Exposing a 'corrupt food system'

From: What Michael Pollan Hasn't Told You About Food

 

TV dinners were launched at a time when only a small percentage of Americans actually owned TVs. Thus, the meals, writes Raj Patel, "were what people ate while they dreamed of affording one." In the American dream, we imagine a bucolic Midwest, a place of bounty, yet the reality is that the breadbasket of America is rife with poverty and a declining life expectancy. The idyllic vision of quaint American farmland doesn't work like that "except in fiction," says Patel, and there is perhaps no greater fiction than the comforting hand of the free market -- particularly as it pertains to food.

Patel's new book Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System makes visible the people behind the abstraction and reveals a global food system that, with our complicity, continues to alienate farmers and consumers alike, all while fattening the pocketbooks of a few middlemen.

To read Patel is to understand the logic behind the sweets company, Nestle, acquiring the weight loss magnate Jenny Craig or why Wal-Mart is free to raise prices in areas where they have already killed off the competition. In the language of markets, these problems are not "self-correcting." Only the profound failure of the prevailing metaphor of the Invisible Hand hampers us from seeing what Patel has spent years of research making visible. In an interview with AlterNet, Patel explains how "the way we choose food today comes from distinctly abnormal roots," how these roots connect us to farmers and consumers around the world, and why we should get angry, not feel guilty.

[ ... ]

OR: Explain for whom the free market works and what "free market" means in the context of food.

RP: Free markets in food and certainly global markets in food are a very new thing. They are barely 200 years old and their origins have everything to do with colonialism. The world's first free market in grain was the market in wheat in the 1880s. This market was forged in imperialism and conquest, particularly by the British over the grain baskets of South Asia.

The social safety nets that existed in India under feudal society had been knocked away by the British. If people couldn't afford food, they didn't get to eat, and if they couldn't buy food, they starved. As a result of the imposition of markets in food, 13 million people across the world died in the 19th century. They died in the golden age of liberal capitalism. Those are the origins of markets in food.

We shouldn't be surprised, then, that in those markets today, there are basically just a handful of corporations that control the truck and barter of goods. In any major market, you'll see that it's basically four or five corporations that control upwards of 50 percent of the market. In tea, it's just one corporation, Unilever, that controls 90 percent of the market, and in coffee there are just a couple of firms that have 80 percent of the market.

 

Domestic spying far outpaces terrorism prosecutions

The number of Americans being secretly wiretapped or having their financial and other records reviewed by the government has continued to increase as officials aggressively use powers approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the number of terrorism prosecutions ending up in court -- one measure of the effectiveness of such sleuthing -- has continued to decline, in some cases precipitously.

The trends, visible in new government data and a private analysis of Justice Department records, are worrisome to civil liberties groups and some legal scholars. They say it is further evidence that the government has compromised the privacy rights of ordinary citizens without much to show for it.

 

The emphasis on spy programs also is starting to give pause to some members of Congress who fear the government is investing too much in anti-terrorism programs at the expense of traditional crime-fighting. Other lawmakers are raising questions about how well the FBI is performing its counter-terrorism mission.

The Senate Intelligence Committee last week concluded that the bureau was far behind in making internal changes to keep the nation safe from terrorist threats. Lawmakers urged that the FBI set specific benchmarks to measure its progress and make more regular reports to Congress.

These concerns come as the Bush administration has been seeking to expand its ability to gather intelligence without prior court approval. It has asked Congress for amendments to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to make it clear that eavesdropping on foreign telecommunications signals routed through the U.S. does not require a warrant.

Law enforcement officials say the additional surveillance powers have been critically important in ways the public does not always see. Threats can be mitigated, they say, by deporting suspicious people or letting them know that authorities are watching them.

"The fact that the prosecutions are down doesn't mean that the utility of these investigations is down. It suggests that these investigations may be leading to other forms of prevention and protection," said Thomas Newcomb, a former Bush White House national security aide. He said there were half a dozen actions outside of the criminal courts that the government could take to snuff out potential threats, including using diplomatic or military channels.

Although legal experts say they would not necessarily expect the number of prosecutions to rise along with the stepped-up surveillance, there are few other good ways to measure how well the government is progressing in keeping the country safe.

"How does one measure the success? The short answer is we aren't in a great position to know," said Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor. With prosecutions declining, he said, the public is left with imperfect and possibly misleading ways to gauge progress in the Bush administration's war on terrorism -- such as the number of secret warrants the government issues or the number of agents it assigns to terrorism cases.

 

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'Sri Lanka doesn't deserve seat on UN human rights council' - Desmond Tutu

From The Guardian :

It would seem self-evident that a country which tortures and kidnaps its own people has no place on the world's leading human rights body. Apparently not: Sri Lanka, despite repeated criticism for its human rights record, is running for re-election to the UN human rights council, with a vote to be held in New York on May 21.

