|
|
Saturday July 12, 2008
Stephen Harper - a special kind of obfuscator
Canada's Harper Says Biofuels Not Main Cause of Food Inflation (Bloomberg)
While
acknowledging biofuels are one of the factors behind higher food
prices, Harper said singling them out doesn't explain why rice has
posted the "most rapid escalation'' in price. Rice isn't a major source
for biofuels, Harper said.
Oh, yeah? Either
our PM is, like, an airhead, or else he is extremely high-mach*, the only
other possible explanation being that he was working from a US disinfo
script. Anyway you look at it, he's obfuscating, and had he been an
English major he would have understood that's something he ought to eschew if he wants to be able to stop complaining that Canadians just don't understand.
Simply put: the price of rice went up because of panic buying and hoarding due to predictions of a coming shortage. There is no immediate shortage in rice.
Fuel
prices have increased for the same reason - the threat of impending,
not actual shortage. Investors are having a field day, and governments
are raking in dollars from the taxes hidden in the price. (See The Tax Poem
to learn just how taxed we really are. It ain't just the GST from which
Harper has tried to buy votes by shaving off a pittance.)
When
the real shortage in grains takes hold it will be largely because
agriculture for biofuels is more profitable than food production.
It's
all very humanitarian, since it will reduce the number of people living
in poverty - once they've starved to death, that is. Harper Sahib at the G8 wasn't kidding when he pronounced imperiously: “The developing world is up against some simple mathematics, and we've simply got to make that point to them.”
Oh,
they've got the point alright, and Harper has proved that he can
"eschew obfuscation" when he's not trying to be misunderstood.
Harper is supposedly an economist, but he seems to be outside the profession on this topic. From the Independent's business section (all underlining mine):
Worldwide, economists are worried that the diversion of agricultural land and certain crops to biofuel production is cutting into grain and cereal production for human consumption. The prices of rice and wheat are linked.
The
west and its partners in crime are getting out of the rice production
business, for one ostensible reason or another. From the Financial Post:
Production
is predicted to decline in Australia, with a report by the Australian
Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics forecasting the 2008 rice
crop to decline by almost 90% due to water shortages. Meanwhile,
production in the United States, theworld's 4th largest rice exporter, is expected to decline due to mounting competition for more profitable crops, the FAO said.
And
naturally this goes ditto for the 51st state. Are those "more
profitable crops" biofuels? It seem likely considering that the bus
shelters in Ottawa have their windows plastered over with large posters
praising Harper for promoting the production of biofuels.
The International Rice Research Institute presents some possible factors, and here are two quite damning ones:
An important factor accounting for the slowdown in yield growth is the reduced public investment in agricultural research and development
(R&D). In particular, international donors have not provided
sufficient support for agricultural R&D that is directly related to increasing crop productivity. Many governments have been unable to compensate for this by allocating more of their own resources.
...
This income-driven growth in demand has pushed up the price of cereals in general. In many areas with high population density, highly productive rice land has been lost to housing and industrial development, or to growing vegetables and other cash crops. (biofuels?)
In
plain words, there's little point in spending money on agricultual
development when real estate in "developing" countries is being bought
for a song by international biz to put up huge factories and massive
factory farms, hiring dirt cheap labour to produce not for the local
economy but for export to countries with the money to buy.
And
that's where the majorest of biofuel production will take place, where
we can't see it and where it can be obfuscated about.
The last
word goes to David Wilkes, senior vice-president of the Canadian
Council of Grocery Distributors, because if anybody should know, he
should:
The
rice situation should also be looked at in the context of the apparent
structural shifts going on in the global food market ... He listed some factors:
* Changing consumption patterns;
* Food being converted into ethanol;
* Agricultural land being taken out of production.
You
ask why "single out" biofuels, Mr. Harper? Because it may not be the
only factor, but it may well turn out to be the biggest and most
devastating.
* High
Machs constitute a distinct type: charming, confident and glib, but
also arrogant, calculating and cynical, prone to manipulate and
exploit. (Salon personality test)
Related: Machiavelli: monster or mastermind?
yayacanada
|
|
