Ya Basta!

Behind every great fortune there is a great crime. The criminal elite, the oligarch rulers of the world do not enslave the world for the bulk of their careers and then suddenly flip altruistic at the end. Foundations, corporate giving, people think that these organizations amass wealth through the most despicable means, but are then motivated to do good for some reason. What a sham. Pickens is an oil man, he wants to control resources, and wind is something you can’t own. Therefore, he must be using the wind farm as investment to control something you can own. Something finite and precious. Water. Here’s the cutsey cute version of this story and the hard news version. Take your pick, the truth is equally troubling either way.

via: DC Examiner

by By Timothy P. Carney

Examiner Columnist | 8/21/08 7:10 PM Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens is about to make a killing by selling water he doesn’t own. As he does it, it will be praised as a planet-friendly wind project. After he pulls it off, the media will deride it as craven capitalism. In truth, it is one the most audacious examples of politics for profit, showing how big government helps the biggest business steal from the rest of us. The plotline behind Pickens’ water-and-wind scheme is almost too rich to believe. If it were a movie script, reviewers would dismiss it as over-the-top.

Continue Reading »

via: USA Today

Ghouls have made a resurgence in cemeteries throughout the United States, prying plates and ornaments from headstones and selling them to scrap yards.

A rise in metal prices is driving the thefts, detectives say. Prices for copper, brass and bronze — metals that are commonly found in cemetery remembrances — have in some cases quadrupled in price in the past four years.

Because the metals can be hammered out of shape, the thefts are virtually untraceable.

“It’s disgusting,” says Detective Kurt Fundermark of the Cape Coral (Fla.) Police Department, who is investigating the theft of 150 brass flower vases from grave sites in two cemeteries.

“These thieves don’t seem to care about their conscience. They don’t care about right and wrong,” Fundermark says.

•In Delaware someone removed 1,000-pound bronze gates from two mausoleums at the Riverview Gardens cemetery in Wilmington.

•More than 200 brass urns were stolen from Rest Lawn Memorial Gardens and Sunset Memorial Park, both graveyards in Cumberland, Md. A married couple was recently charged in the case.

•In Chicago last month, three men were charged with taking $500,000 worth of brass urns and ornaments from cemeteries. Continue Reading »

via: Casaubon’s Book

After “Where should I live?” the next most frequently asked question I get is “How much land do I need?” And just like “Where should I live” is a deeply personal question, shaped as much by who you are, where your family is, what you do for a living, etc… as by any rules of thumb, the same thing is true of “how much land do I need.” That is, it depends on where the land is, what kind of land it is, how much rain you get, what you want to do with it. The one absolute truth is that with a few exceptions the answer is almost always “less than you think.”

Now when I went looking for land I did what a lot of people did - I wanted as much as I could afford. I got 27 acres, and in many ways, that’s far too much. Now don’t get me wrong - I’m delighted I have it. It gives me choices that other people don’t have. But I very quickly realized that 3 intensively managed acres could probably have done me nearly as well and that 1/2 acre could do an astounding amount. There have been times when the only part of this property we’ve used is about an acre of it.

Ok, so the first set of questions applies to you - let’s say you want some land to grow food on. What’s your situation? I’d suggest you ask yourself these questions. I won’t offer any real answers, just things to think about.

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Yes! This is resistence! This is how we fight the global tyrants, the moneyed elite, the banking cartel! Barter! Trade organic produce, stop using fiat currency!

via: Money

Credit crunch pinched residents of one Norfolk village have been taking advantage of an inventive means to save the pennies without cutting back on nights out. Thanks to the resourcefulness of their local pub, ‘The Pigs’, they can now barter fresh produce in return for pints of beer.

The pub, in Edgefield near Holt, is one of the few to see business boom since the start of the credit crunch as it encourages locals to trade their home grown produce in return for alcohol.

The sign outside the pub reads: ‘If you grow, breed, shoot or steal anything that may look at home on our menu, then bring it in and let’s do a deal.’ True to their word they’ll negotiate on anything, agreeing a barter price based on the size, quantity and quality of the produce presented.

Green fingered residents have been trading fruit and vegetables for pub meals and drinks, while others have swapped freshly laid eggs and fish or meat they’ve caught themselves for a pint.

