FTA: So let’s understand where responsibility lies for law and order in a self-governing republic.
In a government of, by and for the People, it is the People who are responsible for their government. This is axiomatic and indisputable: If the government is in our hands, vessels OF the government are in our hands.
"Some trace his downfall back to an ill-fated decision in April 2021 to stop all imports of chemical fertilizers and abruptly put the country on a path to organic agriculture. One commentator wrote that “Mr. Rajapaksa’s imperious decision to impose organic farming on the entire country … led to widespread hunger after the agricultural economy collapsed.” The reality is that this policy had everything to do with foreign currency shortages and an inability to pay for imports rather than a planned shift to organic agriculture. As such, the former president’s hasty call for an organic transition was a convenient excuse to stop paying for fertilizer imports. ... Our research on the diets of long-term organic versus conventional tea farmers in Sri Lanka suggests that it is actually the established organic tea farmers who have done much better over the past two years. They receive a price premium for their product, have well-established internal supplies of high-quality organic compost to maintain their soils, and their tea yields are the same or better than those of conventional tea farmers. Their steady earnings combined with vegetable gardens for home consumption mean that they have nutritious diets. This compares with conventional tea farmers who had to deal with the sudden loss of chemical fertilizer supplies last summer, struggled to find good-quality organic compost, and then saw declining yields, lower incomes, and poorer diets." https://news.mongabay.com/2022/08/drawing-the-wrong-lessons-from-sri-lankas-organic-farming-experience-commentary/
1. It takes time to transition to organic farming, you have to pretty much stop tilling the soil, you have to create stocks of compost, you have to plant cover crops which you till into the soil, you may have to apply amendments including plant and manure compost, and you have to pretty much stop tilling the soil after that. You're looking at 3 to 5 years to prepare the soil, first. Most industrial ag soils are strongly depleted of nutrients, it's basically just sterilized soil which requires huge amounts of petrochemicals to keep going, it's not the rich black loam which was there before the "Green Revolution". And when the petrochemicals go, so do the crop yields. Another problem is Roundup-resistant weeds, which make harvesting and cleaning more difficult - and these weeds proliferate in a big way.
2. The leader and his cronies in Sri Lanka stole huge amounts of money so that the country could no longer afford to pay for petrochemical herbicides and fertilizers - and as a cover for that, he made his announcement about the "transition" to organic agriculture. Essentially, his country got cut off by its suppliers, so he didn't exactly have a choice, so he made up a BS story to cover his ass. It ended up in a very predictable disaster. He and his cronies need to be rounded up and forced to disgorge the proceeds of their theft - then they might make good field laborers for organic farms. I suggest shoveling manure might be appropriate for them - they have lots of experience with shoveling out BS.
3. Over and above that, this is a lesson in why national economies should not be dependent on imported goods for things which affect national security, and food is at the top of that list.
As the J6 defendants receive their fake justice of excessive foregone punishment, we know what judicial bias has become particularly in the DC courts. I have always wondered how people can be so inspired to hate someone like Trump when actual evil is being done in the name of government. I still ask who threw those flash bangs into a crowd that couldn't escape? That turned a crowd into a mob.
The videos show the crowd tried to open up and spread out but the mass was difficult to change. There were people who were injured and one person died as a result of the shock. The use of rubber bullets and those flash bangs caused (IMHO) the crowd to become a mob. Mobs are always unstable. The bullhorns directed actions of the mob to enter the building. Nobody held to account for these actions?
The tragic J6 events were engineered (IMHO) by people who understood crowd dynamics. Ray Epps is part of that group to remove barriers and signs before the masses arrived from the speech. Trump was played. When the bullhorns were not enough to get the crowd agitated into action the flash bangs were used. Was it planned or simply happened? Not looking means we will not know.
Much like Antifa staying behind protesters chucking frozen water bottles and urine balloons over the crowd in order to get the police to react. Antifa are trained in crowd reactions. They agitate and take advantage of the turmoil prior to engaging in direct action.
More evidence. Who knows what lies in those hours of video yet to be seen by the public? But Ray Epps remains the most curious of all the people involved.
The mere fact of the video glitch is scary stuff. Means active meddling and ought to be grounds for a mistrial.
