Hunger Games: Food Abundance and Twisted Truths
Colin Todhunter
The world already produces enough food to feed 10 billion people but over two billion are experiencing micronutrient deficiencies (of which 821 million were classed as chronically undernourished in 2018).
However, supporters of genetic engineering (GE) crops continually push the narrative that GE technology is required if we are to feed the world and properly support farmers.
First of all, it must be stressed that there is already sufficient evidence to question the efficacy of GE crops; however, despite this, conventional options and innovations that outperform GE crops are in danger of being sidelined in a rush by powerful, publicly unaccountable private interests like the Gates Foundation to facilitate the introduction of GE into global agriculture; crops whose main ‘added value’ is the financial rewards accrued by the corporations behind them.
Secondly, even if we are to accept that at some stage GE can supplement conventional practices, we must acknowledge that from the outset of the GMO project, the sidelining of serious concerns about the technology has occurred and despite industry claims to the contrary, there is no scientific consensus on the health impacts of GE crops.
Both the Cartagena Protocol and Codex share a precautionary approach to GE crops and foods, in that they agree that GE differs from conventional breeding. There is sufficient reason to hold back on commercialising GE crops and to subject each GMO to independent, transparent environmental, social, economic and health impact evaluations.
To evaluate the pro-GMO lobby’s rhetoric that GE is needed to ‘feed the world’, we first need to understand the dynamics of a globalized food system that fuels hunger and malnutrition against a backdrop of food overproduction. As Andrew Smolski describes it: capitalism’s production of ‘hunger in abundance’.
Over the last 50 years, we have seen the consolidation of an emerging global food regime based on agro-export mono-cropping (often with non-food commodities taking up prime agricultural land) and linked to sovereign debt repayment and World Bank/IMF ‘structural adjustment’ directives.
The outcomes have included a displacement of a food-producing peasantry, the consolidation of Western agri-food oligopolies and the transformation of many countries from food self-sufficiency into food deficit areas.
As long as these dynamics persist and food injustice remains an inherent feature of the global food regime, the rhetoric of GM being necessary for feeding the world is merely ideology and bluster.
Furthermore, if we continue to regard food as a commodity in a globalized capitalist food system, we shall continue to see the comprehensive contamination of food with sugar, bad fats, synthetic additives, GMOs and pesticides and rising rates of diseases and serious health conditions, including surges in obesity, diabetes and cancer incidence, but no let-up in the under-nutrition of those too poor to join in the over-consumption.
Looking at India as an example, although it continues to do poorly in world hunger rankings, the country has achieved self-sufficiency in food grains and has ensured there is enough food available to feed its entire population.
It is the world’s largest producer of milk, pulses and millets and the second-largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnuts, vegetables, fruit and cotton.
Farmers, therefore, produce enough food.
It stands to reason that hunger and malnutrition result from other factors (such as inadequate food distribution, inequality and poverty). It is again a case of ‘scarcity’ amid abundance. The country even continues to export food while millions remain hungry.
While the pro-GMO lobby says GE will boost productivity and help secure cultivators a better income, this too is misleading as it again ignores crucial political and economic contexts; with bumper harvests, Indian farmers still find themselves in financial distress.
India’s farmers are not experiencing hardship due to low productivity. They are reeling from the effects of neoliberal policies, years of neglect and a deliberate strategy to displace smallholder agriculture at the behest of the World Bank and predatory global agri-food corporations.
It’s for good reason that the calorie and essential nutrient intake of the rural poor has drastically fallen.
And yet, the pro-GMO lobby wastes no time in wrenching these issues from their political contexts to use the notions of ‘helping farmers’ and ‘feeding the world’ as lynchpins of its promotional strategy.
Agroecological principles
Many of the traditional practices of small farmers are now recognised as sophisticated and appropriate for high-productive, sustainable agriculture.
These practices involve an integrated low-input systems approach to agriculture that emphasises, among other things, local food security and sovereignty, diverse nutrition production per acre, water table stability, climate resilience and good soil structure.
Agroecology represents a shift away from the reductionist yield-output industrial paradigm, which results in enormous pressures on health and the environment.
A recent FAO high-level report called for agroecology and smallholder farmers to be prioritised and invested in to achieve global sustainable food security. Smallholder (non-GMO) farming using low-input methods tends to be more productive in total output than large-scale industrial farms and can be more profitable and resilient to climate change.
