The text contains several factual claims that can be verified: 1.
Original video: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNeEPe1cY/
Fact checked on: January 24, 2025
Fact Check Analysis
The text contains several factual claims that can be verified:
1. World Food System and Multinational Companies: The claim that the world food system is based on large multinational companies and private profits is generally accurate. Companies like Nestlé, Cargill, and Monsanto (now part of Bayer) play significant roles in global food production and distribution.
2. International Transfers to Help Poor People: The claim about low levels of international transfers to help poor people is subjective but can be supported by data on foreign aid, which often falls short of international targets like the 0.7% of GNI recommended by the UN.
3. Environmental Irresponsibility: The claim that powerful countries are irresponsible regarding the environment can be seen in debates over climate change policies and environmental degradation, though it is a subjective statement.
4. Colonial History of the DRC: The text accurately states that the Congo was a colony under King Leopold II of Belgium, who exploited it as a personal possession (1885-1908), followed by Belgian colonial rule (1908-1960). Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of the independent Congo, was assassinated in 1961, with alleged CIA involvement.
5. Glencore and Cobalt in the DRC: Glencore is a major mining company operating in the DRC, extracting cobalt, which is crucial for batteries. There have been criticisms about tax contributions and working conditions.
6. United Fruit Company in Honduras: The United Fruit Company had significant influence in Central America, including Honduras, often referred to as "banana republics" due to their economic dependence on banana exports and foreign companies.
7. Role of the Dulles Brothers: John Foster Dulles was the U.S. Secretary of State, and Allen Dulles was the CIA Director during the 1950s. They were involved in the U.S. foreign policy that supported corporate interests, such as the 1954 coup in Guatemala against President Jacobo Árbenz.
8. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948): The Declaration does affirm rights such as food and social protection as human rights.
9. Hunger in the U.S.: The claim that one in seven Americans is hungry is an exaggeration. According to the USDA, about 10.5% of U.S. households were food insecure at some point in 2020.
10. G20 and African Union Representation: The G20 does not currently include the African Union as a member. The suggestion to include it as a 21st member is a proposal, not a fact.
11. COVID-19 Borrowing: Rich countries did borrow extensively during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the U.S. alone spending trillions on stimulus measures. Poor countries have faced higher borrowing costs and limited access to funds.
12. IMF Studies on Financing Gaps: The IMF has reported on financing gaps for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), estimating significant shortfalls.
13. UN Budget: The UN's core budget is indeed much smaller than that of major cities like New York. The UN's regular budget for 2021 was approximately $3 billion.
14. Billionaires' Wealth: The claim about the number of billionaires and their combined wealth is roughly accurate. Forbes reported 2,755 billionaires with a combined wealth of $13.1 trillion in 2021.
Overall, the text mixes factual claims with subjective opinions and proposals for systemic change.
1. World Food System and Multinational Companies: The claim that the world food system is based on large multinational companies and private profits is generally accurate. Companies like Nestlé, Cargill, and Monsanto (now part of Bayer) play significant roles in global food production and distribution.
2. International Transfers to Help Poor People: The claim about low levels of international transfers to help poor people is subjective but can be supported by data on foreign aid, which often falls short of international targets like the 0.7% of GNI recommended by the UN.
3. Environmental Irresponsibility: The claim that powerful countries are irresponsible regarding the environment can be seen in debates over climate change policies and environmental degradation, though it is a subjective statement.
4. Colonial History of the DRC: The text accurately states that the Congo was a colony under King Leopold II of Belgium, who exploited it as a personal possession (1885-1908), followed by Belgian colonial rule (1908-1960). Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of the independent Congo, was assassinated in 1961, with alleged CIA involvement.
5. Glencore and Cobalt in the DRC: Glencore is a major mining company operating in the DRC, extracting cobalt, which is crucial for batteries. There have been criticisms about tax contributions and working conditions.
6. United Fruit Company in Honduras: The United Fruit Company had significant influence in Central America, including Honduras, often referred to as "banana republics" due to their economic dependence on banana exports and foreign companies.
7. Role of the Dulles Brothers: John Foster Dulles was the U.S. Secretary of State, and Allen Dulles was the CIA Director during the 1950s. They were involved in the U.S. foreign policy that supported corporate interests, such as the 1954 coup in Guatemala against President Jacobo Árbenz.
8. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948): The Declaration does affirm rights such as food and social protection as human rights.
9. Hunger in the U.S.: The claim that one in seven Americans is hungry is an exaggeration. According to the USDA, about 10.5% of U.S. households were food insecure at some point in 2020.
10. G20 and African Union Representation: The G20 does not currently include the African Union as a member. The suggestion to include it as a 21st member is a proposal, not a fact.
11. COVID-19 Borrowing: Rich countries did borrow extensively during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the U.S. alone spending trillions on stimulus measures. Poor countries have faced higher borrowing costs and limited access to funds.
12. IMF Studies on Financing Gaps: The IMF has reported on financing gaps for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), estimating significant shortfalls.
13. UN Budget: The UN's core budget is indeed much smaller than that of major cities like New York. The UN's regular budget for 2021 was approximately $3 billion.
14. Billionaires' Wealth: The claim about the number of billionaires and their combined wealth is roughly accurate. Forbes reported 2,755 billionaires with a combined wealth of $13.1 trillion in 2021.
Overall, the text mixes factual claims with subjective opinions and proposals for systemic change.
