where is the revolution of the heart?

Costco confirmed today that it was seeing unusually large orders for rice , flour and other staples and that some of its stores had put restrictions in place as customers now aware of the global food crisis through the media start trying to hoard fearing shortages or just to avoid further price rises. A spokesman for Costco said that there was no shortage but large orders had seen stocks run out at some stores .

Whenever there is talk of shortages or looming disaster , people start to panic and act strangely, some might say ' rationally ' but some people view shortages and disasters as a source of profit and, no matter what we think of this, this is part of human nature and how so called free markets work.

One of the responses to the global food crisis has been for investors to look at ways to profit from it.

Take for example , fertiliser companies, they are now doing brisk trade because with world stocks of grains at a 17 year low , more crops and land being given over to biofuel production and improving standards of living in developing countries like China and India increasing demand farmers need to increase their yield , its the only real variable they can tweak , and so rising food prices are increasing demand for fertiliser and the smart money is being ploughed into phosphate firms as the price of fertiliser soars.

Meanwhile the Bush administration refutes charges that its biofuels policy , which has a quarter of all corn planted in the US diverted to biofuel production , is a major factor behind the world food crisis. It argues that there is an energy crisis and that rising fuel costs are pushing up food prices by increasing equipment operation and transport costs and that its biofuels policy is a well thought out iniative intended to tackle the energy crisis and combat carbon emissions and global warming in the long term.

Only that's not how the poorer countries see it.

They view using food and feed crops for fuel production at a time of low grain stocks and shortage as simply contemptuous of human life .The poorer countries are also the most affected by and the least responsible for global warming , which is already causing droughts , floods and crop failures, so now they need to spend more on fertilisers to increase yields to feed people whose subsistence incomes cant cope with any more price rises and their desperation is causing  political instability. Millions of people who were not on the World Food Programs hunger at risk list six months ago, now join it because they simply cant afford to eat as much as they need to at the current market rates.

The poorer countries are reacting to the food crisis, they are not in control, they are the hostages to the decisions taken by the leaders of the developed countries whose decision making meetings they never get invited to. They are being pummelled by market forces at every turn as  more and more countries turn to short sighted protectionist measures, more likely to add to world hunger than combat it. As usual though, even with this turbulence in the markets, there are winners and losers , the winners are making a killing , the losers face an uncertain future, including the very real risk of starving to death.

The BBC reports that an inquest into the death of a  49 senior university lecture r was told that she weighed less than five stone when she died from  the eating disorder anorexia nervosa. 

Prof Rosemary Pope, pro-vice chancellor at Bournemouth University had  a background in health and psychology weighed 4st 10lb (30kg) when she was found dead at home in March, 2008

Professor Pope's Brother and his son discovered her body and another brother Michael praised his sister, saying how energetic and determined she was despite having so little nutrition and related how distressing it was for him and other family members to realise that Ms Pope was unable to hear their concerns.

Rueters reports that in Patna, India three stray dogs came across a  newborn  baby girl dumped in a mound of mud and cleared the mud from around her and barked until they drew  the attention of local villagers who rescued the child and placed her with a childless couple as police sought to find the girls mother.

Its a tragedy that animals can ask for help but humans often cant. That said, sometimes we know there is no help to be had. 

I read a  Guardian magazine article today with a picture of  a heavilly bearded Robbie Williams explaining how the now reclusive pop star had set out on  a private jet with UK tongue in cheek journalist Jon Ronson, Robbie's girlfriend and a guy called Brandon  to check out a UFO conference in Laughlin Nevada. Robbie apparently is taken by the idea of abductees and UFO's and of course if you want a UFO experience Nevada with its Area 51 is the place to be.

Only Laughlin isnt anywhere near Area 51, its just another up and coming Nevada Casino town under pressure to attract  the conference crowd  out of season to get by  no matter what the conference is. I personally prefer West Wendover on the Nevada Utah border but someone really should tell Robbie just how out of this world most of Nevada is. Never mind losing sight of UFO's and abductees there, Nevada's mountain ranges just go on and on and on and I often wonder how many human beings have ventured that far from the major highways running through Nevada  as a great deal of the state  is about as accessible to ordinary folk as the moon.

Robbie , look in front of you. L.A is the alien environment. If you want to explore the interior space of Nevada or indeed America or anywhere else  , get in touch because we'd love to do that as well ,just  stop chasing ghosts and flying saucers as you'll just end up going round  in circles at non escape velocity with the media in tow.

