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[Haitinow!]

Especially to :

Marc Henry, Jafrikayti and Bon Paulo.

Dear friends

I have noticed your enthusiasm for a better Haiti through your interventions therefore I find it appropriate to invite you to reflect on the following post for patriotic reasons that you and I may obviously share.

Read on:

People in America tend to believe that societies which have eliminated hunger have done so only by denying peoples'rights. There appears to be a trade- off between freedom and ending hunger.

No, this is a myth and this myth paralyzes well meaning people perhaps more than any other. It raises critical questions that must be grappled with. But a clear formulation of these questions is clouded by the multiple distortions contained in the myth.

First it implies that societies that are not making structural changes to end hunger at least have more freedom. Even in terms of theoretical freedoms,this is often false.

People in countries with widespread hunger and other forms of poverty as it was in Haiti before 1987???, Philippines or Chile did not even have the theoretical freedom to freely assemble or to vote.

Moreover, learning more about countries where many,often the majority face hunger has forced certain experts to confront the difference between theoretical freedoms and effective freedoms.

In countries like India or Haiti more and more people have lost control of their land. Still more find it hard to get any kind of job, even at slow starvation "wages". In such countries the people have the the theoretical freedom to organize and to vote. But do they effectively have the freedom?

Given the violent reaction of the elite threatened by any mobilization of the poor, we doubt it. And while perhaps the most basic freedom is the freedom to achieve security for one's self and one's loved ones, in such countries, now the majority of the world's countries- life is increasingly insecure.

In other words, with absolutely no share in control over their country's productive assets, how much effective freedom do people have? This contradiction between theoretical freedom and effective freedom applies also in the United States as well.

Second, the myth seems to suggest that in eliminating hunger, countries have moved from a state of "more freedom" to less freedom. But when the experts studied societies in which the majority are achieving greater food, job and old age security as in China or Cuba for example, the experts found of course, that people have not moved from a state of freedom to a state of repression in the process of achieving that security. No the political and economic structures that preceded the present ones were among the most repressive in the world.

Collective Emancipation Now!

A suivre

My research has been conducted through the channels of the

Institute for Food and Development Policy.U.S.A.

Think about it.

U.S.A.