Halting food exports should be illegal, says Caroline Spelman | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Its a long tradition in England to insist on using the market to feed England by extracting food from their colonies and letting those people go hungry. Its what they did to Ireland in the so-called Famine. Tons of food were shipped from Irish estates under guard to English ships while the Irish farm workers who produced it for their landlords starved or emigrated.

Lord Charles Trevelyan, the government administrator in charge of famine relief, said it clearly. He was a great believer in the wisdom and virtues of the "free market.":

"In the middle of that crisis Trevelyan published his views on the matter. He saw the Famine as a "mechanism for reducing surplus population". He described the famine as "The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated. …The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people"."[Wikipedia]

Some people used to say that if women were able to get into power in the government they would bring about more humane and peaceful policies. But it is clear now that women in politics can be as ideological, cruel and bloodthirsty as any man. Margaret Thatcher, Madeline Albright, Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin all come to mind.

Halting food exports should be illegal, says Caroline Spelman guardian.co.uk

The environment minister, Caroline Spelman, today risked incurring the wrath of many major food-growing countries by saying it should be illegal to halt food exports even at times of national crisis.

In a clear reference to Russia and the Ukraine, which temporarily halted exports of wheat and other grains in order to protect supplies for their own people during an unprecedented heatwave last year, she said no country should be allowed to interfere with the global food commodity market.