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- cross-posted to:
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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.
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Shithole countries
Can we talk about what defining things like this as a “right” means?
Otherwise voting to call it a “right” seems super performative. What’s the consequence of making this a right?
What’s the consequence of making this a right?
Just for starters, it implies certain acts intended to deliberately deprive people of access to food constitute a crime. So embargos of regions like Cuba, Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, and North Korea would be de facto illegal under international law.
Of course, then you have to start asking questions like “What does it mean to be in violation of international law when the ICJ is so toothless?” But that’s the UN for you. Issuing generally progressive proclamations through a general assembly while a handful of economic heavyweights get to decide how it all gets enforced.
Imagine being the only 2 places on earth that go out of your way to be afraid of a toothless organization.
I’m sure they’ll be offering everyone in their respective countries free food as is their newly given right! Right?
Nestle in every country is getting right on that…
Surely Americans above anyone else would want guaranteed access to food? Imagine them going a day without a hamburger?
(I’m poking fun, not being serious)
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This is America, land of the free - as in you are free to fuck off and die, here’s your bill. Capitalism won’t allow for equitable distribution of basic resources because then line don’t go up. We live in hell and claim it’s a privilege, and I hate it.
joke, got it, but actually 🤓☝️…
the US is #10 among countries ranked by obesity rate: https://data.worldobesity.org/rankings/
1 American Samoa 70.29%
2 Nauru 69.65%
3 Tokelau 67.05%
4 Cook Islands 66.05%
5 Niue 63.71%
6 Tonga 63.37%
7 Tuvalu 57.73%
8 Samoa 52.83%
9 French Polynesia 47.02%
10 United States 41.64%
alt source with slightly different rankings, where US is #14: https://www.worldatlas.com/society/the-most-obese-countries-in-the-world.html
American Samoa isn’t a country. It’s a US territory.
A lot of those others aren’t countries either. Tokelau “belongs” to New Zealand. Niue and Cook islands are legally shaky as well.
The population for all combined above the US, compared to the entire US population is ridiculously low, and I feel like this is to distract from how massive the obesity issue is in the US. When excluding what are basically territories and at most micronations, the US has the most severe obesity issue.
Ok, now take out every country with a population smaller than 10.
its easy to go a day without a hamburger, those are chicken nuggy days
Or, as it’s called in France, cakeday
Reddit is France now?
When breadtube is down, they can just celebrate cakeday
🌏👨🚀🔫👨🚀 always has been.
That’s part of the problem. Obesity and malnutrition go hand-in-hand in this country because healthy foods are more expensive and more difficult to procure and prepare for people who are just scraping by. People will rant and holler about how poor people are so stupid for buying and eating fast food when buying ingredients and cooking can be cheaper and is definitely healthier, but that does not account for the people who are working 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet and they simply do not have time for grocery shopping and cooking. There’s also the astonishingly dystopian reality of “food deserts” where there are people who don’t have access to actual grocery stores that sell fresh produce and meat. There are plenty of neighborhoods and even entire towns in America that do not have a store where they can buy fresh food, and even more where they don’t have access to affordable fresh food. It’s abominable.
As a medical professional, I see patients with tons of health problems including obesity, diabetes, hypertension, metabolic syndrome…the list goes on…and they simply do not have reliable, functional access to the healthier diet that would go a long way towards fixing those health problems. There are morbidly obese children with diseases like pellagra because of vitamin deficiencies, or obese people with muscle wasting because the food they have access to is mostly carbs and fat with very little protein. It is so frustrating and appalling to me that people on the outside of these situations look down on people struggling with obesity and diabetes and whatnot as if those people had any meaningful control over their situations.
One of my attending physicians in the family medicine clinic described it as “regular, small-town Midwest problems”. Often, the best we can do is recommend that they try to get more fruits and vegetables, whole grains, fish or chicken instead of red meat…but we also prescribe multivitamins and weight loss, diabetes, and hypertension medications because insurance will at least help pay for those. Honestly, health insurance companies could save literal billions of dollars if they offered rebate programs for healthy food and supported local farmers’ markets or something. Diet and exercise will lower someone’s high blood pressure 5 times as much as most of the medications will.
This is an “are we the baddies?” Moment for the USA.
USA! USA! USA!
