Tag: Hunger

Closing Thought–14May19

I remember a couple of years ago WalMart caught some grief because they threw away coats in dumpsters in some big cities….cities that have a large homeless population that could have used some warmth from the coats in the harsh winters.

I said then that it should be unacceptable to Americans to see a corporation care so little when they could have done the right thing and donated the coats marked for the trash bin…..

And now AmazonGo has been caught being a douche with food…….

Seattle resident Nathan Gregg was at a waste facility, about 15 minutes south of the city’s downtown area, dumping construction materials at around 3:30 p.m. Thursday when he discovered a nearly 6-foot-high pile of prepared meals still in their Amazon Go packaging. Amazon Go is the e-commerce giant’s cashierless convenience store concept.

Photos provided by Gregg showed various wraps, salads, and sandwiches encased in their original sealed plastic containers alongside packaged hot dogs, mushrooms, loose bell peppers, and other grocery items. The discarded food was found at South Transfer Station. There are four Amazon Go stores located in Seattle, and eight other locations across San Francisco, Chicago, and New York.

After Gregg reported the incident, Seattle Public Utilities told him that the Amazon Go waste is being investigated, and the items would be removed from the landfill.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazon-go-waste-food-packaging

This is disgusting but something I expect from corporation…..

I am sure that Seattle food pantries/churches/charities could have put that food to good use….feed the hungry something apparently Amazon could care little about…..

Homeless And Hungry (Just Another Country Song)

There are two situations that have been with us since the beginning and will be with us when this world ends its life cycle……homelessness and hunger.

The promise of politicians says that if you live right then these two situations will never know your name……well my dear friends….that is a LIE! (capitalized for effect)

Take homelessness…….

These men and women, and increasingly children, are the collateral damage of the corporate state, their dignity and lives destroyed by the massive transference of wealth upward, deindustrialization and the slashing of federal investment in affordable housing begun during the Reagan administration.

It is 8 a.m. I am in the small offices of Street Roots, a weekly newspaper that prints 10,000 copies per edition. Those who sell the newspaper on the streets—all of them victims of extreme poverty and half of them homeless—have gathered before heading out with their bundles to spend hours in the cold and rain.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/10/08/homeless-america

The necessities are shelter (home) and food…..in some regions food is almost a luxury item…..famine is always with us somewhere in the world….(BTW an Iphone is not a necessity)

Scientists are getting concerned about the global food supply…..

Researchers from Washington State University have published a new report of the Great Drought, the most destructive known drought of the past 800 years – and how it sparked the Global Famine that claimed the lives of 50 million people. The scientists warn that the Earth’s current warming climate could spark a similar drought, but even worse.

One of the lead researchers, Deepti Singh, a professor in WSU’s School of the Environment, used rainfall records and climate reconstruction models to characterize the environmental conditions leading up to the Great Drought, a period in the mid-1870s known for widespread crop failures across Asia, Brazil, and Africa. The drought was connected to the most extreme manifestation of the El Nino supercycle ever recorded.

“Climate conditions that caused the Great Drought and Global Famine arose from natural variability. And their recurrence — with hydrological impacts intensified by global warming — could again potentially undermine global food safety,” lead author Singh and her colleagues wrote in the Journal of Climate, published online Oct. 04.

The release of the study came days before the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that global warming could cause intense droughts, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-15/scientist-warn-world-brink-major-famine-lead-severe-shocks-global-food-system

I realize that the term “climate change” is a dirty word in some circles…..but that should not matter…..making damn sure that the food supply holds should be a priority…..not a partisan issue….sadly it is not.

Why not?

On a side note….Americans lead the world in wasted food……Americans waste about a pound of food per person each day, with people who have healthier diets rich in fruit and vegetables the most wasteful, research has found.

About 150,000 tons of food is tossed out in US households each day, equivalent to about a third of the daily calories that each American consumes. Fruit and vegetables were the most likely to be thrown out, followed by dairy and then meat.

