Growing in Community
Sharon Astyk, Casaubon's Book
I think the question of land access may end up being the central political issue of the coming century. In both the rich world and the poor world, we’ve systematically deprived people of easy access to land. We have driven up the price of land in the rich world by encouraging sprawl, and thus forced out agrarian populations that previous fed cities. We have pushed people into cities in the name of globalization and industrialization, and claimed their land for speculation.

(original)

Dr. Albert Bartlett's "Laws of Sustainability"
Gail Tverberg, The Oil Drum
At the Denver ASPO conference, I had the good fortune to meet Dr. Albert Bartlett. Afterward, Dr. Bartlett e-mailed me some material he had written over the years. The "Laws of Sustainability" were included in this material. They are part of Al Bartlett's contribution to the anthology The Future of Sustainability by Marco Keiner, published in 2006.

John Médaille, The Agenda: Political or Economic?

We have the kind of government we have because we have the kind of economic system we have. So long as there is a concentration of economic power, there will be a concentration of political power; the one depends on the other. One might talk of European or Japanese “socialism,” but in fact the differences between our governments are differences of degree rather than of kind. Hence I believe that when one talks of political reform, one must at least be conscious of the need for economic reform. Even is power were suddenly devolved back to the states and the cities, you would have business entities with far more power than any one, or any combination, of these political entities, and the situation might be at best the same. At worst, the political order would be even more crippled in relation to the economic order. My own modest contribution to the question of economic reform can be found here.
Speaking of political reform apart from economic reform implicitly endorses the fracturing of “Political economy” into its political and economic components, a split that occurred in the late 19th century. This unfortunate split deprived politics of its economic base, and economics of its political and moral foundations; both sciences were thereby impoverished and rendered incapable of dealing fully with their own subject matters.

But at this point, we come to a great problem for conservatives, for while there is a general consensus on political goals (a consensus somewhat weakened by “neo-conservatism”) there is no consensus on the economic goals. In fact, we see incompatible economic philosophies thrown together in an alliance that is at best uneasy. This has been a long standing problem for conservatism, at least since the 50’s when William Buckley and Frank Chodorov tried to unite the warring factions under the banner of The National Review. There was a tension between the various contributors that gave TNR a great deal of its intellectual depth. However, while the journal helped unite the factions politically, it could never reach an resolution on economic goals. It is interesting to note here that one of the long-standing conservative institutions, The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, was originally called the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists. However, Russell Kirk objected to that name, and it was changed. Kirk was a personality, but certainly not an individualist.

On the economic side of the equation, the major conservative “contenders” are distributism, mutualist libertarianism, and Austrian libertarianism. Some of these debates have been played out in the pages of FPR and have generated heated discussions, which is good. But until some broad economic consensus can be reached, conservatism will have a schizophrenic character about it.

A War Without Logic By SAUL LANDAU

Paul Craig Roberts, The Evil Empire

Obama’s credibility is shot. And so is Congress’s, assuming it ever had any. The US House of Representatives has just voted to show the entire world that the US House of Representatives is nothing but the servile, venal, puppet of the Israel Lobby. The House of Representatives of the American “superpower” did the bidding of its master, AIPAC, and voted 344 to 36 to condemn the Goldstone Report.

In case you don’t know, the Goldstone Report is the Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. The “Gaza Conflict” is the Israeli military attack on the Gaza ghetto, where 1.5 million dispossessed Palestinians, whose lands, villages, and homes were stolen by Israel, are housed. The attack was on civilians and civilian infrastructure. It was without any doubt a war crime under the Nuremberg standard that the US established in order to execute Nazis.

Goldstone is not only a very distinguished Jewish jurist who has given his life to bringing people to accountability for their crimes against humanity, but also a Zionist. However, the Israelis have demonized him as a “self-hating Jew” because he wrote the truth instead of Israeli propaganda.

US Representative Dennis Kucinich, who is now without a doubt a marked man on AIPAC’s political extermination list, asked the House if the members had any realization of the shame that the vote condemning Goldstone would bring on the House and the US government. The entire rest of the world accepts the Goldstone report.

United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza conflict
Advance Edited Version
The Goldstone Report

Alexander Cockburn, Too Fat to Fight

Every truck stop, every diner, every mall offered its tumid diorama of human hippos. We’re talking every age group here – starting with humpty-dumpty adolescents and ascending through the decades to 50-year olds, gigantic, stertorous and grey of countenance. My friend Wilbur who runs a trailer park in South Carolina told me there’s a woman in one of his double-wides who’s up around 400 pounds and can’t get through the door even if she wanted to. She sits and watches tv all day and when she passes, Wilbur will have to get a giant can opener to rip open the side of the trailer to winch out her remains.

Economic growth has let us down. What's the alternative?
Tim Jackson, the ecologist

(via EB -- EB also includes a link to Small Deposits Add Up: Savings, not just loans, factor into microfinance formula, by Suzie Boss, Worldchanging.)

via Carolyn Baker: WALL ST. JOURNAL INTERVIEWS MIKE RUPPERT ON HIS "COLLAPSE" MOVIE

NPR: Michael Ruppert, Explaining The Coming 'Collapse' by Mark Jenkins

New Society blog


Collapse Movie

John Michael Greer gives his opinion about "free market fundamentalists" and the Austrian school, with Michael Shedlock in mind: Harnessing Hippogriffs.

