Szasz, a Reason contributing editor and professor emeritus at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, was driven throughout his long and remarkably productive career by what he called his “passion against coercion,” especially the medicalized versions that recast repression as treatment. His radical critique of psychiatry, laid out in the 1960 American Psychologist essay “The Myth of Mental Illness” and then in a book of the same name the following year, may be more relevant today than ever, as the field grows to encompass every sin and foible despite its shaky empirical foundation.
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Fall Gardening Primer with Tips and Tricks for 2012 – The Survival Podcast
This morning I walked the dogs in 60 degree morning chill and I was ecstatic! While our highs are still in the mid 80s the back of the 100+ degree monster seems truly broken. Time to get serious about fall gardening and frankly fall maintenance of both land and tools.
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How We Became Israel By Andrew J. Bacevich
Peace means different things to different governments and different countries. To some it suggests harmony based on tolerance and mutual respect. To others it serves as a euphemism for dominance, peace defining the relationship between the strong and the supine.
In the absence of actually existing peace, a nation’s reigning definition of peace shapes its proclivity to use force. A nation committed to peace-as-harmony will tend to employ force as a last resort. The United States once subscribed to this view. Or beyond the confines of the Western Hemisphere, it at least pretended to do so.
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Confessions of a Former Republican By Jeremiah Goulka
I used to be a serious Republican, moderate and business-oriented, who planned for a public-service career in Republican politics. But I am a Republican no longer.
There’s an old joke we Republicans used to tell that goes something like this: “If you’re young and not a Democrat, you’re heartless. If you grow up and you’re not a Republican, you’re stupid.” These days, my old friends and associates no doubt consider me the butt of that joke. But I look on my “stupidity” somewhat differently. After all, my real education only began when I was 30 years old.
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Ask the DNC: Is Romney Ready for the Kill List? By John Cook (Video)
As you may have heard last night, Osama bin Laden is dead, has perished from the earth, is at the bottom of the sea, and is not better off than he was four years ago. The Democrats are trying to pull a Bush on national security, inflating Obama’s reputation as a killing machine and portraying Mitt Romney as a bungling softie.
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Democrats parade Osama bin Laden’s corpse as their proudest achievement By Glenn Greenwald
One of the formative events shaping my views of the last decade’s American political landscape was watching the 2004 Republican national convention. An expertly staged, supremely manipulative ritual of jingoism and leader-worship, I regarded it with an equal measure of awe and horror.
America’s militarism was continuously exploited by speaker after speaker to glorify the commander-in-chief, George W Bush, as a brave and noble warrior for American Greatness. Each mention of war and killing prompted his delirious followers to erupt in the same boisterous crowd-chant: “USA, USA.” Bush’s opponent (and his supporters), by contrast, were vilified as soft-on-the-terrorists, troop-hating, America-despising weaklings who lacked the stomach to Keep Us Safe.
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Avant Yard: 20 basil harvesting & storage tips By Diane Rixon
Mmm-mmm. Fresh basil. It’s so very fragrant — the indispensable ingredient in a host of mid-summer recipes.
My basil is lush, green and ready for picking. Okay, I don’t have a whole lot of it out in my garden; however, I’m planning on growing a lot more next summer. In preparation for that lofty enterprise, I thought it’d be cool to find out how the expert basil-growers harvest their beloved herb. Here are some tips I picked up:
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Survivalist congressman is ready for doomsday By Ben Pershing
Deep in the West Virginia woods, in a small cabin powered by the sun and the wind, a bespectacled, white-haired man is giving a video tour of his basement, describing techniques for the long-term preservation of food in case of “an emergency.”
“We don’t really think of those today, because it’s so convenient to go to the supermarket,” he cautions. “But you know, you’re planning because the supermarket may not always be there.”
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Keeper Crops – How to store the summer harvest for the winter kitchen By Kathy LaLiberte
During the winter months, when the ground is covered by a thick blanket of snow, there’s something particularly satisfying about still being able to eat food from your garden. There are many summer-grown crops including potatoes, onions, garlic, beets, carrots and winter squash, can be stored with relative ease to nourish you right through until the next growing season. Even a modest-size garden can yield a substantial crop of winter keepers.
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DARPA’s Cheetah Bot Breaks Human, Robot Speed Records By Stephanie Mlot
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Boston Dynamics have unleashed a legged robot that’s even faster than Olympic champion Usain Bolt.
The Cheetah recently broke its own land speed record of 18 mph, running a 20-meter split at 28.3 mph, faster than the world record for a human set in 2009 when Usain Bolt reached a peak speed of 27.78 mph.
