Housing

Learned Social Classism, Is Working Even Ethical?

November 25, 2012 By Aaron Jackson 6 Comments

As explained in the article Learning Careerism As A Moral Reward System; our society, specifically our education system teaches and prepared us for a careerist lifestyle. Or simply put, working for money is considered success in our societies.

But not only does it teach us to work for currency. Just as we are put down in school for having poor grades, in society we are put down and even ridiculed, almost as criminals, for having low paid jobs, and even more so for having no paid job at all.

This video shows how people are eager to help someone until people assume they are homeless, and that the homeless are also more eager to help people in need:

We live in a society where those with the most important jobs to our survival work long hours, often physically tiring and are not paid very much. There are only a few kinds of workers that we really need, farmers/food producers, construction/manufacturers, delivery, maintenance/repair, and public services such as hospital workers and good police.

As time goes on there is more automation, so there are less jobs available but more people and so more food, building, maintenance, healthcare, and so on is required. However farmers are being paid less as time goes on, many selling their farms to get a different job, as their valuable work doesn’t even pay the bills. Construction workers, store workers, repair services and delivery are often paid low or minimum wage. Construction or farm work is much physically harder than sitting in an office trading stocks, yet those people are praised because they make more money.

There are often stories of fire-fighters and medical workers on strike because they are on a low wage or have poor quality working conditions, but these are the true heroes of our society, these people save us from death. Farmers, medical workers and fire-fighters should be the highest rewarded and praised workers of society, not some of the least.

We should also give more credit to those who are building and maintaining places for us to live comfortably in.

It is shameful that the harder a job is, the less money the workers will make, and those who make the most money in society actually have the easier jobs and often work the least.

In our society even these workers that we require for survival are not made a priority, money is. We are taught that if we work hard we can get a good job, and a good job pays well, most people still believe this and look up to those with ‘well-paid’ jobs and look down on those with a low paid job or those who are considered poor.

The truth is that in almost all cases the LESS-ethical the persons job, the more money they will earn. We could consider the most ethical of all work to be charity work, helping those with less, yet most of this work is either volunteer work or paid minimum wage. Those without jobs at all are looked down on, even when they volunteer to do charity work. Looked down on by those who mess around with numbers to make bigger numbers (trading stocks and shares), or managers; people who make sure that other people work so that they can take a larger cut.

Our parents tried to teach us good ethics and morals, but then they told us to obey at school, which taught us that these twisted careerist ideologies were moral and ethical.

Those without any paid employment, often also without any debt are sometimes homeless, and our society also tells us that they are homeless because they are drug addicts or alcoholics, and therefore we should not help them, even though many of these people are not drug-addicts or alcoholics, and if they are, it is often a sickness that is created by the world they live in, they simply didn’t have enough money or got kicked out by an ex-partner. Relationship breakdown and illness can happen to anyone.

So we have those who work very unethical jobs making ridiculously high amounts of money, those looked down on for having low paid work, even though it is physically more productive, those who are ridiculed for not having a ‘paid’ job or claiming some kind of state benefit, and then the homeless who cannot even apply for many kinds of state benefits or most jobs because they cannot complete the forms without a valid address, and often an email address or phone number; sometimes even the phone number must be a landline number, and of course to apply for a job most of the time these days a printed Résumé/CV is required.

Amnesty international reported that approximately 3.5 million people in the U.S. are homeless, many of them veterans. It is worth noting that, at the same time, there are 18.5 million vacant homes in the country.

AP also reports that nearly 1 in 2 Americans have fallen into poverty.

CBS News reports that “According to a new report out this past week, poverty in America has reached its highest level since 1965″.

So as a whole this brings up a question, apart from a few specific careers, is paid work ethical? How many ethical jobs do you know that are helping people to survive or live comfortably and are not profiting some corporation, or share holders, sat back, relaxing, watching the money you make entering their bank accounts.

When we do get paid, a high percentage of that money gets cut to go to government as income tax, however we give them another chunk of money from VAT, another tax, then depending on where you live there are multiple other taxes such as state tax, council tax, road tax, import tax, property tax, inheritance tax, and so on…

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Filed Under: Banks, Consumerism, Corporations, Economy, Employment, Equality, Featured, Financial Crisis, Housing, Income Inequality, Money, Poverty, Safety, Taxes, Unions, Welfare Benefits

