Breaking News
msnbc.com: Iran plans 10 uranium enrichment plants
Posted on February 8, 2010 | Filed Under Breaking News | Leave a Comment
Iran says it will start producing higher-grade nuclear fuel on Tuesday and plans a major expansion of its uranium enrichment program by building 10 new plants in the next year, further stoking tensions with the West.
The statement by Iran’s nuclear agency chief Ali Akbar Salehi on Sunday evening came after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad earlier in the day instructed him to start work on producing atomic fuel for a Tehran research reactor.
Read Full Article Here: Iran plans 10 uranium enrichment plants – Iran- msnbc.com.
FOXNews.com: Iran Announces Production of Attack Drones
Posted on February 8, 2010 | Filed Under Breaking News | Leave a Comment
Iran has launched two production lines to build unmanned aircraft with surveillance and attack capabilities, the defense minister announced Monday.
It also announced that Iran would soon deploy a missile air defense system more powerful than the advanced Russian S-300 system Tehran has ordered from Moscow in 2007 but has yet to receive.
The state television quoted Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi as saying the unmanned aircraft would be able to carry out surveillance as well as offensive tasks with high precision and a long range.
The two types of aircraft, or drones, are named Ra'd (thunder) and Nazir (herald), with the former possessing offensive capabilities.
Read Full Article Here: Iran Announces Production of Attack Drones – Iran | Map | News – FOXNews.com.
Featured Articles
National Post: Stop selling unlicensed natural health remedies: pharmacy regulators
Posted on February 8, 2010 | Filed Under Featured Site | Leave a Comment
Makers of natural-health products say they are bracing for widespread layoffs and millions of dollars in losses after Canada’s pharmacy regulators issued a surprise directive recently urging druggists to stop selling unlicensed natural remedies.
The order affects thousands of herbal treatments, multi-vitamins and other products, most of them waiting for approval from Health Canada under a backlogged, five-year-old program to regulate natural-health goods.
The National Association of Pharmacy Regulatory Authorities (NAPRA) says pharmacists cannot be assured the products are safe until they are granted a government licence, and should not sell them in those circumstances. “Pharmacists are obliged to hold the health and safety of the public or patient as their first and foremost consideration,” said the association’s recently issued position statement.
Read Full Article Here: Stop selling unlicensed natural health remedies: pharmacy regulators.
Expect this in America next. Natural Remedies are cutting into big Pharma’s profits. Big Pharma wants us sick and dependent on them.
McCain Bill Attacks Natural Supplements
Posted on February 6, 2010 | Filed Under Featured Site | 1 Comment
Sen. John McCain is introducing a horrific bill, the “Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010″ (DSSA) designed to end your access to high potency supplements by giving the bloated, corrupt and dangerous FDA MORE power to destroy supplement access.
Food Supplements are going the way of the dodo in the EU. The US is clearly next unless we act now!
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714
Your legal right to access supplements and herbs will, quite frankly, be a thing of the past. As we predicted years ago, the end of the first decade of the new millennium was intended to be when we lost our Health Freedom. Will you let that happen?
For several years, the Natural Solutions Foundation has kept you abreast of the battle for our food, our health, our freedom, indeed, as we documented and discussed in our 2010 Health Freedom War Council last month, our very lives. We have predicted that the FDA’s Big Pharma Friendly policies would bring natural supplement restrictions home to us as “safety” when, in fact, they are nothing short of health tyranny.
Take away high potency nutrients, herbs and other nutritional aids and what do you have? Pharma triumphant and health freedom defeated — a total rout, and the end of the DSHEA freedoms we rely on. Since the unanimous adoption by Congress of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) we have seen a blossoming of advanced, leading-edge, high potency nutrition sought out by hundreds of millions to achieve and maintain a healthy lifestyle. We’ve warned these freedoms were under sustained attack. Senator McCaine has just escalated the attack.
Read Full Article Here: Action eAlert: Our eBlasts being blocked… URGENT: McCain Bill Attacks DSHEA!.u
Big Pharma will not stop until they have eliminated our ability to cure ourselves.
Critical Issues
BlackListed News: What Do Rising Sovereign Credit Default Swaps Mean?
Posted on February 8, 2010 | Filed Under Critical Issues | Leave a Comment
Ferguson warns of huge government debts threatening the solvency of entire nations:
“The idea that countries don’t go bust is a joke… The debt trap may be about to spring … for countries that have created large stimulus packages in order to stimulate their economies.”
