By Zofeen Ebrahim
Saeed—a small, energetic woman now approaching her 50s—has been running her first ‘tandoor’ centre in Taiser Town’s Khuda Ki Basti-3, located some 30 kilometres from the centre 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).
Many of the people in Taiser Town, a fairly new settlement of 95,000 people, were displaced in 2005 when their homes were demolished to make way for the Lyari Expressway in Pakistan’s commercial capital.
Still livid over their displacement, Ashiq Hussain, 55, said he and his neighbors were literally "thrown in the wilderness," where hunger pangs soon gnawed at their poor, starved stomachs.
"I think she has come as a Godsend," said Hussain of Saeed. "I and my family of 10 would not have been able to survive the spiraling food prices without this subsidised food." Since she opened her first tandoor centre, Saeed has set up two others, the second one in Korangi and a third in Usman Goth, just a few kilometres from Taiser Town. Her maiden branch offers food to 150 displaced families. Donations and what little she earns from her food centres enable Saeed to serve two meals daily to about 1,600 people.
CASE STUDY: fighting food multinationals in South America
In the Brazilian town of Santarem, one brave priest is the only thing standing between multi-national grain trader Cargill and the rest of the Amazon
‘In Santarem people started to say, “why is it so much hotter?” I tell people this is not God’s doing; this is happening because of the destruction of the rainforest.’
Father Edilberto Sena arrives at Rural Radio station and takes up his position behind the microphone. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his script for today’s show. One question is scribbled on it for the daily debate: ‘Why is this happening?’
Edilberto is a Roman Catholic priest and a follower of liberation theology - meaning not only does he believe in teaching the word of God, but believes that he has an absolute obligation to fight poverty and bring justice to the poor. So he takes up the microphone each week not to recite afternoon prayers to his 200,000 listeners, but to tell the people of Santarem, Northern Brazil, exactly why they are finding it so hard to grow crops and why the rainforest that once surrounded their city resembles a burnt desert.
Edilberto isn’t just referring to climate change. The Amazon rainforest is being torn down by agribusinesses which use the land to farm soya and export to European livestock farmers, feeding the growing demand for cheap meat. For ten years Father Edilberto has stood at the heart of Santarem’s campaign against the world’s leader in this trade, Cargill.
‘In Santarem people started to say, “why is it so much hotter?” I tell people this is not God’s doing; this is happening because of the destruction of the rainforest.’
Edilberto is a Roman Catholic priest and a follower of liberation theology - meaning not only does he believe in teaching the word of God, but believes that he has an absolute obligation to fight poverty and bring justice to the poor. So he takes up the microphone each week not to recite afternoon prayers to his 200,000 listeners, but to tell the people of Santarem, Northern Brazil, exactly why they are finding it so hard to grow crops and why the rainforest that once surrounded their city resembles a burnt desert.
Edilberto isn’t just referring to climate change. The Amazon rainforest is being torn down by agribusinesses which use the land to farm soya and export to European livestock farmers, feeding the growing demand for cheap meat. For ten years Father Edilberto has stood at the heart of Santarem’s campaign against the world’s leader in this trade, Cargill.
‘In Santarem people started to say, “why is it so much hotter?” I tell people this is not God’s doing; this is happening because of the destruction of the rainforest.’
Organic Consumers Association - Monsanto
about 7,330 from www.organicconsumers.org for monsanto
'The World According to Monsanto' - Exposing One of the Most Evil ...
23 Jun 2008 ... 'The World According to Monsanto' - Exposing One of the Most Evil Corporations on Earth Monsanto is a world leader in industrial agriculture ... www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_13123.cfm - Monsanto Hid PCB Pollution for Decades ANNISTON, Ala. -- On the west side of Anniston, the poor side of Anniston, the people grew berries in their gardens, raised hogs in their back yards, caught bass in the murky streams where their children swam and played and were baptized. They didn't know their dirt and yards and bass and kids -- along with the acrid air they breathed -- were all contaminated with toxic chemicals. They didn't know they lived in one of the most polluted patches of America. Now they know. They also know that for nearly 40 years, while producing the now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents -- many emblazoned with warnings such as "CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy" -- show that for decades, the corporate-giant concealed what it did and what it knew... |
Monsanto Doing 'Rural Cleansing'
11 Jan 2009 ... Monsanto Doing 'Rural Cleansing' TAKE ACTION: Contact your local newspaper in the US or congress people: Investigate Monsanto's antitrust ...
