Chile Forum

I spend so much time out in the field on jobsites that the shop phone is rarely answered. When I do play back messages, the replay is usually full of sub contractors "beating the bushes" and OC is a fairly affluent area. Inland from the beach there is NOTHING going on in const. that I'm aware of.
Reading Nouriel Roubini's blog for the past several years has been some of the most rewarding time I've spent on the web. I wish there was better news in prospect but it isn't so. Kitco's commentaries seemed overly pessimistic but I'm glad I read 'em now!

panic food hording in the US has started:

http://www.latimes.com/la-fi-rice24apr2 ... 3502.story

I think The London Telegraph is reporting the same thing...

p out...

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see, I think this is the thing people in the West do not really appreciate. When I was in China, a lot of my friends in their 20's to 40's told me stories of how even just 10 years ago they and their families where starving to death. How members of their families had died from lack of food. Now those same people are eating big macs and other western foods. Almost all products are based on rice.

Mean while China is loosing thousands of hectares of land to development and environmental damage. They are a bit more productive on a per hectare basis, but not as productive as you would think with what they have for land. There are millions or billions of people that formally consumed a lot less food, now eating a lot more of it. The average Chinese use to eat one or two meals a day, if at all. Even at that it was fairly simple foods, locally grown. Now, they are consuming 3 to 4 meals a day, and eating food from all over the world.

This same thing is playing out all around the world. Essentially, the globalization's ability to lift people out of poverty might bring other populations crashing down in to poverty. It has produced more demand than can be filled. The world is not equipped to provide for it. Some one, somewhere, is going to starve to death.

The Europeans would have a heart attack if they knew what the Chinese are doing with genetically modified crops. I spent a year at an agricultural University where they did genetic research on crops. It was well known around the University that students where taking experimental genetic seed home to their rural communities and giving it to their families. There have been wild populations of heavily genetically modified plants in the provinces west of Nanjing for some time now. At least since before I was there about 5 years ago.

No controls, and no one really even pretending to control it. We are not just talking about bigger yield type modifications, but the scary sorts along the lines of plants that produce their own pesticides and weed killers for plants that compete with them. Science in China is a joke. At best it is just stolen from some other country, and at worse it is just faked. They are one bad strain away from wiping out their entire food supply. That is apart from the whole issue of it being safe. There are million other things going on in China that could leave a billion people without food in a very short while. How many nuclear armed states can you name with food shortages right now?

That's pretty scary about the gmos running wild in China.

I was thinking over this weekend....what are some parallels in history to what we are living now....and it occured to me that the industrial revolution had a similar routine and I would compare to the internet revolution right now...

Inventions, products and development was very fast and coming out in every direction. At the same time a new journalism appeared and was called investigative journalism. Its where the modern magazine has its roots. No newspaper wanted to or could illustrate the things going on in the meat industry for example as the moneyed guys owned it all...the magazine found new advertizers and moved out with the news, newspapers eventualy followed suit...the teapot dome scandal was first reported in one of these magazines...all of it ...corruption, graft, social ills and conditions etc....Upton SInclair in "the Jungle"....THe english photographer ________ in "Things as they Are"...the internet has started this thing called citizen journalism where the individual non-journalist suppllies the news and information the media and other sources can't or won't supply. This forum could be included in that group. Because of individuals reporting what they see on this basis we become aware of a lot more than we "should"....the public reacts and something has to be done...usually...but then there is so much info to go through, some of the guilty don't seem to really care...its just to much to see it all and run your daily life...think of all the info that we see and nothing gets done no matter how much we hear about it...ie the bear-stearns routine...its like its gone and with the billions of dollars of our money...I saw on a blog that the company was worth 265 million at the purchase by J Morgan(?can't remember?)...its value had been 1.1 billion and so boo-hoo-hoo J Morgan would take the hit and be supported by the us govt in the purchase...they aquired the B/S building in the deal ....which is worth....1.1 billion....so when would we have seen that info 25 years ago...never...

There is the saying that news is simply imformation that someone else doesn't want you to know and the rest is advertizing...

So to come closer to the industrial revolution and its comparison directly tot he internet....new products all the time with just computers...new services...online bill bay...banking....trade sotcks and commodities...all with just a push of a button....I remember when trades were executed over 3 days....and cost a lot in commisions....you really had to be sure.....advertizing and information...loan rates....gambling...you can make a lot and loose alot....you can gain a different identiy and loose it along with everything that is you.....an afgani insurgent can kill your son and in 20 minutes e-mail you a message that your son is dead and that he killed him and attach a photo of his body...

