Economically:

Europe:

  • Ukraine’s Farmers Fight on the Front Line of Global Food Crisis
  • The Coming Russian Struggle for New Markets for Its Oil. A fair amount of cope but it does bring up a couple decent points.
  • Crypto could give Russia several ways to sidestep sanctions — and bitcoin mining powered by embargo-hit energy is just one, the IMF says. It would be so fucking funny if the only reason crypto was banned or severely limited is to constrain Russia, and not because it converts increasing numbers of endangered species into ash in order to solve imaginary equations.
  • UK to open first new coal mine in 30 years
  • Supermarkets limit cooking oil purchases due to Ukraine crisis
  • Greeks spending less on basics
  • Europe Risks Rationing If Putin Cuts Off Russian Gas Supply
  • Grounded Russian cargo ships dent French budget

Asia and Oceania:

  • IMF says yen’s rapid slide may hamper Japan’s post-pandemic recovery
  • Indo-Bangla connectivity projects to boost Eastern India economy
  • A humanitarian crisis is developing in Sri Lanka, but it could spark real change

Africa:

  • Senegalese health workers strike over midwife negliglence, better working conditions and wages
  • Explosion at Nigerian illegal oil refinery kills more than 100
  • Mozamibique creates a sovereign wealth fund.

Mozambique plans to establish a sovereign wealth fund later this year as it prepares to start natural gas exports that the government says may generate $96 billion of revenue for the world’s third-poorest nation.

  • Algeria will not abandon its commitment to supply Spain with gas, Tebboune says Bread, Debt and Politics Whip Up Volatile Mix in Tunisia

The war in Ukraine is accelerating Tunisia’s slump as energy and commodity prices spike and supplies of essentials tighten globally. Inflation hovers near a record high and the deficit is set to double, while 40% of under-25s are unemployed, threatening a new exodus of migrants across the Mediterranean to Europe.

America:

Soaring food prices push more Cargill family members on to world’s richest 500 list. Desperately resisting the urge to fedpost.

Global:

  • Which Comes First: Inflation or Political Instability?

Diplomatically and Politically:

Involving Ukraine or Russia:

  • Zelensky calls again for meeting with Putin ‘to end the war’
  • Moon of Alabama: How Not To Report On Ukraine. It essentially uses an example to demonstrate just how much of the information coming out of Ukraine is directly from Zelensky or his government’s mouths, rather than anything actually happening on the ground.
  • The Austrian Foreign Minister believes that Ukraine should not be offered membership in the European Union.

Europe:

  • EU Council and Commission appeal Western Sahara ruling
  • Slovenia elections are going on. I don’t know enough about Slovenia’s politics to have a halfway educated opinion on this.
  • Forget the presidency, I can lead France as its PM, insists Mélenchon
  • Germany has a special responsibility to stop Putin’s evil. Almost a Dipshittery contender but it’s too boring for that, really. I need at least a juicy, shitty hot take to put stuff in there.
  • Homes For Ukraine whistleblower says UK refugee scheme is ‘designed to fail’

“The system is designed, it would appear, for people to fail. They want to keep the numbers down. Everything they do feels as if it is to do that. I’ve even had a barrister and lawyers on the phone saying they couldn’t understand the system.”

The UK? Making systems fail on purpose to discredit them? Utterly unthinkable. Anyway, let’s reduce NHS funding by a bit more, shall we? Maybe put a private hospital in London?

Asia and Oceania:

  • India suspends tourist visas issued to Chinese nationals: IATA
  • Why the Solomon Islands’ China Pact Has U.S. Riled.
  • Scott Morrison says Chinese military base in Solomon Islands would be ‘red line’ for Australia, US It’s very strange that Australia and the US are ‘rightfully’ worried about what a Chinese military base 1200 miles from Australia might mean, but if you apply the same logic with Ukraine and Russia, then Russia should respect its sovereignty and suck it up.
  • Common Dreams: It’s Wrong to Think of the South Pacific as a US Sphere of Influence
  • Pakistan’s Former PM Imran Khan announces ‘Long March’ to Islamabad for new elections.
  • ‘Not our fight’: Why the Middle East doesn’t fully support Ukraine

“If you think that Putin is a criminal because he moved militarily against Ukraine and you do not think the same about [George] Bush Jr., [US administration officials] Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell, who occupied Iraq … your brain cells are malfunctioning,” Ahmad al-Farraj, a well-known columnist with conservative Saudi daily, Al Jazirah

Asked about their main priorities, a majority of citizens said these were economic in nature. Some worried about corruption and political stability but 57% talked about unemployment, inflation and poverty as the biggest challenges they faced.

North America:

  • Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will visit Ukraine today.
  • Protestors at a demonstration in Manhattan start chanting “Azov”, contributing to the long history of the US siding with fascists.

