Skyrocketing food prices may topple regimes around the globe

Skyrocketing food prices may topple regimes around the globe

news.yahoo.com

The idea of the starving masses driven by their desperation to take to the streets and overthrow the ancien regime has seemed impossibly quaint since capitalism triumphed so decisively in the Cold War. Since then, the spectacle of hunger sparking revolutionary violence has been the stuff of Broadway musicals rather than the real world of politics. And yet, the headlines of the past month suggest that skyrocketing food prices are threatening the stability of a growing number of governments around the world. Ironically, it may be the very success of capitalism in transforming regions previously restrained by various forms of socialism that has helped create the new crisis.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Revolutions and Rebellions. As the world gets more and more desperate with the global energy and food crisis, violence and terror will spread. Once democratic and moderate regimes will potentially fall to extremists and fanatics.

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Thanks bud. I didn't have the patience to go through all that to post the article.

Here is the Time version.

www.time.com...

reply to post by Illahee


I was hoping to get some people's attention with some very real and important news, rather than some crap about a near Sixty Year Old Sex Tape.

I noticed it said sex tape instead of old can of super 8.

Oh well, people will pay attention when the neighbors are stripping thier gardens
or looting their pantry while they are at work.

As a matter of fact we are shifting our garden from the side where it can't be seen to directly in front of all the back windows this year. Odd but we didn't plan it that way except for a change of pace.

Here's a story where the UN Secretary General is now declaring that the Global Food Crisis is now a Global Emergency.

news.yahoo.com...

The World Food Programme still needs another $500 million by May 1st.

People can donate to the World Food Programme online here:

www.wfp.org...

Uh oh. Its far worse than I was thinking. It may backlash into the larger countries by the end of summer. I can see what the IRS rebates are going to now. Ammo and food stocks. They gave us a chance eh? Eat and keep your food or watch a big screen while starving slowly to death.....

This mega sucks. Shouldn't we repeal the pay not to grow acts and force the farmable land back into production? I don't agree with the ideologies and beliefs of some of those places but to let them starve to death is a criminal act.

The most important thing I could imagine people around the world doing at this point is to take over farmland and guard it with their lives from the corporations and governments.

Once democratic and moderate regimes will potentially fall to extremists and fanatics.

Gee... why does that sound so familiar already?

There's no doubt about it... folks aren't looking at this food situation as seriously as they should be.

People have always looked at buying the best television or car, a stereo or wheels for their vehicles or paying for cable, internet and cell phones. Not to many folks have thought about running out of food when the grocery store is down the road and their job is doing good. Most people are living week to week or bi-weekly to bi-weekly instead of looking ahead. Start counting on yourselves and not the government to keep you afloat.

I really wonder if the internet was meant to keep people at home and not at the nations capital? We protest on the internet instead of physically going to Washington anymore. Did past civilizations have internet and it crashed one day and that's where all the lost knowledge disappeared ? I truly hope not, but we have to start saving food or at least spending more on food to stock up with. I find myself at the grocery store buying canned food and non perishable items more than anything else now days.

I posted a thread on this earlier. I have said it before, but I will say it again here. This feels very much like a manufactured crisis to me. Multiple places have mentioned that the problem is more of an economical crisis than a food shortage. Grains have gone up 120% recently, rice is up something like 300%. It isn't so much that there simply isn't food, it is that the people simply can't afford it.

Some places point to a shortage of food that is driving up the cost and I am sure that to some extent, that is true. Fuel costs are driving up costs more than anything if you ask me. When the cost of the farm equipment used to harvest the crops is through the roof, added to the cost of shipping the food.... etc.

Right now in the US it is annoying to a lot of people, but many people are still protected with food stamps. It isn't catastrophic here and it would have to get a lot worse for any food riots to hit our streets. But the poor countries of the world are the ones who will be starving to death because of this. When you can't afford the rice that you need to live, you starve to death. That is happening now and it feels like it is happening on purpose.

It feels as though someone has manufactured a problem and the question is who will gain from this. What type of powers will be granted to help solve the problem. Someone is going to benefit. I just want to know who.

reply to post by Karlhungis

Riots, instability spread as food prices skyrocket
www.cnn.com...

"The finance ministers were in shock, almost in panic this weekend," he said on CNN's "American Morning," in a reference to top economic officials who gathered in Washington. "There are riots all over the world in the poor countries ... and, of course, our own poor are feeling it in the United States."

