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The concerns come as the world suffers for the first time since 1973 from the confluence of record oil and food prices. Corn, soyabean and meat prices jumped this week to all-time highs, while oil prices hit a record of almost $140 a barrel.

This shift toward a national security concern will become apparent at Sunday’s oil meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where ministers are expected to warn that developing countries are cracking under the burden of record oil and food costs.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer and the only country able to raise output, has recognised the danger after developing countries, including US-ally Pakistan, pleaded for a reprieve from oil payments.

Morocco was forced last month to ask for an $800m loan from Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates to cushion the impact of oil and cereal imports.

One Washington official said: “What we have been watching is behaviour [that indicates] China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam [and] Malaysia simply can’t bare the burden on the central budget and that the medium to long-term confluence of oil and food prices is just too much.” He added: “It is leading to a real security issue where the streets are talking to the president.”

Martin Bartenstein, Austria’s economics minister who is travelling to Jeddah, said on Friday that the risk of social tension caused by high oil prices driving inflation to double digits will be a main tenet of his argument.

“It is very high on our agenda,” said a senior diplomat from a larger European nation.

The exhibit is important, accurate but, regrettably, long overdue. It also fails to stress just how much the socialist left initiated and supported the eugenics campaign, not only in Germany but in Britain, the U. S. and the rest of Europe. Playwright George Bernard Shaw, English social democrat leader Sydney Webb and, in Canada, Tommy Douglas were just three influential socialists who called, for example, for the mass sterilization of the handicapped. In his Master’s thesis The Problems of the Subnormal Family, the now revered Douglas argued that the mentally and even physically disabled should be sterilized and sent to camps so as not to “infect” the rest of the population.

It is deeply significant that few if any of Douglas’s left-wing comrades in this country or internationally were surprised or offended by his proposals. Indeed the early fascism of 1920s Italy, while unsavoury and dictatorial, had little connection with social engineering and eugenics. The latter German version of fascism was influenced not by ultra conservatism in southern Europe but, as is made clear in the writings of the Nazi ideologues, by the Marxist left.

The most vociferous and outspoken of the socialist eugenicists was the novelist H. G. Wells, author of The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man. He argued in best-selling books such as Anticipations and A Modern Utopia that the world would collapse and from this collapse a new order should and would emerge.

“People throughout the world whose minds were adapted to the big-scale conditions of the new time. A naturally and informally organised educated class, an unprecedented sort of people.” A strict social order would be formed. At the bottom of it were the base. These were “people who had given evidence of a strong anti-social disposition”, including “the black, the brown, the swarthy, the yellow.” Christians would also “have to go” as well as the handicapped. Wells devoted entire pamphlets to the need of “preventing the birth, preventing the procreation or preventing the existence” of the mentally and physically handicapped. “This thing, this euthanasia of the weak and the sensual is possible. I have little or no doubt that in the future it will be planned and achieved.”

The people of Africa and Asia, he said, simply could never find a place in a modern world controlled by science. Better to do away with the lot. “I take it they will have to go” he said of them. Marriage as it is known would have to end but couples could form mutually agreed unions. They would list their “desires, diseases, needs” on little cards and a central authority would decide who was fitted for whom.

Population would be rigidly controlled, with forced abortion for those who were not of the right class and race. Religion would be banned, children would be raised in communes and all would be well. The old and the ill would, naturally, have to be done away with and doctors would be given the authority to decide who had a right to live, who had a duty to die.

In the United States socialist writer Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and the mother of the abortion movement, called for a radical eugenics approach as early as the first years of the 20th century. She wrote of the need for “a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring. It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them. Herein lies the key of civilization.”

I’m going to call it a welfare backwater. Middle of nowhere, no factories or manufacturing to speak of, and nobody is running a shovel except one out of 642 on the road crew. The video stores do alright, quickie marts abound, the walmart is full of shoppers and the dog groomer is open for business. I also am beginning to believe this is the real America. Get on any two lane state highway and spend an afternoon traveling in a random direction and that’s what you’ll see – town after town of a whole bunch of nothing but village centers empty of anything but gas stations, banks and video stores. On the way out of town the glitz of the new walmart/lowes complex arises like the Emerald City – surely I’m not the only one who wonders what powers and feeds this behemoth.

Must be a lawyer or something in town who pays fifty grand in taxes. Our magical financial system can leverage and default swap that shit into a good million or so to fill up food stamp cards and propane tanks for the households that operate on income “derived” from gov’t grants like matching highway funds, social work, education, emergency room medicaid, and the bad back disability check. It sure as hell isn’t from the joebobs selling cheeseburgers to each other – the only yield on that “swap” is a couple more inches around the middle. It’s just a wonder, that’s all – how some burg as a whole spends a dollar while creating a nickel’s worth of wealth and the population doesn’t even know that’s happening. I think that 95 cents may be coming due.

They were there, they said, to warn him to keep his doors closed and locked.

In Hong Kong just now, they cannot. “Please note that this office cannot accept renunciation applications at this time,” the consulate’s website states. Apart from sounding like East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the closure is unfortunately timed. Because of pending legislation on President Bush’s desk that is expected to become law by June 16th, any American who wants to surrender his passport has only a few days to do so before facing an enormous penalty.

That penalty is buried in an innocuous piece of legislation with the veto-proof name, Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax (HEART) act. The new law means active American soldiers will benefit from tax relief. To pay for that, Congress has turned on expats, especially those who, since new tax laws in 2006, have become increasingly eager to give up their citizenship to escape the taxman.