Despite the fact that globally industrial agriculture grabs 80 per cent of subsidies and 90 per cent of research funds, smallholder agriculture plays a major role in feeding the world.
At the same time, these massive subsidies and funds support a system that is only made profitable because agri-food oligopolies externalize the massive health, social and environmental costs of their operations.
These corporations leverage their financial clout, lobby networks, funded science and political influence to cement a ‘thick legitimacy’ among policymakers for their vision of agriculture.
In turn, World Bank ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ directives, the World Trade Organization ‘agreement on agriculture’ and trade-related intellectual property rights help secure their interests.
In the meantime, supporters of GMO agriculture continue to display a willful ignorance of the structure of the food system which produces the very problem it claims it can resolve.
The pro-GMO scientific lobby arrogantly pushes its ideological agenda while ignoring the root causes of poverty, hunger and malnutrition and denigrating genuine solutions centred on food sovereignty.
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Oh please: If anyone quotes the ‘Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’, ‘The State of Food and Agriculture 2009’ report again (in which it was claimed that we could feed 1.5 times the population) without then checking their more recent, ‘The State of Food and Agriculture 2012’ report – I’m going to have to say that they failed to research their facts (which really should be sacred).
THE STATE OF FOOD AND AGRICULTURE 2012:
“The persistence of high levels of undernourishment worldwide and recent trends in agricultural prices, production and consumption confirm the major challenges facing world agriculture over the coming decades, notably meeting increasing demand from a growing world population.”
Also, the 2009 report made clear it that, “In Latin America, agricultural production increased by more than 50 percent from 2000 to 2012, with Brazil expanding production by more than 70 percent.” Who needs Rainforests anyway?
Climate disaster (change) as a result of overpopulation are causing crops and yields to fall as a result of the effects of floods, drought, tornadoes and this was already telling in the 2012 report:
“Several studies point to slowing productivity growth in agriculture. For crops, for instance, some evidence suggests a slowdown in yield growth rates in recent decades. The 2008 World Development Report (World Bank, 2007) highlighted the decline in annual average yield growth rates for maize, wheat, rice and soybeans, both globally and for most country groupings, with the exception of Eastern Europe for wheat and soybeans. Alston, Beddow and Pardey (2010) reported similar results for developing and developed countries – in particular for cereal yields – in the majority of large producing countries.”
Please, no-one quote that silly fiction again, thanks.
Correction: “The 2012 report [not the 2009 report] made clear it that, “In Latin America, agricultural production increased by more than 50 percent from 2000 to 2012, with Brazil expanding production by more than 70 percent.” Who needs Rainforests anyway?”
greta thurnberg has many of the answers al gores as well i have met al and david attenburger of the bbc blue oblate spheroid ball earth tv show.these guys say we should do a good job with vaccines via shot and via barium heavy metal seeding in the skies. dollar and pound store foods burger joints and chicken shacks are also excellent vector for vitamin vax shots. chemo therapy devices can be put into police and airport scanners for goy dosing.
human insect and lab grown meats are essential along with palm oil,corn syrup and monsatan sky vitamins are all essential for goyim population vanishings and weakenings already.
hospital’s and harold shipmans , full uk liverpool care pathway cull prorammes are dong sterling work
tory blair was correct things can and did get better what a beast system
my life already
There are two separate issues here. One is as old as history, its the problem of the economics of distribution and making a profit that means that sometimes it makes business sense to destroy food than feed poor people. Two notable incidents that spring to mind were the Irish Potato Famine and the Depression but the notion is always with us with various national food ‘mountains’. The other, more insidious, is the attempt by transnational countries to corner the market in food staples by monopolizing its seed sources. The chosen tool for this is GMO foods but its not an inherent property of GMO, this is just a modern way of selectively breeding crops for desirable characteristics. Where it becomes evil is the use of GMO coupled with legal campaigns to enforce monopolies by multinational corporations. This is wrong on innumerable levels (quite apart from encouraging the worst kind of agriculture, large scale monoculture, that tends to create ecological disasters). This rapacious behavior has given GMOs a bad rap but its really just the worst of capitalism at work.
Well put Martin, GMO is a tool like any other: to be used by Men of Good Will or Bad Will indifferently. That is what Christians call Free Will — and Hell waits for those who freely choose the bad.
“From one Cross a technician can make two gallows”. — modern German proverb. I think it comes from The World of Walther Nernst, about the birth of the Military Industrial Complex.
