THE SOCIAL EDGE
by Gerry McCarthy

GM: A United Nations food agency says hunger is on the rise again around the world. Some 842 million people –the majority in Africa and Asia– go to bed hungry every night. What are some of the things Western nations could be doing to address this problem more?

KK: When you look at the shadow of the mushroom cloud in World War II –when we were ushered into the Atomic Age and the Cold War– we have a list of wars that goes like this: Korea, Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Gulf War I, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Gulf War II, and an ongoing war in Colombia. Hot war after hot war, and they’re like brush fires that the peace movement scrambles to try and put out. And they should do this with all possible effort. But we’d be delusional if we thought we could just step on the gas pedal, pick up momentum, and outstrip the warmongers. Because underlying all of these hot wars is the ongoing text of another quieter, but continual war of Western culture against the biodiversity of the planet. Along with that is a war of U.S. culture against weaker countries whose resources we want to control and exploit. The common denominator in those wars is our culture.