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11/25/2004

U.S. Military Taps Bugs and Weeds in War on Terror :.

Don't squash that bug! Cockroaches, beetles, spiders and worms may be the U.S. government's next line of defense in the war on terror.

Backed by the Pentagon, scientists are recruiting insects, shellfish, bacteria and even weeds to act as "bio-sentinels," which give early warning of biological and chemical attacks, detect explosives or monitor the spread of contamination.

At Virginia Commonwealth University, biologist Karen Kester uses bugs as "flying, crawling Q-Tips" that can check their habitats for noxious materials from anthrax to chemicals more thoroughly, cheaply, and reliably than man-made sensors.

"You look at what these animals have picked up or ingested while going about their day-to-day activities," said Kester, whose work is funded by a million-dollar grant from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. The exact details of the funding were not disclosed.


Research Credit: AM, AL


11/24/2004

Israeli Officer: I Was Right to Shoot 13-Year-Old Child :.

The U.S. borrows money from Japan and China to pay for this:

An Israeli army officer who repeatedly shot a 13-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza dismissed a warning from another soldier that she was a child by saying he would have killed her even if she was three years old.

The officer, identified by the army only as Captain R, was charged this week with illegal use of his weapon, conduct unbecoming an officer and other relatively minor infractions after emptying all 10 bullets from his gun's magazine into Iman al-Hams when she walked into a "security area" on the edge of Rafah refugee camp last month.


11/23/2004

WARNING: New Gold ETF on NYSE is a Paper-Based Derivitive :.

People who think this is an investment in physical metal are mistaken:

Given GLD’s recent launch, I was therefore interested to learn from its prospectus how GLD had been changed to provide the necessary assurances of integrity that the fund’s gold bullion assets really exist. More specifically, I was interested to learn how the WGC had improved the custodial controls so that GLD met the same standard that the SEC applies to other mutual funds. The answer came quickly. It didn’t.

Even before starting the prospectus, I downloaded the 2-page fact sheet from http://www.streettracksgoldshares.com, and there on the first line was an eye-opener laying out the essential nature of GLD: “Objective: Designed to track the price of gold”.

Its objective is not to provide investors with the opportunity to own gold bullion by investing in the shares of an ETF. Rather, GLD is designed to track the price of gold. That objective is no different than what is accomplished by a gold futures contract or any of the dozens of numerous gold derivatives available these days. More to the point, futures and derivatives are sold even if the seller does not own the underlying gold bullion needed to deliver on its obligation. They are in practice fractional reserve systems, which allow liabilities for gold to far exceed the quantity of gold owned by the seller of that liability.

Notwithstanding the numerous news accounts that described GLD as a means of investing in gold bullion, GLD cannot be accused of false advertising. Based just on their 2-page fact sheet, the WGC has by its own description created a security which has been designed to bet on the price of gold, not to enable investors to own physical gold bullion. My subsequent reading of the prospectus confirmed this conclusion because on the face of it, the weaknesses I identified in my December 2003 article have not been corrected. GLD has the same loose custodial controls described in the early draft prospectus.



George Bush Senior's Plane Crashes :.

Were the Them trying to make a point about the theft of the election? I have been speculating privately that Bush and the Gang have gone completely off the reservation with this election theft... Draw your own conclusions:

Washington, Nov. 23 (NNN) : A private jet has crashed in the US state of Texas on its way to pick up former US President George HW Bush, killing all three people on board.

The Gulfstream G-1159A plane went down on Monday morning after clipping a light tower in thick fog on the approaches to Houston airport.

Bush, 80, was planning to travel to Ecuador to speak to business leaders, but has now cancelled the trip. He said he was saddened by the deaths of the crew, whom he knew well.

Bush, who is the father of current US President George W Bush, is a resident of Houston.

The jet, owned by a charter firm in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was on its way from Love Field in Dallas. It hit a light tower on a main road in Houston at around 0615 local time 2.5km from the airport.

The aircraft lost part of its wing, and scattered debris over a 100-yard area. Part of the road was sealed off. The two male pilots and a female flight attendant were killed.



Economic "Armageddon" Predicted :.

This article sums it up, in case you still don't get it:

Stephen Roach, the chief economist at investment banking giant Morgan Stanley, has a public reputation for being bearish.

But you should hear what he's saying in private.

Roach met select groups of fund managers downtown last week, including a group at Fidelity.

