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New York Times (June 20)

2016/ 06/ 21 by jd in Global News

“Venezuela is convulsing from hunger,” with over 50 food riots in just the last two weeks. The mobs storming supermarkets, restaurants and stores for anything edible are showing that even in the “country with the largest oil reserves in the world, it is possible for people to riot because there is not enough food.”

 

Financial Times (February 6, 2014)

2014/ 02/ 08 by jd in Global News

“In an era when much of the world is worried about the possibility of drifting into Japanese-style deflation, one country has precisely the opposite problem: unbridled inflation.” Over the last 5 years, India’s consumer prices have been rising annually by close to 10%. “That is no small matter for the multitudinous poor, for whom escalating food prices can summon the spectre of hunger. Nor does it do much for macroeconomic stability, which India badly needs in this year of tapering and tricky political transition.” Fortunately, new central bank governor Raghuram Rajan looks “up to the task.” With his tough policies, he may prove the Paul Volcker of India.

 

Los Angeles Times (April 4)

2012/ 04/ 06 by jd in Global News

Where is the outrage? “In North Korea, children are bred like livestock in labor camps. They are taught to betray their parents. They are worked to death.” Three generations of the Kim dynasty have now “presided over this human rights catastrophe.” Six labor camps house 200,000 inmates who “do hard labor while subsisting on a starvation diet…. They usually die of hunger-related illness before turning 50.” Still America takes little notice.

Where is the outrage? “In North Korea, children are bred like livestock in labor camps. They are taught to betray their parents. They are worked to death.” Three generations of the Kim dynasty have now “presided over this human rights catastrophe.” Six labor camps house 200,000 inmates who “do hard labor while subsisting on a starvation diet…. They usually die of hunger-related illness before turning 50.” Still America takes little notice.

 

The Wall Street Journal (September 3)

2011/ 09/ 05 by jd in Global News

There’s only one way the world can feed 9 billion people and provide them with fuel and water. According to Nestle’s Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, politicians around the world must decide “no food for fuel.” Increasingly food has been diverted for biofuel production. About one half of corn production in the U.S. and rapeseed production in Europe already goes to biofuels, which are also water intensive (producing a liter of biodiesel can require over 9,000 liters of water). While the result of rising food prices from this diversion is merely “annoying” in rich countries, it means people “go hungry” or thirsty in the Third World.

 

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