Britain Blamed for Ireland's Hidden Holocaust

The politicians refer to it as "Ireland's greatest natural disaster", but, from 1845 to 1850, Ireland did not starve for food because of potato blight: it starved because its food, from 40 to 70 shiploads per day, was removed at gunpoint by 12,000 British constables reinforced by the British militia, battleships, excise vessels, the Coast Guard and 200,000 soldiers.

Britain seized from Ireland's producers tens of millions of head of livestock and tens of millions of tons of flour, grains, meat, poultry and dairy products - enough to sustain 18 million persons.

When the European potato crop failed in 1844 and food prices rose, Britain ordered regiments to Ireland. When blight hit the 1845 English potato crop, its food removal regiments were already mobilized in Ireland. Grossly overpopulated relative to its food supply, Britain faced famine unless it could import vast amounts of alternative food supplies. But it didn't grab merely Ireland's surplus food or enough Irish food to save England ; it took more - for profit and to exterminate the people of Ireland.

Assuming Britain's census figures for Ireland are correct, revisionist historians are now claiming that the British government murdered approximately 5.16 million Irish men, women and children between 1845 and 1850.
(Source: http://www.irishholocaust.org)

For the last 15 years Europe has, in effect, been run not by politicians or bureaucrats but by a little-known group of transnational corporations called the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT).

A report called "Europe Inc.", released by a Dutch-based corporate Europe Observatory, shows that the ERT was the driving force behind the EEC's was the drivng force behind the EEC's internal market in the 1980s, the 1991 Maastricht Treaty and the social welfare-cutting single currency.

Founded in 1983, the ERT is made up of 45 basiness leaders from large European transnational corporations whose combined turnover approaches US$880 billion. They include BP, Shell, Daimler-Benz Fiat and Siemens. Their aim is to shape EC policies towards their preferences.

Corporate Europe Observatory researchers investigated ERT documents and European Union files and carried out extensive interviews with representatives of lobby groups supported by transnational corporations.
(Source: The Sydney Morning Herals, 23 August 1997)

 World grain-harvested area per person has declined from around 0.17ha in 1972 to .12ha in 1996. 

Biodiversity loss
The statements
'Man has a special responsibility to safeguard and wisely manage the heritage of wildlife and its habitat…' (Stockholm, 1972)

'The current decline in biodiversity is largely the result of human activity and represents a serious threat to human development (Rio, 1992)

The goals
'The objectives of this Convention… are the conservation of biological diversity, [and] the sustainable use of its components.' (United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Rio, 1992)

 50-100 species are vanishing every day- 10,000 times faster than natural extinction rates; faster than at any time in the last 65m years. 

The reality
Since 1970, according to the WWF, there has been a 54 per cent decline in the populations of 195 freshwater species (living in rivers and wetlands); a 35 per cent decline in the populations of 217 marine species; and a 15 per cent decline in the populations of 282 forest species.

Today, around 27 per cent of the world's coral reefs (home to one quarter of all ocean species) are threatened, up from 10 per cent a decade ago.

Food variety is being lost too : 80 per cent of tomato varieties and 92 per cent of lettuce varieties have been lost in the 20th Century.

The UN states that 11,046 species of plants and animals are currently endangered. These include 1,130 mammals (24 per cent of the total), and 1,183 species of bird (12 per cent of the total), as well as 5,611 species of plants.

In 1995, the illegal trade in wildlife was estimated to be worth over $5bn- the second largest illegal trade in the world after drugs.

If current trends in species extinction continue, we may lose half of all the Earth's plant and animal species in just 50 years time.

Fisheries depletion

The statements
'States shall take all possible steps to prevent pollution of the seas by substances that are liable to… harm living resources and marine life.' (Stockholm, 1972)

The promises
'States commit themselves to the conservation and sustainable use of marine living resources under national jurisdiction… [and] on the high seas.' (Rio, 1992)

 There has been a doubling in global fish catch over the last 35 years, reaching 137m tons today. As a result, according to the UN, half of all fisheries are fully depleted and another 25 per cent are over-fished. 

The reality
Fisheries such as the Atlantic cod, haddock, Capelin, Atlantic herring and Southern African pilchard have either collapsed or are harvested at unsustainable levels.

It is estimated that world commercial fishing capacity is in excess of up to 150 per cent of what is seen to be sustainable. WWF notes that government subsidies to the fishing industry equal some $15bn per year (equivalent to around 20 per cent of the total landed value of the world's commercial fish catch).

Ships discharge up to 50m toms of oil at sea every year (mainly from washing out tar from ships' tanks oil spills).

