sumac.carol
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Environmentalists have highlighted important problems brought about in large part by our excess consumption of resources. The solutions proposed have in some cases been flawed, but the issues identified by environmentalists are correct:
1) pollution of air, water and land by all manner of stuff, the worst being man-made chemicals that do not exist in nature (of which there are tens of thousands)
2) Loss of habitat for other species, resulting in their decline (due to pollution or excess land consumption by humans).
Most environmentalists receive a pittance for standing up to the deep pocketed wealthy who control government and media.Again, still not clear in my mind, but here’s another challenge: poor people the world over use much less energy per capita than the wealthy West. Are the poor more animal-like?
I really question this idea that humans are just like amoebas.Ilargi,
I am not sure we are behaving like all other species in our use of energy/resources, but I have not worked the idea thru completely. Here’s what I have so far:
1) humans consume massive quantities of non-essential stuff, something that other species do not do. This has a huge impact on the speed with which we consume energy2) Graeber speaks of money’s capacity to turn morality into a matter of impersonal arithmetic, which allows for the justification of what would otherwise seem outrageous or obscene. Example: Exchanging a cow for 10 live chickens is imprecise. Calculating the exact value of the cow and chickens may necessitate chopping a chicken in half to equalize the trade. The idea is that violence and quantification are linked. Humans capacity to create money, with all of the perversions this brings about, sets us apart from animals. I’m inclined to think it, rather than our animal-like behavior, sets the stage for our destruction.
John Day I can totally relate to your experience trying to develop a rural property. Finding good contractors is incredibly tough and most good ones are already snatched up by a general contractor, so a package deal or nothing. Then they charge you a “big city tax”. We would have preferred to hire people for some work but ended up doing it ourselves due to lack of reliable labourers. It really has an impact on what you can accomplish. Then there are the mistakes we make as we learn — like for example that, contrary to the sales pitch, peaches are not hardy enough for our zone!
Because locals have been here forever, they don’t hide their disdain for us. We try hard to be generous, but we know that, in the final analysis, we will always be the folks at the old O’Connors place.Here is a herbal option – fire cider. Of course, it, like many of the inexpensive treatments, will likely never be clinically tested – no money to be made.
Here is a recipe for fire cider:
https://www.marthastewart.com/1513793/test-kitchens-favorite-fire-cider-tonic
Here is a backgrounder on fire cider:
https://www.marthastewart.com/1514670/fire-ciderJohn Day thank you for providing the covid treatment protocols. I have already shared them with friends.
Jon Barron’s latest missive on covid.
D. Benton Smith
Your statement seems to be contradicted by history. Societies have defined underclasses based on arbitrary criteria, including gender and ethnicity, such that to attribute membership to an underclass as being related to intelligence is questionable.On another note: the other day I complained that I could not imagine large groups being able to work collaboratively. The farmers protesting in India and the Reddit folks taking down the shorts are showing that, at least for a short-term project, people seem able to cooperate quite well. Uplifting to see.
D. Bento Smith
“What I’m saying, in general, is that as people gain capability (for whatever reason) their thinking and action shifts to what we call the “Right” , and when they lose capability (for any reason at all) their thinking shifts “Leftward”.
You will, of course and as expected, find a bit more stupidity on the “Left” because below average IQ is a fairly big contributing factor to powerlessness.”
I would direct you to start reading Chomsky and Chris Hedges – leading left-wing intellectuals. Would you consider AOC as being weak intellectually?“We coperate well in small groups, platoon sized groups, but we can work well together in groups of up to about 150 members. Bigger groups than that require a hierarchy, because we quarrel too much to get tasks accomplished.”
In my experience, I can’t even think of 20 people I could work well with, non-hierarchically, on any reasonably challenging project before serious issues would emerge. 100 would be only in my wildest dreams. Am I the exception?
Timely quotes from David Graeber:
– In the ancient world, all revolutionary movements had a single program: cancel the debts and redistribute the land
– If one looks at the history of debt..one discovers profound moral confusion.
.the majority of human beings hold simultaneously that (1) paying back money one has borrowed is a simple matter of morality, and (2) anyone in the habit of lending money is evil.– Mone has a capacity to turn morality into a matter of impersonal arithmetic– and by doing so, to justify things that otherwise would seem outrageous or obscene.
