In the Event of War, Trash Downtown!

Can someone modify / update this and repost?

I think it has been revealed who created them.

They're the best posters SF has ever seen.

And the difference is that now, a lot more people REALLY don't want this war (aside from the emperor becoming more exposed by the moment) - even in Marin, a lot of cars already have the no war in Iraq stickers on them.

Yes, in the event of bombing, drop your sign and candles, please, and take action, whatever it may be.

this is one American action some of the Canadian public will stand beside! If our government doesn't condemn yours on the day of war, TORONTO BURNS!!!!!!

Are you an FBI agent? In the past those advocating violence in social action groups have been agitators from the FBI.

Dream on, you sad, deluded fools.

normally I wouldn't advocate property damage (which is not violence by the way, its vandalism - you can only inflict violence on a living thing)

However a war in Iraq needs to be met with a strong show of resentment. I don't advocate it for something like the globalism issue. This is alot different. Millions of innocent people might be killed. We need to draw media attention and property damage undoubtedly does so. While it stigmatizes the resistance to some degree and makes them a target for demonization, it is pretty hard to compare smashing windows with smashing cities. Its much easier to demonize those who damage property at events such as occurred in Seattle. For that reason I feel vandalism would be a tactical error in such situations.
But when you are talking about millions of people being killed its alot harder to demonize the resistance. Its difficult for people to understand the globalization issue; its not as hard for them to comprehend war.

Anyone who wants to riot in downtown SF ought to be met with an anti-riot peace protest. What kind of idiot thinks targeting a music store is going to stop a war in Iraq anyway? To me, it sounds like a group of people who feed of violence and anger are behind this.

If the skinheads want to bust up the joint, let 'em do their own dirty work -- and let the cops use their billyclubs to restore order.

I would encourage people to respect their neighbors person, livlihood and property. It seems to me that peace and justice must begin with one's neighbor if those goals or concepts are to have any meaning at all. PEACE.

I would encourage people to respect their neighbors person, livlihood and property. It seems to me that peace and justice must begin with one's neighbor if those goals or concepts are to have any meaning at all. PEACE.

I would not stand by anyone damaging a private individual's property. But corporations which profit from the war are legitimate targets. After all they will make more than enough money off the orgy of death to recoup any losses caused by a small amount of spray paint or a broken window. Vandalism against private individuals is very bad, it is an action against the common individual, so I condem it. Not so for the guilty parties.

These are unstable and difficult times and we should recall how fragile people are. I encourage everyone to respect their neighbor's person, livlihood and property as they would their own. I do not believe that violence and vandalism against our neighbors can serve any good purpose at all. In a world poised on the brink of war now is the time to practice peace and respect for our neighbors. That is, I think we must live according to our highest ideals and not our baser ones. Let peace begin with each of us.

what would you say to victims of Nazi aggression in WW2? "oh hey mellow out you French resistance folks, be peaceful come on, stop blowing up those factories"

Sometimes actions speak louder than words

well put.

Sam - take a look at the Earth Summit (Green Peace has a good 'reportcard' on their site). Take a look at the latest military lasers being developed to use from space. Take a look at the lastest pharmacological agents being developed for use against civilians in riot situations. Take a look at the number of deaths per minute from AIDS in Africa . . . . then take a look at some US corporate profits and the links of the Bush-bin Laden - Carlyle crap. Cheney is not a millionaire. He is a billionaire.

This is all criminal, so please stop trying to control anarchists for reacting in the way that they need to. You have your own job to do holding candles all day and night, or endlessly petitioning your congress person who won't give you the time of day.

What a brillliant comparison -- a war in Iraq against Sadam Hussein is the same as Hitler's French invasion and the tens of thousands of French citizens sent to concentration camps. Bravo!

Why is it that Nazis want to make everyone else look like a Nazi? Might be their new trick -- groups like Zionists, Yuppies, Republicans, Business people, etc., will be backed into the shameful label, one by one, thereby de-sensitizing the public to the term's truly horrific meaning. Eventually a vague new meaning akin to "conservative" will emerged, thereby affecting makingan image make-over for white supremacists. By then, being called a "Nazi" will have lost its stigma and may even become a badge of honor.

