Food Crisis: Praise for George W. Bush

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, I like to give credit where credit's due an' right now, I'm gonna tip my tuque in the unlikely direction of Merkan President George W. Bush. Now, I'm gonna set aside all the dumbass stuff Dubya's done like waste a half a trillion dollars on a fiasco in EyeRack or oversee the collapse of the Merkan banking and housing sectors or suspend human rights in a trumped up War on Terror. Fer just a few minutes, I'm gonna look the other way and pat ol' Dubya on the back.

Yesterday, Bush asked Congress to dole out another $770 million in food aid. The Merkans already pumped an extra $200 million into food for the hungry a coupla weeks ago. Before that, they added an additional $350 million to the $1.6 billion the Merkans put into food aid every year.

The World Food Program has been asking for $755 million to get it over the hump in this food crisis. A coupla days ago, Canada stepped up with an additional $50 million on top of the $185 million we'd already pledged.

So, I say good on you, Georgie W, fer diggin' in and findin' that extra $770 million. It oughta go a long way in stavin' off a few million deaths by starvation.

Okay, now I'm gonna quit lookin' the other way.

When we talk about $770 million bucks, it sure sounds like a whole lotta dough. You might ask yerself what George Dubya coulda bought with that money if he hadn't decided to feed a few million hungry people. Well, here's one thing he coulda bought. He coulda bought one more day of war fightin' in EyeRack.

That's right, boys'n'girls, the Merkans spend over $700 million bucks in EyeRack every single day, 365 days a year.

Golly-gosh gee whiz, do you figger the war in EyeRack might be somehow connected to the food crisis?

Hmmm... could be... All that war spendin' without any ROI is one of the biggest reasons the US dollar's in the pooper. The low US dollar is what's drivin' up the price of oil. The high fuel costs affect transportation and grocery prices that are a part of the reason so many Merkans can't keep up with their mortgage payments. And, the collapse of the US mortgage market has driven speculators into commodities. And, along with high oil prices, commodities speculation has been another big factor in the food crisis. High oil prices have created a demand for biofuels. Biofuels are competing with traditional grains and are driving up the cost of food.

Now, everybuddy knows that hungry people are angry people. Even George W. Bush knows that. The Merkans got their CIA intelligence fellers an' gals stalkin' 'round every hellhole on the planet. I reckon main CIA headquarters' phones been ringin' off the hook the past few months. There's been food riots and violence in countries all over the world. Anybuddy don't think the CIA had somebuddy in most of those countries reportin' back to Washington?

The food crisis threatens to unleash a wave of violence that would multiply the EyeRack and Afghanistan and African and South American conflicts to worldwide chaos. The Merkans don't have enough riot police in their mighty military to quell that sorta new world disorder. The smartest strategy would be to make sure the poor bastards don't get so hungry that they storm the Bastille.

So, I'm givin' praise to George W. Bush for strategy. I can't say fer sure whether it's strategy dressed up like charity or charity with a strategic motive. It's a welcome additional $770 million whyever it got there.

JimBobby

Fun, Games and Free Rice for the Hungry

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, we got us a bigass disaster loomin'. The food crisis looks like it's gonna be long term and millions of people may die a slow, painful death by starvation. Countless others will be caught up in the civil strife that will shatter much of the developing world. The food crisis can be blamed on the confluence of a number of factors:

• Rising oil prices
• Unrestricted commodities market speculation
  
• The rise of the middle class in China and India
• Biofuel production and subsidization
• Extreme weather conditions
• Rapid population growth

Got money in mutual funds? You're probably invested in commodities and your portfolio is doing well thanks to record high profit taking on grains, oilseeds, rice and other food staples. Hedge fund traders are making out quite well these days and financial gurus are advising "investors" to go long on commodities.

Got 15 or 20 minutes? Play a fun vocabulary quiz and send a few grains of rice to some poor starving bastard in some hellhole where they might otherwise be eatin' dirt.


I played fer about 20 minutes an' managed to earn 3000 grains of rice. I ain't sure if that's enough fer more than one helpin'. Sounds like a lot but I figger maybe it's a cereal bowl full. Better than dirt, I reckon.

Itchin' to do more than play games? Wanna invest a few bucks into global security and feel good about feedin' hungry kids? Send some dough to World Vision. The food crisis is hittin' 'em hard. The high cost of food and fuel means the good fellers an' gals at World Vision are cutting back the number of people they can feed by 1,500,000. That's a million an' a half hungry folks who ain't gonna get any supper.

