UN World Hunger and AIDS Reports: Monopoly Capitalism at Work

The UN has released statements on its latest findings on the global AIDS crisis (HIV/AIDS deaths and new infections highest in 2003, says UNAIDS UN News Centre 11/26/03), and hunger (Hunger increasing around the world after earlier decline - UN food agency UN News Center 11/26/03). The bottom line? AIDS infections and deaths are up, and efforts to dramatically reduce world hunger are failing. While they try to look at the positive side -- the gains made -- the reality is that these statistics are a direct consequence of political decisions and globalization.

The UN has released statements on its latest findings on the global AIDS crisis (HIV/AIDS deaths and new infections highest in 2003, says UNAIDS UN News Centre 11/26/03), and hunger (Hunger increasing around the world after earlier decline - UN food agency UN News Center 11/26/03). The bottom line? AIDS infections and deaths are up, and efforts to dramatically reduce world hunger are failing. While they try to look at the positive side -- the gains made -- the reality is that these statistics are a direct consequence of political decisions and globalization.

Paul Vallely of The Independent/UK (11/26/03) does an excellent job of getting at the heart of the issue of global hunger with his article How the world is getting hungrier each year.

Article Excerpt:

The report tries to put on a brave face. "First some good news," it begins, reporting that the number of chronically hungry people has declined by 80 million in 19 countries, including Brazil, Chad, Guinea, Namibia and Sri Lanka.

So why is the picture so grim everywhere else? The number of those going hungry in India has risen by 19 million since 1995-97, and yet China has reduced its figure by 58 million since 1990-92. "We must ask ourselves why this has happened," says the FAO director-general, Jacques Diouf, in his introduction.

Those who have bucked the trend share five characteristics, he concludes - faster economic growth, rapid expansion in the agricultural sector, slower population growth, lower rates of HIV infection and far fewer natural emergencies.

"The role of capital is decisive," said Hartwig de Haen, assistant director of the FAO's economic and social department in Washington. "Investment in agriculture is a precondition for growth in incomes of the poor and the food supply," he said.
Yet such investment has been declining. Rich countries must put more cash into the agriculture sectors of poor countries. It must, he said, "go back to the level where it was in the early Nineties".

If only it were so simple. The truth is that the 19 nations who have bucked the trend have not been the authors of their own good fortune.

They have been lucky not to have experienced the high levels of droughts and natural disasters that have increasingly afflicted the Third World over the past decade.

Nor have domestic politics had much influence over rates of population growth, which tend to be determined fairly directly by levels of poverty - the worse things are, the more children you need to look after you in your old age.

Nor have many poor nations been able to manage their Aids epidemics in the way the rich world has with its new drug regimes. It is easy for us in the First World to forget the scale of the ravages of Aids - which has killed some 25 million people in the poor world. In this decade it will claim more lives than all the world's wars and disasters of the past half- century. Aids takes a terrible economic toll; it kills off farmers in their prime and leaves behind young orphans and aged parents - mouths with no one to feed them.

Neither is it a coincidence that those countries most dependent on agriculture are those with the most hunger. Increasing the amounts of flowers and strawberries grown for export near Third World airports may help the balance of payments, but it does little for pastoral and subsistence agriculture in remoter rural areas. The economics of globalisation are that the very poorest get poorer still. There are some places to which wealth just never trickles down."

There is gloomy evidence of this in the report. "At least half the higher prices received for exports went not to farmers but traders," it notes, "and there was no increase in production in response to the higher prices". Worst still, it adds, "prices are expected to rise more steeply for food products that developing countries import than for the commodities they export.

"Overall," it predicts, "the lion's share of benefits from trade liberalisation is expected to go to developed countries."

It is critical that there be a much broader awareness of the relative wealth of the so-called "developed world." The reality is that wealth is based on the lack experienced in most of the world. Poorer nations realise this and the last two "trade liberalization" meetings (Cancun and Miami) show that the poorer nations are fighting for their lives. There is increasing global resistance (note the organization and protests at each of these events) to the path of greater corporatization. It is noteworthy that both of these talks (NAFTA and FTAA) broke down. While that is an excellent sign, it has not stopped or reversed the deadly progress monopolistic capitalism - a process that is dramatically increasing the gap between the rich and the poor; the few and the many; the exploiters and the exploited.

