That’s why President Barack Obama’s insulting cancellation of his planned meeting with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, during the 5-6 September Group of 20 meeting in St. Petersburg is so dismaying.

Russia has over 3,000 active nuclear warheads, the majority aimed  at North America.  The US has a similarly powerful nuclear arsenal,   primarily targeted on Russia, or in reserve for a second strike in the event of all-out war.

When two men are holding loaded pistols to each other’s heads, keeping cool, calm and polite is imperative.  But that’s just what Washington has not been doing, exposing Americans to an unnecessary national security risk for no apparent gain.

Informal meetings between heads of state on the sidelines of major international meetings are common and useful.  Such sit-downs serve to smooth over ongoing disputes and send a message of orderly, civilized relations.   The tone is often more important than the content.

Relations between Washington and Moscow have been growing steadily chillier over recent years.  Gone are the days when the credulous George Bush could say he looked into Vlad Putin’s eyes and trusted him.  A series of disputes – Syria, Palestine, arms control, missile defense – bedevil US-Russian relations.  Washington has been blasting Moscow over human rights, which is pretty rich coming after Guantanamo, waterboarding,  and massive US spying on the whole world, including Americans.

Behind this Big Chill is Washington’s ongoing treatment of Russia as a second or third-rate power.  The US lectures and hectors Russia and affords scant concern of Moscow’s strategic interests or spheres of interest.  Europe gets much the same treatment.  Whenever Russia refuses to go along with US policy – Syria being a good example – it comes in for barrages of criticism over human and political rights in America’s state-influenced media and Congress.

President Putin is no angel:  he’s tough as nails and brooks no opposition.  But that’s what Russians want.  Putin has raised Russia off its knees.

In 1989, I was the first western journalist admitted into KGB’s Moscow  headquarters, the Lubyanka.  I was told by senior KGB generals that they were ditching the rotten, corrupt Communist Party. What Russia needed, they said,  was a tough, iron-fisted leader like the strongmen then running Chile and South Korea.  Shortly after, KGB mounted a palace coup in the Kremlin and installed one of its star officers, Vladimir Putin, as prime minister, then president.

Now, President Obama has made clear he is boycotting his planned meeting with Putin because of human rights issues and Syria.  The 800-lb gorilla he did not mention is Edward Snowden, now in temporary Russian exile.   Given that Washington is in bed with numerous rights violators – think of Uzbekistan, Mubarak’s Egypt, Azerbaijan – its squeamishness over Russia rings hollow.

As for Syria, it’s Washington that is violating international law by fomenting the uprising against the Assad regime in Damascus; Russia is well within its legal rights to support Assad and arm him.   More important, Syria is close to southern Russia and a long-time Soviet/Russian ally.  Imagine the US response if Russia sought to overthrow Mexico’s government using Cuban advisors and local insurgents.

Imagine if the US increased its arms supplies to Syria’s rebels and imposed a no-fly zone, as Sen. John McCain urges.  Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missiles down US warplanes.  The US launches attacks on Russian AA units, then on Russian ships delivering arms to the Assad government.   It’s not hard to see how a direct clash over Syria could put Russia and the US on their most perilous collision course since the Cuban missile crisis.

Instead of dealing with this major threat, Obama, under blistering attack from Republicans over the deaths of three Americans in Benghazi, Libya, is offending Putin and indeed all Russians.  This is foolish, short-sighted and sure to worsen US-Russian relations as well as scuttling chances of an arms control pact in the next few years.

Or, in simple English:  President Obama, don’t kick sand in the face of a man holding a gun to your head.  How about some presidential behavior re Russia?

I can think of no more vivid picture of the condition of the modern nation-state. After years of dragging its corpulent carcass about, indifferent to the injuries it caused to those lesser creatures who got in its path, this dinosaur continued to gorge itself on leaves, heedless of the voices from its hinterland informing it that its fate was already determined.  My oft-used metaphor of the just-beheaded chicken can also help describe the condition of the modern state: it flaps about in a pattern of automatic reflexes spewing blood in its path, making a mess of whatever gets in its way. It no longer serves any life-enhancing purpose, having become little more than a mass of reactive energy.

How should intelligent people respond to this? Having been thoroughly conditioned in the political mindset of using force as the most effective manner of bringing about change, our initial answer might be to try to reform the state; to make its actions more palatable to its victims. Such a response recalls Frank Chodorov’s wonderful rejoinder about wanting “to clean up the whorehouse, but keeping the business intact.” But recent history informs us that we are far beyond being able to treat the state as an instrument established and controlled to serve our purposes. As an institution, the state is its own reason for being, its violent powers in the hands of the kinds of people attracted to compulsion as the principal method of dealing with others. As Einstein so well-expressed the point: “Force always attracts men of low morality.”

The state serves only the most debased motives through the most destructive means of accomplishing the ends of the most vicious and corrupt members of the human species. By its nature, the state wars against truth and reality, using terror and violence to overcome our more peaceful and cooperative individual dispositions. To think of reforming such a monstrous system makes no more sense than trying to enclose a wild tiger with a tall fence! Such thinking reflects a continuing attachment to power, a force that would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of those who imagined themselves fit to exercise it.

To attack the state through violent means is the most self-defeating measure. To think this way is to succumb to desperation, to give up on life itself. Our beliefs in systemic violence are destroying us. If we are to live peacefully with one another, our means of doing so cannot be found in the conflict that is the state’s organizing principle. Even the most superficial mind ought to recognize that resorting to violence in an effort to rid the world of state-violence, is not only self-contradictory, but would require us to have coercive powers greater than those of the state! Those who might be successful doing this would have to amass the energies of a super-state, and would have to maintain such powers to prevent the “return” of the deposed state. Sound familiar? Do Marx and Engels come to mind, with their promises about the eventual “withering away of the state?” We cannot use the methodologies that have gotten us to where we now find ourselves. Furthermore, at a time when politicized thinking is on the defensive – and, to many, in full retreat – it is far better to focus attention on the development of alternative models of social organization.

We are beyond the place where incremental changes will suffice. Cosmetic alterations – providing the emperor with a new suit of clothes – may modify, but not end, our well-organized destructiveness. To redesign the systems that war against life, or to replace the puppets atop the pyramid, will only keep us spinning our wheels. Nothing less than a fundamental transformation in our thinking as to how we are to live in society with one another will bring about the change that matters.

As we focus our minds on the task of rethinking our basic assumptions, the question of how to end statism may answer itself. Like the stegosaurus and the decapitated chicken, the state clumsily staggers around in a brain-dead condition. At its best, the state may be said to be functioning at no higher level of intelligence than that of its reptilian brain with its reflexive, knee-jerk “see/act” behavior. Its behavior is dominated by contradictions, conflicts, falsehoods, corruption, violence, and other traits that work against a peaceful and orderly world.

Daniel Goleman observed that “[s]ocieties can be sunk by the weight of buried ugliness,” a reminder of how collective power and collective ideas can bring down civilizations. Rather than focusing our energies on trying to rehabilitate or reinvent the state, we would be better advised to direct our attentions to alternative social practices that serve the living, not exalted abstractions. Like the dinosaurs – whose presence on earth was of far greater duration than that of humans – the state’s monstrous size renders it incapable of making creative, life-enhancing responses to the changes occurring within the world.

Leopold Kohr has written of the dysfunctional nature of size, observing that “whenever something is wrong, something is too big.” The study of chaos and complexity affirm the adverse consequences of trying to manage the world from the apex of Plato’s pyramid. The state is a behemoth that stumbles about, ravenously increasing its consumption of whatever resources it deems necessary to sustain its ever-more-bloated size.

In the long run, the well-being of our children and grandchildren depends upon our bringing about a paradigm shift in thinking about what it means to be human. This involves learning how to regain control over our lives, a task that entails expanding the understanding of our own self-directed abilities, and the awareness of how we have given up such personal powers and authority to the state. This is not something we can do passively, but requires the most energized and focused mind.

In the short run, the best answer to the violence that is synonymous with state power may be to just let politicized thinking play out the logical consequences upon which it is grounded; to allow the system to grind itself down. Perhaps, like the attacking Martians in H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, or the final days of dinosaurs on earth, our best short-term defense against the state may be to allow its dysfunctional size and nature to provide the catalyst for its own extinction. The rest of us need to protect ourselves as best we can against its over-reaching into our lives, and to participate in those peaceful, voluntary alternative systems and practices that serve our purposes. But in the meantime, we should take a lesson from our ancestral mammals who were able to wait out the dinosaurs who lacked the resiliency to respond to the changed conditions of an ever-changing world. Instead of trying to prop up and rehabilitate this destructive monolith, let us allow it to collapse of its own dead weight!

One sign is that the GWOT is 12 years old. The U.S. hasn’t licked terror yet.

What else?