Nuclear waste & radiation

The statements
'Governments should… support and expand international co-operation of radioactive waste problems…' (Stockholm, 1972)

'The safe and environmentally sound management of radioactive wastes, including their minimisation, transportation and disposal, is important, given their characteristics.' (Rio, 1992)

The goals
'States should… promote policies and practical measures to minimise and limit the generation of radioactive wastes and provide for their safe processing, conditioning, transportation and disposal.' (Rio, 1992)

 Since 1970, between 250 and 500 kilograms of plutonium have been discharged into the lrish Sea from the Sellafied nuclear reprocessing planet, making it the most radioactively contaminated sea in the world. 

The reality
Annual spent fuel (the most radioactive type of waste) from nuclear power plants in OECD countries has almost doubled from 4,391 tonnes in 1982 to 8,362 tonnes in 1995.

In 2000, the total global stockpile of spent nuclear fuel was 220,000 tonnes and it is growing by approximately 10,000 tonnes each year, according to the international Atomic Agency.

Annually a further 200,000 cubic metres of low-level and intermediate-level waste is generated globally from nuclear power production, according to the UN. Some of the nuclear waste dumping grounds are now leaking, contaminating nearly soil and water supplies.

Over 400 nuclear bomb factories and power plants worldwide make routine discharges of radioactive waste into the environment.

Cancer clusters have been found around nuclear plants worldwide. A US government study found a high incidence of 22 different types of cancer at 14 different US nuclear weapons facilities across the country.

Sellafield alone produce enough plutonium annually to make 1000 4kg nuclear bombs. The risk of terrorist bomb-making is real. In Europe, between 1992 and 1998, 173 attempted nuclear-related thefts, including of bomb-making material, were reported.

Chemical pollution

The statements
'The discharge of toxic substances… in such quantities or concentrations as to exceed the capacity of the environment to render them harmless, must be halted in order to ensure that serious or irreversible damage is not inflicted upon ecosystems.' (Stockholm 1972)

The goals
'Governments….should…undertake concerted activities to reduce risks for toxic chemicals…. These activities could encompass… the phasing out or banning of toxic chemicals that post an unreasonable and otherwise unmanageable risk to the environment or human health, and those that are toxic, persistent and bio-accumulative…' (Rio, 1992)

'By the year 2000, national systems for environmentally sound management of chemicals, including legislation and provisions for implementation and enforcement, should be in place in all countries….' (Rio, 1992)

The reality
Global sales of chemicals have increased almost ninefold since 1970: from $171bn in 1970 to almost $1.5 trillion in 1998. Between 70,000 and 100,000 chemicals are currently on the world market and 1,500 new chemicals are being introduced each year.

 Pesticides have become between 10 and 100 times more toxic than in the mid 1970s, and their use results in between 3.5m to 5m acute poisonings a year. 

According to the WorldWatch Institute, there are no basic health and environmental data for 71 per cent of the most widely-used chemicals in the United States, and less than 10 per cent of new chemicals reviewed each year have adequate test data in health effects.

The World Health Organisation estimates that 25 per cent of all preventable ill health in the world is due to environmental factors, including exposure to hazardous chemicals.

Childhood cancer (including brain tumours and leukaemia) in the US is increasing by one per cent per year and is now the second leading cause of death in children aged one to 14.

Rates of testicular cancer have tripled, prostate cancer rates have doubled and sperm counts have fallen by 50 per cent among European and American men since 1950.

Breast cancer afflicted one in eight women in developed countries in 1993, compared to one in 20 in 1960.

Waste creation & disposal

The statements and goals
'States should reduce and eliminate unsustainable patterns of production and consumption…' (Rio, 1992)
'Governments should, by the year 2000, promote sufficient financial and technological capacities at the regional, national and local levels to implement waste reuse and recycling policies and actions…' (Rio, 1992)
'Governments should initiate programmes to achieve sustained minimisation of waste generation…' (Rio, 1992)

The reality 
Two-thirds of waste is dumped into landfill sites (in the EU in 1996, there were 8,700 landfill sites storing 1.2bn tonnes of waste)- producing emissions of the greenhouse gas methane and contaminating groundwater.

Pregnant women living within 2 kilometers of a landfill site have been found to have a higher risk of having a baby with a congenital defect.

Many countries have now turned to incineration to deal with their growing waste problems-causing dangerous emission of dioxins (a Class 1 human carcinogen), heavy metals and acid gases
According to the British Foods Standards Agency, one third of the UK population regularly consumes food that contains unsafe levels of dioxins.

