Starved & Stupid In The USA

Here's news you won't get from BushCo's media:
UN praises Cuba's ability to feed people
By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer, Wed Nov 7, 12:14 AM ET
Jean Ziegler, who has been the United Nations' independent investigator on "the right to food" since 2000, spent 11 days in Cuba on a fact-finding mission, meeting with top officials and chatting up farmers, state managers and ordinary Cubans waiting in line for food allotted by ration cards.
"We haven't seen even one malnourished person" — a rare feat in much of poverty-stricken Latin America, Ziegler said Tuesday. "The right to being fed is the priority, without a doubt."
Cuba is one of 32 countries that include the "right to food" in their constitutions, and fewer still — including Brazil, Latin America's largest economy — meet pledges to provide food to all their citizens, he said. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071107/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_un_hunger_expert
Here is more information regarding basic "right to life" issues and Cuba:
The Anti-Empire Report -- Cuba and Original Sin
By WILLIAM BLUM
"Each day in the world 200 million children sleep in the streets. Not one of them is Cuban."
Carlos Lege, Cuban vice president.
...the sanctions (which Cuba calls an economic blockade), designed to create discontent toward the government, have been expanding under the Bush administration, both in number and in vindictiveness. ... the US Treasury has frozen the accounts in the United States of the Netherlands Caribbean Bank because it has an office in Cuba, and banned US firms and individuals from having any dealings with the Dutch bank.
The US Treasury Department fined the Alliance of Baptists $34,000, charging that certain of its members and parishioners of other churches had engaged in tourism during a visit to Cuba for religious purposes; i.e., they had spent money there. (As George W. once said: "U.S. law forbids Americans to travel to Cuba for pleasure."[7])
...Cubans in the United States are limited to how much money they can send to their families in Cuba, a limit that Washington imposes only on Cubans and on no other nationals. Not even during the worst moments of the Cold War was there a general limit to the amount of money that people in the US could send to relatives living in the Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe.
In 1999, Cuba filed a suit against the United States for $181.1 billion in compensation for economic losses and loss of life during the first forty years of this aggression. The suit held Washington responsible for the death of 3,478 Cubans and the wounding and disabling of 2,099 others. In the eight years since, these figures have of course all increased.
...Cuba's sin, which the United States of America can not forgive, is to have created a society that can serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model, and, moreover, to have done so under the very nose of the United States. And despite all the hardships imposed on it by Washington, Cuba has indeed inspired countless peoples and governments all over the world.
http://members.aol.com/bblum6/aer51.htm
Citizen, just one more thing before I stop this rant. Go here for world literacy rates. We're #21:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate