Food Riots in Mozambique

Food prices have risen in 2010, driven especially by the drought and fires in Russia that have limited the harvest being exported from that country. In very poor and rapidly growing countries like Mozambique even a small rise in price can severely threaten a family's food security and the frustration has led to violence, although the fact that the rioting was spurred by young men is not surprising in a country like Mozambique where one out of every ten people is a male aged 15-24.

The trouble this week started Wednesday in the capital, Maputo. Protesters, most of them young men, started marching peacefully but then began throwing stones, burning tires and looting shops. Police opened fire, and tourists and business people were trapped in their hotels or at the airport as mobs cut off the airport road. At least seven people were killed and scores injured.

The government has urged calm, saying it can do little about the high prices, which were sparked by a drop in the value of the import-dependent nation's currency. It pointed out that Mozambique grows only 30 percent of the wheat it needs. "The importation of wheat and other commodities incur high costs in international markets," government spokesman Antonio Nkutumula said.

There has been a concern that recent food prices might be similar to the spike in 2008, but that was caused largely by speculation on corn prices brought about by the short-lived and ill-conceived idea to to create biofuels instead of food out of corn.

This Is NOT How to Cope With Population Growth

A tragic story unfolded in Maryland (suburban Washington, DC) today when police were forced to shoot and kill a man who broke into the offices of the Discovery Channel with explosives taped to his chest and held three employees at gunpoint. He had been convicted of disorderly conduct for a protest he organized outside Discovery's offices in February 2008, and had been on probation which included coming no closer than 500 feet to those offices. However, his probation had ended two weeks ago.

"The Discovery Channel produces many so-called 'Environmental Programs' supposedly there to save the planet," Lee [the suspect] said in an ad he took out in a Washington newspaper to promote the protest. "But the truth is things are getting WORSE! Their programs are causing more harm than good."

In court and online, Lee faulted the Discovery Channel for shows as varied as "Future Weapons," "It Takes a Thief" and "Planet Green."

A lengthy posting that could be seen Wednesday on a website registered to Lee said Discovery and its affiliates should stop "encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants," a possible reference to shows like "Kate Plus 8" and "19 Kids and Counting." Instead, he said, the network should air "programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility."

Ironies abound in this sad tale.

The Continuing Conundrum of Immigration

Enforcing immigration laws is an expensive process, a cost that too few people take into consideration in the ongoing debate about immigration reform in the United States, as my son, Gregory Weeks at UNCC, points out today. At the same time, we are coping with an unanticipated consequence of the war in Iraq--refugees. When the US invaded Iraq, the Bush administration actually expected that US soldiers would be treated as liberators, and in the aftermath of the invasion, the already small number of applications from Iraqis for resettlement in the US was cut nearly to zero. As it turned out, the Iraqi reaction to US presence was not so friendly and Iraqis who have worked in some capacity for the US and its allies have found themselves in harm's way. In early 2008 the United States Congress passed the Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act, which dramatically increased the number of refugees from Iraq, especially among the Chaldean Christian population. But the process seems to have been slowing down, and as US troops are leaving Iraq, there is now concern that the US is exposing many Iraqis to danger because the paperwork required to enter the US is so onerous.

Recession Blamed for Drop in US Birth Rate

The National Center for Health Statistics just released its tabulation of births in the United States for 2009 showing that the number of births declined for the second year in a row and, since the population continues to grow, this means that the crude birth rate (CBR) has dropped to a level not seen in many years. As the economy boomed in the early part of the decade, the number of births in the US reached record highs--peaking at 4.3 million in 2007, and the CBR rose steadily from 2002 through 2007 when it hit 14.3 births per thousand population. In 2009 the number of births declined to 4.1 million and the CBR was down to 13.5.

"When the economy is bad and people are uncomfortable about their financial future, they tend to postpone having children. We saw that in the Great Depression the 1930s and we're seeing that in the Great Recession today," said Andrew Cherlin, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University.

"It could take a few years to turn this around," he added.

Despite this drop, there are still 2 million more people born each year in the US than there are people dying and the death rate has been dropping. Indeed, the infant mortality rate declined between 2007 and 2009 so a slightly higher fraction of the babies born in 2009 will survive compared to 2007.

Humanitarian Crisis Keeps Unfolding in Pakistan

The floods in Pakistan continue to devastate crops and livelihoods, displacing people and their animals in ways that are almost unimaginable. The New York Times reports on a village that had already been evacuated because of flooding suddenly becoming a safe haven for people whose villages were in even worse shape. The aftermath of this natural disaster is obviously hard to discern, but it will almost certainly be wrapped into the already changing political structure of Pakistan as it moves from a largely rural, feudal-based society to a more urban nation. At independence from India in 1947 only one in six Pakistanis lived in an urban area. By 2010 that had increased to more than one in three, and the United Nations projects that by mid-century six out of every ten Pakistanis will be urban. Karachi is already a city of 13 million and Lahore has another 7 million--a reasonable approximation to the rank-size rule.