Emily had always dreamed of a Round the World trip

And the cruise on the SS Prince Ranier had been a snip at $9,000 for a month on the high seas

Which was as near round the world as damn it to a cleaner from the Bronx

Who'd never been much further than Coney Island

She looked at the boarding card and itinerary again 

Visiting 15 exotic and enchanting ports in the Mediterranean and North Africa 

Including the a port in Lebanon

If the fighting stopped

She had rushed around the malls with her credit card after work

buying clothes for the trip

No point in travelling light she told herself

As she blew another $4,000 on a Cruise wardrobe

And booked an upgrade to first class

An additional $2500  bucks

But which included all evening meals

And a chance to dine at the Captains table

She decided that would require a new watch

And treated herself to a Cartier for $3,000

And shoes., Emily decided on quantity rather than quality alone

But didnt skimp on herself as she bought 12 pairs for $3,000

The beauticians bill had came in at half that

The beautician was very friendly though

Unlike the plastic surgeon 

Who'd taken another three grand

For smoothing the wrinkles around her eyes

The legacy of the daily struggle

Of countless hours of overtime just to get by

He'd done a good job though

But she still looked and felt a  lot older than her 35 years  

Life had not been very kind

It had worn her like weathered sandstone 

She'd  chatted about the cruise with the beautician

The girls name was Kulvinder

And she'd handed Emily a Sikh amulet free of charge

' It'll bring you good fortune ' she said

Perhaps you'll meet the man of your dreams' 

Emily thanked her kindly and later threw the amulet  away

She didnt need luck nor a man for life

She looked down at the letter that had started it all again

It was from her bank

Informing her that her credit limit was being raised to some ridiculous  amount

She'd felt  the bank deliberately wanted to get her into even deeper debt

The bank had even used the ability to take an unplanned holiday in its reasons for increasing her credit limit

That had been the decider 

They knew how much she earned as the cleaning agency she worked for had been paying her wages through the bank for years 

Even with overtime it was a pittance 

So she'd thought fuck it, I'll take that holiday of a lifetime

And given in her notice to the agency and told them she wasnt coming back 

The ship sailed at 9.00 am the next day

But Emily couldnt sleep 

She was too busy anticipating the throb of the cruise ships massive  engines underneath her

The sights, sounds and smell of the open sea 

Thoughts of the great temporary adventures ahead

And of finally waving goodbye to the struggle 

And at the back of her mind wondering if  the credit card company or her bank would smell a rat at this late stage

And whether she should take the plunge 

On the return voyage or wait til she got home. 

Whatever she thought, I'm going

The Diceman Cometh by Autotelic

Earlier today through the services of an interpreter we  established a psychic  uplink to a Jawa Shaman named Jawa Utility to get her 6 point plan on surviving the recession and coming out ahead of the curve. Each point relates potential earnings and savings.

1.Salvaging broken military equipment in Iraq.

Jawa Utility was quick to say how impressed she was as a scavenger with firms like Halliburton and Blackwaterwho had scavenged massive amounts of money in Iraq for doing very little and in many cases nothing at all. She suggested budding entrepreneurs should view the deserts of Iraq through Jawaian eyes as a familiar sandy terrain and virtual gold mine of scrap metal with the debris of two Gulf wars and the occupation wastefully rusting in the sun just begging to be recycled. She also pointed out that a significant percentage of the miltary vehicles in Iraq were inoperable because of sand damage and therefore fair game as well as US civilian contractors paid scant regard to the question of actual ownership and the Pentagon didnt seem to care.

Money to be made: there is a high global demand for scrap metal, particularly from china and a niche market in refurbished military vehicles including armour.

Savings: liberating ' lost' Iraqi and US government property would help save the natural desert environment but Jawa Utilty said the biggest saving , almost a trillion dollars , would be to stop recycling pain and hatred and end the occupation and the war.

2. Alternative to Instability in Housing Market

Drawing on life on her planet Tattooine Jawa Utilty advised first time buyers and those struggling to keep up their mortgage payments to try to salvage enough scrap to trade for a genuine Jawa Sand Crawler , dedicated salvaging vehicles that also double up as cheap and spacy mobile homes. Although the Jawa have yet to sell their Sand Crawlers through e-bay they do have trade fairs once a year at which Sand Crawlers are swapped for scrap.

