Off the grid wikipedia
EXCERPT:
Popularity
On 13 April 2006, USA Today reported that there were "some 180,000 families living off-grid, a figure that has jumped 33% a year for a decade," and cited Richard Perez, publisher of Home Power Magazine,[4] as the source.[5] Assuming the same rate of growth, there would be a quarter million off-grid households in the United States by late 2007. Because many third-world citizens have never had the chance to go on the grid, current estimates are that 1.7 billion people live off-grid worldwide.[6]

[edit] Environmental impact
The State of California is encouraging solar and wind power generation that is connected to the electrical grid to avoid the use of toxic lead acid batteries for night time storage [7]. Grid-tie systems are more expensive due to the extra hardware costs (such as a grid-tie inverter) especially when old car batteries that can no longer supply enough current to start a car are re-used [8]

Going off-grid can be done for altruistic reasons or to lower the environmental impact of living, as the typically limited amount of on-site renewable energy available is an incentive to reduce its use. But if energy usage is not reduced, going off grid actually has a larger environmental impact vs using the grid, due to the lower efficiencies of the components. It is often done to residential buildings only occasionally occupied, such as vacation cabins, to avoid high initial costs of traditional utility connections. Other persons choose to live in houses where the cost of outside utilities is prohibitive, or such a distance away as to be impractical. In his book "How to live off-grid" Nick Rosen lists seven reasons for going off-grid. The top two are saving money, and reducing the carbon footprint. Others include survivalism, preparing for the collapse of the oil economy and bringing life back to the countryside.

USA Today
EXCERPT:
In May 2006, USA Today reported that the National Security Agency had been working with AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth to compile “the largest database in the world,” according to the anonymous sources inside the agency that went public.[6] This allowed the paper to uncover a new facet of the agency and further upset the White House after the New York Times revealed the Bush administration authorized the NSA to wiretap international phone calls and e-mails traveling within the U.S.[7]

Anarchy
EXCERPT:
Karl Hess (1923-1994) was an American writer and libertarian activist. He joined the Libertarian Party and was the editor of its newspaper from 1986 to 1990. This short text first appeared in the magazine “The Dandelion” in 1980. It stresses the position already highlighted by the historian and theoretician of the anarchist movement, Max Nettlau that anarchy means freedom and voluntary self-organization and no one in the anarchist movement is interested in prescribing which of the various “isms” (capitalism, communism, mutualism, Catholicism, etc.) any anarchist should follow. This message is very relevant now that the interest for anarchy is growing and that some people, who profess to be anarchists, are battling in order to promote very vigorously (and in some cases trying to impose) their own brand of anarchism, either anarcho-communism or anarcho-capitalism. To all of them the message from Karl Hess is: neither anarchist-communist nor anarchist-capitalist, because “there is no hyphen after the anarchist”

Freemasonry
EXCERPT:
Theodor Reuss
Irregular Freemasonry in Germany, 1900-23
By Bro. Ellic Howe

(16 February 1978)

1. PREFACE
IN ORDER TO introduce Theodor Reuss we can do no better than to quote what his erstwhile but now disillusioned friend August Weinholtz wrote about him in the French masonic periodical L'Acacia in 1907:

This man’s cleverness and extraordinary activities, his sophistries, his knowledge of languages, his ability to play no matter what role, make him a real international menace. In some respects he reminds one of Cagliostro, the most brilliant of all masonic charlatans, who successfully contrived to dupe his contemporaries ... Reuss uses more up to date methods to make people believe in his connections with powerful masonic bodies and, in accordance with the spirit of our age, places sexuality in the foreground ... From a journalistic point of view Reuss is rather an interesting figure. In him we encounter the kind of adventurer portrayed by 17th- and 18th-century writers. But he is a child of our time and social conditions. What is lamentable is that at the threshold of the 20th century it is necessary for the masonic world to be warned anew against a Cagliostro, also that there are men who publicly dare to defend such a person.1 .

Teodor Reuss
EXCERPTs:
1) Founds Ordo Templi Orientis
In 1880, in Munich, he participated in an attempt to revive Adam Weishaupt's Bavarian Order of Illuminati. While in England, he became friends with William Wynn Westcott, the Supreme Magus of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia and one of the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Westcott provided Reuss with a charter dated July 26, 1901 for the Swedenborgian Rite of Masonry and a letter of authorization dated February 24, 1902 to found a High Council in Germania of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. Gérard Encausse provided him with a charter dated June 24, 1901 designating him Special Inspector for the Martinist Order in Germany. In 1888, in Berlin, he joined with Leopold Engel of Dresden, Max Rahn and August Weinholz in another effort to revive the Illuminati Order. In 1895, he began to discuss the formation of Ordo Templi Orientis with Carl Kellner.

2) Meets Aleister Crowley
While living in London, Reuss became acquainted with Aleister Crowley. In 1910, he made Crowley a VII° of O.T.O. (based on Crowley's previously held 33° in the Scottish Rite), and in 1912, he conferred upon him the IX° and appointed him National Grand Master General X° for the O.T.O. in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland by charter dated June 1, 1912. Crowley's appointment included authority over an English language rite of the lower (Masonic) degrees of O.T.O. which was given the name Mysteria Mystica Maxima, or M∴M∴M∴. In 1913, Crowley issued a Constitution for the M∴M∴M∴ and the Manifesto of the M∴M∴M∴, which he subsequently redrafted and issued as Liber LII (52), the Manifesto of the O.T.O. In 1913, Crowley wrote Liber XV, the Gnostic Mass for Reuss's Gnostic Catholic Church. Crowley also dedicated his Mystery Play The Ship (1913) and a collection of poetry, The Giant's Thumb (1915) to Reuss. In 1913 he became Grand Master of the Rite of Memphis-Misraïm, a masonic group which previously included the revolutionaries Louis Blanc and Giuseppe Garibaldi amongst its ranks.

Alessandro Cagliostro wikipedia
EXCERPT:
Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (2 June 1743 – 26 August 1795) was the alias of the occultist Giuseppe Balsamo (also called Joseph Balsamo), an Italian adventurer.

McCalman (2003: p. 4) frames the intrigue enveloping Cagliostro and his contemporaries thus:

"His enemies would have been delighted at the neglect of his house. There'd been plenty of them: Casanova, the greatest lover of the age, was bitterly jealous of him; Catherine the Great, empress of Russia, wanted to strangle him; Johann von Goethe, the most revered of Germany's writers, was driven almost mad by hatred of him; King Louis XVI of France persecuted him as a dangerous revolutionary; Queen Marie-Antoinette wanted him locked permanently in the Bastille for involving her in a diamond necklace swindle; and Pope Pius VI accused him of threatening the survival of the Catholic church."[1]