nothinghead

Just to be pedantic liberalism and socialism are by no means interchangeable terms, if that's what's being implied. And to be clear, social democracy in Sweden looks nothing like it did 2,3,4 decades ago. It's still mostly there in infrastructure, but not so much in spirit anymore, and it is being replaced by a more capitalist democracy (can I put those words together?). What I mean by "in spirit" is if you look at the social democrat party's shift in policy over the last decades they are no longer the same party. Like how Labor is no longer so much about working class ideals and "putting the people first." So the current situation in Sweden is not the best one to get an idea of a working social democracy from, I wouldn't think. But yeah, misogynistic crime seems pretty rife in Sweden. It's worth keeping in mind that Sweden is thought to have a higher rate of reporting sexual assault (possibly because it has a tradition of better equality between the sexes compared to a lot of places - a tradition it would be sad to see eroded by crimes like these) than most places, but that doesn't change the fact that those reports appear to be becoming much more frequent. In fact all sorts of crime seems to be up in Sweden - you read of gang related shootings all the time, something that used to be reserved for bikies but now happens all over the shop. Well, in certain specific parts of the shop, anyway.

So NSW is set to ban the doggies. What do ya think? Great move, IMO. Anyone know if animal rights groups are making the best of the momentum and Baird's assurance that '"widespread and systemic mistreatment of animals" cannot be tolerated' (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-07/greyhound-racing-to-be-banned-in-new-south-wales/7576816)? It's a pretty bold claim from Casino Mike. Is it disingenuous, or does he really care about animal welfare? I'm hoping people who are involved in this sort of activism will be able to push it further, since dog racing is obviously not an alienated case of the systematic mistreatment of animals in NSW/Aus.

Yep that was one of mine. >when the lifeblood of these socialist nations ceases to flow (or fetch a good price) they're in biiiiig trouble. /although we're all in big trouble. That's true, although it's true of any economy, whether it's primary resource based, tech sector, manufacturing etc. Once either supply and/or demand dries up, you're in trouble. The U.S. ticks all three of those boxes, which lends it more stability than Norway's primarily petroleum-based economy. Although, Norway is a much much small country with a lot of oil, and unlike a lot of wealthy nations does not run at a deficit. But Norway's socialist reforms predate their discovering how much worth of natural resources they sit on. Finland, not a nation rich in natural resources on a scale comparable with Norway, is regularly put amongst the top education systems in the world. Danes and Icelanders do pretty well for themselves too.

Fair play Thunder. The usual example of a modern, functional social democracy is the Nordic model. You can check out this document for a rundown on it. Unfortunately along with the economic globalisation the model embraced came its death knell since such systems require a critical mass to function - part of the reason proponents of US capitalism were so paranoid about communism. An important point to note about the Nordic model is that it didn't decline so much because of internal contradictions or failures, but because of external factors related to globalisation. But I agree with you that we have few examples of high-functioning governments, and when they do appear high-functioning it's fleeting and has plenty of negative consequences. For instance, the postwar US economic boom that I believe is the target period of Trump's "make America great again"(?) (sounds a bit like Howard and picket fences), was due in large part to military technologies being deployed in commercial/civilian life, and similar transitions with companies like Monsanto going from wartime torture gasses to mass producing DDT, PCBs, before switching back to inhumane chemical weapons like Agent Orange and other environmentally hazardous substances. The coalescence of the military and public spheres paved the way for a permanent war economy that has, in large part, supported US hegemony ever since. My point is (and this is not directed at you, Thunder, since you've made clear already that you're not an advocate of this) that people are often quick to point out the flaws in socialism or other potential systems of governance, but conveniently ignore the failures of capitalism, or write them off as collateral damage. Part of this collateral damage includes climate change and mass extinction. RC it's worth noting in light of your post that the Nordic model largely left indigenous peoples (Sami) out, and major economic enterprises like mining continued to nick their land and displace them. So yeah, not trying to claim here that an economic system can resolve all our ethical dilemmas, but it can provide a framework in which it's at least possible to address them.