His prediction: America has no better than a 10 percent chance of avoiding economic "Armageddon."

Press were not allowed into the meetings. But the Herald has obtained a copy of Roach's presentation. A stunned source who was at one meeting said, "it struck me how extreme he was - much more, it seemed to me, than in public."

Roach sees a 30 percent chance of a slump soon and a 60 percent chance that "we'll muddle through for a while and delay the eventual Armageddon."

The chance we'll get through OK: one in 10. Maybe.

In a nutshell, Roach's argument is that America's record trade deficit means the dollar will keep falling. To keep foreigners buying T-bills and prevent a resulting rise in inflation, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will be forced to raise interest rates further and faster than he wants.

The result: U.S. consumers, who are in debt up to their eyeballs, will get pounded.



Kevin Ryan Fired :.

This story has been making the rounds on the newsgroup/bulletin board circuit for a while, but I wanted to have more confidence that it was real before I posted it. Looks pretty real.

This is from the South Bend Tribune:

November 22, 2004

Area man stirs debate on WTC collapse
South Bend firm's lab director fired after questioning federal probe

By JOHN DOBBERSTEIN
Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND -- The laboratory director from a South Bend firm has been fired for attempting to cast doubt on the federal investigation into what caused the World Trade Center's twin towers to collapse on Sept. 11, 2001.

Kevin R. Ryan was terminated Tuesday from his job at Environmental Health Laboratories Inc., a subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories Inc., the consumer-product safety testing giant.

On Nov. 11, Ryan wrote a letter to the National Institute of Standards and Technology -- the agency probing the collapse -- challenging the common theory that burning jet fuel weakened the steel supports holding up the 110-story skyscrapers.


Related: UL Executive Speaks Out on WTC Study



Possible Department of Homeland Security Hit, Weirdness

I was checking the logs and I noticed a .gov machine name that kept showing up:

nwg001-ce2.customs.treas.gov

My stats viewer doesn't list IP numbers for me when it's set to resolve the host's domain name. It just lists the domain name, not the IP number. I find the IP manually when I'm interested in something and then use that to find the activity in the raw log.

But this was a weird one. I wasn't able to determine the IP for this treas.gov system. When I did a dig, I found this:

11/23/04 19:22:36 dig nwg001-ce2.customs.treas.gov @ 68.4.16.25
Dig nwg001-ce2.customs.treas.gov@ns21.treas.gov (199.196.132.3) ...
Authoritative Answer
Recursive queries supported by this server
Query for nwg001-ce2.customs.treas.gov type=255 class=1
nwg001-ce2.customs.treas.gov MX (Mail Exchanger) Priority: 5 mx2.dhs.gov
nwg001-ce2.customs.treas.gov MX (Mail Exchanger) Priority: 5 mx1.dhs.gov


What does that mean?! This thing is listed as a mail exchanger for the Department of Homeland Security.

Still, I had no IP for nwg001-ce2.customs.treas.gov. Try it. See if you can determine that thing's IP number.

Can't ping it. Can't nslookup it. Can't whois it. Can't tracert it. Can't dig it. Pretty slick, eh?

I looked at the time he showed up on the log viewer and then checked that moment in the raw log file. Sure enough, there he is:

63.167.255.31 - - [23/Nov/2004:08:48:43 -0700]
"GET /2004_04_18_blogarchive.html HTTP/1.0" 200 102566 "http://www.google.com/search?q=photograph+al+qaeda+training+manual+
agriculture&hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&start=30&sa=N"
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 4.0)"


The user conducted a Google search for: photograph al qaeda training manual agriculture.

Was this really a Treasury hit? * Hmm *

That seems much more like a dhs.gov search than a treas.gov search. Also, if it's a mail exchanger, why is someone doing Google searches about al Qaeda from it? I wonder if any mail related ports are even running on that thing? I sure as hell wasn't willing to nmap it to find out.

Any comments?

P.S. If you want a real treat, do a Google search on 63.167.255.31 and check out some of the "work" these feds are accomplishing with our tax money!

