In a response to UN General Secretary Ban Ki -Moon's call for more money from the international community to combat the global criss caused by soaring food prices President George W Bush has pledged $770m in international food aid to help ease the effects of runaway food prices that have sparked riots in some countries.
The sum offered is just above the $755m Mr Ban called for to plug a funding gap for the World Food Program this year , so its a generous offer, however critics have pointed out that the money wont be available until October when it is actually needed now and that Bush is not really tackling the problem as he has also announced further subsidies and more land to be dedicated to the growing of food and feed crops for biofuel production , a process the UN sees as massively contributing to the global food crisis while the Bush administration merely regards it as a minor contributory factor. Currently, 25%, of corn production in the US is for biofuel production and because of world grain lows, farmers and politicians alike, are hoping the US midwest is not going to be exposed to drought over the summer.
Mr Ban said the world currently faced "widespread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale" because of soaring food prices' but with a rising population and waking China and India competing with the biofuel industry to feed better quality food to their new emerging middle classes its very likely that the world will continue to face hunger , malnutrition and social unrest ' on a global scale, only as the norm.
Adding to the onslought of environmental disasters we seem bent on inflicting on the planet and ourselves Reuters reports today two additional concerns , a forecast of arctic sea ice shrinking to a record low again in 2008 due to global warming with ice lossage the size of Texas and California combined and news that Siberia's Lake Baikal , the worlds largest lake, warmed faster than global air temperatures over the past 60 years,
The lake has warmed 1.21 degrees Celsius (2.18 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1946 due to climate change, almost three times faster than global air temperatures, according to a paper by the scientists to be published next month in the journal "Global Change Biology."
Polar bears in the arctic are already being pressured by the shrinking ice shelves and the fate of the freshwater seal, unique to Lake Baikal also hangs in the balance as the warming of the lake is melting the ice caves and formations it breeds its pups in exposing them for the first time to land based predators and birds.
But there is another concern , commercial interests moving in to industrially exploit the fall out from global warming, greater access to the arctic and its oil and other resources brought about by the retreating ice. The US, Russia, Canada and Denmark are already squaring up to each other in the arctic anxious to stake claims in what is clearly going to be the 21st century's new Klondyke region as global warming opens up the region for a free for all.
The Earth is tired and I dont think we are going to take any notice until the sea and temperature rises force us too by which time it will be too late.
A grey haired troll like woman sits on the step outside the intermediate ward entrance demanding money , cigarettes and a man She's in the secure facility next door but they let her stray As they know if they forget her she'll break back in Her fingers are yellowy brown, she's been burnt by life She confides to visitors she can no longer piss The ward staff eventually relent and hand her some bread The meds clearly arent working She's still way too conscious And once she finishes eating she outlines her list of demands again Then spits on the ground and tells everyone to fuck off Politely. The young gay guy at the fence recently found out he has AIDS He's on the ward for taking an overdose He's on a voluntary section When he arrived he wanted to be here
Now he's not so sure there's any reason to be He and his lover dress up for the review They look like they have plans to flee The unit's psychiatrist has other plans He compulsorily sections the man for his own safety
There's no escaping life here either Alone or otherwise It's fucking prosecuted relentlessly In the asylum only the life affirming have the key to the cage It's a dull closed universe of compliance Designed to crush those with even a glint of striped rebellion left in their eyes As proof the broken tygers trudge cosmic patterns around the exercise yard Erratically clawing at old foes and festering hopes
A little African woman girl
Skips along playing with the dolls in her own head
Personalties dimly clash and interact
The depressives tread deep blue water
Standing apart the blonde ward nurse sternly counts her charges Using the fingers of both hands
In the sunlight Her ' What Would Jesus Do? ' bracelet sparkles
Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered the hallucinogenic drug LSD, or Acid, has died of a heart attack at his home in Basel at the age of 102.
Mr Hofmann first produced LSD in 1938 while researching the medicinal uses of a crop fungus.
