CJ Hopkins takes us through his experience of the “New Normal” Germany’s legal system. His experience involves the alleged “hate crime,” which wasn’t a “hate crime” but perhaps now is a “hate […]

by Kerry Lutz, Financial Survival Network: Kerry interviews Andy Schectman as they introduce Andy’s new show, The Miles Franklin Report. Andy shares his thoughts on the global economy and the precious metals market, specifically focusing on silver and gold. He explains the phenomenon of “little by little, then all at once”—a concept he applies to how global […]

By any definition, Leah Garcés considered Craig Watts her enemy. As CEO and president of the nonprofit Mercy for Animals, Garcés has devoted her life to protecting animals. When she met Watts in the spring of 2014 at his poultry farm in North Carolina, he was one those factory farmers she deeply despised. In fact, she was so worried that his invitation to meet was an ambush that she gave her husband the address with the reminder, “If I don’t come back, look for me rotting away in the chicken litter.”  Watts had raised over 720,000 chickens in 22 years for Perdue, the fourth-largest chicken company in the US. He had been searching for ways to stay on the family land in one of North Carolina’s poorest counties, and when Perdue offered him a contract to raise chickens, it sounded like a lucrative opportunity. He took out a $200,000 bank loan to build four giant chicken houses. But soon the chickens, crammed 25,000 wall-to-wall in the ammonia-laden air, started to become sick or died, and squeezed by Perdue’s profit margins, Watts struggled to pay the bills. After they met, Leah Garcés and Craig Watts became unlikely allies. Credit: Mercy For Animals To her surprise, Garcés realized that Watts was not her enemy, but an ally: Chicken farmers like him wanted to end chicken farming as much as she did. He described the enormous toll this kind of farming took on his physical and mental health. Yet because of his hefty loans, Watts saw no way out. “I realized he was trapped in a system I am advocating against,” says Garcés. Their meeting in 2014 changed the trajectory of both their lives.  Together, they released footage from the horrors of chicken farming in the New York Times. In the first 24 hours, a million viewers saw the panting birds at Watts’s farm living in their own excrements. Two years later, the whistleblower quit the chicken business for good and took a paid job for the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project, warning other farmers not to trust the promises of the chicken industry while still paying off his debt from the chicken houses. A farmer at heart, Watts has now become one of the poster farmers for the Transfarmation Project, which Garcés founded as an offshoot of the nonprofit Mercy for Animals in 2019. “I remember standing in his barn and thinking, could we make it into a strawberry farm? Repurpose the land?” Garcés shares. Watts started small by installing a 300-square-foot shipping container in his large poultry house with a small grant from the Transfarmation Project and cultivating specialty mushrooms like shiitake. He told Garcés he wanted his new operation “as removed from the industrial model as it can be,” while not abandoning farming: “It’s part of me, in the blood. It’s a calling. I like to watch things grow.”  According to Garcés, as soon as the Transfarmation Project started, hundreds of farmers reached out. Credit: Mercy For Animals Garcés describes the story of how she helped Watts leave factory farming in her new book, Transfarmation: The Movement to Free Us From Factory Farming.  As she details in the book and as Watts can attest, it is surprisingly difficult for contract farmers to abandon factory farming. More than 70 percent of poultry farmers live below the poverty line and have to pay off crushing loans. When given the option, an increasing number of farmers and their children want to quit factory farming. “Though we didn’t advertise the Transfarmation Project, as soon as we rolled out the website, hundreds of farmers immediately contacted us,” Garcés says. “We had no idea interest would be that high.”  Crushed by negative news? Sign up for the Reasons to be Cheerful newsletter. [contact-form-7] But collectively, the poultry farmers owe $5.2 billion. “As long as they have too much debt, they can’t leave because their farm is at risk,” says Garcés. “We can’t override so much debt as a small nonprofit. There has to be government action, like it did with the tobacco industry.”  The farmers need to find an alternative source of income that is healthier and more lucrative in order to keep their land. “It’s a solutions-oriented project where we’re rolling up our sleeves and testing what works,” Garcés says. “Many times, when people are tackling systemic challenges, they write about either the problem or the solution. But a gulf is left in the middle: the complexity of how.”

The total weaponization of the federal government is happening.  The post Biden-Harris Admin Launches Investigation of RFK Jr for Whale Incident 30 Years Ago appeared first on Frontpage Mag.

‘After the Flying Saucers Came’, ‘Think to New Worlds’ and ‘How to Think Impossibly’ review JamesHoare Tue, 09/17/2024 - 08:00

Happy 80th Birthday to the greatest mountaineer of all time, Reinhold Messner. An Italian climber, explorer, and author from the German-speaking province of South Tyrol, he made the first solo ascent of Mount Everest and, along with Peter Habeler, the first ascent of Everest without supplemental oxygen. He was the first person to climb all […] The post Good News in History September 17 appeared first on Good News Network.

