Send the Poor Americans to Australia

49.1 million Americans short of food

What is it with the “beastly empires” that they don’t even feed everyone?

For anyone who’s just recovering from the shock of reading about British “migrant children” forcibly removed from their parents and sent to Australia and other Commonwealth countries, or Australia’s own “forgotten children,” here’s another eye-opener.

About 49.1 million Americans (32.4 million adults and 16.7 million children), or nearly 1 in 6,  struggled to get enough food in 2008, the highest number in the 14 years since federal survey on “food insecurity” began, the USDA said in a news release Monday.

About 14.6 percent of U.S. households, some 49.1 million people, “had difficulty obtaining food for all their members due to a lack of resources” in 2008, up 3.5 percent from 2007.

This year’s report also reveals that one third of food insecure households had very low food security (food intake of some household members was reduced and their eating patterns disrupted at times during the year). This is 5.7 percent of all U.S. households or about 6.7 million. This is up from 4.7 million households (4.1 percent) in 2007, and the highest level observed since nationally representative food security surveys were initiated in 1995.

About 5.7 percent of all U.S. households (6.7 million households) including 12.1 million adults and 5.2 million children, had very low food security, up from 4.1 percent (4.7 million households) in 2007,  the highest level since nationwide food security surveys began in 1995.

USDA’s Household Food Security report, 2008,  was based on a December 2008 survey when the jobless rate was well below its current 10.2 percent. The figures for 2009 should be even worse.

The Govt Deception

This post should be read in the context of the US expenditure on the War Racket. Of the Total Outlays (Federal Funds)of $2,650 billion for 2009, the United states is spending $1,449 billion (54%) on the military.

Excerpts from the USDA report:

What Is “Very Low Food Security”?

The defining characteristic of “very low food security” (described in Household Food Security reports prior to 2006 as “food insecurity with hunger”) is that, at times during the year, the food intake of household members was reduced and their normal eating patterns were disrupted because the household lacked money and other resources for food. Very low food security can be characterized in terms of the conditions that households in this category reported in the food security survey. In the 2008 survey, households classifi ed as having very low food security (representing an estimated 6.7 million households nationwide) reported the
following specifi c conditions:

• 98 percent reported having worried that their food would run out before they got money to buy more.
• 96 percent reported that the food they bought just did not last and they did not have money to get more.
• 94 percent reported that they could not afford to eat balanced meals.
• 97 percent reported that an adult had cut the size of meals or skipped meals because there was not enough money for food.
• 88 percent reported that this had occurred in 3 or more months.
• In 93 percent, respondents reported that they had eaten less than they felt they should because there was not enough money for food.
• In 66 percent, respondents reported that they had been hungry but did not eat because they could not afford enough food.
• In 47 percent, respondents reported having lost weight because they did not have enough money for food.
• 27 percent reported that an adult did not eat for a whole day because there was not enough money for food.
• 19 percent reported that this had occurred in 3 or more months.
• All of those without children reported at least 6 of these conditions, and 67 percent reported 7 or more. (Conditions in households with children were similar, but the reported food-insecure conditions of both adults and children were taken into account.)

A summary of the report is posted at: Report summary
Full report is available at: Entire report, PDF

USDA News Release
Release No. 0575.09

USDA REPORT REVEALS HIGHEST RATE OF FOOD INSECURITY SINCE REPORT WAS INITIATED IN 1995

Economic Research Service Report Demonstrates Need for Action

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16, 2009 – USDA’s Economic Research Service’s (ERS) today released its annual report on Household Food Security in the U.S., which revealed that in 2008, 17 million households, or 14.6 percent, were food insecure and families had difficulty putting enough food on the table at times during the year. This is an increase from 13 million households, or 11.1 percent, in 2007. The 2008 figures represent the highest level observed since nationally representative food security surveys were initiated in 1995. The full study is available at http://www.ers.usda.gov/features/householdfoodsecurity/.

“The Obama Administration has put in place unprecedented measures to promote job creation and combat hunger in our Nation, a problem that the American sense of fairness should not tolerate and American ingenuity can overcome, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “The Department of Agriculture’s nutrition assistance programs provide a safety net that improves food access to those with critical needs, but addressing the root of hunger requires a broader strategy. By improving access to federal nutrition programs and working with our partners at all levels of government and society, we can make progress in our effort to reduce and eventually eliminate childhood hunger.”

This year’s report also reveals that one third of food insecure households had very low food security (food intake of some household members was reduced and their eating patterns disrupted at times during the year). This is 5.7 percent of all U.S. households or about 6.7 million. This is up from 4.7 million households (4.1 percent) in 2007, and the highest level observed since nationally representative food security surveys were initiated in 1995.

