Famine in East Africa: Why Does Nobody Care?

Originally posted by Homedawg
Oh,I also forgot the AIDS epidemic thats killing millions every year....and then theres the plague,Ebola,malaria,snakes,buffalo,crocodiles and lions.....and there are how many still waiting to starve?..huh

lol you just solved all their problems, they can eat the crocs, lions and buffalo's, worship the snakes, catch malaria and flush it out with a fresh case of ebola.

Originally posted by AliceBlackman
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...

A really excellent post, AliceBlackman. Everyone here should read this. None of this is accidental -- this is all about maximizing profits for the Elites (who own the corporations) and reducing the common man to desperation -- or DEATH.

As a bonus, the Elites can buy up all the bankrupted farms and other natural resources.
Desperately poor serfs who will work for slave wages -- cheap labor galore.
It's win-win for the Elites.

reply to post by Aeons


Yes there is scrap all the Nuclear advancements every nations is working on and use that to save those in Africa and across the world who are starving for food.

It does not need an anti Christ or a a Messiah to see how, things could be changed for the better.

But as per usual the rich get greedier and the poorest go hungrier.

Typical.

Originally posted by bluemirage5
reply to post by noonebutme

 

Now how on earth can millions upon millions of starving poor Africans afford birth control?

There is such a high birth rate in Africa it seems the real question is what is it about being poor and starving that makes Africans so horny?

reply to post by Wirral Bagpuss


Why is this the "worlds" problem? They are starving because of the civil war in Somalia. Should we go around the world stopping all civil wars?

Originally posted by Homedawg
Oh,I also forgot the AIDS epidemic thats killing millions every year....and then theres the plague,Ebola,malaria,snakes,buffalo,crocodiles and lions.....and there are how many still waiting to starve?..huh

don't forget the hippo's.

aids, having sex with a virgin is the cure, most think. :facepalm:

too many wars there, too many dictators, too much corruption, ignorance, tribal issues.

africa is not poor! it is rich in minerals and oil, the food producing nations were destroyed by their own leaders

by kicking out and murdering the white farmers who grew the food with the intent of giving the land back to their relatives and people who have no clue what to do.

what's that country i'm try to remember? lol.

america has not been into colonization in africa, as far as i remember, cept liberia, which was set up for slaves that wanted to go back to africa.

europeans were the big colonizers there. dutch, french, brits, italy, and who knows who else.

i think they were better off under colonization than now.

doesn't seem like they learned anything in all those years.


eta; malaria can be stopped by a nice bombay sapphire and tonic everyday.

quinine is a treatment, nets we give out by the millions, sanitation, just washing with soap will save lots of people.

www.globalatlanta.com...

reply to post by Kram09


Your tone of hatred towards Americans is too much. I AM AN HONEST HARD WORKING WIFE,MOTHER AND NURSE. WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU CAN LUMP 300,000,000 plus people as the horrifying self centered narcissistic leaches that you imply? I am not the crappy foreign policy or nucleur weapon, I am a human and just because I am American does not make me a monster......I cant believe how offended your posts made me feel!
As far as Africa is concerned, I pray for them daily, just like the Japanese. My concern now is with making sure I have enough food to feed my children and living paycheck to paycheck is not glamorous. Why dont you visit America and see the poverty here with your own eyes before you cast such harsh judements of our people. I AM NOT THE GOVERNMENT! Are you you yours?....

Answer: "Because it is in East African (precisely Easterner's problem) and IT'S THEIR PROBLEM NOT OURS OR ANYBODY ELSE OTHER THAN THEM.

Personally, this is not my opinion.....sadly this is the current paradigm we are living in....so ya better try to cope with it, seal that sympathy of yours, and wait for the new era to come.

Originally posted by Wirral Bagpuss
I cant keep silent over this anymore. I am angered by the current famine in East Africa taking place right now. Millions are dying and flooding over the border into Kenya for example. Families do not make the journey. Children, the weak and old die on the journey. Once in a place where help can be given, people still die as there is not enough qualifed doctors and medicines to cater for everyone. My greatest anger is for the militia groups who prevent aid being delivered within Somalia and why? In the name of relgion apparently. For crying out loud i am sure God, Allah or whatever one chooses to worship would approve of aid being given not witheld! Why cant the world get it's act together? surely NATO or whomever can organise an airlift and parachute food supplies directly to people? Or even set up mobile field hosptials across the country and tell the militas to pack it in whilst getting on with the business of saving lives. I know it can be done, but there just is not the political willpower to do so. I just find that inexcusable.
I also find it appallying that even now in the 21st century whilst we have the technology and means to feed everyone on the planet, people go without food or water or indeed both. Having been paid this weekend i have now made a donation to UNICEF UK. I know it is not much and i wish i could give much more. But at least it is something. I have also enquired about joining a local volunteer group and with the possibility of setting up a new group. That is something else i can do as well. This is something i have been thinking about for some time, but now is the time to put things into action, perhaps a few ripples in the pond can do some good.

I hope this post will inspire and provoke thought amongst ATS.

edit on 31/7/11 by Wirral Bagpuss because: Typo

Its very sad, my heart goes out to those in this crisis.

as far as the why? .. well quite simply, they don't have oil. if they did, the US would be there in a heartbeat!

lets put it this way... If the main export of the middle east was broccoli.. I can guarantee we would not be there.