Governments owe it to Sri Lankan human rights victims - and to victims of human rights abuses around the world - to ensure that the Sri Lankan bid fails. This will be an important test of the 47-member council, to show that the UN's standards for it will be honoured.

If Sri Lanka is defeated this year, that will be important not just for the Sri Lankan human rights leaders who, at great personal risk, have called for Sri Lanka's defeat, and for Sri Lankan civil society. In combination with the humiliating defeat last year of Belarus, it will send an important signal for the future: governments with track records of serious human rights abuses do not belong on a body set up to protect the victims of such abuses.

Sri Lanka has failed to honour its pledges of upholding human rights standards and cooperating with the UN since joining the council two years ago. Indeed, its human rights record has worsened during that time. The Sri Lankan idea of cooperation with the UN, meanwhile, has been to condemn senior UN officials (including the high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, and the under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, John Holmes) as "terrorists" or "terrorist sympathisers."

The systematic abuses by Sri Lankan government forces are among the most serious imaginable. Government security forces summarily remove their own citizens from their homes and families in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again. Torture and extrajudicial killings are widespread. When the human rights council was established, UN members required that states elected must themselves "uphold the highest standards" of human rights. On that count, Sri Lanka is clearly disqualified.

The separatist Tamil Tigers have used despicable tactics in their war against the government, including frequent suicide bombings. But that can in no way excuse the scale of government abuses.

Fortunately, the news from the council is not all bad. Countries running from other regions of the world have credible claims to be leaders in promoting human rights. Argentina and Chile, which suffered terribly from torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in the past, have become leading supporters of human rights, and now seek to join the council. On the African slate, there are some true human rights leaders, and - thankfully - no candidacy from Zimbabwe or Sudan. In the entire world, Sri Lanka stands out as the most clearly unqualified state seeking election to the council this year, and the place where things are getting unambiguously worse.

Defeating the Sri Lankan candidacy would be a comfort to the people of Sri Lanka. It would place international pressure on the government to respect human rights, and to accept a UN human rights monitoring mission, which it has stubbornly refused. It would help make the council a place where true human rights leaders in all regions can help lead the world towards greater respect for human life and human dignity. An outcome, in short, that would benefit those who care about human rights in the world. Any other result would be a travesty.

UN Human Rights Council’s "Pretty Packed Schedule" Has No Time for Myanmar’s Starving Victims

At the initiative of the Cuban government, the UN Human Rights Council will convene on May 23, 2008 for an emergency “special session” to address rising food prices. Several EU states also added their names to the Cuban request.

The world food crisis is certainly an urgent issue, but few expect this meeting to achieve anything other than provide a platform for attacks against the West and free markets. All of which will distract the council from matters it could more suitably address, starting with violations that have a clear victim, perpetrator and remedy. But the countries that lock people up without fair trials prefer to change the subject.

And if “the right to food” were really their concern, why are council members failing to hold an emergency session on Myanmar's unconscionable denial of that right for millions of its starving, post-cyclone citizens?

When this question was posed yesterday to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the reply was that “the Council had a very full programme. . .so it was a pretty packed schedule at the moment and it would be difficult to fit it in.”

[ Source: UN Watch ]

Rights groups: Half of all executions by Saudis are foreigners

From the World Tribune :

At least 200 Syrians have reportedly been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia.

Human rights groups said nearly half of all executions in Saudi Arabia during the past year were of foreigners. Some 158 people were executed in 2007.

On April 17, Saudi Arabia beheaded two Syrians in Tabouk prison. Both men, identified as Feras Al Aghbar and Feras Al Maktabi, were accused of drug offenses.

European human rights groups said 2,000 Syrians, including children, have been detained in Saudi Arabia, Middle East Newsline reported. The groups said about 10 percent of the detainees were awaiting execution in connection with illegal drug trafficking.

"Prisoners are usually sentenced to death after receiving insufficient, sometimes even inexistent, legal representation and consular assistance," the International Federation for Human Rights, the Euro-Mediterranean Human rights Network, the World Organisation against Torture and the Committees for the Defence of Human Rights and Democratic Freedoms in Syria said in a statement on May 1.

In late April, two other alleged drug traffickers were also executed in Saudi Arabia. One of them was a Jordanian citizen of Syrian origin.

Damascus has accused Saudi Arabia of beheading Syrians to highlight poor diplomatic relations between the once close allies. Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz said the royal family did not intervene in court decisions.

"Foreign nationals are often more exposed to miscarriages of justice and unfair trials than nationals," the statement by the human rights groups said. "As a result of their origins, they have little chance of escaping capital punishment."