Famine as a tool of power
Famine as a tool of power.
October 29
The following text is by Adriana Evangelitz. It presents the issue of hunger from a different perspective. For us, it has always been clear that the development of GMOs does not aim to meet the food needs of humanity, contrary to what Koutchner claims (but who is he really working for, that one?). This text completes the grim picture of what is happening on Earth, as always led by the USA. When I read these lines, I recall certain American states where a law allowed weight-loss treatments and all kinds of solutions to be classified as "medical treatments." In another state, a city in the Midwest issued a decree declaring its household waste "private property," so that it could fine poor people caught trying to scavenge food from trash bins. In this country, people spend fortunes maintaining deceased relatives preserved in liquid nitrogen. Obesity is a chronic condition among individuals. There are even groups of obese people who claim their "identity," and mayors who, for electoral reasons, accept instituting an "Obesity Day" each year. To be complete, we should also have an "Idiots Day" and a "Sons of Bitches Day."
Something is seriously wrong on this planet. Power lies in the hands of corrupt or paranoid people—or both at once. That doesn't stop us from dreaming. I think of the project "The Language of the Heart." Could people continue exploiting or hating one another if they could see, feel, and hear the consequences of such exploitation?
I once knew a foolish young man named Alexandre. For a time, before the police caught him after intercepting phone calls that revealed the activities of this miserable gang, he delivered heroin doses hidden inside video cassettes. It didn’t last long. But he still remembered the faces of the people to whom he brought that poison. It still affected him.
One day, people who have stakes in arms factories will be able to see on their screens (what their press won’t show them) the results of this brilliant industry. There are already films showing the impact of depleted uranium shells on genetics, turning Iraq into a land populated by young monsters.
Blood and tears don’t show up on banknotes.
Adriana Evangelitz’s Text:
The very charitable UN has just published Jean Ziegler’s report on the Right to Food. The document is damning, and perhaps too damning, since it took eight months before being shared with us. Its publication date is February 9, 2004. At the UN, they take their time while thousands of human beings die daily from malnutrition or simply from having nothing to eat.
World hunger kills a child every five seconds. 842 million people are undernourished, and 2 billion live below the poverty line, earning less than one dollar a day—or nothing at all—suffering from "hidden hunger," i.e., micronutrient deficiencies that cause physical and mental growth delays, deformities, or blindness, condemning them to lives outside the norm. The effects of hunger are passed from one generation to the next: undernourished mothers give birth to children who will never reach full growth, thus dooming entire nations to atrophy. All this in a world that, according to the FAO, produces more than enough food to feed every population.
It is regrettable to note that the number of victims continues to grow since the 1996 World Food Summit, when governments pledged to take action to reduce this scourge, which functions as a weapon of mass destruction, killing far more people than any contemporary war or terrorist attack. [1]
In light of the failure of the Cancún trade negotiations (Mexico), the rapporteur "revisits the issue of international trade and food security. He examines why, regarding food and agriculture, international trade does not necessarily bring positive outcomes for the vast majority of the poor and marginalized, but instead worsens marginalization and inequality. He analyzes the negative consequences of the imbalances and inequalities created by the global trade rules established by the WTO, as well as the potentially harmful effects of the activities of powerful transnational industrial monopolies that are increasingly tightening their grip on food and water." [2]
We are forced to accuse Western powers, who, despite promises to address this tragedy, are far from honoring their humanitarian and humanist commitments. Worse, they are making it worse. For, clearly, we may assert that the North ruthlessly exploits the South’s resources, keeping developing countries under its control through various international institutions—patent food oppressors—whose illusory loans only deepen the misery of debtor nations. This bitter reality strengthens our conviction that, under the guise of aid, the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, and other organizations, where the shadow of the United States looms large, deliberately condemn certain peoples to famine—and thus to certain death.
The partial and unjust imbalance in the OECD’s allocation of subsidies clearly demonstrates the open disdain for the most disadvantaged regions. While 24,000 people die of hunger each day on our planet, the OECD spends 350 billion euros on agriculture in the wealthiest nations, while giving only 8 billion euros in aid to agriculture in developing countries. We confront here a major issue regarding budgetary distribution intended to improve the living conditions of our brothers and sisters in extreme precarity. There is even a deliberate act to enrich the richest while suffocating those whose daily lives are already hell. Evidence of this is that rich countries no longer hide their indifference toward fighting poverty and openly betray their commitments to the most disadvantaged, since, from 1990 to 1999, official development assistance (ODA) provided by OECD countries declined by 49% in real terms. The causes of world hunger and its worsening are therefore not natural or economic—they are political. And we cannot help but think they are also premeditated. Industrialized nations use hunger as a weapon to subjugate countries that resist their dictates or to satisfy their insatiable thirst for profit benefiting agribusiness. And here, the root of the problem lies once again in the United States.
We have clear proof of this in the GMO market, which many European countries oppose for good reason. The uncertainty surrounding the issue—linked to poorly assessed health risks, consequences...