World Hunger and Poverty

A delegation of Presbyterian and United Church of Christ-backed Florida farmworkers will embark on a 10-day “mini-tour” to the Chicago area next month to carry their struggle for higher wages and better working conditions to fast-food giant McDonald’s – writes Evan Silverstein.

Florida farmworkers suffer the same miserable conditions experienced by generations of farmworkers, including forced labor and wages that leave them in deep poverty, according to the CIW. The pickers now earn 40 to 45 cents per 32-pound bucket, a rate essentially unchanged for nearly 30 years.

“We are disappointed that [McDonald’s] has chosen thus far not to follow Yum! and Taco Bell’s lead,” said the Rev Noelle Damico, a United Church of Christ minister who serves as the PC (USA)’s Associate for Fair Food. “Daily the chorus for food that is ‘fair,’ and not just fast, is rising among Presbyterians and other people of faith and conscience. We hope that this tour will help McDonald’s understand that their own customers want them to work as partners with the farmworkers.”

Read entire Ekklesia article.

The blame not only lay with McDonalds – and similar companies using economic power to oppress – but also the blame lay with all those who shop and do business with McDonalds. When a mafia continuously engages in criminal behavior, those that voluntarily do business with those criminals share the guilt.

Additionally, McDonalds doesn’t deserve reprimand just for how it produces its product. McDonalds also deserves reprimand for what it produces – those disgusting fatty addictive grease-burgers and such. Fast-food is as bad as crack in my opinion.

However, again, the filthy crack dealer is only as guilty as the helpless drug addicts who do business with him.

President Bingu wa Mutharika on Thursday told the United Nations that eradicating poverty remains the greatest challenge facing the world organisation.

Mutharika, delivering Malawi’s statement at the 61st session of the UN General Assembly, said global peace, security and stability cannot be assured if the greater section of humanity lives in abject poverty.

“I believe that in the search for global partnership for development, the greatest challenge the United Nations faces is to eradicate poverty that engulfs the majority of humanity,” he said.

He made a passionate plea to “those who have plenty, to share with others.”

Read entire nationmalawi.com article.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Tuesday called on world leaders attending the annual UN debate to take action against hunger and poverty by providing funds and fostering fair trade.

The Brazilian president asserted that the widespread hunger prevailing in the world today lies at the root of a host of other global ills.

“Hunger nurtures violence and fanaticism,” he said. “A world where people starve will never be safe.”

Lula argued that the international community has the 50 billion U.S. dollars needed to combat the hunger now plaguing 840 million people worldwide.

“Think of the cost of wars and other conflicts. All here know that the second Gulf War may also have cost hundreds of billions of dollars to date. With much less we could change the sad reality of a large share of the world’s population,” he said. “We could save millions of lives.”

Read Full China View Article.

Two villages in Kenya, a third in Tanzania and a fourth in Uganda will share a $100 million aid investment.

Billionaire financier George Soros announced last week that he is contributing $50 million to the Millennium Villages Project, a non-governmental initiative intended to show that closely focused development projects can alleviate severe poverty within a few years.

Mbola in Uyui district is described by project organisers as “one of the poorest villages in Tanzania.”

Similarly, about half the households in Ruhiira Parish in southwestern Uganda earn less than one dollar a day, and more than 80 per cent of local residents are subsistence farmers.

Read Entire Nation Media Group Article.

Last week, Pope Benedict insulted Muslims and Islam itself when he delivered a major address at the University of Regensburg, Germany, in which he quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor who regarded some of the prophet Muhammad’s teachings as “evil and inhuman.”

Although the Pope apologized earlier today, many people doubt the apology fully displayed regret. The Pope seemed to say that he is sorry that his speech offended Muslim’s, but he didn’t say that he is sorry for what he said.

Tariq Ali points out the backwards priorities of this reactionary Pope:

Was Benedict’s most recent provocation accidental or deliberate? The Bavarian is a razor-sharp reactionary cleric. A man who organises his own succession to the Papacy with a ruthless purge of potential dissidents and supervises the selection of Cardinals with great care leaves little to chance.

I think he knew what he was saying and why.

Choosing a quote from Manuel II Paleologos, not the most intelligent of the Byzantine rulers, was somewhat disingenuous, especially on the eve of a visit to Turkey. He could have found more effective quotes and closer to home. Perhaps it was his unique tribute to Oriana Fallaci.

Perhaps.

The Muslim world with two of its countries—Iraq and Afghanistan– directly occupied by Western troops does not need to be reminded of the language of the Crusades. In a neo-liberal world suffering from environmental degradation, poverty, hunger, repression, a ‘planet of slums’ (in the graphic phrase of Mike Davis), the Pope chooses to insult the founder of a rival faith.

Read CounterPunch Article

It’s the same old story – the poor neglected wayward kid gets taken in by a manipulative thug; except this time it’s on a much larger scale. The Taliban is taking advantage of the poverty and suffering caused by Western foreign policy and allowed by the neglect of the world.

The Taliban have regained control over the southern half of Afghanistan and their frontline is advancing daily, a group closely monitoring the Afghan situation said in a report Tuesday.

“The Taliban frontline now cuts halfway through the country, encompassing all of the southern provinces,” the Senlis Council report says. The Senlis Council is an international policy think tank with offices in Kabul, London, Paris and Brussels.

The report from Senlis, which has reported extensively on Afghanistan over recent years, says also that “a humanitarian crisis of starvation and poverty has gripped the south of the country.” The report blames “the U.S. and UK-led failed counter-narcotics and military policies” for this situation…

“The subsequent rising levels of extreme poverty have created increasing support for the Taliban, who have responded to the needs of the local population,” the report says.

