Armed Guards Needed to Keep Order in Buffalo Public Pools
The following article downplays how dangerous the situation is, but since the reaction to the mayhem is to have armed guards stationed at pools to protect life guards from “unruly teenagers” we can assume that unruly here is a euphemism for murdering, raping, thieving criminality:
BUFFALO, N.Y. (CBS) ― Armed security guards have been posted at public pools in Buffalo after a lifeguard was pulled into the water by rowdy teenagers and other unruly behavior prompted safety concerns for parks employees.
The city’s eight public outdoor pools were shut down last Thursday after fights broke out and a locker room was vandalized.
At one pool, a 16-year-old lifeguard says she was yanked by her ankles into the water when she tried to restore order. She says she struck her head on a drain and then was repeatedly dunked by several teenagers until another lifeguard rescued her.
The teen was treated at a Buffalo hospital for a mild concussion.
City parks officials say security guards were on duty over the weekend and will be working at the pools for the rest of the summer.
Buffalo News has a more in-depth article including an audio interview with Public Works Commissioner Steven J. Stepniak. Read the article and notice the disconnect between what officials say is happening and the reports by people there. Packs of young men are terrorizing the public pools, and the only workable solution is to have armed guards there?
This is a break down of basic law and order that has nothing to do with the heat wave, the current financial situation or any other excuse people will use for these thugs’ attacks on women and children. These young men, described as between 16 and 21, have been raised with no respect for others, for rules or for their own safety. This is why the coming depression will be so dangerous, because if these men will damn near kill a teenage lifeguard at a pool for fun what will they do when their parents’ unemployment runs out? When the grocery shelves are empty? When the power is out indefinitely?
Arm yourselves. And if you live in a state that makes it hard for you to defend yourself move. I’d rather live in a van in a state where I am allowed to defend my family then a mansion where the state demands you allow thugs like these to rape your family to death while they send a patrol over.
Mysterious Gold Swap May Foretell Beginning of Next Crisis
From The Telegraph:
The news that a mystery bank has just pawned the family jewels gave traders a jolt – nervous about the sudden transfer of almost 20pc of the world’s annual gold production and the possibility of a sell-off.
In a tiny footnote in its annual report, the bank disclosed its unusually large holding of gold, compared with nothing the year before. The disclosure was a large factor in the correction of the gold price this week, which fell below $1,200 for the first time in more than a month.
Concerns hinged on whether the BIS could potentially sell on this vast cache of bullion in the event of a default, flooding the market with liquidity. It appears to have raised $14bn for whoever’s been doing the swapping – small fry on the currency markets, but serious liquidity in the gold market.
[…]
Meanwhile, economists and gold market-watchers were determined to hunt down which bank is short of cash – curious about who is using their stash of precious metal for what looks suspiciously like a secret bailout.
At first it looked like the BIS was swapping gold with a troubled central bank. After all, the institution is the central bankers’ bank and its purpose to conduct transactions with national monetary authorities.
Central banks in the troubled southern zone of Europe were considered the most likely perpetrators.
According to the World Gold Council, central banks in Greece, Spain and Portugal held 112.2, 281.6 and 382.5 tons of gold respectively in June – leading analysts to point fingers at Portugal, or a combination of the three.
But Edel Tully, an analyst from UBS, noted that eurozone central banks would be severely limited with what they could do with the influx of extra cash – unable to transfer it straight to governments or make use of the primary bond markets.
She then listed the only other potential monetary authorities with enough gold as the US, China, Switzerland, Japan, Russia, India and Taiwan – and the International Monetary Fund.
This led to musings that the counterparty was the IMF, making sense because the lender of last resort is historically prone to cash shortages and has been quietly selling off gold in the first half of the year.
A lot of people are rushing to put a pretty face on this but no matter who’s selling or buying gold this transaction, whether it be a sell off or a lease as some are now saying, means two things for people trying to get prepared.
1) A very large entity, either a bank with multinational holdings or a country in financial trouble, needs cash to keep operating and can’t raise it the normal way. We all knew this was going to happen, and that it will continue to happen to states and countries. This is the kind of move a desperate state might make to keep afloat one more quarter, but when this doesn’t work what happens?
2) The gold market is not the safe haven people claim it is. Owning gold is indeed a great way to maintain wealth in times of inflation, but the price of gold is just as susceptible to global financial mismanagement by governments and good old fashioned supply and demand pressures as any other market. Don’t put all your hope in gold, just enough money to keep operating once hyper-inflation kicks in.
White Gold: Re-Thinking Wealth in a Post-Collapse Society
This post was first published on the original American Survival Blog and I am republishing it now as part of the merging of Red Alerts and A.S.B.
