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Pakistan: Soup Kitchens Spring Up to Stave Off Growing Hunger

Zofeen Ebrahim
IPS News
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:48 EST

© Credit:Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS
A bowl of curry and two rotis (unleavened wheat bread) in this child’s should tide him over to the next meal.

Karachi - Until meager resources began dwindling to almost nothing, 43-year-old Firdaus Begum had not ventured into the Khana Ghar (Food House), which serves up inexpensive but filling meals.

Not too long ago, she finally stepped into the 'tandoor' (clay oven where unleavened wheat bread is baked) restaurant and bought meals priced so low they are practically giveaways. She could not have been more grateful to Perween Saeed for her soup kitchen - where food is offered at a very low price.

Saeed - a small, energetic woman now approaching her 50s - has been running her first 'tandoor' center in Taiser Town's Khuda Ki Basti-3, located some 30 kilometers from the center of Karachi, for the past six years. She offers meals comprising a bowl or plate of curry or vegetables - depending on what is on the menu on any given day - and two 'rotis' (unleavened wheat bread). All these for the price of three Pakistani rupees (less than one U.S. cent).

Press TV
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:48 EST

© Unknown
Protestors shout slogans during a rally against the visit of Israel's President Shimon Peres to Argentina outside the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, November 16, 2009.

Thousands of anti-Israel demonstrators gathered in the square opposite the Argentinean parliament in Buenos Aires to protest President Shimon Peres' visit to Argentina.

"It's a disgrace that the president of our country is meeting today with the child-murderer, Shimon Peres... There are thousands of people who came here today to protest against the hospitality shown to a representative of an occupying and oppressive government," one of the protestors said.

The protestors carried pictures and placards glorifying Hezbollah Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, and the Leader of Iran's Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

The signs read "Get out of Argentina, murderer Shimon Peres", while others said "Death to Zionist-fascist Israel, officer of American imperialism in the Middle East, murderers of the Palestinian people!" the signs also included pictures of Palestinian children killed during Israel's Operation Cast Lead at the beginning of the year.

Jocelyn Uy, Julie Alipala & Jeoffrey Maitem
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:41 EST

© RAFFY LERMA
Fr. Michael Sinnott, the Irish missionary freed from a "previously unknown terrorist group" in the Philippines [CIA]

Irish missionary Fr. Michael Sinnott Thursday cleared the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) of involvement in his abduction, saying a "lost command" and the "original lumad" (indigenous people) of Mindanao were responsible.

"[My abductors] are not the MILF ... They want it to be known that they are the original lumad of Mindanao who lost their homeland and everything else when the merchants came in," said Sinnott, who was freed early Thursday after 31 days as a captive.

Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno agreed on Wednesday to let the MILF facilitate Sinnott's release, according to Press Secretary Cerge Remonde.

Puno had earlier accused the MILF of involvement in the kidnapping.

Sought for comment on Sinnott's statement that his captors were not members of the MILF, Puno said through Assistant Interior Secretary Brian Yamsuan: "I stand by my previous statements.

Neeta Lal
IPS News
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:57 EST

© Credit:Salaam Balak Trust
Indian government’s mid-day meal scheme for marginalized children has not yielded the desired fruit.

New Dehli - Here is a sobering thought on the eve of Children's Day celebrated across India on November 14. Despite the country's impressive economic growth trajectory and growing geopolitical heft, the benefits of that prosperity are not percolating down to its children who constitute a size able 30 percent of the country's 1.2 billion population.

Hence, 6,000 children die in India every day - a shocking 3,000 due to malnutrition - which Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh recently described as a "national shame". India also hosts a third of the world's child brides, according to the United Nations Children's Fund report, released in October, Progress for Children: A Report Card on Child Protection.

Farmers Not Invited to Food Summit ?

Sabina Zaccaro
IPS News
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:46 EST

Rome - World farmers are not part of the official delegations at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) food summit on food security that opened here Monday. But they came anyhow to express their views, since, they say, it is their communities that are most impacted by the food crisis.

Small-scale producers from the Amazonian rain forest, from Africa, the Pacific islands and the Himalayas gathered in Rome for the Peoples' Food Sovereignty Forum (Nov. 13-17), held in parallel to the FAO meetings, to discuss the serious effects of the crisis in their communities.

Judy Rebick
Rabble.ca
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:17 EST

On December 6, Bolivia will hold a general election where Evo Morales, the first Indigenous President in South America will no doubt be re-elected. His party, the MAS, has recently released an election programme that Susan Harvie has kindly summarized and translated. Bolivia is reinventing democractic socialism. They are in the process of creating a plurinational state with equal rights for all nations and people, redistributing land, providing free health and education for everyone, creating what they call a pluri-economy that includes public, private, co-operative and communitarian. In four years of power they have eliminated illiteracy, reduced extreme poverty by 6%, insituted a senior's pension for the first time, nationalized hydrocarbons and achieved a 6.5% economic growth. They are showing that a government that acts in the interests of the majority really can succeed and that an alternative is truly possible. The full list of achievements and election platform for the next four years is below:

John Pilger
NewStatesman
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:11 EST

When General Suharto, the west's man, seized power in Indonesia in the mid-1960s, he offered "a gleam of light in Asia", rejoiced Time magazine. That he had killed up to a million "communists" was of no account in the acquisition of what Richard Nixon called "the richest hoard of natural resources, the greatest prize in South-east Asia".

