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The politics of rice
Inside USA travels to Haiti to look at how the stories of politics, rice and the US are deeply interwoven.
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Vandana Shiva - Exclusive Footage - WTO's Intellectual Property Rights Agreem...
Sturt Townsend interviews Vandana Shiva for the new 1999 WTO protest resource page.
http://www.youtube.com/user/whocontrolstheworld
Vandan Shiva discusses the inception and ramifications of the WTO's Intellectual Property Rights Agreement. Sturt Townsend interviews Vandana Shiva for the new 1999 WTO protest resource page. ... more -
Vandana Shiva - Exclusive Footage - Her Experience in Seattle at the 1999 WTO Prot...
Stuart Townsend interviews Vandana Shiva for the 1999 WTO protest resource page.
http://www.youtube.com/user/whocontrolstheworld
Vandana Shiva discusses the highlights of her involvement in the 1999 WTO protest. Stuart Townsend interviews Vandana Shiva for the 1999 WTO protest resource page. http://www.youtube.com/user/whocontrolstheworld ... more -
Maude Barlow - Exclusive Footage - Can Trade and Protectionism Co-exist?
Stuart Townsend has interviewed Maude Barlow for the 1999 WTO protest resource page.
http://www.youtube.com/user/whocontrolstheworld
Maude Barlow discuses the possibility that trade and the protection of local resources could successfully exist together. Stuart Townsend has interviewed Maude Barlow for the 1999 WTO protest resource page. ... more -
Victor Menotti - Exclusive Footage - Police Targeting "Leaders"
Stuart Townsend interviews Victor Menotti for the 1999 WTO protest resource page.
http://www.youtube.com/user/whocontrolstheworld
Victor Menotti and Mike Dolan tell the story of what happened to Victor during the protest.
Footage Source: Trade-Off Stuart Townsend interviews Victor Menotti for the 1999 WTO protest resource page. http://www.youtube.com/user/whocontrolstheworld ... more -
IMF Raises World Economic Targets
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has raised its global economic forecast after the impact of a credit crunch was not as severe as had been first feared.
The IMF said it now expects the global economy to grow 4.1% in 2008, up from an initial forecast of 3.7% in April. That compares with 5% growth in 2007.
Despite upgrading forecasts for the UK and US, the IMF warned that the global economy remained in a "tough spot".
Policymakers need to balance growth, while dealing with inflation, it said.
"The global economy is in a tough spot, caught between sharply slowing demand in many advanced economies and rising inflation everywhere, notably in emerging and developing countries," the IMF said in an update to the World Economic Outlook it published in April.
Read more... The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has raised its global economic forecast after the impact of a credit crunch was not as severe as... more -
Saving The World's Seeds
Would you start by talking about some general issues surrounding globalization.
Dr. Vandana Shiva: Well those of use who are concerned about the globalization that has been contrived and yet made to look as if it is a natural evolutionary step, we are concerned about the injustice and undemocratic system on which it is based.
And everything we said, fifteen years ago, when these rules were being put in place, very artificially, under GAT and then became the WTO rules, or on the financial side as the instrumentalities and conditionalities of the World Bank and IMF, what we said fifteen years ago turns out not to have been an exaggeration but an underestimation of the devastation of both nature, society and economies.
I had talked about the WTO agreement on agriculture as the death knell for Indian farmers. Every year 16,000 farmers are being killed. They are taking their lives, but I don¹t think they are taking their lives. It is that they are being pushed to the edge of survival - through the indebtedness that is an inevitable result of turning them into a market for Monsanto seed, and, on the other hand disposable items, when Cargill and ConAgra have to dump subsidized grain through a liberalized agreement.
When I started to fight intellectual property rights in the WTO, I was concerned about patents on life. And seed patents now we can see what they are doing.
American farmers are being harassed, fined for three million dollars, and the crime is seed saving?
What could be a worse situation for humanity? To turn something as valuable as saving seeds for the future into a criminal activity.
Similar laws have just been passed in India, two weeks ago.
I think anyone who doesn't resist this kind of globalization is not being fully human, is not exercising their duties.
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More of this interview at the link. And what an opportune moment for the World Bank president to come out to say that food prices will he high until 2012 as if he really knows that. I have also read that pressure is being put on Europe to adopt GM foods. If I didn't know any better I would think this has all been planned to get a desired result for all of the world organizations working in tandem including The World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, and governments of this world intent on keeping poor people down by controlling their food and water. Strangely, the song "Everybody Wants To Rule The World " is in my head now.
