Tag: technocracy

What My Peace Corps Service Taught Me About Global Governance, Medical Coercion and Cancel Culture

This post is inspired by Alison McDowell’s series, Letters from the Labyrinth.

Attention all Dandelions!

I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Czech Republic from 1994-1996, returning there in 1998-9 to teach at the Natural Sciences Faculty at Charles University in Prague.

I’ve written often about my experience and consider those years to have been formative on many levels, including that which defines my worldview to the present day.

While I have written often about those years, I have shared almost no criticism about my time there or the Peace Corps as an institution. I wrote a blog with other Returned Peace Corps Volunteers for several years, from which I was unceremoniously deplatformed as soon as I ventured into (unbeknownst to me at the time) the forbidden territory of ‘conspiracy theory’.

The Peace Corps was established in 1961 by John F. Kennedy.
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

From Wiki:
“On March 1, 1961, Kennedy signed Executive Order 10924 that officially started the Peace Corps. Concerned with the growing tide of revolutionary sentiment in the Third World, Kennedy saw the Peace Corps as a means of countering the stereotype of the “Ugly American” and “Yankee imperialism,” especially in the emerging nations of post-colonial Africa and Asia.[28][29] Kennedy appointed his brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, to be the program’s first director. Shriver fleshed out the organization and his think tank outlined the organization’s goals and set the initial number of volunteers. The Peace Corps began recruiting in July 1962; Bob Hope recorded radio and television announcements hailing the program.”

Globalism, before it was cool.

The organization was in the Czech Republic for only seven years.
From the Peace Corps’ ‘legacy booklet’:

“Through the work and contributions of Volunteers, the Peace Corps has emerged as a model of success for efforts to promote sustainable development at the grass-roots level. The Peace Corps, however, is much more than a development agency. Volunteers embody some of America’s most enduring values: optimism, freedom, and opportunity. Volunteers bring these values to communities around the world not to impose them on other people or cultures, but to build the bridges of friendship and understanding that are the foundation of peace among nations.”

A portion of Vaclav Havel’s parting statement to the Peace Corps:
“The results of the Peace Corps’ work can be seen throughout the Republic. The Peace Corps assisted in establishing many new libraries, completed more than 100 ecological projects, and gave more than one thousand Czech entrepreneurs the opportunity to gain new business experience.” Prague, 1997

Ambassador Shirley Temple Black attended the official opening of the Peace Corps office in Prague in 1991.

Shirley Temple Black’s Remarkable Second Act as a Diplomat | History| Smithsonian Magazine

Speaking of Temple-Black:
According to Kounalakis, “Her personal and informal style worked well with the new government, made up of formerly imprisoned, hard laboring and human rights Charter 77-signing artists, musicians, actors and a playwright president named Vaclav Havel. Many of those new Czechoslovak political leaders admired their American colleague, President Ronald Reagan, an actor-politician like themselves who expressed in the clearest terms – and to the whole world – their deepest desire for freedom.”

The dissident playwright turned politician, President Vaclav Havel’s wife was also a famous actress. Olga Havlová – Wikipedia

Also from Wiki:

“Havel was born in Prague on 5 October 1936[8] into a wealthy family celebrated in Czechoslovakia for its entrepreneurial and cultural accomplishments. His grandfather, Vácslav Havel, a real estate developer, built a landmark entertainment complex on Prague’s Wenceslas Square. His father, Václav Maria Havel, was the real estate developer behind the suburban Barrandov Terraces, located on the highest point of Prague—next door to which his uncle, Miloš Havel, built one of the largest film studios in Europe.[9] Havel’s mother, Božena Vavrečková,[10] also came from an influential family; her father was a Czechoslovak ambassador and a well-known journalist.

“He was known for his essays, most particularly The Power of the Powerless (1978), in which he described a societal paradigm in which citizens were forced to “live within a lie” under the Communist regime.[19] In describing his role as a dissident, Havel wrote in 1979: “we never decided to become dissidents. We have been transformed into them, without quite knowing how, sometimes we have ended up in prison without precisely knowing how. We simply went ahead and did certain things that we felt we ought to do, and that seemed to us decent to do, nothing more nor less.”[20]

Remembering Ambassador Shirley Temple Black – U.S. Embassy in   The Czech Republic

++++

Me, 1994, naive and idealistic

As far as Peace Corps assignments go, I was sometimes rightly chided as having ‘served’ in the “Paris of the Peace Corps.” I did not live in a village in a shack without running water, as is often the stereotype, and sometimes the reality.

