cryptogon.com

10/14/2006

Peak Wheat? :.

Becky and I just bought a 25KG sack of Demeter certified biodynamic wheat berries. We're going to be grinding our own flour with our Country Living grain mill that we brought with us from the U.S.

News like this makes those beautiful little grains of joy seem even more precious:

The world's stockpiles of wheat are at their lowest level in more than a quarter century, according to the US Department of Agriculture, which on Thursday slashed its forecasts for global wheat and corn production.

The lower forecasts were largely attributable to the severe drought in Australia, where the forecast for this year's wheat crop was cut by 8.5m tons to 11m. That is less than half of the 24m produced last year, of which about 17m went to exports.

As a result of the low Australian crop, AWB, the country's main wheat exporter, said it would suspend exports from the country's east coast due to the poor crop and review its export requirements.

To add to the global supply concerns, Ukraine has introduced licences and quotas on its wheat exports, effectively bringing shipments to a standstill. This has already halted Ukrainian wheat shipments of 50,000 tonnes to India. The USDA also lowered wheat output for China, Brazil and the European Union.

Wheat futures on the Chicago Board of Trade reached a new 10-year high of $5.51 a bushel before the release of the USDA report, which represented a rise of 18 per cent since last Friday. The December CBOT wheat contract eased 4 cents to $5.27 in early afternoon Chicago trade, a 56 per cent rise on the year to date.

posted by Kevin at 12:01 AM

10/13/2006

Wal-Mart Ordered to Pay $78 Million :.

All the products are made is slave labor camps, why not run the stores the same way?

A Pennsylvania jury said on Friday that Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, must pay $78.47 million in damages to current and former Pennsylvania employees for forcing them to work "off the clock" or during rest breaks.

On Thursday, a state jury in Philadelphia found in favor of Michelle Braun and Dolores Hummel, formerly employed by Wal-Mart, saying the company violated Pennsylvania labor laws by failing to pay employees for their work.

posted by Kevin at 11:59 PM

Regaining Soil and Sanity :.

I got an email from Dan saying that he lost control of taognostic.com somehow. He's back at danbartlett.co.uk.

posted by Kevin at 11:56 PM

10/12/2006

Feds Bought Fake University Degrees from Paper Mill :.

The "Federal" Reserve prints worthless paper, lends it to the Federal Government and we pay Them the interest! That's the real scandal:

At least 135 federal employees, including a White House staff member and National Security Agency employees, bought bogus online college degrees from a diploma mill, a lawyer in the case against the mill operators said.

Some of those who paid thousands of dollars for phony diplomas include a senior State Department employee in Kuwait and a
Department of Justice employee in Spokane, defense lawyer Peter S. Schweda said Wednesday.

The bogus degree purchases by the federal workers were revealed Wednesday during a U.S. District Court status conference for five defendants in the case against the mill, The Spokesman-Review reported Thursday.

None of the federal officials was identified during the conference.

posted by Kevin at 7:37 PM

10/11/2006

University Instructor Likens Bush to Hitler :.

Also, Hitler was elected. Bush wasn't:

Barrett, a part-time instructor who holds a doctorate in African languages and literature and folklore from UW-Madison, is active in a group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth. The group's members say U.S. officials, not al-Qaida terrorists, were behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

"Like Bush and the neocons, Hitler and the Nazis inaugurated their new era by destroying an architectural monument and blaming its destruction on their designated enemies," he wrote.

Barrett said Tuesday he was comparing the attacks to the burning of the German parliament building, the Reichstag, in 1933, a key event in the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship.

"That's not comparing them as people, that's comparing the Reichstag fire to the demolition of the World Trade Center, and that's an accurate comparison that I would stand by," he said.

He added: "Hitler had a good 20 to 30 IQ points on Bush, so comparing Bush to Hitler would in many ways be an insult to Hitler."

posted by Kevin at 8:42 PM

Lou Dobbs Unfurls Again :.

You tell 'em, Lou!

NEW YORK (CNN) -- I don't know about you, but I can't take seriously anyone who takes either the Republican Party or Democratic Party seriously -- in part because neither party takes you and me seriously; in part because both are bought and paid for by corporate America and special interests. And neither party gives a damn about the middle class.

