Re: [Biofuel] man pays $520 electric bill in pennies
I suspect Ameren CIPS will be instituting a policy, where they will not accept cash payments in cash, below a certain denomination. I recall a case where it was revealed while US coins are legal tender, for amounts less than a dollar, but I can't find a reference to it. In regards to nationalization. I suspect that those who now are reaping the profits, will be the ones reaping the profit, after any nationalization. Doug, N0LKK Kansas USA inc. Kirk McLoren wrote: necessities of life shouldnt be available to exploitation by piggish folks- like the electricity corporations and natural gas. Nationalize oil! Kirk ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] New political metaphors
I think most of us will agree that the terms 'left' and 'right' are fast losing their relevence in the political sense. Many of us will optimistically try to deny that there is any new dichotomy in its place. I have been aware of such a dichotomy for over a decade, and I submit that it is real, that it is definite, and that it has a rock-face that, when reached, will not be susceptible to any post-modern 'both-and' notion. Soon, people will have to choose, and their choices will have implications, possibly tragic ones, possibly heroic ones. Might I suggest two new political terms: 'permacultural' and 'hydroponic'? The world is increasingly moving to the latter approach: systems are simplified so that they may be tightly monitored by government agencies and strictly controlled by legislation. To this end oligopolies are nurtured and renegade human creativity stifled, co-opted, or restricted to superficial irrelevancies. People are reduced to passive 'pure consumers'. The attitude seems to be that the environment is too important to allow people near it. Thus we find the world becoming in a sense 'indoor', a controlled environment. One gets the impression that all of Europe is turning into a single big Victorian drawing-room. Many would disagree with this approach, and there is an old tradition that answers well to the term 'permacultural'. It runs through a number of writers: Fritz Schumacher springs immediately to mind, but there are others. The aim is rather to build systems that have an intrinsic propensity to produce what is desirable, and then to leave them to get on with it. It is an approach that can accommodate a lot of exceptional behaviours, and it thrives on renegade creativity. It is however much more likely to run up against vested interests, be they political or economic, and therefore cannot really thrive inside a 'hydroponic' system. Many of the differences of opinion that have arisen from time to time in this group can be understood in the above terms. Try it. What say you? -Dawie ___ What kind of emailer are you? Find out today - get a free analysis of your email personality. Take the quiz at the Yahoo! Mail Championship. http://uk.rd.yahoo.com/evt=44106/*http://mail.yahoo.net/uk ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] Fwd: Re: [LittleHouses] Bioconversion of Putrescent Wastes
crosspost http://www.esrla.com/brazil/frame.htm interesting Kirk To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Cynthia Womack [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 18:26:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: [LittleHouses] Bioconversion of Putrescent Wastes Thank you for an excellent article! I'd like to know what Dr. Olivier et al might have done with large commercial and industrial use of these units. How do they work with medical wastes such as hospitals and nursing homes? How have they worked at malls,theme parks,concert or sports arenas,livestock areas and the like? My hometown hosts horse shows year round. We get quite a few biting flies and mosquitoes,tons of food waste and a large amount of used stable dressing. It sounds as if these units could be incorporated into the general design for a nominal cost and decrease waste disposal,pests,disease,odor,etc. a great deal. Other measures of reducing waste and recycling could be implemented much more easily to manage the rest of the impact of having so many people and animals in attendance for such extensive periods. This wouldn't even count the synergy of incorporating traditional composting and using the flies and the food residue to grow plants and feed fish and poultry. This would be an 'invisible',toxin-free way of making our most inefficient and unpleasant areas a boon rather than a bane to our environment. --- David Neeley wrote: Please pardon the cross-posting, but I think this would interest both of these lists. For those who live in a rural location who want to get away from waste disposal problems, there is a fascinating presentation with the name I put in the subject line at the ESRLA site. This is by Dr. Paul Olivier, the same gentleman who published about using bagasse (sugar cane waste) and rice hulls in construction. His development uses black soldier fly larvae (benign to humans) to consume putrescent wastes--food residue and both human and animal waste. In the process, the volume