The number of starving US citizens during Obama’s terms in office
is a whopping one in seven, worse than the global average of one in
eight. As he continues to pour several hundred billion dollars into the
Middle East war theater that will likely soon include Syria, Congress
wants to cut $40 billion in food aid to its constituents.
A recent
USDA report
reveals that nearly 18 million families, or 49 million people, lacked
“food security” which is defined as “consistent, dependable access to
enough food for active, healthy living.” Food insecurity is a polite
term for starvation.
Since 1995, the percent starving in the US hovered at or below 12%.
That changed in 2008 when it jumped to 14.6%, and has stayed above 14%
since then. In 2012, the percentage was 14.5%, or one in seven people.
Only 59% of those counted as “food insecure” used any of the three
major federal food assistance programs, researchers found. They looked
at Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps); Special
Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC);
and the National School Lunch Program.
Though food stamps provide an average of $1.33 per meal for its
recipients, Republicrats plan to cut $40 billion over ten years from
this essential social service,
Think Progress
reports. People get nasty when hungry; and many sociologists and
historians point to widespread hunger as the cause of most, if not all,
major revolutions in world history. Even
recent ones. The Romans understood this, ergo the saying,
panem et circenses (give the masses ‘bread and circuses’ to appease them and thus retain control).
Despite that one out of seven US citizens goes hungry, Obama, like
his predecessors, continues to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into
the war machine. At last count, the US spent $684 billion in 2012, or
39% of the total global defense spending, reports
Global Issues.
US military spending is down from 2008, when it spent $711 billion, if sources are accurate.
Even so, notes
Jobs Not Wars, “If the U.S. cut its military spending in half, it would still outspend China, Russia and Britain together.”
Obama’s Food ‘Security’ Program
Obama’s military spending is ironic given his Global Food Security Initiative
announced
just months into his presidency, at the April 2009 G20 Summit held in
London. As part of a global development strategy, Obama stated his plan
to:
“Increase our investments and engagement in development-focused
innovation by seeking and scaling up potential game-changing development
technologies such as vaccines for neglected diseases, weather-resistant
seed varieties, and clean energy technologies.”
The
World Food Programme
of the United Nations estimates the global hunger rate at one in eight.
Under these circumstances, no US president has any business worrying
about hunger over there. But that he is, at least superficially.
The food security initiative includes a “Feed the Future” program
that established “the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program
(GAFSP) – a multilateral trust fund, based at the World Bank and
launched by the United States in collaboration with other donors,
including private philanthropy — designed to help poor farmers grow,
market and earn more.”
In reality, “Feed the Future” is merely a scheme to blanket the planet in genetically modified food and toxic chemicals.
Obama’s concern about homegrown poverty, as we see from bankster
bailouts and never-ending war, is nonexistent. He certainly hasn’t
bucked long-time federal policy of legalizing slavery under the name
minimum wage. No adult can support herself on minimum wage. Hunger is guaranteed under minimum wage.
The War on Farms
Obama’s FDA, run by former Monsanto executives, has a peculiar
interest in destroying small farming operations in this nation.
Nutritious food, grown organically and raised humanely, has been the
target of several federally directed raids, supported by local sheriffs
and police. No one has been sickened by food sold by these farms, or in
the private buying clubs (like Rawsome Foods) that distribute it. But
that’s not the point. Instead, the federal government clearly seeks to
eliminate giant agribiz competition.
The current war on small US farmers is detailed in David Gumpert’s
two books,
The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights (2009), and
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Food Rights (2013).
We also see the feds’ real motives in the “Food Safety Modernization Act” (formerly S 510), and the bandaid fix known as the
Tester Amendment
which was adopted to protect small farms from onerous food safety
regulations that would put them out of business. Even former supporters
now recognize that the FSMA will devastate small farm operations. The
Cornucopia Institute now admits:
“Instead, the regulations would
ensnare the country’s safest family farmers in burdensome regulations in a misdirected attempt to rein in abuses that are mostly emanating from industrial-scale factory farms and giant agribusiness food processing facilities.” [emphasis in original]
On the state level, we continue to find news items where children’s
lemonade and
raspberry
stands are being shut down, for failure to acquire a permit. At the
city level, feeding the homeless, a time-honored act of charity, has
been
criminalized across the US. Even fundraising
bake sales have been criminalized.
Ron Finley, a self-admitted “
gangsta gardener” faced a $400 fine for growing free-for-the-taking vegetables on his tree lawn.
