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The effects of elevated food prices have rippled worldwide and forced governments to impose price controls and trade restrictions. Price increases are due to supply constraints driven by several variables, including high energy prices, geopolitics, and weather. Ukraine restarted maritime transport of crops to the rest of the world, forcing grain prices to slip, though the food crisis is far from over.

We pointed out in April that the next challenge for the global food supply could be a plunge in rice production (read: here). Fast forward months later, and our suspicions appear to be right as India, the world’s largest rice exporter, has seen planting areas of the crop decline by 13% due to heatwaves and drought.

India accounts for 40% of the global rice trade, and a decline in production will complicate India’s domestic inflation fight. It could result in export restrictions, leading to few supplies for the rest of the world.

In the last two weeks, prices in India have soared more than 10% in top growing states such as West Bengal, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh due to lack of rainfall and crop output concerns, Mukesh Jain, a director at Sponge Enterprises Pvt., a rice trader, told Bloomberg. He expects export prices to reach $400 a ton by next month from $365 this week.

Rice feeds half of humanity and is vital for political and economic stability across Asia. Supply disruptions due to potential trade restrictions by India could create shortages and rising prices elsewhere.

There’s still hope crop output could recover as the monsoon season is expected to produce normal rainfall through September. However, some farmers sounded the alarm output is expected to drop significantly.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Russia And China Officially Announce A “New Global Reserve Currency”

July 24, 2022

Russia And China Officially Announce A “New Global Reserve Currency”

And once again, as happens often with consequential news in the United States and the West, no one has noticed and no one seems to care.

If you’ve blinked over the last month, you may have missed it…

China and Russia are taking their shot at the U.S. dollar. And as often happens with consequential news in the United States and the West, no one seems to notice or even care.

Since the beginning of the year, I have been writing about the possibility of Russia and China challenging the US dollar’s global reserve status. Now, it’s happening.

It shouldn’t be any surprise to those paying attention that Russia and China are strengthening their economic ties amidst continued Western sanctions on Russia as a result of the country’s war in Ukraine.

What may surprise some people, however, is that Russia and the BRICS countries, including Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, are officially working on their own “new global reserve currency,” RT reported in late June. Nobody even seemed to notice.

“The issue of creating an international reserve currency based on a basket of currencies of our countries is being worked out,” Vladimir Putin said at the BRICS business forum last month.

And of course, as Russia has been cut off from the SWIFT system, it is also pairing with China and the BRIC nations to develop “reliable alternative mechanisms for international payments” in order to “cut reliance on the Western financial system.”

In the meantime, Russia is also taking other steps to strengthen the alliance between BRIC nations, including re-routing trade to China and India, according to CNN:

President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia is rerouting trade to “reliable international partners” such as Brazil, India, China and South Africa as the West attempts to sever economic ties.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

India isn’t the only one banning food exports. These countries are doing the same

May 21, 2022

India isn’t the only one banning food exports. These countries are doing the same

The war has triggered a huge spike in wheat prices, with Russia and Ukraine among the biggest exporters of the commodity. Many countries have banned wheat, as well as other food exports as a result of the Ukraine crisis.
“As the war continues, there is a growing likelihood that food shortages, particularly of grains and vegetable oils, will become acute, leading more countries to turn to restrictions on trade,” said the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Here’s a list of countries that have banned food exports in the months after the Russia-Ukraine war started, according to a live tracker developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Workers unload wheat sacks from a truck at a Punjab Grains Procurement Corp. facility in the Ludhiana district of Punjab, India, on Sunday, May 1, 2022.

India has banned wheat exports as the price of grain surged this year due in part to the Russia-Ukraine war.

T. Narayan | Bloomberg | Getty Images

India has banned wheat exports, becoming the latest country to do so as the price of grain surged this year due in part to the Russia-Ukraine war.

The war has triggered a huge spike in wheat prices, with Russia and Ukraine among the biggest exporters of the commodity. Both countries account for 29% of global wheat exports, according to the World Bank.

“With food prices already high due to COVID-related supply chain disruptions and drought-reduced yields last year, Russia’s invasion came at a bad time for global food markets,” said the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in an April note.

Washington D.C.-based think-tank the Peterson Institute for International Economics added in a recent note that Russia’s war on Ukraine has “taken a shocking toll on the region.” “It has also contributed to a global food crisis, as Russia is blocking vital fertilizer exports needed by farmers elsewhere, and Ukraine’s role as the breadbasket for Africa and the Middle East has been destroyed.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Half a million Indians flee floods in northeast brought by rain

May 20, 2022

Half a million Indians flee floods in northeast brought by rain

GUWAHATI, India, May 18 (Reuters) – More than 500,000 people have fled their homes in India’s northeastern state of Assam to escape heavy floods triggered by pre-monsoon rains that drowned seven, authorities said on Wednesday, as they warned the situation could worsen.

