“In Famine 1975! The Paddocks suggest a policy based on the concept of ‘triages’ borrowed from military medicine. …………

The Paddocks suggest that a similar system be devised for classifying nations. Some will undergo the transition to self-sufficiency without drastic aid from outside. They will be ones with abundant money for foreign purchases, or with efficient governments, strong population control programmes, and strong agricultural development programmes. Although aid might help them, they could get along without it. Some nations, on the other hand may become self-sufficient if the US gave them some food to tide them over. Finally there is the last tragic category: those countries so far behind in the population food game that there is no hope that food aid will see them through to self-sufficiency.

The Paddocks feel that limited assistance should go to those whom it would save, not to those who can survive without it or those who can’t be saved in any case. Their views have not, to say the least, been greeted with enthusiasm by foreign governments, by those in the US government whose jobs depend on the willy nilly spreading of American largesse abroad, or by the assorted do-gooders who are deeply involved in the apparatus of international food charity. Criticism from some of those groups, is a compliment.

In my opinion, there is no rational choice except to adopt some form of Paddocks’ strategy, at least as far as good distribution during famine is concerned. They deserve immense credit for their courage and foresight in publishing Famine 1975!, which may be remembered as one of the most important books of our age. &mdash Paul Erlich, The Population Bomb, pp. 156-157″

But it’s easy to see why this version of Ehrlich is preferred to the 21st century one, the same class-based reason Marx pointed out re Malthus, but on a global scale: the bite-back to anti-imperialist attacks on the US and western powers in general. And it has a dog-whistle-type appeal : “… the problem cetrainly isn’t me, and it surely isn’t you — so it must be THEM — those different sort of people over there are to blame, and now they want to come here and take our food and lifestyle away, and blame us for the mess they have left thier own countries in …”

This kind of proto-fascist line will be preached in growing intensity as climate-change refugees start to be generated in larger and larger numbers — especially when coupled with US-originated recession.

A clip from the BBC’s Around the World in 80 Gardens (2008) introduces the urban organic food gardening revolution in Havana, Cuba. Also a three-part talk by Cuban permaculturist Roberto Perez that delves deeper into Cuba’s green revolution, and an interview with the makers of The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, the film in which Perez featured.

http://links.org.au/node/416

By Kavita Krishnan

May 7, 2008 — 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.

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

Good luck.