Not really. You have to wonder about countries that think it’s ok to reward people with the work of others for doing… What again? Just existing? Seems like free food leads to confined circumstances. That is something the US knows all too well. The US currently gives food away simply because you exist. Guess what that, without competent education, has led to. Drug epidemics, mass poverty, mass murder, and partridge in a pair tree. Them that work, eat.
Friend, I’m sorry but you’re fucked up in the head.
Ask yourself the question: does human life have value by itself? (independent of everything, including age, race, employment, etc).
If your answer is yes, then every human life should be protected, and we as a society need to be organised in a way that provides the minimum necessities for survival (like food, water, etc). This is what the whole world, except the US, just said.
On the other end, what you’re saying is that life in itself is worthless and that value is given by some other factor (like being employed). This means that, until proven otherwise, everyone is disposable. If you think through the implications of this, you’ll realize you can do whatever to them - kill them on the spot, harvest their organs, cut them to pieces to feed your pigs, … Is this the world you want to live in?
For the sake of completeness, let’s explore the implications of #1, where people get “money for nothing”. What’s usually tested is giving people just enough money to cover their most basic needs. Would some people stop working, if they didn’t have to worry about starving? I’m sure some would. But would you?
Because I, for one, like to be able to afford my luxuries, and will keep working to not give them up.
Let’s go another way with this.
I don’t know if you have any kids or not – this is entirely hypothetical. But I have discovered people think more about a topic the less abstract it is.
You have two kids, aged 4 and 5. Then you get hit by an asteroid that kills you. No one else can take them in.
Wouldn’t you like for the state to look after them? To at least give them food, water, shelter and care until they grow up until they are eighteen? To do all this whether they can earn their way or not? To do it just because it is the right thing to do?
Not because they believe the kids will pay them back or be worth something when they grow up, but because they believe the kids have worth now simply because they are living, sentient human beings?
Or would you rather that your kids are left out on the street to die? forced to make their own way in the world at the age of 4 and 5? that they will only be fed if they can show they have worth?
Just curious.
Thats actually an interesting train of thought imo.
I personally believe every person that is, or will be in the future, a valuable part of society should get access to social help. Be it food, basic income, housing etc etc.
I got this believe because i myself came from a poor family, with my mom basically raising 5 very difficult children on her own. However, all 5 of us became very valuable people in society but have all become a positive influence around us. One is product manager, another is cto, another is data centre engineer, all us have helped people who need it etc etc Without the social support we would never have gotten there.I believe in those principals because i believe those people should be supported so they can flourish, personally, or help humankind as a whole.
What you said explains perfectly why i feel this way haha
Your example here has the nuance of future expectation, however. You’re stating that taking care of the children is an investment, not just something done because they are human beings and should be treated as such. Gabe on the other hand is saying simply that it is the right thing to do, regardless of where the kids’ lives lead down the road.
I know, and i understand the difference.
Before you read on, remember this is a view from a european guy who has known social support. I am not american, and the american way of being all on your own, with your own devices disgusts me tbh.
Im not saying taking care of children is an investment per-se, that is a must. They need to be taken care of, period. My argument for making it sound like an investment, besides basic human need, is one created to counter those that dont believe that and think of them as a waste of time and energy.
I see childeren in need as a hope, a potential for humanity to become better. Those that have known trouble and being poor are special, they have the potential. And yes, maybe you can see that as an investment, but please consider it an investment into humanity itself, and most certainly not an economic investment!What i will confess, is that this changes for me, when we are talking about adults. Things, and situations somebody is in, are very complex things as we in a world with infinite possibilities and infinite different type of people. There is like that 0.1% of human adults that would abuse the system, make it worse for everyone because they dont know or can do better in their lives. Ive grown up around such people and i consider them … Not worth it. however, those people who spoil it should not ever ruin it for the others that want it, need it. A person that can not get basic needs fulfilled should always have the option to get support. Rules can be put in place for adults, yes, but the option should be there and a person should never be put on the street with nothing.
Ditto.
I am also from Europe (the UK specifically) and whether someone is going to be the best person in the whole history of humanity or (for want of a better phrase) the most idle, useless wastrel known to humankind I still believe they deserve the basic support of the welfare system, and shouldn’t be left to starve to death on the streets. Because what does it say about a society that does that to someone?
You don’t help someone for a reward, or for what you will get out of them, you help them because they are a human being who needs help.