South America:

  • Nicaragua and Venezuela Relaunch Cooperation Commission
  • Argentina will not place sanctions on Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine, the foreign minister says
  • Maduro claims that Colombia is planning military strikes in Venezuela.

Militarily:

General news

  • Bulgarian PM Denies Ukraine’s Request For Weapons; Says ‘have Clear Red Lines’
  • Turkey blocks Russian armed forces’ air route to Syria
  • UK promises more defence equipment to Ukraine to combat Russia
  • Switzerland thwarts German plans to re-export Swiss-made ammo to Ukraine
  • In the wake of that article a day or two ago about how amazeballs the Javelin is, ASB reports: “7000+ Javelin anti-tank systems have been sent to Ukraine to date. Ukraine uses 1 weeks of worth of javelins in one day. Only 269 Soviet tanks have been visually confirmed destroyed.”
  • Nazi on Azov livestream says “They and the children should have their heads cut off. Just fucking clean up the entire Donbass”
  • Russian Foreign Ministry claims that the US and NATO is now preparing provocations to make it appear as if Russia is using chemical or biological agents in Ukraine.
  • Russia destroys 423 targets in Ukraine overnight

Eastern Ukraine:

  • Border checkpoint in Russia’s Kursk Region again shelled by Ukraine, governor says
  • Progress continues on the front with action near several locations (Izyum, Pospasnya, Maryinka)

Southern Ukraine:

  • Russia destroys terminal in Odessa where foreign weapons were stored.
  • Head of the DPR says that Mariupol “will become better and more beautiful than he was”.

Dipshittery and Cope:

  • The Guardian: The awful truth is dawning: Putin may win in Ukraine. The result would be catastrophe.

The price of failure – the true cost of a Putin victory – could be staggering. It is potentially unsupportable for fractious western democracies and poorer countries alike, beset by simultaneous post-pandemic security, energy, food, inflation and climate crises.

The UN’s future as an authoritative global forum, lawmaker and peacekeeper is in jeopardy, as more than 200 former officials warned Guterres last week. At risk, too, is the credibility of the international court of justice

In terms of democratic norms and human rights, the full or partial subjugation of Ukraine would spell disaster for the international rules-based order – and a triumph for autocrats everywhere.

Let’s get real. For all its heroism and sacrifice, Ukraine may lose this fight. Dreadful though it sounds, Putin could win. If the west so abandons its principles and values to let that happen, the long-term price, for everyone, will be a whole new world of pain.

Get fucked, westoids.

  • Welcome to the Disorderly, Dangerous World of Expensive Oil and Gas

Vladimir Putin has escalated this crisis. His invasion of Ukraine has pushed up prices and forced Europe — until now the largest importer of Russian natural gas — to begin an attempt to end its longstanding dependence on Russian gas.

President Biden’s hope that he could focus his presidency on the climate, not fixing the world’s oil supply, shattered. Unable to resurrect a nuclear deal with Iran that would have restored Iranian oil to world markets, Mr. Biden began last year to ask other producers to increase their output.

America: “I can’t believe Putin would do this to Europe. Completely without external provocation, he invaded Ukraine because he’s so evil. It’s just despicable. Anyway, wanna see how deep I can dive into my money pool?”

For the green transition, the renewed public awareness that the supply of hydrocarbons does not take care of itself, even as Western governments promise to curtail their use, is — paradoxically — a step forward.

Shucks. It’s such a shame that we only learned climate change existed a year ago, or we might have had over half a century to work on renewable energy sources so that this crisis would be much lessened.

  • America’s Era of Free-Lunch Politics Is Over

Beyond the green-eyeshade aspect of it, the difficulty is that the U.S. economy is now constrained by real resources. Policies such as student-loan relief, which could have been useful stimulus a few years ago, have become inflationary.

By the same token, new spending on social benefits that puts cash in pockets will be inflationary unless it’s taxed away from somewhere else.

Now it needs to pivot from progressive dreamscapes and toward a universe of hard tradeoffs. Deficit spending and protectionist regulations can no longer be justified as stimulus — and it’s not practical to fund programs by taxing the wealth or unrealized capital gains of billionaires.

In other words: Spending more in one area will require spending less in another. That can be done with taxation to reduce private spending — it can even be done with taxing the rich — but the base would need to be larger than the tiny groups targeted by these kinds of ideas.

If the end of free-lunch economics is bad news for the progressive left, however, it’s worse news for Republicans.

This person hasn’t been within 30 feet of a poor person, let alone talked to one, in decades. Literal nonsense. I hope the author gave enough bananas to the monkey which wrote this on its typewriter.

  • I’ve dealt with Putin before: I know what it will take to defeat this brutal despot. (by Ukraine’s PM from 2005 to 2010)

One of the greatest weapons we now have against Putin is international solidarity and support.

Awesome! Let me know when you get more than 15% of the world’s population on your side.

I Thought I’d Mention:

  • Democratic Republic of Congo Declared a New Outbreak of Ebola