For all the West’s lofty claims about spreading freedom, prosperity and progress, the world remains scarred by chronic instability and mass hunger. Last month, as part of its wind-down of international food and medical aid, the United States destroyed 500 metric tonnes of emergency food aid in the United Arab Emirates. Over 60,000 tonnes of emergency food aid have remained stockpiled in warehouses around the world due to the shutdown of USAID. Meanwhile, Israel – with US and European Union support – has been systematically starving the nearly two million remaining Palestinians in besieged Gaza, part of the almost 320 million people globally who are malnourished or at risk of starving to death in 2025.It’s part of a much larger pattern of hoarding and starvation that has its roots in Western norms around capitalism and settler-colonialism, a crime against humanity that rarely faces meaningful international repercussions. This is not an isolated atrocity: The rise of the West and the US was built on the massive hoarding of food resources for profit and t …