Thankfully there are people like Dr. Vandana Shiva and others speaking truth on this. We have to do so as well. We cannot allow this to be the future for our children. So if you have an organization that deals in organic seeds or seeds free of chemicals post it here. Let's really give some information to people to show them they have options and that we do not have to be enslaved to corporate BS any longer.
It is a threat to our health, other species, our environment, and our planet. Those who control the seeds and the water control YOU. I say, no more, and I will be relentless about it here. Would you start by talking about some general issues surrounding globalization. ... more -
Destroying African Agriculture
Biofuel production is certainly one of the culprits in the current global food crisis. But while the diversion of corn from food to biofuel feedstock has been a factor in food prices shooting up, the more primordial problem has been the conversion of economies that are largely food-self-sufficient into chronic food importers. Here the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) figure as much more important villains.
Whether in Latin America, Asia, or Africa, the story has been the same: the destabilization of peasant producers by a one-two punch of IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs that gutted government investment in the countryside followed by the massive influx of subsidized U.S. and European Union agricultural imports after the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture pried open markets. .
African agriculture is a case study of how doctrinaire economics serving corporate interests can destroy a whole continent’s productive base.
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So this so called "secret" report by the World bank stating that "biofuels" are to blame for the world food shortage is in part propaganda to cover up their own participation in it. It is not 'biofuel' production in total that has caused it, but 'ethanol' production and mostly subsidized imports brought about by the destabilization of local economies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that are raising prices. Biofuel production is certainly one of the culprits in the current global food crisis. But while the diversion of corn from food to bi... more -
The US Financial System gets audited
...and the Walls come tumbling down. Watch what happens on Wall Street when this gets around the mainstream news media...if it ever does.
From the article:
As part of the assessment, the Fed, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the major investment banks, mortgage banks and hedge funds will be asked to hand over confidential documents to the IMF team. They will be required to answer the questions they are asked during interviews. Their databases will be subjected to so-called stress tests -- worst-case scenarios designed to simulate the broader effects of failures of other major financial institutions or a continuing decline of the dollar.
Under its bylaws, the IMF is charged with the supervision of the international monetary system. Roughly two-thirds of IMF members -- but never the United States -- have already endured this painful procedure.
For seven years, US President George W. Bush refused to allow the IMF to conduct its assessment. Even now, he has only given the IMF board his consent under one important condition. The review can begin in Bush's last year in office, but it may not be completed until he has left the White House. This is bad news for the Fed chairman. ...and the Walls come tumbling down. Watch what happens on Wall Street when this gets around the mainstream news media...if it ever d... more -
World Bank to meet as food prices soar - Worldnews.com
Read article:
http://article.wn.com/view/2008/04/13/World_Bank_to_mee...
Comment:
Poverty, hunger and economic inequalities have been the source of violence and unrest around the world for many years. What has happened in Haiti this week and other places, have brought this issue back to our attention. I just hope that we see the warning signs and take the opportunity to make a change.
Please leave me your comments and tell us what you think of the issue. Read article: http://article.wn.com/view/2008/04/13/World_Bank_to_meet_as_food_prices_soar/ Comment: ... more -
Hunger. Strikes. Riots. The Food Crisis Bites
It is the constant sensation of hunger that makes Kamla Devi so angry. She argues with shopkeepers in New Delhi over prices and quarrels with her husband, a casual labourer, over his wages - about 50 rupees (60p) a day.
'When I go to the market and see how little I can get for my money, it makes me want to hit the shopkeepers and thrash the government,' she says. A few months ago, Kamla - who is 42 - decided she and her husband could no longer afford to eat twice a day. The couple, who have already sent their two teenage sons to live with more prosperous relatives, now exist on only one daily meal. At midday Kamla cooks a dozen roti (a round, flat Indian bread) with some vegetables fried with onions and spices. If there are some left, they will eat them at night. The only other sustenance that the couple have are occasional cups of sugared tea.
'My husband and I would argue every night. In the end he told me it wouldn't make his wages grow larger. Instead we went down to one meal a day to cut costs.'