But whether or not large nations actually go bankrupt, one thing is clear . . . Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner and their foreign counterparts have failed.
Read Full Article Here: What Do Rising Sovereign Credit Default Swaps Mean? – BlackListed News.
LewRockwell.com: Global Bear Rally Will Deflate as Japan Leads World in Sovereign Bond Crisis by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Posted on February 8, 2010 | Filed Under Critical Issues | 1 Comment
The contraction of M3 money in the US and Europe over the last six months will slowly puncture economic recovery as 2010 unfolds, with the time-honoured lag of a year or so. Ben Bernanke will be caught off guard, just as he was in mid-2008 when the Fed drove straight through a red warning light with talk of imminent rate rises – the final error that triggered the implosion of Lehman, AIG, and the Western banking system.
As the great bear rally of 2009 runs into the greater Chinese Wall of excess global capacity, it will become clear that we are in the grip of a 21st Century Depression – more akin to Japan's Lost Decade than the 1840s or 1930s, but nothing like the normal cycles of the post-War era. The surplus regions (China, Japan, Germania, Gulf) have not increased demand enough to compensate for belt-tightening in the deficit bloc (Anglo-sphere, Club Med, East Europe), and fiscal adrenalin is already fading in Europe. The vast East-West imbalances that caused the credit crisis are no better a year later, and perhaps worse. Household debt as a share of GDP sits near record levels in two-fifths of the world economy. Our long purge has barely begun. That is the elephant in the global tent.
We will be reminded too that the West's fiscal blitz – while vital to halt a self-feeding crash last year – has merely shifted the debt burden onto sovereign shoulders, where it may do more harm in the end if handled with the sort of insouciance now on display in Britain.
Read Full Article Here: Global Bear Rally Will Deflate as Japan Leads World in Sovereign Bond Crisis by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.
naked capitalism: The OTHER Reason that the U.S. is Not Regulating Wall Street
Posted on February 7, 2010 | Filed Under Critical Issues | Leave a Comment
Many people assume that they just have to hang in there until things improve. But the powers-that-be are grabbing more and more power and – unless we stand up to them – they will take it all.
You have to realize that what they’re trying to do is to roll back the Enlightenment, roll back the moral philosophy and social values of classical political economy and its culmination in Progressive Era legislation, as well as the New Deal institutions. They’re not trying to make the economy more equal, and they’re not trying to share power. Their greed is (as Aristotle noted) infinite. So what you find to be a violation of traditional values is a re-assertion of pre-industrial, feudal values. The economy is being set back on the road to debt peonage. The Road to Serfdom is not government sponsorship of economic progress and rising living standards, it’s the dismantling of government, the dissolution of regulatory agencies, to create a new feudal-type elite.
And Foreign Policy magazine ran an article entitled “The Next Big Thing: Neomedievalism“, arguing that the power of nations is declining, and being replaced by corporations, wealthy individuals, the sovereign wealth funds of monarchs, and city-regions.
We either stand up, or we slip back into a darker age.
Read Full Article Here: Guest Post: The OTHER Reason that the U.S. is Not Regulating Wall Street « naked capitalism.
Slate Magazine: Take the Money and Run, The crazy perversities of civil asset forfeiture
Posted on February 7, 2010 | Filed Under Critical Issues | 1 Comment
Civil asset forfeiture, an outgrowth of the drug war, rests on the legal theory that property can be guilty of a crime. Once authorities establish a nexus between a piece of property and criminal activity—most commonly drug cases, but also prostitution, DWI, and white collar crime—the owner must prove his innocence or lose his property, even if he’s never charged with an underlying crime. In most jurisdictions, seized cash and the proceeds from the auctioned property go back to the police departments and prosecutors’ offices responsible for the seizure. The scheme, which creates unsavory incentives for public officials, became popular because of a 1984 federal bill designed to encourage aggressive enforcement.
Read Full Article Here: The crazy perversities of civil asset forfeiture. – By Radley Balko – Slate Magazine.
guardian.co.uk: US food stamps set ever-higher record-38.2 million
Posted on February 7, 2010 | Filed Under Critical Issues | Leave a Comment
A record 38.2 million Americans were enrolled in the food stamp program at latest count, up 246,000 from the previous month and the latest in record-high monthly tallies that began in December 2008.
