WFP Working To Bring Urgently-Needed Food To Northern Mali As Food Security Worsens

 BAMAKO – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is urgently working with partner organizations to reach families in northern Mali whose access to food has been reduced by the on-going conflict and is expected to worsen with the oncom...

A U.N. Appeal to Save Syria

After more than two years of conflict and more than 70,000 deaths, including thousands of children. ... After more than five million people have been forced to leave their homes, including over a million refugees living in severely stressed neighboring...

Global Warming to Cause Starvation of Millions in Asia, Africa

London: Millions of people might face starvation by 2050 as a result of extreme temperature globally. A report has warned that people in Africa and Asia could also become destitute as staple more than double in price by 2050 as a result of...

Homeless in the Shadow of High Tech

Bill Moyer investigates the phenomenon of homelessness and poverty in the high tech Mecca, San Jose, California. It turns out to be a good metaphor for the United States as a whole.

Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America from Monsanto to Wal-Mart

Wenonah Hauter, the executive director of Food & Water Watch, joins us to discuss her new book, "Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America." Hauter tackles the corporations behind the meat, vegetables, grains and milk consumed by millions every day -- including some of the most popular organic brands. "Foodopoly" details how a handful of large corporations control the nation's food production in ways that limit how small farms operate and how ordinary people make choices in grocery stores. And in the wake of the recently passed provision dubbed by critics as the "Monsanto Protection Act," Hauter also discusses the new report by Food & Water Watch, "Monsanto: A Corporate Profile." [includes rush transcript. More to come. Check back soon.]

Wealth Inequality in America

A fascinating video on America’s incredibly skewed wealth distribution, with the top 1% owning 40% and the bottom 40% almost nothing: and it’s getting worse over time! h/t WaPo’s Ezra Klein

Income Inequality: 1 Inch to 5 Miles

The average increase in real income reported by the bottom 90 percent of earners in 2011, compared with 1966, if measured at one inch, would extend almost five miles for the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent. More >

Annual Income of Richest 100 People Enough to End Global Poverty 4our Times Over

Leaders must aim to bring down global inequality at least to 1990 levels

An explosion in extreme wealth and income is exacerbating inequality and hindering the world’s ability to tackle poverty, Oxfam warned today in a briefing published ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos next week.

The $240 billion net income in 2012 of the richest 100 billionaires would be enough to make extreme poverty history four times over, according Oxfam’s report ‘The cost of inequality: how wealth and income extremes hurt us all.’ It is calling on world leaders to curb today’s income extremes and commit to reducing inequality to at least 1990 levels.

The richest one per cent has increased its income by 60 per cent in the last 20 years with the financial crisis accelerating rather than slowing the process.

Oxfam warned that extreme wealth and income is not only unethical it is also economically inefficient, politically corrosive, socially divisive and environmentally destructive.

Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director, Oxfam International, said: “We can no longer pretend that the creation of wealth for a few will inevitably benefit the many – too often the reverse is true.

“Concentration of resources in the hands of the top one per cent depresses economic activity and makes life harder for everyone else – particularly those at the bottom of the economic ladder.

“In a world where even basic resources such as land and water are increasingly scarce, we cannot afford to concentrate assets in the hands of a few and leave the many to struggle over what’s left.”

Members of the richest one per cent are estimated to use as much as 10,000 times more carbon than the average US citizen.

Oxfam said world leaders should learn from the present-day success of countries such as Brazil which has grown rapidly while reducing inequality – as well as the historical success such as the United States in the 1930s when President Roosevelt’s New Deal helped bring down inequality and tackle vested interests. Roosevelt famously warned that the “political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality.”

New global deal needed

Hobbs said: “We need a global new deal to reverse decades of increasing inequality. As a first step world leaders should formally commit themselves to reducing inequality to the levels seen in 1990.

“From tax havens to weak employment laws, the richest benefit from a global economic system which is rigged in their favour. It is time our leaders reformed the system so that it works in the interests of the whole of humanity rather than a global elite.”

Closing tax havens – which hold as much as $32 trillion or a third of all global wealth – could yield an additional $189bn in additional tax revenues. In addition to a tax haven crackdown, elements of a global new deal could include:

• a reversal of the trend towards more regressive forms of taxation;
• a global minimum corporation tax rate;
• measures to boost wages compared with returns available to capital;
• increased investment in free public services and safety nets.

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Dreams

Dreams (4:59 min, Haiti, by Romel Jean Pierre, Roberto Gomez (adviser)) 2012 PLURAL+ Global Block Award 2012 PLURAL+ Turkish Cultural Center of New York Friendship Award

Rising Number of Haitians Going Hungry after Hurricane – U.N.

BOGOTA (AlertNet) - Around 1.5 million Haitians are going hungry because devastating floods caused by Hurricane Sandy washed away food crops and harvests and destroyed swathes of agricultural land, the United Nations said on Monday as it appealed for a...