From Kigali in Rwanda, one of the 5 main screening locations, a slide-show of photographs from the event uploaded on OVI, the video and image platform used to promote PangeaDay content:

From Haifa in Israel, another slide-show of the gathering to watch the event near the Caesarea Port:

During the Event,the friends of Pangea website had live streaming feeds from different places in the world including US, Colombia, Italy, Japan, New Zealand. Other sites, like the Colombian Medellín PangeaDay [es] event had their own website where liveblogging, streaming video and photographs were posted during the event.

Nokia, a PangeaDay partner had the 2008 Nokia Mobile Filmmaking Awards Contest taking place along with the events, and the 5 finalists were flown into one of the 5 different screening locations. You can view the winning videos at this pangeaday OVI site.The finalists were: Rounds all around us by kayoom in India, smile by goofylopez in Indonesia, amazing rainbows! Shot and Edited with my Nokia 93 by ruperthowe in the United Kingdom, The Game -South African Children having fun in a Video Games Room by ecachucho and Clouds Running by pierba in Italy.

The Grand Prize winner on the Pangea/Nokia OVI website is ecachucho with his video on South African children playing arcade games, who won a trip to the Rwandan Gorilla Reserve, with a full crew to help the winner record his trip.

A side draw organized between Nokia and Womworld, which results were announced by David Howell Studios, the creator of the winning video would receive a Nokia N82, a carrying case, tripod, memory card, headphones and speakers. This chosen video was Amazing Rainbows, and in his announcement he mentioned that the winner was chosen because they portrayed best the spirit of the mobile video: recording those once in a lifetime moments that could be gone and never repeat themselves.

Global Voices is well positioned to follow the nuances of this complex issue with authors tracking citizen media in nearly every country of the planet. This article is an attempt to place an overall narrative on the global food crisis with observations from our authors from around the world. Clicking on the links will take you to all the posts that have been referenced.

Let’s begin in the Caribbean. In Barbados, locals learn to deal with a 30% increase in flour prices, along with gasoline and diesel price jumps. Trinidad and Tobago’s Minister of Agriculture, denies there is a food crisis on the two islands, but locals notice an increase in chicken and flour prices. Cuba is trying a new agriculture policy of providing more land to private farmers.

Prices and shortages of food can be seen across Latin America, as many people are becoming desperate. Blame is being placed on both farmers and governments for their failure to act. Arab bloggers in Lebanon, Syria, Kuwait and Egypt are also feeling the pinch, and writing about it too.

Worries continue to circulate in Cambodia that nearly 500,000 children could start missing meals due to a 20% increase in the price of rice. However, a dramatic increase in rice production may not be beyond hope in this country. Farmers here can cultivate two or three harvests per year on the same piece of land.

The latest riots

Protesters in Cairo lighting fires and throwing rocks at a barricade, April 7, 2008 - Photo by James Buck

Two days of riots broke out on April 6 and 7 in Egypt, where prices of staples have doubled since 2004 (and in some cases quadrupled). At least two people were killed and 111 people – including police – were injured (See our special coverage on Egypt's General Strike).

In Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, protesters blocked roads and burned tires, demanding the government cut taxes on key imports.

Just days later, four people were killed and 25 injured in riots in Haiti, where the prices of rice, beans, and fruit have increased 50% in the past 12 months. Less than a week after the violent demonstrations, Haiti's prime minister was ousted in a vote of no confidence.

For Natifnatal, a Haitian currently in Abu Dhabi, the food crisis offers simple math:

For those who don't even know the basics can present the equation: hunger + poverty + rising prices = demonstrations + the Prime Minister's resignation + violence, and argue that an increase in food aid would suffice to reduce hunger.

Even as a cargo plane crashed in Kinshasa on April 15 killing 75 people, Congolese blogger Du Cabiau à Kinshasa, ruminated on a more silent, less telegenic disaster facing the country: the doubling of food prices in the same week.

The effects on trade

So many countries of the developing world import a large percentage of the foodstuffs necessary to feed their populations. Rising prices means problems grow quickly. Even for food exporters, rising prices has touched a nerve. In Korea, one of the world’s most prolific rice producers, a Netizen argues that rice should be withheld from free trade talks, allowing the country to do as it seems fit with its strategic commodity.

Sometimes protectionism won’t be enough, however. As the price of rice has increased throughout Southeast Asia’s rice growing nations, governments were forced to plea for calm and pray that domestic prices would soon begin to fall. The situation is doubly bad for rice importers like the Philippines, where the poor have felt the brunt of the price increase. Indonesia, another importer, has canceled its imports due to high prices. Cambodia and Vietnam have abandoned exports. Bloggers in Malaysia report rumors of rice shortages. The Government of Brunei could move to subsidize food staples like cooking oil, flour, milk, eggs and chicken.