My personal favorite is:

http://www.batcho.net/PersianGuestBookView.htm

Name:
BRANDY
Email:
BEELOU13@YAHOO.COM
Remote Name:
63.167.255.31
Date:
06 Oct 2004
Comments
HI KERRIE, YOUR BABIES ARE BEAUTIFUL. I HAVE LOVED PERSIANS SINCE I WAS A CHILD BUT HAVE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO HAVE ONE. THEY ARE VERY HARD TO FIND IN VERMONT!! I RESCUED A BUFF TABBY CAT LAST YEAR AND I AM LOOKING TO FIND SOME KITTY FRIENDS FOR HIM. I RAN ACROSS YOUR WEBSITE AND IT IS VERY CLEAR THAT YOUR BABIES ARE WELL LOVED AND TAKEN CARE OF. I NOTICED THE PICTURE OF JELLY AND I AM INTERESTED IN BRINGING ONE OF YOUR CATS INTO MY FAMILY. COULD YOU PLEASE EMAIL ME SOME INFORMATION. FOR SOME REASON I CAN'T DIRECTLY EMAIL YOUR SITE. THANK YOU AND KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!!
Or maybe this from the venerable Prophetic Dreams site:

http://members2.boardhost.com/mydreams/msg/3146.html

Re: what does my dream mean
Posted by elizabeth on 11/19/2004, 9:01 am, in reply to "what does my dream mean"
63.167.255.31

I had a bad dream lastnight, I dreamed that I was being fallowed by some hit men, I was trying to hide from them. I found myself under a truck just waiting for them to come by the truck and when one of them did come by I found myself with a shot gun and a hand gun, I shot at his knees to disable him. I than made my way out from under the truck. I stood in front of him saw him face to face and then I got my shot gun and finished him off. At this time ran into a cargarage to hid from the rest of the men. I ended getting into a cross fire with the rest of the men and I finished them off aswell. However, While the cross fire was going on there were two toddlers twins in the middle of it. Nothing happened to them. Funny thing is I don't know why I was wanted by thise hit men.
It means you're wasting taxpayer money, you twit!

Anyway, I didn't bother looking through all of it.



Government Uses Color Laser Printer Technology to Track Documents :.

This is old news, but in case you didn't know:

According to experts, several printer companies quietly encode the serial number and the manufacturing code of their color laser printers and color copiers on every document those machines produce. Governments, including the United States, already use the hidden markings to track counterfeiters.

Peter Crean, a senior research fellow at Xerox, says his company's laser printers, copiers and multifunction workstations, such as its WorkCentre Pro series, put the "serial number of each machine coded in little yellow dots" in every printout. The millimeter-sized dots appear about every inch on a page, nestled within the printed words and margins.

"It's a trail back to you, like a license plate," Crean says.



Gunshot Triangulation Systems Deployed Around U.S. :.

Hint: This is a counter insurgency system.

Gang members in Chicago who fire off a few rounds at their rivals are likely to find cops on the scene in minutes, thanks to new gunshot-detection devices being installed in 80 locations around the city before the end of the year.

The devices, mounted on telephone poles in specific neighborhoods, listen for the distinctive sound of a gunshot and immediately alert a police dispatcher when one is detected. A video camera in the device allows the dispatcher to keep an eye on the scene until officers arrive.

In Chicago's case, the analysis program, developed by Illinois-based Safety Dynamics with a grant from the Department of Defense, uses an algorithm originally developed for neurobiology research to determine whether the sound was caused by gunfire. In the Redwood City, Glendale and Charleston systems, the analysis is done by a modified earthquake-detection program developed by California-based ShotSpotter.

"You can see it as having a robotic policeman on the street," said Safety Dynamics chief scientist Ted Berger, who developed the company's sound-analysis system while at the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering. "You can use it like a force multiplier in high-crime neighborhoods where drug dealing is a problem."


11/22/2004

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins :.

Those of us who have formally studied international political economy have known about this swindle for years, but now the story is conveniently presented on the pages of a single book... Will anyone read it?

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man reveals a game that, according to John Perkins, is "as old as Empire" but has taken on new and terrifying dimensions in an era of globalization. And Perkins should know. For many years he worked for an international consulting firm where his main job was to convince LDCs (less developed countries) around the world to accept multibillion-dollar loans for infrastructure projects and to see to it that most of this money ended up at Halliburton, Bechtel, Brown and Root, and other United States engineering and construction companies. This book, which many people warned Perkins not to write, is a blistering attack on a little-known phenomenon that has had dire consequences on both the victimized countries and the U.S.



Donald Trump on Bankruptcy: "It's a Success" :.

Who's to blame if idiotic creditors give money to these guys! Why wouldn't Trump take the money? If you were to offer a drunk a free bottle of booze, would you expect him to politely decline? In the U.S., where the national debt will soon cross $8 trillion, Trump should be recognized as a champion in the race to the bottom!

