WEEKLY WATCH number 140 (8/9/2005) | |
from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor Dear all: As well as having catastrophic consequences for the appallingly neglected people of New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina has implications for the GM seeds trade, the US economy and the US media (AMERICA). Don't miss an important CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ + POVERTY AND HUNGER IN NEW ORLEANS AND AFRICA All the leading development charities in the UK agree that hunger is a problem caused by inequality, lack of food sovereignty and the maldistribution of food and that GM crops are therefore not relevant to preventing hunger. They wrote jointly to Tony Blair to tell him not to use this fraudulent argument to promote GM crops. Food experts around the world share this view as do the food and farming organisations representing small and family farmers in the Third World. America likes to believe that it is the breadbasket of the world; in fact since the introduction of GM crops it has become a net importer of food. As it is becoming increasingly clear that it is unable to feed its own poor adequately, it is time the rest of the world started rejecting its misguided strategy for feeding the world and the dishonest economic ideology upon which it is based. + TAKE ACTION TO HELP THOSE AFFECTED BY HURRICANE KATRINA Comment by GM WATCH's Jonathan Matthews: "While the hurricane's wind and rain caused relatively little damage to the nation's biggest crops, it has shut down grain-exporting ports around New Orleans for an indefinite period, depressing prices that Midwest farmers are fetching for corn, wheat and soybeans." + WHY HURRICANE KATRINA MAY HAVE SAVED THE U.S. MEDIA EXCERPT FROM THE BBC PIECE: But last week the complacency stopped, and the moral indignation against inadequate government began to flow, from slick anchors who spend most of their time glued to desks in New York and Washington. The most spectacular example came last Friday night on Fox News, the cable network that has become the darling of the Republican heartland. This highly successful Murdoch-owned station sets itself up in opposition to the "mainstream liberal media elite". But with the sick and the dying forced to sit in their own excrement behind him in New Orleans, its early-evening anchor Shepard Smith declared civil war against the studio-driven notion that the biggest problem was still stopping the looters. On other networks like NBC, CNN and ABC it was the authority figures, who are so used to an easy ride at press conferences, that felt the full force of reporters finally determined to ditch the deference. As the heads of the Homeland Security department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) appeared for network interviews, their defensive remarks about where aid was arriving to, and when, were exposed immediately as either downright lies or breath-taking ignorance. + GM SOYA DISASTER IN LATIN AMERICA |