What is Digg?143 Comments
- inactive, on 04/15/2008, -5/+63Here are some more links about the looming food crisis:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/hunger/relief/ ...
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/hunger/environ ...
http://therealnews.com/web/index.php?thisdataswitc ...
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article3782.html
People in the developed countries still don't know what lies ahead. This is a new dimension of global war and corporatist dominance. When people are starving for food, they don't care anymore about borders, rules or any kind of government. The people who have brought our world to the edge of food wars are the same who brought us Americas (and the whole Wests) recession and the loss of democracy (at least what we had). Those people will definitely use this new crisis for their own terrible intentions... - notque, on 04/15/2008, -8/+60http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20070515.htm
Starving the Poor by Noam Chomsky
"The "free trade" regime drives Mexico from self-sufficiency in food towards dependency on US exports. And as the price of corn goes up in the United States, stimulated by corporate power and state intervention, one can anticipate that the price of staples may continue its sharp rise in Mexico.
Increasingly, biofuels are likely to "starve the poor" around the world, according to Runge and Senauer, as staples are converted to ethanol production for the privileged — cassava in sub-Saharan Africa, to take one ominous example. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, tropical forests are cleared and burned for oil palms destined for biofuel, and there are threatening environmental effects from input-rich production of corn-based ethanol in the United States as well.
The high price of tortillas and other, crueler vagaries of the international order illustrate the interconnectedness of events, from the Middle East to the Middle West, and the urgency of establishing trade based on true democratic agreements among people, and not interests whose principal hunger is for profit for corporate interests protected and subsidised by the state they largely dominate, whatever the human cost." - inactive, on 04/15/2008, -3/+32Why the heck is this in Videos?! I clearly posted it in News... Sorry for that.
- dukeeeey, on 04/15/2008, -2/+30USA is turning 25% of corn into ethanol to burn in cars. Way to go.
Source: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinio ... - phnx0221, on 04/15/2008, -5/+31Here we are callously spending hundreds of billions of dollars on death and destruction in a needless war and occupation, and we have hundreds of millions of people who can't get enough food to eat in order to survive.
In Haiti, they are making their biscuits out of clay and even the cost for that is rising at an almost unbearable rate. In Sudan, there are refugees who cannot get food, due to either funds for the aid organization, or due to messes in bureaucracy where they cannot get registered as refugees, and thus cannot get any food for their families.
With so much money that is flowing around the world, there is absolutely no reason that people should by dying of starvation! It's no surprise that violence is breaking out in these countries; you have presidential and government officials who are eating well enough to satisfy themselves and their families, and are making enough to afford such luxuries as automobiles, silks, and spices, yet the populace of these countries go without. Or make food from dirt.
And we make easy claims that these are rogue nations, the protests and crisis' are based upon their evil leaders, or a mishap of climate, when those leaders are our friends. Yet, we fail to realize that our governments have a huge role in this crisis. With free trade agreements, international corporations setting up shop in lands while ruining the landscape, hindering the potential for agricultural growth, and then adding insult to injury by paying wages that would be an insult (not to mention illegal) in the countries where these companies operate, we cannot help but see the direct result now, of all of these actions, on the populations of these countries, and what they are facing now. - jmpeagle, on 04/15/2008, -0/+26this is the result of bad governance and horrible agricultural policies such as export restrictions. There is more than enough food grown in the world to comfortably feed everyone, yet it things such as export restrictions prevent food from reaching the global marketplace. Just earlier this year, Ukraine had to dumb 100 MILLION dollars worth of grain into the black sea because it had been allowed to rot due to their huge surplus and restrictions on exporting. A similar things is happening in Argentina with Farmers essentially rioting and blocking roads because of export restrictions.
It's also being used as a foreign policy tool to curb exports. For example, t.ast month, when Kazakhstan threatened to limit wheat exports, some wheat prices soared by 25%.
http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm? ... - Look4Truth, on 04/15/2008, -3/+25This is just the beginning, store up now.
- inactive, on 04/15/2008, -2/+19To quote the big oil companies, "Let them eat cake".
