I just read Art's post, "TV Alert - The Great Famine".

Interesting... in more ways than one.

Art posted that on 4-6.

On 4-7, I was driving home from Seattle and heard a brief bit on the radio news channel about some group that was soliciting clean plots of land that could be used for community gardens. I think they said they had found over 20, so far.

About 4-4, I received a letter from the USDA: "NASS [National Agricultural Statistics Service] is currently conducting a national survey to identify potential farming operations in the United States and to gather basic agricultural information." And they wanted to know if my single acre grew "...vegetables, has any fruit or nut trees, have cattle, horses, poultry, hogs, bees or aquaculture products..."

At first, I thought it was just a ploy to see if they could figure out a way to tax me a bit more. Then, after hearing the bit on the radio, and now seeing Art's post, it makes me wonder if something more ominous is afoot...

Nearly all our states are broke, the federal government is broke or close to it. Food prices are going up faster than the price of gas. I see more garden beds than even last year, more 6-cow, and 12-sheep suburban 'ranchers', more chickens. The media keeps emphasizing the rebounding of the Stock Market (easily manipulated, like it or not), but there are more empty houses and more vacant storefronts all the time, wherever I go on my job.

Is there a bigger, more worrisome picture developing here?

Our food production is highly centralized, in CA, the Midwest, eastern WA, etc. Virtually all of it is highly dependent on petroleum, for sowing, harvesting, processing and delivery.

Sue

We require information, collectivization is inevitable, resistance is futile. Only kidding, its probably more to do with S510 legislation, where if you produce, keep and use your own seeds, you need to be Federally licensed and have to keep strict records for inspection by Monsanto, oops I mean the USDA.

Or it could be that the USDA want to make some calculations on the nuclear fallout contamination i.e. a little hush hush sampling - no questions asked with plausible denialability.

It would certainly make me wonder if my Government starting asking what vegetables were being growing in my garden. Bizarre..

Perhaps the radio jock in FEMA region 6 could find out for you..

Sounds like a general survey done using a 'shotgun approach' -- i.e., any property owner whose address isn't in a registered town/city gets the standard form. They know it won't apply to everybody, but it often costs more to build specific and accurate lists than to do a mass mailing.

I ask all my students why they are atending my foraging classes. It used to be mainly vegans and raw-foodists. Now 95% of the people say they are afraid of what's coming...

-Blast

Yes, you caught on, come mid-summer the black helicopters will sweep across the country at midnight raiding small vegetable gardens and hauling your tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini of to an undisclosed location.

Of course now that they know that you know they will have to kill you. Your only hope is to flee and request refugee status in Quebec. You will safe there because no self respecting federal agent would stoop so low as to learn French, or be caught in Quebec after dark. Stay inside during daylight hours and you will be safe.

I'm immune to such threats because I don't grow vegetables, or much of anything because it all dies, and being old I have all the federal agents mother's phone numbers and know how to work an analog phone system.

LOL @ Art!

Now you've got me wondering. Lots of people are caught in the squeeze. Working but not making enough. The staus quo, at least around here, has turned into an economic slip.

Add in what's happening ing Japan, the environment, fossil fuels, and you may be right. There might something ominous on the horizon.

So that's what that helicopter is doing? LOL!

Does anyone know who Malthus was? In the late 18th. century he discovered that while the production of food grew arithmetically the population grew exponentially. So it's a given that at some point we will either experience famine or cut down the number of people in this world. It will not probably happen during our lifetime, but it will come, inevitably.

There are a couple of plausable reasons.

-Programs to help small and "hobby" farmers, like the university and state extention services, are potential targets for the budget axe. If they have a customer base, they are more likely to be around in three years.
-There are sections of the current administration that are big on what I would call victory gardens. This could be research to determine what percentage of the population is growing their own, possibly for another push to try to get things like chicks and seeds to be allowable items for food stamps. I can remember when I was kid there was debate here in VT if they should be allowed in small quantities.
-The NASS is the Department of Agriculture's census agency. They could just be doing what the law requires them to do.

But of course, as has been pointed out, we already know the real reason. The silent helos will be showing up to give you a bill to pay for your own produce after it has already been grabbed by illuminati agents to be sold to aliens from the planet Vega. After all, they are Vegans.

Malthus had a point, in his day. Really doesn't apply now, as agriculture has advanced and as fewer people need children to work on a farm, birthrates have declined. We are feeding more, with less.

