free trade and the fat cat industrial/financial/agriculture complex
has stripped the third world of its ability to feed itself.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080418/mongolia_inflation_protest.html
Mongolians flood capital to protest food prices
Friday April 18, 9:40 am ET
Thousands of Mongolians stage protest in capital over rising food
prices
ULAN BATOR, Mongolia (AP) -- More than 20,000 people flooded the
center of Mongolia's capital Friday to demand that the government do
something about rising food prices that have nearly tripled in some
cases.
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Holding banners saying "Stop inflated food prices" and "Let the
salaries of the working class increase," the protesters marched
peacefully to demand that prices for rice, meat and flour be
stabilized.
"We demand that the government of Mongolia take concrete action to
stop the rising consumer prices which enrich a few companies and make
lives of thousands of Mongolians unbearable," said S. Ganbaatar,
president of the Mongolian Confederation of Trade Unions, which
organized the protest.
He said the price of a 55-pound bag of flour had risen to $21.40 from
$7.70 four months ago.
He said the confederation would organize a nationwide strike if the
government does not act to lower prices.
The higher wheat prices were passed on to consumers a week ago when
the price of a loaf of bread increased by about 50 percent.
"The increase of bread prices really affects us," said Munkhtuul, a 33-
year-old high school teacher, go like many Mongolians goes by one
name.
"Most of our salary is spent on food items such as meat, bread, rice.
I don't know why food prices kept going up," she said.
Mongolia was self sufficient in wheat grain when Mongolia was
satellite state of the Soviet Union, but after the democratic changes
of the early 1990s many state-owned collective farms were privatized
and collapsed.
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