One of the world’s largest rivers, the Brahmaputra, which flows into India and neighbouring Bangladesh from Tibet, burst its banks in Assam over the last three days, inundating more than 1,500 villages.

Torrential rains lashed most of the rugged state, and the downpour continued on Wednesday, with more forecast over the next two days.

“More than 500,000 people have been affected, with the flood situation turning critical by the hour,” Assam’s water resources minister, Pijush Hazarika, told Reuters, adding that the seven drowned in separate incidents during the last three days.

People disembark a boat after they were evacuated from a flooded village in Nagaon district, in the northeastern state of Assam, India, May 18, 2022. REUTERS/Anuwar Hazarika

Soldiers of the Indian army retrieved more than 2,000 people trapped in the district of Hojai in a rescue effort that continues, the state’s health minister, Keshab Mahanta, said.

Water levels in the Brahmaputra were expected to rise further, national authorities said.

“The situation remains extremely grave in the worst-hit Dima Hasao district, with both rail and road links snapped due to flooding and landslides,” said Assam’s revenue minister, Jogen Mohan, who is overseeing relief efforts there.

Cities elsewhere in India, notably the capital, New Delhi, are broiling in a heat wave.

India Facing Widespread Blackouts This Summer

April 14, 2022

India Facing Widespread Blackouts This Summer

India faces a persistent shortage of electricity over the next four months as rapid demand growth from air conditioners overwhelms the available generation on the network.

India’s grid reported a record load of 200,570 megawatts on July 7, 2021, at the height of last summer, according to the National Load Despatch Centre of the Power System Operation Corporation (POSOCO).

But since the middle of March, the grid has routinely reported maximum loads above 195,000 MW, including a peak of 199,584 MW on April 8 – less than 0.5% below the record.

In the evening, when there is no solar generation available and supplies are even more stretched, peak loads have hit a new record in recent days.

Exceptionally high loads have arrived far earlier this year, well before the most intense period of summer heat, implying the grid is in trouble.

In a symptom of the struggle to meet demand, the grid’s frequency has faltered since mid-March, dropping persistently below target, with longer and more severe excursions below the safe operating range.

Chronic under-frequency is a sign the grid cannot meet the full demand from customers and makes planned load-shedding or unplanned blackouts much more likely.

India has a frequency target of 50.00 cycles per second (Hertz), with grid controllers tasked with keeping it steady between 49.90 Hz and 50.05 Hz to maintain the network in a safe and reliable condition. Since the middle of March, frequency has averaged just 49.95 Hz and has been below the lower operating threshold more than 23% of the time.

On April 7, the average frequency fell as low as 49.84 Hz and frequency was below the lower threshold for 63% of the day, according to POSOCO data.

Frequency has been below target so often for so long in recent weeks it has sometimes appeared the system is operating according to a much lower informal target.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

World War III Has Already Started, and It’s an Economic War

March 11, 2022

World War III Has Already Started, and It’s an Economic War

In an article I published in April of 2018, World War III Will Be An Economic War, I outlined a number of factors that portend a large scale conflict between East and West and why this war would be mainly economic in nature. I investigated how this conflict would actually benefit globalists and globalist institutions seeking to bring down multiple nations’ economies while hiding the engineered crisis behind a wall of geopolitical chaos and noise.

The goal? To convince the masses that national sovereignty was a plague that only leads to mass death, and that the “solution” is a one-world system – conveniently managed by the globalists, of course.

One issue which I used to get a lot of arguments over was the idea that countries like Russia and China would end up so closely aligned. People claimed there were too many disparities and that the countries would ultimately turn on each other in the middle of a financial crisis.

Well, it’s four years later and now we’re going to see if that is true or not. So far, it looks like I was correct.

My position has long been that certain nations have been preparing for a collapse of the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency (the primary currency used in the majority of trade around the world). My belief is that America’s top economic position is actually an incredible weakness; the dollar’s hegemony is not a strength, but an Achilles heel. If the dollar was to lose reserve status, the whole of the U.S. economy and parts of the global economy would implode, leaving behind only those who prepared – those who saw the writing on the wall and planned ahead.

The dollar crash coalition

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Three Types of US ‘Regime Change’

January 22, 2022

The Three Types of US ‘Regime Change’

When the U.S. overthrows a foreign government it either works from the top down, the bottom up, or through military invasion, writes Joe Lauria.

