#I will however now go to the farmers market and the power of local produce will compel the stewards to disqualify 6 cars ahead of him

[cecoeur]

the reason this all happened is because I ate my bagel before qualifying instead of after :(((( so sorry to daniel that's my bad.

[socialistsephardi]

The Political History of Zionism

With everything currently going on, I’ve decided to make this post detailing the different streams of Zionism, in order to deconstruct rhetoric surrounding Zionism. I do this to aid arguments against Hasbara, which often claims that Zionism is unified and simple.

To begin, Political Zionism is generally considered to start with the writings of Theodor Herzl, in the 19th century political climate of Central and Eastern Europe. Prior to this, numerous pre-zionist movements were competing among the Jews of europe following an event called the Haskalah, or “Jewish Enlightment”. The French Revolution caused France to become the first european nation to recognize Jews as citizens with rights, which would be followed by Britain and Germany. This allowed for the formation of a new secular Jewish middle class enthrawled by enlightment principles - mainly, rationalism, romanticism, and nationalism. However, this also generated a shift from religious persecution towards ‘racial’ antisemitism. As the Jews of various countries were subjected to either intense expectations of assimilation, or reoccuring waves of pogroms, it became clear that most of europe regarded these emancipated Jews as foreign nationals of alien religion and culturally compatible. The proto-Zionists begin building a consensus pushing for immigration to Ottoman Palestine, some seeking to provide an alternative to the pogroms, some believing themselves witness to the signs of an imment messiah, etc. Moshe Hess, an associate of Karl Marx, calls for Jews to create a socialist state in Palestine (more on Hess later). Waves of European Jews arrive, and organizations aiming to support Jewish farmers and artisans in Palestine and Syria are founded. The local authorities begin to differentiate between the immigrant Jews and the Jews from the local communities. Herzl enters the Jewish public consciousness with his writings calling specifically for the creation of a Jewish majority state. appealing to the British and French empires to aid them. He rejects Hess’s socialist proposal and instead proposes a reconstruction of Jewry altogether, rejecting the diaspora entirely, arguing that only separation could ensure Jewish survival. Herzl proposes establishing this state in Argentina, but concludes that Palestine would likely have more ideological appeal. I feel it crucial to note here that in his early writings, Herzl is hostile to religious Jews, claims that the Jews of the Ghettos and Shtetls hold back the intellectual, and calls the Sephardi Jews living under France in Algeria mixed blood barbarians. These attitudes would carry over into the political zietgiest of early Zionism.

From here, Zionism begins to grow, the call for simple immigration to the land is supplanted by a demand for a Jewish majority state, and competing schools of thought emerge. The World Zionist Organization is created, and the Zionists pivot attempt including the consent of the Ottomans in the project. Herzl here also begins to explicitly call for the colonization of Palestine, in line with his admiration for the french and british empires. The first major split within the Zionist movement comes with the formation of Labor Zionism based on Hess’s writings. Wheras Herzl’s camp depended on gaining support from the empires and from prominent Jewish figures, Labor Zionism argued that only the Jewish working class could create such a nation, and sought to emphasize a progressive Jewish identity. This is also where a re-alignment for the religious backing begins. Originally, orthodox Jews are in an uneasy alliance with the entirely secular Jews in the movement, mostly because despite his early writings, Herzl emphasized a need to manufacture support from orthodox rabbis and communities. With Herzl eventual death, the orthodox separate from the mainstream movement, citing the believe that only the Messiah can reassert Jewish control over the land. Reform Jews at this time also reject Zionism, as it is perceived as a threat to Jewish citizenship in Europe and America. The Reform rejected the notion that Jews were bound by a shared nationality, a position which held true until the holocaust.

Over the next few decades, various zionist groups in palestine compete for power. Many begin attacking the Muslim and Christian Palestinian communities, often forcibly separating the local Jewry in the process. Jewish terrorist groups launch attacks on British centers following WW1. Labor Zionists rejected traditional Jewish practice, arguing that these represented a diaspora mentality. They also set up the early Kibbitzim. Jabotinsky develops a trend known as Revisionist Zionism, with the aim of territorial maximalism. Revisionist Zionism becomes ingrained as the right wing faction, and eventually becoming the ideological foundation of the current Likud party. Jabotinsky admired and borrowed core concepts from Mussolini and fascism, in particular the centrality of the state, social conservative unity, and racial supremacy. Mussolini knew of this and told the founder of the World Jewish Congress “For Zionism to succeed, you need to have a Jewish State with a Jewish flag, and Jewish language. The person who understands that is your fascist, Jabotinsky". The revisionists during this time approved of the idea of building a Mediterranean alliance and opposing British influence. In 1939, Stern forms Lehi, and they oppose Britain in WW2, instead arguing that Jews must align with the Axis, eventually going so far as to claim that if they were to take control of the mandate, they would negotiate with Hitler to see the Jews in the camps transfered in as new citizens, and in exchange join the German sphere.

Following WW2, the Nakba occurs, and the Haganah (including groups like Lehi) is reorganized into the IDF. The liberal/general Zionists are now faced with oppozing interal forces such as the labor Zionists and the revisionists. They now turn to emphasis liberalism in the new state, mostly the democratic electoral system and the free market, but largely become a backdrop to the rest of the political movements, which turn themselves into party affiliation, since the basic liberal structure had already been established. The labor Zionists become the dominant trend in Israeli politics until the 70′s. Following the Six Day Way in 67, Israel seizes control of the rest of the land from the mandate. This sets off a new movement. Previously, Religious Zionism was a minor stream mostly simply meaning religious Jews who supported Zionism. From here on, however, it becomes dominated by a right wing religious trend and becomes NeoZionism. NeoZionists combined religious and nationalist elements, specifically advocated settlements beyond the green line, and often advocate the removal of Arab people, citing Arab Israelis as a potential 5th column. Neozionists believe that the secularism of other zionist branches is a significant weak point, and usually incorporate far right orthodox talking points. Groups such as the Hebron settlers are highly influenced by Neozionism. Neozionists are also usually behind the call to establish an entirely orthodox state in the west bank if Israel were to pull out. On the opposite end, there are the post-Zionists, who believe Zionism has fulfilled its goal. Post-Zionists are not really coordiated in the same way others on this list are, but generally they are critical of the direction israel has moved, they typically seek to try to make Jews safer in the diaspora, generally support Arab Israelis and some post-zionists believe in transforming the state into an entirely liberal-democratic one. Right wing Israelis also use “post zionist“ to refer to the Israeli left after the Oslo Accords in the mid 90′s.

Finally, I’d like to take note of Kahanism. Kahanism is an extremist ideology based on the work of Rabbi Meir Kahane, and materialized as the Kach party in Israel, a party which was boycotted by every other faction the single time they were elected to the Knesset, and is now banned and labeled a terrorist organization. Kahanists believe that every single Jew should live in Israel, and that only Jews should live in Israel. They advocate for Israel to enforce traditional Jewish law at the national scale, and together with Neozionists have engaged in actions to provoke fear in diaspora communities. Kahanists believe that all Arab people are the mortal enemy of all Jews and that Israel should seize land from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. Kahane himself proposed laws, including banning intermarriage, banning cultural meetings between Jewish and Muslim students, and re-segregating areas that had already undergone desegregation.

So that is a compressed history of the trends within Zionism. I write this not to garner sympathy for Zionism, but in hopes that this helps pick apart hasbarist simplification. At best, Zionism produced a labor movement with a terribly racist history which stole yemenite Jewish children and encouraged discrimination and segregation against sephardi and mizrachi Jews within Israel from a secular ashkenazi ‘core‘. At worst, fundamentalists and militant zealots who are overwhelmingly hostile to anyone else, groups who align with historic and current fascist and nazi movements, and a massive, overwhelming history of abuse and human rights violations against Palestinians, other Arabs, Jews of color, diaspora movements, etc. If you needed any reason beyond the sheer weight of the Palestinian cause to oppose Zionism, here you go. I hope this sways the mind of any lingering ZIonists reading this, and I hope this is used to more effectively call out Zionism for what it is - a racist, imperialist, and fascist ideology hellbent on redefining Judaism for its aims against any act of solidarity between groups, completely fueled by western interests in carving up and controlling West Asia / the middle east/ Al-Mashriq.

[skies-diary]

You are not the problem for driving a car instead of biking to work. You are not the problem for buying food wrapped in plastic. You are not the problem for leaving the light on overnight.

You are not the cause of the problems the world faces today. Late stage capitalism is.

Yes, driving a car causes air pollution. Yes, plastic is a cancer upon this land. Yes, using electricity burns coal.

Chances are, however, that you don't have any other choice - particularly if you live in America. I've never worked a job that was a comfortable walking distance away, because in America, walking cities aren't really a thing. Public transportation used to be common, but that's changed (because of multiple factors).

Food wrapped in plastic is, more often than not, the only option people have to be able to eat (particularly in food deserts, where the food is far more processed and, therefore, nearly always wrapped in layers of plastic, as opposed to produce and other less processed foods).

Civilian use only accounts for about 1/3 of electricity use; the rest is used by the "industrial and commerical" sectors. Yes, civilian use adds up, but it's nothing compared to manufacturing plants sucking down energy day after day. Using solar power is pushed hard for civilians, but the truth is many people do not have access to solar power; many people live in apartments where they cannot install solar panels, and other live in areas where the HOA forbids solar panels. If you dont live in the customer range of a company that produces green energy, you're out of luck as well.

The truth is individuals are not causing the climate crisis. Wanna know who is?

Here's a good starting point:

Emissions:

Plastic waste creation:

While this is by no means comprehensive, it's a launching point.

Through a mix of disinformation campaigns and lobbying for favorable laws, the corporations of America have convinced the public of America that the climate crisis is whatever the CEOs want it to be. First the narrative was that it wasn't real. But we can see the world burn, we see the fires in Californa and Australia. We see the disturbances in weather, causing natural disasters in rapid succession. We see the start of a mass extinction due to the planet beginning to fail. The lie that climate change is a hoax no longer holds water with the majority of the population.

So, new strategy. The corporate machine develops a new theroy, one still in use today: climate change is real, and it's your fault. You, as a consumer, have been reckless and greedy. Only you have to power to stop the oncoming climate crisis.

This is, of course, entirely false, but it allows corporations to continue, unpunished and unaccoutable, while consumers are saddled with the blame. The truth is, however, we cannot fix this from the civilian side. You can take all the five minute showers you want; that wont save the fish while factories are dumping toxic waste into oceans, while energy companies run pipelines under lakes and rivers which explode and poison the waters and all that live in or drink from them. You can trade in your car for a bike; Amazon and Walmart still runs delivery trucks across the nation day and night. You can bring your own bags to the grocery store and go without plastic straws; marine animals are more likely to be trapped in and drown by fishing nets.

So what does this mean? Give up?

No, of course not. What it means is to be critical of what you're being told about climate change. Recycling, cutting down on plastic use, going vegan, driving a hybrid; all of these are incredible places to start.

But - and I hate to say this - it's not enough. We cannot solve this by ourselves. The charts of corporate giants above; they're the ones that have to change.

So, we press them.

Call the customer complaint lines of companies like Nestle, Coca cola and Pepsi, as well as oil giants, and, keeping in mind that the person on the other end is also a working class person who has not caused any of this, tell them that you're boycotting their company because of their disregard for climate change. Encourage them to do R & D into things like biodegradable plastics if they want your business back. (I know some people cannot boycott these companies; that's okay. If you can, boycott. If you cannot, still call. You just need make them believe you're boycotting. Make them nervous. Make them change their behavior.)

Advocate for green energy; call your electric company and ask what they're doing in terms of green energy. Write or call your representatives and demand that green energy in your state be expanded via government backing like subsidies. Also tell your representatives to back the Green New Deal. Threaten to cast your vote elsewhere if they refuse.

Educate yourself on the facts about climate change and green energy so that when the media giants, megaphones for big oil politicians, and corporations try to tell you lies, you know they're full of shit. Also educate yourself on the views of your local and state representatives. If they're not governing in a way that is in your best interest, throw them out next election cycle. Unfortunately, we cant solve this without major policy and legal changes; your elected representatives are the ones who control those.

It can be hard to fight when you feel overwhelmed by all this. I understand. This is overwhelming to me every day. However, you need to remember: you are not powerless. The phone you're holding right now is a tool. Use it to write to and call the people who need an attitude adjustment. Use it to research. Use it to make a change.

Other great ideas for those who have the means to do so: Take public transport instead if driving. Grow a garden in your backyard; not only for yourself, also for your neighbors. Buy food at farmer's markets or other locally-sourced food (local is best as transporting food is a major polluter). Shop at thrift stores and buy secondhand.

Not everyone can do this. That's okay. You still have a voice. Use it.

Together, we are strong. Remind the bad guys of that.

[jjoutermaybanks]

With You In My Head || Rafe Cameron x Reader

part one part two part three part four part five part six part seven part eight

summary: it’s going to be a long summer. living in the Outer Banks with your trailer park mom and fancy mansion dad, you know it’s going to be a tough three months. things only get harder when your best friend’s brother, the notorious Rafe Cameron, begins to complicate your life even more. but will the island’s biggest wildcard successfully steal your heart, or leave you more broken than before?

word count: 5k

warnings: some casual smut for the TL, enjoy ;))

*not my gif, credit to owner*

PART THREE

You didn’t sleep at all that night.  Hours were spent tossing and turning, staring at the ceiling above you and trying not to close your eyes.  Whenever you did, Rafe’s face flashed into your mind.  More specifically, the chilling expression of intensity that he’d worn while beating the absolute crap out of JJ.  It haunted your thoughts, and you were sure that if you fell asleep you’d see it in your nightmares.

Rafe had scared you more than anyone ever had before.  Violence had always made you sick, which was one of the reasons why you avoided the many skirmishes the Pogues found themselves in.  Bruises and blood didn’t sit well with you, and the smell of JJ’s blood was burned into your nose.  The cracks of Rafe’s fist against his body also echoed in your ears, and it was as if the fight had overwhelmed all of your senses and was slowly drowning you.

So when the morning light began filtering into your room, you were grateful.  You could get up and make breakfast and do everything in your power not to think about what had happened.  

Trudging into the small kitchen of the trailer, you peered over and saw your mother snoring away on the pull-out couch.  Her body looked contorted on the thin mattress, twisted in such a way to try and sleep comfortably.  She looked stiff and there was a frown on her lips, making you sigh.  It pained you that your mother had to live in this stupid trailer, and you angrily recalled the giant house you’d visited your father in yesterday.

It was so unfair.  Their divorce had stolen every last drop of energy and life from your mother, leaving her defeated and passive.  Your father ended up more egotistical and self-centered than ever, at the expense of your poor mom.  You wished more than anything the roles had been reversed, and it was him suffering in this dump rather than her.

But this was real life, and you’d learned a long time ago to accept things the way they were.  This mindset made it hard for you to be optimistic, and you rarely ever hoped for anything.  Frowning, you realized you’d had a sliver of hope on the beach yesterday with Rafe.  You’d secretly hoped you could learn to trust him, and that the two of you could be friends.  But that dream had been destroyed almost as quickly as it was created, which seemed to be a trend in your life.

You felt claustrophobic in the small trailer, and after rifling through the fridge decided to take a trip to the local market.  You barely had any food, and you thought it’d be nice to get some fresh fruit and vegetables for your mother.  

The market was buzzing with early morning activity, and you smiled at the familiar faces of the merchants.  You drifted through the various stands, admiring the ripe selection at your fingertips.  Lifting an orange to your nose, you inhaled the citrusy scent and sighed contentedly.

All of a sudden, a shadow fell over your shoulder after someone came up behind you.  Flinching in surprise, you whirled around and dropped the orange.  It rolled across the ground and landed at none other than Rafe Cameron’s feet.  With a smirk, he knelt down to pick it up, extending it to you with gleaming eyes.