PS more accurately, the birth of COMIC – the Capitalist Owned Military Industrial Complex.
Oh, and the absolute scum who are murdering Julian Assanage will not get away with this.
You (scum) are all being noted.
We are coming for you.
Make no mistake about that.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/nov/25/julian-assanges-health-is-so-bad-he-could-die-in-prison-say-60-doctors
Slightly off topic (but not really): Corbyn is going to walk this election. It will be the biggest landslide since 1945.
If Corbyn looses you know that you are in ‘1984 land’.
The egits, the idiots, will need to take a good look in the mirror…
You mention India, but you don’t mention all the farmers committing suicide in that country…
https://www.rt.com/news/206787-monsanto-india-farmers-suicides/
Incidentally, suicide amongst farmers is also increasing all across the western world.
Another genocide of independent farmers. The non-fictitious Holodomor. The Vendee of the French Revolution. The destruction of the agrarian peasants in South Vietnam, with Agent Orange destroying their fields, and the US military forcibly relocating the farmers to “strategic” urban centers. If the USA had won that war, I suspect that US corporations would have arrived in country to “help” rebuild food production.
Rockefeller Foundation and Harvard Business School jointly created the concept of Agri-Business. Evil twins. Maximizing profit and minimizing nutrition. The complete corporate takeover of food production from seed to shelf.
Independent farmers become employees or contractors. They lose their acreage to the bankers. No heritage to pass down to their children.
Farmers become the Rockefeller company town coal miners of the early 20th century. No savings, no pension, no healthcare. Instead of coal dust, Roundup is the killer.
“Food Sovereignty” says it all, succinctly:- interlinked to engineered weather, with drought resistant seed strains, just the first of many weather engineering methods, tested & experimented with, in the US mid-West, long before WTC7, which contained the SEC criminal investigation of Enron/Monsanto derivative fund investments in commodities, on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange . . .
Monsanto/Bayer/IG Farben, call them what you want, the perps. have already even generated a singular annual performance Sativa Hemp Seed, for ‘Mary Jane’, clearly thinking ahead of any forthcoming legalisation: that should tell you how the design is to control all & any market production, in futures wholly corporate bound & obligated: when nature had always provided so handsomely, & for Free . . ., with love and attention to seed.
The pattern of corporate behaviours, with their BS Patent & Copyright Law, would have you believe that they invented the very vocabulary with which any product was ever developed & marketed, in reality, via
our ownCOLLECTIVE WISDOM & KNOWLEDGE, developed in Universities conditioned to share, over many centuries. Nobody owns science, but some like to think they can enslave others, by abusing Science & all Humanity’s contributions to same.
Bayer has owned 38 patents on cannabis strains for some time. Waiting patiently for decriminalization.
I expect that with Federal decriminalization, the FDA will regulate cannabis production, requiring excessive paperwork, filing fees, etc. to approve a grower and their seeds. Small change to MegaCorp with their teams of connected lawyers and lobbyists, deal breaker for the independent growers.
The US government governs only in the interests of Corporations, that are owned by the 0.001% wealthiest families. The same interrelated, intertwined families that have produced every US President ever.
We own the air, we own the water; we own everything.
These little pricks own nothing, when it comes to the commons.
For fecks sake people, wake-up!
‘GMO’ is another word for unmitigated fascism. Forced upon the people from the top down with weapons of mass distraction and deception.
GMO people are fascists. They have proven again and again that they have zero concerns for the consumers, but are only and exclusively interested in record profits in combination with depopulation efforts.
Because the truth is, that these GMO pushers are like the worst fascists of them all. Can’t have a functioning species if it is not supplied with healthy food. Don’t people recall that “You are what you eat?” What will make that of you when you eat GMO? Anybody know for sure? And remember: all without consent by those affected.
Gates belongs to the gallows he is a fascist string puller that uses his illgained wealth (monopoly) to find ways to exterminate the masses. Here too, psychological projection is used to make the masses swallow where they should spit. Or better never give GMO oral.
For all that is known, the persons behind GMO have lied to their populations about the safety of their ‘creations’, they have bought, blackmailed and disappeared critics. They are inseparably conjoined with the military industrial surveillance cartel. These persons need to be removed from society and locked away until they die due to the threat they pose to humanity.
