Multiculturalism is Dead

Multiculturalism is Dead, So Where Do We Bury the Body? -Jim Goad

I’ll never forget a painting I saw at a West Berlin youth hostel in 1985. The background depicted bombed-out ruins, presumably Dresden after the Allied firestorm. In the foreground were two women, their backs to us as they faced the charred, blown-out buildings. One woman was starting to lift her arm in a Sieg Heil salute, while the other rushed to grab her arm and stop her.

What a weird image it was, mixing national pride with national defeat and national self-loathing.

After World War II ended, no nation on Earth has been force-fed as many Guilt Sandwiches as the Germans, despite the fact that they’d lost seven to nine million of their own Volk in that conflict. One never hears about “the nine million.” It’s nearly verboten to even mention them.

When I saw that painting in 1985, Germany had already endured four decades of post-WWII shaming. Despite all that, I knew that sooner or later, that one lady would tire of holding down the other lady’s arm.

Sixty-five years after World War II’s end, Germany is finally becoming OK with being German again. On October 16 while addressing her Christian Democratic Union party, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said:

In Frankfurt am Main, two out of three children under the age of five have an immigrant background.…This multicultural approach, saying that we simply live side by side and are happy about each other, this approach has failed, utterly failed.

Loud applause greeted that last sentence.

For five years running, the stout, doughy Merkel has been Nummer Eins on Forbes magazine’s list of “The World’s Most Powerful Women,” so her statement is no small potatoes. But only a month earlier, Merkel was telling Germans that they should get used to seeing more mosques in their country. She was also condemning Thilo Sarrazin’s “absurd, insane opinions” as expressed in his shockingly popular book Germany Abolishes Itself.

It’s unclear why Merkel has suddenly shifted her ample hips rightward. She could be responding to recent polls showing that six in ten Germans would like to see Islam restricted, three in ten say they feel their country is “overrun by foreigners,” seventeen percent say that Jews have an undue influence over German affairs [oops!], and thirteen percent say they’d welcome a new Führer [now hold it right there!].

There go those pesky Germans again, refusing to hate themselves. How dare a German say anything besides “I’m sorry” for the next thousand years?

Everyone expected the Germans to get an attitude sooner or later—after all, they’re the Germans. What seems more troubling, at least to the sworn enemies of All Things European, is that all of Europe seems to be getting the same attitude simultaneously.

What one might refer to as indigenous Europeans—you know, the palefaces, the Ice People, the Ghost Men, the Evil Aryans, the Abominable Snowmen—are beginning to chafe at the iron rainbow to which they’ve been yoked since World War II. Geert Wilders has blossomed into a political force solely by promising to protect Dutch culture from Islamofascism. An anti-immigration party just placed twenty anti-immigration asses into the Swedish Parliament’s seats. France is goin’ wild banning burqas and sending the Roma packing. The Swiss have flipped the bird at minarets. Putin’s brand of post-Soviet Russian nationalism is insanely popular, at least among insane Russians.

Even in the self-loathing, culturally obsequious, crushed-and-bleeding former empire that is the UK, comments in response to Merkel’s proclamation were lopsidedly in favor of what she said. Most of the anonymous online whisperers, presumably British nationals, agreed that multiculturalism was a colossal failure in their country as well.

Reading the comments, I saw parallels between Europe’s brand of “multiculturalism” and the American product. Both hither and yon, there’s anger about racial job quotas, oppressive speech codes, and double standards regarding who’s allowed to show ethnic pride.

What’s important is the way multikulti has unfolded and where. You don’t see such sensitivity training being forced upon anyone in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, or South America. You don’t hear China, Japan, or Israel being lectured to swing open their doors to foreigners. Almost exclusively, multiculturalism is a psychological marketing program designed for majority-white countries. Often, it is sold with the idea that whites are paying a historic debt, are reaping what they’ve sown, that what goes around comes around, that the wheel has turned full-circle, the chickens are coming home to roost, and that it’s time to pay the swarthy piper his due.