The War on Herbs
The federal government, in line with globalists, also seeks complete
control over medicinal and nutritional herbs. By and far, the best
advocate protecting our right to natural herbs with which humans evolved
is the
National Health Federation,
the only populist representative on the Codex Alimentarius Commission, a
forum ostensibly created to facilitate global trade in foods.
Unfortunately, we learn from
NHF:
“This will be used to exclude high-potency American supplements and
move towards harmonization of the more-liberal U.S. food regulatory
regime with the harsh European regulatory model that only allows
ridiculously low-potency and expensive supplements to be marketed.”
The “more-liberal U.S. food regulatory regime” is being overturned as
we speak, with the introduction of several bills to force natural herbs
into a testing protocol more strict, and more expensive, than what
pharmaceuticals endure. In opposing hyper-regulation of supplements (as
spearheaded by Senator Dick Durbin and others),
Dr. Mercola explains:
“Data from the U.S. National Poison Data System’s annual report,
which tracked data from 57 U.S. poison centers, showed vitamin and
mineral supplements caused zero deaths in 2010, whereas pharmaceuticals
caused more than 1,100 of the total 1,366 reported fatalities.
FDA-approved drugs cause 80 percent of poison control fatalities each
year. Poison control centers report 100,000 calls, 56,000 emergency room
visits, 2,600 hospitalizations and nearly 500 deaths each year
from acetaminophen (Tylenol) alone.
“Data from the European Union indicate that pharmaceutical drugs are
62,000 times as likely to kill you as dietary supplements. You’re
actually more likely to be struck dead by lightning or drown in your
bathtub than have a lethal reaction to a dietary supplement. These
figures make it quite clear where the danger lies. If Senator Durbin
really
cared about your health, his efforts would be centered on doing
something to make drugs safer, as they obviously pose a FAR greater risk
to your health.”
The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA),
among other laws, already controls supplements. Instead of enabling
enhanced nutrition of its citizens, the feds concern themselves with
increasing pharmaceutical profits.
The same can be said for other nations. In 2011, legislation introduced in Australia sought to
ban thousands of plants,
including its national flower, because they contain DMT, a
naturally-occurring hallucinogen that even the human brain produces.
The War on Weed
Though rarely considered in food criminalization discussions, not
only does marijuana have medicinal and recreational benefits, but its
“seeds contain essential fatty acids and amino acids, which can be baked
into foods to boost their nutritional value, in seed oil when sauteing
foods, or taken as a supplement,” report Fox, Armentano and Tvert in
Marijuana Is Safer So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?
Marijuana Is Safer details numerous medical benefits
including anti-carcinogenic properties, preventing epileptic seizures,
reducing peripheral neuropathy pain along with other types of pain, and
thus reduces opiate dosage needs. It increases craving for food, a boon
for those on appetite-suppressing chemotherapy, and it promotes
sleepiness.
Not only does marijuana treat the symptoms of disease,
Marijuana Is Safer reports, but:
“In some cases, it appears that marijuana can effectively treat
disease itself. For instance, marijuana possesses strong antioxidant
properties that can protect the brain during trauma and potentially ward
off the onset of certain neurological diseases such as Alzheimers.
“In fact, in one of the great political ironies, the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services holds a patent – it’s patent no. 6630507 –
on the use of cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants. That’s
right, the same government that classifies cannabis as a Schedule I
illicit drug (which under federal law is defined as possessing ‘no
currently accepted medical use in treatment’) owns the intellectual
property rights to several of the plant’s naturally occurring,
therapeutic chemicals.”
That
patent was filed back in 1999, deep amid the war on drugs.
Genetically modified marijuana research has been ongoing for over two decades, detailed by numerous freelance
researchers. Several
insist
that a former agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency, Sam Selezny (aka
David Watson aka Skunkman) developed his strains of GM weed in Holland
with funding from the DEA. His company, Hortapharm, stands to make
billions when pot is fully legalized in the States.
Just as natural, unmodified fresh milk is a market threat to
drug-laden, industrial milk; natural, privately grown marijuana is a
threat to the GM weed market. And so we see legal marijuana suffering
under Obama.
Raids on legal cannabis farming and sales has cost nearly $300 million in the past four years, reports
Americans for Safe Access:
Last month, however, we saw some key changes in federal policy. Attorney General Eric Holder
announced
a “compassionate release” program to let medical marijuana users out of
prison. Next, the Dept. of Justice reversed itself by agreeing to
allow banks to work with medical marijuana clinics, and
agreed to abide by voter decision in Washington and Colorado which allows for recreational use.
The DoJ’s policy reversals follow a
unanimous resolution
adopted by US mayors at their annual conference in June, supporting the
notion of “states setting their own marijuana policies without federal
interference.”