If that is not done very soon, GMO WILL BE in everything we eat. Rules and regulations will continue to make small scale organic farming illegal and punishable – to keep the prison cartel from going dry based on cannabis de-illegalization.
The problem is unfortunately that those who have a conscience, are those who are getting rolled over now by the machine. The populations must understand – and they do, when one is to look at the protests against fascist regimes supported by the U.S. regime – mother of all regimes, the world over.
For those not familiar with what organic agriculture is presently evolving/progressing into – and I make it ultra short.
I like to call it ‘Effective Micro Organics Vertical Perma-Aeroculture’.
Plants do not need soil to grow. As a matter of fact, soil is being irreversably lost to the GMO crimes against humanity. Soil is a living organism – not an enemy, nor stinking dirt, or soul-less matter. It needs to be worshiped for it provides the means life requires to exist.
Almost abyone can start an ‘Aeroponic Permaculture’ project immediately. For the price of a TV set, you will be harvesting vegetables year round. Without lots of water involved. With increases in power consumption for LED lights – offset by the harvested produce. You will use also organic fertilizer and EMO – if you can’t set up a fish tank, or don’t want to. However – the perpetuity aspect arises when fish/shrimp are used to grow produce of which a part is used to generate the organic food for the fish/shrimp. Solar heat accumulation reduces overall power consumption.
If everybody can grow food, food production is more spread out and decentralized. A little that will do its intended purpose goes a long way over the big that serves foremost only one purpose – profit and then fails to deliver on its promised voluptous harvests. Almost like the philosophy of ‘torched earth’.
Thank you for keeping to point to the Silverback in the living room.
There isn’t a food-scarcity issue, nor is there a population-growth issue. There are resource allocation crimes being perpetrated across the globe being framed as the above. More Hegelian dialect being foisted at us from all sides, as per usual.
We’re all doomed etc.
Sigh.
Notice the pattern:
“We will save you or the World from: what our ‘solution’ DOES.
Noticing the voice of the ego of substitution for real relationship is freedom from temptation to accept its framing in LACK or indeed scarcity.
The substitution for real relationship USES relationship to GET FROM or GET RID OF, ONTO.
Yes it is both ignorant of real relation as it is arrogant of its own assertions of moral justification set over the invalidity or guilt of others.
The ‘ego’ in my usage is a fake sense of self set apart from and against – Life – and therefore over or under rather than WITH.
To be hostage or victim to ‘our’ ego is to be running under an identity theft in fear of pain of loss and death that stems FROM a sense of dis-possession seeking by any and every means to regain what the very attempt to grasp for itself – denies itself and others.
Loss of love seeks fulfilment in substitution that can never be had for nothing can substitute for relational wholeness, peace and power at rest – but greed and scarcity generate as a world of hollowing out for the sake of a self-specialness in imaged and private reflection that has no truth or truly sustaining power because it is unshared – out of relation or dissociated from the movement of being that Gives Life, Sustains Life and Guides and supports Life.
Bio-technical ‘upgrading’ and replacement of living relational being by systemic ‘control’ is choosing death in the midst of Life. It is merely a logical development of insane premise and false promise.
A true Inherence in Life is not a mindset framed and jacked or hacked into by a blind and blinding program of systemic control.
The ‘Prodigal’ wasteland still LOOKS like a great business opportunity to the mind set in its OWN survival in disregard for Life in Others – and dissociation from one Life in All.
The ingenuity of such a mentality can literally repackage sin of persistent toxic debts into forms that others are attracted to exchange Life for, by framing in currencies of its own making, into which others are drawn as by natural self interest. As a baiting into to a hidden trap.
The underlying issue of ‘control’ vs communication and relationship SUBSTITUTES a version of relationship that operates identity theft. Identity politics is thus in a sense being ‘run’ by the ‘ego of control’ as the illusion of freedom that delivers slavery in a package of your own willing acceptance – at least initially. But once hooked the attempt to escape only deepens the identification – because now the mind is entrained to DO the thing it thinks to be defended from.
Hating is set as love’s substitution – and it will never be enough. Only death can fulfil or release us of what we are unwilling to release – BECAUSE it is engaged in AS self-protection or self-love – born of fear and thus hidden from open, direct and shared appreciation.
The alternative to a false control is a true command. This is recognised and accepted as a decision of the heart. In truly shared interests we can uncover agreements that allow a weaning from the addiction to ‘getting’ and its fear of being ‘gotten from’ or denied in the measure of its own ‘giving’.