“Morning, Y/N,” he greeted, and you snatched the orange out of his hand.  Fuming with embarrassment and irritation, you dropped the orange into your woven produce bag and glared over at him.

“What are you doing here, Rafe?” you demanded, crossing your arms.  You hated how he had taken you by surprise, and you also hated the flush that rose to your cheeks when he looked at you.

Rafe looked taken aback at your harsh tone, but recovered with a charming laugh.  “It’s a public farmer’s market, Y/N.”  He had his own bag of produce hanging off his shoulder, sure enough.

Scowling, you retorted, “What do you want?”  You didn’t feel like wasting time.  The sooner you could get away from Rafe the better.

“What’s wrong?  I thought you and I were becoming friends.”  He actually sounded a little hurt, but you tried not to let this affect you.  Rafe couldn’t be that stupid to think you wanted to be his friend after what he did to JJ.

He walked beside you as you continued strolling through the market, preferring to look at the fruit rather than his eyes.  “I thought we were too,” you told him.  “Until you almost killed my friend last night.”

Rafe stopped in his tracks, and reached out to grab your arm to stop you too.  Immediately wrenching your arm out of his grip, you glared at him as he threw his hands up in surrender.  “What are you talking about?  The fight was fair, and don’t you remember that my side lost?” 

You met Rafe’s eyes with a pointed look.  “Topper and Kelce may have lost, but you didn’t.  One more minute and JJ would’ve been in the hospital for a year.”  As you said this, memories of the fight burned across your mind and made you shudder.

Rafe frowned, and you couldn’t tell if he looked regretful.  You also remembered the way he looked at you before leaving, with slight guilt in his eyes, but you couldn’t detect any of that now.

“It’s not like JJ didn’t get any punches in,” he defended, pointing to his face.  It was then that you noticed the cut on his forehead, and a purple bruise on one of his cheeks.  You hadn’t seen these injuries before, and you took a second to take them in.  So I was wrong, you thought, biting your lip.  Maybe I was too harsh on him.

Shaking your head, you were determined to keep your resolve and not let Rafe break you.  “Still,” you murmured.  “You were brutal, Rafe.”

He pressed his lips into a thin line, eyes distant.  “He would’ve done the same to me if he could have, trust me.”

Again, he was right.  You knew JJ, and he’d left his enemies looking just as bad as he did after fighting Rafe.  Realizing Rafe was steadily disproving all of your arguments for being mad at him, you huffed.  How was he so good at that?  He was nearly impossible to hate.

Sensing your apprehension, Rafe sighed.  “Look, I’m not proud of what happened.  I didn’t even want to fight anyway, but I couldn’t just abandon Topper.”  When you still didn’t budge, he swallowed roughly, lowering his voice to just above a whisper.  “I’ve never been able to back down from a fight.  Ward, he...”  Rafe struggled to find the right words.  “He taught me that a fight is never over until you either win or die trying.  There’s no such thing as losing to him.”

This sent chills down your spine, and also a wave of sadness for the younger Rafe who had to grow up that way.  You couldn’t imagine the extreme difficulty of being Ward’s son, of not being allowed to be vulnerable or show weakness.  Rafe must have had a lot more issues because of this, and he’d alluded to them on the beach.  

Naturally, your sympathy for Rafe overtook your anger, and you let go of the frustration you’d harbored over him.  Giving him a stern look, you said, “Fine.  But next time, don’t kick a guy when he’s already down.”  JJ had lost the fight long before Rafe actually stopped hitting him, and he could’ve spared the blonde boy a few bruises and pains.

Rafe smiled in relief, and you liked the way he looked when he wasn’t so serious.  He was much more handsome this way.  With an enthusiastic voice, he declared, “Let me make it up to you.  Sarah and I are throwing a party tonight, and I want you to come.”

Raising your eyebrows disbelievingly, you asked, “You two are throwing a party?”  You couldn’t imagine Sarah doing anything with her brother that wasn’t arguing.

Chuckling, Rafe rubbed the back of his neck shyly.  “Alright, we’re not exactly throwing it.  It just happens to be taking place at our house, since Ward is going out of town for a few days.  Other than that, I have zero hosting duties.”  

Pursing your lips, you tried to think of an excuse not to go.  “I don’t know, Rafe.  What would I even talk to people about?  I’m not exactly a Kook.”

“Come on, Y/N.  Your dad plays golf with my dad every Sunday.  Your boat is docked three spots down from ours.  You have more in common than you think.”

Rolling your eyes, you said, “It’s not my boat, it’s my father’s.”  

Rafe was refusing to let this go, however.  No excuse was good enough for him.  “Please?  I think you’ll have fun.  Besides, Sarah will be there so you can complain about how much you hate it with her.”  He looked so desperate for you to agree that you couldn’t help but smile.  Something about Rafe broke down all of your walls and banished every inhibition you had.  You couldn’t decide if you liked this trait of his or not.

“Fine, I’ll come.”  He pumped his fist, and you laughed, continuing your shopping.  Rafe accompanied you for the rest of your trip, even offering to walk you home.  But you firmly rejected this offer, threatening not to go to the party if he tried to walk you home.  You left him with a smile on your face and nervous energy in your heart.

Whenever you were dreading something, time tended to fly by.  Today was no different, and the hours flew past until it was time to get ready to leave for the party.  Even though things with Rafe had improved, you still did not feel like being around a bunch of Kooks for the night.  But you’d promised him, and if this friendship thing was serious you had to honor that promise.

You went through your entire closet before you settled on an outfit.  You settled on a pair of flowy shorts in a rusted pink color with a white crop top.  Sarah had bought this outfit with you, and she’d told you it accentuated all of your best features.  You threw it on over a stringy white bikini, and after over-analyzing your appearance in the mirror you gave up and just decided to leave.

From a block away you could hear the voices at the party.  Music was blaring through the balmy night air, and as you approached the Cameron’s house you could see hundreds of people milling around the property.  Your jaw dropping in disbelief, you felt a pang of anxiety at the sheer number of Kooks.  They were all expensively dressed and wearing judgmental expressions to match.  A group of girls whipped their heads over to gawk at you, and if looks could kill you’d be six feet under.

Walking through the yard, you wove through the crowd and avoided eye contact with the people around you.  Your sole mission was to find Sarah, because only she could make this nightmare tolerable.  But when you’d crossed the entire yard, even checking the inside of the house, there was no sign of her.  The lights in her room were off, and she was nowhere to be seen.

You were officially stranded here alone.

A thousand emotions swirled through your mind.  Humiliation, regret, slight irritation.  You were humiliated to be at a party completely alone, regretted even coming at all, and also felt massively irritated that Sarah had bailed.  But then your irritation shifted to Rafe, and a thought occurred to you.  Was Sarah even planning to come at all?  Or was that just a ploy by Rafe to convince you to come?

Seething with anger, you stormed back out, now changing your sights to try and find Rafe.  Luckily he was easy to spot, his tall frame towering over the other party-goers.  He caught your eye across the lawn, and broke into a wide smile.  He said something to the group he was with and then started towards you.

“Hey!  Look who showed up!”  His happiness was infectious, but you were so pissed it had no effect on you.  He picked up on your sour mood, smile faltering.  “What’s wrong?”

“Sarah isn’t here,” you snapped.  “I’m leaving.”  All you wanted was your warm bed and to sleep off the embarrassment you felt right now.  

Rafe sighed, pushing a hand through his gelled hair and messing it up slightly.  “Don’t go, please.  I’m sure Sarah will be here later, she’d never miss a party like this.”  His eyes were fixed on yours, holding your gaze with an electricity you couldn’t ignore.  “Besides, how am I supposed to make up for last night if you leave now?”

You narrowed your eyes.  “Sarah is coming later?” you reiterated, making sure he wasn’t bluffing again.  

Rafe nodded.  “Like I said, she loves parties.”

Once again, you couldn’t find any good argument against him.  He was annoyingly triumphant in most of these situations, and you rolled your eyes at him.  Rafe took this as a victory, and placed a hand on your back before leading you through the crowd of people.

“Let’s get you a drink, yeah?  Being drunk makes these things ten times better.”  He stopped at a makeshift bar setup, and grabbed a solo cup before filling it with mysterious liquid.  When he handed it to you, you saw an odd red colored mixture and sniffed it hesitantly.  It smelled strongly of alcohol, but also had a fruity tang.

“What the hell is this?” you asked, unsure of what the concoction could be.

Rafe smiled proudly.  “It’s my signature.  Half vodka and half whatever fruity seltzer we have in the fridge.  Tastes amazing, and also gets you drunk without the awful taste of regular vodka.”  

Shrugging, you took a long sip, and Rafe whistled approvingly.  “Damn, you’re really trying to get drunk, huh?”

You shook your head.  “I’m the opposite of a lightweight.  It takes a lot to actually get me hammered.”

“Oh, well then drink up.”  Rafe poured himself a cup, and you toasted the solo cups with a laugh.  Now that you weren’t wandering around alone, you were actually sort of enjoying yourself.  But after a minute, you noticed people staring at you, and the group Rafe had abandoned to talk to you looked annoyed at his absence.

You bit your lip.  “Um, Rafe,” you started, causing him to look over at you.  His blue eyes shocked you as always, and you blushed.  “You don’t have to stay and talk to me.  I’m sure you’d rather be with your friends, I’m just a drag.”

He looked shocked that you’d even say that.  “What are you talking about?  I’m not hanging out with you out of obligation.”  At your doubtful shrug, he sighed.  “You know what?  You’re gonna come meet my friends.”  He grabbed your hand, leading you once again through the throng of people.

Panic striking you, you stuttered out, “Rafe, I don’t think that’s a good--”  But it was too late; you’d reached his group of friends.  You recognized Topper and Kelce, and forced a pinched smile.  They both sported black eyes and multiple bruises, not to mention glares pointed directly at you.

“Guys, this is Y/N,” Rafe introduced, and a few of them nodded or muttered greetings.  He went around and said half a dozen names you knew you wouldn’t remember, but you smiled at them anyway.  Rafe was right next to you, and you found yourself almost leaning into him as a shield.  The proximity was closer than you’d ever been, and you got a whiff of his expensive cologne.

The group started chattering about something you only sort of paid attention to.  Instead, you focused mainly on observing Topper and Kelce.  You figured it was a good idea to get to know Rafe’s best friends if you wanted to be friends with him.  Over the course of the conversation, your view of both of them changed.  You realized Topper was more pathetic than anything; he actually cared about Sarah, and missed her like crazy.  This made him easier to understand in your head, and the dislike you held for him before was replaced by pity.  Kelce didn’t change much for you, just confirmed that he was a meathead with little else going for him.  He didn’t have any original thoughts, always trailing behind Rafe or Topper and doing whatever they wanted.

You attempted to listen to the conversation for a little while longer, until you were so bored you couldn’t stand it anymore.  Leaning over to whisper into Rafe’s ear, you said, “I’m gonna go see if Sarah is here yet.”  You smiled warmly at him, hoping he could see you actually appreciated his effort to incorporate you into the group.

Wandering around again wasn’t any more enjoyable this time.  You still felt ostracized from the other Kooks, like you didn’t belong here with them.  An hour must have passed of just aimlessly searching for Sarah, and by the time you gave up it was so late at night you realized Sarah probably wasn’t going to come at all.

Which meant Rafe had lied to you.

Once you made this realization, the anger you’d overcome earlier resurfaced.  Why the hell would he lie about this?  Did he just want to lure you here for his friends to mock and make fun of?  What was the point of making you feel like an outsider, other than to hurt you?  Friends didn’t pull stunts like this.

You stormed towards the pool, heading straight for Rafe who stood beside it talking to his friends.  When he saw you approach he grinned, but this expression quickly changed when he read the anger in your eyes

“Y/N--”

“Why did you lie about Sarah coming?” you interrupted furiously.  “Why would you drag me to this stupid party if you knew I would be alone and miserable?  I mean, did you want me to feel like shit?”

Rafe looked completely stupefied.  He opened his mouth, but no words came out he was so speechless.  You glowered at him, cheeks heating up as you felt the stares of everyone else on your face.

“Well?” you insisted.  Rafe looked more confused than ever, and you rolled your eyes.  At this moment, Topper stepped out next to Rafe.

“Relax, Y/N, you don’t have to make a scene.”  He reached out to touch your shoulder, and you flinched away from his touch.  But this sudden movement caused you to lose balance, and you felt yourself tripping backwards.  

Before you knew what was happening, your body hit the pool.  Ice cold water cascaded over your head, and your arms floundered desperately under the surface.  You reemerged a second later, but you were soaked to the bone and came up to the sounds of hysterical laughter.  Rubbing the water out of your eyes, you saw Topper and the others snickering at your clumsiness, with Rafe staring down at you just as clueless as before.

He recovered quickly though, and extended a hand to help you out.  You grabbed it angrily, and he hauled you out of the pool.

“Y/N, I am so sorry--”

You didn’t wait around to hear his apology,  Instead, you stormed out of the crowd and headed away from the house, trying to ignore the mocking laughter behind you.

The beach seemed to be the place you always went to at times like this.  The waves were calm again tonight, and despite the freezing pool water drenching your clothes the air was warm with summer heat.  You stopped beside a long wooden beach chair with padded cushions, discarding your wet shorts and shirt.  You folded the soggy fabric and left them by the chair along with your shoes, leaving you in just the bikini you’d put on before coming.

In order to work off your anger and dry off your body, you started on a walk down the shore.  It was peaceful at this hour, and you eventually walked far enough from the party to be in total silence.  Normally you’d let your thoughts run rampant right now, but tonight you didn’t want to think about anything.  You especially didn’t want to think about Rafe.  He’d genuinely hurt you, and for the second time in a matter of days.  No matter how sincere he seemed in the aftermath, this humiliation was overpowering.

You must have walked for miles, because the stretch of beach became unfamiliar and prompted you to turn around.  By the time you neared where you left your clothes, you were exhausted and drained from feeling upset.  You were so tired in fact that you didn’t notice someone sitting in the beach chair until they spoke.

“I thought you left.”  Rafe’s voice was soft and timid, worried you’d yell at him again.  You just paused beside him, folding your arms across your exposed chest.

“Why would I leave when my clothes are still here?” you said pointedly, and Rafe nodded in defeat.  He was quiet, clearly picking up on your mood.  You almost appreciated this gesture, if he wasn’t the person who’d ruined your mood to begin with.

Glancing at his house in the distance, you saw the lights were off and the sound of voices had ceased.  The party had finished by the time you returned from your walk, which meant it was just Rafe around.

He was laying across the big chair clad only in board shorts, his exposed torso gleaming in the moonlight.  His gaze was directed towards the sky, face peaceful.

Wanting to fill the silence, you asked, “Why are you out here?  Aren’t you tired from the party?”

Rafe shook his head.  “Nah, I’ll be up for hours.  I just came out here to look at the stars.”

You snorted.  “How cute,” you commented, but when you realized he was serious you regretted your jab.  Rafe shifted aside on the chair and patted a space by his knees for you to sit.  Tentatively, you settled there and gazed up at the stars as well.

“I’ve always loved astronomy,” he admitted.  “I think it’s so cool that there’s so much else out there.  Kind of makes everything down here seem insignificant.”

You furrowed your brow.  “That’s morbid.”

He shrugged.  “I don’t know, it’s sort of comforting.  Like, however shitty things are here, that’s not how it is everywhere.”  This made you turn your gaze to him, frowning.  You wondered if he was referring to Ward, and you sensed you were right when he couldn’t meet your eyes.

A minute passed, and then Rafe said, “I really am sorry.”  His words were genuine, and tried to let them sink in.  It didn’t make up entirely for tonight, but it helped.