The Truth About Diamonds…

June 20, 2012 By Chris Everard Leave a Comment

My name is Chris Everard - I have spent 17 years travelling to eleven countries investigating and reporting on how the super-wealthy families - who have become known as ‘the illuminati’ to many - gain their riches… I have established a monthly magazine which publishes fully illustrated reports and iBook/articles about the Aristocratic-Royal Elite, cover-ups, secret episodes of world history and other matters which are ignored by the mainstream media. FEED YOUR BRAIN MAGAZINE refuses all big corporate advertising and is instead funded by it’s readers via subscriptions. It gives us the the kind of editorial freedom which, say, the BBC do not have - for example, the Director General of the BBC is actually appointed by the Queen…

In this DIAMOND JUBILEE year, I decided to publish investigations into the DIAMOND industry - every diamond on the planet has been the result of some form of exploitation of people or the environment…

You can get a free copy of FEED YOUR BRAIN MAGAZINE by submitting your email in the little box at https://www.FeedYourBrainMagazine.com/ - this is a snippet of the kind of research and investigation I publish each month….

In the 40 years between 1952 - 1992 the Queen avoided paying tax. Does she really have any respect for the British people? She has almost completely avoided paying any contribution towards the upkeep of Britain. Now take a close look - a really close look - at her facial expressions on those rare occasions when the royal family step out onto the balcony at Buckingham Palace. Complete and utter control of the BBC newsfeeds has allowed - up until now - a very effective ‘news blackout’ on the investments of the royals - and their attitude towards the British working class…
Some of the Queen’s most important investments have been in the Nuclear electric industries… and DIAMONDS…

Fortunes have been made and lost in the age-old trading of diamonds. Three of the world’s largest diamonds are owned by the British Queen - whose real name is Elizabeth Saxe Coburg und Gotha (her name is not really ‘Windsor’ - that is a ‘styled’ title-name). The combined value of these diamonds is in excess of $1,000million dollars - perhaps as much as $2,000 million. If these diamonds were re-cut and sold, the accrued fund of money could be placed in a high return deposit savings account, producing an annual income which would provide enough cash to provide the National Health Service with Scanners and dialysis machines FOREVER. Additionally, African & Indian communities in the areas where the diamonds were originally discovered would also benefit from an annual income.

Diamonds are NOT rare - at the African Ekati diamond mine, they are transported on conveyer belts - in giant heaps. A direct result of diamond mining is the diversion of rivers to allow for the mining of alluvial diamond deposits. When the mine is depleted, the rivers are not redirected to their original courses, which in turn results in the pollution of waters and destruction of surrounding flora and fauna. The mining activities also degrade the surrounding land by increasing atmospheric air pollution, contaminating surface and ground water and increasing soil erosion and leaching. The pollution is, in the most extreme cases, leading to desertification and permanently changing land use from agriculture to waste, rendering it useless to traditional inhabitants when the diamonds have all been mined. In the short run the inhabitants of the region are suffering from sickness and disease related to contaminated drinking water supplies. Such diseases include dissentry, Malaria, schistosamiases and Biomphalaria pfeiffer. Rwanda, Sierra Leone, the Congo and Angola are the foremost sources for diamonds in Africa - all these countries have been thrown into civil war and chaos by British Military forces & mercenaries. The ensuing chaos guarantees that the diamond mining can go on unhindered by democratically elected leaders demanding a fair cut of the profits for the African people. The royal elite have mountains of diamonds in stock and carefully control the sale & distribution, giving the impression that diamonds are ‘rare’.

Just recently, Sierra Leone erupted into what the BBC described as “civil war”. The truth is that most of these ‘turf wars’ play into the hands of diamond prospectors, with the displacement of millions of Africans quite - just by chance, of course - enabling mining companies to set up shop, their facilities looking like high security prisons which mar the natural beauty of the landscape and strip the subterranean strata using high powered water hoses and acids in search of yet more shiny transparent crystals. There is, without question, a strange paradox, that many African villages rely on a single standpipe of water, whilst just yards away, high powered water hoses flush diamonds underground by workers who have to suffer the indignity of anal probes and x-rays as they leave their workplace, the bosses making sure that none of their modern slaves have swallowed a small uncut gem to allay the horrendous inequality of their society. (below): The Indian Koh-I-Nor diamond set into a platinum crown owned by Queen Elzabeth’s dead mother.

The royal greed for diamonds has scarred our wonderful planet. In Kimberly, South Africa, we see an abandoned mine which was dug by hand using local labourers who were paid pennies for their hard work in arduous conditions. The giant hole left behind after the royal-elite diamond traders moved on to trash yet another landscape could easily be converted into a hydro-electric power station to benefit the local community. It was abandoned in 1914.