Iraq is a total fiasco for the U.S. and a disaster for Iraqis. The U.S. invasion produced a civil war, then a weak government, new insurgencies and a base for al Qaeda operations. Today and every day, dozens and dozens of Iraqis are still being killed and wounded

The U.S. still hasn’t “won” in Afghanistan, no matter how you define winning. Another weak and corrupt government was put in. The Taliban is alive and kicking. So is al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda affiliates have appeared. Affiliates are new recruits in a network of sub-organizations.

Jihadist insurgents moved into Pakistan, destabilizing that country.

Al Qaeda remains in Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Spain, Germany, China, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Al Qaeda has grown in Yemen where the U.S. now has operations.

The U.S. and NATO attacked Libya and removed Gaddafi. Libya became unstable. Militias proliferated and al Qaeda’s presence multiplied.

Al Qaeda (affiliates included) is pushing into new areas in North and West Africa. They operate from Somalia, Kenya, Libya and Algeria. Al Qaeda has affiliates in Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Nigeria.

The U.S. and its allies decided to remove Syria’s president and support rebels against him. They stoked a war that is ongoing. Al Qaeda and affiliates have benefited. They have infiltrated Palestinian refugee camps in Syria, as they have in Lebanon.

The Syrian war has destabilized the neighboring countries of Lebanon and Iraq, and also affected Turkey and Jordan.

Fearful of attacks by al Qaeda, the U.S. recently closed 21 embassies and consulates for a period. They are in some countries already mentioned (Mauritania, Algeria, Libya, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan.) In addition, they include Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, U.A.E., Bahrain, Oman, Djibouti and Bangladesh.

The U.S. attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan helped al Qaeda operations and recruiting, more than offsetting the killing of al Qaeda members. U.S. operations and policies in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Syria have done the same.

The U.S. military and the CIA are good at deposing dictators and wrecking countries. They are bad at defeating an operation like al Qaeda. Their incompetence is matched only by that of the government that has set the war policies and determined grand strategy.

How’s the GWOT going in America? Americans are the losers. The cost of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan is anywhere from $2.4 trillion to $4 trillion.

Civil liberties have been curtailed. Police have been militarized. Privacy has deteriorated. A police state apparatus has been installed. Economic progress has vanished.

Meanwhile the government continues to look for new fields of conquest, such as Iran.

Obama has said “…we know a price must be paid for freedom.” Americans have paid the price for the GWOT and gotten less freedom. If there is a positive connection between the GWOT and freedom of Americans, it remains to be demonstrated. The connection appears to be inverse or perverse, if you will.

Obama said “Beyond Afghanistan, we must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror,’ but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.”

Obama has retired the phrase “global war on terror” (GWOT). He has replaced it with a “series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists”.

The GWOT goes on. The methods are changing. Obama is moving away from conventional war. He favors surgical drone strikes, only they are not so surgical.

The global aspect is not changing. Just the opposite. The U.S. is involved with counterterrorism in more countries than ever.

The two main reasons why al Qaeda formed are (1) the U.S. support of Israel and Israel’s anti-Palestinian policies, and (2) the introduction of U.S. military forces in Islamic countries.

The U.S. has confirmed and strengthened those reasons during the GWOT, under both Bush and Obama. The GWOT itself has helped al Qaeda affiliates form and spread.

America’s terrorism problem will remain chronic unless these two basic issues are addressed.

ROCKWELL:  Recently, we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Mises Institute and Dr. David Gordon, who is editor of the Mises Review, a senior fellow of the Institute, talked to us about Murray Rothbard and revisionist history.

GORDON:  It’s great to be here speaking about Murray Rothbard because Murray Rothbard was the person who influenced my thinking on political and economic questions more than anybody else ever since I first read Man, Economy, and State 50 years ago.  And I’m also delighted to be here at the Mises Institute because the Mises Institute, and especially its founder, Lew Rockwell, have supported my work over many years.

I want to talk today about Murray Rothbard and revisionism.  We want to ask the question:  Why was Rothbard interested in revisionism?  As you know, Rothbard is a Libertarian who was, of course, very strongly opposed to war because, in wars, there are massive aggressions violations of peoples’ rights and also war is a great promoter of the power of the state.  Remember, Tom DiLorenzo talk yesterday, he mentioned Randolph Bourne’s famous essay, War is the Health of the State.  We know from Robert Higgs’ great work, Crisis and Leviathan, and other works of his on how state power has grown through war.

So where does revisionism come in?  Well, in the wars that the U.S. has been involved in — sometimes this is true for other countries as well — there’s been an attempt to show that each war is not just a struggle between contending states for power but that wars of the U.S. are somehow moral crusades, that we’re facing an evil power bent on world conquest that we have to oppose.  So Rothbard, as someone — an opponent of war, was naturally concerned to counter that.  But one thing in his attempts to counter this I think is crucial, that he wasn’t taking the point of view, well, we can just deduce that all such accounts are false, that it’s always false that one side, or the U.S., is right — it’s always false to say that the U.S. is engaged in a moral crusade.  What if it turned out to be true in particular cases?  This is not something we could just deduce a priori was false.  What he thought was that it was necessary for each war to do a detailed study of the historical evidence.  In each case, we would have to look at the facts.  We couldn’t just say, well, the state is always going to propagandize so we can just dismiss what they say.  We have to look at the evidence.  And this is where the revisionist movement came in.

When we talk about revisionism, we want to know, well, what is it the revisionist historians were trying to revise.  And when the movement came in after World War I, they had in mind particularly to revise Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World War, and this said that the blame or the responsibility for World War I rested entirely with Germany and her allies.  So the revisionists were those who favored revising that.

At the time when World War I was going on, there was a picture that the Germans, particularly under the leadership of Kaiser Wilhelm II, were bent on the conquest of Europe and perhaps the world as well, and there was a need for the United States to counter them.  There were all sorts of movies on attacking the Kaiser and the Germans generally.  And, in fact, in the treaty — I think it’s Article 227 — there was a call to try the Kaiser for war crimes.  This wasn’t successful. In fact, Kaiser Wilhelm lasted a very long time.  He didn’t die until 1941.  He was an exile in Holland.

But in the 1920s and 1921, there were three articles published in American Historical Review by Sidney Bradshaw Fay, who was a professor at Harvard, that challenged the Versailles war-guilt thesis.  And Fay pointed out in one of the articles that there was a claim that, in July 1914, right after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand the previous month, there had been a crown council meeting at which the kaiser along with the various people in the German Foreign Office and general staff applauded war, and he was able to show that that account rested on a misleading report by the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Ambassador Morgenthau.  So Fay’s work attracted some attention.

And then the leading publicist of the movement was another historian, Harry Elmer Barnes.  And he was not only a historian and sociologist, he was a public figure.  And he was a newspaper columnist.  He was an associate of H.L. Mencken and wrote very widely on journalism.

I remember when I was in high school, I once asked Barnes — this was in the — we were having the 1964 election where it was Goldwater against Johnson.  And I asked him what he thought of the election, and he said, “As my old friend, Henry Mencken, once said, I think I’ll sit this one out.”

(LAUGHTER)

I can tell you one story about Barnes that Murray Rothbard told me.  Murray was in charge, at one time, of editing a volume of essays in honor of Barnes and it later went to some other — Arthur Goddard took over the editorship.  He also was the one who helped — Goddard helped Mises on Human Action.  But in any event, Barnes said that when contributors would send in essays, if they had anything critical of Barnes, Barnes would insert comments in the person’s essay.  He would put in things like, “Professor Barnes would respond to this point in such-and-such a way.”

(LAUGHTER)

And Murray said, “Hey, he wrote his own festschrift.”

(LAUGHTER)

So Murray Rothbard became friendly with Barnes and he accepted Barnes’ views on the origins of the war, World War I.  What I want to go into in my talk today is give Rothbard’s views on origins of World War I, American entry into the war and then World War II and American entry into that, into World War II as well.

Rothbard didn’t write all that much on war origins but he did talk about it, so I know what his views were.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GORDON:  He accepted the view that Barnes promulgated in his 1926 book Genesis of the World War, which was revised two years later in 1928.  And according to Barnes, the primary responsibility for the outbreak of the war rested not on Germany but on France and Russia.  Barnes particularly pointed to the desire of the French president, Raymond Poincare, to recover the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, which had been surrendered to Germany after the Franco-Prussian War of 1871.  And Poincare, in conjunction with Alexander Izvolsky, who was the Russian ambassador to Paris — he had previously been Russian foreign minister.  The Russians were very anxious to gain control of the Straits of Constantinople, which were under the control, of course, of the Ottoman Empire.  So according to Barnes, it was France and Russia that instigated the war in order to secure Alsace-Lorraine for France and control of the straits for Russia.

I should say this thesis wasn’t accepted by Sidney Fay in his book Origins of the World War, which also came out in 1928.  He wasn’t as strong a revisionist as Barnes but he said there was a more divided responsibility for the war.  I mean, in the 1930 edition of his book, he criticizes Barnes on this point, but Barnes replied to it.  But Rothbard was inclined to accept Barnes’ view of the war.

