Free Republic

Conventional agriculture is causing enormous environmental damage in Germany, warns a study by the country’s Federal Environment Agency, saying a transition to organic farming and stricter regulation is urgently needed. EurActiv Germany reports. Spanning over 50% of the country, agriculture takes up by far the biggest amount of land in the country, and is one of its most important economic sectors. But intensive farming still harms the environment to an alarming extent, according to a study conducted by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA). The use of pesticides and fertilizers, as well as intensive animal husbandry, have a negative impact on...

REMEMBRANCE of EASTER 2005 Crowd my eyes, you bevies of daffodils, And you forsythias in throngs of cheer, Dandelion galaxies and fountains of trees. Fill my mouth with the breath of hyacinths, you purple air And you roistering breeze. And you quince-buds so eager, you swelling seeds, You squirrels running stitches across the loom Of woven grasses, inflorescent weeds; Jasmine-bush, loop me with your lariats of perfume. Fill me, small birds, with your versicles, And chuckled replies. She is bleeding from the mouth and eyes. Sate me then, Sun, all dapple and spangle Crowd out all else Lade me...

Charles L. Bosk, a writer and researcher, spent time in a pediatric hospital where doctors and nurses took care of disabled and/or premature babies. Sometimes, when disabled babies were born (despite the program’s efforts to detect and abort them), the parents didn’t want them. Bosk wrote about a couple that chose not to treat their disabled baby with routine surgery, but instead allowed the child to die: She [the woman who counseled the parents] reported that the parents had decided not only that they did not want to repair the child’s oomphalecele, but they wanted the child to die, and...

When Ukraine resisted Soviet attempts at collectivization in the 1920s and '30s, the Soviet Union under Stalin used labor camps, executions, and starvation: Holodomor Released known picture of peasant uprisings before the Famine. Photos electronic archive Ukrainian liberation movement Removing vegetables from the villagers. The village of Novo-Red History of the Security Service of Ukraine in cooperation with the Center for Studies of the liberation movement laid out in free access to a unique picture of the peasant uprising that preceded the Great Famine and Genocide diaries of eyewitnesses. Now you can view and download the electronic archive of the...

Reporter Nelufar Hedayat looks at the terrible conditions dogs are forced to live in just to keep the black market in dog meat supplied A shocking new TV documentary will reveal how hundreds pet dogs are being stolen every day in Vietnam for the lucrative dog meat trade. Unreported World shows disturbing evidence of how dogs are stolen, force-fed, kept in cramped cages and slaughtered for meals. Here, reporter Nelufar Hedayat exclusively reveals the horrors she witnessed. The smell of dog and filth permeated the whole room along with frantic, high-pitched barking from the hundreds of dogs crammed into the...

The Yazidis, members of an ancient religious sect, fled when the Islamic State overran their homes. Now they’re trapped with no food or water. Will the U.S. step in to help save them? One week is as long as the average person can survive without water. In extreme temperatures, it may be less. So time is running out for the 10,000 to 40,000 Iraqis, mostly religious minorities, who have been trapped for days in barren mountains without food or water. They face a choice: return to their towns captured by ISIS forces and risk being slaughtered or stay in the...

A British medical journal announced a finding last month that might be the best news in the history of the world: Nearly one out of three people in the world is overweight. Members of the media responded to this thrilling discovery by lamenting the globe’s growing waistline. Pundits rushed to condemn widespread access to inexpensive food. Everyone seemed so excited to attack obesity that no one noticed the report’s incredible story of human achievement and hope. Throughout history, malnutrition and hunger-related health issues have killed more people than any other cause. Over the course of the past half-century, however, the...

I remember our daily food always coming from a long, long line at the end of which was a loaf of bread, a liter of milk, a stick of butter, a bottle of murky cooking oil, or a kilo of bones with traces of meat and fat on them. [...] If we wanted to eat, we learned at a very young age that we had to stand in long lines every day, often in bitter cold at 4 a.m. in hopes that the store would not run out of bread or milk by the time we made it to the...

<p>SALINAS, Calif. –  Three starving children -- including one who was chained to the floor to prevent her from getting food -- were found last month in the squalid home of a Northern California couple, authorities said.</p> <p>All three -- two boys and a girl -- were taken into protective custody, and one was hospitalized, Monterey County Sheriff Scott Miller said Friday.</p>

I just got back from a business trip to Mexico. While there, I met with some Mexicans who had recently traveled to Cuba. What they told me was shocking. The Cuban people are being held on the edge of starvation. According to my Mexican friends, ordinary Cubans are not allowed to eat beef. Instead, what beef there is in Cuba is reserved for the nation’s rulers and for tourists who can pay for it with foreign exchange while staying at the all-inclusive resort hotels. It is in fact illegal to sell beef to a Cuban — not that any...