Sliding your eyes along his face, you saw something flit across his eyes.  The air suddenly filled with tension, and you found it hard to breathe with his gaze so fixated on you.  Your body almost felt a magnetic pull towards his, and when he rested his arms on the edge of the chair you hitched your breath.

Without even thinking, you swung your legs over and shifted your body until you were settled between his legs.  Your head leaned back against his chest, his chin resting just by your ear.  Having his warm skin under yours felt beyond good, and his arms encircled you to rest by your waist. 

You laid together like this for a while, neither of you saying anything.  Your hands drifted up his arms, absently feeling him as he breathed against the back of your neck.  Occasionally he’d lift his hand to point out a star pattern, and when you tilted your head to see it you rested against his shoulder.

While you looked at the sky, Rafe looked at you.  Turning your head to the side, you realized how close your faces were and parted your lips.  Even in the dark his blue eyes were striking.  You held your breath, anticipating his next move.

And when it came, you rejoiced inside.  Rafe leaned forward to connect your lips, his mouth warm and gentle.  You accepted the kiss gratefully, molding against him and twisting slightly so you could bring a hand to his cheek.  His tongue swiped out across your bottom lip, and you opened your mouth to grant him entrance.  Your tongues pushed against one another, deepening the kiss and making your head grow fuzzy.

Tearing his lips from yours, Rafe moved down your jaw and to your neck.  You faced forward again, watching as his hands slid up your abdomen.  His fingers found the ties to your bathing suit top, and in one swift movement he undid them.  The white bikini fell out of place, your breasts exposed to the warm night air.  

Breathing hard, you felt Rafe’s hands skim across your breasts, making your nipples harden into peaks.  His fingers were rough against your skin, and when his thumbs grazed your nipples you exhaled softly.  His lips worked the side of your neck, sponging kisses there while his hands were at your chest.

Waves of pleasure drifted through your body, and your lips hung open in a wordless gasp.  Rafe pinched your nipples lightly, causing you to arch your back against him.  As you did this, you felt something hard pressing into your back, and realized it was his firm length through his shorts.  You continued to grind your hips slowly against his, and his breathing increased by your ear.

“Y/N,” he breathed, making your eyes roll back.  He gave your breasts a firm squeeze, and you raised one hand to touch his cheek.  You were breathing erratically now, and this only increased when he removed his hands from your chest and moved them downwards, towards the pool of moisture already collecting in your bathing suit bottoms.

His fingers dipped below the band, his fingers shockingly cool against your hot skin.  You tensed up when you felt him right where you needed him, and when his lips kissed your ear you exhaled.

And then his middle finger pressed into your clit, causing a moan to tumble from your mouth.  He’d barely touched you and you were already putty in his hands.  Rafe started circling his finger, and you couldn’t control the sounds leaving your throat.

“Yes,” you released, crying out when he dragged across your slick entrance.  “Rafe.” you moaned his name, and a gentle growl rumbled in his throat behind you.

Rafe’s fingers worked expertly against you.  He focused entirely on your clit, knowing exactly what to do to drive your senses wild.  The bundle of nerves was going haywire under his hand, and your hips ground into his palm to try and increase friction.

“That’s it,” he murmured into your ear, causing goosebumps to raise across your skin.  “Do I make you feel good, baby?”  The nickname made you moan again, you brought a hand to roughly squeeze your breast.

Rafe quickened his movements, and your legs were shaking from the sheer pleasure.  When he pinched your clit, you knew you were done for.  An orgasm exploded in your abdomen, and you cried out in ecstasy, tensing against his hand and whining his name.

“Rafe,” you panted, resting your cheek against his chest.  His lips pressed into the top of your head, and you watched him bring his hand out of your bikini bottoms to his lips.  He licked off your moisture, and the sight drove you absolutely crazy.

Slowly flipping over so your chest was against his, you dove in to give him another kiss.  Rafe eagerly reciprocated, spreading his fingers across your back and pulling you close.  But you broke away from the kiss after a second, holding his gaze as you moved down his body.  His mouth hung open while he watched, and when you reached his waist he swallowed.

Slowly, you brought your hand up over his clothed cock.  Rafe jerked at the subtle movement, and you smiled.  You palmed his mound again, licking your lips in preparation.  You wanted to make him feel as good as he just made you feel.

When you were about to pull down his shorts, a voice broke through the silence.

“Rafe?  Are you out there?”

It was Sarah.  Panic flared in your chest, and you pressed yourself as far into Rafe as you could to stay out of view.  He was panting by now, distracted by your body on his and the erection in his pants.

“I’m coming in a second,” he called out.  The distant sound of departing footsteps told you she was gone, and you then scrambled down off the chair and into the sand.  It sounded like Sarah had left, but you didn’t want to take any chances.  

Rafe sat up quickly, blowing out a sigh and running a hand through his tousled hair.  He looked worked up, and still very much hard.  But you ignored him as you pulled your shorts on, retying your bikini top and putting on your shirt.  

“Y/N,” he began, but once you slid into your shoes you wasted no time in running off of the beach, not even bothering to say goodbye.

~ ~ ~

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[thepoetlillies]

Eris - An Original Short Story

Writing Prompt: Turn one of the last texts you sent into a story

Selected Text Conversation: 

Me: A truly chaotic goddess xx

Friend: We stan xx

Word Count: 1,573

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Pagan Gods. Each civilization possesses those ancient beings that used to be praised with the creation and preservation of the world. As science evolved, these gods were dismissed. Simply disregarded as myths. Tall tales of great beings who controlled all aspects of life, told by the ancient worlds as an explanation for something previously unexplainable. Until what science can currently perceive decided that Gods were an impossible fantasy, pushing them out in favour of the contemporary state of technology.

Nevertheless, they continue to roam, their immortality unwavering.  

They each assume various identities, learning to move around every few years, once their everlasting appearance becomes suspicious to the mortal eye. They used to get away with their immortal looks, people were too stressed with plagues and whatnot to really notice, and those who did notice didn’t exactly have time to care. Following 1963 however, they’ve learnt to not stay put too long, seeing as Aphrodite was prosecuted for witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts. 

You’d probably get concerned if your lovely young neighbour Mary hadn’t aged in a decade too.

Inevitably, some remain more obvious than others, like lightning storms following Dave From Accounting wherever he goes. However, mortality has a habit of ignoring this, turning a blind eye so as to not disturb their habitual routines. No one would ever really notice, not unless they went looking for it which not many people do anymore. 

Some people still go searching for some of the more notable gods and goddesses, typically by those modern witches whose shrines and alters offer gifts aiming to please their chosen deity.

Though there are some who manage to roam completely undetected. Even if they entertain certain antics and habits, they are downright disregarded despite their ability to leave behind immense shadows of mayhem.

Eris, unsurprisingly, flawlessly fits the latter category, being the Greek Goddess of Strife, Discord, Chaos and all. Her powers just finished up their riots in a quaint, little spa town known as Harrogate, leaving the city in complete and utter pandemonium before shadowing her arrival in York. The local market utterly oblivious to her presence. For now.

The mundanity of the market is observed from a nearby cafe. The raised countertop and stools provide the ideal view through the floor-to-ceiling windows, allowing the willowy figure to survey the public. 

Various women charge through the market, scouring the stalls for their weekly purchases as though the announcement of nuclear war was just broadcasted. Other women simply wander through, looking at that, looking at this. The echoing of “ooh should I? Well go on then! I’ll treat myself, shall I?” floats throughout Parliament Street for hours. 

There were men who stand with shoulders so pushed back and chins so raised, their masculinity begins to shake as they desperately seek confirmation that they are worthy men while purchasing seeds for their garden. And there were men who embraced their excitement about the local farmer’s market. Both varieties of masculinity equal in worth, as both varieties of women were too. 

Despite the differing types of people, everything was harmonious. A calm before the storm, if you will. The customers worked in tandem with the shopkeepers, ensuring that everyone received their household needs and wants as they received their wages. Each face of each individual adorned a smile as they gazed at the beautiful assortments of goods offered by each stall owner. It was its very own ecosystem, consistent of producers, consumers, and the essential-yet-invisible decomposers. Though it was about to be hit by a merciless storm of acid rain: Storm Eris. 

She raised from her stool in that peaceful cafe, frayed skirt hem grazing her bony ankles as she floated towards the door. Her aura, a violent swarm of crimson and ebony, attacked the ivory-painted door frame as she drifted across the threshold into her unsuspecting target. 

Though completely unaware, the market’s crowd parted like the Red Sea as though Eris was their Moses. Except for the fact that she was there to ravage their relaxing Sunday afternoon, and, well, not emancipate the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Not unless the fresh fruit and vegetables were planning a tyrannical uprising against the consumers. 

As she strolled across the cobblestone road, the sky began to darken. She wished  In nearly any other country, the mortals recognised it as a bad omen and would typically disperse but this was the United Kingdom so all it produced were a few murmurs, a couple chuckles and perhaps a grumble. 

Her delicate-but-strong, bare feet stepped on each cobblestone with purpose yet with a very precise, calculated choice to display no discernible pattern in her strides, her pace, even her stance time seemed completely and utterly regular. However, to anyone who knew her, this was a warning. Her own subtle way of alerting any of her fellow immortals that may be lurking, not that she would necessarily admit to it. 

Long toes gripped the hook of the raised pavement as she rose onto it, remaining planted in front of her destination. A smirk only worthy of the devil graced her features as her scheme was about to unfold. The slender figure all but sauntered towards a sweet handmade jewellery stall. 

The stall was situated in a large canvas tent, the cream material already stained with the steadily drizzling rain. Puddles built up on the roof before penetrating the canvas, erratically spilling Adam’s ale on passersby. A beautifully intricate sign had been suspended above the kiosk’s ingress. It was almost reminiscent of a shop sign in a medieval kingdom, being hand-carved oak with hand-painted images of gemstones. Rubies, emeralds, sapphires all honoured by the fine oil painting’s rendition of their beauty, making the stall irresistible to those who pass. That is, until an aggressive surge of rain flooded over the front of the tent, washing away the gorgeous artwork that had been on display above the entrance to the jeweller’s until it looked like a toddler’s murderscene of an expensive coffee table. What was an alluring jewellery kiosk just a few moments ago, was now a precedent to the chaos about to be unleashed on the entire marketplace. Torn canvas and what rather resembled dishwater had replaced the once-stunning store with miserable ruins. 

Her tall stature and thin frame aided her as she glided through the uneven aisles like a phantom, bestowing a sombre aura wherever she went. Even though she is a goddess, she was still somehow the only thing to ever wander through a marketplace tent without bumping into or getting caught on the broken edges of the crappy plastic fold-up tables and chairs that solely exist for markets and primary school summer festivals. Who even makes them? Do they just spawn into existence as soon as anyone mentions a bake sale? I digress. 

The now-disgruntled customers were too rattled to comprehend the silhouette’s exhilarated spirit as it bounded throughout the stall, implementing disaster at each turn. Befuddled eyes darted around the tent as lanterns suddenly exploded, sending scolding fragments of glass every which way, whatever hadn’t landed on the floor or tables imbedding itself in the skin of unlucky shoppers. Not a second after that, the furniture began to rise. Swirling into its own unpredictable tornado, the plastic units crashed into each other as bodies were slammed into the flimsy tent walls before landing on the cold cobblestone. Subsequently, the ground began to shake violently. An impossibly strong earthquake emerged throughout the bazaar; the earth’s song had been sung, echoing not dissimilarly to a machiavellian villain’s maniacal laugh, and the town’s fate had been sealed. 

From there, her storm grew with stealth. Clouds rallying together, their anticipation mutating into ammunition, until Eris unleashed her fury against the undeserving world. But the mortals were oblivious to their fate. Grey whirlpools lurched across the skies as vengeful bolts pierced the ground, sparks scorching stories onto the earth. Soulless smoke pervaded the once-blue atmosphere, leaving an abhorrent sight in its place. Unbeknownst to the ecosystem, it gradually transformed into a perilous wasteland until the acidic showers began to pour. The bitter torrent was unrelenting as throbbing blisters began to litter each unfortunate creature and sulfur dioxide permeated the air until it had polluted every last lung. 

Beneath the fog and dirt lies the gasping population, desperately searching for even one breath of clean air to soothe the searing pain pervading their lungs before their ultimate demise. A pale face raised, hunting for an answer to the many questions overflowing from her mind. Her plump face gazed through the mist but was only met with portraits depicting excruciating pain that undoubtedly mirrored her own and the soundtrack of groans heavy with suffering. That was until the gloom shifted, revealing the one figure still standing. They stood in the exact core of the marketplace but their visage was unidentifiable. The only thing that could be determined was that this figure was in no way human, but here it didn’t matter if they acknowledged her immortality anymore; nobody would survive to recount the story of this massacre so nobody would survive to expose the truth of eternal life. The town, like many others had and would become, was left ravished by the chaos that demands for inescapable death. Thus, the Gods lived on and on and on, and anyone who ever knew of their existence was cursed with the fact that they would take that forbidden knowledge to their premature graves. 

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Hi!

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it! I’ll be honest when I say it ended up going in a totally different direction than I had originally planned but anyway. This isn’t my best work but I’m still proud of it!

(also, just in case, please can nobody steal this or do anything without crediting me. I don’t think anyone will, I’m just being cautious really, sorry)

Thank You

Amy J. xx

thepoetlillies

[theculturedmarxist]

You might have heard the pithy little soundbite from FDR, “we have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” It’s pretty catchy, the sort of thing every president or head of state wants, you know, something clever enough to seem deep, but not so substantial that it inspires critical thought, something that sounds inspiring, but not something that actually directs anyone to do anything. It’s a neat little “Yes, we can!” sort of slogan that you can slap on pins, signs, shirts, anything. A pretty sharp little piece of electioneering. Great job, case closed, let’s head home.

Except, if you watch the whole thing, it doesn’t stop there. The Great Depression has been ravaging the great Capitalist economies for nearly four years by this point, and Roosevelt spells out in no uncertain terms exactly who’s to blame: not foreigners, not workers, not average people trying to get by, but the capitalists.

I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our Nation impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself [emphasis mine]--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.  

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.  

More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.  

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.  

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.  

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.  

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.  

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.  

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.  

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.  

Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly.  

Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people's money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.  

There are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new Congress in special session detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the several States.  

Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment.  

The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in all parts of the United States--a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that the recovery will endure.  

In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor--the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others-- the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.  

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.  

With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.  

Action in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.  

It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.  

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.  

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis--broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.  

For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.  

We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of the national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stem performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded and permanent national life.  

We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.  

In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come. 

The language and ideology at play in the preceding paragraphs can be deservedly criticized, but they should also be understood both in substance and in the critical context in which they were spoken.

Crisis is a feature of Capitalism, not an aberration. A sound reading of the mechanics of Capitalism relies on several “laws” for its continued function. One such law is to produce as much as possible, for as little cost as possible, to as great a profit as possible. Another is that the capital coming in to an enterprise must be greater than that going out if it wishes to remain in solvency and continued operation. The ultimate result of the functioning of these two laws is firstly that wages, ie the outflow of capital from those possessing it, is predominantly inferior to the inflow of capital to those with the power to capture it, and secondly that profit, the driving force of the Capitalist economy, evaporates as those commodities which it has produced in such abundance become so depreciated in value by their ubiquity that, even if there is demand for them, the population at large loses the ability to purchase them at all, much less for the amount necessary to produce a profit great enough to continue large scale operation.

Or to put it another way, no matter how cheap things become, the “consumer class” loses the ability to purchase them. When that happens, production of those commodities ceases, and when production ceases, employment ceases, and when employment ceases, the economy ceases. For Capitalism, there are only two ways out of this trap: the first is through the creation of a tremendous amount of debt, and subsequently the infusion of a tremendous amount of capital by which it jumpstarts purchasing and consumption again. The other is the destruction of capital, in fact the annihilation of productive capital, which is what would result from this crisis in what would become understood as the Second World War.

