Author Topic: PanFa War; Supply Chain, and Sabotage of Food Supply  (Read 33969 times)

Crafty_Dog

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STratfor: Sri Lanka
« Reply #150 on: July 19, 2022, 09:38:56 AM »
MY themes abound here:
===========================

Why What Happens Next in Sri Lanka May Be More Dangerous
undefined and Director of Analysis at RANE
Sam Lichtenstein
Director of Analysis at RANE, Stratfor
11 MIN READJul 19, 2022 | 14:51 GMT





Opposition activists outside Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's private residence on June 22, 2022, in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Opposition activists outside Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's private residence on June 22, 2022, in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

(ISHARA S. KODIKARA/AFP via Getty Images)

It is hard not to sympathize with the people of Sri Lanka. For months, they have endured a painful economic crisis that has left the country of 22 million people with widespread shortages of electricity, food, fuel, medicines and other basic necessities. Many of these need to be imported, but the country is flat broke. Perhaps even more frustratingly, the main reason for the crisis — years of corruption, mismanagement and consolidation of power by a small elite led by the Rajapaksa family — is largely to blame. Therefore, seeing protesters, who have endured violent crackdowns on their demonstrations, finally succeed in forcing President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign last week can only naturally elicit a feeling that he had received his comeuppance. His brother, Mahinda, who served as prime minister, already stepped down under public pressure in May, while their third brother, Basil, left his post as finance minister in April.

Nonetheless, despite this feeling of a near-term victory for the common people, there are also a variety of reasons why what has transpired in Sri Lanka augurs poorly for the country's future internal security and stability. While not discounting the well-placed frustration of average Sri Lankans, as analysts we need to think critically about the long-term consequences of these popular outbursts. Sri Lanka will by no means be the last country to witness what amounts to a grassroots uprising, making it incumbent upon us to consider what happens next.

What Goes Around, Comes Around

My colleagues have done an excellent job covering what initially began as an economic crisis that quickly spiraled into a political and security one. To be sure, the Rajapaksa government is not wholly to blame for the sad state of the country. Even before Gotabaya and Mahinda came to power in November 2019, the Easter terrorist bombings in April of that year devastated tourism, a key source of employment and foreign exchange, while the onset of the global pandemic in early 2020 wrecked economic havoc like that seen in every country.

But even if the country's leaders cannot be blamed personally for these events, they still compounded these problems with a variety of missteps that turned challenges into a full-blown economic emergency. Upon taking office at the end of 2019, the Gotabaya administration indulged in populism by undertaking the largest tax cuts in the country's history, despite being woefully short of funds. Tragically, these were needed more than ever to cover growing foreign debt repayments and stimulate economic activity after tourism plummeted following the terrorist attacks earlier in the year. Then, in April 2021, just as tourism was beginning to return as the country slowly reopened, the government without warning banned the import of chemical fertilizers in a quixotic move to transition the country toward organic farming.

The upshot of these twin policies was entirely predictable but utterly tragic: government revenue (and reserves) plummeted, while food production collapsed and prices shot up. This has left the government wholly unable to respond effectively to the global reverberations of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, namely, a sharp uptick in global prices already on an upward trajectory. Despite rising food insecurity, poverty and unemployment, the government had little ability to borrow (its debt having been downgraded) and a minuscule reserve of foreign exchange it could use to fund imports to offset these challenges. This has meant a vicious cycle of widespread shortages of basic necessities causing major economic damage and in turn forcing the government to run down its scarce reserves, thereby continuing the cycle. Even though the government reversed the chemical fertilizer ban in late 2021 and its massive tax cuts earlier this year, the damage was done and it was simply too little, too late.

While the economic outlook worsened, popular frustration turned into outright anger, with much directed squarely at the Rajapaksas, who were widely seen as corrupt and inept. This was not only because they presided over the current crisis, but also because they have long dominated Sri Lankan politics. Prior to a brief interlude between 2015-2019 when the opposition was in power, Mahinda served as president from 2005-2015. While foreign investment poured into the country and the economy grew significantly during his tenure, this was primarily due to large-scale infrastructure projects that sent the country's foreign debt soaring, provided comparatively few returns on investment and were beset with corruption in which elites connected to the Rajapaksas were widely seen as the prime beneficiaries. Both between 2005-2015 and upon reassuming power in November 2019, the Rajapaksas also consolidated government authorities in the executive branch, weakened rival centers of governmental power, sidelined political rivals, and put a lid on public dissent.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, by March 2022 when the first major protests broke out in which demonstrators explicitly demanded that the Rajapaksas step down, whatever popular goodwill the family once possessed had largely eroded. Any remaining support then quickly collapsed as authorities portrayed the demonstrators — the vast majority of whom were peaceful and many of whom had previously supported the Rajapaksas — as violent agitators even as security forces cracked down, in some cases violently, on the protesters. This set the stage for what has now been months of unrest, punctuated by various futile attempts by the Rajapaksas to calm tensions, and ultimately culminating in Gotabaya fleeing the country and resigning last week after being chased out of the presidential palace by demonstrators.

