A 21st century corollary to the idealistic hope, “Suppose they gave a war and nobody came,” could be “Suppose everybody stopped smoking and tobacco farmers grew food instead.”
The outlandish idea of devoting millions of acres to feeding hungry people rather than shortening their lives is reflected in new stirrings by Big Government and Big Money.
The House of Representatives will vote this week on a breakthrough bill to empower the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco as it now regulates food, drugs and medical devices, an important step toward bringing a death-dealing industry under control.
Meanwhile, two billionaires–New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Microsoft founder Bill Gates–are pledging $375 million to fight what they called a global tobacco epidemic.
As food shortages rise and health care is unavailable to multitudes, inhabitants of a rational world might see crop rotation from tobacco to food as a logical way of filling empty stomachs and cutting down on cancer and heart disease at the same time.
Once again, from the Daily North Korea of South Korea, an interview with someone who is said to actually live in the Hermit Kingdom. According to the newspaper, which is staffed in part by North Korean defectors, this member of the ‘North Korean Elite class,’ says he is fully aware of the mass protests in South Korea over U.S. beef, and in his words:
“I can speak not only for myself. No North Korean citizen, apart from on holidays, ever eats meat. When I see protests against the import of U.S. beef, I only wish it could be sent to the North.”
When the interviewer - clearly opposed to the protests over U.S. beef - asks what it would be like if a North Korean protested in such a fashion, the man, using the name An Chul-jin, replies:
“I can’t even imagine a citizen beating an agent of the People’s Safety Agency. Even if it’s just a verbal attack, such a person would be automatically sent to the Labor Training Corps. As a consequence, citizens never speak out against them, even if the agent is at fault. If they physically assault an agent, they are taken to a reeducation camp. They’re the ones with the power, so citizens are automatically captured, and sometimes subject to terrible acts.”
July 7th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has emerged as the first leader in the world who seems to have understood the implications of the looming food crisis and taken a practical step. Brown has issued a clarion call to his countrymen to wake up and stop wasting food. Will the G8 leaders support him in making this a worldwide campaign?
(More than 1,300,000 tonnes of food grain - worth millions of dollars - went rotten in storage over the past decade in India, officials admit.) (Read the BBC report here…)
The Independent reports: “Supermarkets (in Britain) will be urged to drop ‘three for two’ deals on food that encourage shoppers into bulk-buying more than they need, often leading to the surpluses being thrown away. The scandal of the vast mountains of food that are thrown away in Britain while other parts of the world starve is revealed in a (British) Cabinet Office report today. It calls for a reduction in food waste: up to 40 per cent of groceries can be lost before they are consumed due to poor processing, storage and transport.”
Ironically, a top British leader is now acknowledging the accuracy of the vision of Mahatma Gandhi, the arch foe of the British empire, that mindless consumerism would create a crisis sooner than later. Gandhi’s oft quoted words: “There is enough for everyone’s need…but not enough for everyone’s greed.” (For more on Gandhi pl click here…)
Let’s get back to The Independent story: “The (Cabinet) report says UK households could save an average of £420 per year by not throwing away 4.1 million tonnes of food that could have been eaten. The Government is to launch a campaign to stamp out Britain’s waste food mountains as part of a global effort to curb spiralling food prices.
“Gordon Brown said he would make action to tackle the soaring cost of food a priority at the G8 summit starting today in Japan. At his first G8 summit as Prime Minister, Mr Brown will argue that the world’s richest nations must do more to tackle the food price crisis. He will urge them to halt the decline in funding for agricultural projects in Africa, so the continent can boost farm production by 6 per cent a year.” More here…
“World leaders are not renowned for their modest wine selections or reticence at the G8 summit’s cheese board. Shortly after calling for us all to waste less food, Gordon Brown joined his fellow G8 premiers and their wives for an eight-course Marie Antoinette-style ‘Blessings of the Earth and the Sea Social Dinner’.” More here…
Here’s an interesting question: What do North Koreans, who risk Kim Jong-il’s wrath by watching South Korean TV, think about the mass protests against American beef that have been taking place in the South for the past two months?
According to this article from the Daily North Korea, a publication staffed in part by North Korean defectors, a letter recently received from someone who works in North Korea doing missionary work writes that the protests are triggering ’sorrow.’
