Unbossed and unbought news and information you can use
Vol. 11 Issue 29…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…July 20, 2008
Intuit's Vibe
Can You Spare A Dime?
By Jesse Garcia
Although most people can't give their time,
All we are asking for is can you spare a dime.
To some people a dime is no big deal,
But to the homeless,
it can mean our next meal.
Waking up during cold winter mornings or hot summer nights,
We are not wanted where there are bright shining lights.
We are harassed by the police and passers-by,
They know we need
help and won't meet us eye to eye.
Each and everyday we try to survive,
In a land where hunger and diseases thrive.
Most people label us as drunks,
But the reality is
most of us live out of our trunks.
Rusted old cars and no where to go,
Although we have worked hard we have nothing to show.
Looking for food and no place to stay,
Most people don't
care if we faded away.
You treat us like criminals, yet we didn't commit a crime,
All we are asking is
can you spare a dime?
About
Me: Jesse Garcia visited the Poetry Against Hunger web site at www.stopthehunger.com
and so appreciated their cause that he offered this poem as a show of support.
Garcia's poem succinctly voices the plight of some of the millions of men,
women and children in America that go hungry; many of these people are also
part of the homeless in this country.
GACM's Food Cooperatives
With the cost of food increasing
as real wages decline and the other costs of living escalate, the food
cooperative program run by the Georgia Avenue Community Ministry (GACM) is a
godsend for its cooperative members. GACM's mission "is to create in the
name of the Lord membership communities of up to 50 households that give
members a sense of extended family and the opportunity to work together to
provide supplemental nourishment so that no body is hungry." Its unique
food cooperative program does just that by providing food to families in need
and creating a sense of community among its member families.
Currently, GACM operates four food co-ops. Each co-op has fifty members or
families, which represent approximately 800 people. According to Chad Hale,
GACM food co-op executive director, "GACM is considering starting a fifth
co-op, as the demand is so great. Our waiting list for new members is about
seventy (70) people, which is down from the more than one hundred (100) of a
month ago."
Every two weeks, co-op members come together. Each member receives a box of
food valued at between $70 and $100 dollars for a medium-sized family. In
return, member families pay a $3.00 handling fee, and they assist in unloading
and boxing the food for distribution. At each gathering, there is roughly a ton
of food to unload and box. The food GACM distributes is provided by the Atlanta
Community Food Bank (www.acfb.org/) for
a handling fee of sixteen (16) cents per pound.
In addition to its food co-ops, GACM prepares a meal every Wednesday during the
school year. While the entire community is invited to attend, attendees tend to
be mostly Atlanta area homeless men. However, according to Hale, "As the
economy declines, more women and children can be seen at our Wednesday meals,
which will commence again in September. Currently, our facility is used to run
a summer camp program."
For more about GACM's food cooperative program and its other community outreach
efforts and/or to make a donation, visit www.gacm.org
or call Chad Hale at 404-688-0871.
Ban Ki-Moon
"For my generation, coming of age at the height of the Cold War,
fear of nuclear winter seemed the leading existential threat on the horizon.
But the danger posed by war to all humanity and to our planet is at least
matched by climate change." Ban Ki-Moon in a speech before UN
General Assembly
Ban Ki-Moon (bän ke-mOOn) was born in Japan-occupied Korea on June 13,
1944 in a small farming village in North Chungcheong. When Ban was 6 his family fled to a
remote mountainside for the duration of the Korean War. After the war, his family returned to
Chungju.
A star pupil, Ban excelled in English. In 1962, he won an essay contest
sponsored by the Red Cross and earned a trip to the United States where he
lived in San Francisco with a host family for several months. As part of the
trip, Ban met U.S. President John F. Kennedy. When asked by a journalist at the
meeting what Ban wanted to be when he grew up, he said "I want to become a
diplomat."
After earning his bachelor's degree from Seoul National University (1970) in
International Relations, Ban received the top score on Korea's foreign service
exam. He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in May 1970. His first overseas
post was to New Delhi, where he served as vice consul. In 1974, he received his
first posting to the United Nations, as First Secretary of the South Permanent
Observer Mission. Following the assassination of Park Chung-hee' (1979), Ban
assumed the post of Director of the United Nations Division.
In 1980, he became director of
the United Nation's International Organizations and Treaties Bureau,
headquartered in Seoul. Ban earned his M.A. degree in public administration
from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1985. A
career diplomat, Ban has held a number of posts in the South Korean foreign
ministry and in its embassies abroad, including ambassador to Austria
(1998-2000) and to the United Nations (2001-2) and minister of foreign affairs
and trade (2004-6).
