fight against ourselves and our own greed. This is a fight which we must win by finding a way to operate human society in such a way that it can function within the tolerance limits, the carrying capacity of Nature for thousands and thousands of years.

How many economists today would say that the environment is more important than the economy? How many business leaders would dare to utter the opinion that their companies cannot continue to grow forever? And how many politicians have the courage to free themselves from their blind faith in Capitalism and modern economics and their devotion to Gross Domestic Products as our main yardstick for economic welfare?

2. Living off Natural Income, not Natural Capital
Modern civilization was built on the exploitation of natural capital. Any corporate manager knows that if a company is run on the depletion of capital, instead of creating sufficient continuous streams of revenue, it is only a matter of time before the company goes bankrupt. The more employees you have, and the higher the costs they incur, the faster the road toward the abyss. Why is it then that we, the managers of Earth, Inc. have not yet learned this lesson? Why is it that we continue to build our materials and energy economy overwhelmingly on natural capital? With the very wasteful and luxurious ways of some of the richest employees of Earth, Inc., it should be crystal clear that this is suicidal behavior. It certainly has nothing whatsoever to with economics ---a sound and frugal use of available resources.

What is our natural income? It is quite simply the sources of energy that can be renewed endlessly and the use of materials which can be replenished, either through mindful and frugal use thereof or through the continuous reuse and recycling of materials.

We have no choice but to work with renewable energy and material sources.

3. A re-evaluation of Value in modern society
In modern economics, 20 dollars worth of oil, 20 dollars worth of wheat, 20 dollars worth of shoes and 20 dollars worth of hotel coupons are treated as if they were of the same value. However, there is a very fundamental difference between these different 20 dollar items. Oil and wheat are primary sources of value, from the Earth, Natural Capital. One of these is non-renewable, oil; the other is renewable, wheat.

Shoes and hotel coupons are secondary products created by men. Shoes are treated as products, with material substance, and hotel coupons provide a service without direct material substance. As long as our economic system treats these different categories of value as equal, there is no incentive to protect non-renewable natural capital, including the semi non-renewable natural capital, soil, which is the foundation for the production of many primary but renewable products as well as of many secondary products. Soil and water are preconditions for the production of most primary products and we cannot produce secondary products without a primary system that functions.

Our economic parameters, including taxes and incentives, must be structured so as to encourage the protection of primary value and the shift from non-renewable to renewable sources hereof.

What we are talking about here is a fundamental restructuring of entire systems based on a re-evaluation of what constitutes sustainable value creation.

Using up primary, non-renewable resources such as oil within another generation or two represents the ultimate selfishness. We take all this precious value for ourselves and leave nothing thereof for our children. Is that really the responsible behavior of mature adults? How can we face our children or our grandchildren without being embarrassed?

What will future historians say of us, if we do not change our ways, and do not do it so soon? One could imagine a history text in the year 2150 saying, There were some ten generations of human beings, living roughly from 1850 to 2050 who thought they had the right to use all of Earths resources just for themselves. They learned nothing from history and left virtually nothing for the Future. They are now known as the mindless spenders, people who knew only how to spend today and appeared to have no idea about how to conserve for tomorrow. Restoring natural systems after these ten generations was an enormous task which has still not yet been completed.

If we do not re-evaluate our notions of value now and recreate our economic systems to reflect this, I fear that this is what future historians may very well write of us.

4. Active reinvestment in the health of natural systems
A new notion o value naturally leads to the conclusion that makes a lot of sense, economically, socially, culturally, to invest and reinvest in the health of natural systems. If forests are depleted, we must invest in their replenishment. If top soil is deteriorating, we must invest in whatever recovery is possible. If crucial systems such as a stable climate of a sufficient ozone layer show signs of stress, it is obvious that we must invest in the restabilization of these. And, as most corporate managers will know, the earlier such investments are made, the lower the cost.

Every corporation today should have as part of its charter, the intention to reinvest in the health of natural systems.

5. A realization of the prime importance of resource productivity in production
Certainly, labor productivity will continue to be an important management issue, but the time has come to realize that another kind of productivity is today of far greater importance and urgency. That is the question of how to raise resource productivity immensely. That not only means how to squeeze more out of every kilogram of material, which would seem a rather out-dated way of looking at things, rather it includes the redesign of production processes so that the least possible amount of resources is used and the highest possible degree of resource recovery is allowed for.

Our crucial scarcity today does not lie in the lack of labor; it arises from the depletion of natural capital and the increasing dysfunction of our natural systems, including topsoil, water, climate, etc.

Resource productivity is not an issue for the environmental department; it is a vital top management issue.