The only people who deserve being labeled a Nazi are Nazis themselves.

<<But corporations which profit from the war are legitimate targets.>>

How are Nike, Virgin, and Gap profiting from the war?

the comparison is off by degrees but I that wasn't the intention anyway. It was merely to say that at times property damage as an act of resistance is warranted. Certainly when millions of lives are at stake, a few broken machines, a smashed window, scratched paint or graffitti are pretty much small potatoes compared to the waste of so many human lives.

aslo, French casualties in WW2 were about 500 000. But already more than 1 000 000 Iraqis have died as result of sanctions, in Desert Storm 400 000 died in a much shorter period of time than WW2. It is expected that casualties in any coming war will be MUCH higher likely in the millions. So yes it is certainly valid to compare the human tragedy of the invasion of France with the human tragedy of the invasion of Iraq.

"How are Nike, Virgin, and Gap profiting from the war?"

You're not a homeowner, are you? And I'm guessing your salary isn't above 200k.

You'd understand what the above means if it were.

And even if it's not, you really should know better.

Only one man is to blaime for the deaths of one million Iraqis:Saddam Hussien
He was asked to leave Kuwait peacfully and he choose to stay there even when 33 nations told him to leave.That war was his fault but you people don't want to believe that.
Saddam Hussien lives in luxury in 48 palaces while his people starve and Saddam looks like he gets fatter in every picture I see.
Iraq sells billions of dollers of oil and none of it seems to go to his people.The sanctions have helped Saddams regime by ganing sympathy from Arabs and libarals the world over.You don't want to belive that one either.The Iraqi people can't remove Saddam because of his Stalin like control.And an invasion can't work becouse of the anti-american additude in the world that won't help support it.So the poor Iraqi people lose out agian.

You're regurgitating the TV corporate military line.

Anyone on here who says anyone else 'derserves' to die because of things they have done - or that many civilians need to get killed - is just not very bright.

No human 'deserves' to get killed by another - it's a choice that the aggressor makes.

The aggressor can choose non-violent means of change - but you have to be smart to do that, which the US gov't isn't.

Where's Osama? Where's the anthrax killer? Where were the jets on 911? Where are the ballots?

Don't waste our time with your military logic, designed to create new threats at every turn to continue the existance of the machine - while all the while we keep messing up here at home, fraudulent election, can't find our own bad guys, corporate scam of the century, etc. Time to deflect that focus - every other week!

If you want to select a logical target, to me that would be a major defense contractor, not a shoe manufacturer. But no matter what target you choose I would tell you it's a stupid idea because it is. You're not going to do enough damage to make the war cost-prohibitive and your likely to sway the general public away towards support of the government with such wanton displays of destruction.

If you want to people to listen, you will have to tug on their heart-strings. Make the war in Iraq personal by helping the public to identify with the combatants and the civlians in Iraq.

thanks for posting that flyer, makes me want to go downtown at least once in a while and maybe find something as good as that.

thanks for posting that flyer, makes me want to go downtown at least once in a while and maybe find something as good as that.

thanks for posting that flyer, makes me want to go downtown at least once in a while and maybe find something as good as that.

You have really showed your completely warped and dellusional view of reality by linking direct action against property as an anti-war protest, with "white power." What the FUCK does anti-war protesting have to do with the believe in the supremacy of those with white skin? You are truely one completely fucked up individual. Please seek help you pathetic asshole.

While you are trashing buildings, make sure to destroy the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and PETA. Their combined efforts have killed more people than the justified attacks and sanctions on foreign police states have. Can you even COUNT how many millions of AIDS patients have died because PETA interfered with animal research?

what on earth does Greenpeace have to do with Iraq?
by the way, yes I can count to 0. AIDS research can now be done without the use of animals. It's not even a very good way of doing the research anymore.
http://home.mira.net/~antiviv/issue159.htm

Furthermore, for your statement to make any more sense than saying "pigs can fly" you would have to show that PETA has been effective in blocking such research; that alternatives were not available; that "millions" would have benefitted.
Unfortunately you won't be able to do that. Millions of people in the West don't die of AIDS in the first place; the number is only in the tens of thousands over many many years. Millions have died in Africa, but since they aren't able to afford the patent drugs we do have and we have prevented them from buying cheaper generic versions through legal means in order for the major drug companies to extract greater profit, it can't be demonstrated that they would be able to obtain any other drugs obtained in the future. Thus millions of them would die anyway.