is reduced by 95%. In short, a two-foot unit resembling a plastic trash can would consume the wastes of a typical family of four for two to three years before having to be emptied--without problems of disease or foul smell, as it happens. One of the pages of the presentation also shows how a urine-diverting toilet could be incorporated into the top of one of these units. I corresponded with Dr. Olivier several years ago, and he was going into production with the small plastic version at a plant in Asia. He also designed very low-cost concrete versions of the device and makes molds that he sells in Latin America and elsewhere. I find the concept fascinating--and once I settle down again somewhere I plan to look into trying one out. Tony Adrian says he has an early prototype of this unit, which is too large for his family. Anyway, enjoy! http://www.esrla.com/brazil/frame.htm David Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LittleHouses/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LittleHouses/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ - Don't get soaked. Take a quick peek at the forecast with theYahoo! Search weather shortcut.___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] Fowl play: The poultry industry's central role in the bird flu crisis
http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=194 GRAIN | Briefings | 2006 | Fowl play: The poultry industry's central role in the bird flu crisis GRAIN | February 2006 Read the press release (Feb 2006) Read GRAINs letter about bird flu to the FAO (Feb 2006) Backyard or free-range poultry are not fuelling the current wave of bird flu outbreaks stalking large parts of the world. The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu is essentially a problem of industrial poultry practices. Its epicentre is the factory farms of China and Southeast Asia and -- while wild birds can carry the disease, at least for short distances -- its main vector is the highly self-regulated transnational poultry industry, which sends the products and waste of its farms around the world through a multitude of channels. Yet small poultry farmers and the poultry biodiversity and local food security that they sustain are suffering badly from the fall-out. To make matters worse, governments and international agencies, following mistaken assumptions about how the disease spreads and amplifies, are pursuing measures to force poultry indoors and further industrialise the poultry sector. In practice, this means the end of the small-scale poultry farming that provides food and livelihoods to hundreds of millions of families across the world. This paper presents a fresh perspective on the bird flu story that challenges current assumptions and puts the focus back where it should be: on the transnational poultry industry. Men in white rubber suits and gas masks chasing down chickens in rural villages... Chickens sold and slaughtered in live markets... Wild birds flying across the sky... These are the typical images broadcast by the media in its coverage of the bird flu epidemic. Rare are photos of the booming transnational poultry industry. There are no shots of its factory farms hit by the virus, and no images of its overcrowded trucks transporting live chickens or its feed mills converting poultry byproducts into chicken feed. The selection of images sends a clear message: bird flu is a problem of wild birds and backwards poultry practices, not modern industry. In this way, the most fundamental piece of information needed to understand the recent avian influenza outbreaks gets left out of the picture. Bird flu is really nothing new. It has co-existed rather peacefully with wild birds, small-scale poultry farming and live markets for centuries. But the wave of highly-pathogenic strains of bird flu that have decimated poultry and killed people across the planet over the past ten years is unprecedented -- as is today's transnational poultry industry. Chicken concentrate The transformation of poultry production in Asia in recent decades is staggering. In the Southeast Asian countries where most of the bird flu outbreaks are concentrated -- Thailand, Indonesia, and Viet Nam -- production jumped eightfold in just 30 years, from around 300,000 metric tonnes (mt) of chicken meat in 1971 to 2,440,000 mt in 2001. China's production of chicken tripled during the 1990s to over 9 million mt per year. Practically all of this new poultry production has happened on factory farms concentrated outside of major cities and integrated into transnational production systems.[1] This is the ideal breeding ground for highly-pathogenic bird flu -- like the H5N1 strain threatening to explode into a human flu pandemic.[2] Nevertheless, the many papers, statements and strategy documents coming out of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), World Health Organisation (WHO) and relevant government agencies contain barely a whisper about the implications of industrial poultry in the bird flu crisis. Instead, fingers are pointed at backyard farms, with calls for tighter controls on their operations and greater restructuring of the poultry sector. The big poultry corporations are even trying to use the bird flu outbreaks as an opportunity to do away with what is left of small-scale poultry production.