• BossColo@lemmy.sdf.org
    5·
    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.

    • knfrmity@lemmygrad.ml
      27·
      1 year ago

      Here are your answers, although likely not the ones you had in mind when you asked these questions.

      1. Each one, from each according to their capabilities, to each according to their need. In general most countries can be self sufficient, or at least self sufficient within regional blocs.

      2. I would argue that China is the greatest contributor to humanitarian aid the world has ever known, but I’ll bite. The US currently exports the most food as “aid,” but this comes with massive costs to the nations receiving it. US food aid is designed to do two things: provide a captive market to over-productive US agriculture, and ensure resource rich nations are dependent on US food supplies rather than their own. The countries pay for this “aid” by growing cash crops for export rather than staples to be consumed locally, or by extracting other natural resources for export and for the profit of corporations in the imperial core. Even something as simple as modernizing agriculture is essentially forbidden to countries receiving US food aid, as more productive agriculture would lessen the position of power the empire has over its neo-colonies.

      3. Up until now, the very real threat of US covert or overt intervention has stopped all but the bravest from ending this cycle of imperialist oppression. Now with the US and allies mired down in Ukraine, BRICS and others have jumped on the opportunity to build something new, partnerships and institutions based on mutual respect and equality amongst nations.

      • EmptySlime
        1·
        1 year ago

        Yeah I thought I remembered reading about this vote. I might be misremembering but I thought that there was no concrete plan to address food access and that it was pretty much just a virtue signal vote likely taken so that people who had no intention of feeding anyone could go “What do you mean I want people to starve? We literally backed a vote in the UN to make food access a human right,” without ever actually doing anything.

        The US sucks for a lot of reasons, chief among them imo definitely our tendency to do literally anything to protect corporate interests. But if I’m remembering this resolution correctly this would have done nothing but give cover to people who had no intention of doing anything on food access.