Quote:It is ready to fund us ten times more than it offered initially as a token of commendation for our efficient fight against this virus. The World Bank has even asked the Healthcare Ministry to share the experience. Meanwhile, the IMF continues to demand from us quarantine measures, isolation, a curfew. This is nonsense. We will not dance to anyone's tune.

Quote:Americans have to recognize that the fight against Lukashenko in Belarus is our fight. He is part of the same trend that has ravaged the US, Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Hong Kong, Brazil, Israel, Egypt, the Philippines, Zimbabwe, and others. We need sustained solidarity in response.

Quote:The world is shocked by images and reports exposing police using brutal violence against peaceful protestors as the Belarusian authorities wage a vicious crackdown on their own citizens. Sign the petition demanding that the police violence ends now.
Right now, thousands of ordinary Belarusian people have taken to the streets across the country to protest what they see as a rigged presidential election, after the incumbent Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s claimed a landslide victory on 9 August.

Quote:President Aleksandr Lukashenko was elected to office in 1994, and since that time his government has been authoritarian. The Belarusian government has cracked down on opposition leaders and movements, and abused civil rights to freedom of assembly and association.

Quote:This report is a wake-up call. The US food system as it stands is adversely affecting our environment, our health, and our society.
The U.S. food system’s current set-up has led to costly impacts on the health of people, society, and the planet. Global warming, reduced biodiversity, water and air pollution, food waste, and the high incidence of diet-related illnesses are key unintended consequences of the current production system.

Quote:In many ways, Covid-19 has boiled over long-simmering problems plaguing America’s food system. What began as a public health crisis fueled an economic crisis, leaving 33 percent of families unable to afford the amount or quality of food they want. School closures put 30 million students at risk of losing the meals they need to learn and thrive.
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Now schools like his are facing major financial and operational challenges as they approach an unprecedented school year in which even more students will need school meals.
Against this backdrop of both challenge and heroism, The Rockefeller Foundation sought out diverse perspectives on what this pandemic has revealed about the U.S. food system and how we can collectively meet this moment.
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Our food system touches everyone and everything, and no one should be satisfied with the status quo. Whether you care most about child hunger or workforce protections, family farmers or fair wages, market efficiencies or racial equity, climate change or national security–all of us should be fighting for a food system that’s sustainable, nourishing, equitable, and just.
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With 40 percent of Americans unable to access $400 even in times of emergency,5 there was an explosion in nutrition insecurity in states and neighborhoods across the country. Grace, a food bank in Summit, New Jersey, was soon feeding 515 families compared to 100 a month earlier. Demand at Feeding South Florida, the largest food bank in that agriculturally rich state, soared 600 percent.6 Navajo County, Arizona, is projected to have a nutrition insecurity rate of 26.2 percent.
Every measure of child hunger rose to levels not seen in decades. In April, the U.S. Census found that a third of households with children couldn’t afford to buy the amount or quality of food they wanted,8 a number that continues to hover around 28 percent. In 16.5 percent of households with children, parents are directly reporting that their children are not getting enough food—meaning that nearly 14 million children are going hungry on a regular basis.
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Poor nutrition—driven by many factors, including lack of access to healthy food, insufficient incomes to afford high-quality diets, and targeted marketing of unhealthy food—is now the leading cause of poor health in the United States.
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Apply true cost accounting—the consideration of not only immediate and direct costs, but also extended and indirect costs—in policy, legislative, and programmatic decision-making, and in public messaging;
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Direct the purchasing power of large institutions along a values-based (equitable, ethical, sustainable) supply chain by incentivizing, requiring, or otherwise enabling institutions’ food procurement to prioritize producers and suppliers that embody these values.
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We also need to invest in hard infrastructure such as regional food hubs; cold chain, mid-scale meat processing facilities; and other aggregation and distribution facilities.
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True cost accounting” considers not just immediate and direct costs, but also extended or indirect costs (e.g., to human health, to the environment).
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the Covid-19 crisis illustrated a clear need for a single executive office responsible for better coordination across government agencies and levels, as well as with community organizations that people know and trust.
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A 2015 study by McKinsey found that agriculture was the least digitized sector in the United States.58 The data landscape of the food system remains complex and highly fragmented, with large concentrations of data from large farms and consolidated private supply chain industries, but little transparency of where food, or need, exists up and down the chain.

Quote:When Bill Gates forced his devilish ‘rescue’ technologies on Indian farmers, the only one to benefit was Gates and his multinational partners. He gave money to the government and a company called Digital Green and made extravagant promises to digitally transform Indian agriculture. Then with the cooperation of his purchased government officials.

Bill Gates put cameras and electronic sensors in the homes and fields of Indian farmers. He used their cell phones, which he gave them for free, and his fiber optic and 5G installations — which he persuaded the Indian Telecom Company to finance — to catalog, study, and steal farmers’ crop data, indigenous practices, and agricultural knowledge for free. Then he sold it back to them as new data. Instead of digitally transforming farms as he promised, he transformed Indian farmers into digital information. He privatized their seeds and harvested the work of the public system. He ripped out their knowledge assets and heirloom genetics, and installed GMO seeds and other ridiculous practices.” Shiva adds, “His clear agenda was to drive small farmers from the land and eventually mechanize and privatize food production."

(11-08-2020, 03:10 PM)Firestarter Wrote: The same Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that plays a huge role in orchestrating the COVID-19 “pandemic”, is financing the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to destroy food production, as obviously they don’t want Africa to eat (“sustainable” agriculture sounds so much better than genocide!)…