90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, July 12, 2022

Food Crisis Ahead: Ten Weeks of Wheat Left in Global Supply, World Leaders Warned

The world could have as little as 10 weeks left in its global stockpiles of wheat, according to one food expert.

Last week, Sara Menker, the CEO of Gro Intelligence, addressed the United Nations Security Council on the issue of global food insecurity. A transcript version of her comments was included on the agency’s website.

Menker said existing data shows that governments are overly optimistic about food supplies.

“Official government agency estimates from around the world put wheat inventories at 33 percent of annual consumption. Verifiable data from public and private sources that we as a company organize and then build statistical models to connect the dots between in our platform show that global wheat inventories are in fact closer to 20 percent, a level not seen since the financial and commodity crisis of 2007 and 2008,” she said.

“We currently only have 10 weeks of global consumption sitting in inventory around the world. Conditions today are worse than those experienced in 2007 and 2008.”

“Similar inventory concerns also apply to corn and other grains. Government estimates are not adding up,” she continued.

Menker noted that the issue runs deeper than Russia’s war with Ukraine.

“[T]he Russia-Ukraine war did not start the food security crisis. It simply added fuel to a fire that was long burning. A crisis we detected tremors from long before the COVID 19 pandemic exposed the fragility of our supply chains,” she said.

“I share this because we believe it’s important for you all to understand that even if the war were to end tomorrow, our food security problem isn’t going away anytime soon without concerted action.”

In separate comments last week, David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program, said the world faces “an unprecedented crisis,” according to WMUR-TV.

Beasley said 49 million people in 43 nations are “knocking on famine’s door.”

Political destabilization often follows extreme hunger, he said.

“We are already seeing riots and protesting taking place as we speak — Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Pakistan, Peru,” he said. “We’ve seen destabilizing dynamics already in the Sahel from Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad. These are only signs of things to come.”

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey last week said “apocalyptic” food price increases could be...

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The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1777

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Amid Hunter’s ongoing scandals, Biden is going soft on China

It took a certain bloodless chutzpah for the president to place his scandal-ridden son front and center at a White House function last week.

Hunter Biden, 52, popped up at Thursday’s Medal of Freedom ceremony, to glad-hand and network from his front-row perch even as he awaits indictment by a grand jury in Delaware over his shady foreign business dealings, most lucratively in China.

Just one day earlier, FBI Director Christopher Wray and his British MI5 counterpart made a rare joint public appearance in London to sound the alarm over the growing “serious security and economic threat” posed by China, which aims to steal our intellectual property and corrupt our politics.

Also on Wednesday, US counterintelligence officials issued a bulletin to state and local officials, warning of an escalating campaign by China to manipulate and influence politicians to push Washington for China-friendly policies.

The threat is not exactly new. The Trump administration pursued aggressive measures to rein in China’s growing assertiveness and espionage activities.

Yet, Joe Biden has gone soft on China since becoming president.

Here are a few examples:

He diverted at least a million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, according to Reuters, to Chinese state-owned gas giant Sinopec, which Hunter had invested in through his ten percent stake in Chinese private equity firm BHR.
He disbanded the China Initiative, a national security program set up by the Trump administration to combat China’s economic espionage at universities and research institutions.
He revoked Trump-era restrictions against TikTok, instead promising a “national security review” which has led to no action for over a year. The world’s fastest-growing social media platform, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, reportedly has repeatedly accessed US users’ private personal data.
In another unwinding of hardline Trump policies, the Biden administration granted the Chinese tech giant’s Huawei a license to purchase chips used in automobile manufacturing, Reuters reported last year.
He has not pressed China on the origins of COVID-19.
He suspended tariffs on Chinese solar panels.
He reportedly is contemplating lifting further Trump tariffs against Chinese imports, for no discernible benefit to America, with economists warning that any effect on soaring inflation would be minimal and short-lived.

It is astonishing that such generous concessions are even being contemplated while China has become Vladimir Putin’s top financier in the war on Ukraine, by buying discounted Russian oil and thus allowing the Kremlin to withstand Western sanctions.

This munificence to China adds to well-founded concerns that Joe Biden is compromised by the Chinese Communist Party, given all the evidence on Hunter’s laptop about millions of dollars that flowed from China to...

A professor at Laval University (Université Laval) in Quebec City has been suspended without pay for two months for questioning the benefits of COVID vaccines for children. Microbiology and immunology Professor Patrick Provost sent out an email soliciting a discussion on the issue and raising his concerns. He has now been disciplined for merely raising such issues by a university that has discarded any semblance of academic integrity and free speech.

According to The Suburban, the controversy began as a conference of Réinfo COVID, “a collective of nurses, physicians, scientists, and citizens seeking to generate debate about how the pandemic has been handled by the government.”Provost asked his colleagues “to share their views with the public” on these issues. Provost also wrote in a June Quebecor Media piece that the COVID-19 “was very real” but asked “was it as significant as reported?” He argued that there was evidence of only five individuals under age 40 dying of the disease and challenged the need for the Canadian government’s vaccine mandates and passports.

As with the university, Quebecor Media quickly yielded to a mob of critics and removed Provost’s remarks. Journal de Québec Editor-in-Chief Sébastien Ménard said that Provost’s points “were inaccurate or could mislead the public.” Notably, Ménard did not seem compelled to address the alleged inaccuracies in the comments or Provost’s basis for raising his concerns.

Ménard did not seem to entertain the possibility that the media can be a place for the exchange of such ideas, including a rigorous debate challenging Provost’s assertions. Instead, the solution, once again, was censorship.

Most of Provost’s colleagues have said nothing in defense of an academic being denied the very freedom that defines and sustains our profession. One exception is Douglas Farrow, a professor of theology and ethics at McGill University in Montreal, who denounced the suspension as “A Repressive Political Act” in a Substack article.

To its credit, the Université Laval faculty union has filed a grievance on...