This morning on DemocracyNow!, I got to talk a little about Newt Gingrich’s poisonous comments on Obama being the food stamp president. First, the facts. Under George Bush, the number of people on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (what food stamps are more properly called in the US) rose by 14.7 million. Under Obama, the number rose by 14.2 million. It’s true, however, that much more money is being spent by Obama. As part of the stimulus bill, entitlements rose to a whopping average of $134.
The entitlements help, to some extent, to dampen in the impact of poverty. And in the teeth of the recession, it’s hard to argue against strengthening the safety net when so many Americans were falling into it.
It’s Martin Luther King day in the US today, and I managed to catch King’s “Birth of A New Nation” speech on KPFA’s Africa Today show this evening. The full speech is here but if you’ve a few minutes, it’s always heartstopping to hear Dr King preach.
Ignacio Chapela will be familiar to readers of Stuffed and Starved. He’s a soil biologist at Berkeley and an outspoken critic of genetically modified crops, a position which has focussed the wrath of the biotechnology industry upon him. Here is a short analysis he penned earlier today on news from Europe that chemical company BASF will be pulling its GMO operations from Europe, where they are unwelcome (because ineffective and dangerous), and moving them to North Carolina.
Are you interested in global food justice? Are you curious about how the world will eat in the future? Will you have some free time in the next six to ten weeks? Are you familiar with at least one of the countries listed below and/or knowledgeable about one of the topic areas? We are looking for interns around the world to do foundational research for a new trans-media project on the future of the global food system.
Protests against genetically modified crops in India are getting increasingly creative. Earlier this week, the world’s largest quantity of aubergine curry was cooked by New Delhi’s top chefs yesterday to accompany a 100,000 signature petition protesting the Indian government’s support of GM crops. But the clipping below, from the Times of India, isn’t just an interesting report – it’s an anthropological trove. FYI, the Limca in the “Limca Book of Records” refers to an Indian brand of lemonade. [H/T:JH]
You don’t have to be from the Global North to be in the colonialism business . Here’s a swiftly and poorly cleaned up google translation of a report published on 23rd August 2011 in the Mozambican newspaper, O Pais (original here).
It’s one thing when stock market clowns like Jim Cramer say that Karl Marx was right, but it’s much more interesting when you hear someone like Nouriel Roubini explain it.
