The Business of Manufacturing Hunger

Darko Lazar

In a study published last year, a Tehran University student, Sadegh Abbasi accuses Great Britain of genocide during the 1917-19 famine in Iran.

Abbasi claims that "the widespread famine" killed between 8 and 10 million people during the time when the UK was the dominant foreign power of the land.

The author of the study explains that Iranian lands were essentially plundered, serving as the main source of food for British forces stationed in the kingdom's Far Eastern colonies. Meanwhile, Britain prevented wheat imports from entering Iran, "intentionally creating genocidal conditions".

Irish historian Tim Pat Coogan makes the same allegations over Britain's role in Ireland's nineteenth century famine.

In his book, ‘The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy," Coogan recalls a time when the island nation lost a third of its population - 1 million had died, whilst 2 million had emigrated.

In a 2014 interview, Coogan asserts that imperialism is the driving force behind such tragedies.

"These were the people who imposed the Opium Laws on the Chinese... they were imperialists, they wanted to clear the land, to get rid of the people," Coogan said.

On the other side of the globe, India suffered at least seven famines under British colonial rule, during which millions of people starved to death, while many others abandoned their land.

Great Britain's brutal economic agenda in the region is said to have produced a deadlier environment than that of the Black Plague in Europe.

British Premier Winston Churchill, often credited for defeating Nazi Germany, played a significant role in this affair, diverting food and medical supplies from the starving victims to the already well-supplied soldiers in Europe.

"Famine or no famine, Indians will breed like rabbits," Churchill reassured his inner circle in 1943.

Deciding the fate of the Third World

Fast-forward to the present-day, and the so-called New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition is pushing a neocolonial corporate agenda with the aim of destroying entire nations.

Under the auspices of the G8, this new crusade has the support of countless international ‘aid' organizations, and a roadmap for manufacturing hunger across the Third World.

Standing behind propaganda slogans claiming to be creating "conditions that will allow the African countries... to improve agricultural productivity," are private corporations with a virtual monopoly over the global seed and pesticide markets.

The signatories of a declaration pledging to support sustainable agricultural growth in Africa include corporate giants like Bayer & Monsanto, DuPont, ADM and Yara International. All of these companies are pocketing millions through their membership in the ‘New Alliance', which launched its campaign to "end hunger" in 2012.

Unlike the scramble for Africa at the 1884 Berlin Conference, during which major western powers assembled to divide the continent's territory and natural resources, today's colonization manifests itself in the form of multinational corporations, determined to seize arable land.

Millions of hectares of land around the globe have already come under the control of companies that are not signatories to any conventions for the protection of human rights, and are thus not obligated to respect universally accepted norms.

Meanwhile, African states are signing almost every single agreement on the table.

The governments of Nigeria, Benin, Malawi, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Tanzania are all paying a hefty price for their membership in the ‘New Alliance,' forced to amend local protection laws in order to make life easier for foreign investors.

The Ivory Coast and Mozambique introduced new legislation that simplifies the acquisition of land by foreign companies, which resulted in the exodus of the rural population after thousands were driven off their own land.

However, the privatization of land is not the sole objective in Africa. In order for the corporate model to flourish, African governments are also expected to amend local regulations tied to the seed.

Mozambique has already agreed to systematically reduce the distribution of free seeds to local farmers, allowing foreign companies to introduce patented seeds to the market.

In her 2013 article, titled "The Seeds Of Suicide: How Monsanto Destroys Farming", Dr. Vandana Shiva writes, "control over seed is the first link in the food chain because seed is the source of life. When a corporation controls seed, it controls life, especially the life of farmers."

Don't comply

Throughout history, starving people across the Third World have often been depicted as the unlucky ones who need to be rescued from the incompetent policies of their governments by western aid.

But in the 21st century, hunger is also spreading across the ‘developed' western world.

In the hope of concealing the extent of the problem, dozens of US cities have outlawed publicly handing out free food to the needy, leaving the most harmless form of American activism to manifest itself through civil disobedience and the risk of jail time.

A Dallas-based organization named ‘Don't Comply' has defied the ban by feeding the city's homeless in public, showing its displeasure with the new laws.

The country's National Coalition for the Homeless [NCH] released numerous reports showing a recent spike in the number of US cities introducing bans on publicly providing people with free food.

"We published the report in the hope that it would embarrass the cities, but they just keep doing it," said Michael Stoops, Director of Community Organizing at NCH.

In some parts of the US, the homeless are treated with an even greater degree of brutality.

In 2014, videos surfaced of homeless people being packed into FEMA camps in North Carolina after being arrested by the authorities. Once in the camp, the homeless are reportedly obligated to accept implantable RFID microchips so as to be able to receive state benefits like food stamps.

The extent to which the neoliberal western order practices the ruthless disenfranchisement of the disadvantaged with impunity is the most telling sign of how deeply engrained this logic is in the so-called system of values - making the reformation of this dystopia a colossal task indeed.

Source: Al-Ahed News