- smacksaw, on 04/15/2008, -1/+18FTA: "The world's 200 wealthiest people have as much money as about 40 percent of the global population, and yet 850 million people have to go to bed hungry every night."
It's only a matter of time before those people take their murderous rage and stop taking it out on themselves and instead upon the extremely wealthy. I'd hate to be that rich. If I was, I think I would invest 99.999% of it. It's almost like...the mega-rich go on vacations that are incomprehensible to me. Vacation from what? Having to know how screwed up the world is? - pintomp3, on 04/15/2008, -0/+16i've been cultivating my fat reserves for years.
- dleesgeetar, on 04/15/2008, -3/+19ok those are excllent points
- inactive, on 04/15/2008, -0/+15This is crazy. I read stories like this and appreciate what I have.
The food distribution is very poor in this world. - notque, on 04/15/2008, -3/+18Would you prefer corporate dominance? Are you laughing because you don't think that corporations dominate influence? Do you think that the populations do?
I don't get it. - andreegal, on 04/15/2008, -0/+14Not even a daily bowl of rice? dang!
- omgTHEPATRIOTS, on 04/15/2008, -2/+16we need to ban growing of crops for fuel, this is ridiculous.
using leftover cooking oil is one thing, but this... this is an incredible fraud. - notque, on 04/15/2008, -2/+15No, unless they specifically were for ethanol based transportation, and subsidies for corporations to produce that instead of food.
- PhilLesh69, on 04/15/2008, -2/+12So writing is not work?
Only what you do for a living is work, right?
Sounds like you are not only a ditch digger, but an elitist ditch digger. You believe that only people who work as hard and stupid as you do are worthy of being called "workers".
We all earn our livings based on our intellect or skills or if we fail really badly in school, on our muscles.
But we all work.
You need to worry about the people who seek unearned advantage, who seek to prevent others from competing against them.
A guy who writes a book, or works for a magazine, whatever, he still is working.
I imagine that you believe that the architect who designed the construction project you are working on is "not really working" or "has never worked a day in his life", too. Right?
Maybe the problem is, the architect, or the writer worked hard in school, when he was a kid, while you couldn't comprehend that there was any purpose to that, and you just had fun. Now that they work without exerting too much effort, while you are busting your ass to earn a buck, you assume that they just are not working.
Don't worry, I was just like you, I blew school off. I was just lucky that schools never blew me off. I learned even though I was blowing it off. Granted, I have a fairly decent IQ of 149, so maybe it never mattered, because now the hardest I have to work is typing in PHP code to connect a database of news articles to a website, and more code to put journalists' articles into that database, and voila, when a journalist publishes his story to the wire service of the newspaper, it is also on the web site. My knuckles get more exercise than your forearms when you are digging a ditch. Yet, I still work hard.
In fact, brain work is more exhausting than muscle work. You'll never know unless you do some mental task job. Your brain is the biggest organ besides your skin, and if you use it for 8 hours a day, it will wear you out.
Laugh if you want, but that just means you've never had to use your brain. - smacksaw, on 04/15/2008, -3/+12The basis is the ***** article if you had cared to read it before spouting off.
- PhilLesh69, on 04/15/2008, -2/+11Chomsky never demanded the use of food crops for "green fuels", but that sounds like a great talking point for Fox News, dude.
Chomsky called for use of biodiesel, like used vegetable oil, or solar power, or nuclear energy.
But, it is good that you recognize that making fuel from food crops is a boondoggle. I applaud you for being intellectually honest about that, at least. - americangoy, on 04/15/2008, -3/+11Gee whiz bit late to the party aren't we Der Spiegel?
http://americangoy.blogspot.com/2008/04/global-foo ... - inactive, on 04/15/2008, -2/+9Give them cake.
- smacksaw, on 04/15/2008, -2/+7How much of it is edible corn?
- Dumbledorito, on 04/15/2008, -2/+7In other news, funerals soon to be renamed as "memorial barbecues" as a mysterious rash of pet disappearances continues to plague the country...
- smacksaw, on 04/15/2008, -0/+5I believe you used the word "uneducated" in this thread, so allow me to educate you. First, I'm a libertarian. Have been all my life and have been a registered libertarian for 16 years. I think it's incumbent upon me to do the right thing, which means being concerned about the world I live in.