In the US (and perhaps in other "western" nations) free trade, trade liberalization, and privatization are promoted as great and positive courses for the US and for the world. It is certainly true that these upside down policies have provided temporary enhancements for the "average" person in the US. However, that is rapidly and dramatically changing as the bulk of the US population begins to experience similar forces as the exploited nations of the world. Namely, increasing costs, decreasing pay, union banning and busting, deteriorating environment, and fewer and fewer opportunities. I believe that it was Michael Parenti who first said that the ultimate consequence of these hegemonic capitalistic forces would be to turn the US into a third world country. The signs are certainly there.

Right now there is a major Grocery Workers Strike in California (see resources at end of this post). It is being driven by the labor practices of global exploiter Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has created more than price "competition." Its labor practices of low wages, temporary staffing, and lousy benefits is a forceful factor in deteriorating compensation for workers outside of Wal-Mart. That competition does not just exist in the grocery sector, but in hardware, electronics suppliers, automobile parts and repairs, etc. Recognizing the threat, the Teamsters in Florida have joined the striking grocery workers.

What is both frustrating and telling is that the grocery chains are fighting their workers rather than fighting Wal-Mart. The grocery chain’s efforts to erode unionization and pay may lower their costs in the short term, but competing against Wal-Mart in this manner is a downward spiral. The problem is Wal-Mart and the grocery chains and others should get on board against them rather than trying to follow their same practices. Perhaps they share the same blind mentality of socialization into the "middle class" in the US which encourages the majority to see the very rich as a group to be protected, and the poor as the group "destroying society." In other words, the "public" doesn't want to hamper the rich because they might be rich some day, and the grocery chains don't want to come out against Wal-Mart because they take Wal-Mart's place some day.

If you think I have drifted off course here, I have not. Wal-Mart is a multi-national corporation engaged in exploiting a global labor force - not just its US labor force. It is certainly not the only one doing so. However, the free trade, trade liberalization, and global exploitation processes at work in the world are tied directly to these very same corporate entities. People must make that connection. People in the US must see that the sometimes impossibly cheap prices are tied to the increasing poverty of much of the world, and to the deteriorating conditions inside the US. These events are not separate things, they are the same thing.

Wal-Mart has made its reputation on destroying communities and the small business in them. These are called "Wal-Mart Towns." Now they are threatening to drive out of business not just small businesses, but other major corporations - Safeway is no small fish. They contributed to the eradication of Montgomery Wards, and to the closing of Levi's as a US-based manufacturers. Both of these businesses American Icons, and both huge businesses.

The path we are on is not good for children, workers, nations, or any other living thing on the earth (including those who are "profiting" from it). It is way past time for people in the "wealthy" nations, and the US in particular, to realize that global poverty is not just "out there," and easing their consciences with donations to the global hunger programs. Send money, but also stand up and be counted, and (as best we can) stop participating in the processes that are oppressing all of us.

It is clear that our so-called "leaders" know exactly the path the world is on. Further, they are prepared to make sure that it stays on that path. Note the following quote from The United States Space Command Vision for 2020:

The medium of space is the fourth medium of warfare-- along with land, sea, and air. Space power (systems, capabilities, and forces) will be increasingly leveraged to close the ever-widening gap between diminishing resources and increasing military commitments.

Although unlikely to be challenged by a global peer competitor, the United States will continue to be challenged regionally. The globalization of the world economy will also continue, with a widening between “haves” and “have-nots.” Accelerating rates of technological development will be increasingly driven by the commercial sector -- not the military. Increased weapons lethality and precision will lead to new operational doctrine. Information-intensive military force structures will lead to a highly dynamic operations tempo.

In other words, our "leaders" know that the current path will lead to increasing desperation, and the possibility of people acting out of desperation (read that as "fighting for their lives"). And what are we going to do? Well, we are going to use highly accurate space-based munitions, and high tech weapons systems, to wipe them out as necessary. President Bush launched the endless "war on terrorism." Of course no mention is made that this is a war to keep the dying from posing a "threat" to the plan. The US and some other nations seem to be willing to spend endless amounts of money to suppress people but very little to create a world where the desperation of poverty and the dead end of environmental destruction might be stopped.

Resources
O'Sullivan, VOA, 11/25/03, California Grocery Workers Strike Widens

Holland, NCTimes, 11/26/03, The truth about the strike

Daily Nexus, 11/26/03, Teamster Union Refuses to Deliver the Goods in Strike

Uncommon Thought Journal 7/06/03, If there was ever any doubt

Posted by rowan at November 27, 2003 9:53 PM | TrackBack | [eMail this article!] |