HOW IT STARTED: UN Deletes Article Touting ‘Benefits’ of World Hunger: ‘Hungry People Are the Most Productive People.’
An article appearing on the United Nations Chronicle website as recently as Wednesday that touted the “benefits of world hunger” has seemingly been taken down.
Screenshots of the post, which web archives appear to show was first published in 2009, began to circulate on Twitter Wednesday.
A link to the article, which now takes visitors to an error page.
It was archived before it was apparently scrubbed from the website by the agency on Thursday.
In it, former University of Hawaii professor George Kent wrote,
We sometimes talk about hunger in the world as if it were a scourge that all of us want to see abolished, viewing it as comparable with the plague or aids. But that naïve view prevents us from coming to grips with what causes and sustains hunger. Hunger has great positive value to many people.
Indeed, it is fundamental to the working of the world’s economy. Hungry people are the most productive people, especially where there is a need for manual labour.
Kent went on to ask, “How many of us would sell our services so cheaply if it were not for the threat of hunger?” he further noted, “For those who depend on the availability of cheap labour, hunger is the foundation of their wealth.”
—Mediaite, July 22nd.
How it’s going: Head of the United Nations weather agency says the war in Ukraine may be “a blessing” for climate change efforts.
Petteri Taalas said that the war in Ukraine “may be seen as a blessing” because it has accelerated the investment and development of “green” energy sources over the long term.
Petteri Taalas is the secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, which is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science, climatology, hydrology and geophysics.
The World Meteorological Organization website says it is “a specialized agency of the United Nations, WMO is dedicated to international cooperation and coordination on the state and behaviour of the Earth’s atmosphere, its interaction with the land and oceans, the weather and climate it produces, and the resulting distribution of water resources.”
Currently, Europe is running out of energy sources and is facing an energy crisis in part due to the war in Ukraine and self-inflicted policy decisions prior to the war.
—Westphalian Times, yesterday.