“”When we see the South Korean people protesting the resumption of U.S. beef imports rather than showing a sense of pride as citizens of a powerful and rich nation, we felt sorrow. The North Korean people are eating grass porridge to survive. … We don’t understand what the South Korean people are protesting. Why make such a fuss? …”
The Iraqi refugee crisis–and it is a crisis–continues to draw my interest, and, the refugees, my compassion.
Perhaps it is because of my personal involvement in another refugee crisis in the seventies; perhaps it is because, in my opinion, the tragedy is a direct, albeit unintended result of our disastrous decision to invade Iraq and our equally disastrous mismanagement of the subsequent, nearly six-year-long occupation.
While, according to some sources, the situation in Iraq seems to be improving, there is no near-term end in sight to the sheer misery that over four million displaced Iraqis are experiencing–in squalid camps in their own country and in equally sordid conditions, mostly in Syria and Jordan.
Regardless of my passion for this issue, it is always great when I come across other voices that are equally or more passionate, and especially much more eloquent and authoritative.
A few days ago, I related the expert opinion on this issue by Morton Abramowitz, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a board member of the International Rescue Committee.
Today’s New York Times had an opinion piece on the Iraqi refugees issue by none other than two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Nicholas D. Kristof.
I honestly can not think of another journalist–or for that matter, a politician or government official–who has focused more of the world’s attention on genocide, famine, global health, poverty and refugee issues in the developing world and elsewhere. Since 2004 Kristof has written dozens of columns about Darfur and visited the area eight times.
Thus, it should be no surprise that Mr. Kristof won his second Pulitzer in 2006, for commentary for what the judges called “his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world.”
In his column, “Books not Bombs,” Kristof calls attention to what he calls the “dirty little secret” of the Iraq war:
The dirty little secret of the Iraq war isn’t in Baghdad or Basra. Rather, it’s found in the squalid brothels of Damascus and the poorest neighborhoods of East Amman.
Some two million Iraqis have fled their homeland and are now sheltering in run-down neighborhoods in surrounding countries. These are the new Palestinians, the 21st-century Arab diaspora that threatens the region’s stability.
Many youngsters are getting no education, and some girls are pushed into prostitution, particularly in Damascus. Impoverished, angry, disenfranchised, unwanted, these Iraqis are a combustible new Middle Eastern element that no one wants to address or even think about.
Kristof also writes:
We broke Iraq, and we have a moral responsibility to those whose lives have been shattered by our actions. Helping them is also in our national interest, for we’ll regret our myopia if we allow young Iraqi refugees to grow up uneducated and unemployable, festering in their societies.
In one of my pieces on this subject I quoted one of the members of our compassionate Conservative administration expressing just the opposite opinion: “…our obligation was to give [Iraqis] new institutions and provide security…” and , we don’t “have an obligation to compensate [Iraqis] for the hardships of war.” You guessed it, this was our former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton
Kristof also bemoans how little the U.S. has done towards accepting more Iraqi refugees into our country. But he also has a suggestion that would help the refugees and at the same time would address the region’s security challenges instead of “devoting billions of dollars to permanent American military bases,” as American hawks would prefer doing:
A simpler way to fight extremism would be to pay school fees for refugee children to ensure that they at least get an education and don’t become forever marginalized and underemployed.
[…]
We have already seen, in the case of Palestinians, how a refugee diaspora can destabilize a region for decades. If Jordan were to collapse in part from such pressures, that would be a catastrophe — and the best way to prevent that isn’t to give it Blackhawk helicopters, but help with school fees and school construction.
If we let the Iraqi refugee crisis drag on — and especially if we allow young refugees to miss an education so that they will never have a future — then we are sentencing ourselves to endure their wrath for decades to come. Educating Iraqis may not be as glamorous as bombing them, but it will do far more good.
Amen, Mr. Kristof, and thank you for continuing to give “voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world.”
June 5th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
The blame game has already been going on, and is likely to become ugly and fierce as to who is causing maximum pollution and contributing towards visible changes in environment.
On the one side we have “developed” countries refusing to have a critical look at their reckless consumerism. While on the other are the “developing” countries wanting to mindlessly ape the Western lifestyle and thus putting an unbearable burden on the scarce resources on our planet earth.
All this has been been convincingly discussed in detail in the latest must-read article in The Economist. However, it does more finger-pointing towards China and India rather than suggesting ways how and what the “developed” nations should do towards sustainable living.