Now, on American entry into World War I, here Rothbard largely followed the great work of Charles Callan Tansill, America Goes to War, which came out in 1938.  Tansill was probably one of the two or three foremost American diplomatic historians of the 20th century along with William L. Langer, who Gary North mentioned yesterday, and Samuel Flagg Bemis. But what Tansill stressed particularly was that America, under Woodrow Wilson, adopted a very un-neutral policy from the beginning in which British violations of American neutrality, such as the –

(CRYING)

GORDON:  I guess someone doesn’t approve of Tansill’s thesis.

(LAUGHTER)

So British violations of American neutrality were largely ignored but Wilson insisted on a very strict interpretation of German violations of American neutrality.  And in fact, his un-neutral policy led the Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan to resign.  Tansill’s work was based, as always with him, on exhaustive research into the archives, and it became the generally accepted view that America had pursued this un-neutral policy.

I should tell you one story about Tansill since I’ve given one about Barnes.  Tansill was a Texan.  He had very strong views in favor of the South in the Civil War.  And once, by some odd quirk of events, he was asked to give the annual Lincoln Day speech –

(LAUGHTER)

– in Washington, and he gave a very furious denunciation of Lincoln.  And I think the controversy over his speech was so great that he almost lost his job.  I think at that time he was teaching at Fordham.  He later went to Georgetown.  But he almost lost his job.

So Rothbard relied in his views on American entry into the war principally on Tansill.  Although he did emphasize more than Tansill did the influence of the Morgan banking interests.  Tansill thought the Morgan banking interests were important but he didn’t place as much stress on it as Rothbard did.

Now turning to World War II, we have a situation where there was a very evil regime in power in Germany.  But one point Rothbard made — I remember there was a speech in San Francisco in 1979 where he emphasized this — was you can’t argue from saying that a totalitarian power is necessarily aggressive.  You can’t say the more the totalitarian the government, the more aggressive it is.  We have counterinstances to that.  For example, Cambodia under Pol Pot was extremely destructive and totalitarian but it wasn’t aggressive in foreign relations.

So on World War II, Rothbard thought that Germany was not aiming at the world war that broke out on September 3, 1939, that Hitler was trying to reach a settlement with Poland.  He wanted a return of the free city of Danzig to Germany and a motor road across the Polish Corridor.  But the Poles, under the influence of — especially under the foreign minister, Jozef Beck, refused to negotiate.  So Rothbard here followed the work of A.J.P. Taylor, Origins of the Second World War that came out in 1961, in saying that World War II had largely come about by improvisation; it wasn’t a deliberately planned event.

And another book that very strongly influenced him was one by the American economist Burton H. Klein — Germany’s Economic Preparations for War – that came out in 1959, which argued that Germany had not built up an extremely large armament, contrary to the propaganda of Winston Churchill, but, in fact, they just had enough armaments for very quick campaigns as in the one against Poland.  So Rothbard did not accept the usual view, which is the prevailing view today that Hitler was deliberately aiming at a world war.

Then on American entry into the war, he again followed the views of another book by Charles Tansill, which is Back Door to War, which came out in 1952.  And what Tansill argued was that Roosevelt wanted to enter the European war, which began, as I said, in 1939, but he realized that the American people wouldn’t support such a move because America favored non-intervention in the European war following the bad experiences of World War I.  So to get into the war, Roosevelt followed a deliberately provocative policy towards Japan, knowing that if he did that and was able to get the Japanese to attack the U.S., then the Axis Powers would come in on Japan’s side, and that’s, indeed, what happened.

So in conclusion, Rothbard felt that by examining the historical evidence on World War I and World War II, it was clear that the mythologies that had supported America’s participation in both wars were not correct, and substantially, he found that there was support for his Libertarian view that war is to be avoided nearly at all costs.

And thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

ROCKWELL:  Well, thanks so much for listening to the Lew Rockwell Show today. Take a look at all the podcasts. There have been hundreds of them. There’s a link on the upper right-hand corner of the LRC front page. Thank you.

Podcast date, December 18, 2012

In words, government at all levels helps us do “things” we couldn’t or wouldn’t do otherwise.   In reality, government is parasitical in the way of the tapeworm or tick, consuming what we produce, feeding itself, and growing larger, until it becomes unsustainable and is gracelessly shed by an exhausted population.

In words, the United States is at war with her enemies.  In reality, there is no “war” with any US “enemies.”  Rather, the US government is a war-loving and warfare-dependent organization that seeks internal and external conflict using two key and opposing criteria:  1) conflicts and wars it may involve itself in without attracting any domestic attention, and 2) conflicts fomented to attract the “right” kind of domestic attention, i.e. against “terror” and for “democracy” or “justice.” This is precisely why there is such rage in the machine against truthtellers Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden.

Manning was subjected to institutionalized torture, mistreated, and labeled a “guilty traitor” by bureaucrats for nearly four years before his date with a kangaroo court.  He faces up to 90 years of prison for what has already been shown in the court to be a crime without a victim.   In reality, his actions did little more than embarrass State Department lackeys and reveal the real nature of America’s modern day “fighting men” to people around the world. Many who watched the incriminating video of US soldiers killing civilians and laughing about it were already familiar with America’s high tech and soulless wars against fourth rate militaries or no-count insurgencies in far away countries filled with poor brown people.   Having a conscience, a backbone and faith in the good of mankind has gotten Manning nowhere in his government career, and if he is not a martyr, he is certainly a posterboy for why every good and honorable person should tread lightly around the snake of state.

Snowden seems to have particularly infuriated the head of state in this country – by ingeniously honoring his oath to the Constitution and acting on his own faith that government works for us, not the other way around.  He was mistaken in this belief, but by acting nobly he exposed the nefarious lying hypocrite that is the President, the executive branch and the warfare state, and as we no doubt will see in coming years, the welfare state as well.  Because he is mild mannered and polite, intelligent and honest, he makes a perfect superman to the USG villains.  That he wisely sought personal safety and freedom of speech outside of the United States (in Putin’s Russia!) is a further source of enragement to our “government” – viscerally and fundamentally exposing its hypocrisy and lawlessness to the patriotic masses.

In words, Washington seeks democracy and fights terrorism.  In reality, the US government funds Islamic fundamentalism around the world, subsidizes tyrants and dictators, and actively trades with and works with al Qaeda places like Libya and Syria.  In reality, US tax dollars funds murder of innocents and those of good will.  The US government funds and facilitates the murders of Christians in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere and has done so for years with the reliable, predictable, and entirely indefensible support of “pro-Christian values” Congressmen and Senators.

A few days ago, in a parking lot picking up supplies from our regional organic supplier, I was reminded that Obama policies in Syria (and our own tax dollars) have directly caused a recent atrocity that is similar to many others, none of which seem to make mainstream news in the “heartland” or to shift state policy.

In that parking lot, my Catholic neighbor was frustrated that our own conservative Congressman for the 6^th Virginia district had continually voted to support the foreign policy of aid to tyrants and al Qaeda linked groups.  He has written repeatedly to the Congressman’s office, recently on the US-funded murder of Friar Murad in Syria, and he has garnered no response.  Silence.  Checking this conservative Congressman’s voting record finds that he also recently voted to continue funding the illegal domestic monitoring and data collection ongoing by NSA, unconstitutional programs that Ed Snowden helped us better understand (building on the truths told by James Bamford and Russ Tice.)  The Democrats are no better — they support murder and monitoring at home and abroad as predictably as the Republicans.    New fractures along the lines of state and anti-state seem to be emerging, and this is at once a sign of hope, but also a harbinger for the centralized state’s larger ongoing battle against the rest of us for its survival, a battle that increasingly forces all of us to choose sides, to clarify our values, and to prepare.

Truthtellers like Manning and Snowden have impacted the world of lying and wordsmithing governments in ways that may not have been initially seen.  The unraveling of the government storyline is irreversible.  From knowledge of our government’s ability and intentions to know everything about us have come demands from defense attorneys, corporations, and interest groups for the data “they paid for.”  From this data we get a closer semblance of “justice” in individual cases, and from this we open the door more widely to recognizing broad government stupidity, excess and overreach.  From widespread recognition of stupidity, excess and overreach we get a new confidence from the nether regions and otherwise unempowered rubes (present company included).  We get resource flows away from government.  We see that the IRS can’t enforce Obamacare, IT guys buy government-allied newspapers for pennies on the dollar, and private sector engineers design space, time and transportation solutions as government bureaucrats gaze helpless, speechless, doe-eyed.

A small but perfect intersection of these concepts is demonstrated by “parallel construction,” as defined by the FBI, DEA and dozens of other agencies that share “sources.”   Simply put, the government recreates a fact stream to hide the actual facts, as a matter of longstanding policy.