Food stamps are the primary federal anti-hunger program, helping poor people buy groceries. The Agriculture Department updated enrollment data on Friday with a preliminary figure for November.
USDA estimates up to $58 billion will be spent on food stamps this fiscal year, which ends Sept 30, with average enrollment of 40.5 million people. Food stamps were renamed the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program in 2008.
Read Full Article Here: US food stamps set ever-higher record-32.8 million | Business | guardian.co.uk.
GQ: Warning, Your Cell Phone May Be Hazardous To Your Health
Posted on February 5, 2010 | Filed Under Critical Issues | Leave a Comment
It's hard to talk about the dangers of cell-phone radiation without sounding like a conspiracy theorist. This is especially true in the United States, where non-industry-funded studies are rare, where legislation protecting the wireless industry from legal challenges has long been in place, and where our lives have been so thoroughly integrated with wireless technology that to suggest it might be a problem—maybe, eventually, a very big public-health problem—is like saying our shoes might be killing us.
Except our shoes don’t send microwaves directly into our brains. And cell phones do—a fact that has increasingly alarmed the rest of the world. Consider, for instance, the following headlines that have appeared in highly reputable international newspapers and journals over the past few years. From summer 2006, in the Hamburg Morgenpost: are we telephoning ourselves to death? That fall, in the Danish journal Dagens Medicin: mobile phones affect the brain’s metabolism. December 2007, from Agence France-Presse: israeli study says regular mobile use increases tumour risk. January 2008, in London’s Independent: mobile phone radiation wrecks your sleep. September 2008, in Australia’s The Age: scientists warn of mobile phone cancer risk.
Read Full Article Here: Warning, Your Cell Phone May Be Hazardous To Your Health: Gear + Gadgets: GQ.
The Public Record: Government Labor Statistics: Lies and Damned Lies
Posted on February 5, 2010 | Filed Under Critical Issues | Leave a Comment
The Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics is reporting that because of a “modeling error,” it misstated the number of jobs lost between March 2008 and March 2009 by 17 percent. In hard numbers, that is to say, the BLS was reporting that a record 4.8 million jobs were lost during those 12 months of economic collapse, when in fact the job loss total was actually 5.6 million.
They missed 824,000 lost jobs! Just to give you an idea of how many people that is, we’re talking about 10 percent of the population of the city of New York, and more people than the entire population of San Francisco.
And it gets worse. The same broken model was used for the next year, so that while we’ve been getting all those soothing words about how job losses are slowing, and about how the economy is going to start coming back, in fact, the number of jobs supposedly created or added during the past nine months has actually been overstated by almost one million! That would be the entire population of the cities of Seattle and Miami combined.
Technically, what happened is that the BLS was relying on an assumption that new businesses were forming all during these two periods, and that these new businesses were hiring people. That’s what happens during normal years, of course. But of course, any dunce without out an economics PhD could have told the BLS that over the past two years, which were hardly normal in any sense of the word, not many new businesses were being formed.
Read Full Article Here: Government Labor Statistics: Lies and Damned Lies | The Public Record.
Strange how today’s unemployment report shows unemployment dropping from 10% to 9.7% obviously reflecting the green shoots of recovery, when the labor statistics show a net loss of 20,000 jobs in January.
The true unemployment number is closer to 25%.
CNN.com: The government has your baby’s DNA
Posted on February 4, 2010 | Filed Under Critical Issues | Leave a Comment
When Annie Brown's daughter, Isabel, was a month old, her pediatrician asked Brown and her husband to sit down because he had some bad news to tell them: Isabel carried a gene that put her at risk for cystic fibrosis.
While grateful to have the information — Isabel received further testing and she doesn’t have the disease — the Mankato, Minnesota, couple wondered how the doctor knew about Isabel’s genes in the first place. After all, they’d never consented to genetic testing.
It’s simple, the pediatrician answered: Newborn babies in the United States are routinely screened for a panel of genetic diseases. Since the testing is mandated by the government, it’s often done without the parents' consent, according to Brad Therrell, director of the National Newborn Screening & Genetics Resource Center.
In many states, such as Florida, where Isabel was born, babies; DNA is stored indefinitely, according to the resource center.
