Poverty of the Elites: Free market famine in Ireland

The Graves are Walking: Free trade uber alles.

[....It is still an insane thought that the most successful country in the world at the time allowed millions to starve in Ireland, its’ closest colonial neighbor.

Imagine the US, the land of plenty, allowing millions of Hawaiians to starve in a Famine there and you get some sense of the absurdity....

But also documented here is O’Connell’s disastrous decision to throw in his lot with Whig leader Lord John Russell who became Prime Minister in July 1846 at the beginning of the worst period of the Famine....

But in the process he backed a man who had become a fully-fledged free trader who insisted that market prices must be received and no government intervention made – even when the result was millions of Irish starving because they could not afford to buy the imported corn.

Russell’s predecessor, the Tory leader Sir Robert Peel, as Kelly points out, had adopted a far more humane policy and had been widely praised for ordering and freeing up imported corn for starving Irish the previous year when the worst of the Famine was blunted.] emphasis added to fan spark of humanity in souls of all who read this.

Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/story/news/periscope/did-irish-leader-daniel-oconnell-help-make-the-famine-happen----graves-are-walking-book-tells-powerful-irish-famine-truths-169750566.html#ixzz26TJ5KH39










[Rock’n’roll great Bruce Springsteen has received a welcome bump after the Democratic National Convention when his tune ‘We Take Care of Our Own’ played right after President Barack Obama’s speech.

The Huffington Post reports that ‘We Take Care of Our Own’ jumped an astounding 409 per cent following its use at the DNC. The song was downloaded 2000 times, which Billboard reports is the most since March....

Despite the song officially being added to Obama’s political campaign playlist, Springsteen is insisting that he is not throwing his support behind any candidate for election 2012 like he did back in 2008.

“I prefer to stay on the sidelines," Springsteen told ABC News in January. "I genuinely believe an artist [is] supposed to be the canary in the coal mine, and you’re better off with a certain distance from the seat of power."

While Springsteen would have liked to have seen "more activism in job creation sooner than it came," he did say he thought Obama had done a good job thus far in his presidency.

Said Springsteen, “He kept GM alive, which was incredibly important to Detroit and Michigan, and he got the health care law passed, although I wish there had been a public option and didn’t leave the citizens victims of the insurance companies. He killed Osama bin Laden, which was extremely important. He brought some sanity to the top level of government.”] emphasis added
 http://www.irishcentral.com/ent/Bruce-Springsteens-We-Take-Care-of-Our-Own-gets-major-boost-from-Barack-Obamas-DNC-speech---VIDEO-169755396.html#ixzz26TNgoeih

September is Hunger Action Month

"September is Hunger Action Month. Nearly 49 million people in America face hunger. That is 1 in 6 of the U.S. population – including more than 1 in 5 children."

Starvation: A Great Business Opportunity

This explains the complete and utter moral and ethical bankruptcy of predatory capitalism, the categorical imperative to put profit above all else, above the value of human life and beyond common human decency.

Silly proletariat, you thought "Hunger Games" a metaphor?

Why should those who hold the capital dictate the ability of other humans to buy food?

Simple human decency requires some socialism to get food to hungry people.

Glad we heard lots about the coming global food crisis at the Republican't convention.  Guess the billionaire elites just assume their grandchildren will still eat filet mignons while the rest of the world has to become vegetarians.

Not to rail against meat consumption-bought a 2 pack of ribeyes on sale for my steaks for the month--but producing the quantity to over feed our fat Western asses, generalizing from my own posterior, for maximum profit for the middlemen, the commodity funds speculator, does not efficiently allocate food resources if we judge the provision of food by whether or not the system prevents famine.

[Our current industrial food system, he notes, clearly demonstrates "how the few now rule the many."]

http://empireofdirt77.blogspot.com/2011/06/eric-schlosser-food-system-based-on.html 

[Barclays has made as much as half a billion pounds in two years from speculating on food staples such as wheat and soya, prompting allegations that banks are profiting handsomely from the global food crisis.

Barclays is the UK bank with the greatest involvement in food commodity trading and is one of the three biggest global players, along with the US banking giants Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, research from the World Development Movement points out.

Last week the trading giant Glencore was attacked for describing the global food crisis and price rises as a "good" business opportunity.

The extent of Barclays' involvement in food speculation comes to light as new figures from the World Bank show that global food prices hit an all-time high in July, with poor harvests in the US and Russia pushing up the average worldwide cost of staples by an unprecedented 10 per cent in a month.

