Las Patronas: Mexican Women's Group Aiding Migrants

Norma Romero Vázquez, director of Las Patronas, receives National Human Rights Award from President Enrique Peña Nieto Norma Romero Vázquez, member of Las Patronas—a group of women who work in support of migrants who cross Mexico on their way to the United States—regrets how “Mexico has become fractured,” marked “by violence, impunity, apathy, discrimination, and by the lack of real opportunity.” Upon receiving the National Prize for Human Rights from the hands of President Enrique Peña Nieto, the activist maintained that “rather than advancing, we have deteriorated, because the idea of progress sustained by taking advantage of those who have less is nothing more than a violation of human rights.” On Thursday afternoon Romero Vázquez received a medal, acknowledgment, and a cash prize for her work helping undocumented migrants.  Day in and day out, a group of 14 people, including her, give food and water to foreign migrants who travel hanging on to The Beast—the cargo train—when they pass through Amatián, Veracruz. She also deplored how, in reality, migrants are not considered as people, “but as merchandise that can be exchanged, negotiated, and eliminated without thought.”

Christmas Solidarity Marches for Justice

The Christian Cultural Movement, SAIn Political Party, and Youth Solidarity Path, invite you to join more than 30 solidarity marches organised throughout the month of December in Spain and Latin America, with the purpose of representing the voice of the impoverished in the streets and of emphasising that hunger and other attacks on human life can be eradicated if the political will exists.

Extracted from: solidaridad.net

Every day, more than 100,000 people -half of them children- die of hunger

Campaingn for Justice in North-South Relations
AGAINST THE CAUSES OF HUNGER,
UNEMPLOYMENT AND CHILD SLAVERY
Thou Shalt Not Kill (God)

“HUNGER IS THE MAIN POLITICAL PROBLEM OF HUMANITY”

More than 2,500 million people in the world live on less than 1.50 euros a day, and 90% of the world’s population owns only 17% of its wealth. As a result, the economic North has built walls and fences along their borders with poorer nations in an attempt to fence in hunger. Along these borders, violence and death await the millions of migrants who try to cross through Central America, across the Strait of Gibraltar, into Melilla, or over to Lampedusa.

Amidst the reorganisation of the imperialist economic system (or “crisis” as they call it), the world’s wealth has increased, while hunger has multiplied and the gap between rich and poor has grown. And as the richest 10% owns 83% of the world’s total wealth, the 3 biggest fortunes are equal to the GDP of the 48 poorest countries.

But yet again, the media machine of the First World would love to convince us that climate change is the main cause of hunger, tens of thousands of deaths, and the suffering of millions of families affected by the illness, loss of homes, famine and drought after typhoons or hurricanes.

HUNGER IS NOT A PROBLEM RELATED TO FOOD PRODUCTION, NOR OVERPOPULATION, NOR CLIMATE CHANGE, BUT OF PLANNED, SYSTEMATIC ROBBERY.

The IMF and World Bank have been responsible for the implementation of the plans of “Structural Adjustment” that are now arriving on European shores but have been impoverishing Latin America, Asia, and Africa for over 25 years. These adjustments are provoking and increasing unemployment; precariousness; exploitation; the death of immigrants within our borders and evictions. And these measures help us to understand more and more what the oppressed of the Earth have been suffering for decades.

The Millennium Development Goals have been being used as a weapon against the poor, presenting them as the ones who are responsible for the injustices they suffer. On the other hand, they hide the robbery and exploitation of the economic North over the economic South. Meanwhile, instead of ending hunger (which is its main responsibility), the UN tries to exterminate the hungry by referring to abortion and contraception as “sexual and reproductive health”. That is how they refer to more than 2,000 million children aborted in the world in the last 25 years.

2014 SOLIDARITY MARCH: Preliminary Street Actions in London: 27 August

2014 SOLIDARITY MARCH

throughout Spain

A March to denounce the causes of Child Slavery and Unemployment 

"The world we live in, the world of the hungry... the world of the oppressed... this world of slaves... can only find the solution in solidarity" –Julián Gómez del Castillo– 

Not even a single child slave in the world! This is not one more problem. This is not mere sentimentality. The tragedy of child slavery is the glaring proof of the institutional dis-order there exists in the world.

