DRANT #309: STOMACH TURNING

Over caviar and sea urchin, G8 leaders mull food crisis

By Andrew Grice, Political Editor in Hokkaido
Tuesday, 8 July 2008

World leaders are not renowned for their modest wine selections or reticence at the G8 summit's cheese board. True to form, discussing the global food crisis – spiralling grocery prices in the developed world and starvation in Africa – was clearly hungry work that left their stomachs rumbling.

Shortly after calling for us all to waste less food, and for an end to three-for-two deals in British supermarkets, Gordon Brown joined his fellow G8 premiers and their wives for an eight-course Marie Antoinette-style "Blessings of the Earth and the Sea Social Dinner", courtesy of the Japanese government.


The global food shortage was not evident. As the champagne flowed, the couples enjoyed 18 "higher-quality ingredients", beginning with amuse-bouche of corn stuffed with caviar, smoked salmon and sea urchin pain-surprise-style, hot onion tart and winter lily bulbs.

With translations helpfully provided by the hosts, the starter menu (second course) read like a meal in itself. A folding fan-modelled tray decorated with bamboo grasses carried eight delicacies: kelp-flavoured cold Kyoto beef shabu-shabu, with asparagus dressed with sesame cream; diced fatty flesh of tuna fish, with avocado and jellied soy sauce and the Japanese herb shiso; boiled clam, tomato and shiso in jellied clear soup of clam; water shield and pink conger dressed with a vinegary soy sauce; boiled prawn with jellied tosazu-vinegar; grilled eel rolled around burdock strip; sweet potato; and fried and seasoned goby with soy sauce and sugar.

That was followed by a hairy crab kegani bisque-style soup and salt-grilled bighand thornyhead with a vinegary water pepper sauce. The main course brought the "meat sweats" – poele of milk-fed lamb flavoured with aromatic herbs and mustard, as well as roasted lamb with black truffle and pine seed oil sauce. For the cheese course, the Japanese offered a special selection with lavender honey and caramelised nuts. It was followed by a "G8 fantasy dessert" and coffee served with candied fruits and vegetables.

This was washed down with Le Reve grand cru/La Seule Gloire champagne; a sake wine, Isojiman Junmai Daiginjo Nakadori; Corton-Charlemagne 2005 (France); Ridge California Monte Bello 1997 and Tokaji Esszencia 1999 (Hungary).

The G8 leaders had earlier made do with a "working lunch" of white asparagus and truffle soup; kegani crab; supreme of chicken; and cheese and coffee with petit fours. The lubrication of choice, for those drinking, was Chateau Grillet 2005.

The TV cameras were sadly not allowed to loiter long enough to discover whether Mr Brown practised what he preaches by not wasting any of his food. The Prime Minister has been shocked by the finding that an average British household could save about £420 a year by not throwing away edible food.

It is a fair bet that much more than that was wasted last night at the opulent Windsor Hotel in Toya, 30 miles from the general public and with 20,000 special police officers for security. Sixty chefs were flown in for the occasion, foremost among them the Michelin-starred Katsuhiro Nakamura.

The total cost of staging the event on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido is estimated at £285m, enough to buy 100 million mosquito nets, and dwarfing the £85m Britain spent on the Gleneagles summit three years ago.

"If it costs this much for them to meet, they had better make some serious decisions to increase aid to poor countries," said Max Lawson, senior policy officer at Oxfam. "If they are just going to sit around and eat, while millions of people face starvation, that is not good enough. They must act– not eat."

While the dinner went on, officials from the G8 nations haggled late into the night over the summit declaration on aid to the poorest nations. Pressure groups fear the G8 is trying to water down the commitment it made at Gleneagles to double aid to poor countries to $50bn by 2010. They want the figure included in this week's statement, rather than a restatement that Africa will receive $25bn by then, and single out France and Italy for criticism. "It's 50-50," one aid campaigner said.

Andrew Mitchell, the Conservatives' international development spokesman, said: "Surely it is not unreasonable for each leader to give a guarantee that they will stand by their solemn pledges of three years ago at Gleneagles to help the world's poor. All of us are watching, waiting and listening."

Bush's prayer for end to tyranny

"I wish for a world free from tyranny: the tyranny of hunger, disease and free from tyrannical governments," was George Bush's wish, handwritten on a piece of parchment and tied to a bamboo tree as part of the Japanese Tanabata festival.

The annual ceremony, which this year coincided with Japan's hosting of the G8 summit, is based on the myth of two star-crossed lovers condemned to meet only once a year in the Milky Way on 7 July. Every summer Japanese people write prayers on thin strips of paper and hang them in bamboo branches in the hope their wishes will be granted.

"I wish for a world in which the universal desire for liberty is realised. I wish for the advance of new technologies that will improve the human condition and protect our environment. I wish God's blessings on all," Mr Bush concluded.

Gordon Brown, mindful of the third anniversary of the London bombings, sought an end to terrorism as well as to poverty.

