Issue of the Week: Hunger, Disease, Human Rights, Economic Opportunity, Population, Environment, War, Personal Growth

Published July 8, 2018

Updated: The End Of Civilization As We Knew It, Part Two

One of the many clear signs of the historical regression of the times hit the news today.

Hit is the right word.

Hit like hitting a newborn infant, or a toddler, literally, until she or he was dead or maimed or hurt or put at-risk in any number of ways for life.

You of course know the story. But we will focus on it anyway in a moment because of its importance.

Anyone can make a baby. It takes no heart, mind or soul. Just a functioning body for a brief moment. It takes everything to be a parent to that baby and toddler, as that is the most critical thing that will impact everything else for the rest of their lives.

In the developed world, most biological parents have babies irrespective of the fact that it is currently anti-survival of the species in general. We don’t need more people, we need less, and more nurturing quality of life for the children already here. In the developed world, population rates have fallen in many places or during periods of time recently. That worries those who think we will somehow continue the unsustainable path of increased production per se as a means to increased prosperity and the capacity to support everyone. You can figure out where the math ends up going here at this point in history.

We act, throughout virtually all segments of society, as if we are just too lacking in cognitive capacity to figure out some way of providing basic needs any other way, much less basic needs for all. We’ve proven throughout history that’s absurd, just as we’ve proven throughout history that part of the problem has been that we appear cognitively challenged when it comes to doing the smart things most in our interest—unless our interest is defined as unsustainable greed instead of reasonable need.

We have referred often to various “isms’ and ideologies and their meaning at times and places and applications today. But they are all parts of a whole. There is no one “ism” causing all problems or providing all solutions.

We refer again to the following from the conclusion of our reflection ten years ago, “We Are One”:

“A structure built on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights requires some kind of basic democracy in the context of rules between nations, while allowing for the evolution of various forms of democracy within nations, in which basic human rights are respected, basic needs for all are met and individual initiative is reasonably rewarded. It is the balance that nature keeps trying to tell us comprise the rules of the road.”

Just dying to get back to that.

But in this week’s specific focus, let us continue.

The historical reason for having children, the survival of the species, doesn’t apply—not for most of us. The biological unconscious inclination is there, as are the many aspects of culture that tell women they are not women and men they are not men without producing children—the sexist imperative that harms all. Yes, there need to be some children created by some of us. But how do prospective biological parents decide? Even to the extent that there was just replacement, or just one to relieve the pressure on the planet, ergo all the other children and people and living things.

Are prospective biological parents saying, I of course dedicate my life to all children first as just the basic floor of decency, and I have concluded that there is a reason I should dedicate my life to a child I will create, for their sake, not mine, and to do all I can to nurture and make them a being existing for others? (This is distinct by definition in some ways from those who adopt, although not necessarily, or entirely—but the motives more likely veer towards sacrifice and love for its own sake for obvious reasons.) The culture makes clear that most biological parents have children as physical and emotional appendages that they own. That’s a tough message—and we can change, but not without facing reality. Children are the ultimate thing. And, of course, that’s how we too often treat children, from abusing them to giving them everything and holding them accountable to nothing, in part in service of the hope of the security of someone being there as we grow old. The fear is understandable. The actions at the expense of children are not—which, by the way, guarantee that generations of pain and all ills of humanity continue.

Most of us, in our view, want, need and try to love for its own sake in the best sense of the word, despite some of the above, although some of the above is beyond the pale.

The largest group of sexual abusers of infants and toddlers are fathers, a singular malevolence. The largest group of physical abusers are mothers. And the largest group of those who abuse and neglect in every way, at this most vulnerable moment in life, are both. And the rest of us are complicit in this and in any other deprivation of these innocents.

And we are complicit in depriving through inequality any parents as well—making “natural selection” of qualification for parenthood appear skewed to wealth, which it is not, and which should never be a factor. But it is. A demonology of classism and all its demon partners. Instead of demanding and creating a society of systemically, mentally, emotionally, economically, spiritually living as all for one and one for all—not as a slogan on social media, but doing it.

Same is true in the developing world, except biological parents, especially the bottom half of the world’s population, in the main behave more rationally. They have more children because of the high infant and child death rate. They don’t know how many will live so they have more. They need the kids in a very real way in terms of everyday survival of the family. The system is at the bottom rung of the same system that requires productivity to survive, but feeding the rich more than themselves or providing equality. Worst of all worlds—billions suffering, millions of children dying, hundreds of millions stunted in various ways and degrees, many millions more added to population in these nations pushed to the limit already, further degrading the environment and enhancing conflcit.