“Now that the American presidential race is down to two candidates who are both committed to cutting emissions, China and India, the world’s most populous nations, are seen by many as the world’s biggest climate-change problems. Russia’s economy is more profligate with energy, but China is widely believed to be the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, and India is rapidly moving up.
“Their exploding emissions are America’s main excuse for failing to take action itself; and their intransigence exasperates those trying to negotiate a global agreement on climate-change mitigation to replace the Kyoto protocol. Meanwhile, both countries are awakening to the problems that climate change will cause them.”
It goes without saying that without equitable distribution of resources the world would be witnessing increasing migrations, poverty and terrorism in the coming years. One option has been shown by the Bush administration — survival of the fittest. The other revolves round urgent evolving of a consensus on such critical issues through serious deliberations by world leaders. The latter option may provide effective long and short term strategy so essential for world peace and harmony.
Meanwhile a study centre, described as the world’s first legal research centre into climate change, will be opened in Canberra at the Australian National University today by environment minister Peter Garrett. The centre would focus on issues such as the international legal regime for tackling climate change, after the Kyoto agreement runs out, climate litigation, and issues involving renewable energy, transport and forestry. More here…
Heightened international competition for the planet’s scarce resources has begun, and it’s emerging nations that stand to lose the most, warns O Globo of Brazil’s chief international columnist, William Waack.
“The first is contained in a report from the respected International Energy Agency , which assumes that geological and geopolitical reasons will inevitably lead to an oil supply crisis. … The other interpretation follows the same scenerio (price inflation, competition for scarce resources) but arrives at a far different conclusion. The rising cost of a barrel of oil will lead to a slowdown in the global economy, which will prevent the emergence of a crisis in supply.”
“The emerging nations will have to compete, perhaps for the first time, for the same resources available to the already rich and developed.”
By William Waack
Translated By Brandi Miller
May 23, 2008
Brazil - O Globo - Original Article (Portuguese)
The immediate consequence of the explosion in oil prices is clear and irreversible in the short term. It’s the global inflation that has manifested itself in higher prices for food, airfares, freight costs, consumables and finished products in many sectors.
But for the medium term, there are two conflicting interpretations. The first is contained in a report from the respected International Energy Agency , which assumes that geological and geopolitical reasons will inevitably lead to an oil supply crisis. This interpretation was the immediate cause of nervousness on oil markets this Thursday (May 22).
The other interpretation for the medium-term follows the same scenerio (price inflation, competition for scarce resources) but arrives at a far different conclusion. The rising cost of a barrel of oil will lead to a slowdown in the global economy, which will prevent the emergence of a crisis in supply.
It’s difficult to resolve this “battle” of interpretations at the moment. Other similar episodes of rising oil prices show that higher prices spur new technologies and the better use of fuel. In the decade of the seventies, the “shocks” in price and supply (caused by geopolitical, not geological reasons) were absorbed by a fantastic technological revolution - the information age.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the United States and the global energy and food crisis.
Want to assist cyclone survivors in Burma and earthquake survivors in China?
TMV reader C Stanley suggests:
In reading this story, where China is specifically listing an urgent need for tents, I was moved to research and give to an organization that had been mentioned to me recently - a group that provides tents and other subsistence items in natural disasters.
One ‘box’ costs about USD 1000 (that includes the organization’s costs in delivering it.)
Contents:
Each ShelterBox normally holds a 10-person tent and a range of other equipment, such as:
• Thermal blankets, insulated ground sheets & insecticide treated mosquito nets • A wood burning stove, or • A multi-fuel stove that can burn anything from diesel to old paint!
• Cooking pans, utensils, bowls and mugs • Collapsible water containers and water purification tablets • Basic tool kit –hammer, axe, saw, pliers, hoe head, trenching shovel, rope etc • A small, children’s pack containing drawing books, crayons, pens etc.
The organization has made it into Myanmar (they work directly through local contacts and are able to avoid some of the bureaucratic red tape of larger organizations) and is beginning to deliver boxes to the China quake area as well.
Apparently donors can find out specifically where their box ends up- each box is numerically coded- but I’m not certain on whether or not there’s a minimum donation to be able to track (I was told it was minimum of $250, but I don’t see that info on their website so I’m not certain.)
The charity got top rating from Intelligent Giving, a British rating organization- and they meet the basic standard of having 10% or less of revenue going to overhead and 90% going directly toward purchase and delivery of boxes. You can find a list on their site of their work to date, which is pretty impressive- they provided something like a quarter million tents after the 2004 Tsunami.
