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6/2/2006

Possum

In the mid-19th century, the Australian brush tailed possum was brought to New Zealand in an abortive attempt to establish a fur trade. The possum has been running roughshod over New Zealand ever since, wreaking havoc on native plants, birds and animals. With no natural predators and a mild climate, New Zealand has become a massive breeding ground for the possum. The creature is a menace.

Our friends and neighbors, Terry and Krissy, are keen trappers and conservationists who wipe out non native and invasive plants and animals with a ferocity that is hardly believable. They trap everything from rats to cats to possums to weasels. When they're not trapping, they're certifying organic farms and working on Kiwi preservation efforts in the region.

Becky and I walked the trap line with them on their 100 acre ecotopia. I won't get too grisly, but these people are NOT messing around. There are traps everywhere, their rifle aim is true and their Rhodesian Ridgeback is fierce. I was left speechless by the beauty of native bush areas that have been allowed to flourish due to their efforts. And I made a point of observing how they used the traps...

Back at our place, Becky and I are using the winter months to prepare our garden. Our house garden paddock is a possum playground. Since we don't have a dog yet, our land is literally crawling with possums. Becky's dad lent us a Timms trap to get us started. I set the trap in the evening, and by morning, I had caught the bruiser you see above. The shocker came when I went to lift the thing out of the trap. What did it weigh? Ten pounds? Maybe more? I plan on burying the creatures in our soon to be orchard. We will plant trees on top of them. I'll also expose the occasional carcass to the hawk that I've seen working our main pasture. He should like that!

Related: New Zealand Department of Conservation: Possums



Water Fuel Experimenter and Team Threatened at Gunpoint :.

Why not just plaster the thing all over the Internet anyway? It might put Them in a weird position to have to follow through on the threat AFTER the information is out there.

Hint to anyone who has something real: It's clear that you're not going to be allowed to profit from it in any normal way. Why not just open source it for all to see and use?

On May 16, a technician who was one of a team of garage experimenters investigating a hydrogen-on-demand technology was run off the road near a rural intersection and accosted by four white, middle-aged males in black suits, carrying Glocks and Mac tens. The assailants were driving a late model, black Lincoln Town Car.

This comes just one month after Bill Williams was similarly threatened because of his experimentation with running a vehicle on a Joe cell.

The victim in this latest incident is an associate of New Energy Congress member, Ken Rasmussen, who also runs an alternative energy news service at http://www.commutefaster.com/Energy.html They had been working on the project together.

A week before the incident, Rasmussen learned of the work being done by Professor Kanarev in Russia. Both use a pulsed signal, and are yielding similar performance rates. Kanarev holds multiple patents, and is widely published. A day before the incident, a person who was interested in funding the project of Rasmussen et al., and had been trying to reach him since November, had finally made contact.

Rasmussen reported the incident for the first time publicly in his news today. He said, "As editor of this page, my life has now been threatened by 2 loaded guns pointed in the face of a good friend."

"Using information which could only have been obtained by monitoring digital cell phones and e-mail, the assailants portrayed to the victim that they had total control over his personal life and was told to remain silent and to not talk to government authorities." He was told that if he did not comply, a family member would be killed. The assailants produced extensive details about this target family member. The threat also included himself, his family and all associates if he did not stop work on the process immediately. The threats made actually applied broadly to anyone working on overunity.

"I'm breaking the story to warn others who might be involved in similar technologies," said Rasmussen.



Freewheelin' :.

Remember, they only want you to think they're out of their heads.

And many people will be so inclined, and receive that lie's sad comfort, now the Department of Homeland Security has cut anti-terror funding to New York City and Washington DC by 40%, and slashed in half New Orleans' grants for security and disaster preparedness on the day that marked the beginning of hurricane season. (New York, according to the DHS risk assessment, boasts zero "national monuments and icons," and only four banking and finanacial assets.) Meanwhile, huge increases in DHS dollars were won by company towns such as Jacksonville, Florida, Charlotte, North Carolina and Omaha, Nebraska. (Omaha might be justified, if the money were to be spent to liberate Boys Town from black ops' sexual predation.)

Are these bizarre choices? Is it incompetence? We may think so, if we mistake Chertoff's Homeland for the United States.



Hundreds of Rockets Left For Anyone to Grab :.

If this is a joke, it's entertaining. If it's not a joke, move along, there's nothing to see here.



U.S. Troops Murder Pregnant Iraqi Woman on Way to Hospital :.

Mission accomplished!

A pregnant Iraqi woman in labour and her cousin were shot dead by US forces as they rushed to hospital along a closed road, police and relatives say.

US forces said their car "entered a clearly marked prohibited area near coalition troops" in Samarra city and failed to heed warnings to stop.

The driver, who was injured, said he had not seen or heard any warnings.



Another Day, Another U.S. Atrocity :.

Bring 'em on!

With US commanders still struggling to contain the fallout from the alleged Haditha massacre, the US military announced it was investigating charges that American soldiers rounded up and shot 11 unarmed civilians, including five children - one six months old - and four women in the town of al-Ishaqi in March.

