Author Archives: Lila

Why Kashmir Should Go Its Way

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Seen on an Indian blog, suggesting why it’s better for Indians to let Kashmir go:”

Military: Their neighbours will be India, Pakistan and China. No country can claim such a host of dangerously unstable, nuclear armed, overambitious, territorially hungry nations. Even NATO membership won’t save you. As Georgia is still finding out.

Economy: It saves us the blank cheque that we write them every year, and we can actually have greater control over them since we will be their biggest and only trading partner (no routes in from China, and Pakistan doesn’t have an economy). We will control the only safe air routes into Srinagar, and the only all weather road and train link into Kashmir. Man, we can make them dance like a monkey on a stick. Maybe they’ll even provide as much entertainment as the erstwhile “Royal” Nepal.

Politics: Watch as Geelani and his ilk find that fasts, bandhs, marches, strikes, threats to sign up with militants is not exactly a popular way to run a Government. It’ll be great fun on a slow news day.

They get to keep Arundhati Roy.”

[Arundati is a noisy fan of ‘let Kashmir go.’]

Read the rest at Churumuri.

The Meisterhucksters of Marketing

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This is an age when huckstering is considered a fine art.
A successful hypester is now a Wagner of marketing, a Van Gogh of persuasion.

This might be vanity or it might be deep-rooted insecurity, it’s hard to tell. It is certainly an inaccurate use of language.

But these days, counting yourself an artist is not a matter of precise definition. It is a kind of self-anointing, the kind typical of the mob mind? We live in an age where there are no priesthoods we can believe in. What could be more democratic than an order into which anyone can be inducted, with a clever turn of phrase, a dab of paint….or a long form sales letter?

You might say, so what? What if salesmen think they are painting the Sistine Chapel? What’s wrong with it?

So many things, it would be hard to know where to start.

In the first place, it reeks of envy…..

Terrific salesmen are not Michelangelos or Leonardos. It would be flattery to call them even hacks.

A salesman does a very necessary and important task. He might do it superbly. That does not make him an artist, let alone an artistic genius.

There may be novelists for whom writing is a business and salesmen for whom selling is a pleasure, but in general there is a difference between activities that have their own reasons for being (the sciences and arts) and activities that are means to those things (selling).

A great artist is not an easy thing to come by. A number of things have to get together – talent so extraordinary as to occur only once in generations… the necessary training…the proper socio-economic soil… enough physical and intellectual vitality…drive…luck…

So many things, in fact, that it isn’t really in anyone’s hands to “decide” to be an artist of that stature. If it is given to you, it will be. If it is not, it will not. Talent does what it can. Genius does what it must, as someone said.

Great art and hype are things that no person of sense, especially a sense of proportion, would confuse or think of comparing. It isn’t just arrogance but arrogant foolishness to think that selling anything, however well, is equivalent to composing the Goldberg Variations.

In fact, a sensible person would laugh at the comparison, if it were not also profoundly sad. It betrays a temperament so shallow it cannot grasp that there are limits to how we shape ourselves. Limits not set by ourselves at all, but by that formless form and ever-changing changelessness that a less self-conscious period in the West called God and the East still calls the Self.

Women Business Leaders in India: Some Notes

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Here are some notes I made recently that turned into a full-fledged article. I thought people interested in the Indian business scene might find it interesting:

Women Business Leaders in India – Are Things Any Better Today?

Women in India do better in business today than they did about 35-40 years ago, but it’s fair to say there’s still a lot more they could do. In the professions and at lower levels things might have gotten better, but at the higher levels, you still don’t see the number of women you’d expect, given the available labor pool (in 2001 women were 48% percent of the population).

There are lots of reasons why Indian women at the top still have problems:

How women do is influenced strongly by how well educated they are. So, the more women have access to schooling, the better they perform economically. That’s why there’s been progress, especially at lower levels. But at the upper level, the situation is different. In the 1970s, you could say the main difficulties were the absence of role models and the shortage of financing and opportunities, which to some extent, still persist. But the overwhelming problem today in upper management remains culture: notions of what women should and should not do in the work place.