Want to learn about the buzz on bees? Have you ever considered starting your own beekeeping? If so, then this comprehensive list of bee articles describing the ins and outs of bees, beekeeping and tried and true practices seasoned beekeepers have experienced are fantastic resources for you! Even if you've never considered getting into beekeeping, this informational post may help you catch the bee fever! Once you learn about these fascinating creatures and the benefits of beekeeping, you may just want to get to raising bees yourself. Read on to lean the buzz on bees! First, simply having the buzz one bees is not enough. It is important to know how to raise bees and what is involved in beekeeping care before you consider taking on the full project. To introduce basic bee knowledge and provide insight into learning to raise bees is a wonderful post from Survival Life that we have shared with permission. How To Raise Honey Bees Raising honeybees can be a fun and rewarding pastime that provides you with all the fresh honey you can eat. Maintaining just one hive can even provide you with a side source of income, but many people are intimidated by the prospect of keeping a few thousand bees in their yard. However, honey bees are surprisingly docile, and modern beekeeping methods make the process extremely non-invasive and bee friendly. To help you decide, let’s weigh the pros and cons. The Pros: Honey is probably the obvious answer. Who wouldn’t love their own fresh batch of honey to use in recipes. A single bee can produce 1/12 teaspoon of honey in her lifetime (about 6 weeks), and with a colony consisting of thousands of bees, that can add up quickly. Wax is another popular product of bees. Bees convert their food and make it into the wax comb. Wax is used in many ways, including candles and cosmetics. Many creams and lipsticks contain beeswax. Pollination is a key component of bee life. If you want healthy plants, bees can help. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, bee pollination is responsible for $15 billion in added crop value, particularly for specialty crops such as almonds and other nuts, berries, fruits, and vegetables. About one mouthful in three in the diet directly or indirectly benefits from honeybee pollination. Diligent workers. There’s a reason we say “busy as a bee.” Bees are constant workers. The nice thing is that it doesn’t take a lot of work on your part to raise bees. Once you get past the initial startup costs, you now have a free labor force that will produce honey and wax that you can later sell. Bees are independent, so there is not a lot of time commitment on your part. Plan for about a half hour each week and for honey collecting twice a year. As long as you are collecting when you should be, not over or under doing it, than you will have a happy relationship with your little honey-makers for years to come. -To read about The Cons along with the rest of this article, click here!– What's The Buzz On Bees? | Learn, Raise And Explore The Possibilities of Beekeeping 1. Best Bee Hive Plans | Build a Hive & Help the Bees image via Build your own bee hive from these bee hive plan ideas, and creating a safe place for bees to live, and a safe place for honeybees to harvest honey. Saving the bees means saving all the crops that come with them! In fact, without bees, we would be short the following foods: apples, almonds, blueberries, watermelon, cherries, peaches, rapeseed, avocados, cucumbers, cranberries,onions, blackberries, grapefruit, oranges, raspberries, cantaloupe, pumpkins, pears, and plums… to name just a few. 2. Creating A Bee Friendly Garden  Want to know what bee friendly plants to put in your garden? Growing a garden takes a lot of hard work. You have to tend to it at all times and make sure that your plants are getting the nourishment they need. In order for any garden to flourish, you need pollinators in the mix. So to ensure that you’ll have fresh fruits and beautiful flowers at all times, you have to create a bee friendly environment. If you want to attract more bees to help your garden grow, enjoy this infographic with a few tips you'll find useful! 3. DIY Mason Jar Beekeeping Growing a beehive may not seem like a suitable idea for suburban homesteaders due to space limitations. If you want to start beekeeping but are concerned about the space, don’t be! There are lots of solutions out there, you can even try my favorite, DIY mason jar beekeeping. With a little bit of research and planning, even a common suburban backyard can be a perfect place for beehives. You’ll just need some simple supplies to get started, some wood, the bees, and you guessed it, mason jars! Check out these steps so you can get started on beekeeping the easy way! 4. What's Happening To The Bees?!? Bumble Bee image via We must save the bees! The bee population is declining, but our demand for bees and their amazing honey-producing & crop-pollinating ways is still rising! Here find one (of many) reasons why the bee colonies around the world are at risk. Learn about why the bee population is in a state of decline and what we can do to help the bees regain their necessary place in the natural order while protecting our crops and honey yields! While it is easy to forget about the small creatures that make it all too easy to take their constant contribution to life as we know it for granted, being well informed on bees and basic beekeeping practices is highly beneficial. You will gain a respect for their contributions, which you may have perviously overlooked. You also may just be inspired to start your own beekeeping! It's easier than you might think. Learn the buzz on bees and just read a few of the informational posts above to take a step in the right direction towards helping the bees and all that they do to contribute to our daily life. Happy homesteading! Did you enjoy our informational posts to learn about the buzz on bees? Let us know in the comments below! Have time for more bee knowledge? Check out these additional Bee-utiful posts! Healing The Soil To Solve The Bee Problem – News Waggle Dance | How Bees Communicate America Is Going To The Bees