Yep. Looks like it was placed there on purpose because the original video doesn't have that glitch. It blows up the narrative that Epps wasn't charged because he wasn't on the grounds.
The full release of the videos are going to destroy the whole story.
Great post. All y’all have been warning (me!) that the climate crisis would be next and yeah here we go, it’s crystal clear. Substackers are wise. Thank you 🙏
There's the sense that we've been sitting on a powder keg of our own making. You can blame the authorities, you can blame everyone else for going along with it.
“ yes, it stings, but you know what doesn’t? A clean conscience. I’m willing to pay a little bit more.” Good for you Colbert… so in the tradition of his predecessor, the Unibomber’s twin, Letterman, here’s my Top Ten list for The World’s Biggest Clueless Asshat:
10) Stephen Colbert
9) Stephen Colbert
8) Let’s just skip to
🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁
1) Stephen Colbert
For those of you old enough, he’d have more success as a June Taylor Dancer! God, he’s an idiot.
From the days of television variety shows.. Colbert did that idiotic dance skit urging his viewers to get vaccinated... he’s either a shill or just an idiot or both.
His mockery has been effective but now has become tiresome even to his fans. His only scared cow is himself. Pity that so many enjoy him beating up on so many.
I don't have a problem with tyrants who want to control me. Every deal I've ever made, every employee I've hired, and every game I've played has been across the table from people who want to beat me. We make a deal and head to the bar to celebrate. My problem is with idiots who allow others to control them. The consent of the governed isn't often active agreement, but is usually just apathy and incompetence. Tyrants rely on that. Success comes from protecting your interests, not expecting someone else to.
The great majority of American colonists in 1776 supported the king and his abuses and usurpations. It only took a few to become ungovernable and throw off such government.
"What we’re actually dealing with is a CONTROL crisis"
I was thinking this morning, before I even read this article, about how what we're witnessing now is a clash between the everyday reality of the masses and the made-up crises of the extremely privileged, and how it is exemplified by the presidencies of Trump and Biden.
Take Trump. You didn't have to like him as a human being to understand that for the average person, life was chugging along pretty smoothly. Prices were affordable, wages were rising relative to costs, and even globally things were quite calm. Even through the first year of the pandemic, in red states, people dealt with annoyances, yes we lost some businesses here in Montana (but we had a Democrat governor with presidential aspirations and a county health officer who thought he was Napoleon), but we pretty quickly got back on our feet. In fact the only thing that wasn't "normal" was the tantrum-throwing, apocalypse-predicting media tearing their hair out because the American public was to them a list of amorphous things: racist, sexist, bigoted, anti-democratic, anti-expert, anti-science, on and on and on.
And so we appeased them, or so it seems. We gave into the fake crisis of the privileged to buy a bit of peace from their constant tirades and lecturing about how we all had to be "better people" worthy of their praise and their unhinged reaction to the election of someone they found repugnant and uncontrollable.
And now we have Biden. The media is placated (well mostly--we still have the January 6 "insurrection," and "systemic racism" and the near constant threat to "our" democracy from "populism" and "nationalism"--God forbid we take care of regular Americans before anyone else), but the crises of the privileged were managed, or so they thought. On the other hand . . . well, I don't have to list the other hand. The apocalyptic movie ending is all around us with a doddering old perverted fool ambling through the wreckage, eating his ice cream, while the rest of us stand in shock wondering how we're going to come back from this.
So the lesson here is important: Choose yourself and trust your own perceptions. It's time to become selfish, particularly as a class, and stop letting others tell us what we should think to be considered "good citizens." Our job, as average Americans, is not to make the privileged proud of us, to live up to their expectations about concerning ourselves with pronouns and microaggressions and carbon footprints, problems of the privileged. Our job is to look after each other and our best interests and understand what the real crises are and not be drawn in by the fake ones.
It’s just so perfectly stated. Since reading Substack, my time on FB is down 70%, the insults are fewer and the intelligent conversation is most welcome..... and I love Instagram simply to see pics of my friends grandchildren ❤️.
"The apocalyptic movie ending is all around us with a doddering old perverted fool ambling through the wreckage, eating his ice cream, while the rest of us stand in shock wondering how we're going to come back from this."
