Best Country On Earth

This is your Bush legacy project right here.

By a vote of 180 in favour to 1 against (United States) and no abstentions, the Committee also approved a resolution on the right to food, by which the Assembly would “consider it intolerable” that more than 6 million children still died every year from hunger-related illness before their fifth birthday, and that the number of undernourished people had grown to about 923 million worldwide, at the same time that the planet could produce enough food to feed 12 billion people, or twice the world’s present population. (See Annex III.)

On the other hand, we have really amazing outdated weapons systems.

We waste more in war spending than it would cost to feed the world. But you know, kids starving doesn't tug at the heartstrings enough, I guess.

Sickening.

Ba-Dunc-A-Dunc

So Duncan Hunter, or "The Dunc," wanted to visit a refugee camp in Chad and distribute food to the people assembled. Sounds good, but he only wanted to do it if he could hunt wildebeests in his spare time. Only there are no wildebeests in Chad. So Hunter did the right thing. He cancelled the food distribution part of his trip.

Compassionate conservatism.

The World's Worst Government

What's happening right now in Zimbabwe is heartbreaking, as the world watches a dream die in slow motion. The opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was arrested twice today, which is a recurrent pattern. His party is barred from holding political rallies weeks before Tsvangirai faces ruling party leader Robert Mugabe in an election. The #2 at the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has been charged with treason and could face the death penalty.

Meanwhile, American food aid in the impoverished nation is being seized by the military.

JOHANNESBURG — Zimbabwean authorities confiscated a truck loaded with 20 tons of American food aid for poor schoolchildren and ordered that the wheat and pinto beans aboard be handed out to supporters of President Robert Mugabe at a political rally instead, the American ambassador said Wednesday.

“This government will stop at nothing, even starving the most defenseless people in the country — young children — to realize their political ambitions,” said the ambassador, James D. McGee, in an interview.

The government ordered all humanitarian aid groups to suspend their operations last week, charging that some of them were giving out food as bribes to win votes for the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, in a June 27 presidential runoff against Mr. Mugabe.

This is repugnant and I'd like to see just one American legislator speak out about this. John Kerry's wife is FROM Zimbabwe, for crying out loud. I don't know how the MDC deals with the helplessness of it all.

Tragedies In Asia

These natural disasters in nearby nations in Asia continue to have worse and worse effects. In Burma the death toll has risen to over 125,000 and the fear is that aid is trickling in so slowly, thanks to the paranoid military government, that a "second wave" of deaths from disease and starvation is imminent. In China, earthquake victims continue to be found, the death toll is approaching 15,000, and Chinese troops are desperately attempting to fill a crack in a large dam that, if breached, would overwhelm yet another city.

Amazingly enough, the quietest disaster happening in Asia could be the most far-reaching, as the second most-powerful party in the Pakistani government, Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League, has vowed to quit the cabinet, which could lead to instability in the most dangerous trouble spot in the world. Sharif's issue is that the Pakistan People's Party has not yet moved to reinstate the judges fired by Pervez Musharraf, and that the ruling party is making poor use of their power. This could blow up in a hurry. And right now, it has to be on the back burner due to the mass loss of life to its north.

Tragic Disaster Assistance

The military leadership in Burma is choking their own citizens, and while I understand the need to keep politics at the cyclone's edge and not act in a divisive manner by insulting the government whose help you need to administer aid, their behavior has been atrocious. First they started confiscating aid shipments, causing the UN to stop sending them (they've recently changed their minds). Then they allowed a US cargo plane in the country, but basically wanted everything dropped off at the docks. They've continually refused travel visas to aid workers. And now it appears that the boxes of aid they are sending out have the generals' names plastered on them.

Despite international appeals to postpone a referendum on a controversial proposed constitution, voting began Saturday in all but the hardest hit parts of the country. With voters going to the polls, state-run television continuously ran images of top generals including junta leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, handing out boxes of aid at elaborate ceremonies.

"We have already seen regional commanders putting their names on the side of aid shipments from Asia, saying this was a gift from them and then distributing it in their region," said Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, which campaigns for human rights and democracy in the country.

