So indeed, under such circumstances, how could developing countries prevent food waste better? How can they improve their infrastructure? And further, what does it tell about our Humanitarian Organizations? How can the The American Red Cross CEO accept an over half a million dollar salary, and that of the UNICEF receive more than $1 million without feeling any remorse? 

Let's now digress a little bit: and what about the best paid religious NGOs leaders. Take a look at the top 25 compensation packages while you are at it, it is only one click away. Obviously, Charity Inc has its own elites' inner circle. What do we make of all those pictures of starving children appearing on our TV screens on regular basis? The scandal of humanitarian and foreign aid alike is so appalling that it should rightfully make us wonder about the concept of 'enforced generosity' embodied by the Welfare State. Volunteering and acting locally is the only way to make it worthwhile. Of course, this alarming food waste, plays into the hands of humanitarian organizations. The only core question here remains: why didn't they see anything coming? A Closer Look At The Global Madness Using 2011 retail prices, the avoidable food waste in the United States (for the year 2009) has a total retail value of 197.7 billion USD. Consumer waste alone amounts to 124.1 billion USD, or nearly 63 percent of the total retail value of wasted food (Venkat 2011). Danielle Nierenberg co-project director of the Worldwatch Institute contends that 31 million tons end in landfills or incinerators each year. That's roughly equivalent to the weight of 74 Golden Gate bridges!

With 47 million on food stamps, American is literally becoming a Food Stamp Nation. CBS reported last September that the House has voted to cut nearly $4 billion a year from food stamps, a 5% reduction to the nation's main feeding program used by more than 1 in 7 Americans: this will force 47.7m people to live on less than one meal a day. The cost of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -SNAP- has more than doubled since 2008, coming to nearly $78 billion last year. (washingtonpost/2013/09/23). While this clearly shows that the SNAP doesn't address the food waste and is thus a mere scheme to waste taxpayers' money, a pertinent question surfaces: why aren't food stamp recipients allowed to get their groceries directly from their local food banks instead? Don't worry, it will simply never happen as long as profit-ponzi economics is being implemented. Meanwhile, doctors lobby against food-stamp reductions.

Obesity becoming a plague in the so-called rich nations. As a response, the British grocery giant Tesco vowed on 21.10.2013 to reduce the nearly 60,000 tons of food wasted by its suppliers and shoppers each year. As part of the measures, Tesco said it would end a range of multiple-buy offers, which encourage consumers to over-buy. Simultaneously, studies show that western countries consume every day a surplus of 1400 calories per person for a total of 150 trillion calories a year. The article continues: 'Times have changed, overabundance times are over and the costs of this irresponsible and inefficient behavior are increasing. The world population has grown tenfold and hunger is still persistent and growing --also in Europe--, the EU has constant and unsustainable yearly deficit of 75 million tons of biomass with the rest of the world, the costs of disposal for waste continue to increase and EU legislation pushes in prevention'. We should all shake our heads in disbelief here. 

So not only seeds are manipulated genetically (think Monsanto), crops are too sprayed with various pesticides, food getting additional chemical treatments and irradiated during processing, all of which destroys nutrients and causes cravings, making us sick and putting on weight. You see, corporations cash in on all ends of spectrum. Big Pharma Inc is there to help. Have you ever heard, by any chance, a commercial on TV praising healthy and balanced diets with organic wholesome foods then citing all the side effects of conventional supermarket items? If they do so when featuring prescription drugs, why not about food? Under such circumstances, what to think of the pharmaceutical, diet and fitness industries? Many people have no idea how dire our situation really is.

Same gloomy picture in the UK and EU. One-fifth of what households buy ends up as waste, and around 60% of that could have been eaten, according to a report from the government's waste advisory group, Wrap. (theguardian.com/environment/2013). In Britain every year 18 million tonnes of food still perfectly edible are thrown away by households alone for an annual retail value cost of 14 billion pounds: at the same time 4 million people in the UK do not have access to a healthy diet (zerowasteeurope.eu/2010/12). Wasting food and hunger side by side is scandalous. In France only, each citizen throws away every year 7kgs of food still in the original package when in the same country, 8 million people are at risk of poverty.

