Going Local For EVERYTHING: Taking Back the Country and Our Lives
Op-ed by R. Hue Reddy
This is not about local food anymore. It is about a push for everything local, to achieve true well-being of this country.Â
Across the board, localizing is showing it is the means to free us from debt, from corruption, from fear, from sickness, from control, from ignorance, from isolation and loneliness, from skill-llessness. It is giving us neighbors again, real value in what we eat, buy, and do, and purpose within a close community.
It is important to note that in every one of these areas, there are major government efforts to malign those involved, to block information, to use regulations and unconstitutional laws and/or police to crush these initiatives.
Here is a short list of some of the areas in which localizing is exploding. They are coming from both the right and left but they all arrive in the middle because the intent is the same – to help people and communities be freer, safer, healthier, and thus happier.
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In money – local public banks, local currencies, barter, and even Ubuntu.
“…. municipal purchasing from locally-based suppliers “creates nearly twice as much benefit to the local economy as buying from multinational chains. ….
“When local purchasing dollars are re-circulated in the local economy they create good jobs and build local business,” added Joanna Buczkowska, managing director at the ISIS Research Centre ….
The report uses the example of an office supplies company, Mills Basics, to show the benefits of local sourcing for municipalities, school boards and other public agencies. In B.C. alone, local governments and school boards spend about $6.7 billion annually on public procurement, according to the study. Mills Basics recirculates 33.1 per cent of its revenues to other B.C. businesses compared to between 16.6 and 18.7 per cent for multinational competitors.
“This presents a 77 to 100 per cent economic advantage for B.C. from buying local,” the report says. “Using provincial multipliers to translate this into jobs shows that this leads to a 80 to 100 per cent increase in jobs per million dollars spent.”
That localizing threatens the global powers-that-are-in-trouble becomes obvious on seeing that Harper, head of Canada, is actually trying to ban local buying in an EU trade agreement.
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In LAW – Common law
People are learning to their amazement that they have been trapped in the false legal system (tied to the debt-based and rigged economic one) that has enslaved them for centuries.
“Our entire legal system is underpinned by Maritime or Admiralty Law, that very few people are even aware of and is guarded by the highest levels of our legal system. It is a great trick of deception that has been played on most of humanity, keeping us entangled in a web of confusion about who we really are and our rights as living breathing human beings, while we are literally treated as numbers by our so-called authorities.
“This is a deeply convoluted system that has been evolving for thousands of years. It has nothing to do with justice for the people but everything to do with the control over human beings who are all sovereign and have inalienable rights that they do not know about. It’s about keeping us ignorant so that we can continue to be treated like cargo and possessions.
“Most of us are filled with utter shock and disbelief when we first stumble upon this information and many people choose to simply reject it as utter nonsense. I urge you to read this carefully and then do your own research to verify what you find. Share this with everyone you know, because we can only free ourselves from the unlawful control of our people by becoming informed.” http://www.ubuntuparty.org.za/
2013/10/laws-and-words-that- enslave-us-part-1.html
It gets worse, the more one looks.
“The Catholic Church uses two legal personalities with which to conduct its international affairs: the first is as an International state known as the Vatican City State, to which the Pope is the Head of Government. The second is as the supreme legal personality above all other legal personalities by which all property and “creatures” are subjects.
“The legal enforcability of its first personality as an International State is constrained by international law. The sovereign status of the Vatican City remains dependent upon the continued recognition of an agreement known as the “Lateran Treaty” signed between Catholic Facist Dictator and . . . Benito Mussolini in 1929 and his political supporter Pope Pius XI. This recognition remains in defiance and contempt to existing international laws prohibiting recognition of rogue states and laws created by mass murdering dictators.
http://www.shiftfrequency.com/
judge-dale-retd-admiralty- courts-and-the-law-of-the-see
The local answer is common law which has been exploding across the US. Common law grand juries are being set up now with the aim of one in every county in the country. This provides a means finally to hold corrupt officials and corporate CEOs accountable. And the juries are open to anyone will to learn the basic principles and contribute their time in their community.
