February 25, 2011

from LaRouchePAC Website

 

Henry Kissinger's 1974 National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM 200) is an accurate statement of the British empire policy underway today, in which the "food weapon" - as he called for at the time - to suppress the population in 13 strategically targeted nations, is today slamming them - look at Egypt, Mexico, India, plus all others worldwide.

The insane destruction of national food capacity and security under globalization, has left billions of people at the mercy of food weaponry in the form of food import-dependence, cash-export desperation, and reliance on "market pricing" for supplies, which now can't be obtained, due to hyper-inflated prices, and/or non-existence of the real product.

This all spotlights the necessity of a full turn to a Glass-Steagall credit system for collaboration on short-term emergency measures and long-term development. Immediately, we need a cap on food prices.

The 13 nations specifically targeted in 1974 were:

• Africa

  • Egypt

  • Ethiopia

  • Nigeria

• Asia

  • India

  • Pakistan

  • Bangladesh

• Southeast Asia

  • Indonesia

  • Thailand

  • Philippines

• Southwest Asia

  • Turkey

• The Americas

  • Mexico

  • Brazil

  • Colombia

At the time, they accounted for 47 percent of the world's population.

• Egypt today has 82 million people, utilizing less than 7 percent of their land area, and dependent on food imports, for example, for half of their wheat consumption.

   

• Mexico today, with 111 million people, is import-dependent in a "good" crop year, for over 40 percent of their food (corn, beans, milk powder, other foodstuffs). But early frosts have made the current crop cycle a disaster, and far more imports are needed. In the 1960s, Mexico was a net grains exporter, self-sufficient and headed for dramatic growth; then in the 1980s, the Kissinger policy hit.
   

• India today, with 1,173 million people, is still grain self-sufficient - a legacy of the anti-globalist Green Revolution policy, but it is import-dependent for other staples, including oils and beans; and is undergoing severe disruption in agriculture potential, as a result of downshifts into cash-cropping of exports of niche-foods to the United States and Europe; and downgrading precious farmland to trendy vineyards and similar uses.

Meantime, a grand slam of hyperinflation is hitting all who are poor, no matter where.

 

Inside the U.S., for example, the poor face spending over 20% of their limited means for food, compared to 5% by those well-off (the national average is 7%). This is a one-dimensional snapshot, of course. It's getting far worse for everybody day by day.

 

Millions of people are facing no income at all, and/or no food at all.

But it's far worse in the poorer countries in the world. The following are typical percentages, by nation, of families' consumption expenditures going for food, whose prices are now hyper-inflating.

 

For them, such hyperinflation is an immediate existential issue, a matter, literally, of life and death:

 

• AFRICA

  • Kenya: 45%

  • Nigeria: 40%

  • Egypt: 38%

  • Algeria: 36%
     

• ASIA

  • Pakistan: 46%

  • Indonesia: 43%

  • India: 35%
     

• AMERICAS

  • Mexico: 24%

  • Peru, Bolivia: 26-35%

These estimates are from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in Time Magazine, Feb. 28, 2011.