Famine in East Africa: Why Does Nobody Care?

reply to post by thePharaoh


I don't know everything and I always learn from members opinions

But Seeing as I live in africa, work with africans and live under african "leadership" I think I grasp the reality of this issue more than most.

Cheers

reply to post by AnonymousFem


Biblical prophecies eh? T'was a mere allusion since everyone on here wants the worst to happen so they can make a cruel joke about it and post it on their Facebook for their reprobate friends.

I do care.

The problem is less the drought, and more the politics and religions of the area. And I'm not allowed to fix that.

I'm not even allowed to suggest that might be the ENTIRE problem.

If I do suggest that I'm also supposed to say that the politics and religions having problem are also my fault as a Westerner. Which is of course, why I'm supposed to fix the problems caused by the drought. I'm also supposed to ignore that if that drought were hitting me, many of the people who could help in that area would cackle in glee and hope that that I rot and they get to watch.

I'm also supposed to ignore that the people who could do something about this closer to home for them, are using the aid and hoping to bleed their enemies (me and you) dry by starving the citizenry. The use their peoples tragedy as a weapon, and they divert the aid to fund their porsches.

I want to change this. I do. I REALLY REALLY do.

I am a member of this organization. It seems to be trying to help. But as always, "most" of the rich are not even involved.

reply to post by Wirral Bagpuss


Yes it is a difficult matter. Especially with all the guilt involved. We in the west know how responsible we are for having created the division and polarity amongst ethnic groups in Africa. At the same we have and still are looting it's natural resources.

At the same time I think the UN has repeatedly over the decades tried to sincerely help the situation with no success. Indeed it seems as if there is a total unwillingness from their part.

I really don't know what to do about it. Basically these people are living in regions that are unfit to live in. Yet they continue to multiply themselves.

It is such a complicated situation with the continuous civil wars, skirmishes and divisions.

Very often I feel that if we left Africa completely alone it might find a way of managing itself. But this would also mean for all our corporations to leave the continent. And well, that really isn't going to happen.

So keep sending food and hope for a miracle.

What really could make a difference is if the nations would settle with their situations and try to work it out together peacefully and politically. Try to establish democracies and get the people involved, just as is happening in the Middle-East right now.

so many of you are saying that the west has tried to help out african nations, with foreign aid and whatnot. you guys have got to be kidding. the IMF, world bank, and WTO have destroyed these nations' economies, which was no mistake, and now many of them are forever in debt.

Originally posted by spitandsnot
so many of you are saying that the west has tried to help out african nations, with foreign aid and whatnot. you guys have got to be kidding. the IMF, world bank, and WTO have destroyed these nations' economies, which was no mistake, and now many of them are forever in debt.

True. Very true.

We have so much responsibility in this whole matter. I call for a immediate forgiving of all debt. That seems appropriate.

reply to post by spitandsnot


. Globalization was supposed to be this entity, that was able to pool resources for the common good. But just as suspected globalization shows us yet again, only where there is profit does globalization make sense.

Does the world produce enough food to feed everyone? The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day (FAO 2002, p.9). The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough food.

SOURCE

The sure sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again - expecting a different result. Isn't going to happen. So we should stop giving hand-outs and let's see what happens. Maybe they will stop having so many kids in a land that cannot support anymore kids.

And there is now much more important things than famine. Americans should know that their country is being screwed up, and that could cause biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. What if same thing happens in US like Greece??? Who would come to help, Europe is struggling to get out of economical depression, at least here in Finland things are getting much better, but I don't want another crisis.

US needs to raise taxes, dramatically decrease their military budget and get out of Afganistan and Iraq. Obama should admit that Bush screwed up things and Obama couldn't fix things up.

Originally posted by dadgad

Originally posted by spitandsnot
so many of you are saying that the west has tried to help out african nations, with foreign aid and whatnot. you guys have got to be kidding. the IMF, world bank, and WTO have destroyed these nations' economies, which was no mistake, and now many of them are forever in debt.

True. Very true.

We have so much responsibility in this whole matter. I call for a immediate forgiving of all debt. That seems appropriate.

Usually the debt ends up get written off...

Eventually more loans get given

Here is just a quick talk about some of the outside influences on Africa and maybe some will see more to these people then people who fight each other and can't be peaceful. It is easy for us in our comfortable homes to criticise these countries (Not just Africa) but we don’t know the half of it. So some of the statements in this thread are pure ignorance, I don’t pretend to know too much about the state over there but there is no need to judge a whole nation of people when most have only got their information from propaganda.