Country by country, continent by continent, there’s a sense that the newer, darker arrivals are receiving preferential treatment over those who’ve been there for generations. In the UK, it’s called “Positive Discrimination.” In America, it’s called “affirmative action” and “amnesty.” And across every border where whites are a majority, there’s a creeping sense that politicians don’t give a [] about how they feel. They never asked for these new waves of immigrants, and they had no choice in this odd social-engineering experiment that’s demolishing whatever they used to share as a common culture.

Suddenly, this doesn’t seem so much like a celebration of all cultures as it does punishment of a specific culture. And that doesn’t sound like such a swell recipe for having everyone get along.

We’ll be continually reminded that European satellite nations such as Canada, the USA, and Australia were settled atop indigenous skulls, so the land-grabbing descendants of those race-murderers have no right to whine about being gradually wiped out themselves by newcomers.

Once again, for Christ’s sake, whether he’s dead or alive: Two wrongs don’t make a right. If colonialism was wrong then, it’s wrong now. Multiculturalism is merely colonialism with a prettier name. I realize and concede the fact that it awards us with a dazzling array of ethnic restaurants unparalleled in their tastiness.

Under multiculturalism, we have a wider selection of food…and no one talks to anyone anymore. Many of us now speak different languages and wouldn’t even know how to talk to one another. Rather than erasing borders, multiculturalism has merely created new borders within borders. Rather than destroying nationalism, it creates mini-nations within nations.

If we’re going to push multiculturalism’s glories, shouldn’t we point out where has it worked in the past? If diversity is a strength, why did stretched-too-thin empires such as ancient Rome and the Soviet Union eventually fall from the weight of their own diversity?

Stop calling me a racist and shoot some believable answers at me. I really want to hear them.

As always, the “chattering classes” are working out their postcolonial guilt complexes at the lower classes’ expense. Either they’ve known what they were doing all along or they haven’t, and I’m not sure which is worse.

It’s dangerous to ignore the fact that all the technology in the world, the ceaseless multicultural brainwashing that’s been laser-beamed into our eyeballs over the past 65 years, has not eradicated the basic human tendency to be tribal. If they didn’t fully murder such instincts in the Germans—and God [] knows they tried hard with the Germans—maybe such instincts can’t be killed.

Yes, I realize we’re all human. If that’s your point, you’ve already made it—and, I might add, at a tremendous expense. What you fail to realize is that humans tend to be tribal. And if you get too many tribes, you don’t have a nation anymore.

I guess we should celebrate the fact that even though no one speaks to one another anymore, at least the people who aren’t speaking to one another are more “multicultural” than they used to be back when people actually spoke to one another.

What kind of newly enriched and suddenly empowered American culture do I see when I drive on the highway near my house? I see Wal-Mart, Chili’s, Motel 6, Wendy’s, and Home Depot. It could be Indianapolis. It could be Omaha. It could be Seattle. It could be anywhere in America. It happens to be Stone Mountain, GA, but you’d have no idea you were even in the South. In 2010, the only cultural landscape we share consists of familiar corporate logos. There’s no local flavor, no sense of indigenous culture. Things don’t seem richer, livelier, and more colorful; they’re empty, listless, and dead.

At least that’s how it feels to me. I don’t feel as if there’s any glue, cohesion, or sense of belonging in this society anymore. I’m feeling the anomie something awful. I don’t see the upside to our newer, more multicultural America. The only thing we share is the currency, and maybe that was the point all along.

Multiculturalism has failed, but it has only begun to fail. Now what? After constant states of flux, our society now seems fluxed-up beyond repair. How do we sort out the mess while avoiding more Trails of Tears?

Multiculturalism is dead, sure, but what do we do with the body? I’ve yet to hear a good burial plan, and I fear we may need one.

And what makes me most nervous is that I’m not even sure who “we” are.
Source: Taki Mag.

Death of a nation

http://www.thepoliticalcesspool.org/jamesedwards/

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That’s a picture of a Martin Luther King Day celebration at the state capitol in Columbia, South Carolina. The statue that’s hidden from the crowd by the blue covered paneling is a statue of George Washington, the Father of our Country. It was covered up so the black people celebrating MLK wouldn’t be offended.