^ On the same point, I disagree completely because I see it the other way around: plenty of voters looking for radical change aren't so much looking for the government to fix their lives for them, as to stop interfering with their lives, or to interfere for the common good rather than the status quo. An example might be Indigenous Australian activists who want the government to play a role in their wellbeing (returning land, subsidising communities properly etc.) not because they are childish or can't find their own way in the world, but because the government is already part and parcel of their everyday life and ignoring that fact isn't doing them any favours. We can see through comparative studies that poverty in the first world is largely manufactured. It isn't down to "lazy poor people," stupidity, incompetence, or any of those sorts of scapegoats. We saw clear evidence of the power of this myth, though, in Greece's financial crisis where the dodgy financial management by the state was blamed on "lazy southern Europeans." Or in the subprime disaster in the US where, again, rich people making dodgy deals for personal gain lead to poor people being blamed for being stupid enough to overextend their finances (though, of course, looking at what actually happened, it was the irresponsible trading of collatoralised debt obligations and other sneaky tricks that led to the subprime crisis - factors that a majority of non-economists had no way of finding out about or understanding fully). In my view anyone who thinks about governance strictly in terms of individuality and self-realisation is missing the point of governance, which is essentially to manage policies that ensure society runs relatively smoothly (rather than to facilitate individual gain). There's also the point about how we want governments to interfere in our lives. Libertarians are rabidly against government intervention, except when it comes to agreements like TPP which suit their ideology. Often such libertarian views are passed off as natural (no trade restrictions brings about an organic market) when they are actually just as manufactured as trade embargoes, or any other governmental regulation. You only need to see the number of pages in the various TTIP documents to realise that Free Trade (TM) is anything but an organic market paradigm. > i don't think government should be deeply involved in wealth reallocation. That's interesting to me since it's something I've come to take for granted. Are you against/complacent about wealth equality in general, or do you just not think that those sorts of measure should be within the purview of the state? I don't understand why socialism is a recurring issue in US politics. The nation has never been socialist and it doesn't seem likely that they'll become so in the foreseeable future. Look at how divisive an issue as simple as health care became. Myself living in a country that has had a rapid erosion of socialist gains in healthcare, housing (close to 0% homelessness), education, crime, and has replaced these with US style individualistic politics that lead to corruption and high level mutual back scratching, increasing poverty, increasing crime, decreasing standards of education and healthcare, homelessness, dramatic opening of the gap between rich and poor - which is a key cause of social unrest and dissatisfaction - and so on, I'm often confused when people are dead against socialism (with the exception of wealthy people who've forged a personal narrative about how they pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps and why can't everyone else). The main downside I see with it is that it makes it difficult to become obscenely rich, but I'd much rather live in a society with content neighbours than have the chnce to rise above them with wealth. What is the problem with functional socialist democracies?

