Behold a Black Horse - orchestrated food riots Rev 6:5-6

[Disco_Destroyer]

Development ministers urge action on food prices

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080413/tts-uk-worldbank-d1d4700.html

By Lesley Wroughton Reuters - Sunday, April 13 11:57 pmWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top finance and development officials from around the globe on Sunday called for urgent action to stem rising food prices, warning that social unrest will spread unless the cost of basic staples is contained.

"We have to put our money where our mouth is now, so that we can put food into hungry mouths. It is as stark as that," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said at the end of a meeting of the IMF and World Bank's Development Committee.

Zoellick and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have said the issue of skyrocketing food prices needs to be front and centre at the highest political levels.

While Brown said he would raise it at an upcoming meeting of the Group of Eight powerful nations, Zoellick said that would be too late. "Frankly speaking, that G8 meeting is in June and we cannot wait," he told a news conference.

Concerns about food costs took on new urgency as senators in Haiti ousted the prime minister after a week of food-related rioting in which at least five people died. There have also been protests in Cameroon, Niger and Burkina Faso in Africa, and in Indonesia and the Philippines.

In just two months, rice prices have shot up around 75 percent, closing in on historic highs. Meanwhile, the cost of wheat has climbed by 120 percent over the past year, more than doubling the price of bread in most poor countries.

The problem is most worrying in developing countries where food represents a larger share of what consumers buy. It threatens to sharply increase malnutrition and hunger, while reversing progress in reducing poverty and debt burdens among the poorest nations.

GLOBAL CONTAGION

Indian Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said rising food costs threatened to stir more social unrest.

"It is becoming starker by the day that unless we act fast for a global consensus on the price spiral, the social unrest induced by food prices in several countries will conflagrate into a global contagion, leaving no country -- developed or otherwise -- unscathed," he said.

"The global community must collectively deliberate on immediate steps to reverse the unconscionable increases in the price of food, which threatens to negate the benefits to the poor nations from aid, trade and debt relief," he said.

Douglas Alexander, Britain's minister for international development, said his country is willing to work with others to bring prices down. "Now is the time for urgent action to tackle the crisis, which is affecting millions of the poorest people across the globe," he said.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warned that governments should resist the temptation to fight soaring food costs with price controls, which he said would likely backfire.

The World Bank has warned that food prices will remain elevated this year and next, and likely stay above 2004 levels through 2015.

BIOFUELS SQUEEZE

One of the main factors behind the surge in prices is the increased use of crops for biofuels as an alternative energy source. Almost all of the rise in global corn production from 2004 to 2007 went to biofuels in the United States.

Other factors that have contributed to the rise are the growth in demand in Asia and droughts in food-producing nations like Australia.

Climate change also received heightened attention at Sunday's meeting -- one of the few times that finance and development ministers have been drawn into the discussions.

The ministers called on the World Bank to mobilize financing to help the poor deal with the effects of global warming.

In Bali in December, countries agreed on a road map for two years of talks aimed at securing a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol on climate change when it expires in 2012.

Zoellick on Sunday helped convene a meeting he called a "Bali Breakfast" that brought developing countries together to discuss ways to tackle climate change. He said he hoped it would become a regular event.

"The drive to address climate change won't work if it's seen as a rich man's club," Zoellick said.

(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; editing by Tim Ahmann)

[insidejob]

Food riots are probably a major indicator of the determination of the global elite to implement the Neo-crazy armageddon strategy. Clearly, the explanations of food shortages are *. There is no reason for biofuel planting to lead to shortages as soon as it has. All the reasons given are a cover for food hoarding by hedge funds. But if they are doing this, then it indicates some sort of timetable. It means we may very well see plagues, war and big terror strike.

The Anglo-American Establishment have been opposed by Russia and China. They believe they need massive, global crises to sideline them and implement their power grab.

For some time now, we've been aware of the Anglo-Americans' plans but we've always hoped that they will stay as plans. We now have to start thinking that they are determined to implement these plans.

[Rory Winter]

The Fury of the Poor
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,547198,00.html
By SPIEGEL Staff

Around the world, rising food prices have made basic staples like rice and corn unaffordable for many people, pushing the poor to the barricades because they can no longer get enough to eat. But the worst is yet to come.