A country that honors a man like King is not going to revere men like Washington and Jefferson for very long. Decades ago, blacks started demanding that schools and streets in the South named after Confederate heroes be renamed, and their statues torn down. White liberals and conservatives said that giving in to these demands was the right thing to do, because Confederate heroes were horrible racists who didn’t deserved to be honored. Now that blacks have succeeded in removing so many tributes to great Southerners, they’re starting to go after the Founding Fathers, who were just as racist as the Confederates. Washington and Jefferson, and many others, owned black slaves. So any reminders of them will have to be removed if America is to reach King’s promised land. And what will conservatives and liberals say, since they’ve already agreed that racist ancestors aren’t worthy of respect?

So now we names schools and streets after scum like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X (a bisexual male prostitute, among other things), and men like Julius Hobson:

The other half of Stuart-Hobson: Julius Hobson (1919-1977) an African-American Marxist civil rights leader, who spent many years working against education in the District of Columbia.

Hobson’s biography says that he destroyed educational testing and tracking in the District in the case of Hobson vs. Hansen, as the result of his daughter failing a standardized test.

“[I]rate after his ten-year-old daughter was tested and placed on a non-college preparatory course of classes, Hobson went to court and challenged the District of Columbia schools’ practices. He argued that such testing and shunting of students into certain classes violated the 1954 Supreme Court decision that prohibited discrimination in education based on race. With famed civil rights attorney William Kunstler as his counsel, Hobson filed suit against Carl Hansen, superintendent of schools, and a U.S. Court of Appeals judge [J. Skelly Wright, a liberal appointed by JFK] ruled in his favor in June of 1967. The case was a watershed moment for the District of Columbia school system, which ended the tracking system that Hobson argued hampered achievement and academic excellence, and desegregated its faculty and some of the more overcrowded schools as well.”

This is what I mean when I said, above, that Hobson spent all this time and money fighting against education. He was fighting against standardized tests, because they gave bad results for blacks. Disparate impact theory means that if blacks fail any test at a higher rate than whites, the test must be prejudiced and wrong.

But the abolition of standardized tests is bad for all students, because it makes it much harder to find out how well (or badly) the teachers union is doing, which in the District Of Columbia is a particularly bad problem. And the abolition of tracking by ability is bad for both smart and stupid students, who should be studying different things at different rates in different classrooms.

Now we name schools after the people who destroyed them.

The old America of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson is gone. We now live in the America of Malcolm X, Julius Hobson, and Martin Luther King. And the whole world wonders after the beast. Every politician in America, even the “conservative” ones, bow down and worship him every third Monday in January.

And let us never forget who gave us the Martin Luther King holiday: the conservative hero, Ronald Reagan. The same one who gave us amnesty, which led to 20 million more illegals flooding our country.

Darwin Was Right

January 13, 2011

by Fred Reed

(Editor’s Note: I swear that Fred and I did not discuss our articles of yesterday and today.)

We are descended from monkeys. There is no other explanation.

Pondering Whither America, I reflected on a story, probably apocryphal but which I am going to believe because I like it, about catching monkeys. Tribesmen somewhere craft a heavy pot with a hole in it large enough that a monkey could insert an open hand, but not withdraw a closed fist. They then put monkey food in the pot. The monkey reaches in, grabs the food and, refusing to let go when the hunters approach, is caught and eaten.

Here we have our politics in a paragraph. The American national monkey can’t let go. The party is over, boys and girls, but we aren’t going to adapt.

For example: When people recently found that they could no longer afford the SUVs, the McMansions, the buying of absurdities in a frenzy of competitive consumerism, they just put it on the credit card. The monkey can’t let go. And now they are screwed.

Same-same domestic policy. The US has played War-on-Drugs for half a century, with no results but to make drugs an integral part of the economy. The evils engendered are great. Yet the monkey can’t let go.

