According to the debate, they had their reasons. But still – when one hundred and eighty six nations say one thing, and two say another, you have to wonder about the two.
According to the debate, they had their reasons. But still – when one hundred and eighty six nations say one thing, and two say another, you have to wonder about the two.
Their reasons will not be valid, I’m not going to even entertain reading them.
We make more food than we consume on this planet—in the absence of scarcity, food security is obviously a human right, it’s aggressively malignant to be against this.
Whilst we’re at it, shelter is a human right too, we have several times more empty houses than homeless people in most developed nations—that’s fucked.
we destroy excess food. hire armed thugs to keep people moving into empty shelter.
that’s what your taxes are for.
Grapes of Wrath was required reading for me in both middle and high school. I don’t understand how more Americans aren’t aware of the inhuman actions taken by corporate interests to secure profit.
maybe most just don’t want to be.
I don’t think its that simple, some of them will have it sink in later in life.
Instead I think its more that we have been so conditioned by visual media that books no longer have the impact that they used to. Now it’s movies and music that fill that role of cultural transmission. Just unfortunately the bandwidth on those mediums is terrible compared to the written word.
okay but I watched “the matrix” before high school, and that film is literally just an essay on situationism (an anarchist philosophy of the hyperobject of capitalism) with some kung fu and crypto-trans-positivity mixed in.
so clearly the medium is not the problem here.
Sure The Matrix profoundly affected some people but not for long and it didn’t create any shifts in society other than now some people had the delusion they were actually in the matrix.
On the other hand there have been several books that many claim to be pivotal in great world events.
It’s not that the medium is the problem, it’s that 1) Movies are made for profit, not to transform culture, and 2) Our culture is far to diverse for any one symbol set to be universal the way old Greek plays were.
Also, the trans positivity wouldn’t have been crypto of the fucking studio didn’t shit themselves over Switch. They were the coolest aesthetic in the show and it is a fucking tragedy how they killed them off. I’m pretty sure leaving Switch’s full story in would have got me thinking about what it means to be an ally a decade earlier.
But the shitcase studio was worried that such an (at the time) outrageous thing would kill their profit (it wouldn’t have).
Which is why we can’t trust Hollywood to make our myths and gods.
I mean, there are movies that were, for better and worse (mostly worse) pretty important too. birth of a nation, the great dictator, the exorcist (and its involvement with the satanic panic),
I watched ‘the matrix’ as a kid, and I ended up as an anarchist. maybe coincidence. who knows.
the control of one relatively concentrated entirely capitalist industry is a problem. I agree on that. one could say the same about the publishing industry. and it turns out indie films exist! and are cool sometimes! just like indie publishing! it’s just way harder to distribute them.
I agree. fuck hollywood (the industry) and hollywood (the place, which is tacky as hell and filled with tourists and always smells like piss except when it smells like shit, and they lock up all the parks at like 5 PM, and also all the good pizza places are closed or dont open until dinner. it’s super fucked up, especially when they used to sell by the slice and that’s, like, perfect for lunch).
They also hire armed thugs to keep people from eating edible food that was thrown out
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2021/02/portland-police-guard-dumpster-face-off-with-residents-trying-to-get-discarded-food-from-fred-meyer.html
true! but only when its on its way to be burned.
FDR is to blame for that
it’s (mostly) not about government subsidies anymore; it’s about supply and demand being entirely uncoupled. I would put the blame far more firmly at the hands of edward bernaise and lee atwater.
remember; we do this with clothes and toys and literally every product.
Worked at a job that aggressively destroyed unsold product to the point that we had a form to fill out and needed a witness to sign it.
Coworker and I “witnessed” each other “pulverizing” stuffed toys by passing them along to needy children orgs and “dumpstering” other products in thrift store donation bins.
Fuck their “brand integrity” when they’re throwing out perfectly good products to make room for more crap people don’t need.
absolutely. this shit is unforgivable. the only cure is the guillotine. not just killing them, but doing it publically, showing anyone who would ever do this shit again that we ALL want them dead, and nobody will save them, nobody will come to their defense, because they do good for nobody.
This is something that’s starting to get to me.
For the last 30 years EVERY excuse that has been made about America’s inhumane corporate toadying has been utter empty and meaningless bullshit but everyone just pretends it’s real words.
I mean the justifications for things like denying children free breakfast aren’t even rational on the surface, even without going into it.
But FUCKING PEOPLE just nod their head like ‘It’ll prevent them from being independent’ is even close to being a rational statement when we are talking about seven year olds that get all of their food given to them ANYWAY?!
I don’t understand how as a country we have gotten to the point that words literally have no meaning anymore but it is going to take us to a dark place very quickly.
I hate to inject politics, but this is very much state by state and locale by locale. NOT “as a country”.