These common law juries are not fictional entities but have the weight of law behind them:Â The Supreme Court recently ruled 6-3 that these grand juries are not part of the legislative, judicial or executive branch but are a 4th branch of government, run by the people.
In FOOD – local farmers, community gardens, home gardens.
People are aware that the local food movement has been moving forward for some time and that getting food out of hands of global corporations tied to drugs and pesticides and GMOs – all associated with disease and death – is essential to human health and protection of the land.
But many consider local food a drop in the bucket, up against industrial agriculture, not realizing its power.
The corporations certainly understand the threat, however. The FDA food safety division, with control over all US food, is run by Monsanto executive Michael Taylor who has been using a wide range of efforts to destroy local organic farms, local food producers, local coops, and local gardens are next. The corporate food sector knows that localization of food will destroy them because of its proven potential for feeding a country real local food (with no corporations making profits).
“Back in 1999, it was estimated that 35 million small family plots throughout Russia, operated by 105 million people, or 71 percent of the Russian population, were producing about 50 percent of the nation’s milk supply, 60 percent of its meat supply, 87 percent of its berry and fruit supply, 77 percent of its vegetable supply, and an astounding 92 percent of its potato supply. The average Russian citizen, in other words, is fully empowered under this model to grow his own food, and meet the needs of his family and local community.
“Bear in mind that Russia only has 110 days of growing season per year — so in the U.S., for example, gardeners’ output could be substantially greater. Today; however, the area taken up by lawns in the U.S. is two times greater than that of Russia’s gardens — and it produces nothing but a multi-billion-dollar lawn care industry.”
The backyard gardening model is so effective throughout Russia that total output represents more than 50 percent of the nation’s entire agricultural output. Based on 2004 figures, the collective value of all the backyard produce grown in Russia is $14 billion, or 2.3 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) — and this number only continues to increase as more and more Russians join the eco-village movement.
http://www.naturalnews.com/
037366_Russia_home_gardens_ food_production.html# ixzz2kLypw7Yq
In HEALTH – health coops, natural healing, and information so people can heal themselves.
The coops are working, even for those without insurance.
“A lot of people think their only option is to either go to emergency room or urgent care,” Carr said. “What they don’t realize is that they’re often paying more than they would end up paying in a doctor’s office with cash.”
“Across town in Tigard, former emergency room physician Dr. Robert Tilley is operating primarily in cash at the Affordable Health Clinic he founded with his wife, Cecilia. The clinic charges $67 per visit.
“The Tilleys said they’re able to keep their costs low by avoiding the complexity of dealing with insurance, collections agencies and the related overhead.”
This all presents a challenge to the medical industry, the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry which depend on disease for profit. And there are government efforts to stop people from finding medical care separate from the corporate/federal health plan that can’t even produce a website that works.
But the real and most serious challenge to the new government system is not financial but medical because a local alternative can actually free people from disease, viruses and toxins, and very cheaply.
The profit in conventional medicine depends on the long term continuation of diseases and generating new ones. Which is why this cure was fought tooth and nail by the medical system in New Zealand.
60 minutes scoop on New Zealand farmer vit c… by johnnyliberty
But in 10 minutes of explanation, one can understand why such cures work and why after the cure in NZ, the US FDA, controlled by the pharmaceutical industry and profiting from patents on drugs, moved to ban the mass production of IV vitamin C.
This video offers even more detail on how free of disease communities could actually be, all easily accomplished locally.
In ENERGY – community energy production, home systems of all kinds including homes designed for passive energy, and free energy.