However, since the increase in resource productivity relates to something that no single individual or organization could own---that which is often called the commons---commonly shared natural capital and natural systems---it may not be sufficient to let corporations decide whether or not they wish to increase resource productivity. As with the question of what is valuable, we also need legislative guidance to ensure that companies who increase resource productivity are rewarded and companies who do not care to make an effort are punished.

Without increasing resource productivity dramatically, it will not be possible for 9.3 billion people in 2050 or 10 billion in 2100 to live decent lives. Without increasing resource productivity---starting now and starting in the industrialized nations---we will never be able to overcome frictions between the North and the South. Bridging the gap between rich and poor---allowing more people on Earth to live a decent life---depends on our ability to achieve much higher levels resource productivity.

6. A realization that consumption and accumulation of wealth cannot produce human happiness
Of course, people who do not have enough food should have food. People without shelter should be allowed decent dwellings. People who have too little of everything should be allowed to consume more.

But whether it is for these people, or for the over-consuming people in the richer nations, it is not consumption which produces happiness. Consumption occurs everyday all over Earth; it is a basic function of life. Until a certain threshold, more consumption of material goods does indeed bring a greater degree of happiness, but beyond this threshold, more consumption does not really improve quality of life. Beyond a basic level of survival, it is not consumption but rather a complex combination of non-material factors which decide whether a person or a society enjoy a sense of happiness.

In natural economics, it is accepted that consumption is of vital importance in daily life. It is a sense of contentment that brings about happiness. The urge to consume ever more creates ever-lasting unhappiness---never can you have enough, always must you want more. Knowng how much is enough, on the contrary leads to a feeling of contentment, which is a critical factor in achieving any form of happiness.

Economics is the study of frugality---of knowing what you can spend, what the limits and possibilities are in the natural system.
People in ancient societies knew that consumption was not a virtue and knew that a society which had no restrictions on the consumption of natural resources would inevitably be brought to fall by nature. The basic message was: know how much enough is or perish. We must nurture a feeling of contentment unrelated to demands forever more consumption, or we must perish. We cannot live with the present economy, in which it is virtually a sin to economize. We cannot continue with a culture which falsely believes that the accumulation of wealth is a proof of your value as a human.

If we want to have a future, any future, if we want to leave some hope for our children and theirs again, we must take new choices today. This is not denouncing the great achievements of our forefathers; on the contrary it is building upon their work taking us one step further in human evolution.

Speech by Tachi Kiuchi - Chairman, Future 500

What is going on.

Cuts only affect dependent livestock.

If you are un-dependent, anti-dependent or independent, they won't affect you, you are not cattle belonging to the farm. You are wildlife!

The cuts are not real. No significant reduction of government financial control is taking place.

Fodder is being consolidated on the most compliant animals in the farm, like the pigs (or dogs used to help in herding the cattle)

Fodder is being redirected away from elderly and non productive cattle, who serve no useful purpose to the farmers.

Small farms are being dissolved and consolidated into larger more efficient units.

These changes must take place otherwise the farm system will break down, and return to nature.

from indymedia

Free market has turned us into 'Matrix' drones

A leading economist has likened the nation's acceptance of free-market capitalism to that of the brainwashed characters in the film The Matrix, unwitting pawns in a fake reality.

...Chang's new book argues that, as in The Matrix, people are brainwashed into seeing things as inevitable that are not...

Independent 29/8/2010

The Story of Christ

Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society; in short, to the very conditions confronting us to-day. Indeed, never could society have degenerated to its present appalling stage, if not for the assistance of Christianity. The rulers of the earth have realized long ago what potent poison inheres in the Christian religion. That is the reason they foster it; that is why they leave nothing undone to instill it into the blood of the people. They know only too well that the subtleness of the Christian teachings is a more powerful protection against rebellion and discontent than the club or the gun.

No doubt I will be told that, though religion is a poison and institutionalized Christianity the greatest enemy of progress and freedom, there is some good in Christianity "itself." What about the teachings of Christ and - early Christianity, I may be asked; do they not stand for the spirit of humanity, for right and justice?

It is precisely this oft-repeated contention that induced me to choose this subject, to enable me to demonstrate that the abuses of Christianity, like the abuses of government, are conditioned in the thing itself, and are not to be charged to the representatives of the creed. Christ and his teachings are the embodiment of submission, of inertia, of the denial of life; hence responsible for the things done in their name.

I am not interested in the theological Christ. Brilliant minds like Bauer, Strauss, Renan, Thomas Paine, and others refuted that myth long ago. I am even ready to admit that the theological Christ is not half so dangerous as the ethical and social Christ. In proportion as science takes the place of blind faith, theology loses its hold. But the ethical and poetical Christ-myth has so thoroughly saturated our lives that even some of the most advanced minds find it difficult to emancipate themselves from its yoke. They have rid themselves of the letter, but have retained the spirit; yet it is the spirit which is back of all the crimes and horrors committed by orthodox Christianity. The Fathers of the Church can well afford to preach the gospel of Christ. It contains nothing dangerous to the regime of authority and wealth; it stands for self-denial and self-abnegation, for penance and regret, and is absolutely inert in the face of every [in]dignity, every outrage imposed upon mankind.