On October 13, 2006, Ban was elected the eighth Secretary-General by the United
Nations General Assembly. In January 2007, Ban replaced Kofi Annan, becoming
the first Asian to serve as UN secretary-general since Burmese statesman U
Thant held the office (1962 - 71). As UN secretary-general, Ban has passed
several major reforms regarding peacekeeping and UN employment practices. He
will likely face many challenges during his term as head of the global body.
The vast array of issues the global body will likely confront involve human
rights, such as torture, and the right of people to basic necessities for
survival, such as food and water, to issues involving global warming, nuclear
proliferation, the spread of weapons of mass destruction and other challenges
surrounding war and peace.
On three occasions, 1975, 1986 and 2006, Ban has been awarded the Order of
Service Merit by the Government of the Republic of Korea. For his
accomplishments as an envoy, he received the Grand Decoration of Honor from the
Republic of Austria (2001). Ban has received awards from many of the countries
with which he has worked diplomatically, including Brazil, which bestowed the
Grand Cross of Rio Branco upon him, the government of Peru awarded him Gran
Cruz del Sol Sun, and the Korea Society in New York City honored him with the James
A. Van Fleet Award for his contributions to friendship between the United
States and the Republic of Korea.
Ban Ki-moon met Yoo Soon-taek in 1962 when they were both high school students.
Ban was 18 years old, and Yoo Soon-taek was his secondary school's student
council president. Ban Ki-moon married Yoo Soon-taek in 1971. The couple has
three adult children. (Sources: www.un.org, www.answers.com and http://en.wikipedia.org)
US and Bioenergy Company Torpedo
Food Summit
By John Burl Smith
Biofuels win at Food summit:
"The rapidly growing global bio-energy industry escaped unscathed from a
UN food summit, but its wings must be clipped to stop fuel-from-food increasing
world hunger." According to the U.N. envoy on the right to food, Olivier
De Schutter, "Countries opposed to biofuels gave in, rather than hold out
against the pro-biofuel countries. A draft summit declaration bent over
backwards to avoid negative language on biofuels. UN Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon had called for "a greater level of international consensus on
biofuels," leading up to the High-Level Conference on World Food Security:
the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy."
The United Nations summit was supposed to address food security and the threat
posed by biofuels but ducked the right to food issue altogether. The confab
held June 3-5, 2008 in Rome, Italy was over shadowed by the Pope's refusal to
endorse biofuel. An impassioned speech by UN Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) Director-General Jacques Diouf appealed to world leaders for $30 billion
a year to re-launch agriculture and avert future threats of conflicts over
food. Dr. Diouf said, "The world spent 1,200 billion dollars on arms in
2006, while food wasted in one country could be valued at $100 billion."
Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said, "The US plans to provide food and
other support to people who are hungry now, direct development assistance to
those countries best able to rapidly increase the production of key food
staples that can help feed the hungry, and encourage action to address
multilateral and country-specific policies that prevent access to food and the
technologies that produce food." Defending US intransigence on the food
crisis, Schafer said, "I would point out that US ethanol production
specifically has come from increased yields in the corn crops. The yield
increases derived are much more than the 2 to 3 percent that is contributing to
the rising inflation in food costs internationally and is not distorting the
global price of food."
There was considerable divergence in opinions expressed on biofuels. Many
developing countries cautioned against the use of agricultural land for fuel
production until hunger has been eradicated. Many countries that opposed the US
position desired a green/sustainable environmental approach to solving the food
for fuel crisis. Belize and Iceland opposed biofuels and promoted the
development of other forms of renewable energy. The Common Fund for Commodities
and Kenya said the production of non-food items for biofuels on arid land would
contribute to sustainable development.
The International Federation of Agricultural Producers emphasized that biofuels
should not be the preserve of wealthy developed countries. The Indigenous
Environmental Network recommended against corporate production of biofuels for
export. Many countries highlighted the impact of biofuels on food prices and
argued against the use of food crops for bioenergy production, urging the
development of other forms of renewable energy. Still others noted that not all
types of biofuels have negative impacts, and that some can be produced sustainably.
At a roundtable on bioenergy and food security, the FAO argued "Even
second-generation biofuel crops will inevitably displace food crops, which is
"morally unacceptable."