Peering Over the Precipice

With that background, it is hard not to understand the protesters' rage and view their moves to storm government buildings last week as a last resort to finally force a change in government they had been demanding for months. Nonetheless, even if we can sympathize with a proverbial David vs. Goliath story, we must also consider the manifold reasons why the popular uprising raises various risks, and will undoubtedly pose future challenges.

Start with the coming days. While the process of electing a new president is certainly a necessary and positive development, it is also fraught with risk. Demonstrators have moved beyond their initial ultimatum that the Rajapaksas step down and have begun to call for more transformative political change. With no clear leader and no clear set of demands, however, it is far from guaranteed that whoever emerges as the country's next president will satisfy the popular demand for greater change. While demonstrators point to a five-point plan they released earlier this month, only one (the president's resignation) has been achieved and the others include broad ideas that, while laudable, will be hard to implement. These include inaugurating a new government "which subscribes to the economic, social and political aims and aspirations of the 'people's struggle'" and creating a "new constitution that endorses people's sovereignty". Even with the protesters' provision of some specific demands to meet those criteria, it is easy to see such topics could merely stoke further divisions or are wholly impractical. Consider, for example, the protesters' demand that a new government oversee the "cancellation of microfinance and farmers' debts" or that the new constitution endorses a "right of the people to education and health" and "eradicate racism and racial oppression." In short, protesters seem to be setting themselves up for disappointment.

These challenges are compounded by the fact that many politicians appear either too tainted by association with the Rajapaksas — notably, parliament remains dominated by members and allies of their Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna party — or too politically weak to lead a fractious polity. This suggests that street protests could continue for weeks or dissipate only to resume later this year once widespread disenchantment reemerges. Indeed, the sad truth is that whoever leads the country will still inherit a full-blown economic emergency that will require millions of Sri Lankans to suffer ongoing pain for weeks if not months to come, making further unrest likely. In this respect, the move by interim President Ranil Wickremesinghe — himself someone protesters have demanded step down — to announce another (undetailed) state of emergency in advance of presidential nominations July 19 and voting July 20 may merely serve to harden popular grievances that will once again bubble over in the future, even if it succeeds in temporarily clearing streets. This could happen sooner rather than later should Wickremesinghe become full-time president, a development that would all but certainly galvanize another round of angry street protests seeking his removal. The ballot will occur in secret and Wickremesinghe's main challenger, Dullas Alahapperuma, is from the Rajapaksa-led Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna — albeit from a different faction — and even served in the former Rajapaksa government. This also could raise protesters' concerns about the legitimacy and outcome of the election, even though Alahapperuma is backed by the main opposition party.

But no matter what happens in the immediate future, this then sets the stage for a longer-term concern: Sri Lankans have now demonstrated that a popular uprising can force the collapse of a government. While in more than one respect this is an awe-inspiring illustration of "people power," it also has a more concerning potential consequence: what if such popular pressure tactics become the norm, leaving whatever is the government of the day effectively paralyzed? There is a difference between using popular pressure tactics as a last resort and coming to rely on them whenever people are unhappy. The risk going forward will be that in a political system they see as illegitimate and unrepresentative, people may come to rely on taking to the streets as the only way to achieve anything.

This risk will be particularly salient under the assumption that whatever government takes shape in the coming days and weeks will not survive for long. It will presumably have an incredibly weak mandate and any reforms to get the economy back on track will undoubtedly prove unpopular. The next presidential election is not until 2024 and the next parliamentary one is not until 2025, though it could easily get moved up if the next president chooses after concluding that the people have lost confidence in the government. Rather than generate unity, in such a scenario early elections are just as — if not more — likely to catalyze greater division as elites jockey to protect their interests and demonstrators feud among themselves. While protesters agree that the current political system needs to change, beyond a few general demands they differ on precisely what should take its place, thereby setting up future disagreements that could play out in further unrest. This risk would be all the greater as the excitement over ousting the Rajapaksas erodes and the truly hard work of rebuilding the country begins, thereby likely exposing a range of societal fault lines.

