Let Them Eat Mudcakes By Luise Light, M.S., Ed.D.“The impact of globalization is felt most by those who benefit from it least.”--Eric Hobsbawm, “On Empire”The greatest hunger crisis in history is ravaging the world. Engineered by British City of London bankers and Anglo-American industrial elites who are apostles of “free markets,” they have captured control of world trade through a system of supra-regulatory bodies (WTO) and international trade and tariff agreements (GATT, NAFTA) designed to optimize profits for the industrialists and their investors while forcing the rest of the world to comply with their rules that strip away all consumer protections and supports which they call disparagingly, “barriers to economic efficiency.” In this schema, there is no room for poor people who are judged “useless eaters,” in that they don’t have the resources to shop in the marketplace and contribute to the profits of transnational middlemen and corporations. The financial elites who own the system, recognize two classes of useful eaters, those who are dependent and do as they are told, no matter how dire the consequences for them, and those who are masters, who create all the rules of the game and absorb the profits.In the thirty or more years it has taken to institutionalize this controlling infrastructure, we have witnessed declines and deficits in every area of life on the planet that we consider socially, culturally, and humanly important: world health has plummeted precipitously, the destruction of nature has accelerated and now all life on the planet is threatened. Economic insecurity, inequality, intolerance, and racial injustice have grown as people are more preoccupied with the daily struggle for survival. Can it be that the British bankers and traders have learned the secret of going back to the future? They seem determined to reverse history and return most of us to the roles of medieval serfs who must pay fealty to our lords, at the cost of our lives.In this new global marketplace, there is no room for hundreds of millions of urban and rural poor so they have been cut out of the picture, a strategy that seems to be in play, right now. In just three years, global food prices have climbed 83 percent, according to the World Bank, placing a life-sustaining diet beyond the reach of the poorest and most vulnerable people on earth. Staple foods that poor people depend on as their major source of calories are the most inflated in price, with rice, the grain of choice for half the world, at a 19-year high, and wheat, the staple for another third of the world, at a 28-year high. Other foods essential for a basic nutritional diet in poor countries, cooking oil, eggs, and dairy, have been equally hard hit by price inflation, affecting the working and middle classes, not just the poor.The exorbitant increases in world food prices threaten the stability of governments, with the potential for violence growing as people ravaged by starvation become ever more desperate. Food rioting already has been reported in 40 countries. The president of the International Red Cross warned recently, people become violent when access to food is withheld and their survival is threatened. The potential for destabilizing wars on every continent is now possible.What is behind this global food crisis? Various rationales have been offered, including the removal of food tariff barriers, liberalization of trade, and enforcement of policies that require developing countries to switch to exporting cash crops and importing food staples for domestic needs. The results of these policies on the economies of poor countries have been nothing short of catastrophic! Cheap subsidized, surplus commodities from rich nations are dumped on poor countries who are experiencing shortages, resulting in decreased local food production and employment. Farmers become dispossessed from their land and stripped of their ability to feed their families. FAO has documented the devastating consequences of such “trade liberalization” policies on the rural poor and local economies in the case of biofuels. Routing corn into biofuels, the FAO predicted in the State of Food and Agriculture Report in 2007, would create scarcities in essential food supplies and price inflation.Other key factors in skyrocketing food prices are the huge spikes in the costs of fuel and transportation, devastating weather catastrophes due to climate change, and growing water shortages. The breakdown of food self-sufficiency in countries is planned to destabilize Third World governments but also to “de-peasantize” these countries, making them more attractive for foreign investors.At risk are 1.2 billion people in the world who live at or near poverty, earning less than $1 a day. Runaway food prices across the globe have placed 200 million people on a deathwatch, in imminent danger of starving to death. Is it any wonder there are angry people in the streets threatening governments across the globe, demanding food? Governments have responded by sending in riot troops and banging heads, which is not a permanent solution to a volatile, chaotic situation, and can be predicted to create more, not less discontent.While starving people in Haiti ate spiced and sweetened mudcakes, the cheapest food locally available to dull the pain of starvation, financial leaders met in Washington, just a few miles off the coast of Florida, to discuss the crisis that threatens to plunge the industrial world into a long and deep recession or even into a depression. These economic engines of the “Free World,” including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Group of Seven, the governments of the richest nations: the US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, and Japan, ignored the global food crisis, focusing instead on shoring up investment banks and restoring investor confidence. One economist for the World Bank later admitted, “We did not think that the human costs of these programs could be so great and the economic gains would be so slow in coming.” You have to wonder, what did they think, or, did they think at all?Meanwhile, national governments, abandoning World Trade Organization (WTO) restrictions, are resorting to old-fashioned ways of dealing with the problem of food shortages. They are issuing ration cards, freezing prices of essential commodities like bread, eggs and cooking oil, slapping export controls on foods essential for home consumption, and re-introducing fertilizer and seed subsidies for subsistence farmers. But the most hopeful sign of the complete failure of this British attempt to install a New Imperial Economic Order, is a brewing rebellion against the WTO and GATT by farmer groups networking internationally to take down the globalists’ agenda.Recently, seven former European heads of state, five former finance ministers, and two former presidents of the European Commission, including former EU Commission head Jacques Delors, former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard, and