How pathetic is that?

Hunger: The Saddest Injustice

A good friend and blogger (https://beetleypete.wordpress.com/ ) got me to thinking about the issue of hunger….as always I have an opinion on that issue as well…….

There were times during my life when food was a major concern…..I admit that I had gone to bed hungry…..the saddest injustice for me is hunger.

I have tried to focus on hunger here on IST…..

https://lobotero.com/2008/12/22/hunger-is-growing/

https://lobotero.com/2010/02/03/hunger-is/

Then we have TV shows that waste food for entertainment….pumpkin chunking. bowling with raw turkey, etc.  I find all such “entertainment” disgusting……but let’s look at hunger right here in the US, that shining city on the hill…..

  1. 1 in 6 people in America face hunger.
  2. The USDA defines “food insecurity” as the lack of access, at times, to enough food for all household members. In 2011, households with children reported a significantly higher food insecurity rate than households without children: 20.6% vs. 12.2%.
  3. Food insecurity exists in every county in America. In 2013, 17.5 million households were food insecure. More and more people are relying on food banks and pantries. Collect food outside your local supermarket for a local food bank. Sign up for Supermarket Stakeout GL.
  4. 49 million Americans struggle to put food on the table.
  5. In the US, hunger isn’t caused by a lack of food, but rather the continued prevalence of poverty.
  1. More than 1 in 5 children is at risk of hunger. Among African-Americans and Latinos, it’s 1 in 3.
  2. Over 20 million children receive free or reduced-price lunch each school day. Less than half of them get breakfast, and only 10% have access to summer meal sites.
  3. For every 100 school lunch programs, there are only 87 breakfast sites and just 36 summer food programs.
  4. 1 in 7 people are enrolled in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Nearly half of them are children.
  5. 40% of food is thrown out in the US every year, or about $165 billion worth. All of this uneaten food could feed 25 million Americans.
  6. These 8 states have statistically higher food insecurity rates than the US national average (14.6%): Arkansas (21.2%), Mississippi (21.1%), Texas (18.0%), Tennessee (17.4%), North Carolina (17.3%), Missouri (16.9%), Georgia (16.6%), Ohio (16.0%).  (source:  dosomething.org)

Kinda sad from a country that can spend $1.5 trillion on a war that it cannot win.

It is a world problem not just one for the US…..and as the world’s nations grow more wealthy the hunger rate never changes……

It’s impossible to ignore the growth of economic inequality in each corner of the planet. Vulgarity is the order of the day, with the very rich hoarding vast amounts of wealth while the poor scratch the earth for their livelihood. The British-based charity group Oxfam has done an important service by offering an annual indication of the gravity of inequality. This year, Oxfam noted that a mere 42 rich people have as much wealth as 3.7 billion poor people. What is most astounding is that in 2017, 82 percent of the social wealth produced by the world’s people was vacuumed into the bank accounts of the wealthiest 1 percent among us. This is not an ancient problem, in other words, but a current problem posed by the structure of capitalism: goods and services are produced socially, but profit is sequestered privately—and with fewer and fewer hands able to seize this profit.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/09/05/hunger-warning

Every generation wants to end world hunger and very generation fails to do so.

I just cannot see a way to make the elimination of hunger  a priority…..words will not feed anyone…it will take action but where will that action come from?

Yemen–America’s Shame

For two year the Saudis have been bombing Yemen back into the Stone Age…..the humanitarian crisis is getting worse by the bomb…..not not are the people in starvation mode they are also facing the worse cholera epidemic in a 100 years…..and all made possible by the US and its aid to our buddies the Saudis.

As the world focuses on isolated incidents of terrorism taking place in Western countries, the wholesale slaughter being committed by Western countries against others generally goes unnoticed unless being pinned on the victim nation. However, even with Americans and other Westerners paying scant attention to Iraq and Syria, the conflict in Yemen scarcely gets a mention except in communities of human rights activists and geopolitical commentators.