I don't respond to surveys where I can be identified. On the census forms I responded with 2 people live in my house, both adults. The rest of the questions were not answered, nor did the MIB come to my door. The black helicopters know better, I know where they live. And they are not silent, just sound suppresed NOTAR MH or AH6's.

I don't currently have a garden. If I see the fecal matter is about to hit the rotating air device, I would get a few rabbits, some heirloom seed and some chickens. That and what I have stocked would keep us for a bit.

I think ironraven's interpretation has a lot of merit. Hardly sinister. And I for one would applaud the notion of a victory garden as a civic duty on par with voting. Aside from the practicalities of getting some exercise and growing some healthy food, it gives people a psychological boost -- a small island of control in a sea of uncertainty. My 2c.

Plus I don't think Malthus realized that nitrogen fixing would be perfected by a chemist. Of course, there will be some limit to what the planet can support.

The situation in Japan may give us clues as to how things might go.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/04/japan-disaster-peak-oil

Psst... Doug, I was joking about the Vegan aliens.

The aliens aren't vegans?

Dang, and I've been hanging on to this entirely vegan bottle of MacAllan 12yr. for many long years. Thought it might be useful for such an occasion -- potent justification, in spite of all other evidence, for the continued existence of Humans and Earth.

I suspect that the aliens are coprophytic--which would explain all the anal probe stories. Tinfoil hats should protect our politicians...

Sue, I think this LA Times article touches a bit on some of these things you are observing and feeling in your gut.

Until I just read this article, I was thinking that all these backorders and delays at stored food companies like Mountain House were due to big government contracts caused by all the disasters lately or maybe the 2012 crowd getting a head start. But now that I read this article, maybe I've been completely missing the sentiments of people like the couple in this news story who are doing things like storing food long term for a number of different reasons and not just disaster preparedness. People who are not poor or out of work, but who are insecure nonetheless and worry about the future, as Blast was also pointing.

There is always another Oh-Oh! coming.

There was WW2, and the Cuban missile crisis, and Vietnam (the war, anti-war, and financial results), TMI, yearly floods and buzzards, a major financial crisis every ten years (each bigger than the last because 'it came out of the blue'), a couple of oil shocks, recession, inflation, stagflation, mass layoffs, riots, hurricanes, a couple of earthquakes, and the occasional serial killer.

In addition we get it all in living color, surround-sound, with color commentary, and large doses of political/religious/economic spin. A hurricane can't come ashore without some religious fanatic claiming it is God's wrath for laughing at an off-color joke or licking stamps with too much feeling. The financial sector is clearly into bed wetting as good news, bad news, no news, and the blithering of the town drunk all cause panic. The dead bodies haven't cooled yet and some political reporter has to ask the politician what he thinks about it. Which is then followed by an extended piece on how the event, and the politician's reaction, will shift the straw polls and results in the coming election. And that is the legitimate media.

Then you have WND, Beck, Jones, et al just making stuff up. Stories invented out of whole cloth about FEMA camps for political/religious prisoners and specially made cars for transporting them. The former never existed and the later turned out to be rolling stock used for transporting cars. But you can still find references to these non-events on the internet. Lies never die as long as they play on people's predispositions.

Point here is there are real scary things out there. And things that get made even more scary by constant media attention and harping. A few blocks burns in a major city during a riot, a tiny fraction of the area, and a hundred million people load guns and look out of their window suspiciously at their neighbors. Instead of being suspicious how about going out and talking to them? If you know the neighborhood you will know long ahead of time if people are going to riot. That's how you stay alert. Peeking around window shades isn't half as effective.

The human brain is structured for keeping up with what is going on in a small tribe and the local area. For millions of years learning of a death was learning about a death of someone you knew. Someone you saw daily. Their death was a warning that danger was very near in both space and time.

Now we get danger signals, emphasized by technology, broadcast from thousands of miles away, involving people we feel sorry for (empathy is another human trait) but with whom we will never have any contact with. A cougar lunches a hiker and millions of people get scared of large cats. The vast majority of those people are not in danger. I wonder how many hikers spend so much time looking for cougars that they forgot to look where they were going and fell off a cliff? I bet you could make a small fortune collecting dropped backpacks, and returning them for a fee, if you could convincingly fake a cougar call. The fear that they might seriously hurt themselves, or run off a cliff and kill themselves, makes that option less attractive.

A local survivalist spent a lot of money and effort collecting gear, for the riots and breakdown of order. Last year he found out he has advanced osteoporosis. He stepped off his front porch and his ankle broke. In his forties he has the bones of a ninety year old. He had to give up shooting his pistols when his arm started to hurt after a day at he range and X-rays showed several bones were cracked. Doctors think that his poor diet and lifelong habit of getting most of his water in the form of sodas has something to do with it. He uses crutches off and on and looks to be heading toward doing his fighting from a Hover-round.

