SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods— a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from “JWR”. Our goal is to educate our readers, to help them to recognize emerging threats and to be better prepared for both disasters and negative societal trends. You can’t mitigate a risk if you haven’t first identified a risk. Today, we look at Asian Longhorned Ticks.
‘Clone Tick’ Swarms are Killing Cattle
Reader Jon C. sent us this: ‘Clone tick’ swarms, new to U.S., are killing cattle by draining their blood, chasing after humans. A pericope:
“Asian longhorned ticks, also sometimes called “clone ticks” because they can reproduce without mating, have killed five cows in the Tar Heel State this year — by draining them of blood. Each cow was infested by hundreds of ticks.
“The official cause of death,” writes technology news site Ars Technica, “was acute anemia, which is typically associated with severe hemorrhaging.”
These ticks are extremely aggressive; New Jersey health investigators in 2017 reported them swiftly clambering up their legs while they investigated a tick assault on a sheep paddock. The ticks’ usual killing grounds are in Russia and Asia, where they are known to spread various serious diseases to humans. It’s not known how or exactly when they arrived in the U.S. So far the ones found in North America have not carried disease.”
CPS Using ‘Predictive Analytics’ to Snatch Kids
Another article sent to us by DSV at Big League Politics: CPS Is Taking Kids Away Based on ‘Predictive Analytics’ Computer Program To Judge Parents.
Soil Degradation: Only 60 Years of Farming Left?
Reader G.P. sent this probably alarmist news item: Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues.
MSNBC Guests Regularly Misuse the Terms Fascist and Nazi
I’m amazed how many times guests on the MSNBC talking head shows use “Trump” and “Fascist” in the same sentence. By advocating less bureaucracy and less regulation, Trump seems to be the polar opposite of fascists. But yet these pundits prattle on, overusing, misusing, and misapplying the terms “fascist” and “nazi”. I believe that one main sore point for them is Trump’s advocacy of secure borders. In this regard, some of the MSNBC crowd borders on paranoid and delusional. Their latest rants include describing the Betsy Ross Flag as synonymous with the Nazi swastika, and calling Trump a racist. To label everyone who advocates secure borders as “fascists” is akin to calling all McDonalds employees “militarists” because they wear uniforms.
Facebook Injecting ‘Hidden Tracking Codes’ In Photos?
A hat tip to DSV for sending this: Facebook Accused of Injecting ‘Hidden Tracking Codes’ In Your Photos.
Netanyahu: Europe Ignoring the Iran Threat
By way of Whatfinger.com, there is this from the BBC: Netanyahu: ‘Europe might ignore Iran threat until nuclear missiles hit’. Here is a quote:
“Israel’s prime minister has said the European Union might not wake up to the threat of Iran “until Iranian nuclear missiles fall on European soil”.
Mr Netanyahu likened Europe’s approach to Iran’s recent breaches of a 2015 deal limiting its nuclear programme to the appeasement of Nazi Germany.
He spoke after EU foreign ministers said the breaches were not significant.
Iran says they are a response to reinstated US sanctions, but insists it is not trying to build nuclear weapons.
It has threatened to return to the situation before the nuclear deal was agreed unless Europe does more to mitigate the effects of the sanctions. They have caused its oil exports to collapse and its economy to plunge into recession.
The EU has set up a mechanism for facilitating legitimate trade without direct financial transactions. However, Iran has said it does not meet its needs.”
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Re: CPS
The dirty secret is that many children get pressed into trafficking come from “Child Protective” Services.
Some foster parents move to another state with their foster kids, whereupon the children are trafficked. There’s no database to track foster parents who move, and so they fall off the grid. Or they are reported as a runaway.
See the story from Italy a few weeks ago, regional CPS was stealing children for trafficking,aided by doctors,police,public officials and only minor punishment wiil be handed out for the crimes instead of the elimination of the corrupt system
60 years until soil destroyed? Thank Roundup for the news.