[3] We cannot control migratory birds but we can surely work hard to close down as many backyard farms as possible, said Margaret Say, Southeast Asian director for the USA Poultry and Egg Export Council. The reactions from some scientists are no less outrageous. Researchers in the UK are pursuing transgenic bird flu-resistant chickens. Once we have regulatory approval, we believe it will only take between four and five years to breed enough chickens to replace the entire world population, said Laurence Tiley, Professor of Molecular Virology at Cambridge University.[4] Backyard farming is not an idle pastime for landowners. It is the crux of food security and farming income for hundreds of millions of rural poor in Asia and elsewhere, providing a third of the protein intake for the average rural household.[5] Nearly all rural households in Asia keep at least a few chickens for meat, eggs and even
[Biofuel] Fowl play - Updated references
Updated references Fowl play: The poultry industry's central role in the bird flu crisis GRAIN | February 2006 References [1] Hans Wagner, FAO-RAP, Protecting the environment from the impact of the growing industrialization of livestock production in East Asia, APHCA 26th Session, Subang Jaya, Malaysia, 24-26 August 2002 [2] H5N1 is an avian influenza virus subtype, the one that is currently at the centre of fears of a human pandemic. [3] Isabelle Delforge, The flu that made agribusiness stronger, Focus on the Global South, Bangkok, 4 July 2004: http://www.focusweb.org/the-flu-that-made-agribusiness-stronger-3.html [4] Mark Henderson, Scientists aim to beat flu with genetically modified chickens, The Times, London, 29 October 2005: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25149-1847760,00.html [5] A. Permin and M. Bisgaard, The Scope and Effect of Family Poultry Research and Development: A general review on some important diseases in free-range chickens, Lead paper for the INFPD E-Conference [6] FAO, In Praise of Family Poultry, Agriculture 21, Rome, March 2002: http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0203sp1.htm and website for the International Network for Family Poultry Development: http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/subjects/en/infpd/home.html [7] Tran Dinh Thanh Lam, Bird Flu Strategy Will Hit Poultry Farmers, IPS, Ho Chi Minh City, 15 November 2005 http://domino.ips.org/ips%5Ceng.nsf/vwWebMainView/9190FA02797E3832C125 70BA0022F907/?OpenDocument [8] A McLeod, N Morgan, A Prakash and J Hinrichs, Economic and Social Impacts of Avian Influenza FAO, Rome, November 2005 ; http://www.fao.org/ag/AGAinfo/subjects/en/health/diseases-cards/cd/documents/Economic-and-social-impacts-of-avian-influenza-Geneva.pdf Chanida Chanyapate and Isabelle Delforge, The politics of bird flu in Thailand, Focus on the Global South, Bangkok, 20 April 2004: http://www.focusweb.org/the-politics-of-bird-flu-in-thailand-4.html [9] Elisabeth Rosenthal, Bird flu threat takes away chickens' free range, International Herald Tribune, 9 December 2005. 10] A Stegemen et al., Avian influenza A virus (H7N7) epidemic in the Netherlands in 2003: Course of the epidemic and effectiveness of control measures, Journal of Infectious Diseases, 2004, 190:2088-2095; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrievedb=pubmedd opt=Abstractlist_uids=15551206 ME Thomas et al, Risk factors for the introduction of high pathogenicity Avian Influenza virus into poultry farms during the epidemic in the Netherlands in 2003, Preventative Veterinary Medicine, 2005, 69:1-11 http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheNcpsidt=16807501 [11] A. McLeod, N. Morgan, A. Prakash, and J. Hinrichs, Economic and Social Impacts of Avian Influenza FAO, November 2005 [12] After testing more than 13,000 wild birds in marshes within bird flu infested provinces in China, scientists identified only six highly pathogenic bird flu viruses in six ducks. The overall conclusion of the study: Transmission within poultry is the major mechanism for sustaining H5N1 virus endemicity in this region. H Chen et al., Establishment of multiple sublineages of H5N1 influenza virus in Asia: Implications for pandemic control, PNAS early edition, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, Washington DC, 10 February 2006: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0511120103 [13] FAO and OIE, in collaboration with WHO, A Global Strategy for the Progressive Control of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), November 2005 [14] BirdLife International, Wild birds 'victims not vectors', Cambridge, 8 December 2005: http://www.birdlife.org/news/news/2005/12/flu_migration.html ; FAO, Fish feed formulation and Production; A report prepared for the project Fisheries Development in Qinghai Province, Rome, November 1990: http://www.fao.org/docrep/field/003/U4173E/U4173E00.htm . [15] Melville, D and K Shortridge Reflection and Reaction, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Vol 4, 2004, pp 261-262. [16] BirdLIfe International, Are high risk farming practices spreading avian flu?, press release, Cambdridge, 18 January 2006: http://www.birdlife.org/news/news/2006/01/flu_agriculture.html [17] Id, op cit (note 14). [18] Suarez DL, Senne DA, Banks J, Brown IH, Essen SC, Lee C-W, et al, Recombination resulting in virulence shift in avian influenza outbreak, Chile, Emerging Infectious Diseases, April 2004: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol10no4/pdfs/03-0396.