Jun
21
2007
By Ivor Hughes
6/21/07
“The flow of immigrants north from Mexico since NAFTA is inextricably linked to the flow of American corn in the opposite direction, a flood of subsidized grain that the Mexican government estimates has thrown two million Mexican farmers and other agricultural workers off the land since the mid-90s. (More recently, the ethanol boom has led to a spike in corn prices that has left that country reeling from soaring tortilla prices; linking its corn economy to ours has been an unalloyed disaster for Mexico’s eaters as well as its farmers.) You can’t fully comprehend the pressures driving immigration without comprehending what U.S. agricultural policy is doing to rural agriculture in Mexico. ”
The Way We Live Now … You Are What You Grow
By MICHAEL POLLAN
The New York Times, April 22 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/magazine/22wwlnlede.t.html
Protectionist food politics and starvation are the seeds of war. In 1984 and under American pressure… New Zealand adopted the American free market model … almost overnight we introduced a system that produced an underclass with all of its destructive on flow into a rise of criminality of every kind… crimes of violence… theft of property .. police brutality… food banks for the new underclass… A sharp rise in nutrition based disease… children going to school on a packet of instant noodles with its little flavor sachet of Neuro Toxins.
This user pays mentality was extraordinarily destructive to the social fabric… the suicides and the ever increasing family violence mirrors exactly what is on plain view in the USA and the UK.
A land where Corporations direct the people elected legislature is seldom productive of any kind of good for the new serfdom. New Zealand is a young vibrant and resilient nation… we survived the Corporation led economic holocaust… but the damage has been done.
I shudder to think what kind of effect these policy’s have in 3rd world nations… their social structures are ill equipped to deal with the economic equivalent of Atilla the Hun which is unleashed upon the hapless peoples… any time .. any where… it is no longer necessary to be an Arab in an oil rich land to invite destruction.
The Corporations are trying to wrest control of the food supply into their own mortician hands. They use their paid lackeys in the Media to spread a myth of food scarcity and how Genetically Modified crops and animals are going to save the world…
Nothing could be further from the truth… there is no shortage of food … but there is a shortage of money to buy it with and an obscenely unjust system of distribution.
Jun
09
2007
Photo: Mary O’Grady Wins Bastiat Prize for Journalism
By Stephen Lendman
6/9/07
She’s at it again on the Journal’s editorial page in her June 4 article called “The Young and the Restless,” subtitled “Is this the beginning of the end for Hugo Chavez?” The writer is self-styled Latin American expert Mary Anastasia O’Grady always getting top grades in vilification and disinformation but failing ones on regional knowledge and legitimate journalism.
This time she may have overstepped. Her article reeks with disinformation, outright lies, and most disturbing of all - incendiary commentary straddling the tipping edge of inciting insurrection. She can get away with it because she represents elitist interests and the Journal’s editorial view supporting the Bush administration’s fixation on ousting Hugo Chavez by any means, including through violence. It doesn’t matter that Chavez was just reelected again in December by a near two to one margin or that he’s admired and loved by the great majority of Venezuelans. They’re unperturbed and/or supportive of his shuttering RCTV’s VHF Channel 2 overshadowing that issue being used as a pretext for suspicious violent street protests, mainly in Caracas. More on that below.
It’s clear O’Grady will fit right in if the Journal’s controlling Bancroft family succumbs to greed selling out to Rupert Murdock’s wooing. That prospect’s got Journal employees apoplectic. They’re scrambling through their union seeking an alternate buyer willing to grant what Murdock never will - journalistic independence and what’s left of the paper’s tattered integrity. Those ideas are anathema to how he views journalism, and he’s not shy saying it.
Australian-raised author Bruce Page wrote about him in his new book, “The Murdock Archipelago,” calling him “one of the world’s leading villains (and) global pirates.” Murdock is clear, according to Page. He wants his journalistic empire to be a privatized “state propaganda service, manipulated without scruple and with no regard for truth (in return for) vast government favors such as tax breaks, regulatory relief, and monopoly” market control free as possible from competitors having too much of what Murdock wants for himself. The problem is he usually gets his way. Unless Journal employees stop him, the WSJ’s independence and status as a legitimate publication are over. Under Murdock control, no distinction will be made between real news, editorial opinion and agitprop, and no views will be tolerated, henceforth, contrary to Mr. Murdock’s. That’s how he operates throughout his media empire - take it or leave and find another line of work.
The way O’Grady writes, she’s not on board with other staffers against the Bancroft family sellout. Murdock will love her views, may give her more latitude and maybe more space as well. Let’s hope she’s disappointed, that Journal employees retain their independence, and Journal readers keep what they now have free from the venomous claws of the villainous king of media moguls.
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