Peace on Earth

Made me cry.

Winter Solstice Ride...

The tempature was in the mid twenties yesterday with a super stiff westerly wind with some mighty gusts, that felt down right frigid.

Some of the gusts almost separated me from my bike. That has happened on road rides before but never in the woods.

Mandi, John and I were shooting for a four plus hour ride but after I had a mechanical problem and stopped for a bit to long we decided to cut the ride short. We were all chilled to the bone.

We ended up with about three hours saddle time and some nice red wind burnt faces. Now today, Monday, the mercury is topped out at ten with some nice stiff wind. Makes yesterday seem down right balmy.

Starting today the nights get shorter and the days get longer. Not that it matters anyway the sun only shined a couple days this month.

Happy Solstice, JOEY

Sorry more politics. I said I was going to stop with all the political stuff but I just can't, its to important.

Obama’s Agriculture Secretary supports GMO crops, big agra

Stop Vilsack’s Confirmation as Secretary of Agriculture

Organic Consumers Association
December 17, 2008

Despite a massive public outcry, including over 20,000 emails from the Organic Consumers Association, President-Elect Obama has chosen former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack to be the next Secretary of Agriculture.

While Vilsack has promoted respectable policies with respect to restraining livestock monopolies, his overall record is one of aiding and abetting Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) or factory farms and promoting genetically engineered crops and animal cloning. Equally troubling is Vilsack’s support for unsustainable industrial ethanol production, which has already caused global corn and grain prices to skyrocket, literally taking food off the table for a billion people in the developing world.

The Organic Consumers Association is calling on organic consumers and all concerned citizens to join our call to action and block Vilsack’s confirmation as the next Secretary of Agriculture. Please help us reach our goal of 100,000 petition signatures against Vilsack’ nomination. Sign today! Your email will be sent to your Senators and the President-Elect’s office.

CLICK HERE to sign the following petition:

We the undersigned reject President-Elect Obama’s choice for Secretary of
Agriculture, Tom Vilsack.

Over the past month, Organic Consumers Association members have sent over
20,000 emails to President-Elect Obama¹s Transition Team, calling for the
appointment of a Secretary of Agriculture who would develop and implement a
plan that promotes family-scale farming, a safe and nutritious food system
and a sustainable and organic vision for the future.

Vilsack¹s business as usual positions have included the following:

-Vilsack has been a strong supporter of genetically engineered crops,
including bio-pharmaceutical corn:

-The biggest biotechnology industry group, the Biotechnology Industry
Organization, named Vilsack Governor of the Year. He was also the founder
and former chair of the Governor’s Biotechnology Partnership.

-When Vilsack created the Iowa Values Fund, his first poster child of
economic development potential was Trans Ova and their pursuit of cloning
dairy cows.

-The undemocratic and highly unpopular 2005 seed pre-emption bill was
Vilsack’s brainchild. The law strips local government¹s right to regulate
Genetically Engineered seed.

-Vilsack is an ardent support of corn and soy-based biofuels, which use as
much or more fossil energy to produce them as they generate, while driving
up world food prices and literally starving the poor.

We pledge to continue working for a just and sustainable food and farming
system. We urge Congress and the office of the President-Elect to consider
appointing a Secretary of Agriculture that will advance a sustainable and
just future.

Trends Forecaster Celente: Greece-Style Riots Coming To U.S.

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, December 15, 2008

Frighteningly accurate trends forecaster Gerald Celente says that America will see riots similar to those currently ongoing in Greece and that the cause will be a hyper-inflationary depression, leading to the inevitable use of troops and mercenaries to deal with the crisis as Americans are incarcerated in internment camps.

As we have highlighted before, Celente’s accuracy is stunning - he predicted the 1987 crash, the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the “panic of 2008,” and is routinely cited even by mainstream news networks as highly credible.

The cause of the riots would be a hyper-inflationary depression, Celente told interviewer Lew Rockwell, causing Americans to revolt in similar circumstances that we have witnessed recently in Iceland and Greece. The trouble would be sparked off by Obama declaring a “bank holiday” whereby people won’t be able to withdraw their money.

“What’s going on in Greece with these riots has nothing to do with a 15-year-old boy being killed, that was only the spark that ignited the pent up, really hatred and disdain, people have for the scandals and corrupt government and the same thing is going on in this country as well,” said Celente.

Celente reiterated his prediction of a revolution and riots in America, and said that the first signs of it could even emerge before the end of the year.