You might see the above stuff I posted as insignificant muck-raking. But it isn’t only things he’s said that the liberal media dislikes, it’s also things he’s done and policies he’s stood behind. I see examining the persona Trump wants to project as part of understanding his character, which in turn is useful in understanding where he stands on policy. I also don’t think we can divorce character from politics. Politicians don’t check their subjectivity at the door. They bring it into work, work it into policy, and make us live with their now institutionalised shitty hang ups about gay marriage or whatever smoke and mirror issue is the soup du jour. And as Halcyon Daze says, he's a successful salesman (cum-politician) - not exactly a trustworthy ethical type. >free trade is a good thing. Arguable, but a massive topic I can’t be bothered getting into. We can agree though, I think, that the overwhelming trend for free trade agreements has been deregulation of (usually already poor) working conditions, outsourcing of labour (i.e. “lost jobs”), impoverishment of already poor workers due to a race to the bottom conducted by owners of capital, hazards to worker and environmental health, and so on and so on. Trump’s business practices, as well as (I think I’m remembering this correctly, could be wrong tho) his support for free trade agreements prior to his political career betray him as a supporter of all the above practices, all in the name of corralling the almighty dollar. Sanders, a Jewish leftist, never stood a chance. American politics is a massive cult of personality, and much of the candidates’ “personality” is delivered in large part by their massively wasteful and criminally costly advertising campaigns. I read the other day about a company, Euclidian Capital it may have been, that donated somewhere in the vicinity of 5-7 million to Clinton’s campaign. They don’t have any web presence whatsoever. It’s all about those campaign dollars, but even if Bernie had them what was he going to market? He did an okay job with some jingoistic sloganising, but when it came to policy a vast majority of Americans couldn’t swallow the idea of a national (much less international) common good without it being directly and compellingly linked to their individual desires. On foreign policy actually Sanders has had a decent amount to say. Some of it, as I say above, is pandering and populist (“I supported the use of force to stop the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. And, in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001, I supported the use of force in Afghanistan to hunt down the terrorists who attacked us.” What a sickening fucking comparison), but other bits have varying degrees of value: War on Terror: “I voted against the war in Iraq, and knew it was the right vote then, and most people recognize it was the right vote today. The only mission President Bush and his neo-conservative friends accomplished was to destabilize an entire region, and create the environment for al-Qaeda and ISIS to flourish.” History of socialism: “The US was wrong to try to invade Cuba; the US was wrong trying to support people to overthrow the Nicaraguan government; the US was wrong trying to overthrow, in 1954, the democratically elected government of Guatemala. Throughout the history of our relationship with Latin America we've operated under the so-called Monroe Doctrine, and that said the US had the right do anything that they wanted to do in Latin America.” Defending non-compelled acts of remote agression: “I think you can argue that there are times and places where drone attacks have been effective, and there are times and places where they have been absolutely counter-effective and have caused more problems when they have solved. When you kill innocent people, the end result is that people in the region become anti-American who otherwise would not have been. So, I think we have to use drones very, very selectively and effectively. That has not always been the case.” US imperialism: “Where Secretary Clinton and I disagree is the area of regime change. We can overthrow dictators all over the world. The point about foreign policy is not just to overthrow a dictator, it's to understand what happens the day after. In Libya, Secretary Clinton, as secretary of state, working with some other countries, did get rid of a terrible dictator named Gadhafi. But what happened is ISIS came in and now occupies significant territory in Libya. But this is nothing new. This has gone on 50 or 60 years where the United States has been involved in overthrowing governments.” The link you provided is, to be a dick about it, rubbish. The author knows some basic economic principles but is either very confused when it comes to their application, or being sneakily ideological in a way that directs the discussion away from the salient points. He seems to be only taking into account middle-class American finances, and ignoring all else, including other nations’ middle-classes (which, for a middle-class American wouldn’t be entirely surprising). The very premise of the article is either shamefully misleading or laughably ignorant. To state outright that free trade is a threat to the ruling classes is one of those inversions so absurd that it's initially easy to swallow since it actually hurts to try to make sense of. “Free trade is a great concept, as are free markets and freedom. The problem is none of these things exist in practice because they don’t provide sufficient advantages to the ruling class.” Is he having a laugh? They do exist in practice, and he doesn't bother to give even an idealised, utopic account of how free trade could/should work. I’ll break a couple of points down but won’t go through the whole thing: “In microeconomic terms, it boils down to risk/reward. That is, all investments will generate some expected cash flow but will face some risks of realizing those cash flows.” Well no, not all investments generate cash flow, but let’s move past that. Yes, free trade agreements are about maximising shareholder reward by increasing risk to the foreign workers generating the capital through commodity production that investors will then siphon the majority of into their own pockets. In the author’s opinion this process of outsourcing labour in order to maximise shareholder profits results in “the main beneficiary of existing trade agreements [being] corporations. Second to finish are the undeveloped nations who receive employment and rising wages which translate into higher living standards. At the shit end of the stick, as per usual, is your American middle class.” Let’s just assume that the author means a “developing nation” or the less appealing “underdeveloped nation,” since “undeveloped nations” don’t really exist, and if they did they wouldn’t have the infrastructure for production. In the absence of actual evidence about how free trade agreements benefit developing nations, I'll use the best historical example we have: since we’re on Trump and free trade agreements, let’s