'THE GRAB' -- The Most Shocking Documentary Of The Year About The Greatest Threat To Your Family's Future

The notches in the pattern are geographically disparate and murky, but they underscore one point: What oil was to the 20th century, food and water will be to the 21st.

‘The BIGGEST story of the 21st century’

Editor’s Note: Pair the above Henry Kissinger quote with the one at the end of this post, then consider carefully what he is implying and saying outloud; right in your face. Combine that with the fact that the last book he contributed to was on the future use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to control the world. Any questions about what the corrupt, sociopathic ruling class is up to?

People, wake up, resist in whatever way — large or small — that you can. Time … is … short. — Mark Taylor

Six years in the making, jaw-dropping new film ‘The Grab’ shows a secret scramble by governments and private firms to buy up global resources.

By Adrian Horton
The Guardian (6/12/24)

In 2013, the US food conglomerate Smithfield Foods – the country’s largest pork producer and maker of the famous holiday ham – was sold to a Hong Kong-based company called WH Group in a deal worth $7.1bn. It was the largest ever Chinese acquisition of an American company; virtually overnight, WH Group, formerly called Shuanghui International, gained ownership of nearly one in four American pigs. Such a huge business deal did not go unnoticed; news coverage and an eventual congressional hearing questioned the sale with a mix of good, old-fashioned American xenophobia and reasonable concern for the nation’s food supply. But in the eyes of most people, and certainly most American consumers, the Smithfield Foods sale remained just that: a one-off business deal, if they were aware of it at all.

For Nate Halverson, a journalist with the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) out of Emeryville, California, the Smithfield deal was the first point in a much wider and concerning pattern – though the company’s CEO, Larry Pope, assured Congress that the Chinese government was not behind WH Group’s purchase, Halverson found evidence to the contrary on a reporting trip to the company’s headquarters: a secret document, marked not for distribution in the United States, detailing every dollar of the deal, and the state-run Bank of China’s “social responsibility” in backing it for “national strategy”.

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“The hope with the film is that we’ve connected together the pieces so that people can see the problem,” said Halverson, “and with good information now in hand, we can all begin to work and put together a world that we all want to live in.”

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A similar national security motivation undergirded Saudi-backed land purchases in such disparate regions as Arizona and Zambia, or Russia’s import of American cowboys to manage its state-incentivized cattle herds. These seemingly unrelated developments form The Grab, a riveting new documentary which outlines, with startling clarity, the move by national governments, financial investors and private security forces to snap up food and water resources. “At some point you’re like, ‘Oh my God, how is this not the story?’” Halverson said. “We’re just seeing the early stages of what’s going to be the big story of the 21st century.”

The Grab, from the Blackfish director Gabriela Cowperthwaite and filmed over the course of six years, captures the CIR team’s developing understanding of the pattern in real time, connecting Halverson’s Smithfield reporting in 2015 to a New York investment company’s purchase of Arkansas farmland to supply Hong Kong, WikiLeaks cables detailing how Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah ordered national companies to buy up resources abroad to drained aquifers in Arizona, and a leaked trove of emails from a private security company to displaced farmers in Zambia. The notches in the pattern are geographically disparate and murky, but they underscore one point: what oil was to the 20th century, food and water will be to the 21st – precious, geopolitically powerful and contested. “The 20th century had Opec,” says Halverson in the film. “In the future, we’re going to have Food Pec.”

That trend is already under way, from Mexico’s avocado militias to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which the film argues was motivated, in part, by Putin’s desire to control a bread basket. The Grab has the feeling of a revelation, though the reveal is not a conspiracy; the pattern is less a plan than a series of reactions, from a variety of actors, to the fact that every single human needs food and water, and there is not enough arable land on Earth for the projected increase of 2 billion people by 2050. The instinct, on a primal and national level, is to hoard. …

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Cartoon by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink

DEEP IN THE SHADOWS: How World Leaders Are Scrambling To Secure Food

“Powerful entities are grabbing up the final resources that are left.”

Amanpour and Company
PBS (6/25/24)

In a world full of unrest, fears are mounting about access to our most vital resources — food and water. "The Grab" is a documentary that chronicles the way certain governments are attempting to control these global resources. The journalist and director behind the film, Nate Halverson and Gabriela Cowperthwaite, join the show to discuss whether the fight over our most precious commodities could lead to geopolitical conflict.

18-minute video

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Syrian Farmer Photographs Illegal U.S. Occupation Troops Stealing Wheat Harvest

CGTN (6/30/24)

Millions of Syrians struggling to survive face a new threat. The daily seizure of wheat shipments by U.S. forces is pushing many of them to the brink of starvation, an eyewitness told China Media Group (CMG) during an interview.

Residents are struggling on meager bread rations for their very survival. Syrian farmer Fiaz, who lives in an area controlled by unauthorized U.S. forces, is one of them.

2-minute video

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WARNING: Prepare For Massive FOOD WARS, World Headed For Shortages Warns Biggest Commodities Trader

By Lena Petrova

10-minute video

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