i feel like blogging

but i don't have anything in particular to blog about. i am so impressed by my cousin, she can take a string of thoughts about bumper stickers and turn it into a cohesive essay-like post - find a theme of some worth in a subject so apparently mundane.

it's 1:23 p.m. and i am still in my pajamas, as is musa. BUT i managed to get a couple of tablespoons of cereal and a few baby spoons of homemade apricot puree into him about an hour ago, so i don't feel as though the morning is completely wasted.
right now we are sitting in the living room, i on the laptop, he crawling around and playing with his toys.
have you ever seen "trainspotting"? remember the baby crawling on the ceiling during ewan macgregor's heroin withdrawal? those jerky, almost robotic movements? well, it's a bit of a grotesque comparison, but that's what musa's crawling reminds me of. he's definitely gotten the hang of it, mashallah, but he's still a little wobbly and hesitant in his control. it's utterly adorable - especially when he stops and looks at me and smiles, like he just did now :D
musa began "real" crawling and sitting up by himself - back so straight! - within the last 10 days of ramadan, mashallah. that means something must have gone right, i hope... i was hoping to have some greater sense of spiritual accomplishment at the end of this ramadan than the last, so my plan was to read the entire qur'an with translation, for the first time in my 28 years, pathetic as that might be. but i only made it to th 19th juz'. it was a lot easier to stay awake while i was fasting, which i did the first 8 days straight and then on and off for the rest of the month. i'm feeling now like i should have maybe not fasted at all - a bit worried about my milk supply and musa's nutrition. inshallah if there was any damage it will soon be resolved.

this feels like one of those useless journal entries i used to write... here's what i did today, here's what's on my mind, blah blah blah. my small, insignificant world. any thoughts worth thinking, or sentiments worth feeling, are swamped under sludge at the bottom of the lake. ramadan should have cleared that sludge somewhat, but it's like it surged back - i LET it surge back - even before eid was upon me.
musa is starting to whine, and i must eat...

eid mubarak!!!

May Allah give you all a happy, safe and blessed day of celebration.

hunger, but not mine

pasted from commondreams.org. just struck me because i am sitting here, hungry from fasting, and learning what this really means is partly the point of fasting...

Published on Tuesday, October 17, 2006 by the lnter Press Service
Hunger Due to Injustice, Not Lack of Food
by Tito Drago


MADRID - Millions of people die of hunger-related causes every year. However, that is not because of actual shortages of food, but is a result of social injustice and political, social and economic exclusion, argue non-governmental organizations that launched a campaign in Spain on World Food Day Monday.

Oct. 16 was established as World Food Day in 1979 by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), commemorating the agency's Oct. 16, 1945 founding date. Monday also marked the first day of Anti-Poverty Week, which will include events in Spain and around the world to raise awareness of the issue.

FAO's slogan for World Food Day this year is "Invest in Agriculture for Food Security". But NGOs argue that the problem is not a lack of food production, but of the injustice surrounding access to and use of foods.

Theo Oberhuber, head of the Spanish environmental NGO Ecologists in Action (EEA), told IPS that enough food is produced in the world to cover the needs of everyone, so that no one would have to go hungry.

But, he added, there are two problems that stand in the way of this. The first is that a large part of all food, whether agricultural products or food obtained from oceans or rivers, goes towards feeding livestock "whose meat and by-products are consumed mainly in the countries of the industrialized North."

The second, he said, is social injustice. In many countries, the majority of the population cannot afford food, "not even food of lesser quality."

Olivier Longué, director general of Action Against Hunger in Spain, pointed out to IPS examples of lower-quality food: in Malawi and Guatemala, for instance, corn forms the basis of the subsistence diet, while in the Philippines the staples are corn, potatoes and plantains.

Action Against Hunger reported that every four seconds someone in the world dies of hunger-related diseases and that nearly one billion people suffer from hunger around the world.

The global NGO also noted that six million children a year die of hunger, which is responsible for half of all deaths of children under five. In addition, many children who survive hunger and malnutrition suffer disabilities for the rest of their lives.

The international NGOs Engineers Without Borders, Caritas and Veterinarians Without Borders, along with Prosalus, a Spanish organization that promotes health care in Africa and Latin America, launched in Spain the campaign "Derecho a la Alimentación: Urgente" (Right to Food: Urgent), and presented a DVD Monday in which they state that food security cannot be achieved without support for agricultural development.

They note that FAO statistics show that more than 70 percent of the people suffering from hunger around the world live in rural areas, where they should be able to feed themselves through agriculture.

The campaign is demanding that governments recognize food security as a basic human right, and that they review their policies on the question and promote agricultural development in a framework of environmental sustainability.

But the EEA questions FAO's call to "Invest in Agriculture for Food Security" because of the growing influence of agribusiness and concentration of land.

The EEA stresses that "more than 70 percent of the global pesticide market is in the hands of six giant agrochemical corporations, of which only three will be left within a few years."

The group adds that these companies control a large part of global seed sales in a lucrative captive market, by means of sales of genetically modified (GM) varieties that are resistant to the firms' own herbicides.

In addition, the offspring of some GM plants are sterile, which means they cannot be stored to grow future crops. Poor farmers thus become dependent on transnational companies, and are forced to buy new seeds every year.

The EEA also points out that the world's 10 biggest food companies account for one-quarter of all food produced worldwide, and 10 large chains account for one-quarter of all food sales.

As an example of the consequences of that policy, "in Spain, farmers often receive only 25 percent of the end price," says the NGO.

"If that is the situation in a developed European country, it's not difficult to imagine what happens in countries of the South, where the rural population lives in infrahuman conditions," said Oberhuber.

© Copyright 2006 IPS - Inter Press Service