talk about NAFTA and Mexico. Any number of reliable sources (the ones I skimmed to remind myself about the particulars of this were Nicole Hassoun’s “Free Trade, Poverty, and Inequality” and Belinda Coote’s Poverty and Free Trade in Mexico) will show how NAFTAs key stated goals failed. It failed to reduce financial inequality, it failed to deliver the growth it promised (a concept I’m skeptical of, but as a free trade advocate I assume you’re not in the same boat on that), it failed miserably on its supplementary trilateral environmental policy supplement (NAAEC). It not only failed to enrich the US middle-classes, it failed in its goal to create a Mexican middle class (which was hoped for in order to expand the consumer base for the excess commodities being produced in this “free” economic paradigm). The reason? Rather than becoming rich from all the jobs opening up in the production sector, Mexican workers became even poorer and more disenfranchised as wealth flowed, according to plan, upward and northward and national economics and production shifted to cater to US wants, which Mexico apparently saw as a stepping stone to their own economic growth. The Centre for Economic and Policy Research report on NAFTA 20 years on, states a few of the details: “From 1960-1980, Mexican real GDP per person almost doubled, growing by 98.7 percent. By comparison, in the past 20 years it has grown by just 18.6 percent. Mexico’s per capita GDP growth of just 18.6 percent over the past 20 years is about half of the rate of growth achieved by the rest of Latin America.” “According to Mexican national statistics, Mexico’s poverty rate of 52.3 percent in 2012 is almost identical to the poverty rate in 1994.” There was a significant increase in unemployment in the same period. 4.9 million Mexican family farmers displaced and a net loss of 1.9 million jobs. And, finally, much to Trump’s chagrin, his country’s trade agreement damaged Mexican lives so badly that even the stepped up border policing (part of NAFTA’s aims) couldn’t stop a massive (79%) increase in emigration from Mexico to the US. This is part of the reason Trump’s combination of anti-Mexican immigration and pro-American labour/manufacturing are such a potent combination for those who don’t understand how trade and immigration are historically interlinked, especially in the US. So who won out of NAFTA? Well, partly China’s economy (but certainly not it’s working class). North American oil industry was a big winner. Mining did pretty alright (it would have anyway, though). Two extremely environmentally costly industries got a boost from free trade, and continue to. Most of the remaining defenders of NAFTA merely cite “the economy” and “US corporations” as the winners of NAFTA (Canada is kind of an interesting case, but let’s leave it out since there are other free trade deals at play between Canada-US that make it complicated). NAFTA concentrated wealth upwards. All of these facts makes the article you linked even more confounding: “while those who generate investors’ profits through labour and consumption haven’t seen a real wage increase in more than 15 years, the investors have seen an almost 400% increase in real profits.” Sure, that’s true and it’s not fair, but then he says: “That means they are not passing the cost savings onto the consumer through lower prices, they are pocketing the savings!” Yes, that’s how transnational capitalism functions. How can an economist even be confused about this? Unfortunately the insinuations that free trade, done correctly, amounts to American financial equality aren’t backed up by any historical evidence of this being the case, nor does the author even offer any convincing theoretical arguments about why it could be the case. He doesn’t seem aware that US corporate capitalism formed around a century ago when dynasty-based industrialism transformed into the speculative stock market. In a few decades the speculation economy became the dominant economic form, and the triumph of venture over industry is one of the factors in the management and maintenance of the class system in the US. Yet to return to a manufacturing economy, as Trump suggests and this author seems to support, would mean massive impoverishment in the US and a steep decline in working conditions. I mean, a free market economy and the capability to manage where manufacturing takes place doesn’t really make sense, does it? In a free market economy the market should determine where manufacturing takes place - and that comes down to where costs are lowest and profits can be highest. >is it fair to criticise what he wants to do as a political leader based on his actions as a businessman? Absolutely. He’s shifting from a career in business to politics, and he’s bringing with him all his business principles, anecdotes, nomenclature, metaphors, mindset, and, personality. > like most of us, he has to try and succeed when the rules, the playing field, are designed to favour others. I’ll have to plain disagree there. I think most would concur that the playing field of American political campaigns comes down to capital clout - something Trump is not short of. The playing field in the US is always designed to favour the rich. > i don't see him as a well connected fatcat Why not? Do you disagree that business is, in large part, about networking and connections? Do you think Trump made millions in a vacuum, or by the sweat of his own back? I don’t know how you can have the idea that Trump isn’t plugged into the business world. Even if it were true that Trump is winning against the odds of a system antagonistic to his ways and means, he’s garnered a good deal of his popularity by peddling ignorance and vitriol about those people we all love to hate, the lower classes. He hasn’t become popular for being a visionary with an intelligent, unique, or pragmatically workable view on international politics. But if you’re detemined to like him for being an outsider, then you should be even more passionate about Sanders. >[Clinton] is a woman though, so that counts for something in a libtard sort of a way. I think this probably is to her campaign detriment. It isn’t as if you hear the same self-congratulatory “FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT” bleating about “first woman president.” Although liberal media is nominally anti-sexist, I still think Clinton’s sex will work against her in “the hearts and minds” of bigoted Americans. Have a look at this article for some reasonable points on why (http://time.com/4347962/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-likability/) and, for balance, this stupid piece of writing that confirms your sentiments about US liberal identity politics (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-bohanan/the-bernie-vs-hillary-bat_b_10132260.html). I'm with you on the role of the US in fostering conflict in the Middle East. If anyone's interested in a history of this packaged in a thought-provoking documentary style, Adam Curtis' Bitter Lake is really good.