Food as a vector of the spectrum of control is both marketised and weaponised. How can this not be a poisoned well? or a cornered market for a racket? But the first order of correction is the restoring of relational appreciation. Giving and receiving is ‘informational energy exchange’. Whether thought, food or regard.
Being in Nature as an aligning in presence that centres and grounds us – is not romanticising or making narratives of Nature as victim – by which to weep or fuel a human self hatred. It is simply to release the mental conflicts as a basis from which to live, so as to feel and to know our being and have such a quality as a living context for evaluating thoughts, perceptions and reactions – especially when ‘old habit’ patterns are triggered or invoked.
Perhaps abundance is the result of WHATEVER we give focus to or choose to live the idea of – but an abundance of lack or debt or conflict does not recognise it own reward and so persists in the self-destructive as if on the verge of success or of averting disaster.
Fear packaged as escape – cells. As in imprisoning a self-perpetuating pattern.
But living cells are synchronised within a functional wholeness or field of intent that communicates the whole in all its parts.
Trying to DO this from the outside in is ‘backwards’ but the recognition that systems are self reflective and self adjusting is perhaps useful to our own consciousness as a capacity to re-cognise and re-align with what is already alive and moving beneath the ‘overlay of an attempt to limit and control it’.
“pro-GMO lobby”
Shouldn’t this be ‘GMO lobby’?
‘Pro-GMO’ gives the impression that there are people who really believe GMO is a great stuff. There are no such people. There are only criminals obsessed with destroying nature, as well as destroying our reliance on nature.
Good to see Mr Todhunter focussing on realities and not climate change bull***t.
Let us suppose 1-5 million farmers feed 25-100 million people. That is 1-5 million people feeding a nation and being employed doing so.
Now let us make 4.5 million of those farmers unemployed by imposing IMF/WTO agriculture.
The oligarchs in agriculture make money. 4.5 million people are unemployed, many lose their intergenerational homes, plenty commit suicide. The ones that survive need jobs they have not been trained for, homes in places they have no roots and society needs to pay for the upheaval in their lives wrought by the agicultural oligarchs.
The question to be asked is why the oligarchs do not have to pay directly for the 4.5 million unemployed they created? Why does society subsidise their vandalism of social cohesion?
They should also ask whether Bill Gates will agree to sterilise his family as a quid pro quo for imposing sterile GMO crop variants on the world?
If open pollination is good enough for Bill and Melinda Gates during their personal procreation strategies, why is it not good enough for sustainable agriculture?
‘Climate change bullshit’ ?
Better tell that to the folks in Venice, who are enduring unprecedented, unseasonable floods, the folks in Australia, where more than six hundred homes haves been lost, more than two million acres burned, tens of thousands of native animals destroyed and several lives lost.
The Earth is resetting.
Editor: Climate change is a permanent condition & manmade climate change is very likely a reality, but ascribing every single anomaly to AGW is not just unscientific, it’s part of the deliberately engendered hysteria designed to stampede us into accepting the fascistic agenda behind the bogus ‘Green New Deal’. There is no hard evidence as yet that the Venice floods & Australian fires are related to human-engendered CO2 levels. – ed
For the sake of balance, with regard to forest/wild fires which are regularly cited as evidence of climate change, I read through reflective articles about 2018 fires in Australia, California and our very own UK (Lancashire and Wales) and established that the majority were actually the direct result of multiple deliberate arson attacks, in some cases several fires being started several miles apart by only one individual; for other fires the cause was either due to carelessness, or had not been determined. The recent California fire was rumoured to have been the result of a fault in an electrical sub-station.
Our media rarely bothers to report the investigation results months after the event. Arguably, the resulting fires may be more devastating because of exceptionally dry conditions but whether that could be regarded as normal for the time of year or the result of climate change is open to debate. But my point is that I myself know people who believe that these serious fires spontaneously combust as a result of climate change because that is what imprecise talk by commentators and the media leads them to believe.
Spontaneous combustion?
Give me a break.
How fires start is irrelevant. The FACT that they can’t be put out IS relevant.
“The fact they can’t be put out IS relevant”
Maybe down to land management practices? Absence of fire breaks, natural or otherwise? Poor fire control measures by fire services? Shortage of fire fighters and equipment? Difficulty getting ahead of the fire to institute control measures? The time it takes to control fires isn’t entirely down to nature.