Traditional gender roles make female bosses unacceptable to a lot of Indian men. Tradition also places the bulk of family responsibilities on the shoulders of women. (This is strictly a generalization, and in particular cases, just the opposite can be true). Culture demands that women stay at home. That make it harder for them to develop networks and mentoring of the kind that men use to launch business careers.

Then there are problems of perception. Women are often seen as needing more time to balance work and family commitments, even when this isn’t really the case. Many male colleagues see them as opting for (and better at) the “soft-focus” areas of a business rather than its hard core. Women tend to get shunted into roles that provide support, communication, and coordination rather than profit and loss evaluation, or expansion and acquisition. That means that while women account for a good part of the ordinary work-force and mid-level positions, they aren’t so visible in the very highest positions. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, CEO of Biocon, says there’s a credibility hurdle that women face when they go out to get financing. People see them as less willing to take risks and less capable of solving problems and trouble- shooting.

Not much research so far:

Another difficulty is that there isn’t much research on the subject available. What there is supports what I’ve observed. Studies in the last 2 years show that Indian women make up 16 percent at junior levels of work but at the highest level (CEOs), that tapers off to only 1 percent. There are only 2 -3 women in administrative and managerial positions for every 100 economically active people. That’s far behind the rest of the world. And while the rest of the world has spent time researching the matter (for example, Breaking through the Glass Ceiling, ILO, 2004), Indian examples haven’t usually figured in the research.

Of course, some of the problems in India are common to other countries too , problems like sexual harassment, patriarchal attitudes and some gender bias in hiring and employment practices. Just as in other countries, these are likely to get better with targeted effort.

Culture can help women too:

Surprisingly, culture can be a positive too. The statistics for top- level managers and leaders in the US may be better. But there are other areas where Indian culture, counter-intuitively, provides a a friendlier environment.

*Studies show that women in Asia tend to draw more of their income from business than women elsewhere. That’s proof of a solid tradition of female business acumen, even if it’s a tradition that’s largely been centered around the family. (Powerful Indian business women usually came out of powerful Indian business families: Simone Tata, from the Tata family (Trent Ltd); Vidya Chabria (Jumbo Group) and Priya Padamjee (Thermax) all owe their positions to family connections).

But even that might be changing now. Now you can also find a Kiran Mazumdar Shaw. Shaw started the biotech giant Biocon, from her garage, after being turned down for a job as a master brewer. And there is a whole crop of managerial divas – from Naina Kidwai (CEO of HSBC) to Microsoft India’s Neelam Dhawan.

Technology spurs womenomics

*There’s another angle to this. It shows how “culture” as an explanation can cut both ways. In India, engineering had been (and still is) a field for men. One side effect was that the “alternative” discipline of computer science was left wide open for women. So, when the Internet revolution brought the outsourcing industry to India, Indian urban women with computer skills got a good chunk of the financial benefits.

*Technology has helped. Contrary to Luddite rhetoric, globalization and the Info-tech revolution have helped womenomics in India. Take transportation. In the past, it’s been a major barrier for would-be business women in India. Now women can set up shop whenever they turn on their computers. Not only do computers let house-bound women become entrepreneurs, they also open up a whole new market of home-shoppers to whom other businesses can sell. Computers also make networking and mentoring easier and cheaper. An example of a bottom-up network enabled by the computer is the popular Indian work-at-home site, sitagita.com

Some people even credit computer technology with the renaissance of Indian female entrepreneurship. That might not be completely true. But what’s true is that female home businesses are a success story overlooked by activists who focus only on the negatives, like the impact of multinationals on female agricultural workers.

Other cultural factors that help

*Despite the traditionalism shown in gender roles, Indian women leaders, at the highest levels, seem to be judged more fairly. A comparison of national politics in the US and in India bears this out. In the US, female candidates have to suffer far more remarks about their appearance than Indian candidates do. And Indian female business leaders are called upon in the media as much as, or more than, American female business leaders.

I believe that one reason for this is a streak of misogyny hidden under the surface of a lot of popular culture in the US. Being able to command the respect of her peers and subordinates is perhaps the most crucial element in a woman getting to the top. But public culture in the US is permeated by demeaning imagery and language. Violently misogynistic rap lyrics and pornography and sexualized epithets for women do not help the perception of them as workers. Asian cultures tend to be less permissive about this.