Fort Dimanche, a former prison in the hills above the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, is a hell on earth. In the past, it was home to the torture chambers of former dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier's death squads, the Tontons Macoutes. Today thousands of impoverished Haitians live in the prison's grounds, digging through piles of garbage for food. But even dogs find little to eat there.

On the roof of the former prison, enterprising women prepare something that looks like biscuits and is even called by that name. The key ingredient, yellow clay, is trucked in from the nearby mountains. The clay is combined with salt and vegetable fat to make dough, which is then dried in the sun.

For many Haitians, the mud biscuits are their only food. They taste of fat, suck the moisture out of the mouth and leave behind an aftertaste of dirt. They often cause diarrhea, but they help to numb the pangs of hunger. "I'm hoping one day I'll have enough food to eat, so I can stop eating these," Marie Noël, who survives with her seven children on the dirt cakes, told the Associated Press.

The clay to make 100 of the biscuits costs $5 (€3.15) and has risen by $1.50 (€0.95), or about 40 percent, within one year. The same is true of staple foods. Nevertheless, the same amount of money buys more of the mud cakes than bread or corn tortillas. A daily bowl of rice is almost unaffordable.


Pakistani women buy subsidized flour in Lahore. The price of staple foods and fuel has risen drastically in the country in the last few months. Many people in Pakistan are now dependent on state subsidies.

The shortages triggered revolts in Haiti last week. A crowd of hungry citizens marched through Port-au-Prince, throwing stones and bottles and chanting, "We are hungry!" in front of the presidential palace. Tires were burned, and people died. It was yet another of the rebellions that are beginning to occur with increasing frequency worldwide, but which are still only a harbinger of what is yet to come.

Food is become increasingly scarce and expensive, and it is already unaffordable for many people. The world's 200 wealthiest people have as much money as about 40 percent of the global population, and yet 850 million people have to go to bed hungry every night. This calamity is "one of the worst violations of human dignity," says former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.


Consequences of the global food crisis

Should we be surprised that despair often turns into violence? The food crisis afflicts the world's poor -- in Africa, South Asia and the Middle East -- like a biblical plague. Prices for staples like rice, corn and wheat, which were relatively stable for years, have skyrocketed by over 180 percent in the last three years. A bottleneck is developing whose consequences are potentially more severe than the global crisis in the financial markets. With nothing left to lose, people on the brink of starvation are more likely to react with boundless fury.


In the wealthier areas, police and UN peacekeepers tried to keep a lid on the violent protests, which were accompanied by looting.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) addressed this global crisis at a joint meeting last weekend. World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned that exploding food prices threaten to cause instability in at least 33 countries, including regional powers like Egypt, Indonesia and Pakistan, where the army has had to be brought in to protect flour transports. The crisis is helping radical Islamic movements gain strength in North Africa. There has been unrest in recent weeks in Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal, the Ivory Coast and Cameroon, where the violence has already claimed about 100 lives.


A desperate appeal by the country's president could not stop the violence. Gangs armed with stones and clubs tore through the streets, setting tires on fire and erecting street barricades.

There are several reasons for the food crisis:

The world population is growing constantly, while the amount of arable land is declining.

Climate change is causing a loss of agricultural land, irreversible in some cases, as a result of droughts, floods, storms and erosion.

Because of changing eating habits, more and more arable land and virgin forests are being turned into pasture for livestock. The yield per acre in calories of land given over to pasture is substantially lower than that of arable land.

The World Bank wants developing countries to introduce market reforms, including the abolition of protective tariffs, a move that often causes massive damage to local agriculture.

Speculators are driving up the prices of raw materials. The resulting high oil price leads to "energy crops" being cultivated instead of grain for food or animal feed.

Millions of people displaced by civil wars need food, and yet they themselves are no longer capable of producing food.

What we are beginning to face is not just an acute bottleneck, but a worldwide, fundamental food crisis. It affects most of all the poor, who spend a disproportionately large share of their income on food and water. The crisis is so dire that it is obliterating any progress made in recent years in fighting disease and starvation.

With too many people and not enough agricultural land, a struggle for the distribution of the best farmland is taking shape that could turn into a new North-South conflict. "These days you hear a lot about the world financial crisis," wrote US economist Paul Krugman recently in his regular column in the New York Times. "But there’s another world crisis under way -- and it’s hurting a lot more people."