Chilean presidential palace during U.S.-backed coup, Sept. 11, 1973. (Library of the Chilean National Congress/Wikipedia)

Throughout the long, documented history of the United States illegally overthrowing governments of foreign lands to build a global empire there has emerged three ways Washington broadly carries out “regime change.”

From Above. If the targeted leader has been democratically elected and enjoys popular support, the C.I.A. has worked with elite groups, such as the military, to overthrow him (sometimes through assassination). Among several examples is the first C.I.A-backed coup d’état, on March 30, 1949, just 18 months after the agency’s founding, when Syrian Army Colonel Husni al-Za’im overthrew the elected president, Shukri al-Quwatli.

The C.I.A. in 1954 toppled the elected President Jacobo Árbenz of Guatemala, who was replaced with a military dictator. In 1961, just three days before the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, who favored his release, Congolese President Patrice Lumumba was assassinated with C.I.A. assistance, bringing military strongman Mobutu Sese Seko to power. In 1973, the U.S. backed Chilean General Augusto Pinochet to overthrow and kill the democratically-elected, socialist President Salvador Allende, setting up a military dictatorship, one of many U.S.-installed military dictatorships of that era in Latin America under Operation Condor.

From Below. If the targeted government faces genuine popular unrest, the U.S. will foment and organize it to topple the leader, elected or otherwise. 1958-59 anti-communist protests in Kerala, India, locally supported by the Congress Party and the Catholic Church, were funded by the C.I.A., leading to the removal of the elected communist government…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Here Come the Climate Change Lockdowns

November 21, 2021

Here Come the Climate Change Lockdowns

Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.

Cities in India Will Lockdown Over Air Pollution

The Supreme Court of India has ordered India’s capital, New Delhi, and the surrounding regions to lockdown— but not because of COVID.

This time, the lockdown is due to air pollution.

The Supreme Court said authorities must temporarily force people to work from home, close schools, and halt building projects in the city, due to the city’s terrible air quality.

The Supreme Court said that this is just a temporary solution to their newest public health emergency… sort of like the original two weeks to control the spread of COVID-19.

Last week we mentioned a doctor who diagnosed his patient with “climate change.”

We then speculated that public health officials would use climate change to find new ways to exercise the powers they claimed during the COVID pandemic.

But even we were surprised that it only took one week before that actually happened…

Click here to read the full story.

UK Company Will Harvest DNA from COVID Tests

A UK government-approved COVID testing company called Cignpost has administered up to three million tests at 71 walk-in locations across the UK.

What customers didn’t know is that when they agreed to the company’s 4,876 word privacy policy, they gave permission for Cignpost to harvest their DNA.

Cignpost says it “may receive compensation” for sharing—or more accurately, selling—your DNA samples to other research companies and universities.

Of course, if a year ago you were concerned about your nasal swab COVID tests being used to harvest your DNA, you probably would have been called a conspiracy theorist.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

India Faces Rolling Blackouts As Coal Shortage Forces Power Plants To Adopt Emergency Measures

October 10, 2021

India Faces Rolling Blackouts As Coal Shortage Forces Power Plants To Adopt Emergency Measures

Due to a combination of factors – including environmentalists’ push for “green” energy like wind and solar, plus the COVID-inspired collapse in global supply chains leaving countries around the world desperate for badly needed energy supplies (from LNG to coal to unrefined crude oil) – energy crises have been unfolding in China, the UK, Continental Europe and now India, the world’s largest democracy.

Just like Chinese authorities ordering energy firms to conserve supplies at all costs, numerous power plants across India could be forced to adopt rolling blackouts as coal supplies run low. A minister in Indian capital New Delhi warned Sunday that blackouts could rock the massive city over the next two days. But the nation’s capital city isn’t alone in suffering energy shortages: it joins two Indian states – Tamil Nadu and Odisha – which have issued warnings about the growing possibility of blackouts due to dwindling coal supplies.

According to Delhi’s Power Minister Satyendra Jain, more than half of India’s 135 coal-fired power plants, which supply around 70% of the country’s electricity, have seen their stocks depleted to such low levels that they only have enough to guarantee power for three days before the capital city is hit with blackouts. Typically, they’re supposed to keep a buffer supply of at least one month. But these aren’t normal times.

