In mood for meatless food? II

Just to make sure you wouldn't miss reading all parts of the Spiegel-article I recommended yesterday. (No, I am not on the Spiegel's payroll; besides, I do not like the spelling style of their German edition).


Part 1: The Choice between Food and Fuel

Part 2: The New Chinese Appetite for Meat

Part 3: Snapping Up Land Across the Globe

Part 4: Can the Poor Afford to Eat?

In mood for meatless food?

You are so shocked by the previous post that from now on you will eat nothing but whole grain bread, muesli, and only sometimes steal your hen one egg?
Fine, as long as you can afford.

Food prices are skyrocketing. Arable land is becoming scarce. And forests continue to disappear across the globe. The world must decide between affordable food and biofuels.

All it takes for Hans Dietrich Driftmann, a businessman from Germany's northern Holstein region, to explain the way the world works is a package of muesli -- or at least to explain the way his world, the world of agricultural markets, works.

Driftmann picks up a packet of "Köllns kernige Multikorn-Flocken" ("Kölln's Crunchy Multigrain Flakes") and reads out the list of ingredients: oats, wheat, barley and rye. Then he slips a set of price tables out of a plastic sleeve and does a couple of calculations to illustrate how the prices of the muesli's ingredients have changed: rye has gone up by 55 percent, barley by 70 percent and wheat 90 percent. The price of oats has also skyrocketed -- by 80 percent -- since the last harvest a year ago. This final figure is what really hits home for Driftmann.

... and the story ends here.

Bon appétit
&
The Peace of the Night.

Apropos calves

You read the previous post? Good.

Now don't I know (at least not yet) what you think about killing 2,000 one day old calves per week, nor would I know whether you like eating the veal of calves being turbo-fed within eight weeks.

As for me, rather than killing and / or eating I prefer admiring certain calves and praising their beauty. :)

The Peace of the Night.

Of Vice and Men

Please keep in mind the four links offered in three posts , January 10th:
The Pig Monopoly (Monsanto), Wheat / Soya Rise, Seeds of Destruction, Doomsday Seed Vault in the Arctic, and those tiny four words 'definively to be continued'.

Thank you. :)

Well then:

Since as a boy I read John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, my blood is boiling whenever I think of racketeers throwing fruits into the ocean 'to keep prices stable'.

Hm, how to cut it short?

Ah, stable is a lovely catchword. It brings me not to fruits but to livestock, and thus to one of Postman Patel's recent posts.

Enjoy, ... if you can.

Augurio, poeta! :)

Another 365 days flown by like 'like farts in the wind' (which is the title of one of his poems): Today my dear friend Giulio Stocchi is celebrating his 'compleanno'.

Auguro a te per le prossimo 366 giorni

salute,
amore,
pace,
ispirazione,
successo,
ozi,
contentezza

e - specialmente se mai qualcosa non immediato vuòle andare liscio -

sereno placidità e viceversa calmo serenità!


May your muse don't stop kissing you, poeta, and may Pegasus give you a good ride. :)



This afternoon I enjoyed hearing the master's voice by listening to 'La Cantata Rossa per Tall el Zaatar' (an album by Gaetano Liguori (music), Giulio Stocchi (text & voce recitante)) and Demetrio Stratos, featuring Concetta Busacca, Pasquale Liguori and Roberto Del Piano, originally released in vinyl LP format, 1976).

But 'The red cantata for Tall el Zaatar' is perhaps a bit dark for such a day.

So may I introduce you to

Pandolfer the cat (translated by Deborah Strozier)

This is the story
of a stray cat with no home
he runs down the streets
the rooftops he roams

yellow is his mane
the color of sulpher
they gave him a name
they called him Pandolfer

Pandolfer the cat
was born in May
he’s big and he’s brave
and he sleeps by day

Pandolfer the cat
is a tiger true
battles with the mice
and wins thirtytwo


By visiting Giulio Stocchi's site and clicking Pandolfer the cat, you get the whole fiaba [not only] per bambini. :)

Tripling the tribute

Neither I'd forget José Carrasco.

Seems it's a night I do remember some special people, representative for lots of courageous journalists.

Take it as a tribute to all those who had, have and will have the courage to speak out against injustice and totalitarism of any kind.
I am not sure, if I had been or would be such courageous.

The Peace of the Night.