Caveats for anyone who considers donations- the payment is set up in British pounds since it’s a UK based organization (exchange rate currently close to 2:1 for USD: Pound.) And, I have no idea if this is tax deductible for US income tax purposes.
Seemed like a good way to get some immediate much needed assistance to these areas though, for those who are looking for a way to help. Since some of you have blogged about this, I thought I’d pass it along.
May 21, 2008 – The effects of Cyclone Nargis are continuing to intensify: the official death toll is now almost 80,000 while aid agencies estimate that the number of dead could be 128,000 or higher. At least one million people are currently homeless and some 2.5 million people are at risk of starvation and disease.
AJWS has been in constant contact with grantee organizations in communities neighboring the affected regions since the disaster struck and is working with them to make sure that aid reaches those who need it most. AJWS emergency funding is supporting the Emergency Assistance Team, a coordinated relief effort that includes the Mae Tao Clinic and several AJWS grantees. Inside Burma*, the Emergency Assistance Team is visiting affected communities, assessing needs, distributing food and clean water, providing shelter and health services, and disposing of dead bodies. The team is also documenting the scenes and abuses they are witnessing.
Grassroots relief efforts like those supported by AJWS are vital to the people of Burma at this time. While some Southeast Asian aid workers are now being granted visas to enter the country, aid efforts are still being hampered by the Burmese junta and aid workers are still not being allowed into the most badly affected areas. It is estimated that aid has only reached 30% of those who need it, and there are reports that international aid is being sold on the open market instead of being distributed.
An AJWS contact in the region, who cannot be named for security reasons, had this to say: “The provision of lifesaving aid has been stalled due to the [junta’s] underreporting and inept emergency management… The people of Burma have been cheated out of accessing the help they desperately need during this devastating time.”
As the situation on the ground in Burma continues to develop, AJWS will continue to provide updates and reports from our grantees in the region.
Click here for an overview on the political situation in Burma and the work of AJWS in the region.
*The name Myanmar was given to the country by the SPDC in 1989. However, pro-democracy activists still use the old name, Burma, to vocalize their objection to military rule. In solidarity with these activists, and in opposition to the illegitimate rule of the SPDC, AJWS refers to the country as Burma.
May 22nd, 2008 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
Than Shwe, as four (4), count them, four huge ships are anchored off Burma, ships filled with relief medical supplies, a helicopter, food, tents, clothing for the poor suffering people of Burma, and YOU Than Shwe, whose names literally mean “million gold’ …refuse to allow the ships into port to land.
This, Than Shwe, is now three weeks after the entire planetary community has rushed to give aid to the people of Burma. You have said and continue to say, No. You have grabbed what shipments of goods you’ve allowed into the country, for yourself and your friends, with only pale distribution far from the center of the Irrawaddy devastation.
A lot of people worldwide see no great leader in you, but think there’s a infantile mewling tyrant inside the great dictator of Burma. It may be so, for when a person carries a profound sense of inferiority, they also give great effort to compensate by overdoing status symbols. I hear you have festooned your military jacket with unearned gold medals, Than Shwe.
There’s an old saying in the military, the real and honorable military, not your colonized kind, Than Shwe: the more gold hanging on the outside, the smaller the man feels himself to be on the inside.
Even our five-star generals and admirals, Than Shwe, do not wear their ceremonial military uniforms at every turn as you do. They know the difference between daily hard work and the garb to do it in, and the occasional all-out ceremonial dress-up.
Most importantly, they got their medals, bars and epaulets the hard way: they earned them– often by spilling their own blood. Not like you, who spill the blood of your own people, and then award yourself a grand medal for doing so.
There’s another story Than Shwe, one from my own heritage:
The greed-sotted Conquistadores who staged a vicious coup, plundering the Aztec nations, setting themselves up as a dictatorship and junta… they had exactly the same problem as you Than Shwe.
Their lust to festoon themselves with gold they had not earned, but killed innocent Aztecs for, made the braggart Conquistadores’ bodies very heavy. The Conquistadores literally clanked from all the gold they hung on all over themselves.
Gold, so heavy in fact, that when the native people turned on them in rebellions that took hundreds of years to come to resolution– in the favor of the people– that when the phony dictators ran from the Aztecs to bunker themselves in their stolen palaces, the gold-laden soldiers often fell into the many waterways and aqueducts Read the rest of this entry »
The outrage in India over President Bush’s recent comments, which appeared to blame that country’s growing middle class for rising food prices, shows no sign of subsiding.
