So I have been listening to some of these shows lately and find them thought provoking, balanced, fair and well outside the mainstream pap shoveled at us. Sort of like Coast-to-Coast radio but without the delusionas and voices coming out of the toasters and such. Go here and check it out: http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/nonsubscriber.php I will add a permalink to the blogroll. GE.
Risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb predicted the 2008 financial crisis, by pointing out that commonly-used risk models were wrong. Distinguished professor of risk engineering at New York University, author of best-sellers The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness, Taleb became financially independent after the crash of 1987, and wealthy during the 2008 financial crisis.
Now, Taleb is using his statistical risk acumen to take on genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Taleb’s conclusion: GMOs could cause “an irreversible termination of life at some scale, which could be the planet.”
Sound crazy?
Sure it does … but only because we don’t understand statistics, and so we have no handle on what’s risky and what’s not.
Taleb and his 2 co-authors write in a new draft paper:
For nature, the “ruin” is ecocide: an irreversible…
Why do we all need to acquire a piece of true wealth in the form of owned land? There are several reasons we’ll discuss. For today we’ll leave the whole, “you never really own the land because of taxes” argument off the table and focus on the land attributes that we can control.
The first reason I want each of us preppers to own land… It’s our fundamental right as a United States citizen. Our ancestors didn’t have this right as most nations of the world restricted the land ownership to royalty and the elite of society.
Published on Oct 25, 2012. LEAP co-founder, Peter Christ, appears on WGRZ-TV in Buffalo, NY and takes on all aspects of our disastrous War on Drugs. Captain Christ is vice-chair of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition-
…In 2012, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) spent $22 billion on subsidy programs for farmers. Introduced in the 1930s to help struggling small family farms, the subsidies now routinely draw condemnation from both left and right as wasteful corporate welfare. While the number of farms is down 70 percent since the 1930s—only 2 percent of Americans are directly engaged in farming—farmers aren’t necessarily struggling anymore. In 2010, the average farm household earned $84,400, up 9.4 percent from 2009 and about 25 percent more than the average household income nationwide.
What’s more, a handful of farmers reap most of the benefits from the subsidies: Wheat, corn, soybeans, rice, and cotton have always taken the lion’s share of the feds’ largesse. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) reports that “since 1995, just 10 percent of subsidized farms—the largest and wealthiest operations—have raked in 74 percent of all subsidy payments. 62 percent of farms in the United States did not collect subsidy payments…
… rural America’s biggest assets – the food supply, recreational areas and energy, for example – can be overlooked by people elsewhere as the U.S. population shifts more to cities, their suburbs and exurbs.
“Why is it that we don’t have a farm bill?” said Vilsack. “It isn’t just the differences of policy. It’s the fact that rural America with a shrinking population is becoming less and less relevant to the politics of this country, and we had better recognize that and we better begin to reverse it.”
For the first time in recent memory, farm-state lawmakers were not able to push a farm bill through Congress in an election year, evidence of lost clout in farm states…” via Associated Press.
July 27, 2012 – Dozen Symptomatic H3N2v Cases At LaPorte County Fair, Recombinomics
WSBT spoke with several parents off camera who said at least a dozen children who had similar symptoms as the pigs and other sick children were treated at local hospitals and doctor’s offices. Continue reading →
The assault on personal reliance, self dependency and the activities that made liberty-driven American agriculture the envy of the world in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries continues. On the heels of a an Oregon man being sentenced to jail for 30 days for rainwater collection and harvesting, Martha Boneta of Fauquier County, Virginia becomes the latest victim of a government boot to the throat:
Farmers in Fauquier County are planning to bring their pitchforks to an Aug. 2 hearing before the Board of Zoning Appeals to protest the arbitrary treatment of one of their own. On April 30, Zoning Administrator Kimberley Johnson sent Martha Boneta an official cease-and-desist notice for selling farm products and hosting a birthday party for her best friend’s 10-year-old daughter on her 70-acre Paris, Va., farm without a special administrative permit. Continue reading →
I first met farmer, author, entrepreneur, thinker, and self-described “Christian-conservative-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic” Joel Salatin at his rural Virginia farm, Polyface, in 2009. We sat in rocking chairs in his home office and talked about everything from food and agriculture to law, regulations, and the Bill of Rights.
I’ve seen Salatin several times since—in Washington, DC, and Little Rock, Arkansas and, most recently, back at his farm—and have even invoked his unsubsidized farming practices to argue that he and farmers like him should serve as the model for supporters of sustainable agriculture—meaning farming that eschews government subsidies while both minimizing environmental impacts and also turning a profit. Continue reading →
Quietly, and with little fanfare, President Obama signed a “National Defense Resources Preparedness” Executive Order on Friday. As the name suggests, the order intends to shore up the country’s national defense resources in advance of a national emergency.
To be fair, this is not the first time that such an order has been written. Presidents Bush (II), Clinton, Reagan, and even Eisenhower provided directives in the same spirit as President Obama’s order– providing some level of government commandeering in times of national emergency.
In the past, these orders have related to things like production capacity for defense contractors, or giving FEMA authority to resolve disputes between other departments in federally designated emergency areas.
President Obama’s order, however, takes things much, much further. Continue reading →
Farmland values in the Cornbelt are rising as fast as anytime in the past 35 years, but may be showing some indication of deceleration. Bankers throughout the five-state region in the Chicago Federal Reserve District report a 22% increase in the value of good farmland over the course of 2011. But in the seven-state Kansas City Fed District, the value of farmland rose 25% in the past year, reports FarmGateBlog…
Higher prices for grain have spurred the most significant demand for land since the 1970’s. Farm land, oil, grains…the price inflation is coming.
… rural America’s biggest assets – the food supply, recreational areas and energy, for example – can be overlooked by people elsewhere as the U.S. population shifts more to cities, their suburbs and exurbs.
I’ve seen Salatin several times since—in Washington, DC, and Little Rock, Arkansas and, most recently, back at his farm—and have even invoked his unsubsidized farming practices to argue that he and farmers like him should serve as the model for supporters of sustainable agriculture—meaning farming that eschews government subsidies while both minimizing environmental impacts and also turning a profit. Continue reading 
The Grey Enigma 