The attached photo shows the awesome and terrible sight of a dust storm rolling into Saskatoon on May 29, 2001 and the graphic below shows the extent of the drought on the Praries. The situation is equally severe in the Western half of the American plains (for more info and links to graphs you can follow the links on this page.) I post this information because I have become convinced, after seeing the dust bowl story chucked into the trash can at the UK IndyMedia site, that apparently people have no conception of just how grave and serious the events transpiring here are, and what the terrible social consequences of this unmitigated disaster are really going to be...So I attempt to clarify a few points here...

The snap shots were made with a cheap digital camera and show a dust storm rolling into Saskatoon on the evening of May 29, 2002. Such a thing has to be seen to be believed. The horizon literally disappears into dark grey murk, and visibility can be so severely reduced that houses at the end of the block become invisible. (That, unfortunately, is my thumb in the upper left corner of the one picture.) Apparently there have been three other dust storms this week, but this is the only one I saw approaching and managed to snap with the camera.

The major American media is ignoring the drought story, as one would expect, even though it is severe, and the fire services said in a recent report that this could be very well be the most severe summer for fires, which one would expect now that things are starting to heat up...The CBC is doing a more responsible job, and not just ignoring the story, and has a report on the fire situation which is also a result of the drought. CONKLIN, ALTA. - Firefighters warn that the massive blaze burning out of control in northern Alberta may get worse. Officials say strong winds and dry weather conditions are fuelling the fire. They say it may burn for months.


I have pages of Related links to drought resources which are on the Drought Watch page ... also see the page Dustbowl - Dirty 30s revisited


The bottom graphic shows the state of the drought on the Praries..Literally NOTHING will grow this year, it is just that bad...


In addition to being a disaster (as it was called last year, perhaps the worst drought in history, and this year is even worse) this drought also has social consequences. For years massive surpluses of food (there is no food shortage) have driven prices below the cost of production or just barely above it, and this is resulting in the emergence of more and more large corporate farms, where farmers who once owned land now work as feudal serfs...now that farmers won't hardly be able to make a dime, which is even worse than the low commodity prices of recent years, one can imagine the coming wave of bankrupt farmers, the foreclosures by banks, the increasing concentration of land ownership, the return of the feudal estate as the primary method of food production, which, together with the drive to 'genetically engineer food' (which is not going to 'feed the hungry', as propaganda suggests, since the hungry could be fed with the surplus which now exists, but is only going to patent the food supply, thus tightening control even more) well all this comes together to spell a multiple disaster with profound social consequences for everyone...Furthermore, you can not destroy the economy of the west, which is dependant on those farmers, without it having ramifications throughout the whole economy, which is why the story is not given play on the major American media (and is also why Wall Street has been so disturbed lately, in case you were wondering what is causing all those precipitous drops, but then there is nothing like good information to put a story into context, now is there)

This is more than a passing story of a passing drought, but something PROFOUND is happening here...in addition most people remember the dirty 30s as the defining event of their lives...they were never the same after living through those times and indeed no one can even think of the 30s without thinking of the disaster so that all the other news stories of that decade pale into insignificance and the 30s are welded together with the words 'dirty' (and the hardship also led to the rise of the Nazis - people are predictable in their responses turning to extremism during extreme times - given that we already have Nazi legislation in place the parallels are very disturbing... The parallels between current 'anti - terrorism legislation' and the Nazis 'anti -terrorism legistlation' of the dirty 30s (which were dirty in more ways than one, in otherwords)...

The Nazi anti-terrorism bill

It is possible that new US farm bill is intended to address this drought threat without actually admitting that it is addressing the drought threat (for political reasons) ... with the land completely ruined it would then be possible for large multinational food giants to buy dustbowl land for next to nothing and just hold onto it, they would think, until it becomes worth something again, a very profitable investment ... The consequences of what is happening here should not be underestimated...You might also want to study the activities of the protest movements during the 30s, the use of brutal methods to suppress them as hardship increased their ranks among the middle classes...lots to consider here and this is a story that will not go away, neither will it be ignored, but rather the repurcussions have only begun to be felt, as this threatens to change our lives in very significant and permanent ways, not the least at the food counter, where you will buy feudal products (whether you like it or not) produced by serfs (you do have to eat, remember) which are patented (the real motivation for genetically modifying foods)...granted this was slowly taking place before, as I described above but after this disaster takes hold, watch it accelerate and events spin out of anyones control...you might also recall how during the dirty thirties there was a wave of corporate concentration as assets were snapped up on the cheap, the most profitable way to do it after all, so those concerned about 'globalization' have even more to be concerned about now as previous trends become amplified and move forward with great impetus...you might also keep in mind that the drought in the thirties didn't reach rock bottom for several years, and neither did the bankrupticies and joblessness, it inched forward month after month, year after year, as the effects rippled through economy, finally hitting rock bottom in the middle of the thirties, so we haven't seen the last of the effects of this particular disaster yet...far from it..