Two brothers who shot and killed a sheriff’s deputy have placed photos of the slain lawman outside the entrance of their farm, calling it a “warning” to other law enforcement officials.
The Associated Press reports that the photos show the “bullet-riddled bodies” of Roane County Deputy Bill Jones and ride-along Mike Brown, who were shot and killed on May 11, 2006, after arriving at the home of Rocky Houston to deliver an arrest warrant.
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The Wisdom and Beauty of Frugal Living – The self-reliant lifestyle can be a joyful, profound exercise in humility and self-awareness By Bryan Welch
My mentor was a sunburned, 60-year-old, 300-pound Jehovah’s Witness in dark glasses. Tim Posey didn’t look like a tree-hugger. He didn’t talk about self-reliance, loving nature or saving the environment. But in many ways, he was the truest and best conservationist I’ve ever known.
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Eating Well, After the Supermarket Runs out of Food By John Robb
Do you have a relationship with the farmer that grows your food?
Currently, for most people, the answer to that question is no.
They get their food from a supermarket. Food produced by some nameless, faceless farmer, producing food on an industrial scale (and getting paid an hourly wage competitive with an employee at China’s Foxconn).
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Stephen Scott from Terroir Seeds – The Survival Podcast
Stephen Scott is co-owner of Terroir Seeds along with his wife Cindy. Terroir is a family owned and operated heirloom seed company that focuses on the “Cycle of Terroir” defined as “from the soil, to the seed, to the food you eat”. Terroir seeds provides unique varieties of heirloom seeds, education and information for all phases of the “Terroir Cycle”.
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Nanotechnology: Armed resistance by Leigh Phillips
The shoe-box-sized package was addressed to Armando Herrera Corral. It stated that he was the recipient of an award and it was covered in official-looking stamps. Herrera, a computer scientist at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Mexico City, shook the box a number of times, and something solid jiggled inside. What could it be? He was excited and a little nervous — so much so, that he walked down the hall to the office of a colleague, robotics researcher Alejandro Aceves López, and asked Aceves to open it for him.
A liberal and a progressive walk into a restaurant called Democracy.
The sign outside promises, “Exercise Your Freedom of Choice with Our Varied Menu.”
Here’s what that menu offers:
Double Cheeseburger Deluxe: $100
Double Bacon Cheeseburger Deluxe: $100
An officer with the Miami-Dade police department was arrested by federal authorities for stopping female drivers for no other reason than to initiate “sexually suggestive conversations.”
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The End of Gasoline Warfare By John Michael Greer
Last week’s discussion of American military vulnerabilities touched on one of the major issues that ought to be giving Pentagon officials sleepless nights—but only one of them The military downsides of America’s obsession with high-tech gizmos, in a world where complexity just gives the other guy more opportunities to mess with you, are no small matter, to be sure, but those downsides are taking shape in a wider context that has its own bad news to deliver to fans of US global dominance.
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Developing Raw Land into a Homestead or BOL Over the Long Haul – The Survival Podcast
One of the more complex questions I was asked at Ben Falk’s PDC course was about a “long term bug out”, which I needed clarification on because it can mean so many things. What the student meant turned out to be something very relevant for the TSP community so it has become the focus of today’s show.
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Farmer Debunks Corporate Propaganda Against Proposed Law to Label Genetically Modified Food By Will Allen
I’ve been a farmer for more than 40 years. While I no longer live or farm in California, I do co-manage 120 acres of farmland in Vermont, and I know that a GMO labeling law passed in California will have widespread implications for consumers and farmers in every state in the country. As a farmer who has experience in both conventional and organic farming, I’m compelled to address the anti-labeling campaign’s so-called “concerns” for farmers and consumers.
You’ve heard of solar power. How about tree power?
Researchers following upon an MIT study last year that discovered a measurable current inside trees have created a gadget that harnesses that power for electricity.
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Slavery vs. Citizenship: What’s The Difference? By Eric Peters
Debating the merits of a particular government policy or proposal with authoritarian-minded political opponents is pointless – if you’re hoping to persuade, at any rate. Far better to ask them a few apparently simple questions – and force them to confront the disquieting answers about the authoritarian nature of the political and social system they support.
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Criminal Negligence in the Bush Administration Pre-9/11 By John Glaser
Kurt Eichenwald reminds us in the New York Times that the infamous briefing declassified for the 9/11 Commission entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” was just one of many, many pre-9/11 classified warnings that an attack was imminent. He writes that ”the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed.”