This link provides interesting and informative observations from experienced firefighters about the multitude of factors involved in controlling wildfires …even if it means accepting that they have to be left to burn themselves out, and can still be smouldering months later.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-so-difficult-to-put-out-wildfires
They can’t be put out because:
1. Humidity levels are exceptionally low (4-6%).
2. Unusually strong Gale force winds.
3. Inaccessible terrain.
4. Almost zero soil moisture caused by more frequent droughts
5. Continuous days of record breaking heatwaves.
6. Climate terrorism by the exploiter class.
Hard evidence?
Increasing frequency and increasing size is hard enough for me.
South California, the Mediterranean coast and large part of Australia are semi-deserts where bush fires were part of Nature. Than (rich – green) man showed up and stopped any natural bush fire which increased the amount of tinder and fuel. Next people are surprised that some big fires occurs and blame it on “climate change”, the new Devil.
Some of the recent fires in Northern NSW were in sub tropical rainforests.
Most of the other areas burnt were dry Eucalypt forests, not ‘semi arid’ areas.
The 1% don’t give a shit about fires and floods. After all, they both add to the GDP.
True. Eucalypt forests natural state is to undergo forest fires from time to time, stopped when “green” man appeared.
@Ed: “Climate change is a permanent condition & manmade climate change is very likely a reality, but …” Global Warming, though a real effect of massive carbon burning by humans, is only one among many other socially and ecologically destructive activities by Homo Sap.sap. We as a species ought to repent and reform for our own good, before we destroy some (or all?) of our ecological niches.
Thanks for this article. Cuts through all the flannel about GMO and the problem of food poverty.
It’s very interesting because just recently I was thinking of quite a few examples whereby certain ‘solutions’ to various problems never seem to go to the root cause.
One I know of is mental health. The ‘solutions’ always seem to focus on the symptoms. Let’s prescribe drugs. Or let’s put the focus on the individual and offer Cognitive Behaviour Therapy’. The fact that someone suffers poor mental health because of bullying at work or another external factor – well never mind that, that’s a fact of life – CBT and drugs will make you more resilient.
So we tend to not to look at the root causes of so many problems. Before you know it you have entire industries cashing in on initiatives which are tempory or non fixes.
The other I can think of is mass immigration. Another thing you hear is ‘Oh well I’m voting Brexit etc which will prevent mass immigration’ Really?
Root cause of much immigration – wars pursued by us and foreign policy. Solution – stop warmongering and plundering and start engaging constructively with the developing world.
The education system used as a political football and constant tinkering for 60 odd years. The result, a mess which enables a few select Oxford colleges which provide the gormless and self entitled which run the country and media. So many examples.
People just get carried along with all these initiatives without ever thinking of the consequences and root causes, hence why nothing is never really achieved.
Lol… there was a downvote here.
I’m very curious to know on what grounds, but not DESPERATELY curious…
War Dropper, for what it’s worth I gave you an upvote, but only on second reading after your query; at first glance the apparent irrelevance of Mental Health and Oxford Colleges threw me off. But on second thoughts, the mental conditioning of Sir Humphrey Appleton and his fellow Firsts who actually run UK plc for the City should be considered an integral part of Britain’s Ecology?
“The ancient Greek word oikos (ancient Greek: οἶκος, plural: οἶκοι; English prefix: eco- for ecology and economics) refers to three related but distinct concepts: the Family, the Family’s Property, and the House. Its meaning shifts even within texts, which can lead to confusion.” — Wiki Paidia
Thank you V.
I suppose this is very closely linked with the sickening tendency of our “traditional” media, whenever a matter of great national importance arises, to drag out their “historical experts” in order to lend “authenticity” to their idea of what we should think and do.
The upshot is usually that we should think, and do, nothing at all, while their experts wallow in the delusion that they know everything.
The “sickening” aspect lies in the fact that these experts show clear ties to military upbringing, speaking in the cold, technical language of war-robots, and with accents betraying their military-academic upbringing, having been sent to boarding school at the age of four, as well as the fact that their father fought alongside Montgomery in Africa, their grandfather was a Sopwith Camel pilot in WW1 and their great-grandfather went to Eton just before receiving orders to be, suddenly, and miraculously, a commanding officer in the Boer War.
Incredible that these people are still with us, while much younger people who really know what they’re doing, like Julian Assange, are sidelined, persecuted and tortured by the BBC’s favourite “distinguished” commentators…