Food rations that could supply 3.5 million people for a month are mouldering in warehouses around the world because of U.S. aid cuts and risk becoming unusable, according to five people familiar with the situation.
The food stocks have been stuck inside 4 U.S. government warehouses since the Trump administration’s decision in January to cut global aid programmes, according to three people who previously worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development and two sources from other aid organisations.
Some stocks that are due to expire as early as July are likely to be destroyed, either by incineration, using them as animal feed or disposing of them in other ways, two of the sources said.
The warehouses, which are run by USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), contain between 60,000 to 66,000 metric tonnes of food, sourced from American farmers and manufacturers, the five people said.
Food we’ve already bought and paid for - our tax dollars at work, literally - intentionally being left to rot. I hate all of this so much. They continue actively and aggressively hurting vulnerable people while putting money into the pockets of those with astronomical treasure piles already. Such efficiency. Very awesomeness.
“At least the filthy libs are losing”
Even Jerry Moran, the limp-dick asshole Kansas senator, went public begging Donald to release it.
Just absolute stupidity, but beneficial for the rich in some way, so they see no reason to change it.
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
-John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
The more things change the more they stay the same.
That Department Of Government Efficiency is sure making an impact.
There is enough food in the world for no one to go hungry, capitalism dictates people should go hungry.
The purpose of these aid programs is cynical: they are to create exactly this kind of dependency. It is why food sovereignty is considered a threat and is actively undermined by the IMF.
What we are seeing is what threat is being made when a country is made dependent on “aid”: starvation. Same as in Gaza. This is the calculus the US and its cronies force upon the global south: submit to insecurity and become a dependency or try to go your own path and become villified and a target to be destroyed.
The former path is guaranteed death and suffering, which is why nations led by those with a coherent political program choose the latter and invest in food sovereignty as an anti-imperialist measure.
This administration would rather they go to waste and people starve then to lift one little finger to help
Why not bring it back and feed the homeless? Idiots.