The interests of foreign powers — most notably China and India, which have been competing for influence in Sri Lanka — must also be considered as potentially disruptive forces. Beijing will be loath to see transformative political change that would undermine its interests, while New Delhi — which has been a crucial economic lifeline for Colombo in recent weeks — will expect some form of return on its support to the country. Their interests will surely diverge and, despite what leaders in both countries say, they do not necessarily share the same goals as those of the Sri Lankan people. For a populace that just overthrew a government, any perceptions of foreign meddling would only add proverbial fuel to the fire, but Sri Lanka will also need foreign support to get itself out of the current economic crisis.

This is of course a recipe for insecurity and instability that could undermine Sri Lanka's future potential — all the more so if what has been a united popular movement splits into competing factions with different demands. Aside from the security risks this would pose, in this scenario a split and/or further aggrieved protest movement combined with political paralysis would also make it all the more challenging to secure precisely the developments that would alleviate Sri Lanka's economic crisis over the long-term, such as signing deals with foreign creditors and agreements to increase foreign investment. Tragically, this would merely help to sustain the economic hardship Sri Lankans are raging against.

Sri Lanka Today, Where Next Tomorrow?

The biggest risk, however, may not be in Sri Lanka itself. No matter what happens there, it is by no means the only country facing a combination of high inflation, low foreign currency reserves, high debt burdens and other challenges that could quickly morph from an economic crisis into a political one. Elsewhere in South Asia, Bangladesh and Pakistan (despite the latter's recent agreement with the International Monetary Fund) look vulnerable, as do plenty of other countries across the globe, ranging from El Salvador to Ghana to Laos to Tunisia. While turbulence in each of these countries would have its own unique contours, demonstrators would undoubtedly take heart from Sri Lankans' demonstration of "people power." The danger, however, is that in focusing on an immediate demand to force out an unpopular government, protesters would be unintentionally setting themselves on an uncertain and potentially dangerous new course — one in which political violence, government repression and long-term political instability and economic damage are all on the table.

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Crafty_Dog

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UN 2030 Agenda behind Farming Restrictions
« Reply #152 on: July 21, 2022, 02:16:57 PM »
Alex Newman Explains UN Agenda 2030 Behind Farming Restrictions
By Ella Kietlinska and Joshua Philipp July 20, 2022 Updated: July 20, 2022 biggersmaller Print


The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for sustainable development informs government policies to restrict farming and transform the food systems in different parts of the world, said Alex Newman, an award-winning international journalist who has covered this issue for over a decade.

The 2030 Agenda is a plan of action devised by the United Nations (U.N.) to achieve 17 sustainable development goals (SDG). The goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development were adopted by all UN member states in 2015.

Then-Secretary General of the U.N. Ban Ki-moon called the 2030 Agenda “the global declaration of interdependence,” (pdf) Newman said in a recent interview on EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program.

“In my opinion, [it] was a direct swipe at our Declaration of Independence … So instead of being independent nations, we will all be now interdependent.”

The 2030 Agenda “covers every element of human life, every element of the economy,” including global wealth redistribution not only within the nations but also among the nations, Newman commented. The Agenda “specifically says that we need to change the way that we consume and produce goods,” he added.

Goal number two on the 2030 Agenda deals specifically with food, Newman said.

In September 2021, the U.N. held the Food Systems Summit, which emphasized the need “to leverage the power of food systems” for the purpose of achieving all 17 sustainable development goals by 2030, according to a U.N. statement.

“Everyone, everywhere, must take action and work together to transform the way the world produces, consumes, and thinks about food,” the statement said.

Taking Over Farmland
The sustainable development agenda emerged in the 1970s when the United Nations tried to define it at a conference in Vancouver, Canada, in 1976. Newman said.

The conference, which was the first U.N. Conference on Human Settlements known as Habitat I, adopted the Vancouver Declaration (pdf), a report that provided recommendations for U.N. member states.

Newman quoted an excerpt from this report: “Land cannot be treated as an ordinary asset controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth, therefore contributes to social injustice.”

Newman said that, in his view, the U.N. ultimately wants to get rid of private land ownership. “We see this all over the world. This is not just happening in the Netherlands.”

He thinks that a war is taking place against farmers and ranchers, especially those who are independent or those who are not part of the system. “They want to remove small farmers, even medium farmers, from their land, and they want to bring it all under the control of these—I think there’s no other term to describe it—fascistic public-private partnerships.”

