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Post by clone on Oct 16, 2010 22:36:32 GMT -8
Canada sending substandard food aid to developing world: Aid group October 15, 2010 Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) included Canada, the United States, Japan and the European Union on a list of some of the world's top food aid donors who continue to supply certain foods despite "conclusive scientific evidence of their ineffectiveness in reducing childhood malnutrition." www.vancouversun.com/business/Canada+sending+substandard+food+developing+world+group/3679642/story .html
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Post by clone on Oct 16, 2010 22:38:47 GMT -8
World Food Day: Fighting global childhood malnutrition Geneva - Top donor countries must end double standard of supplying nutritionally substandard foods to young children in malnutrition hotspots International food assistance has failed to keep up with advances in nutritional science for childhood development. In October 2008, a World Health Organization panel of nutrition experts recognized that corn- and soya-blend cereal is inappropriate for treating malnourished children, including because it can inhibit the absorption of important proteins and other nutrients essential to a young child’s recovery from malnutrition. www.msf.ca/news-media/news/2010/10/world-food-day-fighting-global-childhood-malnutrition/
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Post by clone on Feb 1, 2011 13:19:20 GMT -8
Haitian Farmers Commit to Burning Monsanto Seeds Friday, 18 June 2010, 12:23 pm In an open letter sent May 14, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the executive director of MPP and the spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay (MPNKP), called the entry of Monsanto seeds into Haiti "a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds ... and on what is left our environment in Haiti."(1) Haitian social movements have been vocal in their opposition to agribusiness imports of seeds and food, which undermines local production with local seed stocks. They have expressed special concern about the import of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). ... The hybrid corn seeds Monsanto has donated to Haiti are treated with the fungicide Maxim XO, and the calypso tomato seeds are treated with thiram.(3) Thiram belongs to a highly toxic class of chemicals called ethylene bisdithiocarbamates (EBDCs). Results of tests of EBDCs on mice and rats caused concern to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which then ordered a special review. The EPA determined that EBDC-treated plants are so dangerous to agricultural workers that they must wear special protective clothing when handling them. Pesticides containing thiram must contain a special warning label, the EPA ruled. The EPA also barred marketing of the chemicals for many home garden products, because it assumes that most gardeners do not have adequately protective clothing.(4) Monsanto's passing mention of thiram to Ministry of Agriculture officials in an email contained no explanation of the dangers, nor any offer of special clothing or training for those who will be farming with the toxic seeds. www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1006/S00132.htm
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Post by clone on Feb 1, 2011 13:27:02 GMT -8
The Creole Pig is a breed of pig indigenous to the Caribbean nation of Haiti. Creole pigs are well adapted to local conditions, such as available feed and conditions needed for their management as livestock, and were popular with the Haitian peasant farmers until an extermination campaign in the 1980s. They served as a type of savings account for the Haitian peasant: sold or slaughtered to pay for marriages, medical emergencies, schooling, seeds for crops, orvodou ceremonies. The dark black pigs are known for their boisterous nature and have been incorporated into elements vodou folklore and the oral history of the Haitian revolution. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_pig..the government made some ineffective attempts at replacing the well-adapted Creole pigs with high maintenance American breeds. Unlike the Creole pigs, the foreign pigs couldn't survive on table scraps, and needed little shelters to live in; farmers who could barely afford to feed and house their own children could in no way provide for these pigs. The government project was a complete disaster. www.lambifund.org/programs_technology.shtml
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Post by heavy urban search on May 25, 2011 10:04:28 GMT -8
Burn Monsanto, Burn Haitian Peasants Threaten to Burn GM Aid Package Friday, May 28th, 2010 Almost four months after the disaster that killed as many as 230,000 Haitians, up to a million more are still living in squalid tent cities devoid of potable water, food, and medical aid. With a group of people this desperate, surely any offer of food aid would be welcomed with open arms... But not if those supplies are coming from agricultural lightning-rod Monsanto. Haitian peasant farming leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste has threatened to publicly burn 475 tons of hybrid corn and vegetable seeds from Monsanto's latest aid package. www.greenchipstocks.com/articles/burn-monsanto-burn/979
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Post by moabiter on May 27, 2011 8:33:36 GMT -8
Secret documents show Canadian interference in Haiti April 15, 2011
According to internal documents examined by the Canadian Press this month, Canadian officials feared a post-earthquake power vacuum could lead to a "popular uprising". Obtained through access-to-information legislation, one briefing note marked "Secret" explains, "Political fragility has increased the risks of a popular uprising, and has fed the rumour that ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, currently in exile in South Africa, wants to organize a return to power." The documents also explain the importance of strengthening the Haitian authorities ability "to contain the risks of a popular uprising."