This is the situation in which the Capitalist world found itself in 1933. Now, the Working Class, while a product of Capitalism, is not bound by the survival of Capitalism. Debt or Destruction are not the only two options open to the workers of the world. The inability to generate a profit does not in any way hamper production in a material, mechanical sense. People will always need food and shelter, clothing and education, transportation and medication. The elements necessary for their creation do not suddenly turn to dust because the economy no longer has a use for them. The only thing preventing workers from working is the Capitalist class and their armed thugs preventing them from doing so. As this fact makes itself known, the workers come to realize as well that, possessing the labor necessary, the knowledge necessary, and the means necessary, they understand that the Capitalists themselves are not necessary.

And that is the situation the Working Class and the Bourgeoisie find themselves in 1933. Those are the social and material forces that have put Franklin Delano Roosevelt on that podium, and which allowed him to indict the Capitalist class overtly, to the cheering of the crowds. FDR was a compromise on the part of the Capitalists. They allowed him to take command of one of the premier Capitalist economies on the planet, and to reform it to save themselves, and their property, and their fortunes. In doing so they may have gotten more than they bargained for. FDR would go on to be elected to an unprecedented four terms. FDR talks about a popular mandate for his policies, and surprisingly he isn’t joking. In the election that carried him into office he won 42 states to Herbert Hoover’s 6. In 1936 he would crush his opponent by winning 46 states to Alf Landon’s 2. Even in 1940, on the eve of WW2, he would win an unprecedented third term, 38 states to 10. In 1944, Roosevelt would win a fourth term, 36 states to 12. He would die three months into his fourth term as president, the most popular since Lincoln or possibly even Washington, having utterly transformed the country.

The war years and those leading up to them would be fatal for the working class. The devastation of every other major economy on the planet would lead to a revivification and revitalization of Capital, propelling it through the devastation wrought by it via the Cold War. The reforms won by the working class wouldn’t last either. Roosevelt was himself hardly cold before Congress would slam the door for any likeminded reformers shut behind him. The bourgeoisie would themselves claw back bit by bit every penny, with interest, that they surrendered to keep their necks from the guillotine and their property firmly under their control.

Which brings us to now, to circumstances not too dissimilar to those a century before that brought FDR to his podium.

In our time, it’s not organized labor bringing Capitalism to its knees, but Capitalism’s own excesses. Bernie Sanders, for reasons at which I can only speculate, seeks to be the Reformer that will rescue the working class from those excesses, and possibly even Capitalism from them as well. Whether or not this would be for good or ill, only time can possibly tell.

Yet, the Working Class is not the prisoner of History. As Marx so ably notes, workers play an active role in both the functioning of society and the production of history. We can see that however necessary reforms might be, reforms in themselves won’t liberate the workers. At best they will buy workers only breathing room—breathing room that will be utilized by the Capitalist class as well. Their position has changed also in the century since FDR. They know just as well that it’s a poor businessman that buys the same mule twice. With automation achieving new levels of sophistication with every passing day, what need have they with a restive and demanding working class? Their stock has only risen with previous mass cullings embodied historically in the processes known as World Wars 1 and 2. Now climate change offers them an even more expedient means of dispensing with the so-called reserve army of labor—all the better that it’s “natural,” free-range, guilt-free, on their part at least.

FDR’s words, spoken nearly a hundred years ago, resonated with the Working Class then in part because they were true—all great propaganda carries with it a core of truth around which builds its fantasy. There’s no point in fearing the inevitable, and anyone can see the inevitable result of the course we find ourselves on. For Workers those words are as true now as they were then, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. There is no need to fear climate change—it is already here. There is no need to fear fascism—it is already here. There is no need to fear persecution and repression—they are here already also.

You do not fear losing your job. It was never yours in the first place, so long as someone can deprive you of it by their whim.

You do not fear losing your family. Without the means to provide for them by your own will, from the beginning they were never yours to keep.

You do not fear losing your life. As long as you have to beg and scrape for permission to live, permission to eat, permission to love, permission to grow, it was never your life to begin with. Everything which you identity as “you” and “yours” is but on loan from the person that can take it from you by order of the bank, or court, or the rights claimed by the immortal, insurmountable corporation.

None of us have anything to fear, because fear is the apprehension one feels when faced with the potential of losing something or someone dear to us. The Working Class possesses nothing of its own, no country, no home, neither kith nor kin. We cannot even anticipate a future however dismal. That too has been claimed and spent by the Capitalist class. We have only to watch it turn to ash in between shifts in the prisons where we shovel it into Capitalism’s furnaces.

We have nothing to fear because we have nothing to lose—but everything to win, everything to save! No one is coming to save us. There’s no savior, no deus ex machina, no last minute salvation before the credits roll. Everything relies on you! On you and those that struggle with you. We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for! We’re the only ones that can!

Our generation has a date with destiny, and it can only be fulfilled if we meet it together. No more nations. No more borders. No more races. No more religions. No more property. No more classes. No more fictions! Only the reality of Communism—every one, every where, working together for a future for us all.

A new world is possible. Life waits for us there. We can build it. We must.

Together.

[thosewhoharvest]

Self-Sufficiency in the Time of Pandemic

With the current path that we as a planet are on, the facts are becoming increasingly obvious: times are going to get tough, in many ways. Climate Change warning flags, such as rising temperatures, more numerous and intense natural disasters and struggling ecosystems; and problems particular to the human population, such as resource depletion and the current COVID-19 outbreak we are currently facing; make it pretty clear that from here on out, humankind needs to be resourceful in order to survive.

We are busy going through something unprecedented in human history – there have been pandemics and widespread outbreaks before, but never has the world seen such a huge human population, nevermind one which is so interlinked across the globe. When you think about it, getting anxious during these times is only a natural and somewhat necessary response. But once one’s head begins to clear and the reality of the global situation sets in, the important questions begin to emerge: How am I going to look after myself and those I care about?

The measures we should all be taking to “flatten the curve” and slow the spread of the virus in time for healthcare systems to cope – physical distancing, washing our hands, and isolation, are all symptomatic responses to the current crisis. Don’t get me wrong, they are extremely important to how the pandemic unfolds, but I believe we should also be looking further down the line into the future. The world as we know it is changing before our very eyes, at a pace which is frighteningly tangible, and this pandemic is showing us a few key points, which can now no longer be denied:

We live in a global society – whether we like it, or not. This means that we ultimately need to work together, and respect our place in the collective human species, taking the rights of others to heart.

We are painfully dependent on ageing systems which are designed with profit as the key component, not necessarily human or planet welfare. Capitalism has engulfed all spheres of our society, to the point where the very things we need in order to survive – food, water, shelter and medicine, are turned into mechanisms through which we, as “consumers” can be drained for financial gain.

Our international leadership is largely inadequate and, whether on purpose or due to bureaucratic red tape, slow to act and respond in our time of need. Many countries have seen their governments refuse to react to the pandemic sufficiently, meaning that it wasn’t contained when it should and could have been, and as a result things have gotten much worse.

There are good (as in, really really good) everyday people out there who are willing to put their lives at risk to help others. Cashiers, paramedics, janitors, farmers, teachers, doctors, nurses, and many other overlooked professions are in fact the real heroes in this situation – and not the CEOs, directors or owners of companies. Without those who keep our society running through the day-to-day necessities, things would begin to crumble real fast.

Pandemics can affect everyone, regardless of their demographic. whether directly or indirectly, when something like this happens, it affects you – regardless of who you are. Stock markets and currencies are beginning to crash, companies are closing down, borders have been shut, and lockdowns are taking place. Things like these have far-reaching effects, which can be felt everywhere.

That being said, the planet can feel them too – just a few weeks of decreased human activity can lead to huge environmental improvements such as less pollution, returning wildlife and cleaner waters. This is just a little “sneak peak” at what is possible if we change our ways and try to live more harmoniously with nature.

Once this particular chapter of history subsides, how do we protect ourselves – personally, and on communal and global levels from similar things in the future? Ultimately, they are unavoidable and bound to happen again, be it in a different way or form. Once we accept that there are elements we cannot control, we can begin to look at what can be done to minimise our own suffering, and that of those in the same boat as us, at the hands of such disasters.

Look After Yourself: Strengthen That Immune System

This virus might subside, but chances are that it will be back, or another will take its place soon enough. So you need to fortify your body’s natural defences in order to give them the best chance of fending off such things. This boils down to one thing: keep healthy. Organic fruit and vegetables bring none of the poisons or chemicals that conventional produce carry with them, and often contain more vitamins and antioxidants. In particular, things like garlic, chillies, ginger, broccoli and citrus fruit are great turbo-chargers of the immune system. The fresher your food, the more nutrients it contains, and the better it is for you – so avoid canned or prepackaged produce where possible.

Local is Lekker

In South Africa, we have a saying that “Local is Lekker” – it essentially means that what comes from nearby is great; and it couldn’t be more on point or relevant than right now. By choosing things from local suppliers, businesses, farms, and organisations, you are not only decreasing reliance on the transportation system, but also “voting” with your coin against multinational corporations. Of course, the more local you can get, the better – ultimately, you should aim to be growing as much of your own food as possible. For some, this may mean growing a basil plant on their balcony, for others, perhaps a bed of tomatoes and garlic in their garden. Do what you can, with what you have. We recently began offering food garden design, consultation and establishing services, so if you are interested, please do contact us. Otherwise, support your local farmer and get to know where your food is coming from – it is a great step in not only learning how it’s grown, but also in becoming aware of what you are eating and how it reaches you. We deliver weekly boxes of our fresh organic produce to people nearby every week. Read more about or boxes, or order here.

Water is Life

Without water, we’re in trouble – just ask any Capetonian about the struggle. Having narrowly missed day zero, we can all attest to the importance of this liquid in our lives. Ensuring that you have a good supply or reserve of clean, drinkable water is of utmost importance. Setting up rainwater and dew harvesting can be done extremely easily and fairly cheaply – whether using small tanks to catch rainwater from gutters, catching your bathing water to water your garden.

Take Shelter

If you are among the lucky who have a good roof over their heads, take a moment to appreciate it, and consider how you can improve your dwelling. If there were to be a nearby disaster such as a flood or fire, how would it hold up, or perhaps instead, what is the contingency plan? If you are looking to set up a home somewhere, how can you construct it in such a way that it requires as little new resources as possible, and makes use of what is around? Small changes, such as using natural building materials, simple designs or even just taking note of the prevailing wind can have rather big impacts on a home, and are often overlooked.

Avoid Blackout

Technology plays a huge role in our lives – beyond communication and business, we rely on it to keep our food cold, light up our homes, drive our vehicles and make our stuff. All it takes is a little “Stage 2 Load-shedding” from your friendly neighbourhood power supplier to remind you how dependent we are on it. Although going entirely off-grid is becoming cheaper at a rapid rate, it is still largely out of the financial question for most people. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t take certain smaller measures in order to reduce your reliance on the grid. Depending on your financial position, you can take various steps – install a solar geyser to get electricity-free hot water on tap, buy or make simple solar lamps to light up your house (it’s really easy – look it up), sell your fridge and replace it with a gas alternative, or even just put together a little solar oven (we made one out of an old window and some planks – it cooks brownies like a charm!).

Wash Your Hands

Keeping things clean is a must. But don’t let that fool you into thinking that stockpiling toilet paper and hand sanitiser is necessary. Firstly, that just creates a shortage (do you see the self-fulfilling prophecy here?) and secondly, if worst came to worst and all the toilet paper in the world were to run out, you could use water like the entire continent of Asia is still largely doing after centuries). What is important is finding a way to maintain good hygiene and prevent illnesses from coming into your home and body. The good news is that soap, hand sanitiser, shampoo, and even general house cleaners are really easy to make with very simple, cheap and biodegradable ingredients. Good friends of ours, Guerrilla House, hold frequent soap-making workshops in Cape Town, and there is a plethora of online resources which can teach you how it’s done.

All these steps, however small they may be, add up and create a ripple effect, which although may seem immeasurable, can grow into a huge wave, given the right tide. So my advice is this: prepare yourself. Don’t freak out about the toilet paper, and don’t panic in general. But take time to think about how you can reduce not only your financial and environmental footprints, but also your reliance and dependence on the systems that surround you. And when you do need to depend on them, do it consciously and with full understanding and awareness of the implications it has. Be selective about how you “vote” with your spending – support those near to you, both geographically and socially speaking, and in so doing help build the network of interdependence we all need in order to survive. Because if the governments of the world aren’t going to look after all of us, then we will do it ourselves.

– Nevau, one of those who harvest

[legendaryobservationpuppy]

The Most Effective FRESH DOG FOOD DELIVERY IMO: HEALTH AND CONVENIENCE FROM THE FARMER'S DOG

At an occasion years ago, I talked with somebody who was a quite pet-savvy person. We spoke about dog food, as well as I mentioned adding fresh veggies-- carrots, beans, peas, etc.-- to the young boys' food. She looked aghast. "I don't feed my dogs individuals food," she said. "I don't want to transform them into beggars."

OK, the habits issue apart, when she stated "people food," I could not assist yet question: Well, what is dog food made of otherwise ... food? A minimum of, shouldn't it be constructed from food, genuine food, like the kind individuals eat? If a bag of kibble states it has carrots in it, exactly how's that various from providing your dog a carrot?

The discussion seemed ridiculous to me, and now, say thanks to benefits, it's come cycle ...

THE FARMER'S DOG FOOD REVIEW

WHY FRESH DOG FOOD?

This is the large, underlying concern: Why feed your dog fresh dog food?

At the end of the day, food is food is food is food. What makes one meal different from another eventually comes down to just how it's made, right? Take the carrot example. Boiling and also steaming both prepare the carrots, however steaming protects its nutrients while steaming sheds 60% or more of the carrot's nutrients. Eating a raw carrot may not be best, either, though due to the fact that study shows that some food preparation techniques may really boost the carrot's antioxidant power. Basically, a steamed carrot is a carrot, a boiled carrot is a carrot, a raw carrot is a carrot, a dehydrated carrot extruded right into kibble form is still a carrot ... however they're not all nutritionally equivalent. I believe we can all settle on that, as well as I believe we can all concur that there's absolutely nothing grosser than a boiled carrot. (Actually, perhaps steamed asparagus is grosser?).

Anyway.

If you're mosting likely to eat food, which of course you are, and also if you're going to feed your dog food, which of course you are, wouldn't you want it to be the most nutritionally-rich food readily available? Obviously you do! We all do! And the advantage to our dogs is that they don't have to pick between, claim, a smoked poultry bust vs. drive-thru chicken nuggets because we make the decisions on their behalf. So, it stands to factor that if we know fresh food is best, as well as we're in position to make a decision the most effective food to feed our puppies, we 'd wish to go fresh, yeah?

There are a TON of fresh foods hitting the market (more on that particular in a minute), however we've found The Farmer's Dog to fit our way of living, spending plan, and Coop's belly peculiarities.

Backing up one fast action: When I wrote about The Farmer's Dog previously, we switched foods after getting the results of Cooper's allergic reaction examination. At the time, I really did not write a complete review due to the fact that I wasn't certain how handy it would be given that I was so focused on food allergic reactions. We were so pumped to find a recipe that really did not include a single allergen from Coop's list, and also while he's restricted to among the three solutions for that extremely reason, it's made measurable, obvious distinctions in his stubborn belly. I wanted to sing that from the roofs! However, SO numerous of you have actually connected with details concerns I really did not answer in that blog post that I believed I would certainly draw them together in a full evaluation nevertheless!

Note: Because I assume turning proteins is so very vital, we're still rotating in The Honest Kitchen due to the fact that 2 of the three solutions from The Farmer's Dog do include irritants on Coop's list.

