Monday, October 31, 2011

Anonymous message

Mesaje on http://anonopsibero.blogspot.com/2011/11/anonymous-message-to-zeta-cartel.html

(a talk given at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's fifteenth anniversary celebration in New York City on January 23, 2002)

from the book

Media Control

by Noam Chomsky

Seven Stories Press, 2002

struggleforfreedom80 videos

Saturday, October 29, 2011

How can I forget?

How can I forget
That exploding sound
Which stole my family from me
Leaving me, with no one around?

How can I forget
Looking into mother's eyes?
Desperately, she called for my help
Hopelessly, I watched her die

How can I forget
The burnt bodies on the floor?
Whether my family was amongst them
Even today, I am unsure

How can I forget
Those piercing screams
Which haunt me daily
When appearing in my dreams?

How can I forget
How some are so unkind?
Peace on Earth is something
We urgently need to find

— Hashela Kumarawansa

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

11 Myths About Global Hunger

Myth 1: There isn’t enough food to feed the world.
Reality: There is enough food in the world today for everyone to have the nourishment necessary for a healthy and productive life. There is, however, a need to be more efficient, sustainable, and fair in how we grow and distribute food. This means supporting small-scale farmers – who make up the majority of farmers throughout the developing world – and ensuring that they have fair access to markets.

Myth 2: Resolving hunger means ensuring people have enough to eat.
Reality: Hunger also involves the type of food you eat. Good nutrition means having the right combination of nutrients and calories needed for healthy development. It's especially important for infants, pregnant women and young children.

Myth 3: Droughts and other natural disasters are to blame for hunger.
Reality: Communities that build irrigation systems, storage facilities, and roads to connect them to markets are able to improve harvests. Then people can survive even during times of drought (Learn more). Nature is only one factor when it comes to hunger. The proportion of food crises that are linked to human causes has more than doubled since 1992. Conflict is often at the heart of today’s worst food crises.

Myth 4: Hunger exists when food is unavailable in shops and markets.
Reality: People can go hungry even when there's plenty of food around. Often it's a question of access - they can’t afford food or they can’t get to local markets. One way we can help is through cash transfers and electronic vouchers, which give people the ability to buy nutritious foods in local markets.

Myth 5: All of the world’s hungry live in Africa.
Reality: Of the world’s nearly one billion hungry, over half live in Asia and the Pacific (Hunger Stats). Hunger is also a relevant issue in the United States, where 50 million Americans are food insecure.

Myth 6: Too many people go hungry in my own country for me to worry about hunger abroad.
Reality: One in seven people in the world are hungry, which means one in seven people can’t create, study, or reach their full potential as human beings. That affects all of us. Hunger slows progress on other important areas that connect nations, including security.

Myth 7: Hunger and famine are not easy to predict and can't be prepared for.
Reality: Tools exist to monitor and predict trends in food production as well as food prices. For example, the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) analyzes meteorological and economic factors to alert the world to the possibility of hunger hotspots and famine.

Myth 8: Hunger is basically a health issue.
Reality: This issue also affects education and the economy. Hungry children struggle to focus, learn, or even attend school. Without education, it's much harder for them to grow up and contribute to the growth of the national economy. A study in Guatemala found that boys who received fortified food before the age of three grew up to have wages 46 percent higher than those in a control group.

Myth 9: People are only hungry during emergencies or disasters.
Reality: Emergencies only account for eight percent of the world’s hungry. There are close to one billion hungry people in the world who do not make the headlines and yet they go to bed hungry every night. This is why long-term efforts like school meals programmes are so important.

Myth 10: There are more pressing global issues than hunger.
Reality: When populations are hungry, economies suffer, people fight, and farmers can’t grow their crops effectively. We need to tackle hunger to be able to resolve environmental, economic, and security issues.

Myth 11: There is nothing we can do to help hungry people.
Reality: There’s plenty we can do, even as individuals. Organizations like WFP need constant support and awareness-building efforts at the community level. You can help with that. Start where you are right now: online. Find us on Facebook and Twitter , and share our links to let your network know about the importance of hunger. And find out other ways to get involved here.

(This article was produced in conjunction with dosomething.org)

Monday, October 24, 2011

the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power

Current TV, Keith Olbermann, 05/10/2011.

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

pax orbis terrarum