The Russian ROMANOV royal family are cousins to the British-Bavarian house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Windsor. An orgy of top soil washing and feverish mining has left ridiculously huge chasms and black holes in the Rusiian countryside. A mine at Mirney in Siberia is 1,200 meters in diametre and more than 500 meters deep. The royals have left a giant sink hole at Yellowknife in Canada - a territory stolen from First Nation Canadian Indians - which is so big it can be seen from space. The Diavik diamond mine could easily be converted into a marine biology research station - but like so many other diamond mines, it will probably be left as an ugly scar on our planet.

In the 1930s, a third of British children suffered growth defects caused by malnutrition. This is the era in which queen Elizabeth II grew up - whilst beggars and child prostitutes fought hand and mouth for food and favour from the rich outside the walls of royal palaces, the young Elizabeth was being groomed to take her place as an adult princess - she had her own child sized six-roomed thatched cottage in the garden of the Royal Lodge at Royal Windsor Great Park (situated near Windsor Castle). The London Times reported; ‘The Small House is fully furnished with running water, electric light, and a wireless.’ Architect John Nash rebuilt the Royal Lodge for King George IV and it became one of the Queen Mother’s many homes. She died there, aged 101, after a century of indulgence, fine champagne and enjoying whole-body blood transfusions at the tax payer’s expense.

Since the 1800s, the British-Bavarian royal sovereign houses have been asset stripping Africa and India and building vast estates which are now almost impossible to value accurately. Their investments are global, with rumours suggesting that Queensland in Australia is actually owned by the royal Crown Estates (perhaps that would explain the reason for it’s name), and every building in Regent Street in central London is owned by the Crown Estates. Officially, the Crown Estates are custodians, merely owning properties on behalf of the British people - but that, as far as I am concerned, is nothing but window dressing and political double-speak - as at no time in history has any of the Crown Estates been sold off in order to build hospitals or fund public services. On the rare occasions when there are sell-offs, they are usually Leasehold, and the properties eventually return back to the Crown.

From 1953 up until 1992, the monarchy paid not a single penny in tax. More than 2,400 tax rises took place in that period, with the cost of goods being ramped due to massive amounts of duty being levied on them.
In 1992, a paltry £1million was begrudgingly handed over in ‘tax’ - perhaps this is the reason why the queen described 1992 as her “Anus Horribilis”. In the same year, a mysterious fire at Windsor Castle resulted in taxpayers being told that they would have no less than £30 Million taken from their wage packets to pay for the damage! Ten years later, in 2002, the Queen apparently was not required to pay tax on the cash bequeathed in her mother’s will. The Queen Mother often gave the impression that she was ‘broke’. But she owned not one, but TWO castles! Allegedly, £140 million was placed in Swiss Trusts for the benefit of her grandchildren… If true, then this shows that the Queen Mum was one of the wealthiest people in the world. She was allegedly in debt due to horse racing gambling fetishes - if this is true, then surely a 100 year old woman would not have needed TWO castles and one of these giant estates could have been commercialised or sold off or rented out as a hotel to take the burden off her ‘debts’.

THE CROWN’S ESTATES
So, let us now take a closer look at these so called ‘Crown Estates’… What we have here is a portfolio of some of the world’s most famous landmarks and buildings worth a conservative £6 billion, with urban properties valued at £4.2 billion, and rural holdings valued at £919.5 million; and an annual profit of £226.5 million - that’s almost £1 million profit per day earned from rental and lease incomes. The majority of the estate’s income is derived from urban cities - most notably properties in central London. The Crown’s estate also owns 272,000 acres (110,000 hectares) of agricultural land and forest, and, wait for it, more than half of the UK’s foreshore - beaches, ports, promenades, piers etc. It also includes Ascot racecourse and the aforementioned Windsor Great Park… I think you’re beginning to get the ‘big picture’…
This cosy little arrangement, where vast amounts of tax free cash is paid directly into the bank accounts of Royals has continued, with every succeeding sovereign renewing the arrangement made between King George III and Parliament and is now recognised as “an integral part of the Constitution [which] would be difficult to abandon”. That is, of course, an odd term - as Britain does not have an official ‘Constitution’.

The Crown Estates has an interesting history, where various monarchs have played a kind of ‘soft shoe shuffle’ moving assets in and out of the Crown Estates portfolio as and when their heavy drinking/heavy gambling/heavy tipping (delete as appropriate) habits needed. Upon King George III’s accession of the throne he ‘surrendered’ the income from the Crown lands to Parliament in return for a fixed civil list. What this means is that to this day there very often is a minister inside the Cabinet Office who is described as ‘Minister Without Portfolio’ and it is this minister’s responsibility to manage the Crown Estates. Old King George surrendered to parliamentary control the hereditary excise duties, post office revenues, and “the small branches” of hereditary revenue including rents of the Crown lands in England, (which amounted at that time to about £11,000) and was granted a ‘civil list’ annuity of £800,000 for the support of his household and the expenses of civil government, subject to the payment of certain annuities to members of the royal family. So, in other words, he forewent the few tens of thousands of peasant rents the Crown Estates were levying, handed over control to a puppet minister, and in exchange picked up nearly a £1 million tax free sum every 12 months. However, although the king had retained large hereditary revenues, his income proved insufficient for his expensive life style! Why? Because he used to reward friends with bribes and lavish gifts! Debts amounting to over £3 million during the course of King George’s reign were paid by Parliament, and the civil list annuity was then increased from time to time - leading to the situation we have today, where vast mortgages and massive ‘salaries’ are now paid to more than two dozen Royals who have seldom had ‘normal’ jobs.