Some reports coming out of North Korea indicate that people are beginning to openly question the regime’s explanation of why once again, starvation looms.
This article from The Daily North Korea, a publication headquartered in Seoul dedicated to reporting on the regime and getting word into the Hermit Kingdom about the outside world, reports:
“It appears that North Koreans are expressing increasing doubt about government claims that South Korea and the United States are responsible for the latest food crisis.”
According to one source, located in the North Korean Province of Ryanggang reported on a party meeting held recently in the city of Hyesan:
“During the conference, a speaker is said to have explained the state of international and domestic affairs by saying, ‘the U.S. and the puppet regime (the Lee Administration in South Korea) have overridden peaceful agreements between North and South (referring to the June 15th Joint Declaration and the October 4th Agreement) in order to create a serious food crisis in our Republic.’ … there was an awkward atmosphere in the hall after the chairperson of a People’s Unit from Hyehwa-dong in the city of Hyesan asked forthrightly, “We understand that the Americans and Lee’s puppet faction aren’t helping us with rice, but why won’t China help us, since it’s our closest ally?” The speaker’s face turned pale at the question and a silent tension filled the hall.”
By Lee Sung Jin
May 8, 2008
South Korea - Daily North Korea - Original Article (English)
Yanji, China: It appears that North Koreans are expressing increasing doubt about government claims that South Korea and the United States are responsible for the latest food crisis.
In a telephone interview on May 1st, a source from Ryanggang Province told The DailyNK, “At a conference of the Union of Democratic Women, called to commemorate the founding of the Korean People’s Army on April 25th, one speaker humiliated herself by blaming [South Korean] President Lee” for the crisis.
One of a series of meetings now being held across the country to extol the military, this meeting was held at the conference hall of the General Federation of Korean Trade Unions in Ryanggang Province.
The source reported that, “A lecture was given, entitled ‘Our revolutionary weapons are an invincible force for building a strong military-first country.’ During the lecture, he said that the politics of putting the military first were, “praised even more highly than the People’s Army itself.”
During the conference, a speaker is said to have explained the state of international and domestic affairs by saying, “the U.S. and the puppet regime (the Lee Administration in South Korea) have overridden peaceful agreements between North and South (referring to the June 15th Joint Declaration and the October 4th Agreement) in order to create a serious food crisis in our Republic.”
Then our source reports that there was an awkward atmosphere in the hall after the chairperson of a People’s Unit from Hyehwa-dong in the city of Hyesan asked forthrightly, “We understand that the Americans and Lee’s puppet faction aren’t helping us with rice, but why won’t China help us, since it’s our closest ally?” The speaker’s face turned pale at the question and a silent tension filled the hall.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing foreign press coverage surrounding American involvement with North Korea.
New York, NY, May 8, 2008—Thanks to its historical, 94 years of operation as a non-political entity and relief organization, JDC staff has been granted entry visas to carry out humanitarian aid efforts for victims of cyclone Nargis which hit Myanmar last week. A senior JDC professional is on the ground in Myanmar, where he will assess the situation and carry out plans to aid the estimated several hundred thousand cyclone victims without shelter and safe drinking water. JDC is partnering with MASHAV, Magen David Adom (MDA), and F.I.R.S.T (Fast Israeli Rescue & Search Team) to provide emergency relief, including medical supplies and personnel and rescue workers.
JDC has opened a mailbox and is now accepting donations to provide immediate assistance and relief:
Donate to Myanmar Cyclone Relief:
Online: https://www.jdc.org/donation/jdc_form.cfm
By Phone: 212.687.6200
By Mail: Check payable to: JDC-Myanmar Cyclone Relief, P.O. Box 530, 132 East 43rd St., New York, NY, 10017
May 9th, 2008 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
According to my contact in Yangon, what pitiful supplies are on the ground, have no distribution whatsoever to any of the thousands of villages and tributaries in Burma hit into utter devastation by the tsunami/ cyclone. The Burmese, most poorer than poor before the tsunami, are going on their 6th sunrise without clean water, food, or shelter or medicines.
Meanwhile, it is certain, while the military government gets down their fiddles, the infants and newborns and toddlers grow dehydrated. Without adequate water and food, their mothers’ breasts will have run out of milk, and the children will die from dehydration, an entire generation of young will be gone within a week.