Video transcript
how the system actually works right now. And I want to emphasize we have a world food system. It's based on large multinational companies. It's based on private profits. It's based on a very, very low measure of international transfers to help poor people, sometimes none at all. It's based on extreme irresponsibility of powerful countries with regard to the environment. And it's based on a radical denial of rights of poor people, as we just heard. It's interesting, we heard from the Minister of DRC, what's wrong with your country? Well, we don't even start by saying the King of Belgium created a slave colony for 30 years. The government of Belgium ran the slave colony for another 40 years. The CIA assassinated your first popular leader, Mr. Lumumba, and then installed another dictatorship for the next 30 years. And then, Glencore and others now suck out your cobalt without giving you tax income. We don't reflect on that. We say, what's wrong with you? Why don't you govern properly? And so, we have a system, but we need a different system. We cannot turn this over to the private sector. We already did about 100 years ago. Not only to the private sector, to the private sector with the U.S. military behind it, with the defense of these property rights in the Minister of Honduras' country, where United Fruit ran the country for a long time. And their attorney was the Foreign Minister of the United States, Secretary Dulles, and his brother was the head of the CIA, and overthrew the next-door neighbor, Mr. Arbenz, to make sure that United Fruit could have its property. So, we have a system, but we need a different system. And the different system has to be based on principles of human dignity in the Universal Declaration, principles of sovereignty, principles of economic rights, because these are not nice things to do. In 1948, all the government said that food is a right, social protection is a right. Not a nice thing, not a pleasant thing, a right. That was 73 years ago. The SDGs are nothing more than our generation's attempt to honor the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I come from a country that not only doesn't care about the world's poor, it doesn't even care about its own poor. One in seven Americans is hungry right now. And they don't care. I mean, the poor people care, but one political party, all it cares about is cutting taxes for the rich and filibustering any solution. So, we're in a world that's really tough. The private sector is not going to solve this problem. I'm sorry to say to all of the private sector leaders, behave, pay your taxes, follow the rules. That's what you should do. And what the governments should do is the following. They won't, but they should. First, the G20 should become the G21 by inviting systemically the chairperson of the African Union and the African Union to be the 21st country. The European Union is a member of the G20 as the EU. If you add the AU as the 21st for the G21, you add 1.4 billion people to representation at that crucial event. That will change decisively the discussion because 1.4 billion people are not at the table for finance right now, and they need to be. So, my first recommendation is the G21. I love the G20. Add one seat, 1.4 billion people with the AU represented. Second, we need an order of magnitude change of development finance. The rich countries just borrowed $17 trillion for COVID. The poor countries nothing because the rich countries can borrow at zero, and the poor countries pay 5% or 10% coupon rates or have no access at all. So, the world exposed its grotesque inequality this past year and a half. Rich countries didn't say, we tighten our belts, why don't you? My country spent $7 trillion of emergency funding, not one penny for anybody else, by the way. Seven trillion, it didn't even cross the imagination of the U.S. Congress to include a few crumbs for the rest of the world. But the poor countries cannot borrow. That's what we should have heard from the World Bank. I didn't hear that from the World Bank. I didn't hear real numbers. Real numbers are in trillions right now because the world economy is 100 trillion a year. But we don't talk about real numbers. But my job, all I know in this world is long division. Divide by 100 trillion and then see whether you're talking about something real or not. So, that's the second thing. We need massively to increase the lending and borrowing capacity of poor countries at near zero interest rates like the rich countries have. Then they could get something done. By the way, for COVID vaccines, what we really need is for the United States to sit down with China, with Russia, with the European Union and the U.K. one day around the table and allocate these vaccines rather than hoarding them. That's all it would take. And then we're going to have national pathways. This is a wonderful idea, but they're going to need financing. And so, everything that I've been saying, I know the numbers. That's all I do for 40 years is add up what's missing. You want electricity, it has to be purchased. You want digital access, it has to be purchased. You want safe water, irrigation, it has to be purchased. This is what I do for a living is add up these numbers and then find out that then somebody makes up something and names one hundredth of what's really needed. It's not even hard. By the way, the IMF has done wonderful studies in the last two years showing that we have a financing gap of about 400 to 500 billion dollars a year for the basics for the SDGs. They show the gap, but they don't, nobody comes up with the number, the solution, which wouldn't be so hard because that's just not a big number. It's .5 of 1% of world output. So, if we really care, we wouldn't have the G7 saying, we love education, therefore, we're going to give 3 billion dollars for education. That's what they said at the summit. But what UNESCO has shown is that you need at least 30 billion dollars a year, minimum. But nobody looks at numbers. They just make up nice check the box. So, we need the real numbers of finance to back the national pathways. The final thing is we need the UN as the core and central institution of this world, period. Because this is the only way we're going to have a civilized world is a strong UN. And it cannot be that the whole UN budget is less than my neighborhood's budget in New York. The UN core budget this year is 3 billion dollars. New York City's budget is 100 billion dollars. And then we say, why don't things work well? Because the rich are hoarding everything. Final point, rather than our 3 billionaires going in space, well, they could go into space and stay there and leave their money behind. That would be one idea. But another idea, another idea is we have 2,775 billionaires on the current list. Their combined net worth, 2,700 is 13.1 trillion dollars. Now, I have it on good authority, you don't need more than a billion dollars to be comfortable. But they have an excess of 11 trillion dollars over just the 1 billion. So we should be taxing that and having a civilized world.