Wow. Great summary. My perspective is that we've been fooled into a system that enables greed and then dumps guilt on us to provide for all the needs that greed left in its wake. I think we need a system of reciprocity that enables us to take responsibility for us and ours by providing goods and services that the community values.
"My perspective is that we've been fooled into a system that enables greed and then dumps guilt on us to provide for all the needs that greed left in its wake."
You also put it very well. That's, I think, exactly what's happening.
Bleed the middle class to subsidize the underclass that slaves away for the overlords. If you are bright, talented, hard working you can make the managerial elite and spend your life on conspicuous consumption proving your superiority to the plebs; if you can sell them out entirely you are welcomed to the C suite or the politicians seat at the table. America 21st century.
On a personal level, I am absolutely in favor of organic farming. I'm a firm believer in diluted essential oils and nets on my own property. I try to convince my neighbors to eschew Roundup on the lawns where our kids and pets play. More people need to understand that this isn't an environmental issue. (Just as socialist programs aren't a humanitarian issue; there's a reason Republicans donate significantly more to charity than Democrats. And just as Covid, after the first initial "WTH?", was not a public health issue.)
As someone who comes from a long line of farmers and ranchers (I'm 4th generation on US soil) I can say that *all* farming used to be organic and it worked just fine. The difference? Monsanto and other evil poison companies came in and began duping farmers into using their products. Farmers fell for the false promise of being able to "do more with less" as long as they bought their seeds, fertilizer and pesticides from these companies and signed on the dotted line. That deal with the devil only ended up taking away their independence and turned them into slaves to said companies. Pretty soon their once fertile soil turned into dead soil unable to grow anything without the "magic" products they agreed to buy. Then add the government into the mix telling farmers what they can and can't grow, shutting down their land and outright telling them they *can't* grow *anything*. Also add that the animals farmers use to create fertilizer (cow poop) are regulated to the point they can't afford to keep the animals, once again, making it impossible to grow decent crops without the company's products. Then add to that, governments shutting off farmer's water. Add to that the fact that when all of our food was grown mostly organically, most people also grew a decent portion of their food themselves at home and this all becomes another incredible case of "unintended?" consequences. Leave it up to government and out of control corporations in bed with that same government to destroy something that worked just fine for literally thousands of years.
Is that original, Oregonian? I'm going to need to steal it.
When I think about how to rebuild economics, I think that no fuel should ever be shipped overseas. It should all belong to the continent because it goes under the whole land mass regardless of where it comes closest to the surface. And so sales and reserves and future planning should all prioritize that population. Plus the danger of spills and the trashing of driveby tankers to countries like Somalia. There should be no imports and exports of the same product.
And how to do that concerns your third point, which is the topic of my book and a major topic of my Substack/YT. You put it so succinctly.
I've been having the same conversation, Rob, on other threads. Both can be true: organic, regenerative farming using your own cow-made fertilizer is better AND the militarized march to zero carbon is being used to destroy us. Quoting some great thinker, it's not a food crisis, it's a CONTROL crisis.
As a case in point, regenerative rancher John Roulac was censored for talking about farming. That's a solution that puts people back in CONTROL of their own food and land, and actually reverses airborne carbon, sinking it into the soil where it feeds the life cycle. My book is about economics but it uses the analogy of regenerative ag to say that capital is like carbon--dangerous when ownership is in the clouds but the source of life when sunk into the soil of community.
The homes, the farms, the land, the infrastructure, the skills, the knowledge, the creativity--these are the capital the UN considers wealth, and they all belong to the community that built them, not the bankers and their 'investment vehicles' who never picked up a shovel or a hammer in their lives.
It's "funny" isn't it? Sweden gets an arbitrary number, 96 ESG, and our leaders and elites gets all warm and fuzzy-wuzzy inside. So... are we going to be able to eat that number? Heat our houses with it? "You can't reason like that!" they whine. 'Course I can, just did is my standard reply.
It's funny, sure it is. 65%-75% of our land areal is forested, the skew depending on definitions. Used to be less, when we were self-sufficient in food and energy production, back in the long long ago (1980s) before buying the IMF, World Bank and EU spiel of neoliberal economics.