It’s always done for a “good cause,” to protect the paid stooges, narcs and government informers so critical to the government “making its case” and justifying its activities. Except, now that we know more about how the government operates, and we see how the government works not for us, but for itself and its connected corporate or bureaucratic “friends,” we the people don’t really like “parallel construction.”  We the people don’t like being taken for idiots, being lied to, getting the runaround, funding their own
accusers and paying bureaucratic peeping Toms.

The Constitution bound no man, and the Founders knew it wouldn’t.  However, its language offers a grappling hook for those who value liberty and honesty – and inevitably it is language today that powerfully arms us against the state.    As in any guerilla war, we systematically acquire our enemy’s cache and use his techniques and weaponry against him.   The concept of parallel construction – a weapon of the state – is so understandably in violation of the law in a way that touches so many people – that we who oppose the state must chuckle and celebrate.  The government’s admission and embrace of a policy of “parallel construction” in the ongoing era of the Panopticon is one more revelation of the utter lawlessness of the state, and it has great potential to increase mass intolerance of state “authority.”

With those words, which are found near the end of an August 8 motion to dismiss a spurious battery charge against Sandpoint, Idaho resident Rita Hutchens, the author – Bonner County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Shane Greenbank – incriminates himself.

For about a year, Greenbank tirelessly pursued a charge he knew to be entirely devoid of merit. His petulant motion to dismiss – a document littered with grammatical errors that occurred because the author’s protruding lower lip obstructed his view of the computer screen – offers unambiguous proof that his objective was not to convict Hutchens of an actual crime. Instead, he sought to inflict punishment on her for seeking redress for criminal violence she suffered at the hands of a Sandpoint, Idaho police officer.

Rita Hutchens is a tiny 57-year-old internationally respected quilt artist who has never committed a violent act against anybody. She was accused of “criminal battery” because she allegedly threw a ballpoint pen at a desk in the Sandpoint City Hall while doing research for a potential lawsuit against the city.

That writing utensil supposedly ricocheted off the desktop and glanced harmlessly off the blouse of a deputy city clerk named Melissa Ward. The supposed victim suffered no injury and did not press charges. Yet his incident, insisted Greenbank in a complaint filed last October 5, was a violent assault and a “grave offense against the peace and dignity of the state of Idaho.”

Greenbank, whose flair for rhetorical exaggeration would strike a hormonal adolescent girl as excessive, accused Hutchens of “willfully and unlawfully us[ing] force or violence upon the person of Melissa Ward.” Bear in mind that this was not a case in which a pen was employed as a shank, as occurred in a previous episode here in Idaho, nor was the pen hurled like a javelin. It was tossed carelessly at a desk, which means that there was no criminal intent – an indispensable element of an actual crime.

The same cannot be said of the assault she endured at the hands of a Sandpoint police officer named Theresa Heberer, who attacked Hutchens in front of her home in November 2011. After jumping Hutchens from behind and handcuffing the victim, Heberer held a lengthy conference with her supervisor in an effort to contrive a charge that would justify an arrest. They eventually settled on “obstruction,” a charge that was thrown out of court by Judge Barbara Buchanan several months later.

“There was no reason to touch her,” Judge Buchanan observed. “She did not have to answer [Officer Heberer’s] questions. She has a Fifth Amendment right not to do that…. You can’t be charged with resisting and obstructing for exercising your Fifth Amendment right, and she did have every right to say, `I don’t want to answer your questions, I want to go in my house.’ There is no basis for an arrest, there is no reason for a search warrant.”

After seeking medical treatment for the injuries she had suffered, Hutchens filed a damage claim with the City of Sandpoint. When that request was denied, she filed a notice of tort claim against the city. She was doing research into that claim on August 8 2012, when the pen-throwing incident took place.

The existing audio record of the August 8, 2012 confrontation at Sandpoint City Hall was made by one of several city officials who had surrounded Hutchens while she was trying to examine records of her unlawful arrest. Her chief antagonist was city attorney Scott Campbell, whose office had turned down her damage claim several weeks earlier. The specific official who rejected that claim was Lori Meulenberg, who had prosecuted the obstruction charge against Hutchens.

Hutchens wanted to be left alone to examine the records without Campbell and others swarming her and looking over her shoulder. It should be recalled that she was the victim of a violent crime committed by one of their associates. She finally gave voice to her exasperation.

“I’m tired of you people! Just leave me alone!” she exclaimed. “I just want to look at the record, which I have a right to do, now, in private.”

“Actually, you don’t have a right to do [that] in private,” Campbell said in a taunting voice that oozed condescension.

As Hutchens attempted to read the records, Campbell continued to violate her personal space in a fashion that he would have considered legally actionable if he had been on the receiving end. This could be considered a deliberate provocation, and if so it had the intended effect.

“Do not look over me!” she shouted at Campbell, who continued to behave like an adolescent bully.

“Is this a public place, Rita?” Campbell said, mockingly. “I have as much right to be here in a public place as you have.”

At this point, Hutchens took the initiative to de-escalate the situation by saying that she would leave and “come back tomorrow with a witness.”

What this means is that Hutchens was not looking for a fight; she was looking to avoid one. She was never the aggressor in any sense. Outnumbered, harassed, and mocked by city officials who had no respect for her rights, she withdrew from the office, allegedly throwing down a ballpoint pen as she left.

A few seconds after Hutchens departed, the silence was broken by Melissa Ward, the supposed victim.

“She just threw a pen at me,” Ward snickered. Yes, the “victim” laughed at the incident.

“Should we prosecute her?” an audibly amused Campbell asked Ward.  Significantly, there is no indication that Ward – the identified “victim” – agreed that Hutchens should be prosecuted.  Ward’s giggling comment is the only indication that a pen was thrown by anyone. Hutchens adamantly insists that she didn’t hurl the object, but simply left the building in disgust.

After Hutchens was charged with battery last November, she filed a subpoena demanding that Ward, the purported victim, provide a signed criminal complaint. Campbell, who instigated the persecution campaign against Hutchens, filed a motion to quash that subpoena.

That motion was granted by the Idaho First District Court, which ruled that “requiring Ms. Ward, the victim in this matter, to provide a signed complaint is unreasonable.”

In what sense would it be “unreasonable” to require the alleged victim of criminal battery to sign a complaint? Ward didn’t require medical treatment, and she’s not functionally illiterate, so she is physically and intellectually capable of either writing or dictating a coherent narrative. The only way that the term “unreasonable” has relevance here is as a description of the charge itself – and Campbell’s desire to prevent any critical scrutiny of the incident responsible for that charge.

Rita’s midnight arrest, April 16, 2013.

The confected charge was a misdemeanor offense. Yet after Hutchens declined to appear at a pre-trial hearing late last year, an acting judge named Don Swanstrom (who is no longer in service, and might not have been authorized to act as a judge at the time) issued a day-or-night bench warrant for her arrest.

According a 2011 state Supreme Court ruling (Idaho v. Skurlock), a warrant of that kind is generally inappropriate because at night time people enjoy “a heightened expectation of privacy that should not be disturbed by a knock on the door and the presentation of a search warrant.”

Nonetheless, three officers kicked in the front door to Hutchens’ home on April 16 and dragged her away. In the course of this Gestapo-grade act of overkill, one of the officers discovered what was identified as “drug paraphernalia” under her sofa – which resulted in yet another charge being filed against her.

The judge who was originally tapped to hear the “paraphernalia” case was Lori Meulenberg – yes, the same Lori Meulenberg who prosecuted the obstruction charge and subsequently denied Hutchens’ damage claim for the injury she suffered during her unlawful arrest in November 2011.

Finally, on July 23 – more than three months after this case was reported in detail in this space – the Bonner County Daily Bee published a story offering a critical examination of the campaign to incarcerate Rita Hutchens.

“Despite being a low-level offense, the battery case against Rita Nancy Hutchens has some of the trappings of a high-stakes affair,” observed the Bee. The article noted that the midnight arrest was questionable (at best), and that the treatment of Hutchens “stirred dismay by those in the community who contend law enforcement and the courts are running amok in Bonner County.”

It was likewise notable that the case was “being closely followed by city officials. City Attorney Scot Campbell attended [the July 19] hearing, as did police Chief Corey Coon and Det. Derrick Hagstrom.”

Why was the crème de la scum of Sandpoint’s ruling clique so interested in this trivial case, and so perversely determined to see Rita Hutchens incarcerated? Why did Shane Greenbank insist on having her submit to a mental evaluation – a demand that resulted in her being arrested for contempt on two occasions?

Shortly after Hutchens was seized in her home in a midnight police raid, Greenbank filed a motion demanding that she be forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because of what he described as “unusual behaviors and affects – both in court and in her filings.” He also made the remarkable claim – without providing a molecule of supporting evidence — that he had also been “battered” by Hutchens “outside of court when he served papers to her in the clerk’s office….”

