I want to hear the "It's about 'Merican sovereignty," to this

[RB TexLa]

Really, let's hear how "If they have to starve then they just have to starve, we need trade restrictions, Merican sovereignty has to be protected.


World food summit blames trade barriers

By Stephen Brown and Robin Pomeroy Reuters - 15 minutes ago

ROME (Reuters) - A United Nations summit on the global food crisis called on Tuesday for reducing trade barriers and the scrapping of food export bans to help stop the spread of hunger that threatens nearly one billion people.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said rich nations' "intolerable protectionism" was the main cause of food inflation while U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer focused on export restrictions, which in Asia have been blamed for restricting rice supplies.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080603/tts-uk-food-summit-2c15123.html

[Hydra]

1. Hahaha

I love it when free traders get nailed to the floor. Why should countries export their food when they don't have enough to feed themselves?

Food outsourcing was always a bad idea.

[RB TexLa]

2. They want export bans removed and trade barriers removed

The poor would like there to be freer trade of food.


But so they're hungry, we have to care about sovereignty.

[Hydra]

7. Pfff

http://news.scotsman.com/world/Global-food-crisis-looms-as.3996034.jp

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4070000/newsid_4077200/4077204.stm

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/world/africa/02malawi.html

If it was really about feeding the hungry, we wouldn't be discouraging them from growing at home.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

8. It's about making rich people richer, and the rest of us slaves. nt

[Hydra]

9. Yup

But I have to add one part at the end- "It's about making rich people richer, and the rest of us slaves"...or dead.

This "food crisis" will kill millions...just like the all the others.

[bryant69]

3. we are hording Corn to make Ethanol

That's what this article says. That's also what Rush Limbaugh Says, incidentally.

MIght be right in this case, actually, although from the wrong motives.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[mrreowwr_kittty]

4. This writer disagrees

And I'll take the word of a publication like The Nation over some MSM corporate mouthpiece.


Manufacturing a Food Crisis

By Walden Bello


May 15, 2008


When tens of thousands of people staged demonstrations in Mexico last year to protest a 60 percent increase in the price of tortillas, many analysts pointed to biofuel as the culprit. Because of US government subsidies, American farmers were devoting more and more acreage to corn for ethanol than for food, which sparked a steep rise in corn prices. The diversion of corn from tortillas to biofuel was certainly one cause of skyrocketing prices, though speculation on biofuel demand by transnational middlemen may have played a bigger role. However, an intriguing question escaped many observers: how on earth did Mexicans, who live in the land where corn was domesticated, become dependent on US imports in the first place?

The Mexican food crisis cannot be fully understood without taking into account the fact that in the years preceding the tortilla crisis, the homeland of corn had been converted to a corn-importing economy by "free market" policies promoted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and Washington. The process began with the early 1980s debt crisis. One of the two largest developing-country debtors, Mexico was forced to beg for money from the Bank and IMF to service its debt to international commercial banks. The quid pro quo for a multibillion-dollar bailout was what a member of the World Bank executive board described as "unprecedented thoroughgoing interventionism" designed to eliminate high tariffs, state regulations and government support institutions, which neoliberal doctrine identified as barriers to economic efficiency.

Interest payments rose from 19 percent of total government expenditures in 1982 to 57 percent in 1988, while capital expenditures dropped from an already low 19.3 percent to 4.4 percent. The contraction of government spending translated into the dismantling of state credit, government-subsidized agricultural inputs, price supports, state marketing boards and extension services. Unilateral liberalization of agricultural trade pushed by the IMF and World Bank also contributed to the destabilization of peasant producers.



more...

[Hydra]

11. Thanks for injecting some sanity

:yourock:

[The2ndWheel]

5. Living in a global world without a global system

Not sure how you're going to take car of the current 6.5+ billion people, with an additonal few billion added before the total begins to level off, with our current setup. Too many individual governments acting in their own interest.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

6. The problem is plutocrats acting in their own best interest.

Governments have every right, indeed an obligation, to take care of their own citizens.

[The2ndWheel]

10. Not at the expense of other citizens

That's the world we're creating/we've had created for us. There has to be a government that represents all 6.5+ billion citizens. All these global summits mean jack if there is no way to actually do what they're there to debate.

Corporations are multi-national. That's why they have increasingly more power over governments. Corporations don't see borders. There is more diversity in governments around the world than in corporations, which is a problem if your goal is to regulate those corporations. If governments want more power, it's time to leave the 20th century. Government must become multi-national to compete against business on a global scale. However, it can't really be "multi-national", since if there are too many different interests, it's far easier to divide and conquer you.

There has to be a single global state if there is to be any push back against global corporatization. You can't have worker and environmental laws in one country, and none in another. You can't allow that and think that you can keep corporations in check.

[Hydra]

12. Sure- you want David Rockefeller running that?

How about letting nations control what's in their own borders- regulating the corps, for instance. That isn't insane, as far as I know, and also not impossible.

The corps like to say that countries depend on them- it's the other way around. No markets, no corporation.

That would be why they hate democracy so much- we can and do tell them what to do, when we have a voice.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

13. Oh I agree with many of your points

The problem is that the corporations are working toward a "single state" with no worker or environmental protections anywhere. And they have an inordinate interest in shaping these so-called "free trade" deals. That's why the only recourse some countries have appears to be isolationism or protectionism or whatever, but it's really a natural defensive reaction. Unfortunately, some other countries are successfully coerced into accepting the terms of corporations so it leads to what you are describing. But I'm not in favor of governments merging while corporations have so much power.