It is a myth that world hunger is due to scarcity of food

(Based on an article by Danielle Knight, Washington, Oct 16 1998 (IPS))

Increased food production is not the solution according to recent book

World hunger is extensive in spite of sufficient global food resources. Therefore increased food production is no solution. "The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food". Therefore measures solving the poverty problem is what is required to solve the world hunger probem according to this book.

It is a Myth that Free Trade is the Answer

Reality:

The trade promotion formula has proven an abject failure at alleviating hunger. In most Third World countries exports have boomed while hunger has continued unabated or actually worsened. While soybean exports boomed in Brazil-to feed Japanese and European livestock-hunger spread from one-third to two-thirds of the population. Where the majority of people have been made too poor to buy the food grown on their own country's soil, those who control productive resources will, not surprisingly, orient their production to more lucrative markets abroad. Export crop production squeezes out basic food production. Pro-trade policies like NAFTA and GATT pit working people in different countries against each other in a 'race to the bottom,' where the basis of competition is who will work for less, without adequate health coverage or minimum environmental standards. Mexico and the U.S. are a case in point: since NAFTA we have had a net loss of 250,000 jobs here, while Mexico has lost 2 million, and hunger is on the rise in both countries.

Every 3 seconds a child dies as a result of extreme poverty.

That is 30,000 children dying needlessly every single day.

Make Poverty History

Animated shark

Pretty cool. The wikipedia page on autosterograms (here) which I added an animated section to has also recently been updated with this.

Bad News from Israel

Just came across this study about media coverage from the Glasgow University Media Group.

This is a study of TV new coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and of how this coverage relates to the understanding, beliefs and attitudes of the television audience.

Here are some of their conclusions:

There is a preponderance of official ‘Israeli perspectives’, particularly on BBC 1, where Israelis were interviewed or reported over twice as much as Palestinians. On top of this, US politicians who support Israel were very strongly featured. They appeared more than politicians from any other country and twice as much as those from Britain.

In news reporting there was a tendency to present Israeli settlements in the occupied territories as vulnerable communities, rather than as having a role in imposing the occupation. But as the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim has written, they have a key military and strategic function. They have been built on hilltops to give a commanding position and their occupants are often heavily armed. The Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, has pointed to its role in attacking Palestinians in attempts to seize land. Most viewers knew very little of this - one describes his surprise at learning that the settlements controlled over 40% of the West Bank

This study provides an interesting contrast to people such as Melanie Phillips who argues strongly that the media in general, and the BBC in particular are biased against Israel. She responds to the claims of pro-Israel media coverage:

This is surely the media equivalent to saying that the sun revolves around the earth. It is a truly staggering conclusion, which appears to rest upon such things as the number of times Israelis are interviewed rather than Palestinians

Her counter argument does seem to be quite poor, and is based on the "argument from incredulity" (that Richard Dawkins says creationists use when dismissing evolution). It is essentially: "I can't believe that X is so, therefore it is not so".

She dismisses out of hand careful research showing that Israeli spokespeople are given twice as much air time as Palestian spokespeople on BBC1, saying: "It is a truly staggering conclusion, which appears to rest upon such things as the number of times Israelis are interviewed rather than Palestinians". She seems to imply that such things are trivial. Surely if one side in a conflict has twice as much air time as another in an allegedly neutral forum this demonstrates bias in favour of one group.

The full study is available here, and includes some excellent links and excerpts.

Bush erring on the side of life

Bush has said over the current Terry Schiavo case all over the headlines, it is better to "err on the side of life":

1 "George W. Bush, who has had more executions during his five-year tenure in Austin than any other governor in the nation since capital punishment was reinstated, has made his support for executing mentally retarded inmates clear. In 1995, the newly minted governor rejected a clemency plea from lawyers for Mario Marquez, a mentally retarded adult whose verbal and reasoning skills were comparable to those of a 7-year-old child."

2 "In his five years as governor of Texas, the state has executed 131 prisoners -- far more than any other state."

3 "George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient's family's wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother's wishes in Texas just this week."

Tip o' the pen to Tom Tomorrow, here

Abortion is a difficult moral issue.

Abortion is a difficult moral issue.

Noam Chomsky has said that he would err on the side of being pro choice but could see both points of view, and I would have to agree.