Pub manager and brain child of the popular scheme, Cloe Wasey, enthused “We find the home-grown stuff is often much better than what we can get from the suppliers. When we get the good stuff, and it gets on to the specials board, it’s brilliant.” Continue Reading »

via: CNN

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — Larry Horsley loves that he doesn’t buy much gas, even though he drives his ‘95 Chevy S-10 back and forth to work each day.

Horsley, a self-described do-it-yourselfer, simply plugs his truck into an electric wall outlet in his Douglasville, Georgia, garage and charges it overnight, instead of buying gasoline refined from mostly imported oil.

“If I can keep a dollar from going overseas, I’ll spend two dollars,” he said. The whole conversion, including the truck, cost him about $12,000, which parts dealers say is about standard.

Another Atlanta-area tinkerer, David Kennington, converted his Honda Civic del Sol from gasoline to electric for a different reason: “I’m a raging greenie,” he said.

Both Horsley and Kennington are fed up. They’re among a growing number of Americans who are refusing to wait for big-car manufacturers to deliver mainstream electric vehicles, called EVs. Not only have they rebelled against the status quo by ripping out their gas-guzzling engines and replacing them with zero-emission electric motors, they say just about anyone can do it. Continue Reading »

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Elite, disinformation, infiltration, and challenges to the Conspiracy Theory Movement (that’s a BS term, I know, but what do we call ourselves, what do we stand for?). This article brings up an interesting point. I do not think the Prince really has the world’s best interests in mind. He’s power elite, he’s house of Windsor, and I have no doubt he continues a long line of eugenicists plotting against humanity. The elite constantly attach themselves to legitimate movments and then turn them to their own purposes. Nonetheless, the Prince has many sound points in this article. He brings up the destruction wrought by the Green Revolution and how dangerous corporate monopoly food production is. I don’t know what his motivation for this is. Maybe it’s jsut to give him credibility so when he proposes a solution later that actually will hurt humanity, people will believe in him. Regardless, what he’s saying here is true.

Now, is Obama preaching this message to soften Americans up for an elitist, centralized, forced austerity? Probably. Will the elite experience any shortages, rationing, or cut backs? Of course not. We should be wary of Obama’s motivations behind these comments, but we should also listen to them with an open mind and consider what truth may lie inside. Prince Charles, Obama, David Rockefeller, Hitler, hell, Satan himself can spit wisdom on occassion. And we would do well to listen, with sceptical and critical, but open minds.

via: Telegraph

The mass development of genetically modified crops risks causing the world’s worst environmental disaster, The Prince of Wales has warned.

In his most outspoken intervention on the issue of GM food, the Prince said that multi-national companies were conducting an experiment with nature which had gone “seriously wrong”. Continue Reading »

via: Asia Times

From the details coming out of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Moscow over the weekend, it is apparent that the great game over Caspian energy has taken a dramatic turn. In the geopolitics of energy security, nothing like this has happened before. The United States has suffered a huge defeat in the race for Caspian gas. The question now is how much longer Washington could afford to keep Iran out of the energy market.

Gazprom, Russia’s energy leviathan, signed two major agreements in Ashgabat on Friday outlining a new scheme for purchase of Turkmen gas. The first one elaborates the price formation principles that will be guiding the Russian gas purchase from Turkmenistan during the next 20-year period. The second agreement is a unique one, making Gazprom the donor for local Turkmen energy projects. In essence, the two agreements ensure that Russia will keep control over Turkmen gas exports.

The new pricing principle lays out that starting from next year, Russia has agreed to pay to Turkmenistan a base gas purchasing price that is a mix of the average wholesale price in Europe and Ukraine. In effect, as compared to the current price of US$140 per thousand cubic meters of Turkmen gas, from 2009 onward Russia will be paying $225-295 under the new formula. This works out to an additional annual payment of something like $9.4 billion to $12.4 billion. But the transition to market principles of pricing will take place within the framework of a long-term contract running up to the year 2028.

The second agreement stipulates that Gazprom will finance and build gas transportation facilities and develop gas fields in Turkmenistan. Experts have estimated that Gazprom will finance Turkmen projects costing $4-6 billion. Gazprom chief Alexei Miller said, “We have reached agreement regarding Gazprom financing and building the new main gas pipelines from the east of the country, developing gas fields and boosting the capacity of the Turkmen sector of the Caspian gas pipeline to 30 billion cubic meters.” Interestingly, Gazprom will provide financing in the form of 0% credits for these local projects. The net gain for Turkmenistan is estimated to be in the region of $240-480 million.

