Vin Suprynowicz

Out of Wyoming, firm proponent of self-ownership Mama Liberty has weighed in with a thoughtful commentary on “The Testament of James” (here), focusing on what the tale tells us about the nature of organized religion, and its relation to social control.

“Some people got together and figured out how to use the belief or disbelief of people to their own advantage, to gain control over the people themselves,” as she puts it. “It’s been going on for most of recorded history, and probably before that. . . . It is obviously in the best interest of those controllers not to encourage or allow any competing beliefs among those they control, and new or different stories might just become a threat to their power. . . . People are easy to manipulate if they can be convinced that anyone or anything ‘different’ is threatening, that those who do not believe as they do must be less than human.”

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(Brunette, again.)

We’re blessed with a bunch of cool and creative cats. They’re a primary source of laughter around here, especially the kittens (well, they’re six months old now, but they’re still pretty entertaining.)

Strider, our gray male kitten (see above) loves to lounge around and help Vin at his computer. So does Sandy (see Vin’s author photo … give it a minute to load) a big cream and orange tomcat that adopted us — he previously belonged to a neighbor, though I suspect he’d furiously deny belonging to anyone. He’s ours to the extent that we let him in when he wants in, and out when he wants out (usually around 4:30 a.m.) and he obviously enjoys our premium food (plus occasional table scraps) so he always arrives with a good appetite. Sandy’s a great hunter and sometimes leaves choice tidbits on our doormat. Well, that’s preferable to the gifts of live mice he’s been known to bring into the house once or twice. 😉

The female cats/kittens seem to prefer to hang out with me in the “hers” office. More on that some other time, perhaps.

But I digress, back to Strider …

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The genial John Walker, formerly of Autodesk et al., has posted a new review of “The Testament of James” here:

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In case anyone is suffering those winter blahs, let’s start with some recent good news: The Huffington Post reports “For the first time in more than 20 years, Americans say it’s more important to protect the right to own guns than it is to control gun ownership.”

A new Pew Research Poll released Dec. 10 revealed “a substantial shift in attitudes since shortly after the Newtown school shootings.”

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Despite a bit of predictable straying down rabbit trails (which the host admirably tolerates in preference to “over-moderating,”) an interesting discussion developed not long ago beneath the first part of her recent interview with me at Claire Wolfe’s site ( www.backwoodshome.com/blogs/ClaireWolfe/2015/01/03/ ), albeit mostly among people who of necessity (since it had only just come out) hadn’t yet read “The Testament of James.”

“As for entheogens,” one commenter offered, “if there is a real God, I want to know Him. I mean the *real* one, not some chemistry set ‘god’ that comes from a pill or from a fungus filtered through a caribou’s kidneys, or a weed, or some tree bark distillation.

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Halo around the moon!

(Brunette, here.)

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Economist, banker and former head of the Ludwig von Mises Institute Doug French offers his take on “The Testament of James” at http://douglasfrench.liberty.me/2015/01/22/book-review-the-testament-of-james/ .

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Copy Number 120 of the signed, limited hardcover edition of “The Testament of James” is shipping this weekend. Meantime, a few more reviews have arrived.

Oliver Del Signore, webmaster for Backwoods Home magazine, has weighed in with a review at http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/delsignore1501.html :

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America’s remaining retailers were already pretty well shell-shocked after seven years of Great Recession administered by those geniuses from Goldman Sachs. But store owners got whacked again when they totaled up retail sales for the long Thanksgiving weekend — traditional start of the Christmas shopping season — and found they were down 11 percent from an already lackluster 2013.

Who would have expected otherwise? Investors in America today operate in a high-risk environment. Our overreaching federal government, run by socialist rabble-rousers who have never had to meet payroll in any enterprise as expansive as a corner yogurt stand, can now shut down any enterprise by deciding it endangers some previously unrecognized weed or bug, or somehow generates too much “carbon pollution.” (A term purposely chosen to make you think of black smokestack soot but which has now been redefined, a la George Orwell, to mean colorless, odorless, carbon dioxide — necessary to life on earth. Really. Every time you or the nearest cow exhale, it’s “carbon pollution.” The federal courts say so.)

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A Kindle (e-book) edition of “The Testament of James / from the Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens” is now available at http://www.amazon.com/Testament-Matthew-Hunter-Chantal-Stevens-ebook/dp/B00RNI9UVW .

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