Thread: Food Riots
View Single Post
  #11   Report Post  
Old 17-04-2008, 07:43 AM posted to rec.gardens.edible,rec.gardens
Billy[_4_] Billy[_4_] is offline
external usenet poster
 
First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Aug 2007
Posts: 2,265
Default Food Riots

In article ,
"Dioclese" NONE wrote:

"Billy" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Dioclese" NONE wrote:

"Billy" wrote in message
...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1208...=googlenews_ws
j


Food Inflation, Riots Spark Worries for World Leaders, IMF, World Bank
Push for Solutions

By BOB DAVIS and DOUGLAS BELKIN
April 14, 2008; Page A1

WASHINGTON -- Finance ministers gathered this weekend to grapple with
the global financial crisis also struggled with a problem that has
plagued the world periodically since before the time of the Pharaohs:
food shortages.

Surging commodity prices have pushed up global food prices 83% in the
past three years, according to the World Bank -- putting huge stress on
some of the world's poorest nations. Even as the ministers met, Haiti's
Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis was resigning after a week in
which that tiny country's capital was racked by rioting over higher
prices for staples like rice and beans.
[photo]
As food prices soar, protests are breaking out around the world,
including this riot Saturday in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Rioting in response to soaring food prices recently has broken out in
Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Ethiopia. In Pakistan and
Thailand, army troops have been deployed to deter food theft from
fields
and warehouses. World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned in a recent
speech that 33 countries are at risk of social upheaval because of
rising food prices. Those could include Indonesia, Yemen, Ghana,
Uzbekistan and the Philippines. In countries where buying food requires
half to three-quarters of a poor person's income, "there is no margin
for survival," he said.

Many policy makers at the weekend meetings of the International
Monetary
Fund and World Bank agreed that the problem is severe. Among other
targets, they singled out U.S. policies pushing corn-based ethanol and
other biofuels as deepening the woes. . . (continued)
--

Billy

The Murder of Rachel Corrie
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1248.shtml

4 horseman of the Apocalypse, famine. Overpopulation. Drought,
flooding,
et al - global warming. Self-induced/self-created problem by mankind.


Self-induced/self-created problem by the species homo sapiens
but driven by the avarice and lies of only a few of them. Does
seem to be the "season of the witch", though. When people wake
up and listen to the words of I. F. Stone,"Rich people march on
Washington every day.", then, maybe, we'll have a chance.

In America, we have been waiting for the 4 horseman for so long,
that their reality is in doubt. The "Third World", where a third
of the planet's population lives on $2/day or less, knows better
and have seen these cowboys all too often.
--

Billy

The Murder of Rachel Corrie
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1248.shtml


You of course are correct (sic). Famine does not exist in a world-wide
scale. $2 a month is applicable in some areas of the world, that being half
their income.

Yes, avarice (corporations/futures), and lies (politicians) continue to
corrupt and fleece the corruptible and take from meek of heart.

As usual, like most, you skipped overpopulation. Can't/won't address it.
See meek of heart above.

Addressed else where. It is a problem but if the next president let's us
hand out condoms, raises the third worlds standard of living while
reducing ours to the level of the Europeans all should be well:-( Really
wish I believed that.

I'll skip the denial (by silence) of global warming causing drought and
flooding.


The really scary part is that Pakistan has stationed troops at food
depots and agricultural areas to protect the food supply. The population
of density Pakistan is higher than Manhattan, 544/sq. mi., and they are
nuclear armed with long range missiles.

The Democrats aren't the solution (Clinon:4 more years of war, Obama: a
health plan that only an insurance company could love) and the
Republicans offer 95 more years of war, with no funding, and tax cuts
for the rich. What party can we vote for? No, I don't like Nader either,
because he doesn't have a party base. Dang!
--

Billy

The Murder of Rachel Corrie
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1248.shtml