Many parents don’t realize their baby’s DNA is being stored in a government lab, but sometimes when they find out, as the Browns did, they take action. Parents in Texas, and Minnesota have filed lawsuits, and these parents’; concerns are sparking a new debate about whether it’s appropriate for a baby’s genetic blueprint to be in the government’s possession.
Read Full Article Here: The government has your baby’s DNA – CNN.com.
msnbc.com: Dow tumbles nearly 270 on recovery worries
Posted on February 4, 2010 | Filed Under Critical Issues | Leave a Comment
Stocks buckled Thursday under the growing belief that the global economy is weaker than many investors expected and likely to stop companies from hiring. The Dow Jones industrials traded below 10,000 for the first time in three months.
A flood of bad news, including rising debt levels in European nations and an unexpected jump in the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits, had investors pulling money out of assets like stocks and commodities that look increasingly risky. Fears of more disappointing news Friday, when the government issues its January employment report, added to the selloff.
Demand for safer investments sent the dollar and Treasurys higher and the euro falling. Major indexes skidded as much as 3.1 percent to their lowest levels in three months. The Dow fell 268 points and briefly traded below 10,000 for the first time since Nov. 6.
Read Full Article Here: Dow tumbles nearly 270 on recovery worries – Stocks & economy- msnbc.com.
Apparently the fact that the fed and bailed out banks have been pushing the Dow higher is just now starting to sink in. America is not going to recover from the Great Decline.
Energy Bulletin: Endgame
Posted on February 4, 2010 | Filed Under Critical Issues | Leave a Comment
Friends of mine in a couple of midwestern states have mentioned that the steady trickle of refugees from the Chicago slums into their communities has taken a sharp turn up. There’s a long history of dysfunction behind this. Back in 1999, Chicago began tearing down its vast empire of huge high-rise projects, promising to replace them with less ghastly and more widely distributed housing for the poor. Most of the replacements, of course, never got built. When the waiting list for Section 8 rent subsidies, the only other option available, got long enough to become a public relations problem, the bureaucrats in charge simply closed the list to new applicants; rumors (hotly denied by the Chicago city government) claim that poor families in Chicago were openly advised to move to other states. Whether for that reason or simple economic survival, a fair number of them did.
The actual effects have been instructive. Squeezed between sharply contracting benefits and a sharply contracting job market, many of Chicago’s poor are hitting the road, heading in any direction that offers more options. Forget the survivalist fantasy of violent hordes pouring out of the inner cities to ravage everything in their path; today’s slum residents are instead becoming the Okies of the Great Recession. In the process, part of business as usual in the United States is coming to an end.
What this means, if I’m right, is that we may have just moved into the endgame of America’s losing battle with the consequences of its own history. For many years now, people in the peak oil scene – and the wider community of those concerned about the future, to be sure – have had, or thought they had, the luxury of ample time to make plans and take action. Every so often books would be written and speeches made claiming that something had to be done right away, while there was still time, but most people took that as the rhetorical flourish it usually was, and went on with their lives in the confident expectation that the crisis was still a long ways off.
We may no longer have that option. If I read the signs correctly, America has finally reached the point where its economy is so deep into overshoot that catabolic collapse is beginning in earnest. If so, a great many of the things most of us in this country have treated as permanent fixtures are likely to go away over the years immediately before us, as the United States transforms itself into a Third World country. The changes involved won’t be sudden, and it seems unlikely that most of them will get much play in the domestic mass media; a decade from now, let’s say, when half the American workforce has no steady work, decaying suburbs have mutated into squalid shantytowns, and domestic insurgencies flare across the south and the mountain West, those who still have access to cable television will no doubt be able to watch talking heads explain how we’re all better off than we were in 2000.
Those of my readers who haven’t already been beggared by the unraveling of what’s left of the economy, and have some hope of keeping a roof over their heads for the foreseeable future, might be well advised to stock their pantries, clear their debts, and get to know their neighbors, if they haven’t taken these sensible steps already. Those of my readers who haven’t taken the time already to learn a practical skill or two, well enough that others might be willing to pay or barter for the results, had better get a move on. Those of my readers who want to see some part of the heritage of the present saved for the future, finally, may want to do something practical about that, and soon. I may be wrong – and to be frank, I hope that I’m wrong – but it looks increasingly to me as though we’re in for a very rough time in the very near future.