Take the recent issue with summer lunch program for school kids. As far as I know, it was no strings attached free money from the federal government, yet some states used it and some didn’t, and pretty much on party lines. This is not a singular example, but repeated over and over: how are basic rights turned into political posturing at the expense of citizens?
Repugnicans have been obstructionists so long, they don’t really know how to do anything other than get frothingly angry at non-issues. Probably some of them were angry that it benefited the poor.
I suspect that whole line of reasoning is in service of, and/or a consequence of, this country’s aversion to giving people help they didn’t “earn” or don’t “deserve.” I can hear the conservative relatives now… “yeah it’s just $1.50 to feed a kid each day, but that’s another couple hundred dollars in their welfare mom’s crack budget for the year, and WE shouldn’t pay for that!”
For anyone who actually wants to know, here is the U.S. Explanation of Vote on the Right to Food
For the following reasons, we will call a vote and vote “no” on this resolution. First, drawing on the Special Rapporteur’s recent report, this resolution inappropriately introduces a new focus on pesticides. Pesticide-related matters fall within the mandates of several multilateral bodies and fora, including the Food and Agricultural Organization, World Health Organization, and United Nations Environment Program, and are addressed thoroughly in these other contexts. Existing international health and food safety standards provide states with guidance on protecting consumers from pesticide residues in food. Moreover, pesticides are often a critical component of agricultural production, which in turn is crucial to preventing food insecurity.
Second, this resolution inappropriately discusses trade-related issues, which fall outside the subject-matter and the expertise of this Council. The language in paragraph 28 in no way supersedes or otherwise undermines the World Trade Organization (WTO) Nairobi Ministerial Declaration, which all WTO Members adopted by consensus and accurately reflects the current status of the issues in those negotiations. At the WTO Ministerial Conference in Nairobi in 2015, WTO Members could not agree to reaffirm the Doha Development Agenda (DDA). As a result, WTO Members are no longer negotiating under the DDA framework. The United States also does not support the resolution’s numerous references to technology transfer.
We also underscore our disagreement with other inaccurate or imbalanced language in this text. We regret that this resolution contains no reference to the importance of agricultural innovations, which bring wide-ranging benefits to farmers, consumers, and innovators. Strong protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights, including through the international rules-based intellectual property system, provide critical incentives needed to generate the innovation that is crucial to addressing the development challenges of today and tomorrow. In our view, this resolution also draws inaccurate linkages between climate change and human rights related to food.
Furthermore, we reiterate that states are responsible for implementing their human rights obligations. This is true of all obligations that a state has assumed, regardless of external factors, including, for example, the availability of technical and other assistance.
We also do not accept any reading of this resolution or related documents that would suggest that States have particular extraterritorial obligations arising from any concept of a right to food.
Lastly, we wish to clarify our understandings with respect to certain language in this resolution. The United States supports the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living, including food, as recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Domestically, the United States pursues policies that promote access to food, and it is our objective to achieve a world where everyone has adequate access to food, but we do not treat the right to food as an enforceable obligation. The United States does not recognize any change in the current state of conventional or customary international law regarding rights related to food. The United States is not a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Accordingly, we interpret this resolution’s references to the right to food, with respect to States Parties to that covenant, in light of its Article 2(1). We also construe this resolution’s references to member states’ obligations regarding the right to food as applicable to the extent they have assumed such obligations.
Finally, we interpret this resolution’s reaffirmation of previous documents, resolutions, and related human rights mechanisms as applicable to the extent countries affirmed them in the first place.
Some of these seem quite valid, but I really hope “intellectual property” isn’t the real reason. Poorly written regulations are too easily invalidated or ignored, so the feedback to “stay in your lane” seems important. However our corporate masters should not be able to dictate the basic right to food
So yeah. A bunch of bullshit procedural arguments.
Well yeah that’s the thing, a treaty isn’t (or at least shouldn’t) be a vague “helping people is good and being mean is bad”
The text is here
I started looking into this further and the tweet is misleading. To start with, the graphic is totally inaccurate. This was a vote by the UN Human Rights Council, not the full general assembly. The US was the only country that voted against, with one abstaining. Israel wasn’t involved. It’s also worth emphasizing that the right to food has been established in other international agreements, which the text cites extensively and the US justification refers to near the end.
Edit: I was somewhat incorrect on the vote, there was a later general assembly vote, which the Instagram account that created this links to. However, their effort to imply that the US somehow hates people being fed is still misleading.
As a US citizen, it is a point of great shame that we have so many struggling to eat enough (and/or healthily enough), as well as pay their medical bills.
We are a nation with great influence and military might, but the richest Americans are often a direct reflection for what this nation as a whole truly is… It’s a wealthy place that doesn’t take care of its own citizens.