Schulte -another brave and beautiful soul buried alive for shining light on ugly truth.
Yes, I too wonder when TPTB lose control of the covid cure narrative. Here’s a link to an international study suggesting cruciferous foods and fermented foods seem to be associated with lower mortality rates from covid.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/all.14549?download=true
Re Kunstler and small farm movement: no one “small” could afford to jump in at this point. Gates and his like have bid land prices thru the roof. We’re more likely imho to end up in the “everyone is a serf working on the Lord’s land” scenario.
Madamski so sad to see you go. I am as guilty as any of your charge and will take your good counsel forward in my own conduct.
Example of how poor people are overlooked in lockdown: veterinary clinics require clients to wait in their cars while their pets are being treated. This week when I took in my injured dog, a woman, who did not have a car, stood outside the clinic huddled under a blanket against the cold for an hour and a half while her pet was being treated. She obviously loved her pup enough to make this effort and I overheard her tell the taxi driver to take her to the local motel (ie she’s homeless). Heart-wrenching.
“Today is day 1 in Ontario for an 8 pm curfew! The police can now stop you for any or for no reason. They can now enter your home without a search warrant too. They can now ask you what is in your lunch bag. They can now say the letter from your employer labeling you an essential worker is just a piece of paper. They can fine you as they please. All this has already happened!
We now live in a police state!”Not quite. Here is a quote from the Chief of Police in Ontario: “The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police confirmed officers will not be stopping people only to ask about the stay-at-home orders.”
“Individuals cannot be compelled to explain why they are out of their residence,” spokesman Joe Couto said.
I love Michael Hudson’s definition of a centrist. I feel like I am being slowly smothered when a centrist tries to restrain my thoughts.
Re governments being the root of all evil- I really dunno. We humans seem to need some organizing entity, even at a small scale. Is the issue that anything beyond a small scale is prone to corruption? Certainly there are a bazillion examples of that. However, people across the globe have set up governing bodies (including many self-selected dictatorships of course) since at least around the time of Christ — I don’t think governments are a bug in the system – I think our tendency to create governance reflects the nature of human behavior.
On the evil women thingy: Women have throughout history been the less-valued gender, treated more like chattel – what are the psychological impacts of that? Certainly in our capitalist world, the poor, and minorities, of both genders are also less-valued, likely sharing similar psychological impacts. Perhaps in our stage of capitalism/corporatism/fascism(?) gender has a somewhat lesser impact on behavior than other factors? Better access to opportunities allows women to obtain powerful positions, which put on display the character traits that were otherwise invisible in certain individuals?
On incompetence I would add that the same incompetence found itself at the helm when covid struck. Sort of like a macabre musical chairs. A Canada example: we did not maintain our inventory of masks, and let them expire. And on and on…
But yet so many examples of good, caring people, either helping others directly (Spanish hospital workers walking 20 km to work because driving is impossible due to a freak snow storm) or taking thepersonal risk of standing up, however imperfectly, to protest tyranny and fraud.UK Authorities shut down Vitamin D recommendation for covid https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/09/uk-vitamin-d-and-coronavirus.aspx
As much as I’m sure there are numerous real conspiracies related to all realms including health, my front row seat to institutional health care and large government programs provided dozens of examples of straight up incompetence which resulted in harm no less significant than that created intentionally. Here’s one example: in Ottawa, for many years our major (all public) hospitals all used different electronic patient records software. As the various hospitals provide unique care, transfers between hospitals happen frequently. Can you see the gap? Patient X moves to a new hospital and his electronic record is inaccessible to the new institution. To this day, faxes are still used for a portion of this type of communication. A few years back, a single electronic patient record system (horrible, not user friendly) was finally adopted. Initially, the idea was that only doctors would have access. However, when they saw how much “fun” it was, they decided that everyone should have access…
Madamski amen to the rise in salaries of physicians and administrators. A local story: in Ottawa (capital of Canada) news reports from public health state that there are many personal support workers (those employed to dress, feed, wash the frail and disabled) living in homeless shelters because they cannot afford rent based on their salaries. A goodly proportion of these folks are covid positive, so efforts are made to try to separate them from the other folks living at the homeless shelters. Because these workers are covid positive, they are not supposed to take public transit, so they walk to work. Yes, pity those physicians….
