Archive for July, 2006

Top Picks ~ Week of July 24, 2006

Whole Foods Pledges Greater Support of Small Farms
Reuters - (June 30, 2006)

Fungi Perfecti
A family-owned company “specializing in gourmet and medicinal mushrooms for the health of the planet and its people.”

Blood in Beirut: $75.05 A Barrel
By Greg Palast (July 26, 2006)
Excerpt: This Thursday, Exxon is expected to report the highest second-quarter earnings of any corporation since the days of the Pharoah, $9.9 billion in pure profit collected in just three months — courtesy of an oil shortage caused by pipelines on fire in Iraq, warlord attacks in Nigeria, the lingering effects of the sabotage of Venezuela’s oil system by a 2002 strike… the list could go on.

Exxon’s brobdingnagian profits simply reflect the cold axiom that oil companies and oil states don’t make their loot by finding oil but by finding trouble. Finding oil increases supply. Increased supply means decreased price. Whereas finding trouble — wars, coup d’etats, hurricanes, whatever can disrupt supply — raises the price of oil.

Bioremediating New Orleans 4, Doing It!
By Starhawk (Feb 18, 2006)

Think Small, Think Local
By Michael Kane, Staff Writer, From the Wilderness (Jul 25, 2006)
Summary - Subscribers can view whole article

Campaign for Cooperation in Space
Petition to the UN RE The Space Preservation Treaty

US Air Force Linked to Electronic Warfare Attack in Tennessee
By Alfred Webre - EcoNews Service

Too Good Not to Pass On…

In from one of the most insightful (and charming) members of our network, Kimberly Carter:

“….I am delving deeper into the source and mindset of the Tapeworm and deepening my connection with angels. The combo feels essential. Whew!”

Escaping the Matrix

I just finished reading Escaping the Matrix: how We the People can change the world by Richard Moore.

It has a good overview of how we got to where we are, excellent material on the import and feasibility of the “just do it” approach to building a new world, and the cultural changes and tools we each need to begin.

This is strongly recommended for anyone who wants to deal with the real deal and put their shoulder to the plowshare in a highly useful way.

Special thanks to Harry Blazer for sending this one to me.

To order or learn more about and sign up (I did) for Richard Moore’s CyberJournal Project:

Escaping the Matrix
http://www.escapingthematrix.org

The CyberJournal Project
http://www.cyberjournal.org

Shaolin Kung Fu

One of my lifetime top ten DVD’s is Shaolin Wheel of Life.

I just saw Myths and Logic of Shaolin based on a Solari Action
Network member recommendation. I enjoyed it.

The Shaolin practice is a reminder that the way to grow an excellent civilization is one child at a time.

Lebanon: Death & Dollar Up

Amazing how much better the dollar is doing since the attack on Lebanon started.

I spoke today with an investor who has a portfolio positioned to Navigate a Falling Dollar. He has watched the dollar rise and precious metal prices fall when war and conflict in the Middle East worsen. He watched the same thing happen on the Tsunami and the aftermath of Disaster Capitalism in Indonesia. There were similar patterns in the aftermath of New Orleans.

At first, it would seem counter-intuitive — an increase in warfare and disasters precipitating a fall in gold prices before they head back up in their long term trend — albeit volatile —upwards. That is, until and unless you see a Tapeworm that is hungry for subsidy and using the supression of the gold price, non-accountable fiat currency, warfare and securities fraud to get it. In one sense, the dynamic is the logical extension of years of firing people and cutting their wages to generate a rise in stock prices. Popsicle Index down, Dow Jones up.

Cui bono, Lebanon? Answer that question and we may see how the current conflict serves global strategic interests, including a managed fall in the dollar in a rolling “pump and dump” pattern.

