• BossColo@lemmy.sdf.org
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      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.

      • afellowkid@lemmygrad.ml
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        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.

      • Cyber Ghost@lemmygrad.mlOP
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        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.

        • BossColo@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          Then why the hell is the US the largest contributor of global humanitarian aid? They’re not just evil right? They’re even bad at being evil.

          Your life must be so simple. Never had to form a complex thought, eh?

          • Gay_Tomato [they/them, it/its]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Your life must be so simple. Never had to form a complex thought, eh?

            The level of projection is real. It must be so simple for you to just follow the status quo right? Just have to keep your head empty and mindlessly repeat state department talking points. No commie propaganda can enter if you keep filing your skull with imaginary accomplishments and a constant reminder that being American definitely makes you very, very, special. freedom-and-democracy

          • Flyberius [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            It’s PR to fool people like you. The US is a fucking cancer, and even their foreign aid is mostly used to employ US citizens and to perform PR for image conscious billionaires. I actually work in foreign aid and it disgusts me how much of the budgets we are assigned goes straight back to Western companies.

          • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            I literally have this link bookmarked for dipshits like you.

            Aid in reverse: how poor countries develop rich countries

            We have long been told a compelling story about the relationship between rich countries and poor countries. The story holds that the rich nations of the OECD give generously of their wealth to the poorer nations of the global south, to help them eradicate poverty and push them up the development ladder. Yes, during colonialism western powers may have enriched themselves by extracting resources and slave labour from their colonies – but that’s all in the past. These days, they give more than $125bn (£102bn) in aid each year – solid evidence of their benevolent goodwill.

            This story is so widely propagated by the aid industry and the governments of the rich world that we have come to take it for granted. But it may not be as simple as it appears.

            The US-based Global Financial Integrity (GFI) and the Centre for Applied Research at the Norwegian School of Economics recently published some fascinating data. They tallied up all of the financial resources that get transferred between rich countries and poor countries each year: not just aid, foreign investment and trade flows (as previous studies have done) but also non-financial transfers such as debt cancellation, unrequited transfers like workers’ remittances, and unrecorded capital flight (more of this later). As far as I am aware, it is the most comprehensive assessment of resource transfers ever undertaken.

            What they discovered is that the flow of money from rich countries to poor countries pales in comparison to the flow that runs in the other direction.

            In 2012, the last year of recorded data, developing countries received a total of $1.3tn, including all aid, investment, and income from abroad. But that same year some $3.3tn flowed out of them. In other words, developing countries sent $2tn more to the rest of the world than they received. If we look at all years since 1980, these net outflows add up to an eye-popping total of $16.3tn – that’s how much money has been drained out of the global south over the past few decades. To get a sense for the scale of this, $16.3tn is roughly the GDP of the United States.

            What this means is that the usual development narrative has it backwards. Aid is effectively flowing in reverse. Rich countries aren’t developing poor countries; poor countries are developing rich ones.

            Foreign aid from the West is literally a scam to cover up vast flows of money and resources away from the developing world and towards developed countries. It is the equivalent of the Gates’ of the world donating 0.00000001% of their daily income to charity and the media getting on their knees and fellating them for it. And, as others have said, even the absolutely paltry sums of money donated in foreign aid by the West merely ends up back in the hands of their own investors, because developing countries exist merely as debt peons to be endlessly harvested, without meaningfully developing them.

            This is the face of modern imperialism.

          • sicaniv@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            https://english.news.cn/20220923/c3265b00ba9d4538a25e35060b3103e5/c.html

            https://m.economictimes.com/news/company/corporate-trends/ugly-truths-of-ngo-funding-helping-hand-vs-foreign-hand/articleshow/12125056.cms

            You have to be so fucking shitlib to acknowledge that USA provide humanitarian aid to some country without any ulterior motives. They are not just aids but debt traps, that those countries repay by giving USA the access to their country’s resources and market at any cost. And if those countries don’t comply then USA starts providing more aid to groups opposit to govt and ultimately topple the govt.

          • Cyber Ghost@lemmygrad.mlOP
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            1 year ago

            The USA is the most evil country in the world. No other country comes close it. And most of the “aid” goes back to the same pockets of the investors who give it, but now it is all tax free. Just check out all the tax evasion for millionaires that the Gates Foundation and many others have done! The USA fucks over every single country, especially poor ones!

        • BossColo@lemmy.sdf.org
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          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
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            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
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              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.net
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                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.

                • TillieNeuen [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

                  And the smell of rot fills the country.

                  Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

                  There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate—died of malnutrition—because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.

                  The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

      • Addfwyn@lemmygrad.ml
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        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
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          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.

            • BossColo@lemmy.sdf.org
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              1 year ago

              Right, but you can’t have it both ways. Are countries better off of their agriculture is dictated, or not? Why is it the responsibility of the US?

              • sicaniv@lemmygrad.ml
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                1 year ago

                USA is shit. No one gives any responsibility to US. US can’t even take the responsibility of their own people. Because if it could, there won’t be so much deaths due to health care system failure in COVID. You have to be so bright bourgeois ass licker to ignore any thing critical to US, so shamelessly.

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

          I’m sure China would abide by this if it passed. This is definitely not a bad faith argument.

            • BossColo@lemmy.sdf.org
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              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.