Capitalism's warped priorities produce artificial shortages of the basic necessities.

[Hannah Bell]

Tunisia isn't alone in suffering the effects of a new global food crisis that has pushed up prices for staples by one-third in the past six months, according to the United Nations. It isn't alone in witnessing furious protests over the failure of the system to provide for people's most basic needs. And it may not be alone for long in seeing hated rulers overthrown....

ACCORDING TO a report released last week, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) food price index jumped 32 percent in the second half of 2010.

Some of the blame for rising food prices lies with unforeseen and uncontrollable natural events, such as severe flooding in Australia, which is the world's fourth-largest wheat exporter...But the biggest culprit is something at the heart of the system itself, which makes food shortages and rising prices for basic staples a constant occurrence.

It's not that there isn't enough food to feed the world's population--the problem is that the world's poor don't have enough money to buy it. In 2008, for example, 2.2 billion tons of cereal grains were produced--an all-time production record.

And yet there was a food shortage that caused unrest around the world, and greater suffering even in wealthy countries like the U.S.

Wall Street's casino capitalism contributed enormously to the 2008 food crisis.

In the same way that banks and investment firms inflated the housing bubble by stoking the mortgage boom of the mid-2000s, speculation caused a buying binge in commodities futures, sending prices through the roof.

For example, the cost of the most commonly traded form of wheat, which generally averages between $3 and $6 for a 60-pound bushel, skyrocketed to $25 a bushel by the end of February 2008.

One of the chief villains in this crime was a familiar name: Goldman Sachs. After the Wall Street behemoth convinced its friends in the Clinton administration to loosen government restrictions on speculating on agricultural commodities, it went to town.

This is how food becomes "scarce"--meaning unaffordable--for a billion poor people around the world...

Another source of turmoil for poor countries has been the neoliberal policies--masquerading as "solutions" in the new globalized economy--imposed by the West via debt institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. Over the decades, these international loan sharks demanded "structural adjustment programs" in developing countries--including agreements to privatize state-run industries, relax trade restrictions and cut government spending on social services in exchange for loans.

In fact, Ben Ali's rise to power in Tunisia roughly corresponded with an IMF intervention in 1986 that produced a "stabilization" program through privatization of state-run industries. Over time, the Tunisian government drastically cut state subsidies for staple goods, like food and fuel. And it slashed jobs.

THE WARPED priorities of capitalism, which put profit over human need, breed artificial scarcity of the most basic necessities for human existence--while pretending such shortages are "natural."

The mainstream media here portrays Tunisia's uprising as largely a rebellion against a corrupt dictator. But the revolt is linked to something more fundamental--it's an indictment of capitalism itself.

In that way, Tunisia represents another face of a worldwide struggle in an era of economic crisis--alongside the mass strikes and demonstrations in France last fall against pension "reform," the street battles in Britain when students protested against draconian tuition increases, and much more.

The true face of capitalism has been exposed as a system that can't feed its poor, but can enrich a small elite at the top a million times over--and the only answer of governments, whether authoritarian or supposedly answerable to the people, is bitter austerity.

Their system has proved itself a failure--and with that ugly truth exposed, the opportunities will grow everywhere for resistance to develop and burst onto the scene.

http://socialistworker.org/2011/01/19/revolt-hungry

[Starry Messenger]

1. k&r

[Hannah Bell]

2. kr

[blindpig]

3. Profits or people?

That's what it comes down to, they have made their choice, we must either fight or accept the collar.

[Odin2005]

4. K&R

[edhopper]

5. ENRON - California

Nuff said.