While a difficult read due to older English usage (Warning plenty of Millennial Trigger Words there) there is a wealth of useful knowledge in “Farmers for 40 Centuries” by FH King 1911. Free PDF’s are available through many Permaculture sites.
China has been feeding a far denser population per farming acre for Centuries BEFORE the America was even a dream.
John Seymour’s small holdsteader books are also excellent for folks in English growing environments (not for AZ or MT for example) just be aware a lot of reprints with no new material but new titles. SIGH.
We do not have to drop down into primitive slash and burn Dirt Farming after SHTF if we avail ourselves of the massive knowledge base of Permaculture and Polyculture techniques. Both were developed mostly out of historical Chinese agriculture and John Seymour English Small Holder concepts.
“Modern Chemical Farming” is a cheap oil resource hog that strip mines the soil, destroying the bacteria and fungi of the soil.
The Chinese system and Permaculture FEEDS the soil bacteria and fungi to allow mother nature to grow fertility and oddly enough HEALTHER Plants that resist bugs better.
A can of “Survival Seeds” and a “Scotts Lawn” free of Dandelions because of Roundup means you will fail in gardening. If your soil will not grow dandelions I can assure you it will not grow Heirloom Tomatoes friends. It takes YEARS to eliminate Roundup (and it’s chemical peers) from your soil. I’d build raised beds and build my soil with compost if I had a Scotts yard.
Long horn ticks do not need a male to propagate. As soon as the female gorges herself on blood she gives birth to the young each and every time. They can drain down a grown and young deer/ moose in short order or weaken them to the point where they fall prey to wolves and yotes.
In 1972, Sir John Maddox, editor of the British journal Nature, noted that though it had once been usual to see maniacs wearing sandwich boards that proclaimed the imminent end of the Earth, they had been replaced by a growing number of frenzied activists and politicized scientists making precisely the same claim. In the years since then, liberalism has seen recurring waves of such end-of-days hysteria. These waves have shared not only a common pattern but often the same cast of characters. Strangely, the promised despoliations are most likely to be presented as imminent when Republicans are in the White House. In each case, liberals have argued that the threat of catastrophe can be averted only through drastic actions in which the ordinary political mechanisms of democracy are suspended and power is turned over to a body of experts and supermen. From “Instapundit” this morning. Great timing!
Another “peak” something? I wonder if people will ever get tired of the “end of the world in xxx months/years because of (fill in the blank)”? Good Lord – it is tiring.
@ Oldgeezer, your comment made me laugh in a good way. However, these “end of the world” stories are not an aspect of just one political party. They belong to both parties, and even transcend current political parties.
Heh!
I noted in the top soil depletion article they blame climate change as one of the contributing factors to the loss of top soil.
So here they are appearing to worry about feeding the global population because of the loss of top soil yet they continue with aerosol spraying of chemical poisons world wide in an effort to reduce CO2, they very life supporting gas of life for plant life which in turn provides oxygen for animal life to breath.
Climate change is real, and has been for approximately 4.5 billion years
The talking heads should drag out their pristine and almost unused dictionaries as they seem to get the definitions of patriotism and fascism mixed up. Describing oneself as ANTIFA while utilizing jack booted thug tactics is a rather weird stretch of a definition. I cannot help but notice that the professor that is employed because he studies fascism is not very smart. If you make your life’s work out of studying something that most of us can fully understand with a couple of hours of investigation, your opinions and motives are suspect. A good definition of this results in the word “conman”. Those that employ people of this ilk
When logic flies out the window the next thing to do is utilize name calling and twisted definitions to slay your opponent. Sound familiar?
Predicting the end is very easy when you put it in the distant future, it reminds me of every politician that say’s “with my plan we will have a balanced budget in X amount of years, long after they are out of office. Everything has a time and an end, flapping and flailing that we can change the outcome of mans greed and refusal to actually deal with problems at their root sources is lunacy but it makes for a great sales pitch to the folks that buy into it and keeps moronic politicians and bureaucrats employed and the masses occupied.
Re. ‘Trump’ and ‘Fascist’ in the same sentence.