Solidarity Youth Path has a permanent campaign against Hunger, Child Slavery and Unemployment and for next year has organised a March throughout Spain to denounce the causes of these evils; a march that will be accompanied by actions to be held in other parts of the world as well.

AS LONG AS THERE IS CHILD SLAVERY, 

THERE WILL BE UNEMPLOYMENT!

AS LONG AS THERE IS UNEMPLOYMENT, 

THERE WILL BE EXPLOITATION!

XMAS MARCHES FOR JUSTICE

CAMPAIGN FOR JUSTICE IN 

NORTH-SOUTH RELATIONS

"You shall not kill" God

MARCHES AGAINST THE CAUSES OF HUNGER, UNEMPLOYMENT AND CHILD SLAVERY

15 December at 19h, in Getafe, Madrid

From the City Hall Square to General Palacios

16 December at 19h, in Alcalá de Henares, Madrid

From Mayor Street to Cervantes Square

23 December at 18h in MADRID

From España Square to Puerta del Sol

Organised by Christian Cultural Movement, SAIn Political Party 
and Solidarity Youth Path

Communiqué

CHRISTMAS SOLIDARITY MARCHES FOR JUSTICE

Campaign for Justice in North-South Relations

AGAINST THE CAUSES OF HUNGER,

UNEMPLOYMENT AND CHILD SLAVERY

You shall not kill (God)

Every day over 100,000 people die of starvation; half of them are children.

“HUNGER, UNEMPLOYMENT AND CHILD SLAVERY ARE POLITICAL CRIMES.”

In the European Union 89 million tonnes of food are thrown away yearly. One hundred people could be fed with the food thrown out by supermarkets. Meanwhile, each day 100,000 people die of starvation on a planet full of natural wealth. Hunger crushes 85% of the world population.

In the midst of the reorganization of the imperialist economic system – the so-called "crisis", the wealth of humanity has increased, but hunger and the gap between the rich and the impoverished have also soared. The richest 10% owns 83% of the world’s wealth, with the top 1% alone accounting for 43% of global assets.

Speculation on food commodities markets: in 2007, pension funds, insurance, banks, etc. sought another source of profitability and found it in food. In Africa alone, mutual funds and multinational companies invested in 41 million hectares of arable land. Speculation on food results in an immediate increase in prices. In 2010, wheat rose by 130%, rice by 74% and corn by 31%. What do international agencies do about this crime? They keep quiet and hide the truth. What do we do? Speculation on foodstuffs is a crime we cannot tolerate.

HUNGER IS NEITHER A PROBLEM OF FOOD PRODUCTION NOR OF OVERPOPULATION; IT IS A PLANNED ROBBERY.

5 Million Farmers Sue Monsanto for $7.7

Tuesday 5 June 2012

“Will endless lawsuits from millions of seriously affected individuals will be the end of Monsanto?”

Lawsuit against the very company that is responsible for a farmer suicide every 30 minutes, 5 million farmers are now suing Monsanto for as much as 6.2 billion Euros (around 7.7 billion US dollars). The reason? As with many other cases, such as the ones that led certain farming regions to be known as the ‘suicide belt’, Monsanto has been reportedly taxing the farmers to financial shambles with ridiculous royalty charges. The farmers state that Monsanto has been unfairly gathering exorbitant profits each year on a global scale from “renewal” seed harvests, which are crops planted using seed from the previous year’s harvest.

The practice of using renewal seeds dates back to ancient times, but Monsanto seeks to collect massive royalties and put an end to the practice. Why? Because Monsanto owns the very patent to the genetically modified seed, and is charging the farmers not only for the original crops, but the later harvests as well. Eventually, the royalties compound and many farmers begin to struggle with even keeping their farm afloat. It is for this reason that India slammed Monsanto with groundbreaking ‘biopiracy’ charges in an effort to stop Monsanto from ‘patenting life’.

