.

And just how am I to come into possession of land? Real estate is ludicrously expensive. I do believe that was one of my main points...

Sustenance farming won't pay the property taxes, either, as Jon pointed out.

Um, not really. Should I be? I don't see how Dubai-owned Al Jazeera can offer any unique perspectives that Saudi-owned Fox News doesn't.

If Current TV didn't excite Jon'C, it's unlikely that Al Jazeera will--it's essentially just more of the same crap that we already have. I watched Al Jazeera for several months when I first moved to Paris & it was nothing special--status quo. I'll take Moyers & Company on PBS over anything else on television--at least he's covering issues that actually matter.

Why should you get land for free? However, with a little bit of work you could probably find your way into an extremely rural piece of land for pretty cheap, since you won't need access to the society that you hate so much. And with a little effort you could probably find a way to pay the minor property taxes, by renting out a small parcel for grazing, or logging. With no real income, I imagine you could find plenty of tax shelters as well. It wouldn't be too bad. Except for the lack of medicine, guaranteed food, or any of the other aspects of society that you take for granted.

There are various homesteading opportunities in the U.S. that offer "free" land but there are often strings attached (e.g. pre-approval for a certain size home)--it varies from state to state. If he was around 150 years ago, he'd likely have quite the opportunity for free land.

This conversation reminds me of the story of Dick Proenneke.

Ah, this thread is on the verge of so many interesting tangential topics but the one I'll address now is this interest in Al Jazeera America. Jon`C's thought provoking reply, errors excused, really deserves more attention. Al Jazeera, until recently, was owned by the government of Qatar. Qatar is a small, extremely oil-rich Middle Eastern country. Qatar is also quite friendly with the United States and hosts many United States military facilities. Al Jazeera, or more specifically the Al Jazeera Media Network, is now a "privately" owned multinational multimedia corporation based in Qatar. Those of my friends that find Al Jazeera so refreshing are as misguided as my friends that are so Islamophobically terrified of them. They're as corporate and government influenced as any of the other major news outlets.

I think people are hungry for the truth and sometimes mistake an alternate telling or perspective for the truth. No, sorry, if you really want the truth you are going to have to seek it out at discover it for yourself. You are not going to get it, or certainly not all of it, from virtually any of the state or corporate news sources.

DOMO ARIGATO, MR. ROBOTO

DOMO DOMO

DOMO

They're thinking of the Al-Jazeera of 10 years ago that failed to cheer on the invasion of Iraq like everyone else and subsequently had its Baghdad station totally accidentally bombed by the USAF.

...yeah, so, making the whole thing unaffordable, thus defeating the purpose...

you can still get relatively cheep land in states like Colorado, Montana and Arizona. just looked up a 10 acre plot in Colorado yesterday, for 10,000$ other multiple plots between 2-5 acres for well under 10,000.

.

Those things involve benefiting from society, which apparently exists only to screw you over. Those are then, unnecessary.

Blatantly untrue. According to Monsanto's own website, they average about 11 lawsuits a year.
http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/why-does-monsanto-sue-farmers-who-save-seeds.aspx

Monsanto has stated that they do not currently intend to sue farmers growing RRR crops so long as they do not take advantage of glyphosate resistance, but they reserve the right to do so. The "myth" is that the lawsuits have happened, but the reality is that Monsanto has every legal right under the current patent system to file and win such lawsuits.

.

so what you're saying is that they wont sue farmers growing their seed as long as they don't spray those crops with RoundUp too.

But the law suits have happened. Monsanto has sued and won repeatedly when farmers have used their patents which, "when inserted into plants, increased tolerance to glyphosate herbicides".
Monsanto admits this. How then is it a myth that Monsanto has sued farmers for using their round-up ready crops/storing seed illegally?

See: http://scc.lexum.org/decisia-scc-csc/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/2147/index.do

Did you even read the judgement? The initial contamination of Schmeiser's crop might have been accidental, but when he discovered it had happened, he selectively bred his crops for Monsanto's patented gene and used glyphosate on them. It was deliberate infringement.

not quite the case of the organic farmer being sued because Monsanto agents covertly contaminated their crops with roundup ready seed that everyone is excited about.

Yes. You had stated that it was a myth that "the lawsuits" have occurred.

Looking back at the thread, it seems in your reference to "the lawsuits" you were in fact referring to Obi_Kwiet's mention of innocent farmers, when I had interpreted "the lawsuits" to refer to your previous sentence about farmers.

That was what I was referring to. The internet likes to act like Monsanto sues hundreds of farmers for using their own seed that had been contaminated by evil Monsanto seed. In reality this only happened a couple of itmes, and Monsanto seems to be in the right.

The concern is (or rather, should be) that Monsanto is allowed to.

Nobody should be concerned that Monsanto has a patent on the method of using genetically-modified plants to resist glyphosate applied as a pesticide. The real problem is that their patent doesn't just cover the method, it covers the specific genes Monsanto introduced into order to confer that resistance. If Monsanto did sue farmers over accidental cross-pollination, they would win, because patents are a broken idea from an ancient time.

Gene patenting in and of itself is disturbing.

Ownership of idea is an inherently artificial construct. It's useful to be sure, but it doesn't work out as easily the simple ownerships of tangible goods. We could probably do well to remember that IP can only exist by the decree of the government, and should probably be subject to frequent review, especially as new technologies develop. This a whole now area of IP, and the rules are pretty undefined at this point. And don't think that trials on the basis of extremely broad and ancient laws are a good way to come up with these new rules, but that's an issue that exists with every industry these days.

Software folks are painfully aware that government-granted monopolies are government-granted. Some rumblings on the horizon about practical, maybe even real-time attacks on RSA within a few years. If that happened the US government would certainly invalidate RIM's ECC patents out of interest for national security.

They'll totally keep doing it though.

Part of the problem with gene patenting is that they are not patenting a microwave oven, or a specific technology for desalinating water... They are patenting a fact of nature. They didn't create it, they only isolated it. It's kind of like digging a well and patenting water because well, we found some of it. and saying you reserve the right to sue if someone utilizes rainfall. It doesn't matter that it has not happened yet, it should not even be an option.

Genes aren't necessarily a fact of nature. Anybody can order synthetic DNA, all you need is a text file full of the letters A, C, G, and T, and 15 cents per letter.

How much would a T-rex with an ethernet port cost?