The absence of any further description may lead the otherwise uninformed reader to assume that Rita Hutchens, who is 5’1” tall and weighs about 110 pounds, knocked Greenbank on his tax-fattened ass, which is something he richly deserves. What happened, in fact, is that Greenbank shoved a sheaf of legal documents into her face – and Hutchens shoved them right back. This, we are supposed to pretend, was an act of criminal “battery.”

It should be acknowledged, I suppose, that this act would be sufficient to hurt Mr. Greenbank’s feelings. He is an individual of remarkably delicate sensibilities: About five years ago, while defiling Kootenai County as an assistant prosecutor, Greenbank was slapped down by a judge who declared a mistrial in a domestic violence case because Greenbank, in an attempt to manipulate the jury, started crying during his opening statement.

After initially trying to deny what he had done, Greenbank was forced to admit: “I did have tears running down my face, I did have snot running down my face.” First District Judge Fred Gilber pointed out to the snot-faced prosecutor that this was not the first time the Kootenai County Prosecutor’s Office had been censured “for appealing to the passions or prejudice of the jury.”

Greenbank’s repeated demands that Hutchens undergo a psychiatric evaluation were similarly intended to prejudice the public against her. This is a violation of the ethical standards that govern prosecutors (yes, I was also surprised to learn that such guidelines exist, although they do nothing to inhibit the corrupt ambition of those who occupy the office).

Rule 3.8(f) of the ABA’s ethical standards specifies that prosecutors must refrain from making “comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused”; Rule 3.6(a) forbids prosecutors to make comments that they know or reasonably should know “will be disseminated by means of public communication and will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter.”

Greenbank’s untutored speculation about Hutchens’ mental health was widely reported, echoed by camp-followers of the ruling municipal clique, and had a hugely damaging impact on her public reputation.

“They set out to destroy my reputation – really, to destroy me,” Hutchens told Pro Libertate. “The claims they made about my mental health were in the paper all the time, and it’s absolutely destroyed my business. If this had actually gone to trial, there’s no way I could have been treated fairly by a jury after they had done so much to prejudice the community against me.”

After being incarcerated for contempt of court in mid-July, Hutchens finally underwent the psychological evaluation, which resulted in a terse and unembellished statement that she was entirely sound of mind. This didn’t deter the irrepressibly snotty Mr. Greenbank from using his motion to dismiss the charge to traduce his victim one last time.

“[W]hile it is unfortunate that the psychological evaluation did not result in some treatment recommendation that may benefit the defendant – and, by extension, the public – the State has done all it is able to do in order to minimize further risk to the public,” sneered Greenbank. He neither explained why his judgment of Hutchens’ psychological condition was superior to that of a credentialed mental health professor, nor did he provide any evidence that she ever posed a risk to the public.

The down-market Javert took some measure of comfort in the gratuitous suffering he had inflicted by incarcerating, impoverishing, and defaming an innocent and helpless woman whose “defiance” (his word) simply had to be punished.

Since Hutchens “has spent many more days in jail than she would have if she had actually been convicted of this offense,” Greenbank gloated, “punishment for this offense has been achieved.”

It is widely known, though rarely acknowledged, that prosecutors pursue punishment at the expense of both truth and justice. Bonner County is host to a specimen of that tribe in whom resides the distilled malice one so often finds in that occupation, untempered by the rudimentary intellectual discipline necessary to maintain the pretense of a commitment to principle. Greenbank’s persecution of Rita Hutchens was nothing less than criminal, and if so much as a particle of justice still exists he will face the consequences of his actions.

It is because they’re hypocrites. Pots calling the kettles black.

You cannot – to cite just one example of their intellectual-ethical disconnect – denounce welfare  . .  while defending Social Security. Because they’re both the same thing: The taking by force of one man’s property (his money – and if that’s not handed over, then his physical property will be taken and transmuted into money) in order to hand it over to some other person. That is the essence of the thing. It’s irrelevant whether the beneficiary of the largesse seems to you to be worthy – as “good Republicans” view the flag-waving oldsters on the dole who “paid in” to the system (but who were merely taxed in their turn and who now wish to prey on others to recoup their losses). What’s relevant – the only relevant thing – is, simply: Do you support use of government threats and violence to take other people’s property for your (or someone else’s) benefit for any reason? If you do, then you cannot object to other people’s advocacy of the same thing for their own reasons.

Not, at any rate, without being an obvious hypocrite. A Babbitt. A Grifter – who denies he is a grifter. Which is to say, the most odious sort of grifter. The one who brays about his morality – while denouncing others for being (as he styles it) immoral.

Which is exactly – and rightly – how Republicans (especially “conservative” ones) are viewed by liberal Democrats. To their credit, they – the Democrats – at least have a twisted type of honesty on their side.

They are openly for transfers-at-gunpoint.

Republicans are, too – of course. They merely regard those favored by Democrats as illegitimate. Republican support for the use of force to obtain the property of others is “different”  . . . somehow.

The how is hard to puzzle out.

Either it is – or isn’t – acceptable to take from Smith to give to Jones. To make an exception – any exception – is to surrender the field. No, worse. It is toembrace the enemy.

To be like him.

And that’s exactly what Republicans are – and why this country continues to descend ever deeper into the morass of redistributionist collectivism. Tweedle Dee – and Tweedledum. Is it not madness to expect a prison to cease the practice of executing prisoners by periodically giving the inmates the opportunity to vote for a warden who favors lethal injection as opposed to the gas chamber?

The only way to effectively challenge wealth transfer at gunpoint is to challenge theidea of it – as opposed to one or another particular transfer-at-gunpoint.

This, Republicans – and most notoriously, Republican “conservatives” – have manifestly failed to do. They defend the transfer-at-gunpoint programs they favor. Which they view as ethically acceptable.

Which is why Republican conservatism is a failed ideology. Because it is not an ideology at all. It is merely a watered-down (and hypocritical) version of the ideology espoused by its supposed opposite, the “liberal” Democrats.

They are birds of a feather. Opposing sides of the same Janus. They argue like hyenasover the spoils. Not about the idea of taking spoils at all.

This is why the Tea Party is a bad joke. Why there’s no debate about “the issues” – at the national level at least; and usually, at the local level, too. The basic premise – redistribution at gunpoint – is never challenged. Only the degree of the redistribution – or its object. Which is why this country – its people – will continue to practice a form of cannibalism that becomes more and more rapacious, since the “needs” upon which this cannibalism are based are limitless in principle – and increase exponentially with each election cycle – while the resources available to satisfy these needs are limited. And the incentive to produce the resources to be divvied up naturally declines with each passing year. It is inevitable that a critical mass of people will eventually shrug – or simply join the ranks of the looters. Which in fact is exactly what’s happening. Half the country is on the take , in one way or another.

Looting will eventually become a matter of literal survival. But only a temporary one. Because soon enough, there will be no one and nothing left to loot.

Read the rest of the article

As a result of this phenomenon, an overall optimism has pervaded the economic discussion that has consistently been unfulfilled by actual performance. The government is continuously over promising and under delivering. Unfortunately, no one seems to care.

Measuring the size of the economy accurately in anything close to real time is difficult, inexact, and messy. That is why the BEA has long pursued a policy of initial quarterly estimates (known as the “advanced estimate”), followed by two or three subsequent revisions as more thorough analysis comes to bear. The first estimates come out about a month after the conclusion of a particular quarter. The second and third revisions then come in monthly intervals thereafter. But in the minds of the media, the public and the politicians, the initial report carries much more weight than the revisions. It is the initial report that attracts the screaming headlines and sets the tone. The revisions are typically buried and ignored. This creates an unfortunate situation where the initial estimates are both the most important and the least reliable.

However, logic would dictate that revisions would fall equally in the up and down categories. After all, government bean counters are expected to report objectively, not to create a narrative or manage expectations. If anything, I believe that the public would be better served if they would adhere to the conservative playbook of under promising. That is exactly what they seemed to be doing before the economic crash of 2008. From 2002 to mid-summer 2008, the BEA revised initial GDP estimates a total of 25 times, 80% of which (20 revisions) were higher than their initial estimate. However, the average amplitude of the upward and downward revisions were equal at .5%. The difference may have been a function of the relatively strong economy that the nation saw over that time (which I believe was a result of the unsustainable and artificial housing boom). See the chart below.

But since mid-2008 we have seen a very different story. 67% of the revisions (12 of 18) have been downward, and those adjustments have been, on average, 50% larger than the upward revisions (.75% vs. .5%). Here’s another way of looking at it: Since mid-2008, revisions have shaved a total of 6 points of growth off the initial estimates. This works out to be an average of 1.3 points of growth per year that some may have expected but that never actually happened.

The pattern of early optimism may stem from the lack of understanding in Washington about how monetary stimulus actually retards economic growth. Many of the statisticians may be former academics who take it as gospel that government spending and money printing create growth. As a result, they expect the initial boost created by stimulus to be sustainable. The evidence suggests that it is not.