Read Full Article Here: Endgame | Energy Bulletin.
Survival Sites
SurvivalBlog.com: Some Real World Battery Life Data, by Cactus Jim
Posted on February 8, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
Battery technology has come a long way in the last 10 years since Y2K. Back in the late 1990s, I stocked various types and brands of batteries for long term storage or use. Batteries ranged from store purchased alkaline, rechargeable alkalines, NiCd, generic deep cycle marine
batteries, gel-cell sealed lead acid, lithium and even the ubiquitous flooded lead acid Trojan T-105 floor scrubber batteries. I wrote dates on all the batteries and rechargeable batteries had logs kept of use and maintenance.
In most cases enough batteries were purchased to allow for a reasonable statistical sampling, thus providing a real level of confidence in the results. Note that the word battery and cell are often used below in singular, even though the same test was repeated multiple times on
different units. All voltages and times are given as composite averages of the tests, removing clear outlier data, such as an obviously failed cells that leaked electrolyte during storage.
Read Full Article Here: Some Real World Battery Life Data, by Cactus Jim – SurvivalBlog.com.
TheSurvivalistBlog.net: Review: Rawles Gets You Ready Preparedness Course
Posted on February 8, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
Before we start, I would like to thank Paul for donating his copy of the “Rawles Gets You Ready Preparedness Course” – now if I could get more readers to donate books and other related preparedness products for review I’d be set.
I admit being a little surprised when I opened the package. I was surprised that the “book” was nothing but 200 plus pages of 20 bound 8.5×11 copy paper printed on one side.
At first I thought Paul had simply sent a copy of the book, which would have been fine with me – but after doing more research, I quickly realized that this is the configuration as shipped from the publisher.
One thing is certain; The Rawles Gets You Ready Preparedness Course, isn’t short on wasted space or paper. By printing on both sides of the paper, length could have been cut in half. Font size is also larger than needed as is spacing between lines.
With proper editing and formatting the 200 or so pages, of The Rawles Gets You Ready Preparedness Course could easily be reduced to less than 100. To be honest if I had paid the asking price of $149.95, plus $12 shipping for this “course” I would have felt violated, ripped off and lied to.
Read Full Article Here: Review: Rawles Gets You Ready Preparedness Course.
Adventures in Self Reliance: Kids Prep Minute: Drills
Posted on February 8, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
Another post here about preparing with kids in the house. If you don’t have kids, read it anyway. Maybe it will get your imagination going on something you could do to be better prepared also.
Our topic today is drills, and I’m not talking about your favorite Makita here. I’m talking about practicing your emergency plans to the extent possible. If your kids are anything like mine, I can talk till I’m blue in the face and they amazingly can’t remember a thing I said five minutes later. Physically doing something reinforces what you talked about in their memories. Did mom say go left or right? But if they’ve run the drill and always gone right, there will be no question when the time comes to do it for real.
Drills or “emergency plan practice” also help to work out kinks in your plans you might not have known were even there.
Read Full Article Here: Adventures in Self Reliance: Kids Prep Minute: Drills.
Coffee with the Hermit: Special Day Coming Up Soon…!
Posted on February 8, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
As all of you know…Valentine's Day is coming up pretty soon.
That is traditionally the day for most folks to give some token of endearment to their partners. It can be small, it can be large…but that doesn't really matter as long as the gift is one given from the heart!
I think it's more important that ever to show some love and respect for those in our lives that offer their support and encouragement, be it lover or husband or wife! And we should never forget the young ones in our group! They face the same challenges and the same obstacles as the heads of the family…and are often more troubled by everyday happenings simply because we haven't taken the time to talk things over with them and offer up some reassurance.
Read Full Article Here: Coffee with the Hermit: Special Day Coming Up Soon…!.
bison survival blog: the accidental doomer
Posted on February 8, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
I know that generally you assume only great things from the keyboard of your favorite survivalist writer. That’s me, Bison, by the way in case you forgot. Usually by Sunday after a day’s rest I am inspired to deliver on that assumption. This time it almost didn’t happen and you came really close to getting a standard space filler such as a solar water heater. Don’t relax, it could still happen. But at the last minute I remembered an amusing tale I have been meaning to share with you, how your very same favorite author of all things paranoid and apocalyptic came to be such an enlightened guru for you. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been a survivalist for decades. But why did I take the dark path towards full blown despair and doom? No, I’m not talking about my unbalanced mental state. Rather, those small events in life that equal more in their sum than their parts. If it wasn’t for a few different events, I would still be content with 300 pounds of wheat berries, a water filter and a handgun. Instead, I am huddled inside my tin box in the desert, eagerly awaiting the crash of civilization. Why? Instead of just planning for a failed harvest or earthquake, caching enough supplies to cover 90% of possible disasters, why did I come to embrace the idea that we are all destined for the stewpot?