Another covid close up: I celebrated with my demented mother her 90th birthday on Tuesday at her retirement home which had a covid outbreak. She tested positive on Thursday (after testing negative on Monday) and she became palliative as of Friday. She’s on her own ice flow now.My mother celebrated her 90th birthday on Tuesday, tested covid positive on Wednesday and today (Friday) is in palliative care (family instructed to say goodbye tonight). Covid whipped thru her retirement home, after having been clean a month ago. Mercifully quick. So hard on the workers. I read tonight that a non-trivial number of personal support workers (who bathe, feed, clothe the frail) live in homeless shelters because they cannot afford rent here. These people then being covid into the shelters. Just one more injustice to the vulnerable populations.
I also loved the photo of first day back at school!
Also liked the tilled field – reminds me of the cacaphony of country life. Are the colours and composition too jarring for your preference V.Arnold? It is “edgy” if that’s an appropriate descriptor.Two David Graeber quotes on the subject of Bitcoin:
1 Bitcoin is based on a false popular understanding of what money is and how it originated. It’s more of a speculative commodity than a viable currency.
2 The danger of a virtual money system is obviously inflation – if money is just a promise, what’s to stop people from promising all sorts of things. There has to be some mechanism to keep things from getting out of control.I searched high and low to find Graeber’s take, and this is all I could find.
As someone who knows practically nothing about Bitcoin, I am sensitive to the environmental arguments related to energy consumption. My concern is, with the huge players getting into Bitcoin and talk of central banks creating their own private crypto currency, will these become the “higher” form of money and leave the average person in the dust? Granted we already are in many ways
…Mr. House I thought of the same thing, except everyone seems so polarized that I suspect it would end up being just a mud-slinging exercise, instead of presentation of evidence.
Mormon faith that is very applicable to this situation: “I teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves.“. (It is a very “American” grown faith, in some ways.)
Here’s a contrasting approach from Martin Luther in 1524:. ” Christians are rare in this world; therefore the world needs a strict, hard, temporal government that will compel and constrain the wicked not to rob and to return what they borrow, even though a Christian ought not to demand it…”. He goes on to say that if only Gospel leads us, without laws and force, all would go to hell in a handbasket, basically. So many interesting perspectives on the role of government in our lives. Meanwhile, it looks like dollars are the governing force in our world right now.
I want to add my thanks to you Ilargi – it has been quite a ride and you’ve helped by holding a light in front of us.
https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/12/18/vaccine-side-effects-what-to-expect/
Regarding adverse covid vaccine response: (headache, chills, muscle aches etc): these adverse responses are expected. As Jon Barron said, your body is developing an immune response and will experience mild symptoms as if infected by covid. In fact, no such response indicates no development of immune response by the body. Interesting that people over 50 have fewer adverse effects. Could this be because they are not developing as robust an immune response? The piece that looks completely political is immunizing the elderly, who have very little ability to mount an immune response. Getting a successful immunization requires a healthy immune system. Vaccines cannot give a person a healthy immune system.A sad sidenote on the human cost of silver: the vast majority of silver mined in the Americas was destined to feeding China’s heavy demand, as the Chinese quickly depleted their own mines. Europe at the time did not produce anything of interest to China, but Europe wanted Chinese silks and spices, and had to pay for them in silver.)The toll of silver mining on Indigenous communities in the Americas was horrendous.
Okay, so now we know silver is the root of evil, to be used against peasants right? Not so fast:
Back in the 1400’s in China during the Ming dynasty, there was general distrust of any type of commerce. Taxes were paid in labour, under a quasi-caste system. Over time, taxes became so high that peasants left their lands, and there were large floating populations
Some of these folks took to silver mining, and silver began to be used in the illegal economy (remember Ming dynasty disliked commerce). When the government tried to shut down the mines, popular uprisings were do strong that the government gave up and allowed silver to be used as currency, instead of labour.I:vevread more than 300 pages of David Graeber’s debt book. There are dozens of great examples relevant to our times, totally overturning my understanding and perhaps that of others. Here’s one:
In the late 1500s, during which large amounts of silver were circulating in Europe (much of it mined in the Americas), there was a collapse in European standards of living. Taxes had to be paid in silver
However, very little of this silver was in hands of ordinary people – most went to bankers, governments and large-scale merchants, who -double surprise! — used their control of silver to insist that silver be considered as money and replace the community systems of trust that were in place for ordinary people. This period, described by Graeber as one of unparalleled violence, resulted in unsuccessful uprisings, after which impoverished peasants became vagabonds who were rounded up by governments and exported to the colonies as indentured laborers.
