The mood among the protesters contrasted sharply with many positive reports in the
Indian media. (BBC)

LINKS

The global policeman Bush, in the time-honoured traditions of the backyard bully, has long harboured the habit of dictating to nations who their friends and enemies should be. Now, he has taken to telling nations how much they should eat, and of wagging a disapproving finger at poor nations whose middle class has made some improvements in its diet.

Karl Marx, born on 5 May, 1818, nearly two centuries ago, had in 1867 laid bare the ``intimate connection between the pangs of hunger of the most industrious layers of the working class, and the extravagant consumption, coarse or refined, of the rich, for which capitalist accumulation is the basis'' (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 25). In May 2008, nearly a century and a half later, as we hear Emperor Bush hold forth on global hunger, we are reminded that capitalism and global wealth remains just as intimately wedded to hunger.

The global policeman Bush, in the time-honoured traditions of the backyard bully, has long harboured the habit of dictating to nations who their friends and enemies should be. Now, he has taken to telling nations how much they should eat, and of wagging a disapproving finger at poor nations whose middle class has made some improvements in its diet.

Bush's sentiments (and those of his lieutenant Condoleezza Rice) reek of callous contempt for the world's poor. They lay bare the fact that the only perspective Bush and US imperialism is capable of is that of the US corporations. In Bush's words, the growing purchasing power of the middle class in the developing world is ``good'' because ``y'know, it's hard to sell products into countries that aren't prosperous'' (see http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3006775.cms), he said on May 3. But, lamented Bush, ``you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food''. In other words, India's growing appetite was pushing food prices up and causing the rest of the world to go hungry. Unfortunately, the world's people haven't mastered the art of being markets, not mouths: of tightening the belt over their bellies while loosening their purse strings ...

Bush is the head of the nation whose successive governments used its military to ruthlessly batter a long list of Latin American and African countries into being pliant suppliers of cash crops for the US corporations; and in the process devastating the food security of these nations. Major General Smedley Butler has described how, as a US marine, he had been ``a high class muscle-man for Big Business...a gangster for capitalism'' who had helped to make Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, various Central American republics, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic ``safe'' for plunder by US fruit, oil, and sugar corporations and banks in the early twentieth century. Washington's latest exploit has been to ``make Iraq safe'' for US oil corporations, in the process devastating its economy, its infrastructure, and its thriving health and education structures. Now, Bush has the gall to offer in charity what his nation has plundered by military muscle and economic arm-twisting. Like a rapacious wolf dressed up as a kindly and nurturing mother, he describes the US as an ``unbelievably compassionate and generous nation'' and offers to help the poor countries out by ``buying food directly from farmers as opposed to giving people food''. So, the deepest desire of the US corporations –- to have the farmers of developing countries as captive and direct producers for them alone -– is projected by Bush as generosity!

The US today along with a small and exclusive club of ``developed'' countries guzzles a disproportionate share of the world's scarce resources including fuel, paper and food. It is also responsible for a disproportionately high share of global pollution. Although constituting only 5 per cent of the global population, the US emits more carbon dioxide, consumes more paper and other forest products, and produces more municipal waste than any other country. Yet Bush refused to curb carbon emissions in the US, saying ``the American way of life is not negotiable'', and peddling the absurd theory that cows were more responsible for such emissions than cars, and so countries like China and India ought therefore to bear a greater burden of curbing emissions!

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© 2008 Kavita Krishnan

SOURCE: http://links.org.au/node/393

URL: http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2008/05/08/adding_insult_to_injury_bush_says_starvi