In April 1954, just less than a year after her royal coronation, Queen Elizabeth II stepped off the SS Gothic into the only Arab territory to ever become a colony of the British Empire, Aden.
Exposing a Nearly Invisible Conspiracy to Control the World’s Food and Water
Gabriela Cowperthwaite uncovers a massive global scheme to gobble up resources, pairing with the Center for Investigative Reporting to bring these shadowy operations to light.
You’ve heard the expression, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” Well, The Grab makes the case that society had best brace itself for disorder, since certain parties are gobbling up the world’s food and water resources while the rest of us are distracted by other things. Produced in association with the Center for Investigative Reporting, Blackfish director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s astonishing, eye-opening doc hits us with the idea that the next world war won’t be fought over ideology, oil or border disputes, but basic resources like meat, wheat and water, none of which should be taken for granted.
Experts call this field “food security,” and the entire system is more fragile than it looks. World populations are climbing while water resources are dwindling, which has led countries such as Saudi Arabia and China to seek farmland on other continents. Among its myriad examples, The Grab focuses on a 15-square-mile expanse in La Paz, Ariz., an arid desert locale where there’s no limit to the amount of water landowners can pump from the aquifers. Arizona’s policy of unrestricted access means Saudi investors can legally tap into the water table to grow fields of hay, which will be shipped home to feed their cattle, even if it means draining the wells of local farmers in the process.
It’s the same principle described at the end of There Will Be Blood, when a triumphant Daniel Day-Lewis crows, “I drink your milkshake!” Only now, it’s H2O, not oil, that’s at stake. Versions of the same thing are already happening all over the world (not that Americans should pretend for a second that they’re not among the culprits of the global resource snatch). A good part of what makes The Grab so alarming is the reminder of what’s being done to satisfy your own consumer comfort.
For years, the West had a virtual monopoly on this phenomenon: Colonialism has historically been less about taking care of foreign peoples than about taking control of their resources. And now, other countries — like fast-growing China — are looking for a piece of the proverbial pie. The Grab points to the Great Chinese Famine and the Arab Spring as examples of shortfalls that reshaped nations, and suggests that world leaders must anticipate their people’s food and water needs if they hope to stay in power.
Want to understand the reason Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine? Look no further than the besieged country’s status as supplier of 29% of the global wheat trade. Russia already took a big bite of the country in 2014, to which Ukraine responded by cutting off water to Crimea. It’s no coincidence that Russian forces occupied the canal on day one of their latest offensive, destroying the dam blocking water from the Dnieper River. (Not upset enough about Putin? Just wait’ll you hear why global warming is a good thing to a country that sees usable ranch land under areas of ice.)
Simply repeating the film’s points makes one sound like some kind of conspiracy nut, and yet, the truth is outrageous — like the way Blackwater founder Erik Prince turned his attention to a new venture, Frontier Resources Group. Operating like mercenaries, FRG reps have been gobbling up fields and forests in Zambia, driving poor villagers out of their homes, so their land can be used to feed distant regions.
The big picture here is so elusive and vast that it helps Cowperthwaite to have a few intrepid investigators to follow, letting their research drive the shape of the film (which, when you unpack it, must have been one hell of a task to structure). Her main character is CIR sleuth Nate Halverson, a tenacious journalist who broke enough of these stories that he now understands how they connect.
Halverson explains how looking into the acquisition of Smithfield Foods (a livestock company responsible for one in four American pigs) by a state-funded Chinese company led straight back to President Xi Jinping’s national strategy. All these revelations sound sinister, playing on audiences’ fears of the other without seriously challenging the degree to which their own governments do the same. It’s not fair, but those with money have always been in a position to buy mines, fields and whatever means they need to transport those resources away from where they’re harvested. So what’s new here?
On one hand, all this harvesting is being done in plain sight; on the other, there’s enormous secrecy about how companies (many of them private-looking fronts for government interests, deceptively hidden behind layers of offshore accounts) are going about the actual pillaging — and the public deserves to know. Untangling those arrangements is what Halverson and fellow investigators Mallory Newman and Emma C. Schwartz have been focused on, playing cloak and dagger as the paranoia mounts (as when they disable the camera and internet functions on a computer terminal before accessing “the trove,” a massive leak of damning insider data).