>history is bloody horrendous wherever you look, America is a country that has provided much of the forward impetus in that regard. People flocked to America from around the entire world Yep, it is. Which is why I don't think it makes sense to take an entire nation, with all its historical baggage, and say "hey, that was a great time, let's recreate it." People flocked to lots of places, that doesn't make them utopias. People flocked to Australia while the worst parts of our history were being played out. Migrations are about people flocking to where they see resources. What makes him an arsehole isn't that he can't fix the US, it's stuff like this: Trump’s real estate company, of which he was president at the time, was sued twice for discrimination against black tenants or prospective tennants. He has no problem with Klansmen and other organised racists openly supporting his campaign. He’s insinuated that Native Americans who wear suits or own businesses aren’t real Indians. He said of some campaign supporters, who bashed a homeless Latino man because “all these illegals need to be deported,” that they were passionate about wanting the country to be great again (same rhetoric some here have swallowed). He’s claimed to have said “I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.” Here’s some confirmed quotes: "The Mexican government is much smarter, much sharper, much more cunning. And they send the bad ones over because they don’t want to pay for them. They don’t want to take care of them." "When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with [sic] us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." As for not being neoliberal, he talks tough about wanting to stop TPP (as it currently looks) and renegotiate NAFTA, but look at his actions. His own businesses manufacture overseas, in the very countries he spouts the most virulent rhetoric about - Mexico and China. Talk is fine, but actions speak louder than words and Trump’s actions are at odds with his platform. His tacit promise to reinvigorate US manufacturing seems to be little more than a populist appeal to the lower classes. He has outright stated that he is for free-trade, he just wants the US to profit even more than it has done from it. Let’s not forget that this is a man who has, without a hint of shame or sarcasm, stated that you can never be too greedy. EDIT: Something I want to add is what pisses me off about Trump's rhetoric about bringing manufacturing back to the US to make it great again is that he pretends to be oblivious that for the US to be competetive on the domestic and international market for mass manufactured products it'll have to, to a large extent, emulate currently competitive nations like China. Which means they'll either need a LOT more Mexicans (preferably paperless), or to cut domestic wages, conditions, and regulations to something close to par with China. But a race to the bottom is rarely a bad thing for those right at the top.