"It is not going to areas where it is most in need," he said in London.

There's going to be a second catastrophe as those in most urgent need of supplies and medical care don't get them in time. The military government is failing its people and doesn't seem to have much concern over it.

More Dead In Myanmar

The tragedy in Myanmar is so widespread that the country is asking for outside help. For context, Myanmar was battered during the tsunami and resisted outside help.

"YANGON (AFP) - Myanmar said Monday more than 10,000 people died in the cyclone that battered the impoverished nation, whose secretive military rulers made a rare appeal for international help to cope with the tragedy.

Reeling from the weekend disaster, which also left thousands missing, the Southeast Asian country once known as Burma -- one of the world's poorest -- warned that the staggering death toll could still rise further.

'There could be more casualties,' said Nyan Win, foreign minister of the military junta which has ruled the country with an iron fist for decades, and normally puts tight restrictions on aid agencies from the outside world.

'We will welcome help like this from other countries, because our people are in difficulty,' he said."

It should be noted that NPR is reporting that relief organizations haven't yet been allowed inside the country, although World Vision already had a small group there and they have begun to operate emergency services.

This plays into the food crisis as well, because the area hit the hardest is full of rice paddies. Myanmar exports rice to Sri Lanka. Also, the World Food Program is coordinating relief efforts, which means a further strain to their resources.

The last number I heard was 22,000 dead. (I also don't put it past this government to add those monks murdered in last year's riots on to the top of the piles of bodies.)

I cannot say if relief money will actually get through, but here's a link.

UPDATE: Think Progress is right, any member of the Bush family trying to lecture anyone about the "inept" response to a natural disaster needs to shut their damn mouth.

World Food Crisis Update

Bush has done this before in the face of crisis: starting with a pledge of aid too small for the job, then being shamed into something larger (this happened with the tsunami relief). And now, he's doing it again.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush called for $770 million in new U.S. food aid donations and other measures on Thursday as Washington seeks to stave off a food crisis threatening to envelop the developing world.

Bush, expressing concern as skyrocketing world food prices intensify unrest in poor countries from Haiti to Burkina Faso, promised the United States would take a lead in fighting the hunger now gripping a greater swath of the developing world.

"With the new international funding I'm announcing today, we're sending a clear message to the world that America will lead the fight against hunger for years to come," Bush said.

Except he offered less than half this sum a few weeks ago. And actually, he's offering the same kind of money now. The additional funds are toward extra seeds and farming development for third world nations. That isn't bad (teach a man to fish and all that) but what is needed right now is direct aid, and more than the $395 million Bush has proposed. There's an urgent need right now and we can't wait for development programs. This is about saving lives; putting down the roots for the future must wait.

The administration has already requested supplemental food aid funding, a perennial addition to annual budget funds, of $350 million for fiscal 2008, but some are pushing for a figure at least $200 million higher.

"As a humanitarian organization interested in saving lives, we are not sure these resources equip us to meet the needs now," said Catholic Relief Services, an aid group.

Raymond Offenheiser, head of Oxfam America, urged Congress to loosen purchasing rules for food aid to make the most of every aid dollar.

Meanwhile, the WaPo finished up their series about the food crisis by exploring the role of ethanol.

Across the country, ethanol plants are swallowing more and more of the nation's corn crop. This year, about a quarter of U.S. corn will go to feeding ethanol plants instead of poultry or livestock. That has helped farmers like Johnson, but it has boosted demand -- and prices -- for corn at the same time global grain demand is growing.

And it has linked food and fuel prices just as oil is rising to new records, pulling up the price of anything that can be poured into a gasoline tank. "The price of grain is now directly tied to the price of oil," says Lester Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute, a Washington research group. "We used to have a grain economy and a fuel economy. But now they're beginning to fuse."

