Or something like that. That headline certainly makes as much sense as this deranged PC-rant from National Progressive Radio by way of the ancient leftist publication The Nation: “Why the Far Right Hates Soccer,” by Dave Zirin. Just when you think the lunatic fringe can’t get any nuttier, along comes this:

Every World Cup, it arrives like clockwork. As sure as the ultimate soccer spectacle brings guaranteed adrenaline and agony to fans across the United States, it also drives the right-wing noise machine utterly insane.

“It doesn’t matter how you try to sell it to us,” yipped the Prom King of new right, Glenn Beck. “It doesn’t matter how many celebrities you get, it doesn’t matter how many bars open early, it doesn’t matter how many beer commercials they run, we don’t want the World Cup, we don’t like the World Cup, we don’t like soccer, we want nothing to do with it.”

That darn right-wing noise machine, upset over a little thing like lethal soccer riots! But you know — you just know — it goes deeper than that, and we all have a sense of where this is heading, don’t we: (more…)

A few weeks ago, Lord Christopher Monckton told me a distressing story about a visit to Haiti. He said that poverty in that troubled nation is so pervasive that many of its inhabitants have been reduced to eating mud pies. The term “mud pies” is not slang for a local staple made from locally-grown cereal crops. We’re talking about people reduced to eating actual dirt. Monckton watched Haitians form mud into the shape of pies, mixing in a sprinkling of whatever nutritional foodstuffs might be available (like oil and salt) and then “cooking” the mud pies in the sun.

Sounds like further evidence of the devastating effects that the January 12 earthquake had on Haiti, right? Not really. Oh, did I forget to mention? This was the situation in Haiti before the earthquake hit, as this 2008 story that appeared in National Geographic documents.

Between 2000 and 2010 the World Food Price Index, the inflation-adjusted measure of how expensive food is across the globe, almost doubled. In 2000 the index sat at a value of 90. As of January 2010, the index had risen to a value of 172. That a 91% increase in the cost of food over the course of a decade.

While Americans and citizens of other industrialized nations may be able to absorb that kind of price increase, the poor living in the Third World cannot. Tragic cases of starvation like the ones Monckton witnessed in pre-earthquake Haiti are hardly unique. Dwindling, more expensive food supplies have led to an increasing number of food riots around the world. More and more people are dying, simply because they can not afford basic sustenance. How could this happen? (more…)