Another UK study found that cancer deaths among children living in communities neighbouring municipal waste incinerators had doubled between 1974 and 1987.

Many countries, including Japan, France, Britain, Ireland, Greece and Mexico still recycle less than 12 per cent of their household waste.

The United States still throws away enough aluminium to replace its entire commercial aircraft fleet every three months.

On current trends, the OECD predicts a further 70 to 100 per cent increase in waste generation in industrialised countries by 2020 and a 200 per cent increase in developing countries.

 In the past 20 years, municipal waste generated per person in industrialised countries has increased almost threefold, to an average of 475 kilos per person per year. 

Health epidemics

The statements
'Man had the fundamental right to… adequate conditions of life, in an environmental of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being… (Stockhold, 1972).

The goals
'Goals [that] are recommended for implementation by all countries [include].. by the year 2000….to mobilize and unify national and international efforts against AIDS to prevent infection and to reduce the personal and social impact of HIV; to contain the resurgence of tuberculosis, with particular emphasis on multiple antibiotic resistant forms.' (Rio, 1992)

The reality
Death from HIV/AIDS jumped more than sixfold worldwide over the past decade, from just over a half-million in 1990 to over 3 million in 2000. Nearly four out of five of these deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa.'

 Deaths from HIV/AIDS jumped more than sixfold worldwide over the past decade 

There were an estimated 8.4m new cases of tuberculosis in 1999, up from 8.om new cases in 1997, largely due to a 20 per cent increase in incidence in African countries.

Malaria caused 1.08m deaths worldwide in 2000, up from 0.86m in 1990. Children in Africa under the age of five make up a significant share of these deaths.

Poverty
The Statements
'Millions continue to live far below the minimum levels required for a decent human existence… the industrialized countries countries should make efforts to reduce the gap between themselves and the developing countries.' (Stockholm, 1972)

The promises
'All States and all people shall co-operate in the essential task of eradicating poverty…. in order to decrease the disparities in standards of living and better meet the needs of the majority of the people of the world.' (Rio, 1992)

The reality
The number of people living in poverty (defined as living on less than a dollar a day) over the last decade has increased by 100m, according to the former Chief Economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, to 1.3bn people (over a fifth of the world's population).

A further 1.6bn (another quarter of the world's population) survive on less than two dollars.

The UN forecasts that another 100m people will live on less than a dollar a day by 2015.

The UN states that the average household consumption expenditure in Africa is 20 per cent less than it was 25 years ago (despite the fact that the average annual rate of GDP for developing countries as a whole from 2.7 to 4.3 per cent from the 1980s to the 1990s).

In 1960 the combined incomes of the richest fifth of the world's population were 30 times greated than the poorest fifth. By 1991 they were over 60 times and in 1998, 78 times as high.

In the second half of the 1990s, one third of the world's willing to-work population was either unemployed or underemployed, the worse situation since the 1930s.

In 1997, 40 per cent of all children in the developing world under the age of five were underweight or starving. In 1996 the average daily intake of calories in the developing world was the same as in 1970. About 840m people worldwide are now malnourished.

The total debt burden developing and former Eastern bloc countries has increased 34 per cent since 1992, to $2.5 trillion in 2000, the Worldwatch Institute notes.

In 1947, external debt payments made up 92.3 per cent of the GDP of countries of socalled lowdevelopment.

Development assistance to developing nations has decreased in the past decade from $69bn in 1992 (in 2000 dollars) to $53bn in 2000. As a percentage of GNP, development and decreased from 0.33 per cent in 1992 to 0.22 per cent in 2000.

The UN High Commission for Refugees estimates that the number of refugees (forced from their homes because of political persecution armed conflict or environmental disasters) has growth from 2.7m in 1972 to 12.1m in 2000.

Globally, about 160,000 extra people are migrating to cities from the countryside every day, because rapid industrialisation of agriculture and imports of subsidised food are driving them off the land. Most migrants end up in booming squatter settlements or slums.

 In 1997, 40 per cent of all children in the developing in the developing world under the age of five were underweight or starving 

Poverty of affluence
If a broader definition of poverty if considered, taking into account social and cultural indicators, poverty has increased in the industrialised world too.

For the 24 OECD countries for which data are available, the OECD reported that the average has almost tripled from 14.3 per cent in 1970 to 41.2 per cent in 1998.

An estimated 4,000-9,000 languages have disappeared in the last 500 years and its estimated that at least half and up to 90 per cent of the remaining 6,800 remaining languages will be extinct by the end of this century.

