The West Warns Africa Not to Import Essentials— Instead Says ‘Let Them Eat Bugs’
It’s nothing to do with the free market or rules-based order — it’s mafia geopolitics
In yet another show of barbaric insensitivity, the West is warning African nations against importing basic commodities while pretending to be the good guy, providing aid, and promoting nutrition programs. The Guardian published a piece on September 2nd that was quickly edited after an aid group reportedly said their program was misrepresented.
The title was also changed.
I have yet to confirm this, but when I saw it the morning it was published, I’m fairly certain the title was ‘Let Them Eat Bugs.’ Naturally, I was appalled by that headline, noted it for later reading, and came back to find it changed to ‘UK Urges Hunger-Stricken African Nations to Farm Insects’ — again, I may be misremembering and reached out to the Guardian for clarity.
The title aside, knowing the US and its allies are actively trying to keep those same hunger-stricken nations from doing business with Moscow for much-needed basics, I found the nature of the piece to be hypocritical in a way that the ‘kind-hearted’ West has mastered.
Create or extremely exacerbate problems in poorer nations, and then report to your incredibly ignorant populations about all the good you’re doing in poor nations X, Y, and Z.
This is not a knock on eating insects, many nations and cultures do so, and there’s potential to alleviate malnutrition and reduce the environmental impacts of animal agriculture. It’s also not a takedown of the UK programs themselves that are operating in many countries in Africa. They could have value and are helping worthy subsets of the population where they operate.
It’s just that aid programs in general are band-aid solutions at best and marketing campaigns for Western imperialism at worst. It’s all well and good to highlight food programs in poor countries, but one must at least try to mention how and why those nations are so poor in the first place — just saying the word ‘corruption’ isn’t enough.
At a time when hunger and social unrest are spiking across the world, the mafia don diplomacy of America adds to the human suffering while its Western media apparatus runs interference and keeps us all thinking we’re the generous stewards of all that is good and holy.
They’re not under-developed; they’re over-exploited. — Michael Parenti
After an unprecedented two and a half years, every country on earth is on shaky economic ground. The one-two punch of COVID then the Ukraine war has left even well-off European nations scrambling to ensure their citizens have heat for the coming winter. PMs have already resigned and governments are frantically trying to implement relief measures to keep prices down for fear of coming unrest.
Obviously, all of those dynamics are at play in poorer nations and across Africa but to a whole other level.
Because of our financialized global economy, basic commodities — even food — are bought and sold as bonds by traders, meaning a drought or bad harvest in a key country can push prices up across the planet.
Poor nations are subject to another layer of depravity through neocolonial measures imposed by IMF or World Bank loans that often destroy subsistence farming and force these countries to adopt larger-scale practices and grow food specifically for export rather than domestic consumption. These structural adjustment programs make them buy essential agricultural products on global markets while forcing them to privatize many key industries and enact other horrific measures.
So, they’re already in a very vulnerable state.
The cost of basics, the price of wheat, in particular, is said to have played a major yet understated role in the Arab Spring of 2011, and, according to Al Jazeera, the current costs are already higher than they were during that revolutionary time.
As with any limited commodity, it goes to the highest bidder and Western nations can produce and import high levels of food and simply waste 30–40% of it, paying police to stand and guard a freaking dumpster against a hungry group of people.
That’s kind of the role the US and the West play in global politics.
Hundreds of millions of people don’t have enough to eat, millions are at risk of starving to death, and the US is sending diplomats to the continent to issue threats.
With the current Ukraine situation and the mayhem that is our media, most citizens of the West would be shocked that people in South America and Africa still have a positive view of Russia. Not only that, young Africans are increasingly seeing China as having the most positive impact on the continent.
In early June, the leader of the African Union Mackey Sall, and African Union Commission chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat met with President Bootin’ in Sochi. Newsweek reported, “After the meeting, Mahamat said on Twitter that the leaders called for the suspension of Western-imposed sanctions on Russia to allow the export of grains he said were needed to mitigate a growing food and energy crisis.”
The meeting appeared to go well with Sall saying, “Russia is ready to ensure the export of its wheat and fertilizer.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also went on an African tour in July and appeared to get a very warm welcome.
In response, the American ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas Greenfield took her own tour of Africa and warned them not to buy anything except grain and fertilizer. She said, “We caution countries not to break those sanctions. They stand the chance of having actions taken against them.”
Hundreds of millions of people in Africa do not have enough to eat. According to the humanitarian aid organization Alima, nearly a million people are at risk of dying in one region alone: the Sahel, a vast tract of land south of the Sahara… How effective Ms. Thomas-Greenfield’s warning will be is uncertain. Even if African countries are punished for buying Russian oil, some may decide it is a price worth paying. Staggering fuel price increases and shortages have already hit hard, and have driven food prices still higher. — NY Times
Hundreds of millions of people don’t have enough to eat, millions are at risk of starving to death, and the US is sending diplomats to the continent to issue threats. Yes, they do make it clear that grain and fertilizer are exempt from sanctions, but that’s not the point.
Issuing secondary sanctions on nations that don’t exactly follow America’s dictates is not a ‘rules-based order;’ it’s mafia geopolitics.
America is in no position to tell sovereign nations who they can and can’t do business with. The invasion was rightly condemned by the U.N. but these sanctions are unilaterally imposed by the West; they’re not some binding international law. And whatever happened to our ‘free-market’ fundamentalism? Like all ‘Western values,’ they go right out the window when it comes to imposing our will.
As Uganda President Yoweri Museveni said, “If they really want to help Africa, they should consider separating us from the sanctions in a war where we are not participating.”
While edible insects probably are “a sure way to save lives and improve nutrition of the poorest people on planet Earth,” what poorer nations really need is national sovereignty: sovereignty over their land, natural resources, economies, and decisions. All things denied to them since colonization.
African countries need oil, gas, minerals, and agricultural essentials at reasonable costs. Sanctions broadly increase prices in everything, as we’re seeing across the globe with 40-year-highs in inflation.
African nations cannot afford the trends to continue as they are and should be free to provide for their citizens in any way they can.
But in the West, we still think we’re the kind-hearted chosen ones. We ignore the mob boss relations we have with the world and write warm articles about how African countries can just eat bugs — and we’re helping them!
While edible insects probably are “a sure way to save lives and improve nutrition of the poorest people on planet Earth,” what poorer nations really need is national sovereignty: sovereignty over their land, natural resources, economies, and decisions. All things denied to them since colonization.
The last thing they need is condemnation and threats from an obese misinformed West whose complicit in most environmental destruction, historic air pollution, and wastes a combined 120-something billion tons of food a year.