I don't razz him about it and help any way I can, he is a good guy and I like him, he can be very funny, but it is ironic that after running scared about the 'golden hoard' and civil collapse it is the soda that was the bigger threat to his health and well being. I also want to be on his good side. Eventually he is going to get around to selling his gear, he can't work and the bills don't stop, and I'd like to be near the head of the line. I'd like to think of this as enlightened self-interest.

I'm not that worried about the Russians, the Taliban, the Feds (who know me quite well already), the Japanese reactors or the wrath of your Deity.

I do worry about the dumbass in the minivan behind me who's yapping on the phone or the guy at work that doesn't know/care what he's doing and the havoc he will wreak.

Just about everyone in my neighborhood indicated on their census form that they were a particular race, that I know good and well they are not. The word is that the census has never prosecuted anyone for "lying about their race". After all, how can the census prove you wrong? For reasons unknown to me, the census only takes the position that a person's race is what they say it is -- and some say everyone has a little of everything in them.

But what good is a census if large numbers of people in certain areas are not being all that truthful about their race. The people who run the census say that over 99% of the importance of the entire census circulates around the answer to that single race question (why is that?). And now large numbers of people are messing that up but good by not being truthful (let's just say it, lying).

It may best/worst way to protest of them all, at least on my block, but I can say, it got the pot holes fixed, and money is still rolling in.

Absolutely correct information would be nice but almost as good is flawed information that has a known amount of error. The census isn't going to contradict anyone, or prosecute anyone, but they can sample the population and make their own estimations. Of course you can also control for errors in your estimators by having them estimate the race of a known sample. The end result is you get a raw result with a well defined error. Which, in the end, is about as good as it gets.

Yes, some people are going to lie on purpose. You are also going to get a percentage who just, for some unknown reason, check the wrong box. There are even a small percentage of people who lie, but end up telling the truth. A considerable number of people misunderstand their own ancestry. A good percentage, largely out of wishful thinking and cultural idealization, claim American indian ancestry. Must of us are mutts. That is a good thing. Mutts are usually healthier and better adapted than purebreds.

Actually, all of us are mutts. Biologically speaking, "race" is a highly flawed concept.

I have a good friend who is self identified as American Indian. His actual parentage is obscure (long story). I was discussing DNA options with him just a few days ago so that he could learn his biological antecedents. He approaches this with some trepidation because the answer might not be satisfactory.

Perhaps our DNA haplogroup could be worked into our ID number on the soon to be obligatory TSA ID microchip embedded in the left mastoid process. That ought to clean up the census data.

I wonder what the recent(last 10yrs) owners of All those Indian casinos that, sprung up outa' nowhere would have to say about Scientifical proof that they weren't Native Americans,to begin with,thus making their sovereign land a myth!:)

I don't think science would say that at all. It's simply that most of us have "intertwined lineages" due to the antics of past generations. Those formal portraits in the history books don't begin to convey all the shenanigans that went on. Think Thomas Jefferson, a true intellectual giant, and his good friend, Sally Hemmings.

Apparently, we are all six billion of us descended from a population of around 2000 in S Africa. 2000? That's about the size of a large voting precinct here in my county.

Thank you for the article, Arney.

"The so-called Great Recession was declared officially over last fall, yet consumer confidence — or lack of it — remains consistent with an economy in deep trouble."

Could someone please tell me EXACTLY what indicators are being used to say that the recession is over? Don't use the Stock Market, it isn't an indicator.

Sue

I'm with you Sue and Arny. That article really hits home. Low income families are getting squashed by an ever increasing cost of living and middle income families are being strerched by the same forces. What we pay for the necessities like food, hydro, natural gas, gas for the vehicles, property taxes, etc. is an increasing percentage of our income and we can only cut back so much. If someone loses their job, it can push a family to the brink and that's going to have a ripple effect across the economy making that great recession that just ended look like a tea party.