* Another positive for Indian women in business is that although women are only a tiny part of top management, the women who are at the top are very powerful and in crucial sectors where they make an enormous impact.

How demographics can help women in India

*Demographics also helps in India. India (like China) suffers…and will continue to suffer…a shortage of skilled personnel. This seems incredible given the population figures. But first-class education there really does not reach down as deep as it does in the west. In a number of disciplines, including computer programming and management, there simply aren’t enough people for all the start-ups, expansion and relocation going on. That’s going to be good for women. Human resources departments will have to go after them more actively and groom them for higher positions.

*There are other positives. About a third of India consists of young people below the age of 15. That means that the pool of experienced labor is relatively small and HR departments will be forced to turn to an overlooked resource: women who’re done with rearing their children and want to reenter the job market. Since women live longer than men by several years, there’s no reason why women couldn’t outlast them to reach the top in managerial positions.

*Companies looking to hire Indians who live abroad and relocate them to India are running into obstacles. The Indian- origin employees want pay and benefits equal to other employees. Also, they’re often not in touch with what’s happening in their home country, unless they revisit frequently (as I do). Local employees resent the “foreign-returned” Indians. There are only a few areas where this isn’t so, and two of them are computers and finance. Not surprisingly, some of the most powerful women entrepreneurs and managers are in those areas.

The most important Indian business women

* Who are the most important Indian business women?

It’s difficult for an outsider to judge but it’s possible to pick a dozen of the most visible.

  • The capital markets are important as India opens up to foreign direct investment. And Naina Lal Kidwai, who was the first Indian woman to graduate from Harvard Business School and runs the Indian operations of HSBC, has been named repeatedly on lists of the most prominent Indian business women.

    Lalita Gupte and Kalpana Morparia, the joint managing directors of ICICI Bank, India’s second largest bank are important figures as well.

    So is Manisha Girotra, who chairs the India operation of Swiss banking giant UBS.

  • In Information technology and computers, one of the most visible managers is Neelam Dhawan, head of Microsoft’s Indian operations.

  • In Biotech, the biggest name is Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, who heads Biocon.

  • The automotive industry has also been pretty important in recent developments, with a number of large auto manufacturers opening branches in India (including Ford, Toyota, and Hyundai) and with large-scale investment in highway projects and in other infrastructure.Sulajja Firodia Motwani, joint MD of Kinetic Motor, which manufactures two-wheelers, scooters and motorcycles and various auto components, as well as elevators, escalators and auto parking systems, is a noteworthy figure here. Her company has attracted investment from the likes of Citigroup and is likely to do well as the transportation business profits from the real estate boom in India.

  • Priya Paul, the chairwoman (chairperson is an awful word – I prefer chairman or chairwoman) of Apeejay Surendra Park Hotels is a business woman in a field which has a pivotal role to play now – travel and tourism. Commercial real estate and the hotel business is slated to be very profitable in Asia and Paul is the president of the Hotel Association of India and leads the Indian team at the World Travel and Tourism Council.
  • Health and medicine is an area where India offers extremely competitive rates for world class services and I expect that private medical groups like the Apollo Hospital will do very well, especially as medical tourism grows. Since Apollo caters to that demand, the heads of Apollo, Preetha and Sangita Reddy are positioned at the center of the development.
  • In alternative medicine, Shahnaz Hussain, CEO of Shahnaz Herbals which has hundreds of world wide franchises, was one of the earliest to realize the business potential of Ayurveda and alternative medicine.

  • In the food and beverage industry, Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo’s CEO (and one-time president and CFO) is one of the most noted managers and has been listed among Forbes top 10 women CEOs. She’s also on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of N York, one of the most important banks in the US.
  • Shobana Bhartia (of the famous Birla family) is a news maker in the area of media. She’s is the Vice President of Hindustan Times and was appointed to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament.
  • Vidya Chabria (a non-resident Indian based in Dubai) who took over Jumbo Group (which includes one of the largest distributors of consumer electronics, IT and Telecom in the Middle East as well as several breweries and other companies in India) from her husband,

And you can’t leave out Jyoti Naik, President of Lijjat Papad (pappads are fried lentil crisps very popular in Indian households), the first cooperative business by housewives with no experience to make it big.

