Survivalist Movement Reviving

As reader Finnegan mentioned in the comments last week, citing the 1970's, with dire economic times comes an increase in the "survivalist" movement.

With that comes a report that it is becoming popular again. Thought things were bad? US survivalists await worse:

"The movement's definitely growing," Rawles, manager of the site survivalblog.com, told AFP by telephone from what he described as a survival-ready ranch "somewhere west of the Rocky Mountains."

Survivalists have a long history in the United States. But what used to be the preserve of anti-establishment loners, cultists and gun nuts has gone mainstream.

Government agencies are encouraging citizens to prepare evacuation plans and food supplies in case of myriad disasters.

Firearms, gold pieces, and long-storage food are reportedly flying off the shelves, and the Internet is flooded with sites like survivalblog.com, where the like-minded exchange tips on everything from marksmanship to cheese making.

"We're seeing three times the number of readers we had just nine months ago," Rawles said.
"The cross section of the readership is changing too. Before, most of my readership was conservative Christians. We're seeing a lot more left of center."

Experts say sparks for this phenomenon include the 9/11 attacks of 2001, government incompetence during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and now recession: people are more afraid and less trusting in government.

The more radical survivalists are getting ready for what they call EOTWAA, the End-Of-The-World-Armageddon-Apocalypse, or the niftier SHTF, as in Shit Hits The Fan.

With all the movies we've seen in our lifetimes with these doomsday/apocalyptic/Armageddon scenarios one can't help but think of what it would be like. I tend to think I would be in trouble. I don't even know how to fish, let alone hunt. In the movies, I'd be one of those types in the desperate mob who still remain in the city. I'm pounding on your SUV window: "Let me in!" "Help!" 'I need to get out of here, we're all going to be killed!"

Afghanistan: Is It Time to Leave?

Joe Klein has a hard-hitting, gut-wrenching article on the Afghan situation in Time Magazine. Personally, I would have found this type of article defeatist, and distasteful two or three years ago. However, at this point, I think it's fair to examine the situation. It seems hopeless. The Aimless War, Why Are We in Afghanistan?

And then there were the daily frustrations of Armour's job: training Afghan police officers. Almost all the recruits were illiterate. "They've had no experience at learning," Armour said. "You sit them in a room and try to teach them about police procedures — they start gabbing and knocking about. You talk to them about the rights of women, and they just laugh."

....

We know what the mission used to be — to kill or capture Osama bin Laden and destroy his al-Qaeda command. But once bin Laden slipped away, the mission morphed into a vast, messy nation — building effort to support the allegedly democratic Karzai government. There was a certain logic to that. The Taliban and al-Qaeda can't base themselves in Afghanistan if something resembling a stable, secure nation-state exists there. But the mission was also historically implausible: Afghanistan has never had a strong central government.

...

The current Western presence is the most benign intrusion in Afghan history, and the rationale of building stability remains a logical one — but this war has become something of a sideshow in South Asia. The far more serious problem is Pakistan, a flimsy state with illogical borders, nuclear weapons and a mortal religious enmity toward India, its neighbor to the south. Pakistan is where bin Laden now lives, if he lives.

After 9-11, I was as fired up as anybody about the Afghanistan campaign. We couldn't sit back while Osama and Mullah Omar were laughing at us. The camps and safe harbors needed to be rooted out. But, who was talking about nation building and democracy? Seven years later, the idea is getting old. It's not going to work.

Obama had better articulate why this mission is so critical, and gain popular support. If not, pull out and blame the whole mess on the previous administration. Here in Canada we're bugging-out in 2011 regardless. It's getting harder to explain the commitment in these tough economic times.

Anti-Americans, jihadis and lefties will point their fingers and say, 'see, another Empire gets humiliated in Afghanistan.' It's foolish to let your pride get in the way of clear thinking. We chased the bad guys out, realized we were in a bad neighborhood, and didn't want to stick around. It's the armpit of the world. Time to go home. Hopefully the Afghans can benefit from the infrastructure improvements.

Hope!

Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.

-PJ O'Rourke

UAW Do a Plaxico

My God, the UAW refuses to agree to wage cuts for auto workers, which might sink the bailout package. Out of control labour costs are what's killing GM, Ford and Chrysler. Paying people $73 an hour for unskilled labour can't work. The New York Post has the story:

He spoke shortly after Republicans left a closed-door meeting where they balked at giving the automakers federal aid unless their powerful union agreed to slash wages next year to bring them into line with those of Japanese carmakers.