But there can be little doubt that these overly optimistic projections have worked wonders on the public relations front. The big Wall Street firms and the talking heads on financial TV set the tone by jumping on the new releases and ignoring the revisions to prior releases. That is precisely what happened last week when the better than expected 1.7% growth in 2nd quarter GDP overshadowed the .7% downward revision to 1st quarter GDP from 1.8% to 1.1%. The initial estimate for 1st quarter GDP, released back in April, was 2.5%. Since the consensus expectation for 2nd quarter GDP was just 1%, the media jumped all over the “good” news, while ignoring the revisions to the prior quarter, and discounting the strong likelihood that Q2 GDP will be revised downward. The nature of our short-term 24-hour news cycle is a big factor in this. Reporters are always looking for the big story of the day, not the minutia of last month. The lack of critical thinking and economic understanding also play a role.

Of course even if you have the discipline to focus on the final estimates, you still aren’t getting the real story. All GDP estimates are based on imperfect inflation measurement tools, which I believe are designed to under report inflation and over report growth. The most recent GDP projection used an annualized .71% inflation deflator to arrive at 1.7% growth. Anyone who believes that inflation is currently running below 1% has simply no grasp of our current economy. Look for more analysis of this topic in my upcoming columns. In the meantime, don’t get excited by initial reports of a healthy recovery. The reality is likely to be more sobering.

“While both of these have some specific features that not all Mossbergs or Remingtons have, Shakespeare’s famous lines still ring true today: ‘A Mossberg is a Mossberg and a Remington 870 is a Remington 870.’ Any Mossberg 500 or 590 or 590 A1 is basically the same fundamentally, as is the Remington 870 and all of it’s variations,” – hickok45.

Thoughts? Preferences? Saiga 12, anyone?

Reprinted from Guns.com

This probably isn’t an earth-shattering revelation to anyone, but if you feel like experimenting, try to buy a week’s worth of healthy food for a family on a budget of, say, $50-75.  Food manufacturers that target lower income shoppers with more affordable products tend to include more GMOs and toxic ingredients in their offerings.

It just isn’t possible to stick to  my usual food restrictions.  Generally speaking I avoid:

• Non-organic dairy because of the hormones and antibiotics as well as the GMO feed given to the animals
• Non-organic meat because of the hormones and antibiotics as well as the GMO feed given to the animals
• Anything containing corn, soy, or canola in any form because it is almost certain to be GMO
• Anything with chemical additives like artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives
• Anything that is likely to have been doused in pesticides
• Anything containing neurotoxins like MSG, fluoride, or aspartame (along with other artificial sweeteners)

It is a matter, then, of weighing the pros and cons, and figuring out what things, for you, are the most important, while also deciding which standards can be sacrificed.  These decisions will be different for everyone, based on their personal health concerns, their genetic propensity for certain diseases, and the members of the family for whom they are buying the food.

Sometimes, when you’re looking at someone else’s situation while you are comfortably backed by a loaded pantry, it’s easy to be judgemental and tell them what they “should” do. The thing that we  must all remember is that when times are tough, a person may be down to these two options with a two week grocery budget:

1.) Buy strictly healthy organic foods and feed your family for perhaps 8 out of the 14 days.

2.) Carefully select which standards you will relax to keep the tummies of your family full throughout the wait for the next paycheck.

Very few people are going to choose option one.

Usually, I have an enormous stockpile of non-GMO dried foods and a flourishing garden to serve as a back-up for whatever non-toxic items are being offered at a reasonable price that week.  Because I’ve recently moved and am rebuilding my pantry from the ground up, I have no such stockpile right now. I am at the mercy of the food manufacturers.

When your budget is extremely limited, the normal healthy eating suggestions of shopping only the perimeter of the store or visiting the farmer’s market will not suffice to feed a family.  As much as you may want to dine only on locally grown, fresh organic produce, a $50 farmer’s market spree will only get you through a few days if you are totally reliant on only this food.

The Lesser of the Nutritional Evils

So what is a broke, but health-conscious, shopper to eat?

After strongly considering the list above, I decided not to cut corners on the organic dairy, neurotoxins, or the GMOs.  I have a growing child and these things are at the top of the toxic pyramid for her development.  This isn’t to say that the pesticides aren’t harmful, or the preservatives are not a  chemical minefield.  In a perfect world, I’d avoid all of it, and you should too.

If you are in a situation where you have to feed your family and don’t have a lot of money to do it, you need to do your research well before looking at those brightly colored packages with the false promises of nutrition within.  While this list isn’t comprehensive, here are some things to consider about conventional grocery store offerings.

GMOs: Genetically modified foods have not been tested for long-term effects on humans.  There is a great deal of evidence to indicate the GMOs can cause a host of illness.  Peer reviewed studies implicate GMOs in the development of grotesque tumors, premature death, organ failure, gastric lesions, liver damage, kidney damage, severe allergic reactions, a viral gene that disrupts human functions…you can read more HERE.

Hormones and antibiotics: Livestock animals that provide meat or dairy products are tainted with growth hormones, antibiotics, and GMO feed.  These items pass through the food chain to the consumer. Growth hormones can cause opposite sex characteristics in developing children, early puberty, the development of cancer, and infertility. Furthermore, the world is quickly becoming immune to the effects of antibiotics because of constant exposure through the food supply, which means that there is the potential for things that should be easily treated to become deadly due to antibiotic resistance.

Pesticides: The use of pesticides in conventional farming is rampant.  Even the hijacked the Environmental Protection Agency has to admit that the ingestion of pesticides can cause health problems.  They warn of the risk of “birth defects, nerve damage, cancer, and other effects that might occur over a long period of time.”  (Keep in mind, however, that despite this warning, the EPA just RAISED the acceptable limit of glyphosate at the behest of Monsanto.) Especially at risk of harm from pesticides are prepubescent children and fetuses.

Neurotoxins: Our water supply is spiked with fluoride, a neurotoxin that  lowers IQs, causes infertility, has been linked to cancer and causes hardening of the arteries. Nearly every packaged food on the shelf is seasoned with MSG in one of its many names, and many lower calorie foods and diet drinks are sweetened with aspartame.  Both of these are excitotoxins that cause brain cell death instantly, causing decreased IQs, headaches, depression, and seizures.

Assorted chemical cocktails:  The length of the ingredients list in your food is often a direct indicator of the unhealthiness of the item. When an item contains a host of additives, colors, flavors, and preservatives, you can safely bet that most of the nutrients are gone.  These highly processed foodlike substances are very difficult for the body to break down so that the few remaining nutrients can be used. If you can’t picture what an ingredient looked like in it’s natural state, it probably isn’t something you really want to eat.  When is the last time you saw a tertiary butyl hydroquinone grazing in a field, or a calcium propionate growing in the garden?

What should you eat when you’re broke?

Grains: If you can’t swing organic grains, look for whole grains with few or no additives.

• Wheat flour
• Brown rice
• Pasta (with recognizable ingredients)
• Couscous
• Quinoa
• Barley

Meats:  If you can’t afford grass-fed organic meat, at the very least look for options that are guaranteed to be hormone and antibiotic free.  The USDA does not allow the use of growth hormones in pork, which makes it a slightly better option.

Here’s a little primer on those confusing meat labels:

• Hormone-free: This means something with beef, but is nothing but a marketing ploy when you see it on poultry or pork, as the USDA does not allow the use of hormones with those animals.  Hormone-free does not mean antibiotic-free
• Antibiotic-free: Because of poor and stressful living conditions, factory-farmed animals are very susceptible to illness.  Antibiotic-free means they were not prophylactically treated with antibiotics. This does not, however, mean that the animal is hormone-free.
• Grass-fed: Grass-fed cows are allowed some access to the outdoors and are not fed grains or corn.  This does NOT mean they are organic, because the grass they are grazing on may have been chemically fertilized and sprayed.  Unless you have actually seen them roaming around the farm, keep in mind their access to the outdoors may not be the lovely rolling pastures that you have in your mind, but a crowded corral with hundreds of other cows.
• Free-range: This label doesn’t mean diddly squat.  It means that the animal is allowed a minimum of an hour a day outside.  This could mean that they are crammed into an open area with a billion other chickens, still, without room to move, or that their cage is put outside, leaving them still tightly confined. Like the grass-fed cows above, unless you actually see the farm with the gallivanting chickens or pigs, take the label “free-range” with a grain of salt.

Your best options, if you can’t afford organic meats, are to go for the hormone and antibiotic free options as a supplement to vegetarian protein sources like local eggs, beans, and organic dairy products.