55% of Britain’s foreshore is owned and operated by the Crown Estates - permission has been granted time and time again for ugly and dangerous nuclear reactors which belch radioactive waste into the English channel, North Sea and Irish Sea.

Filed Under: Africa, Banks, Corruption, Housing, Illuminati, Income Inequality, Nuclear, Poverty, Royal Family, Russia, Taxes, United Kingdom, War

Foreclosed Homeowners Re-Occupy Their Homes

December 29, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

San Francisco – Carolyn Gage was evicted from her foreclosed home in January. Earlier this month, she moved back in.

“I’ve been in here for 50 years. I know no other place but here. I left and it was just time for me to come back home,” said Gage, who is in her mid-50s.

Gage’s monthly payments spiked after her adjustable rate mortgage kicked in, and she could no longer afford the payments on her three-bedroom house in the city’s Bayview Hunters Point district. She says she tried to modify her loan with her lender, Florida-based IB Properties, but to no avail.

When Gage initially left about 10 months ago, she took some personal items with her, but left most of the furniture and continued paying for some utilities.

“It didn’t feel right for me to move. I just left my things because I knew I was going to return to them eventually,” she said.

She had to re-activate a few utilities when she returned, like the water, but found the process fairly easy.

Walking back into the house was an emotional moment for Gage, but a joyous one.

“I was like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz; there’s no place like home,” Gage said. “It’s a family home; I plan to stay there.”

Gage was one of about two dozen homeowners who gathered Tuesday for a community potluck on Quesada Avenue for residents facing foreclosure and are refusing to leave their homes.

Homeowners expressed outrage at the way predatory lenders have targeted their community.

Residents of the Bayview are starting to see how the African-American community was especially victimized in the foreclosure crisis.

Gage believes that single women and elders in the black community were targeted for predatory loans. At the peak of the housing boom she was solicited for an adjustable rate loan to do some home improvements, even though she told the loan agent that she was on disability and did not have a steady income.

According to a report released last week by the Center for Responsible Lending, African Americans and Latinos were consistently more likely than whites to receive high-risk loan products. About a quarter of all Latino and African-American borrowers have lost their homes to foreclosure or are seriously delinquent, compared to under 12 percent for white borrowers.

Bayview residents Reverend Archbishop Franz King and Reverend Mother Marina King, who are founders of the St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, are also facing foreclosure. Their eviction date is set for Dec. 22.

King expressed deep anger and sorrow at the situation facing the black community in the Bayview.

“First redevelopment moved us out of the Fillmore and now we’re losing our properties too? It’s like there’s nowhere for us to go,” he said.

Grace Martinez, an organizer with Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) who helped to arrange the event, commented that banks have become increasingly hostile to their efforts. “They call the police on us; they laugh at us.”

Vivian Richardson, a homeowner on Quesada Avenue whose house was also foreclosed on, also has no intention of leaving. Her current eviction date is set for Dec. 31, but she, like many of her neighbors, is asking her lender to reduce the principal on her loan in order to make the monthly payments more affordable.

Richardson has been attempting to modify her home loan for the past two years. Earlier this month, tired of the lack of communication from the lender, Aurora Loan Services based in Delaware, she worked with ACCE to coordinate an e-mail blast to Aurora’s chairman.

On Nov. 3, over the span of one to two hours, approximately 1,400 emails were sent and more than 100 phone calls made, imploring Chairman Theodore P. Janulis to stop Richardson’s eviction. A spokesperson from the bank called her an hour after the blast and asked her to send an updated set of financial information so that they could review her case.

Two weeks have passed and she has yet to hear anything further. The bank spokesperson commented that Richardson’s case is still being reviewed internally and they hope to get back to her by the end of next week.

However, Richardson has lived in her house for 13 years and plans to stay regardless of the bank’s decision.

“I will defend the home,” she said.

On Dec. 6, there will be a national day of action, “Occupy Our Homes,” where people across the country facing predicaments similar to Gage and Richardson may follow their lead.

