Food Riots Lead to Haitian Meltdown

In Haiti the food riots were severe enough that a UN "Peacekeeper" was killed, and the Prime Minister was forced to resign.

Food Riots Lead to Haitian Meltdown: On Saturday the Haitian Parliament voted to oust Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis. This was in the wake of riots over food prices. They say "what started out as a protest against food and fuel prices has segued into a political mine field". The situation is described in terms of a power struggle between factions of Haitian leadership, making this sound like the result of manipulation by those factions rather than a natural outgrowth of anger over food prices. That is, it's possible some faction is manipulating anger over food prices to drive people into revolt. Or maybe not.

The Fury of the Poor does a good job of describing the desperate straits being faced by the Haitian poor.

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...On the roof of the former prison, enterprising women prepare something that looks like biscuits and is even called by that name. The key ingredient, yellow clay, is trucked in from the nearby mountains. The clay is combined with salt and vegetable fat to make dough, which is then dried in the sun.

For many Haitians, the mud biscuits are their only food. They taste of fat, suck the moisture out of the mouth and leave behind an aftertaste of dirt. They often cause diarrhea, but they help to numb the pangs of hunger. "I'm hoping one day I'll have enough food to eat, so I can stop eating these," Marie Noël, who survives with her seven children on the dirt cakes,...

...A daily bowl of rice is almost unaffordable....

"Should we be surprised that despair often turns into violence?" Indeed.

As quited in Food Riots Unlikely To Happen In Philippines? the IMF has warned that food riots are likely to have dire consequences around the world. World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned that exploding food prices threaten to cause instability in at least 33 countries, including regional powers like Egypt, Indonesia and Pakistan.

The article describes four causes:-

• Ever growing world population while there is a decrease in arable land
• Climate change causing loss of arable land due to several factors
• Because of changing eating habits, more and more arable land and virgin forests are being turned into pasture for livestock. The yield per acre in calories of land given over to pasture is substantially lower than that of arable land.
• The World Bank is demanding "market reforms" including removal of import tarrifs
• Speculators are causing a rise in price of "raw materials" making it seem more attractive to grow food as "energy crops" rather than as food
• Millions of people displaced by wars and unable to do productive things like raise their own crops

Article Reference: 

Food Riots Lead to Haitian Meltdown

The Fury of the Poor

Haiti seeks new prime minister after food riots

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Food Riots Unlikely To Happen In Philippines?

Over the weekend the more I thought about the food riots the more wrong this seemed. Here are some stories of potential food riots in the Phillipines.

Food Riots Unlikely To Happen In Philippines: In the Phillipines there are official reassurances that food riots will not happen there. The IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn told reporters at the IMF’s semi-annual meetings in Washington. “Hundreds of thousands of people will be starving, leading to a disruption of the economic environment” if food inflation keeps accelerating at its current rate.

The problem described in this article is purely the cost for food, especially rice and wheat. The Phillipines government apparently has enough reserves, both cash and stored grain, to avert a crisis.

Transcript of a Press Briefing by Tomasso Padoa-Schioppa, Italian Finance Minister and Chairman of the International Monetary and Financial Committee, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, with John Lipsky, First Deputy Managing Director, and Masood Ahmed, Director, External Relations:

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...MR. STRAUSS-KAHN:...If food prices go on as they are today, then the consequences on the population in a large set of countries, including Africa, but not only Africa, will be terrible. Hundreds of thousands of people will be starving. Children will suffer from malnutrition, with consequences all of their lives.

Moreover, the consequences will be such that disruptions may occur in the economic environment, trade balances, current account, so that at the end of the day most of governments, having done well during the last five or ten years, will see what they have done totally destroyed and their legitimacy facing the population destroyed, also.

So, it is not only a humanitarian question. It is not only an economic question. It is also a democratic question. As we know, learning from the past, those kind of questions sometimes end into war. So, if we want to avoid that the huge rise in commodity prices, and especially in food prices, has these terrible consequences, then we need to take this problem into account much more than has been done until now. So, financial turmoil, on the one hand, slowdown in the economies, no decoupling from the emerging countries, global problems, that is one of the problems we have to face. Increase in price commodities, especially in food prices, that is the second problem we have to face. To do that, the reform of the Fund is certainly necessary, but we now need to devote a hundred percent of our time to these questions.

What I saw this morning is that the spirit of multilateralism is obviously alive and kicking, and that was probably the best news of the morning. Now, I think Tommaso and myself are prepared to answer all the questions you want....