former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, have gone public with an open letter to the EU Presidency and the EU Commission. The letter warns that the systemic collapse of the global financial system brings with it the threat of unprecedented poverty, proliferation of “failed states,'' migration of entire populations, and further military conflicts. The financial world, they argue, has accumulated a massive amount of “fictitious capital'' with very little improvement for humanity. Among the immediate countermeasures they propose is creation of a European Crisis Committee, and the convening of a world financial conference to “reconsider'' the current international system and the global world order.In another remarkable rejection of the British agenda that is increasing the prospects for war, the Japanese Prime Minister has called for an international effort to help Africa double rice production over the next 10 years. Japan has pledged to help African countries to develop irrigation systems, improve crop varieties, and train workers in the field. He predicted that Africa would be a powerful engine for world agricultural growth, and over the next decade, and Japan will stand side by side with Africa to develop the infrastucture needed to be successful.Japan is not alone in calling for the doubling of food production. In a recent paper, Helga LaRouche of the Schiller Institute in Germany, writing in the Executive Intelligence Review, also is calling for doubling world food production. Why haven’t the US and the British Neo-colonialists come up with a single strategy for producing more food to feed everyone on earth? It is clear that other nations are jumping in to the void and will prosper from our reckless and clumsy efforts to manipulate and control global food and fuel.As a nutritionist and a public health worker, I urge the FAO to dismantle and abolish the WTO and GATT which are instruments of special interests long associated with economic imperialism. In the 21st century, all countries must have the right to fully determine the consumption needs of their populations. In order for us to have a stable world, food sovereignty is essential. We must abandon Utopian schemes to create a single unified global food market and encourage countries to develop their own local agriculture to feed their people, decrease reliance on food imports, and boost their local economies.Right now, Anglo-American speculation in commodities is driving up the price of staples necessary for nutritional survival, and creating obscene profits for the biggest industrial food corporations. When profitability overtakes morality, we call this criminal behavior. It is time for us to recognize that access to nutritious food is a basic human right, and any institutions or individuals responsible for widespread starvation and malnutrition, either from unjustifiable trade pressures or restrictive market policies, should be called to account under international law. Adequate nutrition is central to human health and survival and makes important contributions to economic progress, as healthy populations live longer and are more productive. No government or private group has the right to abridge freedom to nourish ourselves. It is our birthright.Dr. Light is the former director of dietary guidance at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and author of, What to Eat: The Ten Things You Really Need to Know to Eat Well and Be Healthy.
Let Them Eat Mudcakes By Luise Light, M.S., Ed.D.“The impact of globalization is felt most by those who benefit from it least.”--Eric Hobsbawm, “On Empire”The greatest hunger crisis in history is ravaging the world. Engineered by British City of London bankers and Anglo-American industrial elites who are apostles of “free markets,” they have captured control of world trade through a system of supra-regulatory bodies (WTO) and international trade and tariff agreements (GATT, NAFTA) designed to optimize profits for the industrialists and their investors while forcing the rest of the world to comply with their rules that strip away all consumer protections and supports which they call disparagingly, “barriers to economic efficiency.” In this schema, there is no room for poor people who are judged “useless eaters,” in that they don’t have the resources to shop in the marketplace and contribute to the profits of transnational middlemen and corporations. The financial elites who own the system, recognize two classes of useful eaters, those who are dependent and do as they are told, no matter how dire the consequences for them, and those who are masters, who create all the rules of the game and absorb the profits.In the thirty or more years it has taken to institutionalize this controlling infrastructure, we have witnessed declines and deficits in every area of life on the planet that we consider socially, culturally, and humanly important: world health has plummeted precipitously, the destruction of nature has accelerated and now all life on the planet is threatened. Economic insecurity, inequality, intolerance, and racial injustice have grown as people are more preoccupied with the daily struggle for survival. Can it be that the British bankers and traders have learned the secret of going back to the future? They seem determined to reverse history and return most of us to the roles of medieval serfs who must pay fealty to our lords, at the cost of our lives.In this new global marketplace, there is no room for hundreds of millions of urban and rural poor so they have been cut out of the picture, a strategy that seems to be in play, right now. In just three years, global food prices have climbed 83 percent, according to the World Bank, placing a life-sustaining diet beyond the reach of the poorest and most vulnerable people on earth. Staple foods that poor people depend on as their major source of calories are the most inflated in price, with rice, the grain of choice for half the world, at a 19-year high, and wheat, the staple for another third of the world, at a 28-year high. Other foods essential for a basic nutritional diet in poor countries, cooking oil, eggs, and dairy, have been equally hard hit by price inflation, affecting the working and middle classes, not just the poor.The exorbitant increases in world food prices threaten the stability of governments, with the potential for violence growing as people ravaged by starvation become ever more desperate. Food rioting already has been reported in 40 countries. The president of the International Red Cross warned recently, people become violent when access to food is withheld and their survival is threatened. The potential for destabilizing wars on every continent is now possible.What is behind this global food crisis? Various rationales have been offered, including the removal of food tariff barriers, liberalization of trade, and enforcement of policies that require developing countries to switch to exporting cash crops and importing