Even when resources are inadequate to provide food for the entire family, children are usually shielded from the disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake that characterize very low food security. However, children as well as adults experienced instances of very low food security in 506,000 households (1.3 percent of households with children) in 2008, up from 323,000 households (0.8 percent of households with children) in 2007.

The fundamental cause of food insecurity and hunger in the United States is poverty – marked by a lack of adequate resources to address basic needs such as food, shelter and health care. The Obama Administration has taken aggressive action on these fronts through the expansion of critical services for Americans most in need. The historic investments of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, with a focus on long-term job creation, are a major part of this effort. The Recovery Act provides tax relief for working families, job training, unemployment insurance, income support and affordable housing to needy Americans and their children.

A central part of the Recovery Act included a significant increase in nutrition assistance benefits for the 36.5 million people (half of whom are children) who participate in USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly the Food Stamp Program. It also provides resources to the state agencies that administer the program, helping them to deal efficiently with increased caseloads.

“As the Obama Administration works to foster a robust recovery for all, it’s important to recognize that we have another opportunity to improve the health and nutrition of our children when Congress begins to debate the Child Nutrition Reauthorization,” said Vilsack. “It is vital that we make it easier for families and administrators to bring eligible children into the program and to eliminate gap periods when children struggle to find the nutrition assistance they need – at breakfast, during summer, and in after-school settings.”

USDA’s National School Lunch program serves 31 million children a healthy meal each school day – for some children in need, this is their most important meal that day. USDA is working with states to increase the use of technology to make low-income children whose families already receive SNAP automatically certified for free school meals and to promote policies that make it easier for eligible families to participate in SNAP. Also, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, or WIC program, ensures mothers and their children have access to nutritious options as well. Nearly half of all infants in this country participate in WIC.

“During challenging economic times, the pool of those in need of vital food assistance expands,” said Vilsack. “USDA’s role – along with our partners – is to ensure individuals do not fall through the cracks, and can access nutritional services with dignity and respect.”

Related Links:

• Poverty Index
  

• 338,000 Afghan infants dying under Obama war
• Number of Hungry Rises Above 1 Billion
• World cannot survive without a revolution
• Images of the Day: G20 at a Glance
• Bail Out the People: Nationalize the Banks
• The Anti Poverty Day
• What We Always Believed, World Bank Finally Confirms
• Fight For Food!
• We Need Food!
• If the world were falling apart!
• Emerging Food Crisis

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The Anti Poverty Day

About one half of the world population live on less than $2 per day!

October 17 the Global Anti Poverty Day

UN says it is trying to address the issue by working towards the anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals. But when?

The Millennium Development Goal pertaining to eradication of poverty aims to halve the number of poor globally by 2015. With the high prices of food showing no sign of abating, and with the world’s ecosystems heading towards a collapse, their goal is becoming increasingly elusive.

Related Links:

• Poverty Index
• What We Always Believed, World Bank Finally Confirms
• Fight For Food!

• Early “Dividends” of Climate Change
• We Need Food!
• Emerging Food Crisis
• We are Hungry: Food Riots Grip Egypt, Haiti, El Salvador

The cause of death: Poverty

The overwhelming majority of human-enhanced natural phenomena like hurricanes and extreme climatic events are invariably the poor!

A resident drags a corpse through a flooded street after tropical cyclones left hundreds dead and thousands stranded in Gonaives in this September 8, 2008 photo released by the Untied Nations in Haiti. REUTERS/handout/logan Abassi.

What We Always Believed, World Bank Finally Confirms

But even their revised figures don’t tell the full story!

The World Bank has warned that world poverty is much worse than they previously thought. WB said number of poor people in Africa doubled  to 380 million between 1981 and 2005. With the depth of poverty deteriorating even further the average poor person is now living on just 70 cents per day or $255 per year—the cost of a meal for two in the average [London, Tokyo, NY, LA … ] restaurant.

There were 1.4 billion people living below the new poverty line of $1.25 per day in 2005, many more than the previous estimate of 985 million in 2004.

It makes you wonder whether those living in abject poverty were included in the “household surveys.“

The Press Release:

Press Release No:2009/065/DEC

WASHINGTON, DC, August 26, 2008 – The World Bank said improved economic estimates showed there were more poor people around the world than previously thought while also revealing big successes in the fight to overcome extreme poverty.

The new estimates, which reflect improvements in internationally comparable price data, offer a much more accurate picture of the cost of living in developing countries and set a new poverty line of US$1.25 a day. They are based on the results of the 2005 International Comparison Program (ICP), released earlier this year.