Celente said that the troops now being brought back to America for “domestic security” would be used to suppress the riots.

“There’s talk of opening all these detention centers and hiring the goon squads, the Blackwaters to run them, so these are realities going on as we speak,” said Celente, adding that the Halliburton subsidiary KBR had been awarded a half a billion dollar contract to build “national emergency” internment camps in the name of detaining illegal immigrants but that they would be used to hold rioting Americans.

“We’re really in a period of ‘off with their heads’ and its going to be the people against the politicians,” said Celente.

Celente said that a breakup of the United States was possible and that the secessionist movement was strong.

“The government owns and runs the largest mortgage company, owns the largest insurance company, they’re going to be owning a piece of the oil industry, so it’s a fight against a totalitarian government…so there’s going to be rebellions and things will change for the better if we break up these criminal governments that are in place now,” said Celente.

The forecaster added that the government was killing people for a false reason in Iraq and robbing people blind with the bailouts at home.

Listen to the interview here.

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

(NaturalNews) Following the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's setting of a "safe" level of melamine in foods, the World Health Organization (WHO) has announced its own safety level of 0.2 mg per kilogram of body weight per day.

In other words, the WHO says that a 150-pound person could safely consume 13.6 mg of melamine per day.

That's a lot of melamine. It's almost like a nutritional supplement dose. And the scary part about all this is that neither the WHO nor the FDA has any science whatsoever to back up this "safe" consumption guideline.

Melamine is an industrial chemical that has sickened hundreds of thousands of children in China and killed babies and pets across the world. It has no place in the food supply whatsoever. For these health agencies that are supposed to be serving the public to now claim that a person can "safely" eat 13.6 mg of melamine per day, every day, is simply outrageous. It is a betrayal of the very public these agencies are supposed to serve and protect.

Without any scientific evidence whatsoever, the world's health agencies are essentially endorsing very high levels of melamine in foods. How high? If a 150-pound person eats just one chocolate bar per day, and that chocolate bar is a 50-gram bar that's contaminated with melamine, the WHO would allow an incredible 272 parts per million of melamine in the bar, which is 272 times the allowable level of melamine contamination that has been put forth by the FDA!

The FDA, you see, is outlining its melamine limits based on how much melamine is in the food. The WHO, on the other hand, is stating a limit of how much a person can consume, and the WHO limit is significantly higher than what the FDA limit would have typically exposed a person to.

What's really astonishing here, though, is not only that both the WHO and FDA think it's "safe" for babies, children and adults to consume melamine every day, but that these agencies support the daily consumption of multiple untested chemicals in combination!

For example, the FDA has declared bisphenol-A to be completely safe and has placed no consumption limit on it whatsoever. There is no limit on acrylamide consumption, either, meaning that a U.S. citizen could be consuming large amounts of melamine, bisphenol-A, acrylamides, phthalates, perchlorates and numerous other chemicals in highly toxic combinations that are all "approved" by the FDA!

I must emphasize there has been no safety testing done on melamine that could scientifically establish a "safe" consumption limit. Thus, the FDA and WHO are just blindly guessing at what a safe level might be. Consumers are guinea pigs, in other words, and if babies start dying or falling ill from all these chemicals at some later date, then they'll deal with it then (by denying they could have known the chemicals were dangerous, of course).

In other words, the health authorities of the world are now setting food safety standards in precisely the same way that a fifth-grade takes a history quiz… by guessing!

I have a radical idea: How about setting a standard that would require no industrial chemicals in the food supply?

And why is that so radical anyway? Shouldn't that just be common sense? Why are the FDA and WHO shoving chemicals down our throats and insisting they're all safe to eat?

Why have our food safety agencies become pushers of industrial chemicals?

So True...

So who is next, oil companies, Wal-Mart, Target. Everybody get in line for your goverment handout.
This bailout is just a bandaid. Its like putting a patch on a hole on an innertube, when you can see that there is giant rip in the sidewall of your tire. You put the tube back in the tire, inflate and cross your fingers, knowing that it is very much likely to fail again.

JOEY

Pine needle tea...

Pine needles are higher in vitamin C than oranges and lemons. It is way cheaper than oranges and lemons since it grows in my yard.

So how does it taste? It tastes like pine needles. Which is not to bad.

How I did it: I have been making some wreathes for Christmas so I have pine tree branches laying all about in the house. So I just snipped off a couple mini branches, put them a jar, and added some almost boiling hot water. I let it steep for about an hour.

