Food for Thought 4

- The number of homes repossessed by banks in Toronto rose 44% from March 2008 to this March.
- Further afield, the star economy of the neo-cons, Ireland, has crashed and burned further and faster than any European economy, posting the biggest drop in GDP of any industrialized nation since the Great Depression. The C.D. Howe and Fraser Institutes praised Ireland in 2003 for aggressive tax reduction that `yielded enormous benefits'. Prosperity was founded on low-cost labour, an advantage it soon lost. (Toronto Star, 3/May/09).
- On the health front, the good news is that the swine flu has disappeared. Unfortunately, it reappeared as H1N1, renamed by the World Health Organization in deference to the pork industry. Rick Arnold of Common Frontiers calls it NAFTA flu and argues multi nationals are getting away with dire conditions not allowed north of the Mexican border. The first case occurred near the hog farms of US giant Smithfield Farms ($12 billion annual sales). In the US, Smithfield was fined $12.6 million in 1997 for dumping raw sewage into a river. Do you see a pattern here?
- Fast food companies are adding vitamins to their food so they can advertise them as healthy eating. So French fries cooked in trans fat but containing vitamin C are healthy. Will these guys ever quit trying to circumvent good practices in the name of profit? No, and we can't expect them to do so while the profit system is in tact.
- Similarly, the Canadian government is getting worried as California passed a climate change bill with a low carbon fuel standard, and other states may follow. After failing to influence Arnold Schwarzenegger, claiming that targeting the oil sands would divert money to oil rich countries that fund terrorism and threaten our security (as if the US would fall for that one – they made it up in the first place!), our government has started an intense education program for our top diplomats so that they will be able to present Canada as a clean energy super power. That's the dirtiest project on earth we are talking about!
- Michelle Obama showed support for the poor by showing up at a Washington food bank wearing sneakers, $540 sneakers by the Paris house of Lanvin! The fact that people were lining up to receive handouts while she was able to spend that kind of money on casual shoes was apparently lost on her. She should have thrown the shoes to the crowd. One shoe would have fed a family for a month. Hell, a lace would have fed them for a week!
John Ayers