On World Food Day: Humanity Between Schizophrenia and Hypocrisy

Dr. Michel E. Abs

Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches

On the 16th of October, the founding day of the Food and Agriculture Organization, also called World Food Day, this organization is active in organizing advanced, rich and well-prepared events in order to raise awareness of food, food security, malnutrition, famine, rural migration and everything related to these phenomena.

In a related context, statistics from the various sites concerned with the subject overwhelm you with the problems faced by the oppressed subjugated people as well as subjugated classes in non-subjugated peoples, in terms of food, drink, housing, health care and other related matters...Statistical figures showing millions of people that are hungry, homeless and deprived of the minimum  conditions of life as well as of the number of those who have no tomorrow, who do not know their fate and those who suffer from life problems, both physical and psychological, fill the pages of the institutions concerned with their issues and their pictures in their displacement, asylum and misery consolidate the image of the inhumane face of humanity and its eagerness to dance on existing pain.

Two things draw the attention of the insightful researcher here:

The first is the blockade imposed by the influential countries in international politics on the defeated countries. This type of blockade comes under the label "punishments", meaning that the strongest have appointed themselves as judges, punishing the weaker for the "sins and misfortunes" they themselves have committed.

Much ink has been poured in writings on the above subject matter and throats have become hoarse with the impact of the harm that “punishments” cause to peoples rather than to governments that the dominant nations claim to take revenge on.

Far and near knows that all of this, amounts to subjecting specific peoples to specific wills in order to reach specific goals. A large part of these goals has been achieved, the most important of which is starving peoples and throwing them into deprivation and misery to impose external wills on them.

As for the second matter, it is the "blockade" that giant companies impose on markets in general, and commodity markets in particular.

There are foods and medicines that the only justification of the price at which they are sold is the monopoly of giant companies that carry-on merging with one another in order to become more powerful and exert control of their goods over markets available to them.

We understand the costs incurred by these companies in developing their products, but such costs do not justify the price at which these products are sold, be they food, medicine or any other product.

In addition, we see that there are countries and companies that destroy huge quantities of foodstuffs only in order not to flood their own market with them and consequently lower their prices.This is the height of schizophrenia and blasphemy.

Most of those who lament over the wretched, and those who support them and uphold them, as well as those who cause them to suffer in the first place, belong to one constituency.

This is why we say to them, lift your political and economic siege on the peoples the wealth of whom you have and are still plundering, and they will be able to manage their own matters. Stop your evils and schemes for these vulnerable communities, and they are will be able to manage their affairs. Your multinational corporations as well as  the policies of your governments are wreaking havoc in these societies. The cartels of oil and weapons continue to destroy the environment of these peoples whose land you have made a dumping ground for your waste. Everything you do is done under the cover of a corrupt ruler whom you yourself have appointed as governor over his people.

The worst thing about it is that all starvation, oppression, and slander are taking place in the name of democracy and economic development. Economic killers roam the streets of the world, under the name of "advisers", implicating ludicrous governments in the policies of impoverishment and starvation.

Such killers are those whom the Master who had rebelled against spoke of, when He said, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (Matt 7:15).

Let him  who has two ears to hear, hear!