There’s so much at stake in this arena that one half expects these journalist heroes to be silenced along the way. For that reason, The Grab unspools like a thriller in one sense and a dystopian science fiction movie in another. The entire situation might be incredibly depressing were it not for a few heroes Halverson identifies along the way, like Brigadier Siachitema, or “Brig,” a Zambian human rights lawyer who takes the case of those displaced by FRG. Accountability is the first step, and to that end, The Grab doesn’t entirely let its audience off the hook. We are what we eat, after all, and the more responsibly sourced our food, the better we can all feel about ourselves.
Couldn't find a good picture of FRG, but I did find this video:
Erik Prince, Frontier Resource Group: Investing in battery metals
3,350 views Apr 28, 2019
121 Mining Investment TV
This video has been up for 3 years and has only gotten 3,000 views. Most media stories like to present Erik Prince as a villain. I'm beginning to think he might be one guy who can cut through the bullshit. Frontier Resources Group is an investment firm. They probably have a nondescript office somewhere. Frontier Services Group seems to be the force that gets things done.
I am not quite sure what JM is referring to. He might be talking about Europe waging economic warfare against Russia, or maybe he's talking about a battle within the catholic church. I'm just not real clear. But the Siege of Melos is a history lesson worth repeating. Return of Kings has a good synopsis.
Since I started using playlists, I'm getting to know some of the tunes there. You hear a tune a couple- three times and you might think it's a cool tune and then not think about it any more until you find it coming through air to you. But you hear a tune a couple dozen times and it starts to worm its way into your brain you get to feel like you really know it, you know man? Whatever.
I've been listening to Choctaw Bingo and the lyrics about Uncle Slayton are kind of interesting. First we have the verse that introduces him:
Uncle Slayton's got his Texan pride
Back in the thickets with his Asian bride
He's got a Airstream trailer and a Holstein cow
He still makes whiskey 'cause he still knows how
He plats that Choctaw bingo every Friday night
You know he had to leave Texas but he won't say why
He owns a quarter section up by Lake Eufala
Caught a great big ol' blue cat on a driftin' jug line
Sells his hardwood timber to the shipping mill
Cooks that crystal meth because the shine don't sell
He cooks that crystal meth because the shine don't sell
You know he likes his money he don't mind the smell
And a bit later he gets mentioned again:
And some surplus tracers for that old BAR of Slayton's
Here's the closer:
Uncle Slayton's got his Texan pride
Back in the thickets with his Asian bride
He's cut that corner pasture into acre lots'
He sells 'em owner financed
Strictly to them that's got no kind of credit 'Cause he knows they're slackers
When they miss that payment
Then he takes it back
He plays that Choctaw Bingo every Friday night
Drinks that Johnny Walker at that Club 69
So we get the idea that he's a tough old bird and knows how to make some money from land, lumber and drugs. Golly gee, that sounds a whole like ol' Milton Thump from Winter's Bone. You don't see much of him in the show, but he was in charge. Everyone that we see in the show are just his minions.
Here's the whole tune if you are interested.
