Updated November 18, 2009

You just know that something is astray when Afghan poppy growers begin to switch from opium to wheat (The Independent). And this is exactly what they are doing!

According to an official UN report, opium production in Afghanistan has risen dramatically since the downfall of the Taliban in 2001. UNODC data shows more opium poppy cultivation in each of the past four growing seasons (2004-2007), than in any one year during Taliban rule. More land is now used for opium in Afghanistan, than for coca cultivation in Latin America. In 2007, 93% of the opiates on the world market originated in Afghanistan. This is no accident. According to Afghan sources, president Karzai used to work for the CIA and is the Opium “Godfather” of Afghanistan today. The aim of the US bases in Afghanistan is to be able to strike at the two nations (Russia and China) which represent the only combined threat in the world today to the USA.

Russia is a nuclear power and it holds the world’s largest treasure of natural gas and vast reserves of oil urgently needed by China. The two powers are increasingly converging via a new organization they created in 2001 known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). That includes as well as China and Russia, the largest Central Asia states Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

Afghanistan has historically been the heartland for the British-Russia Great Game, the struggle for control of Central Asia during the 19th and early 20th Centuries. British strategy then was to prevent Russia at all costs from controlling Afghanistan and thereby threatening Britain’s imperial crown jewel, India.

Afghanistan lies along a proposed oil pipeline route from the Caspian Sea oil fields to the Indian Ocean, where the US oil company, Unocal, along with Enron and Cheney’s Halliburton, had been in negotiations for exclusive pipeline rights to bring natural gas from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan and Pakistan to Enron’s huge natural gas power plant at Dabhol near Mumbai.

The problem for the US elites around Wall Street and Washington is the fact that they are now in the deepest financial crisis in their history. It is now clear to the entire world this Elite [and Globalism] is fighting for self-survival. This is demonstrated by the arbitrary exercise of power by non elected officials such as Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and now Tim Geithner, stealing trillion dollar sums from taxpayers without their consent in order to bailout the bankrupt biggest Wall Street banks, banks deemed “Too Big To Fail” .

Just like Britain and the USSR before it collapsed the USA finds itself in a similar situation where the financial means (each Private costs $ 750,000 per year) start to dwindle away...

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According to the World Bank, just over 1 billion people live on one dollar or less per day. People in the poorest countries in the world spend 80% of their income on food. Chinese consumers spend 28% of their income on food. In India it is 33%. Belgium, France and the Netherlands spent about 14 % of their income on food.

In promoting bio-fuel as an ultimate effort to break the fuel shortage, politicians have opted for an acceleration is the price of food commodities.

 According to a recent UN report, it takes 232 kg of corn to fill an average 50 liter car tank with ethanol - enough corn to feed a child for an entire year. It is estimated that almost 20% of total US corn production will go towards ethanol this year and the number is set to rise to 45% by 2015. Hence, in promoting bio-fuel as an ultimate effort to break the liquid fuel shortage, politicians are accelerating the price of all food commodities that are already – as a result of the monetary inflation – rising exponentially. 

According to Goldman Sachs, the cost of ethanol from corn is now over $80 per barrel, it is about $145 from wheat and over $230 from soybeans. Only Sugar (grown and used in Brazil and South Africa) cane ends up costing $35 per barrel. Conclusion, politicians must be aware that the price of crude oil will never fall back under the $ 80 per barrel. This has huge implications as oil and natural gas are used to manufacture a broad range of products: from fertilizers to plastics.

 Not only is the demand rising but the supply and the cost (fertilizers, energy, etc.) to grow Food commodities is dramatically increasing. Sometimes the price of fertilizers is that high that farmers cannot afford (Africa) to buy them.

Inflation is there to stay and though a financial impact of Hedge funds and other speculators cannot be denied, all Food commodities are in a secular UPTREND and will remain there for the years to come. Sooner or later we shall see the word Hyperinflation rather than the word Inflation in the headlines of the Media.

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