Anyone who can narrow down what they mean by being "American" and "Unamerican," and what the value of being "American" actually is? While you're at it, also give some info about the period "when America was great." Was it pre-USA America, when native peoples were being cheated, disenfranchised, and slaughtered and invaders were consolidating their mini-empires? Or the Civil War period when the South fought to protect their privileged and oppressive way of life whilst the North sought to capitalise on the benefits of cheap or free labour and the industrial boom, meanwhile avoiding taxes whereever possible and cementing the idea in American culture, which lead to numerous acts of aggression on foreign soil, that individual gain should always be prioritised over social/communal good? Or maybe post Civil War, with Jim Crow, lynchings, continuing aggression towards Native Americans ("Indian Wars"), the introduction of discriminatory immigration laws (esp. against Mexicans and East Asians), and all the rest of it. Or during the WWII period when they placed some of their own, foreign-lookin, citizens in internment camps, grew wartime industries into global markets and warred more or less constantly since, which has conveniently kept these destructive industries massive and powerful and reinforced the US' economic position at the top. I'm being polemical, but I honestly don't see a "once great America" that some fuckwit racist neolib businessman like Trump can perform some atavistic cultural-economic rite on and recover.

I second (third?) the fungus gnats, check for fruit fly looking things buzzing about. At that size they don't need ferts and will grow in any old (depleted) soil. A heat mat will help pop them but may dry them out too quickly once they get true leaves. You could try putting a towel between the mat and the pot after they sprout to reduce the warmth and evaporation. Misting the soil may not be enough to get water down to the roots (dunno how thoroughly you do it). I poke pinholes in a 1.25 litre plastic bottle and use it to shower them pretty thoroughly every few days and never lose them after saturating the soil. Wilting IME can happen from over OR underwatering. I don't find they need much water at that age. My bhut seedlings go without water for ages (well, about a week or so). When I've grown em Trinidad scorps are more fussy about water (i.e need a more consistent supply). Do they get enough light in that window? Maybe try 'em under a fluoro tube til they get settled.

nettles are great dried, as pesto, or in soup. fresh or dried clover chickweed viola spp. toughness of kale can be reduced by bruising it (roll it between your hands or something) before cooking.

Tried with plants from SAB a couple of times, but the slightest hint of a chilly or dry breeze and they get pretty upset. Never got one to make it through a winter in a Mediterranean climate (outdoors but in a greenhouse).

I don't think anyone's mentioned bala. Sida cordifolia is plentiful, easy to grow, and ime pretty decent against hayfever and congestion.

Allthe best Bullit, hope to see you back sometime talkin brug

Damn. Just shit to see you go incog, but glad to hear its for positive reasons and growth. Will miss your posts.