In March 2013, according to a study by the European Commission, 89 million tonnes or 179 Kg per capita of food are wasted every year in the European Union. By 2020 this could increase by over 40%. Well, cynically we should rejoice at the prospect that if the IMF 10% Supertax Bail-in Proposal on all Eurozone household savings, is passed, such an increase will most likely not come true... but let's not fool ourselves: in this economic environment, less buying will too result in more food price inflation. However, inflation cannot go on forever. At some point, hyperinflation sets in and completely destroys the purchasing power.

In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, up to 150kgs of food produced is lost per person every year, according to FAO research.(guardian.uk). In the region, there are at least 265 million people hungry, heightening the travesty of the food waste problem. More than a quarter of the food produced in Africa spoils before it is eaten.

As China has enjoyed a boom over the past two decades, food waste has too become a major concern. According to WorldWatch Institute, more than $32 billion of food is thrown away in China annually, although 128 million Chinese live below the poverty line and often lack sufficient food. (usa.chinadaily.com). But that's China only. An estimated 42 percent of the fruit and vegetables and 20 percent of the grain produced in the Asia Pacific region are lost or wasted. In short: 1.3 billion ton of food, enough to feed 3 billion people - are lost annually.

More banking data. While the West gets fatter and sicker, The World Bank Food Price Index rose by 60 percent in the course of just a few months of 2008, and international prices of maize, rice, and wheat increased by 70 percent, 180 percent, and 120 percent, respectively, compared to the mid-2007. Between 2000 and 2012, the World Bank global food price index increased 104.5 percent, at an average annual rate of 6.5 percent. But the spikes affect everything. For example: The wholesale price index (WPI), India's main inflation measure, climbed to 6.46 percent last month - its fastest rate since February - pushed up by food prices such as a 322 percent jump in onion prices, government data showed (Reuters: 10.14.13). Here the inflation index just follows the supply and demand, though it is outrageously misleading as we throw out food like never before. As you can see, inflation also causes scarcity since everything becomes more expensive. It should be obvious to all by now that The World Bank pretends to address a distress that it helps sustain in the first place. The squeeze can only worsen and there is a brick wall forming on the horizon.

Rightfully, the UN warns of looming worldwide food crisis in 2013... and we can trust that with such trends, the threat hasn't gone away. Rising food prices will threaten disaster and unrest and much of it will be blamed on the global warming. Although records show that earth temperatures have never been constant, such a blatant pillage and waste of resources will never be admitted by our so-called lawmakers. However, this UN statement is very enlightening and proves we cannot trust the organization. The UN perfectly knows the prime cause of food waste but then double-speaks as if it never read the investigations of its own FAO department.

To add to the injury, the hypocritical UN claims that:
'We've not been producing as much as we are consuming'. Supplies are now very tight across the world and reserves are at a very low level, leaving no room for unexpected events next year," said Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist with the FAO.... The UN figures come as one of the world's leading environmentalists, Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Research Center in Washington, says that the climate is no longer reliable and the demands for food are growing so fast that a breakdown is inevitable... the global food supply system could collapse at any point, leaving hundreds of millions more people hungry, sparking widespread riots and bringing down governments. Lester goes on: Food shortages undermined earlier civilizations. We are on the same path. Each country is now fending for itself. The world is living one year to the next,' he writes in a new book. According to Lester Brown, we are seeing the start of a food-supply breakdown with a dash by speculators to "grab" millions of square miles of cheap farmland, the doubling of international food prices in a decade, and the dramatic rundown of countries' food reserves.

THE SMOKING GUN. While we shouldn't trust global warming theories too fast, Lester Brown knows that the system is predatory and pretends to play the visionary. This is the sobering and revolting outcome awaiting us around the corner. It is what globalization has always meant to be about. Last April, worldwatch.org established that the global population grew by 3.8 billion or 122.9 percent between 1961 and 2010, net per capita food production increased by 49 percent over this period. This is a smoking gun: the two-digit number just mentioned matches our current global food waste! And this figure doesn't take into account the yearly 15 trillion calories surplus in the West stipulated above? Overpopulation theory is (another) mega deception which makes people hope for wars. Have you ever heard :'we need a war, we can't feed the whole planet anymore'? Such a train of thoughts comes from either ignorance, intellectual laziness or a lack of access to information.