Your statement is false on *numerous* accounts.

>>> We need to go to the source of the problem, the rich. Burn down their mansions with them inside. Kill them all. <<<

What are you, 10 years old?

>>>But doing it in only one country wont work. The ruling class is global. We must strike them all across the globe, and all at once. This will require a degree of organization which, as yet, we have not attained. So get out there and organize. Start today.<<<

My error, you're 6 year olds.

Keep talking dirty to us smash, you know it gets us all hot n bothered.

I agree that damage or violence is not the way.
It's a good excuse for brutal repression a spin doctoring.

BOYCOTT IS THE SOLUTION
CHOKE THEM WHERE IT HURTS THE MOST, THEIR BOTTOM LINE!
Without our money and time,they have nothing.

"BOYCOTT IS THE SOLUTION
CHOKE THEM WHERE IT HURTS THE MOST, THEIR BOTTOM LINE!
Without our money and time,they have nothing.

Umm, I thought part of the problem is that "you" don't have any money.

TROLL ALERT

The only way to deal with trolls is to limit your reaction to reminding others not to respond to trolls.

http://members.aol.com/intwg/trolls.htm

>Then if you see them makig death threats against innocent people, or destroying other people's property, you should find out where the live and do the same to them.

And when we find out where you live, Smashy, (which is only a matter of time) what do think we're going to do?

We should begin by trashing the things the lefti holds most dear. Black neighbourhoods and homosexual places, forests, PETA buildings, Berkely. Doesn't it make sense? Makes as much sense as those black morons who burned and looted their own homes back in 1992.

And you're going to get home alive, how?

Former tennis star John McEnroe weighs in with an op-ed in the Daily Telegraph, and I swear I'm not making this up:

In travelling the world as a tennis player, I have a better appreciation of other countries than most Americans. We could do with being a little less besotted with money, money, money, win, win, win. When I am in England each summer people always ask: "Why don't English players win Wimbledon? They ought to be more like Americans and play to win." To my mind, it's time Americans started being more like the English--or at least learnt to lose with grace.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/09/08/wny08.xml

Hey,anybody who dares to question the self-rightous left gets my vote!Who's side are they on?Bush did it? What kind of desperation is this?Afganistan is a better place now and the lefties can't stand it!They are using the accidental deaths of Afgans to fuel thier sick propaganda.Even though women have more rights and children have a furture to look forwad to the lefties are sour grapes over the war.
Power to the trolls!

TROLL ALERT

The only way to deal with trolls is to limit your reaction to reminding others not to respond to trolls.

The liberal theives are obviously at it again. America will never see it's potential until all liberals are "sanitized" (credit to X2 for that idea).


