Gold is flirting with $1700/ounce on NYMEX, DOW down 150-200 points. Yeah, after the US credit downgrade anything's possible. We live in interesting times...

As for my preparations, I'm simplifying my lifestyle, simplifying my diet, incorporating many cleansing ceremonies into my life to increase my psychological spiritual resilience. Personally, I think psychological and spiritual resilience is the greatest need for most people in the developed world. We have plenty of material resources, but they won't do any good if vast swaths of the population go apeshit at the first hint of turmoil.

If the tendons are too hard to cut, maybe soak them in warm water?

There is also the documentary Water, The Great Mystery. You can watch it on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3ZUe54fVHI

I found it fascinating. Not sure I believe everything in there, but then we should always approach pre-packeged ideology with healthy skepticism.

What about buying reverse-osmosis (RO) water, which is admittedly too pure to drink as-is, and re-mineralizing it with either sea salt or clay? This is what Nora Gedgaudas recommends in her recent book Primal Body, Primal Mind.

Thanks for posting that video sabertooth. I really hope we are at the cusp of a radical revolution in thinking about who controls what people eat, and who decides what risks we, as individuals, can choose to take about the foods we wish to purchase and from whom we purchase them...

I think it's time for Phil to whip out his dainty pink glove and get to work then.

When I first arrived at this site I probably acted much like Dorothy, albeit without such an emphasis on veganism simply because that hadn't been such a large part of my past. Over time I've matured, and my posts are usually few, short and meaningful (or at least I like to think so, perhaps others will disagree).

The point I'm trying to make is that if you ban everyone who isn't 100% mature in their raw paleo development initially, this forum will become a pretty sparse place. And when there are moderators who are obviously using their status for power tripping, that doesn't help either.

I hope that Dorothy is re-instated, and that she gets a well-deserved apology from cherimoya_kid

I personally would object to the idea of deceiving the current owner as to the animal's purpose. And beyond that I'd be concerned about what the pony was raised on. If largely grain or some sort of manufactured feed, I'd be hesitant to eat it. Also, it seems like pet horses and ponies are supposed to take different types of medicine over the course of the year to alleviate disease and parasites. What sorts of side effects might these have if eaten? I guess I'd have a lot of questions before I would be willing to take a former pet and turn it into food...

If you seriously ban her, then you probably shouldn't be a moderator. You blew this way out of proportion...

The debt legislation recently passed in the US seems to move towards your ideal Geoff. States are already fearing dramatic reductions in funding for various programs, as are many agencies within the Federal Government including the military. It remains to be seen, of course, whether programmatic reductions will be allocated in a way that delivers greater liberty and wellbeing, or whether they are allocated in ways that achieve the opposite goal.

How is the government clamping down on raw meat? I can buy it anywhere (although obviously higher quality grass fed, grass finished meat is more rare and more costly). I can even buy it from restaurants in the form of steak tartare, and raw fish in the form of sushi is available everywhere and is socially accepted. Heck, a friend went to a local farm's work day a couple weekends ago (Bread and Butter Farm, they sell at the Burlington Farmers Market in City Hall Park) and the farm put out a spread of RAW BEEF for participants. Bread and Butter Farm is our local chapter if the Weston A. Price Foundation. I've personally brought raw meat dishes to potlucks around town, and they have been well received.

I think it is a mistake to compare the legal trajectory of raw dairy products and raw meat, as the lobby for high quality grass fed and grass finished meats is far stronger, the health benefits of these products are far more widely known and accepted, they're far more available to start with, and I feel like eating meat raw is becoming more and more socially acceptable with the popularity of sushi and similar dishes.

And how is the government clamping down on raw nuts?

In-state sale of raw milk is legal in many states, including here in Vermont provided the milk is sold from the farm that produces it. In other words, you can freely buy raw milk from the farm that produces it in Vermont, but you can't buy it from a supermarket. You also cannot ship raw milk across state lines. That's not a state law, that's a federal law. It is also the law that was broken in the case of RawSome. I don't know California's laws well, so it's also possible that they are similar to Vermont in that it would be legal to buy raw milk from the farm that produces it but not from a store. In this case, here's a second law that was broken. Cheese made from raw milk is different. I don't claim to know why, perhaps because it keeps longer, but it's legal to ship cheese made from raw milk not only across state lines but from country to country.

Raw dairy IS the only hope for small dairy farms, and this is largely why it's such a controversial issue. Large dairy farms want to keep selling their products without fear of being outcompeted by little guys that sell vastly superior products, and particularly don't want the research illuminating how pathetic their product actually is permeating public discourse. Raw milk is controversial largely because it challenges a worldview that supports industrial production of agricultural products, including the industrial production of "organic" agricultural products and organic dairy products specifically.

But, we also have to ask the question of whether it's worth it to produce dairy products in general. Sure, some people can tolerate them, but are they actually good for people, even when raw? We (Homo sapiens) are the only species that I know of that consumes the milk of another species. We are also the only species that consumes milk past the stage of weaning, which for all species ends in early childhood. In other words, we're the only species that insists on holding onto an early childhood food into adulthood. Why? Why can't we eat foods designed for early childhood during early childhood, and graduate into adult foods when the time comes?

Looks like it. Is it growing on a birch?