Food riots have erupted in West Africa and South Asia.

Riots and paralyzing strikes have crippled Thailand, France, and Greece.

Riots and protests in some developing countries are just the worst manifestation of this.

View London riots UK riots verified areas in a larger map

Lander assumes that rioting and gang behavior are a result of poverty and poor economic conditions.

With the eruption of the 1929 Palestine riots, Safed and Hebron became major clash points.

The Mexican Revolution of 1910 began with a challenge to the dictator Porfirio Díaz that ignited peasant uprisings and worker revolts.

A more positive view of Obama emerged when the Arab revolts began in Tunisia and Egypt countries with pro US regimes.

Thus, the riots that France is now seeing emerge from French policies, not from instigations by Islamists.

But politics in many developed democracies has lately been disrupted by populist insurgencies seeking to exit this shared reality.

Hunger is not a new phenomenon, but as long as the rural poor endure it in silence, as they have for a long time, governments can comfortably ignore it. Food riots by urban populations, on the other hand, threaten what governments care about the most their legitimacy.

Only in the Philippines do state failure, chronic insurgency, and proliferating ties between local and foreign terrorists come together in a lethal cocktail.

Food riots by urban populations, on the other hand, threaten what governments care about the most their legitimacy.

India suffered caste conflicts, clashes over the rights of different linguistic groups, religious riots (mainly between Hindus and Muslims), and separatist threats.

So far, the Arab revolts have vindicated the assumption that, given the structure of most Arab societies, toppling secular autocracies inevitably means opening the door to Islamic democracies.

Last but not least, diverting vast tracts of agricultural land into fuel production has contributed to a doubling of prices for wheat and other grains. With food riots in dozens of countries, isn t it time to admit that the whole idea was a giant, if well intentioned, mistake?

With food riots in dozens of countries, isn t it time to admit that the whole idea was a giant, if well intentioned, mistake?

As the riots surrounding the failed World Trade Organization conference in Seattle demonstrated, a coalition of labor, environmental, and human rights advocates is intent on sabotaging the WTO, the institutional embodiment of global trade.

She also speculates that prison officials might be intentionally subjecting inmates to unbearable conditions, in order to provoke riots that would in turn seem to justify legislation like the Sadists Law.

Then came the riots in Tibet, which caught the government off guard, followed by embarrassing protests over China s Olympic torch relay in several Western and Asian countries.

The Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK is shot, the Civil Rights movement, race riots, the Vietnam War, MLK is shot, Bobby Kennedy is shot, Watergate.

Up through the 1980s and 1990s, Lee often justified the continuation of authoritarian policies by reference to those communal riots, and to the ever present possibility of a loss of social trust and a return to conflict.

During the 18 day uprising, a young woman journalist appeared on TV confessing she was trained by the Mossad to foment those riots in Tahrir.

Resurgent prices for commodities are creating huge revenues for owners of mines and oil fields, even as price spikes for basic staples are sparking food riots, if not wholesale revolutions, in the developing world.