©independent.co.uk
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DRANT #308: VETERANS : DON'T TAKE THE MONEY, START THE HEALING

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In a vast tragic irony, proudly exposing the bleeding sores that evidence our murderous national cancer, Bush spoke for all of Us today when he signed the latest bill funding the war
and said: "Our nation has no greater responsibility than to support our men and women in uniform..."

How terribly terribly painfully murderously true this is, and what a searing if totally unconscious commentary.
Its true: We don't have any greater responsibility. We can't even imagine a greater responsibility.
It's all about Us.
Once again, "our nation" -- which means me and you and your Aunt Betty too- has acted from pure self-interest.
Once again We all have acted as if We have "no greater responsibility" than to----- ourselves.
The War Funding Bill was brilliantly and purposefully packaged by a bipartisan coalition to democratically provide bribes for everyone. And we all took the bribes, and couldn't opt in fast enough.
Little we care, less we even notice, that we have made a pact to commit another year and a half of unspeakable murder and torture on others.
Why should we ? This is all about US, and we got OURS.
Bush definitely got his. He gets to go out in style, unopposed, and heave the dungpile on the next guy's lap.
The Congrassholes got theirs, cause now they can fly home in their private jets, and crow about how they supported the troops, and helped the poor, and the farmers, and created forceful anti-drug programs, and of course, sent money to rebuild the Katrina levees. Right on time, that one.

And We get Ours- cause we're going to get longer unemployment benefits, and we get to feel good about supporting our men and women in uniform, and we get paid for crops we couldn't grow, and dontcha forget the shameful "stimulus" hush money payments.
And the Veterans- they got theirs: a new complement of benefits and programs worth billions.
As the IAVA (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America) said in an email blast today : "WE DID IT ! " Well, they sure did. We all did.

We have ALL of us made a helluva deal, and all we have to do is commit unspeakable acts on some unpronounceable Arabs for another year or so ? Hey, where do I sign up ?

Well, now that we got ours, and the Veterans got theirs - I wanna know- what are we going to do for the VICTIMS ?
If we think that our Troops suffer - from Post-Traumatic Stress, wounds, disease, destruction of family - what the hell do we think our victims suffer from ? Many of them are victims themselves, but ALL of them are perpetrators.
I am now asking all the Winter Soldiers to step up and put the same all-out effort into forcing Congress to put up billions in reparations -- and begin to make amends for all we have done. I am asking them, and I am asking you and me and all of us.
How perfect it is that we have rushed to the aid of our fellow perpetrators - and have lifted not an eyebrow for our real victims.
How indescribably vile it is that the Veterans' Benefits were appended to the very same bill that continued to fund the ongoing killing. And so, the Veterans supported the bill because THEY got THEIR money- while simultaneously facilitating the next 18 months of murder. And we all did nothing that stopped it.

We are ALL of us perpetrators: we who carried out their orders and did not refuse; who killed because we were told to, and did not refuse; who followed some genocidal testosterone-poisoned code of honor and protected or defended our fellow perpetrators, and did not refuse; who blamed somebody or something else- and did not stand up for ourselves and refuse; and above all others-
We The Complicit, who have achieved exactly nothing by our feeble efforts to stop six years of war and murder and torture, and have exercised no control over our employees in Congress who have taken OUR money and funded and aided and abetted the war and the murder and the torture.

The healing must begin NOW.
And that healing must itself begin with each of us taking full responsibility for what we have done, and dedicating our lives to making amends.
There can be and there will be no healing unless and until this happens.
Step number one: we must ALL refuse to take any of the money that this new bill bestows on us.
Every veteran must refuse to use the money he/she gets from this new bill - and give it instead to our victims.
The veterans can NOT accept the blood money they are getting for having done the killing, while perpetuating the funding of murder.
We need the veterans to show us the way- show Congress and each and every one of US- what we must do.
This can be their greatest and most redeeming mission of honor. This is their monumental and historic chance truly to change the course of the world. They can and must lead us -- to begin the enormous task of healing.
Taking money for evil deeds well done serves only to perpetuate the symbiosis of killing. Turning that money to healing can change the world.
Imagine- thousands of Vets- lining up in front of Congress, with their new benefit checks, announcing that they are taking the money to Iraq or Afghanistan- to bring aid to the victims. And then we see them board the planes. And then we see them re-building homes and hospitals and schools, and repairing the water and electrical systems, and delivering massive medical aid. And we may even see a few of them with individual victims - the very sons and daughters of people they killed or tortured or "detained."
And then, we must ALL join them. For we have not just failed to stop them in their killing, not merely been complicit- we have paid for it, and we have - all of us- been war profiteers- hoarding and spending the trickle-down pecuniary profits of the war economy on ourselves. We each of us, must take our OWN checks, and stand in front of Congress, and follow the model that the Veterans set-- and get the money to our victims.
It is clear that as things now stand, We The People will not rise up, will not stand up on our own, will not change the murderous and inhuman direction we have taken.
I pray that once that spark is lit, and we are shown the path, we will jump and run to follow it.
Please, let the healing begin.
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