to work. The government owns everything.
Now think; British Health-care...ol' ButtCrack's DeathCARE..
'just take this little white pill, granny/grandpa'
Posted on 01/01/2013 4:46:39 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
Edited on 01/01/2013 4:56:50 PM PST by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
Hard times: Eighteen-year-old prostitute Katya scours the street for work as a police car drives past in Moscow in 1991 shortly before the collapse of the USSR
These shocking pictures may look like something out of the Great Depression - but in fact they show life in the last years of the Soviet Union, less than three decades ago.
Shop shelves were often bare, it was normal to have to join a long queue if you wanted to buy groceries and many of the people looked ground down after a century of desperate poverty.
The dismal state of the USSR's economy, during a time of rapidly improving living standards in the West, was a result of its dogmatic Communist political system, which stifled free enterprise and stopped the country moving on from its feudal past.
As these images show, by the 1980s that system was close to collapse, as Mikhail Gorbachev's liberalising reforms did little more than open the door to ever louder clamours for change - and on Boxing Day 1991, just a few years after these photos were taken, the Soviet Union was finally dissolved.
A former colleague of mine with an MBA made several trips to one of the former soviet republics. He found it necessary to explain in detail just what "capitalism" is. They hadn't a clue.
Although I see parallels between what happened to the Soviet Union and what will happen to us, I see a key difference. There will be a very large proportion of the population which has seen how good things can be. Some of these people are ignorant liberals today. They just might lose some of their ignorance when it is THEIR dinner which is at issue.
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As has been played out in Marxist regimes time and again: As individuals, Marxists never believe that they will be rendered expendable in the new People’s Paradise. They will never catch a bullet in the head. They will remain among the unassailable elite. It will always be the enemy, the opposition, the other guy; what they fail to understand is that as the criteria for acceptable thought and speech narrows, they become the other guy.
The delusion that it will never happen to them is simply narcissism, a quality Marxists possess in spades.
Of course Russian leaders did have to build walls to keep citizens in because everyone grew to hate the place... A cautionary tale to our ‘leaders’....
Yet whenever we talk about a border fence the left compares it to the Berlin wall. They say the same thing about Israels defenses.
They know they’re dishonest, they just don’t give a rip.
Coming soon to your town! And the lines won’t be anywhere near as calm or the people standing in them near as patient.
Look what is happening right before your eyes and take heed. There’s a Great Storm coming you can feel it.
Listen to what the bible says: A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it. NIV Proverbs 22:3
The fact is that many will not accept that a breakdown is occurring even as they watch it happening before their eyes. Why don’t they realize it? It’s caused by a condition called ‘Normalcy Bias’ a mental state people enter when facing a disaster.
It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects. This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations. The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred then it never will occur. It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.
A good article on ‘Normalcy Bias’ is on our own ChocChipCookies Blog The Survival Mom:
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2010/12/29/normalcy-bias/
And as I posted the people in these pictures have be conditioned to their plight. Standing in endless lines to in the end find little or nothing left was a way of life with them. They where a controlled people in a controlled environment and had been for decades. This is NOT true when it starts happening here. Just look at the ‘Black Friday’ violence or the brawls that break out the day of a new released basketball shoe! And this is in a land of plenty!
This was in a news story about hurricane Sandy (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2953537/posts?page=33) In darkened neighborhoods, people walked around with miner’s lamps on their foreheads and bicycle lights clipped to shoulder bags and, in at least one case, to a dog’s collar. A Manhattan handyman opened a fire hydrant so people could collect water to flush toilets. “You can clearly tell at the office, or even walking down the street, who has power and who doesn’t,” said Jordan Spiro, who lives in the blackout zone. “New Yorkers may not be known as the friendliest bunch, but take away their ability to shower and communicate and you’ll see how disgruntled they can get.”
Sound familiar? Yes it’s petty much that favorite quote of mine that some have complained about:”Let me tell you something about humans, nephew: They’re a wonderful, friendly people - as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working.” “But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those friendly, intelligent, wonderful people...will become as nasty and as violent as the most blood-thirsty klingon.” Quark from: The Siege of AR-558 (#7.8)” (1998)
You either prepare and stand on your own beholden to no one or you become dependent on others to provide your basic needs and become their ‘serf’. Me I don’t want to be beholden to anyone for providing what is needed for me and mine. I certainly don’t want to have to kiss some ‘gubberment’ third class bureaucratic to try and coax some help from them, I don’t want some ‘jack booted’ thug herding me in line and telling me where to stand, sit, eat or sleep. And last but not least I don’t want to be shut up in with a bunch of ‘zombies’ and have to worry about not only trying to get basic necessities but having to fight to keep what I manage to get.
Its your choice you can prep or you can stand around on a bridge waiting for FEMA to bring you a bottle of water, a MRE, a warm blanket and a kiss for your boo-boo and maybe you can even get your picture as you stand there on the national news.
For those who are just starting or are old hands at prepping you may find my Preparedness Manual helpful. You can download it at:
http://tomeaker.com/kart/Preparedness1j.pdf NOTE! THIS IS A FREE DOWNLOAD. I DO NOT MAKE ONE CENT OFF MY PREPAREDNESS MANUAL!
For those of you who haven’t started already it’s time to prepare almost past time maybe. You needed to be stocking up on food guns, ammo, basic household supplies like soap, papergoods, cleaning supplies, good sturdy clothes including extra socks, underwear and extra shoes and boots, a extra couple changes of oil and filters for your car, tools, things you buy everyday start buying two and put one up.
As the LDS say “When the emergency is upon us the time for preparedness has past.”
Again I like to recomend FReeper’s ChocoChipCookie Blog The Survival Mom (Please Blog Police let this one slide!) Where you can get lots of useful information like:
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2011/11/20/8-morale-boosters-for-any-worst-case-scenario/
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2010/02/02/survival-priorities-the-rule-of-three/
And More
Also there is Ferfal’s Blog a survivor of Argentina’s first collapse:
And there is Selco’s Blog a Bosnian War survivor at:
“There is no greater disaster than to underestimate danger. Underestimation can be fatal.”
Whaa...no smiles in those pics? I thought hope n change came with lots of smiles...and where’s the unicorns and skittles? I’m confused....
very few thin people. Big difference from the Depression era pictures.
***4) Her mom came with her. The first time they entered a supermarket, her mom started screaming. Manager, et al came over to see what was the matter. Mom was overwhelmed at all the food available and freaked out..***
Same thing almost happened here when a Russian exchange student first visited Walmart.
I think I'll stick with that. ;)
I just renewed my oath, looking at that picture.
/johnny
It sucked wicked in ‘76, but we still managed to have fun. We hauled grain in cleaned-up tankers to Novorosisk (Caucasis) and Poti(Georgia)under the Nixon Grain Deal.
Everything was for sale, and the price was cheap.
Remember ‘Leggs’ in the eggs? They were good as gold for bartering/gifting. I had a case, and my pal spoke fluent Russian.
The old devushka at the gate? Pack of Wrigleys made her year!
Even the one who giving a little bit of leg couldn’t entice you? ;-)
One thing we were taught 60 years ago in school on the high plains was how to make a cup out of a sheet of paper.
I’ve never forgot.
Things weren’t much better in the soviet union in he best of times.
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That’s just what I was thinking. The only time in my lifetime that I saw empty shelves and lines was during the Nixon/Carter era price controls, and long lines at the filling stations.
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