I got lucky, very lucky in fact. I was assigned to a brand new school, with a private office, and lived in the vacated 2-bedroom flat of the school’s principal. It even had a private phone.

At the Ambassador’s Residence in Prague, feeling sophisticated.
Champagne socialism, free-market capitalism? Who knew, who cared?!

A short time after arriving I was summoned to the state-of-the-art, just being organized, computer room. I had requested an e-mail address. The teacher running the show was excited, thrilled even, to have someone even remotely interested in his very claustrophobic cyber-world.

The enormous room was full of donated equipment, mostly used, monitors and hard-drives and equipment I didn’t recognize were stacked up on every inch of the floor and only he and a handful of others knew how to use it all, or even cared to use any of it.

And new shipments were coming in at a regular clip. He couldn’t keep up with all the offerings.

At the same time, the old Soviet materials were stacked up on the street twice a week to be hauled away by the trash crew. Huge stacks of newspapers, magazines, books, busts, badges, portraits that seemed bottomless in those early days.

“We just traded one Big Brother for another,” one teacher quipped.

I was thrilled to be there. I fully expected to find, as per the slogan, “The toughest job you’ll ever love.” Bring it on, I thought.

But, I was young and naive and idealistic and I didn’t understand bureaucracy. I was dumb enough to think I was supposed to be honest on the seemingly endless ‘ratings forms’ we were required to complete. Instead of spend five minutes giving five stars and glowing reports to any and all activities and instructors like most of my fellows, I actually thought about it, wrote what I thought needed improvement, made suggestions I thought would be helpful.

That got me labeled as a complainer almost immediately, I later learned.

One thing we weren’t supposed to complain about was the vaccine schedule. Even though some volunteers were insisting they were getting sick from it.

However, the Volunteer Handbook was unequivocal. “Also during Staging, you will be given immunizations that are required for overseas travel and for re-entry into the United States. Please do not obtain any immunization before going to Staging. If you are sensitive to any immunizing agents or medications, or have religious reservations concerning the taking of immunizations or medications, you should notify the Office of Medical Services before accepting an invitation to training.”

Another touchy topic for the form-police was concerning which projects got funded. My grant request for the impoverished orphanage for ‘Romany’ (Gypsy) children was rejected, while seemingly less necessary funding was granted to other projects, especially those in cooperation with other agencies, like USAID (in our case, for English-language textbooks), in more recent cases, it’s known for such causes as: With USAID Support, Ukraine’s Tech Sector Thrives Despite Russia’s Full-Scale War | Ukraine | Press Release | U.S. Agency for International Development

Other project missions had impressive corporate sponsors, like the English-language essay contest about women’s role in Czech society, organized by Fran Aun, currently a Public Relations professional with such current successes as the trans campaign:

You can pee next to me!

Fran Aun’s efforts in Prague got me noticed. Hmmm, yikes?

Me, so proud, sitting at the table in the middle for our celebratory cruise on the Vltava, because my students dominated the essay contest winning multiple corporate-sponsored prizes, including a new computer for my 1st place winner and a super fancy new copy machine for my school.

The Peace Corps is now hiring for a new position: Climate Financing Support Specialist.

My Report Card for the Agency, according to their own stated goals:

1.  To help the people of such countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained manpower, particularly in meeting the basic needs of those living in the poorest areas of such countries,
2.  And to help promote a better understanding of the American people on the part of the peoples served
3.  And a better understanding of other peoples on the part of the American people.

As for goal number one, I give a C-. I do not consider an essay questioning women’s role in modern society to be more in line with basic needs of the poorest children in orphanages.

As for goal number two, I give a B+. That is, considering the people who were actually served were not those needing to meet basic needs, but those with an American-loving entrepreneurial spirit, that seems ‘fair’, I guess.

