Morning Comrades.
A little housekeeping before I get back into it. One, this week might see a few disruptions in regards to scheduling these newsletters as there is a lot of personal life happening. Nothing to worry about it, just things that require my time and attention away from this desk. I’ll keep you all informed of any changes this week via our telegram channel.
Secondly, there is no Weekly Jams this week as I have just now cancelled my Tidal subscription, for a plethora of reasons. The main reason I use streaming services like Spotify or Tidal is to find new music. That has always been my biggest selling point for them and one of the reasons I started doing these playlists, aside from the joy of sharing music. Tidal has been absolutely atrocious in this regard. I figured that the first couple of weeks would be so, as any algorithm needs time to figure out what you are into but after 2 months I am still getting suggested the same music as before, there is no progression and not enough depth to warrant my subscription there. That meant that I actively had to seek out new music and sadly I do not have the time for that in an amount that satisfies my curiosity. A side reason was that the tidal application for Sonos - how I predominately listen to music at home - is one of the worst apps I have yet to come across and because of that I have spent more time on Mixcloud & bandcamp than anything else.
For the sake of finding new music and sharing it with you I am going back to Spotify. I am yet to figure out a way for me to properly reward bands financially that I enjoy. Yes, gigs are back and I am tempted to start buying vinyl again, both of which will probably happen but I am unsure as to do in regards to Spotify. The fact remains that their usability and algorithm are far superior to Tidal and that’s what I am there for. I would absolutely love to hear from those of that are interested in this how you go about paying for music, or, in regards to the above, how you would approach it.
Lastly, just the subtle reminder that you can support this work with a monthly subscription. Aside from my undying appreciation you get a few lovely benefits, mostly more of me in your inbox, and again, my appreciation. Also, I realized earlier this past weekend that we are fast approaching the 2nd anniversary of this project. I am thinking of printing a book with the best essays and graphics, anyone interested in that?
There were two pieces of information this weekend that really grabbed my attention, both in regards to the war in Ukraine and both from the US, both from President Biden. The above song from the Doors has been on repeat in my head since then, for all the obvious reason and I wanted to take some time to dissect them and offer us all perspectives that you probably won’t make it into the mainstream narrative, but that’s what we are here for I gathered.
The first has to do with wheat and the second with the masks off moment by Biden in Warsaw over the weekend.
So, let’s talk wheat. Dr. Sarah Taber is a crop and food safety scientist with a PhD in plant medicine from the University of Florida and most of the “debunks” below are thanks to her insight. President Biden said Thursday that a food shortage is in the near future for the U.S.—and it's "gonna be real."
Following the sanctions that were placed on Russia by the U.S. government as a result of Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion into Ukraine, Biden is predicting that groceries across the country will be in short supply, and pricier than ever before due to the disruption of wheat exports both from Ukraine and Russia.
Problem is, that is bullshit. For two main reasons.
One, wheat exports aren’t scare or disrupted. What is happening is that the stock markets are once again utilizing a war, as they do with every crisis they create, to play “line goes up, line goes down” as food, such as wheat are a tradable commodity to them and not a human right. So whatever shortages that my exist, and I am quite certain there will be some, are not down “bad guy a does war and good guy b fights back” but because the real enemy sits in our backs, profiting off yet another engineered crisis for them to exploit.
Secondly, and this is where Dr. Taber comes in. In a series of tweets that I will paraphrase for you below, she laid it the reality of the wheat market quite clearly. She goes on to state that missing wheat from the war in Ukraine is actually less than 1% of global wheat crop produced. With headlines such as "25% of world wheat exports are missing," that naturally leads people to think "oh my god we have to suddenly come up with 25% more wheat in the world out of nowhere." Which is factually untrue. It is actually realistically 0.9%
The Black Sea region exported 25% of its own production internationally, and the reality is that most of the world's wheat is eaten in the country that grew it. India & China alone grow massive domestic crops & eat most of them. So exports are a very small fraction of the global wheat crop.
An estimated wheat export shortfall from the Russian invasion is: 7 million tons, and yes, that sounds like a lot! Unless you look at total global production, which last year was 778 MILLION TONS. The war shortfall is 0.9% of the global wheat crop! Not 25%!
We don't have to suddenly increase world wheat production by 25%. We have to increase it by… 0.9% and the world's farmers already started planting more wheat 4 months ago, when wheat futures rose due to possibility of Black Sea conflict.