World Bank Supports Harmful Water Corporations’ Privatizations that Hurt the World’s Poorest

Johanna Treblin

Inter Press Service

16 April, 2012

“According to CAI, funding the privatization of water hurts the world’s poorest and can also have negative effects on water access and human rights.”

People in many developing countries often lack access to clean water, but the approach to remedy this problem has shifted in recent years to rely more on the private sector. Yet, as this new report and several other watchdog groups have shown, the change has been more harmful than helpful.

Corporate Accountability International, the U.S.-based non-governmental organization that published the report, has called on the World Bank to stop funding the private water sector and start redirecting its money to public and democratically accountable institutions.

The World Bank's private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), has spent 1.4 billion dollars on private water corporations since 1993, according to the report.

As of January 2013, that investment will increase to 1 billion dollars per year. The report also says that the IFC is attracting 14 to 18 dollars of follow-up private investment for every 1 dollar it directly invests.

This money helps explain why the World Bank and the IFC continue to fund private water corporations, even though roughly one third of all private water contracts signed between 2000 and 2010 have failed or are in distress – four times the failure rate of comparable infrastructure projects in the electric and transportation sectors, according to CAI.

"A tremendous failure"

Saint Patrick’s Day and the Irish Famine

Go ahead: Have a Guinness, wear a bit of green, and put on the Chieftains, but let's honor the Irish starving peasants by  commemorating Ireland's Holocaust and learning the truth about it. Students need to know the economic and social forces that starved and uprooted over a million Irish -- and that are starving and uprooting people today.




St. Patrick's Day is celebrated on March 17, the saint's religious feast day and the anniversary of his death in the fifth century. The Irish have observed this day as a religious holiday for over 1,000 years. At present, for St.Patrick's Day, North Americans, Irish and Non-Irish go out to pub and drink as much as humanly possible and have a jolly good time.

"Wear green on St. Patrick's Day or get pinched" Irish folk memory refers to the Famine dead as having "mouths stained green" - because there last meal was often grass.

Sadly, today's high school textbooks continue to largely ignore the famine, despite the fact that it was responsible for unimaginable suffering and the deaths of more than a million Irish peasants, and that it triggered the greatest wave of Irish immigration in U.S. history. Nor do textbooks make any attempt to help students link famines past and present.

Yet there is no shortage of material that can bring these dramatic events to life in the classroom.  Sinead O'Connor's haunting rendition of "Skibbereen" includes the verse:

... Oh it's well I do remember, that bleak

December day,

The landlord and the sheriff came, to drive

Us all away

They set my roof on fire, with their cursed

English spleen

And that's another reason why I left old

Skibbereen.

East Africa's drought: the avoidable disaster

Tens of thousands of lives could have been spared if agencies and governments had heeded the warnings, a report says.

Wed. 18 January 2012  

The deaths of tens of thousands of people during the drought in east Africa could have been avoided if the international community, donor governments and humanitarian agencies had responded earlier and more swiftly to clear warning signs that a disaster was in the making, according to a new report.

Figures compiled by the Department for International Development (DfID) suggest that between 50,000 and 100,000 people, more than half of them children under five, died in the 2011 Horn of Africa crisis that affected Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya.

The US government estimates separately that more than 29,000 children under five died in the space of 90 days from May to July last year. The accompanying destruction of livelihoods, livestock and local market systems affected 13 million people overall. Hundreds of thousands remain at continuing risk of malnutrition.

The authors of the report, published by Save the Children and Oxfam, suggest current emergency response systems, which they believe to be seriously flawed, will soon be tested again as new humanitarian crises loom in West Africa and the Sahel, where growing food shortages are reported.

"Early warning systems in the Sahel region show that overall cereal production is 25% lower than the previous year and food prices are 40% higher than the five-year average. The last food crisis in the region, in 2010, affected 10 million people," the report warns.

A recent Save the Children assessment in Niger showed families in the worst-hit areas were already struggling with a third less food, money and fuel than is necessary to survive.

The report, A Dangerous Delay, concludes that although drought sparked the east Africa crisis, human factors turned it into a disaster.