The stakes are high since a global and increasingly corrupt and dangerous system is actually killing for control – wars for gas and oil (with the false flag 9/11 as the justification), poisoning whole communities’ land and water with fracking, exposure to nuclear accidents, mountain top removal with poisons leaching downstream, etc. People have had enough of the corruption behind all that. http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/
“…. the player that stands to lose the most [ the San Francisco area] – Pacific Gas and Electric Co. – isn’t likely to let Marin or any other community considering similar programs go without a fight. PG&E, which both supplies and distributes energy throughout Northern California, stands to lose the lucrative supply side of its business in communities that choose to go their own way. The company has a long history of successfully staving off public power efforts in San Francisco and elsewhere. …
“They’re throwing up regulatory, legal, political roadblocks,” said Tim Rosenfeld, project director for the Marin Energy Management Team.”
And most seriously, corporations have been suppressing advanced technologies for decades, that could give people unlimited free energy for travel, heat, cooking, air-conditioning. Local power would mean endless energy in people’s homes and hands, and the end of environmental destruction and wars for control of energy…
“Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by power obtainable at any point in the universe…it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheel work of nature.” Nikolas Tesla
In EDUCATION – community controlled schools, parents sharing teaching with other parents, homeschooling, unschooling.
The questions from angry parents have caught up with education:Â “World Class Standards: Whose World, Which Economic Classes and What Standards?”
“If educational goals and core values are developed by a few  educators in isolation from their communities, no matter how well thought out they may be they will not create the conditions needed for change.” — Tony Wagner
Various forms of homeschooling are emerging, including parents sharing teaching, and unschooling for which this following quote by George Bernard Shaw sums up their intention:
“What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child.”
In MANUFACTURING – local manufacture of things needed locally, teaching skills again, 3-D printers for home manufacture
Even the corporate NY Times is saying it, the future of manufacturing is local. But the threat to global corporate power is clear and they are working to obstruct what will set communities free.
3D Printing: The Sum of All Corporate-Fascist Fears
For several years now, buzz has been growing about 3D printing. Small companies have begun opening up around the world, selling 3D printers, or using 3D printers for small run production, filling niches, or shifting markets from large corporations and their globalized supply chains, to local, decentralized business models. While governments like those in China have embraced the technology and wholly encourage a grassroots, bottom-up industrial revolution, others, like the US have only feigned enthusiasm.
“Caterpillar, Ford, Intel, and Apple …. would see decentralized alternatives to these corporations cut into and utterly gut their bottom lines – a reality US President Barack Obama and the corporate-financier interests that dictate his agenda must surely be aware of. ….
“In the case of Ford and other big-auto giants, who by right should be shuttered and out of business already had it not been for their unwarranted influence and power buying them immense bailouts from America’s taxpayers, there are already alternative business models undermining their monopolies. In America itself, there is Local Motors who recently gave a short tour of their manufacturing facility they called a “microfactory.” These microfactorires represent the next step in industrialization where small companies will cater to smaller, local markets and niches, entirely replacing the centralized Fortune 500 corporations of Detroit, barely clinging to life and their unsustainable, antiquated business model as it is.”
In DEFENSE – bringing military home, local militia, community support of militia
Militias for all the government effort to portray them as dangerous racists or terrorists, are very much as part of the move to RE-localize crucial functions of a community in order to protect people (whether their food, health, economics, jobs, children’s education, etc.) Seen in this light, it is easy to recognize the stigmatizing for what it is. Just as with attacks on local food, local manufacturing, local energy, local banking, the push back against militia from the powers-that-are-in-trouble is fierce.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is now working for (paid by) DHS and both are portraying legal and constitutionally-devoted local militias as dangerous white racist terrorist groups, though many are multi-racial.
The voluntary militias serve their community just as local volunteer fire departments do.
With local militia committed to the Constitution, the government would not have an easy time using the NDAA against local community people, or moving to martial law.
This militia in Texas is a prime example of how non-racist, professional, constitutional, and protective of this country, the militias are designed to be. Their commitment is local but their intent is similiar to Oathkeepers, a military and veterans’ group that invites all military live up to their oath to the Constitution and to the American people, to defend the country from enemies foreign and domestic.
Such a vile order to forcibly intern Americans without charges or trial would be an act of war against the American people, and thus an act of treason, regardless of the pretext used. We will not commit treason, nor will we facilitate or support it.”NOT on Our Watch!”
