Food Crisis - Silent tsunami, by Eric Walberg

[MikeWB]

Food Crisis - Silent tsunami, by Eric Walberg

Date: Sat, 17 May 2008 04:11:46 -0700 (PDT) From: Eric Walberg <efgh1951@yahoo.com>

Silent tsunami

By Eric Walberg

A version of this appeared at http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/897/in2.htm

Is there more than meets the eye in the sudden flurry of talk about a world food crisis, asks Eric Walberg?

Food protests and riots have swept more than 20 countries in the past few months, including Egypt. On 2 April, World Bank President Robert Zoellick told a meeting in Washington that there are 33 countries where price hikes could cause widespread social unrest. The UN World Food Programme called the crisis the silent tsunami, with wheat prices almost doubling in the past year alone, and stocks falling to the lowest level since the perilous post-WWII days. One billion people live on less than $1 a day. Some 850 million are starving. Meanwhile, world food production increased a mere 1 per cent in 2006, and with increasing amounts of output going to biofuels, per capita consumption is declining.

The most commonly stated reasons include rising fuel costs, global warming, deterioration of soils, and increased demand in China and India. So is it all just a case of hard luck and poor planning?

There is just too much of a pattern, and too many elements all pointing in the same direction. Anyone following the news will have heard of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) which first met in 1921 and the group that represents the inner circle within the inner circle, the Bilderberg Club, which first met in 1954. The latter, once a highly secretive organisation bringing together select world political and business leaders, was exposed to the media spotlight in 1990s and since then has had to endure increasing criticism for its, to say the least, undemocratic role in shaping political leaders

[Anonymous]

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jeR ... rLQmikuIhQ

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