No War for Oil?

Coordinated global action, my ass! The burden of feeding the world’s pool has been borne by the productive, wealthy west for as long as there has been a way to deliver aid. Nonetheless:

This year, the U.S. had contributed $362.7 million to WFP just through May 4, according to the website. That figure does not include another $250 million above the planned yearly contribution that was promised by President George W. Bush in the wake of WFP’s April warning that a “silent tsunami” of rising food costs would add dramatically to the world population living in hunger. Nor does it include another $770 million in food aid that President Bush has asked Congress to provide as soon as possible.

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia, with oil revenues last year of $164 billion, does not even appear on the website donor list for 2008.

As for not being generous, one pervasive feature of the Arab character that rarely sees much daylight is a kind of hatred of the poor and those who are bad off for their “common” nature and lack of success that’s associated with natural inferiority.

The only other major oil exporter who made the WFP list of 2008 donors was the United Arab Emirates, which kicked in $50,000. UAE oil revenues in 2007 were $63 billion.

By contrast, the poverty-stricken African republic of Burkina Faso is listed as donating more than $600,000, and Bangladesh, perennial home of many of the world’s hungriest people, is listed as donating nearly $5.8 million.

The high present cost of food, increasingly inaccessible to the poorest of the world is largely that way BECAUSE of the high cost of transporting food from where it’s produced efficiently and in abundance to where it isn’t, not to mention the fact that fuel is one of the biggest inputs in food production to begin with.

Forget biofuel. Even though the output of biofuels has doubled in 5 years, the trend in the price of grain has tracked upward with the cost of petroleum move for move, tick for tick, doubling in 15 months, benefitting fake humanists like Chavez, faux social victims like the Gulf Arabs, and the champion of domestic economic ineptitude, Ahmedinejad.