America's
ConcernsCorn is hip high on the 4th of July; food is higher, learn why
By Charles Carlson
July 4, 2008UNHERALDED NEWS
Biofuels behind food price hikes: says leaked World Bank report
AFP News, London July 04, 2008Someone at the World Bank leaked a biofuels research report purported to be written by top researcher. We will eventually see this report that has been suppressed since April. Those who bottled it up had to know the US Congress was at that very moment considering the $290 billion Farm Bill, that subsidizes the annual burning of upward to 10 billion bushels of corn, desperately needed for food.
Had such a prestigious report been publicized it would have been an embarrassment to every congressman, and might well have stopped the bill in its tracks. Bush must have known the report was coming, for he vetoed the bill knowing the Congress was sure to override him!
We Hold These Truths is among the few who opposed the Farm Bill for humanitarian reasons, and did our best to delay and derail it, knowing that the truth about the ethanol induced famines would eventually come to light. Our own comprehensive and well documented research report, Corn-to-Ethanol: US Agribusiness Magic Path To A World Food Monopoly, was published and widely reprinted in September 2007. If you Google it, you will find it posted on dozens of websites.
Unfortunately, we do not enjoy the power or the funding of the World Bank, so alone we were not a threat to the Farm Bill, no matter how absolutely and completely correct history will prove We Hold These Truths to have been. We cannot yet read the leaked World Bank Report, but you can read ours, which draws the similar conclusions based on solid evidence.
The Farm Bill was passed by Congress in mid-June, 2008, at least 60 days after the World Bank Report was ready to read but, according to this report, was suppressed for political reasons, and farm prices skyrocketed immediately.
You should recall your congressman if he voted for it. His pension should be taken away from him and given to the cause of world famine. You have him to thank for high food and energy prices. Why? Because our report was available to him, he went with the lobby money instead.
From APF News London: "Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis. Internal World Bank study delivers blow to plant energy drive.
"The report's author, a senior World Bank economist, assessed that contrary to claims by US President George W. Bush, increased demand from India and China has not been the cause of rising food prices.
The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.
The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3 per cent to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.
"Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George [W] Bush."
"Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases."
"Droughts in Australia have also not had a significant impact, it added. Instead, European and US drives for greater use of biofuels has had the biggest effect."
"The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140 percent between 2002 and this February,"
The Guardian said: "The report estimates that higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15 percent, while biofuels have been responsible for a 75 percent jump over that period."
The Guardian's Story: ( http://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=2409 )
Corn-to-Ethanol: US Agribusiness Magic Path To A World Food Monopoly Charles E. Carlson Sep 27, 2007 ( http://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=1774 )
The Farm Bill: An Outrage to Taxpayers, an Obscenity on Humanity
Charles E. Carlson Jun 18, 2008 ( http://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=2378 )We Hold These Truths
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