Victoria Nikiforova
There was once such a term “sausage emigration”. Today events are developing so strange that it is just right to wait for a trend reversal. It seems that it’s time for Western partners to go to Russia – for sausage and other food.
Major UK supermarkets have just warned shoppers that food shortages are growing and there will be no gourmet food for Christmas. Interruptions in the supply of milk, red meat, chi-cken, coffee, like a tsunami, cover one after another European countries and the United States . One thing or the other disappears from sale. Then it appears again – with an absolutely fantastic price tag.
Newspapers publish photos of empty supermarket shelves . Professional survivalists gloat: “We told you so!” Intellectual publications teach readers to gr-ow greens on windowsills and roll up tomatoes for the winter. In the trends of California hipsters, hiking in the forest for mushroom-berries (foraging) and getting food from garbage cans is freeganism.
Progressive publications, petrels of the “great reset,” tirelessly explain that this is how it should be. There is generally need less. Food is, in fact, very unhealthy. Especially meat, milk, cheese, cottage che-ese, chocolate, coffee, pastries. Soy meat is different! Fried grasshoppers, minced worms, milk from flies.
All this smoothly and imperceptibly brings the Western consumer to the inevitable rise in food prices. In fact, it has already begun. The sad paradox, however, is that there are no real prerequisites for it. Never before has humanity fed itself so cheaply and so successfully. Even last year, during lockdowns, prices for rice, wheat, corn did not grow. All food products became cheaper. This fall, the Food and Agriculture Organizat-ion of the United Nations expects a record grain harvest worldwide. Neverthel-ess, food is becoming more expensive at an alarming rate.
The shortage of food in the West bears all the signs of a man-made crisis. Take, for example, the US meat supply disruption last spring. They were connected with the fact that the authorities urgently sent all the personnel of the meat processing factories home. Allegedly, the coronavirus was raging there. Farmers were forced to massively slaughter livestock and destroy birds. Meat sections in supermarkets were empty.
Now, absolutely according to the same patterns, the grocery deficit in the UK is being organized . Empty shelves, checkout lines, meager food packages for the hungry and the immortal “two in one hand” – what is happening on the island is vividly reminiscent of the 1990 Soviet deficit.
Since the spring of last year, in the supermarkets of the country’s largest chains, it was possible to buy no more than three packs of eggs, flour, pasta, diapers, and toilet paper. Now the restrictions are gradually being lifted, but flour at Tesco , for example, is still sold in quantities of no more than three bags.
Business analysts offer some complex explanations for the type of “disruptive i-mpact of the pandemic on supply chains”. Translated into Russian, “disruptive” means “tearing”. But it is not so much the pandemic that destroys the logistics, but the authorities themselves.
For example, in England , the Test and Trace mobile application is running. By uploading it to a mobile phone, a person receives notifications about contacts with people who have been diagnosed with coronavirus. Having received such a notification, he is obliged to stay at home for ten days. It is clear that such an application is not profitable for businessmen or self-employed, they do not even download it. But if the employer has to pay for the whole thing, then people are happy to go into self-isolation – who will refuse a ten-day vacation?
Therefore, British ports, cargo transportation, supermarkets are faced with a huge shortage of personnel. At the end of July, about 1.7 million Britons were o-ut of work. There is no one in the country to transport, ship, put on shelves, sell goods. Hence the empty sections in the stores.
The story is similar in the United States. Sitting on coronavirus benefits often becomes more profitable than working hard for a relatively small salary. As a result, shipping, warehousing and retail suffer.
This summer there was another shortage of meat – now they are blamed on cyberattacks, and cyberattacks – on the notorious “R-ussian hackers”. American slaughterhouses surrendered to them. Probably, steaks will take the ransom.
The senselessness of these excuses once again demonstrates the man-made nature of the crisis. “America is faced with a shortage of everything and everyone – from salad to semiconductors – and there is no end in sight” – this is how local experts describe the situation .
For people with Soviet experience, this end is perfectly visible and well known. After a year or two of suffering, the deficit will end as if by magic. The goods will return to the shelves. “One hundred varieties of sausages” in showcases will again begin to delight the eye of the consumer. But the price tags for them will be several times higher.
Tellingly, online commerce around the world works without interruptions. This is for retailers who barely survived the lockdowns, the business is in full swing. Who will go to a supermarket where half of the shelves are empty? And the Internet giants’ profits and capitalization are growing by leaps and bounds.
All right according to Klaus Schwab, the apologist of the “Great Reset”: digital corporations have a disruptive (destructive) impact on traditional business. They ruin him, to put it simply. This is the logic of modern capitalism: having devoured the countries of the third world, corporations began to burn out competitors in their own countries. And consumers will have to pay for this whole banquet.
The purposeful destruction of global logistics is beneficial not only to American corporations, but also to the American government. Artificial shortages, rising food prices, food riots – all these are classic tools for creating “controlled chaos” in different countries.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which almost openly serves the US Department of Defense , gives us a perspective : “The masses of the urban poor who were left out of work during the pandemic <…> are most likely to stage riots and protests due to rising food prices . <…> It was these groups of the population that took to the streets in more than 40 countries in 2007-2008 and succeeded in overthrowing governments in at least two states. “Agree, this beats the main goal of the “great reboot”. If its authors want to demolish national governments, then what could be better for this than artificial shortages and rising prices?
All this is well known to us in Russia. The February revolution took place precisely because of the plan-ned shortage of food in Pet-rograd . If American partners are making artificial price increases a weapon in hybrid warfare, this should be taken seriously. It sounds strange, but the price tag for a chicken is quite capable of becoming a national security issue.
If the status of the main granary of the world and import substitution in the food sector mean something, then soon all the flags will visit us – oddly enough, for sausage. For meat and milk. For ice cream and jam. All this has already been tasted in China , and perhaps it will gradually reach our Western partners. “Sausage emigration” to Russia is a nice thing.
