President blames modern diet for gays and baldness

BY: TOM HENNIGAN, www.irishtimes.com

BOLIVIAN PRESIDENT Evo Morales has blamed “deviations” such as homosexuality and widespread baldness in Europe on modern diet.

“The chicken that we eat is full of female hormones. Because of this the men who eat this chicken have deviations in their being as men,” he said at the opening of a conference on climate change in Bolivia on Tuesday.

He also blamed widespread baldness in Europe, which he labelled a “sickness”, on the diet of Europeans. “They are almost all bald and this is because of the things they eat, while among the indigenous peoples there are no bald people because we eat other things,” said the president, a lustrously haired Aymara Indian.

Mr Morales said industrialised western powers were responsible for bringing “more and more poison” into the world, warning that “within 50 years everyone will be bald”.

He was speaking at the opening of the People’s World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in the town of Tiquipaya, central Bolivia. It is being attended by five left-wing Latin American leaders and 15,000 activists. Organisers say it is a left-wing alternative to the failed climate talks in Copenhagen last year.

Warning his audience that “either capitalism dies or Mother Earth dies”, Mr Morales called for the creation of an international organisation of social movements to push governments into signing a comprehensive deal to combat climate change at a conference to be held in Mexico in November.

In his wide-ranging address, Mr Morales also claimed that drinking Coca-Cola damaged your health.

Earlier this month a government-backed alternative to the US soft drink went on sale in Bolivia. Called Coca-Colla, after Bolivia’s indigenous peoples, it is made from coca leaf, which has been used in the Andes for centuries as a stimulant in medicine and rituals. Coca is also the base ingredient for cocaine.

Bolivia is the world’s third biggest producer of cocaine.