Re: 2008 Cruel Summer Deus: Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.
- From: okahSatzquach <Veggywow@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 19:07:18 -0700 (PDT)
On May 11, 8:37 pm, bodhi <psychedelictour...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Hot summer streets
And the pavements are burning
I sit around
Trying to smile
But the air is so heavy and dry
Strange voices are saying
What did they say?
Things I can't understand
It's too close for comfort
This heat has got right out of hand"
- "Cruel Summer" Bananaramahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n6chxpEINs
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.
By BINOY KAMPMARKhttp://www.counterpunch.org/kampmark05082008.html
"I don’t want to alarm anybody, but maybe it’s time for Americans
to start stockpiling food. No this is not a drill."
--Brett Arends
There is a time for food, and a time for ethical appraisals. This was
the case even before Bertolt Brecht gave life to that expression in
Die Driegroschen Oper. The time for a reasoned, coherent
understanding for the growing food crisis is not just overdue, but
seemingly past. Robert Zoellick of the World Bank, an organization
often dedicated to flouting, rather than achieving its claimed goal of
poverty reduction, stated the problem in Davos in January this year.
‘Hunger and malnutrition are the forgotten Millennium Development
Goal.’
Global food prices have gone through the roof, terrifying the 3
billion or so people who live off less than $2 a day. This should
terrify everybody else. In November, the UN Food and Agricultural
Organization reported that food prices had suffered a 18 percent
inflation in China, 13 percent in Indonesia and Pakistan, and 10
percent or more in Latin America, Russia and India. The devil in the
detail is even more distressing: a doubling in the price of wheat, a
twenty percent increase in the price of rice, an increase by half in
maize prices.
Finger pointing is not always instructive. In this case, it may be.
The US and various European countries are moving food crops into the
bio-fuel business, itself an environmentally unsound business. This,
in addition to encouraging developing countries to not merely
‘liberalize’ their agricultural sectors, but specialize in exporting
specific cash crops (cotton, cocoa), has done wonders to precipitate
the shortages. Consumption in developing economies, added to the
vicissitudes of climate change, water availability, and rising
fertilizer costs, are others.
Political stability is being undermined. Food shortages are proving
endemic. Food riots are becoming common. Riots have been sparked in
Cameroon, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Uzbekistan and Yemen. There have been
riots over spiraling grain prices in Mauritania and Senegal. In Mexico
City, mass protests were sparked by a price hike in tortillas. In
Haiti, biscuits are being made from a mud compound. The Somali
capital Mogadishu bore witness to the deaths of five people.
Governments, indifferent and incautious to the demands of a hungry
public, have already fallen victim to the food crisis. Prime Minister
Jacques Edouard Alexis was dismissed by a senate vote in Haiti after
skirmishes between UN forces and protesters. The UN commander Major
General Carlos Alberto Dos Santos Cruz urged calm amidst the carnage.
‘It is important for the people to have a peaceful life in Haiti,’ he
claimed in April 2008. The message then: be peaceful on an empty
stomach.
The Bush administration, so often in arrears on the relief front, has
earmarked some 770 million dollars or so in funds dealing with the
problem. There is one glaring hitch: the money would only start
flowing in 2009. ‘There is definitely a lag time when it comes to
assistance,’ states the senior manager of the Foreign Aid Reform
Project at the Brookings Institute, Noam Unger.
More troubling is the critique offered of the crisis by officials
within the administration. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
at the Peace Corps conference held at the end of April, targeted
various culprits. The audience barely stirred at some of the
explanations: distribution, oil prices, and the ‘alternate fuels
effort’. They duly woke up when Rice moved on to targeting the export
strategies of various countries – India and China foremost amongst
them. ‘We obviously have to look at places where production seems to
be declining and declining to the point that people are actually
putting export caps on the amount of food.’
The problem, for Rice, is rising food consumption. Improved diets
within China and India are bothering free market fundamentalists who
insist that export caps stifle trade. According to this rationale,
Indians are far better off buying the rice from the global market than
eating their own in times of crisis. How silly of them to ensure a
domestic supply first before shipping off the rest for the global
market. Rice is crying foul at such protectionist deviancy, will
‘have a look at it’ and take the matter to the World Trade
Organization.