Donald J. Trump's casino empire has filed for bankruptcy protection after months of negotiations with bondholders over restructuring a crushing debt.

Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. and numerous related operations filed for protection from its creditors under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code on Sunday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Camden, N.J. The Trump casino business consists mainly of three Atlantic City properties and a riverboat casino in Indiana and are only a small part of Trump's overall real estate empire.

The filings come even as Trump, the celebrity developer and best-selling author, has returned to the spotlight with the television show "The Apprentice," which turned "You're fired" into a national catch phrase.



Bill Could Criminalize Fast-Forwarding DVD Ads, Trailers :.

A new bill before Congress may eventually have DVD-viewers thinking twice before fast-forwarding through the ads and previews.

The proposed legislation would make fast-forwarding through those ads illegal -- not only in theaters, but also at home, NBC News reported.

The bill allows technology that lets families edit out explicit scenes or material to track the DVD use. But broadcast companies have lobbied hard to keep commercials and movie trailers off limits.

"Their concern is if it becomes easy for people to skip ads, then their whole business model goes down the drain," said Gigi Sohn, of a consumer advocacy group called Public Knowledge.

Public Knowledge is fighting the bill and Sohn said families have been skipping ads ever since the early days of the VCR.

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, agreed, saying: "Do we really expect to throw people in jail for behavior they've been engaged in for more than a quarter century?"

Media executives said that's not their goal. The Motion Picture Association said it supports other parts of the act, "particularly those provisions that will help combat the theft of motion pictures," NBC News reported.



Gold Market Update: Slingshot Advance? :.

Interesting dollar and gold charts.



Cryptogon Reader Contributes $25!

'A' supports Cryptogon! Along with the generous contribution, 'A' wrote:

Put me down as just A, if you don't mind. A friend turned me on to your site a month or so ago and I spent entirely too much time going through the archives. Glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks we're rapidly on the way to becoming a banana republic.

I voted "lock and load". My SO and I already have country property with our own water supply, arable land and ponds that I plan to stock next spring. I've recently purchased a 2000 Jetta TDI and there is a co-op nearby that sells bulk 100% biodiesel. While I can't run that in the winter here, you bet I will be as soon as the weather gets good again. Hell, I've even moved all my 401(k) money into offshore investments. If I could, I'd be buying gold with it.

I thought I should support your site as long as I have a few bucks available. Keep up the good work!
What if America had 1,000,000 people like 'A' who were willing to allocate resources to values? In the words of Col. Walter E. Kurtz, "Our troubles here would be over."



New Zealand: Operation LEAF Blown Wide Open by Insiders :.

All dissidents, of all stripes, everywhere, need to understand something:

YOUR COMPUTERS ARE BEING TARGETED BY INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES.

What's interesting about LEAF is not so much the fact that it happened, but rather the candor with which it's being discussed. Operations like LEAF represent standard operating procedure for ALL intelligence agencies. This is day-to-day, bread-and-butter type stuff. Totally routine.

Note that Nicky Hager, one of the authors breaking details of LEAF, wrote the infamous and remarkable book, Secret Power - New Zealand's Role in the International Spy Network. He is the Kiwi equivalent of authors such as Seymour Hersh and James Bamford in the U.S.:

A group of dissident spies has launched an unprecedented attack on the SIS, saying it has misused its powers by bugging law-abiding Maori for political intelligence.

The SIS's Operation Leaf, they say, has been used to find "dirt" on individuals, and intelligence about iwi divisions, finances and Treaty claims. Now they question the service's leadership and strategy.

Spies have never before broken ranks in New Zealand. Now three have done so and say they have evidence of a scandal.

Their claim that the SIS has bugged "decent, law-abiding New Zealanders" has been made many times by liberal and left-wing activists. But now, for the first time, the accusation comes from within the intelligence community.

Their testimony also shows disagreements about the SIS' strategy and its operation, and about its handling of major issues such as the Zaoui affair. Some also criticise the leadership of SIS director Richard Woods. This, too, is unprecedented news from inside the castle. It seems not all is well in the kingdom of secrets.

"Peter", one of the spies interviewed in an Asian capital, said he broke the SIS code of silence because he felt guilty.

His work on Operation Leaf - a widespread bugging operation against Maori individuals and organisations - had been a burden on his conscience and he felt "cleansed" by speaking about it.

