Originally published on DailyKos, and republished here by permission of the author.

Back in 2008 I wrote two little noticed diaries about speculative buying that helped to drive food prices higher (here and here), and surprise, surprise, our friends from Goldman Sachs are well represented in this mix of global finance companies.

Two years later, the world food market is still seriously exposed to speculators artificially driving up prices and worsening the risks of malnutrition, and according to one of the world’s leading agricultural researchers, Joachim von Braun, the head of the International Food Policy Research Institute (von Brown was one of the first to write about flawed regulatory regimes in banking and finance driving up food prices) an even bigger food crisis is looming, exacerbated as well by climate change. A visit to his site is well worth your time as he speaks eloquently about food and water.

The food crisis of 2007/2008 is now well documented. According to Paul Jay, from 2007 to 2008 the price of maize in Ethiopia went up 141 percent, retail wheat flour in Peshawar, Pakistan, went up 82 percent, rice in Thailand up 73 percent and this had little to do with supply and demand and much more to do with speculation by the usual suspects.

In March of 2008 the price of food commodities hit an all-time high, sending 100 million people into the ranks of the hungry, worldwide.

On May 12, 2009, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released a report showing that same air cargo companies transporting humanitarian aids to Africa also funneled arms into the same volatile parts of the continent.  The research is performed by two British nationals with former ties to governmental and non-governmental organizations.  The report focuses primarily on the messengers of the destabilizing efforts as supposed to the sources.  What could be the logic given by the researchers to go after the air cargo companies, as supposed to the sources who are paying them to transport their cargo?  The former are easier to track. It is from that perspective a recommendation is also offered to boycott the air cargo companies.  The logic behind such recommendation is that, if reputable governmental and humanitarian organizations cease to utilize the services of these messengers, the problem may be obviated.  This approach clearly assumes that reputable organizations (such as governments and NGOs) are not involved with the ‘bad’ cargo (some weapons and illicit drugs) that the aircraft are carrying.  It is also implicitly assumed that if reputable organizations cut off income to these airliners by denying them business, the problem can be curtailed.  Furthermore, it is assumed that the weapons that go to destabilize a region are those that originate from non-reputable organizations, as the report mentions the ones coming from western government are for logistic defense support only.

Western policy in the horn

In the last days of his government, Mengistu Hailemariam sat in front of the Ethiopian parliament and explained why the capture by rebels of a hill four hours drive north of the capital city did not signal defeat for his regime. He reasoned that the reality of military engagement meant that hills are captured and lost all the time with little implication. Never mind that the rebels had one tenth the number of soldiers as the government, and that they were essentially equipped with captured government weapons. He continued to state that even the defeat at Afabet in Eritrea, which astute commentators of the time predicted would be Ethiopia’s Dien Bien Phu, really meant little since Afabet was a small town of 700 inhabitants. Never mind that it contained the largest Ethiopian garrison in Eritrea outside Asmara with the most elite of the Ethiopian fighting force, Nadew ez, within it.

Such egregious miscalculations by policy makers and leaders happen all too often. Typically they lead to the unnecessary extension of violence and suffering without having much altering impact on the final results.