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Maple Seed Drones Will Swarm The Future by Carl Franzen
Imagine a cheap, tiny, hovering aerial drone capable of being launched with the flick of a person’s wrist and able to provide manipulable 360-degree surveillance views.
President Fernando Lugo, a leftist president, was deposed by an impeachment and removal from office engineered by his political opponents in the Paraguayan legislature. In June 2009, another leftist Latin American leader, Manuel Zelaya, was removed by the U.S.-trained and supervised Honduran military at gunpoint under the claimed authority of the Honduran Supreme Court acting on orders from the Honduran Congress. In both cases the United States acquiesced to the new political realities brought about by constitutional «soft»coups and it quickly recognized the accession to power in Paraguay by Lugo’s opponent, Vice President Federico Franco just as it had the Honduran junta led by Roberto Micheletti.
The city of Chicago is the most watched city in the U.S., with a network of tens of thousands of security cameras. But Big Brother won’t stop at that — new street lights with a twist about to be put in place in Chicago and several other cities — are able to speak to people, as well as record conversations. RT’s Anastasia Churkina reports.
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Dianne Feinstein targets press freedom by Glenn Greenwald
The supreme Senate defender of state secrecy and the Surveillance State, California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, yesterday issued a statement to Australia’s largest newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald, demanding (once again) the prosecution of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
This Monday, Twitter released it’s first ever transparency report. It revealed that just in the first six months of 2012, they’ve received more demands from governments for user data, than all of last year. And surprise, surprise, the United States made up the majority of the 849 requests, with a whopping 679. Alyona talks to Salon’s Glenn Greenwald about the growing surveillance state and what can be done about it.
A pioneer is one who goes before others, leads and prepares the way for others to follow, and this is a perfect description of the Transition movement as it pioneers new ways of thinking and living. As Sharon Astyk notes, ‘We talk a good game about wanting a better world for the next generation, but we aren’t living our lives as though we love our own kids, much less anyone else’s. It seems to me that the only way to give the next generation a decent shot at life is for those of us who care most about them to take things into our own hands and prepare for the changes ahead’ (Astyk, 2008: 7; emphasis added).
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You Can Grow Oca! by Rob Cardillo
Oca (Oxalis tuberosa) is a long-ignored South American tuber that is now beginning to show up in markets that specialize in unusual Latin American ingredients. Oca (also spelled ocha) is a highly productive perennial plant with waxy, brightly colored tubers that are perfect as a season-extending crop — they’re best harvested from the garden or greenhouse in late December or early January. In its native lands of Bolivia and Peru, oca is second only to the potato in agricultural importance. It is an excellent source of carbohydrates, phosphorus and iron, as well as essential amino acids that promote the health and proper function of muscles, organs, nails, hair, skin and more.
The wisest, like OpenSourceSurvival Members, realize that our greatest and only real hope lay in possessing and passing on a reservoir of individual skills and cooperation with like-minded groups of people. In this, we can if compelled to do so, recreate the resiliency, safety, and low impact lifestyles of a tribal or village based economic society.
I feel it is becoming more clear that our pending economic collapse isn’t something that will happen but something that is happening right in front of us. Much as people in the Balkans felt no war was coming while mortars were placed in the hills around their cities we continue to think our economic woes are just the downside of a cycle.
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Will the Real Capitalism Please Stand Up? by David W. Cooney
Capitalists wonder why we distributists oppose capitalism. Distributists, on the other hand, wonder why so many good people continue to support it. I think the problem lies in the fact that there is no consistently held definition of capitalism. What do you mean when you say “capitalism?” The definition I hear most often from various capitalist pundits is the equally vague term, “free market,” but what does that really mean?
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The Court and the “Ring of Capitalists” by David S. D’Amato
Last week’s 5-4 decision from the US Supreme Court, holding that Congress did indeed possess the constitutional authority to enact the individual mandate that remains Obamacare’s most controversial provision surprised many. The Court’s majority opined that although the US Constitution’s Commerce Clause doesn’t give Congress the power to impose the mandate, the legislative branch’s taxing power does.
Lincoln Hospital in New York City has started a new program that allows artists to trade their talents for health care. For every hour they work at the hospital, the artists will receive $40 of credit towards their health care.
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Behind the Crack-up of the Right by Pat Buchanan
In introducing his new book, Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America, Paul Gottfried identifies a fundamental divide between neoconservatives and the traditional right. The divide is over the question: What is this nation, America?