Read Full Article Here: bison survival blog: the accidental doomer.
Staying Alive: OPTIONS
Posted on February 8, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
The East coast mid-Atlantic states got a helluva snow storm this past weekend. Some places got over thirty inches of the ugly white stuff. And they are to get more this Tuesday. If you read The Ornery Bastard you can get a view of a Safeway store that has been hit with anxious shoppers in the storm area. Pretty dismal picture. But Busted Knuckles put those store pictures in the blog for a reason. It is for you to get a glimpse of what is gong to happen when the collapse comes. The scatter brained American public is going to panic and the stores will be empty IN A FLASH. And this is just for a snow storm. When the word gets out that there has been an economic collapse, all stores everywhere will be emptied. And if you get there in time to get some supplies, you might not get them through the parking lot and get them into your car. There will be people of no money or very little money out in the parking lot that will take them from you. This puts you in the position of having less money and no supplies. It may put you in the hospital or the morgue. The people of this country are on edge, big time. And when they get pushed to the edge they will push back on whomever is in their way. This is a fact and not a theory. I got on the lists and forums after Katrina and it was survival of the fittest, jungle rules, for a lot of people. I read about this one young couple who had a old man Grandfather who was a bit of a prepper. He has the fuel in a shed out behind his house that would get him to Dallas, Texas, and the home of a good friend. Their story of how they made it to Dallas from their home North of New Orleans was very interesting. Twice when they were pulled over to put fuel from one of their cans into the truck tank, they had to show their pistols to keep others at bay. And this was a few miles North of their home. At least a five gallon can’s worth.
Read Full Article Here: Staying Alive: OPTIONS.
Total Survivalist Libertarian Rantfest: Invisible Resistance to Tyranny In Progress Review
Posted on February 8, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
First of all it starts by talking about the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter. Basically the idea was that someone who is pursuing legitimate military type targets and trying to minimize collateral and civilian damage is a freedom fighter regardless of if you like their ideas. Conversely someone who is willing to target civilians and non military type targets is a terrorist. The extreme sides of this sliding scale are easy to identify. A person or group who kill a chief of police who has been running a death squad or an occupying force being identified as a freedom fighter is easy. A person or group that firebomb a preschool are obviously terrorists. There is a lot of gray in between black and white in this situation.
In the gray area we are likely to give benefit of doubt to people whose causes or beliefs we support. A 10 person cell can not expect success in attacking a fortified location where hundreds of armed personnel reside but they can get a good effect by attacking a place those people frequent. Lets say a bomb was placed in a “soft target” like a restaurant or bar frequented by the targeted group. That bomb explodes at a peak time (say 10PM on a Friday night for a bar or lunchtime at a popular restaurant. It kills several of the targeted group and wounds 20 more. Also the bomb kills the establishments owner, a couple employees, a few random unlucky people and wounds another dozen of the same. If you hate the targeted group this was a legitimate target and the actions were just. If your brother who just needed to earn a living was unlucky enough to be working the kitchen that day the outlook will be different. The middle is very murky indeed.
Read Full Article Here: Total Survivalist Libertarian Rantfest: Invisible Resistance to Tyranny In Progress Review.
Sixbears in the Woods: Status
Posted on February 8, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
For me status was never about the stuff you have. It's cool to have interesting stuff, but it doesn’t make you an interesting person. Money was never much of a motivator. It’s a marker in a game that bores me.
My dad had and has status -at least in the way I measure it. Knowledge is a big part of it. Formal education is nice to have, but never let education get in the way of your learning. The thing that always impressed me about dad was he’s the guy people go to solve problems. He’s a figure it out sort of guy. Never makes much money for the stuff he does. Even in his mid seventies, he’s the problem solver in the retirement park. He doesn’t charge for what he does, but he does accept donations.
