3 Horseman of the Apocalypse – Global food insecurity, Ukraine & Covid

Before Putin invaded the Ukraine, global grain production had already plummeted in 2022 due to massive climate crisis global droughts impacting harvests and interrupting the agricultural calendar.

I’ve been arguing that our inflation will hit double digits by December because we are grossly underestimating the Apocalyptic impact of global War, Famine and Pestilence.

PLAGUE:

There is no way Covid is over and the impacts will only grow. The large global pool of unvaccinated make the perfect brew for a new variant to come through and the existing flare ups will continue to require restrictions for the foreseeable future. Covid is here to stay and it won’t simply fizzle away. It will continue to disrupt developing nations and the first world and will continue to shut down China, while long Covid will be a public health nightmare.

WAR:

I’ve never been a fan of Putin.

I’m not a Lefty who looks up to or admires him.

I think he is a thug who has used appalling authoritarian tactics to hold onto power.

That’s not to say I don’t agree with his criticism of the West and the abomination that is the US Military Industrial Complex.

I’m not fan of Washington or Moscow.

I argued that Putin would invade the Ukraine because of the attempted coup in Kazakhstan in January and that his view of NATO expansion had become an existential threat.

The West should have ensured Russia’s collective sense of national security was respected.

We didn’t.

Putin’s bluff means he has to double down on the war in Ukraine…

Russia-Ukraine war: Vladimir Putin believes ‘doubling down’ will improve conflict outcome, US Central Intelligence Agency says

US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director William Burns said on Saturday that Russian President Vladimir Putin believes doubling down on the military conflict in Ukraine will improve the outcome of the war.

…Putin’s desperation of course is now being purposely manipulated by the West…

Behind Austin’s Call for a ‘Weakened’ Russia, Hints of a Shift

When Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III declared Monday at the end of a stealth visit to Ukraine that America’s goal is to see Russia so “weakened” that it would no longer have the power to invade a neighboring state, he was acknowledging a transformation of the conflict, from a battle over control of Ukraine to one that pits Washington more directly against Moscow.

…protecting innocent Ukrainians from invading Russians is now secondary to a wider American goal of significantly weakening Russia.

Those are two very different goals and of course the American Military Industrial Complex is already making $33Billion in military aid…

Biden says U.S. sending Ukraine another $150 million in aid

President Joe Biden on Friday authorized the shipment of another $150 million in military assistance for Ukraine for artillery rounds and radar systems in its fight against Russia’s invading forces.

Biden said the latest spending means his administration has “nearly exhausted” what Congress authorized for Ukraine in March and called on lawmakers to swiftly approve a more than $33 billion spending package that will last through the end of September.

…$33billion and a new military aim to weaken Russia.

This stopped being about saving innocent Ukrainian lives sometime ago. This is now about making the American Corporate Military Gods of War rich.

 

 

FAMINE:

Russia & Ukraine produce 12% of all globally traded calories and the shut down of exports and war damage to farms has devastated food and fertilizer production which will trigger food riots throughout the Middle East and South America. The commodification of food is a major problem…

The banks collapsed in 2008 – and our food system is about to do the same

or the past few years, scientists have been frantically sounding an alarm that governments refuse to hear: the global food system is beginning to look like the global financial system in the run-up to 2008.

While financial collapse would have been devastating to human welfare, food system collapse doesn’t bear thinking about. Yet the evidence that something is going badly wrong has been escalating rapidly. The current surge in food prices looks like the latest sign of systemic instability.

Many people assume that the food crisis was caused by a combination of the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine. While these are important factors, they aggravate an underlying problem. For years, it looked as if hunger was heading for extinction. The number of undernourished people fell from 811 million in 2005 to 607 million in 2014. But in 2015, the trend began to turn. Hunger has been rising ever since: to 650 million in 2019, and back to 811 million in 2020. This year is likely to be much worse.

Now brace yourself for the really bad news: this has happened at a time of great abundance. Global food production has been rising steadily for more than half a century, comfortably beating population growth. Last year, the global wheat harvest was bigger than ever. Astoundingly, the number of undernourished people began to rise just as world food prices began to fall. In 2014, when fewer people were hungry than at any time since, the global food price index stood at 115 points. In 2015, it fell to 93, and remained below 100 until 2021.

…these impacts are being felt now.

 

There is an amalgamation of crises that are rushing together pushing the planet into a steep economic recession. Since 2008 the central banks have printed 25 Trillion to keep the Ponzi scheme from collapsing and that has artificially created the lowest interest rate in 5000 years.

5000 years!

The unwinding of that kind of pressure surely is going to be the event horizon of a Debt Black Hole?

A climate crisis that exacerbates an economic crisis that exacerbates a war crisis that exacerbates a pandemic crisis.

That’s a lot of Black Swans all ubering home.

In the light of the threats to us in the here and now, this budget trying to determine the future seems hopelessly compromised.

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