Friday,
September 14, 2007
Isn't this Pasta Protest Silly
? NO ! NO!
The
ANNOTICO Report
A global
intelligence gatherer is terming recent events "the biofuel
backlash". Wheat-growers, especially in
The Bio Fuel
Policy is a Fraud that only benefits Big Agri
Businesses, and is another stealthy transfer of wealth.
Even with good
Weather, there is With world wide Starvation.
Then when there are Floods, Droughts,Cold and other less favorable weather, this Bio
Fuel project becomes a Travesty.
There are literally
millions of ways to CONSERVE Energy and Utilize
ALTERNATE Self Replenishing Energy,, How can the Government/Oligarchs justify,
using Taxpayers to Subside Bio Fuels, and then have the Consumer Taxpayer pay
significantly higher prices for Food.?
What’s
The Story with... The Cost of Pasta?
The
Herald -
By Stephen Daisley
September
15 2007
AS Mussolini learned to his misfortune, Italians are not a people to be messed
with. Thankfully, no-one was suspended upside-down from meat hooks this week,
but it was getting ugly there for a while.
The country has
risen up in moral indignation at the spiraling cost of pasta.
This week, the
clarion call went out from
In
The consumers
aimed to voice widespread discontent at the hike in food bills. Italians take
their pasta seriously. According to www.pasta.go.it,
a pasta fansite, more than three million tonnes of it is piled on Italian plates every year.
But the growing
cost of wheat is being passed on to the consumer, and the pound of pasta that
costs 50p just now could be pricier to the tune of 20% by year's end.
But it's not just
on pasta that consumers are feeling the heat. In
Fingers are being
pointed in all directions. The developing world is eating more meat and,
therefore, needing more wheat to fatten farm animals (inconsiderate as ever,
those starving third-world types).
Closer to home,
producers of durum flour, the main ingredient in pasta, have seen Australia's
crops suffering a drought at the same time as Europe's wheat fields drowned in
excess rain. This only a year after devastating storms laid waste to
Yet, with no
single clear-cut cause, it would seem the blame can't be dished out like little
portions of minced beef inside ravioli parcels. Not so, says Strategic
Forecasting (Stratfor). The global intelligence
gatherer is terming recent events "the biofuel
backlash". Wheat-growers, especially in
Some might think
state intervention and a little less carbohydrate in our diet a fair exchange
for saving the planet. After all, proponents of biofuels
- such as ethanol, biodiesel and non-petrol fuel
sources - claim they are a more eco- conscious resource than hydrocarbons. The
American National Biodiesel Board insists these
products are a friend of the birds and the trees. "Biodiesel
helps preserve and protect natural resources," the NBB claims. "For
every one unit of energy needed to produce biodiesel,
3.24 units of energy are gained."
Au contraire,
pipes up Friends of the Earth. The environmental campaigner invokes cautious
quotation marks when speaking about such "green" fuels. It warns that
biofuels may be produced by "destroying
rainforests and wetlands, not only threatening endangered habitats and species
but also releasing far more carbon into the atmosphere than could ever hope to
be saved by replacing fossil fuels".
Laugh as we might
at Italians defying national stereotypes, this week's protest should remind us
that decreasing supplies of food and the rising tide of global population is
not really funny at all.
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