The other large point is that our food manufacturing system is deeply flawed. Romaine lettuce, any person? I'm certain you've all seen the congeries as well as gobs of dog food remembers as a result of tainted active ingredients, too. Actually, there's a significant one underway as I kind this: FDA Alerts Pet Owners concerning Potentially Toxic Levels of Vitamin D in Several Dry Pet Foods.

It's critically essential to me that we're feeding Cooper a food where the active ingredients are properly sourced as well as the production is smaller range for much better quality assurance. I fully recognize that no food manufacturing system is excellent. For that, we would certainly have to expand as well as make our very own, which allowed's be straightforward, isn't taking place.

THE VERY BEST FRESH DOG FOOD DELIVERY.

I assume we can all concur that fresh food is the method to go, however that's not without a substantial list of pros vs disadvantages when it concerns pet food. It's not like you can stroll right into the produce area of your local pet store and also pick up a fresh dish, ya understand? Let's take a look at a few of the evident advantages and disadvantages of fresh dog food as well as fresh dog food delivery services:.

Price: Equal parts PRO/CON. I enter into this carefully below re: The Farmer's Dog, yet these services are definitely more costly than getting an average store bag of kibble (though there are several superior kibbles that are similar or even more costly). I do assume it's worth taking a look at the expense of health-related issues from fast food vs. wholesome foods. However you men understand me: I'm NOT somebody that says in a covering declaration kibble is bad. It's not. Although I advocate genuine, whole food, these solutions could not fit your budget plan. #noshame It's my viewpoint that The Farmer's Dog is priced at a reasonable worth. It's most definitely a stretch if you've been feeding normal kibble, however not if you've been feeding premium or, as we were, a dried alternative like The Honest Kitchen.

Packaging: PRO! Alright, you guys. You know I'm consumed with searching for green remedies to every animal care problem. Well, The Farmer's Dog can be found in recyclable packaging AND the insulation is corn starch that you liquify in your kitchen area sink! The brand is dedicated to sustainability, as well, so you can trust that their production techniques are gentler on the setting.

Website/ordering: CON. You can not see the formulas till you create an account. I feel like that's a disappointment for those people that have dogs that are SO sensitive to active ingredients that we can't choose till we see every last active ingredient.

Ease: PRO! Extra on this below, yet having the food automatically shipped is a life saver.

Small-batch manufacturing: PRO! For all the factors mentioned above. And also each packet comes identified particularly for Cooper.

THE FARMER'S DOG VS OLLIE (OR NOMNOM NOW, PETPLATE, ETC.).

Fresh food + shipment is the future, y' all.

Hopefully by now you're on board with the fresh food item, yet shipment?

OK, so I know that you're busy. I'm hectic, you're active, we're all essentially extended so thin it's difficult to maintain. Grocery store pick-up has actually changed my life! I truthfully can't stand entering into the shop-- really, grocery buying is my single most despised chore-- so buying online then driving over and having a person tons it right into my auto is, in my opinion, the best invention of my life time.

At the very least it was.

Till ... Delivery!

Distribution is the next wave of convenience foods, which is SO much better than "comfort" foods like McDonald's or microwave meals since you can pick all your very own healthy and balanced foods and have them given your doorstep. My neighbors, who have 5 youngsters, obtain their groceries provided, and also I'm certain it's altered their lives right! Well, that's just how I really feel regarding fresh food distribution for my pets. I think more people are demanding delivery for more and more things (I have 3 different apps on my phone for takeout/delivery services ...) so you can expect to see tons of fresh dog food shipment brands appear to fulfill that requirement.

After my previous article, I got a lots of inquiries regarding exactly how The Farmer's Dog compares to Ollie. Truthfully? We've never attempted Ollie. I did Google a bunch of the brand names that are currently around, and also almost everything I read placed The Farmer's Dog towards the top for convenience, expense, and also alternatives. Right here's a testimonial from a food blog site I like if you want to check out some particular contrasts.

Just How Much DOES THE FARMER'S DOG COST?

It varies. It depends on the dimension as well as age of your dog as well as his or her everyday calorie requirements. Let's say you enjoy a sedentary pug. Well, your price is going to be reduced-- and also appropriately so!-- than my high-energy, perma-pup Am Staff mix. He needs a great deal of calories in the day to stay up to date with his skittering as well as cat chasing!

That said, they do supply arrangements to do the dish as a mattress topper, which I believe would be an ahhhhhmazing means to blend whole foods right into a kibble or dehydrated diet plan in a cost-effective method.

My recommendations? Try it at 50% off as well as see. It's either going to work wonders for your dog as well as his diet plan (which I truly do think it will certainly) or it will not! But, it can't hurt to try, specifically at such a reduced cost.

ALL-TIME LOW LINE.

At the end of the day, every person wants to do what's finest for their pup. That's it. All of us do the best we can with the criteria we have. No, this isn't mosting likely to be for everyone. It might not be a square meal option for you, either, yet the topper situation might work. Or, possibly you're ready to dive into something brand-new. Everybody's doing their ideal, and as long as you're caring your pet dogs, you're doing terrific. If part of that includes attempting The Farmer's Dog fresh dog food shipment service, I would certainly enjoy to assist you start with a discount: Click below to try it for 50% off!

What rocks have I left unturned? I attempted to answer the inquiries I had obtained via email as well as DM, but in case I missed something, or if an additional question cropped up for you as you were reading this, please leave them in the remarks! I 'd love to supply as much info as feasible, and if I do not understand the solution, I'm always satisfied to connect to the business to find the right information!

[sunshineandfangs]

Klarosummer - Quote || Abhang Samsāra

Quote: “Farmers markets aren’t just for hippies.”

@klarosummerbingo​

Caroline suppressed a groan, feeling the start of a headache merrily pounding away behind her temples and brow. And she wondered what she had done in a past life to deserve this.

I’ve gone native, she thought wryly, amused despite herself, for she knew exactly what she had done in her past lives. And quite frankly she didn’t think she deserved this dudebro lingering in her space, having been attempting to flirt and talk himself up (both badly) at the same time for what had to be almost 30 minutes now.

“-thought hippies were more wild,” he sneered, apparently finally catching on that she hadn’t been paying even a lick of attention.

Caroline blinked, honestly not sure what he was even talking about or if it was somehow supposed to be an insult. She barely refrained from rubbing her forehead as she started to respond, staring him dead in the eye so he could properly appreciate just how few fucks she gave about him.

“Look, I’m not sure what logic you’re attempting here, but it sucks. First of all, farmers markets aren’t just for hippies. They’re a way for smaller producers to advertise and sell products, and they’re good for the local community.” She watched with rightful schadenfreude as his eyes started to glaze over. “Secondly, whether they do or do not attract a larger than average population of hippies has nothing to do with your success or rather lack thereof with getting a girl to hop on your tiny dick.” Caroline let herself smirk as his jaw dropped in shock, an angry and embarrassed flush creeping up his face.

He spluttered, trying to defend himself, but she just talked over him. Karma, really. “Finally, those “wild, free-spirited hippies” or however you’re stereotyping them probably have even less time for your bullshit. So, do yourself a favor and just go home before someone less tolerant than me decides to shut you up.” She waved him off, turning to the next customer, “You have a nice day now.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the boy open and close his mouth like a dying fish, outraged but too dumbstruck to know how to react. The man she had shifted to greet apparently lost his own patience as he turned to face the boy.

“Off you go,” he mocked. 

And she rose an eyebrow at the docile obedience, sensing the light flare of power. A vampire? How interesting.

He pivoted back to face her with a charming grin to hide the hunting expression in his eyes.

“Quite the sharp tongue you have, love.”

She wondered what he wanted, sensing he wasn’t seeking something as basic as blood. Her ponderings were expertly masked though as she simply raised an eyebrow in response.

“Hmm, and my tolerance has already been worn down, so please buy something or leave.” Her smile was bland, even as she watched barely concealed ire enter his eyes.

---

Klaus wasn’t sure if he wanted to admire the young blonde’s audacity or choke it out of her. It had certainly been a long time since someone dared speak to him with such dismissal. 

She hardly knew his identity though and he’d rather she stayed precisely where she was. So, he turned up the charm, letting his smile deepen the dimples on his face. Cocked his head just so, to draw her eyes down the smooth lines of his neck, across the open collar of his Henley.

“Of course, sweetheart, I’m sure your time is valuable.”

---

He was good. 

The dimples, the accent, the seemingly innocent head tilt. Even his apparent polite concession after she had been more rude than not. Had she truly been just the 22 year old she appeared to be, he would have likely gotten her hook, line, and sinker.

Unfortunately for him, she wasn’t.

Thus, her reaction was perfectly polite, but distant as she gestured with her arm toward her collection of binned produce. “Please, take your pick then.”

---

Klaus made a show of rifling through the various baskets of fruits, subtly flirting all the while. He was both impressed and offended when she didn’t respond at all, maintaining a polite façade, but no more. 

Thanks to his minions he knew she was at least partially attracted to men, probably entirely based on her dating history, so it wasn’t that. Not that he needed her to like him, but it would certainly make it less suspicious to linger. And considering everything that was at stake he was hardly going to leave such a task up to the help.

He decided to make a more blatant pass, peered up at her through his lashes, slightly bent over a crate of strawberries. Ensured his accent was a bit deeper when he spoke.

“Ah, apologies, I realize I haven’t introduced myself. Please, call me Klaus. May I have the name of my lovely, sharp-tongued vendor?”

---

Internally, Caroline marveled at her luck. Realized he must have been what drew her soul to Mystic Falls. Not every life had dramatic purpose or whatever one wanted to call it, but it was rare she would appear somewhere so obscure without the hand of destiny being at work.

And now Klaus of The Sun and Moon Curse was at her metaphorical door. Well then, she might as well catch him off guard now, while the effort to mass compel people would hopefully be more work than he wanted to exert.

“Klaus,” she repeated, rolling the syllables across her tongue, wondering how things were about to change. “If even half the rumors I’ve heard of you are true, I’m quite certain you already know it. After all someone like you wouldn’t be lingering if not for a purpose, am I right?”

---

Klaus’ expression instantly hardened, his mind racing at this unexpected reveal. None of the reports he had received indicated the girl was at all aware of the supernatural, let alone informed enough to have heard of him. 

Of course, he knew about the so-called council, with their sworn duties to protect the town against vampires. But the good sheriff showed no indication she had ever told her daughter a thing. And the girl herself had seemed as ordinary as they come, a bit overachieving perhaps being on a startling number of committees, but normal. Too human even, seeing as she returned from college to take care of her sick mother.

“I must admit it’s been a long time since someone surprised me, Caroline.” As he spoke he let menace seep into his voice, hoping she wasn’t going to make him chase her.

It would be troublesome to deal with the fallout of such a spectacle, but he would if she pushed him. This chance would not slip through his fingers.

---

Caroline’s wariness spiked as she caught the look in his eyes. She’d have to be more careful. Whatever had brought him here must be more important than she thought, if it put such a dangerous glint in his eyes.

“Well,” she started carefully, “I have to admit to my own surprise. I wouldn’t think a tiny town like this one would be of any interest to you.”

He chuckled darkly. “Oh, you’re quite correct about that, sweetheart. I could not care less about this place.”

It was a warning and threat all rolled into one, daring her to test his resolve. Caroline wasn’t particularly attached to this place, but she did love her mother. And she wasn’t so cruel as to go out of her way to condemn the residents to be the gruesome aftermath of an immortal’s rage.

She pursed her lips. “You’ve made your point, Klaus, I won’t make a scene. Just tell me what your want. I’m not going to indulge in some kind of sick game with you.”

“Good thing I’m not playing, sweetheart. Now, you’ll make your excuses to leave, and then you’ll come with me. If I catch even a hint of duplicity your mother will be the first to suffer my wrath.” His smirk was a monstrous thing to behold. “Obey me and I’ll permit you to visit her under my careful watch.”

She already knew she would go with him, quite assured he’d carry through with his threats, though she was also quite confused. What use was she to him? Had he learned the truth of her, wanted to use her knowledge for something?

Caroline nodded to him, hurried to excuse herself from the market and felt his gaze burning a hole in her back as she did so. When she returned to his side, a warning hand settled on the small of her back. The two of them appearing as some happy couple rather than abductor and captive.

“What do you want from me, Klaus?” She whispered as he helped her into his car. The manners seeming ridiculous considering everything.

He didn’t respond immediately, situating himself in the driver’s seat and backing out of the space. He stayed silent as he drove and she figured he wasn’t going to answer when he finally did.

“There’s a rather pesky curse I want to break, love. Several years ago I thought my chances were ruined, but as it turns out,” he glanced over at her a covetous expression on his face, “you’re my missing piece.”

Understanding flooded her. She had heard that The Sun and Moon Curse required a Doppelgänger, creatures born of Silas’ and Amara’s tampering. Her circumstances were different though, and never had she cursed her consistent appearance more. Not even when it had caused immense trouble during the times she had been born to parents that looked nothing like her.

See, despite the surface level similarities she was not a Doppelgänger. Her blood didn’t carry the magic he needed.

Caroline suppressed a ragged sigh. She was going to have to be the one to inform him of his mistake. Not something she was looking forward to. What had she done to deserve this again?

She closed her eyes, deciding to wait until they were out of a multi-ton moving vehicle to be the barer of bad news. ...Still, what did a being such as her fear of death? Innumerable millennia and innumerable lives, even Klaus was nothing in the face of that. 

---

Author’s note: The title today is Hindi/Sanskrit for “Unbroken Cycle.” Admittedly it doesn’t have much connection to India beyond the utilization of the ideas of reincarnation, which while not exclusive to Hinduism and Buddhism, are obviously very prevalent. Meanwhile the word Samsāra in and of itself is quite tied to the idea of reincarnation.

[delta-has-a-blog]

Gate Hoppers: World Info

This is going to be an ever-expanding list, adding in new worlds as I make them or decide to so reveal their existence.

Yvjærdën - Could be considered one of the three main worlds of the story, this is where Norabellé's mother Nadalé comes from. Her species are humanoids named Jaegers, strong and blessed with tremendous life force, Jaegers could possibly live out their years until killed otherwise. This makes more of then apt for Relic creation, although they are shorter than your average person and just about that much duller as well.

Is largely plains and prairies with large oceans and mountains muddled about, and the only regions that actually get cold are the mountains.

Known for very hardy inhabitants

Very.

Most flora that isn't grass grows close to the ground as well, and if there is a tree it's a large one.

Most civilized people are nomadic

The predators are just as if not hardier than their omnivorous counterparts.

Gnäroknstrad - Look hard to pronounce? Regional dialect makes it worse, each of the beast man species living here have different vocal clicks. Imagine this but said in horse. This is where Norabellé's father, Faravir's species the Külveena reside. He's since moved in with Nadalé and picked up working in the office for the Federation. However Nora lives here, funny how that works?

All civilized people native to this world are beast-men

All biomes within are extreme versions of the ones found elsewhere, with the world itself being just as large in comparison to others.

Widely regarded as a highly dangerous world for outworlders

Not so much for those who are native

Despite the differences in DNA beast-man species can safely reproduce with most other humanoid species. Further research is being done into exactly how. No not like that, get your head out of the gutter... Maybe it's my mind that's in the gutter...

Despite the large differences in each culture all share the value that respect and honor is important, however if you have no honor your earn no respect.

Most Relics thar are produced within this world are weapons.

??? - New world where Angel is discovered, while "Ruins" is more like it. Overrun by life forms so dangerous that no civilized life can exist, all that's left is their memories.

Every creature here can and will try to kill you

Some of the plants too

Used to be entirely civilized, until they had their extinction event.

