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Tag(s): Agribusiness; Agriculture; Energy; Green; Haiti; Monsanto; Policy; Subsidies; WORLD DEPOPULATION; World Bank; (more...) World Hunger (less...)
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April 21, 2008 at 05:32:55

Hunger Plagues Haiti and the World

by Stephen Lendman Page 6 of 6 page(s)

www.opednews.com

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-- making it all genetically engineered and inflicting great potential harm to human health; and

-- producing reduced crop amounts for food, diverting greater quantities for fuel, allowing prices to soar, making food as dear as oil, ending government's responsibility for food security, and tolerating the unthinkable - putting hundreds of millions of poor around the world in jeopardy and letting them starve to death for profit.

This is the brave new world neoliberal schemers have in mind. They're well along with their plans, marginally diverted by today's economic distress, well aware that growing world protests that could prove hugely disruptive, but very focused, nonetheless, on finding clever ways to push ahead with what's worked pretty well for them so far, so they're not about to let human misery jeopardize big profits.

If they won't reform, people have to do it for them, and throughout history that's how it's always worked. Over time, the stakes keep rising as the threats become greater, and today they may be as great as they've ever been.

What better time for a new social movement like those in the past that were pivotal forces for change. Famed community organizer Saul Alinsky knew the way to beat organized money is with organized people. In combination, they've succeeded by taking to the streets, striking, boycotting, challenging authority, disrupting business, paying with their lives and ultimately prevailing by knowing change never comes from the top down. It's always from the grassroots, from the bottom up, and what better time for it than now. It's high time democracy worked for everyone, that destructive GMO and biofuels schemes won't be tolerated, and that "America the Beautiful" won't any longer just be for elites and no one else.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sj.lendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM to 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests.

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I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.

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2 comments

An astronomer who has worked on a number of NASA projects, Ken lives in Baltimore, where he devotes his scientific training to observations and inferences about current affairs, politics and the media.

He authors Shockfront and The Bonehead Compendium.
Kenneth AndersonAn astronomer who has worked on a number of NASA projects, Ken lives in Baltimore, where he devotes his scientific training to observations and inferences about current affairs, politics and the media.

He authors Shockfront and The Bonehead Compendium.

Worldwide Hunger

Steve,

Excellent article and overview.

by Kenneth Anderson (19 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 16 comments) on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 9:57:08 AM

Except for repeated unsuccessful attempts to obtain a full-time job during the 1980s, my adult life has been spent in nuturing, and witnessing the progress of, my very large family. My personal evaluation of this experience is that it has contributed immeasurably to the expansion of my internal capacity to view other human beings as equal members of the human family before a loving Creator, and compellingly equal members of the society politic before our global institutions of government.
MyTwoCentsExcept for repeated unsuccessful attempts to obtain a full-time job during the 1980s, my adult life has been spent in nuturing, and witnessing the progress of, my very large family. My personal evaluation of this experience is that it has contributed immeasurably to the expansion of my internal capacity to view other human beings as equal members of the human family before a loving Creator, and compellingly equal members of the society politic before our global institutions of government.

Hunger

Again, thanks to Stephen Lendman for an eye-opening expose' on hunger. I would have reservations on some points:

All of those predatory actions by the agribusinesses are fundamentally to blame, but the rapidity with which the crisis has come to a head points directly to the inflation of the money supply by the Federal Reserve Board - both to accommodate federal government borrowing and to prop up the American stock market. As the stock market rises, so do prices and so do the numbers of hungry. The fact that the world monetary system has been linked to the dollar since 1948 makes the cheapening of the dollar a world crisis. The situation demands removal of all obstacles to issuing of local currency.

It was, in fact, the inflation that followed Richard Nixon's U.S. detachment, in 1974,from the commitment to buy and sell gold at $35/oz, which in turn was followed in the 1980s by steep interest rates to control that inflation, which wiped out many small American farmers and placed third world countries in bondage to American banks. It seems that it was in this period that American agribusinesses got the big jump on third world food production, probably because of IMF demands on nation borrowers.

I also am not sure about the major effect that biofuel production has on world food output. It would seem that ethanol and other biofuels are to young to be having that steep an effect.

However, the agribusiness giants are extremely suspect that they are stockpiling grain commodities with the expectation of controlling food prices and reaping huge profits.

In the end, it comes down to the 536 members of the U.S. Congress, who control the massive US military arsenal, which is used as the "big stick" of U.S. corporations. It is a serious responsibility of the American people; we seem to be the only ones who can stop this madness.

And that leads to election integrity, which I see as the critical issue from now to November, even more important than the Clean Election Campaign, and Media Reform.