• BossColo@lemmy.sdf.org
    0·
    1 year ago

    This is one of the greatest examples of virtue signaling I think I have ever seen. I’ll ask three questions. If you can answer all three, I think the problem with this is very obvious.

    1. Who among these countries do you think would be responsible for footing the bill on this one?

    2. Which of these countries is currently the greatest contributor of global humanitarian aid the world has ever known?

    3. What is stopping any of these countries from banding together without the US and making their beautiful dream a reality without this pointless resolution?

    Smear campaigns work better when they’re not completely transparent.

      • BossColo@lemmy.sdf.org
        0·
        1 year ago

        1. I refer to #3, why don’t they just do it then?

        2. I didn’t say per capita. You love that oil money don’t you?

        3. Yes, the US is purposely starving the world.

        You’re lying to yourself and everyone else. Stop being a bad person.

        • Cyber Ghost@lemmygrad.mlOP
          0·
          1 year ago

          The USA starves the world because desperate and hungry people are easier to exploit. Starving people and preventing people from getting accessible food serves their corporate interest because they can keep rising food prices.

        • uralsolo [he/him]@hexbear.net
          0·
          1 year ago

          Not the OP but the US is purposefully starving the world. Not through direct means ala the British Empire in Ireland or India, but through upholding an economic and political regime that paralyzes many countries from being able to secure their own food supply. How this operates varies between regions, but most commonly poor countries’ agriculture is heavily pushed by Western money towards export crops. As Thomas Sankara said of his own country, they had been able to feed themselves for thousands of years, so why after being ruled by France were they suddenly dependant on food aid?

          Also if we agree that that chart is a good indicator of anything then China is the largest contributor and voted in favor of making food a human right.

              • BossColo@lemmy.sdf.org
                0·
                1 year ago

                Fair, I shouldn’t have speculated like that. However, my argument is that the whole vote was a charade. If China knew the US was going to veto this, then their vote is meaningless.

                • Edward (any)@lemmygrad.ml
                  01·
                  1 year ago

                  This isn’t the security council, or anywhere else, where the U.S. has veto rights. This (the Third Committee) seems to run on “majority yes” voting (i.e. if enough vote yes, it is adopted).

        • afellowkid@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          Yes, the US is purposely starving the world.

          Yep. I doubt you’ll care to read the following but I’m putting it here for others to see.

          The United States is the world leader in imposing economic sanctions and supports sanctions regimes affecting nearly 200 million people. … Targeted countries experience economic contractions and, in many cases, are unable to import sufficient essential goods, including essential medicines, medical equipment, infrastructure necessary for clean water and for health care, and food. … While on paper most sanctions have some humanitarian exemptions for food, necessary medicines and medical supplies, in practice these exemptions are not sufficient to ensure access to these goods within the targeted country. (Center for Economic and Policy Research)

          It’s well known that sanctions are ineffective for pressuring governments, but very effective at waging siege warfare by starving and killing ordinary citizens by disease and infrastructural failures. Continuing to use sanctions in this way and to this extent, when this is well known, is definitely “purposely starving the world”. An independent expert appointed by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in 2019 that US sanctions violate human rights and international code of conduct and can lead to starvation. Why does the US continue to be the world leader in imposing sanctions, increasing its use of sanctions by 933% over the last 20 years, when this is well known? It’s because they know the effect, and they’re doing it on purpose.

          We can also look at some US internal memorandums from before it was more politically incorrect to talk about starving people in other countries. In 1960, U.S. officials wrote that creating “disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship” through denying money and supplies to Cuba would be a method they should pursue in order to “bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government” in Cuba.

          In other countries, we see a pattern of US officials and US-backed institutions purposely denying aid and loans to governments they don’t approve of, and then suddenly approving aid and opening up loans when a coup brings a leader they’re happy with into power. When Ghana was requesting aid under an administration that the West’s bourgeoisie didn’t like, U.S. officials said this: “We and other Western countries (including France) have been helping to set up the situation by ignoring Nkrumah’s pleas for economic aid. The new OCAM (Francophone) group’s refusal to attend any OAU meeting in Accra (because of Nkrumah’s plotting) will further isolate him. All in all, looks good.” The “situation” they were helping to set up was a coup they knew was going to happen. After a US-friendly coup took place, suddenly it was time to give the “almost pathetically pro-Western” government a gift of “few thousand tons of surplus wheat or rice”, knowing that giving little gifts like this “whets their appetites” for further collaboration with the US. You will find the same song and dance in numerous other countries, Chile being a well-documented example, if you simply look for it.

          The US imposes starvation and depravation of other countries on purpose, using it as an economic wrecking ball, then pats itself on the back for giving “aid” to the countries which have been hollowed out by such tactics.

          The loans which magically become available to countries that meet the US approval standards are not so pretty either, as a former IMF senior economist said, he may only hope “to wash my hands of what in my mind’s eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples”, there not being “enough soap in the world” to wash away what has been done to the global south through the calculated fraud of the IMF, whose tactics are designed to accomplish the same kind of goals as the sanctions are–to prevent the economic rise of any country but the US by wrecking its competitors economically, tearing apart their local manufacturing capacity and transforming them into mere resource extraction projects, redirecting their agricultural industries into exports to make sure they reach a level where they are more reliant on imports to feed themselves, and reliant on foreign aid which is ripped away whenever they do not do what the US approves of or make friends with who the US wants them to.

          I refer to #3, why don’t they just do it then?

          This is what secondary sanctions and the US’s various protection rackets have always been designed to prevent, which has definitely been a powerful tool for them, but it seems with the rise of the new non-aligned movement and de-dollarization its becoming a less successful one and we can see countries “just doing” what they want more and more while the US leadership waves around, as usual, more sanctions and military threats in response.