Republican Sen. George V. Voinovich of Ohio, a strong bailout supporter, said the UAW was willing to make the cuts - but not until 2011.
...

Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the GOP point man in the talks, said the two sides had been tantalizingly close to a deal, but the UAW's refusal to agree wage concessions by a specific date in 2009 kept them apart.

Why the f--- should the public support these people? What's the point? The Detroit Three should declare bankruptcy. Maybe somebody else can pick up the pieces and start over. This model is unsustainable. What ever happened to 'lean and mean'? These fat cats are still stuck in the Carter era.

If they bail them out now this will be extremely unpopular. Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina predicts rage and doom:

“We’re going to have riots. There are already people rioting because they’re losing their jobs when everybody else is being bailed out. The fairness of it becomes more and more evident as we go along. The auto companies may be hurting,” he said, but “there are very few companies that aren’t hurting and they’re going to hurt. We don’t have enough money to bail everyone out.”
...

“If you look at where we’re going, we’re not on a sustainable course as a country,” DeMint said. “Frankly, GM is in a better financial situation than we are as a country. The only difference is we can print money. But as other countries around the world lose confidence in the value of a dollar – that’s going to come home very shortly.”

This Photo Is Going to Hurt

Time: Massimo Calabarsi has the dirt

CBC: Illinois Governor trying to sell Senate seat

Who Says You Can't Live Well In These Lean Times?

A kindly neighbour took this photo of the wife and I after our new home reno. Even if the budget is tight these days, we found a little bit of room for improvement. Happiness begins at home.

Inflation

These four items cost me $15.16. I asked the cashier if she made a mistake. She showed me the receipt, and nothing was accidently added. Vancouver is expensive, and so is my downtown grocery store, but really. (That's No-Name flaked tuna by the way. And the small sized Parmesan.)

Seems Like There's Plenty of "End of Empire' Chatter These Days

Forbes magazine has a piece about how the British coped with losing their empire and how this relates to the American predicament of our times:

... Sir Anthony Eden, was, in the words of The Times (London), "the last prime minister to believe Britain was a great power, and the first to confront a crisis that proved she was not." Once the last thrash of empire--the Suez Crisis of 1956--was behind it, Britain decided to withdraw as peacefully as possible from its empire, and to redefine its world role as the bridge between the U.S. and the rest of the world--an "honest broker" in Macmillan's words.

After the Suez disaster, British Prime Minister Sir Harold Macmillan sent President Eisenhower a telegram stating acidly, "Over to you." Meaning we're not dealing in the Middle East anymore, have fun with it. This is why I'm not sure it is such a bad thing if American power recedes. Let somebody else deal with the Middle East. Or North Korea for that matter. I don't say this lightly or flippantly either.

Must Read Article of the Day

Marcus Gee of the Globe and Mail has a bleak assessment of Japan since her economic collapse in the early 1990's which they haven't recovered from. And how it could now be happening to us.

A second myth is that Japan suffered more than the United States and other countries will today because its bubble was so much bigger. In reality, the credit and asset bubble that built up in the United States was the biggest in history. At the peak of Japan's bubble, it needed three yen of credit to make one yen of national income. The United States needed eight dollars of credit for every dollar of income. In Japan, the bubble grew for only about five years in the high-flying late 1980s. In the United States, the credit binge has been going on for a couple of decades.

...

To make matters worse, Americans entered their crisis with a savings rate of zero. In Japan, it was 16 to 17 per cent. Japanese could cope by reducing that over time to about 2 per cent. What will Americans do?

“To put it bluntly, America is much worse off, because there is no buffer,” said Mr. Koll of Tantallon Research. “America runs without a safety net.”

Like the Lloyd Bridges character says in Airplane: "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines."

Hard Times Throwback Word of the Day: Okie

Tom said, "Okie? What's that?"

"Okie use' ta mean you was from Oklahoma. Now it means you're a dirty son-of-a-bitch. Okie means you're scum. Don't mean nothing itself, it's the way they say it."

- Man from Oklahoma, Grapes Of Wrath,Ch. 18

Hard Times

“No one can possibly have lived through the Great Depression without being scarred by it. No amount of experience since the depression can convince someone who has lived through it that the world is safe economically.”

-Isaac Asimov