UN Troops Raping Children in Sudan

The Daily Telegraph of London reported on Tuesday that U.N. peacekeepers and civilian staff were raping and abusing children as young as 12 in southern Sudan.

The newspaper, in a story posted on its Web site, said it had gathered accounts from more than 20 young victims in the town of Juba of U.N. civilian and peacekeeping staff forcing them to have sex.

Read entire article on alertnet.org.

I find it disgustingly horrific that these UN agents would rape these children, especially when the UN assigned the agents to keep the peace and help the children – and people – in this region plagued by violence, hunger, and poverty.

This just further confirms my suspicion that the UN lacks the ability to successfully eliminate hunger and poverty, and spread education and healthcare, to the world.

What do you think?

We Need a New Era

by Scott Hughes

The new year comes whether we want it to or not. Without fail every year, all of us a year older celebrate the coming of a new year on New Years Day, and we wish ourselves a good year.

What’s so new about it, though?

As we close this year and tally up the millions of children who died of hunger, I have no doubt that millions more will die next year. In the so-called new year, AIDS will continue to spread. In the so-called new year, we will still blow ourselves up with bombs, missiles and other weapons, instead of building schools and educating the children. The new year will still deprive billions of innocent people the opportunity to gain healthcare, education, food, and employment.

I see nothing new about the coming year. I see the same traits in the coming year as the past year, and all the years before that. I see the same pain, hunger, poverty, disease, and unhappiness. I see the same neglectful and apathetic public. I see the same non-meritocratic social inequality. I see the same prevalence of coercion, violence, hate, and loneliness. I see the same deficit of cooperation, love, and solidarity.

The United States government will still put the majority of its funds – stolen through taxation – towards Pentagon spending. Mega-corporations will still use politicians to oppress the masses, and the masses will continue to let it happen. The prison-industrial complex will still ensure that millions of poor and working-class people will still rot in prison – many for “victimless crimes”. Instead of changing the world and bettering their own lives, the working-class and the general public will continue to squander their power and indulge in self-destructive and short-sighted vices.

Consumers will still buy the petty material things from the malls and shops, as directed from TV commercials and billboards. We will still take drugs – both legal and illegal. We will still eat unhealthy and addictive foods, as we grow fat and depressed in front of the same television that brainwashes us into doing it.

We won’t better our lives by bettering the world in 2007. We will continue to make the few rich and powerful people in this corrupt world richer and more powerful, at our expense. We will buy fast-food, cigarettes and beer, and fancy cars, houses, and clothes on credit. We will still neglect our kids.

We don’t need a new year, we need a new era! We need a new era in which no child goes hungry, and no child lives in poverty. We need a new era in which all people have access to education and socioeconomic opportunity. We need a new era in which healthcare is everywhere and homelessness is nowhere. We need a new era in which HIV and AIDS no longer spreads. We need a loving and happy era.

We can celebrate the beginning of the new calendar one day every year, but we also need to change the world and make both the world and our lives permanently better.

A new year will come whether we want it to or not, but a new era will only come if we make it.

Let’s make a new era. Let’s get motivated and use love, patience, and dedication to create non-governmental organizations based on voluntary solidarity and voluntary cooperation to solve the many problems facing us and our world.

Let’s change the number of the year tonight, and change the world tomorrow.

Poor Nutrition Correlated with Financial Poverty

Unlike wealthy neighborhoods dotted with banks and health food stores, low-income neighborhoods are often filled with pawnshops, check cashing outlets, payday loan outfits, and stores that rent furniture and appliances. Dollar menus draw many low-income folks into fast-food joints, while convenience store shelves are stocked with cheap solutions like soda, chips and sugary snacks.

These businesses offer high interest rates and bad nutritional choices, Cooper said.

“These institutions are predatory,” Cooper said. “(Low-income people) are in these lifestyles where they are underemployed, working two jobs, they are tired and just trying to keep the household running. They are not making healthy choices.”

Read entire Express-News article by Melissa Ludwig.

Melissa Ludwig explores the connection between poverty and unhealthy food choices in the article above. She also discusses programs that educate the poor about better food choices.

Unfortunately, the unhealthy habits of many poor people parallel the same unhealthy habits in many middle-class people. Because unhealthy food tends to have addictive qualities, corporations make more profits by pushing unhealthy foods onto the public – both poor and not – in the same way cigarette companies push addictive cigarettes onto the public. Corporations will always want profits, so if we want to improve our eating habits we have to do it ourselves.

Nobody can behave better unless they know better. Poor people tend not to have access to the same education, including education about health and nutrition. All in all, I see this nutrition issue as just another example of the importance of education in ending hunger and poverty, and making a better world for us all.

What do you think?

Is GM Food an Answer to Poverty and Hunger?