The Great Hunger Lottery

THE GREAT HUNGER LOTTERY. How Banking Speculation
Causes Food Crisis.

Report by World Development Movement

Take the highest stakes, riskiest economic behaviour ever devised, and marry it to the most fundamental basic need of humankind, and you have the subject of this report.

Over the past decade, the world’s most powerful financial institutions have developed ever more elaborate ways to package, re-package and trade a range of financial contracts known as derivatives. A derivative is not based on an exchange of tangible assets such as goods or money, but rather is a financial contract with a value linked to the expected future price movements of the underlying asset. Derivative contracts are traded on a growing number of underlying assets, from share prices, to mortgages, bonds, commodity prices, foreign exchange rates, and even index of prices.

Derivatives trading has been one of the most lucrative parts of the financial industry, but it is the increasingly complex, opaque and disconnected nature of these and similar products that ultimately triggered the collapse of the banks and the worst financial crisis in human history.

Of course, the financial crisis has been an economic disaster of seismic proportions for millions around the world, plunging many countries into recession causing millions to be thrown out of work, soaring public debts and cuts in vital public services.

But while betting on the value of sub-prime mortgages or foreign currency values undoubtedly leads to disastrous consequences, there is another area where the speculative behaviour of the world’s largest banks and hedge funds represents a threat to the very survival of people: food commodities.

In The great hunger lottery, World Development Movement has compiled extensive evidence establishing the role of food commodity derivatives in destabilising and driving up food prices around the world. This in turn, has led to food prices becoming unaffordable for low-income families around the world, particularly in developing countries highly reliant on food imports.

In the report we describe how the current situation came to pass, the risks of another speculation induced food crisis, and what specifically can be done by policymakers here in the UK as well as in the US and EU to tackle the problem.

But at its heart, The great hunger lottery carries a very straightforward message: allowing gambling on hunger in financial markets is dangerous, immoral and indefensible. And it needs to be stopped before any more people suffer to satisfy the greed of the banks.

Follow this link to read the full report: THE GREAT HUNGER LOTTERY

Why Is There Hunger in a World of Plenty?

Hunger is on the rise in the world, everywhere, in developing countries as well as in countries with an advanced economy like Spain or the USA. Every day in the world about 100,000 people, including almost 50,000 children, die of hunger or hunger-related causes. In fact, hunger and malnutrition are the number one risk to health worldwide - greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined! Yet, there is a general consensus by organizations working in the field (Oxfam, World Food Program, World Hunger, Food and Agriculture Organization, etc..) that there is enough food in the world for everyone. There is enough food to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories per person per day (FAO). Today food is produced for 12,000 million people (FAO) when the planet is inhabited by 7,000 people.

Today's food crisis can be attributed to two principal long-term factors, namely the green revolution agricultural model, and the policies of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organisation (WTO):

• In recent decades, many countries have had to abandon their autonomous national agricultural research and food policies. Since the 1970s, the IMF and World Bank have imposed radical liberalisation and structural adjustment reforms on them, and these have been further buttressed by the WTO as well as through bilateral free trade and investment agreements.
• The resulting agricultural and economic policy has neglected farmers in many developing countries. Most countries were forced to open up their markets, give foreign investors access to land, and to dispose of strategic food reserves. This opened the floodgates to global agricultural industry and speculation. Local markets are now being flooded with subsidised agricultural products from industrialised countries. Instead of producing food for local markets, farm products and commodities are being produced for industrialised countries. The result is that some 70 per cent of all developing countries are now net food importers and find themselves entirely at the mercy of world market prices.
• Private firms have taken over what used to be government functions. They are forging ahead with transforming peasant farming into an industrial, energy-intensive agricultural model. In the hands of large corporations, seeds are being engineered to be chemical-dependent and to require regular watering, and are being protected by patents. The new seeds are not suited either to poor soils or to smallholdings.
• Cereal has now become an object of speculation by large firms and investment funds on deregulated markets. The share of speculative investments in commodity futures trading – in other words in markets were investors do not physically buy or sell products but make bids only on future price movements (as is precisely the case for wheat or rice) This means that today as much as one-half of the wheat being traded on the Chicago grain exchange is already controlled by hedge and other speculative funds.
• Each year, an ever larger portion of the world’s crops — cassava and corn, sugar and palm oil — is being diverted for biofuels as developed countries pass laws mandating greater use of nonfossil fuels and as emerging powerhouses like China seek new sources of energy to keep their cars and industries running. The combination of ambitious biofuel targets and mediocre harvests of some crucial crops is contributing to high prices, hunger and political instability.
• Much Third World grain and other food are fed to animals to produce cheaper meat to be eaten in developed countries. Rising demand for corn from China and other emerging nations with growing meat consumption has boosted prices as well