“If coal supply doesn’t improve, there will be a blackout in Delhi in two days,” the national capital’s Power Minister Satyendra Jain said today. “The coal-fired power plants that supply electricity to Delhi have to keep a minimum coal stock of one month, but now it has come down to one day,” Mr Jain said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Blackout Warning For Delhi If Coal Supply Not Restored In 2 Days

October 9, 2021

Blackout Warning For Delhi If Coal Supply Not Restored In 2 Days

Over half of India’s 135 coal-fired power plants, which in total supply around 70 per cent of the country’s electricity, have fuel stocks of less than three days

Power Crisis: Coal-fired power plants are facing shortage of coal

There could be a blackout in the national capital in the next two days if coal supplies to power plants do not improve, a Delhi minister said today. Delhi joins a long queue of states including Tamil Nadu and Odisha that have raised concerns over long power cuts due to shortage of coal in power plants.

Over half of India’s 135 coal-fired power plants, which in total supply around 70 per cent of the country’s electricity, have fuel stocks of less than three days, data from the central grid operator showed, news agency Reuters had reported earlier this week.

“If coal supply doesn’t improve, there will be a blackout in Delhi in two days,” the national capital’s Power Minister Satyendra Jain said today. “The coal-fired power plants that supply electricity to Delhi have to keep a minimum coal stock of one month, but now it has come down to one day,” Mr Jain said.

“Our request to the centre is that railway wagons should be arranged and coal should be transported to the plants soonest. All the plants are already running in only 55 per cent capacity,” the minister in Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government said.

Mr Jain alleged the coal crisis appears to be “man-made, just as the crisis of medical oxygen supply during the COVID-19 second wave.”

“There is politics going on. If you create a crisis, it will seem that some great work has been done by solving it,” the Delhi minister said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Perfect Storm” – Global Energy Crisis Spreads To Brazil And India

October 4, 2021

“Perfect Storm” – Global Energy Crisis Spreads To Brazil And India

The global energy crisis plagues Europe and China and risks spreading to emerging market economies.

According to Bloomberg, severe droughts in Brazil have led to a collapse in hydroelectric generation and could force the South American country to ration power if power imports from Uruguay and Argentina aren’t increased.

Brazil is South America’s largest economy. It derives 60% of its power from hydroelectric sources, but La Nina has produced drought this year and dwindled water levels at reservoirs, making hydro less dependable.

Brazil, in many ways, has been ahead of the decarbonization of its power grid. When it comes to the energy transition, countries worldwide begin to embark on but discover that renewable power is not sustainable. Bear Traps Report’s Larry McDonald recently opinioned in his note to clients that the ESG push for power grids is contributing to the global energy crisis.

To mitigate a power grid collapse, the South American country is in the process of firing up natural gas generators to compensate for the loss of hydroelectric power. This would force the government to compete in a tight global natgas market that could raise prices higher.

“Brazil’s hydroelectric reservoirs in the southeast and central west, which represent almost three-fourths of the country’s installed capacity, have fallen to 17% amid the worst drought in 91 years,” Bloomberg said.

Earlier this year, the La Nina weather pattern brought drought to Brazil but plenty of water to north-eastern South America that filled up dams in Colombia to historically high levels. Another round of La Nina, which the U.S. Climate Prediction Center said has a 70% chance of forming this fall/winter, could delay the rainy season in Brazil and trigger power disruptions that would have drastic economic impacts.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Twitter Admits To Censoring Criticism of The Indian Government

April 27, 2021

Twitter Admits To Censoring Criticism of The Indian Government

On Saturday, Twitter admitted that it is actively working with the Indian government to censor criticism of its handling of the pandemic as the number of cases and deaths continues to skyrocket. There are widespread reports that the Indian government has misrepresented the number of deaths and the true rate of cases could be as much as 30 times higher than reported. The country has a shortage of beds, oxygen, and other essentials due to a failure to adequately prepare for a new surge. Not surprisingly, the Indian government has moved to crackdown on criticism. This included a call to Twitter to censor such information and Twitter has, of course, complied. With the support of many Democratic leaders in the United States, Twitter now regularly censors viewpoints in the United States and India had no trouble in enlisting it to crackdown on those raising the alarm over false government reporting.

Buried in an Associated Press story on the raging pandemic and failures of the Indian government are these two lines:

“On Saturday, Twitter complied with the government’s request and prevented people in India from viewing more than 50 tweets that appeared to criticize the administration’s handling of the pandemic. The targeted posts include tweets from opposition ministers critical of Modi, journalists and ordinary Indians.”

The article quotes Twitter as saying that it had powers to “withhold access to the content in India only” if the company determined the content to be “illegal in a particular jurisdiction.” Thus, criticism of the government in this context is illegal so Twitter has agreed to become an arm of the government in censoring information.