He seemed in conflict about his role as whistle-blower. On the one hand, he remains a "loyal New Zealander" and a supporter of the service. But he says he was disgusted when told to bug ordinary people.

He offered to apologise to the Maori whose computers he had targeted. He had grown up in the area, he explained, and had friends in the Maori community. Remarkably, the people whose computers he claims to have bugged agreed to co-operate with the newspaper and not to divulge his real name. The iwi organisation allowed the newspaper to do a thorough search of its accounts and computer records. Invoices and diary entries provided a paper trail of all Peter's work on home and office computers over three years.



Vote Fraud Stories by the Dozens :.

You can't even shake a stick at it!



89 Year Old Woman Sent to Jail for Protesting Iraq War :.

It's pure fascism now:

Lillian Willoughby, a Deptford Quaker who will turn 90 in January, went to jail Wednesday to protest the war in Iraq.

Shortly before noon, Willoughby rose from her wheelchair, gave her husband of 64 years, George, a hug and a kiss, and disappeared into the federal detention center at Seventh and Arch streets here.

Reporting with her were five other peace activists, including a young couple from Camden, Cassie Haw, 22, and her husband, Chris, 23. All were convicted of obstructing the entrance to the federal building in Philadelphia on March 20, 2003, the day the United States invaded Iraq.

Lillian Willoughby, a Deptford Quaker who will turn 90 in January, is helped by George, her husband of 64 years, as she prepares to go to jail Wednesday in Philadelphia for obstructing the entrance to the city's federal building during an anti-war protest last year. (Courier-Post Photo/Richard Pearsall)

Given a choice between a $250 fine and a seven-day jail term, the six chose jail.

"I don't believe supporting the war in any way," Willoughby said Wednesday.

Addressing a group of about 50 supporters who gathered a block away, Willoughby said nonviolence isn't something that just happens.

"You have to learn to do it," she said, "to train for change," whether it's dealing with violence on the street or violence between nations.

Marion Brown, 59, of Northeast Philadelphia, one of those who would go to jail with Willoughby a few minutes later, recalled how she told the federal judge who sentenced them that she'd pay the fine if "you can use the money to provide clean drinking water to children in Iraq or to lessen our grandchildren's tax burden for paying for this war."

"He said, 'No,' " Brown said. "He said he didn't think I was in any position to negotiate."



Halliburton 'Bids for UK Deal' :.

Halliburton Bids for UK Deal... The more likely scenario is that Cheney walks in with a briefcase full of photographs (and or videotape) of certain goings-on and makes the filthy officials an offer they can't refuse:

Halliburton, the oil services giant once run by US vice-president Dick Cheney, has emerged as a leading contender to manage the construction of two British aircraft carriers, The Sunday Telegraph said.

The ministry of defence would not confirm or deny the report that Halliburton's subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) was one of two companies to have won the recommendation of MoD officials to take on a "physical integrator" role in what the Sunday paper said was a £9bn carrier program.

The ministry said on Sunday that a statement would be made soon.

"The recommendation of KBR is highly controversial and is likely to spark strong opposition from Britain's defence industry," said The Sunday Telegraph.

Halliburton is under investigation in the United States for possible violation of army procurement rules in Iraq.

The Sunday Telegraph said defence industry executives fear that if KBR does win the integrator role it could have consequences for the future of Britain's shipbuilding industry.


Research Credit: AM



Electric Supercar Outruns Porsche 911 Turbo :.

Called the Eliica - short for Electric Lithium-Ion battery Car - this radical 800bhp eight-wheeler from Japan is proof that electric vehicles can be fast and fun to drive, too. Boasting a four-second 0-60mph sprint and seven-second 0-100mph time, the Eliica is faster than a Porsche 911 Turbo.



What's in Cheney's Pants? :.

Is that a colostomy or catheter bag in Cheney's pants? Like everything involving Cheney, there's something that's just not right about this. (Nevermind the fact that he's allowed to be in the presence of small children.) We know about Cheney's questionable cardiac conditions, but does his piss himself regularly as well?

Note: I thought about hosting this image locally... but I just can't bring myself to do it. If the link dies, and you don't see this, you shouldn't go searching for it. Count yourself as one of the lucky ones and go buy a lotto ticket.



Locust Plague Hits Israel :.