I sipped the tea slowly over the course of an hour or two. Did it make me feel good? Sure it did and I am going to have another cup today.

Here's to your health, JOEY

Winter Gardening....

Well I guess it is not officially winter yet but it sure has been feeling like it. I took advantage of the little reprieve from the winter nastiness today and spent some time in the garden. Yep, the garden. Picked some lettuce and finished off the rest of the radishes. The lettuce has been growing, freezing, growing under some windows for a couple months. The radishes have been growing and actually thriving in a little make shift greenhouse Mandi and I through together. Feels great being able to lengthen the growing season and the more Mandi and I learn and practice the better we get at it.

Peace, JOEY.

Swat Team conducts food raid in rural Ohio‏

On Monday, December 1, a SWAT team with semi-automatic rifles entered the private home of the Stowers family in LaGrange, Ohio, herded the family onto the couches in the living room, and kept guns trained on parents, children, infants and toddlers, from approximately 11 AM to 8 PM. The team was aggressive and belligerent. The children were quite traumatized. At some point, the “bad cop” SWAT team was relieved by another team, a “good cop” team that tried to befriend the family. The Stowers family has run a very large, well-known food cooperative called Manna Storehouse on the western side of the greater Cleveland area for many years.
There were agents from the Department of Agriculture present, one of them identified as Bill Lesho. The search warrant is reportedly suspicious-looking. Agents began rifling through all of the family’s possessions, a task that lasted hours and resulted in a complete upheaval of every private area in the home. Many items were taken that were not listed on the search warrant. The family was not permitted a phone call, and they were not told what crime they were being charged with. They were not read their rights. Over ten thousand dollars worth of food was taken, including the family’s personal stock of food for the coming year. All of their computers, and all of their cell phones were taken, as well as phone and contact records. The food cooperative was virtually shut down. There was no rational explanation, nor justification, for this extreme violation of Constitutional rights.
Presumably Manna Storehouse might eventually be charged with running a retail establishment without a license. Why then the Gestapo-type interrogation for a 3rd degree misdemeanor charge? This incident has raised the ominous specter of a restrictive new era in State regulation and enforcement over the nation’s private food supply.
This same type of abusive search and seizure was reported by those innocents who fell victim to oppressive federal drug laws passed in the 1990s. The present circumstance raises the obvious question: is there some rabid new interpretation of an existing drug law that considers food a controlled substance worthy of a nasty SWAT operation? Or worse, is there a previously unrecognized provision(s) pertaining to food in the Homeland Security measures? Some have suggested that it was merely an out-of-control, hot-to-trot ODA agent, and, if so, this would be a best-case scenario. Anything else might spell the beginning of the end for the freedom to eat unregulated and unmonitored food.
One blogger familiar with the Ohio situation has reported that:

“Interestingly, I believe they [Manna Storehouse] said a month or so ago, an undercover ODA official came to their little store and claimed to have a sick father wanting to join the co-op. Both the owner and her daughter-in-law had a horrible feeling about the man, and decided not to allow him into the co-op and notified him by certified mail. He came back to the co-op demanding to be part of it. They refused and gave him names of other businesses and health food stores closer to his home. Not coincidentally, this man was there yesterday as part of the raid.”