Not everyone thinks it's fantastic. People who use corn to feed cattle, hogs and chickens are being squeezed by high corn prices. On Monday, Tyson Foods reported its first loss in six quarters and said that its corn and soybean costs would increase by $600 million this year. Those who are able, such as egg producers, are passing those high corn costs along to consumers. The wholesale price of eggs in the first quarter soared 40 percent from a year earlier, according to the Agriculture Department. Meanwhile, retail prices of countless food items, from cereal to sodas to salad dressing, are being nudged upward by more expensive ingredients such as corn syrup and cornstarch.

Considering that the most recent energy bill included massive investments in corn-based ethanol, we're in a real quandary here. Corn for ethanol is being grown because it's profitable, and it's profitable because of subsidies. And I have to say that Kevin Drum is right, for the sake of the planet these subsidies should not be extended.

Starvation, Hunger, And The Downside of a Globalized World

Finally waking up to the global challenge we face with rising food and fuel prices and the imminent starvation of millions, the Washington Post is committing some responsible journalism, maybe a tad late, by running a series dedicated to the global food crisis. It's a complex issue with a variety of factors and countervailing forces, without an easy cause-effect scenario. So it's beneficial to stretch it out over several days and examine what we can do and how we can prevent future crises.

The first article looks at the statistical reality of food prices, which soared due to increased demand and hoarding, and aren't likely to fall back to 2006-era prices anytime soon. For a billion people living on next to nothing, the article says, "it is a matter of survival."

Interestingly for a consensus media establishment paper like the Post, they actually attribute the problem to market forces.

The root cause of price surges varies from crop to crop. But the crisis is being driven in part by an unprecedented linkage of the food chain.

A big reason for higher wheat prices, for instance, is the multiyear drought in Australia, something that scientists say may become persistent because of global warming. But wheat prices are also rising because U.S. farmers have been planting less of it, or moving wheat to less fertile ground. That is partly because they are planting more corn to capitalize on the biofuel frenzy.

This year, at least a fifth and perhaps a quarter of the U.S. corn crop will be fed to ethanol plants. As food and fuel fuse, it has presented a boon to American farmers after years of stable prices. But it has also helped spark the broader food-price shock.

"If you didn't have ethanol, you would not have the prices we have today," said Bruce Babcock, a professor of economics and the director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University. "It doesn't mean it's the sole driver. Prices would be higher than we saw earlier in this decade because world grain supplies are tighter now than earlier in the decade. But we've introduced a new demand into the market."

They shrink back into blaming protectionist markets for the problem, but I think the paper stepped over a kernel of truth. It's not just about biofuels - it's been known for a while that they could contribute to starving the poor - it's about market forces driving types of farm production, subsidies making it more profitable, not to mention political forces (Iowa being the first primary state certainly drives the corn ethanol boom domestically). And this is a symbol for how markets work with respect to producing and distributing resources around the planet. Devilstower at Kos wrote the finest post on this topic I've ever seen, and I wish I could excerpt it all but I'll just give you a piece and urge you to follow the link and read it yourself:

Whether it's a bridge in Minnesota or body armor in Iraq, we live in a world constructed by low bid. That's not just true for items built by government contract. For decades, business has focused on efficiency, on the elimination of all redundancy, on "right sizing," on "just in time" on "zero inventory." One of the economic indicators we've been trained to look for each month is the measure of labor productivity, the amount of output achieved for each man-hour of input. In the United States, productivity has soared over the last decade, as automation, outsourcing, and just-in-time have worked together to make US workers much much more productive.

Want to know why corporations are able to sit on huge sums of money, but the average worker's pay hasn't increased? It's because they can get by with fewer of us and still get what they need. Not more than they need, of course. Just enough. Corporations have been proudly "cutting the fat." Flexibility and robustness are not the goals for a corporate society that rarely glances beyond the end of the current quarter.

The trouble is, fat does something other than cause unsightly bulges in your favorite outfit. Fat is storage. If bears were to "cut the fat" before heading into hibernation, they'd be really thin -- as in skeletons -- come spring.

We've promoted this vision of business that's right on the edge, pushing supply out right to the margin, getting everything done expending the precise resources needed, and with respect to this food crisis, a market that works that way is left unprepared. We've globalized and interlocked and paralleled these production and distribution systems so earnestly, that when some farmers decide to switch to growing biofuels instead of food, or when some Chinese and Indian people decide to eat a bit more meat than grain in their diet, or when a few monsoons and hurricanes wipe out some crops, there's no excess supply to which to revert.