The extent of just one bank's involvement in agricultural markets will add to concerns that food speculation could help push basic prices so high that they trigger a wave of riots in the world's poorest countries, as staples drift out of their populations' reach.]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/barclays-makes-500m-betting-on-food-crisis-8100011.html

World Starves While "Christians" Flock to Chick-Fil-A

Dang, wish I'd of written this.  How true, people starve while stuff myself with frozen pizza and favorite malted beverages.  At least, avoiding fast food, fried food, and retail outlets run by haters might extend my span.


[Yesterday approximately 20,000 people around the world died of starvation while hordes of mostly old, mostly fat white American Christians flocked to a fast food chain to spend money and consume fried chicken from cancer- and disease-ridden chickens that suffered every second from birth to slaughter to show support for said chain's willingness to donate millions of dollars to stop The Gays from getting married.

Meanwhile, people who buy multiple boxes of Sudafed or who purchase money orders over $1000 end up being tracked by law enforcement while individuals who buy thousands upon thousands of rounds of ammunition are not.

Cool. Carry on.]  emphasis added just because
http://www.ginandtacos.com/2012/08/02/scenes-from-this-american-life/

[World Vision and Save the Children say that millions of families are suffering in what is effectively a large-scale nutrition crisis.

They say the main reason is not drought or food deficit, but a lack of protection against shock price rises.

The charities want more investment to protect against food insecurity.]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19074859

Be the change, donate to Mercy Corps to help stop starvation: https://www.mercycorps.org/donate/

See the USA on $4.50 a Day: Living on food stamps in A-Merry-Ca

Wonder how Rachel Ray could live on $4.50 per day.  Obviously from RepubliKKKan crazytown, 450 pennies a day amounts to a king's ransom for these useless, non-productive dregs of society.

Tax cuts for billionaires but pinga for the poor.

Let them eat filet I can ear John Boehner say.

[By: Lauren Markoe and Josef Kuhn
Posted: Friday, October 28, 2011 7:12 am
Section: Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS) Religious leaders and members of Congress this week are getting a firsthand taste of what it’s like to eat on $4.50 a day as part of the “Food Stamp Challenge.”In the challenge, participants try to live for a week on the average amount received by people who use food stamps, now known as the federal Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP).

“We do need to put ourselves sometimes in other people’s shoes so we can really feel what they have to go through every day,” said Donna Christensen, a Democrat who represents the U.S. Virgin Islands as a nonvoting delegate.

The Food Stamp Challenge is part of Fighting Poverty with Faith, an annual interfaith initiative endorsed by 50 national religious organizations.

This year is a particularly critical one for the cause, faith leaders said, because Congress is considering significant cuts to the more than $64 billion program.

On Thursday (Oct. 27), religious and political leaders teamed up with current SNAP recipients to shop at a Safeway grocery store near Capitol Hill.

One of them was the Rev. Peg Chemberlin, president of the National Council of Churches and a former adviser to the White House’s Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Several decades ago, unable to find a job after leaving a seminary program, Chemberlin signed up for food stamps. But she had forgotten what it was like to shop on such a tight budget.

“No soda, no magazines, no coffee,” said Chemberlin as she pushed her cart by each item. She tried not to look at the donuts, croissants and Doritos.

“Absolutely no specialty items,” she said.

Chemberlin shopped with Vernell Livingston, 72, a local resident whose only sources of income are Social Security payments and SNAP.

At one point, Chemberlin suggested some $6.99 beef patties to Livingston, who shook her head and said, “No, no, no, no.” She selected less expensive ground turkey instead, which she planned to eat with cheese on 99-cent wheat bread for dinner.

At another point, Livingston put a $1.29 can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup in her cart, and then opted for a generic chicken noodle soup for 89 cents.

Livingston’s three small bags of groceries totaled $29.93, just under the average SNAP allotment of $31.50 per week.

Although SNAP is called a “nutritional assistance” program, good nutrition may be unattainable for many of those receiving benefits.

Chemberlin said she wished Livingston could have bought more fruits and vegetables, “because it’s clear she’s very oriented toward eating healthily, but we had to choose between fruits and vegetables and protein.”

“The health risks are terrible, when you look at sugar, sodium and fats in the foods you must buy on $4.50 a day,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., who once received food stamps as a single mother.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat from Washington, D.C., said one in four families in the nation’s capital are on SNAP.

Since the beginning of the recession, she noted, the number of those on SNAP nationally rose from 27 million to 44 million, and nearly half are children.

Eight members of Congress, all Democrats, have agreed to take the Food Stamp Challenge.]
http://www.ethicsdaily.com/faith-political-leaders-find-out-how-far-food-stamps-go-cms-18751

Hunger in America