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.

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.

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.