Any Relics recovered from this world are highly dangerous, just as much as the creatures that call it home

Great Gate Federation HQ - Not necessarily a world but through the power contained in Relics found by the Grand Hoppers they were able to create the HQ and transport it into a rift all on it's own. Accessible only by sister-transporters to the main Relic that brought the HQ to the rift. One of many security measures taken to ensure what the Federation finds stays hidden if it must.

Surprisingly homey

Many misconceptions have been bred in the general public

Livelier than one would think

Vindikarr - A hub world of technology & industry that the Federation maintains good relations with. Mostly large hills and mountains with scattered valleys, where a curious species named the Grinka live. The Grinka are the main inhabitant of Vindikarr, other than the sister species the Kriva who call the mountains their home. Houses a wide array of birds and bird-type animals while at a keen lack for terrestrial life as most enjoy a life of burrowing through the mountains.

Despite living industrially, the Grinka and Kriva live in harmony with nature, taking care not to damage their home in their progress

Both the Grinka and Kriva may seem odd at first, but they are as friendly as the are workaholics, even if they aren't good for conversation.

Within both cultures it's commonplace to have weekly celebrations, the reason of which could be anything.

Mirafune - A lush world that's inhabitants are just as much part of the past as they are residents of the present. Humanoids, non-humanoids and everything to and fro may be seen inhabiting this world, all cultures placing a heavy value upon tradition. Many also, shun the over-technological, deciding to put their trust into the things they know work. As such many of the Relics that are produced from the people here are simple, but deadly in efficiency.

One of the friendliest worlds for other races, but not quick to trust

Traditionally like said before they are wary of outsiders, but once you gain their trust they're quite open

Many contests of might are held here, the raining champion is none other than the Grand Lion herself.

As such, many martial combatants make a pilgrimage to this world for it's contests

Privéda - If the above is the home of the not l noble warrior this is the home of the gladiatorial. Despite this the cultures of Privéda are all surprisingly philosophical, often posing grand existential mysteries to each other in heated philosophical debates, of which happen often. Much like the above world they too hold competitions, but nobility and honor have no place, the strong wins by whatever means necessary. The Grand Lion is a common visitor of this world as well.

Will welcome any willing to fight and compete, though they have crass views about those opposed to such displays

Mostly inhabited by a race of giants know as the Grodar

The land varies greatly in biomes, each continent being one mega biome

Much like the severe biomes, the weather of each can reach high extremes

Ullio - This isn't as much a world as it is a giant marketplace. It's said before the advent of the Gates it was a empty rock, before a company so decided to begin mining from it. Eventually the workers began living here as a result, then the company collapsed and rather than leave their home they made it into their own place of work. Now, the entire planet is like one huge center where you could feasibly find almost anything you need. Not exactly known for it's great natural views as it was barren nothingness before.

Nearly every inch is owned by one or another market

Whispers have it that under the world operates a lucrative back market where even dangerous Relics show from time to time

Not as accepting as just willing to let anyone who will pay in

Theft is met with furious vengeance

You could quite literally sell your family members here, if you were dastardly enough to do so

Moltova - Do you like sand? This world is mostly sand, deserts, and other climates the like, with the exception of the tundras. As such the peoples who hail from here are both very heat resistant and very stubborn. Known for having highly dangerous natural fauna.

(Anakin screaming in the distance)

The only regions that differ from the born are the coasts, but even then they are a curious form of desert swamp

Famous for their immaculate glasswork, and such is in abundance as sand is everywhere

Large corporations tend to avoid trying to come here to mine or collect other resources, as doing so is highly difficult for anyone not naturally heat resistant and there's the Fin-bosa, giant serpent-like creatures that use tremors to detect their prey.

Home to many natural species, from a host of beast-man species and many other humanoids

Brîgatërna - Most know this land simply as the home of the Liege of Decay, while in the surface it seems bustling with life that's only the surface. Underneath are massive chasms fueled by an endless cycle of death, and the surface reaps all the benefits. The few species of civilized folk who make this home typically turn away from the grotesque underbelly, with only one making it home. Funny as that is, as the surface dwellers can be the most toxic of all, even moreso than the worst poisonous flora of the chasms.

Home to the chasm-dwelling Hu'k, and the surface-dwelling Narfūda, Kiräken and Júmùna (úmù was on purpose)

Don't let the pretty colors fool you, the Narfūda can be a downright barbaric people, using their amassed power to control the other surface-dwellers with an iron fist, with the Hu'k only avoiding them because if the safety of the chasms they call home.

Despite what locals may tell you of the Hu'k, they aren't ravenous flesh-eaters, they simply wanted safety. As such the are distrusting of outsiders, but will extend a hand to those in need.

As they can't verbally communicate, many assume the Hu'k are a undeveloped people, however the case is that they communicate by transmitting emotions and thoughts to others.

District O - "Districts" refer to places uninhabited by any civilized people, for whatever reason. District O is simply wild lands, and has yet too evolve any species capable of civilization. Relatively safe for a district, a favorite to send Hopper trainees too.

Many of the creatures here would be dangerous to the general public, but not so much for even slightly experienced Hoppers.

As no civilization has ever formed, it stands to reason no Relics have been discovered here.

Many of the non-dangerous flora and fauna from here are favorites of domesticators, especially the hare-like Opopo.

Sometimes more experienced Hoppers lead civilian exploration teams through here

Ímer'ii - A relatively small world, inhabited by a species of humanoid known as the Forovins. The Forovins have a vast array of races, much like humans but share very similar farming cultures, with differences depending on local. Some prefer the nomadic approach while porters find safety in anchoring down. A favorite vacation spot for Hoppers, as it's a good break from all the fighting the more experienced ones get into. Home of the Grand Rhino, where his farm resides, ran by his many grandchildren.

Many of the predators of this world ate quite tame as well, as the farmers utilize them as herding animals

Vinguard is a well known figure here, known as the local gramps for good reasons

Many are happy to house Hoppers for fr, should they simply put in a little work.

Lünovéra - A world of darkness, lit solely by many small stars that orbit it and reflect the light of far away stars. Original home of the Grand Owl, and a host of many other dark and dim-dwelling peoples and fauna. Despite this it's always bustling and busy, as they've evolved to operate at basically random times as there's no set day-night schedule and only one setting. Forever fascinated by the bright colors produced by technology, the cities that were once known as lightless became some of the brightest known, although there are always those who prefer the natural state of things.

Many insect-type beast-men hail from this world, with very few natural humanoid species

Fans of firework shows, which are displayed upon any celebration

Known too for their intricate death rituals, performing a chant, song and dance for the recently departed.

From their love of lights alone, many electrical innovations have spread out from this world.

District A - In a sentence, no don't come here. A favorite training ground for Noir Hoppers this place is highly dangerous. So much so that even high ranking normal Hoppers are wary of this District. Some Noir Hoppers that are crazy enough make this world their base of operations, due to the secrecy gained in doing so.

Most things can and will try to kill you

Like dragons? There's several monsters very close to those here.

Giant, angry octopi? Yeah those too.

As Relics have been discovered here civilization did exist but was wiped out (wonder how, couldn't be the basically-dragon Jervassk or the pissed off octodad Zerrfîn)

Only crazy people come here

??? - Another newer world, with it's exploration being headed by none other than two of Nora's good friends, the Ríoruné family Ibānu (Shiba) Lion Hopper, Iika and the Jaeger Rhino Hopper Brôvīshka. Iika and her stoic companion the man-of-one-face typically work in a team, but often work in tandem with Nora whenever possible. So far so moderately dangerous, but Relics ripe for the picking. Home to semi-civilized folk but nowhere near the capacity to make such Relics.

As with all new worlds little is known yet, although through Iika's reports they know which fauna are domesticatable and through Brôvie's (nickname via Iika) reports they know which fauna and flora are the tastiest but not necessarily which ones aren't poisonous as Jaegers laugh at pretty much all of those.

The locals are nice but quick to venerate one as a God

They think Brôvīshka is scary but a good guy

District J - A district you'll only see more experienced Hoppers in, and in most cases in teams of at least two. All creatures native to this world are considered Monsters due to their levels of aggression, not a singular one not attacking on sight. Some however, can be driven away. Used as one of the primary worlds for Relic components and ores.

The landscape is ever-changing, either by conflict of the creatures here or simply the whims of the land

The weather too, can change wildly, going from clear skies to thunderstorms in mere minutes.

One singular location is free from this, a towering inert golem-type Guardian Relic and a fifty-foot radius around that stays in a state of constant pleasantry. Shifting seasons slowly but never in a way that would be uncomfortable for those in it.

Vulture's Roost - Once a district, District F to be precise, taken control over by Her Lady of Benevolence, Jinko. She then built what started out as one supermassive hospital but now functions as a miniature HQ for the Vulture Hoppers, but also training center.

Is still considered a District as other areas past the Roost are still uninhabitable

Not only do they perform medical research but also make supplies that are sold to other locations

Both Vultures that follow Jinko and the Liege come to work here, even the Liege himself.

Jinko is seen as an older sister figure to many, and many come to see the Liege as a kindly advisor.

Oxíll Star - The star is the miniature headquarters made by the Grand Mole in the wake of seeing what was made by Jinko. Thinking, "Why shouldn't the Moles have their own?" They proceeded to mine into a world presumed to have been a comet of some sort, shaping the inside and adding it's own power generator coupled with propulsion systems to control the direction in which it is going. Many Moles find the innate danger in riding a comet through space as a great part of the experience.

No one here is completely sane

Serves as the training center for the Moles and home for many as well

All new ores are sent here for study, unless the Hopper in question is able to process it themselves it is sent here for that as well.

The inside is shaped by the Moles' constant digging, now having 1/4 the inside of the massive comet uncovered.

((Will add more soon))

[a-wandering-fool]

Sanders: I Will Do a Better Job ‘Explaining What We Mean by Socialism – Democratic Socialism’

“I think what we have to do, and I will be doing it, is to do a better job maybe in explaining what we mean by socialism — democratic socialism. Obviously, my right-wing colleagues here want to paint that as authoritarianism and communism and Venezuela, and that’s nonsense.

“What I mean by democratic socialism is that I want a vibrant democracy. I find it interesting that people who criticize me are busy actively involved in voter suppression trying to keep people of color or low-income people from voting, because they don’t want a vibrant democracy. I do.

“Second of all, what it means, Rachel, is that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world we can provide a decent standard of living for all about people. That’s just the reality. That’s not Utopian dreaming; that is a reality. Health care for all can be done and we can save money in doing it. We can have a minimum wage which is a living wage, and I’m delighted to see that you know, right now, five states already passed fifteen dollars an hour minimum wage. The House of Representatives is gonna do it. We have got to do that.”

The problem with “democratic” Socialism is something the Left in this country should be able to intuit–but sadly don’t: sometimes you’re the party who wins the argument. And sometimes the other folks vote in President Donald Trump.

So when economic institutions are run by consensus rather than economic institutions being forced to cater to fickle customers–there will always be a large minority of customers who are as unhappy as the Left is today with our Democratically elected President.

It also never ceases to amaze me how someone on the Left who is a Bernie Supporter or who supports “Socialism” will then post endless diatribes againstthe Government for doing something stupid. Like cops arresting the wrong man. Like a local zoning commission leveling a bunch of homes for a Foxconn factory. Like the government taking cash from an innocent couple.

Our government is already “democratic”–yet this doesn’t stop our government from doing incredibly stupid things. And we’re supposed to turn over the entire economy to this same government?

The reason why Socialism fails is not because it’s not sufficiently “democratic” enough. Socialism fails because it creates a single point of failure: centralized command and control of the economy.

Through a free market, price signaling (which is a way of signaling what customers want) allows multiple suppliers to make individual decisions about the products they plan to offer and how they plan to make those products. But when decision making is pushed up to a central authority–such as a government oversight bureau–price signaling falls to the wayside. Instead of giving customers what they want, governments tell corporations what to give to customers. And like the Left who is unhappy about the 2016 Presidential Elections, some customers don’t get what they want.

Instead they get what the government tells them the should have.

If you don’t think this description–that the Government should tell us what we can consume, rather than having corporations guess what we want by providing a variety of products–doesn’t apply to Bernie Sanders, remember his famous, but rather telling quote:

You can’t just continue growth for the sake of growth in a world in which we are struggling with climate change and all kinds of environmental problems. All right? You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.

But there is a rather natural result of companies (made up of and employing thousands of people) competing for your dollars.

And when they do: when companies are forced to compete for your dollars, by appealing to your desires and to your convenience, this is the natural result:

The thing is, though, one of the attacks against Capitalism by “Democratic Socialists” of all breeds, is this very excess. What many of us see as a feature, Socialists see as a bug: all that bread, just sitting there, waiting to be consumed, is somehow “proof” of either Capitalism’s waste, the excesses which are destroying our planet, or it’s proof of Capitalism’s “excesses”–the fact that the bread just sits there, when there are people who are going hungry.

These arguments was just used by an editoralist in the Guardian to argue we must end capitalism:

We need to fundamentally re-evaluate our relationship to ownership, work and capital.

The sad part, however, is that for most socialists, while they see the excess bread waiting at the store for someone to buy it as a sign of failure–they can’t envision a world where they themselves don’t have access to such a large selection of bread.

Which is what the Party leaders of the former Soviet Union did: they created two classes of stores–one for themselves and other Party leaders where there were plentiful supplies for the Party elite, and one where there were constant shortages as various 5 year plans were being “tweaked” to properly account for supply and demand constraints whose signals had been destroyed by decades of central planning.

Of course, Socialists of all stripes believe “fixing” the problem of oversupply (but perhaps limiting oversupply to an important few, ‘natch) will help the planet. Because we don’t need 23 different brands of underarm deodorant and 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are going hungry and the planet is on the brink of collapse, right?

And if a few people wind up with a temporary shortage–well, next year, with computers, we’ll somehow do better…

I remarked once elsewhere that I believed that people who call themselves “Socailists” are stupid and they hate people.

This was not just a vapid ad-hominem attack.

I believe self-described “Socialists” of all striped are willfully ignorant because they deny all this reality: they deny that the fundamental problem with “Socialism” is that it centralizes decision-making power to a handful of people who make production decisions through political, rather than economic, decision making tools. And by denying economic signals, they ultimately destroy the feedback loops that make the economy stable.

This is why things failed in Venezuela, by the way. Not because Venezuela was authoritarian (though it takes a degree of authoritarianism to tell farmers what to grow and at what price to sell their goods, and it takes a degree of authoritarianism to tell store keepers what price to charge and how much to stock).

But because Venezuela made it impossible for farmers and store keepers to do their job in an efficient manner.

And had Venezuela been run by a strongman dictator, a central committee of economists, an democratically elected board of governors, or by an on-line nation-wide plebiscite where everyone got to participate and vote–the results would have been exactly the same. Because the decision making process in all of those cases was removed from the economic forces which should motivate those decisions.

As an aside, if you’ve been following along, the smarter of you should be saying “yeah, but doesn’t this happen with large corporations?”

And you’d be exactly right. Large corporations often become inefficient because a central suite of corporate leaders decide what products to produce and at what price point to sell them at. Corporate leaders then can become fixated on providing the same products in the same way–even when market tastes or market forces demand they change–as Circuit City did, denying the rise of on-line retail of electronics, right up to the point of bankruptcy when hundreds of stores closed nation-wide.

Which is why it’s imperative that corporations which become inefficient be allowed to go bankrupt rather than limping along on government life support, such as Obama’s bailing out of General Motors. The resources General Motors would have lost in a bankruptcy hearing don’t get burned to the ground; they get purchased by other corporations who may be able to put them to better use.

Imagine the world today if Tesla had picked up a couple of functioning GM car factory plants back in 2008. It’s not unreasonable to assume we’d be farther along towards the all-electric utopia the Left keep asking for, had a Leftist President not interfered with the economy.