Fruits and vegetables: If organic produce is not an option, look for the items with the lowest pesticide loads.  (This list by the Environmental Working Group is based ONLY on pesticide loads – some of the items they recommend could be GMOs).  Fruits and vegetables that can be peeled often subject you to less pesticides than thin-skinned items. If you must buy conventional, wash the produce carefully and peel it if possible.  Look to these stand-bys:

• Apples (peeled)
• Asparagus
• Avocados
• Cabbage
• Cantaloupe
• Eggplant
• Grapefruit
• Kiwi
• Mangoes
• Mushrooms
• Onions
• Oranges
• Pineapples
• Rutabagas
• Sweet Peas
• Sweet Potatoes
• Turnips

 Dairy products: Conventional dairy products are absolutely loaded with hormones.  Dairy cattle are given high levels of female hormones to make them produce a greater quantity of milk. This makes little boys develop female characteristics and makes little girls hit puberty at a far younger age than normal, which is the reason you see 4th graders with large breasts and hips.  These hormones can also trigger obesity in both genders.  Because of the public outcry, some dairies have pledged not to use rBST, the most commonly used of the growth hormones.  Do your research to discover if there are any such brands available to you.  The Lucerne brand from Safeway is guaranteed to be hormone free. (It’s interesting to note that Monsanto, the company that pushes rBST, wants the FDA to disallow dairies to put this on their labels, and that the FDA forces those who label their products rBST-free to also put the following disclaimer on the containers: “No significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBST-treated and non-rBST treated cows.” (source) )

Organic dairy is still better, because the cattle are fed a healthier diet and are free from antibiotics.  If you can’t swing it, at the very least, search for rBST-free dairy products. For products, you can save loads of money by making your own from untainted milk.  Learn how to make yogurt, how to make yogurt cheese, and how to make cottage cheese.  Plain yogurt can also be used as a healthy substitute for sour cream.

Water:  If you are on city water, chances are, your water is loaded with chemicals, from fluoride to ammonia to chlorine.  I won’t drink this water, and I won’t let my children drink it either.  The large 5 gallon jugs provide the least expensive way to buy water.  Also look for sources of spring water to fill your own containers. (This interactive map can help.)

Other Tight Budget Tips

Build your pantry. It’s hard to think about building a pantry when you have barely enough food in the cupboard to make it between paychecks.  But if you can purchase one bulk item per shopping trip, in a few months you will have a pantry that will allow you to make higher quality grocery purchases on your weekly trips. At that point, you can start going to the farmer’s market, which in many locations is very reasonably priced, buying in enough bulk to preserve your foods, and have the occasional splurge.  Go HERE to learn more about building a whole foods kitchen on a half price budget.

Be scrupulous about food hygiene.  Wash your produce very thoroughly and soak it in a baking soda bath.  Also remember to careful wash your beans and rice. (Click HERE to see some photos of the dirt that comes off of a cup of rice!)

Get growing.  Even if it is the off season, you can sprout some seeds on your counter to add fresh nutrients. You can grow some salad greens and herbs in a sunny windowsill.  Invest a few dollars each week in some seeds and you will soon be able to supplement your diet with nutritious, organic, home-grown veggies.  Go HERE to get more ideas for growing your own food on any budget, in any location.

Visit outlet stores.  Sometimes places like Big Lots or grocery clearance centers have organic options at good prices. You might be able to pick up canned goods, cereals, and crackers at a fraction of the normal grocery store price.

Forage for freebies.  In many locations, even the city,  there are free delicious foods just waiting for you to pick them.  Dandelions, wild berries, nuts, and nutritious leaves abound. Just be very sure you know what you’re picking and then enjoy your wild foods.  Check out this excellent guide to the nutritious goodies that may be in your backyard masquerading as lowly weeds.

Plan on at least one extra frugal meal per day.  Have peanut butter and crackers, a bowl of oatmeal, or soup for one meal per day – not every meal has to be made up of protein, veggies, and grains.

 Don’t give up.  If you are feeling financially defeated, it is sometimes easy to say, “*bleep* it!!!” and just get some Ramen noodles or macaroni and cheese and call it a meal.  Don’t do it!  Do the very best you can with the resources you have available. Remember, if you can’t afford good food, you definitely can’t afford bad health – it’s even more expensive.

The Simple Truth

There are a lot of things that readers may find to pick apart in this article – and that’s good!  By thinking critically and discussing these things, sometimes we can come up with solutions that may not have occurred to us previous to the conversation. I’m not some expert that shouldn’t be questioned – I am just a mom on a budget.  Some of the suggestions here were gleaned from the comments sections of previous articles.

Do your research and do the best that you can with what’s available given your resources.  Create a plan to provide better options in the future. Don’t go down that toxic trail laid out by Big Food without fighting, kicking, and screaming.

Reprinted with permission from The Organic Prepper.

The “cross between Concorde, a rail gun and an air hockey table” will deliver passengers between US cities faster than the speed of sound.

The history of transport is replete with dreamers who have concocted such schemes for getting people from A to B in previously unimagined haste. And many of them have remained just that, impractical ideas on a drawing board that will never see the light of day.

But the latest mysterious project, which has had the technology world buzzing for months, has one crucial difference. Its backer is a Silicon Valley wunderkind with a proven track record of turning science fiction into reality.

Billionaire Elon Musk’s CV is impressive, to say the least. He made his initial fortune from PayPal, the online secure payment system, before going on to launch spaceships. Last year his SpaceX venture became the first private operation to dock a cargo capsule with the International Space Station.

Back on Earth, Mr Musk also founded Tesla, which has made electric sports cars viable and profitable.

The mercurial, fictional character of Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr in the Iron Man films, is reputedly based on him.

So when Mr Musk, 42, announced that he would be publishing plans for the Hyperloop on Monday, August 12 – tomorrow – scientists were sent into a tailspin.

They will have to wait for Mr Musk to post his “alpha design” on the internet then but he has dropped several hints about its features, including that the system will be powered by solar panels.

Mr Musk will not be patenting the design and it will be “open source”, meaning anyone can modify it, or try to build it.

The fevered speculation about what it would actually look like has ranged from wild theories on Star Trek-style teleportation to more achievable ones involving cars being pushed through vacuum sealed tunnels using magnets.

Mr Musk has denied it will be a so-called “vactrain”, a concept that is already being pursued by a company in Colorado. His idea “does involve a tube, but not a vacuum tube”, he said, adding: “Not frictionless, but very low friction.”

In recent weeks a large part of the mystery appeared to have been solved. A technology enthusiast in Canada called John Gardi published a diagram of how the Hyperloop might work. He went on to ask Mr Musk on Twitter: “Can you give me some basic clues? What diameter of tube so I can start designing stations and throughways?”

To his extreme surprise Mr Musk replied: “Your guess is the closest I’ve seen anyone guess so far. Pod diameter probably around 2m.”

Mr Gardi, who describes himself modestly as a “tinkerer”, came up with a tunnel 9ft in diameter, raised above the ground on pylons. His tube could be made from materials already used for sewer pipes. It would form a continuous loop between two destination points. Giant turbines would blast a stream of air into the tube. The two-metre wide pods, carrying people, would be moved by a rail gun – a tube that uses magnets to accelerate material passing along it.

As they approach their journey’s end they would be routed out of the air stream and slowed down using a magnetic braking system.

Read the rest of the article

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By Dr. Mercola

This is my second interview with Dr. Daniel Kalish, who is an expert on hormone balance as a foundation for optimal health. In this interview, he shares some fascinating information about how you can balance the chemicals in your brain using functional medicine laboratory testing.

Dr. Kalish is successfully using this method, which he calls the “Kalish Method,” to treat five common health problems:

1. Overweight
2. Fatigue
3. Depression
4. Female hormone imbalance
5. Gastrointestinal problems

I first met Dr. Kalish in California in the mid-1990s while attending a Functional Medicine seminar. It was immediately clear to me that he was one of the brightest individuals at the meeting.

The area of hormone testing can be a bit confusing. The information presented here helps to clarify how hormone testing can be used to detect and correct imbalances in your brain’s chemistry that underlie many of the symptoms commonly experienced today. For a more comprehensive review of his work, you may want to check out his new book, entitled The Kalish Method: Healing the Body, Mapping the Mind.

Functional Medicine: The Kalish Method

Functional medicine is a relatively new approach to health that looks at the underlying causes of disease and attempts to correct them before disease sets in. It focuses on determining the root causes by looking at your entire body and environment. Dr. Kalish’s particular approach zeroes in on three systems of your body:

1. Brain/endocrine system, which govern your body’s processes through hormones, neurotransmitters, and other biochemical messengers (control center)
2. Digestive system and nutrition (intake)
3. Detoxification system (elimination)

He addresses each of these systems with specific laboratory tests, including saliva and urine. It’s a kind of “mind mapping” — essentially, taking a snapshot of the mind by measuring things such as the quantity of serotonin and dopamine going in and out of your neurons. This is just one of the many the tests that can be performed, and this particular urine test is cutting edge technology offered by only one lab in the United States.

The Kalish approach to health offers enormous advantages, one of which is a very rapid cessation of symptoms. Patients report improvement in how they feel usually within the first month — like a “switch has been flipped.” Even for those who have struggled with lifelong depression, dramatic results are usually seen within the first couple of months. This is largely because the precise cause of the problem has been nailed down through laboratory testing.