Here I must revert to the counterfeiters of ideas and words. So many otherwise earnest haters of slavery and injustice confuse, in a most distressing manner, the teachings of Christ with the great struggles for social and economic emancipation. The two are irrevocably and forever opposed to each other. The one necessitates courage, daring, defiance, and strength. The other preaches the gospel of non-resistance, of slavish acquiescence in the will of others; it is the complete disregard of character and self- reliance, and therefore destructive of liberty and well-being.

Whoever sincerely aims at a radical change in society, whoever strives to free humanity from the scourge of dependence and misery, must turn his back on Christianity, on the old as well as the present form of the same.

Everywhere and always, since its very inception, Christianity has turned the earth into a vale of tears; always it has made of life a weak, diseased thing, always it has instilled fear in man, turning him into a dual being, whose life energies are spent in the struggle between body and soul. In decrying the body as something evil, the flesh as the tempter to everything that is sinful, man has mutilated his being in the vain attempt to keep his soul pure, while his body rotted away from the injuries and tortures inflicted upon it.

The Christian religion and morality extols the glory of the Hereafter, and therefore remains indifferent to the horrors of the earth. Indeed, the idea of self-denial and of all that makes for pain and sorrow is its test of human worth, its passport to the entry into heaven.

The poor are to own heaven, and the rich will go to hell. That may account for the desperate efforts of the rich to make hay while the sun shines, to get as much out of the earth as they can: to wallow in wealth and superfluity, to tighten their iron hold on the blessed slaves, to rob them of their birthright, to degrade and outrage them every minute of the day. Who can blame the rich if they revenge themselves on the poor, for now is their time, and the merciful Christian God alone knows how ably and completely the rich are doing it.

And the poor? They cling to the promise of the Christian heaven, as the home for old age, the sanitarium for crippled bodies and weak minds. They endure and submit, they suffer and wait, until every bit of self-respect has been knocked out of them, until their bodies become emaciated and withered, and their spirit broken from the wait, the weary endless wait for the Christian heaven.

Christ made his appearance as the leader of the people, the redeemer of the Jews from Roman dominion; but the moment he began his work, he proved that he had no interest in the earth, in the pressing immediate needs of the poor and the disinherited of his time. what he preached was a sentimental mysticism, obscure and confused ideas lacking originality and vigor.

When the Jews, according to the gospels, withdrew from Jesus, when they turned him over to the cross, they may have been bitterly disappointed in him who promised them so much and gave them so little. He promised joy and bliss in another world, while the people were starving, suffering, and enduring before his very eyes.

It may also be that the sympathy of the Romans, especially of Pilate, was given Christ because they regarded him as perfectly harmless to their power and sway. The philosopher Pilate may have considered Christ's "eternal truths" as pretty anaemic and lifeless, compared with the array of strength and force they attempted to combat. The Romans, strong and unflinching as they were, must have laughed in their sleeves over the man who talked repentance and patience, instead of calling to arms against the despoilers and oppressors of his people.

The public career of Christ begins with the edict, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand."

Why repent, why regret, in the face of something that was supposed to bring deliverance? Had not the people suffered and endured enough; had they not earned their right to deliverance by their suffering? Take the Sermon on the Mount, for instance. What is it but a eulogy on submission to fate, to the inevitability of things?

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven."

Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there. How can anything creative, anything vital, useful and beautiful come from the poor in spirit? The idea conveyed in the Sermon on the Mount is the greatest indictment against the teachings of Christ, because it sees in the poverty of mind and body a virtue, and because it seeks to maintain this virtue by reward and punishment. Every intelligent being realizes that our worst curse is the poverty of the spirit; that it is productive of all evil and misery, of all the injustice and crimes in the world. Every one knows that nothing good ever came or can come of the poor in spirit; surely never liberty, justice, or equality.

"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

What a preposterous notion! What incentive to slavery, inactivity, and parasitism! Besides, it is not true that the meek can inherit anything. Just because humanity has been meek, the earth has been stolen from it.

Meekness has been the whip, which capitalism and governments have used to force man into dependency, into his slave position. The most faithful servants of the State, of wealth, of special privilege, could not preach a more convenient gospel than did Christ, the "redeemer" of the people.

"Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled."

But did not Christ exclude the possibility of righteousness when he said, "The poor ye have always with you"? But, then, Christ was great on dicta, no matter if they were utterly opposed to each other. This is nowhere demonstrated so strikingly as in his command, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."