India went all-out planting more wheat and looks set to continue a 3 year streak of rapidly increasing wheat exports. The US planted four MILLION more tons more wheat seed last fall than usual. Australia, Canada, Argentina, South Africa, even Brazil getting in on it as well. If anything, by the looks of it, we are producing more wheat than we need, which again, comes down to making Wall Street more profits as overproduction causes all kinds of stresses in their economic reality.
With comments about food shortages from Biden, that were quickly echoed throughout the entire western mainstream press, the narrative of “toughing it out” “we need to be more manly about this because…”, and so on all lead to one goal. Moving the narrative one step further to total individualization, straight fascism ( the merging of the corporate and government, rule of the strong, by the strong ), and one the flip side increasing profits even more for the capitalists. Don’t even get me started on nonsense such as the “natural” causes of inflation. So if you are looking at the root of the problem for your food getting unaffordable, look no further to those in their Ivory Towers in Wall St. No one has to go hungry, but that’s talk about a different alignment of our production, economy and human rights and we all know where that leads to.
The second topic that I wanted to touch one was a statement from Biden that had anyone that was paying attention, blink, and blink hard for a hot minute. It’s been a month since Putin and the Russian State invaded Ukraine and up until now we have not heard much in terms of clear strategy and intentions from the US ( and NATO ). - I do believe that the US government through NATO is, in the most horrible of cynical, greedy terms, utilizing this war and the Ukrainian people as pawns for their proxy war with Russia to defend their unipolar hegemony over the world. That is truly what war is, theft and power written large, yet, up until this point all we have really heard from the US was the disgusting but to be expected sable rattling from the NATO press, whipping up idiotic sentiments of nationalism and once again laying out the world in a binary context. It’s hard to put into words how utterly played out that playbook is, but here we are. Fact remains, NATO has not issued clear intentions in regards to their strategy and tactics. Until now. Whether this happened accidentally or is being played as such, I leave to the paid journalists to mince lyrical over but here we are.
That’s it. Again, whether that was intentional or not makes no real difference but this is the end game. I have and we all should have multiple problems with this. One, historically speaking, “regime change” is not something the US government has ever been good at. From Iran, to Iraq, Vietnam to the entirety of Central and South America, “regime change” usually involves war, the instalment of fascist dictators “friendly to US business interests”, none of which ever have or will benefit you before you ask and it is plainly unethical and immoral. Yes, of course Putin is a criminal dictator, no questions asked, but playing “regime change” chicken with another nuclear super power is something that just needs to be entirely off the table. As former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis put it on Saturday:
There is no doubt that these ideas have all been thought out but numerous staffers on all sides of the war and other conflicts but you don’t on a world stage DURING A DAMN WAR and ramble on about it. All that does is simply inflame an already insanely dangerous and horrible situation. The position here has always been that peace is the utmost priority and this is the exact opposite of that.
That clear declaration of regime change as the U.S. goal for Putin was quickly refuted by Biden's aides, who absurdly claimed he only meant that Putin cannot remain in power in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe, not that he can no longer govern Russia.
An additional good point was made by Ferguson's reporting in Bloomberg last week:
Reading this carefully, I conclude that the U.S. intends to keep this war going….I have evidence from other sources to corroborate this. “The only end game now,” a senior administration official was heard to say at a private event earlier this month, “is the end of Putin regime"…..I gather that senior British figures are talking in similar terms. There is a belief that “the U.K.’s No. 1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.” Again and again, I hear such language. It helps explain, among other things, the lack of any diplomatic effort by the U.S. to secure a cease-fire. It also explains the readiness of President Joe Biden to call Putin a war criminal.
All this just make the facts clearer and clearer that in addition to the total failure in humanity, NATO isn’t doing what they are saying they are doing to - i.e. ending this damn war, but escalating it, for reasons I have spoken on enough - greed. Again, the real enemy sits in the rear and the faster we all realize this, the faster we can get to stopping them and their wars. That’s it.
Thanks for your time today comrades, I will be back here on Wednesday.
Until then, I remain yours, without compromise,
V.
The app Radiooooo — dj uploaded around the world music, any decade within 20th ce - 21st, with options to select “slow”, “fast”, and “weird” auto play songs… very fun to discover obscure/new music ❤️
Great to hear you're back on Spotify: how do I find you? :)