In 1944, 26-year-old Marshall Sutton was a young idealist who wanted to change the world for the better. As a conscientious objector and Quaker, he refused to fight in the war but he still craved the chance to help his country. "I wanted to identify with the suffering in the world at that time," he says. "I wanted to do something for society. I wanted to put myself in a little danger." That danger came, unexpectedly, in the shape of a small brochure with a picture of children on the front. "Will you starve that they be better fed?" it...

If you’ve read any news in the past day, you’ve seen reports regarding cannibalism in colonial Jamestown. It was known prior that the colonists had undergone a number of starvation years where they were forced to eat foods that they wouldn’t normally. The trash pits from the sites hold the remains of animals who aren’t normally butchered, including horses, cats, dogs, rats and snakes. Burials from this period are not given the complete funerary treatment likely due to the high number of deaths, and the skeletons show evidence of nutritional hardship and early death. The colony was founded in 1607...

A day after winning the three-week battle to take their brain-dead daughter from Children's Hospital Oakland, the family of Jahi McMath conceded Monday they are losing the ghastly war against nature. Her body, checked in at an undisclosed care facility Monday morning, has deteriorated so badly, that "Right now, we don't know if she's going to make it," said attorney Christopher Dolan. "She's in very bad shape," he said. "What I can tell you is that those examinations show that her medical condition, separate from the brain issue, is not good." Dolan's frank and sober assessment echoes a Friday legal...

The Real Thanksgiving Story In the middle of December 1620 the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, leaving behind the sinfulness of the “old world” to make a “new Jerusalem” in America. Three years later, in November 1623, they had a great feast thanking God for getting them through an earlier famine, and now for a bountiful crop. What had created the earlier famine and then the bountiful crops? The story is told in the diary of Governor Bradford, who was one of the elders of that early Puritan colony. At first, they decided to turn their back on all the...

STALIN - UKRAINE'S GENOCIDE BY FAMINE Eighty years later, there’s no denying the Soviet atrocity. By Alec Torres NRO 11/9/2013 ‘We went to a field. We had nothing to eat. Everything was taken from us. So my mother decided we would go to the field, find some half-frozen potatoes, some kind of vegetables, to make a soup. At that time the Soviet Union was teaching people to report on each other, to spy on each other. Somebody saw that we came with some vegetables, half-frozen, and they arrested my mother. That was the last time I saw her.” So Eugenia...

Swedish Muslims north of the Arctic circle have long waited for and feared this summer. When the sun never sets, they have pondered how to observe Ramadan, when devout Muslims fast from sun up to sun down for a month. "Kiruna is as high up as you get in Sweden, the sun never sets during this month," Ali Melhem, 45, who has lived in Kiruna for 24 years told The Local. As the fasting month is set by the moon, Ramadan usually moves about 10 days forward in the calender each year, which means this is the first summer it...

China's long term goal, dating back to the rule of Mao Zedong, of becoming self sufficient in food is running into some inconvenient reality, much no doubt caused by that country's command economy. The problem started with China's breakneck drive to become an industrial power. This, coupled with a somewhat lax approach to environmental regulation, created large amounts of farmland contaminated with heavy metals. Since China is also driving to grow much of its own food, much of this farmland is being used, resulting in contaminated crops that are not fit for human consumption. Chinese farmers are also overusing pesticides,...

<p>The US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Monsanto Monday over an Indiana farmer accused of having pirated the genetically-modified crops developed by the agribusiness giant.</p> <p>The high court was unanimous in its decision, ruling that laws limiting patents do "not permit a farmer to reproduce patented seeds through planting and harvesting without the patent holder's permission."</p>

Staple foods will more than double in price by 2050 from extreme temperatures, floods and droughts that will transform the way the world farms. As food experts gather to discuss how to feed the nine billion people expected in 2050, leading scientists state that food insecurity risks turning parts of Africa into permanent disaster areas. Rising temperatures will drastically affect access to basic foodstuffs: "Food production will have to rise 60% by 2050 just to keep pace with expected global population increase and changing demand. The annual production gains we have come to expect … will be taken away by...

REMEMBRANCE of EASTER 2005 Crowd my eyes, you bevies of daffodils, And you forsythias in throngs of cheer, Dandelion galaxies and fountains of trees. Fill my mouth with the breath of hyacinths, you purple air And you roistering breeze. And you quince-buds so eager, you swelling seeds, You squirrels running stitches across the loom Of woven grasses, inflorescent weeds; Jasmine-bush, loop me with your lariats of perfume. Fill me, small birds, with your versicles, And chuckled replies. She is bleeding from the mouth and eyes. Sate me then, Sun, all dapple and spangle Crowd out all else Lade me and...