Protesters display placards against the alleged escalating prices of commodities during a protest march in Manila on April 12.

Mexicans were the first to take to the streets, when they protested against higher prices for cornmeal, the basic ingredient in tortillas. Mexico can only cover a portion of its demand with domestic production. It imports the rest, mainly from the United States. Meanwhile, more and more farmers in the US are selling their corn to biofuel producers, who pay a higher price for the grain.

To avert further protests, Mexican President Felipe Calderón decided to increase government subsidies for corn, which were already high to begin with. But only countries that are relatively strong financially can afford this. In other countries, like Haiti, Bolivia, Algeria and Yemen, the lower classes have been hard hit by food-price inflation.

'People Are Dying Before Our Eyes'

In the Middle Eastern country of Yemen, people get by on an average of €1.18 ($1.86) per day. The government faces the challenges of a wave of refugees from Somalia, tribal warfare in the north and the constant threat of terrorism. Since February, wheat prices in Yemen have doubled and the price of rice and cooking oil has increased by a fifth. And since the end of March, people have died in Yemen in unrest over bread prices.

Within the last quarter, food prices have increased by 145 percent in Lebanon and 20 percent in Syria. "Even parsley, for which we paid almost nothing in the past, has suddenly tripled in price," complains one resident of the Syrian capital Damascus.

Iraq and Sudan, once the "bread baskets" of the Arab world, are nowadays dependent on the World Food Programme. More than a million people in Iraq and 2 million in Sudan's Darfur region require food aid. Life in Darfur, Sudan's western province, has always been difficult. The Sahara has shifted southward in the last four decades, while rainfall has declined dramatically. Yields of sorghum, the area's most important grain crop, have dropped by two-thirds.

The civil war in Sudan has made more than 2 million people in refugee camps completely dependent on food aid. Fields in the region have not been farmed for years. "People are dying before our eyes, while the world looks on," says Johan van der Kamp of the German aid organization Deutsche Welthungerhilfe.


Food prices in Haiti are reported to have risen by 50 to 100 per cent in the last year, hitting the vast majority of the population -- who live on less than $2 a day -- particularly hard.

Developing countries faced a similar challenge more than a generation ago, which led to the advent of the so-called Green Revolution. Through the use of fertilizer, pesticides and hybrid seed, farmers in developing countries were able to boost their harvests considerably. Some now believe that it is time to launch a second green revolution. The heads of research at agricultural conglomerates are convinced that genetic engineering could be the answer to the world's food problems. But the question is: how long would it take?

Food shortages have even become an important issue in affluent areas, like Dubai, where supermarkets have pledged not to raise the prices of 20 staple foods for at least one year. The goal, clearly, is to prevent dissatisfaction within the city's legions of Indian and Pakistani construction workers. Without them, the enormous hotels, museums and artificial islands with which Dubai is making such a stir in the world would not exist. Foreign workers are paid their meager wages in the local currency, the dirham, which is tied to the falling dollar.

The beneficiaries of globalization on the Gulf can ill afford food riots in the shadow of their skyscrapers and shopping malls. "The consequences of discontent, anger in the Middle East can be more geo-political than they may be elsewhere," Robin Lodge of the United Nations World Food Programme recently told the news agency Reuters. Nowhere is this truer than in Egypt.


Many observers feel that the Haiti riots are just a foretaste of global food-related unrest to come.

Saad Ibrahim owns a small snack shop in Cairo in a neighborhood behind the Al-Azhar Mosque. He sells dishes like noodles and chickpeas in tomato sauce, and his shop is in a good location. Nevertheless, most of the faithful now walk quickly past his shop after Friday prayers. "I have fewer customers every day," says Ibrahim.

Last fall a ton of noodles cost about 1,500 Egyptian pounds, or a little more than €175 ($276). Since then, prices have tripled. Ibrahim blames the government for the price hike. "As an agricultural country," he says, "we could grow everything ourselves, instead of importing it for a lot of money."

Thirty-two million of Egypt's population of 80 million get by on €1 ($1.58 ) a day, and 16 million on even less. The price of cooking oil alone has risen by 40 percent within the last year. Inflation jumped to above 12 percent in February, and the higher cost of wheat has had an especially adverse impact.


Rising food prices have sparked violent protests around the world. Five people were killed and hundreds injured during recent riots in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti.