          • BossColo@lemmy.sdf.org
            0·
            1 year ago

            1. If they had, why isn’t the world completely fed? Surely if every other country donated half their GDP, then the world is solved.

            2. Developmental aid is not humanitarian aid. Maybe learn, instead of googling for facts that support your position, then trying to pass them off as your own ideas. Have you ever read a book?

            3. History has context, leave your bubble just for a second and try to be more than a parrot. I wish you could see the absurdity of mentioning China’s nation building efforts, then citing this article at me. You’re clearly a stooge. Congratulations.

            • WhatWouldKarlDo@lemmygrad.ml
              0·
              1 year ago
              1. Because shit happens. Why isn’t everyone in the US fed? Half of your GDP should surely feed the people.
              2. I read in a book once that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.
              3. You’re a fucking idiot.
              • BossColo@lemmy.sdf.org
                0·
                1 year ago

                1. Because saying that people need food doesn’t magically put it in their mouths. It’s nice that you believe a UN resolution would though.

                2. How would you split it? Just fuck the natural disaster victims, right?

                3. You’ve really proven your intellect with this one.

                • silent_water [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  0·
                  1 year ago
                  1. we literally pay farmers to destroy food - enough food to feed every starving person in the country. we do so solely to prop up the ag lobby.

                  the rest of your post makes no sense.

        • Addfwyn@lemmygrad.ml
          03·
          1 year ago

          Yes, the US is purposely starving the world.

          Unironically yes. While the US is particularly fond of bombs and drones, another favourite weapon of theirs is starving the countries of people who have the audacity to disagree with them. See: Cuba*, DPRK. As a bonus, they even get to blame the countries they are starving for the lack of food.

          Not even only other countries, the US is happy to do it to their own people because the hungry are easier to exploit. The US has an absolute staggering amount of food waste, it is the largest component of most US landfills. They’d sooner throw away food before giving it to the needy. In many cases, they will punish you for giving it to the needy (see the charitable organizations repeatedly fined in Texas for feeding the homeless).

          *Incidentally this exact same map can be used for countries voting to end the US sanctions of Cuba.

          • BossColo@lemmy.sdf.org
            0·
            1 year ago

            Take a look at what uralsolo had to say. The US is starving the world by forcing them to grow certain crops. And you say the US is starving the world by not trading with them. The cognitive dissonance is astounding.

            • Edward (any)@lemmygrad.ml
              02·
              1 year ago

              Here is what uralsolo had to say:

              How this operates varies between regions

              (Of course, emphasis mine)

    • Anarcho-Bolshevik@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      I don’t understand why everybody is downvoting you. It’s a well known fact that throughout its 247 years of existence, the United States has literally never committed a single atrocity. I’m not saying the United States is perfect; maybe it committed an atrocity or two a couple of times, but nothing that was a big deal.

      • sinovictorchan@lemmygrad.ml
        1·
        1 year ago

        There are the Indian Residential fake school genocide that continued after the Cold War, the subjugation of communities of freed slaves, the Black Wall Street massacre, the Cold War massacre against a mass of peaceful workers who demand meritocracy on the excuse that human rights advocate are evil Soviet agents, and the current planned illegal dumping of hazardous landfills and industrial chemical waste (which contains components of the chemical weapons by British in WW1) onto to the lands of First Nations and African American communities to poison the water and food sources.

      • YoungBelden [any]@hexbear.net
        English
        1·
        1 year ago

        Also this thread is a good summary: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1493599447904931847.html

        In 2015, the North’s net appropriation from the South included:

        • 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents
        • 822 million hectares of embodied land
        • 21 Exajoules of embodied energy
        • 188 million person-years of embodied labour

        To put these figures in perspective:

        • 12 billion tons of raw material equivalents is 43% of the North’s annual material consumption. In other words, nearly half of the North’s material consumption is net appropriated from the South.
        • 822 million hectares of land (more than twice the size of India), would in theory be enough to provide nutritious food for up to 6 billion people, depending on land productivity and diet.
        • 21 Exajoules of energy would be enough to cover the annual energy requirements of building infrastructure to ensure that all 6.5 billion people in the global South have access to decent housing, public transport, healthcare, education, sanitation, communication, etc.

        In other words, all of this productive capacity could be used to provide for local human needs, but instead it is roped into servicing capital accumulation in the North. Patterns of net appropriation reproduce deprivation in the South.

    • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      parenti " foreign aid is when the poor people of a rich country give money to the rich people of a poor country." parenti

      Myths of “Humanitarian” Intervention

      CONTRARY TO POPULAR belief, U.S. leaders are no different from those of most other countries in that they have a dismal humanitarian record.

      True, many nations including this one have sent relief abroad in response to particular disasters.But these sporadic actions are limited in scope, do not represent an essential policy commitment, and obscure the many occasions when governments choose to do absolutely nothing for other peoples in dire straits.

      In addition, most U.S. aid missions serve as pretexts for hidden political agendas. They are intended to bolster conservative procapitalist regimes, build infrastructures (roads, ports, office complexes) that assist big investors, lend a cover for counterinsurgency programs, and undermine local agrarian self-sufficiency by driving independent farmers off lands that are then taken over by corporate agribusiness.

  • rjs001@lemmygrad.ml
    01·
    1 year ago

    And also, guess what countries voted against condemning Nazism? Here’s a hint: everyone’s favorite eastern European country who everyone claims doesn’t have a Nazi issue and the Eagle country didn’t vote for it