In Afghanistan the 'Seal Six' craft evidently went down... everyone killed in action there are now called "NATO troops" instead of Americans. Heavily armed Multi-Jurisdiction FoodControl Swat teams step in to shut down & crush the Rawesome Foods outlet in Venice CA as our friendly local industrial food monolith Cargill has millions pounds of ground turkey recalled -- weeks after regulators realized something was up. Clearly the regulatory capture in FDA & related authorities has spun pretty far out of control. No one is ever going to swat raid Cargill. That's the game, people.
And of course stability is taking a huge leg down this week. It's always hard to get the timing with these things, but it's pretty clear that thangs are getting worse fast. If you hasn't already, try to cash out of the American & European stock market while you still can. Get rolling, know your neighbors, readjust for a different life. Minnesota in particular is a hard place and they're right, it's going to be a hard winter here. (Video: good interview w Gerald Celente)
Overall it has occurred to me there should really just be weekly public meetings about collapse & responses in as many places as possible. This is really pretty bad.
One of the things about the recent Minnesota government shutdown was that childcare was really a mess as the state childcare credits were cut off. Let's say that the economy takes another major dive like 20% with a lot more layoffs & people with jobs are stretched thin. If people have a better way of obtaining childcare available then they are more likely to be able to hang onto their jobs or be capable of taking new ones.
I don't really know if I can follow through but I think it would be helpful. At collapse meetings, might also help to adding an online channel for live video (ie skype or livestream or google+ hangouts or whatever it's called) would probably be a good idea -- possibly also a phone line to call into.
We are seeing positive trends a bit in Minneapolis for food security as urban farming becomes a possibility, but the nettlesome regulatory & zoning parts of city government will surely take longer than winter 2011 to actually permit things, I bet. :(
Mpls fluoride toxifies foods! Another issue is that city tapwater is fluoridated, which means that the disgusting toxic additive will accumulate in vegetables! What happens to veggies when they get this toxic crud into their cells? Mpls has either Fluorosilicic acid or Sodium fluorosilicate added... the city budget is trashed & they're going to make layoffs. Hey City: Quit fluoridating! Damn state mandate! One idea: call a special session to suspend as many mandates as possible :-|
Urban agriculture plan: ci.minneapolis.mn.us/cped/urban_ag_plan.asp // main page: ci.minneapolis.mn.us/dhfs/homegrown-home.asp
city notices on local food: ci.minneapolis.mn.us/dhfs/homegrown_news.asp
the major story on it by Rebekah Rentzel: http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2011/07/29/chickens-move-minneapolis about Growing Lots Urban Farm in Seward by Hiawatha & Sisters Camelot which is also growing now. There's a pretty good community food effort rolling along -- can't find a good map of this stuff around though.