The crisis is not necessarily borne out of production, but economics, and in particular the current form of capitalism. The second part of the Washington Post series focuses on the real-world cost of this perversion of production and distribution as it relates to the poor in Mauritania. The problem is this easy reliance on a globalized market that will unquestionably produce whatever bounty is needed. That dismisses human greed. And it has led us down this path.

Global Crisis

The food shortage is getting on the radar screen. I guess when there are runs on rice bags at Wal-Mart and Costco, the notion that it's a global crisis becomes more finely realized.

"This steeply rising price of food — it has developed into a real global crisis," Ban said, adding that the World Food Program has made an urgent appeal for additional $755 million.

"The United Nations is very much concerned, as (are) all other members of the international community," Ban said. "We must take immediate action in a concerted way."

The world economy is built on so many bad deals for poor people and enrichment for multinationals that this was bound to happen. During the Depression political elites had to wrench power away from entrenched corporate interests to avert mass starvation. What will we see on the global level?

World Food Crisis Update

Though broadcast media types have it in their contract to avoid talking about starving people at all costs - just too, too depressing, you know? - US print media actually has caught up to the story and are delivering some decent reports.

Haiti’s hunger, that burn in the belly that so many here feel, has become fiercer than ever in recent days as global food prices spiral out of reach, spiking as much as 45 percent since the end of 2006 and turning Haitian staples like beans, corn and rice into closely guarded treasures.

Saint Louis Meriska’s children ate two spoonfuls of rice apiece as their only meal recently and then went without any food the following day. His eyes downcast, his own stomach empty, the unemployed father said forlornly, “They look at me and say, ‘Papa, I’m hungry,’ and I have to look away. It’s humiliating and it makes you angry.”

That anger is palpable across the globe. The food crisis is not only being felt among the poor but is also eroding the gains of the working and middle classes, sowing volatile levels of discontent and putting new pressures on fragile governments.

In Cairo, the military is being put to work baking bread as rising food prices threaten to become the spark that ignites wider anger at a repressive government. In Burkina Faso and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, food riots are breaking out as never before. In reasonably prosperous Malaysia, the ruling coalition was nearly ousted by voters who cited food and fuel price increases as their main concerns.

This is an international crisis that's decades in the making, and attributable to a variety of factors. But this one bad crop can wipe out all of the gains on global poverty made in the past 10 or 20 years.

And of course, the food crisis is inextricably linked with the fuel crisis, as oil reached $115/barrel today.

This is the result:

In Haiti, where three-quarters of the population earns less than $2 a day and one in five children is chronically malnourished, the one business booming amid all the gloom is the selling of patties made of mud, oil and sugar, typically consumed only by the most destitute.

“It’s salty and it has butter and you don’t know you’re eating dirt,” said Olwich Louis Jeune, 24, who has taken to eating them more often in recent months. “It makes your stomach quiet down.”

The short-term answer is immediate food aid from the North. Longer-term, I think subsistence farming as a patriotic and economic imperative must return. The technology exists to grow something inside a planter even if you live in an apartment. A windowsill can be your farm. That's a piece of the puzzle; we also must end delivering so much agricultural product to alternative energy, and also become oil independent, which seems like a contradiction but is manageable by smart policy choices. Also, agribusiness is destroying family farms and driving up prices, and unquestionably contributing to what we're facing. Most of these are linked somewhat.

World Food Crisis Update

It took the World Bank to raise the alarm for needing immediate food aid and panic across the globe for Bush to get the message. But he did get it, and so credit where due.

President George W. Bush on Monday ordered $200 million more in U.S. emergency food aid to be made available to help alleviate food shortages in Africa and elsewhere, the White House said.

Bush took action a day after top finance and development officials from around the world called for urgent action to stem rising food prices, warning that social unrest would spread unless the cost of basic staples was contained.

