When the Riots Begin

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Homework assignment for the Singaporean:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_riots

The main targets of that riot were small businesses and supermarkets. Few if any private houses were looted. Some motorists were beaten senseless, but it is unknown whether being armed would have helped them. The main cause of the next riot will likely be either IOUs issued in place of welfare checks (probably in California) or increasing heavy handedness by police and a desire to write lots of traffic violation tickets in an attempt to shore up government revenues. Personally, I do hope that society collapses, for out of the flames will be born a better world.

I don't know what Singapore's media is saying about the budget crisis in California, but if your media is anything like ours, they're hyping it for all the lurid potential. Most inner city kids do not attend school, or attend irregularly. Our ghetto populations don't particularly value an education. A school shutdown may cause a crime spike in well off areas as bored rich kids occupy their time by committing petty crimes. You can expect a spike in teen births nine months later, too.

Some Americans are discussing potential street rebellions by the former middle class, who have been destroyed by the collapse. In addition, they are being taxed more and more, and shoved to the margins. America hasn't had a "white riot" since the aftermath of our revolution over 200 years ago, but that may change. IMO the whites need to organize so that they are capable of sustaining an Iraq style insurgency.

The Californian school budget imbroglio is a sensitive issue, fraught with obvious but carefully hidden racist undertones that run deep. To force the poorest in any community to live within their means by taking away needed social services smacks of the sort of cruelty that only the vindictive rich could dream up. But I do understand the effect that higher taxation of any sort would have on an already fragile state economy - it would push a lot of small businesses, the backbone of any economy, over the edge and into the abyss of bankruptcy. However, school is not only where these underprivileged kids have a shot at building better lives, but more importantly, it is also where America has a chance to impart the language and values of society to its new citizens. Without which you will have a growing number of ‘non-American’ citizens living and reproducing in America.

The situation in China is difficult, especially in areas like Tibet and Xinjiang where foreign activists have taken an interest and where for historical reasons the peoples of these areas form a necessary though unwilling component of China. But China is not going to collapse. In fact, despite widespread local corruption, the Chinese government enjoys a large degree of support and is widely accepted as legitimate. Contrary to what you read in and hear from the American media, the Chinese government does strive and has to a great measure met the aspirations of its citizens. Would a poor Latino kid whose brother is serving his country in Iraq or Afghanistan but who finds himself squeezed out of school feel the same way? Is a man who is forced to move his family from one disgusting motel to the next accept the justness of his present predicament?

The riots probably will not happen this summer. I would say wait a winter, let the buggers freeze and then they will get angry. Bad things will start to happen and word gets around. Fear, desolation and finally rage sets in. Groups like MS 13 will go on a recruiting spree later this year as lots of young people become available. Once they blood in, these kids will never leave.

Honestly, the AK-47 is a good bet. You would also want to get at least 200 rounds of ammunition. You might also want to get an emergency kit ready.

The average low temperatures in the coldest months (December/January) in Los Angeles is 9 degrees Celcius/47.8 degrees Fahrenheit. It occasionally drops a bit below the frost mark, but is usually up to a nicer temperature by 10 or 11 each morning. I know people in LA that wear shorts year round.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles#Climate

Dude, America is a lot bigger than California. California is a lot bigger than Los Angeles. And it is stupid even for a Californian to wear shorts when the temperature is 10 degrees Celcius.

That was the 2004 map. Maybe the Singaporan should focus less on the shortcomings of the US and more on why his own country still has torture enacted into its legal code, too...

I see you're quick to defend the Chinese Communists and bash America. How cute. Hu Jintao loves ya, baby!

I see you're unfamiliar with the state of American schools. I've worked in an American school district, and the vast majority of public schools are little more than glorified babysitting. 30 minutes of each 60 minute class period is spent at computers watching rap videos on Yahoo. Fridays are movie days, usually cheap, kid friendly movies like Beethoven (not the composer, it's actually about a huge dog that gets into various situations and is bailed out by kids) and Monster House, a cartoon about a spirit possessed old house that "eats" kids.

Most American kids long ago gave up on bettering themselves. They look forward to the streets because that's all they know. I've seen it, you haven't. Singapore is a vastly different culture. You guys value education. Most Americans don't. Our top scientists come from places like Singapore, Japan, and India. The rich, of course, have their own privately run schools, where they don't have to mix with the unwashed, where they are taught real knowledge. Those schools are not accessible to the average American. We get movies and music videos on school equipment, and the occasional lecture.

America already has great numbers of "non-Americans", even whites, since schools long ago gave up trying to civilize and Americanize kids. Most Americans have zero clue what is in our founding documents. One common error is mixing Thomas Jefferson with Karl Marx. If you search long enough on Youtube, you can find man-on-the-street interviews done by an American comedian named Jay Leno, they are called "Jaywalking". Leno asks ordinary Americans basic questions about American history and government, only to get blank stares and random guesses. Americans are conversely well schooled in pop culture, however. One time Leno went to an American public university and interviewed graduates on their graduation day, and got the same blank stares. America is not Singapore, American education is all about more salary for less work for teachers and administrators. American educators long ago jettisoned high minded ideals about teaching the fundamentals of American civilization.

Taxes are being drastically hiked in both overt and covert ways. That is a far more likely source of unrest. Many who are struggling will be pushed over the edge. Traffic tickets in the US are so expensive-several hundred dollars a pop-that a handful can send a poor person into financial purgatory. Couple that with the fact that the poor are targeted by police, and you have a potential riot.