As for goal number three, I give an unequivocal F. The only stories that are allowed are those demonstrating our relentless positivity and the plate-spinning and mask juggling and illusions of a thousand other cultures who apparently dream of becoming just like U.S.

What I actually learned in my service from the Czech people, and tried to bring back home to fulfill the 3rd goal was categorical rejected by the current day Peace Corps: suspicion of government, especially volunteering; the critical importance of life skills; self-reliance over government reliance; local aid over foreign aid; and in fact, a good dose of paranoia, which was rampant among the Czechs, and would be wisely adopted by the majority of U.S. in the present times.

The line between entrepreneurs, civil servants, and philanthropists was breached ages ago, and it seems like Americans might be the last to know.

Fellow RPCV TEFL Volunteer, Antonio Lopez, “While I was serving my term as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I was definitely aware that a large scale societal change was under way, and that I was taking part in it. I guess I felt that way because I was a teacher working with teenagers, people who are always in a process of change and seeing the world around them with fresh eyes.”

The Illusion of Abundance

I grew up on fast food, TV dinners, mac & cheese, like most middle class Americans. And I liked it, like most middle class Americans. Because, I didn’t know any better. Like most middle class Americans.

We had a constant supply of chips, cookies, candy, coke, and all things convenience. Our cupboards and fridge were never empty. I never worried I would go hungry.

And yet, I know now, decades later, I was malnourished. I know this in retrospect, like I know now I was also vaccine injured. It is not until you know what real nourishment feels like, what real health feels like, that you can recognize its opposite.

I feel like I was one of the lucky ones. I saw it in time. I traveled, so I saw how different my normal actually was, in the wider context. No other culture ate like we did. Every other culture was healthier than we were. It has since changed in the last decades, as more cultures adapt to Western, particularly the modern American, faux-food diet.

But this realization is far from new or unique. As James Corbett so well documents, and I’m elaborating on now with personal anecdote, food as a weapon is not new or unique.

https://mises.org/library/what-caused-irish-potato-famine

When was food weaponized? Well, let’s just say, it’s been a minute.

My food upbringing was normalized and enhanced— baby formula replacing breast feeding, a dozen vaccines added per decade, cooking from scratch becoming obsolete, supplements becoming de rigeur, pharmaceuticals coming to rule the world of health where food once reigned.

And the conquering continues.

Corbett:
“The answer is simple. We are witnessing a controlled demolition of the food supply chain, one that is intended to result in the destruction of the current industrial farming system as we know it. But this changeover is not intended to return us to truly sustainable farming practices, with local, organic farmers producing crops in accordance with age-old agricultural wisdom. Far from it.
As it turns out, the “solution” to this food crisis being proffered by the billionaires of the corporate-pharmaceutical-medical-industrial-philanthrocapital-military complex is being engineered in laboratories and sold to the public via a bought-and-paid-for mainstream media.
One thing is for certain: the future of food will look very different from anything that we have seen in human history.

Scientists are bioengineering spores that can be inserted into crops and livestock, allowing companies to identify and track food products all the way through the food system, from farm to factory to fork.
DARPA is doling out multi-million-dollar contracts for researchers to find ways “to turn military plastic waste into protein powder” for human consumption.
A company called Amai Proteins is using genetically engineered microbes to create peptides that taste like sugar but are digested like proteins. And the best (read: worst) part is that, “[a]lthough these microbes are technically genetically engineered, the desired products can be purified and legally sold as non-GMO”!”

https://open.substack.com/pub/corbettreport/p/what-is-the-future-of-food?r=apljy&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Just as my home cupboards were full, todays grocery stores are full. As we suffer mass malnutrition.

Yes, some claim shortages because they can no longer find cheap cat food. Whatever.

A food supply abundant with non-nourishing food is worse than empty store shelves. Exponentially worse. We are a population lulled into the illusion of abundance for the last six decades plus.

If you think that’s not a deliberate and highly effective conquering strategy, you are a fool.

Those Were The Days

Sometimes it’s the simplest things that invite in the nostalgia for days long gone. Just this morning I was recalling the times of my youth—until just about a decade ago—when during all that time I used to practice the seasonal closet.

