Free Republic

Food fight A Korean refrigerator speaks to the falsehoods surrounding famine | Mindy Belz This time of year my refrigerator hums, happily I imagine, with the comings and goings of harvest and feasting—roasts and leftover gravies, cooked squash and potatoes, the summer peppers not eaten by grubs, and the last of the lettuces. How can my family receive such bounty while others go poor and hungry? It's a complex question. Take my refrigerator, a sturdy 22-cubic-foot model made by the LG Corporation of South Korea. The reason I'm able to own an appliance from the Korean Peninsula is that a...

CHICAGO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - On a recent shift at a Chicago emergency department, Dr. William Sullivan treated a newly homeless patient who was threatening to kill himself. "He had been homeless for about two weeks. He hadn't showered or eaten a lot. He asked if we had a meal tray," said Sullivan, a physician at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago and a past president of the Illinois College of Emergency Physicians. Sullivan said the man kept repeating that he wanted to kill himself. "It seemed almost as if he was interested in being admitted." Across the country,...

Texas needs rain — and needs it quickly — to keep farmers and ranchers from suffering even bigger losses next year from the drought that already has left them with record-breaking losses this year, producers said Friday while in San Antonio. Corn growers in Texas could encounter even bigger losses in 2012 after seeing output fall by 40 percent this year; and rice plantings, which fell by only 2 percent this year, could be cut nearly in half if more water does not become available soon, officials said. “It could drive us to acreage levels we've probably not seen in...

There’s a supermarket anomaly near my home. Two supermarkets, a block apart: King Soopers (a Kroger store) and Safeway. In my town, everybody shops at King Soopers. Safeway is deserted. There are literally more employees than customers. Consequently, I get tremendous prices at Safeway, including a large percentage of my groceries at 50% off. What’s up with that? For some reason, Safeway has made the corporate decision to keep the store open as a loss leader. Curious. They stock all the normal foods, but then they have to get the food out of the store quickly at 50% off while...

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, August 22, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A recently retired New York Times reporter has penned a book in which she details how she followed through on a shocking pact to help her 88-year-old mother, Estelle, starve to death. Julia Gross with her mother Estelle. In an excerpt from the book, “A Bittersweet Season,” published recently in the Daily Mail, Jane Gross describes her mother’s increasing dissatisfaction with life as her health deteriorated, and her mounting desire to die, despite the fact that she was not terminally ill. “So here we were, my mother and I, wishing that she...

As I write this, Somalia is suffering its worst drought in 60 years. The lack of rain—combined with civil unrest and political interference from the al-Qaeda linked al-Shabab group—has produced catastrophic results. Yesterday Nancy Linborg, an official with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), told a Congressional committee that more than 29,000 children under the age of 5 had died over the past three months in Somalia, thanks to the famine. If conditions worsen—and there's little reason to expected that they won't—upwards to 800,000 children may die of hunger and other causes. The violent political situation on the ground...

Via Breitbart. I don’t know which budget bill she’s talking about, the 2011 one or Ryan’s new one, but if it’s the former than she’s actually complaining here about a GOP budget that she could have prevented by passing a budget herself last year when she was Speaker. (Of course, with Democrats in control in the Senate and White House, any Mass Senior Starvation Program would require bipartisan support to pass now anyway.) Anyway, get used to this: Warnings about grandma being forced to eat styrofoam peanuts and Fancy Feast because of heartless Republicans and their insane crusade for solvency...

A Hidden History of Evil Why doesn’t anyone care about the unread Soviet archives? In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains...

This year's particularly harsh winter has hit northern Minnesota's deer population hard, and the survivors could even be in trouble if spring weather doesn't kick in soon. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources says it is finding more and more dead whitetails in the woods, and the agency expects even more to surface over the next two weeks or more. That's because the animals can't find food and become vulnerable to death by natural causes or predators such as wolves, the Mesabi Daily News of Virginia, Minn., reports. Sometimes it's difficult to tell whether a deer died before or after...

Why N.Koreans Are Starving North Korea has been knocking on the doors of practically every country except for the poorest African nations since last year asking for food aid, yet according to a senior South Korean official, last year's harvest in the North was among the best in two decades. North Korea watchers say the main reason for the food shortage in the North is hoarding by the government and military. â—† No Drop in Food Production According to South Korean government statistics compiled between 1991 and 2009, North Korea had bumper crops in 2005 (4.54 million tons) and 2006...

