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The Math That Predicted The Revolutions Sweeping The Globe
Motherboard ^ | February 19, 2014

Posted on 02/24/2014 10:13:24 PM PST by JerseyanExile

It's happening in Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand, Bosnia, Syria, and beyond. Revolutions, unrest, and riots are sweeping the globe. The near-simultaneous eruption of violent protest can seem random and chaotic; inevitable symptoms of an unstable world. But there's at least one common thread between the disparate nations, cultures, and people in conflict, one element that has demonstrably proven to make these uprisings more likely: high global food prices.

Just over a year ago, complex systems theorists at the New England Complex Systems Institute warned us that if food prices continued to climb, so too would the likelihood that there would be riots across the globe. Sure enough, we're seeing them now. The paper's author, Yaneer Bar-Yam, charted the rise in the FAO food price index—a measure the UN uses to map the cost of food over time—and found that whenever it rose above 210, riots broke out worldwide. It happened in 2008 after the economic collapse, and again in 2011, when a Tunisian street vendor who could no longer feed his family set himself on fire in protest.

Bar-Yam built a model with the data, which then predicted that something like the Arab Spring would ensue just weeks before it did. Four days before Mohammed Bouazizi's self-immolation helped ignite the revolution that would spread across the region, NECSI submitted a government report that highlighted the risk that rising food prices posed to global stability. Now, the model has once again proven prescient—2013 saw the third-highest food prices on record, and that's when the seeds for the conflicts across the world were sown.

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(Excerpt) Read more at motherboard.vice.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: agriculture; bosnia; food; foodprices; havesvshavenots; hokum; malthusianwetdream; opec; redistribution; revolutionarywave; syria; thailand; ukraine; venezuela; whinewhinewhinewhine; yaneerbaryam
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To: Grimmy

“Never thought of this as a trigger.”
***************

Madame - the peasants are angry as they have no bread.

“Let them eat cake”.


21 posted on 02/25/2014 1:12:00 AM PST by 21twelve (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2185147/posts 2013 is 1933 REBORN)
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To: steve86

Not discounting the food prices, however, the common thread I see from 2008 on is obama.


22 posted on 02/25/2014 1:25:27 AM PST by AllAmericanGirl44
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To: JerseyanExile; All
Read and weep: http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130911_OurCoolingClimateCapitolHill16thSeptember2013.pdf

and: “The official view in Norway is in contrast to what the people experience because of cooling weather: Late spring gives flooding and avalanches when late snow-melting in the mountains. Water pipes freeze because of early and deep frost in the winter. Insect populations down 40% in 5 years because of cool and wet summers. This of cause is bad for pollination of fruit and berries. The grain harvest in Norway this summer is down 18% from average the last 5 years, despite increase in area and better seeds. But officially it is getting warmer.”

Norway is not known as a major wheat producer...but it's production is in decline because of colder weather


23 posted on 02/25/2014 2:35:14 AM PST by spokeshave (OMG.......Schadenfreude overload is not covered under Obamacare :-()
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To: spokeshave

And for what reason are we to “weep”?


24 posted on 02/25/2014 2:39:00 AM PST by Gene Eric (Don't be a statist!)
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To: Gene Eric
"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow,and our planet began to heal.

Welcome King Barack "Canute" Obama the Great.....

...Obama issues an Executive Order to the Sun...

....to increase it's magnetic field....

and make a good crop of sunspots before elections in 2016....

(PhysOrg.com) -- Sunspot formation is triggered by a magnetic field, which scientists say is steadily declining. They predict that by 2016 there may be no remaining sunspots, and the sun may stay spotless for several decades.

The last time the sunspots disappeared altogether was in the 17th and 18th century, and coincided with a lengthy cool period on the planet known as the Little Ice Age....and lasted 400 years.

Good luck surviving with no electricity and GE modified seeds.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news203746768.html#jCp also


25 posted on 02/25/2014 2:40:39 AM PST by spokeshave (OMG.......Schadenfreude overload is not covered under Obamacare :-()
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To: Grimmy

‘Twas famous during the French Revolution.
“Why are the French people revolting?”
“It is because they have no bread.”
“Well, let them eat cake.”

The aristocracy in France was clueless then.
Many in Washington still believe that propping up the price of corn today (the most affordable of grains) is a good thing.


26 posted on 02/25/2014 2:43:09 AM PST by Qout
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To: spokeshave

Given our agricultural propensity, I foresee a way out of our debt.

BTW, thanks for the illustrative post!