"Aish baladi," a soft, round flatbread, is a mainstay of the Egyptian diet. The state has subsidized it for decades, which has helped to preserve calm. But for how much longer can this system function? The lines are getting longer in front of bakeries that sell the subsidized bread, as more and more Egyptians depend on government aid. Riots in recent weeks claimed at least 11 lives after corrupt bakers sold inexpensive, subsidized flour at high prices on the black market, triggering an angry response from the public.

Meanwhile, the government has slated $2.5 billion (€1.58 billion) of its new budget for bread subsidies. But providing cheap bread comes with its own bizarre consequences. Some farmers are already feeding bread to their livestock because of the exorbitant cost of animal feed.

Raising cattle is a profitable business because rising incomes in some developing countries mean that more and more consumers can afford to eat meat. The new middle class in Delhi and Beijing is no longer satisfied with traditional diets high in foods like rice and lentils. But it takes seven kilograms of feed and vast quantities of water to produce just one kilogram of beef, which only drives up prices.

In Jordan, which has a modern system of agriculture, the cost of staple foods has increased by 60 percent within a year. "I can hardly sell my vegetables anymore," says Hussein Bureidi, a vendor who operates a stand near the Grand Mosque in the Jordanian capital Amman. "How can this go on?" King Abdullah fears a return of the 1996 food riots, when angry citizens clashed with police in the city of Karak.

In Algeria, the prices of cooking fat, corn oil, sugar and flour have doubled within six months. With the exception of an inadequate, 15-percent increase in salaries for civil servants, the government has done little to fend off what Radio Algiers called an "attack on our standard of living." Until now, oil and gas revenues have not been used to fund additional food subsidies. If this were the case, the government might find itself no longer able to service its foreign debt on time.

But India has the largest number of underfed people, about 220 million. Aptly enough, two international conferences on the food crisis took place in New Delhi last week. Jacques Diouf, the Senegalese head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), blamed the dilemma on rapid growth in demand in both China and India. The crisis, Diouf said, could expand into an unprecedented catastrophe.

China has close to a quarter of the world's population to feed, but only 7 percent of its farmland. A similar situation applies in India. This means that both countries must import food on a large scale, prompting many exporting countries to impose export quotas so that their own citizens are not suddenly forced to go without.

When Haiti's hungry poor went on a rampage last week, the United States closed its embassy there as a precaution. The incidents also alarmed British Prime Gordon Brown, who wrote a letter to his Japanese counterpart, Yasuo Fukuda, the current chairman of the G-8 nations. In the letter, Brown recommended that the international community endeavor to prepare a "fully coordinated response" to rampant hunger.

It would not come a moment too soon.

RÜDIGER FALKSOHN; AMIRA EL AHL, JENS GLÜSING, ALEXANDER JUNG, PADMA RAO, THILO THIELKE, VOLKHARD WINDFUHR, BERNHARD ZAND

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

[simplesimon]

Those clever anti-semitic Czarist secret police wrote (Protocol 6):

[James C]

[Rory Winter]

Bolivia's President Evo Morales calls for 'reparations to the earth'
http://therealnews.com/web/index.php

At UN forum on indigenous issues, Bolivian president calls for global economic overhaul 10 hours ago.



President Evo Morales outlined a plan at the UN on Tuesday to rescue the world from environmental degradation and injustice. Drawing connections between free-market economics, excessive consumption, environmental problems and social injustice, the Bolivian leader urged the world to “put an end to the exploitation of human beings and the pillage of natural resources” by rejecting free-market theory and reallocating the money spent on war to fighting environmental and climate problems.

See Video at http://tinyurl.com/6bwd2g

Extraordinary ALBA Summit begins in Caracas


Chávez and Morales during the reception of the Bolivian president at Miraflores Palace

[festival of snickers]

rice rationing in california costco

[blackcat]

http://consumerist.com/382141/costco-one-bag-of-rice-per-customer-plea se

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2008/240408Wal-Mart.htm

[festival of snickers]

theyre going to starve us to death

[Rory Winter]

[zimboy69]

i dont understand whats going on
i used to buy a loaf of bread for around 70-80p a year ago now its £1.20 at least
is all food rising by 20 ish percent a year


why whats going on to do that


i could understand food going up by a couple of pence a year above inflation but such a big rise feels like somone is behind it

[fish5133]

"Let them eat cake"

Gotta get revenue for the war somehow or other

[James C]

[redadare]

Well actually James C, there are not millions of food producers out there. There are millions of very small, and in the context of a global food crisis, not relevant suppliers and there are the real food producers and controllers of food production.