Amidst the hustle and bustle of the “lame duck” Congress, another law was passed that didn’t quite get the same media coverage as the Bush tax extension “package,” the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and the new START treaty. The Food Safety Modernization Act was not steeped in the same level of popular controversy as these other pieces of legislation. Nevertheless, its passage may affect our daily lives even more than these, and in a rather stealth manner. Yes, the week before Christmas, the 111th Congress of the United States gave Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services...

t is getting hard to keep track. One minute the government tells us American children are suffering from record levels of obesity. The next, children are facing a hunger epidemic. Which horror story should you believe? Neither. The truth is, 94.3 percent of American households are able to put enough food on the table every day to feed their families, and the vast majority of children living in these households are healthy and well-fed. Given the food shortages facing people in other countries, Americans are the envy of the world. According to the United Nations, 98 percent of undernourished people...

01-01-2011 21:38 N. Korean soldiers leave barracks en masse looking for food An increasing number of North Korean soldiers are showing “AWOL” behaviors to avoid intense physical training and look for food, the local daily, Chosun Ilbo, said Saturday, sourcing it to RFA. AWOL is a military acronym for "absence without leave." “It’s hard to punish them because there are too many of such soldiers,” an unnamed North Korean informant, told RFA in the report. Some of the soldiers display “on-off’ AWOL behaviors, for example, leaving the barracks in the morning looking for food and coming back in the evening....

... "Republicans, however, later agreed to pass it by unanimous consent."

Destitute TV Girl Finally Died of Starvation By Kang Won Cheol [2010-12-09 18:07 ] ▲ The 23-year old girl, as she appeared in the Asia Press film. A 23-year old, poverty-stricken young woman who appeared in newspapers and on TV around the world when she was filmed by a cameraman inside North Korea died of starvation in October, it has been revealed. The woman, who appeared in a KBS special program, “North Korea’s Third Generation Succession: Who Is Kim Jong Eun?” alongside global media including the BBC(UK) and Asahi TV(Japan) amply demonstrated the dire straits in which some North Korean...

I heard this story years ago, so I thought I’d post it. The official story has the pilgrims boarding the Mayflower, coming to America and establishing the Plymouth colony in the winter of 1620-21. This first winter is hard, and half the colonists die. But the survivors are hard working and tenacious, and they learn new farming techniques from the Indians. The harvest of 1621 is bountiful. The Pilgrims hold a celebration, and give thanks to God. They are grateful for the wonderful new abundant land He has given them. The official story then has the Pilgrims living more or...

Do you believe that you will always be able to buy inexpensive food at the supermarket? If so, you might want to think again. During 2010, agricultural commodity prices have exploded. Nearly every single important agricultural commodity is experiencing double-digit percentage price increases. The S&P GSCI Agriculture Index recently surged to a fresh two-year high and now we find that food producers and retailers are starting to pass those commodity price increases on to consumers. Food inflation is real; it is here and it’s going to hurt a lot of people. In fact, food inflation is hitting consumers hard all...

In previous articles I brought up how liberals want the state to control the worlds food supply. Liberals believe that the private sector should not have a say in growing distributing and selling food. The state along with one world communist government should only have a say in those matters. Of course any student of history can see where that has lead, from food shortages and blights in the middle ages thanks to feudalism to hundreds of millions dying under communist made food shortages in Ukraine and China. Farms and grocery stores are not the only things liberals want to...

Obama's industrial policy is designed to make America non-competitive in the world economy, destroy millions of jobs, and devastate our manufacturing and industrial capacities. No one will want to invest here, and fewer and fewer U.S. companies will be exporting goods "Made in America." And we have a fierce competitor called China. How far down this road we already are can be seen in the following data: During this ten-year period, total exports from the United States to China totaled $424 billion, while exports from China to the United States totaled $2.163 trillion, resulting in a U.S. net trade deficit...

Eight-week-old Saul Castillo, wrapped in a blanket and wearing a green and white hat, died when his tiny 14-gram heart stopped beating, his emaciated body little more than skin wrapped around sunken eyes and protruding bones.