To police Haiti's traumatized and suffering population 2,000 Canadian troops were deployed (alongside 10,000 American soldiers). At the same time several Heavy Urban Search and Rescue Teams in cities across the country were readied but never sent because, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon noted, "the government had opted to send Canadian Armed Forces instead."
The files uncovered by the Canadian Press go to the heart (or lack thereof) of Canadian foreign-policy decision-making. Almost always strategic thinking, not compassion, motivates policy. One is hard-pressed to find an instance where compassion was more warranted than post-earthquake Haiti.
www.rabble.ca/news/2011/04/secret-documents-show-canadian-interference-haiti god bless monsanto.
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Post by ODA on Jul 5, 2011 9:37:38 GMT -8
Sunday, June 26, 2011 #Radiation in Japan: Government Wants to Offer Japan's Seafood to Developing Nations As part of the ODA (Official Development Assistance) under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a host of aid programs for developing nations around the world, the Japanese national government is going to buy up processed seafood [canned fish, for example?] from the earthquake-affected areas and offered them to developing nations. ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/06/radiation-in-japan-government-wants-to.html
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world economic forum davos
Guest
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Post by world economic forum davos on Jan 29, 2012 8:57:19 GMT -8
Philanthropy is the enemy of justice 29.01.12 Updated 16.37 <snip> The biotech agriculture that Lord Sainsbury was unable to push through democratically he can now implement unilaterally, through his Gatsby Foundation. We are told that Gatsby's biotech project aims to provide food security for the global south. But if you listen to southern groups such as the Karnataka State Farmers of India home.iae.nl/users/lightnet/world/indianfarmer.htm food security is precisely the reason they campaign against GM, because biotech crops are monocrops which are more vulnerable to disease and so need lashings of petrochemical pesticides, insecticides and fungicides – none of them cheap – and whose ruinous costs will rise with the price of oil, bankrupting small family farms first. Crop diseases mutate, meanwhile, and all the chemical inputs in the world can't stop disease wiping out whole harvests of genetically engineered single strands. Both the Gatsby and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundations are keen to get deeper into agriculture, especially in Africa. But top-down nostrums for the rural poor don't end well. The list of autocratic hubris in pseudo-scientific farming is long and spectacularly calamitous. It runs from Tsar Alexander I's model village colonies in 1820s Novgorod to 1920s Hollywood film producer Hickman Price, who, as Simon Schama brilliantly describes in The American Future, "bought 54 square miles of land to show the little people how it was really done, [and] used 25 combines all painted glittery silver". His fleet of tractors were kept working day and night, and the upshot of such sod-busting was the great plains dustbowl en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl But there's no stopping a plutocratic philanthropist in a hurry. And then there is the vexed question of whether these billions are really the billionaires' to give away in the first place. When Microsoft was on its board, the American Electronics Association, the AeA, challenged European Union proposals for a ban on toxic components and for the use of a minimum 5% recycled plastic in the manufacture of electronic goods. AeA took the EU to the World Trade Organisation on a charge of erecting artificial trade barriers. (And according to the American NGO Public Citizen, "made the astounding claim that there is no evidence that heavy metals, like lead, pose a threat to human health or the environment".) j.mp/wf9U6r
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Post by north korea on Mar 6, 2012 17:40:39 GMT -8
N.Korea trades nuclear ambitions for food 01/03 02:03 In a surprise breakthrough, Hillary Clinton has announced North Korea is to stop some of its nuclear programmes in return for US food aid. The deal comes only two months after Kim Jong-un succeeded his father as leader. “North Korea has agreed to implement a moratorium on long range missile launches, nuclear tests, and nuclear activities at Yongbyon including uranium enrichment activities,” Secretary of State Clinton told Congress. www.euronews.com/2012/03/01/nkorea-trades-nuclear-ambitions-for-food/
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