From all appearance, Gazprom, which was headed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for eight years from 2000 to May 2008, has taken an audacious initiative. It could only have happened thanks to a strategic decision taken at the highest level in the Kremlin. In fact, Medvedev had traveled to Ashgabat on July 4-5 en route to the Group of Eight summit meeting in Hokkaido, Japan.

Curiously, the agreements reached in Ashgabat on Friday are unlikely to enable Gazprom to make revenue from reselling Turkmen gas. Quite possibly, Gazprom may now have to concede similar terms to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the two other major gas producing countries in Central Asia. In other words, plain money-making was not the motivation for Gazprom. The Kremlin has a grand strategy. Continue Reading »

via: Al Jazeera English

The US has had stern words for Russia over its military intervention in Georgia to back South Ossietian separatists, but many analysts say that the Bush administration must share the blame for the crisis.

Washington has formed a close bond with the government of Mikheil Saakashvili since he came to power in the 2003 ‘Rose Revolution,’ offering military and economic aid and encouraging Georgia to join Nato.

Jon Sawyer, the director for the Pulitzer Centre for Crisis Reporting, said US politicians had encouraged their Georgian counterparts to think they had the backing of the US when Tbilisi decided to launch its attack on South Ossetia last week.

“The US has for several years now mishandled the situation in Georgia,” he told Al Jazeera.

“The way that Mikheil Saakashvili has approached this [has been by] thinking that he could be an extension of the west, a partner of the United States.” Continue Reading »

I generally agree with this essay - rich jackasses who think they’re going to be able to hole up in the wilderness and wait out the police state are in for big surprises. Community is without questions the best form of survivalism. But self defense has its place to. And community defense. By any mean necessary.

via: of two minds

I’m not trying to be difficult, but I can’t help cutting against the grain on topics like surviving the coming bad times when my experience runs counter to the standard received wisdom.

A common thread within most discussions of surviving bad times–especially really bad times–runs more or less like this: stockpile a bunch of canned/dried food and other valuable accoutrements of civilized life (generators, tools, canned goods, firearms, etc.) in a remote area far from urban centers, and then wait out the bad times, all the while protecting your stash with an array of weaponry and technology (night vision binocs, etc.)

Now while I respect and admire the goal, I must respectfully disagree with just about every assumption behind this strategy. Once again, this isn’t because I enjoy being ornery (please don’t check on that with my wife) but because everything in this strategy runs counter to my own experience in rural, remote settings. Continue Reading »

via: Survival Blog

This is the full interview that was used for an Alternet article that’s less good.

AlterNet: Is survivalism a failure of community? A celebration of it?

JWR: I’d say that survivalism is indeed a celebration of community. It is the embodiment of America’s traditional “can do” spirit of self-reliance that settled the frontier.

AlterNet: Is it engineered by personal issues? Is it a racial, or economic phenomenon, in your opinion? Or both?

JWR: Survivalism [is a movement that] crosses all racial and religious lines. It is essentially color blind. For 99% of us, we could care less about the color of someone’s skin, but we care a lot about about including people with valuable skill sets. The preparedness movement is simply a rational quest for family and community level self-sufficiency in an increasingly dangerous world. There is unfortunately a very small but very vocal minority that are disgustingly racist idiots. I’m sad to say that they also call themselves survivalists. They get an inordinate amount of press coverage, making that 1% look much larger than it really is. In my opinion they should be ignored and shunned, and I certainly don’t give them a platform on SurvivalBlog.

The economic cross section of SurvivalBlog readers is also amazing. We have working class readers that a worried about how they are going to make their next car payment posting alongside surgeons and entrepreneurs. We have both starving students and Little Old Lady pensioners. The readership is also global. We have regular readers in more than 90 countries. But even with this diversity, we all get along. [I didn't mention that I also edit out a lot of rants and foul language from the readers' letters that I post.] Part of this is the realization that the next Great Depression will be a tremendous “leveler”.

AlterNet: Do you think survivalism is a rational response to our current crises?

JWR: Absolutely. Continue Reading »