It is internationally that the monkey principle really bites. The country is well on its way to being a merely regional power militarily, economically, and diplomatically. Short of a miracle, short of a conceivable but unlikely catastrophe in China, Amricans will soon be medium potatoes. There is nothing we can do about it, but we will bankrupt ourselves trying. We can’t let go.

If you look beyond the Reader’s Digest patriotism of Fox News, and the high-school cheerleading of little Sarah Palin, if you look beyond the national borders, all of this is obvious.

By Chinese standards, America is a small country, having a quarter of its population. Their economy grows at close to double digits. Yes, it may slow down, or it may not. Short of unforeseen disaster, the question is not whether but when the Chinese economy will dwarf the American economy. Tell me why this is not true.

All power springs from economic power. While America decays, plays, and sucks its thumb, China invests. Everywhere. There is nothing unprincipled in this. It is just intelligent commerce.

Do not underestimate these people of the epicanthic fold. I have lived among the Chinese, in Taiwan years ago. I liked them, and still do. I know them to be smart, disciplined, studious, practical—as well as nationalistic and very racially conscious. No, we do not think these attitudes proper. It doesn’t matter what we think.

Note that China has that perfect government, an intelligent dictatorship concerned with advancing the country. The American government consists of self-interested lobbies and Wall Street looters. China is run by engineers, America by lawyers. Watch.

The US is midway through an inexorable suicide. If a country does not manufacture things, it does not have an economy, and manufacturing has fled American shores. Ship-building, steel, consumer electronics, railroads: gone. You may think your HP laptop is an American product, but in all likelihood every component was made overseas and it was assembled in Taiwan.

The country as a whole, as always, looks inwards and doesn’t understand, doesn’t know what stirs without. Communism no longer protects America from Chinese competition.

America is the world’s greatest debtor nation, China the greatest creditor. We cannot possibly repay what we owe, so we must either default or inflate. If another choice exists, I am unaware of it. And yet the government spends, spends, spends, and borrows, borrows, borrows. No one is in charge. No one cares. All line their own pockets. Wait.

Rationally, this would seem a good time to let go of unaffordable luxuries. But no. The US continues to buy things it can’t pay for, to play roles it can no longer maintain, because it pains the national vanity no longer to be the biggest kid on the block. The monkey can’t let go.

The millstone around the American neck is the Pentagon. The direct cost alone of feeding the military contractors is almost mortal to a sinking economy: $720 billion this year, plus another $120 billion requested for the unending wars, plus huge black programs, the Veterans Administration, and so on. A trillion wilting green ones, call it. The more perceptive note the opportunity cost of wasting so much engineering talent, so much money for research and development, on martial zoom-wowees.

China, Russia, the Moslem world, Latin America and all the rest who detest the US must be enjoying the spectacle. Spend on, spend on, oh round-eyed fools….

Vanity. We do not garrison South Korea because Pyong Yang may send its troops across our common border into Arkansas. We do it because we think it our birthright to rule the world. The monkey cannot let go.

Our practical choice is between retracting the military or going down hard. But we cannot retract. Once you have made your economy dependent on huge unproductive expendititures, there is no quitting. It might seem wise for example to reduce the military rolls by the 30,000 troops in South Korea. But they would simply increase the rate of unemployment, already dangeorusly high. Since most of the military contributes nothing to the defense of the United States, releasing all unneeded soldiers into joblessness would probably precipitate an armed rebellion.

There is worse. Towns spring up around large bases to supply the troops and their families. Close the bases, and the towns die. Closing Camp Lejeune would kill Jacksonville; Fort Bragg, Fayetteville; Fort Hood, Killeen. Further, huge companies…Lockheed-Martin, much of Boeing, and dozens of others—being unable to compete in the civilian economy, have become obligate military suppliers. Cut their big programs and you unemploy tens of thousands for whom there are no civilian jobs.

The federal bureaucracy is much the same, employing vast numbers yet producing nothing. Politicians drone about wanting “smaller government.” How? Eliminate the Departments of Education, or Housing and Urban Development, or Commerce—and where do the people go?