Now, we are self-sufficient in food to about 30% of need. Oh, official figure is 100% but that's counting imports and previous farmlands turned into forests, residential areas, golf courses, and so on. Because to a politician of the neoliberal green variety - aka a silver spoon - as soon as there's a want or a need, the market magically provides. Guess what? The time it takes to prepare land and grow potatoes is a lot longer than the time you can go without food.
It sure is something when my 85 year old neighbour talks about wanting to blow all power lines, water pipes bridges leading in and out of the major cities. That's where the traitors, parasites, and all others such no matter if EUsocialist or neoliberal capitalist mulitkultur traitors live.
Wall off the cities. Let them eat eachother. We have the hydro power. We have the farmlands. We have the mines and the forests.
But we're a democracy so the worthless parasites gets to decide, because there's more of them. all the thousands and thousands of years since the ice gave way under hardships we today can scarcely imagine, and all it takes to destroy it is 40 years of post-modern PC campus marxism, neoliberal capitalism, and multiculturalism. All those ancestors who starved and toiled and froze, all for nothing now.
We are NOT a democracy! We ARE a Democratic REPUBLIC! (If you're in the USA.) Write that down. Remember it. There is a difference. We are NOT majority rule.
At least we're not supposed to be majority rule. Lol. I actually think with the monsters who've been running things for far too long it's minority rule. A handful of billionaires who think they know best. I don't think a majority of the people wants any of the insanity we've seen over the last couple decades.
Remember Klaus claimed the government of Argentina was in his back pocket, like Canada, France, New Zealand, Australia, Germany .... it doesn't look as if it's all working out as planned...
Ironically, the agenda of the environmental alarmists is not just going to be bad for humanity but also for the environment. Countries with more economic freedom are less likely to cut down their forests, pollute their rivers, and kill all their animals. The demands of the hysterics to "save" the environment often include implementing the very policies that cause enormous harm to the environment and ruin people's lives in the process.
Exactly. In a free market, there is no incentive to waste.
I recently installed a rain barrel for my backyard garden not out of a desire to be "green" but out of a desire to be economical. I saw *for myself* that I could be more efficient this way. I didn't need the government shoving things down my throat.
Bureaucracy always feels the need to *do something*, even if it's wrong. It can't understand that the solution is just to leave things alone.
Just FYI, while the Sri Lanken leaders are absolute crooks, it is also true that they signed up with China’s Belt and Road, had a huge port built, ceded it back to China, and China was going to be allowed to port their Navy there and refuel. Given the great power conflict between Russia+China vs USA NATO, and the interest in controlling the Indian Ocean, I would be somewhat surprised if larger interests were not at play.
If only more people understood this! When left to pursue our own interests we constantly innovate ways to become more efficient, as long as we know our property rights will be respected.
Progressivism almost always ends with the exact opposite of what they promised and hoped for. There are laws that govern the universe, laws that the US founders were incredibly wise to understand. Our 3 core documents (Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and Constitution) brilliantly and clearly define how to move WITH these universal principles as a society.
Progressives have and always will live with a false sense of reality. They will paint their rosey picture and imagine their utopia, and damn reality and universal laws.
Then when their thing inevitable goes south, they will scream and wail and blame and try more of what is doomed to fail, and the unintended consequences will continue to exponentially multiply. You simply cannot cheat the way the universe is ordered.
And these "progressives" scream for this "change" while enjoying the standard of living and quality of life that those of us who value the founder's principles live by to create all of the things these zombies enjoy. It's mind boggling. Nothing is ever good enough for them.🤯
It’s all right here:
FTA: So let’s understand where responsibility lies for law and order in a self-governing republic.