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The Laws Obama is Breaking in His Relentless Drone War By John Glaser
The Obama administration has superseded both domestic and international law in its targeted killing program in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. A legal memo from the Congressional Research Service has concluded that “none of the established legal frameworks is a perfect fit for the Administration’s lethal targeting operations because the current US practice of lethal targeting involves features that are improvised, inconsistent or otherwise questionable,” according to Secrecy News.
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Natural Bee Keeping with Conventional Hives and Inland Storm Prepping – The Survival Podcast
Today’s guest is Mil Apostol. Mil has been keeping bees in her backyard since 2008 when she got her first hive. She studied with master beekeeper Serge Lebesque and keeps her hives chemical-free.
Mil believes in learning from local wild bees about how to be a better beekeeper. She has an organic garden, worked as a chef for many years, and also is an avid forager of wild foods.
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The CIA’s Islamist Terrorist Network By Wayne Madsen
The Central Intelligence Agency cobbled together the forerunner of the present Muslim jihadist terrorist network in the late 1970s to battle Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Throughout the next three decades, the CIA continued to maintain links with the jihadist groups, using them as allies for certain operations and attacking them when America’s «commitment» to the «war on terrorism» required an propaganda boost in the world’s media.
Surging unemployment and financial disarray have stoked calls for separatism in Catalonia, a comparatively prosperous part of Spain whose political leaders say their wealth is being sucked dry by the central government.
Crowds waved red and yellow striped Catalan flags – one of the oldest still in use in Europe – and sang the Catalan anthem on a national day marking the conquest of Catalonia by Spain’s King Philip V in 1714 after a 13-month siege of Barcelona.
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Dr. Lee Reich on Growing Fruit Naturally – The Survival Podcast
Lee Reich, PhD is an avid farmdener (more than a garden, less than a farm), gardening consultant, and writer who has worked in plant and soil research with the U. S. Department of Agriculture and Cornell University.
Dr. Reich is a well known author, most recently he published, of The Pruning Book and Grow Fruit Naturally. He is also the author of 4 additional books.
Prominent Blogger Nate Silver predicts Obama has a 78% chance of winning the forthcoming presidential election. 270towin.com also forecasts a likely Obama victory. So what could happen to the state of the Union if Obama indeed defeats Romney?
Prediction: there will be more calls for secession. ’More’ means that calls for secession already exist.
The sure-footed mule, long a mainstay of US Marine operations in mountainous areas, may soon find itself replaced by a robot.
Developed by the USMC’s Warfighting Lab, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and Boston Dynamics, the Legged Squad Support System (LS3) can walk up to 3mph for 20 miles, and can job for short bursts at 8mph, all while carrying up to 400 pounds. Knock it over, and it will stand up again.
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Australian government asked to leave aboriginal community By Sarah Keenan
Just over five years ago, on 21 June 2007, Australia’s then prime minister John Howard announced that rates of child sex abuse in the country’s Northern Territory aboriginal communities were so high that they constituted a national emergency. Drawing on the federal government’s constitutional power to override Territory legislation, and suspending Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act 1975, Howard led the federal government in rushing through the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007. Pushed through parliament in less than four weeks, there was an almost total lack of consultation with the aboriginal communities that were to be affected.
Law enforcement has long been the target of retaliation on a small scale. In the past, criminals typically avoided the police, so retaliatory or outright targeted and planned attacks on law enforcement were rare. Today, it appears there are ever-increasing attacks on police officers. What lessons have these elicit organizations learned from the current world situation that blurs the lines between criminal and terrorist? What lesson must law enforcement learn and APPLY to stay ahead in the decision making cycle to detect, deter, disrupt, prevent or respond to these unpredictable, uncertain, unexpected and unconventional threats?
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5 More Indicted in Fort Stewart Militia Case By Ryan Smith
Five more men have been indicted in connection with a militia group said to have carried out the murder of a former Fort Stewart soldier and his girlfriend, the Associated Press reports. Four of the men are former soldiers.
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Another Guantánamo prisoner death highlights Democrats’ hypocrisy By Glenn Greenwald
A detainee at Guantánamo was found dead in his cell on Saturday, according to camp officials. He is the ninth person to die at the camp since it was opened more than ten years ago. As former Gitmo guard Brandon Neely pointed out Monday, more detainees have died at the camp (nine) than have been convicted of wrongdoing by its military commissions (six). This is the fourth detainee who has died at the camp since Obama’s inauguration.
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