Like the industrial revolution, there is no regulation...the consumer is on his own....is there rat crap in your meat? ...is your info secure on this site?....the blogs tell us whats up just as fast as something more radical is boring down on you...its almost too much...the library of congress has a copy of everything ever published...in the old days ....now anyone can put out what they want for public consumption and there is no back up.....newspaper articles on the web are updated...tehy delete the wrong or objectionalble info and rewrite it...

We are loosing our memory....will we learn from our mistakes or what it was really like if we can just go back and edit or delete what we want? I think the "delete and edit" ideal has entered the common conscience of everyone. I am going to pick on Hilary but they are all guilty of it. She went through the sniper incident in a remote speech, bloggers et al got a hold of it and brought it up...the people that were there said "what Snipers?"...through the internet the actual photos that everyone had made the rounds....the mainstream media didn't report it except for what the internet blogs were up to...and then Hilary says she mispoke...and now its gone away like it never happend...she edited and deleted...

Our problems of what we see now going on is very much wrapped up in this edit and delte ideal...


p out



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What I find surprising is that people are surprised about these checkpoints in the United States:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=90060908

Even the attorney interviewed seems to be fairly ignorant about current reality in the United States. Refuse those checkpoints, and watch how many hours they can hang you up, or even outright detain you as they at least run you through a bureaucratic windmill.

Another article on the status of U.S. government food stocks, for those skeptical of the place we are in:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industrie ... pply_N.htm

This would for the most part put the U.S., and likely many other countries is in a very bad position say should there be a wide spread crop failure this year.

I see that US cities are going the way of UK cities, starting with NY and DC. Say cheese!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24400482/

I've just heard on National Public Radio (U.S.) this morning that a majority of students at university in the U.K., when polled, ask for increased surveillance on campus. I think that most people, if frightened enough, would want the same; few of us exalt principle over security.

yea, history has proven without exception (none that I can think of anyway), that these "temporary" security measures intruding in to private life and liberties don't end well and that the cat never goes back in to the bag.

Ironically, throughout history it normally leads to the end of the government that started doing it sooner or later in some sort of armed conflict/revolution/war/very bad things happening. It rarely preserves the power it was intended to protect. Once a government treats its people as the enemy, that is exactly what they become.

Without getting mired in a 2nd amendment debate, this is entirely why the gun owning community regard registration as a prelude to confiscation. The second amendment protects all the others....Otherwise how does that "armed conflict/revolutionary war" (etc) get started or stand a chance?
Catching mad mullahs after they have just tried to blow up a train is being held up as a good example of why surveillance is needed. Most of this is blowback from meddling overseas and irrational immigration policies.

[quote="MikieO"]Without getting mired in a 2nd amendment debate, this is entirely why the gun owning community regard registration as a prelude to confiscation. The second amendment protects all the others....Otherwise how does that "armed conflict/revolutionary war" (etc) get started or stand a chance?
Catching mad mullahs after they have just tried to blow up a train is being held up as a good example of why surveillance is needed. Most of this is blowback from meddling overseas and irrational immigration policies.[/quote]

I just don't understand how this would play out in the current day United States. I cannot be convinced of the feasability of an armed-citizen uprising against the government, it would take about an hour to be squashed by the armed forces.

it would take about an hour to be squashed by the armed forces.
In much the same way that Afghans in caves were squashed?

Yeah the USG has essentially federalized and militarized the whole national guard, state police, city police, county sheriff apparatus and now with no more Posse Commitatus has free reign to use US military forces for domestic operations (what do you think NORTHCOM is about?).

So they now have everything from exotic light, sound, chem, bio and radiation weapons; sophisticated psyop technologies; cutting edge and black budget realtime surveillance technologies; and everything from automatic weapons to tanks and helicopter gunships to micro thermonuclear devices at their disposal.

Don't think a group of rebels with their illegally obtained auto weapons and handful of grenades and rocket launchers will pose much threat.

The best outcome is to let the Empire chew up as much as possible so they get in over their heads and overextended and then let the natural process of decay do it's work. Then Mr. Yahoo rebel can jump in with his small arsenal as the US devolves into regions and city states.

JMHOs.

[quote="MikieO"]it would take about an hour to be squashed by the armed forces.
In much the same way that Afghans in caves were squashed?[/quote]

I don't see these as comparable situations. Certainly we would expect the government to act radically different if there were a domestic uprising attempting some sort of coup than it has reacted to the "war on terror." Also, the fact that a civilian uprising would be directly engaging in conflict with government forces, instead of hiding in remote areas. Maybe its just my own shortsightenedness, but I don't see comparable situations there.