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol10no4/03-0396.htm DL Suarez, Evolution of avian influenza viruses, Veterinary Microbiology, 22 May 2000, 74(1-2):15-27; See: Evolution of avian influenza Toshihiro Ito et al, Generation of a Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A Virus from an A-virulent Field Isolate by Passaging in Chickens, Journal of Virology, May 2001, 75(9): 4439-4443. http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/reprint/75/9/4439.pdf See: Generation of a Highly Pathogen [19] FAO and OIE, in collaboration with WHO,
[Biofuel] The top-down global response to bird flu
http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=12 GRAIN | Against the grain | 2006 | The top-down global response to bird flu GRAIN | April 2006 We live in poverty, without any basic facilities and no one coming to enquire about our problems. All of a sudden all the television crew, media persons and doctors wearing surgical masks are roaming our dirt roads to collect more statistics. Our chickens were our only source of income and now they have destroyed even that. Is this what is called governance? -- Ganesh Sonar, small farmer, Navapur, Maharashtra, India1 [READ Fowl play: The poultry industry's central role in the bird flu crisis by GRAIN, February 2006] [We have also compiled a bird flu resource page with relevant publications, articles and links - www.grain.org/go/birdflu] On 17 February 2006, the Egyptian government confirmed that bird flu had broken out in the nation's poultry. With the international spotlight beaming upon it, the government did not want to look unprepared or, worse, at fault. So it immediately responded by blaming migratory birds and traditional poultry practices. The world is moving towards big farms because they can be controlled under veterinarian supervision The time has come to get rid of the idea of breeding chickens on the roofs of houses, said Egypt's Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif.2 Then the Egyptian government swung into action with a military-style cleansing operation. It ordered the culling of all backyard and rooftop poultry and banned live bird markets, where 80% of the nation's poultry is sold. Farmers were promised compensation and vendors were promised refrigerators, so they could switch to selling frozen chicken, but neither materialised.3 Meanwhile, the government banned the transport of live poultry and ordered that all slaughtering must take place in official slaughterhouses, leaving farmers not located near the few official slaughterhouses with no way to slaughter their chickens.4 In less than a month, the Egyptian government effectively destroyed its multi-billion dollar poultry industry, the livelihoods of millions of Egyptians and its ancient poultry practices and biodiversity. The government is now easing restrictions on imports of frozen meat to make up for domestic shortfalls and importing chicks from the US and Europe to restock its commercial farms.5 The response from the Egyptian government was not only insensitive to the importance of poultry for its people, it was misinformed. Yes, some backyard and rooftop flocks have been infected, but far more birds are dying from bird flu in factory farms. Plus, extensive testing of live migratory birds since 2004 did not report cases of bird flu.6 Although official veterinarian reports single out backyard flocks, the website of the Egyptian government clearly lists initial outbreaks at three factory farms where nearly 70,000 birds were culled, followed by further outbreaks on large factory farms in the regions of Ashmoun, Al-Marg, Giza Badrashaan and Damietta, as well as the culling of 77,000 birds at two farms near the desert city of Belbeis and 30,000 birds in nearby New Salhia where one of Egypt's largest poultry companies has its farms.7 The industry estimates that 50% of the commercial farms in the country have been infected and that over 25 million chickens have been slaughtered.8 Power politics at play The response from the Egyptian government is sadly typical of what is happening around the world. Today's power politics ensure that the consequences for the poor get completely overshadowed by theoretical concerns over a possible human pandemic. In India, for example, the government was badly prepared when bird flu broke out in the state of Maharashtra in March 2006. As in Egypt, the explosion of media interest propelled the government into action. Although the source of the