It is a grim, unsettling story. Yet it is certainly not an exceptional one. Across the world, a food crisis is now unfolding with frightening speed. Hundreds of millions of men and women who, only a few months ago, were able to provide food for their families have found rocketing prices of wheat, rice and cooking oil have left them facing the imminent prospect of starvation. The spectre of catastrophe now looms over much of the planet.
In less than a year, the price of wheat has risen 130 per cent, soya by 87 per cent and rice by 74 per cent. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, there are only eight to 12 weeks of cereal stocks in the world, while grain supplies are at their lowest since the 1980s.
For the Devi family, and hundreds of millions of others like them, the impact has been calamitous, as Robert Zoellick, the World Bank President, warned at this weekend's G7 meeting in Washington. Brandishing a bag of rice, he told startled delegates from the world's richest nations that the world was now perched at the edge of catastrophe.
'This is not just about meals forgone today, or about increasing social unrest, it is about lost learning potential for children and adults in the future, stunted intellectual and physical growth,' he said. Without urgent action to resolve the crisis, he added, the fight against poverty could be set back by seven years.
end of excerpt.
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Is this a true catastrophe in the making brought on by overconsumption? Or a manipulation of the poor by world governments to find an excuse for their new world order? It is the constant sensation of hunger that makes Kamla Devi so angry. She argues with shopkeepers in New Delhi over prices and quarre... more -
Food Prices Stir Poverty Concern
The International Monetary Fund has said that rising food prices threaten to undermine gains made in cutting poverty and further strain a global economy already hit by a financial crisis. The International Monetary Fund has said that rising food prices threaten to undermine gains made in cutting poverty and further strai... more
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Credit crisis could cost $1 trillion
The International Monetary Fund said Tuesday that financial losses stemming from the U.S. mortgage crisis might approach $1 trillion, citing a "collective failure" to predict the breadth of the crisis.
Falling U.S. house prices and rising delinquencies may lead to $565 billion in mortgage-market losses, the IMF said in its annual Global Financial Stability report, released in Washington. Total losses, including the securities tied to commercial real estate and loans to consumers and companies, may reach $945 billion, the fund said. The International Monetary Fund said Tuesday that financial losses stemming from the U.S. mortgage crisis might approach $1 trillion, ... more -
IMF -- International Monetary Fund Home Page
See what the IMF is up to.
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UK internet censorship law passed on New Years Eve
Did anyone notice? It seemed to slip under the radar undetected like many other laws have done over the last four or five years.
The law, or more specifically "process in action", has been designed to block child pornography from of the UK - a noble cause - but Frank Fisher, a resident IT expert type from the Guardian, has spotted some flaws its seemingly innocent sheeny surface.
Firstly, the servers which are blocked are not up to debate, they are decided by the IMF, augmented by the Home Office and then blocked by the ISP's. The list of servers blocked are not up for discussion, nor are they listed anywhere, rendering the process fairly secretive.
Are we to trust our government to block access to child pornography and child pornography only? The government has "leaned on" ISP's in the past to block sites on the word of one just one police officer and have also tried to block sites which simply embarrass or undermine the government.
As of the 31st of December you've been looking at a state censored internet, and no-one can see what is and is not getting blocked. No debate, no watchdog, no nothing. Loath it or lump it...
Now while you still can get those webcams fired up and tell me what you think... Did anyone notice? It seemed to slip under the radar undetected like many other laws have done over the last four or five years. ... more -
South America to open new bank.
"Representatives from across South America will sign agreements on Sunday setting up a new regional bank, the Banco del Sur or Southern Bank."
They are doing this to supersede the World Bank and IMF.
Do you think this is a good idea? "Representatives from across South America will sign agreements on Sunday setting up a new regional bank, the Banco del Sur or So... more -
Life and debt - trailer--Jamaica No Problem?
I know I keep saying it, but this is truly a "MUST SEE" film.
This was one of the first documentaries to really spell out how exactly the IMF works in third world countries. The way the agricultural infrastructure was retooled, food soverienty destroyed and dependence created. Its no accident that when international lenders issue billions of highly qualifies money to underdeveloped countries that they almost always endup bankrupt and internally restructured for export.
Feature film linked below. Enjoy!
Cove
Disband the WTO! "Don't tase me bro!" I know I keep saying it, but this is truly a "MUST SEE" film. ... more
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