Wanna know my prediction? Over the next few weeks and months, we will see unprecedented violence and suffering all due to high food prices. Governments will fall. All other world issues will pale by comparison. Millions will be affected. Fingers of blame will be accurately pointed at commodities speculators, government-subsidized ethanol programs, meat-eaters, big oil, failure to act on climate change, failure to implement fair trade and failure to eliminate poverty.

JimBobby

Canada's Ethanol Policy Contributing to Food Crisis

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, some dang chickens is comin' home to roost. All over the world, poor folks is strugglin' just to put one meal a day into their pitiful bodies. An' we're bitchin' about the price of gas when we hafta fgill up the chugmobile. There's close connection between the two things, too.

The bigass commodities boys sold their ethanol big lie to the top levels of government in the US, Canada, the UK and the EU. Just like the big nuke merchants, the big corn lobby didn't waste any time tryin' to figger out how they could fleece a public concerned about climate change and greenhouse gases. Ethanol and other dumbass biofuels are a big part of the reason people are riotin' an' dyin' in the Philippines, Haiti, Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal, Cameroon and Vietnam.

Food shortages ain't just a humanitarian issue. It's a security issue. Hungry folks who're starvin' to death got absolutely nuthin' to lose and they've got excellent motivation: life. The bigass G8's all over the problem at their big pow-wow down in Washington, DC.

Ministers representing 185 countries agreed on the weekend that soaring food prices threaten global calamity and pledged to co-operate on a solution to save the world's poorest people from starvation.
(Good Guardian article...)

Ethanol ain't the only reason folks is starvin' but it's one of the reasons. Nobody seems to be disputin' that except maybe the Brazilian cane growers and the big Iowa corn boys. In the 2006 budget, the Harper bunch gave away $2 billion fer ethanol and biofuel development. Most everyone knows by now that ethanol ain't a GHG reducer and ain't doin' a single thing to help ol' Mother Earth. It takes somethin' like 1 an' a third liters of petro to make one litre of ethanol and it gobbles up fresh water like nobody's business.

But it is somebody's business and that business got $2 billion from us while it contributed to the food crisis that's killin' poor folks all over the place.

Here's some numbers from the Guardian:

Food in figures

93,000,000 Acres of corn planted by US farmers last year, up 19 per cent on 2006.

76% Amount of US corn used for animal feed.

8kg Amount of grain it takes to produce 1kg of beef.

20% Portion of US corn used to produce five billion gallons of ethanol in 2006-07.

50kg Quantity of meat consumed annually by the average Chinese person, up from 20kg in 1985.

10% Anticipated share of biofuels used for transport in the EU by 2020.

$500m The UN World Food Programme's shortfall this year, in attempting to feed 89 million needy people.

9.2bn The world's predicted population by 2050. It's 6.6bn now.

130% The rise in the cost of wheat in 12 months.

16 times The overall food consumption of the world's richest 20 per cent compared with that of the poorest 20 per cent.

58% Jump in the price of pork in China in the past year.

$900 The cost of one tonne of Thai premier rice, up 30 per cent in a month.

Here's something that really gets under my skin. Little wee Canada gives away $2 billion to these ethanol guys and it would take only $500 million to top up the UN's food program so they could help 89 million hungry people survive. That's right. With just one-quarter of the money we spent on developing biofuels so we can drive the chugmobiles and tell ourselves we're saving the planet, we could feed the multitudes. And that's just Canada.

We need to get our gummint to quit subsidizin' these ethanol guys. I know it ain't gonna be too popular with the farmers. They ain't starvin' to death, though. Farmers ain't to blame. They do what they gotta do. They gotta buy seeds, fertilizers, tractors, combines, silos, and other stuff to grow that corn. The bigass seed and fertilizer outfits like Monsanto are the ones who engineered the lobbyin' to get all these gummints makin' laws sayin' we gotta have 10%-20% ethanol.

Us Canajuns gotta decide what's really important. Do we keep up with a corporate welfare feel-good program of promotin' ethanol? Or do we put a moratorium on biofuel until we quit starvin' people to death so's we can fill up the chugmobile an' drive three blocks to the Timmy's Drive-Thru window?

JimBobby