was the highest in its more than 20 years of existence. The deeper roots of the food crisis lie in the lethal cocktail consisting of years of pressure to liberalise and growing control by corporations, to which must be added the expectation of quick profits, and worsening climatic conditions. That explosive mix has led to soaring prices and hence astronomical profits. At the same time, it spells hunger and destitution for millions of human beings.

Who Benefits from Food Crisis by Gambling on Hunger?

By Frederick Kaufman
Harper’s Magazine
July 2010

The history of food took an ominous turn in 1991, at a time when no one was paying much attention. That was the year Goldman Sachs decided our daily bread might make an excellent investment.

Agriculture, rooted as it is in the rhythms of reaping and sowing, had not traditionally engaged the attention of Wall Street bankers, whose riches did not come from the sale of real things like wheat or bread but from the manipulation of ethereal concepts like risk and collateralized debt. But in 1991 nearly everything else that could be recast as a financial abstraction had already been considered. Food was pretty much all that was left. And so with accustomed care and precision, Goldman’s analysts went about transforming food into a concept. They selected eighteen commodifiable ingredients and contrived a financial elixir that included cattle, coffee, cocoa, corn, hogs, and a variety or two of wheat. They weighted the investment value of each element, blended and commingled the parts into sums, then reduced what had been a complicated collection of real things into a mathematical formula that could be expressed as a single manifestation, to be known thenceforward as the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index. Then they began to offer shares.

As was usually the case, Goldman’s product flourished. The prices of cattle, coffee, cocoa, corn, and wheat began to rise, slowly at first, and then rapidly. And as more people sank money into Goldman’s food index, other bankers took note and created their own food indexes for their own clients. Investors were delighted to see the value of their venture increase, but the rising price of breakfast, lunch, and dinner did not align with the interests of those of us who eat. And so the commodity index funds began to cause problems.

Wheat was a case in point. North America, the Saudi Arabia of cereal, sends nearly half its wheat production overseas, and an obscure syndicate known as the Minneapolis Grain Exchange remains the supreme price-setter for the continent’s most widely exported wheat, a high-protein variety called hard red spring. Other varieties of wheat make cake and cookies, but only hard red spring makes bread. Its price informs the cost of virtually every loaf on earth.

As far as most people who eat bread were concerned, the Minneapolis Grain Exchange had done a pretty good job: for more than a century the real price of wheat had steadily declined. Then, in 2005, that price began to rise, along with the prices of rice and corn and soy and oats and cooking oil. Hard red spring had long traded between $3 and $6 per sixty-pound bushel, but for three years Minneapolis wheat broke record after record as its price doubled and then doubled again. No one was surprised when in the first quarter of 2008 transnational wheat giant Cargill attributed its 86 percent jump in annual profits to commodity trading. And no one was surprised when packaged-food maker ConAgra sold its trading arm to a hedge fund for $2.8 billion. Nor when The Economist announced that the real price of food had reached its highest level since 1845, the year the magazine first calculated the number.

“It’s absolutely mind-boggling,” one grain trader told the Wall Street Journal. “You don’t ever want to trade wheat again,” another told the Chicago Tribune.

“We have never seen anything like this before,” Jeff Voge, chairman of the Kansas City Board of Trade, told the Washington Post. “This isn’t just any commodity,” continued Voge. “It is food, and people need to eat.”