Where does life begin exactly? I don't think you can really say with any certainty it is at any exact point. Clearly very few people would agree with killing a healthy embryo seconds before birth. But at the other extreme, given that a foetus a few days old is just a ball of a few cells that has a good chance of not becoming an embryo how can this really be considered a human being. It differs very little from a sperm or an egg, and few seem to care much about them being killed.

I have to say I'm not overly pleased at the Church's intervention on the issue, and I think religion should stay out of politics.

But where to draw the line? I think it is a difficult moral issue and it has to be an arbitrary time. I think 24 weeks is about right.

Misuse of Drugs Act

Surprisingly coherent view from Simon Jenkins in The Times :

The 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act has long been the most harmful, counterproductive and politically mesmeric law on the British statute book. It has long borne no relation to reality. There is hardly a young person in the land who has not tried cannabis and some four million people use it regularly, undeterred by the most draconian drug laws in Europe. These laws have left drug distribution in the hands of criminals and made British cities, small towns, even rural villages the most drug-ridden in the Western world.

The cramming of jails with users and dealers has had no deterrent effect. Indeed the Home Office's tolerance of drug abuse in its own institutions has them prime centres of hard drug addiction. Drug illegality has corrupted the police, plagued schools private and public and become the single biggest cause of industrial-scale crime. Yet successive governments have refused to reform the 1971 Act. Even the right-wing press is now in favour of reform, as are numerous opinion polls.

Full text here

UN Human Rights Commission

Was slightly worried at the UN's plans to change the Human Rights Commission.

"Reform" can often mean change for the worse - eg Bush's Social Security "reform", which will rip the heart out of one of the most effective anti poverty campaigns in US history. (there's a great flash animation about Social Securityhere, done by Free Range Media)

But getting back to the UN's reforms, I think they may well be for the better. Amnesty has been heavily critical of the UNHRC in the past:

At a time when human rights are under attack like never before, the Commission needs to be an effective, fair and principled guardian of human rights. It must be willing and able to speak up wherever violations of human rights occur and whoever the perpetrator. Each time it does not perform this role its credibility is further eroded.

But Human Rights Watch's Director Ken Roth has said:

“The Secretary-General is proposing a structure that could do much more to protect human rights than what the U.N.’s been doing for the last fifty years. This is a courageous proposal and we support it.”

So hopefully this is a change for the better. I was heartened by a BBC poll which suggested that the majority of the world's population wanted a stronger not weaker UN. The US seems to be mildly supportive of a larger security council, which Chomsky discusses in detail here. The BBC has an interesting debate on the subject of the UN more generally here, although I have to say I found in unsettling ho many people were opposed to it.

Interesting image

Heres a few random things I found today:

- Found a section on the How Stuff Works site about how a BMW hydrogen car works. Its found here. I just wish I knew where to get a proper "green" car for the UK. You can buy an electric car at Going Green, but they are only two seaters and don't have a huge range.

- Another thing I found was this excellent "magic eye" image here (apparently made by a bulgarian bloke called Anton Anotov. No really). Theres some more on this site.

Now the image below might look like its a random collection of dots, but just relax your eyes and you should see a pretty impressive animation.

BBC post Hutton

Good to see that the BBC hasn't been cowed by the Hutton report and is continuing to remind us of the illegality of the war in Iraq, and the hundred thousand people who died there. This was the headline today on the BBC website:

Soldier wins VC for Iraq bravery
A soldier is awarded the first Victoria Cross for 23 years for two acts of heroism in Iraq.
Citation: 'Unquestioned valour'

It stresses how brave the soldiers were. Hmm.

One of the next items on the BBC website was this:

Dutchman in Iraq genocide charges

Halabja was one of the worst atrocities of Saddam's regime
Prosecutors in the Netherlands have formally charged a Dutch businessman with complicity in genocide for selling chemicals to Iraq's former regime.

Hmm, yes BBC, its all the fault of the Dutch businessmen.

Of course the vast majority of the arms were provided by Britain and America, but as the BBC well knows it just "won't do" to admit to your own countries crimes.

As Paul Foot makes clear here:

From 1985, the ECGD [a branch of the British government] guaranteed the sale of defence equipment to Iraq to the tune of at least £25m a year. .... In 1988, when the war ended, the guarantee for Iraq was quadrupled--to £100m

So the British government had been selling arms to Iraq throughout the 1980's, and then at the time of the Al Halabja disaster (which the BBC and British government are calling genocide), we actually increased the military aid fourfold.

Why aren't the BBC drawing attention to the British Governments major role in what they accept is genoicde. Surely this is of major importance?