Another major advantage is that children can be helped very easily and quickly with functional medicine, which eliminates the need for medications about 95 percent of the time.

Picking Up Ball That Conventional Medicine Has Dropped

There are profound differences between functional medicine and conventional medicine. Conventional medicine aims at identifying life-threatening diseases, but ignores the realm of more subtle issues. For example, endocrinologists look for rare and unusual disorders like Addison’s disease — things that could kill you in a week or two if left untreated. If you don’t have one of the major diseases, their interest and expertise generally wanes.

By contrast, functional medicine looks at identifying and correcting imbalances and lifestyle issues that are eroding your health over time, reducing your quality of life, and predisposing you to the development of serious health problems down the road. In other words, functional medicine aims at preventing you from ever developing those major diseases in the first place.

According to Dr. Kalish:

“There is a predictable way that the body breaks down. It doesn’t happen in different ways in different people. We have hormone and brain problems, digestive problems, and toxicity problems. There’s a methodical way you can test and correct all these issues, if you get hooked up with the right group of doctors that know how to do all this. This technology is available. It’s not a question of whether it works or not. It’s just a matter of accessing it.”

Through various carefully selected laboratory tests, your body’s chemical and hormonal imbalances are identified. Problems with your gastrointestinal function may be detected, or with how your body cleanses and rids itself of toxins. With this information, then, specific strategies can be prescribed, such as diet and lifestyle modifications, supplements, or perhaps a different approach to managing your stress. Supplements are designed to be used short-term, therapeutically, in order to accomplish a specific goal.

Interventions Used in the Kalish Method

Based on what imbalances are identified by the laboratory analyses, Dr. Kalish may prescribe a variety of natural supplements, short-term. For example, low doses of the hormones cortisol, DHEA, and pregnenolone may be prescribed to replace what’s missing in your body — just enough to balance out your system. Sometimes, amino acids, vitamins and minerals, and herbs may be used — everything from B vitamins to magnesium, to tryptophan or 5-HTP.

These agents are used to temporarily assist your body’s natural hormone producing capacity and can be discontinued when your normal endocrine function has returned. It’s typical for adrenal function to be restored within six months to a year — and sometimes in just a few months. Dr. Kalish cautions against self-prescribing these supplement because you can easily make imbalances worse, if you don’t have all of the necessary information.

A key part of Dr. Kalish’s approach is helping his patients return to a more biologically appropriate diet rich in organic, biodynamically grown foods, similar to how your ancestors ate. He also recommends occasionally exposing yourself to cold, because it produces an environmental “shock” to stress the body (in a good way), similar to exercise, which stresses your body to make it stronger.

Poor Adrenal Function May Be the Cause of Chronic Fatigue

Your adrenal glands are each no bigger than a walnut and weigh less than a grape, yet are responsible for one of the most important functions in your body: managing your stress. When your adrenal glands are overtaxed, a condition known as adrenal fatigue or adrenal exhaustion sets in, which in turn can set a cascade of disease processes into motion. One tell-tale sign of adrenal burnout is feeling chronically fatigued.

Conventionally, you’d see an endocrinologist who would evaluate your adrenal glands, or perhaps a doctor of internal medicine. Unfortunately, they tend to primarily test for specific diseases like Addison’s disease or Cushing’s disease, both of which are relatively rare.

The Kalish Method calls for testing your adrenal function by taking four saliva (or urine) samples over the course of a day. This maps out your circadian rhythm, showing how your cortisol levels rise and fall throughout your day. Saliva is collected at approximately four-hour intervals: first thing in the morning upon waking, then at noon, late afternoon, and again at night before going to bed. The Kalish Method is aimed at normalizing dysfunctional adrenals and restoring normal adrenal function. It’s a clinically validated method that’s been used for a long time, yet most physicians are still not aware of it.

“What we find is that if we just restore what’s missing in the person for a period of six months or maybe at the most 12 months, the adrenal glands and the internal production of these hormones comes back,” Dr. Kalish explains. “So, we’re actually restoring the normal production of these hormones in the body. The treatments, therefore, are relatively short-term; six months to a year. The only way we’ve found to do this real repair process is to use these really low dosages of DHEA and pregnenolone over a period of time.”

Another common hormonal cause of adrenal fatigue is hypothyroidism or underactive thyroid. Thyroid function is diagnosed by a blood test, but there’s some controversy over what is normal and what’s not. Many alternative doctors feel the conventional reference ranges are far too broad, and opt to treat people exhibiting sub-clinical thyroid symptoms.

“What’s interesting about the thyroid and the adrenals is that as the cortisol levels go up, one of the normal body mechanisms is to downregulate thyroid,” Dr. Kalish says. “So, most everybody with high cortisol is going to have lower than ideal thyroid hormone levels. At that point, it becomes a decision as to if you want to work on the adrenals, work on thyroid, or work on both together…

More than 90 percent of the time, the adrenal program is enough to restore thyroid function. The biggest reason [for doing] the adrenals first is that when you start taking thyroid hormones your internal production of thyroid hormones drop. With the adrenal glands, it’s the opposite. When you start to take these adrenal-support products, your internal production of adrenal hormones comes back. If you can restore adrenal function, you can save the person from having to be on thyroid medications potentially for the rest of their life.”

For more specifics on Dr. Kalish’s treatment protocol for adrenal fatigue, please see my previous interview with Dr. Kalish on this topic.

How Functional Medicine Can Help You Lose Weight

Besides fatigue, weight gain  and depression are the most common issues Dr. Kalish sees, and all three respond very well to his approach. For example, one of the interesting things in terms of diet and weight loss is that, as soon as he gets people’s adrenal hormones and brain chemicals back in check, he notices them gravitating toward more healthful diets.

Why is this?

Many food cravings stem from inappropriate blood sugar responses and imbalanced serotonin and dopamine levels — which control how your neurons fire. Once these are corrected, cravings go away — usually within the first month or two. Your cravings come from brain chemicals. When those chemicals are shifted, the cravings just disappear — like hitting the Reset button. Then people begin making better food choices, start to lose weight, and have more energy because insulin sensitivity and normalleptin signaling are being restored.

The key lies in reversing the distortion in your appetite center and reestablishing your normal fat burning metabolism. Of course, the mechanism for reestablishing normal fat burning is diet and exercise, but if your brain chemistry perpetually prompts you toward making bad decisions, it will be a frustrating uphill battle. Functional medicine doesn’t take the place of diet and exercise — it augments it, making it easier for you to implement the changes needed without as much emotional stress.

Are Toxins Making You Depressed?

There is very little scientific evidence for the widespread notion that depression is caused by an imbalance of your neurotransmitters. In fact, there is no correlation between serotonin level and depression. Many people with low serotonin are not depressed, and many depressed people have normal levels of serotonin. The same is true of dopamine.

However, there is good scientific evidence for a relationship between depression and environmental toxins. Toxins make their way to your brain, where they damage cells and change how your neurons fire. Being that toxins are commonplace in today’s world, part of functional medicine involves identifying environmental toxins that could be damaging your brain and contributing to mood problems, Parkinson’s, dementia, and a multitude of other diseases. We’re all exposed to these chemicals to some degree because they’re pervasive in our environment — in your air, food and water.

According to Dr. Kalish, some of the most significant environmental toxins are heavy metals, such as mercury, arsenic andaluminum. Also problematic are chemicals like benzene and toluene.

It is estimated that the average American now has between 300 and 400 different neurotoxins circulating in his or her body at any one time. Even newborn babies are now born with some level of neurotoxic chemicals on board. Your body isn’t equipped to break these down, so they tend to accumulate over time and dysregulate your biochemistry. Making matters worse, many if not most people have dysbiosis, or imbalanced gut flora, and some of these microorganisms are responsible for breaking down the toxins in your GI tract, so you can eliminate them. All of these problems contribute to today’s toxic overload.

Functional Medicine — A Valuable Tool to Help Restore Your Health

The Kalish Method is a proven method of treating problems such as overweight, fatigue, depression, hormonal imbalance and gastrointestinal dysfunction using the principles of functional medicine. A treatment is most effective when the root cause of your problem is directly addressed.

Dr. Kalish starts with specific laboratory tests that pin down the underlying cause. These tests help to determine whether your problem stems from your brain, adrenal glands or your gut, or if it’s a malfunction in your body’s detoxification process. Whatever the cause, the problem can be effectively addressed using targeted dietary changes, supplements, sleep hygiene, stress management tools and other natural interventions.

Functional medicine can be a valuable tool to help you restore your natural physiological balance. Dr. Kalish has worked with more than 8,000 patients, and every day, he sees “magical” health improvements by applying the same fundamental principles. For more information, you can visit his website, KalishInstitute.com, which details his innovative approach to functional medicine.