In November 1967, the booty was handed out at an extraordinary conference in a lakeside hotel in Geneva. The participants included the most powerful capitalists in the world, the likes of David Rockefeller, and senior executives of the major oil companies and banks, General Motors, British American Tobacco, Imperial Chemical Industries, American Express, Siemens, Goodyear, US Steel. The president of Time Incorporated, James Linen, opened the proceedings with this prophetic description of globalisation: "We are trying to create a new climate in which private enterprise and developing countries work together for the greater profit of the free world. The world of international enterprise is more than governments . . . It is a seamless web, which has been shaping the global environment at revolutionary speed."

Xinhua
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:00 EST

Yemeni tribesmen have kidnapped a Japanese engineer who serves the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) northeast of the capital Sanaa, a provincial official said on Monday.

The official told Xinhua that Yemeni tribesmen had kidnapped a Japanese engineer in the Arhab district which is located about 60 km northeast of Sanaa.

A source at the Japanese embassy told Xinhua that "the kidnapping incident occurred when the engineer was on a working visit to one of the projects financed by JICA"

The official, who asked not to be named said "negotiations are underway with the kidnappers to release the Japanese architect" and predicted it could be released in the near future.

"They (the kidnappers) want their relatives jailed (in Yemen) to be released," the official said.

Brian Smith and Ann Talbot
World Socialist Website
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:10 EST

The ministerial Forum on China-Africa Cooperation met in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, last week, attended by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and representatives of more than 300 Chinese companies. Wen took the opportunity to chide the US for its large budget deficit.

He made it clear that China intended to press ahead with its programme of investment in Africa despite American opposition. He pledged $10 billion (£6bn) in concessional loans - loans with lower interest rates and longer repayment periods than standard loans - to Africa over the next three years. His offer was warmly welcomed by African ministers.

Within days of the conference closing, the US responded. The International Monetary Fund threatened to cut off lines of credit to the Democratic Republic of Congo if it did not scale back a Chinese investment plan. The IMF, a body dominated by the US, showed that it is quite prepared to plunge this war-torn and impoverished African country into financial isolation, a fate that has already befallen Zimbabwe, with disastrous consequences for the mass of the population.

Rod McGuirk and Jill Lawless
The Associated Press
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:08 EST

poor British children sent to British colonies

© Associated Press
Oct. 6 1950 b/w file photo of 10 year old twins Brian Thomas Sullivan (left) and Kevin James Sullivan from Islington, London, who carry their luggage to the boat train 'Rangitoto' as they leave Liverpool Street station in London bound for Auckland, New Zealand.

Canberra, Australia - Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a historic apology Monday to thousands of impoverished British children shipped to Australia with the promise of a better life, only to suffer abuse and neglect thousands of miles from home.

At a ceremony in the Australian capital of Canberra attended by tearful former child migrants, Rudd apologized for his country's role in the migration and extended condolences to the 7,000 survivors of the program who still live in Australia.

"We are sorry," Rudd said. "Sorry that as children you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where so often you were abused. Sorry for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation and the cold absence of love, of tenderness, of care. Sorry for the tragedy - the absolute tragedy - of childhoods lost."

Comment: Today's Telegraph shares more stories of the abuse and suffering these children had to go through:

Sandra Anker, was sent to Australia when she was six. She described her experience as "one of the crimes of the century".

She told the BBC, "Why I was sent out is beyond me. I don't understand it. I was deprived of my rights as a British citizen and I feel the British government have a lot to answer for.

"I feel really angry about it and feel the British government should compensate us so that we can get back to England and get to be with our families.

"We've suffered all our lives. For the government of England to say sorry to us, it makes it right - even if it's late, it's better than not at all."

Ron Simpson and his sister, from Annisford, Newcastle upon Tyne, were shipped out to Australia in 1938 after his parents, who were very poor, saw an advertisement offering to educate children from poor families.

In a book by David Hill, The Forgotten Children, Simpson recalls his first horrific encounter at the Fairbridge Farm School in Molong, New South Wales.

"I was working in the kitchen when the chef pushed me into the toilet, bolted the door, ripped off my clothes and sodomised me," he said.

Another time, he slept through the bell one morning and was hit with a hockey stick as a punishment. The beating permanently damaged the vertebrae in his spine.

Another 'orphan' was Mary O'Brien, from London's East End, who was 13 when she left England in 1959 for the Fairbridge Farm School with her brother Paddy and sister Myrtle.

Mary stayed in the farm's visitor centre, Gloucester House, where she claims she was abused by one of the men responsible for her care.

"I was expected to clean up for them, serve them and their visitors. It was the most degrading part of my life. They treated me - he [treated me] - like sh**, sexually abused me," she said.

According to the Globe and Mail , Canada won't apologize to British home children. As David Owen says however, one of the children who suffered abuse and his life was sacrificed to the British and Australian economic interests, no apology will heal him.

And at the end of the day, apologies count for naught if not followed by actions that will secure the safety and well-being of children all over the world. As long as the children in Gaza, the West Bank, in Bagdad, in Peshawar, in London, in Paris, the New York, etc, are growing up suffering because of the policies of world politicians, Kevin Rudd's apology or Gordon Brown's or anyone's, will be nothing but a hypocritical performance in front of the cameras.

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