In a new paper, “The developing world is poorer than we thought but no less successful in the fight against poverty,” Martin Ravallion and Shaohua Chen revise estimates of poverty since 1981, finding that 1.4 billion people (one in four) in the developing world were living below US$1.25 a day in 2005, down from 1.9 billion (one in two) in 1981.

An earlier estimate—of 985 million people living below the former international US$1 a day poverty line in 2004 —was based on the (then) best available cost of living data from 1993. The old data also indicated about 1.5 billion in poverty in 1981. However, the new and far better ICP data on prices in developing countries reveal that these estimates were too low.

The new estimates continue to assess world poverty by the standards of the poorest countries. The new line of US$1.25 for 2005 is the average national poverty line for the poorest 10-20 countries.

“The new estimates are a major advance in poverty measurement because they are based on far better price data for assuring that the poverty lines are comparable across countries,” said Martin Ravallion, Director of the Development Research Group at the World Bank, “Data from household surveys have also improved in terms of country coverage, data access, and timeliness.”

“The new data confirm that the world will likely reach the first Millennium Development Goal of halving the 1990 level of poverty by 2015 and that poverty has fallen by about one percentage point a year since 1981, ” said Justin Lin, Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, Development Economics at the World Bank. “However, the sobering news that poverty is more pervasive than we thought means we must redouble our efforts, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

The new data show that marked regional differences in progress against poverty persist. Poverty in East Asia has fallen from nearly 80 percent of the population living below US$1.25 a day in 1981 to 18 percent in 2005. However, the poverty rate in Sub-Saharan Africa remains at 50 percent in 2005—no lower than in 1981, although with more encouraging recent signs of progress.

MORE KEY FACTS & ANALYSIS

• This is the first major effort to update poverty data based on 2005 measures of purchasing power parity. The new poverty estimates are also based on data from 675 household surveys across 116 developing countries. Over 1.2 million randomly sampled households were interviewed for the 2005 estimate, representing 96% of the developing world. But lags in survey data availability mean that the new estimates do not yet reflect the potentially large adverse effects on poor people of rising food and fuel prices since 2005.

• The number of poor has fallen by 500 million since 1981 (from 52 percent of the developing world’s population in 1981 to 26 percent in 2005) and the world is still on track to halve the 1990 poverty rate by 2015. But at this rate of progress, about a billion people will still live below $1.25 a day in 2015. Also, most people who escaped $1.25 a day poverty over 1981-2005 would still be poor by middle-income country standards.

• East Asia’s progress has been dramatic since 1981, when it was the poorest region in the world. In China, the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day in 2005 prices has dropped from 835 million in 1981 to 207 million in 2005. The Bank’s earlier 2004 estimate had 130 million people living in China below $1 a day based on 1993 PPP.  Thus, the new calculations reveal more poor people than assumed earlier, but China’s remarkable success in reducing poverty still stands.

• In the developing world outside China, the $1.25 poverty rate has fallen from 40 percent to 29 percent over 1981-2005. However, given population growth, this progress was not enough to bring down the total number of poor outside China, which has stayed at about 1.2 billion.

In South Asia, the $1.25 poverty rate has fallen from 60 percent to 40 percent over 1981-2005, but again, not enough to bring down the total number of poor people in the region, which stood at about 600 million in 2005. In India, poverty at $1.25 a day in 2005 prices increased from 420 million people in 1981 to 455 million in 2005, while the poverty rate as a share of the total population went from 60% in 1981 to 42% in 2005.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the $1.25 a day rate was 50 percent in 2005—the same as it was in 1981, after rising, then falling during the period. The number of poor has almost doubled, from 200 million in 1981 to about 380 million in 2005. If the trend persists, a third of the world’s poor will live in Africa by 2015. Average consumption among poor people in Sub-Saharan Africa stood at a meager 70 cents a day in 2005. Given that poverty is so deep in Africa, even higher growth will be needed than for other regions to have the same impact on poverty.

For middle income countries the median poverty line for all developing countries—$2 a day—is more suitable. 2.6 billion people lived on less than $2 a day in 2005—a number largely unchanged since 1981. This suggests less progress in crossing the $2 a day hurdle. By this measure, the poverty rate has fallen over 1981-2005 in Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa, but not enough to bring down the total number of poor. The $2 a day poverty rate has risen in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, though with signs of progress since the late 1990s.

— ### —
Contact: mtuckprimdahl@worldbank.org
After the embargo lifts, the new poverty data will be available at http://econ.worldbank.org/research and
ICP data is available now at http://www.worldbank.org/data/icp

Related Links:

If the world were falling apart!

