Shortages and Hunger on the rise

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In the U.S. and in Europe, pastries and pasta may cost a bit more, an increase that is, so far, mostly absorbed by the consumers in these and similarly wealthy nations. But in Pakistan, Egypt and other countries with large segments of the population living near or below the poverty line, soaring wheat prices have caused shortages, resulting in food riots that may spark political unrest.




With black-marketing and illegal hoarding on the rise in the global wheat trade, the world's poorest people go even hungrier, and fall victim to malnutrition and starvation at an ever increasing rate.

The worldwide wheat crisis is caused by many factors, such as drought in Australia, failed harvests elsewhere due to global warming, steadily rising demand in Asia, unscrupulous market speculation, use of grain to feed cattle, and, most recently, the use of food crops to make biofuels.


Will this lead to what some world leaders call
"a silent tsunami of hunger"?

(Video via Link TV - Sources: ABC News, U.S.; Deutche Welle, Germany; Hechos, El Salvador; Teletrece, Chile; BBC, U.K.; Al Jazeera English, Qatar; South Asia Newsline, India; KBS, Korea.)



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What it is REALLY like

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"I never wonder to see men wicked,
but I often wonder to see them not ashamed",

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), poet and prose satirist,
most famous for his novel 'Gulliver's Travels'

Ever since Americans learned that American soldiers and intelligence agents were torturing prisoners, there has been a disturbing question: How high up did the decision go to ignore United States law, international treaties, the Geneva Conventions and basic morality?

The answer, we have learned recently, is that — with President Bush’s clear knowledge and support — some of the very highest officials in the land not only approved the abuse of prisoners, but participated in the detailed planning of harsh interrogations and helped to create a legal structure to shield from justice those who followed the orders.

We have long known ... that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a list of ways to abuse prisoners. But recent accounts by ABC News and The Associated Press said that all of the president’s top national security advisers at the time participated in creating the interrogation policy: Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Rumsfeld; Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser; Colin Powell, the secretary of state; John Ashcroft, the attorney general; and George Tenet, the director of central intelligence.

"This is a monument to executive supremacy and the imperial presidency," said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School and the Washington College of Law at American University.

Only by fully understanding what Mr. Bush has done over eight years to distort the rule of law and violate civil liberties and human rights can Americans ever hope to repair the damage and ensure it does not happen again.
(via various editorials published by The New York Times on the topic: 'Torture')



[Read about Torture on Wikipedia]


[Related: Fernando Botero and Mark Twain]


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The Showdown

La Nuit de la Vérité

- The Night Of Truth -

An AMALGAMATED PERSPECTIVES Film Pick

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Director: Fanta Régina Nacro; Language: French, Mooré and Dioula, with English subtitles; Running time: 100 minutes




In a fictitious country in sub-saharan Africa, the leader of the ruling "Nayak" people and the leader of the opposition "Bonandés" along with their respective retinue of armed soldiers come together to finalize and celebrate a landmark truce between the two warring tribes. ...

... A huge feast and festive ceremony are prepared to commemorate this occasion. But on the night of this event the atmosphere of fear and mistrust is palpable. A decade of atrocities and slaughter between the enemy camps is hard to lay to rest, good intentions notwithstanding.

In the end, this is the story of a flawed hero tormented by his past crimes, and a mother driven to insanity by an unmitigated desire for revenge, a scenario mimicking the classic Shakespearean tragedies.
The denouement will shock and surprise the viewer.


Read about it at Link TV

This is the award-winning feature debut by one of Africa's most talented female directors, Fanta Régina Nacro, who shaped this plot after the real and factual fate of her own uncle.

"I had long struggles with my cinematographer," Nacro says, "to get him not to look for the perfect shot, the perfect light, the beautifully composed image - because that was not what I needed. What I wanted was the reality of things, to capture the immediacy of things even if they weren't beautiful."


[Warning: This film contains extremely violent and macabre scenes]

UPDATE, MARCH 2012: The entire web seems to have been scrubbed clean of video clips from this film. Do we smell the stench of censorship...?

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Do Something

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AMALGAMATED PERSPECTIVES Editor:

"I am marching in memory of Abdel Khaleq Nasser, Iraqi, male, civilian, husband and father, journalist, age 50, killed by mortar shell on 29 September 2007 in Bab Al Bedh, West Mosul. IBC database file #k7537."

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ImageBites -

- Snapshots borrowed from various photographers and taken on October 27, 2007 at nationwide demonstrations to End the War in Iraq.

(Unable to identify each one by name, AMALGAMATED PERSPECTIVES gives collective credit to all photographers whose work you see here.)

In Philadelphia:


In Salt Lake City:


In San Francisco:


In Chicago:


In Jonesborough TN:


In Orlando:


Everywhere:


Participants by City:

(Note: These are preliminary estimates pending verification. )

Boston 10,000
Chicago 30,000
Jonesborough 400
Los Angeles 18,000
New Orleans 300 (many Katrina survivors)
New York City 45,000
Orlando 3,000
Philadelphia 8,000
Salt Lake City 1,000
San Francisco 30,000
Seattle 7,000



Related article posted on CROSS-CULTURAL OUTLINE

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Chokehold

Feasting on
the flesh and organs
of our fellow mammals?