"This additional food aid will address the impact of rising commodity prices on U.S. emergency food aid programs, and be used to meet unanticipated food aid needs in Africa and elsewhere," the White House said in a statement. It said the assistance would be made available through the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Good news. But, of course, this is a temporary fix which doesn't even fill immediate needs between now and May 1. The problem is largely structural and a consequence of rising prices due to a variety of factors, particularly the cost of oil to transport food. However, don't dare suggest something disruptive like price controls which might save a few lives.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warned on Sunday that governments should resist temptation to try to control soaring food costs through price controls, which he said would likely make the situation worse.

In remarks prepared for delivery to the World Bank's development committee, Paulson said such measures were "generally not effective and efficient" at protecting people likely to suffer the most.

"They tend to create fiscal burdens and economic distortions while often providing aid to higher-income consumers or commercial interests other than the intended beneficiaries," Paulson said.

They tend to create food that people can eat, and I'm willing to take a little inefficiency in the short term. Anyway, Paulson has little credibility telling anyone about unnecessary intervention in the markets after propping up Bear Stearns. It's not like he particularly believes in unfettered capitalism, at least when it comes to bailing out his rich buddies.

World Food Crisis Update

Last week I tried to call some attention to the looming world food crisis that is resulting from soaring prices on staples like rice and wheat. This week we've seen a continuation of that alarm as the crisis has spread.

Rice climbed to a record for a fourth day as the Philippines, the biggest importer, announced plans to buy 1 million tons and some of the world's largest exporters cut sales to ensure they can feed their own people.

Rice, the staple food for half the world, rose as much as 2.9 percent to $21.60 per 100 pounds in Chicago, before paring gains. The price has doubled in the past year. Philippine President Gloria Arroyo announced two rice tenders today and pledged to crack down on hoarding. Anyone found guilty of "stealing rice from the people'' will be jailed, she said.

"We're in for a tough time,'' Roland Jansen, chief executive officer of Pfaffikon, Switzerland-based Mother Earth Investments AG, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television from Zurich today. Unless prices decline, "you will have huge problems of daily nutrition for half the planet.'' Mother Earth holds about 4 percent of its $100 million funds in the grain.

This is basically a preview of the resource wars that will result if we continue to ignore the disastrous effects of climate change. Wealthy or resource-rich nations will simply pull their goods from the world market and retrench to benefit their own citizens, and as a result resource-poor nations will have little recourse. When you see wheat harvests becoming a more prized commodity than heroin harvests in Afghanistan, you know that there's a major problem out there. The impact on global security is great, as nations without access to adequate food supplies will create civil unrest and perhaps even the toppling of many regimes. And it should be of particular concern where in the world these sparks of violence and rioting would occur. Already we're seeing incidents in places like Egypt, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Cameroon (40 died in riots in February), Uzbekistan, Yemen and Indonesia. But consider that nearly half of the 160 million in Pakistan are "food insecure" and risk malnutrition and starvation from rising prices. We've seen that grinding poverty can be a magnet for extremism and fundamentalism. This is a national security crisis as well as a moral one.

Another example of geopolitical concerns of world hunger is in Zimbabwe, a country with 10,000% inflation and almost totally reliant on world food aid. In the midst of a political crisis where longtime dictator Robert Mugabe has apparently lost national elections but won't give up his position, violence has spread, in particular with respect to seizing farms.

Militant ruling party supporters invaded white-owned farms Monday, a day after President Robert Mugabe urged Zimbabweans to defend seized land, fanning fears he would stage a violent crackdown to retain power [...]

Invasions that began Sunday worsened with intruders entering at least 23 farms in southern Masvingo province and northern Centenary, said Trevor Gifford, president of the Commercial Farmers Union.

“In Masvingo where the police have been very cooperative, every time they remove invaders, within five, six hours they’re reinvading,” he told The Associated Press. “It’s very apparent that this is being coordinated from higher up the chain of command.”

Workers were being rounded up on the farms and forced to chant anthems in support of the ruling party, he said, and many of the farm owners had fled out of concern about their safety.