We debate ‘ism’s to death as our liberties are snuffed out. They are all different liberty-crushing tools on different sides of the same coin. Well, there is ONE exception, laissez-faire free-market capitalism. The left opposes it. Millennials oppose it. Show me one member of Congress who does not believe that we-the-people need ‘some’ (wink-wink nod-nod) regulation. As for Trump, can anyone tell me with a straight face that Trump is laissez-faire free-market capitalist?
JWR I send my compliments , long time reader, I must point out the moon landing miss statement
I was in the bar of a nice hotel just before reporting to Marine Corps Boot camp in San Diego. Armstrong was going to say “a man” but said “one small step for man”. Under
he circumstances who could blame him. Last week News footage showed a landing denier calling him a liar and coward. Said individual was 40 years younger 50 lbs heavier.
A good head taller. Armstrong knocked him on his but . The idiot filed charges , the judge
laughed him out of court.
Joseph E Parsons Lt Col of Marines (Mustang) ret
Something that may contribute to some of the confusion with the term fascism is that if you google fascism (and actually use google) the first thing that shows up is Wikipedia with the description:Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of radical right-wing, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. Since Google also has the, people also ask bar right under it you can’t see anything else so if you aren’t super curious that’s what you’ll walk away with. And a lot of people see Trump as “radical” and know he’s right-wing so…
The End Is Near(er)!
But until it’s here (and it will come)
Genesis 8:22 While the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
Those that peddle fear only desire CONTROL and they don’t own control any more than the own the earth.
“Fascism” –
Unfortunately, in our time, the words “fascism” and “Nazi” have lost their meaning and have instead been equated with “whiteness”. They have been reduced by the Left to purely racial epithets . Anything associated with white culture, history or heritage is denounced as racist. This idea is now even being accepted by a disturbingly large number of white college students.
Capitalism is a “white” economic system that somehow only benefits white people. Property rights are evil because black slaves were once considered “property.” The US Constitution is evil because it was written by old white slave owners. Even the Apollo moon landing is now called “racist” because money was spent on science instead of welfare programs for minorities.
There is no longer a common understanding of the philosophical and historical meaning of fascism is or what Nazis believed. There is a lot of education about the holocaust, but there is very little understanding of the centralized command and control dictatorship that created the concentration camps, or how it came to be. I would wager that not one in a thousand Americans know that the word “Nazi” is a contraction for “National Socialist German Worker’s Party,” (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP). Operative word, socialist.
The media has worked over time in turning Nazis into comic book characters. Whether its Star Trek, or the Avengers, a Tarantino movie, NCIS or a hundred other TV shows and movies, Nazis are the go-to bad guys… they are portrayed as mindless white robots in uniforms with guns. But who cares, right? The Nazis WERE bad guys.
The problem is there is a concerted effort by the media and academia to leave out the totalitarian aspect of the Nazi social order because the Left would like that exact same power. They don’t want people to know that Nazi Germany was a centralized command and control dictatorship. Their creed was that the individual was nothing, that their “people” was everything. Freedom was considered a decadent concept of weak and dying democracies. A strong man dictator would save them from themselves.
The irony is, we now have groups like Antifa that claim to be “anti-facist” yet act exactly like modern day “brown shirts.” I once had a 20 something vegan girl call me a “Nazi” because she overheard me supporting the 2nd amendment. She apparently had no idea that Nazis confiscated guns. Translation: what she really meant was that I was a white guy with a gun that didn’t support her idea of utopia. She of course believed in socialism, gun control, socialized medicine, the whole nine yards of despotism. The concern is, as with many like her, she failed to learn from history and had no real suspicion of power, and its misuse by a dictator.
Fascist, Nazi, racist, Ni**er and all other such terms are used to elicit an emotional response instead of rational thought. We should know by now that most people are ruled by their emotions instead rational thought. Rational thought isn’t taught anymore at any “institution of learning” so the only thing the victims that attend said institutions have is their emotions.
Rational thought is hard, lets get pi–ed off instead!!! (Sarcasm)