I say if we cut all the aid from Africa, also take out all the corporations and let Africa profit from their own wealth in resources.

Originally posted by sonofliberty1776
You are complaining, but what are you DOING?

Exactly. Oh but there is always that handy excuse that any money you donate will not get there, be misspent etc etc. But I'm as guilty. Was taking a nice big slurp of wine the other day when up pops a pic of a starving half dead child. I don't have much money but have a full larder and money spent on that could probably feed someone for a week. No we stick our heads in the sand. It was the same with Japan. Sad for them but hey ho, other side of the world, nothing to do with us. But the way things are going, one day that hunger will come for US.

reply to post by kykweer


[color=cyan]

Once more smh this is a Sapiens Sapiens issue for 1 Duces I am taught to be colorblind something learned when I wasn't smh and that didn't even relate to race. I see issues in humanity YOU THE AFRICANAZ and ANY 3RD WORLD LOCATIONS. 1 doesn't see pathetic color lol 1 sees energy the ENERGY in that Region and many others breeds EVOL smh EVOL that works with other evol these EVOLS are magnetic whether you likes or not SAPIENS SAPIENS YOU? These locations breeding evol where a 123456 and up year old are at risk for destruction as soon as they are born. You never felt the fear no matter how collection fields trained YOU may be. Yes location for collections of energy misused pick 1 THEY pick 10 souls YOU not help souls. Sorry that was for you either way. Now you attitude hmm if OTHERS were observing you as a species as a hole you play cancer to the species body you let finger or leg or organ just die as long as it not YOUR side of the SAME BODY. Interesting. So if there was land masses destroyed and some retreat locations involved your brother in which you deny for some GODFORSAKEN reason. Petty? So back to OTHERS watching YOU as species are they seeing a TEAM global effort OR CUT throat only the supposed strong survive smh and if they see cut throat then are sapiens sapiens viewed as weak for this pathetic issue of whatever it iz. And if SOME are seen weak THEN what of the OUTCOME do you see LOOK.

LOVE is the ONLY WAY BROTHEREN

LOVE LIGHT ETERNIA*******

NAMASTE

Do you want to know why "nobody cares"?..remember somalia?..millions of tons of food were sent and the warlords stole it and fed who they chose..the UN sent in troops and after the thugs killed a bunch of them,they stayed in a soccer stadium and played cards....klinton sent in troops to oversee the distrubition and the starving murdered them and dragged their mutilated bodies thru the streets on international television ab=n you want us to get all weepy and spoungy about them now?...let their own people take care of them....life is hard everywhere////

Why no big stink in the media ? Our media especially in the US is controlled by basically 5 Corporations. Big Business has a huge hand in global starvation and food insecurity. Shareholder value and CEO pay comes first.Africa despite what most people think has about half the population density than Asia and Europe.
We in the Industrialized Nations can help, buy local grown food, grow our own food, this will loosen the stanglehold of Agribusiness on the Southern Hemisphere and then hopefully the people will once again be able to regain their ability to feed themselves. Full people also tend to be far more peaceful

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, enough food is produced in the world to provide over 2800 calories a day to everyone — substantially more than the minimum required for good health, and about 18% more calories per person than in the 1960s, despite a significant increase in total population.

The global food industry is not organized to feed the hungry; it is organized to generate profits for corporate agribusiness.
This year, agribusiness profits are soaring above last year’s levels, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge, Monsanto,Dupont Agriculture and Nutrition, Potash Corporation plus a few more, are the monopoly or near-monopoly buyers and sellers of agricultural products around the world. Six companies control 85% of the world trade in grain; three control 83% of cocoa; three control 80% of the banana trade. [7] ADM, Cargill and Bunge effectively control the world’s corn, which means that they alone decide how much of each year’s crop goes to make ethanol, sweeteners, animal feed or human food.

As the editors of Hungry for Profit write, “The enormous power exerted by the largest agribusiness/food corporations allows them essentially to control the cost of their raw materials purchased from farmers while at the same time keeping prices of food to the general public at high enough levels to ensure large profits.”

