To my humble mind, the true significance of the Olympics just celebrated – apart from the obvious significance of the beauty of it all and the capacity of our youths and their dedication – has a hidden political meaning. This should be obvious to one and all, but it is not. I would like to put forward some considerations I consider to be salient:

Planet Earth consists of at least 205 nations with as many ethnic groups or more within them. I recently visited Ethiopia and learnt that Ethiopians speak seven or eight languages, apart from another 80 languages spoken by smaller ethnic groups.

I also read that there are some 7,000 languages in the world. A richness in itself which adds to its beauty but which is not always appreciated by the larger nations.

We Maltese – being a small nation – should be able to understand this more than many others.

This beauty has come to the fore, in our days, with the fall of all types of imperialisms – or almost. Unfortunately, humanity’s beauty has one gross unforgivable smear, which is hunger and thirst.

This is unforgivable, because if humanity is capable of gathering around an important value such as sport, it should be capable of redeeming humanity from this humiliating plague.

This is planet Earth, a conglomeration of innumerable peoples and cultures. It is wrong when we try to amalgamate all this variety and try to impose one economic model for the whole world, in what is known as globalisation.

The next Olympics will be held in Brazil, a country that is politically committed to eradicate hunger through its Fome Zero (zero hunger) project. This commitment will possibly be ex­tended beyond its shores too.

Brazil recently signed an agreement with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation whose president is Brazilian, to invest $2.3 (€1.9) billion in favour of small farmers in a number of African countries. A ray of hope, I suppose, which we will be able to better judge by 2016.