In 1936 Mao Tse-Tung, then a cave-dwelling revolutionary, told Edgar Snow his life story. Snow recorded Mao's self-serving autobiography in Red Star Over China, which for decades made the American's name as the leading reporter in China. Back in China twenty-four years later, Snow was pestered by news agencies enquiring about mass starvation. The Snow of the 1930s had gone into the field to see for himself a prolonged drought in the north-west, where people were rumoured to be selling their children. But this time he relied on his access to top officials such as Premier Zhou Enlai, and foreigners...

Food Crisis Doomsday Scenario As Prices To Shoot Through The Roof Politics / Food Crisis Aug 31, 2010 - 08:52 AM By: Pravda The worst weather on record coupled with the practice of speculation in the commodities markets are set to send food prices skyrocketing, bringing misery and starvation to large swathes of the world’s population. Are we set to see food riots this winter? In the USA, Walmart has already announced a price hike of 5.8% on average for a 31-item basic basket for this Autumn. The long-term rise, however, is far more frightening, with the UNO predicting an...

by Nancy Matthis at American DaughterThe toxic chemical dispersant Corexit 9500 was pumped into the Gulf to counter the oil spill. Now it appears to have gassified, entered the atmosphere, and rained down on inland farmers, damaging crops and killing songbirds: One month ago, on May 24, The European Union Times wrote about a report prepared by Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources for President Medvedev -- Toxic Oil Spill Rains Warned Could Destroy North America: A dire report prepared for President Medvedev by Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources is warning ... that the British Petroleum (BP) oil and gas leak...

In 1983 Sudan's Arab Islamist military dictator, Jaafar Numeiri, advanced his policy of national Islamisation by enacting Sharia Law (Islamic Law) across the whole of Sudan. When the African, predominantly Christian and animist Southerners resisted, Khartoum responded with Islamic jihad. For the next 21 years the Southern Sudanese suffered constant aerial bombardment, scorched-earth raids, enslavement, chemical weapons and government-made famines that could wipe out up to 100,000 Southerners in a couple of months (as in the Bahr El Ghazal famine of 1998). On 2 Jan 2005 the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM, representing the Southerners) and the Arab Islamic Government...

Pick up a box of cereal or other packaged food at the grocery store, and chances are you’re looking at a genetically modified product. The Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit organization that seeks sustainable alternatives to harmful methods of food production technologies, estimates that more than 70 percent of the processed foods in U.S. grocery stores contain some genetically modified ingredients — mostly corn or soy. But, in most cases, these modified foods have received only limited testing. For example, take the three genetically modified corn varieties already being sold by Monsanto that are the subject of new analysis...

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is ignoring economic and political advice from his last remaining patron; China. Kim is carrying out a propaganda campaign to anoint his youngest son (Kim Jong Un) as his heir apparent. Kim also refuses to adopt economic reforms (along Chinese lines, with a free market economy). The recent currency revaluation (which wiped out the savings of most North Koreans, especially those that ran small businesses), and the attempt to shut down the few free markets, turned out disastrously. Kim Jong Il made a rare public apology, but responded by punishing dozens of senior officials...

For us it is a saddening sight - a magnificent bull elephant struck down in his old age. But for the starving of Zimbabwe, it was little short of a miracle. The carcass provided a vital source of food, and hundreds of desperate villagers in the Gonarezhou National Park descended on the dead animal within minutes of its discovery. Using machetes, axes and knives made from tin cans they set upon the six-ton carcass, which was found deep in scrubland.

UNITED NATIONS - Up to half the food aid intended for the millions of hungry people in Somalia is being diverted to corrupt contractors, radical Islamic militants and local U.N. workers, according to a U.N. Security Council report. The report blames the problem on improper food distribution by the U.N. World Food Program in the African nation, which has been plagued by fighting and humanitarian suffering for nearly two decades, according to a U.N. diplomat. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because the report has not yet been released. It calls on U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to authorize an...

IT IS not sufficient to describe North Korea as a totalitarian dictatorship. Totalitarian dictatorships normally manage to keep the lights on. North Korea might be better understood as another kind of polity. It is an incompetent hereditary autocracy flavoured with Confucianism, that most hierarchical of eastern philosophies. Or you could cut to the chase and call it a basket case of a country wholly owned by a family of venal frauds. Running a tyrannical absolute monarchy in the 21st century is not easy. People generally have greater expectations. They might be prepared to tolerate slum housing, slave labour, thought police...