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64172-2002Sep10.html


washingtonpost.com
Gov. Bush Extends Fla. Voting Hours
By Brendan Farrington
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, September 10, 2002; 8:11 PM
MIAMI –– Florida's first big test of its new elections system turned into a nightmare Tuesday as polling stations opened late on a busy primary day and problems cropped up with the touchscreen voting machines brought in after the 2000 debacle.
Gov. Jeb Bush ordered polls statewide to stay open two hours longer. That meant some precincts in the Florida Panhandle, parts of which are in the Central time zone, would be open until 10 p.m. Eastern time.
Bush said he gave the order "out of fairness," but had sharp words for officials in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, where there were many complaints.
"It's shameful," Bush said. "The state put up money – significant sums of money – for training, for machines. ... There's no excuse for not having precinct workers in a precinct for voting, no excuse for not turning on the machines."
Added Secretary of State Jim Smith, Florida's top elections official: "I frankly wonder what in the hell have they been doing for two years."
The state changed voting laws and outlawed punchcard ballots after the 2000 presidential election. It spent $32 million to reform its election system and more than half of the state's voters were expected to use new touchscreen machines Tuesday instead of punchcard and butterfly ballots.
But problems began immediately.
Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, who was seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge Bush this fall, was delayed from voting after workers struggled to get the touchscreen machines operating. She waited several minutes while an election official booted up one of the 18 machines. Some voters left, exasperated with the delay.
Elsewhere, ballots jammed as workers put them through optical scanners and dozens of polls workers didn't show up. Hundreds of voters were turned away before some machines were up and running.
"It's deja vu all over again – election problems in Florida," said Democratic national Chairman Terry McAuliffe. "Even before the polls close, we know that election reform in Florida has failed its first test."
Republican national Chairman Marc Racicot said some problems could have been expected in the first election after such widespread changes.
With just over two months before the next federal elections, the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate have passed separate elections overhaul measures.
"Here we go again," said Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., who helped design the bipartisan Senate bill. "We have a real chance to restore confidence in our election system, but sadly it is slipping through our fingers."
Election workers in Orlando said 42 percent of Orange County's ballots would have to be counted by hand after polls closed. The ballots were tearing as they were fed through optical scanning machines, making them unreadable. The county has nearly 426,000 voters.
In one precinct in a predominantly black Miami neighborhood, voting didn't begin until 11:45 a.m., nearly five hours after polls opened. Officials estimated about 500 people left without voting.
"Nobody has been able to vote in this district, period," said Delbra Lewis, who attempted to vote three times by late morning. "I've been here since 7 a.m. and I haven't been able to vote."
State election law requires that polls open at 7 a.m., but doesn't say anything specific about what happens if they don't.
In Broward County, which has more registered voters than any of Florida's 67 counties, some precincts didn't open on time because poll workers didn't show up and one opened nearly two hours late because workers didn't have the right equipment.
In Boca Raton, where two candidates sued over Palm Beach County's new voting machines, Ellen Siegel left her polling place without casting a ballot.
Siegel said she and several other voters were given the plastic cards they needed to insert into the new ATM-style voting machines, but they read "invalid."
"No one had any idea how to get the machines up and running," said Siegel, a 15-year resident of the city.
The election protection program, made up of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the People for the American Way and other civil rights groups, said they documented dozens of problems in at least four counties Tuesday.
The group dismissed the state's decision to extend poll hours.
"It's not going to solve the problem because a lot of people won't be able to come back or will be discouraged from coming back," said Elliott Mincberg, vice president of People for the American Way.
Still, Palm Beach County elections chief Theresa LePore said she faced few problems. Some poll workers didn't show up, so some polls had minimal staffing levels, but all opened on time.
"So far, so good," she said.
© 2002 The Associated Press

TROLL ALERT

The only way to deal with trolls is to limit your reaction to reminding others not to respond to trolls.

Homer: "We played trolls online for three hours! Then I got disconnected."

Bart: "Listen to yourself, man: you're hangin' with nerds."

Homer: "You take that back!"

Marge: "Homer, please! These boys sound very nice, but they're clearly nerds."

Homer: "Really? But nerds are my mortal enemy!"

Lisa: "Dad, nerds are nothing to fear. In fact, they've done some pretty memorable things. Some nerds of note include... popcorn magnate Orville Redenbacher, rock star David Byrne, and Supreme Court justice David Souter."

Homer: (gasp) "Oh, not Souter! Oh, no!!"

Trolls are not to be tolerated. They are not to be accepted. They have no right to exist. They are nOT as good as you and me.

I wonder how big of a nerd you have to be before you troll IMC all day claiming liberals are really right wingers and the moon is made of blue cheese?

You said that already, grefft, or hooper, or nessie, or whoever you call yourself. It's about as funny as your Simpson joke. A real hit in France, you hood wearing faggot.

Trollnerd called me a faggot! Shakin in my boots geekboy. Keep snarling there little doggie.

watch him try to get the last little word in like a little poodle barkin as the postman leaves

They'll scream and shout for the right to queers to spread AIDS, , but it's okay for blacks in Africa who simply want to be farmers and take care of themselves to die. The ideaology of the Greenpeace Corporation must be adhered to.

