Adnan Al-Daini

Pigs, marabou storks and human scavengers compete for food waste
at Dandora dump on the outskirts of Nairobi. (Photo: AlertNet)

"Waste not, want not." - How does the human race measure up to this wise saying when it comes to one of the essentials of life, food?

Not well, it seems. Research by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, reported in the Guardian, found that between 30% and 50% of all the food produced in the world, equivalent to 1.2 to 2bn tonnes, never makes it to a plate and ends up as waste every year. Reasons for this colossal waste are given:

“Unnecessarily strict sell-by dates, buy-one-get-one free and western consumer demand for cosmetically perfect food, along with poor engineering and agricultural practices, inadequate infrastructure and poor storage facilities…In the UK as much as 30% of vegetable crops are not harvested due to their failure to meet retailers' exacting standards on physical appearance, while up to half of the food that is bought in Europe and the US is thrown away by consumers.”

A report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimates that per capita food waste in the US and northern Europe is 95-115 kg/year while in sub Saharan Africa and south/south East Asia it is 6-11 kg/year. What a scandalous waste of resources! Lest we forget, the energy needed to produce and distribute this staggering amount of wasted food comes overwhelmingly from burning fossil fuels, with greenhouse gas emissions exacerbating global warming.

More »

Barry Grey

“We’ve only been showing the feeds that authorities are comfortable with.” ― Chris Cuomo, CNN

With the imposition of a state of siege in Boston, a historical threshold has been crossed. For the first time ever, a major American city has been placed under the equivalent of martial law. The already frayed veneer of a stable democracy based on constitutional principles is in shreds.

On Monday, April 15, two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in the city’s center. Three people were killed and over 170 were injured, some seriously. This was a criminal act with tragic consequences. But violence, including acts of mass homicide and disasters resulting in major loss of life, is a regular feature of American society. Even as the events in Boston were unfolding, a factory explosion in Texas, to all appearances linked to safety hazards, took far more lives than the bombs detonated at the end of the marathon.

There is no precedent for the massive mobilization of military, police and intelligence forces carried out April 19 in Boston and its environs, which encompass more than 1 million people. Thousands of heavily armed police and National Guard troops occupied the streets, backed up by machine gun-mounted armored vehicles, Humvees and Black Hawk helicopters. As the WSWS noted, the scene resembled the US occupation of Baghdad.

More »

Pepe Escobar

Private military operatives hired to 'work' the Boston marathon
with black backpacks, radiation detectors, tactical gear. (NN)

The writing is on the (bloody) wall. The final vestiges of the rule of law are disappearing.

The Boston bombing was major blowback. That much is certain. The question is, what level of blowback?

It could have been a covert op gone real bad. It could have been blowback from former ''freedom fighters'' - in this case ethnic Chechens - reconverted into terra-rists. It could have been straight blowback for United States foreign policy targeting Muslims, whether dispatching them to Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib or Bagram, extraordinarily renditioning them, or target assassinating them.

The FBI, predictably, is not admitting any of these three options. It sticks to a convoluted screenplay worthy of those cocaine-fueled Hollywood nights in the 1980s; a couple of bad guys who ''hate our freedoms'' because...they do.

As I've written elsewhere in a sort of preamble for this article, there are inter-galactic holes in the story of the Tsarnaev brothers. Now we also know - via their mother - that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was monitoring elder brother Tamerlan for at least five years. In a subsequent interview to CNN's Piers Morgan, the mother actually talked, significantly, about ''counseling''.

At the same time, the FBI was forced to admit it had in early 2011 accepted a ''foreign government'' (code for Russia) request to take a closer look on Tamerlan. This, apparently, they did - and found nothing terrorist activity-worthy.

So what happened afterwards? Some IQ above 50 in the FBI must have noticed they now had access to a precious Chechen-American asset. So Tamerlan became an FBI informant. They could play him like a fiddle - like so many patsies before.

More »