For a free market to function, you need two things: things governments often try to prevent. You need robust competition, such as the rise of Amazon destroying Circuit City’s business model. And you need to allow old, outdated companies to fail.

The answer to a rich billionaire is a thousand entrepreneurs pecking away at that billionaire’s business.

I also said that Socialist “hate people.”

The reason for that goes right to the heart of the “you don’t need 23 different kinds of deodorant and 18 different kinds of sneakers” remark, without considering why these things exist.

Each of these different products are, in a sense, like the bread waiting for customers: each brand, each variation, are all attempts to constantly figure out what consumers want. And we don’t all want the same thing. Me: I want a roll-on deodorant (rather than an aerosol), because my armpits don’t get that sweaty. And I want an unscented brand, because I’m sensitive to perfumes.

But if we were to decide by some sort of central committee the one brand that is allowed to be in the marketplace–because supposedly all that time and effort thousands of workers are engaged in trying to come up with a different brand that may appeal to consumers is better spent elsewhere–which brand should we have? Bernie Sander’s favorite brand? Will it be an aerosol antiperspirant which can dry out my arm pits, leading them to hurt? Will it be an “Old Spice” scented deodorant which can make me physically nauseous?

You may not want any one of the other 22 brands of deodorant in the store. But someone does. And when you eliminate them, aren’t you taking away someone else’s choice?

Are you ignoring their desires?

Isn’t that a little hateful?

So go ahead, Bernie Sanders.

Let’s have a conversation about Socialism.

Let’s allow you to get frustrated because you think–as policy makers in the past have thought countless times before–that the reason why the American public is rejecting your ideas is because somehow we’re stupid and we need those policy decisions explained to us in simpler words. Convince yourselves that Conservatives are genetically inferior, more susceptible in believing lies, and are just outright stupid. Never mind that conservatives actually do better on an ideological ‘Touring test’, meaning conservatives (and not liberals) are better at discussing oppositional beliefs without exaggerating them or resorting to negative stereotypes.

And never mind that conservatives actually understand liberal ideology better than liberals understand conservative ideology. Which is a trivially obvious conclusion, when you realize that left-wing ideology is taught in our schools and parroted on our television shows and news programs, in a country where “Das Kapital” is more likely to be read in college than “The Conservative Mind.” For most thoughtful conservatives (really, classical liberals subscribing to a brand of liberalism before “progressives” stole the term), we had to find our own way out of the weeds, guided by some references to Adam Smith and John Locke half-remembered in passing from a class on American History in high school.

I’d love to have that honest debate about socialism, not a one-way “conversation” where we are lectured to by our betters, and told by those with an agenda how their definition of “Socialism” has never been tried before because of some slippery definition that is full of double-speak and gobbledygook.

Let’s have that honest discussion, with people who know the difference between Milton Friedman and John Keynes, who understand what David Hume was trying to do and why Adam Smith’s “The Welfare of Nations” is more a book about morality than it is a primer on economics. Let’s talk about John Mill’s ideas about the use of forceable action against others.

And let’s have an honest debate over if economic decisions are better made by economic forces or by political forces.

Let’s have this discussion, as Phil Donahue did with Milton Friedman, several times.

But don’t be surprised if voters reject your ideas.

It’s not that we don’t understand them.

It’s that we understand them extremely well.

=====================

[sparrowpraxis]

Solarpunk stuff for really broke people

Hey! I’m excited about sustainability, but I’m really poor! So here are some tips if you are also poor. 

Some starter tips

There are some things you can take that, while not stealing, people won’t expect you to take. This includes seed collecting from untended gardens, portions of plants that grow in the wild, and soil from parks. This kind of stuff can cut down on expenses.

Seeds can be sold in expensive stores, but can also be taken from produce you buy. Stuff like garlic, onions, green onions, tomatoes, and potatoes are all really easy to reproduce by themselves. Care enough to want organic, heirloom, ect? Go to a farmers market, take the seeds.

Some places also do seed libraries or seed swaps. Keep an eye out for these, especially if you live in or near a big town. Dollar tree also sells seeds in the spring.

A lot of this might involve bending rules. Be sneaky and be careful.

Plants

Ideally, land to plant on in a garden is how food is produced. However if you’re like me you live in a cramped, overpriced studio on the second floor or something.

Yeah containers work. But you need soil for that, and you can’t grab all of it from potting soil bags ripped open at your local garden store. Maybe if you’re patient. But I’m not.

Hydroponic setups work better. One like this requires a plastic bottle, some kind of mesh, and fertilizer. 

Fertilizer is, in a lot of places, seen as a bright blue powder sold in gardening stores. You could buy that. I wouldn’t personally. You could steal it from a chain store. But more likely, you could make your own. This article talks about fertilizer from food and food waste. And you can learn about nutritional needs of plants here.

This method could grow herbs, leafy greens, and some vine plants like pole beans, with support. this is not recommended for root plants like potatoes, for a lot of reasons.

Of course if you have access to dirt (not necessarily potting soil) you’re in a better place. Do a few tests, like drainage and composition. PH shouldn’t be a huge deal if you’re digging it up, just find dirt that shit is already growing in. Find a container that can hold a lot of dirt, poke a few good sized holes for water drainage, and plant that shit!

If you manage to bring some of your shit past usable to seed, congrats! Maybe learning about seed collection would help you spread the love to your other friends.

Oh and since there are no bees in your apartment (I hope) you’re gonna need to hand pollinate fruiting plants.

Recycling and reusing

Perhaps the most efficient way of doing this is having friends who also reuse things. You’re not gonna be able to save every candy wrapper most days, and I’m in no position to give up simple luxuries like candy. If you got the money, finding local producers who use compostable/recyclable materials for your little luxuries is nice though. But some of us ain’t got that kinda money. And that’s ok.

As I said before, bottles can be used to make hydroponic gardens. Maybe if you want you can help your friends set up some gardens if you got one too many two liters from Little Caesars.

Plastic bags can be turned into plarn (plastic yarn) and used to knit or crochet. If you feel so inclined you can learn to make cool shit, like reusable shopping bags or something. You could also make a bunch of plarn and outsource this to your friend who likes to knit in exchange for something you wanna do, or are good at.

Egg cartons can be used as seed starters. If you use the cardboard kind, they’ll dissolve into the soil if you break em down a little before planting them.

Aluminum foil can be used to keep algae out of your hydroponic garden, or as an alternative to steel wool. 

There’s a lot that I could say, but reuse stuff is popular right now. Ideally, it should be reused into something that has a good use. And remember, sharing your talents and outsourcing things you can’t do is good and pure.

Green Power

This is gonna be a little more expensive. If you got a little money laying around, this could help reduce your power bill or something. But this isn’t gonna be free or next to free.

Phone chargers are an easy one to power. They charge up and don’t vary in their power needs.

This tutorial is, quite frankly, brilliant, and takes away a lot of the barriers to making solar powered stuff (like soldering). They tear apart a garden light to do this. That light could be used for some plants or something.

Wind and hydro are kinda unrealistic for an apartment, but it’s something people do.

Local resources

Food banks, community gardens, borrowing land, pooling resources. Buy an empty plot with your friends and start a community garden. 

[thecoroutfitters]

Written by R. Ann Parris on The Prepper Journal.

Preppers can reap some big rewards by applying some of the habits of successful market gardeners and small farmers to our home gardens.

See, they have an eye on profit, which means an eye on efficiency. Most preppers aren’t looking at cash income from the garden, and scale matters even in for-profit growing, so there are some common practices we should actively avoid, but there are plenty that can save us time and resources.

That’s precious enough for now, and will be even more so any time our spending power is limited.

Establishing a Market

Before planting, successful market growers tend to have established their markets. It could be farmer’s markets, tailgate sales, roadside stands, restaurants, grocery outlets, or an ag professional who compiles orders for those latter from numerous local farms. Each market requires figuring total produce needed, and working backwards to planting dates so they can be served. The growers who wing it without either step tend to make less profit.

We want to emulate the first group.

We don’t have to worry about diversification or coolers of product that didn’t move because restaurants went under or weather kept the public from shopping, but it’s the same general concept.

We want to start out with an idea of our end goals in types of produce – how much we want for fresh eating and preserving – and from there work backwards to harvest goals, and have an idea of when we’ll be harvesting.

Covers

One thing almost all market growers do, from tiny backyard operations to folks cultivating in excess of 2-5 acres, is invest in row covers.

Usually, there are several in play – a mesh or cloth cover used to prevent insect access, which can also function as frost protection, and plastic sheeting used for cold protection.

Those covers add too much time to the period when a cultivated plot can remain in production for most professional growers to skip the investment. They may start small and add to it incrementally, but they get them.

In addition to plant covers, market gardeners also regularly cover their soil during dormant periods.

That patch we were just growing in is precious. We want to keep as many nutrients and soil amendments in place as possible, and prevent as many weed seeds as possible now that we’ve spent hours a day/week/month weeding and conditioning it. However long it will be between plantings, especially the smaller ag operations get it covered.

Pros are mostly going to go to poly silage tarps sooner or later.

For home growers, anything goes. Baby pools, straw, cardboard, a cover crops, salvaged wall paneling, leaves, heavy-duty curtains, thick blankets, wood chips, newspaper weighted with sticks – anything that doesn’t run away fast enough. Flip the wheelbarrow over a patch, park the mowers at the ends, whatever it takes to cover as much as we can, best as we can.

Really. Whatever it takes.

Hedge Seeding/Planting

Whether they’re direct sowing or transplanting, growers regularly start an extra set of seed to fill in any gaps that appear. It gives a uniform harvest and makes the best use of space.

This video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyNacaaUWsI demonstrates market garden practices for beets that applies to preppers, to include extra seed sets. The indicator crop demo’d with radishes is also a biggie – and on most home scales can be harvested for spicy sprouts or spaced out more for the roots.

Exceptions also apply here.

For a super small gardens and those feeding even 5-8 people, the predictable, consistent yields and turns from a whole vegetable bed at once isn’t as vital. Having a 2’x3’ or even a 30”x25’ patch at different stages of development doesn’t affecting our harvest efficiency or totals that much.

There are also plants that will basically catch back up, especially if we have more than 100 days to our growing seasons. Indeterminate squash and pole or bush beans are examples where even if they don’t reach the same total yield, replacing a non-starter with seed with a 10-21 day gap instead of having same-age transplants doesn’t greatly affect our harvest or space use.

There are also cases where, due to stronger light and warmer soils, fill-in-the-gap direct-sown seeds will catch up to buddies that were started under cold frames or planted as soon as the soil was warm enough.

It’s typically the crops like salads and small tubers and roots, that are both densely planted and faster-growing (35-65-day harvest ranges), where we’ll want to have backups to transplant if there are holes. Otherwise, we’re potentially “losing” the yields that empty space would have produced.

Big-time commercial growers will accept losses – like expecting a certain ratio of blanks in a corn field. Smaller growers, even the professionals, can’t afford it.

Avoid Thinning

Now, there are absolutely exceptions and scale totally matters on this one, but… Thinning is wasteful. Market growers and preppers in a busy world or in a world with reduced or nonexistent outside resource and are in lockstep on waste – we want to minimize loss wherever we can.

Both daily hours and seed are finite resources. For most of us, so is both growing space and growing season.

If we’re thinning, we’ve spent time and resources planting unnecessary amounts. Then we spent more time (and possibly additional resources) pulling them out to avoid overcrowding.

We also “spent” soil fertility on them (we’re moving homemade compost or manure around, or are buying and spreading fertilizers, which those seedlings may have started sucking up). We may have pumped extra water for them. That’s additional time and resources used for something we’re pulling out at 1-12”.

Especially if the trimmings are laying in a field, hitting compost, or represent such a low fresh feed amount we’re not adjusting anything for livestock … that’s not making use of a byproduct. It’s just extra work and resource waste.

There are exceptions. Planting schemes that make it fast and easy to harvest edible seedlings for human or livestock consumption works for most small-scale growers. Gardeners with truly limited growing season and who are super-crunched on space but have the time and copious seed are also exceptions.

High seeding rates for plants with low germination is a given – that’s not waste at all. If they’re doing the job of a cover, where having denser plantings actually lets us save time and improves our harvest because it limits weed competition, that’s different, too.

Business Analysis

Any good organization tracks expenditures and results, sports teams to charities to production and services. It’s easier for us than market growers, here, too, though. We’re just going to cruise our pantry stocks and make notes (actual notes).

If we ran out of tomatoes, we want to plant more and-or trial some alternatives and-or increase types to avoid a big shortage if it’s a bad season. If we have more left from the previous season than we want when we start canning/drying again, we assess how many extras we have, and decrease.

 (If I want to reduce pantry stock by 30% next year, I’d only decrease planting for a 20-25% reduction in case it’s a bad year. I’d rather decrease again the year after than run short.)

If we still have a few as we’re canning/drying more, we’re on the money and trials will be solely about increasing variety, efficiency, or productivity.

Professional growers must spend additional time tracking and crunching numbers on whether a crop type is worth growing or not, outlay in pest control and fertilizer and water, labor hours, and planning ahead for infrastructure maintenance.

Ideally we’d do the same there, as well. We just have a different baseline for profitability.

Seed is a cost they factor as well, especially since the pros aren’t keeping back their own seed. Yields by variety and finding the ideal seeding rate can hugely affect their business. That’s one we want to dial in, too, as much as possible.

We also both consider packing and packaging, just differently. Our other infrastructure and skills will affect where we most want to concentrate on post-harvest processing and storage.

Ask For Help

It’s a great time to be a market grower. Small urban and suburban farming is exploding right now. Those growers have a lot riding on their success. Since they can’t risk repeatedly failing, they ask for help.

And, the climate being what it is, usually they find it. Like us, they have to cull through a lot of information, find answers from people growing in the same environmental conditions and styles they are, but it’s largely a supportive community.

Small-Farm Market Grower Strategies

In this golden internet age, we can easily find blogs, Facebook groups, and YouTube channels produced by market gardeners. Some of them are especially useful for preppers with tight land limits as urban and suburban ag continue to enjoy increased attention.

Remember, though, that while many of the tricks of the trade apply to balconies and backyards, our bottom line is different – they need dollars and cents, and we’re trying to maximize food value. That means that especially what we grow, and how much of it, is going to be significantly different.

Also bear in mind there are also planting styles, medias, and schemes that can be very efficient and profitable at a small scale that wouldn’t work for market growers.

Mostly, though, we share a focus on making our efforts profitable. That makes professional-level strategies an excellent study while practicing our survival gardens.

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[itscollegeeats-blog]

Recipe:  Egg in an Avocado

Good morning, afternoon, and evening my striving college students!  Welcome to College Eats; a blog where I, a fellow striving college student, share my tips and tricks on how to eat healthy on a college student’s budget and schedule. Eating healthy can be tough when you feel like you do not know where to start.  My goal is not only to save you time and money, but teach you how to eat healthy efficiently.  So, I have compiled a few recipes that I feel fit in with a college student’s life and appeal to everyone’s taste buds.  These simple meals can replace where you have maybe been ordering in, picking up take out, or maybe giving up and just having a beer for dinner.  Today I am introducing to you a breakfast recipe that I especially love because it is simple, it tastes amazing, and it absolutely fuels your body for the day ahead of you.  It is the egg baked inside an avocado.

Yes, you read that right…  I said an egg inside an avocado!

Here’s what you’ll need:

v 1 Avocado

v 2 Eggs

And that’s about it.  It does not break the bank.  You can get avocados and eggs just about anywhere, but my favorite place to grocery shop is Aldi.  Aldi consistently has great sales on their produce.  You can find avocados for under a dollar here, but of course this price is always fluctuating depending on where you live.  If you have the option of shopping at a local farmers market or co-op this is a great place to buy produce.  However; it might not necessarily be the cheapest option for you. And that’s okay!  Spend what you are comfortable spending, but this meal shouldn’t cost you more than $4.  Think of the money you’re saving.  Let’s say you eat your newly found favorite recipe, egg in an avocado, 3 times a week. That’s 3 of your meals covered in just $12.  I don’t know about you, but sometimes I spend $12 on just one meal when I eat on the go.  And the thing is, you could probably find $4 in your couch cushions!    

