[Marxism] NYT: Across Globe, Empty Bellies Bring Rising Anger

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(They have sown the wind, but they will certainly reap the whirlwind.
The recklessly false priorities of the capitalist system are today
generating angry mass protests across the globe as those who are being
literally staved to death constitute a real "right-to-life" movement.)
====================================================================

THE NEW YORK TIMES
April 18, 2008
Across Globe, Empty Bellies Bring Rising Anger 
By MARC LACEY

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/world/americas/18food.html 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti ? Hunger bashed in the front gate of Haiti?s
presidential palace. Hunger poured onto the streets, burning tires and
taking on soldiers and the police. Hunger sent the country?s prime minister
packing.

Haiti?s hunger, that burn in the belly that so many here feel, has become
fiercer than ever in recent days as global food prices spiral out of reach,
spiking as much as 45 percent since the end of 2006 and turning Haitian
staples like beans, corn and rice into closely guarded treasures.

Saint Louis Meriska?s children ate two spoonfuls of rice apiece as their
only meal recently and then went without any food the following day. His
eyes downcast, his own stomach empty, the unemployed father said forlornly,
?They look at me and say, ?Papa, I?m hungry,? and I have to look away. It?s
humiliating and it makes you angry.?

That anger is palpable across the globe. The food crisis is not only being
felt among the poor but is also eroding the gains of the working and middle
classes, sowing volatile levels of discontent and putting new pressures on
fragile governments. 

In Cairo, the military is being put to work baking bread as rising food
prices threaten to become the spark that ignites wider anger at a repressive
government. In Burkina Faso and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, food
riots are breaking out as never before. In reasonably prosperous Malaysia,
the ruling coalition was nearly ousted by voters who cited food and fuel
price increases as their main concerns. 

?It?s the worst crisis of its kind in more than 30 years,? said Jeffrey D.
Sachs, the economist and special adviser to the United Nations secretary
general, Ban Ki-moon. ?It?s a big deal and it?s obviously threatening a lot
of governments. There are a number of governments on the ropes, and I think
there?s more political fallout to come.?

Indeed, as it roils developing nations, the spike in commodity prices ? the
biggest since the Nixon administration ? has pitted the globe?s poorer south
against the relatively wealthy north, adding to demands for reform of rich
nations? farm and environmental policies. But experts say there are few
quick fixes to a crisis tied to so many factors, from strong demand for food
from emerging economies like China?s to rising oil prices to the diversion
of food resources to make biofuels. 

There are no scripts on how to handle the crisis, either. In Asia,
governments are putting in place measures to limit hoarding of rice after
some shoppers panicked at price increases and bought up everything they
could.

Even in Thailand, which produces 10 million more tons of rice than it
consumes and is the world?s largest rice exporter, supermarkets have placed
signs limiting the amount of rice shoppers are allowed to purchase.

But there is also plenty of nervousness and confusion about how best to
proceed and just how bad the impact may ultimately be, particularly as
already strapped governments struggle to keep up their food subsidies.

?Scandalous Storm?

?This is a perfect storm,? President Elías Antonio Saca of El Salvador said
Wednesday at the World Economic Forum on Latin America in Cancún, Mexico.
?How long can we withstand the situation? We have to feed our people, and
commodities are becoming scarce. This scandalous storm might become a
hurricane that could upset not only our economies but also the stability of
our countries.? 

In Asia, if Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi of Malaysia steps down,
which is looking increasingly likely amid postelection turmoil within his
party, he may be that region?s first high- profile political casualty of
fuel and food price inflation.

In Indonesia, fearing protests, the government recently revised its 2008
budget, increasing the amount it will spend on food subsidies by about $280
million.

?The biggest concern is food riots,? said H.S. Dillon, a former adviser to
Indonesia?s Ministry of Agriculture. Referring to small but widespread
protests touched off by a rise in soybean prices in January, he said, ?It
has happened in the past and can happen again.?

Last month in Senegal, one of Africa?s oldest and most stable democracies,
police in riot gear beat and used tear gas against people protesting high
food prices and later raided a television station that broadcast images of
the event. Many Senegalese have expressed anger at President Abdoulaye Wade
for spending lavishly on roads and five-star hotels for an Islamic summit
meeting last month while many people are unable to afford rice or fish. 

?Why are these riots happening?? asked Arif Husain, senior food security
analyst at the World Food Program, which has issued urgent appeals for
donations. ?The human instinct is to survive, and people are going to do no
matter what to survive. And if you?re hungry you get angry quicker.?

Leaders who ignore the rage do so at their own risk. President René Préval
of Haiti appeared to taunt the populace as the chorus of complaints about la
vie chère ? the expensive life ? grew. He said if Haitians could afford
cellphones, which many do carry, they should be able to feed their families.
?If there is a protest against the rising prices,? he said, ?come get me at
the palace and I will demonstrate with you.?