We can pretend that the current recession is temporary, and not a manifestation of dying opulence, just as a fading beauty can pile on the make-up and hope that men don’t notice. We can spend while others grow, buy their goods on credit—for a little while longer. The monkey can’t let go.

And any who say that we ought to put our house in order and come to terms with reality? They will be said to Hate America. Well and good, until the bill comes due.

Fred, a keyboard mercenary with a disorganized past, has worked on staff for Army Times, The Washingtonian, Soldier of Fortune, Federal Computer Week, and The Washington Times. He has been published in Playboy, Soldier of Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Harper’s, National Review, Signal, Air&Space, and suchlike. He has worked as a police writer, technology editor, military specialist, and authority on mercenary soldiers. He is by all accounts as looney as a tune.

©Fred Reed
www.FredOnEverything.net

Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got

Logical, Practical Baby Steps Toward Survival and Secession

If you have been reading the articles posted here at DumpDC, you have read about the impending economic collapse. But sometimes all this gloom and doom, although accurately predicted, can be overwhelming. And when you feel overwhelmed you may just give up, thinking all is hopeless.

So today, I’m offering some common sense steps you can take to become as prepared as you possibly can become.

First, remember that none of us know when the s*** is going to hit the fan (WSHTF). We cannot accurately predict dates when events will occur. Let’s just do what we can until those days transpire. As legendary businessman A.L. Williams said, “All you can do is all you can do.” Let’s just hope that all you can do is enough.

1. Begin this week buying silver coins.

I started buying gold and silver about ten years ago when the price was $300 an ounce. Today’s gold prices are above $1,360 and will go higher. Ten years ago silver was about $15 an ounce. Today I’m buying silver at $35. It will go higher too, but it’s much more affordable for the average person. Make a commitment to yourself to buy as many silver coins as you can each month. If that’s only one coin, that’s better than doing nothing. Always try to buy coins that are 99.99% pure silver. Do not buy collector coins because the collection value melts away when you are using the coin for money. No one will care if it’s rare. Only the purity of the silver will matter.

Survivalists might disagree with me about placing this recommendation as number one. They might say that stocking in food, water and weapons are more important. But my opinion is that hard money will buy all those things, but only if you have hard money. Sure, you may be able to buy supplies cheaper now before the crash. But hard money is king and you’d better have it in your possession after the crash.

Gold and silver coins are actually money. Paper “money” is not money…it’s currency. When you buy gold and silver coins, you are exchanging your paper currency for real money. You are taking the value still found in your currency and storing that value in real money. As time goes by, it will take more and more paper currency to buy real money.

Do not sell gold and silver you already own. The carnival barkers on TV and down your street looking to buy your old jewelry will pay pennies on the dollar, and they will hand you paper currency as payment. That is backwards and foolish. Don’t fall for that scam. Tuck your old jewelry away as a stash of value.

Where to buy? Check coin dealers in your area as well as pawn brokers. You can even go online and find dealers with great prices. I recommend buying coins face to face with a dealer and only using cash. Why create a paper trail of your purchases?

2. Sell some stuff

You have personal property around your home that still has value that you are not using anymore. Electronics, furniture, tools, CDs, DVDs, even collectibles. Sell your extra stuff to raise cash. Then use that cash to buy even more silver.

Thank God for Ebay and other auction websites! It gives all of us great tools for selling our unwanted personal property. But if you’re not Internet savvy, just have a yard sale.

3. Start storing food and supplies

By selling off some old stuff, you’ll have more storage space. Make a special storage space in your home and being to buy extra food. Start with canned goods. Buy food you already like. Canned vegetables and meats are great. Then buy some paper products, like toilet paper and paper towels. If you are going to buy bulk items like rice or pasta, you’ll need sealable food containers for them. Don’t forget toiletries, like soap and other cleaning products. Buy some chorine bleach, which can be used to purify water. Buy canned juices, cake mixes, pudding, etc. My point here is to begin to put aside extra supplies toward the day that you can no longer just run to the store for stuff you need. That day will surely come whether you believe it or not.

