Russia and Ukraine

[The Grand Nudger]

On the subject of BASF, I wrote about it a bit back - and we definitely have a problem..though it isn't going to affect 1st worlders a much as third worlders (no surprise there). The whole "because of energy prices" is misleading. They make the ingredients for fertilizer, which competes with energy generation for feedstock in the haber process. It doesn;t actually matter what the cost of that feedstock is, as it gets rolled into the price of the product, and that product is used by a captive market that can and will and has bought it at any price. A more accurate assessment would be, that because energy production has been prioritized over fertilizer production....they would prefer to go to someplace where it's easier to procure their feedstock even if it means that someone will freeze to death in their homes.

Poor..poor BASF, billions in profit, but not as many billions as they would have liked. So, naturally, they use the war in ukraine as an excuse to move their profiteering operation to friendlier ground, where they, too, can get some of that sweet sweet laundered russian ff at half market price - so as to better exploit the corn growers market in the us. Its not as if they stopped doing expos and donating fertilizers to grow their own market share and prevent american startups or green producers from muscling in.

So I guess we can add corporate propaganda to russian propaganda as a thing at least some people are susceptible to, and feel presents a compelling case for abandoning ukraine to a bunch of murderous thugs.