Philippines Seeks Asian Summit on Food Crisis, Trade (Update4) :

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The Philippines, the world's largest rice importer, is urging China, Japan and other Asian nations to attend an emergency meeting on the region's food crisis ... Grain prices including rice, the staple food for half the world, have surged this year on concern there's a shortage in the international market, prompting some growers to impose export curbs. The higher prices are stoking unrest and fanning inflation,... China, Egypt, Vietnam and India, representing more than a third of global rice exports, have curbed sales this year, and Indonesia says it may do the same. ... Rice futures have almost doubled in the past year as the Philippines tried to secure shipments. ... Soaring food prices, together with the seizure in credit markets, topped the agenda at this weekend's meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Article Reference: 

Food Riots Unlikely To Happen In Philippines

Transcript of a Press Briefing by Tomasso Padoa-Schioppa, Italian Finance Minister and Chairman of the International Monetary and Financial Committee, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, with John Lipsky, Firs

Philippines Seeks Asian Summit on Food Crisis, Trade (Update4)

Global crisis as food prices soar

Rice, flour to flood markets

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The other global crisis: rush to biofuels is driving up price of food

I read this news article immediately after watching an episode of Doctor Who, and it seemed a story that would fit right in. 'A dramatic rise in the worldwide cost of food is provoking riots throughout the Third World where millions more of the world's most vulnerable people are facing starvation as food shortages grow and cereal prices soar.' The article says food riots are occurring in many countries, that the riots are due to rising food prices, and the rising food prices are due to food being diverted to biofuel production.

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The new market for biofuels has raised grain prices. Corn is being used to produce energy and the market is anticipating hugely increased production in the coming decade. George Bush wants 15 per cent of American cars to run on biofuels by 2017, which will mean trebling maize production. Europe has a set a transport fuels target of 5.75 per cent from biofuels by 2010. As a result, the price of corn has begun to track that of oil quite closely.

In order to preserve our way of life U.S. policies are causing fuel to be produced from the most inefficient fuel source possible which just happens to be food.

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Food-riot watch: Port-au-Prince under siege: Food riots seem to be happening around the world on a near-daily basis lately. U.N. peacekeepers fired rubber bullets and tear gas at an angry mob that tried to storm the National Palace in the Hatian capital, Port-au-Prince today. Riots began in Haiti last Wednesday and five people have already been killed in the violence. According to Reuters, the price of rice has doubled over the last six months and Haiti's poor are growing desperate:

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If the government cannot lower the cost of living it simply has to leave. That's our decision," said protester Renand Alexandre. "If the police and U.N. troops want to shoot at us, that's OK, because in the end if we are not killed by bullets we'll die of hunger."

Unsurprisingly, Haiti's government is stumped about how to deal with what is, in fact, a growing global crisis.

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Haitian leader's answer to food crisis doesn't satisfy critics

...the nationwide protest over rising food prices..."Our children are hungry and we can't feed them," he says. "We know we have a president in this country. So we're forced to get out on the street and cry for help to the people who have the capacity to do something for us. That's why we put up the barricades to block the cars. The president must do something about this."...After demonstrations turned violent and street clashes erupted between United Nations peacekeepers and protesters..."The proposals of the president, as good as they may be for the future of the country, do not solve the immediate problems of the population,"...Food prices are rising around the world, but perhaps nowhere have they had such a devastating impact than in Haiti...Since US troops whisked away former Frmer President Jean-Bertrand Aristide into exile during an armed rebellion in February 2004, the prices of rice and beans have nearly doubled, and in the past six months...

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Why costs are climbing
...Unlike past food crises, solved largely by throwing aid at hungry stomachs and boosting agricultural productivity, this one won't go away quickly, experts say. Prices are soaring and stand every chance of staying high because this crisis is different.

A swelling global population, soaring energy prices, the clamouring for meat from the rising Asian middle class, competition from biofuels and hot money pouring into the commodity markets are all factors that make this crisis unique and potentially calamitous. Even with concerted global action, such as rushing more land into cultivation, it will take years to fix the problem....

...Other UN officials have been equally blunt. Sir John Holmes, the UN's top humanitarian official and emergency relief co-ordinator, said this week that soaring food prices threaten political stability. The UN and national governments are especially worried about potentially violent situations in Africa's increasingly crowded urban areas. Rioting triggered by absent or unaffordable food could cripple cities. "The security implications should not be underestimated as food riots are being reported across the globe," Mr. Holmes said....