Prison rates in industralised countries have doubled from around 44 per 100,000 population in 1972 to around 88 per 100,000 population in 1992.

The OECD reported that in the last 30 years, suicide rates have increased by more than 10 per cent on average among the OECD countries.

In the United States, people living alone swelled from only 17 per cent of all household in 1970 to 26 per cent in 2000.

Industrial Agriculture - Lies?

During industrial agriculture's prime years (1970-1990) the number of hungry people in every country except China actually increased by more than eleven per cent.

The total cost of large-scale farming, like these monocropped fields are incalculable. How do you estimate the toll when billions of pesticides are released each year into the environment?

Industrial agriculture is devastating our land, water and air. It is threatening the sustainability of the biosphere. Its massive chemical and biological inputs cause widespread environmental havoc as well as human disease and death. Its monoculturing reduces the diversity of our plants and animals. Its habitat destruction endangers wildlife. Its factory suffering. Its centralised corporate ownership destroys farm communities around the world and lead to mass poverty and hunger. In short, the industrial agriculture system is clearly unsustainable. It has truly become a fatal harvest.

But despite these impacts, industrial agriculture still gets a free ride from our media and policy makers. It is rare to hear any questioning - much less a call for the overthrow- of this increasingly catastrophic food production system.

This troubling quiescence can be attributed in part to the enormous success that agribusiness has had in utilising the 'big lie'. This is a technique familiar to all purveyors of propaganda. Corporate agriculture inundates the public with self-serving myths about modern food production. For decades now, the industry has effectively countered virtually every critique of industrial agriculture with the big-life strategy.
The agribusiness myths have become all too familiar. Industrial agriculture is necessary to: feed the world; provide us with safe, nutritious, cheap food; produce food more efficiently; offer us more choices; and, of all things, save the environment.

And when confronted with the indisputably negative environmental indisputably negative environmental and health impacts of industrial agriculture, the sector immediately points to technological advances- especially recent achievements in biotechnology- as the panacea that will solve all problems.
The agri-business claims are broadcast far and wide by way of industry lobbying efforts, product promotions and multi-million-dollar advertising campaigns on TV, in newspapers, magazines and farm journals, and via radio.

Moreover, as the industry becomes more consolidated- with the same biotech companies owning the seed and chemical businesses and a handful of firms controlling a majority of food brands- the strategies for promulgating these myths become ever more concerted and the messages ever more honed. US corporation Archer Daniels Midland is now known to all Americans as the 'supermarket to the world', while Monsanto offers 'Food, Health, Hope'.

Industrial agriculture's myths have been, and are being, repeated so often that they are taken as virtually unassailable. It is therefore essential that they are debunked.

Myth Number 1
INDSTRIAL AGRICULTURE WILL FEED THE WORLD

The truth: World hunger is not created by lack of food but by the poverty and landlessness which people access to food. Industrial agriculture actually increases hunger by raising the cost of farming, by forcing tens of millions of farmers off land and by growing primarily high-profit export and luxury crops.

There is no myth about the existence of hunger. It is estimated that nearly 800 million people go hungry each day. And millions live in the brink of disaster. 
Malnutrition and related illnesses ill as many as 12 million children per year. Famine continues in the 1st century, though few of us are aware of the truly global nature of problem. In Brazil 70 million people cannot afford to eat properly, and in India 200 million suffer hunger on a daily basis. Even in the US, the world's number-one exporter of food, 33 million men, women and children are considered among the world's hungry.

There is, however, a myth about what is causing this tragic hunger epidemic and what it will take to alleviate it. Industrial agriculture proponents spend millions each year on advertising campaigns that claim that people are starving because there is not enough food to need the current population- much less a continually growing one.

'Guess who's coming to dinner? So stated the Monsanto website, warning of the warning of the growing pressures on the Earth's natural resources to feed more people'. Monsanto claims that low technology agriculture 'will not produce sufficient crop yield increases to feed the world's burgeoning population.' Its answer to the 'problem' is pesticide- and technology-intensive agriculture that will produce the maximum possible output from the land in the shortest possible amount of time. Global food corporations, the company says, will have to serve as the 'saviours' of the world's hungry.