Feuding over food and fuel continued to grow and burn once the conference
ended, considering an estimated 850 million people in the world today suffer
from hunger. Of those, about 820 million live in developing countries, the very
countries expected to be most affected by food for fuel production, the raising
cost of food and climate change. Hijacked by the biofuel lobby, the food summit
flopped because it evaded the question of how to feed a growing world. This
subject was sidetracked by how to supply millions of cars in the US with
cheaper fuel.
An editorial in The Hindu (India newspaper- 6/9/08) hinted at US stonewalling,
"The Food and Agriculture Organization summit in Rome was deadlocked on
the policy measures needed to alleviate the crisis over the rise in food
prices. The worrisome prospect of the cynical play of national interest and
one-upmanship delayed any meaningful dialogue on the challenges ahead."
India's agriculture minister, Sharad Pawar, argued that "Such diversion
compromises food security without having a significant impact on food for fuel."
According to the FAO, of the nearly 40 million tonnage additional utilization
of maize in 2007, ethanol plants, mostly in the U.S. (the largest producer and
exporter of maize), absorbed 75 per cent. Similarly, the European Union's
biodiesel sector consumed about 60 per cent of the rapeseed oil output from
member states. This drive for alternative energy, with no substantial gains to
the environment, entails changing cultivated land from food grains to feedstock
for biofuels. Given the target of 50 per cent increase in food production by
2030, the only biofuels that can justifiably be advocated are the
second-generation varieties such as algae that do not entail appropriation of
land meant for the cultivation of food grains." (On the Net, see www.bioenergywiki.net/index.php)
World Bank Secret Report (Excerpts)
By F. William Engdahl
A World Bank (WB) secret study,
sequestered by the Bush Administration, concludes that bio-fuel cultivation in
the USA and EU are directly responsible for the worldwide explosion in grain
and food prices. The WB secret report says that at least 75% of the recent
price rises are due to land being removed from agriculture - mainly maize in
North America and rapeseed and corn in the EU - in order to grow crops for
vehicle fuel. The WB study confirms Henry Kissinger's 1970's agenda, "If
you control the food you control the people."
According to the London Guardian, "The WB study was embarrassing to the US
because the Bush Administration used subsidies for bio-fuel in the 2005 Farm
bill which created the food crisis. George W. Bush's goal is to "advance
the spread of 'Genetically Manipulated Organisms' such as GMO maize, soybeans,
rice and other crops patented by Monsanto." Independent scientific studies
and countless farmer reports have shown that long-term planting of GMO or
bio-tech crops, lowers crop yields and develop "super-weeds"
resistant to Roundup or other GMO-paired chemical herbicides and pesticides.
Their strategy is to use hedge funds, troubled US and European banks and
investment funds to pour billions of dollars into grain price speculation to
fuel the explosive rise in grain prices worldwide. In other words, speculation
in food futures has produced the food "crisis." The planned EU and
USA bio-fuel acreage quotas, periodic droughts and floods in key growing
regions such as the USA Midwest are blamed for speculative price run-ups. The
WB report states further that "even the successive droughts in Australia
and other major food regions have had only a 'marginal' impact on food
prices."
The main driving force behind food prices is that tens of millions of hectares
of prime agriculture land in the world's two largest food export regions - the
USA and the EU - are being permanently removed from food production in order to
grow raw material to keep cars in the US running on cheap fuel. The WB study
concludes that bio-fuels have forced "food prices up by 75%." A
damning rebuttal to US Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer's estimate that
plant-derived fuels add only 3% to food prices. The WB report estimates that
doubling and tripling of world food prices in the past three years have forced
an added 100 million people below the poverty line. That has triggered food
riots from Bangladesh to Egypt to Haiti.
Bush has cynically claimed higher food prices are merely due to higher demand
from India and China. The WB study refutes that: "Rapid income growth in
developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption
and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases." The
WB report goes on, "Without the increase in bio-fuels, global wheat and
maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to
other factors would have been moderate." The basket of food prices
examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and February 2008. Higher
energy and fertilizer prices accounted for an increase of only 15%. Bio-fuels
have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period.
The WB study demonstrates that
production of bio-fuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First,
it has diverted grain away from food to fuel, with over a third of US corn now
used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going to
production of bio-diesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land
aside for bio-fuel production rather than food. Third, it has sparked financial
speculation in grains, driving food prices up higher.
The missing link in the WB study is the longer-term geopolitical agenda behind
the present global food and energy crises. Powerful tax exempt private
foundations such as the Rockefeller, Ford and Gates foundations and private
wealth have a long term agenda of population reduction, in the interests of the
global economic and financial elites. Food scarcity, higher prices for basic
foods in developing countries as well as control of food seeds through patent
and Terminator suicide seed by Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Dow, BASF and Bayer
- "the horsemen of the GMO Apokalypse," have a massive depopulation
agenda for the developing world.