In a government of, by and for the People, it is the People who are responsible for their government. This is axiomatic and indisputable: If the government is in our hands, vessels OF the government are in our hands.
https://alexanderscipio.substack.com/p/self-governing-means-the-people-are
"Some trace his downfall back to an ill-fated decision in April 2021 to stop all imports of chemical fertilizers and abruptly put the country on a path to organic agriculture. One commentator wrote that “Mr. Rajapaksa’s imperious decision to impose organic farming on the entire country … led to widespread hunger after the agricultural economy collapsed.” The reality is that this policy had everything to do with foreign currency shortages and an inability to pay for imports rather than a planned shift to organic agriculture. As such, the former president’s hasty call for an organic transition was a convenient excuse to stop paying for fertilizer imports. ... Our research on the diets of long-term organic versus conventional tea farmers in Sri Lanka suggests that it is actually the established organic tea farmers who have done much better over the past two years. They receive a price premium for their product, have well-established internal supplies of high-quality organic compost to maintain their soils, and their tea yields are the same or better than those of conventional tea farmers. Their steady earnings combined with vegetable gardens for home consumption mean that they have nutritious diets. This compares with conventional tea farmers who had to deal with the sudden loss of chemical fertilizer supplies last summer, struggled to find good-quality organic compost, and then saw declining yields, lower incomes, and poorer diets." https://news.mongabay.com/2022/08/drawing-the-wrong-lessons-from-sri-lankas-organic-farming-experience-commentary/
1. It takes time to transition to organic farming, you have to pretty much stop tilling the soil, you have to create stocks of compost, you have to plant cover crops which you till into the soil, you may have to apply amendments including plant and manure compost, and you have to pretty much stop tilling the soil after that. You're looking at 3 to 5 years to prepare the soil, first. Most industrial ag soils are strongly depleted of nutrients, it's basically just sterilized soil which requires huge amounts of petrochemicals to keep going, it's not the rich black loam which was there before the "Green Revolution". And when the petrochemicals go, so do the crop yields. Another problem is Roundup-resistant weeds, which make harvesting and cleaning more difficult - and these weeds proliferate in a big way.
2. The leader and his cronies in Sri Lanka stole huge amounts of money so that the country could no longer afford to pay for petrochemical herbicides and fertilizers - and as a cover for that, he made his announcement about the "transition" to organic agriculture. Essentially, his country got cut off by its suppliers, so he didn't exactly have a choice, so he made up a BS story to cover his ass. It ended up in a very predictable disaster. He and his cronies need to be rounded up and forced to disgorge the proceeds of their theft - then they might make good field laborers for organic farms. I suggest shoveling manure might be appropriate for them - they have lots of experience with shoveling out BS.
3. Over and above that, this is a lesson in why national economies should not be dependent on imported goods for things which affect national security, and food is at the top of that list.
As the J6 defendants receive their fake justice of excessive foregone punishment, we know what judicial bias has become particularly in the DC courts. I have always wondered how people can be so inspired to hate someone like Trump when actual evil is being done in the name of government. I still ask who threw those flash bangs into a crowd that couldn't escape? That turned a crowd into a mob.
Just recently saw a video showing the cops throwing said flashbangs into the crowd.
The videos show the crowd tried to open up and spread out but the mass was difficult to change. There were people who were injured and one person died as a result of the shock. The use of rubber bullets and those flash bangs caused (IMHO) the crowd to become a mob. Mobs are always unstable. The bullhorns directed actions of the mob to enter the building. Nobody held to account for these actions?
The tragic J6 events were engineered (IMHO) by people who understood crowd dynamics. Ray Epps is part of that group to remove barriers and signs before the masses arrived from the speech. Trump was played. When the bullhorns were not enough to get the crowd agitated into action the flash bangs were used. Was it planned or simply happened? Not looking means we will not know.
Much like Antifa staying behind protesters chucking frozen water bottles and urine balloons over the crowd in order to get the police to react. Antifa are trained in crowd reactions. They agitate and take advantage of the turmoil prior to engaging in direct action.
See this new(?) video?
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/01/caught-video-ray-epps-led-break-first-set-us-capitol-barriers-now-video-led-break-second-set-barriers-jan-6/
More evidence. Who knows what lies in those hours of video yet to be seen by the public? But Ray Epps remains the most curious of all the people involved.
The mere fact of the video glitch is scary stuff. Means active meddling and ought to be grounds for a mistrial.
Yep. Looks like it was placed there on purpose because the original video doesn't have that glitch. It blows up the narrative that Epps wasn't charged because he wasn't on the grounds.
The full release of the videos are going to destroy the whole story.
Great post. All y’all have been warning (me!) that the climate crisis would be next and yeah here we go, it’s crystal clear. Substackers are wise. Thank you 🙏
There's the sense that we've been sitting on a powder keg of our own making. You can blame the authorities, you can blame everyone else for going along with it.