Partly inspired by the Occupy movement, the day of action is supported by various community organizations like Take Back the Land and ACCE. The call to action is for people to move back into their foreclosed properties and to defend the properties of families facing eviction.

Martinez commented on the growing anger people are feeling. “The idea is, ‘I want what’s mine.’” She said many homeowners had trusted the banks and ultimately, “People were buying into a lie.”

Source: https://www.truth-out.org/foreclosed-homeowners-re-occupy-their-homes/1322246348

Filed Under: Debt, Housing, Occupy, USA Tagged With: Foreclosure, Re-Occupy

Four Ways to Naturally Purify the Air in Your Home

December 13, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

By Anthony Gucciardi

How toxic is your home?

While most people spend the majority of their time outdoors, indoor air quality may actually be more threatening to your health than outdoor air. Considering the fact that outdoor air is hit with factory pollution, harmful chemicals, and much more, it is truly shocking to know that indoor air quality can be up to five times worse than outdoor air.

It is important to begin purifying the air in your home, and you may be surprised to know that to beginning this process does not require an expensive air purifier.

Here are 4 ways to naturally purify your home that you can begin immediately:

1. Use the Right Kind of Paint (Low-VOC)

The type of paint that you use inside your house can affect the overall air quality of your home. Volatile organic compounds, known as VOCs, are actually released by paints for months after application. What exactly are VOCs? These highly toxic chemicals can include formaldehyde, which was recently classified as a carcinogen by the United States government. When using VOC-containing products, the compounds will slowly release into your home, threatening the health of you and your family.

It is important to note that varnishes and waxes may also contain VOCs. Use low-VOC or no-VOC products when it comes to household painting, varnishing, or waxing.

2. Avoid Synthetic Household Cleaners, Art, and Beauty Supplies

Synthetic household products may also be introducing harmful chemical into your home. The chemicals that produce fragrance react with ozone in the air to form formaldehyde and ultrafine particles that can collect in the lungs. This effect is not limited to household cleaner, however. Hair and nail products as well as art and hobby supplies can also increase the level of VOCs in your home.

Popular air freshening products have also been found to trigger allergies and asthma.

For a safer room freshener, dip cotton balls in a sweet-smelling extract like vanilla and stash them around the house.

3. Test Your Home for Radon

Radon is a deadly invisible and odorless gas, commonly found in the basements of older homes that have not been properly tested and protected against radon gas. With it being the leading cause of lung cancer in nonsmokers and the 2nd leading cause of lung cancer period, radon gas is not something you want in your home. Scientists have even estimated that radon causes thousands of deaths annually.

Testing your home for radon is easy, inexpensive, and is vital to ensuring that your home is free of toxins.

4. Ventilate

Proper ventilation of your home is key to removing unwanted toxins from inside your home. Oftentimes during the winter months it becomes a challenge to routinely open your windows and properly ventilate your home. As a result, toxins can accumulate inside without the possibility of being released. If you live in a climate that allows for proper window ventilation all year long, then you will be able to avoid the issue and keep your windows open for a few hours each day.

Even during the winter season, however, keeping your windows open for just a few minutes per day can make a difference. If possible, place a fan in one window to blow indoor air outside, and another facing inward to blow outside air in. This will allow for optimum circulation of the air, bringing in fresh new air and removing toxic air buildup.

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/4-ways-to-naturally-purify-air-in-your.html

Filed Under: Health, Housing, Pollution Tagged With: Toxins

More Young People Than Ever Sleeping Rough

December 12, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

Government cuts and high unemployment are driving a sharp rise in the number of young people who are homeless.

Charities believe there is a worrying link between the record youth unemployment figures and the people they are dealing with.

On the streets of central London on her early morning rounds, outreach worker Miranda Keast told Sky News that under those aged between 16 and 25 now account for a larger proportion of her work.

“There has been a noticeable increase in those age groups,” she said.

“If they haven’t been in education and they don’t have much support from their families financially then it is very difficult.”

A survey carried out by Homeless Link has revealed 44% of homeless services and 48% of councils report an increase in young people seeking help.

The report also found 62% of young homeless people seen by charities were not in education, training or employment, and around half were in financial difficulties.

Paige Evans, 17, counts herself lucky to have a part-time job but has spent the last year sleeping rough or borrowing friends’ sofas in south east London.

She told Sky News: “I wake up in the morning and I don’t know where I’m going to be staying next.

“I do feel ashamed that when people ask me whereabouts do you live, and I have to say I don’t.”

Paige was helped last month by a Nightstop UK scheme where homeowners offer their spare room to someone in need.

It is a stopgap measure that gives homeless people a bed while waiting for help from overstretched organisations.

