13-05-2022: Across the last several months, there have been a procession of food processing plants across the United States of America (US) mysteriously catching fire. Food processing plants in the states of Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Illinois and more have been burned to the ground. So far, 18 food factories are now a pile of ashes.[1] One might say, the US is a big place, and industrial accidents occur – but 18 in a few months? And all of this at a time when US President Joe Biden declares that “food shortages are going to be real”. After one of the fires destroyed parts of the Azure Standard Headquarters in Oregon, the company stated that “basically any liquid product” such as honey, oil and vinegar will now be out of stock.[2] On top of this two separate aeroplanes have nosedived and crashed into food processing plants in Georgia and Idaho,[3] seriously affecting food supplies.
Proxy war on Russia
It may be plausible, though still a stretch, to claim that the food factory fires are just a coincidence, with safety standards slipping or something. But 18 food plants burning down – and then two more are struck with aeroplanes? This can hardly be explained by happenstance. It is difficult to avoid surmising that the food shortages are being deliberately brought about through subterfuge. When Joe Biden announced that food shortages are going to be real, he placed the blame on – where else? – Russia, for its military operations in Ukraine. Yet he conceded that the Western sanctions on Russia will result in a price being paid in Europe and the US.[4] This, at least, is true. The Western economic sanctions on Russia have rebounded against the countries of the European Union (EU) and the US. NATO’s proxy war on Russia via Ukraine is a cut and dried demonstration of the total impasse of the capitalist system, which may now risk a nuclear world war simply in order to preserve its rule.
The war of Washington and Brussels on Russia via Ukraine has understandably caused shortages of food products, given Ukraine’s longstanding position as the “breadbasket” of Europe. The collapse in economic activity in Ukraine due to the war has already caused a critical shortage of sunflower oil.[5] Countries such as Somalia needs to import 90% of its staple grains, and Sudan and Yemen are heavily dependent on imported grain, and much of it came either from Ukraine or Russia.[6] Ukraine and Russia are both major wheat producers, and Russia is also the world’s largest producer of fertiliser. Fossil-fuel derived fertiliser is a critical component of agricultural production these days, arguably due to agribusiness pushing soils to the absolute limit of fertility. It is estimated that without fertiliser, corn and wheat yields in the US would drop by more than 40%.[7] Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF), one of the fronts for imperialism, are now warning that food shortages and supply line issues will cause riots and civil unrest, beginning in the Third World, and spreading from there.[8] The “powers that should not be” are more or less announcing riots over food shortages, while denying responsibility.
“Covid” food shortages
During the last two years of horrific state repression under the guise of an entirely fraudulent “Covid pandemic”, working people are seemingly being conditioned to regard empty supermarket shelves as part of the “new normal”. The elite have all the propaganda powers at their disposal to slyly persuade working people that shortages of one or two food items are just due to the alleged “spread” of the latest Covid variant, with not an iota of proof that such could be remotely plausible. Major supermarket chains such as Coles in Australia are also blaming “Omicron” for supply line issues, alongside the strong suggestion that product limits could be imposed at any time. A Woolworths spokesperson even stated that supply challenges will exist as long as there are rising numbers of community transmissions and claimed that their company is experiencing a 20% staff absentee rate in the food distribution centres and a 10% staff absentee rate in their stores.[9]
The only part of this narrative which accords with objective reality is the fact that the isolation period required for staff who “test positive” to SARS-CoV-2 or its supposed variants is leading to absences for 7 or 14 days. Whether or not SARS-CoV-2 exists and is pathogenic, Covid propaganda is false to the core, a fig leaf which barely covers the civil war launched by finance capital against the working class. The two years of lockdowns patently had nothing to do with the health of anyone, and everything to do with a planned destruction of whole sections of world economies, with the intent to re-start production in some form, i.e., “The Great Reset”. The wealthiest ruling classes in the history of civilisation of course cared not one whit about the millions of workers who were thrown on the unemployment scrapheap, nor the seriously damaging physical and psychological health effects of brutal lockdowns, vaccine and facemask mandates – not to speak of the operation of Covid concentration camps.
Food shortages, along with inflation, cost of living increases, the threat of nuclear war, climate collapse, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, censorship, a lack of free speech, fraudulent “pandemics”, Covid detention centres, rock bottom wages for those who retain employment – all of this and more rears up like a nightmare before the subconscious of the working class. Yet there is a way through to the other side of this seeming Armageddon. All of these crises can essentially be sourced to one element – the fact that the capitalist system is locked in a dead end from which it cannot reverse. Production based on private ownership of the means of production for private profit using social labour is reducing itself to a wild and dangerous absurdity.
Capitalist food shortages – real or contrived – on top of other social ills, could be toppled if committed revolutionaries could lead the masses in a pitch battle to establish a series of workers’ states, administered by workers’ delegates freely elected from workplaces far and wide. Anchored with the theory of Permanent Revolution, internationally linked Marxist vanguard parties would then begin the regional integration of collectivised and planned economies – the first pillars of a socialist future.
WORKERS LEAGUE
E: workersleage@redfireonline.com
[1] https://ussanews.com/2022/05/04/these-are-the-food-processing-plants-that-mysteriously-burned-down-in/ (11-05-2022)
[2] https://www.westernstandard.news/news/exclusive-food-shortages-magnified-by-string-of-destroyed-food-processing-facilities/article (11-05-2022)
[3] https://www.dailydot.com/debug/food-processing-plant-fires-conspiracy/ (11-05-2022)
[4] https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-on-food-shortages-its-going-to-be-real (11-05-2022)
[5] https://www.tellerreport.com/business/2022-05-10-supermarkets–why-are-the-shelves-still-empty-.r1zosfjvI5.html (11-05-2022)
[6] https://nutrition.tufts.edu/news/war-ukraine-escalating-global-food-crisis (11-05-2022)
[7] https://www.newsmax.com/us/ukraine-russia-food-shortages-inflation/2022/03/18/id/1061880/ (11-05-2022)
[8] https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-04-22-imf-warning-food-supply-shortages-social-unrest.html (11-05-2022)
[9] https://7news.com.au/sunrise/on-the-show/coles-and-woolworths-say-empty-shelves-to-remain-for-weeks-and-more-product-limits-could-be-imposed-c-5245409 (11-05-2022)
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