Here’s an older post, gently recycled for this Valentines day. A newer one can be found here.

[Photo credit:tjgiordano]

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The Friday after Thanksgiving is traditionally the day when US consumers rush to the shops, and spend until their eyes bleed. But tomorrow doesn’t inevitably have to involve running around with a credit card and bags of crap we don’t need.

One man who takes shopping’s stigmata very seriously is the Reverend Billy, preacher at the Church of Stop Shopping.
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The parental commandment to ‘eat up because people are going hungry’ is, from a strictly economic point of view, nonsense. Eating less of the food on your plate for which, presumably, you have already paid will not increase the incomes of the hungry nor will leaving your greens and mash potatoes reduce the price of food for the poor.

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I’m going to be in the UK for the launch of The Value of Nothing next week, and I’ll be giving talks at the London School of Economics on Tues Dec 1, the Bristol Festival of Ideas on Weds Dec 2, and City University on Thurs Dec 3. Keep Reading »

In the run-up to Copenhagen, a splendid new booklet by Oscar Reyes and Tamra Gilbertson and published by the Trans National Institute is an arsenal of analysis and counter-point. And it’s short. Just the sort of thing to arm yourself with before the media starts getting it wrong in the run-up to next month’s summit.

It’s Thanksgiving here in the United States, and it’s a very good time to be contrarian, and remember those who have little to be thankful for.

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This is a special posting for all y’all who receive this blog via email. At the end of this week, I’ll be moving my blogging over to RajPatel.org, and retiring this venerable site.

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The World Food Summit has just ended in Rome, at which the head of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, lauded the declaration as “an important step towards the achievement of our common objective – a world free from hunger.”

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Here’s a bit of a plug for the new book – out in the UK in December, in the US in January. I was lucky enough to get to make this book trailer with Scott Hamilton Kennedy, whose documentary about the South Central Los Angeles farm, The Garden was spectacular, well deserving the Oscar nod that it got (and it was a particularly good year to be nominated ). Keep Reading »

The USDA has released its data for hunger in the United States, and the numbers aren’t good.

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