Amerika's Formula For Success

As noted the other day, the United States or, as I like to call it, Trump's Amerika, no longer even bothers to conceal its contempt for the rest of the world. It's disgraceful threats at the the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly against Ecuador for sponsoring a resolution to encourage breastfeeding, thereby reducing the profits of the corporate behemoths that produce baby formula exemplifies its shameless corporate thralldom.

Today, Star letter-writers weigh in on the magnitude of Amerika's crime against newborns:

The World Health Organization estimates that 800,000 child deaths worldwide each year could be prevented by breastfeeding.

A 2016 Harvard study found that 3,340 infant and maternal deaths a year could be prevented by breastfeeding in the U.S. alone. In Third World countries where destitute moms dilute formula, often with dirty water, the rates are much higher.

They want their infants to look like the pictures of healthy babies on the advertising they are given by sales people dressed as medical professionals. So why would Trump threaten to withdraw military and other aid to Ecuador if they put forth a resolution supporting breastfeeding at the World Health Assembly?

Because Third World countries are areas of major growth for Nestlé and Abbott Nutrition, and they are big Trump supporters.

It is once again time to boycott the products from both of these companies, like we did in the 1980s. It helped then. Let’s make a difference now.

Gail Rutherford, Toronto

It is indeed stunning, but probably not surprising, that the Trump government would threaten countries with punishing trade measures to support American business interests against a breastfeeding policy that experience and science have proven to saves lives. Baby formula kills when mixed with polluted water that can be the only water available.

The U.S. is going back to the days when the American government would wage wars and depose elected governments to support an American company. We must acknowledge that Trump is at war with the rest of the world — except for the other strongarm dictators.

Ian McLaurin, Port Perry, Ont.

American Thuggery

By almost any metric, the United States is a rogue nation. The depth of its depraved thuggery was recently made evident to the world:

A resolution to encourage breastfeeding 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.

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

Then the U.S. delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

Captured by neoliberal forces, the once admired country resorted to mafia-like extortion to try to get its way:

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.

Health advocates frantically sought another sponsor for the resolution, but none could be found as sundry countries cowered before the American behemoth. Then in a turn that amply demonstrates the inversion the world is currently experiencing, an unlikely ally came to the rescue:

It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure — and the Americans did not threaten them.

The move to thwart maternal health benefits is part of a much larger pattern of strong-arm tactics from a nation clearly unmoored from moral underpinnings:

The Americans also sought, unsuccessfully, to thwart a WHO effort aimed at helping poor countries obtain access to life-saving 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.

God bless America? Not on your life.