Than Shwe: You cannot keep others from knowing about the mayhem of your country. Burma is on satellite. The floods and the people and the animals can be seen dead and floating and bloated. The living can be seen by satellite also, picking through ruins, entire villages wiped out with no survivors.
Than Shwe, delaying allowing aid workers in, makes you only look more and more unleaderly.
Than Shwe, animals survive by adapting. Animals who can learn new behavior, survive the unforeseen.
Than Shwe, animals who do as they have always done, die.
Than Shwe, open your heart, if not your mind. Be known as a ruler who took care of his people in every way possible, rather than going down in history as the leader who stood by paralyzed and allowed holy people and helpless people, his own kith and kin, to die in misery.
CODA
I hear from my contact in Yangon, that the people on the ground in Burma are begging that international aeroplanes please fly over and drop supplies.
Than Shwe, if they fly, let them fly unmolested. Add no more horror to horror. It’s within your power. Choose honorific over horrific.
Than Shwe, the new respect you would receive then, would be remarkable.
This is our deepest prayer for you Than Shwe, and for the people of Burma… the Central Buddhist Precept:
May 8th, 2008 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
Various news reports say there are over 200,000 dead in the cyclone and tsunami that hit Burma… now five days ago.
Other reports say over 500,000 will be dead if the thousands of bodies floating in water and lying in mud are not burnt or buried, and the injured given help, and the vulnerable given clean water.
This is after the government originally said there might be a total of 10,000 dead. Maybe not even that many, they said.
This from The Sun, U.K., by Nick Parker, Chief Foreign Correspondent at Mae Sot on the Burmese border
and James Clench
The UK has so far pledged more aid than anyone, announcing a £5million package to be channelled through the UN.
Charities Save the Children, Oxfam and the British Red Cross have also swung into action.
But most of the aid is yet to be distributed because of the secretive Burmese junta, led by ruthless General Than Shwe.
His isolationist regime is paranoid an influx of foreigners might have a political impact on a national referendum due tomorrow, set to strengthen the army’s grip still further.
Three days ago, the dictatorship’s Health Minister went on TV, in what was called a rare appearance, and he said aid was on its way to the Burmese people. Right away.
It’s not. Aid is not on its way. Five days later, world aid is not present in Burma.
General Than Shwe, dictator of Burma, has 400,000 soldiers at his behest.
And as I wrote at TMV earlier, hopefully Than Shwe would stand out of the way and allow the experienced international teams of aid workers to bring equipment and supplies, and the means to both unload it and distribute it.
It didn’t happen.
Ships from many nations are still fully loaded all over the world waiting orders to turn the wheel and steam toward Burma. Cargo planes are loaded and waiting. They are filled with medical supplies At various airports outside Burma, aid workers are sitting on their packed duffels and backpacks ready to go: parameds, post trauma specialists, doctors, engineers, health care workers, and heavy equipment, such as back hoes, trailers. All waiting.
And waiting
And waiting
Than Shwe, hugely well fed dictator of the ancient Burmese people, he who has suffered no personal loss from this disaster for he is ensconced more than 200 miles away from where the tsunami/ cyclone hit… and it is Than Shwe, who wanted to be king of everything and who wanted to control everything, it is he who has publicly failed the world soul, failed the world heart that cries out for a humane response…
Than Shwe has failed publicly and utterly by keeping aid workers out of Burma, by putting no real teeth behind his health minister’s claim that help was coming, big help was coming, right away, huge help was coming.
Than Shwe is merely keeping all aid workers on strings… without cutting the red tape.
The dictatorship’s excuse? Than Shwe and his merelings continues to parrot that they “cannot let aid workers into the country out of concern for the workers own safety.”
Than Shwe,NEWS ALERT: to aid workers, a disaster site wouldn’t be a disaster site if it weren’t unsafe.
Than Shwe’s huge lie will not hold water, not even a drop left behind by the tsunami.
The growing world food crisis looks like a montage in a disaster movie–crowd scenes of hungry rioters in Haiti, Egypt and Africa’s Ivory Coast; close-ups of emaciated mothers holding out starving children to anyone who will feed them; well-fed gray men in paneled rooms clucking impotently.
Before the World Bank meeting last weekend, president Robert Zoellick talked about the growing emergency caused by doubling wheat and rice prices in the past year. “While many are worrying about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs and it’s getting more and more difficult everyday,” he said.