Milk in Japanese supermarket

For decades food prices in Japan have been in stasis, which is strange for a country that imports almost every staple other than rice. Not any longer. Price increased for the first time in more than two decades. The same goes for milk products, which consumers been paying for at the same rate for three decades. Beer, cooking oil, and soy sauce also experienced increases.

A silent killer

In Bangladesh, where people spend as much as 80% of their salaries on food, high prices for rice have hit the middle class. It’s much worse for the poor, as media reports confirm several hunger deaths. The country’s military chief raised the ire of many when he suggested people replace rice by eating potatoes.

In Tajikistan, where people already faced a winter-long energy shortage, it looks like more than 260,000 people are in need of immediate food assistance. Worries persist that this number could grow to 2 million by winter.

Talk about globalization. In Yemen, the prices of staples have risen while the cost of certain electronic goods have dropped. Kuwait has also seen price increases, no thanks to the falling U.S. dollar.

In Burkina Faso, where people felt the government sat on its hands as prices in some sectors increased more than 40% since the beginning of the year, riots sparked in several cities throughout the country in late February, resulting in plenty of property damage and more than 300 arrests.

At about the same time in Cameroon, anger over rising prices and falling wages sparked three days of violent confrontation with the military. Anger was also fed by President Paul Biya's attempt to change the constitution so he could sit for a third term.

The story is far from over. We’ll keep posting updates – so please check our Special Coverage page on the Global Food Crisis 2008 often.

For want of a better title more or less sums up the problem in the region:

“The biggest problem with our rising rice prices is that it’s more a distribution error than a problem with the rice yields. It’s more about politics than it is about agriculture…What’s probably going to happen though is an even higher rise in rice prices. The thing about a necessary product is that when price goes up, people buy more. And since they’re spending more on rice, they’ll spend less on the things that accompany that rice.”

Even Singapore, one of Asia's richest countries, is now scrambling to offer cheap food prices as reported by Singapore News Alternative.

Rice exporting nations are also gripped with panic. Thanh Nien cites that “Rice fever runs hot in several Vietnam provinces.” Details are Sketchy is worried because nearly half a million kids in Cambodia are expected to start missing meals in the coming weeks as a result of the rising cost of rice.

Vuthasurf describes the mood in Phnom Penh:

“The rice price is remarkably increasing in Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh residents have been buying and stocking rice. All type of rice price is increasing too fast and making Cambodian people worried. The price of rice is going up across the nation by more than 20 percent, comparing to the previous year. Rising the rice price is helping the farmers but it is hitting badly the poor such as garment workers, teachers, civil servants who have low-income.”

But Cambodia’s government is optimistic that rice production will improve. Im Sokthy explains:

“Cambodia has about two million hectare of land for rice production. Its existing irrigation system can cover 30 percent of the land. It can expand to three million hectares for rice production. Adding to this, Cambodia could cultivate about two to three times per year on the same land areas. Based on this, it is seen that Cambodia has huge potential to become the world's largest rice exporting country.”

Youthful Insight notes the anomaly in policymaking in Indonesia, which may be applicable as well to other countries:

“On one side the government must keep inflation and food price low enough so its does not hurt the poor. But on the other side the government must maintain a reasonable high price to give incentive to farmers to increase their production and increase rural welfare. Is there any policy to achieve both objectives above? Yes! Give high subsidy to the farmers like what the developed countries are doing. But the problem is our government does not have the money to do it.

“Cheap food price is good for poor urban, whose main sources of income are the service and manufacturing sectors. But bad for rural poor whose main source of income is agriculture sector. Lower food price means lower income and also lower welfare for rural area. The government sacrifices the rural for the sake of the urban. Why? Because urban poor is more attractive politically than rural poor.”

New Mandala mentions the ongoing debate in Thailand about the extent to which farmers will benefit from high rice prices. Thailand Crisis is surprised to hear the Thai Prime Minister exhorting the people to eat less so that Thailand can export more rice.

The Malaysian quotes a politician who is asking the Malaysian government to stop the space mission program so that the money can be used to develop Sabah as a food producing state.

Filipino journalist Ricky Carandang points to another reason for the rising food prices:

“Yes, there are real supply and demand factors driving up rice prices, but one must concede that a big chunk of the increases in the prices of oil, gold, and rice, are due to speculation on the international commodities markets.”

Lengua et Pluma blames the economic policies of the Philippine president:

“The government is quick to blame the traders, when it hides on the background its policies that pave the way for cartel operations and the declining rice production in the country. This crisis that has brought about the overdependence on the importation of food, and an agriculture that is geared mainly towards the production of raw materials for export, has put on the forefront the long-running problems that beset our agriculture and farmers –lack of irrigation, lack of subsidy on the production of our farmers, land use and crop conversion, and the monopoly of land by a few land owners and transnational corporations, to name a few.”

