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The Politics of Hunger

Some 36 million Americans do not have enough to eat. Globally, the number of people considered hungry is close to one billion, what the UN has called a breaking point. And even as oil prices have come down the global food crisis continues to worsen. So what's driving the crisis at home and abroad?

Joel Berg, the author of All You Can Eat: How Hungry is America? Arun Gupta, Editor of The Indypendent, Max Fraad Wolff, an economist and freelance writer, and Kathy Ozer Executive Director of the National Family Farm Coalition discuss possible solutions.

Other Lands Have Dreams: An Interview with Kathy Kelly

Kathy Kelly, the author of Other Lands Have Dreams and a co-founder of Voices for Creative Non-Violence, discusses her recent trip to Gaza. As the United States continues to supply Israel with billions in weapons and military hardware the public remains largely in the dark as to how those weapons are used. A tenuous ceasefire may have been reached in Gaza but the violence hasn’t stopped. What can be done? Kelly, who has been an advocate of non-violent resistance for decades, shares her stories.

The F Word: It’s not the Lobbying, it’s the Agreeing!

Now it's official: Mark Patterson, a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, will be the new Treasury Secretary's chief of staff despite Barack Obama's supposedly strict new rules on lobbying and ethics. Patterson lobbied for Goldman from 2005 until April of last year on a whole host of issues including credit default swaps, credit rating agencies, and sovereign wealth funds, the bank-driven deregulation of which brought us to the current debacle. Now Patterson will be the point person on who gains access to the Treasury Sec's ear. But Patterson is hardly the heart of the problem. Geithner's ear is. To give a bit of background. Geithner's first job was with Kissinger Associates, where he worked with the former Secretary of State. From there, he went to the U.S. Treasury Department, where he rose in esteem and became an aide to Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin -- two pro-bank, pro-deregulation Treasury Secretaries. MORE