Time to STOP and THINK

Mammals are warm-blooded, have hair (or fur) and possess a neocortex, a brain region that is involved in higher functions such as sensory perception, and is unique to mammals. Only mammals give birth to live young and have mammary glands to suckle their offspring.
Mammals encompass approximately 5,400 species.
This includes humans.

In nature larger mammals prey on smaller ones for survival.
Humans, however, do not depend on red meat, rare, medium or well-done, as a primary food source.


Swallow this


A disproportionate demand for meat has been instilled and carefully nurtured in the general population by the livestock and meat packing industry which, like the tobacco industry, is using every marketing ploy and behavior manipulation trick in the book to make us consume their products and by-products in ever greater quantities. In collusion with the powerful fast food industry they exert an inescapable dominance over all other producers of foodstuffs and have us in a literal chokehold, targeting especially children.

Do we really need a regular intake of prime rib, steak, hamburger, pork chops, bacon, leg of lamb, venison etc.?

The answer is a resounding "No!"

In fact, consumption of beef and pork carries with it a bombardment of artery-clogging grease, secondhand steroids and growth hormones (used to fatten the animals prior to slaughtering) and residual antibiotics (used to control the spread of disease in feedlots and pigpens).
These contaminants seriously compromise our health and well-being.

Anyone who has bothered to find out about the brutal efficiency of 'factory farms', slaughterhouses and meat processing plants will think twice before biting into that 'juicy' hamburger patty.

Just for argument's sakeAsk yourself:
Would you raise, fatten up, slaughter, butcher, roast and eat a dog? Of course not.

Turns out that in our society dogs are the 'holy cows' while cows are a strictly utilitarian commodity...

Mammalian Hybrids of the Future

Add genetic experimentation to the food chain equation and you arrive at a nightmarish visualization like the one depicted below. As we are herded down the perilous road of corporate greed spawning mad science the question of 'Who eats What' may soon turn into a

WHO eats WHO



[See also: Harvesting the corpses of human beings in the name of Science]

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Animating the Animator

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Chris Landreth pays tribute to the life and legacy of Ryan Larkin in a brilliant visual masterpiece of animation art.



Chris Landreth (born 1961 in Hartford, CT), an American director, animator and writer working in Canada, uses standard CGI animation in his work. But well beyond that, he often puts his signature touch of surrealist styling into his animated shorts. He does so especially successfully in Ryan, a 2004 Oscar winning animated psychological documentary of Ryan Larkin (1943-2007), featuring actual taped interviews as voiceover.

Chris calls his stunning and unembellished visual portraiture 'Psychorealism'.

Ryan Larkin was a renowned animator in the 60s and 70s, who had gotten caught up in a downward spiral of excessive drinking, cocaine abuse, and homelessness which eventually lead to his death in February 2007 at age 64.


When asked how he came up with the idea for Ryan, Landreth said,

"I met Ryan Larkin in the summer of 2000. I hung out with him for one week and thought, "What a life story this guy has". It has all the elements of drama. It's got tragedy, comedy, absurdity, [and] this redemptive element. And there are some other themes as a result of it that are about Ryan, but also about alcoholism, addiction, mental illness and fear of failure."

[Must see: Hollow Man on CROSS-CULTURAL OUTLINE]


[For a different kind of animation: click here]


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Deliciously Dysfunctional Tryst

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If a love story is called for, Angel Eyes delivers romance and drama wrapped up in mystery and suspense.

A Film Critique by The Commentator

The 2001 drama/romance Angel Eyes, directed by Mexican-born Luis Mandoki and starring Jennifer Lopez and James Caviezel, exhibits the finer side of main-stream "commercial" movie making by resisting the sell-out of shallowness and predictability . The main characters are well crafted and well developed in the course of the film and reveal depth of emotion and convincing inner conflict. The subtle plot clues are achieved by using points of view and camera angles and nothing is given away until the final denouement.

For a script that relies heavily on an undercurrent of mysterious off-screen events and early psychological trauma as the foundation and validation of the plot, Angel Eyes is exceptionally well laid out and right on target.


About the actress

Jennifer Lynn Lopez (born to Puerto Rican parents in 1969 in the Bronx, N.Y.), is a Hispanic American actress, singer, songwriter and business entrepreneur.
Lopez's childhood friends nicknamed her "The Supernova," and her first husband, Cuban Ojani Noa, called her "La Guitarra". This first marriage lasted barely a year. In 2001 she married actor and choreographer Cris Judd (divorced in 2003) and is currently married to the popular Salsa and Latin pop star Marc Anthony (2004–present).



[For details about plot and cast go to Angel Eyes]



[Read a review of a film from a completely different genre]



:: Have you seen this movie? Please comment ::

Follow your Bliss

"Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music -
the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people,"

Henry Miller (1891 - 1980), American writer, perhaps best know for his novel Tropic of Cancer, published in 1934

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Following his bliss:

Myron Michael Hardy aka Money the Mystro
29 year-old poet, emcee and hip hop artist


-:- TAKE -:-
A
.......L I S T E N.......

(Instructions: Clicking on the link 'LISTEN 'will start up a music player in a new window. Click on a track. To stop the music, close player window.)

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[See related: The reason for Poetry]

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