Today many of us think of precious metals as some form of freedom currency, not realizing that it was anything but that historically.Here’s my update on getting covid tested. I have noted that different test sites use different tests
The local hospital uses the VERY uncomfortable test that tickles your brain via your nostril. The seniors residence (where my mother lives) uses a much less invasive test (touches the inside of the nose and throat). In discussion with the test administrator at the hospital I learned that the less invasive test is a lot less accurate. But even more interesting, apparently hospital workers are not systematically and regularly tested because they would lose workers! The administrator had never taken the test! If they don’t have to be tested, why do the rest of us have to? The test administrator noted that the more times people take the invasive test, the more painful it becomes, and she speculated that perhaps some injury is occuring. IncredibleI should add that none of the livestock folks have had success on the fruit department -the learning curve and effort raising livestock was all they could handle.
Great post. I’m thinking some vegetarians are more motivated by concerns over the way animals are treated, as opposed to the energy issue.
Yes, too much unnecessary reliance on high tech gadgetry in renewables. Our house is passive solar – wide roof overhang allows the sun into the house in winter but not in summer. Concrete floor captures heat. No batteries or solar panels and very little firewood required for heating.
Local neighboring organic livestock farmers nearby comment on the positive impacts of the animals (goats, chickens, cows, sheep) on their soil.
Changing our way of being from mostly urban to more back to the land, in addition to all the infrastructure changes, will of course entail a huge learning curve and a lot of physical effort people are not accustomed to. After neing at organic fruit farming for about 10 years, we still make many mistakes along the way, in spite of doing a lot of research.Doc Robinson, you misread Jon’s article re proteins and protein fragments. Whether it is a fragment or whole protein, Jon’s point is that it’s only one protein as opposed to the whole or fragment of multiple proteins. Here is a quote:
“One advantage to this approach is that since we’re talking about building the vaccine around only one virus protein or protein fragment as found in the spike, rather than the entire virus, there’s no way the vaccine can accidentally infect someone or make them sick with COVID-19. A second advantage, theoretically, is that the more proteins you’re dealing with, the more likely you are to have a negative side effect. With only one protein, the odds of a negative response, then, are less—and likely to be less intense if one occurs. In any case, whether it’s one protein or many, as long as the right protein or protein fragment is included, your body will build an antibody defense for it. Thus, if someone who was immunized gets exposed to the coronavirus later on, their body’s adaptive immune system should be able to fight it off more easily and be, therefore, more likely to avoid serious illness.”.
PS:In the link above to Jon Barron’s article, Jon argues that the covid vaccine is less likely than the regular flu shot to generate adverse reactions because the covid vaccines have much simpler protein profiles.
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) won’t require its health care employees to take the upcoming COVID-19 vaccine, which the medical provider expects to begin offering as soon as this month,
This may be a story about keeping your workers happy. Here’s a real life example from my family circle: the hospital employer tried to make the flu vaccine (referred to in the article above as ever so safe) mandatory for workers during periods in which the institution was in outbreak mode. This creates a perverse incentive – who wants to take a shift during outbreak mode? So there was a generalized rejection of the flu vaccine among workers. Sooooo, the hospital decided that the flu vaccine was no longer mandatory.
Perhaps it has something to do with several UPMC employees having participated in vaccine trials, only to report fever, fatigue or arm pain, with some needing to take a day or two off from work. According to Snyder, this is “a normal and healthy immune response.”
According to Jon Barron, if you don’t experience some such symptoms, your body has not generated an immune response to the vaccine.“no CDC money has gone into investigating existing drugs to treat COVID, only vaccines and novel patented creations like remdesivir, things that will make profits”
It goes without saying that no money will ever be spent by CDC on plant-based pathogen destroyers, you know, horseradish, garlic, spoke cider vinegar and hot peppers, the kind of stuff that you grow in your backyard and herbalists have used forever.