A few million infants and toddlers die every year from hunger and disease, and hundreds of millions are permanently harmed.

What would you do if you knew that nearly a million of these deaths of infants and toddlers every year could be ended, and countless millions more prevented from every kind of developmental damage and risk, by something that cost virtually nothing?

You of course know what we’re talking about. How could anyone not know something so fundamental and consequential, right?

So, you know that a unique and extraordinary gift of nature, basic human right and basic need was, for the first time in recent history, as US national policy, being not just discouraged, but any nation that endorsed it threatened, in favor of corporate greed.

In effect, the willingness to kill innumerable infants and toddlers and developmentally harm many millions more.

So, you’re pretty busy taking action.

Because you’ve heard the news today.

The US has opposed the basic policies of the World Health Organization, developed and strengthened over decades, to promote exclusive breastfeeding for babies for the first six months and in conjunction with solid food for two years or more, as the scientifically proven antidote to hunger, disease, death, and enormous harm to hundreds of millions, and as a unique health and developmental benefit for all children, as well as being a health benefit for mothers.

This is being done to promote the profits of the infant formula corporations. They were virtually exiled from earth a few decades ago for trying to replace breastfeeding with formula, with arm-twisting, bribes and lies, costing more for those who could least afford it and helping to cause death and harm to millions.

This grotesque action appears to have been thwarted in the main for now, with an assist—get this—from Russia.

Our involvement with this issue as one of our primary focuses in ending hunger and providing for children goes back over 25 years.

World Campaign co-founder, Lisa Blume, spearheaded the largest public service campaign in history for the Women, Infants and Children Program, on breastfeeding promotion, “Breastfeeding is Best”. The campaign started in 1993, running for many years as part of The Campaign To End Hunger, viewed in the US and globally. The national impact was summed up by the late Lawton Chiles, then governor of Florida:

“Earlier this year, the state of Florida passed landmark legislation supporting mothers who breast feed their children. The ‘breastfeeding bill’ led to national media attention, with prominent coverage in the New York Times, on CNN and elsewhere.

Breast milk is well recognized as the best food for newborns…Unfortunately, only about half of the mothers in the United States breast feed their babies. Two-thirds of low-income mothers do not, although breastfeeding is even more important in low-income families where babies may already be subject to poor nutrition and health care.

In support of the nationally acclaimed non-profit public service media program, the Campaign To End Hunger, the state of Florida, HRS and the Florida WIC program have joined forces to launch the enclosed “Breastfeeding Is Best” television and radio public service advertising (PSA) campaign. These PSAs are designed to appeal to different ethnic groups and to all economic groups.

Effective promotion of breastfeeding and maternal and infant nutrition and health can be accomplished through ongoing TV and radio broadcasts of this top-quality PSA. Florida has the opportunity to lead the way in breastfeeding promotion in the U.S.”

~ Lawton Chiles, Governor, State of Florida

As always, it was our privilege to have done this.

And it was to our absolute horror, to read today, the cover story broken by the Sunday New York Times, “U.S. Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution Stuns World Health Officials”.

What could more blatantly exemplify the end of civilization as we knew it? Many other issues are connected. But this dam breaking would be a flood of the blood of babies. You either wake up and act with urgent outrage, or choke on it.

Here’s the article:

“U.S. Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution Stuns World Health Officials”

By Andrew Jacobs, Cover Story, Sunday New York Times, July 8, 2018

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.

When that failed, they turned to threats, according to diplomats and government officials who took part in the discussions. Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.

The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.

The showdown over the issue was recounted by more than a dozen participants from several countries, many of whom requested anonymity because they feared retaliation from the United States.

Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation, according to officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the United States.

“We were astonished, appalled and also saddened,” said Patti Rundall, the policy director of the British advocacy group Baby Milk Action, who has attended meetings of the assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, since the late 1980s.

“What happened was tantamount to blackmail, with the U.S. holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on best way to protect infant and young child health,” she said.

In the end, the Americans’ efforts were mostly unsuccessful. It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure — and the Americans did not threaten them.

The State Department declined to respond to questions, saying it could not discuss private diplomatic conversations. The Department of Health and Human Services, the lead agency in the effort to modify the resolution, explained the decision to contest the resolution’s wording but said H.H.S. was not involved in threatening Ecuador.

“The resolution as originally drafted placed unnecessary hurdles for mothers seeking to provide nutrition to their children,” an H.H.S. spokesman said in an email. “We recognize not all women are able to breast-feed for a variety of reasons. These women should have the choice and access to alternatives for the health of their babies, and not be stigmatized for the ways in which they are able to do so.” The spokesman asked to remain anonymous in order to speak more freely.