Imagine yourself in a rapidly de-industrialized America (or Europe, Canada whatever) due to financial collapse exacerbated by food shortages, disease and a chaotic world exploding in the wake of American power receding. Maybe solar storms or an E.M.P. have knocked out the grid, or cap-and-trade has created energy shortages like we see in places like Venezuela and are beginning to see in Europe. Imagine that supermarkets are empty, refrigeration is unreliable and there is no guarantee that things will ever get back to normal. What would you do?
For many survivalists, myself included, the solution is “prepping” for such a scenario. This involves stockpiling long lasting foods and perhaps water if there is no other way to ensure supply. Those are short term solutions however, completely unsustainable for a lifetime. In the long term many survival minded people learn hunting, trapping and fishing skills. This is a sure way to starvation if it is your only option to put food on the table for you and your family as anyone who has ever been hunting or fishing will tell you. A better option is to supplement those skills with the art of growing food and foraging for wild plants. All together you now have a recipe for a short and brutish life much like that of ancient man when he still lived as a hunter-gatherer. Doable but hardly ideal.
Man is a social animal for a reason: our needs are more easily met when we cooperate in large groups. We need an economy to truly live a sustainable lifestyle; we will need to trade with others for things which for one reason or another we will not be able to produce ourselves. In short the best case scenario for a survivalist is to be enmeshed with a large group of people living in an area they are invested in securing who all produce various things that they will trade internally and on occasion with outsiders.
Producing things people will trade for is the ideal for long term sustainability after a collapse. Much has been written on how to avoid looters by looking like you have nothing to loot. Many survivalists are planning on spending years, maybe decades, hiding in bunkers with a select group of fellow survivalists. This too will end badly for many as anyone who can envision several well armed families living in close quarters and sharing finite resources will conclude. Those who survive any coming collapse will do so by being able to produce things others need, not share things from steadily depleting collective pantry. Food would be the most valuable resource of course, although a good seamstress or carpenter will likely be able to get by. What we are talking abut is wealth in the old sense of the word, not acquired through business deals or wise investment but through production.
Eggs, for example, are a kind of wealth. Many suburbanites have begun keeping their own hens for economic reasons (they save money on eggs) but we see more and more that a person with small flock of chickens is doing something most Americans have little experience with – producing actual wealth. Even survivalists often don’t fully understand this idea, explaining why people who think America is about to descend into a new dark age think one ounce gold coins (or worse, gold certificates) are going to pull them through while the rest of us starve. Gold and silver have their uses (one of which is enriching bloggers pre-collapse) but gold and silver represent wealth. They are not necessarily true wealth.
I’ll give you an example. I have two neighbors in the above worst of the worst case scenario. One has a veritable dragon’s hoard of one ounce gold coins each of which are now theoretically worth $10,000 in the new, desperate America. The other has a micro-farm consisting of a flock of chickens, a couple of milking goats and a large garden. Now let’s suppose that both want to get a couple of bowls of Rob Taylor’s famous five can chili or some homemade cough drops I mixed up in my spare time. What happens? Do I make change for a $10,000 gold coin? Or do I take a small basket of eggs for a batch of chili with a home made cough drop lagniappe? Sans a banking system to standardize currency bartering with precious metals is a risky proposition which is an idea I have put forward to before. This is not to say gold will be worthless, but it will be hard to trade with and if push comes to shove, harder to digest. Historically this has always been the case.
The first verse of the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem reads:
Wealth is a comfort to all men;
yet must every man bestow it freely,
if he wish to gain honour in the sight of the Lord.
This line references the rune Feoh which represents wealth in general but its name literally means “cattle” which was the the measure of wealth the ancient Northern Europeans used. Those who study runes for religious reasons point out this understanding of wealth, as practical goods like livestock and furs, provides both historical and spiritual insight into the runic tradition. For the survival minded of any religion it is instructive to note that people who lived in a harsh environment of low technology and scarcity of resources, livestock was how people measured wealth and was the currency that common people traded with.
Of course, many people don’t have room for cattle or other sorts of livestock like goats which are increasingly popular. But depending on the laws in your areas and rules of your homeowner’s association if you happen to be unlucky enough to have one, almost everyone can own a few chickens or grow heirloom vegetables. These renewable resources have value to you and others. If you find no buyers for your eggs, goat’s milk, and Cherokee Purple tomatoes, you can still use them to provide comfort and security for you and your family which is literally what wealth is. Not so your gold hoard or your ammunition reserves. It is time for survivalists to have a fundamental rethinking of what wealth means and how we can acquire it in a post-collapse world.