There is evidence that the Rome UN Food Summit was orchestrated by Bush, Gordon
Brown and governments to try to convince the Pope to reverse his policy on GMO.
Groups like Greenpeace and the London Independent newspaper reported in the
days before the Rome UN summit, senior Church figures stated that the policy
reverse was expected. A poison pill feared by those fighting for food and
against biofuels, Washington tried to stage an event where Pope Benedict XVI
would endorse the spread of GMO as a solution to world hunger, something the
Vatican had strongly opposed on moral and other grounds. At the last minute
that endorsement did not happen.
The Roman Catholic Church today stands as one of the most important moral
barriers to widespread acceptance of GMO in many developing countries such as
the Philippines and Latin America. Perhaps, Jesus Christ stirred up the Pope to
do as Christ with the five fish and two loaves. (Read Engdahl's essay in its
entirety and other works by the author at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net)
Food Fights
Like water and oxygen, food is an essential for human life; it ought to be seen
as a basic human right. People should not be allowed to starve or die of
malnutrition when enough food worldwide is produced to provide adequate
nutrition for every man, woman and child. Yet, millions of people around the
world do not get enough food to eat.
In response to the escalating cost of food, riots have erupted in a number of
countries. A food riot turned deadly in Haiti when a United Nations soldier was
shot and killed in April. At least five others died when stone-throwing
protestors battled Haitian police and UN peacekeepers in the southern part of
the island nation. Protestors blamed the government for its failure to provide
jobs and control the soaring cost of staples, which include rice, beans, bread
and cooking oil.
Dave Welsh, a delegate to the San
Francisco Labor Council, which on June 9, 2008 adopted a resolution calling for
a Moratorium on Foreclosures, Utility Shut-offs, Evictions and Public Housing
Demolitions ("The Right to a Job, Food & Water, and Housing," www.dissidentvoice.org), argues "One
reason is the intervention of the US government, acting on behalf of
agribusiness giants. "Free trade" agreements like NAFTA are
destroying subsistence agriculture in countries like Mexico. Cheap
US-taxpayer-subsidized corn has flooded the market, putting Mexican subsistence
farmers out of business. That in turn has been one impetus for the migration
northward of millions of jobless Mexican and Central American workers looking
for work.
US `experts' went to Haiti and arranged the extermination of almost the entire
population of Haitian Creole pigs, a principal source of protein for the
people. Haitian rice farmers were put out of business by an influx of cheap US
rice. Now the price of rice has skyrocketed and people can't afford to buy it.
Agribusiness is now diverting acres and acres of corn to making ethanol for
fuel, raising the price of corn beyond what people can afford. These greedy
trans-national corporations are in effect taking away the people's right to
food in many poor countries, trampling on their 'food sovereignty.'"
As the food fights have already shown, people do not willingly starve to death.
Unless something changes soon, we can expect to see more food fights,
especially in Third World nations where incomes do not keep pace with
inflation.
Mailbox: E-Mails,
Faxes and Telephone Calls
Email brawny@twlakes.net..Wholesale Inflation
Worst in 27 Years..By Martin Crutsinger..Soaring costs for gasoline and food
pushed inflation at the wholesale level up by a larger-than-expected amount in
June, leaving inflation rising over the past year at the fastest pace in more than
a quarter-century. The Labor Department reported that wholesale prices jumped
by 1.8 percent last month, the biggest one-month rise since last November. Over
the past 12 months, wholesale prices are up 9.2 percent, the largest
year-over-year surge since June 1981, another period when soaring energy costs
were giving the country inflation pains.
Email Mwananchi@yahoogroups.com
...Five Million Kids Stunted, Says Report...By Paul Kiwuuwa…Over five
million children in Uganda are stunted due to underfeeding, according to a
study by a charity. A report by the Uganda Child Rights NGO Network said
serious cases of stunted children were evident in Acholi and Karamoja regions
and the districts of Kabale and Kisoro. "One-third of Uganda's children
are stunted with 10% of them below five years. In Acholi and Karamoja, the
affected children are at 15% and 22% respectively." The network's national
programme coordinator, Stella Ayo Odongo, last week presented the report to
Parliamentary Forum for Children during a seminar at the Imperial Royale Hotel
in Kampala. According to the 2006 Uganda National Household Survey, children
make up 51% of the country's population estimated at 30 million.