Although lobbyists from the baby food industry attended the meetings in Geneva, health advocates said they saw no direct evidence that they played a role in Washington’s strong-arm tactics. The $70 billion industry, which is dominated by a handful of American and European companies, has seen sales flatten in wealthy countries in recent years, as more women embrace breast-feeding. Overall, global sales are expected to rise by 4 percent in 2018, according to Euromonitor, with most of that growth occurring in developing nations.

The intensity of the administration’s opposition to the breast-feeding resolution stunned public health officials and foreign diplomats, who described it as a marked contrast to the Obama administration, which largely supported W.H.O.’s longstanding policy of encouraging breast-feeding.

During the deliberations, some American delegates even suggested the United States might cut its contribution the W.H.O., several negotiators said. Washington is the single largest contributor to the health organization, providing $845 million, or roughly 15 percent of its budget, last year.

The confrontation was the latest example of the Trump administration siding with corporate interests on numerous public health and environmental issues.

In talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Americans have been pushing for language that would limit the ability of Canada, Mexico and the United States to put warning labels on junk food and sugary beverages, according to a draft of the proposal reviewed by The New York Times.

During the same Geneva meeting where the breast-feeding resolution was debated, the United States succeeded in removing statements supporting soda taxes from a document that advises countries grappling with soaring rates of obesity.

The Americans also sought, unsuccessfully, to thwart a W.H.O. effort aimed at helping poor countries obtain access to lifesaving medicines. Washington, supporting the pharmaceutical industry, has long resisted calls to modify patent laws as a way of increasing drug availability in the developing world, but health advocates say the Trump administration has ratcheted up its opposition to such efforts.

The delegation’s actions in Geneva are in keeping with the tactics of an administration that has been upending alliances and long-established practices across a range of multilateral organizations, from the Paris climate accord to the Iran nuclear deal to Nafta.

Ilona Kickbusch, director of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, said there was a growing fear that the Trump administration could cause lasting damage to international health institutions like the W.H.O. that have been vital in containing epidemics like Ebola and the rising death toll from diabetes and cardiovascular disease in the developing world.

“It’s making everyone very nervous, because if you can’t agree on health multilateralism, what kind of multilateralism can you agree on?” Ms. Kickbusch asked.

A Russian delegate said the decision to introduce the breast-feeding resolution was a matter of principle.

“We’re not trying to be a hero here, but we feel that it is wrong when a big country tries to push around some very small countries, especially on an issue that is really important for the rest of the world,” said the delegate, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

He said the United States did not directly pressure Moscow to back away from the measure. Nevertheless, the American delegation sought to wear down the other participants through procedural maneuvers in a series of meetings that stretched on for two days, an unexpectedly long period.

In the end, the United States was largely unsuccessful. The final resolution preserved most of the original wording, though American negotiators did get language removed that called on the W.H.O. to provide technical support to member states seeking to halt “inappropriate promotion of foods for infants and young children.”

The United States also insisted that the words “evidence-based” accompany references to long-established initiatives that promote breast-feeding, which critics described as a ploy that could be used to undermine programs that provide parents with feeding advice and support.

Elisabeth Sterken, director of the Infant Feeding Action Coalition in Canada, said four decades of research have established the importance of breast milk, which provides essential nutrients as well as hormones and antibodies that protect newborns against infectious disease.

A 2016 Lancet study found that universal breast-feeding would prevent 800,000 child deaths a year across the globe and yield $300 billion in savings from reduced health care costs and improved economic outcomes for those reared on breast milk.

Scientists are loath to carry out double-blind studies that would provide one group with breast milk and another with breast milk substitutes. “This kind of ‘evidence-based’ research would be ethically and morally unacceptable,” Ms. Sterken said.

Abbott Laboratories, the Chicago-based company that is one of the biggest players in the $70 billion baby food market, declined to comment.

Nestlé, the Switzerland-based food giant with significant operations in the United States, sought to distance itself from the threats against Ecuador and said the company would continue to support the international code on the marketing of breast milk substitutes, which calls on governments to regulate the inappropriate promotion of such products and to encourage breast-feeding.

In addition to the trade threats, Todd C. Chapman, the United States ambassador to Ecuador, suggested in meetings with officials in Quito, the Ecuadorean capital, that the Trump administration might also retaliate by withdrawing the military assistance it has been providing in northern Ecuador, a region wracked by violence spilling across the border from Colombia, according to an Ecuadorean government official who took part in the meeting.