Newman noted some examples to illustrate his opinion: The Chinese regime forces peasants to move to megacities, farmers are killed in South Africa, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the United States proposed a new rule that could bankrupt small and medium farmers.

In March 2022, the SEC proposed a regulation that “would mandate publicly traded companies to report on their carbon emissions and other climate-related information,” as well as report similar information from any companies with which they do business, according to an SEC statement.

As a consequence, all companies in the business supply chain of a publicly traded entity would have to report their carbon emission and climate-related data.

U.S. Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.) led 30 lawmakers to urge SEC to repeal its proposal, calling it a “regulatory overreach.”

”Imposing regulatory overreach on farmers and ranchers falls outside of the SEC’s congressionally provided authority,” the senators said in a statement. “This substantial reporting requirement would significantly burden small, family-owned farms.”

The American Farm Bureau Federation said in a statement that the proposed rule could create “substantial costs” for farmers because they do not have teams of compliance officers or attorneys like large corporations. Moreover, it may push out of business small and medium-sized farmers and force food-processing companies to look for agricultural raw products outside of the United States, the statement asserted.

Centralizing Food Supply
1.tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI6B10I-FILEDIMAGE
People shop in a supermarket as inflation affects consumer prices in New York on June 10, 2022. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)
 “If you control the food supply, you control everything,” Newman said.

“One of the things that the communists loved to do is create scarcity and create dependents. As long as you have independent people who are able to take care of themselves, there really is no need for the government to run your life and to control everything that you do,” Newman said.

“Americans are good examples,” Newman continued. “As long as the food production is widely diffused, and it’s in the hands of independent producers, it becomes very difficult to get people to bend to your will.”

The whole idea of using food as a weapon has been a hallmark of communist regimes for 100 years, Newman explained. “It’s also been a hallmark of the very same people who are openly promoting the U.N. Agenda 2030, the sustainable development goals, and even the World Economic Forum.”

Those who contrived “the controlled demolition of our food supply … want to completely restructure it,” in order to gain total centralized control of that because it gives them absolute power over everybody under their jurisdiction, Newman said.

For example, the Chinese regime and the mega-corporations formed a public-private partnership to centralize control of the food supply, Newman said.

It’s similar to what occurred in Nazi Germany, where on paper private companies own the business and ostensibly manage their businesses, but, ultimately, the private companies will be taking their orders from the government, Newman explained.

In the United States, the ESG metrics are used to “hijack control of the business sector, of the individual companies, and put them at the service of the goals of what I call the predator class—the people behind the World Economic Forum, behind the United Nations,” Newman said. (ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance criteria that are used to evaluate companies on how compliant they are with sustainability.)

The food supply centralization is just one component of their agenda, but it is a very critical one, which along with energy and other things, allows them to control humanity, he added.

In January 2021, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the government of the Netherlands launched a new initiative called Food Innovation Hub, according to a WEF statement. The Hub, joined by several public and private sector partners, is a key platform that will use technology and innovations for food systems transformation, the statement said.

The Food Innovation Hub secured “multiyear funding “ from the Netherlands’ government and established its Global Coordinating Secretariat that would coordinate the efforts of the regional food hubs as well as align with global food processes and initiatives such as the UN Food Systems Summit, the statement read.

The global food Secretariat would be located in Wageningen, Netherlands, at the heart of the Dutch agrifood ecosystem, and would direct the development of global, regional Food Innovation Hubs, according to the “Invest in Holland” website.

“The work of these regional hubs is already underway, with more than 20 organizations leading the initiative across Africa, ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations], Colombia, and India, and the European hub,” the website said.

Ramon Laguarta, CEO of PepsiCo, said in the WEF statement: “Food is one of the main levers we can pull to improve environmental and societal health. With the right investment, innovation, and robust collaboration, agriculture could become the world’s first sector to become carbon negative. … Unlocking this potential will take ambitious multi-stakeholder, pre-competitive collaborations to transform the food system—exactly what these Hubs are designed to cultivate.”

Among the solutions advocated by the WEF to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions is replacing livestock-derived foods with alternative forms of protein, such as insects, and lab-cultured proteins, according to a 2019 white paper (pdf) commissioned by the WEF.


In response to this recommendation, several indoor agriculture start-ups have emerged, including Ÿnsect, “the first fully automated vertical insect farm in the world, able to produce 100,000 tons of insect products a year,” a WEF report said.

In March, France-based Ÿnsect acquired Jord Producers, a U.S. mealworm manufacturer, to expand its operations in the United States by entering the American chicken feed market, said a company statement.