Ailsa McWilliam, from Nightstop UK, told Sky News the organisation badly needs more people to act as hosts.

“It’s a double edged sword at the moment, the cuts in the economy and the way young people are being hit by the economic situation,” she said.

“If we had more hosts it would mean we wouldn’t have to turn as many young people away.”

Filed Under: Economy, Financial Crisis, Housing, Poverty, United Kingdom Tagged With: Homelessness, unemployment

‘Occupy Homes’ Figure: Bank Of America Is One Of The Biggest Criminals

December 12, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

After being in the middle of the Occupy Our Homes day of action earlier in the week, Alfredo Carrasquillo spoke to Up with Chris Hayes Saturday morning.

Despite risking arrest for staying in a home owned by Bank of America, Corrasquillo was determined to keep his homeless family in the occupied house.

“Bank of America has basically been one of the biggest criminals in history,” he said. “They have been basically foreclosing on homes, forcing families that are working hard to try and provide for their children, forcing them to be homeless and out on the street. There’s more vacant homes than there are people out on the street.”

“Ultimately, these homes need to be filled with families that need them. There’s always technicalities involved in it, but the fact of the matter is, if there’s empty homes, they should be filled with families that need them.”

Despite many stories of possible foreclosure fraud, including attorney generals across the country investigating or lawsuits, Bank of America has yet to be federally convicted of any foreclosure crimes.

Source: https://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/11/occupy-homes-figure-bank-of-america-has-been-one-of-the-biggest-criminals/

Filed Under: Corruption, Crime, Housing, Law, Media, Occupy, Poverty, Protests, USA Tagged With: Bank of America, Foreclosure Fraud, Journalism, Occupy Homes

Introduction to Emergency Survival Shelters

December 1, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

If your plane crashes, your car gets washed away in a mudslide, or your boat sinks and you’re stuck on an unknown coast, your first priority might not be food or water, but an emergency shelter.

It depends on the conditions — weather primarily.

Of course, the best alternative is to get out of the wilderness and back home, but you might have to hunker down before you can leave. In case you do, you’ll need to know how to build an emergency survival shelter.

Assess the situation before you build an emergency shelter

When you find yourself stranded, follow the DAPA procedure:

Don’t panic. Disorientation, stress, and fear are the enemies of functionality. You can’t reason yourself through a situation without getting control of your emotions.
Assess your situation. Remain calm; look around. You might not know which direction points home, but you can determine your physical relation to the immediate environment. Are you in a gulley? Are you on high ground? Is it cold? Are you injured? Next, is there anyone with you? If so, determine whether they need help. Then determine what tools you have. What’s in your pocket?
Plan. Having a plan gives you the means to apply rational thought — it helps keep you mentally stable. Bad morale is lethal; your plan should be designed to guarantee incremental successes. This rewards you with the pleasure of progress. Don’t be too cocky for Baby Steps. Your first success might be something as simple as reaching the vantage point you identified when assessing your situation just moments ago, or identifying North, or taking stock of your tools. If you’re completely befuddled as to what to do, you still must plan. If you can’t think of anything else, determine simply to reach a landmark, like “I’m going to walk 100 yards uphill and see what’s there.” Your goal is always to improve your situation. Be realistic. Your ultimate goal is to get out of the wilderness and get home, but you might not be able to do that right now. If that’s the case, set interim goals that are achievable and improve your situation.
Act. What you planned, now you must do. Be diligent, but be flexible. Put some effort into carrying out every step of your plan, but revise the plan if necessary to reach your goal. For example, if you have decided to build your shelter against a fallen tree trunk, but find that the ground is drier next to a rock ledge nearby, feel free to move — if you have time. The goal always is to improve your situation.

Understand Your Immediate Shelter Needs

There are four primary considerations in determining your emergency shelter needs: purpose, environment, physical condition, and materials on hand.

Purpose of a shelter. Always, always keep in mind the purpose of your emergency shelter; you only need to provide basic protection from the elements. If the threat is rain, spend your energy stopping most leaks. If the threat is cold, focus on insulation. If the threat is heat, focus on shade and ventilation. Once you’ve abated the major environmental threat, move on to the next item in your overall plan. Don’t waste time and energy perfecting something that’s good enough.
Environment. If you’re supremely lucky, you’ll be stranded in an environment that resembles the garden of Eden — food will grow on trees, cold, clean water will bubble out of the ground, you’ll find mossy patches four feet thick for your bed, and the temperature will hover around 80 degrees Fahrenheit day and night. Bet against it, though. Just in case the garden of Eden is hard to find where you’ll be traveling, you should be prepared for a less benign environment. Whenever you travel, it is vitally important to have some information about the weather forecast.
Physical condition. If you’re in good condition, you can be more aggressive, take a little more hardship, take a little more calculated risk. If you’re injured, sick, or malnourished, your weakened condition means you’ll have less tolerance for exposure. You’ll have to be more careful to provide warmth, to stay dry, and keep your stress level down. Understand your capabilities and limitations.
Materials on hand. As always, your best bet is to have a well-stocked everyday carry bag. Ideally, you’ll have a ripstop poncho with grommets — you can tie this down for immediate shelter from wind and rain. In five minutes, you have a life-saving shelter. Barring that, consider what you do have, whether it’s snow, leaves, evergreen boughs, bamboo, banana leaves, whatever.