“The farmers are being told that everything on the farm is the property of those invading,” he said.

The farms are the chokepoint to maintain power in Zimbabwe. Before the election there were reports of needing a membership card from the ruling party to receive food aid. Seizing the farms is a continuation of that process. And so the food crisis sustains a brutal dictatorship.

African heads of state are meeting about Zimbabwe right now. But before long, they're going to have their own problems resulting from hunger. This is perhaps the biggest threat to global security we've seen in quite a while.

World Report

If there's one thing the world needs, it's a report:

• Violence has once again sparked in Tibet, with at least eight dead in the latest round of clashes between protesters and Chinese police. Apparently you can be arrested just for being found with the Dalai Lama's picture. The government is planning 1,200 show trials for protesters and organizing what they call study sessions for residents, essentially to indoctrinate them into Chinese propaganda. Clearly the Chinese fear losing control of the situation, and now is the time for the IOC and the world community to increase pressure for reform. See also Matt Browner Hamlin's must-read demolition of "serious" thinker Nick Kristof's prescription for Tibet.

• If Tibet is bad, Zimbabwe may be worse, and it feels like we're headed toward a civil war or a brutal repression there. The reports are conflicting. The Guardian says that Robert Mugabe is negotiating a release of power in exchange for immunity from prosecution for past crimes, which the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) may not be willing to give. Morgan Tsvangirai is announcing that he has won the Presidency outright and that there's no need for a runoff through which "Violence will be the new weapon to reverse the people's will." Meanwhile Mugabe's ZANU-PF party is challenging the results of Parliamentary elections which resulted in an MDC victory. Prospects for a peaceful resolution look dim, frankly.

• Between the French offering a new battalion for Afghanistan and the United States vowing to add troops as well, it looks as if NATO is finally getting serious about the problem in the country, about 6 years too late. Democrats and Republicans basically agree about the need to increase our capacity in Afghanistan, though the Bush Administration has been asleep at the switch and has made the situation extremely difficult.

• Earlier this week I mentioned the growing world hunger crisis as food prices skyrocket and richer nations retrench and lower exports. The World Bank has recognized the scope of the problem as well.

The World Bank has called on the international community to co-ordinate its efforts in a "new deal" to fight global hunger and malnutrition.

A move was needed because of soaring global food and energy prices, said the bank's president, Robert Zoellick.

Mr Zoellick said the top priority was to give the UN World Food Programme an extra $500m for emergency food aid.

The World Bank estimates 33 countries face potential social unrest because of rising food and energy prices.

Unless we do something legitimate and globalized about climate change these resource wars are going to continue. In the case of the food crisis it's not the only cause, but it will be a sustained cause going forward.

• The fallout from having a Musharraf policy instead of a Pakistan policy continues, as we may have alienated the new Parliamentary players and sidelined our efforts at engagement and even counter-terrorism. Just another way Bush has harmed national security.

• Fighting the right enemies:

Saudi Arabia remains the world's leading source of money for Al Qaeda and other extremist networks and has failed to take key steps requested by U.S. officials to stem the flow, the Bush administration's top financial counter-terrorism official said Tuesday.

Stuart A. Levey, a Treasury undersecretary, told a Senate committee that the Saudi government had not taken important steps to go after those who finance terrorist organizations or to prevent wealthy donors from bankrolling extremism through charitable contributions, sometimes unwittingly.

I remember when the 9-11 Commission report blocked out references to Saudi Arabian involvement, as if they could possibly cover up the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi Arabian. What could be more damning than "They did it"? Apparently this cover-up relationship with the Saudis continues, as they still fund terror and we still call them a great ally. How warped.

• Really interesting article on the Iranian blogosphere. The fact that an Iranian blogosphere is allowed at all shows that it is not quite the caricature our leaders would have us believe, though some topics are filtered (often in surprising and erratic ways). Many bloggers have been arrested and persecuted, but also many have thrived and criticized the official dictates of the Islamic Republic. Eventually, open-source communication does make an impact, and it's an honor to be working in the same medium as those in Iran.