And if you need a better reason (because clearly some people do) you help them because if you were in that situation you hope someone would help you.
Because what does it say about a society that does that to someone?
I just wanted to single this sentence out right here, in agreement with you. The whole purpose of living in a society is taking care of one another. Those who are able should do what they can for those who cannot. They too someday will no longer be able bodied and thus require help themselves. I feel like so many people are just so shortsighted to even see the point. It’s sad, really.
I appreciate the further clarification. I apologize if I put your example in a vacuum and projected solely that upon you. I think we’re both pretty much on the same page regarding this, so don’t really have anything more to add at this point. Cheers :)
No problemo, after your comment i read my comment again and agreed it could have been interpreted in a very different way. Hence a few edits i put in hehe.
I also had a look inside and i must admit part of me thinks of an economic investment, its an unescapable thought due to the world we live in. However, it is not even close to my real reason and drive to help people, which is hope, potential and letting the person flourish like i have been able to do!
Education is a right, does it mean that teachers are not paid?
…what?
I don’t agree with the comment you are responding to, but they’re not talking about teachers not getting paid they’re talking about reward for not doing anything, and that reward having to come from somewhere (workers who pay their taxes). Asking if teachers get paid doesn’t work here, they’re paid by the taxpayers but that has nothing to do with having a fundamental right to something (the US offers a public education as a right to all citizens). Teachers don’t have a fundamental right to a teaching job.
Food is not a reward, its a basic necessity.
And having a right to food does not mean the US to pay for everything just like the US does not pay for education on the rest of the world.
And ecucation IS a human right because its inscribed in the list of human rights recognized by the UN and approved by the US.
I think the point being made is this :- teachers find a job. Then they teach. They produce the product (knowledge) which is given to kids and teenagers.
Kids and teenagers do not pay for this. They go to school (up to a given age) for free. And everyone seems happy with this point of view. Education is a right.
And sure – teachers don’t have a fundamental right to a teaching job, but that isn’t the point. The point is kids have a fundamental right to the product the teachers make – knowledge.
Fun fact, universal basic income leads to more people improving their lives and getting educated, working better jobs, reducing homelessness, and strengthening the job market, etc.
That’s more than just free food! And yet it reduces all the bad things you blame on free stuff!
Then they should have talked about universal basic income. You gotta dig deeper than that. I’m responding to the bait that I saw. And UBI reduces all of the bag things for drones. Who’s paying for this again? Btw, I grew up in it, and fought my way out. The depressing truth is that if the situation you are in isn’t enough motivation to get yourself out, then I have to believe that you don’t want to get out. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I’m not saying that we don’t get out heads, and hearts stepped on by all the crabs wearing timberland boots over here. The tendency ought to be to look to our own, as opposed to others. Others keep us in bag life situations. They didn’t put us there. Out own did that. All of this is general stuff. Something for nothing isn’t a lifestyle I can abide.
I am on disability and can easily live on it
I still work because it turns out I like to feel useful, even if I can’t contribute fully
The vast majority want to feel useful, few will choose to just subsist on UBI. Even outside my own anecdote, this has been proven with every single UBI experiment
Tell the heirs of rich people to give up their free money first
Get a load of the temporarily embarrassed billionaire over here. He’s currently pulling him self up by his bootstraps good and proper right now and those proles can f off if they think they can get their unwashed hands on his (future) money.
So, first off, what exactly is the most important thing people buy? It’s food, and it’d water. So free food is the next best thing after universal basic income, and is in itself a form of universal income. Second, you say that it’s not rich people and corporations that put us into this situation, and I just want to know where you got this idea, because it’s not poor people who established a capitalist society, or artificially inflated the price of basic needs, causing people to give up less necessary items because they couldn’t afford both housing and food. It’s also not poor people who decided that the minimum wage shouldn’t be livable. All of those things where done by rich people who were born into the right families and didn’t work for a single day in their lives. So tell me again how this is poor people’s fault?
What a dipshit
Regards
A person from the Nordic welfare states
Not starving to death is not a “reward” and judging ones worth by their ability to provide labor is a disgusting point of view.
Everything has value in, and of itself. It isn’t not my place to care about every sentient thing in reality. If being practical is being fuct, then that’s me. Have fun caring about everything you can’t do anything about. When you have a fight worth fighting, I’ll sign up again. In the mean time I agree with everything you say. Whatever that’s worth.