That's right. According to the liberals the idiot elitism must be followed. bring back the days of the happy darkie, courtesy of the liberal racists.

Pass the lobster please. BURP

They'll scream and shout for the right to queers to spread AIDS, , but it's okay for blacks in Africa who simply want to be farmers and take care of themselves to die. The ideaology of the Greenpeace Corporation must be adhered to.

That's right. According to the liberals the idiot elitism must be followed. bring back the days of the happy darkie, courtesy of the liberal racists.

Pass the lobster please. BURP

Impotent Troll
A troll who is genuinely malicious and malevolent,
but the newsgroup readers regard him/her/it as comical in his/her/its monotonous rantings. It is usually highly susceptible to counter-trolling.

not once has hooper addressed the shamefulness of liberals JUSTIFYING starving poor Africans because the Greenpeace CORPORATION says it's right. Hooper would rather be a comedian.

Pull the lever, Greenpeace chimp. But don't do it with your mouth full.

If Lame-O-Matic here tries to get the last word again

For that matter, neither has grefft, assuming he and hooper isn't the same person.

--------------------------


http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0902/jkelly090502.asp

Resurrecting the "Happy Darky"
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |

They've got rhythm. They've got watermelon. They've got quaint folk customs. So what need have they for jobs, for education, for civil rights? So went the "Happy Darky" myth, prevalent among well-off whites in the segregated South of half a century or so ago.

The "Happy Darky" myth is being resurrected in more pernicious form by environmentalists.
The introduction of electricity is "destroying" the cultures of the world's poor, said Gar Smith, who edits "The Edge," the online magazine of the San Francisco-based Earth Island Institute.
With the introduction of electricity, African villagers spend too much time watching television and listening to the radio, Smith said.

George Monbiot, a columnist for the trendy leftist British newspaper the Guardian, said poor people are happier people:
"In southern Ethiopia, the poorest half of the poorest nation on earth, the streets and fields crackle with laughter," Monbiot wrote. "In homes constructed from packing cases and palm leaves, people engage more freely, smile more often, express more affection than we do."
At a taping of a PBS special on the Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, a female panelist decried "the pernicious introduction of the flush toilet."

The World Health Organization estimates that famine in southern Africa will take the lives 300,000 people in the next six months. But delegates and journalists in Johannesburg applauded the dictators of Zambia and Zimbabwe for refusing to let their starving people eat genetically modified American corn.

About 17,000 tons of corn donated by the U.S. Agency for International Development is sitting in storage in Zambia. Greenpeace and Friends of Earth have been lobbying the governments in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique not to accept the corn.

Americans eat this corn every day. But environmentalists describe it as "toxic." The starving people it was sent to feed have a different opinion: "About all Josephine Namangolwa has in her hungry, weary body is anger, and in an instant it all comes surging out," wrote New York Times correspondent Henri Cauvin Aug. 31. "It has been days since she had a nourishing meal to feed her eight children."

"'We are dying here,' she shouts as aid workers arrive in her village of Chipapa to check on their warehouse and the nearly 500 tons of cornmeal inside...She and the rest of the 2.4 million facing starvation in Zambia will be eating any of this food, or any of the thousands of tons of additional food being shipped from the U.S.," Cauvin wrote.

"Please give us the food," pled an elderly blind man in the village of Shimbala, quoted in a Los Angeles Times dispatch Aug. 28. "We don't care if it's poisonous because we are dying anyway."

There were no empty bellies at the Earth Summit. Dennis Morgan, head chef of the five star Michelango Hotel in the posh Johannesburg suburb of Sandton told the London Sun he had ordered 5,000 oysters, a half ton of lobster and other shellfish, two tons of steak and chicken breasts, and buckets of caviar and foie gras, and gallons of champagne and cognac for the environmentalists to eat and drink.

Southern Africa is drought stricken. But each of the environmentalists was using, on average, 53 gallons of water a day. The 45,000 delegates also generated hundreds of tons of trash. Environmentalists think other people must sacrifice to protect the environment. But not, of course, the environmentalists themselves.

The "Happy Darkies" who environmentalists think can do without electricity, flush toilets and food are not happy with the fate Greenpeace and other environmental organizations would consign them to.