Strap them kids in
Give 'em a little bit of vodka in a cherry coke
We're going to Oklahoma to the family reunion for the first time in years
It's up at uncle Slayton's cause he's getting on in years
You know he no longer travels but he's still pretty spry
He's not much on talking and he's just too mean to die
And they'll be comin' down from Kansas
and from west Arkansas
It'll be one great big old party like you never saw
Uncle Slayton's got his Texan pride
Back in the thickets with his Asian bride
He's got a Airstream trailer and a Holstein cow
He still makes whiskey 'cause he still knows how
He plats that Choctaw bingo every Friday night
You know he had to leave Texas but he won't say why
He owns a quarter section up by Lake Eufala
Caught a great big ol' blue cat on a driftin' jug line
Sells his hardwood timber to the shipping mill
Cooks that crystal meth because the shine don't sell
He cooks that crystal meth because the shine don't sell
You know he likes his money he don't mind the smell
My cousin Roscoe Slayton's oldest boy from his second marriage up in Illinois
He was raised in East St. Louis by his momma's people
Where they do things different
Thought he'd just come on down
He was going to Dallas Texas in a semi truck called from that big McDonald's
You know the one they built up on that great big ol' bridge
Across the Will Rogers Turnpike
Took the Big Cabin exit stopped and bought a couple of cartons of cigarettes
At that Indian Smoke Shop with the big neon smoke rings
In the Cherokee Nation hit Muskogee late that night
Somebody ran a stoplight at the Shawnee Bypass
Roscoe tried to miss 'em but he didn't quite
Bob and Mae come up from little town
Way down by lake Texoma where he coaches football
They were two A champions now for two years running
But he says they won't be this year no they won't be this year
And he stopped off in Tushka at that "Pop's Knife and Gun" place
Bought a SKS rifle and a couple a full cases of that steel core ammo
With the berdan primers from some East bloc nation that no longer needs 'em
And a Desert Eagle that's one great big ol' pistol
I mean .50 caliber made by badass Hebrews
And some surplus tracers for that old BAR of Slayton's
Soon as it gets dark we're gonna have us a time
We're gonna have us a time
Ruth Ann and Lynn come down from Baxter Springs
That's one hell raisin' town way up in Southeastern Kansas
Got a biker bar next to the lingerie store
That's got them Rolling Stones lips up there where everyone can see 'em
And they burn all night you know they burn all night you know they burn all night
Ruth Ann and Lynn they wear them cut off britches and those skinny little halters
And they're second cousins to me
Man I don't care I want to get between 'em
With a great big ol' hard on like a old bois d' arc fence post
You could hang a pipe rail gait from
Do some twisted sisters 'til the cows come home
And we'd be havin' us a time
Uncle Slayton's got his Texan pride
Back in the thickets with his Asian bride
He's cut that corner pasture into acre lots'
He sells 'em owner financed
Strictly to them that's got no kind of credit 'Cause he knows they're slackers
When they miss that payment
Then he takes it back
He plays that Choctaw Bingo every Friday night
Drinks that Johnny Walker at that Club 69
We're gonna strap them kids in give 'em a little bit o' Benadryl
And a cherry coke we're goin' to Oklahoma Gonna have us a time
Most of Scotland's coal in the sixteenth century was mined close to the Firth of Forth and transported by sea. Shipping the coal from the Moat pit at Culross, Fife, was easy because one of its shafts emerged on an artificial island on the foreshore. Boats could come alongside to load directly from it.
This remarkable innovation was developed by Sir George Bruce of Carnock in 1590. Sea water, which leaked constantly into the pit, was drained by a horse-driven chain of buckets and emptied back into the sea. The pit was flooded in a violent storm in 1625 and abandoned.
TEARING APART my new Ford Lightning electric truck made my mechanic WANT TO RETIRE?!?!
Hoovies Garage
Electric cars are conceptually very simple - a battery, a dial to controller the voltage and a motor to drive the wheels. In actuality they are very complicated. Now most of the complicated bits don't have any moving parts so there won't be any mechanical wear, but even the best electronic components sometimes fail for no apparent reason. Ford or some tool vendor probably has a tool to diagnose any problem, should one arise. The solution will undoubtedly be to replace the defective component, and it will very likely be a very expensive component.
Then there is the cooling system that seems to to be connected to everything. As long as it doesn't spring any leaks, and it shouldn't, you should be fine.
All this reminds me of the story about the guy who bought a used electric car for around $10K, drove it for a year or two and then the battery died. Replacing the battery was going to run $14K, if you could find one, but as far as the dealer was concerned, they were obsolete and no longer available.
If you are just driving around town, and you can plug your car in every night to charge, I can see that an electric car could make your life a little easier. But I am afraid they are going to be like all the other modern electronic gadgets - disposable. Use it until it breaks, but when it breaks it's not going to worth fixing it. Just throw it away and buy a new one.
The biggest problem with electric cars is the same problem we have with bicyclists and vegans - people who believe in them won't quit telling you how great they are.