I thought this was normal! So silly of me, so childish. I see that now. But, in my defense, it was such a common thing. Everyone in my family did this, and most of my friends, too. Little did I know those were the good ole days, never to be appreciated again. If only I’d known. I definitely would’ve savored those times more, not treating them as just normal life. It is with significant chagrin that I now understand the ephemeral flight of fancy that seasonal world really was.

There was such a pleasant and proper order to it, you know? You’ve got your summer clothes—the shorts and tank tops and swimming suits and sandals—and there’s only so much room in a closet or in a chest of drawers. It made perfect sense that we would pack up our summer things once autumn came to make way for our sweaters and boots and woolens. Those were some good times!

How we used to love to rummage through those boxes again, having been lost for months out of sight, and then just like an impromptu Christmas, you’d find sweaters in there you totally forgot about and it was like having a whole new wardrobe again! Even moving south did not change this quaint habit—summer closet, winter closet—just a smaller shift of degrees and heavier on the summer selections.

Now my summer crocks sit next to winter boots sit next to slippers sit next to flip flops. Oh, the visual chaos! The sweaters are folded awkwardly next to tank tops. Linen being felt up by Fleece. It’s just, wrong. So wrong. The wool socks are in a false embrace with the anklets. Who can even make sense of the accessories?! The scarves, poor things, silk on wool, just imagine their mutual discomfort.

Last week, this week.
Yo-Yo Season, the New Normal

As if the wardrobe malfunctionings are not enough, there’s the critters, domesticated and wild. And the plants. The dogs and goats shed only to shiver the next week. The buds open only to get killed by frost. All season long.

But, progress has it costs, I get it. The future children will adjust to weather whiplash, and be all the stronger for it. That’s so reassuring. The great minds of Bill Gates and David Keith will come together and all will be scientifically managed in perfect harmony. Nature was so terribly cumbersome for the Great Ones. They deserve better. All the children will be so happy when we are watched over eternally by machines of love and grace.

Food Gratitude

My first deep dive down the conspiracy theory trail was not Geoengineering/Weather Modification, though that’s where I find myself most often these days. Rather, it was food, and health.

I was already well down that particular trail for years before attending a very large conference in Washington, DC where one of the hot topics was GMOs.

One of the speakers was an African woman who had some official title in some African country. All the details about her escape me now, except for one thing she said. She was speaking to us ‘anti-GMO’ types in the audience, and there were a lot of us. She was referring to our privilege to be able to take such a stance as Americans when there were people starving all around the globe.

Of course, that wasn’t the first time I’d heard such a claim. But something about her—a very large, dark-skinned woman donned in her traditional dress with quite a commanding presence—made me waffle, for just a moment. In that moment I looked around the room and realized her statement was having a similar effect on others. As she went on in that line of lecturing, they began to nod and look a bit sheepish after having just feverishly applauded the opposing stance.

It was, after all, a mostly Progressive crowd of over-40s who were clearly well-to-do, judging by the cost of the conference and the topics discussed. She was shaming us, and it was working.

Later on, when I was considering her words while not among the approving crowd, I thought, I wonder how many anti-GMO activists she just converted. She was effective, no doubt. But she wasn’t saying anything new, it was the same diplomatic version of—if you don’t feed Africa with GMO crops we will starve, so save your do-goody, anti-science rhetoric for those who can afford to hear it.

What I hear her saying is actually this: We want a quick fix, a short-term solution for a long-term problem. Then when that solution fails, come in with another one. And then another. If you keep selling those solutions, we’ll keep buying them.

“On the Corruption of GM Science,” John stated, “There is no balance in the GM research field or in the peer-review process or in the publication process. For this we have to thank corporate ownership of science, or at least this brand of it . . . Scientific integrity is one loser, and the public interest is another.” Dr. Brian John to GM Science Review, 2003

2003! It’s almost 20 years and it’s only gotten worse.
(I’ve been writing about it since 2009 if you’d like to see some of those old posts with some very telling comments still attached: Starting From Scratch – Kensho Homestead)

Why do we continue to allow our own Food Gratitude to poison the world with Food Idiocracy?