Seven organizations representing small farmers in Africa, India and the Philippines presented to Greenpeace and to two other environmental organizations at the Johannesburg summit a "trophy" consisting of a piece of wood upon which two heaps of dried cow dung had been mounted. They called it the "Bulls...t Trophy."

Barun Mitra, who presented the trophy, called the environmentalists parasites who "prey on the blood of the poor."
"They are not interested in famine or poverty," he said. "This lot is concerned only about their own interests."

---------------
----------




From the New York Times


August 30, 2002
Between Famine and Politics, Zambians Starve
By HENRI E. CAUVIN


USAKA, Zambia, Aug. 29 — About all Josephine Namangolwa has left in her hungry, weary body is anger, and in an instant it all comes surging out.

It has been days since she had a nourishing meal to feed her eight children, victims, like millions of other Zambians, of the deepening food shortage that is sweeping southern Africa.
Yet before her eyes stand sacks and sacks of untouched — and for now untouchable — cornmeal, which has been the foundation of the Zambian diet for generations and is currently at the center of a scientific and diplomatic debate over genetically modified food.

It is an argument that means nothing and everything to Ms. Namangolwa.

"We are dying here," she shouts as aid workers arrive in her village of Chipapa to check on their warehouse and the nearly 500 metric tons of cornmeal stored inside, all of it from the United States and some of it almost certainly from genetically engineered crops. "We want to eat."
For now, however, she and the rest of the hungry in Zambia will not be eating any of the food from Chipapa, or any of the thousands of tons of additional food being shipped to the region from the United States.

President Levy Mwanawasa has banned the distribution of food produced with genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.'s, laying down a hard line in a debate that has gripped the region for weeks.

The president, along with close advisers and sympathetic scientists, has expressed a number of concerns about G.M.O.'s. Health is one; trade relations with the European Union and the United States is another.

Genetically engineered corn is shipped in two forms, as unmilled kernels and as cornmeal. Zambian officials worry that the kernels might be used as seed, producing genetically modified corn that would cross-pollinate with nonmodified varieties. This would jeopardize Zambian exports to the European Union, which requires all genetically modified products to be so labeled.

A number of people following the debate say that it has at some level turned into an undeclared trade dispute between the European Union with its powerful environmental activists and the United States and its influential biotechnology industry.

With millions of lives in the balance, neither side wants it to look that way, and both have gone to great lengths to keep the trade issue out of the public debate. In a statement today, the European Union mission here all but encouraged Zambia to accept the modified corn, saying that milling would allay its concerns about exports from the country.

But even if the incoming corn were milled into cornmeal, eliminating the risk to the Zambian agriculture industry, the government remained concerned about the suitability of the food for human consumption.

"I have been told it is not safe," the minister of agriculture, Mundia Sikatana, said in an interview.
Asked if he believes such foods are poisonous, Mr. Sikatana said the studies he had read had led him to that conclusion. "What else would you call an allergy caused by a substance? That substance that the person reacts to is poisonous."

All of the talk of toxins and trade has confused many local people, while frustrating the United Nations World Food Program and angering Washington, which is supplying about three-quarters of the food for the W.F.P.'s operations in the region.

The W.F.P., which is feeding just over a million Zambians now, expects to be feeding about 2.5 million by the end of the year.

At the moment, the agency says it has only about 7,000 metric tons of food, or some two weeks worth, approved and available for distribution. About 14,000 tons already in the country, some already milled, some still whole grain, have been frozen by the president's edict. Far larger shipments on the way face the same fate unless Mr. Mwanawasa changes his mind.
In an indication of the matter's urgency, Andrew S. Natsios, the head of the United States Agency for International Development, met with Mr. Mwanawasa this week to urge him to accept the corn and to offer Zambia assistance in assuring that the food is indeed safe.

In an effort to ease Zambia's doubts about the safety of the foods, the agency has offered to fly Zambian scientists to the United States to meet with government and academic researchers. Mr. Natsios maintained that Mr. Mwanawasa was open to the offer and the possibility that it might yield a solution.

"I think he wants more information," Mr. Natsios said. "There's no commitment to change, but I don't think this story is at an end."