Keep in mind that this information could protect lives. It is not “fake news” but efforts by journalists and others to disclose failures by the government that could cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

India’s Experiments with COVID-19

April 4, 2021

India’s Experiments with COVID-19

Shooting from the Hip

Reminiscent of his demonetization effort in 2016, on 24th March 2020, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, appeared on TV and declared an immediate nationwide curfew. No one was to be allowed to leave wherever he or she happened to be. All flights, trains (after 167 years of continual operation) and road transportation came to a complete, shrieking halt.

Stranded in India… [PT]

Tens of millions of people — myself included — got stuck wherever they were.

People were not allowed to leave their homes, not even for grocery shopping, the latter of which was amended after a few days when the government realized that people needed to eat. In a country of 1.38 billion people, the initial policy was a shot from the hip, without any consultation or planning, as if prepared by primary school kids.

Hunger Games, Day-27, India; The irony is that it is the poor who have done slightly better are the most vicious towards the poor. It is women who are most misogynistic. Having been given a blank check, those somewhat better off are putting to action all the sadism they have. pic.twitter.com/4IVXX8qKCV

— Jayant Bhandari (@JayantBhandari5) April 19, 2020

Those, particularly the poor, who ventured out to get food, were ruthlessly beaten by police.

Hunger Games, Day-8; Hundreds of millions are desperate. Lines are growing. In economics, this is a sign of shortages. So is “Price gouging”. In the dystopia of India, beating up shop-keepers is believed to relieve shortages. In a police state, the police also becomes the judge. pic.twitter.com/AWRPFzSHrD

— Jayant Bhandari (@JayantBhandari5) April 1, 2020

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Jayant Bhandari, acting-man, india, covid, pandemic,

India’s Farmer Movement, Indigenous Land Defenders and Hidden Histories

January 4, 2021

India’s Farmer Movement, Indigenous Land Defenders and Hidden Histories

The protests may be half-a-world apart. But they’re both based on a spiritual connection to the land.

A mural in East Vancouver depicts Indigenous people paddling out to the Komagata Maru in 1914 provide food for those onboard. Photo submitted.

When 250 million workers joined the largest strike in human history last month to support the Indian Kisan Andolan, or Farmer Movement, the connection to Indigenous land protests in British Columbia might not have been instantly evident.

But the two struggles have much in common in their resistance against neoliberal nation states and the corporations that influence them. They also share a hidden history that aligns the struggles in a unique field of solidarity.

Indian farmers are fighting the central government over three bills that effectively hand the agricultural market to large corporations, letting them set prices, and turn formerly independent farmers into contractors under corporate control.

Punjabi farmers have taken their protests to the border of Delhi and created blockades on highways, while farmers from other parts of India are doing the same.

The majority of Punjabis in India follow the Sikh faith. Agriculture is central not just to Punjab’s economy, but also to its culture. During the march to Delhi, police brutalized the farmers with water cannons and batons. Despite this, the farmers practiced a central tenet of the Sikh faith, langar (free kitchen) and made food available to both protestors, bystanders and police.

In B.C., a different but connected battle is being waged. Hereditary Chiefs from the Wet’suwet’en Nation have opposed TC Energy’s Coastal GasLink pipeline across northern B.C. since it was proposed. This resistance has led to demonstrations and railway blockades across Canada.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The U.S. Continues To Import A Record Amount Of Silver While Flows Into India Nearly Dry Up

December 21, 2020

The U.S. Continues To Import A Record Amount Of Silver While Flows Into India Nearly Dry Up

U.S. demand for silver continued to remain strong as imports surged higher in September after a decline in August. However, the opposite was true for India as silver imports during the same month collapsed to an all-time low. What a difference in just a few years as India imported nearly 500 metric tons on average a month last year.

According to the data from GoldChartsRUs.com, India’s silver imports in September fell to only 11 metric tons (mt) compared to 169 mt during the same month last year. That’s a 93% decline year-over-year. Interestingly, during July last year, India imported an average of 33 mt of silver A DAY. However, in September this year, it was a total of only 11 mt. Gosh, that’s a tad bit more than 350,000 oz. What’s going on? Of course, the pandemic likely was part of the reason for the decline in silver imports, but the silver price rise to an average of $27-$28 during September likely curtailed buying by savvy Indian investors.

While India’s silver imports nearly dried up in September, it was a totally different story for the United States. Total silver imports jumped to 745 mt in September, up from 524 mt in August. When be put India and U.S. silver imports side-by-side, we can see a huge difference.

The United States imported 66 times more silver than India in September. In just the past three months (JUL-SEP), U.S. silver imports totaled 2,309 mt, or 74 million oz. As we can see, the U.S. has imported roughly 2.5 times more silver than India during the first three-quarters of the year. The majority of U.S. silver imports were in bullion form.

The next chart shows just the U.S. silver bullion imports for Jan-Sep.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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