John wrote: ↑Mon Jun 20, 2022 8:47 am
** 20-Jun-2022 World View: Famine
There are 40 million tons of wheat sitting in silos in Ukraine that
can't be exported because the Russians are blocking the ports. As a
result, people in many countries are starving, with food increasingly
expensive, scarce or unavailable.
EU officials today said that Russia is guilty of war crimes for
forcing much of the world to starve.
Unless Russia is forced to release the wheat, maize and cooking oil
produced in Ukraine, there's going to be massive famines in multiple
countries this summer and fall. This will cause massive unrest.
Sri Lanka's meltdown continues, with food, fuel, and medicines so
expensive or scarce that they're out of reach for most people. Sri
Lanka is the poster child for China's Debt Trap Diplomacy, and now the
chickens are coming home to roost. Sri Lanka is negotiating with the
IMF for a $5 billion bailout, but the IMF is insisting on tax
increasing and subsidy reductions, which is not what the corrupt
government wants to do.
Sri Lanka is being called "the canary in the coal mine," because other
countries are headed in the same direction. There are already price
riots going on now in countries from Pakistan to Belgium.
Here in the United States, it's expected that the sh-t will hit the
fan on July 4, when families want to take road trips, but gas (petrol)
prices will be sky high and gas may even have to be rationed.
Every day, the Biden administration does something to turn the United
States into a third world sh-thole. Whether America can survive until
we can get rid of these pro-Confederacy white supremacist a--holes
remains to be seen.
A couple of other issues.
Bitcoin fell to the 17K range over the weekend, but has now recovered
to just above 20K. Bitcoin is being seen as a bellwether of the
global financial crisis as a whole.
Up until 2-3 weeks ago, it seemed that Ukraine was winning. But
Russia has changed strategy to massive genocide and destruction
through huge amounts of artillery.
Massive monsoon floods in Bangladesh and India causing unrest.
China is increasingly demanding that the Taiwan Strait be declared
Chinese waters rather than international waters. Over the weekend,
the US administration signaled that it will reject those demands, and
will continue Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONO) in the South
China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. This could give rise to a military
confrontation, if China chooses to be more and more belligerent.
China's "zero covid" policy (alluding to the Wuhan Coronavirus) is
looking more and more like a joke. The Chinese Communists are
conducting millions of covid tests every day, and if they find even
one case, then an entire building or city can be shut down and locked
down for several days.