I love food but I am sure that I am not the only one who takes for granted the ability to just pop to my nearest supermarket to stock up on supplies. Food is essential not simply a pleasure as everyday millions of people across the world struggle to get enough food to survive. According to the non-governmental organisation Action contre la Faim (Action Against Hunger), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations reported that in 2006 854 million people throughout the world suffered from hunger. Now there are multiple causes of hunger including natural catastrophes, conflicts, epidemics or poverty all of which have been exacerbated by the global economic crisis that began in 2007, threatening not just jobs but lives too, as food prices rose dramatically. The fact that 10 million people actually die of hunger each year, 6 million of whom are children under the age of 5 is a real cause for concern, especially when it is widely estimated that the number of hungry people could pass the one billion mark this year.

Moreover, despite the World Bank increasing the funding of its Global Food Crisis Response Program to over $2 billion in April of this year, food prices in many countries remain unsustainably high. In sub-Saharan Africa 80 to 90 percent of all cereal prices monitored by FAO in 27 countries remain more than 25 percent higher than before the soaring food price crisis two years ago. In Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean prices are monitored in a total of 31 countries, and in over half of these prices also remain more than 25 percent higher than in the pre food-crisis period (2007). In Eastern Africa, in Sudan, prices of sorghum in June were three times higher than two years ago. Consequently, a World Food Summit is to be held at FAO Headquarters in Rome in November, with the aim of securing a broad consensus on the eradication of hunger, on improved governance of the international agricultural system and on policies and programmes to ensure world food security.

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I am the first to admit that conventional democratic political processes are often corrupt, slow and ineffective due to bureaucracy and vested elitist interests that are contrary to  the greater well being of societies. I hold cynical views about corrupt politicians and social injustice and believe that it is fine to be disappointed and even disgusted by politics. BUT I ABSOLUTELY HATE it when people say that politics is not important or does not affect them or their daily lives.  According to the work of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA)  there is a worrying trend of of increasing global voter apathy going as far back as 1945 so that “voter turnout has decreased globally over the past 10 years by almost 10 percent, both in established democracies as well as newly-democratized developing countries.

Politics cannot be easily defined but this wikipedia entry provides these key points by describing it as:  as process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behaviour within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. It consists of “social relations involving authority or power” and refers to the regulation of a political unit, and to the methods and tactics used to formulate and apply policy. However, there is not an academic consensus on the precise definition of “politics” and what is consider as political and what is not. Max Weber defined politics as the struggle for power. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics)
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The history of the world is littered with countless examples of people’s inhumanity towards each other and Brazil is no different from any other country. The Human Rights record of Brazil from the military dictatorships of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s to the present day raises many serious concerns, especially about the stability of one of the world’s largest emerging economies. Human rights is often viewed through the prism of domestic policy owing largely to the state’s monopoly on the use of violence, however in Brazil this monopoly extends beyond the state to paramilitary groups and death squads who are often employed to support drug traffickers, the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and the removal by force of landless and homeless workers. Indeed such violence has even extended to those who sought to defend human rights such as Chico Mendes.

Furthermore, the Plan Condor active during the 1970s and 1980s involved the coordination between the military governments of the Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay to eliminate their “opponents” and highlights how human rights issues have international repercussions. This plan (created and supported by the USA) was carried out through the extrajudicial execution, torture and forced disappearance of thousands of people, among many other serious human rights violations. Only recently has Brazil started to show signs of a willingness to punish those responsible with the extradition of Uruguayan colonel Manuel Cordero to Argentina, although the Brazilian state still has hundreds of cases of abuse to investigate that were committed under its own military regime.

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Lightning struck twice with Usain Bolt setting two new world records 9.58 and 19.19 in the 100m and 200m sprints respectively and he’s a cultural ambassador on top of all that.

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Sneak peak of our new tie-dye tees set to original aspecks music. Look out for footage of the creation of the tune with Mensa and Graeme Martin of TAP’ Taroot from France.