the editor’s blog

Here is a Al Jazeera report on the impacts of the Belo Monte Dam in Altamira, Brazil and on the Xingu Encounter 2008. For more on the latter, see the site of International Rivers

Here is what the World BanK has to say about it:

“Economic empowerment is about making markets work for women(at the policy level) and empowering women to compete in markets (at the agency level)”

Now, food prices are skyrocketing, fuel for transport and cooking are up, communities are strangled with debt, and what is the World Bank talking about? Empowering women to compete. This is their ultimate solution for everything.

This is what they really mean by “gender mainstreaming”. Imagine women storming cities in the 1970s, hands up high in the vagina symbol screaming at unison “GENDER MAINSTREAMING!!!”: what an image of co-optation could have been. One thing seems clear about this current respectable slogan of World Bank policy on gender and development: whatever will happen through the energy, food, financial, or environmental crises, the subjectification of women to the market in particular, and therefore the reshaping of the conditions of reproduction in general (who knows in what direction…), will be central to their managing of these crises . . .

I do not know what happened since last year, when the news came out of Indian farmers refusing to sell their land in order to develop export processing zones and thus forcing the government to do a U turn. In any case, this is an interesting piece of news here

Here are some more links about the current global food crisis. We need to keep watching the World Bank on the matter. On the 29th of April World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick announced that “a New Deal must embrace a short, medium and long-term response: support for safety nets such as school feeding, food for work, and conditional cash transfer programs; increased agricultural production; a better understanding of the impact of biofuels and action on the trade front to reduce distorting subsidies, and trade barriers.” In short, conditional feeding. He also called for Sovereign Wealth Funds to use a small percentage of their assets to provide the cash for this new deal. As in the late 1970s the petrodollar were used to fund third world debt to “help their development”, so now, the accumulated surplus which followed the last round of global accumulation can serve the next round of global restructuring.

Here are also three links that highlight speculation as the main reason for the recent climb in food prices.

www.newstatesman.com/print/200804170026

globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8794

www.grain.org/articles/?id=39#_ednref9

A short extract from the newstatesman article will do here do make the point:

“Conventional explanations for the food crisis range from climate change to dietary change in China, from global overpopulation to the switch of agricultural production to biofuels. These long-term factors are important but they are not the real reasons why food prices have doubled or why India is rationing rice or why British farmers are killing pigs for which they can’t afford feedstocks. It’s the credit crisis.
This latest food emergency has developed in an incredibly short space of time - essentially over the past 18 months. The reason for food “shortages“ is speculation in commodity futures following the collapse of the financial derivatives markets. Desperate for quick returns, dealers are taking trillions of dollars out of equities and mortgage bonds and ploughing them into food and raw materials. It’s called the “commodities super-cycle“ on Wall Street, and it is likely to cause starvation on an epic scale.”

What does need to be explored is the link between the alternating of speculation waves (the latest of which is on food prices) and different phases of global restructuring. Also, I am curious, how many pension funds hold commodities futures in their assets?

Here are some other links I got from the grain.org site listed above:

Overview: FAO, World Food Situation: www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation
Overview: Financial Times, “The global food crisis”, interactive map, last updated 21 April 2008: tinyurl.com/6knmy8
Overview: Stefan Steinberg, “Financial speculators reap profits from global hunger”, Global Research, Centre for Research on Globalisation, Montreal, 24 April 2008.
globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8794
Overview: Confédération Paysanne, “Les révoltes de la faim dans les pays du Sud : l’aboutissement logique de choix économiques et politiques désastreux”, Press release, 18 April 2008: tinyurl.com/5glx8u (French only)
Structural Adjustment Programmes: “UNCTAD official blames food crisis on structural adjustment programme,” This Day, Lagos, 23 April 2008: allafrica.com/stories/200804230375.html
Food sovereignty: www.viacampesina.org and www.nyeleni2007.org
Agrofuels: GRAIN, Agrofuels special issues, Seedling, July 2007, www.grain.org/seedling/?type=68
Rice in the Philippines: GRAIN, Philippines and beyond: rice crisis – reaping the ‘fruit’ of market capitalism, Hybrid rice blog, 22 April 2008, www.grain.org/hybridrice/?lid=201

The extract below says it all . . .the video at the Democracy Now! site explains it: among other things, the countries that have liberalised most are those in which global food price hikes are hurting most . . .

AMY GOODMAN: For our last segment, we look at the dramatic rise in global food prices, adding a new level of danger to the crisis of world hunger. In Africa, food riots have swept across the continent, with recent protests in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Senegal. In most of West Africa, the price of food has risen by 50 percent—in Sierra Leone, 300 percent. Last week, African finance ministers warned the rise in international food prices “poses significant threats to Africa’s growth, peace and security.” Other protests have been held this past week in countries like Cambodia, Indonesia, Egypt. In Haiti, at least five people have died in riots over 50 percent price hikes for rice, beans and fruit since last year. The demonstrations continued Monday outside the national palace in Port-au-Prince.

HAITIAN DEMONSTRATOR: We are protesting voluntarily. It is not for money. The parliament is responsible for all of this. All we ask for is for the government to cut down on prices of food.

An article today on The Guardian reveals the hypocrysy of it all. The world’s shipping fleet without which the burgeoning production chains of global capital would be paralised, emits 1.21bn tonnes of CO2 a year. Aviation, 600million tonnes. Yet shipping has been completely absent from public debate and government targets. Read the rest of this entry »

Not the truth, but in the spirit of the truth. Watch this hilarious report from Onion News Network: Many U.S. Parents Outsourcing Child Care Overseas

Report: Many U.S. Parents Outsourcing Child Care Overseas

Quite impressive interview to Pascal Lamy, the director of the World Trade Organization, one of the institutions overseeing and promoting global capital, its enclosures and disciplinary processes. Here Lamy pays tribute to Karl Marx, especially the idea that the system is predicated upon a “certain theory of value” and that “alternatives to capitalism” must be found since “capitalism cannot satisfy us. It is a means that must remain in the service of human development.” Wow, what an oxymoron!! Read the rest of this entry »

This short film surveys the tactics used by the city administration of New Orleans, to try to get “affordable” housing tenants out of their houses, so as to “regenerate” them for money making. It also shows some of the struggles of the tenants to stay in. They have other types of “regeneration” in mind. A clear case of value struggles.

This good article from the International Herald Tribune links it all: peak oil and biofuel, planterary urbanization and growth in meat consumption for middle classes, increase in food prices, especially hurting the poor, and spreading food riots across the globe.

The other oil shock: Vegetable oil prices soar Read the rest of this entry »