When they came, filled with rage and by the thousands, he huddled inside and
his presidential guards, with United Nations peacekeeping troops, rebuffed
them. Within days, opposition lawmakers had voted out Mr. Préval?s prime
minister, Jacques-Édouard Alexis, forcing him to reconstitute his
government. Fragile in even the best of times, Haiti?s population and
politics are now both simmering.

?Why were we surprised?? asked Patrick Élie, a Haitian political activist
who followed the food riots in Africa earlier in the year and feared they
might come to Haiti. ?When something is coming your way all the way from
Burkina Faso you should see it coming. What we had was like a can of
gasoline that the government left for someone to light a match to it.?

Dwindling Menus

The rising prices are altering menus, and not for the better. In India,
people are scrimping on milk for their children. Daily bowls of dal are
getting thinner, as a bag of lentils is stretched across a few more meals.

Maninder Chand, an auto-rickshaw driver in New Delhi, said his family had
given up eating meat altogether for the last several weeks.

Another rickshaw driver, Ravinder Kumar Gupta, said his wife had stopped
seasoning their daily lentils, their chief source of protein, with the usual
onion and spices because the price of cooking oil was now out of reach.
These days, they eat bowls of watery, tasteless dal, seasoned only with
salt. 

Down Cairo?s Hafziyah Street, peddlers selling food from behind wood carts
bark out their prices. But few customers can afford their fish or chicken,
which bake in the hot sun. Food prices have doubled in two months.

Ahmed Abul Gheit, 25, sat on a cheap, stained wooden chair by his own pile
of rotting tomatoes. ?We can?t even find food,? he said, looking over at his
friend Sobhy Abdullah, 50. Then raising his hands toward the sky, as if in
prayer, he said, ?May God take the guy I have in mind.?

Mr. Abdullah nodded, knowing full well that the ?guy? was President Hosni
Mubarak.

The government?s ability to address the crisis is limited, however. It
already spends more on subsidies, including gasoline and bread, than on
education and health combined. 

?If all the people rise, then the government will resolve this,? said Raisa
Fikry, 50, whose husband receives a pension equal to about $83 a month, as
she shopped for vegetables. ?But everyone has to rise together. People get
scared. But we will all have to rise together.?

It is the kind of talk that has prompted the government to treat its
economic woes as a security threat, dispatching riot forces with a strict
warning that anyone who takes to the streets will be dealt with harshly. 

Niger does not need to be reminded that hungry citizens overthrow
governments. The country?s first postcolonial president, Hamani Diori, was
toppled amid allegations of rampant corruption in 1974 as millions starved
during a drought. 

More recently, in 2005, it was mass protests in Niamey, the Nigerien
capital, that made the government sit up and take notice of that year?s food
crisis, which was caused by a complex mix of poor rains, locust infestation
and market manipulation by traders.

?As a result of that experience the government created a cabinet-level
ministry to deal with the high cost of living,? said Moustapha Kadi, an
activist who helped organize marches in 2005. ?So when prices went up this
year the government acted quickly to remove tariffs on rice, which everyone
eats. That quick action has kept people from taking to the streets.? 

The Poor Eat Mud

In Haiti, where three-quarters of the population earns less than $2 a day
and one in five children is chronically malnourished, the one business
booming amid all the gloom is the selling of patties made of mud, oil and
sugar, typically consumed only by the most destitute.

?It?s salty and it has butter and you don?t know you?re eating dirt,? said
Olwich Louis Jeune, 24, who has taken to eating them more often in recent
months. ?It makes your stomach quiet down.?

But the grumbling in Haiti these days is no longer confined to the stomach.
It is now spray-painted on walls of the capital and shouted by
demonstrators. 

In recent days, Mr. Préval has patched together a response, using
international aid money and price reductions by importers to cut the price
of a sack of sugar by about 15 percent. He has also trimmed the salaries of
some top officials. But those are considered temporary measures.

Real solutions will take years. Haiti, its agriculture industry in shambles,
needs to better feed itself. Outside investment is the key, although that
requires stability, not the sort of widespread looting and violence that the
Haitian food riots have fostered.

Meanwhile, most of the poorest of the poor suffer silently, too weak for
activism or too busy raising the next generation of hungry. In the sprawling
slum of Haiti?s Cité Soleil, Placide Simone, 29, offered one of her five
offspring to a stranger. ?Take one,? she said, cradling a listless baby and
motioning toward four rail-thin toddlers, none of whom had eaten that day.
?You pick. Just feed them.?

Reporting was contributed by Lydia Polgreen from Niamey, Niger, Michael
Slackman from Cairo, Somini Sengupta from New Delhi, Thomas Fuller from
Bangkok and Peter Gelling from Jakarta, Indonesia.


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WALTER LIPPMANN, CubaNews
Los Angeles, California
http://www.walterlippmann.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
"Cuba - Un Paraiso bajo el bloqueo"
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