Very useful information on long-term emergency food storage

 

Commander Zero, whom we've met in these pages on several occasions, recently wrote an article asking his readers for feedback on cold weather food storage.  His exact question was:  "If you were going to store foods in a location that was going to be subject to freeze/thaw cycles, what foods would be best choices?"

Many of his readers responded - 44 of them, as I write these words.  They've provided a great deal of information that's useful for anyone considering food storage, even if not in a cold-weather environment.  I highly recommend clicking over to his place to read his question and explanation, and their responses.

Peter

A potential terrorist threat from Iran

 

I'm sure that by now, most of the readers of this blog are aware that Iran has been sending coded signals to unknown persons.

Iran sent out a possible “operational trigger” to activate “sleeper assets” abroad after the war with America and Israel began, according to an encrypted message intercepted by the US.

The coded signal was sent out following the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Feb. 28, with the message appearing to hold instructions for “covert operatives or sleeper assets,” ABC News reported, citing a federal alert sent to law enforcement agencies.

The message could “be intended to activate or provide instructions to prepositioned sleeper assets operating outside the originating country,” the alert warned.

. . .

“If ever there’s going to be a Hezbollah cell or a Hamas cell act in the United States in a violent way, it’s now,” Chris Swecker, a former assistant FBI director, told Fox News after the war began.

There's more at the link.

Anybody with any knowledge of international terrorism has been aware of the security risk posed by allowing millions of illegal aliens to cross our borders during the previous administration, with minimal or no security and background checks.  I shall be highly surprised if several hundred - possibly several thousand - terrorists and their supporters did not take advantage of that opportunity.  It was a gilt-edged invitation to set up terrorist, espionage and sabotage cells within the US in a virtually untraceable, unidentifiable fashion, and I'm sure our enemies did precisely that.  Individual terrorists would have done likewise.

We don't know how many such cells or individuals did that, but we've already seen examples of illegal aliens committing such crimes.  I would expect increased acts of terrorism in the short term, and possibly one or two attempts to commit some really big atrocity such as the World Trade Center attacks of 2001.  I'm sure law enforcement and security agencies and staff have already been briefed about that, and are on a higher state of alert to spot and prevent them.  However, most individual Americans are not security-conscious at all, and most are not armed and ready to defend themselves and others.  That would apply particularly to "blue" states, where anti-gun and anti-self-defense messages dominate, but it's not restricted to them.  Even here in Texas, generally regarded as a very pro-Second-Amendment state, there are urban pockets where liberal/progressive ideas and policies dominate.  (Plano, I'm looking at you.)

I can only suggest that readers arm themselves to the extent legally possible, and be prepared to defend themselves and their loved ones if necessary.  I'd also suggest remembering and applying John Farnam's sage advice:

The best way to handle any potentially injurious encounter is: Don’t be there. Arrange to be somewhere else. Don’t go to stupid places. Don’t associate with stupid people. Don’t do stupid things.

Sometimes we can't avoid having to be in or near such places or people.  If so, plan to get out of there as quickly as possible, and keep your head on a swivel while you're there.  Forewarned is forearmed.

Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  It's started, at least among sympathizers.  See this link for more.

Is the AI threat to jobs also a threat to pensions, IRA's and 401(k)'s?

 

Last week we looked at how artificial intelligence (AI) was affecting the job market.  I've been trying to read more widely on the subject, in an effort to understand its implications for all of us over the next few years.  Jonathan Turley, well-known lawyer and legal scholar, offers these thoughts.

We are looking at one of the greatest job losses in history.

In a free-market system, such technological changes tend to offset losses with new jobs in emerging industries. And there will be such growth with the AI and robotic revolutions. But it is also likely that we are looking at a static class of unemployed and practically unemployable citizens as this new revolution unfolds.

. . .

The impact of AI is not confined to factory workers and truck drivers.

The danger is that politicians will react predictably and try to subsidize jobs that are no longer viable and industries that are being dramatically downsized. At the same time, they are likely to expand model programs in Democratic cities for universal basic or guaranteed income.

Democrats have moved forward with more than 60 bills creating such programs, and this week, Cook County, Ill. (the second-largest county in the U.S.) made permanent the universal basic income program it had originally launched with federal COVID-19 relief funds.

The problem is the creation of what I call a “kept citizenship” in a republic designed for people who are economically and politically independent from the government. That system is seriously undermined by a large percentage of citizens living off the government dole.

The solution cannot be an “arts-and-crafts” population kept entertained by government programs to learn glassblowing and pottery-making. A different type of citizen would emerge that is unlikely to be sufficiently free of the government to counter its excesses or failures.

. . .

All governments will face this existential crisis in the 21st Century. It will create growing instability globally. Although AI and robotics will make goods cheaper and more widely available, they are also likely to have a dramatic effect on populations. For example, as production costs drop with the new technology, there will be less advantage to moving factories to other countries with cheaper labor forces, such as China and Mexico.

Companies may choose to build near consumer markets to save on transportation costs while utilizing higher-skilled worker populations to maintain robotic and AI systems. That could produce massive unemployment in certain countries with low-educated, low-income populations. That in turn could destabilize governments and increase the chances of war in countries with large populations of unemployed young men.

There's more at the link.  Recommended reading.

Mr. Turley outlines a very real constitutional issue for the United States.  Our federal government is specifically restricted by the constitution in what, and how much, it can do - even if much of those provisions are today observed more in the breach than in the observance.  Nevertheless, I think it's a valid argument that our system of government, and how we vote for it, are designed for citizens who are not dependent on that government.  They are able to vote as free men and women because they are not dependents.  The moment they cease being free - the moment they become financially dependent on the same government they're helping to elect - the greater becomes the danger that they will vote for their own financial advantage, rather than the good of the country.  As the Roman poet Juvenal satirically pointed out almost two millennia ago, people will vote for "bread and circuses" rather than what their country needs to remain viable.  The fall of Rome not too long afterwards tends to bear out his point.