Local Freakonomics hopes the Brunei government will continue subsidizing the price of basic food items:

“While I don’t expect the government to subsidize all food but I do expect some food price subsidies/food security packages are being planned for Brunei’s staple food (in addition to rice and sugar) such as cooking oil, flour, milk, eggs, chicken.”

Related article: Southeast Asia and rising price of rice

My Silent Kao Pei is proud that Thailand is

“The first country thus far that has managed to proceed with the torch relay undisrupted. Reports showed that the security forces and the demonstrators have come to an agreement that they had to remain behind the police barricades or face arrest.

“The torch relay managed to proceed smoothly, and even had time to slow down it's pace and stop for supporters to pose for pictures with the torch bearers. People were even allowed to touch the Olympic torch without ending up pinned to the ground by security forces. Many of the local Thai believe that the day's relay is what an Olympic Torch Relay should be like - happy and peaceful, where everyone has a place, even the demonstrators.”

Gnarly Kitty describes the scenes in a Bangkok street during the torch relay:

“There was the Pro-Tibet sides, full of Thais, the press, some hippies from Khao San and of course the activist groups and some resident Tibetans. Yes that was my side.

“And then, there was this other. Clad in red, the Chinese crowd was proudly waving their national flag along with Olympics flags and posters. The Chinese crowd was bigger, louder and more visible than the Pro-Tibet group.

“But one thing I was proud of the PT (Pro-Tibet) group was that they kept their promise. They didn't put out the torch. They stayed in their designated areas, they didn't curse at the police. Heck they even thanked the police on their speaker for being there to keep things calm.”

Jotman.com liveblogged the torch relay in Bangkok. The China Mogul remarks that the Thai police prepared not only for pro-Tibet protesters:

“In the Thai capital, police prepared not only for pro-Tibet protesters but also for demonstrators who are unhappy with China's support of army generals ruling in neighboring Myanmar.”

The Dainty Knife uploads an anti-Olympic graffiti which was painted in Bangkok. The graffiti reads:

“How long will they kill our prophets? While we stand aside and look.”

To be or not to be predicted that Kuala Lumpur will be a mess city during the torch relay. It seems the blogger was wrong. Arun’s Weblog provides details of the successful torch relay in Malaysia. They Call Me Ah Bong notes that watching the relay “is definitely quite an experience.” kiasumum uploads pictures of the historic activity. This is the flame’s second trip to Malaysia, its first visit was on the way to Tokyo for the 1964 Olympic games.

The Malaysian reports that police “detained a Japanese family of three who unfurled a pro-Tibet banner just before the first runner took off with the Olympic torch.” Songs of Innocence and Experience describes the torch relay as an “Unmalaysian” affair since “Red Army” students have “conquered the streets” of Kuala Lumpur. Beijing Olympics fan writes that a bit of rain did not dampen the spirit of torchbearers and the crowd.

Imagination is the key to freedom uploads a video of the parade. Caryn Tan uploads the route of the relay. She also posted some merchandise items which were sold during the activity. United shares some interesting facts about the Olympics.

Yeancworld informs us that Malaysian residents were advised to use public transport during the torch relay. And the government has warned that “cars blocking the way will be towed without notice!”

Lingli does not support the “Boycott Olympics” campaign:

“Think before you support those who claim that China's rule over Tibet is cause enough to boycott the Olympic Games, and disrupt the torch relay. Think of the athletes who have worked all their life to come to this stage - do we want to destroy their dreams because of this? The Olympics is no platform for this nonsense. Think before you boycott the Olympic Games - you would have played a part in denying China their time to shine in the world's eyes, to show what they are made of - they are the ones who are going to be leading us, Asians, all the way to the top.”

nofearSingapore asks why the torch did not pass Singapore:

“Singapore lies in between Malaysia and Indonesia. But the torch relay will inexplicably bypass Singapore completely! It seems almost intentional! It must be psychologically bruising for our rulers to be publicly humiliated by China like this. And to think that we stood up like a sore thumb defending China’s honour at this time, the hour of their need. How ironic!”

Indonesian Circle quotes an organizer of the torch relay in Jakarta:

“Indonesia is proud to be a part of the global Olympic torch relay for the first time and will do its utmost to prevent some irresponsible groups from stealing the show at the historical event in Jakarta on April 22. This is our first time to host the Olympic Torch relay and we are very proud of it.”

The Bali Times reports that Indonesia has drastically shortened the Olympic torch route. A Vietnamese Olympic torchbearer sends a letter to the President of the Olympic International Committee in protest of China's politicization of the Olympics in relation to the dispute over some islands in the South China Sea.