“We are seeing a humanitarian disaster,” Emmanuel Reinert, executive director of The Senlis Council told IPS. “There are around Kandahar now camps with people starving, kids dying almost every day, and this is obviously used by the Taliban to regain the confidence of the people, and to regain control of the country.”

I guess the late and great Martin Luther King’s words still ring true today, “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period … was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

Almost everyday I receive a report about Bill Gates generosity and the philanthropist actions of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Bill Gates generosity demonstrates what happens when a common person works hard and intelligently to gain wealth, status, and power, rather than just inherit it.

Strong intelligent people like Bill Gates threaten the non-meritocratic status quo, as their determination and intelligence overpowers the figurative chains that hold the working-man down. Thus, these exceptionally hard-working and intelligent people like Bill Gates take back the power from those non-meritocratically rich and powerful elitists who stay rich off the labor and work of others.

Karen DeYoung of The Washington Post reports:

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s richest charity, joined with the Rockefeller Foundation yesterday to launch a new development initiative for sub-Saharan Africa that they said would revolutionize food production and reduce hunger and poverty for tens of millions of people.

Modeled on the Rockefeller-pioneered “green revolution” that transformed farming methods and staved off widespread famine in much of the developing world nearly a half-century ago, the initiative coincides with a new round of Western concern about the long-intractable problems of the poorest continent.

Home to 16 of the 18 most undernourished countries, Africa is the only part of the world where food production has decreased in recent years.

Read the entire Washington Post article.

by Scott Hughes

Today marked the fifth anniversary of the tragic 9/11 attacks that killed 2,819 citizens. This is not a day for celebration, but is rather a mournful day. The horrible memories of that terrible day still plague the hearts and minds of people worldwide.

As with all avoidable tragedies, we must fight through our pain, and solve the problems that originally led to the tragedy. We must not let our pain debilitate us into just awaiting the next avoidable tragedy.

Albert Einstein said, “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Unfortunately, as I pointed out in a recent blog, we still continue the same actions that foster terrorism and needless death, as shown by the rise in global terrorism.

Ignoring the inherent link between war and hunger, we still allow 16,000 children to die from hunger every day [1]. Indeed, there is a relationship between the 2,819 innocent people who died on 9/11 from terrorism and the 16,000 innocent children who died on 9/11 from hunger. Yet, we continue to allow innocent children and people to die from these causes: violence and hunger.

Ignoring the link between drug prohibition and terrorism, we still allow an easy funding opportunity for terrorists and other violent criminals, instead of reducing crime and terrorism by repealing drug prohibition.

Instead of actually fixing the conditions that caused and allowed 9/11, we have allowed our leaders to waste resources not only on the $50 billion dollar a year drug war as mentioned, but namely on the war in Iraq. The ousting of the secular tyrant Saddam Hussein in Iraq surely had a positive impact on his local enemies. However, this war has only increased anti-Americanism, hatred, violence, and terrorism. So far, the war in Iraq killed well over 40,000 citizens! So far, the war in Iraq cost United States taxpayers well over $300 billion! So far, the war in Iraq killed over 2,500 U.S. soldiers.

The UN says a $40 billion increase in current aid would provide food, clean water, sanitation, health services, and education to everyone on the planet. That’s less than one seventh the cost of the Iraq war. The 16,000 children who died today could have been fed and educated, instead of the Iraq war. Would a world in which children didn’t starve have less terrorism and hatred? Would a world in which all children were educated (and thus taught how to take care of both themselves and the future children of this world) have less terrorism? So, instead of increasing terrorism by causing the death of over 2,500 U.S. troops and 40,000 Iraqi citizens, couldn’t we have reduced terrorism and violence, and the death of the innocent!

And, we would have had over $270 billion left over.

End the drug war, and we’d have $320 billion left over.

Or instead, perhaps we could return the tax-dollars to the citizens from which they were taken. These citizens could then spend the money on personal DEFENSE, which would actually decrease violence and protect the lives of innocents.

Perhaps we could prevent the next 9/11, rather than facilitate it.

About The Author: In addition to this blog, Scott Hughes runs the World Hunger and Poverty Forums.

[1] State of Food Insecurity in the World 2005. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

The United Way of Lincoln and Lancaster County began its yearly fundraising campaign last Thursday. It set a $5.4 million goal.

United Way funds thirty-nine agencies that in turn provide sixty-five programs in the areas of hunger and homelessness, child outreach, and domestic violence.

Read the full Journal Star story.

Let me share some of staggering facts:

One out of every eight children under the age of twelve in the U.S. goes to bed hungry every night.

Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger

For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years.

Poverty is the main cause of hunger. 70 percent of the world’s poor are female. [1]

25% of American children under age six live in poverty. One in eight children under age twelve goes to bed hungry every night. American children have just a 50-50 chance of escaping poverty. [1]

30,500 children die from preventable diseases each day. Malnutrition is linked with over half. [1]

The UN says a $40 billion increase in current aid would provide food, clean water, sanitation, health services, and education to everyone on the planet. [1]

Middle-income nations like Israel and Egypt receive most U.S. aid. Just 40% goes to poor nations. [1]

The U.S. spends over $1 billion a day on defense. 1.2 billion people worldwide live on under $1 a day. [1]

About 850 million people worldwide are undernourished [3].

16,000 children die every day from hunger [4]. That’s about one child every 5 seconds.

In the United States in 2004, 13.5 million households (or 11.9% of all U.S. households) were food insecure; 13.9 million United States children under age 18 lived in food-insecure households (19.0% of all children). [5]

[1] http://www.mainstream-media.net/campaigns/pitch.cfm?id=55

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger

[4] State of Food Insecurity in the World 2005. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

[5] (Source: Nord, M., Andrews, M., Carlson, S. (October 2005) Household Food Security in the United States, 2004. Washington, D.C.: Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture.)