People are being urged by Scotland’s new chief scientific adviser to embrace genetically modified (GM) food as an answer to poverty, hunger and toxic pollution.

Professor Anne Glover, herself a genetic engineer, is urging consumers to ignore labels like “Frankenstein foods” because they are misleading and damaging. The potential benefits of GM crops are “huge”, she says, and the risks “extremely small”.

But her enthusiasm for GM food has infuriated environmentalists, who fear she could exert an important influence on Scottish ministers. They argue GM crops are “potentially dangerous” and point out that they have been widely rejected by the public and supermarkets.

The Scottish Greens’ environment speaker, Mark Ruskell MSP, has proposed a bill to Holyrood to make GM companies strictly liable for any economic damage caused by contamination from GM crop trials and commercialisation.

Read entire article by Rob Edwards.

I find it misleading to use hunger and poverty to support genetically modified foods, because there is already more than enough food to feed everyone in the world. The socioeconomic status quo causes hunger and poverty, not a lack of food.

Genetically modified food has benefits and drawbacks. Luckily, manufacturers can produce both, and individual consumers can individually decide which type of food they want. In a free-market, genetically modified food would probably sell for less than natural food. Customers can individually choose if they want to purchase and eat the cheaper GM food or the regularly priced regular food.

Regardless of whether they produce GM food or non-GM food, I want companies held liable to the rest of us for any damage they cause to our environment.

Nonetheless, GM food cannot solve hunger and poverty. Hungry and poor people do not need more food and resources in the market; Hungry and poor people need more money in their hands to purchase the foods and resources already at the market.

What do you think?

Over 1 Million New Yorkers Ask: Food Or Rent?

Food or rent? That is the daily choice faced by about 1.2 million of New York’s 8.2 million people.

Faced with that choice, mostly they pay rent and rely on emergency or charity food to survive, poverty activists say.

“It’s a struggle,” said 53-year-old Pierre Simmons, who has a part-time job, as he wrapped up a bagel from his soup kitchen lunch for later. “I have a job, but the cost of living is so high it makes it hard to buy food.”

Hunger is not unique to New York. More than 12 million U.S. households — or 35 million Americans — struggled with hunger in 2005, according to the U.S. government.

While the city’s Wall Street bankers are due to collect nearly $24 billion (12.3 billion pounds) in bonuses this year, more than one-fifth of New Yorkers are battling to make ends meet below the national poverty line of $10,000 a year for an individual.

One quarter of New York’s 1.9 million children are living in poverty, 40 percent of families with children had difficulty affording food in 2005 and one-fifth of the city’s children rely on free food to survive, according to a report by the Food Bank For New York City.

Read entire Reuters article by Michelle Nichols.

It’s a terrible shame that these people and children struggle with hunger in a place where food is readily available. Unfortunately, that shame extends from New York to the entire United States – the most socially unequal nation in the world. Indeed, the shame even applies globally. We live in a world where there is more than enough food to feed everyone; why do 16,000 children die of hunger every day?

We live in a world in which strong and smart people go hungry. Obviously, these struggling people want out of hunger and poverty, but non-meritocratic social inequality denies them the opportunity. When we acknowledge the rampant non-meritocratic social inequality that plagues the world, we realize that the majority of us – not just the lowest-class minority – are oppressed by it.

As Lila Watson once said, “If you have come here to help me, then you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

More than anywhere, New York epitomizes the non-meritocratic social inequality that plagues the world and keeps the working-class overworked, the hungry hungry, and the children starving.

What do you think?

Follow Seattle: End Homelessness

Putting an end to homelessness can be done.

Not shelter it, feed it or clothe it. End it.

An intractable social problem — created by the economy, drug addiction, mental illness, domestic violence, the justice system, lack of health care — can be solved, [Bill Block] says.

King County has an estimated 8,000 homeless people, and Block is charged with finding a home for all of them.

Homelessness will end, the plan says, when we build a roof over every bed.

“It can be done,” Block said. “We see it all over the country.”

At its worst, the Ten-Year Plan is a naive campaign that gives false hope to society’s most downtrodden and will inevitably end in failure. At its best, it is wildly idealistic and maybe crazy enough to work.

To accomplish its goal, the Committee to End Homelessness in King County, an alliance of government, business and nonprofits, must create 9,500 units of housing. Its members — who include King County Executive Ron Sims and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels — have given themselves a deadline of 2015.

Read entire Seattle Times article by Sharon Pian Chan.

I agree with Bill Block about the possibility to end homelessness, not only in Seattle, but I also believe we can end homelessness everywhere. The 8,000 homeless in King County only represent a fraction of the approximately 1 billion homeless people throughout the world. Nonetheless, our soceity can end hunger if the people of the world organize and actively fight hunger like Bill Block and the Committee to End Homelessness in King County. What do you think?