Boycott Kellogg's! Stop Monsanto's GE Sugar
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Bayer Crop Science
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AFGHANISTAN-US: Mission Essential, Translators Expendable
Basir "Steve" Ahmed was returning from a bomb-clearing mission in Khogyani district in northeastern Afghanistan when a suicide bomber blew up an explosive-filled vehicle nearby. The blast flipped the military armoured truck Ahmed was riding in three or four times, and filled it with smoke. The Afghan translator had been accompanying the 927th Engineer Company near the Pakistan border on that October day in 2008 that would forever change his life. A medical evacuation team took the injured men to a U.S. Army hospital at Bagram Base.
Three days later Ahmed regained consciousness, but was suffering from shrapnel wounds in his scalp and severe burns covering his right hand and leg. A little more than three months after his accident, Ahmed was fired by his employer, Mission Essential Personnel (MEP) of Columbus, Ohio - the largest supplier of translators to the U.S. military in Afghanistan. In a statement released to this reporter, the company said that Ahmed’s "military point of contact (POC) informed MEP that Basir was frequently late and did not show up on several occasions. A few days later, Basir’s POC called MEP’s manager and told her that they were not able to use him and requested a new linguist."
Ahmed says he missed only one day of work and arrived late twice.
Today, he lives in hiding in nearby Jalalabad for fear that his family will be targeted because he had worked with the U.S. military. The 29-year-old has no job and had to wait nine months for disability compensation to pay for medical treatment for the burns that still prevent him from lifting his hand to his mouth to feed himself.
Ahmed is one of dozens of local Afghans who have been abandoned or poorly treated by a complex web of U.S. contractors, their insurance companies, and their military counterparts despite years of service risking life and limb to help the U.S. military in the ongoing war in Afghanistan.
two-thirds of those killed before the end of last year were murdered because they collaborated with the U.S.
Salam Aleikum!
| August 12, 2006 |
Civilian Translators in Iraq Thrust Into Combat Roles |
| by Pratap Chatterjee A total of 199 Titan translators have been killed in Iraq and another 491 have been injured, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics – the highest of any company in Iraq. |
"Employees of Titan and other corporations have become part of an experiment in government contracting run largely by trial and error."
U.S. translators, many of whom were born in Iraq, were paid as much as 10 times more than the locals for less work.
"We got paid 750 dollars a month to work with the troops and up to 1,000 dollars if we went on missions outside the city, but they were paid 7,000 dollars to stay at the base and translate documents,"
Iraqi translators fear retribution
Private contractors say shift of power puts them, their families at grave risk
Salam Aleikum!
(Peace to You)
More than six years since the March 2003 invasion of their country, Iraqis are in increasingly more desperate straits. The violence and lack of security have forced more than 4.5 million of Iraq’s population of 25 million to flee their homes and towns to other perceived safer areas within Iraq or to other countries, primarily neighboring Syria and Jordan.
Despite this chaotic environment, tens of thousands of brave and patriotic Iraqis have served vital, indispensable services to U.S. military and civilian employers as interpreters/translators, guides, and drivers, and in other capacities. Because of their work with U.S. employers, many of them, and their families, have been threatened with death, and many have been kidnapped or killed.
We feel it is our obligation to help them find safety. Because the U.S. government has been very slow to recognize and adequately fund this huge humanitarian crisis in Iraq, we are trying to do as much as we can through grass-roots efforts and joining with other support networks to help them find safety and navigate the long process toward resettlement in the United States.
Consequently, we have not had the time to keep this website updated. We hope you will look over our site to find resources, ways to help, and more information about Iraq and its brave and steadfast people.
"Every translator knows of at least one other translator who has been tortured and killed," an Iraqi translator, identified only as Jasim, said. "I'm wanted by Al Qaida, Sunni and Shiite militias, and there's a price on my head. And they want me to hand over my address?"
U.S. Abandons Iraqi Translators to Their Fates While Diminutive Denmark Rescues Its Own
In the wake of Argentina's dramatic economic collapse in 2001, Latin America's most prosperous middle class finds itself in a ghost town of abandoned factories and mass unemployment. The Forja auto plant lies dormant until its former employees take action. They're part of a daring new movement of workers who are occupying bankrupt businesses and creating jobs in the ruins of the failed system.
But Freddy, the president of the new worker's co-operative, and Lalo, the political powerhouse from the Movement of Recovered Companies, know that their success is far from secure. Like every workplace occupation, they have to run the gauntlet of courts, cops and politicians who can either give their project legal protection or violently evict them from the factory.
Was Our Universe Created By a Collision With a Parallel Universe? Two of the World's Leading Physicists Present a Radical Theory
String theorists Neil Turok of Cambridge University and Paul Steinhardt, Albert Einstein Professor in Science and Director of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton believe that the cosmos we see as the Big Bang was actually created by the cyclical trillion-year collision of two universes (which they define as three-dimensional branes plus time) that were attracted toward each other by the leaking of gravity out of one of the universes.
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