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Extreme left-wing kookiness (was Self-Suffiency Acreage Requirements)
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 15:50:59 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote: gregpresley wrote: "Bob Peterson" wrote in Diet for a Small Planet is hardly evidence of anything other than left wing . I also found the only word that matters: "progressive", the happy-face word of choice leftists prefer. Or was it the only one that you were able to read? When it comes to political agendas, yours seems to pretty much control your ability to absorb information. |
Extreme left-wing kookiness (was Self-Suffiency Acreage Requirements)
Jonathan Ball wrote in
link.net: Ayrshire wrote: "gregpresley" wrote in : I'm sorry if I missed your science/biology/nutrition credentials in this discussion, as well as those of your cohorts who chose to dismiss the conclusions of this author without reading a word of her book. Perhaps you'd care to share? Otherwise, I'll be forced to disregard everything you write, as meaningless drivel coming out of a well of ignorance. .........Still waiting, didn't get any response to this part of my post in the long unsupported rant by the following poster...... "Jonathan Ball" wrote in No, Johnathan, what you are unwilling to do is accept Greg's political analysis. You seem to have Greg and me mixed up; further evidence for that is that you misattribute his comment about universities only hiring highly credentialed persons to me. Greg is not offering a political analysis; I am. Greg is refusing to accept mine, as he is cynically trying to pretend that "Diet For a Small Planet" is about science, not polemical agenda advancement. He is wrong. The "scientific" conclusion offered in "DFSP" is unimportant to the point of being utterly trivial. What IS important in it is Lappe's sense - her UNSCIENTIFIC, ideologically driven sense - that hunger in the world is due to "injustice", and that the "injustice" is due to the market. Quite unintentionally, she points out that world hunger, to the extent it is driven by the misguided protectionist agricultural policies of the developed western nations, is caused by a *refusal* to let the market work. The subsidies she decries, and that I decry, are the result of ANTI-market forces at work. Lappe attributes the existence of hunger to an economy that fails to offer everyone opportunity. Which is at least partly a bogus charge, and is motivated solely by her leftist ideology. Her scientific credentials, whatever they are, do not entitle her to make such a judgment. She fails to note that the majority of these economies are really socialist dictatorships or countries where islam is the dominant culture. Lappe is more interested in criticizing, polemically and NOT scientifically, the market economies of the developed nations. Poverty & food is used as a weapon to keep enough people enslaved to the leadership of the country in order to maintain control. Sudan, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Bangladesh & Cuba are examples of the control & cultures I speak about. If you go to the page of Lappe's UNscientifically founded, leftist political agenda-motivated organization to which I earlier provided a link, www.foodfirst.org, you will find that they are FULL of effusive praise for Cuba. In other words, we are dealing here with garden variety 1960s activists who don't realize they LOST. She talks about the plight of landless and land-poor people and the need for land reform. Of course there is no definition of land reform, which usually means taking land away from owners to give someone else. this is another means of control like the Mexican revloution's land reform and subsequent 70 years of one party rule. The nonsense you refer to You mean the nonsense the ardent leftist Greg refers to... about universities only hiring highly credentialed persons is laughable. One doesn't get tenure in a university unless they toe the politically correct line, or kiss up to the egotists in the department. Reams of research gets shelved because the results aren't what the professor wanted. I've spent enough time working in universities to know. You may be correct that I have confused who was praising Lappe. Her views are driven by leftist ideologies rather than a scientific conclusion. She has ignored evidence that refutes her stance. The '12 Myths of Hunger' from the FoodFirst web site is a political document based on the usual leftist prescriptions, land reform, income redistribution, hatred of the market, a living wage and the evil rich. In the 12th Myth Lappe gives a cursory overview of why our country, USA, was established. To encourage liberty for individuals. land ownership was part of the desired outcome for many in the early part of our history. But the document rails against liberty by saying that the trend toward privitzation & de-regulation isn't the answer. My expertise is in the agricultural sector, farm management & policy. I believe more harm has been done to land ownership of small farmers by policies that the US Congress has set, in the name of helping small farmers, than the market. The document written in 1998 also says things like 'growimg number of hungry' 'growing numbers of working poor' due to welfare reform ignores the great Clinton economy, the rising numbers of jobs and low unemployment rates of the time. |
Extreme left-wing kookiness (was Self-Suffiency Acreage Requirements)
Ayrshire wrote:
Jonathan Ball wrote in link.net: [...] You may be correct that I have confused who was praising Lappe. I definitely was not praising Lappe. Her views are driven by leftist ideologies rather than a scientific conclusion. She has ignored evidence that refutes her stance. It's important to note that there are two distinct pieces to her stance, one of them scientifically founded but trivial, the other anything but scientifically based. Her conclusion that people can live healthfully and economically on a meat-free diet is probably scientifically sound, but it is also trivial: who cares? It's when she bases her policy prescriptions on it that she gets into intellectual trouble. The '12 Myths of Hunger' from the FoodFirst web site is a political document based on the usual leftist prescriptions, land reform, income redistribution, hatred of the market, a living wage and the evil rich. A lot of the statements in the '12 Myths' (http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgr...8/s98v5n3.html) are unobjectionable. For example, myth #1: Myth: Not Enough Food to Go Around Reality: Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world's food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,500 calories a day. That doesn't even count many other commonly eaten foods-vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide: two and half pounds of grain, beans and nuts, about a pound of fruits and vegetables, and nearly another pound of meat, milk and eggs-enough to make most people fat! The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food. Even most "hungry countries" have enough food for all their people right now. Many are net exporters of food and other agricultural products. That is pretty much true: with minor exceptions, there is plenty of food. What the sneaky leftists at FoodFirst leave out of this is, the food in many cases is NOT where the hungry people are. They also largely misidentify *why* the food isn't where the hungry people are. In the 12th Myth Lappe gives a cursory overview of why our country, USA, was established. To encourage liberty for individuals. land ownership was part of the desired outcome for many in the early part of our history. But the document rails against liberty by saying that the trend toward privitzation & de-regulation isn't the answer. My expertise is in the agricultural sector, farm management & policy. I believe more harm has been done to land ownership of small farmers by policies that the US Congress has set, in the name of helping small farmers, than the market. The document written in 1998 also says things like 'growimg number of hungry' 'growing numbers of working poor' due to welfare reform ignores the great Clinton economy, the rising numbers of jobs and low unemployment rates of the time. |
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