4. Own firearms

If you do not already own a firearm, you are a victim waiting to be victimized. In the days following the collapse of the American financial system, crime will be rampant as desperate people do desperate things to survive. So, not only do you need to own firearms, but you need to become proficient in their use. Go to the gun range and learn how to use your firearm. Start now buying quantities of ammunition for your firearms. Having one box of ammo is not enough. Ammo is cheap. Buy 1,000 rounds or more for every different firearm you own. Make your ammo purchases at a gun shop and use cash, no credit or checks. No paper trail.

5. Get out of debt

Do everything you can to pay off debt of any kind, especially debt that is tied to collateral, such as your house or car. Last thing you want is to have your collateral repossessed or your home foreclosed.

How about consumer debt? In 2010, I heard financial guru Suzie Orman tell an Oprah Show audience to not worry about paying off consumer debt. She actually said that if you had to choose between credit card debt and house/car debt, choose house/car debt because it is secured debt. The credit card companies may be able to ding your credit score, or even sue you for the debt, but they cannot foreclose or repossess because it’s unsecured.

6. Increase your income

If you make more money, you can get prepared for disaster quicker. But making more money isn’t all about disaster preparedness. Have you ever heard of the concept of “having a Plan B”? Most people concentrate on just their present source of income, like their job. That’s Plan A. As most of you have noticed lately, jobs can go away unexpectedly even if you’re a great employee. Having more than one source of income lowers your risk of losing your major source of income.

The best “Plan B” you can have is a home-based business of your own. You can make great money, and having a home-based business opens up a source of tax deductions you never had before. You can write off thousands of dollars of business deductions…IF you have a business.

Most average people do not know how to properly evaluate a business opportunity. So, they make bad choices, lose a bunch of money, and come to the conclusion that being in business doesn’t work. But what if there was a simple way to evaluate ANY business opportunity before you jump in and risk your capital?

I’ve got the answer for you. I have a free video for you to watch. Click on www.ExploreFreedom.com. At the homepage, look to your left and find “Watch Brilliant Compensation.” Most of you should choose “English Live” and click “GO.”

If you want to learn more about how to make money in the energy business, contact me through the ExploreFreedom website. I’ll give you a hint…energy is one of the only truly recession-proof industries in America today. Is YOUR job recession-proof?

7. Do a security check at your home

Most folks live day to day with a false sense of security. They have no awareness of their surroundings and are surprised by robberies, car jackings and burglaries. But breaking into a residence is pretty easy. Have you made it easier for burglars inadvertently? Here’s quick checklist:

• Trim shrubs away from door and windows. Shrubs are good hiding places.
• Place a motion sensor exterior light next to every exterior door.
• Invest in a monitored security system for your residence. Make sure ALL openings have a sensor, even second floor openings.
• Reinforce your exterior doors to make them harder to bust open. I wrote an article at my insurance blog HERE.
• Install deadbolt locks with LOOOONG screws that sink into the framing behind the door frame.
• Don’t leave ladders and tools outside your home for obvious reasons.
• Get a concealed weapons permit and carry a pistol at all times.

8. Start planning where to live

When we reach The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI), will you want to live in a state that takes its orders from Washington DC, or will you want to live free? Spend the time NOW deciding where you want to live. Get out of the cities, which will be the most dangerous places of all. You might even consider choosing a state NOW and moving there before TEOTWAWKI. The other option is to expatriate and live outside the USA. That’s a very attractive alternative. But if you wait until TSHTF, Washington might not let you leave.

9. Spread the word

Friends don’t let friends stay ignorant. Discuss these concepts with those you love. Be prepared to take some criticism.

10. Face some tough decisions.

Remember the story of the Little Red Hen. Her friends did not want to help her prepare, but they were sure ready to help eat what she had worked for. Keep this in mind when, after you have sacrificed to be prepared, your family, neighbors and friends want to latch onto you for survival. What will you do if they discover that you have a stash of supplies and money and you don’t want to share? Will they come try to take it by force? You’re going to have to make some tough decisions then.