I’m very grateful my better half contributes whole-heartedly in our efforts to maintain food wisdom on the wee homestead and in cyber-discussions on the topic. Here’s a bit of recent data he’s compiled.

Have you heard the latest?
Well, line up folks, the Food Pyramid is back, new and improved!

Welcome to the ‘Food Compass’!*

What will you find in this 200+ page document crafted by top university scientists?

https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs43016-021-00381-y/MediaObjects/43016_2021_381_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Egg substitutes scored high than real eggs!
Over seventy processed breakfast cereals scored higher than a boiled egg. Even one called “Malt-O-Meal Marshmallow Mateys”, cause if its got marshmallows its gotta be good for you. 🤮

Some interesting rankings (the higher the score the ‘better’):
Almond milk, unsweetened, chocolate 91
Soy milk, light 75
Chocolate milk, made from no sugar added dry mix with non‐dairy milk (Nesquik) 73
Hot chocolate / Cocoa, made with no sugar added dry mix and non‐dairy milk 70
Whole milk 46

Frosted Mini-wheats is ranked as healthier than ground beef,
Lucky Charms as healthier than chicken…

TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein)** gets a perfect score of 100
Higher than any red meat, poultry, or seafood except Halibut or Tuna
The best poultry: Braised Chicken Liver 71
Boiled goat head and Cooked beaver 43
The best red meat: Raw Ground Beef 38
Braised Beef steak 23

They also list IMITATION cheese as healthier than 40+ of the “real” cheeses listed. (For example cheddar, Monteray, colby, gouda, feta, etc…..).

*”Food Compass is a nutrient profiling system which ranks foods based on their healthfulness using characteristics that impact health in positive or negative ways. It was developed by the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.”

The Healthiest Foods You Can Eat, Ranked by Scientists

** “For TVP, first you extract oil from the soybeans using hexane (which leaves about 20 ppm hexane behind in TVP), followed by a sequence of other similarly appetizing processes to degum, bleach, deodorize, and neutralize the taste of the oil. The solids left over are defatted soy flour. That is cooked and extruded through a nozzle into various shapes and sizes, exiting the nozzle while still hot and expanding as it does so. Sometimes some higher-protein concentrate or isolate is also used. The defatted thermoplastic proteins are heated to 300–390 °F, which denatures them into a fibrous, insoluble, porous network that can soak up as much as three times its weight in liquids. As the pressurized molten protein mixture exits the extruder, the sudden drop in pressure causes rapid expansion into a puffy solid that is then dried (it’s basically “shot from guns” like Cocoa Puffs). As much as 50% protein when dry, it is approximately 16%, similar to meat, when rehydrated, and various artificial colors and synthetic flavors can be added during the process to make it imitate different kinds of meat.”

For further reading:

Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation by F. William Engdahl 2007

Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public by Steven M. Druker 2015

Foodopoly: The Battle Over The Future Of Food And Farming in America by Wenonah Hauter 2012

Two excellent newer articles at Corey’s Digs:

NEW Controlled Food System Is Now In Place And They Will Stop At Nothing To Accelerate Their Control
New “Food is Medicine” Nutrition Screening, RX, Tracking and Control

Still This Love Crap

Have you ever experienced unrequited love? Ever love someone who was so out of your league they didn’t know you existed? Ever been horribly, unfairly, unceremoniously jilted by a lover? Ever love someone for years who treated you like shit most of the time? Ever love someone who turned out to be completely different than the one you thought you fell in love with?

Ever tried to muster up feelings of love for someone or something you did not, could not, love?

And yet still, despite its ephemeral nature—from its meaning, to its translation, to how it is individually experienced—some of our greatest thinkers, philosophers, social critics, poets, not to mention a good chunk of pop culture, still repeats “Love is the answer.”

We should love everyone and especially nature. That’s what’s wrong with the world, they insist, not enough love. And every time I hear this, I roll my eyes, even when it comes from someone I love.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b08njtjg

Most recently I heard it in an interview coming from Wendell Berry (link). How someone so inspiring, who has led such a charmed and wholesome and respectable life, who now at an advanced age seems so wise, could repeat such nonsense confirms for me only one thing: “We don’t see things for what they are, we see them for what we are.”

