jiroemon1897 posted:

I saw a guy in Walmart today with red SS bolts tattooed on his leg. He had the military bro getup on, so probably """not""" a Nazi, but instead the classic LF meme favorite Scout Sniper (Schutzstaffel). Lmao

curt schilling believes that shit

See it's ignorance like this that spreads, and makes people more stupid. You do know the "SS" in this picture stood for "Scout Snipers" right? I mean you at least did a SMIDGEN of research? Didn't think so.

— Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) June 20, 2018

Major General James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, was scathing of those who suggested a wedding party had been hit. "How many people go to the middle of the desert ... to hold a wedding 80 miles (130km) from the nearest civilisation? These were more than two dozen military-age males. Let's not be naive."

When reporters asked him about footage on Arabic television of a child's body being lowered into a grave, he replied: "I have not seen the pictures but bad things happen in wars. I don't have to apologise for the conduct of my men."

thank you for your service, you detestable piece of shit

n a recent rainy day, farmer Allen Druffel stands outside a silo shuffling his feet in the gravel. This co-op bin is where he stores his dried garbanzo beans in the tiny town of Colton, Wash. The place should be busy; trucks should be loading and hauling this year's crop to markets and international ports. But midafternoon, there's just the rain.

Since farmers like Druffel brought in this year's crops, hardly any garbanzos — or chickpeas — have moved.

"Thirty to 40 percent of our total revenue is in the bin," Druffel says. "And we're not sure what we want to do with it."

And it's bad times for lentils and peas, too. In the agriculture industry, these are all called pulse crops. The largest importers of U.S. pulse crops have slapped tariffs on them, and they've been sitting in silos ever since.

Bitter bumper

The real trouble started early this year, with the U.S. pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Then came President Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs. China and India are the two largest buyers of American garbanzos, peas and lentils, and those exports have all but stopped. Other countries are holding off on buying them, too, while the prices are unstable.

Druffel saw the market drop only when it was too late — after he had already planted the crop in the spring, and then again after harvest.

"It was a bit of a roller coaster," Druffel says. "It was one of the best crops we've ever harvested. And then to see the pricing take a 40 to 60 percent fall is really unfortunate. If you're talking real numbers, in February of 2018 I sold chickpeas for 50 cents a pound — and today they're trading at 18 cents a pound."

Dirk Hammond is an honest-to-goodness bean counter. He does the accounting at George F. Brocke & Sons, a pulse crop exporter in Kendrick, Idaho.

"I tell people this year, I feel like I'm the Grinch because of the prices," Hammond says. "And it's, you know, nothing that we as a company, or any grower or landlord has done — it's just a circumstance of global politics and global trade."

At Brocke & Sons, high-tech systems sift through the harvest, sorting out the chaff and debris and packaging the pulse crops for shipment around the world. In the deafening facility, robots whiz and whirl, stacking hefty bags of garbanzo beans on wooden pallets.

To describe this as a bad year for export markets is a gross understatement — this has been a real catastrophe.

Tim McGreevy, American Pulse Association

Hammond says this year's pulse crops were nearly busting out of the bins. Farmers had plenty of moisture for their dryland or nonirrigated crops. So they had really great quality and yields. And across the nation, farmers planted more garbanzos than ever before — increasing the acres grown from about 600,000 acres to 800,000.

"Real catastrophe"

Down the road in Moscow, Idaho, Tim McGreevy is the head of the American Pulse Association. He represents pulse crop growers across the country.

In the near 25 years he has held the job, McGreevy says he has never seen such a tough market. He estimates his pulse growers have lost $500 million so far.

"To describe this as a bad year for export markets is a gross understatement — this has been a real catastrophe," McGreevy says.

And if markets don't reopen real soon, it is going to get a lot worse for farmers and processors.

So far, pulse farmers haven't been awarded much in the way of government payments or help. There are federal loans — and some farmers will have to take them to keep operating as they hold on to their crops, hoping for better prices by spring.

In January and February it's the bankers who will largely decide farmers' fates. Most farms have to borrow operating cash for each coming year to buy things like fuel, seeds and chemical fertilizer.

Right now, it's a question of what to plant to make those costs back. Not much in dryland is making money right now. Prices are at or below cost of production in this area for wheat, barley, rapeseed, lentils, garbs and peas.

"There's not a lot to run right now, that is the absolute truth," McGreevy says.

McGreevy says older farmers might decide to just quit before the next go-round. But young farmers might be giving up the keys to the farm if things don't turn around in a matter of months.

"Young farmers generally have a lot more debt that they are assuming as they are just starting off in their careers," he says. "If they are purchasing any property, with prices that we are seeing right now, it's very difficult to cash flow that."

On farmer Allen Druffel's remote spread, the dirty-white sky is indistinguishable from the earth. Just a 5 o'clock shadow of wheat stubble bristles out of the snow. Druffel tries to brush off this year's disappointment and his family's risk.

"No, it doesn't bother me," Druffel says in a low voice. "It's the game we chose to play. I do it 'cause I love it."

Pressed a bit more, Druffel smiles. Through welling tears, he reluctantly admits:

"Oh, it hits home."

Same story was being told about soybeans a few months ago, except soybeans are delicate and can't be siloed, they were being rolled up in 100-meter long tarps and left to sit outside in the hopes they wouldn't rot. (They did, afaik)

Commodity meat supplies are similarly glutted from lack of an export market. Meat is being dumped on the US retail market at a 40% discount because the cold storage facilities are full. The low prices at the supermarket from basically free meat and unlimited grain stores are probably helping disguise the actual economic conditions for a lot of people because at least right now food is affordable. Until the glut is cleared and everyone finds out how many farms fold or cut production next year.

Crops and farms always fail somewhere and finding a broke farmer for an aw shucks story is the easiest thing in rural journalism but the stories the past 2-3 years have been more that the older family and small farms were already all wiped out long ago when no one gave a shit and now the failures are the consolidated megafarms which replaced them, and entire industries which anchor regional rural economies.

The upcoming wave of failures in the american export commodity farming industry is going to directly cause massive starvatio in the third world nations that have had their food systems taken away from them by imperialism.