How People Can Stop Food Takeover

If people want to prevent food supply from being used as a tool to control them, they need to find alternative sources of food locally, Newman said. “You need to have a relationship with the local farmers in your community, get to the local farmers market, deal with the local farmers, come up with some agreement,” such as getting delivery of fresh, seasonal produce from the local farms for 100 bucks a week, he said.

“We need to really start providing an alternative economic structure, because if we let them get control of the entire food supply, I guarantee you, it will be used as a weapon to take your freedom, to get you to do things you otherwise wouldn’t want to do, to undermine the sovereignty of your nation, whether you’re in the United States or another country, and ultimately to dispossess people of their private land and of their freedom.”

“If you have agricultural land, do not sell out to these people. They’re trying to bribe the farmers to leave their land.
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Ice Age Farmer
« Reply #153 on: July 24, 2022, 07:04:36 AM »


Crafty_Dog

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Re: PanFa War; Supply Chain issues
« Reply #158 on: July 27, 2022, 04:50:53 AM »
Stock up now!
Don't stock up in your freezer unless you have power that works during brownouts.

or if we don't have the vehicles to ship it.
or if we can't afford it in the first place.

or if china decides they will shut down the grid

what could go wrong?

 :wink:

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Re: PanFa War; Supply Chain issues
« Reply #160 on: July 28, 2022, 10:10:18 PM »

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GPF: Australian LNG
« Reply #166 on: August 01, 2022, 12:33:52 PM »
LNG supply. Australia, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas exporter, will decide in October to restrict natural gas exports unless domestic producers can prove the country has adequate supplies for next year. It follows a consumer watchdog’s forecast of a 10 percent supply shortfall in 2023.

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At least read the bullet points
« Reply #167 on: August 03, 2022, 10:57:36 AM »

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China: largest wholesale hub locked down
« Reply #170 on: August 09, 2022, 12:04:24 PM »
NSIDE CHINA
China Locks Down World’s Largest Wholesale Hub, South China Sea Port Due to New COVID-19 Outbreak
By Alex Wu August 7, 2022 Updated: August 7, 2022 biggersmaller Print


The Chinese communist regime has put the world largest wholesale hub, Yiwu city in east China, under semi lockdown due to a new outbreak of COVID-19. Meanwhile, “China’s Hawaii” in the South China Sea has also locked down due to a sudden outbreak. The new lockdowns have renewed concerns for disruptions to global trade and supply chains.

According to official data, since new infections were reported on Aug. 2, COVID-19 has quickly spread in Yiwu, a city of 1.85 million, and to many neighboring counties and cities. A total of 135 cases were officially reported a few days later by Aug. 4.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Chinese regime has concealed the real scale of its local outbreaks and being suspected by the outside world for underreporting the number of cases in the country.

The rapid spread in this wave of COVID-19 infections in the city is caused by the more infectious Omicron variant BA.5.2.

Yiwu authorities ordered a series of control measures on Aug. 4, putting the city in an indefinite semi-lockdown status. All residents are required to take COVID-19 PCR tests, are prohibited from entering and leaving their residential communities unless deemed necessary by the authorities; and must hold a negative COVID-19 test result from within the last 24 hours to enter a public place. Meanwhile, public transportation and non-essential services have been suspended, and most tourist areas are closed.


Yiwu City has been an important port and export center for various small commodities around the world for many years. It’s the world largest wholesale hub. There are more than 2 million small and medium-sized enterprises in mainland China with business connections to Yiwu.

Economic Losses, Disruptions to Global Supply Chain

The indefinite lockdown of the city has raised concerns that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) COVID-19 restrictions will further aggravate China’s economic downturn and disrupt global supply chains, especially that of small commodities.

Xie Zhanwen (pseudonym), the owner of Qingkou Baolong Plaza in Yiwu, told The Epoch Times that infection cases were found in Qingkou Night Market and that the whole area has been locked down. The authorities haven’t told local businesses anything about how long the closure will be in place.

Zhang Xiaofeng (pseudonym), a seller at the Small Commodity City in Yiwu, said, “The outbreak this time is serious, and there are many confirmed cases in Jiangdong district. Most businesses in Yiwu Small Commodity City are temporarily shut down, and the economic loss is huge. Dining-in is prohibited, but takeaways are still allowed, for now.”