“ yes, it stings, but you know what doesn’t? A clean conscience. I’m willing to pay a little bit more.” Good for you Colbert… so in the tradition of his predecessor, the Unibomber’s twin, Letterman, here’s my Top Ten list for The World’s Biggest Clueless Asshat:
10) Stephen Colbert
9) Stephen Colbert
8) Let’s just skip to
🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁
1) Stephen Colbert
For those of you old enough, he’d have more success as a June Taylor Dancer! God, he’s an idiot.
Not old enough for June Taylor. However ++f Colbert
Pardon my French
From the days of television variety shows.. Colbert did that idiotic dance skit urging his viewers to get vaccinated... he’s either a shill or just an idiot or both.
That was pathetic. Both.
His mockery has been effective but now has become tiresome even to his fans. His only scared cow is himself. Pity that so many enjoy him beating up on so many.
It’s called virtue signaling by some, I call it condescending bullying!
Love it. But keep an eye out for feds, friends, so you don't wind up in a gulag next to the Q-Shaman.
At this rate, I'll get a revolution for my birthday.
Squee~
I’M IN!!!
I don't have a problem with tyrants who want to control me. Every deal I've ever made, every employee I've hired, and every game I've played has been across the table from people who want to beat me. We make a deal and head to the bar to celebrate. My problem is with idiots who allow others to control them. The consent of the governed isn't often active agreement, but is usually just apathy and incompetence. Tyrants rely on that. Success comes from protecting your interests, not expecting someone else to.
The great majority of American colonists in 1776 supported the king and his abuses and usurpations. It only took a few to become ungovernable and throw off such government.
"What we’re actually dealing with is a CONTROL crisis"
I was thinking this morning, before I even read this article, about how what we're witnessing now is a clash between the everyday reality of the masses and the made-up crises of the extremely privileged, and how it is exemplified by the presidencies of Trump and Biden.
Take Trump. You didn't have to like him as a human being to understand that for the average person, life was chugging along pretty smoothly. Prices were affordable, wages were rising relative to costs, and even globally things were quite calm. Even through the first year of the pandemic, in red states, people dealt with annoyances, yes we lost some businesses here in Montana (but we had a Democrat governor with presidential aspirations and a county health officer who thought he was Napoleon), but we pretty quickly got back on our feet. In fact the only thing that wasn't "normal" was the tantrum-throwing, apocalypse-predicting media tearing their hair out because the American public was to them a list of amorphous things: racist, sexist, bigoted, anti-democratic, anti-expert, anti-science, on and on and on.
And so we appeased them, or so it seems. We gave into the fake crisis of the privileged to buy a bit of peace from their constant tirades and lecturing about how we all had to be "better people" worthy of their praise and their unhinged reaction to the election of someone they found repugnant and uncontrollable.
And now we have Biden. The media is placated (well mostly--we still have the January 6 "insurrection," and "systemic racism" and the near constant threat to "our" democracy from "populism" and "nationalism"--God forbid we take care of regular Americans before anyone else), but the crises of the privileged were managed, or so they thought. On the other hand . . . well, I don't have to list the other hand. The apocalyptic movie ending is all around us with a doddering old perverted fool ambling through the wreckage, eating his ice cream, while the rest of us stand in shock wondering how we're going to come back from this.
So the lesson here is important: Choose yourself and trust your own perceptions. It's time to become selfish, particularly as a class, and stop letting others tell us what we should think to be considered "good citizens." Our job, as average Americans, is not to make the privileged proud of us, to live up to their expectations about concerning ourselves with pronouns and microaggressions and carbon footprints, problems of the privileged. Our job is to look after each other and our best interests and understand what the real crises are and not be drawn in by the fake ones.
May I copy and paste this, please? NYC issuing a PSA with what to do in case of a nuclear attack..🤦♀️🤬🤦♀️🤬. Now that is some serious fear mongering.
Be my guest. Thanks for the confidence booster.
It’s just so perfectly stated. Since reading Substack, my time on FB is down 70%, the insults are fewer and the intelligent conversation is most welcome..... and I love Instagram simply to see pics of my friends grandchildren ❤️.
