Archive for December, 2006

Poverty Is A Threat To Peace

Friday, December 15th, 2006

[Muhammad Yunus is the head of Grameen Bank, the winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for it’s innovative work on microcredit lending with the poor of Bangladesh. This is an excerpt of his acceptance speech, given on December 10 to the Nobel Foundation in Oslo. The full text can be read here.]
Ladies and Gentlemen:
By […]

Hunger Rose In U.S. In 2005

Wednesday, December 13th, 2006

…according to the USDA report, more than 35 million people were living in households that are “food insecure.” That means 12 percent of the U.S. population didn’t get enough to eat for at least part of last year.
According to the report, things got even worse for those who are worst off. The number of people […]

Nobel Laureate: Poverty Fight Essential

Sunday, December 10th, 2006

Economist Muhammad Yunus accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Sunday for his breakthrough program to lift the poor through tiny loans, saying he hoped the award would inspire “bold initiatives” to eradicate a problem at the root of terrorism.
Yunus, a 66-year-old Bangladeshi, shared the award with his Grameen Bank, which for more than two decades […]

Human Rights Day and World Poverty

Saturday, December 9th, 2006

10 December 2006 marks the 58th birthday of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted and proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948. During the last 60 years many achievements have been made in the name of human rights, but considerable challenges still remains to be fulfilled in making […]

S.C. Hunger Rate Leads U.S.

Friday, December 8th, 2006

About 6.3 percent of households in South Carolina - roughly 100,000 families - had “very low food security,” according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture study issued last month.
That means normal eating patterns were disrupted and some had less to eat.
The percentage is the highest in the nation and well above the U.S. average of […]

U.S. Poverty Moves To Suburbs

Thursday, December 7th, 2006

The suburban poor outnumbered inner-city counterparts for the first time last year, with more than 12 million suburban residents living in poverty, according to a study of the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas released today.
“Economies are regional now,” said Alan Berube, who co-wrote the report for the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “Where you […]

Imagine

Tuesday, December 5th, 2006

Back in 1971, John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono let the world imagine a better world, with no need for greed or hunger. Watch the video of their song, Imagine:

Recently, A Perfect Circle has made a downbeat remix:

Unfortunately, I think the downbeat version fits our contemporary world more than Lennon’s original. It’s […]

Crops & Global Warming

Monday, December 4th, 2006

An unprecedented effort to protect the world’s food supplies from the ravages of climate change will be launched today by an international consortium of scientists. The move marks a growing recognition that serious changes in weather patterns are inevitable over the coming decades, and that society must begin to adapt.
Some £200-million a year will be […]

No Obligation To Give

Friday, December 1st, 2006

by Scott Hughes
A few weeks ago, my grandmother told me about the veterans’ charities that asked her for donations. She told me that she regularly gave to a specific veterans’ organization, but that other organizations continued to solicit her. She asked me, “if I give to one, I shouldn’t be obligated to give to the […]