The Insanity of Our Food Policy. The former World bank economist, Joseph Stiglitz, sheds more light on farms subsidies in America that have been implemented since the Great Depression and which can be illustrated with the slogan 'taking from the poor to subsidize the rich'. The slogan is now a worldwide fact. Although Stiglitz unfortunately agrees that those subsidies were necessary when the depression was raging, he misses the mark. What really caused the Great Depression that rippled through Europe is the credit binge fueled by the Federal Reserve, which also is responsible for the 2008 crash, which in turn exposed the derivatives industry as the ultimate pool of toxic assets that contaminated the Old Continent and even countries like Iceland. The MSM will never tell us how the current US and European financial crises dire are. It is however puzzling that Stiglitz who came out as a whistleblower more than a decade ago to decries the WB actions in developing countries (aimed at land grabbing on a large scale after saddling countries with more debts they could possibly repay), will not say that this very same scenario now playing everywhere in developing and developed countries alike. News are being fragmented on purpose. It is up to us to assemble the puzzle. But, forget about Stiglitz and Lester Browm, John Perkins author of 'Confessions of An Economic Hit Man', a NYtimes best-seller a few years ago, tells it all on youtube.

Farm subsidies, what are they good for? They simply are designed to eliminate competition over time. Everybody would support a family farmer but that's quite another thing to subsidize the expansion of a mega-farm that puts smaller farms out of business. It is now a fact that mega-farms, the top 10 percent of farmers, collected 74% of all subsidies, amounting to nearly $166 billion over 16 years! The real winners in the subsidy explosion since the mid-'90s have clearly been the animal-feedlot operators and the largest corporate mega-farms. Suppliers like Monsanto and big grain traders. The bottom 80% of recipients averaged just $587 a year. Mega-farms pocket billions of dollars while food waste is at record high... do the maths? Who benefits? Organic sellout: USDA guts organic rules to Protect (animal) Mega-Farms. The UK, this is much of the same: 'mega farms' help keep food prices down, say experts (11/2013). Prices low? At the expense of society? By the way, did you know that among the number of landowners claiming a slice of the 3.5bn subsidy in the UK, EU subsidy recipients include the Queen and the Duke of Westminster? Mega-Farms do not only bankrupt smaller competitors, they also are toxic at many levels, not to mention the rampant animal abuse. Philosophy Before Ecology Green not so green. 

So much wasted food also implies lots of trash. In Sweden, where an average household is estimated to throw away 25% of food purchased, seems to have come up with an innovative idea to tackle waste is now facing a unique dilemma: a quarter of a million homes are powered by the incineration of waste, which means that only 4 percent of all waste generated in the country is landfilled. Believe it or not, the nation has run out of much-needed fuel and has been forced to import burnable trash from neighboring countries, namely Norway. Swedes are so trash-strapped that officials are shipping it in -- 80,000 tons of refuse annually, to be exact -- from elsewhere. This is the theater of the absurd. Just imagine the infrastructure a global air cargo network would have to handle if we all countries embraced the Swedish waste-to-energy incineration program. Though this is pure digression, it cannot work out on a large scale because if people were truly food savvy and care for the environment, there would be less much burnable trash available and we still have to resort to other energy sources. As far as solar power seems appealing, as implemented today, it is too a dead end as we'd be faced with a massive pollution linked to the failure to cheaply recycle solar batteries. There are ways to capture and make energy plentiful without having to store it. The topic of free energy is well documented on the internet but has little attention from the mainstream because it is much less profitable - if not at all.
  