Love is the answer to the West’s problems, they say, because you take care of what you love. And the younger thinker and social critic Paul Kingsnorth agrees with him.

How lovely.

Now here’s a homework assignment I’d love to give to these fools. Kingsnorth likes to study tribal cultures, which I think is really cool. He likes them because they have a solid home in nature, unlike Westerners. And I agree. So, I think he should ask all those tribal folks their opinions about this ‘love’ solution so many Western thinkers keep harping on about.

My bet is, it doesn’t translate. At all. I bet he’d have to write an entire essay for them about what he means by love in the first place, let alone how he expects that will solve anything.

How do you make someone love you? Or care about you? I have a difficult time imagining a more monumental task. And yet, somehow those who care about nature are tasked with getting those very great many, like the Technocrats and their vast entourages, to not only love it, but to respect it, to care for it, to nurture it even. Seriously?

What a debilitating delusion they are spewing. And not just once or twice out of an understandable desperation. But constantly, for decades now.

Yet to call it out for the obvious shallow fantasy that it is, I become the bitch.

Well then, so be it. Let me play that role for a minute or two right now.

Imagine Mother Nature is your very own mother. Maybe you love your mother, let’s give it the benefit of the doubt. You love her, but your sisters love her more. And your mother and your sisters are screaming at you—“You don’t love me!” “You don’t care about me!” “You are exploiting me and you must stop!”

How will you respond to their shrieks and demands of love and care? Deny your lack of love, perhaps? Maybe yell back that they are all wrong about you? Maybe ask what they mean by that?

You might be so sure of your love that you ask what you can do to prove it?

Maybe Mom replies she wants you to write her a poem professing your loving feelings. So you do. You go even further, and you write 10 poems and throw in a tediously long essay to boot. And you’re very proud of your efforts and you feel you’ve really captured the intense love you have for her.

And she says she likes them, even the tediously long essay. In fact, everyone who loves her also agrees how perfectly you’ve captured those feelings of love through your words. Astonishing.

But, after all, those are just words, and you said to love her is to care for her, so she wants to see some action.

So with the same zeal you wrote the ten poems and tediously long essay you tackle the part where your loving words become caring actions.

You chop wood and carry water for her. You refrain from any negativity in her presence, because she doesn’t like it. You insist that everyone in her company, through shame or coercion or even force, abide by her rules and preferences.

At long last, she is satisfied with your efforts. You can feel the power of her appreciation filling your heart and coursing through your veins.

She tells you, “Child, you are a true master of loving care!”

“Except, you see, there’s so many children over there who don’t love me. And their lack of love for me is upstaging your love. Their lack of love is demonstrably more powerful than your true love. What can you do about this?”

And you reply, “Great Mother, don’t you worry, I can make them love you like I do!”

Really? Can you? What makes you so sure about that?

You read them your poems, and they smirk. Then they read your tediously long essay and shrug. You show them your admirable work in fetching wood and carrying water for your Great Mother, and they respond by clear cutting your forest and damming your river.

Then they tell you their favorite joke, laughing all along.

The joke goes like this: There were these three dudes on a yacht. One was an American, another was Russian, and the third one was Mexican. They were all drinking and getting boastful as drunken men like to do.

The Russian said, “In my country, we have so much vodka we can afford to throw it away!” And he takes a full bottle of vodka and throws it into the ocean.

They all laugh harder. So, the Mexican says, “In my country, we have so much tequila we can afford to throw it away!” And he takes a full bottle of tequila and throws it overboard.

And they all laugh harder still. Then the American says, “Well, in my country we have so many . . .

And he picks up the Mexican and throws him overboard.

The Russian and American look at each and howl with laughter. And the American blurts out between guffaws, “Tough love!”

To The Holy Spirit

O Thou, far off and here, whole and broken,
Who in necessity and in bounty wait,
Whose truth is light and dark, mute though spoken,
By Thy wide grace show me Thy narrow gate.