The United States Embassy in Quito declined to make Mr. Chapman available for an interview.

“We were shocked because we didn’t understand how such a small matter like breast-feeding could provoke such a dramatic response,” said the Ecuadorean official, who asked not to be identified because she was afraid of losing her job.”

There are a small percentage of mothers who can’t breastfeed for various reasons. There should be further support to provide them with breastmilk and when necessary as the only option the most appropriate formula.

There are a number of additional horrors noted in the Times article, not the least of which is the attempt to deprive those most in need in poor countries of pharmaceutical support. The 2005 movie of John le Carré’s The Constant Gardner reeked of the truth of these companies willing to do anything to the wretched of the earth and those who supported them to make money. For those of us who have been exposed to such life-risking experience and murderous psychopathy, whether in circumstances as portrayed in the film, or related to the deepest harm perpetrated upon us at our most vulnerable time of life, the film elicited a depth of trauma not fully recognized until later. That’s how true to life the film was. Tragically not new news–and emblematic of why we are struggling with the issues of civilization we are today. Yet this glimpse in the article of life imitating art imitating life at a newly cruel and brazen level was stomach-churning.

Any art of any value that deals with hard realities that need to be faced will be traumatic in some sense of the word—heartbreaking, painful, disturbing—to anyone who has a conscience or empathy. Rachel Weisz, who starred in the above film, did so again in 2011 in one of the great cover-up movies of all time, The Whistleblower. Weisz and all the actors are extraordinary in both films. The latter, one of the few directed by a woman, Larysa Kondracki, was based on the UN peacekeepers sexual abuse of children and women in Bosnia. Weisz plays Kathryn Bolkovac who worked with the peacekeeping force and exposed the sexual abuse.

It has a relationship to the rest of this commentary.

Here’s Ed Vulliamy in The Observer in 2012:

“We do not see the torture inflicted on one girl for trying to flee her captors, but we see the tears of her fellow slaves forced to watch. We see the iron bar tossed on to the cellar floor when the punishment is over, and we know what has happened. …

The Whistleblower spares you little. … the most searing drama-documentary of recent years…

Speaking to the Observer last week, Bolkovac said: “The thing that stood out about these cases in Bosnia, and cases that have been reported in other [UN] mission areas, is … that police and humanitarian workers were frequently involved in not only the facilitation of forced sexual abuse, and the use of children and young women in brothels, but in many instances became involved in the trade by racketeering, bribery and outright falsifying of documents as part of a broader criminal syndicate.”

We will note the modelling of Bolkovac in saying “children and young women”–children first as opposed to the child degrading and woman infantilizing “women and children”, as we’ve commented on at length before.

Bolkovac went through hell to tell the truth. She was eventually affirmed in everything she said. It rocked the UN, as other such revelations have since. It showed the usual collusion between all the private and public and national and international interests. It shows the corruption of the UN, and the possibilities.

For the most recent history and update on the issue, from Bosnia to Congo to the Central African Republic, be sure to watch PBS Frontline on July 24, UN Sex Abuse Scandal.

The UN is the ultimate global institution representing all nations. It is, to say the least, a work in progress, as the elements it is made up of are all the best and worst of humanity. If it will not hold itself accountable for the sexual abuse and slavery of children, and of adults, then that is the measure of why there is no place of ultimate resort yet for decent governance and justice on the planet.

But who leads us there? The most powerful nations obviously. And the US remains first in line by a mile. Therefore, the story of trying to thwart the UN agency, WHO, in saving the lives af millions of babies, is a story of moral rot and strategic insanity which goes far beyond the one horrid example of trying to stop mothers from breastfeeding for profit.

It exemplifies why we have picked a place in time which continues to reveal itself as a marker for the end of civilization as we knew it.

The issue is also one that can exemplify why civilization can bottom out in numerous ways and then move forward. It is an issue public opinion can easily be rallied around–if it is given suffient ongoing attention. We know because we’ve done it and it’s been done numerous times on issues of social import.

So like all the horrors, you can either duck and cover and wait for oblivion while your soul shrivels, or you can use it as another baseline for action to create a humane and livable world.

To add critical background information on the breastfeeding story, The Guardian and Save The Children carried out an investigation published in February showing “Formula milk companies are continuing to use aggressive, clandestine and often illegal methods to target mothers in the poorest parts of the world to encourage them to choose powdered milk over breastfeeding”:

“How formula milk firms target mothers who can least afford it”

Read it and weep.

And remember:

The river in flood cuts an oxbow, the overfull dam gives way.

To be continued.