'Green Manias' follow one another and the following example is quite convincing to say the least. Since farmers prefer (in)organic fertilizers, waste is no longer returned to the land as organic matter, short-term profits drive the Biofuels craze. Nowadays, many countries are so focused on turning waste bio-matter into biofuel that farmers spend more on (in)organic fertilizers to improve soil condition. But since most farms use chemicals, how detrimental are the latter to our health? If pollution is getting worse by the days, look no further: the Green Ideology has simply been hijacked by corporations decades ago. A future column of mine will shed light on the 'patent and copyright industry', which impedes knowledge from freely circulating, hence helps sustain 'modern feudalism'.

Expensive organic food is anti-human rights. Let's consider the glass half-full and half-empty theory. While it is comprehensible that growing organic food demands more dedication, and that time is money, it seems logical to pay more for wholesome foods. But labels don't tell the truth as 'organically grown' doesn't always imply that seeds are organic. A very obvious example is that of seedless grapes, which can never be organic as the fruit is sterile. Few people are aware that the the USDA lowers organic standards each year, to the point that what we call today 'organic produces' don't deserve to be called as such. This is because corporate farming lobbies are powerful enough to influence the law as they see fit. 

With an ever-growing number of people aware of the toxicity of conventional foods, decades ago lobbies foresaw the shift in consumption and set up the takeover. Unless one tenders one's own garden or buys directly from local and privately owned farms, most organic produces sold in our supermarkets no longer are fully organic but nonetheless remain expensive. Their organic certification does not protect consumers. Have you heard of the Whole Foods scandal (video) two years ago? Caught in a bind, Whole Foods Inc, contended in March of 2013, that they have committed to having labeling for all products by 2018. 

From there, we can realistically assess that the organic craze doesn't lead us anywhere but adds to the injury. However, regardless of the real story behind organic labels, higher prices contribute to an ever-ongoing slow-motion class war. Indeed, throughout history, it has always been easier to tell who can afford healthier food. This Darwinian approach must end because in the long run, it affects us all. No civilization can function when the majority suffers. It is also condemning those with lower incomes to be more prone to diseases. Poisonous foods mutate our DNA for the worse and it is a bounty for 'Big Pharma'. Please bear in mind that many low-income people often are Medicaid/Medicare recipients and that taxpayers foot the bill. Every time we buy organic, we (unwillingly) support corporate farming lobbies' eugenics agenda. Yet everybody views Nazism as most atrocious regime ever. Nazism isn't dead but playing out in front of our very eyes and with our consent. Far to the contrary, buying organic shouldn't make us feel more secure. Every time we do, we should also be horrified by the harm we allow to be perpetrated upon our fellow humans. A shift in consciousness is needed. As much as we need an economic system that doesn't cause scarcity and inflation, having access to wholesome organic food should not be regarded as a privilege but an absolute human right. Most people are oblivious to this very ethical issue because of the way we value Life and wealth: logical fallacies abound, meaning that education must be reformed. As long as we continue to think that the more successful has more rights, things will go from bad to worse -- and possibly lead to our extinction now that planetary pollution has reached unprecedented levels. Indeed, what can truly be deemed organic under such circumstances?

Philosophy rescues humanity. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. No economic and social model can survive the abuse of power. Being in power goes along with 'withholding and/or distorting information' and thus intrinsically implies 'knowing more' and taking advantage from it. Yet since Darwin, we call it competition of the fittest and the celebrity cult. Fascism is how are named the extremes on the Right as well as on the Left. All political models have a tendency to move toward the extremes, because thriving to survive prompts them to constantly engage in blame games. In this process, all parties eventually start mimicking one another to get more votes. Beyond that stage, speech just remains a rhetoric (ie: lies) while actions speak by themselves. Just look at the oligarchic takeover of the planet - which is hard to deny, isn't it? The absolute bottom line is that Slavery vs Freedom are the only two ideologies that exist and worth analyzing in the Universe. Freedom, empathy and self-responsibility are bedfellows while fear, divide and conquer, and slavery go together. One cannot be free if expecting the state to regulate anything we can think of, because the state is a power-greedy entity that, if not kept in check, will always end up controlling us more and more. 