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War is the Health of Government Spying & Secrecy by John Glaser
Lesson one from Cato’s Julian Sanchez is that “Government surveillance is now almost entirely off the books.” The old way of tallying how many times the national security state attempts to spy on citizens is not taking into account the digital internet age.
The development and urban sprawl that continues to push away from our cities and pushes our suburbs out to the countryside are devastating natural environments. Building new subdivisions means tearing down trees, draining wetlands, and plowing over meadows and fields. Instead of a native environment and an abundance of ecosystems, we end up with treeless lots spread with perfect green lawns. When we destroy the natural landscape and replace it with manicured lawns and non-native plants, we destroy the wildlife that came before us. We create sterilized, pesticide-laden, and well-pruned lots instead. And we end up wasting resources by using gallons and gallons of water to keep that lawn perfectly green.
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Andy Griffith and the Fourth Amendment, RIP by Anthony Gregory
This video making the rounds features the wonderful Andy Griffith, who sadly passed away this week, in character explaining the importance of due process to Opie. He reveals a profound reverence the principles of Fourth Amendment. More precisely, he is abiding by the principles of the exclusionary rule declaring that improperly obtained evidence is “poisoned fruit.” There is debate over the propriety of this rule as a Fourth Amendment enforcement mechanism, but, that matter aside, modern audiences might find this scene somewhat jarring.
In Extraenvironmentalist #44 we discuss the archeology of innovation with Sander van der Leeuw to learn how our complex societies have shifted short-term risks to long-term risks through the application of technologies. Sander explains how our complex societies developed and describes why our previous models of innovation may not address issues of sustainability. We ask if the genius factor can have a role in developing the breakthroughs necessary to preserve our species or if we’ll need to look for other models of development. Then, we travel to Salt Spring Island, BC to meet Amy and Larry who innovated in low-energy models of living by living off the grid for fourteen years in California.
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Building a Yurt from Scratch: Resources by Milkwood Permaculture
While there’s many solutions to easily yurt oneself if you have a reasonable budget ($8-$10,000), we need to find a solution more in the DIY realm. So we have searched far and wide, and here’s what we’ve come up with in terms of build-it-yourself-from-scratch Yurt and Ger resources.
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Why homeschool: Learning from real life by Jennifer Hartley
This is the second essay in a series on the topic of why our family is homeschooling (Part I is here). I’ve been thinking about all the many, interconnected reasons that my educational philosophy has been taking the shape it has. Some overarching themes that I can point to are: collapse awareness, learning in and from the real world, and striving for a revised culture based on integrity, kindness, and respect rather than domination and control.
Now this is interesting and a big thanks to Adam for sending me this one. The deal here that perked me up is this move by Exxon might be tied into Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s letter (which I posted below) in regards to Karzai doing deals with China on oil contracts. Rohrabacher’s views on supporting the new ‘Northern Alliance’ as Karzai does deals with the Taliban was noted earlier on the blog, and Karzai definitely does not like this guy. lol
I would be interested in any other theories or speculations as to why Exxon would be willing to risk it in these areas. Is this the ‘Kurdistan’ of Afghanistan once all the western forces move on and the Taliban come back to restart where they left off?
with Joel Salatin
My garden beds are a combination of a few things I like.
1- would be raised bed gardening and in particular square foot gardening
2- Hugelkultur – this is a technique where wood is buried inside of the garden bed which greatly reduces and even can eliminate the need for irrigation. Don’t take my word for it… read this, and listen to this and this For the purposes of this instruct-able I’ll ask you to suspend your disbelief and lets just assume your on board with hugelkultur.
This week, the United States celebrates its independence from Great Britain. But throughout the nation’s history there have been plenty of people who have sought their independence from the US, not in it. Some of these rebellions against the US have been mere publicity stunts, while others genuinely threatened to tear the country apart. Still others continue to this day, their members insisting that secession is their naturally given right.
Funded and approved by the US Department of Treasury in 1943, this Disney featurette was to encourage every good American to do his “duty” and pay his taxes, which, at this time, were at an all time high. Those who do not wish to pay or don’t pay it gladly are depicted as friends of Hitler and enemies of liberty and democracy.
Few things make the need for local resilience more apparent than a power outage — particularly one in sweltering 100 degree heat like the one in the mid-Atlantic right now. Unfortunately, there’s every reason to believe we are going to see lots more outages like this.
