Hungering for a True Thanksgiving
By Amy Goodman
Truthdig: Nov 17, 2009
"In the next 60 seconds, 10 children will die of hunger," says a United
Nations World Food Programme (WFP) online video. It continues, "For the
first time in humanity, over 1 billion people are chronically hungry."
The WFP launched the Billion for a Billion campaign this week, urging the 1
billion people who use the Internet to help the billion who are hungry. But
if you think that hunger is far from our shores, here is some food for
thought ... and action: The U.S. Department of Agriculture released a report
Monday stating that in 2008 one in six households in the U.S. was "food
insecure," the highest number since the figures were first gathered in 1995.
Economist Raj Patel, author of "Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the
Hidden Battle for the World's Food System," told me he was "gobsmacked" by
the U.S. hunger numbers, which he finds appalling: "The reason that we have
this huge increase in hunger in the United States, as around the world, isn't
because there isn't enough food around. Actually, we produced a pretty
reliable solid crop last year. ... The reason people go hungry is because of
poverty."
In addition to the online campaign, the United Nations is hosting the World
Summit on Food Security in Rome this week, hoping to unite world leaders on
the cause of eliminating hunger. Patel remarked on the U.N. summit, "They're
making all the right sounds about hunger around the world, but as some of
the activists outside that summit are saying, poor people can't eat
promises."
Almost 700 people from 93 countries, many of whom are small-scale food
producers, have gathered outside the U.N. summit. They are there in behalf
of the People's Food Sovereignty Forum, and they are pushing for
small-scale, organic, sustainable food-sovereignty and food-security
programs, as opposed to large-scale agribusiness with its dependence on
genetically modified organisms and chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Michelle Obama said last March when planting the White House's organic
kitchen garden, "It is so important for them [children] to get regular
fruits and vegetables in their diets, because it does have nutrients, it
does make you strong, it is all brain food." The first lady of the U.S. made
the point that a homegrown, organic garden is a sustainable and affordable
way to strengthen family food security.
This has led some to wonder, then, why her husband has appointed Islam
Siddiqui to be the U.S. chief agricultural negotiator. Siddiqui is currently
vice president for science and regulatory affairs for CropLife America, the
main pesticide industry trade association. According to the Pesticide Action
Network of North America, "This position will enable him to keep pushing
chemical pesticides, inappropriate biotechnologies, and unfair trade
arrangements on nations that do not want and can least afford them." It was
CropLife's mid-America division that circulated an e-mail to industry
members after Michelle Obama's garden announcement, saying, "While a garden
is a great idea, the thought of it being organic made Janet Braun, CropLife
Ambassador Coordinator, and I shudder."
Jacques Diouf, director-general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organization, engaged in a 24-hour hunger strike over the weekend, before
the food security summit kicked off. He said in a statement, "We have the
technical means and the resources to eradicate hunger from the world so it
is now a matter of political will, and political will is influenced by
public opinion." Diouf has estimated that it would take $44 billion per year
to end hunger globally, compared with the less than $8 billion pledged
recently to that goal. Juxtapose those numbers with the amount being spent
by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the U.S. has
spent on average about $265 million per day in Afghanistan since the
invasion of that country in 2001 (which is a much lower estimate than that
provided by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and others). Even
at that rate, five months of military spending by the U.S. would meet Diouf's
goal, and that would be if the U.S. were the sole contributor.
Consider pausing this Thanksgiving, which for many in the U.S. is a major
feast, to reflect on the 10 children who die of hunger every minute, and how
your elected officials are spending hundreds of billions in public funds on
war.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio
news hour airing on more than 800 stations in North America. She is the
author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback.
***
From: Sid Shniad
Subject: Open letter to Barack Obama from the founders of Military Families
Speak Out
November 23, 2009
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Obama:
As you prepare to announce a new strategy for Afghanistan that could mean
deploying tens of thousands more of our loved ones to fight a war with no
foreseeable end, we call on you to terminate the military occupations of
Iraq and Afghanistan, bring our troops home now, and ensure they get the
care they need when they return. We urge you to stop billions more from
being misspent overseas to misuse young men and women and instead utilize
those funds to help overcome the pressing domestic issues of our time; a
growing population of veterans suffering from post traumatic stress
disorder, a fractured health care system, and a woeful economic climate all
desperately demand your attention and action.
Our family is intimately connected to these issues. My husband, Charley
Richardson is slowly but surely dying of an aggressive, metastatic cancer,
and dealing regularly with the fractured and overstressed medical system. He
also lost his job of twenty years at a state university last April as a
result of recession-related budget cuts. And our son served one deployment
in Iraq as a Marine and was sent to Afghanistan twice after he joined the
private army of contractors that is so central to the war efforts in both
Iraq and Afghanistan. We are acutely aware of how political will has been so
wrongly misdirected toward military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan
instead of achieving economic recovery and sorely needed healthcare reform
at home.
We were fortunate. Our son returned to us in good physical health and we
were able to hold him in our arms and not just keep him in our hearts. So
many of our friends within the organization we co-founded, Military Families
Speak Out, have not shared this outcome. Their loved ones returned in
flag-draped coffins; or with life-altering physical wounds; or with the
hidden, often deadly, psychological injuries of war.
We hope you will think again about the faces of the families that you saw
when you were at Dover, and the faces that won't be seen again, hidden in
caskets and arriving under the cloak of darkness. We know you are concerned
about the unfair burden that this war is placing on a relatively small
portion of our population, and the burden that will continue for decades to
come. Suicides in the Army have hit a record high. Our returned troops
should be re-building their lives rather than seeing depression, violence,
divorce and suicide tear those lives apart. The bombs of these wars are
indeed exploding at home.
The people of the United States don't want these wars. Even without a draft,
even as we deficit fund the wars, they don't want them. Public opposition
continues to grow, with 57 percent opposing the war in Afghanistan,
according to a recent Associated Press poll. The latest CNN poll found that
49 percent of Americans favored reducing the number of troops in
Afghanistan -- with 28 percent saying they should all be withdrawn
immediately -- compared to less than 40 percent who want to send more.
Imagine what the polls would tell us if the burden of the wars, financial
and service, were actually shouldered and shared throughout our nation.
The American people want safety and security, as do the people of Iraq and
Afghanistan. But we don't believe these wars are helping to achieve these
goals. The more we bring bombs and guns into Afghanistan, the more civilian
casualties there are and the more our troops are seen as occupiers rather
than liberators.
We put the same challenge before you now that we put in front of President
Bush and in front of Senators and Members of Congress. Consider the options
available to you as if the lives of your loved ones hang in the balance.
Consider if it were your daughters being deployed, would you be so quick to
stay, or escalate, the course?
Please do not be the one to dash our hope for an end to these wars; for the
swift and safe return of our troops; and for a new foreign policy that truly
respects the lives of our service members who volunteer to put themselves in
harm's way, as well as the lives of children, women and men of other
countries who are caught in the crossfire.
Please continue to build hope in the world. Send no more troops. Bring our
troops home now.
In Peace,
Charley Richardson and Nancy Lessin
Co-Founders, Military Families Speak Out
Charley@mfso.org
Nancy@mfso.org
Military Families Speak Out (www.mfso.org) is an organization of over 4,000
families with loved ones who serve or served in the military over the last
eight years, and who are speaking out to end the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. MFSO was founded in November, 2002 and is the largest
organization of military families speaking out against wars in the history
of this country.
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