Global food prices may be even higher next year, new UN report says … Global food import bills may pass the $1 trillion mark in 2010, a level not seen since food prices peaked in 2008, says a new United Nations report, which warns that harder times could be ahead without a major increase in food production next year, the UN News Service reported on November 17 2010. According to the latest edition of the Food Outlook report, released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, food import bills for the world's poorest countries are predicted to rise 11 per cent in 2010 and by 20 per cent for low-income food-deficit countries. "With the pressure on world prices of most commodities not abating, the international community must remain vigilant against further supply shocks in 2011 and be prepared," the Rome-based agency said, quoted by the UN News Service. – UK Telegraph
Dominant Social Theme: Starvation is upon us. Wait, maybe not.
Free-Market Analysis: Food prices are going up; everywhere we read about it. When we Googled "high food prices" recently we received 100 MILLION hits. Now there's a dominant social theme for you. The UN especially (talk about predictable culprits) has been flogging this latest power elite promotion; but what is interesting is that the causes remain somewhat mysterious. Was it supposed to be this way?
No. Global warming was to have been identified as the culprit in our opinion, giving rise, logically to two scarcity-based memes: declining food production and potable water. The UN itself, in our view, was supposed to have been the designated messenger for this scary information. As an instrument of elite control, the UN is at the fulcrum of the global governance that the Anglo-American elite wants to install. Fear-based promotions are at the heart of elite manipulations that propel society toward a more comprehensive NWO. Unfortunately, the Internet's truth telling has blown up global warming and now the next two fear-based promotions are dangling in the ether without much to justify them. Here's something from DanielsTrading.com:
Shortages in major producing nations, export quotas and a shift to more-profitable crops are all pushing up the price of key food commodities – and that's raised the cost of importing food for nations around the world. The consequences, warns the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization, could be severe. The global food import bill will rise above $1 trillion, to $1.026 trillion in 2010; the all-time record, reports the Financial Times, was set in 2008, during a global food crisis, at $1.031 trillion. Rising grain futures have presaged the surge in costs – the prices of corn, wheat, soy, and meat have all been on an upward trend. The ability of farmers to increase production is hampered, moreover, by a shift to crops with even higher margins, like sugar and cotton.
This is all kinda … general – isn't it? "Shortages in major producing nations," and a "shift to more-profitable crops" are putting pressure on food prices. So for some reason when farmers begin farming "more profitable crops" other crops are less farmed. Ordinarily this should cause the prices of less-farmed crops to go up, stimulating increased production and subsequent price reductions. Thus you could rewrite the article as follows: "As farmers shift away from harvesting food staples, experts are predicting bumper crops of corn, wheat and soy. "There will be a surge in the production of these staples as demand is high and production is low," one expert said. "Next year should see a very productive harvest and prices should deflate sharply."
Of course an article of this sort would then forego alarmism. And alarmism is the whole POINT. It's what the elite counts on when it is trying to manipulate billons of people in a certain direction – in this case, toward a more authoritarian and centralized form of governance with one major worldwide currency, one central bank and one set of worldwide taxes. (Not only that, but if food and food prices ARE being manipulated, then the global warming explanation would have provided cover for it.)
And as odd as the idea seems, global warming was making progress toward the goal of UN action when certain damning emails were released online that showed an academic conspiracy to hype warming alarmism. It didn't help that the UN was closely tied to the manipulation. The movement has never recovered from that (a year ago, now) and integrating food-scarcity and water-scarcity memes into the larger narrative of alarmism is proving increasingly problematic.
Returning to Google, we did a search to see how closely food and water-scarcity memes were linked to the phrase "global warming" and found only about 500,000 potential cites. Given the numbers that the elite needs to work with on a major promotion, that is not a lot. Moreover, even when the phrases appear in the same article, the linkages are not necessarily presented in a logical sequence. Here's an excerpt from a recent article (early September) in the UK Guardian mentioning both food shortages and global warming:
UN calls special meeting to address food shortages amid predictions of riots … Poor harvests and demand from developing countries could push cost of weekly shop up by 10% … Global wheat harvest this year has been hit by droughts and floods. Two years after the last food crisis, when prices surged by nearly 15% in the UK, food inflation is back. Soaring global food prices have prompted City and food industry experts to warn that the cost of the weekly shop is set to rise by up to 10% in the coming months. As in 2008, rocketing prices are the result of rising demand and supply shortages caused by freak weather and poor harvests. Moreover, these conditions are exacerbated by speculation on commodity markets and changing diets in fast-growing Asian countries.
From our point of view, the internationalist UK Guardian is likely to provide as sympathetic venue as exists to present the linkages between global warming and other scarcity memes. But even the Guardian cannot do it. The closest the paper comes to doing so in the entire article is when it mentions "freak weather." Again, in our view, the promotion was to have matured by now and the "freak weather" glancingly mentioned was supposed to have been tied directly to global warming.