It also emerged that murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges are likely to be brought imminently against seven Marines and a Navy corpsman for killing an Iraqi civilian near Baghdad on April 26. They are being held in solitary confinement at Camp Pendelton Marine Corps base in California.

The Iraqi civilian they killed was allegedly dragged from his home and shot. The troops are alleged to have planted a shovel and an AK-47 rifle next to his body to make it appear as if he was an insurgent burying a roadside bomb.



Former CIA Analyst: Staged Terror Attacks "Probable" to Justify Iran Invasion :.

Back in mid-May, murmurs about Iran and June started coming in from all over the shop. I'm now starting to doubt it, simply because it seems obvious that it's going to happen:

Former CIA analyst and Presidential advisor Ray McGovern, fresh from his heated public confrontation with Donald Rumsfeld, fears that staged terror attacks across Europe and the US are probable in order to justify the Bush administration's plan to launch a military strike against Iran, which he thinks will take place in June or July.

Appearing on The Alex Jones Show, McGovern was asked about the timetable for war in Iran and said that behind the diplomatic smokescreen, the final chess pieces were being moved into position.


6/1/2006

Proposal to Implant Tracking Chips in Immigrants :.

Oh sure! Why not!?

Scott Silverman, Chairman of the Board of VeriChip Corporation, has proposed implanting the company's RFID tracking tags in immigrant and guest workers. He made the statement on national television earlier this week.

Silverman was being interviewed on "Fox & Friends." Responding to the Bush administration's call to know "who is in our country and why they are here," he proposed using VeriChip RFID implants to register workers at the border, and then verify their identities in the workplace. He added, "We have talked to many people in Washington about using it...."


More: A Tracking Device for Immigrants


5/31/2006

The Purpose Driven Life Takers :.

Imagine all the good, little "christians" in their HDTV enabled, Satanic worship centers, doped up on soda, Ritalin and Jesus. Take what's left of their lizard brains, and turn them into Crusaders:

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.

The game, slated for release by October 2006 in advance of the Christmas shopping rush, has been previewed at video game exhibitions, and reviewed by major newspapers and magazines. But until now, no fan or critic has pointed out the controversial game's connection to Mr. Warren or his dominionist agenda.

...

The game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces, is based on scenes from the first four novels in the series. The game was developed by a publicly-traded company called Left Behind Games, according to SEC records. The developers obtained the license from Tyndale House, the Christian publisher of Left Behind.


Related: Onward, Christian Soldiers


5/30/2006

Dollar Plunges on Paulson Appointment :.

Dollar holders: move it or lose it:

The US dollar fell sharply on Tuesday as Hank Paulson, Goldman Sachs' chief executive, was named as the new US Treasury secretary, replacing the increasingly pressurised John Snow.

...

"China has not taken kindly to pounding the pulpit and speakers who seem to convey an antagonistic approach," said Michael Woolfolk, senior currency strategist at Bank of New York. "Mr Paulson has considerable experience in China and is well regarded over there. He could reinvigorate the discussions over currency policy."

He added: "Paulson represents a window of opportunity to accomplish a soft landing to a rapidly growing global imbalances problem. If anyone is capable of carrying this off, he is one of the best placed. The 'strong dollar' policy may quite quickly have an epitaph written for it: 'rest in peace'."



Computer Techs Join Fight Clubs :.

My former PHB could have kicked all of our asses... at once!

They may sport love handles and Ivy League degrees, but every two weeks, some Silicon Valley techies turn into vicious street brawlers in a real-life, underground fight club.

Kicking, punching and swinging every household object imaginable -- from frying pans and tennis rackets to pillowcases stuffed with soda cans -- they beat each other mercilessly in a garage in this bedroom community south of San Francisco.

Then, bloodied and bruised, they limp back to their desks in the morning.


Research Credit: EG


5/29/2006

Waste in NZ: Compost, Reuse, Recycle... or Pay

How about having to pay to throw your trash away? That's right. In most of New Zealand, waste/trash/rubbish works like this:

If you don't compost it, reuse it, or recycle it, you have to pay to dispose of it.

For the average, throw-it-out American, I think this would be one of the most jaw-dropping aspects of New Zealand.

As Becky and I were making a recycling run, I couldn't help but to be amazed at how matter-of-fact people were about doing this. Young and old. Male and female. Better off and less better off. People separated their plastics, glass, aluminum and cardboard, and put them all in the appropriate bins.




Becky and I compost, reuse and recycle everything we can. As a result, we have generated only three grocery-store-sized bags of landfill waste since I got here in March, or about one bag per month. Even though most of what we eat is made from bulk-bin purchased dry goods and vegetables, that are carried in reused bags, the waste we are generating is almost all food related packaging that can't be recycled. We will be generating even less waste as we ramp up food production here on our farmlet.

As a small, island nation, the problems associated with profligate waste became a national security matter for New Zealand sooner than it might have for other countries. But even in NZ, there's a long way to go.

Related: Zero Waste New Zealand




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