So . . . if AI leads to increased unemployment (as appears likely at present), what will the newly unemployed do?  Can they, on their own initiative, figure out new ways to make a living and rebuild their society?  Or will they listen to the siren song of politicians who promise them all sorts of freebies and benefits in return for their vote?  (For that matter, any politician who promises to set up government programs to do the hard work for people, so that they don't have to think and work for themselves, is almost guaranteed electoral success.  See the universal basic income (UBI) scheme being pioneered by Chicago, and look for something similar in New York and other "blue" cities.)

The biggest threat posed by AI job replacement is one that Mr. Turley has not mentioned at all.  It's simply this:  if government is to provide a basic guaranteed income to every citizen, it can argue that private pension schemes, IRA's and 401(k)'s are now obsolete and unnecessary.  After all, if the state will provide our needs, why do we need to make provision for them ourselves?  That leads directly to the next and larger problem:  what if the state decides it can confiscate or "nationalize" our pensions, because with UBI we no longer need them?  There are many trillions of dollars saved by Americans in such pension systems, and a left-wing government will be frothing at the mouth over the temptation to seize them all.  It would wipe out a huge chunk of our national deficit (at least until such governments spend it all again!), and can be "sold" to the underfunded portion of the electorate as a "tax on the rich" who want to "hold on to money they don't need any more".  The massive population of "blue" cities and states can be expected to vote for it en masse, overwhelming the more conservative vote of those who've worked for their future income and want to keep it for themselves.

That will, in turn, beget a whole new series of arguments and confrontations over how much UBI should be, and whether "richer" people whose private pension funds were "nationalized" are entitled to a higher UBI payment as compensation, and a whole range of related issues.  What if housing were folded into the UBI arrangement, so that anyone receiving UBI was also guaranteed a place to live?  What quality of place?  In what sort of suburb?  Will everyone be forced into Cabrini-Green style housing, or will there be any freedom of choice?

I have no idea what may emerge from the current state of affairs, but I can foresee far more problems for society than are presently being discussed.  In days past, laissez-faire economists used to claim that "What's good for the banks is good for the country".  Well, AI may be good for business, but it may very well be "double-plus-ungood" for our jobs and for our society.  Right now, we just don't know . . . and that uncertainty is dangerous in itself.

Your thoughts, dear readers?

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 302

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

Today let's enjoy a duo who've delighted thousands with their instrumental crossover guitar pieces.  I'm speaking of Rodrigo y Gabriela, who started performing in the early 1990's and have never looked back.  I've picked a couple of old favorites, plus an extended session with Metallica's bass player Robert Trujillo.

First, here's "Hanuman".

Next, we have "Tamacun".

Finally, from Colorado's Red Rocks Amphitheater in 2014, they're joined by Robert Trujillo for an extended jam session.

Sounds like a lot of fun was had by all concerned.  You'll find lots more music from Rodrigo y Gabriela on YouTube.

Peter

Stand by for the next Shifta War...

 

I note that the Kenya-Somalia border is to be reopened.

Kenya's border with Somalia will re-open in April almost 15 years after it shut because of attacks by Islamist militant group al-Shabab, President William Ruto has announced.

Based in Somalia, the group has masterminded a series of deadly assaults in Kenya including one on a shopping centre in the capital, Nairobi, killing 67 people in 2013 and one at a university in Garissa two years later killing 148.

The plan has been announced before, in 2023, but further attacks postponed the arrangements.

Ruto said the intention to re-open two crossings follows years of security assessments, adding that there will be a heavy deployment of security forces to ensure the move does not compromise safety.

There's more at the link.

I think this is a terrible idea.  That part of Africa - northern Kenya, eastern and northern Uganda, southern Sudan, Ethiopia, and of course Somalia - has been home to the so-called Shifta bandits for generations (of whom Al Shabab is nothing more or less than a recent reinvention of the wheel, with a religious gloss overlaid on their traditional barbarism).  The current disastrous situation - almost a genocide - in southern Sudan is just the latest atrocity in a region that's been soaked in blood for centuries.  It's family against family, clan against clan, tribe against tribe.  The so-called Shifta War was fought there in the 1960's, and despite "official" peace agreements, has never really stopped.

I spent time in the area many years ago, trying to arrange mission convoys for various church groups, getting food and medical aid to mission stations that desperately needed it.  I think my convoys were the only ones that usually got through, because I made sure to hire the meanest, most vicious Shifta bandits I could find as convoy guards against their fellow scumbags.  They would be well paid, but only after the convoy got through and returned safely.  Things got "sporty" on occasion, but my guards usually justified their cost and then some.  Sadly, some mission groups decided that my methods were insufficiently Christian, and had to stop.  (It's odd that most of their aid convoys never made it more than a few miles from their depots before being raided and robbed blind.  They were regarded as "soft targets".  My convoys were not!  I think they felt I was making them look bad to their NGO sponsors.)

There are many other places like this around the world.  Western news media seldom have anything worthwhile to say about them.  They quote government ministers or spokesmen who proclaim that everything is sweetness and light, while on the ground it's "the strong survive" and devil take the hindmost.  Shifta country is one of the worst . . . and now they want to reopen a border between two of the worst-affected parts of Shifta country.

I already know what the result is going to be.

Peter