Skip to main content

You can just choke on the irony





Hunger talks start with lobster and foie gras



THE opening day of the UN World Food Summit, dedicated to combating global hunger, was marked yesterday by a sumptuous lunch for the 3,000 delegates served by 170 Italian waiters.



The summit leaders were offered foie gras, lobster, and goose stuffed with olives. followed by fruit compote.



The Rome lunch was a symbol, for Western leaders at least, of the extravagant and bloated bureaucracies that the aid business has created, and went some way towards explaining why so few of them were in attendance yesterday.
I can't help but wonder that many places in the world today would be better off if the UN would just...go away.



I loved this portion, too:



A stream of limousines and police outriders escorted the leaders from the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), a sprawling United Nations bureaucracy housed in the former Fascist Ministry for the African Empire near the Colosseum, to the luxury of hotels on the Via Veneto and the city’s finest restaurants.



....



They [FAO officials] acknowledge that many Third World regimes are corrupt and that maladministration and dictatorship are as much responsible for economic backwardness and malnutrition as drought and natural disasters. But the FAO’s backers say that the organisation has laudable aims and the West should help to achieve them instead of carping from the sidelines. [Emphasis mine.]



The FAO was founded in 1945, initially to help countries devastated by the Second World War to re-establish food supplies and later to help the newly independent countries of the Third World.



If the record is mixed, it is because the West has failed to provide the "political will", and the funds, to back up their promises, Nick Parsons, the FAO spokesman, said. Of the $70 billion (£48billion) spent on development aid worldwide, just $11 billion goes on agriculture.
Rush Limbaugh often points out that these programs rely on people's perceptions of their intentions, not their actions, and here we have the backers of one such agency actually saying that. "Yes, we're ineffectual and we eat well (pass the lobster, please), but we mean well...."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

John Wick: Chapter 4

No sense in playing coy, this is a great film. I’ve seen it twice and while I don’t quite love it in the way I love the first, original John Wick , it’s my #2. It’s a little overlong, has some wasted space and time, has one absolutely pointless and useless character, and generally ignores the realities of firefights, falling, getting shot, hit, etc. All that notwithstanding, it’s a great action flick, has a genuine emotional core, and is well worth your time if you’re into that sort of thing. Like I am. Summary: John Wick (Keanu Reeves), last seen saying he was fed up with the High Table, goes to war to obtain his freedom. Some of the most incredible action scenes ever filmed ensue, culminating in a very satisfactory finale and a devastating post-credit scene. The first Wick film was a surprise hit. It was a simple, straight-forward tale of vengeance told in a simple, straight-forward manner. Where it stood out was its devotion to human stunt work, on exploiting long camera shots that ...
Post a Comment
Read more

DVD: The Descent

While waiting for the fourth disk of season 4 of House to arrive, I watched The Descent . This movie has been out on DVD for a while, so why bring it up now? Because I think I might become a fan of its writer-director, Neil Marshall . His latest is Doomsday , recently released on DVD, and while it’s sort of a mess, it’s a mess in that oh-fun-what-the-heck-let’s-shoot-a-Bentley-through-a-bus sort of way. The Descent is a different sort of animal. Prepare for spoilers. Since this film has been out for a while, I’m going to feel free to reveal. The setup is simple: Six friends go spelunking, complications ensue. Basic complications involve Sarah and Juno. Sarah is an emotional wreck following the rather horrible and tragic deaths of her husband and daughter (this trip is seen as therapy , oh my). Juno is a reckless thrill-seeker who leads an unknowing Sarah and friends into a cave no one has – publicly, at least – ever explored. All goes horribly...
1 comment
Read more

Dune Part 2 (2024)

I have come not to praise Dune but to bury it. I am in a distinct minority. So be it. To explain why, there will be some minor spoilers ahead; sorry. The short version is #NotMyDune. Summary: Picking up where Dune Part 1 left off, we find the young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) hanging out with the Fremen. Plots to overthrow rival houses and empires ensue. Go here to see what I thought about Dune Part 1 (2021) . Overall, I found it to be technically brilliant, but lacking a human heart, an exercise in frenetic slow motion. D2 is more of the same, though with far more action. Acting-wise, everyone is doing a fine, more than adequate job. Absolutely no one or nothing stands out. The way the characters are written (adapted, actually), their back and forths and interactions, are all weak and unengaging. I generally hate when they speak. I've read the novel a ridiculous number of times, and these films are prompting me to read it again. I understand that trying to translate the n...
1 comment
Read more