Wendell Berry

Squash Mysteries

Hey, you bee, you got my cucumber in my Trombetta!
Right?!

Some interesting twists and turns in the garden, as usual.

I did realize that cross-pollinating between cucumbers and squash do occur. It’s result is sometimes ‘parthenocarpic’, fruit that is seedless.

But, different fruits off the same plant?
This is news to me.
But, I’ll bet the Robo-Bees in the future technocrazy will have an ap for that!

These really did come off the same plant, same age, Hubby just happened to harvest some before I got a side-by-side photo. Next time.

I have the big seed-saving goals this year, but there is a learning curve for sure.

Because of space requirements, and that learning curve that seems to be getting steeper by the month, I decided to start with just a few crops. I already do most of the herbs, and the other easy stuff, like okra and sunflowers. I’ve ventured slightly into peppers and tomatoes, with negligable results.

Cucumbers, melons and squash are all in the ‘challenging’ category. I thought I planned correctly when I put the ones I want to seed-save at opposite ends of the garden, but then. . .

In my reference book, The Complete Guide to Saving Seeds by Robert & Cheryl Gough, it seems pretty hopeless. “Recommended isolation distance for varieties that can cross-pollinate is 1 1/2 to 2 miles; recommended isolation distance for other Cucurbita species is 1/4 mile.”

As in, Miles?! Oh my.

And furthermore, there’s another squash mystery. I’ve got zucchini right by Trombetta, as already mentioned. Yet the zucchini leaves, which look gorgeous, better than I’ve ever seen them, are flowering, and not producing. Yet the cucumbers and Trombetta are producing like crazy, and the Trombetta leaves are not really looking too good.

Zucchini in foreground looking happy, Trombetta at left, yellowing

Any gardener, myself included, would immediately claim a gorgeous zucchini plant flowering just fine, but not producing, is the result of poor pollination.

But, I know, that’s highly unlikely. First, I’ve seen bees on them. Second, the nearby Trombetta and cucumber, also bee-pollinated, are producing just fine.

So, what gives?

And furthermore, more, why does spellcheck capitalize Trombetta and not zucchini?

I’m open to facts, theories, or random guesses.

Human Capital Markets

Yes, it’s a thing and it sounds a lot like modern slavery.

Social Impact Investing. Doesn’t that sound super? Now the corporations and governments, through their other super sounding ‘Public-Private Partnerships’ (the latest fancy phrase for fascism) will be openly programming your children, no more beating around the bush about it.

This is about surveillance, its proliferation and its management. It’s also exactly why I quit teaching. It became painfully obvious within the university systems involved with educational technology that this was the direction they were heading years ago.

They tried to sell it to us all wrapped in glowing marketing slogans, appealing to teachers’ better instincts to help their students. Most teachers, like 99% of them, bought it, no questions asked. Surveillance does not help people, it life-squashes them. It is not a long-term motivational strategy either, it does not help with coaching, all it does is invade folks’ minds and lives.

Of course, they are going to say everything you want to hear—they know we need a heavy coating of sugar to take our medicine. It’s all about helping the poor, raising all boats, no child left behind, build back better bullshit.

But “Pay for Success Financing” is not about helping people, it’s about making money off poverty. Like the old saying goes:

“If shit had value, the poor wouldn’t have asses.”

Please folks, stop buying their propaganda! They’ve got our number, because they’ve got our data. They know how to outfox the Left, the Right, the churchies and the anarchists, and everyone in between. And they want the children. They want to own the next generations forevermore and from cradle to grave.

They are expert snake oil salesmen and they would swindle their own grandmothers, so imagine what they’d be willing to do to yours!

Alison McDowell calls it out—the soft global coup—and breaks it down so well in this video, I cannot recommend it enough.

Digital Digestion Denver: Metastatic Zeros and Ones, A Soft Global Coup
https://youtu.be/Vx7Dt8hql5M

Don’t have 40 minutes to spare? Here’s a one minute teaser.

What’s Happening to Cyberspace?

I’ve been noticing for years, as so many others have as well, that the online world is being transformed into something quite unrecognizable.