Hunger in a world of abundance 
A deeper look at the root causes of hunger will reveal that any claim that it is caused by a lack of food is nonsense. In reality, food production has kept pace with population growth. Studies conducted by the UN food and Agriculture Organisation, not scarcity, that best describes the world's current food supply. Every year enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human with 3,500 daily calories. In fact, enough food is grown worldwide to provide 4.3 pounds of food per person per day. This figure would include two and a half pounds of grain, beans and nuts, a pound of fruit and vegetables and nearly another pound of meat, milk and eggs.
What about the pace of population growth in the future? Although many people argue that we should curtail population growth for ecological and socio-economic reasons, history has not yet borne out the Malthusian concept that population growth equals hunger. Indeed, during the last 35 years per capita food production has actually grown 16 per cent faster than the world's population. Peter Rosset, of Food First, states: 'We now have more food per person available on this planet than ever before in human history.'

The real cause of hunger

If we have plenty of food to feed today's population- and to support population growth for the foreseeable future, why then do 800 million people go hungry every day? One basic cause is 'food dependence'.
For centuries and in virtually every area of the globe, the industrial system of agriculture has 'enclosed' farmland-forcing subsistence peasants off land so that it can be used for growing high-priced export products instead of diverse crops for local populations. The result of enclosure continues to be that untold millions of peasants lose their land, community, traditions and 'food independence'. By 'food independence' is meant people's ability to grow their own food.
Removed from their land and means of survival, the new 'landless' flock to industrialised cities where they quickly become a class of urban poor competing for low-paid jobs, and doomed to long-term hunger or starvation.

The victims of enclosure are becoming ever more numerous. Just 50 years ago only 18 per cent of the population of developing countries resided in cities; by the year 2000 the figure had jumped to 40 per cent. Unless current policies change, it is estimated that by 2030 56 per cent of the developing world will be urban dwellers. A UN report has found that close to 50 per cent of this urban population growth is due to migration, much of it forced, from rural to urban communities.

After enclosure both the urban and rural poor are completely food dependent. Their access to food is solely by purchase. Very often they simply do not have enough money to buy food, so they starve. Increasing agricultural output has little effect on the hungry because it fails to address the key issues of purchasing power and access to land which are at the root of hunger. As Food First has stated: 'If you don't have land on which to grow food or the money to buy it, you go hungry no matter how dramatically technology pushed up food production.'

Farmers who can't buy food
Industrial agriculture causes mass starvation not only among the urban poor but also in farming communities. The chemical and technological inputs and patented seeds brought to farmers in the Third World by agribusiness have dramatically increased the costs of farming. Even as the farmer must pay more and more to farm 'industrially', higher yields and worldwide competition have led to lower prices being paid to the farmer. Yet, because of high middleman costs, the prices of food are not generally lower for the consumer. 
Advances in industrial agriculture have, therefore, put millions of the world's farmers in a fatal bind: they spend ever more in production costs, yet receive ever less income. The cruel irony is that even as these farmers grow the world's food, they cannot afford to feed themselves. This has resulted in mass starvation in rural communities, epidemics of farmer suicides and the annihilation of farm communities throughout the globe. Currently, more than half a billion rural people in the Third World have become landless or do not have either sufficient land or money to buy or grow their own food.

Exports devour people
Yet another way industrial agriculture increases hunger is by what it grows. The problem is that after corporate driven agriculture 'encloses' land and evicts farm communities it does not grow staple foods for the hungry. Global corporations favour luxury high-profit items like flowers, sugar cane, beef, shrimp, cotton, coffee and soya beans for export to wealthy countries. Local people are often left with nothing. As export crops and livestock use up available land, small farmers are forced to use marginal, less fertile lands. Staple food production for local use plummets and hunger increases. in Africa, for example, while severe famines have occurred in the past decade industrialised agriculture has achieved record yields for its cash crops.

In fact, one could classify the worlds, population into three groups: there are about 1.2 billion 'over-consumers' who eat the equivalent of 850 kilograms of grain each year- mostly in the form of animal products or other 'luxury' foods; there are another 3.5 billion 'sustainers' who consume the equivalent of 350 kilograms of grain in a mixed diet; and there are 1.2 billion people who are surviving on only 150 kilograms or less each year. In the light of this, it should not be surprising that during industrial agriculture's prime years (1970-1990) the number of hungry people in every country except China actually increased by more than 11 per cent.

Currently, most government and private-sector efforts to reduce world hunger are focused on the technological quest to produce ever higher yields on agricultural land. But yet again this misguided approach is actually increasing the hunger crisis and causing environmental and social devastation. The myth that more food will cure hunger also diverts attention from the urgent need for economic reforms, land redistribution and sustainable and affordable farm practices. We need a revolution in our approach to feeding the world. The focus has to be on supporting local agriculture, where people live close to (or on) the land, grow food for their own communities and use ecologically sustainable techniques. In other words, hunger can only be solved by an agricultural system that promotes food independence.