Certainly the article is disturbing nonetheless with a good deal of information on food riots and reduced crops of food staples. But in a sense, too, it is strangely subdued because of the lack of narrative cohesion. A certain threnody of fear, which was to have been raised to a high pitch by now, is lacking. Without a rhetorical spine, even the most dire fear-based promotions tend to be less effective. Without a pattern, the meme sinks into a kind of mumbo-jumbo. There's no logic to it, no compelling reason for it and thus no call-to-action to be generated.
Of course, the Anglo-America power elite never gives up. When one has ploughed literally trillions into effective media manipulations and built up fear-based narratives over decades, the chances of merely abandoning them are virtually non-existent. You might think of the elite as running a multi-trillion enterprise with numerous parts. If so, one of its chief interests is creating fictional narratives that drive its largest governmental and industrial businesses. Without fear-based memes much of the rest ceases to work.
The investments are huge, and thus they are ongoing. They feature think tanks, white papers and even elite "spokesmodels" such as Al Gore who are recruited to play their parts within larger promotions. But it is a measure of how troubled the global warming theme has become that even a pitchperson as rarified as Gore has run into trouble. In fact, his businesses, media enterprises and personal credibility have reached a kind of nadir. He's simply not convincing anymore. And thus we have been on the lookout for a replacement. In fact another Guardian article written just yesterday informs us that:
"Arnold Schwarzenegger… prepares to leave office and become a global champion in war against climate change …
It's very nearly a wrap for Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose career as governor of California will come sputtering to an end in January with his approval rating in the 20s, the state budget shortfall at $25bn (£16bn), and unemployment at nearly 13%. But, like the action heroes he has so often played, the man they called the governator is already working on a comeback. In what is likely his last performance on a world stage as governor, Schwarzenegger this week launched the R20 climate network, an alliance of regional leaders who have pledged to work together to fight climate change. Schwarzenegger is the "founding father" of the new venture, a self-appointed global champion in the war against climate change …
How will he approach the fight against climate change? "I always was a big believer in doing things on a global level," he said. "Everything I have ever done, I always was interested in doing it globally – if it was the fitness, if it was the bodybuilding, if it was entertainment and acting and showbusiness." … But don't expect to see Schwarzenegger touring an Al Gore-style scientific slideshow. The governator's version of environmental leadership hinges on avoiding mention of the words climate change or greenhouse gas emissions, which he thinks are a turn-off for some people. "People get stuck and fall in love with their slogans and with their little agendas," he said. "You've got to make it hip. You've got to make it sexy to be part of this movement."
The vehicle for this next stage of his life is the new R20 group of city and state leaders, which Schwarzenegger conjured into being at his climate summit this week. The group, whose name is a conscious play on the G20 club of major world economies, is devoted to putting together clean energy projects in developing countries by recruiting finance from industrialised countries. The first wave of projects is likely to involve the installation of white roofs, which reflect the sun and keep houses cool, aides said.
After this week's launch, the next stop is Cancun, where aides say the R20 will hold a side event at the UN climate summit. Then there is the prospect of another star turn for Schwarzenegger, who is thinking of putting in an appearance at Davos, the talking shop of the global elite. Then he will see where the R20 takes him. "It could very well be that this would be the main thing," he said of his new career, but just as immediately mentioned some alternatives. "It could also be that it would be one of five things that I would do. It could be showbusiness. It could be business in general." (UK Guardian)
You see? Former US vice president Al Gore is apparently out; the Gubernator has been tapped for the job. Of course, like anyone approaching a new career challenge, he seems a bit nervous. Professional meme watchers, reading between the lines, can likely see in Schwarzenegger's attitude a certain equivocation. He's not sure the gig is going to work out. He say so himself: "It could also be that it would be one of five things that I would do. It could be showbusiness. It could be business in general."
But one can bet he will be well compensated for his efforts. On tap, perhaps, a book that will sell five million copies. (Of course it won't sell anywhere near that, but enough copies will "bought" to bring up the level of compensation to significant numbers.) Perhaps there will be documentary in the works. Call it the "Green Gubernator." Or "Schwarzenegger's Climate Quest." That's how these things work. Arnold doesn't work for peanuts, and of course he's not the only spokesperson. There are a number of them circulating throughout the West, and no doubt in Asia and China as well – along with the developing world.
The Internet has provided us with a window into the larger business that the Anglo-American elite has built up in the past 100 years. When one penetrates the outer layer of its promotional misinformation, one notices right away that it IS a business, the largest and most powerful in the world. It is run by a familial elite and powered by mercantilism, which conflates government and private interest to a degree where it is impossible to separate them.
What cannot be achieved in the private market is leveraged via laws and regulations. In the process, competition is either intimidated or bought out. Someone like Bill Gates who did not initially want to cooperate (and spurned his father's advice) is subject to a variety of pressures. Now Bill Gates runs a foundation in line with elite objectives. His father pals around with Warren Buffet.
Seen from this perspective, in fact, government is just another arm of the business and a mid-level executive like Schwarzenegger can slip smoothly from one role to the next. We are sure in fact, that the various enterprises of the elite are set up in a businesslike fashion. And like any firm facing challenges, the product lines are shifting and the executives themselves are being shuffled. For a variety of reasons often mentioned in these modest pages, we anticipate the pressure will continue.