Our country's middle class is not just collateral damage in what has become all-out class warfare. Political, business and academic elites are waging an outright war on working men and women and their families, and there is no chance the American middle class will survive this assault if the dominant forces unleashed over the past five years continue unchecked.

They've accomplished this through large campaign contributions, armies of lobbyists that have swamped Washington, and control of political and economic think tanks and media. Lobbyists, in fact, are the arms dealers in the war on the middle class, brokering money, influence and information between their clients our elected officials.

posted by Kevin at 1:57 PM

10/10/2006

Time Capsule to be Beamed from Mexican Pyramid :.

As long as Cheney and Senior aren't anywhere near this event, I won't panic:

Mexico's Teotihuacan, once the center of a sprawling pre-Hispanic empire, is set to become the launch pad for an attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life.

Starting on Tuesday, enthusiasts from around the world will have a chance to submit text, images, video and sounds that reflect human nature to be included in the message.

Those contributions -- part of media company Yahoo's "Time Capsule" project -- will be digitalized and beamed with a laser into space on October 25 from the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, now an archeological site near Mexico City.

Archeologists say a culture centered in Teotihuacan, known as the City of the Gods, dominated Mesoamerica for hundreds of years during the first millennium. It is unclear what led to the society's collapse.

posted by Kevin at 5:52 PM

Locked Down Indoctrination Centers :.

Another day, another MKULTRA zombie enters a school with a gun... Cui bono?

Each morning, the 16,000 students in the Spring Independent School District in suburban Houston swipe their ID tags as they climb onto the school bus. A radio frequency tag tracks them, as it does when they arrive at school and as they leave the building.

Nearly 1,000 cameras watch them all day. Every visitor — parents, volunteers, the guy who fills the Coke machine — must surrender his or her driver's license to a secretary who checks it against a national database of sex offenders. This fall, nearly one in three schools literally trap visitors inside a "secure vestibule," a bulletproof glass room, until they're checked out.

Welcome to the brave new world of school security. In an era when deadly school shootings seem to happen like clockwork, schools are hardening up, trying unconventional means to deter violence and keep track of students and adults.

posted by Kevin at 5:44 PM

10/9/2006

Give Kids More Free Playtime :.

Marketing pitches to create "super children"???

Numerous studies have shown that unstructured play has many benefits. It can help children become creative, discover their own passions, develop problem-solving skills, relate to others and adjust to school settings, the academy report says.

"Perhaps above all, play is a simple joy that is a cherished part of childhood," says the report, prepared by two academy committees for release Monday at the group's annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.

A lack of spontaneous playtime can create stress for children and parents alike. If it occurs because young children are plopped in front of get-smart videos or older children lose school recess time, it can increase risks for obesity. It may even contribute to depression for many children, the report says.

Social pressures and marketing pitches about creating "super children" contribute to a lack of playtime for many families. But so does living in low-income, violence-prone neighborhoods where safe places to play are scarce, the report says.

posted by Kevin at 1:31 PM

10/8/2006

Home Sellers Learning Day Trading Skills (Continued...) :.

It's amazing how much this is like trading. The FBs (f*cked buyers) are starting to sell outside the spread. This is feeding downside momentum by causing other shockingly undercapitalized idiots to ditch their flips/go bankrupt.

Now, in the stock market, in times like this, traders might try to "catch the falling knife" by buying at the lower prices with the expectation of profiting from the "dead cat bounce" as other traders go bargain hunting.

How do you know when the downside momentum is slowing? In the case of real estate, how much inventory is out there and how many days have houses been on the market? If these numbers are increasing, consider sitting on your cash and letting the torrent of blood in the streets keep rising as prices continue to fall.

Another way of visualizing price momentum (up or down) is to draw two moving averages on your price data (one shorter and one longer), I like 8 and 13 period moving averages, for example. As the short period MA line moves further and further away (up or down) from the long period MA line, you have increasing momentum (up or down). As the short period MA line goes back toward the long period MA line, you have decreasing momentum.