The same blog also noted that the Ohio Department of Agriculture has been chastised by the courts in several previous instances for its aggression, including trying to entrap an Amish man in a raw milk “sale,” which backfired when it became known that the Amish believe in a literal interpretation of “give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away” (Matthew 5:42)
The issue appears to be the discovery of a bit of non-institutional beef in an Oberlin College food service freezer a year ago that was tracked down by a county sanitation official to Manna Storehouse. Oberlin College’s student food coop is widely known for its strident ideological stance about eating organic foods. It seems that the Oberlin student food cooperative had joined the Manna Storehouse food cooperative in order to buy organic foods in bulk from the national organic food distributor United, which services buying clubs across the nation. The sanitation official, James Boddy, evidently contacted the Ohio Department of Agriculture. After the first contact by state ODA officials, Manna Storehouse reportedly wrote them a letter requesting assistance and guidelines for complying with the law. This letter was never answered. Rather, the ODA agent tried several times to infiltrate the coop, as described above. When his attempts failed, the SWAT team showed up!
Food cooperatives and buying clubs have been an active part of the American landscape for over a generation. In the 1970s, with the rise of the organic food industry (a direct outgrowth of the hippie back-to-nature movement) food coops started up all over the country. These were groups of people who freely associated for the purpose of combining their buying power so that they could order organic food items in bulk and case lots. Anyone who was part of these coops in the early era will remember the messy breakdown of 35 pounds of peanut butter and 5 gallon drums of honey!
These buying clubs have persisted and flourished over the years due to their ability to purchase high quality organic foods at reduced prices in bulk quantities. Most cooperatives have participated greatly in the local agrarian economies, supporting neighborhood organic farmers with purchases of produce, eggs, chickens, etc. The groups also purchase food from a number of different local, regional and national distributors, many of them family-based businesses who truck the food themselves. Some of these food cooperatives have become large enough to set up mini-storefront operations where members can drop in and purchase items leftover from case lot sales. Manna Storehouse had established itself in such a manner, using a small enclosed breezeway attached to their home. It was a folksy place with old wooden floors where coop members stopped by to chat and snack on bags of organic corn chips.
The state of Ohio boasts the second largest Amish population in the country. Many of the Amish live on acreages where they raise their own food, not unlike Manna Storehouse, and sell off the extras to neighbors and church members. There is a sense of foreboding that this state crackdown on a longstanding, reputable food cooperative operation could adversely impact the peaceful agrarian way of life not only for the Amish, but homeschoolers and those families living off the land on rural acreages. It raises the disturbing possibility that it could become a crime to raise your own food, buy eggs from the farmer down the road, or butcher your own chickens for family and friends – bustling activities that routinely take place in backwater America.
The freedom to purchase food directly form the source is increasingly under attack. For those who have food allergies and chemical intolerances, or who are on special medical diets, this is becoming a serious health issue. Will Americans retain the right to purchase food that is uncontaminated by pesticides, herbicides, allergens, additives, dyes, preservatives, MSG, GMOs, radiation, etc.? The melamine scare from China underscores the increasingly inferior and suspect quality of modern processed institutional foods. One blog, commenting on the bizarre and troubling Manna Storehouse situation, observed that:
“No one is saying exactly why. At the same time the FDA says it is safe to eat the 40% of tainted beef found in Costco’s and Sam’s all over the nation. These farm raids are very common now. Every farmer needs to fully equipped [sic] for the possibility of it happening to them. The Farmer To Consumer Legal Defense Fund was created just for this purpose. The USDA just released their plans to put a law into action that will put all small farmers out of business. Animals for the sale of meat or milk will only be allowed in commercial farms, even the organic ones.” December 3, 2008 7:09 PM

After doing a bit of research I have found that the folks that own Manna Storehouse still have not been charged with any crimes. Yet none of there personal belongings or food have been returned. I wonder how long it will be until growing your own food and raising your own live stock will be completely illegal.

JOEY

-5 with the wind chill...

A couple years ago when bike racing was real important and my sights were always set on the coming race season, I probably would have rode on a day like yesterday. The high yesterday was 18 degrees with windchill factors around 5 below. With no real plans for racing next year Mandi and I have both been branching out a bit more with the cross training. We have been doing more running and hiking when the weather is poor. Also lots of pilates and jump rope, don't laugh jump rope is tuff. So instead of bundling up yesterday and going for a three hour torture ride and freezing the whole time, we went hiking instead. We headed out to South Haddix trail with our friends Joel and Katie.

They are alot of fun to hang out with, as they share many common interests with Mandi and I. They have an awesome little farm over in Bellington. They grow most of what they eat and also sell at the local farmers market (Joel is the coordinator). Joel is turning into a master bread maker and cranks out several loaves a week of some of the best bread I have ever ate. They both are also incredibly gifted runners.

We had a great time trudging through the woods. When I hike I usually just blunder around and normally do not stick to a trail. You can find a lot more interesting things to look at when you are deep in the woods away from the ground that is normally troden upon. So thats what we did most of the day yesterday. It was actually a beautiful day. After a nice burst of snow in the morning the ski cleared up and the sun shone most of the day.

Peace, JOEY

2 Bridges...

Yesterday Mandi and I did the two bridge ride. It is my second favorite dirt road ride in Randolph county. Its a pretty simple ride. Start on Harpertown Road in Elkins. Ride until you get to the river and the first bridge. Cross the bridge and go left. Ride until you find the next bridge across the Shavers Fork. Cross the bridge, go up the hill(three mile climb) . Take a left on top. Ride until you find route 219. Left on 219. Left when you reach the rail trail. Ride to Elkins. Your done. Pretty simple, a nice round ride.

