By Shoshana Berman, Opinions Editor e have been solving world hunger now for about a century. Seems to me every time we do this the result is simply more hungry people, not less. The world’s population has more than doubled since I was born. During this same time, the number of hungry people has exploded. The world’s population will double again before I reach my life’s expectancy. Gwynne Dyer outlined in the Sept 3 Georgia Straight that Ethiopia’s population during the well publicized 1984-1985 famine was 40 million. 25 years later, they are entering another food crisis with 80 million people to feed. In Northeast Africa, famine-causing drought is cyclical and normal, occurring every 10 to 15 years. Even if we solve all the structural problems that will cause famine this time, 30 years from now, there will be 160 million in Ethiopia alone on the brink of starvation. Only four factors control population: food supply, disease, war, and birth control. Without birth control, populations increase. With the elimination of many diseases, populations increase. So how do the factors of food supply and war affect population? When we give undeveloped regions food, all we do is set the stage for war and civil strife. Biologically, you can only put so many organisms in a contained area before they kill one another. Without arable land, without job prospects, or education, or other infrastructure, what do exploding populations relatively free of pandemic disease and hunger do? They kill each other. A lack of food supply has been a natural population control in underdeveloped regions throughout their histories. How can I be such a monster? Two countries with the fastest growing populations are Sudan and Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s birth rate is 45.5/1000, the fourth largest in the world. If we gave a job, sufficient food, and an education to every Afghan today, we would have to Solving world hunger part of the problem not the solution doubling. The only other factor that slows population growth is war. Sudan’s birth rate was 50 in 1990, 40.5 in 1997, and is down to 38.5/1000 today. Is the bloodshed and ethnic conflict tearing Sudan apart a direct result of a birth rate of 50/1000 in 1990? Consider: those baby boys born in 1990 are 19 now, of the age most likely to create violent conflict over scarce resources. I believe that this population explosion and subsequent bloodshed are a direct result of food aid without other infrastructure development and population controls. The way we usually solve world hunger is by providing unilateral aid, where we send grain from the U.S. or Canada to an impoverished area and distribute it. However, all food aid does is destroy the local economy and support farmers in North America, while exacerbating the problem of hunger in underdeveloped regions. It’s hard for an African farmer to compete with free foreign food, and local merchants aren’t supported by food aid distribution either. Another great way we solve world hunger is to force, as a form of aid, genetically altered sterile seeds onto governments as structural adjustment programs for debt reduction through the IMF. The use of these seeds as aid means that impoverished farmers in undeveloped regions have to buy seed each year copyrighted to Monsanto instead of planting crops that produce their own seeds for the next sowing. So how do I think we should approach development and hunger? The long answer is to support local farmers with sustainable seed and improved agricultural practices, purchasing their goods through fair trade, promote education, particularly for women, and provide micro loans for small business ventures, an investment that employs a local workforce. If food is absolutely necessary in crises, it should be dependent on governments putting in place a population management strategy, and the use of local food sources only. Solving world hunger the way we have gone about it for decades is only resulting in more hungry, desperate people not less. Qiaro Michael Moore, the ultimate hypocrite By Garth McLennan ell, here we go again folks. Michael Moore is coming out with another “documentary.” I use that term loosely because in the past, his films have been little more than blatant propaganda, chock full of not-so-subtle manipulation and plenty of ridiculous exaggerations. This time, Moore is out with Capitalism: A Love Story, which bears the message that in essence, capitalism is evil. “Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil,” Moore says at the end of the film. The fact is Michael Moore is the Rush Limbaugh of the left side of the political spectrum: a complete hack who acts as nothing more than a political shill with Canada had the model health care structure. Never mind the fact that this year health care in B.C. will eat up an astounding 32 per cent of our budget and is set to increase by 18 per cent over the next three years. I guess Moore just glossed over those details. And Cuba? Moore is actually trying to tell us that Cuba has better health services than the United States? Yes, Cuba does have a high number of doctors, but health care is so hard to obtain there that a large number of people have been forced into the black market to try and get necessary medication and surgeries. Then there is the travesty that Fahrenheit 9/11 . This film is such a farce there has actually been a documentary made solely to expose the lies in Moore’s film. It discovered 59 errors, deceptions and “l only hope that the obsessive Moore backers come to their senses and realize that they are just putting money in the pockets of a liar and a hypocrite.” very little solid evidence to back up his arguments. Both are loud, obnoxious and completely unwilling to see both sides of an argument. Both have fanatical followings of people who blindly accept everything they say as truth and who never give their arguments any serious criticism. Most sensible people just write both of them off. At this point, it’s hard to put any belief in anything Michael Moore has to say. If you go back through a few of his past films, there are plenty of exaggerations and half- truths that Moore presents as fact. For example, in the movie Sicko, the central theme is the ineffectiveness of the American healthcare system. That’s fine— there are undoubtedly a number of flaws with U.S. health care. But Moore went on to compare their system to those of Britain, France, Canada and even Cuba. If you took everything that Moore said without a grain of salt, you'd think that outright lies. The most prominent of these regards the August 6, 2001 presidential briefing that supposedly said that Osama Bin Laden was about to attack the United States using airplanes. This just wasn’t true. What the report actually said was that “The FBI had not been able to corroborate” such a threat. Someone who does not tell the truth, or presents things as truth when they are not, is a liar. Someone who says that free market capitalism is evil while at the same time lining his own pockets with money made from that very message is a hypocrite. Michael Moore is guilty of doing both. The fact that Moore is going to laugh all the way to the bank is sickening. I only hope that the obsessive Moore backers come to their senses and realize that they are just putting money in the pockets of a liar and a hypocrite.