Technically its the growth of the money supply rather than the contraction of the money supply. The money supply is still expanding due to rounds of Quantitative Easing, i.e. to re-inflate the whole private cartel of private banks (which all failed spectacularly in late 2008) called the Federal reserve and the US treasury Ponzi scheme rather than let it rapidly deflate to point that the worlds reserve currency becomes worthless. The result is trickle up economics with the wealthy financial controlling class just buying time to exchange fiat currency into realizable physical assets whilst preparing for a post peak oil future. Other challenges such as the peak oil situation are putting pressure on these folks on how to achieve the best way to transform a post industrial society into a system of Serfdom, Manorialism, Feudalism and Slavery once more (i.e. stable post industrial informational controlled societies through compliance such as use of information physiological operations such as terrorism) can be achieved whilst still in control of those financial methods of control of the wider populace. The next 20-40 years will be extremely challenging for everyone as letting the greatest historical Ponzi scheme collapse too quickly would be neither beneficial for anyone. You can't put a frog into boiling water as it will quickly jump out, better to let it get comfortable and then turn up the heat.

Well, based on Wall St. bonuses, life is just peachy, so that must be why we're in a recovery. Wall St. handed out a record $135 billion in bonuses for 2010. That's higher than even before the financial crisis in 2008. Obviously, bonuses are not handed out evenly, but on average, that's a $141,000 bonus.

I guess they were out of pitchforks at the local hardware store on the day Wall St handed out the bonuses. No...actually, that must've been the night of the final episode of American Idol last season. Or maybe people were just too busy at their second or third jobs.

I think they call it progress.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlJZaQdqto8

Actually, the recession is over because the National Bureau of Economic Research says so. We've been in recovery since the summer--not of 2010, but the sumer of 2009. Whew, that makes me feel so much better. We've been recovering for quite some time now.

For what it's worth, this article displays the main indicators used by NBER. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to see those graphs going UP!

Meanwhile inflation is close to zero, okay maybe 2 or 3% . . or maybe Inflation is Actually Near 10%. . .

Recessions are estimated to have started and stopped by a simple metric of growth and time. It is a useful metric but the definition doesn't have anything to do with overall prosperity, economic health, or fairness. Understand that and you will avoid a lot of confusion.

The plan, as far back as Reagan's advisors, was to bankrupt the nation and then use the claim of poverty to liquidate the poor and put the uppity middle class in their place. To deregulate, set capital free, and roll the clock back to the Guilded Age. Seen as the good-old-days before regulations, and labor got in the way. The theory is that during economic hardship the aristocracy will remain untouched in their gated community.

The situation is fairly well explained here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNi1sevKNd0&feature=player_embedded

Are buzzards a big problem in the USA ?
What protective measures are advised ? would a shotgun suffice.
Sorry, could not resist !

Buzzard, hungry buzzards, circling overhead.... We're doomed!

Isn't it wonderful how spell checkers let us say the strangest things?

I find it unsettling that some members here are posting their “tinfoil” concerns in this thread. Not because of the otherwise tinfoil nature of the concerns, rather because I share them. I simply can’t buy the news and government statements that all is well with the economy when I haven’t seen a cost of living increase in three years, my wife has been laid off for 8 months, my house has lost 60% of its peak value, and the cost of everything seems to be escalating at break-neck (or break-pocketbook) speed. We are both post- baccalaureate degree holders, so it’s not limited to low-wage or unskilled workers.

It is alarming that peak oil awareness is present here and being discussed as it has been considered tinfoil by so many for so long. It is the reason I sought out this forum, to gain some insight into preparation without the hysteria of many of the other survival-oriented sites. I share in Sue’s opinion that there’s a big, life-altering Oh-Oh on the horizon. Possible players: peak oil, economic collapse, climate change, food/water shortages. When taken together and ruminating on the feed backs, that’s one hell of an Oh-Oh. I’m not sure how to equip myself or family to deal with such.

All is not well with the economy. The same ones that ran up the debt and drove the financial system into the ditch, causing the recession, are the ones who tell me they are sadly forced to cut services to save money, and hand the nation over to the tender mercies of the efficient and benevolent corporations and financiers to make things right. None of the major talking heads depend on those services and few of them saw much real down side when the financial system went down in flames because their money protected them. Even legal restrictions are little barrier when you can hop into the tax deductible corporate jet and go to Guatemala to do what you can't do here.

When I see discussion on TV it is always bankers and financiers and corporate leaders who are doing the talking. Where are the union representatives and people looking out for labor. I'm tired of some guy making millions claiming to be talking for the middle class. The median income in the US is roughly $45,000 but everyone claiming to be looking out for people who make $45K all make twenty or more times that much. And most of them work very hard at hanging out with people making many times that. Other than the gardener and doorman they may never interact with anyone making median wage.

You don't need to be destitute to empathize with and seek to look out for poor people. But you ought to spend time around those you claim to represent. You ought to know and understand how they feel and what their lives are like.

