Now that the USDA has solved the problem of giving out free food using Farmer’s markets, they are moving on to bigger things
“Following the commitment of the L’Aquila Summit, in 2012 leaders of the G-8 engaged with African partners to foster global food security. In this framework, G-8 members have agreed on the goals of the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition G-8 initiative. Their goal is to increase public investment in agriculture, accelerate new investments and greater collaboration in agricultural research. This G-8 activity complements the ongoing activities of the Committee on World Food Security and other international organizations.”
The thing to remind people – when we get to the point that the only way to buy food is using a government issued spending card, the day they sequester your food allowance, you’re going to join the long history of government directed mass starvations.
I remember my grandmother telling me about world war 2 in the USA. You needed government permission to buy meat and then were only allocated a certain amount per family. Same for sugar, and other items. Using money was illegal if you didn’t have a government issued card that permitted you to use your money.
After they confiscated all the gold. And all of the manufacturers were told what to build and what they could charge. Walt Disney was told what to put in his cartoons. Steel workers were told they could not strike. American citizens had to sign loyalty oaths.
FDR was a fascist, but he was our fascist and our cause was just. Since Japan bombed us, we had to get involved in Europe.
One of the things I learned from talking directly to people on the Internet is “World War II” is very much a US centric concept. Europe didn’t much care about defeating Japan. It was mostly a long standing conflict between Japan and its neighbors, mostly China. FDR decided to squeeze Japan and cut off its access to oil.
While Japan and Germany had a mutual defense agreement, Japan was not in a position to provide much of anything to help Germany or Italy. French Indochina and Burma were nominally involved, with both Japan and China agreeing they wanted both the French and Germans out of Asia.
I think you have told me you spent time in Asia. I would not assert that I have all of that complete, just that it is different from the black and white Walt Disney cartoon version.
I agree with what you wrote. I would add that Japan was exceedingly brutal to China. Some of that brutality was a Japanse response to people like Chinese Tung Sheng Liu who harbored or aided American pilots from the Doolittle Raid – a spring surprise 1942 bombing of Tokyo from American pilots that would just have enough fuel for a one-way trip to China.
http://www.doolittleraider.com/
This is unrelated, but not really.
Who the hell is running the US government policy on Syria? We have John Kerry saying we have to fund the people exploding car bombs in Damascas, but Presidnt Obama saying “fool us once about WMD, shame on us, fool us twice shame on me”. He’s not buying any of these claims of WMD use as a need for us to get involved to force regime change using force. Any news source pushing the “Syria is using chemical weapons” to rush us into yet another war is going on my permanent shit list.
What appears to be going on with the dichotomy between Obama and Kerry’s position is to ensure that whatever happens next, Obama will be seen as innocent and having nothing to do with ‘whatever happens next’. I am not kidding.
Another thought- there is often criticism about the US staying out of the war in Europe too long and not helping to end the German atrocities. I think that there was a conscious decision to stay “neutral” as long as possible so that US ships could freely cross the Atlantic which the British could not.
Additionally, there was the “lend-lease” deal which I first heard about from British friends. Britain realized it needed to protect the homeland and could not support foreign military outposts throughout the world. So there was a “neutral” business deal where Britain would not abandon those bases, but instead lease them to the Americans. The Americans paid the rent not with cash, but with surplus military equipment from World War One…. and at the end of the day, the Americans could still travel the Atlantic as a neutral country.