Now...It's not commie bs. It's called "paying attention". Do you think Osama Bin Laden is a communist? Here is a man from a country where a small family controls all of the money. Millions of people are subjugated by religion, economic hardship or both. They look at their oil-rich neighbours like Kuwait and the UAE and see everyone benefiting from oil wealth while they live in virtual slavery to their wealthy sheik masters. Osama Bin Laden has no trouble finding both sympathy and support in his murderous ideas. Why? Because these people have nothing to live for. When you use wealth to create that sort of desperation, that's the powderkeg you get.
Consider yourself educated now. - inactive, on 04/15/2008, -1/+5Come on, you can't get "let them eat cake" wrong.
- sherrife, on 04/15/2008, -1/+5The reason you don't voluntarily commit suicide to ease the load on this planet is the same reason they shouldn't be left to die: life, and human life in particular, is intrinsically valuable.
You're right that we shouldn't simply send them food, but any reasonable long-term strategy to allow the third world to develop in a truly independent and democratic way DOES require some short term stuff to ease the immediate and urgent crisis. The solution is not to let them die while western corporations make billion dollar profits, as you seem to be implying, but to get our governments and the corporations controlling them to stop ***** with them. You forget that those warlords were mostly created and propped up by US! (See Saddam etc)
They were fine before the west came along, and they'd be fine if we'd just pay reparations, offer our assistance if it asked for, and otherwise butt out. - inactive, on 04/15/2008, -1/+5LOL Im evil.
- goforbroke, on 04/15/2008, -1/+5The corporations are not mindless entities, rather just a bunch of people with the same human weaknesses as the rest of us. They are at most amoral.
- notque, on 04/15/2008, -1/+5That just so happen to make the decisions.
- inactive, on 04/15/2008, -12/+16They can't haz cheezburgerz?
- GeorgeClayton, on 04/15/2008, -2/+6The statement below is a gross misunderstanding of economics. Supply and demand, food is grown, food is eaten, more food is grown. If some rich guy buys a bunch of food and sends it to poor people, now there is a decrease in supply. The only way to really combat hunger in many of these countries is population control & improved farming techniques.
"Food is become increasingly scarce and expensive, and it is already unaffordable for many people. The world's 200 wealthiest people have as much money as about 40 percent of the global population, and yet 850 million people have to go to bed hungry every night. This calamity is "one of the worst violations of human dignity," says former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan." - inactive, on 04/15/2008, -0/+41.Buy a tonne of rice
2.Store it
3.????
4.Profit? - smt12, on 04/15/2008, -1/+5Sorry, you think a bunch of GMOs in the hands of a few large corporations will help this problem? What about getting rid of the monoculture system, and going back to the days where farmers grew multiple crops, and were thus less susceptible to bugs, etc. Just wait till we're down to a couple varieties of corn and wheat worldwide and we get a nasty blight. Then you'll see a food crisis.
The problem is we (North Americans especially) want dirt cheap food, and thus are happy to let this go on as it saves a buck here and there on the grocery bill, even though in the western world the ratio of food spending to earnings is at its lowest in a long time (if not ever): http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer780/aer780 ... (Old article, but still holds true). - theyerb, on 04/15/2008, -3/+7Me thinks the biofuels came at a bad time.
- megarobotguy, on 04/15/2008, -0/+3FYI, "Malthusian catastrophe is a return to subsistence-level conditions as a result of population growth outpacing agricultural production." - wikipedia
- sherrife, on 04/15/2008, -1/+4Yea, and they have to keep buying those seeds from the company each year, hows that for independent development!
- pagit, on 04/15/2008, -0/+3How much gold can a loaf of bread or 25 mud biscuits buy ?
- badoli, on 04/15/2008, -1/+4Look at Austria. We have one of the best health service and are one of the richest states of the world.
- PhilLesh69, on 04/15/2008, -0/+3It doesn't matter.
First off, all corn is edible. Some might go to livestock feed, if it is of lesser quality, but that is only because it doesn't look as good, so buyers for foodstuffs turn it away, and it ends up in livestock feed.