*mic drop*
"The apocalyptic movie ending is all around us with a doddering old perverted fool ambling through the wreckage, eating his ice cream, while the rest of us stand in shock wondering how we're going to come back from this."
Wow. Great summary. My perspective is that we've been fooled into a system that enables greed and then dumps guilt on us to provide for all the needs that greed left in its wake. I think we need a system of reciprocity that enables us to take responsibility for us and ours by providing goods and services that the community values.
You put it really well, Lillia.
"My perspective is that we've been fooled into a system that enables greed and then dumps guilt on us to provide for all the needs that greed left in its wake."
You also put it very well. That's, I think, exactly what's happening.
Bleed the middle class to subsidize the underclass that slaves away for the overlords. If you are bright, talented, hard working you can make the managerial elite and spend your life on conspicuous consumption proving your superiority to the plebs; if you can sell them out entirely you are welcomed to the C suite or the politicians seat at the table. America 21st century.
On a personal level, I am absolutely in favor of organic farming. I'm a firm believer in diluted essential oils and nets on my own property. I try to convince my neighbors to eschew Roundup on the lawns where our kids and pets play. More people need to understand that this isn't an environmental issue. (Just as socialist programs aren't a humanitarian issue; there's a reason Republicans donate significantly more to charity than Democrats. And just as Covid, after the first initial "WTH?", was not a public health issue.)
As someone who comes from a long line of farmers and ranchers (I'm 4th generation on US soil) I can say that *all* farming used to be organic and it worked just fine. The difference? Monsanto and other evil poison companies came in and began duping farmers into using their products. Farmers fell for the false promise of being able to "do more with less" as long as they bought their seeds, fertilizer and pesticides from these companies and signed on the dotted line. That deal with the devil only ended up taking away their independence and turned them into slaves to said companies. Pretty soon their once fertile soil turned into dead soil unable to grow anything without the "magic" products they agreed to buy. Then add the government into the mix telling farmers what they can and can't grow, shutting down their land and outright telling them they *can't* grow *anything*. Also add that the animals farmers use to create fertilizer (cow poop) are regulated to the point they can't afford to keep the animals, once again, making it impossible to grow decent crops without the company's products. Then add to that, governments shutting off farmer's water. Add to that the fact that when all of our food was grown mostly organically, most people also grew a decent portion of their food themselves at home and this all becomes another incredible case of "unintended?" consequences. Leave it up to government and out of control corporations in bed with that same government to destroy something that worked just fine for literally thousands of years.
Control the food, you control the people.
Control the energy, you control the continent.
Control the money, control the world.
Is that original, Oregonian? I'm going to need to steal it.
When I think about how to rebuild economics, I think that no fuel should ever be shipped overseas. It should all belong to the continent because it goes under the whole land mass regardless of where it comes closest to the surface. And so sales and reserves and future planning should all prioritize that population. Plus the danger of spills and the trashing of driveby tankers to countries like Somalia. There should be no imports and exports of the same product.
And how to do that concerns your third point, which is the topic of my book and a major topic of my Substack/YT. You put it so succinctly.
It sounds like another example of government trying to fix a problem they themselves created and failing.
I've been having the same conversation, Rob, on other threads. Both can be true: organic, regenerative farming using your own cow-made fertilizer is better AND the militarized march to zero carbon is being used to destroy us. Quoting some great thinker, it's not a food crisis, it's a CONTROL crisis.
As a case in point, regenerative rancher John Roulac was censored for talking about farming. That's a solution that puts people back in CONTROL of their own food and land, and actually reverses airborne carbon, sinking it into the soil where it feeds the life cycle. My book is about economics but it uses the analogy of regenerative ag to say that capital is like carbon--dangerous when ownership is in the clouds but the source of life when sunk into the soil of community.
The homes, the farms, the land, the infrastructure, the skills, the knowledge, the creativity--these are the capital the UN considers wealth, and they all belong to the community that built them, not the bankers and their 'investment vehicles' who never picked up a shovel or a hammer in their lives.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Dismantle-Empire-2020-Vision/dp/1733347607/
Excellent posting
It's "funny" isn't it? Sweden gets an arbitrary number, 96 ESG, and our leaders and elites gets all warm and fuzzy-wuzzy inside. So... are we going to be able to eat that number? Heat our houses with it? "You can't reason like that!" they whine. 'Course I can, just did is my standard reply.