The popular myth is that poor people just want to be handed huge amounts of money and sit around eating bon-bons. Which tells me the people who came up with that didn't know much about poor people. I've lived and worked around poor people and it is hard to find any that don't just want a decent job, dignity, a fair chance at living a modest life, and some chance their children might move up a little. Failing that, yes, they will take what money gets tossed to them. Just getting by, and hating every minute of it, is better than not getting by. The poor are always in survival mode.

You want to learn urban survival skills? Find out where the homeless people stay and hang out. Average Americans often feel fear going into depressed urban areas. Imagine being homeless and living there. You have no resources. No reserve. Even the police don't take you seriously. Just staying alive is a trick. Staying relatively healthy and sane is remarkable.

The simple fact is that there has never been a settled and quiet time when all was well in this nation. But, you ask, what about the good old days, when we were united and happy working together? Say ... during WW2. We all set aside our differences and pulled together. Really ...

"During the forty-four months from Pearl Harbor to V-J Day, there were 14,471 strikes involving 6,774,000 strikers: more than during any period of comparable length in United States history.29 In 1944 alone, 369,000 steel and iron workers, 389,000 auto workers, 363,000 other transportation equipment workers, and 278,000 miners were involved in strikes."

From: http://libcom.org/history/world-war-ii-post-war-strike-wave

Look up the 'Zoot-suit' riots, and, of course, there was that unpleasantness with the Japanese-Americans during WW2. Land and property abandoned, confiscated, most of it systematically stolen.

Point here is that the US hasn't had settled times and the 'good old days' are largely an illusion. Going back to 'better times' assumes there were better times. It all has been, and looks to always be, a rattle and roll existence.

The best anyone can do is to set up systems that take the worse of the rough edges off, moderate the system to avoid the worse of the extremes, and prepare as a society and individually as time and resources allow. There aren't any easy answers but we got this far, through some very rough times with less to work with, and that should give us hope that we will get through the troubles of our times.

The Japanese are rebuilding after a huge disaster. But they rebuilt after WW2. That was many times worse.

Ah, World War II, a united, strong nation, working together.....

I grew up in Hattiesburg, Miss. during the war years, because my Dad trained for the war at nearby Camp Shelby. People then talked of two wars, the current unpleasantness and the Civil War (War Between the States, as it was termed locally). The CW was quite vivid and there was no love lost for those carpetbaggin' dammmyankees who were now infesting the Mother Soil.

Let's not even talk about the separate (but equal!) black and white porcelain drinking fountains in the local Woolworth's, or all the other baggage of a hermetically sealed, racist society. I attended my first three grades at a run down dilapidated school. I never had any idea of where or what black kids attended.

In many ways things have gotten better in this country, but they are far from perfect, and we probably have no very good idea of what the next bump in the road will be (I was certainly clueless on 811). That is why they are challenging....

Sounds like they calmed down considerably between 1864 and 1942. In South Carolina they still often call it the "War of Northern Aggression" and until recently genteel ladies, in polite company no less, would spit every time they said the name of the general who marched Atlanta to Savannah. (Safer for monitors and keyboards in SC if I don't use that name.)

Sue,

When I read this NY Times article, I thought of this thread. An apparently well-planned and sophisticated group stole truckloads of produce and frozen meat! This group created a fake trucking company that was properly registered and insured. They were hired like any normal trucking company, went around picking up their loads for a few days, and then just disappeared. Crazy.

I used to drive a Vega. I hope that doesn't mean there is a chance I'm an alien. I know there are times when my wife thinks I am.



Apologies. Couldn't resist.

buckeye

It is incredible how much trouble crooks will go through just to be dishonest. They registered with the federal government and bought insurance (under a stolen identity, I imagine) and bought/stole/borrowed/gained access to a truck in order to steal $300k worth of perishible produce which would net them how much? Split among how many people?
Why not just run a real trucking company? I guess that's complicated, not simple like stealing.

Arney, Yes, I saw that article. If crooks worked as hard at a legitimate business, they could be millionaires.

Another, two more recent signs of lack of prosperity locally:

The number of trailers (including tiny, old, scummy, moss-streaked ones) parked in driveways, and front and side yards, has increased by a factor of approx. ten. Most of them have orange extension cords running to them.

On my way out of my one-horse, one-gas-station, one-grocery store small town this morning, there was a fairly pretty young woman in her 20s sitting up in her sleeping bag beside a vacant building, holding a couple of small dogs. She looked normal, not like a junkie or homeless person, her hair looked clean, the dogs looked in good shape.

Sigh.

Sue