Jesus told a parable in Matthew 25:1-12 about ten virgins, five wise and five foolish. Read it HERE.

Conclusion

Don’t allow your mind to be overwhelmed by the prospect of economic collapse. You can begin TODAY to change your life and be prepared for the worst. But no one can make you do this. It has to be your decision.

Secession is the Hope For Mankind. Who will be first?

DumpDC. Six Letters That Can Change History.

© Copyright 2011, Russell D. Longcore. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Riots Spread As Global Food Shortage Worsens

Riots Spread As Global Food Shortage Worsens

By Gwynne Dyer

(Editor’s Note: A state that secedes won’t have all the federal farm subsidies that the USA has through Washington’s manipulation and regulation. An unregulated farming industry will produce abundant food. Food shortages comes from governments interfering in the free market.)

If all the food in the world were shared out evenly, there would be enough to go around. That has been true for centuries now – if food was scarce, the problem was that it wasn’t in the right place.

But there was no global shortage. However, that will not be true much longer.

The food riots began in Algeria more than a week ago, and they are going to spread. During the last global food shortage, in 2008, there was serious rioting in Mexico, Indonesia and Egypt. We may expect to see that again, only more widespread.

Most people in these countries live in a cash economy and a large proportion live in cities. They buy their food, they don’t grow it. That makes them vulnerable, because they have to eat almost as much as people in rich countries do but their incomes are much lower.

The poor, urban multitudes in these countries (including China and India) spend up to half of their entire income on food, compared with only about 10 per cent in rich countries.

When food prices soar, these people quickly find that they simply lack the money to go on feeding themselves and their children properly – and food prices now are at an all-time high.

“We are entering a danger territory,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, chief economist at the Food and Agriculture Organisation. The price of a basket of cereals, oils, dairy, meat and sugar that reflects global consumption patterns has risen steadily for six months, and has just broken through the previous record, set during the last food panic in June 2008.

“There is still room for prices to go up much higher,” Abbassian said, “if, for example, the dry conditions in Argentina become a drought, and if we start having problems with winter kill in the Northern Hemisphere for the wheat crops.”

After the loss of at least a third of the Russian and Ukrainian grain crop in last summer’s heat wave and the devastating floods in Australia and Pakistan, there’s no margin for error left. It was Russia and India banning grain exports in order to keep domestic prices down that set the food prices on the international market soaring.

Most countries cannot insulate themselves from this global price rise because they depend on imports for a lot of domestic consumption.

But that means that a lot of their population cannot buy enough food for their families, so they go hungry. Then they get angry, and the riots start. Is this food emergency a result of global warming? Maybe, but all these droughts, heat waves and floods could also just be a run of really bad luck. What is nearly certain is that the warming will continue, and that in the future there could be many more weather disasters because of climate change.

Global food prices are already spiking whenever there are a few local crop failures, because the supply barely meets demand even now. As the emerging economies grow, Chinese, Indian and Indonesian citizens eat more meat, which places a great strain on grain supplies. Moreover, the world population is now passing through 7 billion, on its way to 9 billion by 2050. We will need a lot more food.

Some short-term fixes are possible. If the United States Government ended the subsidies for growing maize (corn) for “bio-fuels”, it would return about a quarter of US crop land to food production.

If people ate a little less meat, if more African land was brought into production, if more food was eaten and less was thrown away, then maybe we could buy ourselves another 15 or 20 years before demand really outstripped supply.

On the other hand, about a third of all the irrigated land in the world depends on pumping groundwater up from aquifers that are depleting rapidly. When the flow of irrigation water stops, the yield of that highly productive land will drop hugely. Desertification is spreading in many regions and a large amount of good agricultural land is simply being paved over each year. We have a serious problem here.

The shortages will grow and the price of food will rise inexorably over the years. The riots will return.

In some places the rioting will turn into revolution. In others, the rioters will become refugees and push up against the borders of countries that don’t want to let them in.

Or maybe we can get the warming under control before it does too much damage.

Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist based in London. Find her work HERE.

Copyright 2011, APN Holdings NZ Limited