Read Full Article Here: Sixbears in the Woods: Status.
Boniface’s Treatise: Field Dressing A Hog
Posted on February 7, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
The Eagle found this video the other day and sent me the link. I admire the guy’s control over the blade. I think the knife is a Mora, but that is neither here nor there. Any sharp knife should get the job done.
I will have to pick my neighbor’s brain. Yesterday I did talk to him for a little bit, but Meine Frau was in a hurry, which cut the conversation short. He was telling me 30-40lbs and under makes for the best eating when it comes to hogs. After that the larger the hog the nastier it will get, which ended with him complaining about a 300lbs kill. The man has been hunting since he was knee high, and even has an armadillo recipe. Gotta love the boys from Central/West Texas, but then again I am biased about regions.
Read Full Article Here: Boniface’s Treatise: Field Dressing A Hog.
bison survival blog: book review:militia porn
Posted on February 7, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
Militia porn is a diversion. It is pure entertainment. Not that some of its basic tenets won’t come to pass, but the simple fact is that you have much bigger problems ahead besides gun confiscation and semi-auto bans. Like the coming famine. If not this year from drought than in a year or three from oil declines. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be smart to bury a rifle and some ammo. It will, for various reasons besides NATO ninja troops kicking in your door. Like when the fire department is underfunded and lets your house burn, you have a backup for protection.
Read Full Article Here: bison survival blog: book review:militia porn.
American Apocalypse: Survival notebook.
Posted on February 7, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
Just a reminder to start or update your survival notebook.If your like me you have millions of bookmarks,videos,blogs,websites,etc.But if the net goes away so does most of your info.When I first started notebook,I thought it was an original idea,Ha nope.
But it is a great idea.By the time your done it will be huge or take several to store that much info.And dont put it off,remember one minute too late? A lazy Sunday is a great time to start it.And do store it in waterproof Bag or container.
Read Full Article Here: American Apocalypse: Survival notebook..
Accept The Challenge: Ron Paul, Soup and PMs
Posted on February 7, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
Just Add Water Recipe – Creamy Cheddar Potato Soup
It is brain-dead easy and extremely good. Seriously good.
Makes 4 cups
Read Full Article Here: Accept The Challenge: Ron Paul, Soup and PMs.
Sixbears in the Woods: Tent Living
Posted on February 7, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
It’s one thing to occasionally spend a weekend in a tent. Living in a tent for months on end is a whole different experience.
There are some things that always matter no matter how long you camp. Don't pitch your tent in a low spot where rain water will pool. Never leave food in the tent. Don’t cook in the tent -stuff like that.
If you are going to spend any time at all in tent, get a good one. We usually buy ours from L. L. Bean or Eastern Mountain Sports. We travel with two tents. One a 2 person, 4 season tent. It's small, low to the ground, and very good in high winds. It can also take a fair amount of snow loading. For our other tent we prefer a 6 – 8 person, 3 season tent. I’m 6′3″ and I like a tent I can stand up in. Very handy for getting dressed.
We use the small winter tent for tight places where there's not enough room for the big tent. If it’s extremely windy or cold, that's the tent we use. Sometimes we set it up because we are only staying one night. We’ve also used this small dark colored tent in places where we did not want to get noticed. Another good thing about traveling with two tents, there’s a backup if something happens to one of them.
Read Full Article Here: Sixbears in the Woods: Tent Living.
Snow
Posted on February 7, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
Apparently the eastern portion of the US is getting a unusually large amount of snow. Me, I love snow. It makes everything quiet, pretty and just plain peaceful. Right up until you have to drive in it.
Remember the first rule of surviving a disaster? Yeah, well there’s always going to be someone who ignores the weather advisories. The National Weather Service has this advice:
Read Full Article Here: Snow.
SurvivalBlog.com: Where Have All the Dutch Ovens Gone?, by Curtis M.
Posted on February 7, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
A recent post on SurvivalBlog was about baking bread and it talked about building an oven to bake bread to give out for charity. As I read the article I was wondering why there are not many articles on Dutch ovens on the blog. Anything that can be baked in a regular oven can be baked in a Dutch oven or cooked on a stove top for that matter. The way a Dutch oven works is 2/3 of the coals are on the top and 1/3 goes on the bottom. The lid has a lip that holds coals on top. They can also be stacked one on top of the other with the large on bottom smaller on top so a complete meal can be prepared all at once, also conserve fuel. Yeah you have to learn how to use one and yes there is a learning curve. Dutch ovens come in a large range of sizes from small desert size to 16 inch 12 quart behemoths. They use any fuel available and do not add a smokey flavor to the product being cooked. In fact when the wagon trains came west in the 1800s while crossing the prairie the only fuel available was Buffalo dung.