food staples for domestic needs. The results of these policies on the economies of poor countries have been nothing short of catastrophic! Cheap subsidized, surplus commodities from rich nations are dumped on poor countries who are experiencing shortages, resulting in decreased local food production and employment. Farmers become dispossessed from their land and stripped of their ability to feed their families. FAO has documented the devastating consequences of such “trade liberalization” policies on the rural poor and local economies in the case of biofuels. Routing corn into biofuels, the FAO predicted in the State of Food and Agriculture Report in 2007, would create scarcities in essential food supplies and price inflation.Other key factors in skyrocketing food prices are the huge spikes in the costs of fuel and transportation, devastating weather catastrophes due to climate change, and growing water shortages. The breakdown of food self-sufficiency in countries is planned to destabilize Third World governments but also to “de-peasantize” these countries, making them more attractive for foreign investors.At risk are 1.2 billion people in the world who live at or near poverty, earning less than $1 a day. Runaway food prices across the globe have placed 200 million people on a deathwatch, in imminent danger of starving to death. Is it any wonder there are angry people in the streets threatening governments across the globe, demanding food? Governments have responded by sending in riot troops and banging heads, which is not a permanent solution to a volatile, chaotic situation, and can be predicted to create more, not less discontent.While starving people in Haiti ate spiced and sweetened mudcakes, the cheapest food locally available to dull the pain of starvation, financial leaders met in Washington, just a few miles off the coast of Florida, to discuss the crisis that threatens to plunge the industrial world into a long and deep recession or even into a depression. These economic engines of the “Free World,” including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Group of Seven, the governments of the richest nations: the US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, and Japan, ignored the global food crisis, focusing instead on shoring up investment banks and restoring investor confidence. One economist for the World Bank later admitted, “We did not think that the human costs of these programs could be so great and the economic gains would be so slow in coming.” You have to wonder, what did they think, or, did they think at all?Meanwhile, national governments, abandoning World Trade Organization (WTO) restrictions, are resorting to old-fashioned ways of dealing with the problem of food shortages. They are issuing ration cards, freezing prices of essential commodities like bread, eggs and cooking oil, slapping export controls on foods essential for home consumption, and re-introducing fertilizer and seed subsidies for subsistence farmers. But the most hopeful sign of the complete failure of this British attempt to install a New Imperial Economic Order, is a brewing rebellion against the WTO and GATT by farmer groups networking internationally to take down the globalists’ agenda.Recently, seven former European heads of state, five former finance ministers, and two former presidents of the European Commission, including former EU Commission head Jacques Delors, former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard, and former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, have gone public with an open letter to the EU Presidency and the EU Commission. The letter warns that the systemic collapse of the global financial system brings with it the threat of unprecedented poverty, proliferation of “failed states,'' migration of entire populations, and further military conflicts. The financial world, they argue, has accumulated a massive amount of “fictitious capital'' with very little improvement for humanity. Among the immediate countermeasures they propose is creation of a European Crisis Committee, and the convening of a world financial conference to “reconsider'' the current international system and the global world order.In another remarkable rejection of the British agenda that is increasing the prospects for war, the Japanese Prime Minister has called for an international effort to help Africa double rice production over the next 10 years. Japan has pledged to help African countries to develop irrigation systems, improve crop varieties, and train workers in the field. He predicted that Africa would be a powerful engine for world agricultural growth, and over the next decade, and Japan will stand side by side with Africa to develop the infrastucture needed to be successful.Japan is not alone in calling for the doubling of food production. In a recent paper, Helga LaRouche of the Schiller Institute in Germany, writing in the Executive Intelligence Review, also is calling for doubling world food production. Why haven’t the US and the British Neo-colonialists come up with a single strategy for producing more food to feed everyone on earth? It is clear that other nations are jumping in to the void and will prosper from our reckless and clumsy efforts to manipulate and control global food and fuel.As a nutritionist and a public health worker, I urge the FAO to dismantle and abolish the WTO and GATT which are instruments of special interests long associated with economic imperialism. In the 21st century, all countries must have the right to fully determine the consumption needs of their populations. In order for us to have a stable world, food sovereignty is essential. We must abandon Utopian schemes to create a single unified global food market and encourage countries to develop their own local agriculture to feed their people, decrease reliance on food imports, and boost their local economies.Right now, Anglo-American speculation in commodities is driving up the price of staples necessary for nutritional survival, and creating obscene profits for the biggest industrial food corporations. When profitability overtakes morality, we call this criminal behavior. It is time for us to recognize that access to nutritious food is a basic human right, and any institutions or individuals responsible for widespread starvation and malnutrition, either from unjustifiable trade pressures or restrictive market policies, should be called to account under international law. Adequate nutrition is central to human health and survival and makes important contributions to economic progress, as healthy populations live longer and are more productive. No government or private group has the right to abridge freedom to nourish ourselves. It is our birthright.Dr. Light is the former director of dietary guidance at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and author of, What to Eat: The Ten Things You Really Need to Know to Eat Well and Be Healthy.
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