Skibbereen.
by Transmontanus, 11 April 2008
Food riots in developing countries will spread unless world leaders take major steps to reduce prices for the poor, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Friday. Despite a forecast 2.6 percent hike in global cereal output this year, record prices are unlikely to fall, forcing poorer countries’ food import bills up 56 percent and hungry people on to the streets, FAO Director General Jacques Diouf said.
The reality is that people are dying already in the riots,” Diouf told a news conference. “They are dying because of their reaction to the situation and if we don’t take the necessary action there is certainly the possibility that they might die of starvation. Naturally people won’t be sitting dying of starvation, they will react.”
The FAO said food riots had broken out in several African countries, Indonesia, the Philippines and Haiti. Thirty-seven countries face food crises, it said in its latest World Food Situation report.
Friday 11 April 2008 at 21:31
My Mum told me that she left old Skibbereen because it was so fucking boring there (actually she is from Clonakility which is just down the road and doesn’t scan so well).
Saturday 12 April 2008 at 1:53
I hate Hoare and all he stands for.
What a cunt.
Saturday 12 April 2008 at 2:14
oh fuck
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2008/04/nick-cohen-on-idiocies-at-large-on-left.html
i spoke too soon
I am now ready to give up
nick cohen is a fucking tosspot.
that’s it. No fucking more.
The world is theirs.
Defeat for the enlightenment, defeat for the struggle for liberation, we have nothing left to struggle for.
Oh — hang on –
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200407/hitchens
History, too, might have endings and ironies that are simply inscrutable, or that do not yield to any known dialectic. In spite of the most appalling discouragements and reverses and persecution, Trotsky did continue almost to the end in a belief that the workers would rise again, and that Hitlerism and Stalinism and imperialism would be overthrown by a self-aware and emancipated class. It was this that led him to his only truly banal or farcical initiative: the proclamation of a Fourth International to succeed the Social-Democratic and Communist ones. But at the very end of his life, cut off in Mexico and aware of his own declining health, he admitted, after the outbreak of the Second World War, that the conflict might just end without a socialist revolution. In that event the whole Marxist-Leninist project would have to be abandoned:
We would be compelled to acknowledge that [Stalinism] was rooted not in the backwardness of the country and not in the imperialist environment, but in the congenital incapacity of the proletariat to become a ruling class. Then it would be necessary to establish in retrospect that … the present USSR was the precursor of a new and universal system of exploitation.
Being Trotsky, he could not admit that in the event socialism “petered out as a Utopia,” there would be nothing left worth fighting for. On the contrary, “it is self-evident that a new minimum program would be required—to defend the interests of the slaves of the totalitarian bureaucratic system.”
Any of you fuckers up for defending the interests of the slaves of the totalitarian bureaucratic system?
i am. I repeat - I am….are you?
Ps — I have some Zizek that makes similar points — i will look it up and send you all it.
Just to piss you off and that.
Decentest filth. Morons and shit like that. Gaaaaaawwwwwwd. What wankers.
Saturday 12 April 2008 at 4:14
Give me the manic wibbler Žižek over the decentists any day.
Saturday 12 April 2008 at 4:30
What the fuck does any of this have to do with the post?
Saturday 12 April 2008 at 12:38
What the fuck does any of this have to do with the post?
Nothing, so apologies. I was reacting drunkenly to an email from Will, and thought this was a different post.
Saturday 12 April 2008 at 12:38
It has as much to do with the post as does the plastic paddy shite of conor-AI-foley’s comment.
Deal with it.
X
Saturday 12 April 2008 at 12:50
How much can “world leaders” do to reduce food prices? I half heard some analysis on BBC radio last week of recent price increases for rice, and get the impression that export bans may not help the situation. Diouf has issued a “something must be done” press release, but does it say any more than this?
Saturday 12 April 2008 at 13:39
It doesn’t matter how you chrome a turd–it is still a turd.
The decentist accommodation with neo-liberalism does not seek to alter the relations of production–in fact claims that any such attempts are bound to fail–and as such acquiesces to the boom-bust cycle and the perpetuation of poverty at home and abroad.
Saturday 12 April 2008 at 17:00
“How much can “world leaders” do to reduce food prices?”
Finally. A fucking comment that’s at least on fucking topic. Simple answer:
Buy food for the fucking poor for starters. Not like there isn’t enough food; the poor can’t afford to buy it.
Then we could start by repealing the fucking corn laws (ethanol subsidies).
Jesus. The mum in Clonakilty, decentists, Hoare, and fuck, what’s wrong with everybody today?
Saturday 12 April 2008 at 17:04
I thought Hak’s comment was very much on topic and most accurate.
Saturday 12 April 2008 at 17:27
Jesus. The mum in Clonakilty, decentists, Hoare, and fuck, what’s wrong with everybody today?
No Jesus, thank God. But as for the rest, I posit that it’s a combination of alcohol and middle-aged hormonal reaction to an uncertain start to Spring.
Back on-topic…
States and charities buying food for the poor is something that is done in humanitarian aid contexts, and it is an answer. But I’m also keen to hear constructive suggestions about how best to deal with the huge structural problems of the world food market. Jacques Diouf and the FAO are in a strong position to lead such a debate.
You’re right to highlight the likelihood of increased political conflict over food. This, like water and other natural resource wars, is highly likely to increase as a result of climate change and nation-states’ use of resources as a weapon against other states and their own populations.
Saturday 12 April 2008 at 18:22
OK Terry, you deserve a sensible comment on this.
Ethanol subsidies are not the problem. The main problem is agricultural subsidies full stop. There is no shortage of arable land to grow food; the problem is that the rich world has been systemtatically protecting their markets against the poor. This makes farming uneconomic in much of Africa - because it costs too much to get the food to market - and also results other places such as Afghanistan and Colombia switching to ‘alternative’ production instead.
The short-term cause of the price rises are that more people in China, India, Brazil, etc, can afford to buy meat - which in turn drives up the prices of cereal crops. The other reason is that the subsidised farmers of the US can get more of a profit from biofuels than food.
If you look at the long-term trend of food prices they have been plunging dramatically over the last three decades and so this is partly a correction.
Rising food prices does produce some winners amongst the poor (small farmers) as well as a lot of loser (the urban poor). Of course the big winners are the agro-industrialists of Europe and North America (and all those private schools in Britain which the farmers send their kids to).
Saturday 12 April 2008 at 20:35
“The main problem is agricultural subsidies full stop.”
Beginning to conclude so.
Corn laws. Repeal.
Sunday 13 April 2008 at 12:38
The head of the IMF has now spoken out on the matter.