Remember always as you watch events the fundamental problem of the Tapeworm. A negative return on investment economy always needs more subsidy to prop it up. The problem is that the negativity of returns deepen over time. As injections are made to trick the system to feed the Tapeworm and subsidy is extracted, the fundamental productivity in the system decreases. Entropy rises. The healthy is eaten or learning to respond to the Tapeworm instead of doing what creates the wealth that is needed to sustain the system, let alone engorge the parasite. As the Tapeworm grows from its success in extracting subsidy, the need for subsidy increases. It keeps getting fatter. The subsidy demands grow at the same time that the availability of wealth steadily deteriorates — the system produces less per capita or per acre as the productivity and reserves decline. And so things worsen as the Tapeworm succeeds until one of two things happen — the host dies or the Tapeworm is expelled or shrunken.

If you understand the fundamental dynamic, then you see the opportunity. Reverse the process to a positive return on investment — one person, one family, one community, one enterprise, one industry at a time — and the conditions of abundance become possible. A critical question is how to do it in a way that is something other than generating more subsidy for the Tapeworm. This is why it is essential to withdraw our energy from the Tapeworm. Indeed, attract the cells of the Tapeworm back to investment in a positive return system and the process reverses in an exponential manner. Given the need to integrate complex and powerful technology to work in harmony with people and living things in order to make such a reversal possible, a far more spiritually and morally advanced culture and global investment model is required.

Doable? Yes. If you believe it is not, then the math is simple. The alternative is significant depopulation. If you watch the Tapeworm move into Tibet, into Rwanda, into Afghanistan, into Iraq, into East Timor, into the Gaza strip, into Lebanon — all likely financed by highly centralized financial interests — then you understand that what is happening is going to continue to happen until negative is transformed to positive. Events will progressively worsen as the rate of entropy grows.

When critics tell me that it is too much to ask of people to adopt a new investment model, I am not discouraged. Peter Medawar said it best, “What is relevant is what solves the problem. If we had thought through real relevancies, we would be on Sirius by now.” Or as I always say, “Nothing will change, until we change how money works.”

Understanding the process is incentive enough to Get Started With Coming Clean and Building Real Wealth. The more degrees of seperation between us and the entropy, the more our ability to thrive and survive gathers strength.

Top Picks ~ Week of July 17, 2006

Second High-Ranking Afro-American Official in Bush Administration Dies Under Suspicious Circumstances
Wayne Madsen Report (July 15/16, 2006)

See also the articles on the two recent Enron deaths from Top Picks ~ Week of July 10, 2006.

Future By Design
A William Gazecki Film
Imagine a world where war is outdated, there is no shortage of resources, and every human being enjoys a high standard of living.

Wild Oats Launches Nationwide Initiative to Promote Local Produce
By Lorraine Heller - foodnavigator-usa.com (July 17, 2006)

The Meatrix ~ An Animation Produced by Sustainable Table
Problems with factory farming & how to find healthy food for your family

Ken Lay’s Alive!
By Greg Palast - Scoop Independent News (July 19, 2006)

HOME SCHOOLING

In from a Solari Action Network member; two recommended links:

Top Picks ~ Week of July 10, 2006

EVOLUTION & TRANSFORMATION

100 Mile Diet
Local Eating for Global Change

The Stop Shopping Monitor
Catherine’s Latest Interview on Flashpoints Posted at Reverend Billy’s Blog

BUSH & CLINTON ADMINISTRATION SUCCESS

US ‘Could Be Going Bankrupt’
By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor - Telegraph.co.uk (July 14, 2006)

Intel Fires 1,000 Executives
By Steve Wexler - eChannel Line (July 13, 2006)

BAD NEWS FOR HEDGE FUNDS

Want a sustainable world? Make sure that hedge funds have a higher cost of capital than the local store where your kids buy popsicles.