Read Full Article Here: Where Have All the Dutch Ovens Gone?, by Curtis M. – SurvivalBlog.com.
American Preppers Network: Can We All Get Along?
Posted on February 6, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
Is it possible for a group of individuals to mesh together and for the sake of survival? Can they forget their previous ways of handling problems to make it work? The answer is that it all depends on the personalities of the group members. A group should have a balanced set of personalities. These personalities, when combined together, should make the group a strong and unified force. For a group to be successful, the group should have a set of principles that each member should possess. For example, consider the following values:
Read Full Article Here: American Preppers Network: Can We All Get Along?.
bison survival blog: druid dread
Posted on February 6, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
Druid Dude seems to be saying that his view of the future has started coming true much faster than he had previously thought. I can’t see him saying that we are going to have a waterfall collapse. My view, and while I try to live under its assumption I also acknowledge that I could be overly paranoid, is that we are headed for a waterfall. A constant series of small failures until suddenly the tripping point is reached and we fall straight down. His view, and he can proudly also point to living what he preaches, is that collapse is a staircase. We go straight ahead, hit a problem and fall down slightly, then make adjustments and continue straight ahead until the next small fall and adjustment. Remember, we both base our assumptions on the same book. Which, by the way, is really the only book you need on understanding the coming collapse. I think he is wrong in his views but that does not diminish my respect for him on an intellectual level.
Read Full Article Here: bison survival blog: druid dread.
TheSurvivalistBlog.net: What Did You Do To Prep This Week?
Posted on February 6, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
Many of you suggested we bring back the weekly “What Did You Do To Prep This Week” segment of the blog. I think this is a good idea. Seeing what others are doing to further their preparedness can give ideas and encouragement to those still procrastinating. Or set the idea wheels spinning for those of us who have been in this for a while.
We should all strive to do something, even if it is only something small, each week to better our preparedness level. While it may be impossible or at least unrealistic for most of us to put away a case of ammo and 500 pounds of hard red winter wheat each week, it should be our goal to do something, no matter how small, to increase our level of preparedness.
For instance; This week I went through the contents of my bug-out bag (if I’m forced to retreat from my homestead by a superior force) I try to do this at least two times per year adding and replacing contents as needed while at the same time looking for weakness in the system and correcting any potential problems.
Read Full Article Here: What Did You Do To Prep This Week?.
Sixbears in the Woods: Utility Trailers
Posted on February 6, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
Yesterday my blog was about roof racks. One little aside was that a good set of roof racks can save you the expense of a utility trailer. This post is about utility trailers. What gives? There are times when a good utility trailer is just the thing for the job.
It can save someone the expense of buying and maintaining a truck. A lot of people own a big truck because a few times of the year they do things like haul compost. 99% of the time, they don’t really need a truck. Driving a fuel efficient car that occasionally pulls a trailer would save them an awful lot of money. True, there is the expense of installing a trailer hitch and buying a trailer. It can be done on the cheap.
Read Full Article Here: Sixbears in the Woods: Utility Trailers.
SurvivalBlog.com: Lessons Learned from the Oklahoma Ice Storm of 2010
Posted on February 6, 2010 | Filed Under Survival Sites | Leave a Comment
The Oklahoma Ice Storm of 2010 is now melting away and as usual there were lessons learned. Many of these should have been “known” before but we are never as prepared as we should be. In that vein I am going to rehash several things that went right, a few that went wrong, and others that we can improve on the next time that “life as usual” is not.
First, the setting: I live in Southwestern Oklahoma and have been here for almost three years. About January 22nd we started getting word of an impending ice/snow storm scheduled to hit on about January 28th. As the storm came together we received updates that refined the details. The reports of January 27th were remarkably accurate to what we would receive as well as the specific times that each type of precipitation would start to fall.
Read Full Article Here: Two Letters Re: Lessons Learned from the Oklahoma Ice Storm of 2010 – SurvivalBlog.com.