Even after Yemen has overtaken Syria as the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis, most of the world has remained deathly silent about the situation unfolding there.

While not overwhelmingly involved with troops, bombing campaigns, and the like in the way that it is in Syria or Iraq, the United States is nonetheless complicit in the destruction of an entire country by providing intelligence, weapons, and political support to Saudi Arabia and the GCC in their war against the Yemeni people. In addition to that support, however, the United States has, at times, also contributed limited direct military support to the Saudi effort.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-faces-of-yemen-where-is-american-outrage/5619219

One of America’s most respected news stows is “60 Minutes” and they recently did a feature on Yemen…..

Saudi Arabia’s year long blockade and bombing campaign in Yemen has gotten very little coverage in the United States, even as the extreme food and fuel shortages have developed into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Now, as the Saudi noose on Yemen tightens — leaving 7 million people facing starvation and another 1 million infected with cholera — the war is having its moment in the media spotlight.

On Sunday, “60 Minutes” aired a 13-minute segment on the war’s devastating humanitarian toll. The program featured imagery of starving children and interviews with displaced people, all obtained after Saudi Arabia blocked “60 Minutes” from entering the country.

https://theintercept.com/2017/11/20/60-minutes-yemen-war-us-involvement/

The Saudis have gone so far as to bomb the available airport to keep supplies from entering into the country…..I lost a lot of respect I had for “60 Minutes” after they failed to report the whole story did nothing but a fluff piece to silence some critics…..this is why we have some much call out of “fake news”….no one wants to report the truth anymore.

An estimated 130 children or more are dying every day in war-torn Yemen from extreme hunger and disease, according to ​Save the Children, an international aid group

The charity said a continuing blockade by the Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen’s Houthi rebels aligned with the country’s former president was likely to further increase the death rate. It said more than 50,000 children are believed to have died in 2017.

The coalition closed all air, land and sea ports to stem the flow of arms from Iran on November 6, after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired towards its capital Riyadh. It has since said that aid can go through “liberated ports” but not the key Houthi-controlled port of Hodeidah.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/yemen-children-are-dying-at-a-rate-of-130-a-day-while-saudiled-blockade-continues-20171118-gzo21m.html

Even the American Conversation has weighed in on the atrocity that is Yemen…..

Yemen has been upside down for three years. Hunger, epidemics, and a blockade are all getting tighter. But the misery has escalated following the ballistic missile which was fired from Yemen at the King Khalid International Airport in the Saudi capital on Nov. 4. Overnight, Yemen became completely isolated from the entire globe.

This development has ushered in a new wave of civilian suffering. It feels like the war has just opened a new chapter of violence in a country beset by crises since the eruption of the 2011 uprising.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/dispatch-from-yemen-were-cut-off-and-starving/

Sad and to watch American news then NO one cares about the plight of children in Yemen or the rate of starvation…..truly sad.

Children Are The Future

How many times have you heard that piece of political crap?  My fave tag line by the mental midgets we elect is the one that states….”we must secure the future for the children”……then these same “saviors” set about destroying any program that would benefit the children.

But the US is not alone…..we hear all about the children from international sources and they too are concerned for the future…..another really poor tag-line.  If these people truly cared one iota about children crap like this would not happen…..

“Children have been killed while studying in the classroom and while sleeping in their beds. They have been orphaned, kidnapped, tortured, recruited, raped, and even sold as slaves.” That’s Anthony Lake, executive director of UNICEF, explaining why the UN organization has designated 2014 as the worst year on record for children across the globe. “Never in recent memory have so many children been subjected to such unspeakable brutality.” Lowlights from the UNICEF report, per the New York Times:

  • As many as 15 million children are directly affected by violent conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, and Ukraine. And 230 million are estimated to live in regions where armed conflicts are taking place.
  • In the Central African Republic, where 2.3 million children are affected by violence, more than 430 have been killed or hurt and as many as 10,000 have been recruited as child soldiers.
  • The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza has left 538 children dead, 3,370 hurt, and 54,000 without homes.
  • The Syrian civil war and the rise of ISIS have disrupted the lives of 7.3 million Syrian children and 2.7 million Iraqi children.
  • South Sudan’s civil conflict has left hundreds of thousands of children displaced, as refugees, or suffering from severe malnutrition.
  • West Africa’s Ebola outbreak has also left thousands of kids orphaned.