I noticed this incremental shift long before the “Fact Checking” era began, but not long after I got removed from the blogging platform I’d been blogging at for years, before I started this blog.

It was mere annoyance at first, at the little things. Why can’t I find recipes anymore by independent bloggers? I thought DuckDuckGo was supposed to be a more neutral search engine. Why is it all becoming so commercialized and institutionalized? So many ads, so much repetition, so few unique voices. If I didn’t know the exact name of the specific bloggers’ recipes I wanted to find the only links that come up in my searches are for the ‘big name’ mainstream mega-platforms, like Betty Crocker, Saveur, Food Network, listed over and over again. The original content creators that made the web what it is are being systematically squeezed out.

And it’s not just about controversial content, as Truthstream Media is pointing out in this new video. Mel aptly describes it as the latest Potemkin Village.

This morning I got this message (below) in my inbox. Now, it’s been some years since I’ve blogged for GRIT, and that stint didn’t last long even back then, because the stupid rules were already starting in at that point, and changing constantly, and I found it too annoying to try to keep up with them, considering it was supposed to be a labor of love (ie, no one’s getting paid for all the free content we provide).

Now it seems they don’t even want free content anymore from mere bloggers.

Dear GRIT blogger:

During the past 10 years, you have offered your know-how generously, supplying millions of readers with the actionable advice that has enabled so many households and farms to turn country living dreams into reality. The work you do — and the wisdom you transfer to the digital page — underpin more resilient, connected communities. Also during the past decade, the Internet evolved immensely.

When we started the GRIT blogging program, we were on a mission to supply a rapidly growing online readership with timely — even daily — information, free of the page and time constraints faced by the print edition of the magazine. We also were largely free of rules; blogging was in its “Wild West” period. As online writing evolved, search engines placed increasingly complex, and ever-changing, “web rules” around what content is featured in search results. Meanwhile, blogging as a format and cultural phenomenon underwent its own transitions. These factors have led us to make a tough decision.

No more bloggers at GRIT.

Looks to me like the WorldWideWeb is being Walmarted. I believe in business parlance that’s called Vertical Integration.

Anyone else finding it terribly annoying?

Eye-Opening Quotes

I’ve decided to add a new and regular feature to this blog—quotes on social engineering. The first is a doozy, just in case you’re snoozing!

This was lifted from the excellent article in Strategic Culture by Cynthia Chung, From Trotskyism to Radical Positivism: How Albert Wohlstetter Became the Leading Authority for Nuclear Strategy in America

Bertrand Russell

Russell would put it forth most succinctly in his “The Scientific Outlook” (1931):

“The scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power. Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless and contented. Of these qualities, probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researchers of psycho-analysis, behaviorism and biochemistry will be brought into play… all the boys and girls will learn from an early age to be what is called “cooperative” i.e.: to do exactly what every body else is doing. Initiative will be discouraged in these children, and insubordination, without being punished will be scientifically trained out of them.”

“In 1953, Russell would update this creepy piece of work and make it even creepier, writing:

“It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment… This subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship. Anaxagoras maintained that snow is black, but no one believed him. The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray.”

In his “The Managerial Revolution,” Burnham echoes the Fabian Society methodology and Russell’s “The Scientific Outlook,” writing:

“Nevertheless, it may still turn out that the new form of economy will be called ‘socialist.’ In those nations – Russia and Germany – which have advanced furthest toward the new [managerial] economy, ‘socialism’ or ‘national socialism’ is the term ordinarily used. The motivation for this terminology is not, naturally, the wish for scientific clarity but just the opposite. The word ‘socialism’ is used for ideological purposes in order to manipulate the favourable mass emotions attached to the historic socialist ideal of a free, classless, and international society and to hide the fact that the managerial economy is in actuality the basis for a new kind of exploiting, class society.”

When’s the Anger stage?

Or did we already move right into acceptance, bypassing anger totally?

If anyone is still doubting how serious it really is—this global coup-d’etat happening right now, right under our noses—then this is the video for you!

How the World Economic Forum Is Getting The ’Great Reset’ Done
https://odysee.com/@neverlosetruth:0/wef:e
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