27 posted on 02/25/2014 2:47:01 AM PST by Gene Eric (Don't be a statist!)
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To: JerseyanExile

Just another thing the elite politicians exempt themselves from - we pay for their food, so who cares what it costs?


28 posted on 02/25/2014 2:49:38 AM PST by P.O.E. (Pray for America)
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To: Impy

Cut functionality of EBT cards for a week and you will see how fast this spreads to the US.


29 posted on 02/25/2014 3:41:53 AM PST by Former Proud Canadian (Cruz/Palin 2016)
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To: Gene Eric
In the 21st century people forget what is really needed for survival. Without water and food human beings die. It's that simple. Energy allows you to produced more food, move it to cities, and process it. It also allows you to move and purify water.

Countries with poor water resources cannot sustain large populations. China comes to mind.

Fun fact, 20% of the world's fresh water resides in the Great Lakes.

30 posted on 02/25/2014 3:50:25 AM PST by Former Proud Canadian (Cruz/Palin 2016)
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To: Former Proud Canadian
Countries with poor water resources cannot sustain large populations. China comes to mind.

China's "re-unification" with Tibet gave the direct access to the Himilayan glaciers. They'll divert that water for the own population and the fresh water it supplied to surrounding coutries will start to dry up.

31 posted on 02/25/2014 4:02:21 AM PST by tacticalogic
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To: Impy

Our food prices have fallen by 30% in the last 40 years. As a result, the US has the lowest food prices in the world, and the lowest food prices in the history of the world.

Here Are The Countries That Spend The Most On Food;
http://www.businessinsider.com/countries-that-spend-the-most-on-food-2014-2#ixzz2uKxDwBAg


32 posted on 02/25/2014 4:40:37 AM PST by Balding_Eagle (Over production, one of the top 5 worries for the American Farmer every year.)
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To: FreedomPoster; 21twelve

“I’d love to see some analysis of the effect of ethanol requirements in gasoline (a hidden corn subsidy) on food prices linked to this.”

No matter the effect, we still have the lowest priced food in the history of the world: http://www.businessinsider.com/countries-that-spend-the-most-on-food-2014-2#ixzz2uKxDwBAg


33 posted on 02/25/2014 4:45:56 AM PST by Balding_Eagle (Over production, one of the top 5 worries for the American Farmer every year.)
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To: Balding_Eagle

We affect prices in the rest of the world with our brain dead energy policy / corn subsidy. Our policy creates some of this unrest.


34 posted on 02/25/2014 4:54:58 AM PST by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: Balding_Eagle

We affect prices in the rest of the world with our brain dead energy policy / corn subsidy. Our policy creates some of this unrest.


35 posted on 02/25/2014 4:54:58 AM PST by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: FreedomPoster
We affect prices in the rest of the world with our brain dead energy policy / corn subsidy. Our policy creates some of this unrest.

That's a good thing.

36 posted on 02/25/2014 4:57:27 AM PST by Balding_Eagle (Over production, one of the top 5 worries for the American Farmer every year.)
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To: Balding_Eagle

I’ll have to disagree. Burning food and creating a subsidy while arguably increasing human misery is rarely good policy in my book. You’ll have to work much harder than you have to convince me otherwise in this case.


37 posted on 02/25/2014 5:02:01 AM PST by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: LibWhacker

But he’s not going to be president forever.

***
Define “forever”....


38 posted on 02/25/2014 5:08:21 AM PST by Bigg Red (O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! Ps 8)
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To: FreedomPoster

For more than 50 year the American Farmer has shown the rest of the world how to grow so much food that they not only could easily feed all their people, but they could have enough left over that they could burn their foodstuffs to heat their homes.

We’ve proven the above by example, all the while lowering our food prices by 30% over the past 40 years.

The rest of the world has told us to stuff it, THEY know better than we do.

There is a price for stupidity and stubbornness, let the bastards starve to death. And don’t bother us for any more free food. We want to burn it to fuel our cars and heat our homes. The rest can rot in the fields.


39 posted on 02/25/2014 5:09:15 AM PST by Balding_Eagle (Over production, one of the top 5 worries for the American Farmer every year.)
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To: JerseyanExile
"Everything now is very sensitive to what will happen with the ethanol mandate," Bar-Yam tells me.

If we continue to burn the food, the cities will follow.

40 posted on 02/25/2014 5:11:02 AM PST by Constitutionalist Conservative (I'm a constitutionalist, not a libertarian. Huge difference.)
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