There is NO excuse for the deliberate targeting of children……….and the children have a very limited future unless the powers that be pull the collective heads out of their butts…..and I do not see that miracle occurring any time soon…….

The Land Of The Free

I have read another report that shows me that this country is losing all compassion…….we accuse people of being poor by choice…..we accuse people on Social Security as being freeloaders……..the country turns its back on its vets…..just a few incidents……

And then I read one that makes me ashamed…….

A simple citation couldn’t keep Arnold Abbott off the streets of Fort Lauderdale, where he’s been feeding the homeless for more than two decades. The 90-year-old man, charged Sunday with violating a new ordinance that clamps down on public feeding of the homeless, dished out meals at a public beach Wednesday, just as he has every Wednesday for 23 years in honor of his late wife, ABC News reports. Shouts of “God bless you, Arnold!” were heard as almost 100 homeless people and volunteers gathered around, the AP reports. Though officers at first only recorded “Chef Arnold,” they later stepped in to issue him another citation.

But Abbott remains undeterred. “You cannot sweep the homeless under a rug,” he tells Local 10. “There is no rug large enough for that.” Fort Lauderdale’s mayor admits Abbott is “a super nice guy” but wants to see him move his program to a nearby church in order to provide a “sanitary” and “safe, secure [setting]”; per the new ordinance, which went into effect a week ago, those handing out food outdoors must make public toilets available. As for what’s next, the World War II veteran says he’ll feed some 200 people at a local church on Sunday, but “I don’t plan to give up the beach,” he says. “I’ll fight for the beach as long as there’s birth in my body.” The AP notes Abbott also runs a culinary school that trains the homeless and finds them jobs in kitchens. (Click for more on his first arrest this week.)

So but in my mind what this man is doing is not a crime…..if anything he should be rewarded for his humanitarianism……not be treated like a criminal………

Any thoughts?

Teacher Sends Hungry First Graders Home With Backpacks Full Of Food | ThinkProgress

We all hear the stats on the people that are hungry in this country…..it falls on deaf ears……why?  Well if I am not hungry then it is a made up report, sort of thinking.  Thanx to our politics we have learned to be unfeeling to others needs.

This story is heart warming….my problem is that it is a story…..especially in the “best” and “richest” country on the planet.

 

Teacher Sends Hungry First Graders Home With Backpacks Full Of Food | ThinkProgress.

Only In Mississippi Is Feeding Birds A Crime

My lovely state spends way too much time debate and enacting laws that are just flat out STUPID!  The state’s economy is in the crapper…..education is in the crapper…..health care is in the crapper…..and what do they do?

From site Mississippi PEP…………

New regulations passed by the state’s Commission on Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks removed an earlier exemption allowing feeders to be placed on or near residential homes. Under the new rules, all feeders would have to be located more than 100 yards from any property line or building.

Unless you’ve got a really, really, really big backyard, it’s tough to meet that requirement.

The state commission now says the regulations were not intended to ban backyard birdfeeders. They plan to review and correct the language at some point.

Until then, Mississippians should beware of overzealous park rangers and wildlife officers who could seize upon the opportunity to hand out citations for feeding mockingbirds — the state bird — in their backyards.

Read More

Only in Mississippi would it be a ‘crime’ to feed birds in your own backyard.  They are ‘freeloaders’ and we know what Southerns think of freeloaders, huh?

And too many think I am unfair in my attacks against the state of Mississippi.  Take my word for it….it is a cultural wasteland…….and now they have moved beyond attacking the citizens to kove on to attacking birds……a lovely place to stay as far away from as you can get.