Food production and processing is handled by a very small number of vertically integrated global (mostly US) businesses, including Cargill, Continental Grain, Bunge and ADM. And something like 40% of all seed, especially maize and rice is GM. Again, the supply of these is controlled by a very small number of global businesses.

And none of their shareholders are going hungry!

[truthseeker john]

We know why this is and it's an ochestrated effort to reduce the world's population.


http://www.avaaz.org/en/world_food_crisis/

World Leaders: stop the food crisis

We've plunged into a world food crisis-- soaring crop prices sowing inflation and squeezing households round the world, 100 million more facing starvation and food riots flaring from Egypt to Bangladesh. In Sierra Leone alone rice prices have doubled, leaving 90% of the country unable to provide food for their family--so we're joining with their foreign minister Zainab Bangura (right) to press world leaders to act.

Both rapid emergency action and fundamental reform are needed to end this crisis, so we'll deliver the campaign in the coming days and weeks to a string of key political meetings and summits--add your name urgently to the petition below, then watch Zainab's video message and spread the word:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/world_food_crisis/

[truthseeker john]

[truthseeker john]

[truthseeker john]

http://www.nineeleven.co.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=14506

[James C]

[truthseeker john]

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/low-prices -force-farmers-to-give-up-on-cauliflowers-775599.html
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE0D8113CF930A25754C 0A96F958260
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/us/28labor.html
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/12/2476/

[redadare]

[truthseeker john]

What is this if not a conspiracy?

http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/whatwewant/trade.shtml

ROBBED, RIPPED OFF and RUINED...

Something is very wrong with world trade - it's filling the pockets of the rich while ripping off the world's poorest people. Why is this happening? What can we do? Read on to find out why MakePovertyHistory is calling for Trade Justice.

Millions of people are stuck in the trade trap. No matter how hard they work, they earn less every year. The situation is so dismal, half the world's population now lives on less than US$2 a day - roughly the cost of a burger.

Why are people cheated of a proper living?

Trade rules

You may not be aware of them, but trade rules control how countries do business with each other. They are agreed at international level, and are supposed to make sure nations compete openly and fairly.

In reality they don't.

That's because the rules are rigged - loaded in favour of the wealthiest countries and their business interests.

So no matter how hard people work in the developing world, or how much their countries produce, trade relationships benefit the rich world most.

The result is misery for hundreds of millions of people who just want the chance to make a living, feed themselves, send their kids to school and create a better future for the next generation.

So who's behind these unfair trade rules?

A handful of big international organisations set the rules and policies controlling the way we trade.

The problem is policies aren't decided democratically, but on the basis of who has the most economic clout. While paying lip-service to fairness, the richest countries, with their almost limitless resources, steer decision-making in their interests.

Poor countries lose out time and again.


Meet the big boys

Three main bodies combine to write the rules of trade:

World Trade Organisation (WTO)
World Bank
International Monetary Fund (IMF)

All three are dominated by the world's richest nations.

[blackcat]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/03/biofuels.renewableen ergy

[Sherlock Holmes]

[paul wright]

Well it's bollox and a scam, but we ought to wasting less and producing more
I'm all in favour of local production, but anyhow this nonsense is gradually being forced on us with the Codex manipulated dead and gm food soon to be forced on us
We'd better get outside the grid for consumption and self-help before 01/01/10

[blackcat]

[Sherlock Holmes]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/09/healthandwellbeing .foodanddrink