Future World

The tectonic plates of the world are drifting around. A couple of hundred millions years ago all the land formed one big land mass called Pangea.

In another 250 million years, if the tectonic plates continue along their present course, there is likely to be another large landmass: "Pangea Ultima".

There is an excellent website and animation here.

If present trends continue, Australia will move North and hit South East Asia, and the Americas will move towards and eventually hit the African plate.

I think its interesting we can predict that a place A will collide with a place B in 250 million years.

So for example what is now New York will likely hit a point on the Western coast of Africa.

I think it would be interesting if I set up a website where people from all such points A and B could make contact. They could make friends, exchange information, and store it digitally.

Perhaps they could also decide to make time capsules that would be opened 250 million years in the future. Or not.

*****
NASA has an excellent article here

I have to say, as well, I'm not sure I really understand why the Americas would start moving towards Africa. Currently, of course, they are drifting apart and forming the Mid-Atlantic ridge. Even Chris Scotese, a supposed expert on the subject, concedes that predictions beyond 50 million years into the future have a high margin of error.

Street Life

Street Theatre Performance

Friday 18th March 3pm

Longmarket (Next to New Look on Canterbury High Street)

Theatre challenging the residents of Canterbury's attitudes towards homeless and ex-homeless people.

Street Life

I was inspired by having worked with Cardboard Citizens in London whilst on my placement to work using drama and in particular using the methods of Augusto Boal with some of the Homeless people of Canterbury.

Come and see a piece of Theatre created in collaboration with members of my workshop group that I have been running weekly drama workshops with, based in The Scrine Foundation near Canterbury East Station.

I feel passionately that I want to give them the opportunity to have a second chance, something I think all human beings deserve. These people have become homeless for a variety of reasons; I am not interested in what these are, what I am interested in is their experiences of what Canterbury is like if you¡¦re homeless. Many of us including myself are probably guilty of having made the Homeless people of Canterbury feel excluded from society. This can be in a number of different ways; from ignoring someone selling The Big Issue, to verbal abuse, and even to violent crimes. This is what I want to challenge in my performance. How do you behave towards someone who lives on the streets?

I think people may be unaware of how social exclusion can lead to a whole host of other issues. In extreme cases, this rejection by society can lead to other problems such as alcohol and drug addictions as well as mental health problems.

Below are some statistics relating to homelessness taken from http://www.nationalhomeless.org and http://www.crisis.org.uk. These show how homelessness is more widespread than some people may think, and that homeless people get a rough time from society, though the actual figures are much higher than this;



Facts about Homelessness

About 596 people sleep outside around England on any one night, 321 of whom are in Greater London (ODPH, June 2002).

Over 76,680 people place themselves in bed and breakfasts each year. Research has estimated that 88% of these are single homeless people.

There are 26,471 single homeless people who live in hostels and

9,600 single homeless people live in squats.

24,000 asylum seekers were recorded as 'absconded' by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate in 1998. This group would, therefore, be denied access to help with accommodation.

There are 265,579 people who live in crowded accommodation with too few bedrooms.

The Zircon affair

The Zircon was a spy satellite whose existence had been kept quiet by the Thatcher government.

A BBC documentary series called "Secret Society" was produced in 1986 which, among other things, revealed the existence of the satellite program. There was a clear public interest in douing so, as it had been hidden not just from the people but also from Parliament.

The Thatcher government forced the sacking of the Director General and raided the BBC's offices.

As Chomsky points out, this clearly highlights the fragility of freedom of speech in the UK.

* * * * *

A good bit of background is available here, but take this website with a pinch of salt

An excellent page offers for sale "Secret Society" and several other groundbreaking documentaries here and is well worth a look. (NB Tony Gosling, secretary of NUJ in Bristol is based in Montpelier)

Bush accused of 'fiddling while world burns' by ignoring climate change

Saw this article in the Independent:

One of Britain's most eminent scientists has attacked President Bush for acting like a latter-day Nero who fiddles while the world burns because of global warming.

Lord May of Oxford, the president of the Royal Society and former chief scientific adviser to the Government, said the Bush administration must accept the case has been made about the link between man-made pollution and climate change. Continuing to deny the impact of human activities on the environment may ultimately have catastrophic consequences for everyone on the planet, he said.

It continues:

In addition to urging America to ratify the Kyoto agreement, Lord May accused the Daily Mail of waging an undeclared propaganda war against the science of climate change.

