It's a scary world

When you read things like this:
During the debate about the entry of the global seed organization Cargill into India in 1992, a Cargill executive stated, "We bring Indian farmers smart technologies, which prevent bees from usurping the pollen." During the United Nations Biosafety Negotiations, Monsanto circulated literature that claimed that "weeds steal sunshine." A worldview that defines pollination as "theft by bees" and claims that diverse plants "steal" sunshine is one aimed at stealing nature's harvest, by replacing open, pollinated varieties with hybrids and sterile seeds, and destroying biodiverse flora with herbicides.

Vandana Shiva
"Worldview of Abundance"
in Food & Faith

Wanna own your own slave?

The Chicago Sun-Times columnist, Cathleen Falsani, points out that it's more than 165 years since slavery was made illegal in the USA.

It's sixty years since the United Nationas declared, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that: "No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms."

Yet in 2008 there are more slaves in the world than were taken during 400 years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, according to the documentary film, Call + Response. This film is a combination of music focusing on slavery, and images of people who are suffering in slavery around the world.

Of the 27 million slaves worldwide, half are children and 80 percent are female.
Some more stats:

• • Slave traders made $32 billion last year.

• • The average cost of a slave is $90.

• • More than one-third of all prostitutes in South and East Asia are children.

• • More than 17,500 people are trafficked as slaves to the U.S. each year.

• • Fifty percent of slaves in the U.S. work in agriculture, manufacturing or domestic work.

For more information go to the Call and Response website. A question worth asking: how many slaves are there in New Zealand?