It's funny, sure it is. 65%-75% of our land areal is forested, the skew depending on definitions. Used to be less, when we were self-sufficient in food and energy production, back in the long long ago (1980s) before buying the IMF, World Bank and EU spiel of neoliberal economics.
Now, we are self-sufficient in food to about 30% of need. Oh, official figure is 100% but that's counting imports and previous farmlands turned into forests, residential areas, golf courses, and so on. Because to a politician of the neoliberal green variety - aka a silver spoon - as soon as there's a want or a need, the market magically provides. Guess what? The time it takes to prepare land and grow potatoes is a lot longer than the time you can go without food.
It sure is something when my 85 year old neighbour talks about wanting to blow all power lines, water pipes bridges leading in and out of the major cities. That's where the traitors, parasites, and all others such no matter if EUsocialist or neoliberal capitalist mulitkultur traitors live.
Wall off the cities. Let them eat eachother. We have the hydro power. We have the farmlands. We have the mines and the forests.
But we're a democracy so the worthless parasites gets to decide, because there's more of them. all the thousands and thousands of years since the ice gave way under hardships we today can scarcely imagine, and all it takes to destroy it is 40 years of post-modern PC campus marxism, neoliberal capitalism, and multiculturalism. All those ancestors who starved and toiled and froze, all for nothing now.
At least, hate keeps you warm.
We are NOT a democracy! We ARE a Democratic REPUBLIC! (If you're in the USA.) Write that down. Remember it. There is a difference. We are NOT majority rule.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the US has de facto moved on to proto-fascist oligarchy.
Still says “democratic republic” on the tin tho, I’ll give you that.
At least we're not supposed to be majority rule. Lol. I actually think with the monsters who've been running things for far too long it's minority rule. A handful of billionaires who think they know best. I don't think a majority of the people wants any of the insanity we've seen over the last couple decades.
🙌 The majority should be silent no more.
Remember Klaus claimed the government of Argentina was in his back pocket, like Canada, France, New Zealand, Australia, Germany .... it doesn't look as if it's all working out as planned...
Ironically, the agenda of the environmental alarmists is not just going to be bad for humanity but also for the environment. Countries with more economic freedom are less likely to cut down their forests, pollute their rivers, and kill all their animals. The demands of the hysterics to "save" the environment often include implementing the very policies that cause enormous harm to the environment and ruin people's lives in the process.
Exactly. In a free market, there is no incentive to waste.
I recently installed a rain barrel for my backyard garden not out of a desire to be "green" but out of a desire to be economical. I saw *for myself* that I could be more efficient this way. I didn't need the government shoving things down my throat.
Bureaucracy always feels the need to *do something*, even if it's wrong. It can't understand that the solution is just to leave things alone.
Don't just do something, stand there!
Just FYI, while the Sri Lanken leaders are absolute crooks, it is also true that they signed up with China’s Belt and Road, had a huge port built, ceded it back to China, and China was going to be allowed to port their Navy there and refuel. Given the great power conflict between Russia+China vs USA NATO, and the interest in controlling the Indian Ocean, I would be somewhat surprised if larger interests were not at play.
If only more people understood this! When left to pursue our own interests we constantly innovate ways to become more efficient, as long as we know our property rights will be respected.
Progressivism almost always ends with the exact opposite of what they promised and hoped for. There are laws that govern the universe, laws that the US founders were incredibly wise to understand. Our 3 core documents (Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and Constitution) brilliantly and clearly define how to move WITH these universal principles as a society.
Progressives have and always will live with a false sense of reality. They will paint their rosey picture and imagine their utopia, and damn reality and universal laws.
Then when their thing inevitable goes south, they will scream and wail and blame and try more of what is doomed to fail, and the unintended consequences will continue to exponentially multiply. You simply cannot cheat the way the universe is ordered.
And these "progressives" scream for this "change" while enjoying the standard of living and quality of life that those of us who value the founder's principles live by to create all of the things these zombies enjoy. It's mind boggling. Nothing is ever good enough for them.🤯