He accused the newspaper of misleading its readers with a misinformed campaign.

"It appears to be conducting an undeclared campaign to deny the potential threat from climate change - in the past 15 months the Daily Mail, which attracts six million readers every day, has published six opinion pieces, including four from its science editor, that have used misleading arguments against the scientific evidence on climate change," Lord May said. "It brings to mind the ill-fated and disreputable campaign by The Sunday Times during the early 1990s to deny that HIV causes Aids. It seems that some parts of the media have not learnt the lessons of that unfortunate campaign."

International Womens Day

March the 8th is International Womens Day.

There is a great presentation on the Amnesty International site here about women under fire.

The beating of women demonstrators celebrating International Womens Day by Turkish Security forces (shown here) highlights the need to campaign for women's rights.

I have to say I wasn't particularly impressed by the British government minister on Radio 4's The World at One ptogramme yesterday, who basically said that it was a bad thing but it is all over now, and won't happen again so don't worry about it.

The United States and Torture

"A US Army report into Abu Ghraib notes that, since 2001, there have been five cases around the world of ‘detainee deaths as a result of abuse by US personnel’"

Just saw a documentary on Channel 4 here in the UK, about abuse of prisoners in the United States. There is an excellent website here.

We need to ensure all people are treated as human beings. There was a tendency at the time of the Abu Ghraib scandal to dismiss it as the work of a "few bad apples" who were "unamerican". This is untrue and the abuses at Abu Ghraib fit a pattern of abuse that have been committed for years and are at their most extreme under George W Bush.

The US in Iraq

This story (taken from the New York Times) was highlighted by Dan Perkins here, and goes to show the disregard for human life shown in Iraq:

"The journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, 56, ran into fierce American gunfire that left her with a shrapnel wound to her shoulder and killed the Italian intelligence agent sitting beside her in the rear seat. She had been released only 35 minutes earlier by Iraqi kidnappers who had held her hostage for a month, and the car carrying them to the airport was driving in pitch dark.

But the conditions for the journey, up a road that is considered the most dangerous in Iraq, were broadly the same as those facing all civilian drivers approaching American checkpoints or convoys. American soldiers operate under rules of engagement that give them authority to open fire whenever they have reason to believe that they or others in their unit may be at risk of suicide bombings or other insurgent attacks.

Next to the scandal of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, no other aspect of the American military presence in Iraq has caused such widespread dismay and anger among Iraqis, judging by their frequent outbursts on the subject. Daily reports compiled by Western security companies chronicle many incidents in which Iraqis with no apparent connection to the insurgency are killed or wounded by American troops who have opened fire on suspicion that the Iraqis were engaged in a terrorist attack."

What's the news?

In Rwanda a common greeting is "Amakuru?". It means "Whats the news?", and the answer is always "Ni meza" meaning "Good news".

At first I though this was ridiculous. I mean you can't always have good news can you? All the time?

But now I have come to realise that people in Britain are not too different. For example, if asked "how are you?" in the following situations the answer by many British people would probably be along these lines:


Feeling fine: "I'm fine"
Feeling crap: "I'm fine"
Won the lottery: "I'm great"
Depressed: "I'm fine"
Feeling really fine: "I'm fine"

Parents have died: "I'm fine"

Of course, if a British person is asked whether or not they would like a cup of tea, the answer is invariably an enthusiastic "Yes please!"

Bloggers and the right

A couple of prominent British commentators have seized on the idea (prevalent in the US) that the media has liberal bias, and that the "blogosphere" will hold liberals to account.

As Iain Duncan Smith says here:

the blogosphere will become a force in Britain, and it could ignite many new forces of conservatism. The internet's automatic level playing field gives conservatives opportunities that mainstream media have often denied them.

Melanie Phillips continues the point here:

As Duncan Smith observed, blogging democratises the national conversation by providing an alternative discourse to the world view of the left, which the mainstream media (MSM) regards as the neutral middle ground.

Absolute nonsense.

They seem not to recognise that there are many who regard the media as champions of the establishment and powerful, and not of the left. Yes, blogs will help people have a voice. But they may well be surprised if they are assuming that will be a people's voice of the right. Take a look at one of the most succesful online communities, indymedia. Hardly a champion of conservative values

There is a good deconstruction of Iain Duncan Smith's article here

Mark Lynas has also strongly criticised Melanie Phillips in this post: Sceptics meet reality in the 'Moral Maze'