Over the past three decades, transnational agribusiness companies have engineered a massive restructuring of global agriculture. Directly through their own market power and indirectly through governments and the World Bank, IMF and World Trade Organization, they have changed the way food is grown and distributed around the world. The changes have had wonderful effects on their profits, while simultaneously making global hunger worse and food crises inevitable.(When countries were given independence they were also given the debt incurred by their previous colonial overseers), the IMF & World Bank also dictate to these countries how much they can spend on public health and education, educated women with access to contraception do a wonderful job of family planning.

Today’s food crisis doesn’t stand alone: it is a manifestation of a farm crisis that has been building for decades.

Over the past three decades the rich countries of the north have forced poor countries to open their markets, and then flooded those markets with subsidized food, with devastating results for Third World farming.

But the restructuring of global agriculture to the advantage of agribusiness giants didn’t stop there. In the same period, southern countries were convinced, cajoled and bullied into adopting agricultural policies that promote export crops rather than food for domestic consumption, and favor large-scale industrial agriculture that requires single-crop (monoculture) production, heavy use of water (in Africa this is terrible due to being drought prone), and massive quantities of fertilizer and pesticides. Increasingly, traditional farming, organized by and for communities and families, has been pushed aside by industrial farming organized by and for agribusinesses.

The focus on export agriculture has produced the absurd and tragic result that millions of people are starving in countries that export food. In India, for example, over one-fifth of the population is chronically hungry and 48% of children under five years old are malnourished. Nevertheless, India exported US$1.5 billion worth of milled rice and $322 million worth of wheat in 2004. In other countries, farmland that used to grow food for domestic consumption now grows luxuries for the north. Colombia, where 13% of the population is malnourished, produces and exports 62% of all cut flowers sold in the United States.

In many cases the result of switching to export crops has produced results that would be laughable if they weren’t so damaging. Kenya was self-sufficient in food until about 25 years ago. Today it imports 80% of its food — and 80% of its exports are other agricultural products.
The shift to industrial agriculture has driven millions of people off the land and into unemployment and poverty in the immense slums that now surround many of the world’s cities.

Industrial farming continues not because it is more productive, but because it has been able, until now, to deliver uniform products in predictable quantities, bred specifically to resist damage during shipment to distant markets. That’s where the profit is, and profit is what counts, no matter what the effect may be on earth, air, and water — or even on hungry people.

The average American buys 53 times as many products as someone in China and one American's consumption of resources is equal valent to that of 35 Indians. Over a lifetime, the typical American will create 13 times as much environmental damage as the average Brazilian. Sierra Club via CNN

www.internationalviewpoint.org...

It seems like Americans do care, however only ones who are wealthy enough to spread their fortune for example 50 cent, and he seems to care. So if he is representing United States which other country celebrities are doing something about it?

50 Cent

reply to post by Wirral Bagpuss


One of the main problems is the government in Africa to begin with. Very little of that aid money makes it to the people who so desperately need it. On top of that, you have the situation of yes, you fed someone for the day, but there is tomorrow, and the next day and the next...to the next week, next month, next year, next 10 years. The ever never ending problem of people who cannot care for themselves and yet continue to also have children on top of that, and not just one, or two...but handfuls. I think after years and year and years, I mean you have to realize, this isn't recent, I can clearly remember this being a problem since I was just a little girl myself, 30 years, and its been since beyond that, I think people just get discouraged, and think "whats the use?" the same people will be hungry tomorrow, and the next day, and they'll have more children that they can not care for. I can understand it being enough to make one throw up their hands and scream "what is the freaking use?" Yes, we can care for them, but so can their very own government, so how do you fix that?

I think the majority of people want to help but they fear helping.. how many people here would honestly board a plane to somalia knowing they could be kidnapped and ransom'd, and the peron who pays your ransom will be locked up by their govenment. Its crazy, the rest of the world needs to get together and create a massive task force who can go into countries like these and freeze the current govenment while they fix problems like trade, irrigation, food shortages and medical problems.

Originally posted by bluwindRD
I think the majority of people want to help but they fear helping.. how many people here would honestly board a plane to somalia knowing they could be kidnapped and ransom'd, and the peron who pays your ransom will be locked up by their govenment. Its crazy, the rest of the world needs to get together and create a massive task force who can go into countries like these and freeze the current govenment while they fix problems like trade, irrigation, food shortages and medical problems.

All those powers already exist in theory with the Security Council.