My Writing on Women:

My interest in India and Indian women stems from writing about the complexity of language, and about how small groups and businesses (and a contextual approach) do better at catering to the the needs of communities than big businesses.

I am not a gender feminist, although I’ve used the language when it’s useful. I’ve blogged on men’s rights and done some very anti-feminist pieces where I think it’s been warranted.

I would say I’m interested in marrying methodological individualism (from the right) with psycho-social awareness (from the left). Applied complexity theory might be another way of saying it.

Some writing that’s related:

  • “Witches and Bastards,” 2005, Counterpunch, is a complex piece about Indira Gandhi and what it means to be a powerful woman in India. It argues that India is in many ways a very female-centered culture, where even village women are more powerful than many give them credit for being. It also suggests that Gandhian political economy has more sense than it’s been given credit for and might be the basis of a small group approach to politics and the economy. (This is a theme I take up in my book “Mobs, Messiahs and Markets,” 2007)
  • “Missing Women,” 2004 The Gowanus Review – is a piece I did about female foeticide in India that explores cultural and economic explanations and suggests remedies. I make the point about technology and female entrepreneurship for the first time there.

“Psychic Injuries and Double Standards,” – a chapter contributed to One of the Guys(Seal Press, 2007).

It argues that female soldiers should be held to be as accountable as the male soldiers.

  • “The Globalized Village,” Alternet, 2003 (included in the book, The Third World: Alternative Views, 2006)demonstrates how ambiguous language has obscured the negative impact of free market policies on small-scale community efforts. The piece was widely reprinted. I make special note of the impact on village women’s access to water.
  • “How About Your Back Yard?” 2004, Himal South Asian, argues that “north-south” language doesn’t help explain the problem of waste disposal in India, and that turning to multinationals doesn’t help. It actually disrupts the successful efforts of local small groups.
  • *I did an extended research paper on images of India in the American media as part of my graduate studies and also did graduate work in theories of representation focusing on how speech and imagery affect political discourse, with special reference to pornography.
  • This was continued in a series of popular articles in the alternative press, “Iraqi Women and Torture” questioning the media emphasis on the torture of men during the Iraq war. This led to a book on the subject, “The Language of Empire” (MR Press, 2005), which was well-regarded and influenced the work of many establishment journalists.
  • I am contributing an article on torture and performance theory to the Routledge Key Concepts Series, 2009. I make an extended argument to show that depictions of women in violent pornography can be torturous, given the cultural context.

Solzhenitsyn on the Cancer of Conformity

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Alexandr Solzhenitsyn died today. For most of his life, he was the conscience of the Soviet Empire. Some of the most forceful passages in his writing were directed against the intelligentsia who allowed themselves to be puppets for their rulers:

“A man sprouts a tumor and dies — how then can a country live that has sprouted camps and exile?” he asked questioning the complicity of ordinary Russians in the crimes of Stalin’s era.”

More at MSN

Media-Trix: Suspect In 2001 Anthrax Attacks Commits Suicide….

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“Federal prosecutors investigating the 2001 anthrax attacks were planning to indict and seek the death penalty against a top Army microbiologist in connection with anthrax mailings that killed five people. The scientist, who was developing a vaccine against the deadly toxin, committed suicide this week.

The scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, worked for the past 18 years at the government’s biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Md. For more than a decade, he worked to develop an anthrax vaccine that was effective even in cases where different strains of anthrax were mixed, which made vaccines ineffective, according to federal documents reviewed by the AP.

U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the ongoing grand jury investigation, said prosecutors were closing in on Ivins, 62. They were planning an indictment that would have sought the death penalty for the attacks, which killed five people, crippled the postal system and traumatized a nation still reeling from the Sept. 11 attacks….”

More at FOX on a tragic twist in a bizarre case.

Comment:

For those of you who didn’t follow it, here’s the gist.

