Something to ponder as you sit down to Sunday dinner amid the ruins of the UN food crisis summit

From The Independent today:

Spam flies off the shelves of American supermarkets; looted shops burn in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; and the food crisis elbows climate change off the UN's agenda at a summit that draws more heads of state and media than any in recent memory – yet reaches no useful conclusions.

The food crisis has gripped the whole world in the past year, from the wealthiest countries to the poorest: from Japan, where beef has vanished off school menus in favour of less costly chicken or pork, and the US, where sales of Spam have shot up 10 per cent, to the poorest nations, where 70 or 80 per cent of people's income goes on food (in the UK the figure is 10 per cent).

Thirty-seven countries are confronted by a crisis in food costs, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), while riots have broken out in two dozen.

Haiti used to grow its own rice, and its farmers were protected by high tariff barriers. But as a condition for an International Monetary Fund loan in 1986, it was compelled to slash tariffs, and within two years the local markets had been flooded by heavily subsidised American rice. Local farmers, unable to compete, went out of business. The process was repeated in 1994. Globalised Haiti, no longer able to feed itself, was at the mercy of the world food prices.

Meanwhile, the price of food has become a pawn in the hands of financial speculators. Speculative trading in agricultural commodities has grown by more than 1,000 per cent in the past four years, to more than $150bn (£76bn). With the price of oil – the key ingredient in fertilisers and agrochemicals – surging unstoppably, food prices are expected to remain at historic highs for the next decade.

A sane world would at this point reverse course and do some of the worthy things that UN summits are so good at talking about – helping some of the 96 per cent of African farms dependent on rainfall to build irrigation systems, for example.

But the business-driven priority, as endorsed by the FAO summit, is to gouge open the world's economies even faster, via a speedy conclusion of the Doha round of trade liberalisation. That is likely to make it even harder for the poor to feed themselves.

Further article links here.

America goes down the rabbit hole once more

It is never easy to decide if the United States of America has absolutely no grasp of the ironic or it simply knows the way to Alice's wonderland.

With the US having little credibility left concerning its own human rights record, yesterday News.com.au reported:

THE US has decided to limit further its involvement with the UN Human Rights Council due to its "pathetic" record.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "has taken the decision that we will engage the Human Rights Council really only when we believe that there are matters of deep national interest before the council, and we feel compelled", said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
"Our scepticism regarding the function of the council on human rights in terms of fulfilling its mandate and its mission is well-known. It has a rather pathetic record in that regard,'' he said.

At the same time Human Rights Watch comments on America's 2.3 million people behind bars:

"The new incarceration figures confirm the United States as the world's leading jailer,'' said David Fahti, HRW's US program director.
"Americans should ask why the US locks up so many more people than do Canada, Britain, and other democracies,'' he said.
The new figures show a sharp racial imbalance in the US prison population, with blacks outnumbering whites by six to one.
Nearly 11 per cent of black men aged 30-34 were in prison, according to Justice Department figures.
HRW said blacks in the US were12 times more likely to be sent to jail for drug-related crimes than whites, even though drug use among the two races was about the same.

Bill Henson is owed an apology

At Live News yesterday Tim Brunero asked:

Will Miranda Devine apologise to Bill Henson?

After the furore created by journalist Miranda Devine and Braveheart's Hetty Johnson, it would appear that an apology is in order to artist, Bill Henson. Though I imagine that none of us will live long enough to see this happen.

Bill Henson's profile from the art gallery also caught up in these failed allegations of wrongdoing.

Synchronous views of Obama

With the US Republicans now busy searching for that cache of Kryptonite, this flight of fancy tickled my rather juvenile sense of humour this week.

The allusion to Superman is something Senator Obama also appears to fancy himself.

Images from Us versus Them and Democracy in Action.