Why is it called "catching a falling knife"? Because there's a good chance that, instead of catching the knife, you'll get killed by it! Sometimes there are many more apples waiting to be shaken off the tree than you realize. Right now, for example, Joe and Jane Six Pack are still in denial. Once they find themselves hopelessly upside down, ARMs unlocked, they'll just walk away, leaving the keys to the front door in the mailbox. Any recovery could see Joe and Jane Six Pack (or the banks) using the opportunity to sell right into the wave of bargain hunters. Prices then take another leg down as the bargain hunters---knives protruding from their skulls---become the new crop of f*cked buyers.

After crashes, prices tend to stabilize (sideways movement, if you look at them on a chart) and volume drops off. In the example above, the moving averages flop on top of each other and move sideways with prices. Sellers are exhausted. Buyers are exhausted. Traders call this "flatlining" after a stock has crashed.

Eventually, prices start to creep up, along with volume. And off we go again on the boom/bust cycle... Well, assuming the entire economic system doesn't crash along with real estate:

Just how weak is the Boston real estate market?

We got an idea yesterday. And if you're looking to sell your home in the near future, the news isn't good.

Brand-new luxury condos downtown saw hundreds of thousands of dollars wiped off their value in the Hub's first public real estate auction in a decade.

The 31 condos up for sale in the Folio building on Broad Street sold on average for 30 percent below their asking prices.

Some barely fetched their minimums.

Related: Home Sellers Learning Day Trading Skills

posted by Kevin at 4:58 PM

Conservative, Christian Republicans, Family Values and Buggery :.

What would Jesus do?

A former House page says he had sex with then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) after receiving explicit e-mails in which the congressman described assessing the sexual orientation and physical attributes of underage pages but waiting until later to make direct advances.

posted by Kevin at 4:40 PM

The Big Box Organic Food Industrial Complex :.

Thankfully, this grotesque system is inching closer to collapse every day:

Next time you're in the supermarket, stop and take a look at Stonyfield Farm yogurt. With its contented cow and green fields, the yellow container evokes a bucolic existence, telegraphing what we've come to expect from organic food: pure, pesticide-free, locally produced ingredients grown on a small family farm.

So it may come as a surprise that Stonyfield's organic farm is long gone. Its main facility is a state-of-the-art industrial plant just off the airport strip in Londonderry, N.H., where it handles milk from other farms. And consider this: Sometime soon a portion of the milk used to make that organic yogurt may be taken from a chemical-free cow in New Zealand, powdered, and then shipped to the U.S. True, Stonyfield still cleaves to its organic heritage. For Chairman and CEO Gary Hirshberg, though, shipping milk powder 9,000 miles across the planet is the price you pay to conquer the supermarket dairy aisle. "It would be great to get all of our food within a 10-mile radius of our house," he says. "But once you're in organic, you have to source globally."

posted by Kevin at 3:36 PM

Monsanto and India's Agricultural Apocalypse :.

Prompted for login? Use BugMeNot:

Indian farmers now must compete or go under. To compete, many have turned to high-cost seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, which now line the shelves of even the tiniest village shops.

Monsanto, for instance, invented the genetically modified seeds that Mr. Shende planted, known as Bt cotton, which are resistant to bollworm infestation, the cotton farmer's prime enemy. It says the seeds can reduce the use of pesticides by 25 percent.

The company has more than doubled its sales of Bt cotton here in the last year, but the expansion has been contentious. This year, a legal challenge from the government of the state of Andhra Pradesh forced Monsanto to slash the royalty it collected from the sale of its patented seeds in India. The company has appealed to the Indian Supreme Court.

The modified seeds can cost nearly twice as much as ordinary ones, and they have nudged many farmers toward taking on ever larger loans, often from moneylenders charging exorbitant interest rates.

Virtually every cotton farmer in these parts, for instance, needs the assistance of someone like Chandrakant Agarwal, a veteran moneylender who charges 5 percent interest a month.

He collects his dues at harvest time, but exacts an extra premium, compelling farmers to sell their cotton to him at a price lower than it fetches on the market, pocketing the profit.

His collateral policy is nothing if not inventive. The borrower signs a blank official document that gives Mr. Agarwal the right to collect the farmer's property at any time.

Business has boomed with the arrival of high-cost seeds and pesticides. "Many moneylenders have made a whole lot of money," Mr. Agarwal said. "Farmers, many of them, are ruined."

posted by Kevin at 3:06 PM

:. Reading

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
by Scott and Helen Nearing 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.

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