2011 began with food prices as high as they were during the 2007/08 crisis. Erratic weather, speculators, conflicts, trade restrictions, the cost of fuel and the use of food grains to produce bioethanol all play their part in keeping food, including all the major staple food grains, expensive.

More than 100.000 People Starved to Death Yesterday

More than 100.000 people starved to death yesterday.

More than 50.000 children are dying of hunger today.

Thousands of mothers will watch their children die of hunger tomorrow.

This daily crime rarely makes headline news!

Nearly one billion people face hunger every day. Hunger is the bellwether of a deeper malaise. Despite huge increases in productivity and incomes over recent decades, global hunger is on the rise.

Powerful elites amass wealth at the expense of impoverished populations. Bloated biofuel lobbies, hooked on subsidies that divert food from mouths to cars. Dirty industries that block action on emissions.  Enormous agribusiness companies hidden from public view that function as global oligopolies, governing value chains and ruling markets.

Just as an example of how evil this system can be, we can read the following extract from the article entitled: Soft Commodity ETFs: Making Profits With Corn, Wheat, Rice, Soy and Agribusiness ETFs: "Buying softs is the order of the day. Prices on commodities like wheat, corn, rice, soy and other agricultural products are expected to continue to rise, so be on the lookout for soft commodities ETFs."

Also, Oxfam reports that the world’s grain trade is a distinct monopoly, with three agribusiness firms (Cargill, Bunge and ADM) controlling an estimated 90% of grain trading between them.

The FAO purports that the world already produces enough food to feed everyone — 6 billion people — and could feed double — 12 billion people.

Hunger is a crime that Humankind

should hang its head in shame at!

Food speculation: 'People die from hunger while banks make a killing on food'

January 23, 2011,
The Guardian.

by John Vidal

It's not just bad harvests and climate change.

It's also speculators that are behind record prices...

And, it's the planet's poorest who pay.

11 million people across four countries are threatened by starvation in the Horn of Africa for 60 years. The United Nations declared parts of Somalia to be in a state of famine. Aid experts had predicted the emergency but appeals had been ignored and help is still months away, although warning signs were being reported a year ago by the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) and the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit.

Oxfam accused European governments of "morally indefensible willful neglect"

World Food Programme (WFP) executive director, Josette Sheeran, said: "WFP saw this emergency coming..."

Naming a food crisis a famine does not legally require action in the way that announcing a genocide would, despite the politicization of the term and the gravity of the label. "Morally speaking, famine is a term that must elicit moral indignation," said Bruno Geddo, a representative of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

Just under three years ago, people in the village of Gumbi in western Malawi went unexpectedly hungry. Not like Europeans do if they miss a meal or two, but that deep, gnawing hunger that prevents sleep and dulls the senses when there has been no food for weeks.

Oddly, there had been no drought, the usual cause of malnutrition and hunger in southern Africa, and there was plenty of food in the markets. For no obvious reason the price of staple foods such as maize and rice nearly doubled in a few months. Unusually, too, there was no evidence that the local merchants were hoarding food. It was the same story in 100 other developing countries. There were food riots in more than 20 countries and governments had to ban food exports and subsidise staples heavily.

The explanation offered by the UN and food experts was that a "perfect storm" of natural and human factors had combined to hyper-inflate prices. US farmers, UN agencies said, had taken millions of acres of land out of production to grow biofuels for vehicles, oil and fertiliser prices had risen steeply, the Chinese were shifting to meat-eating from a vegetarian diet, and climate-change linked droughts were affecting major crop-growing areas. The UN said that an extra 75m people became malnourished because of the price rises.

But a new theory is emerging among traders and economists. The same banks, hedge funds and financiers whose speculation on the global money markets caused the sub-prime mortgage crisis are thought to be causing food prices to yo-yo and inflate. The charge against them is that by taking advantage of the deregulation of global commodity markets they are making billions from speculating on food and causing misery around the world.

As food prices soar again to beyond 2008 levels, it becomes clear that everyone is now being affected. Food prices are now rising by up to 10% a year in Britain and Europe. What is more, says the UN, prices can be expected to rise at least 40% in the next decade.