Mr. Sikatana said the government has made its decision and can meet the country's needs without American aid. Efforts to bring hundreds of thousands of tons of corn from elsewhere are underway, and Mr. Sikatana said no Zambian will starve.

With each passing day, however, the fates of millions of hungry people around Zambia grow more dire.

Loveness Malupande, who lives not far from Chipapa, in the village of Kabweza, with an extended family of about 24, said her family had sold off all but two of the 20 cattle they had, all to buy stopgap supplies of food, which have since run out. For now, the family is left to scavenge. "We go out in the bush and look for wild roots," she says.

One of her relatives, Cliff Malambo, 27, said he had heard about the food at the warehouse in Chipapa. "They have said that the food is not good for us, but we don't know," he said. "They don't explain."

Many Zambians question the government's statements and wonder why friends who received the American corn before the ban went into effect have not died. Others applaud the government's vigilance. Almost all of them are somewhat befuddled.

"People ask me if it's safe," Steven Grabiner, who runs the Riverside Development Agency, a church-affiliated charity, said. "I say, `Yes, I think it is. If you make me a bowl I'll eat it."'

Foods produced from crops engineered to be more resistant to worms, for example, are now widely consumed in the United States less than a decade after such products first entered the market. By many accounts, they have made American agriculture more productive, but they have also brought controversy.

A number of scientists and consumer advocates argue the effects of genetic engineering on both the environment and consumers have not been adequately examined. Yet, years of extensive testing have not turned up any findings that would suggest such foods are not safe for humans, Marc Cohen, an analyst at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, said.
While genetically engineered food has almost certainly found its way into Zambia for several years, through international aid or through imports from South Africa, which produces genetically modified crops, the scale was always small and never attracted attention. But the volume of food being brought in for the relief operation is huge, aimed at feeding 13 million people across six countries, and red flags went up.

Mozambique and Zimbabwe at first joined Zambia in resisting the geneticaly modified corn, particularly out of concerns over cross-pollination. Ultimately, Mozambique and Zimbabwe decided to mill the corn before bringing it into the country, eliminating the potential threat to their agricultural sectors.

Zambia so far has balked at milling in part because of the cost, which at $25 a ton is not an inconsequential expense for one of the poorest countries in the world.
Critics of the government say that officials were late drafting a comprehensive policy on genetic engineering and were nowbuying time to try to form one.

"We should be confining our debate in this hour of emergency to corn," said John W. K. Clayton, president of the Zambia National Farmers' Union. "We don't have the luxury of time to launch into broadranging debate on this issue."

"This is the work of the politicians," Ms. Namangolwa said as she looked in on the stockpile of corn. "This meal is O.K. They are not helping us. They are killing us."

You can't hide the truth, hooper. Play like a kid while the third worlders you people give lip service to starve.


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http://new.blackvoices.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=bv%2Dzambia020828



From the Los Angeles Times
Zambia rejects gene-altered U.S. corn
Africa: Millions face starvation, but the government cites safety fears for refusing grain.
By Davan Maharaj And Anthony Mukwita
Times Staff Writer

August 28 2002

SHIMABALA, Zambia -- After waiting seven hours under the sizzling African sun, John Shikuboni hoped to fill his empty sack with free corn stored in a warehouse here.

But an aid official told Shikuboni and about 200 other hungry men, women and children that he could no longer distribute the corn because the Zambian government had ruled that the genetically modified grain was not safe for them.

"Please give us the food," pleaded an elderly blind man wearing a threadbare shirt. "We don't care if it is poisonous because we are dying anyway."

Many Zambians in rural areas have resorted to eating leaves, twigs and even poisonous berries and nuts to cope with the worst food crisis in a decade hitting southern Africa. Still, their government is refusing to accept donations of genetically modified corn that the United Nations and aid agencies say could help ease the starvation and suffering of about 2.5 million Zambians.

The United States, United Nations and humanitarian aid groups insist that the U.S.-donated corn is safe and identical to grain eaten daily by people in the United States, Canada and other countries. But Zambian officials say they fear that the gene-altered corn poses health risks to their citizens.