Today, world governments and their corporate cheerleaders - operating as bankers' puppets - are accomplices in the destruction of nature and the fabric of society. In this regard, all revolutions have failed to achieve their objectives because the 'nature of the state' is rarely, if never, regarded as the prime cause, hence history repeats itself. We shouldn't look any further to explain our out-of-whack materialism. We are left to our selves to resolve the biggest dilemma of mankind ever. Think of the half empty-full glass theory. Cultures and races do not really oppose but also complement one another. They all offer different perspectives of the same 'big picture'. They exist to help us grow in awareness and grasp the true meaning of free will. Nothing can improve without a counter trend, and as a matter of fact, war has hardly resolved any conflict... the only tool we have to stop all this overnight is... 'Love'. 

Obeying nature to transcend it. Since speculation and competition are leading us to the abyss, is a radical reform possible? Forget about another bloody revolution as it is on a consciousness level that the war is being waged. It will have to be an intellectual global movement. We should favor an unbiased educational system based on the values of responsible benevolence and empathy as emotional currencies and that regards 'obsession with power' as a psychiatric condition. In order to achieve this, and this is a very daunting task, we'll have to deconstruct and demystify history as we know it. Those who control the past, control the present, and, of course the future. Everything we think we know is wrong. As long as mentalities about how we view money and wealth doesn't change, absolutely nothing will change. As we can see today, the run-up for profits brings us back to square one while the global GDP couldn't even help fix the damages done to nature. Nature gives us everything free of charge, so this means that if we truly go along with natural laws, all our inventions should come to an 'economic status quo': no extreme poverty nor wealth. Wealth redistribution is a futile concern. Hoarding and extreme luxury are just impossible to achieve in a society that has mastered natural laws. Wealth as we view it today is thus a 'grand illusion' as mind over matter will always win over in due time. By using the word 'mind' it is implied any empathetic emotion, as well as the thirst for knowledge and wisdom. Basically since materialism has to mirror what we stand for (the mind), negative or positive outcomes will translate accordingly. The more stress, sufferings and fears, the more disconnected are we from natural laws.

Let's abolish usury forever now! Since most religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism) prohibit it, the topic is highly sensitive. Spreading the word demands one to overcome the fear of being called names. This is a daunting task but the latter is necessary for the truth to prevail. There is no freedom possible without letting go what holds us back. However, economic trends indicate that we are inflating ourselves into oblivion anyway. There is no other choice than speaking out! Although printing each new one hundred-dollar bill merely costs 17 cents to the Federal Reserve, it is absolutely cynical to imagine how central bankers do enrich themselves 'literally printing banknotes' (wealth they do not have in the first place) and then additionally charging an interest on every note circulating. It isn't just the Federal Reserve alone but one of the tenets of central banking implemented worldwide affecting all races and cultures. And this is a crime against humanity. Not only we cannot pay back our debts, if we ever could, there wouldn't be any money left in circulation and we'd be dispossessed from everything we hold dear. Please check out previous columns of mine to understand the in-workings of 'usury' and how it operates as a wealth transfer in favor of the top of society. It is however impossible to change the world without abolishing 'usury' first. If YOU really wish the world to become a better place, it really is up to EACH of us. It is not about 'Occupying Wall Street' but 'Occupying Our Selves'. Protests are unnecessary if new paradigms are embraced. At this point, global oligarchy wants upheavals to justify the necessity of a 'UN Police State'. Awareness alone is not enough if attitudes remain the same. Although the 'mother of all crises' is looming, instead of seeing the latter as 'doomsday', we have to embrace it as 'the end of a multi-century old serfdom' and ready ourselves to help out our neighbors, relatives and friends.

Recently Bloomberg.com wrote that The World's 2170 Billionaires Control $33 Trillion In Net Worth, Double The US GDP. What the article didn't speak of is the 'Armada of Millionaires and Multimillionaires' working either directly with or for them. They've got what they always wanted: the privatization of the world. And all this was done in the broad daylight while we were burying our heads into the sand, hypnotizing ourselves with 'the laws of attraction' or 'don't speak of evil, just ignore it and it will go away' type of thinking, running on the debt treadmill to make ends meet or buy the latest IT gadgets, watching dumbing-down reality TV shows or Hollywood super-heroes type of entertainment, boozing, over-eating and... carelessly wasting food.