Every Backyard a Garden

Tonight I was working on the book I am writing and simultaneously listening to music on the Internet when I came across a song I hadn't listened to in years: Somos Hijos Del Maiz (We Are Children of Corn) by Carlos Mejia Godoy, one of the most popular singer/songwriters in Nicaragua around the time of the Sandinista revolution.  I got to feeling nostalgic about the months I spent in Nicaragua in the 1980s.  It was during the war when the U.S.-backed contras were attacking and terrorizing the population in the north and the country was struggling valiantly under the weight of the U.S.-imposed trade embargo.  The supermarket shelves were empty; there were no commercials on T.V. because there was nothing to buy; the water and electricity supplies were precarious; the few vehicles there were, were carrying so many people they spilled out the windows and clung to the roofs and tailgates; there were long lines for basics like milk or cooking oil, not because of government inefficiency but because there was neither enough of these things nor enough transportation to make them available; newspaper took the place of toilet paper; there was no toothpaste because they could make the paste in the country but not the tube; if you went to a doctor they would prescribe three or four medicines in the hopes you would be able to get your hands on one of them (people went back to using herbal remedies).  People bore all this and more cheerfully, asking only that the war be over so they could get on with rebuilding their country.

This song was inspired by that trade embargo.  One of the things Nicaragua used to get from the United States was wheat, which doesn't grow in Nicaragua's tropical climate.  When the supply was cut off, there was no bread.  No matter, these resilient people would find another way, and that is what this song is about.  I remember listening to it on a scratchy radio in a friend's dirt-floored kitchen in Esteli, northern Nicaragua, one night with several neighbourhood children, one of whom commented, "This song is from a few years ago when the Americans cut off our wheat," to which her young friend replied, "No, it's hundreds of years old."  I think they are both right.  It is as old as human resilience and refusal to be subservient to slave masters.  I mentally translate the references to blood of heroes in the song into the spirit of determination and defiance.

We could learn from Nicaragua's lesson today.  I keep reading about how later this year we are going to have manufactured food shortages and food riots, how the cost of wheat, corn, soybeans and so on is going to soar.  The other day I was listening to Stewart Swerdlow talk about this and his comment was that those things aren't good for you anyway (the Monsanto versions anyway!) and we should be growing our own.  I couldn't agree more.  Prices are going up?  Okay, what can we do for ourselves?  The control system is depending on us to depend on it.  We don't need to.  Everyone who has even a little land can grow a garden, or if you don't want to, let your neighbours put it to good use.  Attract bees and hummingbirds.  Get out in the dirt and the sun and work up a sweat.  The food tastes better afterwards, too; I always think growing your own feeds your soul as much as your body.  Then learn to preserve it; canning and drying are better than freezing (what if there is no electricity?) Of course the controllers are passing all sorts of laws trying to keep us from growing our own food, so we'd darn well better get started now and show them we won't be stopped!  Above is a basket of kidney beans I grew in 2009, just to show they really will grow in a cold climate.  They were sweet and delicious, too.  Yes, I realize it's January, but my garden genes get active around this time of year.

Okay, here is the song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slWvmx1B-S4

  It's a great song.  What grows where you live?  Can you learn to grow it, prepare it, develop a relationship with it?  Now, before you are desperate?  My encouragement goes out to anyone doing this, it's the spirit we need to thrive in the time ahead.

Up To Our Necks in Snow

I don't know how the world can cope with all this global warming

The Advancing Tyranny

The strangle-hold of the state on our children is advancing.  I read today that State Rep. Kelli Stargel, from Florida, has introduced a bill that would force school teachers to evaluate parents on their participation with their children's schools.  I found Ms. Stargel easily on the Internet and wrote her the following letter:


This is to let you know that people around the world (I am in Canada) are aware of your recent bill requiring school teachers to evaluate parent involvement with the schools.

I don't know whether this was your own idea or whether you were pressured into this by another group.  Whichever way, I wish to express my opinion of this measure and request that you do some more thinking about what you are doing.  As you may be aware, there are other such bills coming into effect in some other parts of the world.  In Great Britain, there is a bill that would allow unprecedented levels of interference by schools in family life.  Your proposal is a sign of the times.

Please think about this.  What such legislation expresses is the assumption that children are the property of the state and the parents only serve to help the state in achieving its objectives.  That is a very big assumption and an incredibly arrogant one.  Schools have no business interfering with family life, nor with implying they know what children need better than their parents do.  There are plenty of excellent parents who for whatever reason choose not to be involved with the schools.  I know this very well, having chosen to homeschool my own child, who is now light years ahead of her peers academically - a near-universal occurrence among homeschooled children, which does not say much for the superiority the schools are claiming.  What if it is the schools who are wrong and not the parents?  How about letting parents evaluate the teachers and not the other way around?

The assumption that children belong to the state is not new, nor was president Obama's proposal to extend the school day by three hours unpredictable.  As far back as 400 B.C. Plato proposed a society where children would be removed from their parents at birth and raised by the state, and we have been moving in that direction since the beginning of public schooling.  Arne Duncan's "vision of schools as the heart of the community" echoes Dr. Richard Day's statement back in 1969 that he had a "vision of schools as the hub of the community".  Hub or heart, what this is talking about is taking away privacy and making parents accountable to the state, not the state accountable to parents.  There is another name for that: tyranny.  Just be aware that your action is part of this larger plan and consider whether this is really what you want to support.

Desperate, Oh Yeah

http://www.davidicke.com/headlines/43292-oh-they-are-getting-so-desperate

This is right along the same lines as what I was thinking.  Do look at the above and watch the clip it refers to, where a spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center demonizes some of the people who are getting too close to the truth for comfort and ludicrously blames them for the shooting of the congresswoman and other people in the supermarket in Arizona.
Just look at it, they can kill THREE birds with one stone.  One: they get rid of someone who knew too much about the drug cartel.  Except they bungled that one.  Two: they push for censorship of the Internet by blaming the shooting on freedom of speech gone wrong. They're obviously working on this, considering the above video clip.  Three:  The shootings happened so conveniently in a supermarket weeks after Big Sister Janet Napolitano announced the eventual plan to introduce body scanners into all public places including shopping centres.  I'm waiting for the shoe to drop on that one.

Stop Acquiescing With Your Own Enslavement - David Icke

http://www.davidicke.com/headlines/42780-david-icke-a-message-for-2011-stop-acquiescing-with-your-own-enslavement

What is this year going to bring?  Well, it depends on us, there is no one out there waiting in the wings to save us.  How long are we going to sit around and allow the chains to tighten?  Until we lose our homes?  Until we lose the ability to decide what goes into our bodies?  Until we can no longer grow our own food?  Until our children are taken away from us to be abused by Satanists?  Hang on... these things are ALREADY happening.  How much more are we going to allow?  We need to stop sitting around talking about it, get up and get moving.  Come on everybody, let's get going.  It is what we make of it.