The freeze zones are in even worse shape than LA-in Chicago and Philadelphia, where it DOES get cold, most people have given up trying to better themselves. They survive day to day by dealing drugs and the women sell their bodies. There are block after block of abandoned buildings. As for California, the coast, where most of the people live, is really mild, and a day of sun makes it warm. In the great inland valleys, it gets cold, but the temperature rarely drops below freezing in Sacramento or Stockton. Outlying farming areas get colder, but the immigrant farmworkers already live in dreadful conditions, and few kids bother to break out of the rural ghettos. You really don't have a clue do you. You likely haven't been outside of Singapore and China, where the culture is 180 degrees from America.

America already HAS millions of poor people with no skills and no education who really don't give a sh*t anymore. It has for decades. The former middle class is really hurting though. You want a riot, look to the guy who has lost his 6 bedroom suburban house, sold all his luxury goods, and is now living in a motel. He's the one we need to be worried about, since he's fallen so far so fast that he doesn't view life as worth living anymore. The poor have barely felt the crisis, since their lives were so bad to begin with. Few even have a bank account, they use storefront check cashing services to cash their meager welfare and pay checks, and for high interest loans. Their supermarkets have always had rotten food. They have always been surrounded by crime. You take a formerly middle class family from a once rich suburb, and force them to live in a ghetto motel and dodge criminals, they will eventually riot, freeze or no freeze.

That's another good point - people in other "have" countries really don't get how bad poverty is in the US - it's not as bad as the 3rd world, but it's way worse than anything in W. Europe, Canada, Australia or the well-to-do Asian countries.

Yes, I am aware of that - I have driven to the four corners of the continental US, and have lived in several regions.

Your original theory focused on LA. The impoverished minority population is overwhelming concentrated in southern California.

If someone has a healthy metabolism, and is active when outdoors, there is nothing stupid about wearing shorts year round in a mild climate.


My Nostradamus predictions: the whole world is going to get bad!! What will you do in Singapore? Do you have your AK-47??

I concur...

Some peoples' opinions are also reaching a new crass height, I might add on the topic at hand.

The thing is, most tourists to the US rarely go outside the designated tourist areas. I remember reading about how most tourists to Argentina aren't allowed to go outside of the city center of Buenos Aires, so they have no clue how bad it really is there. They don't see the crumbling "conurbano" (suburbs), much less the rural areas that really haven't seen any significant economic improvement since the 1930s. In rural Argentina, many people still drive 1930s cars.

America isn't that bad, but you'll find plenty of rattletrap old 1980s cars, and smelly markets, and streets littered with garbage, and rundown old wood frame houses. And that's in California, where it's relatively wealthy. Spend some time looking at the photos of Detroit at http://www.detroityes.com/ (click on "Tour Detroit"), for a glimpse of how bad it gets in the older industrial zones. It's a real eye opener for somebody from a wealthy, autocratic country like Singapore or Hong Kong. (OK, HK is semi-autonomous, but still...)

I don't think ANYBODY from Singapore really gets it, they go and spend five years in Silicon Valley which is very wealthy and say "see, America isn't so bad". Poverty in Silicon Valley is utterly unlike poverty elsewhere-even the east side barrios are pretty spiffy, having a two bedroom house worth a million bucks will do that. They need to go to Oakland for a day or two, then if they make it out alive they can have some clue. Then go to the Hispanic city center of Stockton for a day. Then maybe they will have an inkling.

Word about the climate, i get out without a coat and i wear the same clothes as i do when inside around 10 degrees outside. Hey pezar, i once watched a doc on the poor folks of New York, some of em were living in the old abandonned tunnels of the city... T'was quite interesting. One of them had even found a pretty sneaky way to jack into a power conduit and get himself some electricity (he was living in a very constricted place.... o.O ), the guy even had a rather broken down fridge working, how 'bout that? ^^ Anyways <.<

Zeno you are right. Just google "Gerald Celente" or go to whatreallyhappened.com

I am afraid it will come down to riots, guns and death in the streets within a couple of years.

Do what you need to do.

Poverty is so bad in the U.S. that people risk their lives to come here.

ruveyn

I can say that the major problem with California schools is that they allow illegals to put their kids in them. That move means people who don't pay enough in taxes get free state services (not just education) and the schools have to cater to these kids by teaching them in their own language rather than mandating they learn English.

The cost these schools operate at to accommodate people here illegally in the first place is staggering, and other states making the same stupid moves are seeing their costs go through the roof as well.

Its been happening for a couple of decades in the LA area. A once greatly touted education system is now in rubble. Many states spend far less money per student and get better results. And, the health system is a mess. Try going to the emergency room with an actual emergency in LA.

And, with LA under-reporting its crime statistics by up to 40% its hard for an average citizen to get the full picture of the City of Angels.

The Singaporean has mentioned going to LA for film school in previous posts. I think he has done plenty of homework already.

I live in the Southeast US and we have already seen some of the effects of the economic problems in Michigan. Michigan has been hit by hard times for quite a while. Michigan gang members and criminals have been traveling outside their state, even down south to commit crimes and then take their booty back up to their home state.

If this is any indication of what happens when criminals have no one else to rob then it might be a good idea to go over some basics of home security and what to do in the case of an emergency.