• Finally, it appears that a liberal is a conservative who's been mugged by reality.

Conservative U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., joined some of his most liberal colleagues in the House of Representative on a recent trip to Africa. What he saw there changed him, at least a little.

Struck by the unrelenting poverty in a South African slum, Nunes this week joined Democrats in supporting a $50 billion global AIDS relief package. Most of his fellow Republicans opposed the bill.

“It’s one thing to hear about a problem,” Nunes said Thursday. “It’s another thing to see it for yourself. This was horrendous.”

Once you step outside that bubble, it's hard to ignore the truth and the suffering.

Daylight In Zimbabwe

Robert Mugabe's rule, in Parliament at least, is over.

HARARE, Zimbabwe - President Robert Mugabe's long-ruling party lost its parliamentary majority Wednesday, bolstering opposition claims that impoverished Zimbabweans voted for change in this struggling southern African nation.

The opposition also claimed victory for leader Morgan Tsvangirai in Saturday's presidential vote, but the state-controlled newspaper predicted a runoff — the first official admission that Mugabe, the nation's autocratic leader of 28 years, had not won re-election.

The Movement for Democratic Change expressed confidence Tsvangirai could win a runoff with an even larger margin, but there were fears an embattled Mugabe would roll out every weapon in his considerable political and government arsenal to stay in power.

They ought to be afraid of that. Tsvangirai probably won handily in the first round, and would be President right now if it weren't for intimidation tactics like withholding food aid unless citizens vote for Mugabe. Tsvangirai has to move very delicately on this one. He's putting a lot of pressure on Mugabe to concede but I don't think a guy who basically ran the country as a dictator for three decades is likely to do that.

But the fact of a non-ZANU Parliament alone is pretty remarkable, and it's mainly due to electoral reforms demanded by the international community. Maybe the horrors of Zimbabwe are nearing the end.

Major World Hunger Crisis

We get tunnel vision on superdelegates and stump speeches and credentials committees, all of which have their own level of importance. When I see a headline that millions are in danger of starvation I stop thinking about all that and pay attention.

Meteoric food and fuel prices, a slumping dollar, the demand for biofuels and a string of poor harvests have combined to abruptly multiply WFP's (the UN's World Food Program) operating costs, even as needs increase. In other words, if the number of needy people stayed constant, it would take much more money to feed them. But the number of people needing help is surging dramatically. It is what WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran calls "a perfect storm" hitting the world's hungry.

The agency last month issued an emergency appeal for money to cover a shortfall tallied at more than half a billion dollars and growing. It said it might have to reduce food rations or cut people off altogether.

The most vulnerable are people like those in Sudan, whom Joannes is struggling to feed and who rely heavily, perhaps exclusively, on the aid. But at least as alarming, WFP officials say, is the emerging community of newly needy.

There are weather-related reasons: flooding in Australia and Indonesia which lowered rice harvests. There are problems of increasing demand as the population increases. There are of course problems with rising fuel prices, which impact food production and distribution. Increases in demand for biofuels raise prices for staples like corn, as well. And there are war zones like Afghanistan, where Hamid Karzai has asked the WFP to help feed 7.5 million people, up from 5 million, a consequences of wheat prices rising 2/3 in the last year. Add this all up and you have 40 nations at risk of serious hunger out of the 121 that the WFP monitors.

The ability of individuals to feed themselves simply affects everything else. You cannot improve health care, establish a working education system, or increase economic output without food security. This is a far more urgent problem than the American financial crisis, although the plunging dollar contributes to it.

The Financial Times has more.

Governments across the developing world are scrambling to boost farm imports and restrict exports in an attempt to forestall rising food prices and social unrest [...]

Saudi Arabia cut import taxes across a range of food products on Tuesday, slashing its wheat tariff from 25 per cent to zero and reducing tariffs on poultry, dairy produce and vegetable oils.

On Monday, India scrapped tariffs on edible oil and maize and banned exports of all rice except the high-value basmati variety, while Vietnam, the world’s third biggest rice exporter, said it would cut rice exports by 11 per cent this year.