Asia Times: China's Three Gorges Dam comes of age
Fifteen years since work began and at a cost of between US$8 billion to $27 billion, the water level in the reservoir behind the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River will soon reach its final height of 175 meters. Officials, though, aren't celebrating too loudly: as China searches for new forms of renewable energy, the dam has become a monument to obsolete ambitions. (Nov 3, '09)

Billy Blundermacher’s Great Corn Cob Fiasco
Gene Logsdon, The Contrary Farmer
Billy Blundermacher was maybe not the smartest farmer in Winsome County but contrary to what politicians, prophets, preachers and pedagogues were saying, he knew that 1 plus 1 always equaled 2. Often he wished fervently it were not so, that numbers existed only in the fantasy realm of the Federal Reserve, not the real world.

(original)

Asia Times: Obama's world outreach teetering
Just months after well-received speeches in Turkey and Egypt, setbacks from Afghanistan to the West Bank to Pakistan, Iraq and Iran have seen belief plunge in the Muslim world over United States President Barack Obama and his plans for progress. With this, anti-US sentiment is back on the rise. - Jim Lobe

Tomas Luis de Victoria (1548-1611) - Salve Regina a 8

Westminster Cathedral Choir - Requiem Op 48Fauré

Flea Street Cafe looks good, but it is $$. It prides itself on using organic ingredients, but how is it really different from restaurants like Chez Panisse that rely upon locally grown food?

Hmmm. John Bentley's Restaurant in Redwood City. Would Pete Takeshi like this place?

Contra Costa Times Recent Restaurant Reviews

Alison Krauss and Union Station, "Goodbye is all we Have"

Alison Krauss and Union Station

Pam Martensm, The Fire Sale of America

Zenit: Holy See on Renewable Energy
"The Energy Consumption Pattern of Today Impacts Future Generations"

Katherine Dalton, Localism with Teeth

The principles underlying states’ rights and secession are ideas many writers here sympathize with. And as “localists,” we can’t separate ourselves from association with these terms. This is particularly true of “states’ rights.” What else do we mean when we talk about greater local autonomy and power, but states’ rights? What is subsidiarity, but the moral argument for the devolved power of states’ rights? What is federalism? We can avoid certain terms, in preference for others with less baggage, but we can’t avoid their meaning when their meaning is our own.

All talk of local autonomy, all calls for devolution of power from a central government, must in the end be calls for the rights of states to oppose and if necessary nullify federal overreaching. Otherwise those calls are just hot air. That is because politics is first and last about power, not highway beautification or universal health coverage. Anyone who has tried to argue with representatives of a federal agency—with, say, the U.S. Forest Service about the illogic of cutting down the woods the agency exists to manage—should know that earnest requests for an obvious good can have little effect on a large bureaucracy which exists to protect not woodlands but itself. The people who work for the Forest Service will follow a logic in making their decisions, but it will be the logic of their budget, not of the forest or the forest’s neighbors or the Indiana bat.

Dr. Fleming gives a measured recommendation of Christopher Wickham. Framing the Early Middle Ages (Google Books). $220.00 for 1018 pages! haha!

A shorter (more popular?) work: The Inheritance of Rome.

Related links:
Book review by Andrew Roach of 'Framing the Early Middle Ages'
Review: The Inheritance of Rome by Chris Wickham
The Inheritance of Rome by Chris Wickham - review - Telegraph
The Inheritance of Rome Chris Wickham Michael Patrick Brady
Plz be respecting feudalizm: further opinions from Chris Wickham

This morning I was surprised to hear someone on 560 AM who is not a neocon, but a non-interventionist and localist critical of both imperial misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gerald Celente of the Trends Research Institute. He was no Republican cheerleader, putting blame on both parties for the disaster that has befallen. Nor did he think the bailout helped the average American. It is, rather, beneficial only for the rich. He also talked about the growing gap between the rich and the poor.

' Worst economic collapse ever'

Ralph Nader, Hoh's Afghanistan Warning

Beneventan and Ambrosian Chant

Répons et verset - Chants Bénéventains


Chant of Benevento - Pascha Nostrum


Chant of Benevento - Laudamus te Christe


Ambrosian chant - Ecce apertum est Templum tabernaculi


Ambrosian chant - Tecum principium in die virtutis tue


Ambrosian chant - Ecce quam bonum et jocundum


Links:
wiki on Ambrosian Chant, Beneventan Chant
Beneventan Chant
The Beneventan Chant by Thomas Kelly (see also Plainsong in the Age of Polyphony, which he edited)
CE on Ambrosian chant
Ambrosian Chant - Home Page
CANTO AMBROSIANO - SPARTITI

Google Books: Western plainchant: a handbook

Tonight's guest on Coast to Coast AM: Craig Hulet, who gives an Economic Exposé. He also talks about the "Silk Road Strategy" (doc).

The show is definitely open to hear alternate points of view. But does its openness to stories about the paranormal and UFOs undermine its credibility?

Related Links:
Hulet
U.S. political objectives in the Middle East will Fail
From 2004: Election myths and the Asian challenge

LiveScience: Giant crack likely to create new ocean

Black Friday moved up this year?

I was a bit incredulous when I read Michael Shedlock's An Early Thanksgiving, Black Friday Begins last week; I did not think that there would be so many companies so desperate for sales that they'd start the holiday shopping season early, even though we are in a recession. But I just saw a Kohl's commercial featuring Jingle Bells in the background and trumpeting their cash-back program. If sales are really poor this year, what will the consequences be?