In 2001 Anthrax-laced mailings killed 5 people and led investigators to the government’s bio-defense labs at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Originally, the mailings looked like they were written by a Middle Eastern or Pakistani person. Relying on a novel technique of literary analysis created by an English professor and written up in Vanity Fair, the FBI shifted suspicion to a bio-terrorism expert, Stephen Hatfill, who was placed under 24-hour surveillance.

Hatfill later sued Vanity Fair and the English professor for the allegations. He also sued the government for leaking the charges that led to his hounding in the media. This June, the government settled (without admitting guilt) for a multi-million dollar figure. Now, another scientist, Bruce Ivins, who has been under investigation for the same attacks, has killed himself.

Hmmm.

So many killer scientists and so little anthrax….

What should we make of this?

Here’s my novel investigative technique. Leaning back in my chair and putting my finger tips together in my best Sherlock style ( I haven’t got a Stradivarius around to saw on…….let alone cocaine), let me pronounce judgment.

Could it be that our dear (almost departed) government was busy concocting “evidence” (with your tax dollars) to bolster their global-crazed-Islamicist-preemptive-porky-military-boondoggling case for going to war in Iraq? And that it didn’t quite fly….

That is to say, the suspicious-Paki-letter-writer part..er… bombed (overlook that imagery, please..).

And could it be that they then tried to distract attention by publicly fingering assorted scapegoats, leading to one of said scapegoats accidentally turning into sacrificial kebab?

And could it also be, dear reader, that I have a future as an FBI consultant….or at least, a Vanity Fair theorist?

For more on this, see Glenn Greenwald’s blog. Greenwald’s raised questions about the anthrax scares earlier.

Their Man in Africa: Chinese Checkered in Zimbabwe

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And what’s the real deal behind the unrelenting bad press for Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe? (Not that we are Mugabe fans here, but anyone who gets trashed regularly in the mainline…sorry…stream media invites lively curiosity, if not outright solicitousness from us). Well, here’s what:

“In April 2007 the chairman of China’s top political advisory body, Jia Qinglin, head of the National Committee of the Chinese Peoples’ Political Consultative Conference, flew to Harare to meet with Mugabe. It was a follow-up to the 2006 Beijing China-Africa Cooperation Summit where the Chinese government invited the heads of more than 40 African states to discuss relations. Africa has become a diplomatic and economic priority for China and its economy.

At that time, Beijing got an open invitation to help develop dormant mines in the country. The deputy speaker of Zimbabwe’s parliament called for more Chinese investment in the country’s mining sector, according to China’s Xinhua news agency. Zimbabwe’s mining laws were changed to allow the government to reallocate mining claims that were not being exploited.

Mining generates half of Zimbabwe’s export revenue. It is the only sector in the country that still has foreign investors after the collapse of the main agricultural sector. Western companies with mining claims in Zimbabwe were not exploiting them. “We would appeal to the Chinese government to come in full force to exploit these minerals,” Zimbabwean Deputy Parliamentary Speaker, Kumbirai Kangai said to the official Xinhua.

Kangai assured potential Chinese investors that they would not expose themselves to legal action if they took over claims held by Western companies.

A few months after, in December 2007, Chinese company, Sinosteel Corporation, acquired 67 percent stake in Zimbabwe’s leading ferrochrome producer and exporter Zimasco Holdings.Zimasco Holdings is the fifth largest high carbonated ferrochrome producer in the world. It used to produce 210,000 tons of high-carbon ferrochrome per year, nearly all of it along the mineral-rich Great Dyke, accounting for 4 percent of global ferrochrome production.

Zimasco has also the world’s second largest reserves of chrome, after South Africa. It was formerly owned by Union Carbide Corporation, now part of Dow Chemicals Corp.

Oh, oh! Alarm bells went ringing in London and in Washington at that news….”

More by the straight-talking Bill Engdahl.

Media-Trix: Rehearsing Our Rulers

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“The most interesting of the seminars was presented by Dr. Vincent Covello, a crisis communication expert who told us an amazing story. His group had rehearsed former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his officers in how to respond to situations that included planes hitting the World Trade Center. Statements had been prepared and rehearsed way in advance of September 11, 2001. Suddenly, the poise and leadership that Giuliani was admired for seemed hollow.