outbreak was known to be from the area's major hatchery and although common sense would dictate that the proper response would be to follow the channels of transmission leading from there, the government imposed an indiscriminate cull in a 10 km radius around the infected sites following World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines.9 Similar culls were repeated in one of the poorest districts of the state when a small number of samples collected from various villages came back positive. Within that district, complete culls occurred over an area of 1,500 square km, involving more than 300,000 birds and over 300 villages.10 The state did provide some compensation to the affected farmers, but the US$0.88 given per bird was far below the value of a village chicken, which typically sells for three times the price of a factory chicken and produces eggs worth four times the price of industrial eggs.11 Needless to say, the government has no plans for replenishing the invaluable poultry biodiversity that it destroyed and there is even talk of new state regulations to ban backyard
Re: [Biofuel] New political metaphors
Works for me, Dawie...unfortunately the hydroponic mind, having been carefully crafted and nurtured over the years, when presented with your new terminology, will not be able to understand words with more than one syllable and will probably think it is being presented with some kind of sexual politics that has as its' choices polygamy on one side and homosexuality on the other. I'm not exactly sure why, except that my observation of the hydroponic mind is that it tends to reduce to the sexual anything it can't or refuses to understand. I'm also not saying there is necessarily anything wrong with either of the two orientations that I am suggesting the hydroponic mind will conceive. What I'm saying is that when it comes to politics it takes an honest analysis of the political landscape to survive, so if we are going to adopt these words, we have to be prepared for the potential meanings the hydroponic mind will unnaturally evolve, ie it's a really screwed up world in which we live, the left and right having totally morphed into twisted configurations of their true selves, and real advances in any area of life are usually made when we KISS...Keep It Simple, Stupid. No, I'm not saying you are stupid. Homophobic mind, oops, see, I mean hydroponic mind is stupid and anyone who will attempt to lead it needs to at least look like they are stupid too and lead that way, GWB being the almost perfect example. I say almost perfect, because, as you know, GWB doesn't just look stupid and leads that way; he IS stupid and leads that way, which may be why he is so successful. Oh oh, I've said too much. Here come the thought police outside my door. I hear their commander screaming at them now...COMPANY HALT PREE-SENT ARMS! Oh man, tomb of the unknown soldier here I come. Later. Mike DuPree - Original Message - From: Dawie Coetzee To: Biofuels Mailing List Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 2:14 AM Subject: [Biofuel] New political metaphors I think most of us will agree that the terms 'left' and 'right' are fast losing their relevence in the political sense. Many of us will optimistically try to deny that there is any new dichotomy in its place. I have been aware of such a dichotomy for over a decade, and I submit that it is real, that it is definite, and that it has a rock-face that, when reached, will not be susceptible to any post-modern 'both-and' notion. Soon, people will have to choose, and their choices will have implications, possibly tragic ones, possibly heroic ones. Might I suggest two new political terms: 'permacultural' and 'hydroponic'? The world is increasingly moving to the latter approach: systems are simplified so that they may be tightly monitored by government agencies and strictly controlled by legislation. To this end oligopolies are nurtured and renegade human creativity stifled, co-opted, or restricted to superficial irrelevancies. People are reduced to passive 'pure consumers'. The attitude seems to be that the environment is too important to allow people near it. Thus we find the world becoming in a sense 'indoor', a controlled environment. One gets the impression that all of Europe is turning into a single big Victorian drawing-room. Many would disagree with this approach, and there is an old tradition that answers well to the term 'permacultural'. It runs through a number of writers: Fritz Schumacher springs immediately to mind, but there are others. The aim is rather to build systems that have an intrinsic propensity to produce what is desirable, and then to leave them to get on with it. It is an approach that can accommodate a lot of exceptional behaviours, and it thrives on renegade creativity. It is however much more likely to run up against vested interests, be they political or economic, and therefore cannot really thrive inside a 'hydroponic' system. Many of the differences of opinion that have arisen from time to time in this group can be understood in the above terms. Try it. What say you? -Dawie -- Now you can scan emails quickly with a reading pane. Get the new Yahoo! Mail. -- ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the