Eggs can also be found at Aldi for a great price, but eggs tend to be the same price anywhere you decide to do your grocery shopping.  You can go to any Walmart, Target, Festival, or even your local Kwik Trip for a quick grocery run!  

The best part about this recipe, in particular, is how easy it is to customize and make it just how you want it.  You can top it with salt and pepper to taste, shredded cheese of any kind, salsa, chives, the list goes on!  

So here’s how you start:

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.  While you are waiting for the oven to preheat, slice your avocado in half, and take out the pit.  Scoop out a little bit of avocado from each half to create space for the egg to bake in the center.  Set your avocado halves in a small baking dish that allows them to stand up on their own. A tip from me to you:  a muffin tin works great for this if you have one.  I like to line the tin with tin foil.  This is just in case I get any spillover from the egg whites because I might not have scooped out enough avocado to make room for the egg.  If you do not have a muffin tin, try a bread pan or another small dish for your avocados to bake in.  Once those avocado halves are snug, go ahead and crack your eggs into each half.  What you should try to do is crack the egg so the yolk goes into the center of the avocado first, and then the egg whites can fill in the empty spaces.  This will get you a perfectly cooked yolk every time.  Once your eggs are inside the avocado, place them in the oven and set a timer for 15 – 20 minutes.  The cooking time will depend on the size of your eggs and the size of your avocados so while this meal is baking, be sure to pay attention to your egg whites. Once these have set, your egg in an avocado is ready to eat!  

Customization:

If you’d like to add shredded cheese to your egg in an avocado, pull them out of the oven with about five minutes left on your timer.  Then add as much cheese as you would like right on top of the avocado halves, and stick them right back in the oven to melt and become golden.  My absolute favorite is topping my egg in an avocado with salsa and some salt and pepper. This is where you can get creative and have some fun with what you might have laying around in your kitchen!

As college students, we are always on the go whether it’s to the next class, to work, to the gym, to the bar; we’re always moving!  If you can set aside just 20 minutes in the morning to prepare a healthy, hearty breakfast for yourself, you will be full of energy to start your day.  

Nutrients and Benefits:

Now let’s talk health benefits.  Did you know that avocados contain more than 20 vitamins and minerals? It is most abundant in Vitamin K, Vitamin C, Potassium, Vitamin B6, and Vitamin E.  An avocado contains 2 grams of protein and 15 grams of healthy fats. This is why I selected this recipe. With the avocado being so sufficient in healthy fats, you will be fuller longer.  No more purchasing snacks on campus in a pinch because you are still full on your breakfast!  The majority of this fat in the avocado is oleic acid.  Oleic acid has been associated with reducing inflammation and can have beneficial effects on genes that are linked to cancer.  Avocados are one of the fattiest plant foods that exist. This means avocado oil can replace the olive oil that is in your kitchen because it is a healthier, but also safe choice, for cooking.  Every little change you can make helps!  Avocados are also rich in fiber which means they are good for our metabolism.  Fiber lowers the risk of contracting many different diseases.  

Another awesome thing avocados do for us is heighten our ability to absorb nutrients from other fruits and vegetables.  It’s the gift that keeps on giving!  Next time you put together a salad, throw in some avocado. The vitamins that require fat to be activated will increase absorption dramatically.  You should always be including a healthy fat into your vegetables in order to maximize the nutrients that you are absorbing when you eat these vegetables.  

But what about the egg? The other half of this fantastic concoction! Eggs are one of the most nutritious foods on this planet.  How awesome is it that they are also one of the most inexpensive?  The egg is the college student’s secret weapon of nutritious versatility.  They hold a little bit of every nutrient that we need.  Consuming eggs means we are consuming the “good” cholesterol.  Yes, there is such a thing!  It’s called High Density Lipoprotein.  When we have high levels of HDL, we lower our risk of heart disease, stroke, and other risks.  Studies show that just 2 eggs a day for 6 weeks can increase your HDL level by a whopping 10%!  But there’s another thing that eggs do for us, and I’m willing to bet you’ve never heard of this important nutrient.  It is called choline.  Choline builds our cell membranes and takes part in producing signaling molecules in our brains.  One egg carries more than 100 mg of this stuff!  

The benefits don’t stop there, eggs are a tremendous source of protein. It is incredibly important that we as young people are getting enough protein in our diets.  Now, just one single large egg contains 6 grams of protein.  That’s 12 grams of protein in the recipe I just provided for you!  The protein you get from eggs will optimize your bone health, help with weight loss, and increase muscle mass.  There are so many nutrients packed into just one egg.  

These two ingredients are so powerful just by themselves, you can only imagine your day going great when you start with an egg in an avocado for breakfast.  Share this simple recipe with your friends, family, loved ones, and other students that you think could use this in their diet.  

If you try this meal, I want to know what you think of it!  Contact me with questions, comments, concerns; I’m all ears!  I would love it if you sent me other simple recipes or other tips and tricks using healthy food options that are also inexpensive.  

Thanks for reading!  In the meantime, stay tuned! I have another scrumptious and enriching recipe planned for you next week!

  https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/12-proven-benefits-of-avocado

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/10-proven-health-benefits-of-eggs#section9

[gretamclaughlin]

Modern Agriculture and the Death of Healthy Eating

This week, we watched two films: Symphony of the Soil and Food, Inc. Both cover the pitfalls of modern agriculture and explain how the Green Revolution has destroyed the soil, the water, humans, animals, and the earth as a whole. On the bright side, they speak about the steps we can take to progress past these unsustainable practices. To put it simply, modern agriculture is ruining our earth and everyone who inhabits it. People’s views of idyllic, agrarian farming are completely disconnected from the machine-heavy reality that we live in. The rise of industrialized agriculture and biotechnology was promising at first, and they offered solutions to some of the world’s most pressing issues related to food insecurity. At first, especially in places like India, the Green Revolution revitalized agriculture and fed the population. However, as more time passes, industrialization is becoming a lot less promising, and it is the reason for depleting soils, health issues, and more, pushing the world food system to the brink of collapse. We must evaluate how we got here and what we should do to change this reality.

Industrialized agriculture leans on artificial pesticides, fertilizers, GMOs, machinery, and other human-made technologies. Due to their prevalence, there are few farmers who do not rely on them in some way. In fact, because of the degradation of soil, environmental conditions, and more, many crops are now unable to grow without chemicals and engineering, thus increasing the gravity of the situation. The number of breeds of plants has decreased rapidly in the past century, and the increase in monocultures worldwide has degraded ecosystems and left the door open for an impending food crisis. Essentially, what was introduced as a saving grace is now a growing issue.

In a natural system, the soil is supported by nutrient cycling and the rich organisms that live there. Plants feed microorganisms called exudates, and these exudates grow bacteria and fungi, which protect the roots from diseases. The bacteria and fungi also release nutrients for the plants through nitrogen fixation. If there is enough nitrogen in the soil, fertilizers are unnecessary. However, modern agriculture has caused for the planting of monocultures. Instead of a wide breadth of plants feeding the soil, only one variety does, and the soil quickly becomes exhausted. Even organic farming often just uses organic alternatives to chemical fertilizers, rather than creating agroecosystems.

Huge corporations control America’s food system. Meat companies, like Perdue and Tyson, control wide shares of the market, and they produce meat in unnatural conditions. Animals and birds are genetically modified, pumped with hormones and antibiotics, and raised in inhumane conditions, disconnected from the natural world. Their bodies often do not resemble the natural versions of themselves, and they are abused, beaten, and fattened for slaughter. To make matters worse, when they are killed, it is done in massive slaughterhouses under reprehensible conditions. The animals are doused with chemicals like ammonia. These conditions are the root of significant health problems in the U.S., including E. coli outbreaks and even early-onset puberty in girls, which was spoken about in a previous blog post. Watching Food, Inc. deeply disturbed me. Birds and animals are raised in small pens, living in their feces and on top of each other. The slaughterhouse scenes were especially alarming, and when one owner explained the process of adding chemicals to meat, I was absolutely disgusted. There is nothing that seems safe about it. The documentary truly changed my view of the food industry, and I am now a vegetarian because of it. I just could not stand by any longer and support such an exploitative and inhumane practice.

Growing plants is also done in an unsustainable manner. Monsanto controls most of the seeds in the U.S., and even farmers who do not use the seeds can have crops infiltrated by them through the wind carrying them over. At this point, almost all the soybeans in America are grown with Monsanto seeds. The corporation is also ruthless when it comes to farmers, and they control their usage of seeds, not allowing farmers to save them for the next year. If the farmers do not comply, they are hit with massive lawsuits that push them out of business. There seems to be no way out because Monsanto’s “RoundUp Ready” options are often the only ones that can be grown given the state of soil and ecosystems. While learning about this, all I could think about was how Monsanto is just like the typical, greedy capitalist villain that you imagine as a child, destroying nature and people’s livelihoods for a quick buck.

The usage of pesticides and other chemicals completely depletes the soil and the rich breadth of organisms inside of it, and plants are unable to grow without biotechnology. In other words, much of the earth’s soil today cannot support traditional agriculture. Additionally, they are harmful to the people who consume the food as well. According to Melanie D. Mason, hundreds of contaminants are not regulated by the EPA, causing them to be left in drinking water sources in the U.S. (Mason 2013, 53). These contaminants have been linked to cancer, reproductive difficulties, issues with nervous system development, and immune system suppression. The byproducts of pesticides and fertilizers can enter the ground and surface water through runoff caused by irrigation water, another effect of industrialized agriculture. The government is currently putting the interests of corporations above the people, and we are all suffering because of it.

Agriculture needs to become completely organic if we want to reduce the environmental degradation that it causes. Symphony of the Soil features farmers who have made the switch to organic farming, and they lauded the quality of the soil and production levels of their methods. Many also explained that organic farming was a lot less expensive production-wise than non-organic farming. In Food, Inc., the owner of Polyface Farms spoke about how people often see industrialized agriculture as the only solution to the world’s food problems. He explained that this was untrue, and organic agriculture could be as much, if not more, efficient and productive than industrialized agriculture, and it is more sustainable in the long run. This truly opened my eyes because I always saw GMOs and modern agriculture as the way that we were going to feed the planet. Looking back, these opinions were definitely influenced by propaganda. However, now I understand their disadvantages, and I am fully a proponent of organic agriculture.

Customers need to be educated more about what is in their food, how and where it was produced, and its effects on their bodies, the environment, and workers. Food, Inc. displayed the power of this. Walmart altered the food it carried based on customer preferences towards organic foods. According to Jennifer Chait, as of 2019, Walmart is the largest seller of organic products in North America (Chait 2019). Therefore, if customers learn about what actually happens in the food industry and the effects of their actions, they will demand companies to change what they offer. It is the economical decision for many of these corporations to listen to consumers or else they will lose business. Education can take the form of grassroots campaigns aimed at teaching the public, such as public screenings of documentaries, advertisements, and events. Even just a small amount of exposure to the realities of the food industry could affect people to the point that they alter their buying and consumption habits, allowing them to break out of the “consumer bubble.” This has clearly worked for me. Many people still have this romanticized, agrarian vision of agriculture, and if they understand how this has changed since the Green Revolution, their vision of their food will subsequently be altered. If more retailers sell organic food, more people will gain access to these healthier, more sustainable options.

More extensive knowledge of food could come about through formal education; classes and lessons regarding “food literacy” should be established in school curriculums throughout the U.S. in order for people to better understand what they are consuming and how they can switch their habits. Understanding basic principles of ecology, such as chemical cycling, is also essential in shifting how Americans view agriculture. People should begin campaigning to local boards of education to implement these changes. If all students are required to take certain courses about the environment, farming, and food, more people would understand the impact of industrialized agriculture. Obviously, there would be pushback because of the hold that companies have on the U.S.’s governments. However, even if more courses that just speak about the environment in general are implemented, people will be more likely to understand the pitfalls of the food system. A little progress is still progress.

Sweeping government regulations must also be established. Corporations cannot keep getting away with ruining the environment and endangering public health, and they must be held accountable through new laws. There must be stronger policies about agricultural practices. For example, there should be limits on the number of pesticides one can use per square acre per year, and there should be heavy fines for those who violate the policies. Better crop-planting practices are also necessary, and if the state and federal governments could distribute subsidies to farmers who follow these techniques, more people will make the shift. There should also be regulations on what can be deemed organic. For example, some organic farmers import organic versions of chemical fertilizers. Although this is a better option, it should be noted that it still leads to more pollution than traditional methods and does not return the soil to its natural state. In addition, organic foods do not need to be 100% organic to be labeled as that, and this needs to change. There should be a new labeling system that gives numbers that correspond with the “level” of organic ingredients, as well as how the food was produced. For example, a rating of five could mean that all of the components of the product are organic, and all of the fertilizers came from local, natural sources (such as animal manure). On the other hand, a rating of one would indicate that no aspects of the product are organic. Similarly, there should be labels on all products containing GMOs and hormones. If people saw how prevalent they are in our food, more people would be concerned and demand change in agriculture. Companies do not want you to know this information, so we should petition our representatives to create new policies. Perhaps if they hear the people speak directly to them, they will understand the gravity of the situation. Additionally, as consumers, we can boycott companies that are a part of the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association’s movement against GMO labeling. General Mills, Coca-Cola, and Cargill are among the “Terrible Twenty.” If readers are interested, they can visit theboycottlist.org for more.

There is no reason that we should have so many disease outbreaks, and there are better solutions than just dousing the meat with chemicals. If the government regulates how many animals can be in a square foot at once and fines those who do not follow these regulations, animals will be treated better, and meat will be safer to consume. Kevin’s Law must be implemented in order to regulate the safety of these facilities so that everyone is safer and healthier. We should work to shift laws at the state level first because states are generally more responsive to environmental issues. If more and more states set standards for agriculture, companies will have no choice but to change.

Campaign finance laws must be reformed for the sake of the American people. Currently, politicians listen to corporate interests over their constituents, and it is causing people and the environment to suffer. Therefore, if stricter laws are passed regarding campaign donations, corporations will hold a smaller grip on government officials, and we will have a safer and healthier future. The same goes for lobbying laws. This is obviously a large undertaking, but if environmental groups start working with other public activist organizations, together, they can put more pressure on elected officials to change the laws. Then again, it is unlikely that laws will change given that it is the elected officials who are benefitting from campaign finances.

The world is suffering from the effects of the Green Revolution, and people are at the mercy of massive corporations for food. It seems like we are stuck in this system, and there are few ways to eat ethically. Many of the solutions that I propose are based on government action, and they seem unlikely to work in a system that is historically unresponsive to environmental concerns. However, I am not sure what other ways there are to institute sweeping regulations on industries. Pressuring states to shift their policies first seems more realistic than pressuring the federal government. Regardless, it is up to us to begin making changes and to speak out about the injustices of the food industry for the safety of ourselves and others.

Word Count: 2173

Question: To what extent has organic farming been implemented outside the U.S.?

Diagrams:

Benefits of organic agriculture

The rise of pesticide use globally

Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia has been lauded for its organic and humane practices.

Works Cited:

Mason, Melanie D. 2013. “Effects Of Industrialized Agriculture On Drinking Water Supply.” The Health Education Monograph Series 30, no. 2: 53-56.

Chait, Jennifer. 2019. “Largest Organic Retailers in North America.” Updated November 20, 2019. https://www.thebalancesmb.com/organic-retailers-in-north-america-2011-2538129.