A corporation is a private entity (and a legal individual), which is maybe its most key distinction from the state which is (supposedly) a public entity. IMO it is increasingly corporations that dictate the law, rather than the state (who obviously officially facilitate legal issues) due to mutually beneficial agreements, kickbacks, and other ways of reinforcing structures of hierarchy. We only have to look at outcomes of public disasters like Nestle’s various privatisations of water, the Bhopal incident, or Deepwater Horizon to see that the state grants massive concessions to corporate responsibility when it isn't in the public interest. What I’m suggesting about the waning of the power of the state can be seen in stuff like the rise of private security powers (where I live shop-cops have, as of recent years, been allowed powers comparable to state police. They can carry and use guns, detain citizens, and so forth, but are solely engaged with protecting commercial interests), privatisation (which has been strong in the Western world for decades now and is basically a process of yielding public wealth to private interests), and the assent of domestic and international policies to corporate rather than public interests. Of course if you stop paying taxes or run around damaging company property the state will come down on you, but to me these kinds of actions (esp. on a macro scale) feel more and more geared toward thje protection of high-end financial interests rather than being for public good. You’re absolutely right that the state authorises stuff like the TPP, but what do they/we (as a public body) gain from it? “Free trade” agreements diminish the authority of the state as they cede power to corporations and financial interests. One of the concerns about the TPP’s large scale effects is its apparent enabling of corporations to sue our government. Under TPP scumbags like Phillip Morris may be able to sue the state (i.e. rip off our public finances) for things like using plain packaging on tobacco products. (In fact, Phillip Morris are engaged in arbitration with Australia currently due to an obscure loophole in an existing trade agreement). Other similar encroachments of corporate control over public issues seem likely under the TPP. The situation now is that agreements like the TPP can exist without the state (the state is just a barrier to “free-er” trade) but states would find it difficult to compete internationally without the sort of profiteering “free trade” enables. Absolutely things like the TPP are enabled by the state, but to me that feels like an intermediary bureaucractic stage which doesn’t depend on a state making a decision about whether they’ll let it happen or not, but is about getting ducks lined up in terms of who gets what at the elite levels. My point basically is that the state is only really useful to common interests as a regulatory body, but has come to base its regulatory practices on private rather than broadly public interests.

The TPP and other "free trade" agreements are really different to Statism, which would be a planned economy along the lines of what China would claim to have (/have had). I agree that state violence is something we should all be watching and moderating in any ways we can, but things like the TPP are about corporate control and profit-driven violence rather than fascist centralisation as we've known it in the twentieth century. Although (as you point out) those two can go hand in hand (i.e. the state authorising policies that are detrimental to democracy), imo it seems as though Western politics are heading the way of diminishing the role and authority of the state in favour of corporate-driven alliances and policies.

Anyways, look forward to when both those champs are back and posting again.

I had a go at about 30 litres of apple cider from just wild apples using no additional yeast. Turned out pretty well. Next time I used a champagne yeast and it went a bit weird and headachey and some turned into apple cider vinegar. Next time I used a cider yeast and tried to make a decent lot of apple cider vinegar alongisde the cider, and ended up with some kind of apple wine from both lots. Needless to say I've not mastered the cider family just yet. Still, not as bad as my housemate who added diabetic amounts of sugar to the cider, exploded a few bottles in the racking room and had to use steel wool to scrub the walls clean. Easy ferment recipe for getting probiotics going: - Make up a strong brine (non-iodised salt melted into water). Should taste about as strong as seawater, as a rough estimate. - Chuck your fermentables in there. - Push contents down at least once a day for several days to get rid of air bubbles and submerge the top stuff exposed to air (bits exposed to air can get mouldy fast). - When it tastes good (sour not salty) chuck it in the fridge and start eating. Sauerkraut is an easy example. Shred your cabbage, throw it in the brine, and follow the above instructions. A few fresh juniper berries adds flavour and the cloudy looking ones are covered in wild yeasts that will kickstart the process.