"We would rather starve than get something toxic," said Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, who declared a food emergency in the nation three months ago.

Privately, aid officials say the Zambian government is looking a gift horse in the mouth.

The Bush administration has dispatched to Zambia its top aid official, Andrew Natsios, administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, to persuade Mwanawasa to accept the food.

Natsios is expected to meet with Mwanawasa today in Lusaka, the Zambian capital.

"I'm going to tell him he needs to reverse that decision," Natsios said in a telephone interview. "It's endangering people's lives, and we're going to have massive losses of life if this policy remains in place."

A savage confluence of events--drought, bad governance and disease--means that about 13 million people in six southern African countries face starvation. Many of them now rely on rations from the U.N. food agency to survive.

U.N. officials say they must have $500 million to avert a famine. So far, the United States has been the most willing donor, shipping a few hundred thousand tons of food to southern Africa.

But the U.S. gifts have ignited a debate in the region about the safety of grain whose genes have been modified to produce higher yields and bolster resistance to drought, diseases and herbicides.

Southern Africa is not alone in its suspicion of genetically modified food. The European Union bans many modified products, and some European scientists say the crops could cause allergic reactions in consumers.

Leaders of several African countries say they find themselves in a dilemma: Feed their people food they believe causes allergic reactions, or let them die. Agricultural officials also worry that the grain would be planted and, through cross-pollination, would contaminate their natural varieties.

Lesotho, Malawi and Swaziland agreed to accept the U.S. donations after the World Health Organization--and several U.S. agencies--certified the U.S. corn as safe. Zimbabwe and Mozambique accepted the grain on the condition that it would be milled before distribution to prevent people from planting it.

But Zambia--a landlocked nation slightly larger than Texas--has been the lone holdout, saying its top scientists had warned about the alleged health risks of gene-altered corn. The country's agriculture minister said Zambia would import non-altered food to feed its hungry.

"There's no way we can help them if they don't accept the food," James Morris, director of the U.N. World Food Program, said from his Rome office Tuesday night. "No one is going to step up with donations of non-GM [genetically modified] corn to fill the gap. This is food we have complete confidence in."

Despite the official skepticism in Zambia and other countries, some prominent African scientists have been lobbying for African nations to embrace genetic engineering to secure the food supply and increase efficiency and crop yields.

"GM crops and foods are just one part of the overall strategy to ensure sufficient food" for Africa, said Jennifer Thomson, a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. "Europe has enough food. They don't need GM foods. But we have different needs."

Natsios, the USAID administrator, said he recently was heartened by the Zambian government's decision to let aid workers distribute genetically modified corn to Congolese and Angolan refugees living in camps here.

He said the Zambian government is probably trying to use the gene-altered corn issue to gain leverage in its relations with the United States. He noted that the United States greeted Mwanawasa's election last year with a lukewarm response after the opposition and other groups alleged that the balloting was rigged.

For the good of starving Zambians, Natsios said, Mwanawasa "needs to separate the diplomatic issue from this (food) issue."

In Shimabala, a farming village 40 miles south of Lusaka, Shikuboni and others say they hope the government swiftly reverses its policy.

Only recently, Shimabala was a bountiful collection of farms producing maize, cassava and other crops. But the drought has reduced the corn fields to parched brown earth with only a few dying shrubs.

Steven Grabiner, a food aid official, said the thousands of bags of food in his warehouse could feed Shimabala's 300 families for at least a month.

"I would rather eat that maize than die because the government has no alternative to the hunger problem," said Bweengwa Nzala, a 28-year-old farmhand. "The government was elected by us the people, and now we are hungry. We want the government to help feed us instead of forcing us to resort to eating wild fruits like monkeys."

"We are not afraid," said Florence Chisanga, who also waited in vain at Grabiner's food distribution center. "If we die tomorrow, no problem. What we want is food."

Times staff writer Maharaj reported from Nairobi, Kenya, and special correspondent Mukwita from Shimabala.
Copyright © 2002, The Los Angeles Times

Liberals are lily white.

Found this on a Christian site which is just fuming at Bush and capitalism in general it seems. Allies in strange places?

http://www.endtimesnetwork.com/index.html