We produce more food than we can eat in the US alone. We export a lot of it and throw another 40% directly in to the garbage.
Food is scarce only because there’s money in making it scarce. It doesn’t have to be, and it shouldn’t be.
Have fun caring about everything you can’t do anything about.
Isn’t that what you’re doing right now? Caring about the opinions of others that you won’t change?
You’re not being practical. You’re just wrong
And an asshole.
Russia: sure
China: okay
North Korea: all right
USA: NNNOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Sir, That is the cost of Freedom 🦅 /s
Colonists donating money made from stolen property be like:
Look at me. look how generous I am. 💪
Wow more anti-US propaganda from Lemmy.ml truly shocking
Is it propaganda if it’s true?
Technically it can be. Propaganda isn’t propaganda because it’s false, but because it’s one-sided and selective.
In my defence (and okay, it’s a very limited and crappy defence) my post said “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.”
So I sort of presented a balanced argument. Not a very balanced one, but I did present an attempt at putting America and Israel’s side, even if it was a half-arsed one.
I don’t think what you said was propaganda, I’m just being pedantic.
Most propaganda is essentially truthful.
Wow, a critical comment that adds nothing of value to the conversation, attacking the commenter instead of the comment. Even more shocking!
You do know that people can dislike the decisions America makes and be vocal about that, without it being propaganda right?
Yes, and I also know that Lemmy.ml is a factory for authoritarian propaganda
Now do per capita
Americans HATE this one trick
I was going to ask what countries the aid goes to, and what classes as aid.
You sure you don’t want it as a percentage of GDP?
If an abusive husband refuses to let his wife have a bank account, should we celebrate his generosity for all the spending money he “gives” her?
I was struggling to believe this. I mean Turkey, China, North Korea, really? But yeah, I read a little about the reasoning on a .gov website, but there was a lot of, let’s just say language there. Someone on stack exchange broke it down and regrettably the reasons aren’t good. Mostly it was along the lines of, if people just decided to stop working, we don’t want to have to provide them with food or it would infringe upon our intellectual property if we were forced to help others with their right to food. It would also did into our food profits. So yeah… Shit.
Capitalism invents scarcity where it doesn’t already exist in the name of wealth.
If the authority declares food a right, it complicates the artificial scarcity required to profiteer.
Next up, air and water.
Israel is the US’s puppet
Oh honey
Okay, we can hate on Israel all day long for their many crimes, but let’s not entertain “Jews run the United states” jokes. They are the US puppet. A very beloved puppet but still.
No one but you mentioned the Jewish religion. Meanwhile, pro-Zionist candidates (right and left) with the backing of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have had an almost unexplainable 100% rate of election. The US election system has been hijacked by Israeli interests.
Hijacked by Israeli interests? Comrade, they are the US interests before they are Israeli. Flipping it around and pretending the Israel state owns US politics is one key word away from Nazi conspiracy when you know the actual line of motivations begins and ends with the US.
You completely disregard the largest zionist organisation in the US, CUFI, of which most members are American Christians.
The US support for Israel is the perfect storm composed of financial, military and religious interests of various groups in power in the US. The interest of the Israeli government and center to right wing happen to align with those. Thinking Israel is in control in any of this and doesn’t have to pander to those American interest groups is delusional and a common, sometimes antisemitically motivated, misunderstanding.
Thank you!
Neither one is a puppet. Each one uses the other. Israel has an outsize influence on US foreign policy, but the US also has an outsize influence on Israeli foreign policy. Israel tries to sway US elections, and US interests try to sway Israeli elections. They share many of the same enemies, which keeps them tied together even when things aren’t necessarily in their shared interests.
In this particular case, the two probably voted “no” for different reasons.
The US voted “no” because they wanted John Deere to be able to remotely shut down a combine harvester, or so that Monsanto can sue people for misusing seeds, things that probably be illegal if food were seen as a human right. Israel voted no because they wanted to be able to keep denying food to Palestinians.
