Forecast: Food Prices Will Stay High, Poor Will Get Screwed

A new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development and the Food and Agriculture Organization forecasts that food prices will remain high for the next decade, and may continue to increase, further straining the world's 862 million poor and malnourished people. Not surprisingly. biofuels get a large heap of the blame. To address this continuing commodity calamity, OECD prescribes more of the same policies that helped create the problem:

“The way to address rising food prices is not through protectionism but to open up agricultural markets and to free up the productive capacity of farmers, who have proven repeatedly that they will respond to market incentives,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría at the Outlook’s launch in Paris. “Governments can also do more to foster growth and development in poor countries, so as to improve the purchasing power of the most vulnerable food buyers.”

       

"We're going to fuck you where it hurts most bitches."

On May 25, the women of Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa, a nonprofit organization calling attention to the rampant outbreak of unsolved femicides in the maqiladora town of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, received this lovely, almost Trajan-esque anonymous email:

"Fucking old fools with making yourselves famous you already showed your arses with the film Bordertown. Don't carry on robbing the mothers who deserve help, leave Juárez now if you don't like it. Leave the people of Juárez in peace we're sick to death of your fucking bullshit complaints. We're going to fuck you, fucking gossips and exaggerators. Don't be surprised if one day we take your daughters and send them back to you in pieces. We're going to fuck you where it hurts most bitches. Most of all the whore Malu Garsia (sic) and the hypocrite Maricela (sic). Take care because soon you'll have unpleasant news."

This is by no means the first threat received by the women of Nuestras Hijas, who have been increasingly receiving phone, email, and text message threats in the run-up to the Mexican release of Bordertown, a movie based on the Ciudad Juárez killings. Amnesty International is appealing to the international community to demand an investigation into these anonymous threats, and justice for the women of Chihuahua.

       

The Sex-For-Food Scandal

A new report from Save The Children UK exposes the continuing problem of abuse and exploitation of children by international aid workers. The STC report highlights the most frightening aspect of problem: the underreporting of sexual abuse and violence.

STC's researchers conducted interviews and focus groups with UN and NGO aid workers in Southern Sudan, Haiti, and Côte d’Ivoire. A full two-thirds of staff interviewed could cite as many as ten incidents of verbal sexual abuse and half could cite incidents of coerced sex or touching. Despite this anecdotal evidence of widespread abuse, very few cases of sexual abuse by aid workers are ever reported - in 2006, there were only 371 allegations of abuse reported against the staff of 41 UN agencies. This is a disturbingly small total, considering that there are more than 200,000 UN peacekeepers alone.

Among the obstacles to reporting are fears that reporting abuse will lead to cutting off of aid or other forms of retaliation, fears that reporting abuse will stigmatize victims and make them less valuable to future suitors, lack of effective law enforcement systems in the countries where abuse is taking place, and lack of knowledge by victims and their families of their rights and the procedures for reporting abuse. STC cites a series of recommendations for closing this gap in reporting:

• Effective local complaints mechanisms should be set up in-country to enable people to report abuses against them.
  
• A new global watchdog should be established to monitor and evaluate the efforts of international agencies to tackle this abuse and to champion more effective responses.
  
• Tackling the root causes or drivers of abuse should become a greater priority for governments, donors and others in the international community, including the development of stronger child protection systems at the national level.

       

Honor the Fallen by Ending the War

This Memorial Day, while the President and the Pentagon poop out their usual bland rhetoric celebrating the 4,082 pointless deaths and 85,000 injuries they've caused in a war over a lie, Code Pink proposes a better Memorial Day gift to our troops: an end to the Iraq War. And maybe some Freeway Blogging.

We do not honor our loved ones by accepting the continued loss of life in a reckless, irresponsible war that has no military solution. We do not honor the troops by standing by indifferently as members of the Congress give their sneering Commander-in-Chief a blank check to continue a war based on a tidal wave of lies and hubris.

We honor the fallen by beginning an immediate redeployment from Iraq and by showing our determination to stop a new war with Iran. We honor the fallen by making sure that those who return from Iraq and Afghanistan receive all the help they need for their education, and their physical and mental health. We honor the fallen by taking action, by making peace.

Global Peace Index: We're Number 97! We're Number 97!

The 2008 Global Peace Index is out, and the United States has ranked 97th, in between Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. This is a slight disimprovement over last year's ranking of 96. The index, which compiles 24 indicators including violent crime, relations with neighboring countries, potential for terrorist acts, and military expenditure, has been endorsed by the likes of Joseph Stiglitz and Muhammad Yunus.

Oh, well. Wait till next year!

       

A Jihad For Love: So They DO Have Gays in Iran!

Democracy Now today interviews Indian filmmaker Parvez Sharma, director of the new film A Jihad For Love, a documentary exploring the lives of gay and lesbian Muslims in twelve countries. The profiled individuals and couples, including a South African imam, an Egyptian exile, and a "nonexistent" Iranian homosexual, all face daily struggles of isolation and persecution that make John Hagee sound tame.

In the interview, Sharma explains his film's title:

I mean, there’s this battle for the soul of Islam. “Jihad” is almost an English-language word now. And this whole idea of the Jihad al-Nafs, which is the struggle with the self, and the greater jihad within Islam is rarely spoken about. I feel there is a very major movement right now in Islamic thought for progressive Muslim voices to take back some of the discussions that have been taken away from us. So this whole idea of taking “jihad,” a very contested word, and putting it right next to “love,” I think is very powerful. Some of the critics think that the title is silly and ridiculous, but I think it really explains the film.

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“America Don't Worry! Israel is Behind You!”

Nadia Hasan's latest article in Palestine Think Tank is an insightful piece that merely scratches the surface of the U.S. corporocratic campaign in the greater Middle East. The seed of the story is a t-shirt she saw during a trip to Jerusalem several years ago that read "“America Don’t Worry! Israel is Behind You!”. At the time, she remarked that the names should have been reversed, given the United States's near-unconditional support for Israel at the urging of many powerful lobbying organizations. She then later realized the ironic truth of the t-shirt's slogan:

The recent events in Lebanon and in recent months in the Occupied Palestinian Territory of Gaza Strip proves that certain international and regional powers are continuing efforts to implement their “master plan” of chaos for the region as the first step in a greater plan to make their domination permanent.

This is not a conspiracy theory as many are saying, is just the result of decades of efforts from the imperialistic powers to gain the control of certain strategic areas in the Arab Homeland and to control Arab oil and monopolize their market. For that reason these incidents are not limited just to Lebanon. Sometimes we get so overwhelmed with the huge amount of propaganda that we are not able to see the whole picture, the clear chain of events with similar patterns from the Gaza Strip to Baghdad to Somalia to Darfur to Beirut. Some elements can be different in each case, but they have one thing in common, the master colonialist project of United States and the high security risks that these events cause to its main settlement in the region, Israel. These places are strategically interconnected and the success of the US plan in the region depends being able to control them.

Although the importance of oil and strategic control are certainly a huge motivator, the Friedmanesque economic dominance of the region should not be overlooked. It's no secret that since 2001, World Bank loans to the Middle East have increased, with a massive upsurge in privatization of state-run industries. Egypt has been the largest privatizer, selling off banks and other industries to the highest bidder. Israel is not merely a mercenary force in this globalization campaign, it is also a victim, with state assets being sold off while inequality and poverty increase. An aid-dependent Israel is no different than an aid-dependent Jordan or Egypt - they'll always put the profit of a few over the needs of the majority.