The short of it: Do you trust multinational corporations, CEOs, politicians, and heads of state to act in the best interests of workers and average people by pushing various forms of deregulation, or do you think that the wealthy and powerful act in their own interests and the interests of other elites? Historical example: The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a (so-called) free trade agreement which can be readily compared to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which was implemented as a priority of the United States' government in 1994. Like the TPP, NAFTA was marketed by the U.S. as a way of increasing trade revenue and generating wealth in the North American bloc (Canada, U.S.A., Mexico). As well as being promoted as a way of increasing trade revenue for all the signatories, the U.S.'s public was assured that jobs would be created and environmentalist measures would be put in place. NAFTA ended up creating many jobs, most of which were in Mexican maquiladoras (poorly regulated exploitative factories comparable to sweat-shops). In the U.S., which stood to gain the most from the deal, 25,000 jobs were lost because of NAFTA-enabled outsourcing to Mexico. Luckily for proponents of the Agreement, though unrelated to its effects, at the same time jobs were lost the U.S. Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan lowered interests rates which offset the job losses (and actually created mor jobs than were lost, no thanks to NAFTA). Meanwhile, the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) (supposedly a measure to protect against environmental damages due to the Agreement) was both dubbed responsible for damages to Mexican economics while failing to achieve the environmental protections it was designed to accomplish. Basically, an Agreement based on similar principles to the TPP failed to improve economic conditions for the average jane/joe in the U.S., worsened conditions for the Mexican working class, and was responsible for an increase in environmental hazards south of the U.S. border. Do you want Australia to become a new Mexico to the U.S.? Possible effects on day-to-day: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-23/talkaboutit-five-ways-the-tpp-could-affect-you/6642230 Economics: http://aftinet.org.au/cms/US%20TPP%20report%20shows%20zero%20Australian%20growth http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-29/verrender-dont-expect-ftas-to-live-up-to-their-name/6579408 Intellectual property: Read the rundown and get further resources here: https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp Leaked IP chapter: https://www.wikileaks.org/tpp/ Clicktivism: https://openmedia.org/censorship What does Australia stand to conceivably gain from the TPP? Increased trade revenue. *Note that I've edited the above articles into snippits I found interesting. Read the whole articles by clicking the links.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/senators-give-medical-marijuana-the-green-light-20150725-gik5oq 1) The U.S. said it's okay. 2) There's money in it. Enough pessimism tho. Progess's progess. (Weird that this might come before gay marriage rights.)

I'm looking to buy some reasonably well established caapi and iboga (the latter preferably from a warm temperate zone). Reason I request established plants is that I won't be around a lot to look after them as carefully as young plants would require.

No good even with a hothouse in a mediterranean climate incog? Anyways, am chasing narrow leaf catha now. Gutted that I snoozed on the SAB webshop's last plant! Anyone got rooted narrow leaf khat to trade or sell?

The videos seem to be about protestors apparently being anti-GMO, the posts in this thread are about Monsanto and its business practice. Mycot's post is an outlier in that respect. So you're trying to address an issue that is tangential to the discussion here. Search out a thread on GMOs where your videos will be relevant. This one was about organising demonstrations against a company, not a technology. Otherwise, can you post your facts about why Monsanto is worth defending? edit: If anyone's interested in a refresher on why Monsanto is such a horrible company, Marie Monique Robin's book The World According to Monsanto is a pretty devastating read. It covers things like the impact of Monsanto's: 1) industrial scale production of PCBs and dioxin and its subsequent destruction –at least once in cooperation with the U.S.'s Environmental Protection Agency– of materials that would incriminate the company and leave it liable for legal action and costly settlements for people whose health and lives were effected (/destroyed). 2) Monsanto's role in developing chemical weapons (2,4,5- trichlorophenoxyacetic acid, Agent Orange, and others) for the U.S. government. 3) The company's infamous large scale production and deployment of DDT. 4) Its falsification of scientific documents to save itself from liability for giving countless people cancer which also meant it could conduct business as usual manufacturing carcinogenic substances. The misleading studies also meant that dioxins produced by Monsanto were not regulated by the US's Clean Air Act since they were "safe," and as with so many other things once the rest of the world saw the U.S. approving these practices, we followed suit. 5) On a different note, the company's infamous role in the farmer suicides in India. Of course, there's heaps more. Check it out if you're interested.

Value healthy food as a basic human right, ecologically innocuous farming and diversity, your right to grow plants? Protest Monsanto on May 25th - find a local protest to join or start your own. Get involved! http://rt.com/usa/monsanto-march-protests-world-069/ http://www.organicconsumers.org/monsanto/ http://morallowground.com/2013/05/07/nick-meyer-march-against-monsanto-rallies-happening-worldwide-in-may/ More information about local events probably on fb etc.