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/introduction-to-emergency-survival.html

Filed Under: Environment, Housing, Self-Sustainability Tagged With: Emergency, Survival Shelters

Movers And Sheriff’s Deputies Refuse Bank’s Order To Evict 103-Year-Old Atlanta Woman

December 1, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

Yesterday, a Deutsche Bank branch in Atlanta had requested the eviction of Vita Lee, a 103-year-old Atlanta woman, and her 83-year-old daughter. Both were terrified of being removed from their home of 53 years and had no idea where they’d go next.

But when the movers hired by the bank and police were dispatched to evict the two women, they had a change of heart. In a huge victory for the 99 Percent, the movers “took one look at” Lee and decided not to go through with it. Watch WSB TV’s Channel 2′s video report about the incident:

The stress of the possible eviction made Lee’s daughter ill; she was rushed to the hospital the same day. Lee had one message for Deutsche Bank: “Please don’t come in and disturb me no more. When I’m gone you all can come back and do whatever they want to.”

UPDATE

Chase bank, which services the loan on Hall’s house, has now announced that it will no longer try to evict her and will work out a deal to let her stay in her home.

Source: https://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/11/30/378565/moves-and-deputies-refuse-eviction

Filed Under: Banks, Health, Housing, Money, Occupy, Police, USA Tagged With: Eviction

The Secret Revolution in North Dakota

November 30, 2011 By T Kelly 1 Comment

North Dakota citizens may abolish property taxes, allowing them more control over government spending. Nearly 30,000 signatures were collected to place the people’s initiative on the ballot in June, 2012 that would constitutionally abolish all property taxes in North Dakota.

This landmark measure supports property rights, small government and freedom advocates around the country.

If the initiative is successful, North Dakota will be the first state to abolish all property taxes, both state and local, and will provide a model for the other states to do the same. North Dakota may be the first state to kick off the property rights revolution!

Since 1978 the state legislature has amended, altered or “reformed” property tax 134 times.

This tells us that the tax cannot be fixed.

Legislation to abolish property tax was introduced in the 2009 legislative session. The bill was defeated. There was even an attempt to turn the bill into a study to investigate the issue and that even failed.

Since the initiative qualified for the ballot, several city and county groups have come out in opposition to the measure, in direct violation of state law. The hysteria coming from government leaders include threats that this will be the end of public education, fire and police protection will be terminated, and there will be no more roads (remember that roads are funded through the gas tax).

If the measure passes, two very important issues will be addressed in order to pare down the size of government and spending:

1. The initiative mandates that schools and local governments must be “fully and properly funded” before the state can address any other budgeting (like special interests).

2. The measure also states that all “legal obligations” must be funded. Legal obligations are:

A. Statutory — the things that the state has directed local government to fund.

B. Contractual obligations — spending that the counties and cities have taken on through contracts like bonds, special construction, etc.

After schools, local governments and legal obligations are funded and the real debate begins! Does the city, county or state have the obligation to fund a museum or an art festival? Most people would say ‘no’. Does that mean that the local government can’t fund museums or art festivals? This is an issue of real self rule and local control. If the people really, truly feel they must have a museum or a new hockey rink, then they can vote themselves a new tax to fund it—a sales tax or user fee or special assessment or whatever. They just can’t fund it with property tax.These two points will spark a whole new level of public discourse on the proper role of government and citizen involvement.In addition to forcing the state to prioritize spending, it will also compel them to scrutinize current and future spending, especially if they want to avoid increasing taxes.

According to the Beacon Hill Institute study on EmpowerTheTaxpayer.blogspot.com, there is no need to increase taxes to “pay for” the missing property tax revenues. By putting an extra $3000-4000 in each family’s pocket, the state will enjoy an increase in sales and income tax revenues. Businesses will invest more heavily in our local economy, while the need for some government employees will vanish. The state’s economy will improve without increasing any taxes.

