Food - The Problems is World Wide

We are not the only ones facing a storm of rising fuel and food prices. The recent flooding here and throughout the Midwest has left us with the prospect of even less corn. This is from Scotland's Sunday Heralds Rising food prices signal end of an era:

"In a worrying report due to be released this week by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, scientists predict that 854 million people will suffer unacceptable levels of food deprivation within the coming decade.
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Equally disturbing is the prediction that the world will have to increase food production by 50% by 2030 - and unless that happens food prices will go through the roof, there will be shortages of basics such as cereals and rice and as stocks disappear there will be real hardship, chiefly among the poor.

Worst affected will be countries that rely on imports. There have already been riots in countries including Bangladesh over shortages of rice and the subsequent hiking of prices, and there is now an uneasy feeling that this could remain the norm, especially if neighbouring countries place restrictions on exports to protect their own markets."
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As with any crisis of this kind there are no simple answers and even the experts have been hard pushed to come up with a reason for the onset of this unexpected challenge. There are lots of obvious clues - production failing to keep pace with population growth being the most apparent - but most of what we know is deeply unpalatable. We've become far too greedy not just in the amounts that we eat, but in the way that we expect food to be consistently cheap and freely available.

Take the humble green bean, once a late summer treat but now to be found on supermarket shelves all the year round. Most of the supplies come from east African countries where low labour costs drive down production costs to keep the western world happy. But nothing is for nothing. Those very countries that produce the green bean are among the heaviest importers of food, mainly cereals, and as the prices rise, so do the shortages get worse. Add on increased fuel costs, globalisation and unnecessary meddling in food commodity futures markets and the picture gets bleaker. Sniff the wind, so to speak, and you'll sense that change is in the offing and that we're entering a new age of high prices and fuel and food shortages that will force us to alter our perceptions.

If Talking to Hamas is Appeasement...

Then what to make of this from The Washington Post - Truce in Gaza?:

"ATRUCE between Israel and Hamas was to begin this morning in the Gaza Strip, ending daily barrages of rockets that have terrorized nearby Israeli towns as well as counterstrikes that have killed more than 350 Palestinians this year. In accepting the Egyptian-brokered deal, Israel embraced the least bad of the limited options it has for countering Hamas, which has been turning Gaza into a fortified base for advancing the cause of Islamist extremism in the region -- a cause it shares with Iran. For a while, Israeli civilians will be relieved from having to duck into bomb shelters, and Gazans will be better supplied with food and other essential goods. How long the peace lasts, and whether it does more good than harm, will depend on how well Israel and Hamas's moderate Palestinian rivals use the calm."

While I suspect John McCain will keep his mouth shut about Obama's willingness to talk with people McCain does not like, anyone want to make a bet that George W. will leave office with foot securely lodged in his mouth?

Government dominating religion

For anyone thinking that our secular government has dominated religion, a better example of how it is done. A whole lot different than anything we would see in this country.

Sunday reading - Bush, Blair, Iraq and Iran

Reading around this morning without enough caffeine (yet) and Bush's Iraqi plan still exercising lot of word processors. The Washington Post's columnists Broder, Will, and guest writer Michael O'Hanlon all seem to agree that Bush and his critics share some common ground. Will puts forward this argument most succinctly:

Bush and his thoughtful critics, ostensibly at daggers drawn, are actually in agreement on three points. First, the failed policy of the past three years is both militarily and politically unsustainable. Second, any substantial departure from that policy must involve a leap into the dark -- a bet on the future about which no reasonable person can be confident. Third, the nation embarked Wednesday night upon the beginning of the end of U.S. suzerainty in Iraq, where, Maliki has said, with more bravado than plausibility, that by June -- about when the full surge probably will reach Iraq -- his government will be able to handle its security challenges.

I still think Bush's interest is in creating the appearance of doing something to save his reputation rather in actually solving the problem he created. Still, O'Hanlon has a good argument on why we should let the surge go ahead.

Rather than deny funding for Bush's initiatives, Congress should provide it now -- but only for fiscal 2007 (meaning through September). By that point, or even the August congressional recess, we should know if the surge is showing promise. If it does, Congress could consider continuing its support. If not, the moment will be right to force the president's hand and move to a backup plan.

All three agree (as does the Post's editor), that the great weakness of the plan lies with al-Maliki. Broder puts it this way:

For this gamble to work, a lot of implausible things have to happen. Maliki's governing coalition, which includes the party of Moqtada al-Sadr, will have to steel itself to send troops into the neighborhoods controlled by Sadr's own Mahdi Army. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says this will happen, but the promise remains to be tested.

For others who already noted this problem with al-Maliki see this earlier post of mine.

Meanwhile, Blair is not going to send more British troops but will send words of support to Bush. That last link goes to a Sunday Herald article. I found these three paragraphs interesting - in a scary way:

During his swansong' tour, Blair is expected to revisit Iraq and continue to rework his record without any recourse to an apology. According to one Blair aide: "The emphasis is not so much on the past, as offering insight into the future. All prime ministers have done this." But not all have had one eye on Washington while doing it.

Similar warnings are being thrown at whoever takes over from Bush. One credible forecast is that Bush is intent on delaying any withdrawal in Iraq until the next president takes office. Leslie Gelb, a former State Department official in the Carter administration, said: "The worst challenge the next president will inherit will be to figure out how to lose in Iraq without the appearance of losing. Then there's huge problems at either end of Asia - Iran and North Korea. The next president is heading into the biggest, most dangerous set of problems we've faced since the Cuban missile crisis."

On Friday Blair effectively accepted Gelb's forecast, but said he and Bush had done the right thing. Any other action would have been a mistake.

I do not think anyone noticed this quote from Gelb. I know the idea is understood but that reference to the Cuban missile crisis does put quite a point to it all.

The Sunday Herald also has an article on Iran, Iran: The Backlash Begins, that might serve as a bit of antidote to the scare-mongering we get here for reporting on Iran. Here are the interesting bits:

Having built an international status on baiting the West, the president is in danger of becoming a scapegoat for the increasing isolation Iran faces over its nuclear programme - which the West suspects is designed for bomb-making despite Iranian denials.

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More worrying still for the president was the fact that fundamentalist newspaper Jomhouri Eslami - which often reflects the views of the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - accused Ahmadinejad of adopting the nuclear issue as a personal slogan to deflect attention from his government's economic failings.

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The warning followed criticism by MPs that a conference staged last month questioning the holocaust - organised to bolster Ahmadinejad's dismissal of the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis as a "myth" - had damaged the national interest.

At a closed session of the conservative-dominated parliament, members denounced the event as "inappropriate" and "unnecessary", and said it had directly influenced the UN's decision to impose sanctions on Iran.

For the president's opponents the welter of criticism means only one thing. "It's a sign that the golden age and honeymoon of Ahmadinejad with the people is over," said Isa Saharkhiz, a journalist and political activist. "He is in a position where not only his critics but many of his followers are trying to distance themselves from his stances and actions. His rivals in the last presidential election will have a more vital role in the country's future."

Still reading the Sunday Herald and another article that might be of interest - Sadr’s Army. "Whenever he (Sadr) is asked why he keeps fighting against what has happened in the past four years he invariably answers: 'I do not care what the Americans have to say about this and I never did. Only the Iraqi people can choose who they want to protect their country.' "

Oh, what a wonderful way to start a morning. Take all this as a reminder that the world is a whole lot more complicated than we might like and what appears a simplistic solution may only be a simpleton's blathering.