Karma's a bitch, isn't it? I'm sure the fearless Israeli military is planning to shoot a few young girls and old men to deal with the problem:

Millions of locusts swarmed through Israel's Red Sea resort town of Eilat on Sunday, devouring crops and flowers in the country's south.

Israeli agriculture officials sent crop dusters into the air to spray against the locusts that swept in from North Africa in the first such invasion since 1959. Eilat residents reported clouds of locusts eating palm trees bare and wiping out entire gardens.



Enlux LED Lights :.

We all have selfish habits, right? One of mine is using incandescent bulbs instead of more energy efficient fluorescent lights. I hate fluorescents. No matter how manufacturers try to tint them, I always seem to notice the grey-green spectra and flicker.

Is there an energy efficient solution that doesn't involve fluorescents!? (Don't say candles, you smartasses out there.)

LED lights! This technology makes so much sense. These lights aren't cheap, but... My birthday was last week; if anyone wants to send a belated gift, I'd love one of these! ;)

Enlux is a designer and manufacturer of LED-based lighting solutions. Enlux has released the world´s first LED-based drop-in replacement for incandescent and halogen floodlights offering similar performance. Enlux´s LED floodlight has an estimated lifetime of 50,000 hours. The long life offers considerable savings on replacement and maintenance costs.


11/21/2004

Of Mice, Men and In-Between :.

Nice:

In Minnesota, pigs are being born with human blood in their veins.

In Nevada, there are sheep whose livers and hearts are largely human.

In California, mice peer from their cages with human brain cells firing inside their skulls.

These are not outcasts from "The Island of Dr. Moreau," the 1896 novel by H.G. Wells in which a rogue doctor develops creatures that are part animal and part human. They are real creations of real scientists, stretching the boundaries of stem cell research.

Biologists call these hybrid animals chimeras, after the mythical Greek creature with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail. They are the products of experiments in which human stem cells were added to developing animal fetuses.




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Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture by Andrew Kimbrell Readers will come to see that industrial food production is indeed a "fatal harvest" - fatal to consumers, as pesticide residues and new disease vectors such as E. coli and "mad cow disease" find their way into our food supply; fatal to our landscapes, as chemical runoff from factory farms poison our rivers and groundwater; fatal to genetic diversity, as farmers rely increasingly on high-yield monocultures and genetically engineered crops; and fatal to our farm communities, which are wiped out by huge corporate farms.

Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America by Bertram Myron Gross This is a relatively short but extremely cogent and well-argued treatise on the rise of a form of fascistic thought and social politics in late 20th century America. Author Bertram Gross' thesis is quite straightforward; the power elite that comprises the corporate, governmental and military superstructure of the country is increasingly inclined to employ every element in their formidable arsenal of 'friendly persuasion' to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Americans through what Gross refers to as friendly fascism.

The Good Life
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Helen and Scott Nearing are the great-grandparents of the back-to-the-land movement, having abandoned the city in 1932 for a rural life based on self-reliance, good health, and a minimum of cash...Fascinating, timely, and wholly useful, a mix of the Nearings' challenging philosophy and expert counsel on practical skills.

Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth by David Bollierd In Silent Theft, David Bollier argues that a great untold story of our time is the staggering privatization and abuse of our common wealth. Corporations are engaged in a relentless plunder of dozens of resources that we collectively own—publicly funded medical breakthroughs, software innovation, the airwaves, the public domain of creative works, and even the DNA of plants, animals and humans. Too often, however, our government turns a blind eye—or sometimes helps give away our assets. Amazingly, the silent theft of our shared wealth has gone largely unnoticed because we have lost our ability to see the commons.

The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It: The Complete Back-To-Basics Guide by John Seymour The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It is the only book that teaches all the skills needed to live independently in harmony with the land harnessing natural forms of energy, raising crops and keeping livestock, preserving foodstuffs, making beer and wine, basketry, carpentry, weaving, and much more.

When Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten When Corporations Rule the World explains how economic globalization has concentrated the power to govern in global corporations and financial markets and detached them from accountability to the human interest. It documents the devastating human and environmental consequences of the successful efforts of these corporations to reconstruct values and institutions everywhere on the planet to serve their own narrow ends.

The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener This expansion of a now-classic guide originally published in 1989 is intended for the serious gardener or small-scale market farmer. It describes practical and sustainable ways of growing superb organic vegetables, with detailed coverage of scale and capital, marketing, livestock, the winter garden, soil fertility, weeds, and many other topics.