Re: [Biofuel] New political metaphors
Hello Mike, Dawie Then you need two terms Mike. Your view of the hydroponic mind might be a bit American, but I guess it has its variations everywhere, or at least everywhere in the industrialised societies. Anyway it would apply to the subscribers, people who've been lulled and hypnotised by the altogether new levels of saturation available to the consent manufacturing industry since the dual arrival in the 70s of the neo-liberal economic era and of the silicon chip. The chip enabled much more powerful delivery systems, much closer control of just about everything, and the kind of reach that made corporate globalisation possible. But your description doesn't fit those who're calling the tune. They do have a lot of blind spots, but they're not stupid. This is something to be viewed over the last 30 years or so, not just the last decade, and the last 30 years also has it's historical context. Worth checking out the list archives on Edward Bernays, eg. Post-modernism followed the failure of the modernist project in the 60s, but since (for those who call the tune) that project was just an excuse for wealth-extraction anyway, it was replaced not by whatever post-modernism was supposed to lead us to, but by a much more potent and effective wealth-extraction system. Hence, for instance: http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=423Itemid=8 CEPR - The Scorecard on Globalization 1980-2000: 20 Years of Diminished Progress July 2001, Mark Weisbrot, Dean Baker, Egor Kraev, and Judy Chen This report looks at economic and social indicators for all countries for which data are available and compares the period of 1980-2000 with the previous 20 years. Indicators include: the growth of income per person, life expectancy, mortality, literacy, and education. It finds a very clear decline in progress as compared with the period 1960-1980. Download report: http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/globalization_2001_07_11.pdf The rich got richer and everybody else got a whole lot poorer. As we've established, poverty is not just an unfortunate side-effect of corporatism, it's an essential part of what they call wealth creation, ie wealth extraction and wealth concentration plus poverty creation, essential for the race-to-the-bottom style of labour relations upon which neo-liberal corporate globalisation depends. And the environment gets trashed along the way. In previous discussions people have tended to see all this as just more of the same. Of course you can find many of the same elements in the 50s and 60s, or back in the 1920s and 30s, or in the late 19th Century, or whenever. But that just explains it away, which makes it more dangerous. It's not just more of the same, unless you want to say that's what a tyrannosaurus is compared with a ghekko, just more of the same. On the other hand, this is the same old story that's been going on for the last 10,000 years or so, the problem of power, and though we seem to lose all the wars, it's been a story of steady progress, right up to now. Thus the microchip also enabled the Internet - the great leveller - and the Other Superpower, which will be the nemesis of what we're calling the hydroponic side. See How to kill a mammoth, by Roberto Verzola, secretary-general of the Philippine Greens: http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg30628.html [biofuel] Mammoth corporations We'll win in the end, but as Chomsky just wrote in the Guardian, A predator becomes more dangerous when wounded. So does a rat in a corner. So, Dawie, I don't really see the new dichotomy you talk of. It seems left and right have always meant a lot of different things. When I left South Africa in the 70s left-wing there meant the somewhat right of centre Progressive Party, backed by Anglo American, since the real left wingers were in exile, in jail or dead. I went to work in Hong Kong, where left-wing meant pro-China and right-wing meant pro-Taiwan. The dichotomies between the WTO, IMF, World Bank, Davos, so-called free-traders etc on the one hand and the World Social Forum et al on the other are rather clear, as between top-down Big Central and Think Globally, Act Locally, or between risk assessment and the Precautionary Principle. Also, I'd suggest that the opposite of hydroponic would be organic, rather than permacultural. Permaculture's a bit of a brand-name, trendy among caring city folks, with accreditation courses sold somewhat like a Ponzi scheme. I've seen a lot of junk in a lot of places represented as Permaculture, and some good projects indeed, but that was quite often due more to the people who were doing them than to the label, though not always. After all, Howard and the other pioneers of organic farming were dissing hydroponics in the 1940s, when Bill Mollison was still a little boy. Trouble is the word organic is also a bit denatured these days, but it's still serviceable.