/begin my translation [No. 331] Flood of Reports to Central Party "People on the Verge of Starvation Death" 02/16/10 (According to sources,) an official from the central party revealed, "There are 5,660 reports which reached the central party from provinces, saying that food situation is dire or people are on the verge of death from starvation. Of them, 2,000 reports even spelled out names of people died in their city or county." According to the reports, commerce has collapsed, food supply is completely cut off, and people are barely getting by eating food substitute such as residue from liquor and...

Bartering is Back in North Korea By Yoo Gwan Hee, from South Pyongan in 2008 [2010-01-20 16:27 ] As predicted by experts on North Korea’s economy, since the authorities have yet to officially release state prices, the North Korean people are now surviving by bartering. A defector, who spoke with his family in North Hamkyung Province on Tuesday, reported the news to the Daily NK, “I called my family to send some money to them as I had heard they were in trouble, and they told me that the current situation is unspeakably terrible. They live only by bartering with...

Before currency reform, food price in Pyongyang and Chongjin (in old denomination per kg) Between Sept. and Nov., 2009, rice: 1800~2400 won, corn: 800~1100 won After currency reform, rice price in Pyongyang and Chongjin (in new denomination per kg) date rice pricein new won contributing factor Dec.2009 1st ~ 9th  20~ 25 government institutes currency reform1 new won = 100 old won 10~15th  30~ 45 price in new currency would not settle properly, and price rises 20~30th  50~ 60 Public Security impose ban on the use of foreign currency on Dec. 28; price rises Jan.2010  1st~5th  80~120 price doubled...

North Korea 'struggling against civil unrest' The revaluation of the won has led to rampant inflation and civil disorder Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor The North Korean dictatorship is struggling to contain civil unrest and runaway inflation caused by a drastic revaluation of its won currency, which is threatening new food shortages in the already hungry nation, according to reports in South Korea. /snip Agents of the People’s Safety Agency (PSA), which is conducting a so-called “Fifty Day Battle” against illegal enterprise, were reported to have been attacked and driven away as they sought out market activity in the city...

Violence in N.Korea as hunger woes mount: reports AFP February 3, 2010, 1:15 am SEOUL (AFP) - Angry North Koreans have attacked security agents as hunger woes mount following a crackdown on free-market trade, according to reports on Tuesday from groups in Seoul with contacts in the communist state. Social unrest and riots have flared since a shock currency revaluation by Pyongyang last November worsened shortages of food and other goods for an increasingly desperate population, they said. /snip "Therefore, people are taking revenge on agents, since they feel so desperate that regardless of their actions, they will die," the...

Watching the ongoing relief efforst on TV, it is frustrating to know that people deserately need the basics and will probably not get them for days. The officials are offloading everything at the airport andit is stacking up. I am no expert, but IMO we need to be doing a 2 pronged approach to this disaster, and airstyle-type drop of World War II combined with the precise relief we are seeing set up on television. But why they are not doing the airdrops is beyond me. The peeople need the basics such as water and crackers and these could beeasily...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau. The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau. The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau. The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, April 27 (UPI) -- The Rev. Jesse Jackson and several leaders of Florida's Haitian community arrived in Haiti Sunday to study the country's food crisis, Haitian radio reported. Jackson and others are expected to discuss food-price inflation with Haitian leaders, according to officials of his Rainbow Push Coalition. Protests over spiking food prices left at least seven people dead this month and prompted lawmakers to oust Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis. On Sunday, Ericq Pierre, a former senior adviser with the Inter-American Development Bank, was named Alexis' successor.

Haitians say their hunger is real Thu Apr 10, 2008 4:45pm EDT By Jim Loney PORT-AU-PRINCE, April 10 (Reuters) - Elta Petithomme has been scouring the Haitian capital's garbage-strewn main market street for hours, searching for something to feed her four young children. Today, pickings are slim. Yesterday she sold a cellphone for 50 gourdes, the equivalent of about $1.30, enough to buy some bread, sugar and fried plantains. That's all the children, all under the age of 6, had to eat for the day. "Some days neighbors will cook and give us some food, as little as it is....

North Korea rushes to starvation December 09, 2009 Olivia Ward North Korea's beleaguered people are used to running on empty. But a silent catastrophe that is looming in the secretive dictatorship may push the poorest beyond the point of no return. A sudden revaluation has left the currency worthless, threatening collapse of the fragile food market. "This could start widespread starvation deaths in the hungry season, after the last harvest runs out," said Andrew Natsios of Georgetown University, author of The Great North Korean Famine. "There are a number of alarming things happening at once, and people may not be...