But at the meeting, nothing was done. An official of the International Monetary Fund observed that “the best sort of response is to allow market forces to operate, to allow prices to rise so that there can be a supply response.”
April 17th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Why is the media, and the blogs, overlooking the “real” issues? The recent Clinton/Obama debate once again brought under spotlight a serious lack of professionalism among journalists and their growing penchant to trivialize serious issues. To give another example, few seem interested at the looming food crisis that is likely to have worldwide political and economic ramifications.
Would the media wake up only when the wolf reaches their doors or the dinner table (when it is too late)? Even if the media is looking for “sensational” news there is plenty to be found in the “real” issues. How about this….?
“Food riots have erupted in countries all along the equator. In Haiti, protesters chanting ‘We’re hungry’ forced the prime minister to resign; 24 people were killed in riots in Cameroon; Egypt’s president ordered the army to start baking bread; the Philippines made hoarding rice punishable by life imprisonment. ‘It’s an explosive situation and threatens political stability,’ worries Jean-Louis Billon, president of Côte d’Ivoire’s chamber of commerce,” reports The Economist. Read the rest of this entry »
Was President Bush’s recent tour of Africa just a convenient and thinly-disguised attempt to whitewash an otherwise dismal foreign policy record? Mohammad Jafar Ahmed of Al-Khaleej of the United Arab Emirates writes, ‘By signing agreements and handing out donations to help combat disease at the end of his second term, Bush’s tour appeared to be an attempt to instill memories other than the American catastrophe in Iraq and the quagmire in Afghanistan.’
By Mohammad Jafar Ahmed
Translated By James Jacobson
February 22, 2008
United Arab Emirates - Al-Khaleej - Original Article (Arabic)
In his last months before leaving the White House, American President George Bush remembered of the “Dark Continent,” setting off on a six-day African tour starting in Benin, and moving on to Rwanda, Tanzania and Ghana, and ending today with a stop in Liberia.
Bush’s “farewell” tour, which is the second to Africa of his presidency, was meant to convince the world that he feels the suffering of this forgotten people, presenting himself as an advocate who wants to help them overcome the effects of war, conflict and disease. But perhaps the true purpose was to rescue a legacy tainted with the blood of thousands in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan - the result of his wars and unlimited support of Zionist aggression, in addition to the sanctions he has imposed on a number of countries that have opposed his policies.
The tour was striking in that it didn’t include the real hot spots of conflict on the Dark Continent, notably Sudan, home of the Darfur crisis, as well as Kenya, where the turmoil that has embroiled the nation since the recent elections continues, to say nothing of Chad and Somalia.
Bush’s five-country selection prompts anyone interested Africa’s difficulties to question the meaning and true objectives of his tour and whether it was for political or economic purposes. As Darfur is one of the major preoccupations of the West, particularly in the United States, which kept the crisis on the international agenda until it reached the U.N. Security Council, Sudan can be considered the greatest failure of Bush’s tour; similar to the way Palestine was the great failure after his last Middle East tour, where as result of American cover for “Israeli” crimes, hundreds have been martyred in Gaza and the West Bank.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with out continuing translated foreign press coverage of the United States.
2) Tajikistan: “Tajikistan is in the grip of emergency food shortages, the UN’s World Food Programme is warning… Some humanitarian agencies claim Central Asia’s poorest nation is heading towards catastrophe.”
[Note: Tajikistan is ruled by a “democratic” despot, Emomalii Rahmon. He “won” re-election in 2006, but that election is widely held to have been corrupt — at the very least, Rahmon had no serious opposition. A 2003 referendum, also corrupt, could enable him to remain in power until at least 2020. He has nine children. No word on whether they are suffering food shortages, but I’m sure they’re doing just fine.]
3) Pakistan: “Taliban militants declared a ceasefire today in fighting with Pakistani forces. The Pakistani government, meanwhile, says its is preparing for peace talks with the Al Qaeda-linked extremists in the lawless tribal area near the border with Afghanistan.”
[Shouldn’t this story be getting a lot more attention?]
4) Italy: “President Giorgio Napolitano dissolved Italy’s Parliament on Wednesday, and the cabinet scheduled national elections for April 13. Mr. Napolitano’s move followed the failure of Italy’s political factions to agree on a plan to revise the country’s flawed electoral law before a new vote.”