Associating Judaism with the genocidal state is anti-semitic, we don’t do that here.
let’s not entertain “Jews run the United states”
Large financial institutions run the United States. And those institutions have a vested interest in controlling trade through the Mediterranean Sea, specifically by way of the Suez Canal. This creates a socio-economic incentive to back a heavily armed ethno-state with strong ties to the US/UK financial system. And - after the holocaust - the Jewish diaspora just happens to be the group that fit the bill. (The large Arab community in Saudi Arabia does, too, but its okay to be racist towards Arabs so we don’t complain quite so much about that).
So we run into a problem. Saying “AIPAC is manipulating our elections with enormous sums of cash laundered through the MIC into mass media social manipulation” is true, but quickly gets you labeled antisemitic by people who want to conflate billionaire shipping magnets with your elderly aunt from Queens. Trying to draw a line between plutocrats entangled with the MIC and random synagogues in Chattanooga or Cleveland becomes difficult when you’ve got real actual nazi fucks screaming slurs on one side of you and cynical mass-murdering shits insisting anyone anti-war is anti-Jew on the other.
Yeah, it’s a complicated tight line to walk. Hence why it should be avoided implying that Israel puppets the United states and thus falling into actual Nazi conspiracy theories.
Hence why it should be avoided implying that Israel puppets the United states
The influence of Israeli lobbyists and their affiliates is undeniable. As is the influence of Saudi, UK, Japan, fucking Bermuda…
Fixating on Israelis as uniquely influential is a problem. But then we have no problem with ranting about Trump being a “Russia controlled puppet”, so we clearly aren’t above a little Cold War style hysteria.
It might behove us to ask why Benny from Philly has such disproportionate influence, rather than just writing every observation of influence off as Jew Hate.
But that gets us into a whole conversation about domestic police lobbying, the Pentagon’s revolving door with industry, the role of the O&G lobbyists, etc. And that’s even worse than antisemitism. It’s anti-Americanism.
You know these ventriloquism-routines where the puppet makes the puppeteer talk with it’s voice?
I’ve watched enough Twilight Zone to know how this works.
In most of The Twilight Zones I watch the puppet ends up killing the parents, taking over the kid and staring at the camera going “Who’s a good boy?”
Which, okay, does kind of sound like the relationship between Israel and the USA but that’s beside the point
We all know the US is a piece of shit country. Sometimes, I hope Trump wins (I hate him with a passion), so he can just definitely send that shithole down the drain, thus making those idiots learn about the meaning of consequences.
Lol… Not an American, but stood for democrats theoretical ideologies. But as an outsider it does make sense to put Trump on the presidency again to let him finish the screw up he started his last term.
One of the downfall is the global gag order that comes online about abortiom whenever Republicans win.
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I was about to say this smells like disinformation. Cherry picking a more nuanced issue? Unfair portrayal since the USA may face the most significant consequences? Maybe. But ultimately, it still seems to boil down to shareholder primacy and US agricultural lobbies (my interpretation). That’s heartbreaking and everything that is wrong with the world currently.
https://geneva.usmission.gov/2017/03/24/u-s-explanation-of-vote-on-the-right-to-food/
People don’t like the Jews any more?
I think they’re OK.
Criticising the actions of the Israeli government doesn’t equate to hating all jews.
Arguing in bad faith that the two are the same is a known Zionist trick to avoid accountability for their authoritarianism.
Jewish != Zionist. Zionism requires the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Being Jewish does not.
Why not just be atheist?
If the whole world was atheist there would be far less fighting. And we all know war = money.
Most zionists aren’t jewish, they’re American protestants.
The core of this conflict isn’t religion, it’s imperialism.
Why would food not be a right if it was imperialis?
The conflict being Israel vs Palestine. Israel claims food is not a human right because they’ve been starving the Palestinians by destroying olive groves, denying food entry, destroying rain water tanks, filling wells with concrete, etc for half a century.
That’s interesting, I didn’t know that.
Who, Jewish people?
Everyone.
As much as you might like it if everyone thought the same as you, they feel the same way.
Its not about feelings, its about facts.
Pull your head out of your ass k
Zionism does not require any ethnic cleansing of anything, it merely requires a Jewish state.
A Jewish state in a land that’s already occupied by Jews, Christians, and Muslims can only exist as an apartheid or by ethnically cleansing the locals. Apartheid can only last for so long.
I’m Jewish and I think it’s an obligation of every Jew to critique the Israeli government.
I’m an American jew who is absolutely appalled and disgusted by Israel’s conduct as of late.
OK but the other bad country in this post is the states.