Re: [Biofuel] New political metaphors
Hi Keith...wonderful expose and thanks for the additional references. No doubt my views are suburban, middle-class American, I guess middle-middle class, maybe almost lower-middle class. Anyway, I'm not sure of your suggestion for my needing two terms. Could you please expound, keeping in mind we're more than a little schizo in this part of the world, so that about the time you think you have a handle on one term another appears which you try to assimilate thereby compounding the schizophrenia...? Otherwise, my comments on GWB definitely tongue-in-cheek, no, sarcastic, cynical rant that something as brilliant as the human mind could be so stupid as to be used the way his ilk (and his ilk for centuries before him) could use it. Anyway...you mention Edward Bernays...anyone interested might check out this four part BBC video series on the development of public relations in America and later in British politics: http://www.mercola.com/2007/mar/6/freud-was-used-to-control-the-masses.htm Edward Bernays absolutely pivotal. Mike DuPree - Original Message - From: Keith Addison [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@sustainablelists.org Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 9:46 AM Subject: Re: [Biofuel] New political metaphors Hello Mike, Dawie Then you need two terms Mike. Your view of the hydroponic mind might be a bit American, but I guess it has its variations everywhere, or at least everywhere in the industrialised societies. Anyway it would apply to the subscribers, people who've been lulled and hypnotised by the altogether new levels of saturation available to the consent manufacturing industry since the dual arrival in the 70s of the neo-liberal economic era and of the silicon chip. The chip enabled much more powerful delivery systems, much closer control of just about everything, and the kind of reach that made corporate globalisation possible. But your description doesn't fit those who're calling the tune. They do have a lot of blind spots, but they're not stupid. This is something to be viewed over the last 30 years or so, not just the last decade, and the last 30 years also has it's historical context. Worth checking out the list archives on Edward Bernays, eg. Post-modernism followed the failure of the modernist project in the 60s, but since (for those who call the tune) that project was just an excuse for wealth-extraction anyway, it was replaced not by whatever post-modernism was supposed to lead us to, but by a much more potent and effective wealth-extraction system. Hence, for instance: http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=423Itemid=8 CEPR - The Scorecard on Globalization 1980-2000: 20 Years of Diminished Progress July 2001, Mark Weisbrot, Dean Baker, Egor Kraev, and Judy Chen This report looks at economic and social indicators for all countries for which data are available and compares the period of 1980-2000 with the previous 20 years. Indicators include: the growth of income per person, life expectancy, mortality, literacy, and education. It finds a very clear decline in progress as compared with the period 1960-1980. Download report: http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/globalization_2001_07_11.pdf The rich got richer and everybody else got a whole lot poorer. As we've established, poverty is not just an unfortunate side-effect of corporatism, it's an essential part of what they call wealth creation, ie wealth extraction and wealth concentration plus poverty creation, essential for the race-to-the-bottom style of labour relations upon which neo-liberal corporate globalisation depends. And the environment gets trashed along the way. In previous discussions people have tended to see all this as just more of the same. Of course you can find many of the same elements in the 50s and 60s, or back in the 1920s and 30s, or in the late 19th Century, or whenever. But that just explains it away, which makes it more dangerous. It's not just more of the same, unless you want to say that's what a tyrannosaurus is compared with a ghekko, just more of the same. On the other hand, this is the same old story that's been going on for the last 10,000 years or so, the problem of power, and though we seem to lose all the wars, it's been a story of steady progress, right up to now. Thus the microchip also enabled the Internet - the great leveller - and the Other Superpower, which will be the nemesis of what we're calling the hydroponic side. See How to kill a mammoth, by Roberto Verzola, secretary-general of the Philippine Greens: http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg30628.html [biofuel] Mammoth corporations We'll win in the end, but as Chomsky just wrote in the Guardian, A predator becomes more dangerous when wounded. So does a rat in a corner. So, Dawie, I don't really see the new dichotomy you talk of. It seems
[Biofuel] MAGNASOL
If you are getting into biodiesel or have had some weird results with consistent reactions even though you are sure they should be in closer tolerance. Do this check with the supplier of your oil to see if they use a filter powder, MANY MANY do in the US. This is fine but I found that they often leave qiute a bit of the un reacted powder in the oil ( it takes out FFA's) This powder will also tie up your methanol and Lye. Thus you can get inconsistent completion results. It will not show up in titration nor will you be able to see it. The cure to this is: Heat Oil to 180 F Wash like biodiesel (it ties up water too) Drain all water, Let set to be sure you get the water out then proceed. This little known deal can cause some head scratching Anyone else? Jim ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