Money to be made: Sand Crawlers essentially pay for themselves if those who live in them remain in the salvaging, recycling and repairs business

Savings: stress, mortgage default, house loss, eviction, family break up, despair, depression, homelessness and suicide

3 Establishing Independent Financial Consultancies

The Jawa have an interesting ethical approach to theft, they'll steal anything with the keys left in it as long as it doesn't bring their clan into disrepute .So, the Jawa wouldn't steal a disabled person's mobility wheelchair with the keys in it, for instance, if the person had no legs and was very obviously  totally dependent on the vehicle. The Jawa have more trouble with greyer areas of property ownership. Based on this firm ethical code,  Jawa Utility suggested that people could replace the unprecedented number of registered financial advisers bailing out and selling up their businesses because of the recession and advise major institutions like Citigroup and Bear Steams who also have a very lax approach to theft, embezzlement and having others pay for their mistakes.

Money to be made : the financial markets are rotten to the core, name your own price

Savings: off shore or Swiss bank account and  zero office rental and overheads if consultancy is registered from a toilet  in some offshore tax haven. 

  
4. Water Conservation Scheme

The Jawa make a habit of not bathing and retain moisture in their sackcloth cloaks and cowls and their water saving efforts could be used in projects targeted at Green audiences and consumers paid for out of public funds. The Rev Mathus,  a 19^th century population theorist beat the Jawa to advise poor people against taking baths but he was more interested in the poor catching diseases and dying than saving water as he thought there was far too many of them anyway. Jawa Utility also thought there was scope for designing moisture retaining clothes but had some difficulty understanding that humans do not like the smell of let alone the taste of their own sweat.

Money to be made: Governments and Grant Awarding bodies hurl cash at anyone who can string a couple of sentences together and call it a Green bid.

Savings: It is horrifically expensive to recycle water or purify saltwater. Jawa Utility suggested that countless lives could be saved if water was treated as a precious finite resource and shared around on the basis of need not greed nor creed.

5..Removing Women From the Workplace

Jawa Utility explained that on Tattooine women were treated as mere chattels and were traded every year at the Sand Crawler fairs. She said that many males from earth would probably like their women to stay at home and wash their filthy underwear for them and do the child rearing and that this was normal where she came from except if the women were psychotic in which case they hallucinated and spoke in tongues and were immediately revered as visionaries, seers and sages.

The Jawa have no concept of PMS.

Money to be made: uncertain but it was felt men would go in for the wife swapping anyway.

Savings: although its thought that women might somehow contribute to the economy through working Jawa Utility argued that the cost of not installing modesty boards on desks and reducing calls unrelated to work being made from the office each day would offset this conribution, whatever it was. 

6 Feeding the World

The Jawa have a highly efficient digestive system which is able to extract maximum nutrition from the humble Hubba Gourd. Jawa Utility suggested that the cheap , stable and quick growing Hubba Gourd would be ideal for tackling the world hunger problem as its availability wasn't subject to speculation or the vagaries of the market. She also felt the Hubba Gourd Diet Plan could be turned into an international best seller but was puzzled that half the world was starving while the other half ate too much and struggled to be as thin as possible.

Money to be made: the best seller alone would bring in hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide

Savings: countless human lives if the Hubba Gourd or another staple like it was able to replace cereal crops currently being diverted into making biofuel.

Acclaimed British film maker, broadcaster, naturalist and evironmental campaigner David Attenborough wrapped up 30 years of a hugely popular natural history series by expressing his fears of what the future holds for the planet and its inhabitants.

Attenborough, 81, whose natural history broadcasting career began almost 50 years ago started  off  the pioneering ' Life'  series with  Life on Earth ' in 1979 and finished with Life in Cold Blood in 2008.

Attenborough almost single handedly defined the natural history documentary genre and his fearless but always respectful approach to wildlife and the natural world  made his broadcasts essential viewing for hundreds of millions of people around the world.

He said global warming would make it almost impossible to  remake the series now and that wildlife and nature were threatened by another big change that has occured during his 50 year broadcasting career, the human population growing by two thirds , a problem that is pushing all other species and fauna to the margins.

Attenborough who has long campaigned on global warming and other environmental issues believes it is to late for us to stop the warming process and argues that unless Governments act in a responsible and  co-ordinated way to protect the environment ,we wont have much of a future..