Every eventuality, said the crisis expert, should be prepared for and rehearsed so that those in charge look cool and confident when it happens. In fact, said the expert, nothing should be left to chance. Former Gulf War Commander Norman Schwarzkopf had rehearsed the famous tear he shed during a Barbara Walters interview when she asked about the casualties of the first Gulf go ’round.

More in an interesting post at The Congress Blog.

PC Professoriat and Non-PC Stars

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“A major new study of the political correctness of faculty members may challenge assumptions all around. For those who deny that there is an identifiable group of PC professors, the study says that there is in fact a group with consistently common perspectives, largely based on their views of discrimination (that it exists and matters).

But for those who say that these tenured radicals have all the power in academe, the study finds that politically correct professors’ views on the role of politics in hiring decisions aren’t very different from the views of other professors. Further, the study finds that a critical mass of politically incorrect professors is doing quite well in securing jobs at the most prestigious universities in the United States, despite claims that such scholars are an endangered species there……”

More at Inside Higher Education News.

“Simmons analyzes disciplines, and finds sharp differences — largely consistent with previous studies about disciplines and political leanings. Humanities and social science fields tend to have higher politically correct rankings, while professional and science disciplines do not. The table that follows is in order of political correctness. Psychology is the only field where a majority of professors are politically correct. Four fields — finance, management information, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering — had no one who was politically correct….”

 Comment 

Global Games: The Ugly Face of Inflation

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“Ugly math
On her way to the market, Lingani explained the ugly math: A year ago, she could feed her entire family a nutritious meal of meat and vegetables and peanut sauce for about 75 cents. But now the family gets much lower-quality food for twice the price.

She said the cost of six pounds of cornmeal has risen from 75 cents to $1.50. A kilogram — 2.2 pounds — of rice cost 60 cents last year and costs a little more than $1 now. Other basics such as salt and cooking oil have also doubled in price.

Fuel costs have more than doubled for trucks that haul food to landlocked Burkina Faso, helping keep food prices high.

Beef or goat meat is now so expensive — about $1.20 for a tiny portion — that the family has given up meat completely, eating cheap dried fish instead. Rather than seasoning their sauces with vegetables and peanuts, they now use the tough leaves of baobab trees, the gnarly giants that flourish here in the dry lands south of the Sahara.

To soften the sour taste of the leaves, Lingani mixes in potash, a paste made by boiling down water strained through ashes from wood fires.

“In the past, our money would last the whole month. We might even have some left over,” Lingani said. “But now as soon as it arrives, we spend it.”

Dinner happens only if there is a bit of food left over from lunch. Even then, she said, there is rarely enough left for women.

“When the children ask for food, we have to give it to them,” she said. “We’re mothers.”

Thus the Washington Post on some of the weakest victims of food price inflation, poor mothers in Burkina Faso in Africa, where energy prices have doubled recently.

Comment:

Meanwhile, over in Zimbabwe, suffering from 2.2 million percent inflation, the 100 million…oops, billion... dollar note has just been injected into the national blood stream, for a little extra sugar high. That’s following on the heels of the 10 million dollar note this January and then in swift succession, the 100 million, 250 million, 5 billion, 25 billion and 50 billion notes, according to this report from AFP. Even then, economists say the inflation rate is grossly underreported.

And back here in the USA, GHQ, Globalization, the picture isn’t pretty either.

There are of course the poor. They may be always with us, as the Good Book says, but rarely in such numbers…..and rarer yet for such reasons – adjustable rate mortgages.

But the middle-class too is scrambling, raiding their IRA’s to pay the bills. That is, if they’ve managed to get them. And organic farmers who used to have to fight off insects and birds now have a new plague to deal with – diesel thieves who work round the clock to siphon of gas they can sell for half price to local truckers.

Too bad, trying to solve the energy problem seems only to have added..er…fuel to the crisis. A confidential World Bank Report tells us that about 75 percent of the 140 percent price rise between 2002 and 2008 was driven by the diversion of agriculture to biofuels….

If you got rich in the ethanol scam, try sleeping soundly on that number.