Conscienceless Fat Pigs
Not very nice, is it, to point at the obese and the grossly overweight among us, and blame them not only for their failures in consumption discipline resulting in their poor health conditions, and society having to pick up the health-care tabs, but blaming them also for consuming too great a portion of the world's food resources. How's that for a leap of logic?Because people in developed countries have too much of a good thing and over-consume, they are effectively denying other people in less-developed countries sustenance. Would that it were that simple. But for simple-minded bureaucrats it comes down to that.
After all, none other than Jacques Diouf, director general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization claimed as much. "The excess consumption by the world's obese costs $20-billion annually, to which must be added indirect costs of $100-billion resulting from premature death and related diseases."
Yes, and? Should, then, people living in developed countries emulate the conditions of bare subsistence of those in sub-Saharan Africa?
The simple fact is countries of the developed world do have a collective conscience. The governments of those countries, in reflection of the wishes of their populations, do offer massive assistance to countries of the world which are incapable of providing sufficient sustenance to their people.
Many of those same countries to whom such massive assistance is given have proven themselves to be functionally incapable of good administration benefiting their constituents.
Yet they seem to feel comfortable in blaming the developed countries for their dire conditions, all too often brought upon their populations by their singularly inept and often criminally corrupt administration.
While there is much truth to the accusation that North American and European farm subsidies are not helpful to developing countries' agricultural options, one could state with some truth, that these same countries provide inordinately and vital generous assistance in fighting global hunger. Somehow, expressions of appreciation appear increasingly remote to non-existent.
The meeting of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization has a distinct purpose. One that promises to go sliding off the rails of reality and result, into madcap lunacy with the presence of odious monsters like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
The latter has, through deliberate and criminal mismanagement, beggared his country and impoverished his people. The former is an incoherent manipulator of feverishly nasty fantasy. Neither belong in a respected forum of responsible world leaders.
Mr. Mugabe claiming entitlement to being feted as an elder statesman whose right to rule should run roughshod over the rights of his people to a future beyond imminent starvation. Mr. Ahmadinejad feeling sufficiently secure to appear in an international forum spreading his mission of defamation and hatred while claiming the right to ownership of nuclear weaponry the better to challenge and threaten his neighbours.
Mugabe pointing out the obvious, that the world is mad, not him; that Zimbabwe's former colonial masters have engineered his country's fall from plenty to poverty. Ahmadinejad gilding the lily of his paranoid obsession with Israel, informing the assemblage that Zionists are responsible for rising food prices and food shortages world-wide.
The wonder of it is that the international assemblage doesn't come away from the experience feeling smeared by association with these two.
But then, why should they, since the congregation of the concerned for the hungry of the world dine at a palace of unsurpassed splendour in a congenial atmosphere of plenty with a mouth-watering menu of vol au vents with sweetcorn and mozzarella, pate of crevettes and pumpkin, veal with cherry tomatoes, spinach and a fruit salad.
Seconds, anyone?
Labels: Political Realities, Societal Failures, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, June 04, 2008
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