In the meantime, Omicron variant BA.5.1.3 has caused a rapid outbreak of COVID-19 in Sanya, a famous resort town in China known as “China’s Hawaii” and an important port of the South China Sea since Aug. 4. Authorities have locked down the city and shut down all inbound and outbound flights on Aug. 6, leaving 80,000 tourists are stranded in the city. The “zero-COVID” measures are expected to cause further damage to China’s declining economy as well as international trade.

Adding to that, tensions across the Taiwan Strait have been escalating as the socialist CCP pushes for its “One China” principle to the exclusion of liberal democratic Taiwan, which could further damage global trade and supply chains. Following the historic visit of Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, to Taiwan, the CCP has been conducting military drills, sending warships to the Taiwan Strait, and launching missiles in the South China sea and international waters, including inside Japan’s EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone).

The military drills have been disrupting the key maritime shipping routes for cargo and commodities in the region, as ships have to navigate around the Strait in surrounding waters.

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GPF: Michael Yon is right 2.0
« Reply #176 on: August 19, 2022, 02:52:54 PM »
August 19, 2022
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Global Migration Trends
Food and energy crises will make an unprecedented situation even worse.
By: Geopolitical Futures
Global Migration
(click to enlarge)

The COVID-19 pandemic, ensuing economic crisis, changes in travel restrictions and increased incidents of conflict displacement have created an unprecedented scenario for global migration.

Globally, there are more than 280 million migrants, a record 3.6 percent of the world’s population. Remittances from migrants play a crucial role in low- and middle-income countries, many of which are leading sources of migration, like Mexico and India. It’s also no coincidence their destination countries, like the U.S. and UAE, are among the wealthier countries. Since the mid-1990s, remittances have heavily outweighed official development assistance in developing states. Of the $702 billion worth of international remittances that circulated in 2020, $540 billion went to low- and middle-income countries.

Insecurity also plays a large role in driving global migration and displacement. Nearly 35 million migrants were refugees or asylum seekers, and an additional 55 million were internally displaced. Refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo constitute more than half the world’s refugee population. However, as economic strains magnify food and energy crises, the incidence of conflict will likely increase, spurring new flows of security-related migration.

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MY: Germany
« Reply #177 on: August 20, 2022, 07:15:09 AM »
I'm guessing these price increases are due more to supply issues than demand:

https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/2606181/germany-marching-into-another-weimar-winter

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Re: PanFa War; Supply Chain issues
« Reply #183 on: August 24, 2022, 02:08:25 PM »
Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #604
08/24/2022
New to the Hotline? Click here to subscribe–it's free.
 
1) The Left’s New War On Fertilizer Could Cause Mass Hunger And Starvation
Those over a certain age will recall that what gave birth to the modern “green movement” was Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring” about how DDT was killing all the birds (stet). Not only was it completely fatuous, but the resulting war against pesticides contributed to the death of millions of poor people in third-world countries from the horrors of Malaria.

We might be facing a similar nightmare scenario as many advanced and supposedly educated countries are now declaring war on fertilizer – you know the stuff that makes plants and crops grow.

The Wall Street Journal reports that “Canada is urging farmers to reduce fertilizer emissions to curb greenhouse gases, triggering a backlash from farmers and concerns amid global food shortages.” Other developed nations have declared "emissions from agricultural sources" a threat to humanity, and they have set a goal of reducing 30% by 2030 and eventually ban nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer.

The net result could be a catastrophic decline in the aggregate food supply, and people may starve. 

As Doug Casey, an investment guru and scholar, notes in his latest Newsletter: “The invention of synthetic nitrogen is what created the real “green revolution”- which was mass food production that allowed humanity to grow from a population of under 2 billion to almost 8 billion within a century.

His warning is worth heeding: “The hobgoblin of climate change is being used to obtain full and total control over the entire food industry. Quite a feat.”

We worry that this nutty idea will travel south from Canada to fill the brains of American intellectuals, who will also endorse crippling domestic food production. What happens when the planet’s two largest agriculture exporters cut their food output?

World food security is already at dangerously low levels as the chart below shows.

First, the greens set out to destroy our modern energy sources (so far they are succeeding), and now they want to restrict global food production.

We will say it again: climate change fanaticism is the world’s greatest existential threat to the health and prosperity of the planet.

Crafty_Dog

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Tucker
« Reply #185 on: August 29, 2022, 08:03:59 PM »

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« Last Edit: September 10, 2022, 11:43:27 AM by Crafty_Dog »

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A world on fire
« Reply #196 on: September 13, 2022, 09:22:19 PM »

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Railway strike?
« Reply #197 on: September 14, 2022, 12:21:35 PM »

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