Food as Trade Commodities
Finally, we cannot discuss starvation without mentioning food
commodities. The dissolution of trade barriers and deregulation of the
banking sector has led to price manipulation, increasing food insecurity
and causing widespread starvation.
F. William Engdahl
explains
that for over 4,000 years, grains were safely stored for up to seven
years to protect against war, drought and famine. That all changed in
1993 with the passage of GATT – the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade – when:
“[T]he European Union finally agreed in 1993 to the GATT Uruguay
Round, requiring a major reduction of national agriculture protection.
Central to the Uruguay Round deal was agreement on one major change:
national grain reserves as a government responsibility were to be
ended….
“The elimination of national grain reserves in the USA and EU and
other major OECD industrial countries set the stage for the next step in
the process—elimination of agricultural commodity derivatives
regulation, allowing unbridled unchecked speculative manipulations.
“Under the Clinton Treasury (1999 – 2000) the elimination of grain
reserves was formalized by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
(CFTC)—the government body charged with supervising derivatives trade in
exchanges such as the Chicago Board of Trade or NYMEX— and in
legislation drafted by Tim Geithner and Larry Summers at Treasury. As
will be shown below, it was no accident that Wall Street pushed
Geithner, former President of the NY Federal Reserve, to become Obama’s
Treasury Secretary in 2008, amid the worst financial debacle in history.
Something to do with having foxes guard henhouses.”
The Fox scored big in the henhouse:
“When Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State in 1972-1973, acting in
league with the Department of Agriculture and major US grain trading
companies, he orchestrated an unprecedented 200% jump in the price of
grain. The price hike was triggered at that time by the US signing a
three-year contract with the Soviet Union that had just gone through a
disastrous harvest failure.
“The US-Soviet deal hit amid global drought and severely reduced
harvests worldwide, hardly a prudent time to sell the entire US grain
cupboard to an ostensible Cold War opponent. The sale took place amid a
major world grain harvest shortfall leading to the explosive price rise.
Critical voices in US press at the time appropriately dubbed it the
Great Grain Robbery. Kissinger had even arranged for much of the cost of
shipping US grain to the Soviets to be paid by US taxpayers. Cargill
and company laughed all the way to the bank.”
Next, writes Engdahl, came the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000:
“The two key architects of Clinton’s new law were a former Goldman
Sachs consultant and Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and his
Assistant at Treasury Tim Geithner, friend of Wall Street and today
Obama’s Treasury Secretary. Secretary Summers was also a key player in
preventing efforts to regulate financial derivatives in commodities and
financial products….”
“At the time, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)
proposed also to deregulate trading in derivatives between major banks
or financial institutions, including derivatives of grain and other
agricultural commodities.
“The historic and unprecedented deregulation opened a massive hole in
Government supervision of derivatives trading, a gaping hole that
ultimately facilitated the derivatives games leading to the 2007
financial collapse. It also formed the deregulation free-for-all that is
behind much of the recent explosion in grain prices.”
The Emerging Local Food Movement
There’s still hope.
Despite the
FDA’s war
on private food and herb sources, private buying clubs and direct farm
to consumer sales are spreading as fast as Monsanto-resistant weeds, and
are a boon to local farm economies. The following chart shows the
growth in direct sales from 1997 thru 2007, segregated by region:
Urban agriculture is taking off in blighted areas in
Detroit,
Los Angeles, and other cities.
Rooftop and
bus top gardens
represent innovations beyond the ken of Obama and his agribuddies. They
profit urbanites by providing local, healthy produce in food deserts,
where fresh, nutritious food is lacking. They also provide a food
cushion, should disaster strike and the local store’s 3-day food supply
runs out.
While peace activists the world over vocally oppose more MidEast
wars, agtivists continue to battle the biotech giants whose products are
genetically contaminating natural crops and destroying our pollinators
and soils with their requisite toxic chemicals. A fortnight of actions
for
Seed and Food Freedom is planned for Oct. 2-16 around the planet.
As “generals gather in their masses,” we can expect little positive
aid from the feds. We can and should get local regulators on our side,
so that our kids can have lemonade stands, our churches can have bake
sales, and our private buying clubs or food co-ops can provide the food
we want, that is much healthier for us, and that works with nature
instead of against it.
The real trick to reducing hunger is to decentralize the food system,
to grow our own, and to buy local. This is food democracy in action,
and we don’t need permission to do it.
It’s coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It’s here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it’s here they got the spiritual thirst.
It’s here the family’s broken
and it’s here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
~
Leonard Cohen