Japan scraps zero interest rates
By BBC News (July 14, 2006)

MISSING MONEY & FINANCIAL COUP D’ETAT

$21 Billion Missing and Counting
See Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney on the House Floor

Unwarranted Influence and Misplaced Power
By Linda Minor (July 13, 2006 / Sanders Research Associates, Subscribers Only)
Forty-five years after President Eisenhower cautioned us about the military-industrial complex, we now understood what he meant. Psychological warfare (lobbying, advertising and fear tactics) have been used to build what in 1961 was a “defense establishment” and “armaments industry” into what has become the most powerful terrorist organization on earth. How did this corporate takeover of government defense function happen, and who engineered it? Could a syndicate of bankers and investors, using war profits of a munitions maker have been guilty of engineering America’s own gunpower plot?

Criminal Charges Filed Against George H.W. Bush (Sr.) in Iceland
From Richard Moore - Cyberjournal Newslog (July 6, 2006)

ENDLESS ENRON AGONY

Enron Witness Found Dead in Park
BBC News (July 12, 2006)

NYTImes: Lay’s Death Very Convenient
From Richard Moore - Cyberjournal Newslog (July 6, 2006)

Bring Me the Head of “Kenny Boy” Lay: Another Convenient Death Invites New Investigations of Enron-Bush Crimes
By Larry Chin - Online Journal Associate Editor (July 10, 2006)

The Disappearace of Ken Lay
By Carlton Meyer (July 14, 2006 / Sanders Research Associates, Subscribers Only)
A well-known American was recently convicted of massive fraud so great that he must be considered a major organized crime figure. He would spend the rest of his life in prison, yet the judge allowed him free on bail until sentencing four months later. This was unusual because a man facing life in prison is likely to flee, especially if he has millions of dollars in assets. Just two weeks after his conviction, his wife announced that this felon had suddenly died of a heart attack, and his remains had been cremated within hours of his death.

Ken Lay is Alive and Well
Americans for Equal Justice

A Must See

If you want to understand why it is essential that we reassert control of financial flows, including taxes and government securities issuance, see the documentary The Future of Food directed by Deborah Koons Garcia in 2004.

The Future of Food
http://www.thefutureoffood.com/

Top Picks ~ Week of July 3, 2006

More Massive Data Thefts
Wayne Madsen Report - Scroll down to 7/03/2006 post

Members of Corporate Media & PR Spin Machine
Wayne Madsen Report - Scroll down to 7/02-03/2006 post

Gold Shines After UAE’s Dollar Shift
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - The Telegraph, London (7/04/2006)

What Correction?
By James Turk - GoldMoney Alert (7/01/2006)

MERLib.org - Modern Energy Research Library
A tool to help study and learn about more saner Energy Technologies; fuel, generators, engines, etc, and also present technologies and insights

Questing: A Guide to Creating Community Treasure Hunts

One of the great financial opportunities in America is reengineering the flows of money in places — and finding ways of creating liquidity between places without going through centralized financial institutions.

This kind of change can only happen where there are strong local networks and cultural consensus — where financial intimacy can happen. How do we create and nurture such connection? How do we reconnect to the history and traditions of our place together? Indeed, to find our history is to find our power.

Here is one idea that looks terrific. It’s called Questing. In Questing: A Guide to Creating Community Treasure Hunts, by Delia Clark and Steven Glazer, University Press of New England, 2004, the authors introduce this practice as follows:

“This book is about a place-based education model called “Questing.” Questing is creating and exchanging treasure hunts in order to collect and share your community’s distinct natural and cultural heritage, your special places and stories. Each Quest is a specific treasure hunt focused on a particular community story, environment, or character … Questing is local and organic; it is authentic and interdisiplinary; it is personal, collaborative, and intergenerational.”

When I put together an Economics Curriculum for high school students with a focus on understanding the place in which we live, I did not know about Questing. It would certainly be something to add:

Economics 101 - A Curriculum,” by Catherine Austin Fitts, in From the Suburbs, March 18, 2005

When you tap into the history of your place, you tap into the power to manifest a new future for your place.

Special thanks to Delia Clark and Steven Glazer for this terrific book.