Analysts agree the cost of fuel is among the reasons for the skyrocketing prices.
Another major reason is rising demand, particularly in places in the midst of a population boom, such as China and India.
Also, said Sachs, "climate shocks" are damaging food supply in parts of the world. "You add it all together: Demand is soaring, supply has been cut back, food has been diverted into the gas tank. It's added up to a price explosion."

The Great Biofuel Famine
www.sott.net...

Using United Nations global poverty statistics as a base, it is now clear that United States and European Union biofuel policies will significantly contribute to the early, avoidable deaths of between 10 and 20 million people in the year 2008 alone.

Biofuels are a dead end technology that can only lead to more human misery, hunger, and environmental destruction no matter what biofuel crops we grow.

In Haiti, some of the poor have resorted to eating cookies made of mud, and Haitian food riots are beginning to look more like outright revolution.

Here's a project for someone who knows how to find the answer... I'd be very interested in seeing who the people are that have a large majority of their holdings recently moved into 'commodities' (recently meaning within the last 6-12 months) I'm suggesting you may find some of the same entities from back in '01 with all the 'put options' on the airlines...






[edit on 4/15/2008 by RabbitChaser]

reply to post by Karlhungis



Some places may have increased food production but it is not a universal increase. In addition the places that are growing more still have to ship their food, which uses fuel. That fuel costs quite alot, consumption is outpacing production. Many nations have already hit peak production.

The costs of that fuel has to go into the cost of the food. So unless somone starts subsidizing fuel costs for farmers, were going to have high prices. If we subsidize we'll just have higher taxes. Either way were going to pay for it.

So I don't see it as manufactured situation, unless if you mean by manufactured you actually mean negligent uncontrolled consumption of resources and negligent out of control population growth.

So far I don't see anyone benefitting except energy producers, I'm pretty sure they know as I know that whatever gains they make now are temporary and they need to prepare for the long term. If they expect to survive and not meet the same fates as the Ancien Regime they better start helping rather than adding to the problem.

Originally posted by MikeboydUS
reply to post by Karlhungis

 

So I don't see it as manufactured situation, unless if you mean by manufactured you actually mean negligent uncontrolled consumption of resources and negligent out of control population growth.

Welllll, perhaps that is the problem, and THIS is the manufactured solution to "thin the herd", so to speak. Codex Ailmentarius(sp?)...

The population HAS been growing out of control, and whoever runs the big picture has just been letting it.

Still, who has what to gain from thinning down the population, anyway? Those with massive amounts of power and wealth were put into the position they are, by taking advantage of huge populations, via work and sales.

I seriously cannot see what there is to be gained by starving many people to death, when the people are worth more alive.

reply to post by LostNemesis



Perhaps the people are considered to be worth less than the resources that they consume.

I posted a story a week ago about Kissenger drafting a plan for just this very catastrophy that we are seeing unfold. He basically said that 3rd world countries were growing beyond thier means and if allowed to grow uncontrolled, then we would face the choice of Americans rationing their own food to support and feed nations that weren't responsible in their own population growth. He didn't think that America would be willing to do that so he was proposing birth control methods that obviously didn't work.

So now we are facing that reality.

Obviously birth control and family planning should be just as critical as growing and delivering food stocks. Its quite a problem.

Expect prices to go higher

Oil Pushes to New High Above $113
biz.yahoo.com...

Right now it is already costing truckers $1000 to fill their trucks. $1000 thats crazy! I thought $50 was bad. I can't even fathom what it costs for Aircraft at this time.

I've been reading this thread with quite a lot of interest. I'm currently worried about increasing food and fuel prices (I'm in the U.K). I thought it might be a good idea to compile a list of global food, fuel and travel prices as real people are affected by them (i.e not government stats) so I've started a thread to this end here on ATS.. I've done it so as to compare prices across countries and so that in the near future we can all have a look back at the cost of living to check how much the increases really are.

I hope prices don't increase too much but I'm anticipating fuel to reach 2 GBP per litre within the next 6 months (at many service stations (not local stations) diesel is already at 1.19 GBP per litre (local stations 1.08) and bread to hit the 2 GBP per loaf (white) over the same period. Nothing solid to base my anticipation, I'm just going on a hunch brought about via increases in the last few months.

Stared and flagged.