Biofuel: the new Holocaust

"The price of agricultural land will be influenced by its potential use for bio-energy. As farmers choose what crop would suit them best, they will change what they produce and hence the whole system of relative prices of agricultural produce. This will imply a very large increase in the demand for agricultural land. Its price and that of the products that use it intensively – such as food and cotton – will go up. By how much? This will depend not only on the cost of bio-energy but also on how much additional land is put to use and the degree to which food crops will be complements or substitutes of bio-energy: they would be substitutes if switch grass were planted instead of soybeans; they will be complements if biofuels are made out of wheat stalk. My bet is that they will tend to be more substitutes than complements and the relative price of food will go up." Ricardo Hausmann (director of Harvard University’s Center for International Development)

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People will have to starve to death so that we can ride in style.

Regular News Links readers know that biofuel is one of my hobby horses. My intuition tells me that this process is part and parcel of the same growing technical perfection that created the possibilty of the Holocaust and the atom bombs that devoured Hiroshima and Nagasaki: a perfection organization and logistics that not only allows us, but invites us to express our darkest natures on a monstrous scale.

The following article by George Monbiot is a masterpiece. DS

Monbiot:The western appetite for biofuels is causing starvation in the poor world - Guardian
Abstract: It doesn't get madder than this. Swaziland is in the grip of a famine and receiving emergency food aid. Forty per cent of its people are facing acute food shortages. So what has the government decided to export? Biofuel made from one of its staple crops, cassava. The government has allocated several thousand hectares of farmland to ethanol production in the district of Lavumisa, which happens to be the place worst hit by drought. It would surely be quicker and more humane to refine the Swazi people and put them in our tanks. Doubtless a team of development consultants is already doing the sums.(...) the superior purchasing power of drivers in the rich world means that they will snatch food from people's mouths. Run your car on virgin biofuel, and other people will starve. Even the International Monetary Fund, always ready to immolate the poor on the altar of business, now warns that using food to produce biofuels "might further strain already tight supplies of arable land and water all over the world, thereby pushing food prices up even further". This week, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation will announce the lowest global food reserves in 25 years, threatening what it calls "a very serious crisis".(...) A recent study by the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen shows that the official estimates have ignored the contribution of nitrogen fertilisers. They generate a greenhouse gas - nitrous oxide - that is 296 times as powerful as CO2. These emissions alone ensure that ethanol from maize causes between 0.9 and 1.5 times as much warming as petrol, while rapeseed oil (the source of more than 80% of the world's biodiesel) generates 1-1.7 times the impact of diesel. This is before you account for the changes in land use. A paper published in the journal Science three months ago suggests that protecting uncultivated land saves, over 30 years, between two and nine times the carbon emissions you might avoid by ploughing it and planting biofuels.(...) If the governments promoting biofuels do not reverse their policies, the humanitarian impact will be greater than that of the Iraq war. Millions will be displaced, hundreds of millions more could go hungry. This crime against humanity is a complex one, but that neither lessens nor excuses it. READ IT ALL

Ethiopia invades Somalia with US support: George W. Bush and the "Fear of the Lord"

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This is so easy, these juxtapositions are so obvious, but they have to be made and repeated and circulated. Howard Dean is absolutely correct when he says the Democrats should push "values". Progressives should not allow the rich human values of Christianity to be monopolized by criminal hypocrites who are more incensed by gay marriage than by the United States supporting a situation which is literally a "hell on earth", one that produces starving children and drug-crazed warlords. The Horn of Africa, with its famine and genocide has the Devil's fingerprints all over it, and any believer, no matter how tepid, would have to approach it with the greatest trepidation. There are scads of people running around today calling themselves "Christians": among them, notoriously, the "decider" himself... George W. Bush. What in hell do these people mean by the word "Christian"? I always thought that evangelical, Southern Baptist types really believed in hellfire and were afraid of it. Probably, most people who are spiritually inclined, of any tradition, would agree with King Solomon that, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Prov. 1:7). When you read about the Horn of Africa you have to ask yourself if any of these self-proclaimed "Christians" actually do "fear God". DS

News Items - BBC - Islamists abandon Somali capital: As they withdrew, gunfire was heard and armed supporters of the city's warlords began taking control of key facilities. Some residents say lawlessness has returned to Mogadishu - which had been under Islamic rule for six months.(...) Residents in the north of the city have reported cars and mobile phones being stolen. Rising insecurity has forced most businesses to stop trading.(...) The situation seems to be descending back into anarchy, our correspondent adds.(...) Courts administering Islamic law restored order in a city bedevilled by anarchy since the overthrow of former President Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.(...) The UN Security Council has failed for a second time to agree on a statement calling for the withdrawal of Ethiopian and other foreign forces from Somalia.(...) The African Union earlier called for Ethiopia to withdraw, as fighting moved closer to the capital Mogadishu. However, the United States has signalled support for Ethiopia's intervention, with the White House saying Addis Ababa had reason for concern about Somalia's internal security situation.

Ethiopia: Malnutrition is cheating its survivors, and Africa's future - New York Times
Abstract: Almost half of Ethiopia's children are malnourished, and most do not die. Some suffer a different fate. Robbed of vital nutrients as children, they grow up stunted and sickly, weaklings in a land that still runs on manual labor. Some become intellectually stunted adults, shorn of as many as 15 I.Q. points, unable to learn or even to concentrate, inclined to drop out of school early. There are many children like this in the villages around Shimider. Nearly 6 in 10 are stunted; 10-year-olds can fail to top an adult's belt buckle. They are frequently sick: diarrhea, chronic coughs and worse are standard for toddlers here. Most disquieting, teachers say, many of the 775 children at Shimider Primary are below-average pupils — often well below. "They fall asleep," said Eteafraw Baro, a third-grade teacher at the school. "Their minds are slow, and they don't grasp what you teach them, and they're always behind in class." Their hunger is neither a temporary inconvenience nor a quick death sentence. Rather, it is a chronic, lifelong, irreversible handicap that scuttles their futures and cripples Ethiopia's hopes to join the developed world. (...) Thirty percent of Amhara's children under 5 are stunted, with another 26 percent severely stunted, evidence of lifelong, acute hunger. One in 15 pregnant women experiences night blindness, indicating vitamin A deficiency and a diet devoid of protein and red or yellow fruits and vegetables. Among both malnourished children and their mothers, the impact of such privation is achingly evident. One recent Sunday, Tewres Beram, a woman in her early 20s, carried her daughter Mekdes to a free immunization clinic. Mekdes, severely malnourished, sat suckling fruitlessly at her mother's breast. "We don't have enough food," her mother said, "so there's not enough milk to feed her." A year old, Mekdes does not crawl. Her sister, 2, has barely begun to crawl. "Both of them are like little dead bodies," their mother said. Sirkalem Birhanu, 40, clasps Endalew, age 2 and unable even to hold up his head. "He's always sick," she said. Endalew has company, she said; his 13-year-old brother "is very tiny, and he loses weight." "And he's always been sick," she added. READ IT ALL