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A Vermont No Fly Zone by Thomas H. Naylor
I believe all military aircraft should be banned not only from the Burlington International Airport but from Vermont’s airspace. Vermont should become the country’s first military no fly zone, just like Libya was during the recent war.
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Concerned Oahu Citizens Demand that Monsanto Stop Poisoning Hawaii and Leave the State by James W. Macey
Several organizations and over 100 concerned citizens held a protest on Thursday in front of the Monsanto Corporation headquarters in Kunia on the Island of Oahu, Hawaii. The protesters met in Kunia and marched over a half mile to the Monsanto compound for two hours of roadside sign-waving and chanting. The protesters demanded that Monsanto leave Hawaii saying they need real food not exported GMO seeds and chemical contamination. The group also demanded that Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) foods be labeled.
I see the ideas behind bioregionalism and localization as convergent rather than juxtaposing. Perhaps the label is a bit glib; what I meant here was really about being “bio-regionally oriented.” It comes from seeing oneself first as a citizen of a place, and a citizen of a locality or a nation second. It’s about putting the qualities and nature of a place ahead of considering our abstract allegiances, which always get us in trouble, since they divide people around competing ideas and ideals of cultural identity. Learning to become a citizen of a place is the crux of the philosophical parent of deep ecology, i.e., “bio-regionalism.” This philosophy has informed my motivation and outlook, thanks to the work of Peter Berg and Planet Drum that I began to read when I moved to Northern California in 1983. Being bioregionally oriented, an ecological citizen, encourages you to attend to attuning with your “life place” which is not one place really but occurs in connected, concentric circles — with ones immediate home (dwelling) being the first ring, with ones greater home in a physical community or neighborhood being the next, and finally with the bio-region with all its natural and climatic particulars.
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Decentralization: Freedom by Diffusion by David C. Huff
One of the beneficial aspects of national election campaigns is their reminder to us that America is becoming dangerously enamored with the false hope of political salvation. The finances, energy, media attention, and zealous devotion heaped upon candidates for high office at times reaches messianic proportions. They provide further evidence that what was once a valid political process now borders on idolatry.
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The Medium is The Middleman: For a Revolution Against Media by Al Giordano
Media now controls a new economic order: one that has supplanted governments, churches and productive industry to impose a mediating tyranny over people and our Daily Lives.
Therefore, something akin to Revolution is necessary.
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Cascadia Rising by Martin Patail
In the 1970s, environmental scientists began to see the region as a distinct geological area, with its own biological and environmental signature. Ernest Callenbach’s 1975 sci-fi novel Ecotopia portrayed a sovereign haven of free love and groovy alternative medicine (and, on a less groovy note, separate city-states for African Americans). Over the past 40 years, political groups of all stripes—from gay activists to white nationalists—have espoused different visions of a breakaway Northwest.
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A Coup in Paraguay? Is That in Africa? by Saul Landau
Washington had cited the presence of Al Qaeda and Hezbollah cells in the region – huh?– as the reason for its recent military activities there, and hoped to gain positions from which it could attack the populist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia rather than seeking to counter phantom terrorist groups. Washington tends to be “concerned” over threats to its traditional hegemony like the newly-formed Union of South American Nations (Unasur) – and its planned regional defense system to which the US is not invited. State Department officials continued to sound off about how much they remained committed to democratic procedures. Sure, I thought, like Groucho said:. “In America you can go on the air and kid the politicians, and the politicians can go on the air and kid the people.”
Citizens can hold police accountable in the palms of their hands with “Police Tape,” a smartphone application from the ACLU of New Jersey that allows people to securely record and store interactions with police, as well as provide legal information about citizens’ rights when interacting with the police.
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Will your Internet provider be spying on you? By Douglas Rushkoff
This month, if everything goes according to schedule, your Internet service provider may begin monitoring your account, just to make sure you aren’t doing anything wrong with it — like sharing copyrighted movie or music files. While we might all agree that copyright holders need to be protected, we may not all be equally happy about all of our communications being checked for violations. People and businesses who are not doing anything illegal may still have some things they wish to hide from their Internet access providers.
Resisting war taxes can be very simple — don’t pay some or all the tax due on your annual Federal income tax form, or don’t pay the Federal excise tax on telephone bills, or both.
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