He accidentally ingested some of the drug and said later: "Everything I saw was distorted as in a warped mirror". For some reason Hoffmann thought the drug would be useful for people with mental health problems as if they didnt have enough problems already.
Not to be confused with 60's activist Abbot ' Abbie ' Hoffmann who was bi polar , busted for dealing drugs rather than inventing them and committed suicide in 1989.
"What's exciting is that people are building new social systems, new systems of review, new systems of governance . My hope is that those will produce... new ways of working together effectively and fairly which we can use globally to manage ourselves as a planet."
Tim Berners Lee on 15th anniversary of release of web code into public domain by CERN
It's ancient and darkly alive This Interfabrique Shaping thoughts Into beautiful conforming patterns and spirals Of chaotic obedience In monochrome blue But Governance you say? By whom ? For what? The hooded thuggees of existence? Or the jugganaut of all anihilating progress? Bent on the conquest of time
A National Well Being Measure undertaken by Healthways and Gallup found that most Americans are struggling .
When asked to rate their lives on a ladder scale, 47% of the 100,000 respondents polled since January 2008 said they were struggling and a further 4% said they were suffering . Contributing factors included negative workplace environments, and difficulty making positive decisions about modifiable health behaviours like diet, exercise and stress.
“In general, we find that misfortunes tend to reinforce each other,” said Daniel Kahneman, Ph. D., Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School Senior Scholar, Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Nobel Laureate, Economics 2002. “In addition to physical pain, illness also increases feelings of stress, sadness and worries about money, and lowers energy. These consequences of illness are buffered or mitigated to some extent by the availability of health insurance, by higher income, by being married and by social contact with others. We are discovering that different aspects of life determine people's judgments and their emotions, and we expect this survey to provide a much richer picture of the feelings of the American citizenry than has ever been available.”
I suspect money problems and the economy play a much bigger part in the degree to which people are struggling but these surveys are not produced by ragged trousered philanthropists, Healthways has a vested interest in talking up the health rather than economic aspect of the national malaise as its a provider of Health and Care Support solutions to , quote ' help millions of people maintain or improve their health 'unquote, so describing workplaces and potential paying customers as unhealthy makes a lot more sense than blaming the economy and the lack of spiritual vision Americans have about where they and Americaare going.
George Bush certainly has a myopic material vision of where America should be going as he rounded on Congress today accusing his detractors of adding to the nations pain through blocking capacity for producing and refining more oil , including blocking opening up an Alaskan Wildlife Reserve for oil drilling.
In California today a Judge hearing a case brought by three environmental groups ruled that the the Bush administration has 16 days to decide whether polar bears are now an endangered species because of climate change
The US court found in favour of the three environmental groups that sued to protect polar bears threatened by melting sea ice, rejecting a plea by the government to postpone its decision until June 30.
An agency of the US interior department was supposed to have ruled by January 9 on whether to designate the polar bear an endangered species. But the agency failed to act, angering green activists who attributed the delay to the Bush administration's sale of oil and gas drilling leases near polar bear habitats in Alaska.
The California judge Claudia Wilken, ruled that the administration presented "no specific facts that would justify the existing delay, much less further delay".
Rising global temperatures have endangered the bears by preventing them from hunting beneath the arctic sea ice. Without sufficient ice for refuge, some of the bears have drowned while others have grown too weak to reproduce.
"These magnificent creatures are in peril, and this administration has no right to walk away from protecting them," Barbara Boxer, Democratic chairwoman of the Senate environment committee, said in a statement on the court decision.
The administration can still decline to list the polar bear as endangered by the May 16 deadline.
It seems to me that we should all be seriously looking to the plight of the polar bear as a means of arriving at a new spiritual awareness of and vision for living on this planet to avoid drowning in a sea of human despair.
feel free to submit artwork , articles and ideas, email us through contacts page the comments system has also been fixed so dont be scared to input and if you have time check out the archives. we could also do with some money if you want to contribute