Secondly, there is a fixed amount of arable land suitable for crops. It shrinks every year due to residential growth, industrial land needs, etc. If there is 1,000 acres to grow corn, and 25% of that land is used to make ethanol, that means that only 750 acres are available to produce all the corn we eat. Increase the amount of ethanol corn to 35%, and we only have 65% of that same land to grow food crops.
One of the biggest flaws of the scientists who came up with the studies that said corn ethanol was a good idea was that they didn't take into consideration the land needed and the land available. It was almost like they assumed the corn would be grown in parking lots.
And, according to Newsweek:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/130628
"Perhaps the greatest folly, in time lost and dollars wasted, has been the push for ethanol to replace gasoline. In the United States, almost all ethanol comes from corn. When you tote up the carbon emissions caused by clearing land to grow corn, fertilizing it and transporting it, corn ethanol leaves twice the carbon footprint as gasoline." - looselips, on 04/15/2008, -0/+3I am sure they prefer sun baked clay cakes, over the "*****" which was originally implied there.
- TheMidnight, on 04/15/2008, -0/+3Robbin' Food?
- Hangly, on 04/15/2008, -0/+3Let them eat Soylent Green.
- Truzseeker, on 04/15/2008, -0/+2A world revolution against the new world order ? That would be interesting, but they don't even know the faces of these crooks from which to take action, however I think that day is about to pass, and we shall see either self distinction or a major correction.
- Kapitaine, on 04/15/2008, -1/+3Please explain then...
- inactive, on 04/15/2008, -0/+2 EU defends biofuel goals amid food crises
The EU Commission on Monday rejected claims that producing biofuels is a "crime against humanity" that threatens food supplies, and vowed to stick to its goals as part of a climate change package.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080414/sc_afp/euunfa ... - Hangly, on 04/15/2008, -0/+2Cake or death?
Thank you for flying Church of England. - tehnico, on 04/15/2008, -0/+2Sugar beets, while producing 10x+ more energy than corn, require extremely high quality ground to grow in. Only heavily fertile and damp soil produce energy yields that are superior to corn.
- PhilLesh69, on 04/15/2008, -2/+4Well, considering that I argued here on Digg with all the global warming idiots when they announced subsidies for corn ethanol, "in order to create energy independence for America", and they all dugg me down or argued with me that I was an oil industry shill, that I was a heretic, etc, because I told them about how cutting down trees to grow crops for bio fuels would contribute to carbon emissions, or that taking up food crop lands to grow bio fuels would lead to mass starvation, or that there were ways to reduce USAGE by building all new homes, at a cost of only an extra 15 to 20% of the cost to build a new home would allow that home to be entirely off-grid and to use only 30% of the energy of an existing home. When I said all of those things, I was yelled at and argued against.
I don't believe in man made global warming, but I believe we can make the world unlivable for ourselves, for the short term. And, if you live a normal human lifespan, shouldn't you be more concerned with that, than with some nebulous theory? I want to live as long as possible, I don't want to breathe poisoned air, drink poisoned water and eat poisoned food.
Besides, if we focus on the more immediate threats, we will most likely not have to worry whether global warming is real or not. If we fix the things that are going to definitely decrease our lifespans, we will most likely mitigate anything they claim is causing global warming. But these pseudo-environmentalists have committed themselves to MMGW, so they cannot abide any dissenting voice. - benjpw, on 04/15/2008, -1/+3BTW I'm an anthropology student and have read some studies on this, so take it for what its worth. I just wanted to let you know - almost every major introduction of agriculture and crops has failed, because culturally it just doesn't work. The problem lies introducing in monocroping and other Western systems that just don't work well with other cultures.
I think the anti-GMO environmental stuff is BS, but its also BS to try to go into a culture and just assume they will welcome a different crop with open arms. We need to approach this on said cultures terms if we want it to work. - galeninjapan, on 04/15/2008, -0/+2B-b-but government is infallible.
-
Show 51 - 100 of 142 discussions
The Digg Toolbar for Firefox lets you Digg, submit content, and keep track of Digg even when you're not on the Digg site. Download the official 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is