The national mainstream media is not covering this story. The NEA has pledged $4-5 million to fight passage of the measure — this in a state where a Senate race costs less than $1 million. They clearly see the national impact this measure will generate and want to stop it before any other states get any bright ideas.

North Dakota is one of the cheapest places to run a campaign, so if we get good support not only will this measure pass in our state, but we will see it being promoted in other states as well.

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/secret-revolution-in-north-dakota.html

Filed Under: Family, Housing, Law, Money, Taxes, USA Tagged With: Property Taxes

Class Segregation: Rich Hunker Down in Wealthy Enclaves — Leaving the Rest of America’s Neighborhoods to Deteriorate

November 29, 2011 By T Kelly 1 Comment

America’s rich haven’t just become richer, according to a new study. They’ve become far more likely to live among their own kind.

Just 40 years ago, most Americans rubbed elbows with neighbors from a fairly wide cross-section of income levels. But today’s rich, Census data show, are keeping everyone else at arm’s length — and more.

How many neighborhoods have you ever seen with oodles of rich residents — and poor schools? Or, vice versa, how many neighborhoods do you know with lots of poor people and richly appointed schools?Silly questions. We all know the answers. Kids in affluent neighborhoods don’t go to schools with leaky roofs, tattered textbooks, and uncertified teachers. Kids in poor neighborhoods do. And what goes for schools, of course, goes for every other public service as well — from parks and libraries to road repair and garbage pick-up. You’re going to be much better off, as a person of modest means, if some of your neighbors have more substantial means.

Back in 1970, the vast majority of Americans lived in neighborhoods that did mix people of substantial and modest means. No more. In fact, says a new study just released by the Russell Sage Foundation and Brown University, the share of Americans living amid intense income segregation has more than doubled.America’s rich haven’t just become richer, show the study data from Stanford University sociologists Sean Reardon and Kendra Bischoff. They’ve become far more likely to live among their own kind. The same for the poor.Reardon and Bischoff have gone through Census data from all the U.S. metro areas with populations over 500,000. They define as “affluent” those neighborhoods where most families have incomes that run at least 50 percent over the typical family income of the entire metro area.

Poor neighborhoods have most families making less than two-thirds the metro median income.

In 2007, in the nation’s most typical metro areas, neighborhoods that rated as affluent in the Stanford research schema had over half their families making over $112,500. Poor neighborhoods had over half their families making under $50,000.Nearly one out of three families in America’s large metropolitan areas, the Stanford analysts found, spent 2007 in either a severely segregated rich or a severely segregated poor neighborhood.In 1970, by contrast, only one in seven American families lived in neighborhoods that rated as segregated rich or poor.In that same year, 65 percent of Americans lived in neighborhoods where over half the resident families rated as middle income. By 2007, that share of Americans living in middle-class neighborhoods had dropped to 44 percent.

The isolation of America’s rich, the authors of this new income segregation study note, is actually getting more intense than the isolation of the poor. And that isolation, they point out, deeply matters.“The increasing concentration of income and wealth in a small number of neighborhoods,” the two authors note, “results in greater disadvantages for the remaining neighborhoods where low- and middle-income families live.”New Jersey hosts some of the nation’s most income-segregated areas, and this segregation, Newark Star-Ledger commentator Tom Moran observed last week, is taking an ever heavier toll on our political psyche.Growing income segregation, explains Moran, “means people of different means don’t rub elbows as much, their kids don’t play together as much, the parents don’t chat over the back yard fence.

In this segregated environment, people know less and less about people not like themselves. They more easily embrace stereotypes. Politicians from neighborhoods where rich people only interact with other rich people will gravitate more glibly to mean-spirited austerity budget cutbacks.These pols don’t see the threats austerity poses to the well-being of real people with real needs. They see instead the “lazy” poor.This phenomenon has been swirling around the U.S. political scene ever since modern American inequality first began skyrocketing in the 1980s. In 1991, Robert Reich, soon to become the U.S. secretary of labor, gave the phenomenon a label: the “secession of the successful.”America’s top earners, Reich would note, “feel increasingly justified in paying only what is necessary to insure that everyone in their community is sufficiently well educated and has access to the public services they need to succeed.”The nation’s “stark political challenge in the decades ahead,” Reich added back in 1991, will be trying to reaffirm that we remain “a society whose members have abiding obligations to one another.”

We are, the new Stanford data tell us, most definitely losing that challenge.

Source:

https://www.alternet.org/economy/153213/class_segregation:_rich_hunker_down_in_wealthy_enclaves_-_leaving_the_rest_of_america’s_neighborhoods_to_deteriorate

Filed Under: Capitalism, Financial Crisis, Housing, Income Inequality, Money, USA Tagged With: Class, Neighbourhood, Segregation