The moves mark a rapid shift away from protecting farmers, who are generally the beneficiaries of food import tariffs, towards cushioning consumers from food shortages and rising prices.

The social unrest potential is great. We have already seen "tortilla riots" in Mexico and "pasta riots" in Italy. Restricting exports is going to decimate countries in the developing world as the richer nations try to cushion the blow in their own countries. Food stocks are as low as at any time in recent memory.

This goes well beyond any political issue. Over the past week we've all received urgent calls for money from candidates for state and federal office. Poor people worldwide don't have a flashy email they can send you. Yet they need your support more than ever.

WFP's Fill the Cup program has for small amounts that can feed the hungry for a week or more. That's probably the best way to get resources into the hands of those who need them.

Global Giving has programs that feed children in Niger and India, for example.

World Hunger Year tackles community-based solutions to hunger and poverty.

CARE has a World Hunger Campaign.

Do the research, see which organization fits with your comfort level, and give. Millions of people are at risk and our financial mess has at least a little to do with it. The other thing you can do is DEMAND that your Congresscritter raise US donations to the World Food Program. Global poverty is an economic and national security issue. It's also, as John Edwards called it, the moral test of our generation.

World Report

Every so often I look at the world, and make a report. This is that report.

• Zimbabwe is the biggest hell hole on Earth. Inflation is over 100,000% annually. You actually need a wheelbarrow to carry around money. And in a country dependent on international food aid, the ruling party of Robert Mugabe is using food aid as a weapon to force the public to vote for them. "No ZANU Card, No Mealie Meal," as Hilzoy puts it. I'm sickened. Among the many insufferable dictators around the globe, Mugabe may be the worst, and I would have little problem with a humanitarian intervention to force equal distribution of food aid.

• Speaking of dictators and Africa, a leader of the Janjaweed militia is finally admitting what everyone already knew, that he received his orders to rape and murder the Darfurians from the Sudanese government in Khartoum, as well as heavy weaponry. Even though this has been assumed, it's the first time a Janjaweed leader has gone public.

• So desperate to reach any kind of fig leaf of a deal in the Middle East that would signify something resembling a "legacy," the Bush Administration is now talking about allowing Hamas to participate in talks with Israel, using Egypt as an intermediary. This is mainly about negotiating a cease-fire, not some overarching agreement on Palestine. But the softening stance is probably a good thing in the long run.

• Speaking of Bush toning down his arrogant foreign policy, apparently they've discovered that nobody really likes Pervez Musharraf, and are stopping their praise of him, instead trying to cozy up to the opposition parties. Might be a little late for that, but of course we rarely learn out foreign policy lessons.

• So I guess a substantial number of our troops (at least a dozen) have been subject to accidental death by electrocution in Iraq, and Henry Waxman wants to get to the bottom of it. Support the troops, I believe, is the phrase. Man, they must be living in a pit over there, paid for by our tax dollars (funneled to unfeeeling corporations who do shoddy work, that is).

• The Islamists in Somalia, though defeated in last year's war, have not been vanquished, and in fact they beheaded three Somali soldiers, prompting the UN to raise alarms and plead for peace talks. Even the proxy wars Bush fights and wins are never actually won.

• There's some additional news from Tibet, where the authorities have arrested dozens inside the autonomous region and have acknowledged unrest outside the province, in other parts of China. Chinese police have shot Tibetan protesters in Sichuan province, wounding four. So far, the estimate from protests in Lhasa is 13 deaths, which is probably low. Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama sits in exile in India, and relations between India and China may grow strained as a result. It's a bad situation, but pressure must continue to be put on the Chinese government to allow for independence or at least some peaceful solution.

• And finally, Doraemon is a Japanese ambassador. When I went to Bangkok a while ago, we saw this Doraemon piggy bank in the Thai version of a 7-11. The bank was free with a hot dog, and my friend didn't want the hot dog but was willing to pay the price for the bank. The clerk refused to give the bank without the hot dog. It was an amusing cultural misunderstanding that hopefully Doraemon, in his new diplomatic role, will help to prevent.