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I have learnt......
Related to country: Kenya

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

I have learned many things in these past months. I now know that what you see is not always what is. There is the face value-the reality, but below the surface, there is the truth.

I have learned that to get at the truth, we must always scratch the surface. While this is not always possible, it must be seen as a necessary step to the truth, even if we fail to do it.

This an important fundamental truth that we must learn to observe in all our interactions. For it is only the truth that will finally set us free. I will be telling you about the truths I have learned this past months. Do not take people at face value, whether they have an angelic face, or the face of a beast. Scratch the surface, if you can. Peace.

June 21, 2009 | 4:23 PM Comments  0 comments

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Chronic malnutrition in Gaza blamed on Israel
Related to country: Palestine

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/chronic-malnutrition-in-gaza-blamed-on-israel-1019521.html

Chronic malnutrition in Gaza blamed on Israel

Donald Macintyre reveals the contents of an explosive report by the Red Cross on a humanitarian tragedy
Saturday, 15 November 2008
AFP/GETTY/MAHMUD HAMS

The Israeli blockade of Gaza has led to a steady rise in chronic malnutrition among the 1.5 million people living in the strip, according to a leaked report from the Red Cross.

It chronicles the "devastating" effect of the siege that Israel imposed after Hamas seized control in June 2007 and notes that the dramatic fall in living standards has triggered a shift in diet that will damage the long-term health of those living in Gaza and has led to alarming deficiencies in iron, vitamin A and vitamin D.

The 46-page report from the International Committee of the Red Cross – seen by The Independent – is the most authoritative yet on the impact that Israel's closure of crossings to commercial goods has had on Gazan families and their diets.

The report says the heavy restrictions on all major sectors of Gaza's economy, compounded by a cost of living increase of at least 40 per cent, is causing "progressive deterioration in food security for up to 70 per cent of Gaza's population". That in turn is forcing people to cut household expenditures down to "survival levels".

"Chronic malnutrition is on a steadily rising trend and micronutrient deficiencies are of great concern," it said.

Since last year, the report found, there had been a switch to "low cost/high energy" cereals, sugar and oil, away from higher-cost animal products and fresh fruit and vegetables. Such a shift "increases exposure to micronutrient deficiencies which in turn will affect their health and wellbeing in the long term."

Israel has often said that it will not allow a humanitarian crisis to develop in Gaza and the report says that the groups surveyed had "accessed their annual nutritional energy needs". But it warned governments, including Israel's, that "food insecurity and undernutrition, including micronutrient deficiencies" were occurring in the absence of "overt food shortages".

A 2001 Food and Agriculture Organisation definition classifies "food security" as when "all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life."

The Red Cross report says that "the embargo has had a devastating effect for a large proportion of households who have had to make major changes on the composition of their food basket." Households were now obtaining 80 per cent of their calories from cereals, sugar and oil. "The actual food basket is considered to be insufficient from a nutritional perspective." The report paints a bleak picture of an increasingly impoverished and indebted lower-income population. People are selling assets, slashing the quality and quantity of meals, cutting back on clothing and children's education, scavenging for discarded materials – and even grass for animal fodder – that they can sell and are depending on dwindling loans and handouts from slightly better-off relatives.

In the urban sector, in which about 106,000 employees lost their jobs after the June 2007 shutdown, about 40 per cent are now classified as "very poor", earning less than 500 shekels (£87) a month to provide for an average household of seven to nine people.

The report quotes a former owner of a small, home-based sewing factory, who said he had laid off his 10 workers in July 2007. "Since then I earn no more than 300 shekels per month by sewing from time to time neighbours' and relatives' clothes. I sold my wife's jewellery and my brother is transferring 250 shekels every month ... I do not really know what to say to my children." Others said they were not able to give their children pocket money.

In agriculture, on which 27 percent of Gaza's population depends, exports are at a halt and, like fisheries, the sector has seen a 50 per cent fall in incomes since the siege began. Among the two-fifths classified as "very poor", average per capita spending is down to 50p a day. In the fisheries sector, which has been hit by fuel shortages and narrow, Israeli-imposed fishing limits, "People's coping mechanisms are very limited and those households that still have jewellery and even non-essential appliances sell them".

The report says that if the Israeli-imposed embargo is maintained, "economic disintegration will continue and wider segments of the Gaza population will become food insecure".

Arguing that the removal of restrictions on trade "can reverse the trend of impoverishment", the Red Cross warns that "the prolongation of the restrictions risks permanently damaging households' capacity to recover and undermines their ability to attain food security in the long term."

The detailed Gaza fieldwork for the report was carried out between May and July. An International Monetary Fund report confirmed in late September that the Gaza economy "continued to weaken".

Mark Regev, the spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said that, contrary to hopes when Israel pulled out of Gaza, the Gazan people were being "held hostage" to Hamas's "extremist and nihilist" ideology which was causing undoubted suffering. If Hamas focused resources on the "diet of the people" instead of on "Qassam rockets and violent jihadism" then "this sort of problem would not exist", he said.

December 27, 2008 | 3:48 PM Comments  0 comments

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Post-colonial enslavement soon a sub-Saharan African reality
Related to country: Kenya

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

I was happily enjoying my Saturday morning, browsing through the morning paper when I came across this article: “Queries as Qatar Seeks to Grow Food in Kenya”. At first read, I couldn't believe it. So I read it again, more slowly, digesting every word in the short article.

Yes. It was true. Kenya had signed a deal to lease thousands of acres of prime Kenyan land to foreigners to grow food for their own nationals. At the same time, it so happens that Kenya can’t feed herself, that there are many landless Kenyans and that youth unemployment has become a huge security burden on the nation.