In praise of ... Japanese food

Editorial
The Guardian,
Wednesday July 9, 2008

Poor Katsuhiro Nakamura. The chef - the first from Japan to win a Michelin star for his cooking, in Paris, a city convinced that it is home to the world's best cuisine - was proud of the "blessings of the earth and the sea social dinner" he cooked for G8 leaders this week. The menu was spectacular, including kelp-flavoured cold Kyoto beef shabu-shabu and boiled prawn with jellied tosazu vinegar among its 19 dishes. But Mr Nakamura's timing was terrible. He served the huge meal just after Gordon Brown called on people to eat less. It is not known what the British prime minister (probably more of a Tunnock's Tea Cake sort of man) thought of the dishes. But Japanese food has certainly presented the world with a problem: its popularity, and Japan's appetite for fresh seafood of the sort served up so lovingly by Mr Nakamura, has been bad news for the environment. Tuna stocks are being sacrificed to sushi lunches munched at office desks around the globe. Free marketeers, too, may object to Japan's careful protection of its farming industry. None of this makes Japanese cooking anything other than one of the world's great cuisines, even if the food served in Japanese homes has little to do with the flamboyant excess of a world leaders' banquet. People in the country eat modestly, healthily and well, and care about fresh produce, seasonality and taste - all good lessons for western leaders fretting about their own countries' unhealthy, bloated populations.

[Dogsmilk]

[Sherlock Holmes]

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/food/2008/07/g8_japan_food_menu.html

On the menu at the G8
The menu for the G8 summit has been revealed. Tim Hayward doesn't know which is more depressing - the leaders' hypocrisy or the incompetent PR
July 7, 2008 3:50 PM


G8 leaders and their spouses join in a toast at the beginning of the G8 Social Dinner at the Hotel Windsor. Photograph: Getty

The Hotel Windsor at Lake Toya on the island of Hokkaido in Japan, has been turned into a fortress for the duration of the G8 summit. The public are kept outside a wide security perimeter, the Japanese airforce is overflying to prevent suicide attacks from the air, media access is strictly controlled yet it looks like the entire thing is being undermined by a menu.

The conference organisers have proudly released the menu for a dinner banquet offering 19 different dishes which the delegates will attend after a busy day discussion the global food crisis. Unsurprisingly, the world's media, currently faced with reporting the now predictable series of disheartening climbdowns and volte faces by the major powers have jumped on the story with alacrity.

Just in case you've suddenly lost your appetite, here are some of the menu highlights (all very much sic):

Dinner

Corn-stuffed caviar
Smoked salmon and sea urching "pain surprise" style
Winter lily bulb and summer savoury
Kelp-flavoured cold kyoto beef shabu-shabu, asparagus dressed with sesame cream
Diced fatty fles of tuna fish, avocado and jellied soy sauce and Japanese herb "shiso"
Boiled clam, tomato, Japanese herb "shiso" in jellied clear soup of clam
Water shield and pickled conger dressed with vinegar soy sauce
Boiled prawn with jellied tosazu-vinegar
Grilled eel rolled around burdock strip
Sweet potato
Fried and seasoned Goby with soy sauce and sugar
Hairy Crab "Kegani" bisque soup
Salt-grilled bighand thornyhead with vinegary water pepper sauce
Milk fed lamb from "shiranuka" flavoured with aromatic herbs and mustard
Roasted lamb and cepes and black truffle with emulsion sauce of lamb's stock and pine seed oil
Special cheese selection, lavender honey and caramelised nuts
G8 fantasy dessert

... And it would be deeply wrong in any assessment to forget the selection of wines on offer ...

Wine list

Le Reve grand cru champagne
Japanese saki
Corton Charlemagne 2005
Chateau Latour burgundy
Ridge California Monte Bello 1997
Tokaji Essencia 1999 from Hungary

Partly it's the bloated menu English that makes this sound so ludicrous - the chef Katsuhiro Nakamura is Michelin-starred so we should probably expect it - but when juxtaposed with the supposed purpose of the summit it becomes obscene.

To be sure, no-one expects senior politicians discussing poverty and hunger to survive off airdropped rice and muddy water with electrolyte powder but surely someone must have seen this coming. They've been planning this for years. Thousands of people in governments, press departments, catering and security have been through every moment of this event with microscopic attention.

They've ensured there's no chance of unsightly protest, no chance of a momentary security lapse. They've organised for hundreds of VIP politicians to be in just the right place at just the right time with all the information at their fingertips to solve our global problems and the first big story that leaks out is this.

I'm not sure which is more depressing: the hypocrisy or the incompetence.

[Dogsmilk]

I just hope the catering staff managed to add their own 'ingredients' to some dishes.
What wouldn't I give to piss in Gordon Brown's clam soup.
And do a few other things I daren't say.

Shower