Members of the American public are not so sure. A narrative of
catastrophe is gradually building – stockpile or perish. The Wall
Street Journal (April 25) was one of the first to issue the clarion
call: ‘Start Hoarding Food Americans!’ The paper had various
suggestions. Stock up on some products – dried pasta, rice, cereals,
canned products. Buy them all in bulk to save. Sit the children down
give them a good talking to – no, not about the birds and the bees,
but about ‘how our generation and the two behind it, screwed their
world into a death spiral through greed and predatory capitalism.’
Solutions suggested by such economists as Jeffrey Sachs, somewhat
patchy yet desperately needed, are forthcoming: allow easier access
for sub-Saharan African farmers to fertilizers; reduce the amount of
crops going into bio-fuel development; shore-up climate change
policies.
Sachs, in his work Common Wealth, also advocates the abolition of
states in the face of a crowded planet. But it was state regimes
besotted by neoliberal economics that brought us here. They can take
us back and remedy the damage. Abolishing them would simply absolve
their regimes.
In the meantime, the US and some countries in the West may have to
brace themselves for a starving army guided by the morality of the
stomach. The food riots are coming.
-------------
Food Crisis Feared as Fertile Land Runs Out
Maps show 40% of Earth's land is used for agriculture
Growing human 'footprint' a risk to the environment
by Kate Ravilious
December 6, 2005 by the Guardian / UKhttp://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1206-01.htm
New maps show that the Earth is rapidly running out of fertile land
and that food production will soon be unable to keep up with the
world's burgeoning population. The maps reveal that more than one
third of the world's land is being used to grow crops or graze cattle.
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison combined satellite
land cover images with agricultural census data from every country in
the world to create detailed maps of global land use. Each grid square
was 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) across and showed the most prevalent
land use in that square, such as forest, grassland or ice.
"In the act of making these maps we are asking: where is the human
footprint on the Earth?" said Amato Evan, a member of the University
of Wisconsin-Madison research team presenting its results this week at
a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
The current map shows a snapshot of global land use for the year 2000,
but the scientists also have land use data going back to 1700, showing
how things have changed.
"The maps show, very strikingly, that a large part of our planet
(roughly 40%) is being used for either growing crops or grazing
cattle," said Dr Navin Ramankutty, a member of the Wisconsin-Madison
team. By comparison, only 7% of the world's land was being used for
agriculture in 1700.
The Amazon basin has seen some of the greatest changes in recent
times, with huge swaths of the rainforest being felled to grow soya
beans.
"One of the major changes we see is the fast expansion of soybeans in
Brazil and Argentina, grown for export to China and the EU," said Dr
Ramankutty.
This agricultural expansion has come at the expense of tropical
forests in both countries.
Meanwhile, intensive farming practices mean that cropland areas have
decreased slightly in the US and Europe and the land is being gobbled
up by urbanisation.
The research indicates that there is now little room for further
agricultural expansion.
"Except for Latin America and Africa, all the places in the world
where we could grow crops are already being cultivated. The remaining
places are either too cold or too dry to grow crops," said Dr
Ramankutty.
By continuing to monitor changes in land use the scientists hope that
they will be able to highlight problems and help find solutions.
"The real question is, how can we continue to produce food from the
land while preventing negative environmental consequences such as
deforestation, water pollution and soil erosion?" said Dr Ramankutty.
The next phase of the project is to build an internet-based databank -
called the Earth Collaboratory - that would draw on the knowledge of
scientists around the world, local environmentalists and members of
the general public.
Jonathan Foley, director of the Wisconsin-Madison research team, said:
"[The Collaboratory] will truly be a brave new experiment that
effectively bridges science, decision-making and real-world
environmental practice - collectively envisioning a new way to live
sustainably."
------------
Mormon Women Teach About Food Storage - PART ONEhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zjUttkGsW8
PART TWOhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPyNgOMfVWk&feature=related
Latter-day Saints Food Storage Calculatorhttp://lds.about.com/library/bl/faq/blcalculator.htm
LDS Food Storage Sitehttp://www.providentliving.org/channel/1,11677,1706-1,00.html
--------------
namaste;
bodhihttp://psychedelictourist.blogspot.com
eedur learn 2 writ rite or just get ah job an cut yoh hairz, jerk
.
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