...Throughout history, the world has seen food shortages and famines triggered by drought, war, pestilence, crop failures and regional overpopulation. In the Chinese famine between 1958 and 1961, an estimated 30 million people died from malnutrition. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, severe food shortages hit India and parts of southeast Asia. Only the emergency shipment of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of grain from the U.S. prevented a humanitarian disaster. Drought, violent conflict, economic incompetence, misfortune and corruption created deadly famines in Ethiopia and Sudan in the first half of the 1980s....

...Starting next week, Britain will require gasoline and diesel sold at the pumps be mixed with 2.5-per-cent biofuel, rising to 5.75 per cent by 2010 and 10 per cent by 2020, in line with European Union directives. Ontario's ethanol-content mandate is 5 per cent. As the content requirements rise, more and more land is devoted to growing crops for fuel, such as corn-based ethanol. In the EU alone, 15 per cent of the arable land is expected to be devoured by biofuel production by 2020....

Article Reference: 

The other global crisis: rush to biofuels is driving up price of food

Bangladesh workers riot over soaring food prices

Food-riot watch: Port-au-Prince under siege

Haitian leader's answer to food crisis doesn't satisfy critics

Haitian Prime Minister may be fired Saturday

Haitians say their hunger is real

Calm returns to Haiti after riots

Food-riot watch: Egypt protests spook government

Why costs are climbing

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An inconvenient comparison of two homes

Al Gore, the big time promotor of environmental awareness and alarming people of global warming... you'd think he'd be living in a super green house and driving a super green car, right? One would hope he'd put his money where his mouth is.

Al Gore's home is a typical mansion of the rich elite in all its energy wasting glory.

George W. Bush's home in Crawford Texas is the epitome of off-the-grid living with every sort of sustainable energy gizmo you could think of.

If only GW would do for the country what he does for himself in his own home.

UPDATE (April 14, 2007) In Ecotality Gets Drudged When Gore Goes Green it's noted that Al Gore has applied for zoning permission to install solar panels on his house.

Article Reference: 

An Inconvenient Truth

Ecotality Gets Drudged When Gore Goes Green

James Lovelock: The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years

James Lovelock is an independant scientist who has been nurturing the Gaia model of understanding the earth. He's published a string of books claiming the planet we call Earth is a living being he names Gaia. e.g. Gaia : A New Look at Life on Earth He began this work as a space scientist advising NASA on how would they determine whether there was "life" on other planets, such as Mars. That is, given the sparse set of instruments we can send to Mars, which ones should be sent to make the measurements required to determine whether "life" exists there. The question sent him to pondering life on this planet, leading him to recognize the planet as a whole being a living organism.

I say this to help give context to an article he has written fortelling a disastrous change in Gaia. The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years He's saying that the global warming phenemona is Gaia developing a "fever", that the historical record of this planet shows several fevers which occurred, and that in the past those fevers took 100,000 years to heal.

When earth has a "fever" it undergoes a climate change with an expansion of desert lands, the heat around the equator becoming unbearable for most life (including humans) and that as a result he expects billions of humans to die.

This may very well be what will occur. We are beginning to see alarming signs such as the melting of the permafrost in the arctic.

However in the recent few days I've heard a couple spiritual teachers talking about the apocalypse period described in the Book of Revelations. That book is a set of visions an early prophet received about the future of humanity. It's a rather disturbing part of the Bible since it describes a horrible war, disease, famine, environmental problems, and more. But the book also ends with a great deal of hope, with a "New Heaven and New Earth". The book is also hard to interpret and understand.

These two teachers, Ron Roth and Gregg Braden, have both studied the ancient writings of a wide range of traditions. They both said a similar thing about the Revelations. First, that many of the predictions in it have already come to pass. e.g. The Ukranian name for Chernobyl means "Wormwood" which, in Revelations, was a star that burned on the earth, which is essentially what happened at Chernobyl.

They both teach about the power of prayer, in an authentic form of prayer practiced by ancient mystics. Both, especially Gregg Braden, talk about the cycles of history recorded in the ancient texts and how the ancient teachings talk about a cataclysmic time which will happen about now. It's not just the book of Revelations, but other ancient traditions predicted apocalypse. But they all suggested prayer as the way humanity could avoid the fate.

It's not too late.