Does the man sound dangerous white racist or a terrorist?
Does this list of what these groups would defend citizens against sound like plans of terrorists?
1. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people.
2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people
3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to military tribunal.
4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state.
5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.
6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.
7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.
8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control.”
9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies.
10.We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.
In DEMOCRACY AND ETHICS – localizing brings accountability, localizing brings democracy, localizing offers deeper ethical interaction.
“Ideally this means living together in a community of like-minded people, a modern tribe, interacting with the world around it on the basis of mutual benefit.
That is easier said than done but we can make a start by
– Respecting our fellow man / woman in their entirety
– Recognizing that everyone is equally important
– Respecting that every opinion is a valid one
– Giving an equal amount of time to everyone to express themselves
– Listening carefully to what others say
– Not allowing ourselves or others to dominate
– Creating mechanisms whereby we support each other in all life situations (sickness, bereavement, loss of job, becoming homeless)
– Trying to care for the wellbeing of all
– Making decisions in a circle of equals taking into account the longterm effect of our decisions
– Beginning all meetings in a circle, welcoming each other and appreciating each others’ presence
– Organising meetings for celebrations and enjoyment
– Trying to grow as much of the food we need in a co-operative way to again connect to nature and our spiritual selves
All of this localization would please Gandhi (including militias, for he saw gun ownership as crucial). He, too, saw the danger of being ruled by global corporate power. Gandhi’s “Swadeshi” was about localization and rebuilding the culture. The plans in the US to localize so much are the means to free the country from same global forces that crushed India – forces that are centralized, corrupt, controlling, extractive, poisonous, taxing, war-based, debt-engineering, food-engineering, and deadly.
Mahatma Gandhi was a champion of ‘swadeshi’, or home economy. People outside India know of Gandhi’s campaigns to end British colonialism, but this was only a small part of his struggle. The greater part of Gandhi’s work was to renew India’s vitality and regenerate its culture. Gandhi was not interested simply in exchanging rule by white sahibs for rule by brown sahibs; he wanted the government to surrender much of its power to local villages…..
According to the principle of swadeshi, whatever is made or produced in the village must be used first and foremost by the members of the village. Trading among villages and between villages and towns should be minimal, like icing on the cake. Goods and services that cannot be generated within the community can be bought from elsewhere.
Swadeshi avoids economic dependence on external market forces that could make the village community vulnerable. It also avoids unnecessary, unhealthy, wasteful, and therefore environmentally destructive transportation. The village must build a strong economic base to satisfy most of its needs, and all members of the village community should give priority to local goods and services.
Every village community of free India should have its own carpenters, shoemakers, potters, builders, mechanics, farmers, engineers, weavers, teachers, bankers, merchants, traders, musicians, artists, and priests. In other words, each village should be a microcosm of India – a web of loosely inter-connected communities. Gandhi considered these villages so important that he thought they should be given the status of “village republics”.
The village community should embody the spirit of the home – an extension of the family rather than a collection of competing individuals. Gandhi’s dream was not of personal self-sufficiency, not even family self-sufficiency, but the self-sufficiency of the village community.
The British believed in centralized, industrialized, and mechanized modes of production. Gandhi turned this principle on its head and envisioned a decentralized, homegrown, hand-crafted mode of production. In his words,
“Not mass production, but production by the masses.”
By seeing the series of ways the country is going local, we can suddenly see the immensely caring work and contribution of so many groups to the whole. Across he political spectrum, people have been working tirelessly to protect us – by localizing our health, our money, our manufacturing, our legal rights, our schooling, our food, and even the defense of our lives.
Localization is not a small thing but THE thing to free us from corrupt global corporate power. Localization also brings us together, despite massive and malign efforts to divide and conquer. Together, and knowing each other well at the local level, we can’t be defeated.
Original contribution to Natural Blaze by R. Hue Reddy, all author rights reserved 2016