Originally posted by Wirral Bagpuss
I cant keep silent over this anymore. I am angered by the current famine in East Africa taking place right now. Millions are dying and flooding over the border into Kenya for example. Families do not make the journey. Children, the weak and old die on the journey. Once in a place where help can be given, people still die as there is not enough qualifed doctors and medicines to cater for everyone. My greatest anger is for the militia groups who prevent aid being delivered within Somalia and why? In the name of relgion apparently. For crying out loud i am sure God, Allah or whatever one chooses to worship would approve of aid being given not witheld! Why cant the world get it's act together? surely NATO or whomever can organise an airlift and parachute food supplies directly to people? Or even set up mobile field hosptials across the country and tell the militas to pack it in whilst getting on with the business of saving lives. I know it can be done, but there just is not the political willpower to do so. I just find that inexcusable.
I also find it appallying that even now in the 21st century whilst we have the technology and means to feed everyone on the planet, people go without food or water or indeed both. Having been paid this weekend i have now made a donation to UNICEF UK. I know it is not much and i wish i could give much more. But at least it is something. I have also enquired about joining a local volunteer group and with the possibility of setting up a new group. That is something else i can do as well. This is something i have been thinking about for some time, but now is the time to put things into action, perhaps a few ripples in the pond can do some good.

I hope this post will inspire and provoke thought amongst ATS.

edit on 31/7/11 by Wirral Bagpuss because: Typo

Not to sound racist, but after 20+ years of people only caring about poor black countries and poor black people when poverty, famine and hunger know no race difference; you just start to become cynical then apathetic towards their plight.

The best thing we can do is nothing. Let nature take it's course. By interfering we are only making things worse for them in the long run.

As long as when Americas food and resources give out,I can count on looking up and seeing african planes filling my sky with food and medical supplies in an endless stream,I dont have a problem helping them now....so,lets see...which nations over there can I count on?......

reply to post by Wirral Bagpuss



Why don't you pack up some food and take it to them?

reply to post by Wirral Bagpuss


I remember back in the 80s I was in the 5th grade and Ethiopia was having a terrible famine. I remember the feeling of wanting to help as our school saved money to help the poor people.



I am not 10 anymore and I see Africa for what it is. They choose to not help themselves so why should anyone do anything for them. They could have a great society, but it is the people bring the land down not the land bringing the people down.

In 1680s, famine extended across the entire Sahel, and
in 1738 half the population of Timbuktu died of famine.[55]
between 1687 and 1731, there were six famines.
in 1784 cost it roughly one-sixth of its population
experienced famine in 1784 and 1785
a great famine occurred on average every seventy years
documented repeated famines in Ethiopia.
in 1888 and succeeding years
afflicted Ethiopia from 1888 to 1892
year 1888 is remembered as the worst famine
severe drought struck in 1913.
famine in Rwanda during World War II
and the Malawi famine of 1949
in the early 1970s, when Ethiopia

wiki

And so on and on it goes.
There will never be any end to famine in Africa.
There will never be any end to the organisations asking for aid.

We're all running low on that charity feeling. Besides, the Africans once had education, water, power and communication. They asked the British to leave their country, tore down power lines and made washing lines out of them.

Whilst it is unsettling to see the images of children lying dying, some culpability does lie with their forefathers.

Originally posted by bluemirage5
reply to post by noonebutme

 

Now how on earth can millions upon millions of starving poor Africans afford birth control?

Very easily.

It's called "Abstinence" - every heard of it?

reply to post by kykweer


I completely understand the situation - I'm not disagreeing with that at all. Force a bunch of human beings into close quarters with nothing to do and a constant irritatnt nagging at them and you have the perfect receipe for sex.

However, my point is, they don't HAVE to do it - they choose to do it. They can't afford/have no access to birth control - pregnancy is bound to result. In a famine, how much sense does that make? None. I also understand that some human beings are slaves to their hormones, fair enough.

But if you know you don't have enough food to feed yourself let alone a baby - it doesn't take a genius to work out that having a child under those circumstances is a very, VERY stupid thing to do.

Originally posted by sonofliberty1776

Originally posted by Kram09
reply to post by sonofliberty1776

 

If that's directed at the OP, they already explained.

It's a small gesture, but it's something.

But the question can also be fired back at you.

Not really. It is not my concern. I am more concerned about our problems here. Since I support ending ALL foreign aid, you should realize that I do not want the government to do anything about other countries issues. We need to fix our problems now.

You are right, we need to help the banks and corporations, we need to give them more money. If we dont have any money, we need to borow some to give them. Poor corporations need us....

Look at NATO, helpping americans to steel other countrys. We need money for the banks and fast food quickly, I only wheight 167 kg. I know is embarassing, im american i have to weight more than 200kg.

Ha ha ha

That was some of the most awesome I read today.

"only 167 kilos" everybody in U.S. is sooo slim - (Besides the 95 percent there isnt".

Ha ha ha

Originally posted by sonofliberty1776

Originally posted by Kram09
reply to post by sonofliberty1776

 

If that's directed at the OP, they already explained.

It's a small gesture, but it's something.

But the question can also be fired back at you.

Not really. It is not my concern. I am more concerned about our problems here. Since I support ending ALL foreign aid, you should realize that I do not want the government to do anything about other countries issues. We need to fix our problems now.

[/quote)

African development issues are a direct result of the west pulling all wealth and prosperity out of the African countries and into the pockets of the rich western nations and coorporations, so it might be an idea to "fix (y)our problems" indeed..