The interpreters claim that Christ had to make these concessions to the powers of his time. If that be true, this single compromise was sufficient to prove, down to this very day, a most ruthless weapon in the hands of the oppressor, a fearful lash and relentless tax-gatherer, to the impoverishment, the enslavement, and degradation of the very people for whom Christ is supposed to have died. And when we are assured that "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled," are we told the how? How? Christ never takes the trouble to explain that. Righteousness does not come from the stars, nor because Christ willed it so. Righteousness grows out of liberty, of social and economic opportunity and equality. But how can the meek, the poor in spirit, ever establish such a state of affairs?

"Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven."

The reward in heaven is the perpetual bait, a bait that has caught man in an iron net, a strait-jacket which does not let him expand or grow. All pioneers of truth have been, and still are, reviled; they have been, and still are, persecuted. But did they ask humanity to pay the price? Did they seek to bribe mankind to accept their ideas? They knew too well that he who accepts a truth because of the bribe, will soon barter it away to a higher bidder.

Good and bad, punishment and reward, sin and penance, heaven and hell, as the moving spirit of the Christ-gospel have been the stumbling-block in the world's work. It contains everything in the way of orders and commands, but entirely lacks the very things we need most.

The worker who knows the cause of his misery, who understands the make-up of our iniquitous social and industrial system can do more for himself and his kind than Christ and the followers of Christ have ever done for humanity; certainly more than meek patience, ignorance, and submission have done.

How much more ennobling, how much more beneficial is the extreme individualism of Stirner and Nietzsche than the sick-room atmosphere of the Christian faith. If they repudiate altruism as an evil, it is because of the example contained in Christianity, which set a premium on parasitism and inertia, gave birth to all manner of social disorders that are to be cured with the preachment of love and sympathy.

Proud and self-reliant characters prefer hatred to such sickening artificial love. Not because of any reward does a free spirit take his stand for a great truth, nor has such a one ever been deterred because of fear of punishment.

"Think not that I come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill."

Precisely. Christ was a reformer, ever ready to patch up, to fulfill, to carry on the old order of things; never to destroy and rebuild. That may account for the fellow- feeling all reformers have for him.

Indeed, the whole history of the State, Capitalism, and the Church proves that they have perpetuated themselves because of the idea "I come not to destroy the law." This is the key to authority and oppression. Naturally so, for did not Christ praise poverty as a virtue; did he not propagate non-resistance to evil? Why should not poverty and evil continue to rule the world?

Much as I am opposed to every religion, much as I think them an imposition upon, and crime against, reason and progress, I yet feel that no other religion has done so much harm or has helped so much in the enslavement of man as the religion of Christ.

Witness Christ before his accusers. What lack of dignity, what lack of faith in himself and in his own ideas! So weak and helpless was this "Saviour of Men" that he must needs the whole human family to pay for him, unto all eternity, because he "hath died for them." Redemption through the Cross is worse than damnation, because of the terrible burden it imposes upon humanity, because of the effect it has on the human soul, fettering and paralyzing it with the weight of the burden exacted through the death of Christ.

Thousands of martyrs have perished, yet few, if any, of them have proved so helpless as the great Christian God. Thousands have gone to their death with greater fortitude, with more courage, with deeper faith in their ideas than the Nazarene. Nor did they expect eternal gratitude from their fellow-men because of what they endured for them.

Compared with Socrates and Bruno, with the great martyrs of Russia, with the Chicago Anarchists, Francisco Ferrer, and unnumbered others, Christ cuts a poor figure indeed. Compared with the delicate, frail Spiridonova who underwent the most terrible tortures, the most horrible indignities, without losing faith in herself or her cause, Jesus is a veritable nonentity. They stood their ground and faced their executioners with unffinching determination, and though they, too, died for the people, they asked nothing in return for their great sacrifice.

Verily, we need redemption from the slavery, the deadening weakness, and humiliating dependency of Christian morality.

The teachings of Christ and of his followers have failed because they lacked the vitality to lift the burdens from the shoulders of the race; they have failed because the very essence of that doctrine is contrary to the spirit of life, exposed to the manifestations of nature, to the strength and beauty of passion.

Never can Christianity, under whatever mask it may appear-be it New Liberalism, Spiritualism, Christian Science, New Thought, or a thousand and one other forms of hysteria and neurasthenia-bring us relief from the terrible pressure of conditions, the weight of poverty, the horrors of our iniquitous system. Christianity is the conspiracy of ignorance against reason, of darkness against light, of submission and slavery against independence and freedom; of the denial of strength and beauty, against the affirmation of the joy and glory of life.

From a comment posted by Emma Goldman here