The New Holocaust Denial [Enviros deny starvation in Africa]

Center for Consumer Freedom ^ | May 20, 2003 | CCF

[ZGuy]

One of the more odious tactics of today's historical revisionists is the outright denial of the Jewish Holocaust. Beginning with the Nazis themselves, and continuing through modern Hitler apologists, it has always been fashionable among the desperately anti-Semitic to claim that the six million exterminated Jews simply never existed. Now a similar deceit surrounds the tragedy of starvation in Africa. And judging from the "Biodevastation" protest event held during the past few days in St. Louis, the new Holocaust deniers are today's anti-biotech campaigners.

According to Oxfam America, more than 14 million people in Southern Africa face starvation. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations says that 16 million more are starving in the continent's Eastern regions. One UN report puts the total number of starving Africans at a whopping 60 million. And making matters even worse, the British Medical Journal published a letter last year outlining the connection between African malnutrition and the rapid spread of AIDS.

Foods improved through biotechnology are among the tools available to fight this catastrophic reality. Biotech crops can produce greater amounts of food. Many are bred to resist the dry conditions, the native diseases, and the insect plagues that make it so difficult for African farmers to feed their nations' people.

But the environmental activists gathered in St. Louis are more interested in destroying the Life Sciences industry than in feeding the hungry. Activist speaker after activist speaker at the "Biodev" event -- some flown in from Africa just for the occasion -- categorically denied that Africans are starving.

Leading the charge was Zambian science adviser Mwananyanda Lewanika, who made the final recommendation last year that his country should turn down genetically enhanced U.S. food aid -- that is, after European-funded activist groups had propagandized the rest of Zambia's executive branch. Lewanika told the gathered activists that Zambia simply doesn't have a hunger crisis. When asked about a United Nations estimate that 2.9 million of his countrymen faced starvation, he responded that the UN must have "exaggerated." And recalling incidents of hungry Zambians (literally) looting food-aid storage facilities rather than going hungry, Lewanika insisted that the 6,000 looters "were paid to do it" by Westerners. Uh-huh.

Similarly, Raymond Bokor, an organic-only agriculture activist from Ghana (whose organization is also funded by European governments), claims that his people "were never starving" in the late 1990's, when American scientists offered to help Ghanaians cultivate biotech maize. But the "Feed the Children" organization notes that even today, " twenty-seven per cent of all children under the age of five in Ghana are underweight, due to malnutrition, inadequate feeding and starvation."

Add to the mix Lawrence Tsimese, an African socialist who is enrolled full-time at Vermont's radical Institute for Social Ecology. "Apart from a 1983 drought," Tsimese insisted on Saturday, African nations "don't have hunger problems."

Unfortunately, hunger problems abound. And there's no question that anti-biotech scare mongering has a human cost. In the case of Africa, that human cost is measured in millions.

This article is Part 1 of a three-part series on the recent "Biodevastation" protest event.

[Billthedrill]

The entire "Frankenfoods" hysteria has been a ruthless scam from the beginning. It is nothing more than a successful attempt by European - yes, especially French - farmers' cartels to keep competition to a minimum. The cloying self-righteousness of the Greens in the face of real starvation is one of the most glaring signs of a left that has utterly lost its moral compass and is stuck in a self-willed blindness and a retreat into wishful thinking as a solution to real problems.

One sign of this is that it resolutely ignored pervasive and categorical human rights violations in Iraq, preferring the fiction that the U.S. was intervening only in the interests of the oil companies, an illusion it is yet to give up. Another is this situation, where those who feed the starving for no cost at all are cursed as exploiters and defenders of industrial, "capitalist" farming. And they will happily ignore the starvation rather than admit that they're wrong.

[gregwest]

Ted Turner, in an interview about his environmental activism believes that the optimal population for the Earth is somewhere around 20 million. He has bought into the whole Sangerite idea that Africa and many underdeveloped parts of the world need to be depopulated in order to best manage the world's resources. For these guys, globalism is their religion. They are doing their "god's" work and that gives them all the justification they need for genocide. I guarantee you that the 15 billion Bush recently proposed to compassionately save Africa from AIDS will be spent on programs to continue the depopulation of the continent.

GW

[Tijeras_Slim]

Ping for leftist manufactured famine

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The cloying self-righteousness of the Greens in the face of real starvation is one of the most glaring signs of a left that has utterly lost its moral compass and is stuck in a self-willed blindness and a retreat into wishful thinking as a solution to real problems.

If isn't anti-American, it's not on their radar screen.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!

[Clive]

This is a child in Zimbabwe. This year. In the 21st century.

This child has kwashiorkor because his parents supported an opposition party.

The government is using starvation as a weapon.

There are 8 million people in Zimbbwe existing on World Food Program relief.

Zimbabwe was once the breadbasket of southern Africa, a net food exporter.

Last year Zimbabwe refused donations of US maize because it was genetically engineered.

[Clive]

-

[winner3000]

Message to American blacks (a.k.a. African-Americans): The left in this country are allied to the extremist environmentalists who would rather have all blacks in Africa die in order to help the environment. WAKE UP!

[Libertarianize the GOP]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[Avoiding_Sulla]

This sort of thing is the whole point of the Left's existence. Socialism, utilitarianism, statism all hiding behind the sucker's label called liberalism that has been planning this "for humanity's own good."

If you are really appalled and not just another purveyor of evil news, then join me in being relentless and unmerciful to the death planners. It is obvious that this will not stop in Africa.

The Malthusian fear driven agenda of world population reduction (down to at least one half billion people) demands that this scenario be played out time and time again.

This form of evil is as old as humanity. Those seeking absolute power will decide who lives and who dies. Such monster's deserve not a moments piece. Such evil merely hides behind the soft science scholarship of liberal intellectuals who pronounce how the earth's demise is inevitable unless "we cull the herd."

Okay brave readers: which one of you wishes to be the first to volunteer to eliminate you and your offspring? Hey, you are being warned and can still do something about it. Did anyone ask those in Zimbabwe? How about Cambodia? China? Ukraine?....

It is now clear to me, after the 20th Century, and anew in the 21st Century, that the old litany of "look at how many have died in the name of God" was not the lament the Left wished the rest of us to infer.

The real meaning was "Yup. If we do it in the name of humanity we can do it faster and with less guilt."

-Avoiding_Sulla

[Pan_Yans Wife]

BTTT

[maica]

I believe that many of the suffering and dying Africans are more victims of malnutrition and starvation than of AIDS. It is just 'convenient'for the left propagandists to use those stats to promote the AIDS 'crisis.'

It is also convenient to ignore the mismanagement of food production and distribution in many African nations. Where are Americans of African ancestry raising their voices in protest - even as obesity is a national issue here?

[farmfriend]

I had a meeting with Dr. Wambugu. She has developed and promotes bio-tech foods for Africa. She has some great articles on her web site.