Why Does “IF” Hate America, its Middle Class and the Poor So Much?

Warren Buffet: “If the world were falling apart I’d still invest in companies”

Mr Buffet, we know how your anti-environment, contorted mind works! There really isn’t much more you can do, other than waging war on nature, is there? It would of course be out of the question to do something outrageous like changing the system, creating a sustainable future, or working in harmony with nature …

• Warren “IF” Buffet’s Net Worth: $62.0 billion
• CO2 pollution produced by Mr Buffet in 2007: At least 12.62 million metric tons [MMT]
• Combined Net Worth of World’s Richest 100: $1,725 billion
• No. of World’s Billionaires: 1,125 heads
• Combined Net Worth of World’s Billionaires: $4,384 billion (source)
• CO2 pollution produced by World’s Billionaires in 2007: At least 891.43MMT
• No. of people who live on less than $2 per day: About 4 billion souls (Source)

Warren “If” Buffet listens to a question during a news conference in Madrid May 21, 2008. REUTERS/Andrea Comas. Image may be subject to copyright. See MSRB fair Use Notice!

If it were possible to amass so much money by so few without declaring war against nature …

If it were possible to accumulate so much “wealth” without causing severe ecological degradation, creating abject poverty and harming so many …

If it were possible to transform so much of the earth’s natural resources into trash and still have a future …

If it were possible to do what you do without committing genocide, war crimes, murder …

If the world were not falling apart …

[Warren Buffet produced at least 12.62 MMT of CO2 in 2007]

Related links:

• Buffet the Climate!
• Buffet the Poor

• World Poverty Index
• Poverty Index
• State of Our World
• Collapsing ecosystems

• Wal-Mart, the Panther Chameleon and Josef Fritzl
• Nature: An NPO

abc

Let Them Eat Bullets!

Delivering Climate Security: International Security Responses to a Climate-Changed World

According to the above-titled report written for Britain’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), governments around the world have hugely underestimated the potential conflicts resulting from climate change. The highlights of the report are:

• If climate change is not slowed and critical environmental thresholds are exceeded, then it will become a primary driver of conflicts between and within states

• In the next decades, climate change will drive as significant a change in the strategic security environment as the end of the Cold War,” said Mabey.

• If uncontrolled, climate change will have security implications of similar magnitude to the World Wars, but which will last for centuries

• A failure to acknowledge and prepare for the worst case scenario is as dangerous in the case of climate change as it is for managing the risks of terrorism or nuclear weapons proliferation

• Unless achieving climate security is seen as a vital and existential national interest it will be too easy to delay action on the basis of avoiding immediate costs and perceived threats to economic competitiveness

Source

Can the world elite brand the poor and starving masses as “terrorists” in order to eliminate them?

Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.” According to a report by New York Sun.

News Reports:

• U.N. Security Council must act preemptively – on climate change – this global threat requires a war-room mentality

• Security risk from climate said underestimated
• Sam’s Club, Costco limit bulk rice purchases
• Sam’s Club, Costco Ration Rice Amid Hoarding Worries
  

Special Links:

• Future in the Making
• Index of Human Impact on Nature (HIoN) March 2008
• The First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities
• Giga Trends
• World Problems: The Root Cause Matrix

Food Riots Grip Egypt, Haiti, El Salvador

“We are hungry!”

Food riots have broken out in Port Au Prince, Haiti, due to soaring food prices. The violent clashes that have paralyzed the city left 5 people dead.

In El Salvador, sky-high food prices, especially corn, the staple diet of South America, led to protests. Women took to the streets banging their pots and pans, shouting “we are hungry!” Video report

Related Links:

• Riots across Egypt amid rising food prices

Poverty, Hunger, Disease

Image based on CIA world map showing percentage of population living below their national poverty line. Right click on the image, then click on View Image to see original. (Image Credit: user:Sbw01f via Wikimedia; GNU Free Documentation License)

Country In Focus
India: A soul-sick nation with a diseased psyche that spends billions of dollars on its military and nuclear armament, instead of her people!

Democracy and Freedom [sic.] Indian Style: Women washing clothes in a filthy ditch alongside a main road in Mumbai, India. This file is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Brazil License Este arquivo está licenciado sob a Licença Creative Commons Atribuição licença 2.5 Brasil. This photograph was produced by Agência Brasil, a public Brazilian news agency. Their site states: O conteúdo deste site é publicado sob a licença Creative Commons Atribuição 2.5 Brasil (Content of this site is published under the Creative Commons License Attribution 2.5 Brazil)