Peace, JOEY

Washington Post: 20,000 More U.S. Troops To Be Deployed For “Domestic Security”

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, December 1, 2008

The Washington Post today reports on plans to station 20,000 more U.S. troops inside America for purposes of “domestic security” from September 2011, an expansion of Northcom’s militarization of the country in preparation for potential civil unrest following a total economic collapse or a mass terror attack.

“The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials,” reports the Post.

“Domestic emergency deployment may be “just the first example of a series of expansions in presidential and military authority,” or even an increase in domestic surveillance, said Anna Christensen of the ACLU’s National Security Project. And Cato Vice President Gene Healy warned of “a creeping militarization” of homeland security.”

As Alex Jones exposed back in the late 1990’s, U.S. troops have been training for this eventuality for a considerable amount of time. During numerous urban warfare drills that Jones attended and reported on, troops were trained to raid, arrest and imprison U.S. citizens in detention camps as well as taking over public buildings and running checkpoints. During role playing exercises, actors playing prisoners would scream “I’m an American citizen, I have rights” as they were being dragged away by troops.

The contention that the troops will merely help “recovery efforts” after a major catastrophe is contradicted by the fact that Northcom itself, in a September 8 Army Times article, said the first wave of the deployment, which was put in place on October 1st at Fort Stewart and at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, would be aimed at tackling “civil unrest and crowd control”.

After a controversy arose surrounding the admissions made in the Army Times article, Northcom retracted the claim but conceded that both lethal and non-lethal weaponry traditionally used in crowd control and riot situations would still be used in the field.

The increasing militarization of America is part of a long term agenda to abolish Constitutional rule and establish a “military form of government,” following a large scale terror attack or similar disaster, as Tommy Franks, the former commander of the military’s Central Command, alluded to in a November 2003 Cigar Aficionado piece.

Franks outlined the scenario by which martial law would be put in place, saying, “It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important.”

In the short term, the domestic deployment of troops is likely aimed at combating likely civil unrest that will ensue after a complete economic collapse followed by a devastating period of hyperinflation.

This warning was again echoed a few days ago in a leaked internal memo from Citibank.

“The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done. When the dust settles this will either work, and the money they have pushed into the system will feed through into an inflation shock,” wrote Tom Fitzpatrick, Citibank’s chief technical strategist.

The memo predicts “depression, civil disorder and possibly wars” as a fallout from an economic collapse that many say is on the horizon.

Naturally, the claim that such troop deployments are merely to aid in disaster relief efforts is a thin veil aimed at distracting from the real goal. Should a real tragedy occur, volunteers and already existing civil aid organizations are fully capable of dealing with such events, as we witnessed on 9/11.

The military are primarily trained to kill people and break things, and their role during the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts was mainly focused on detaining people in sports stadiums, shooting alleged looters and seizing guns from wealthy home owners in the high and dry areas, while real recovery measures were left to volunteers and local state authorities.

The open admission that U.S. troops will be involved in law enforcement operations as well as potentially using non-lethal weapons against American citizens is a complete violation of the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act, which substantially limit the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement unless under precise and extreme circumstances.

Section 1385 of the Posse Comitatus Act states, “Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

Under the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Bush on October 17, 2006, the law was changed to state, “The President may employ the armed forces to restore public order in any State of the United States the President determines hinders the execution of laws or deprives people of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law or opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”

However, these changes were repealed in their entirety by HR 4986: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, reverting back to the original state of the Insurrection Act of 1807. Despite this repeal, President Bush attached a signing statement saying that he did not feel bound by the repeal. It remains to be seen whether President elect Obama will reverse Bush’s signing statement.

The original text of the Insurrection Act severely limits the power of the President to deploy troops within the United States.

For troops to be deployed, a condition has to exist that, “(1) So hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or (2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws. In any situation covered by clause (1), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.”

Is the incoming Obama administration and Northcom waiting for such a scenario to unfold, an event that completely overwhelms state authorities, before unleashing the might of the U.S. Army against the American people?

The deployment of National Guard troops to aid law enforcement or for disaster relief purposes is legal under the authority of the governor of a state, but using active duty U.S. Army in law enforcement operations inside America absent the conditions described in the Insurrection Act is completely illegal.

The political left and right need to join forces and denounce this plan for what it is - another unconstitutional step towards the incremental implementation of martial law and the militarization of America.