The diaries of the journalist who helped expose the Soviet Terror Famine in the Ukraine are now on display in Cambridge. At the time of his writings he was denounced as a liar by Soviet sympathizers including Walter Duranty of the New York Times. Had he not died in suspicious circumstances he would no doubt have been pleased to see that the truth of his accounts is now accepted, although he would perhaps be disappointed to see that one of the outlets for his writing, the Guardian (then the Manchester Guardian), frequently publishes articles explicitly and implicitly supportive of totalitarian...

TAMPA - One photograph shows a beautiful baby girl with a fat, happy face. Another shows a dead 5-month-old with sunken eyes. She weighed 6 pounds. Her autopsy showed no body fat. Without being told it's the same child, you'd never be able to tell. When Polk County investigators responded to a call Sunday about a baby not breathing at the Lakeland home of Tivasha Logan and Chauncey Gardner, they found more beer than baby food, Sheriff Grady Judd said. There only were about 2 ounces of formula inside the one can they saw.

Weekly Roundup - Living On Nothing Edition Category: Roundups | Comments(15) Did you hear about the guy that lives on nothing? No seriously, he lives on zero dollars a day. Meet Daniel Suelo, who lives in a cave outside Moab, Utah. Suelo has no mortgage, no car payment, no debt of any kind. He also has no home, no car, no television, and absolutely no “creature comforts.” But he does have a lot of creatures, as in the mice and bugs that scurry about the cave floor he’s called home for the last three years. To us, Suelo probably sounds...

State Highway 9 is a two lane strip of asphalt that cuts across the northernmost tier of counties in Iowa, from Larchwood to Lansing. If you drive its 320 miles, as I have done many times, you will not be dissuaded from the stereotype of Iowa as a flat boring expanse of cornfields. The few points of interest include Lake Okoboji and the headquarters of Winnebago in Forest City. It takes you near Mason City, the model for "River City" in Meredith Willson's The Music Man, and the site of the plane crash that claimed Buddy Holly after a February...

According to Gunny G Online: “This astounding control will include the elimination of organic farming by eliminating manure, mandating GMO animal feed, imposing animal drugs, and ordering applications of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides. Farmers, thus, will be locked not only into the industrialization of once normal and organic farms but into the forced purchase of industry’s products.” HR 2749 creates severe criminal and civil penalties, including prison terms of up to 10 years and/or fines of up to $100,000 for each violation. Does it include judicial review, Congressional oversight, a defined and limited set of penalties and punishments for a...

When she was 16, Crystal Renn signed a $250,000 modeling contract and moved to the city. But after starving herself for years to stay at 95 pounds, she gave it all up to become a plus-size model -- and finally, at size 12, achieved major success. With her memoir, "Hungry," due out Sept. 8, Renn tells her story to The Post. Nine years ago, when I was 14 years old, a modeling scout spotted me at an etiquette class in my hometown of Clinton, Miss., and pulled me aside to show me a photo of supermodel Gisele in a clingy...

Food Riots, Tax Rebellions By 2012...Trend forecaster, renowned for being accurate in the past, saysThe man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the fall of the Soviet Union is now forecasting revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions - all within four years, while cautioning that putting food on the table will be a more pressing concern than buying Christmas gifts by 2012. Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is renowned for his accuracy in predicting fut ure world and economic events, which will send a chill down your spine considering what he told Fox...

President Barack Obama talks about restoring economic growth. But his science adviser, John Holdren, once called for zero economic growth while writing with Paul and Anne Ehrlich--who predicted mass starvation in the 1970s. **** Admittedly, President Obama hasn't formally adopted this goal. But by putting the economy into hock and running up government borrowing, which even the Congressional Budget Office warns will crowd out private investment, the president seems determined to prevent a robust recovery. Maybe John Holdren will get his wish after all.

Leadership: Our new science czar, John Holdren, once backed compulsory sterilization and forced abortion as part of a government population-control program. The only thing missing was a Soylent Green recipe.In April, President Obama declared that "the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over." In everything from stem cell research to climate change and energy policy, reason and science would triumph. The problem is that what the Obama administration considers science, as exemplified by the choice of Holdren, is troubling. In a recently rediscovered 1977 book, "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment," co-authored with doomsters Paul and Anne Ehrlich,...