Under the proposed legislation, expatriates surrendering their citizenship with a net worth of $2m or more, or a high income, will have to act as if they have sold all their worldwide assets at a fair market price. If the unrealised gains on these assets exceed $600,000, capital-gains tax will apply. A study by the Congressional Budget Office guesses that the new law will progressively net the government up to $286m over five years. It is unclear, however, why people would suffer the consequences if they did not expect to save money in the long run by escaping American taxes.

That expats want to leave at all is evidence of America’s odd tax system. Along with citizens of North Korea and a few other countries, Americans are taxed based on their citizenship, rather than where they live. So they usually pay twice—to their host country and the Internal Revenue Service. As this makes citizenship less palatable, Congress has erected large barriers to stop them jumping ship. In 1996 it forced people who renounced citizenship to continue paying income taxes for an extra ten years. Theoretically, the new law allows for a cleaner break.

But even as the law tries to prevent people from renouncing their citizenship, it may have the opposite effect. Under the new structure, it would make financial sense for any young American working overseas with a promising career to renounce his citizenship as early as possible, before his assets accumulate. For everyone else, plunging stock and property prices mean now may be as good a time as any to hand back the passport, says Kurt Rademacher, a partner at Withers, a global tax-planning firm.

The lifting, agreed despite U.S. calls for the world to remain tough on Havana, will pave the way for a new dialogue with Cuba but come with calls that it address human rights concerns and free political prisoners.

Relations would be reviewed in one year, they said.

“Cuban sanctions will be lifted,” EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told reporters after foreign ministers of the 27-nation bloc clinched agreement at a summit dinner in Brussels.

His proposal comes the day after The Independent revealed that the Environment minister, Phil Woolas, has held private talks with the biotechnology industry about relaxing Britain’s policy on the use of GM crops.

The Prime Minister also signalled that he is happy to see a public debate over whether GM crops should be grown commercially in Britain to reduce global prices by boosting production. His spokesman said last night: “His view is that we must be guided by the scientific evidence.”

Ministers who support GM crops believe there are no convincing arguments against them. They want to turn the tables on environmental groups who campaigned successfully against widespread GM production in Britain during the last government review in 2004. Although there is no ban, the ministers want the rules changed in light of the food crisis, as no GM crops are currently being grown commercially in this country.

At a two-day summit in Brussels which began last night, EU leaders were urged to “bite the bullet” and embrace GM products as a solution to rocketing food prices. The plea came from Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission. Several EU countries, led by France, are unconvinced that “Frankenstein foods” are safe.

At the meeting, Mr Brown suggested allowing more GM animal food into the EU. The move may raise safety fears because contaminated feed was blamed for the outbreak in Britain of BSE in the 1990s.

The Commission fears that Europe could run short of animal feed because of its strict licensing regime, which could further raise food prices. Europe is heavily dependent on imports as it does not have enough land to both farm animals and grow the feed they need. The other elements of the Brown plan are a global trade deal; further reform of the Common Agricultural Policy; a review of the role to be played by biofuels; and a plan to use aid for poor nations for new technology farm products.

The Independent revealed yesterday that ministers believe Britain’s cautious approach to GM should be relaxed because of current global food problems. But the Government’s rethink provoked a furious backlash from opponents of GM crops.

Tricia O’Rourke, a spokeswoman for Oxfam, said: “The present food crisis needs more than a technology fix. More focus is needed on sustainable technology that 400 million smallholders can use to improve their productivity.”

Caroline Lucas, a Green Party MEP, added: “There are no guarantees that GM crops are safe, sustainable or the solution to the problem of hunger. Over 70 per cent of citizens and several governments in the EU have expressed concerns over the negative effects that such crops may have on human health, biodiversity and the environment.”

Friends of the Earth accused ministers of falling for “hype” by GM firms. Its GM campaigner Clare Oxborrow said: “GM crops do not increase yields or tackle hunger and poverty.”

By wiping out corn and soybean crops across Iowa, Illinois and other states, the flood is driving up prices that were already at historic highs and increasing the cost of feed for cattle, hogs and poultry.

Economists say that will force livestock farms to cut back on production even more than they were, and that will eventually lead to higher prices for beef, pork, chicken, milk and eggs.

“I have no choice: going broke or increase prices,” said Heinz Kramer, who expects to have to charge more for the pork and beef that he processes at a family-owned company in La Porte City.

Pork prices could be up as much as 30 percent next year because of production cutbacks, said John Lawrence, an economist at Iowa State University. Prices of beef and poultry products are likely to be at least 10 percent higher by the end of this year, he said.

“The higher the corn prices go today the higher meat prices, milk and egg prices will go a year from now,” he said.

The Agriculture Department has said that food prices overall would rise by 4.5 percent to 5.5 percent that year, but those numbers are likely to be revised upward in July after analysts get a better idea of the impact on corn supplies.

The inflation estimate was made at a time when was selling for $6 a bushel, said USDA economist Ephraim Leibtag. Corn prices rose to $7.46 a bushel Wednesday on the Chicago Board of Trade.

Nearly half of 2007’s corn crop was used for livestock feed. Corn sweeteners and soybean oil are widely used as food ingredients, but they have a smaller impact on retail prices than feed costs have on livestock products.

Food prices are “absolutely a concern and something that we’re going to be paying close attention to,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. “It’s too early to say what the exact impact will be.”

Whatever it is, it is likely to be more significant in poor regions where corn and vegetable oil are staples. In some countries, people spend as much as 70 percent of their income on food. The United Nations has identified 22 countries that are especially vulnerable to rising prices because of hunger rates and dependence on imports.