For a long time, I was lost for words. I thought to myself that this was the exact kind of deal that even the Secretary General of FAO, Jacques Diouf, has described as “neo-colonial agricultural systems emerging.” Then I got angry and started writing this article.

Apparently, it is not only Kenya that is following such a dubious road. Other countries in the region have entered such deals. What makes Kenya’s case worse is that the Kenyan Minister for Agriculture “denies knowledge of the deal." Apparently, "other Gulf states are negotiating leases.”

Kenyans seem to have a very short memory. So I have decided to jog it for them. Many decades ago, the British came to the region that would come to be known as Western Kenya and claimed that they would ‘protect the locals from hostile tribes and slavers.’ In addition, they promised the people a Western education and industries to create white collar jobs. The people tried to resist, but were eventually overcome when famines and strange diseases weakened their communities. After the wars of conquest and the partitioning of the colonies, Kenya proper was born.

The British overstayed their welcome by about 70 years. What transpired during those years is known to Kenyans of all shades, the collaborators included. The people who negotiated our "independence" are still in power today, negotiating our future fortunes away; perhaps for the next 100 years. Kenyans need to wake up to this reality and become part of the negotiations. Do people realize that our leaders could be granting 1000 year leases as has happened before?

Reference
“Queries as Qatar seeks to grow food in Kenya”. Saturday Nation. Friday, December 19th, 2008.
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/504642/-/view/printVersion/-/132fw0s/-/index.html

December 26, 2008 | 7:33 PM Comments  0 comments

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Foreskin Success
Related to country: Australia

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Foreskin success

Despite a flap over penis reconstruction, an Australian conference concludes that doctors can rebuild them.
By Jack Boulware

After much debate, and no doubt the viewing of many slides projected against a screen, an Australian medical conference concluded last week that the male foreskin can be repaired. The flap of skin around the penis can be rebuilt, reconstructed and improved cosmetically, with few complications.

The crux of the conference's debate centered around international medical reports claiming that up to one-third of foreskin reconstructions led to complications. In the experience of Australia's penis surgeons, this was not the case.

Over a two-year period at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital, 23 patients had successful operations, and 22 of them ended up with a handy-dandy retractable foreskin, as the good Lord intended.

If your baby needs a new foreskin, apparently you'd do well to fly the tyke to the land down under. They seem to know what they're up to, foreskin-wise. Foreskin restoration in Australia comes about in a variety of ways. Sometimes a baby boy is born with an incomplete foreskin, which affects one in 300 births. Occasionally a boy is born with the opening to the urethra located on the underside of the penis, preventing a normal erection. And then there's the parents expressing concern over the cosmetic appearance of their little boy's penis. What if you don't want the "circumcised look"?

Melbourne pediatric surgeon Professor Paddy Dewan assured the assembled group of penis doctors that there is a solution. "In situations where a circumcised appearance is considered undesirable, foreskin reconstruction offers an appropriate choice to parents," Professor Dewan said.

Circumcision is still a hot topic of discussion in Australia, with the nation's percentage of foreskin removal hovering somewhere between 25 and 40 percent, and on the decline. Medical arguments in favor of the operation claim that it reduces infection and disease, but pediatric doctor policy on the subject goes back and forth.

Professor Dewan added that parents tend to have very strong views about the procedure, both for and against. "It's a small piece of skin that creates a lot of emotion," he said.
-- By Jack Boulware

December 1, 2008 | 10:51 PM Comments  0 comments

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Attention Mr. Ruto: Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)
Related to country: Kenya

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

The seems to be a raging debate about GMOs in Kenya. The Minister for Agriculture, Hon William Ruto seems to have made up his mind, (despite all opposition) that we need GMOs. Now Mr. Ruto is a relatively young educated man and therefore should behave in a more enlightened way: Global commerce is at the heart of the GMO crusade. Good human nutrition is not a priority of the patent owners. This is why most of Europe has rejected GMOs.

This is a serious matter with long term implications; Mr. Ruto should not unilaterally decide for Kenyans, without getting all the technical briefings that are necessary before such a decision is made. What exactly has been modified and what are the consequences of such modification for human health? What is the long term impacts to the soils? What about the side effects of the chemicals. Why is it that even in the USA, there is a lot of conflict in this area. Hybrid maize should be used as a good example: since hybrid maize was introduced in Western Kenya in the 1950s, people have become more ill than when the native crop was the dietary staple. This in part explains why the human development index in Western Kenya is low; and the people have many diseases. The soils have changed and are no longer as productive, unless more chemicals are added. Also native plants eg traditional vegetables have disappeared. These are known bad effects of hybrids. What do we know about GMOs?.

There are many "strange diseases" in Western Kenya that are yet to be fully investigated and tamed. Pellagra easily comes to mind. Pellagra causes malnutrition, which in turn weakens the immune system. If the people are already malnourished, are GMOs going to tame this malnutrition? Genetic modification means that some amino acids (protein) that form part of the normal genetics of the said crop have been changed. If Ruto wants to effectively use GMOs, Kenya should invest in developing GMOs that actually target the malnutriton already present in the community. Impossing generic GMOs whose focus is global commerce is like gambling with the health of a Nation. Below are some links about pellagra.
REF: Hybrid Organisms- Wikipedia the free encyclopedia.
http://www.merck.com/mmpe/sec01/ch004/ch004d.html
http://eh.net/bookreviews/library/0654.shtml
http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/Ca-De/Corn-or-Maize-Based-Diets.html
http://italianfood.about.com/od/polentarecipes/a/aa030498.htm
http://www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news.php?articleid=1143969408




September 29, 2008 | 8:51 PM Comments  0 comments

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