This needs to be kept at the top of the topic list. It's nothing new - Jesus said the same thing, ffs. But clearly, some people refuse to listen. Roughly 73% of Ontarians who voted yesterday, for example.
LBmuskoka
Posted on: 10/08/2011 07:15
Agreed RevMatt.
History provides ample evidence. Take for example the Irish Potato famine (1845-1852): There were other food sources, in particular grain, however the government of the day preferred that grain to be exported. Throughout the famine Ireland was a "net exporter" of grain and livestock exports actually increased while thousands starved to death. To further show that times never change, doesn't this sound familiar,
"Sir Charles Trevelyan, who was in charge of the administration of Government relief to the victims of the Irish Famine, limited the Government's actual relief because he thought "the judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson".
The history of famine in Ireland provides another lesson for those that need to hear. The Great Famine of the 1800s was not the first time Ireland had experienced a famine. In 1740, Ireland, as was much of Europe, was hit with unusual cold weather. Crops failed on a grand scale. However the response in 1740 was different. People still died, there were food riots, but in 1741 exports of food was stopped and available stocks were distributed within the country. Unlike the famine 105 years later, there was no mass immigration and the crisis lasted for two years not 8. The other lasting effect of the 1845 famine, that persists even now, over 150 years later, is that the Irish still hold the British responsible for starving their people. The pangs of hunger never go away and will be remembered long after the body is fed.
Here is an echo from the past, it sings a familiar song....
I thirst beside the heather-laden bogs –
no samaritan for me;
no one here to see
that I shall die amidst the
plenty, in the field –
and that its yield
will sail to shores beyond the sea.
How can it be
that flocks of sheep can find their fill
while I lie empty and in pain?
or is it vain
to beg attention to my plight?
How can I fight
when I am listless, drained alone,
shrunken to the bone
while others eat what I have
grown in toil?
Woman of the soil –
I fade against a wall of human greed
and - sower of the seed –
I languish as it grows...
Corporations don't care who or how many they kill. They are based on the principle that greed is good, and that the acquisition of wealth is the main purpose of life.
They don't care how many they kill or starve or impoverish. Let us not kid ourselves that applies only to moslems and foreigners. that will, and have, quite as happily done it to us.
LBmuskoka
Posted on: 10/08/2011 12:20
Corporations are created, ruled and supported by people.
Turning corporations into self entities allows all the people involved to abdicate their, our, the collective responsibility.
It is like blaming shootings on guns. The reality is; people kill people.
LB
-------------------
But, unlike someone under a banyan tree, all publicly traded corporations have been structured, through a series of legal decisions, to have a peculiar and disturbing characteristic. They are required, by law, to place the financial interests of their owners above competing interests. In fact, the corporation is legally bound to put its bottom line ahead of everything else, even the public good.
The Corporation, 2003
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 10/08/2011 14:39
The Irish famine is an excellent example of how people might have helped, but did not. The English deserve the criticism they have received about this.
I am not so sure the situation in Somalia is the same, unless you want to blame the fanatics who won't let aid agencies into Somalia.
LBmuskoka
Posted on: 10/08/2011 15:35
War destroys the land. It kills the livestock. It kills the farmer.
The situation in the Horn of Africa is man made. Like the Irish famine there are resources available to feed the people but these resources are being denied by those in power and those seeking it.
LB
--------------------
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
graeme
Posted on: 10/08/2011 16:07
The occupy Wall st. movement is not at all like the movement against the Vietnam war. That one was just against the war. This is one is against the whole political and economic structure of the western world.
I don't know where it's going. But it has the makings of a revolution. And it's spreading across Europe.
Governments may well beat it down with force. But no democracy would survive that. The politicians and, I presume, the business leaders are scared. That explains why Obama and t he governor of New York gave pretend sympathy speeches.
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 10/09/2011 15:07
LMB
Yes, the Somalia famine is man-made, but this time not by the West. From The New York Times
MOGADISHU, Somalia — This particular area of Mogadishu was supposed to be safe, a highly fortified government compound in one of the few neighborhoods that Somalia’s transitional government actually controls.
But on Tuesday morning, that illusion was shattered when an enormous truck bomb was detonated right outside the compound’s gates, killing dozens of people — many of them students standing around waiting for exam results — and sending the signal that the Shabab Islamist group may be making a comeback after several months of losing ground.
....
The Shabab are also widely blamed for causing Somalia’s famine. Much of the Horn of Africa, including Kenya, Ethiopia and other parts of Somalia, has been hit this year by one of the worst droughts in decades. But just about the only areas where that drought has spelled famine, as defined by certain thresholds of death and malnutrition rates, are Shabab-controlled areas.
The Shabab have refused to allow many Western aid organizations into their territory and have even blocked famine victims from fleeing to seek help.
The United Nations says that tens of thousands of people have already died and that as many as 750,000 may soon starve to death unless aid efforts are rapidly scaled up.
graeme
Posted on: 10/09/2011 15:22
The west has greedily and brutally interfered with Africa for centuries, destroying societies and economies for short tem gain. That's a major reason it has famines and terrible governments.
Immediately, we are running hinto hatred and opposition to our aid preciesly becasue we have created hatred.
Nor does most of the West give a damn about sdening aid. We have yet to send any link adequate aid to Haiti - on our doorstep.
In Libya, we have spend billions on bombs and other weapons to destroy stability in Libya (and it will get worse.) A fraction of that money would have enabled aid workers too help in Somalia.
The skies are, indeed, getting drak. That's because of the flights of pigeons coming home to roost.
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 10/09/2011 16:29
The US Govt may be cutting back aid, but there are still lots of private aid groups, supported by private individuals, like Oxfam. They cannot get into Somalia either.
Most Somalians do not support Shabbab. They would prefer to see the foreign aid!
According to NYT, there has been an anti-Shabbab protest, over the truck-bombing.
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Thousands of residents of this bullet-scarred city packed into a stadium on Sunday to denounce the Shabab Islamist group for the suicide bombing last week that killed scores of people, many of them students.
It was one of the largest rallies in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, in years.
Many participants cried as politicians and others took turns heaping scorn on the Shabab, the militant group that claimed the Tuesday truck bombing.
“Should we abandon our country because of fugitive criminals from abroad and children who have disobeyed their parents?” said Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, Somalia’s president. “The answer is no.”
The rally was held around noon on a steamy day. Many people were soaked in sweat by the time they walked from their neighborhoods to the old soccer stadium, located in central Mogadishu. The program included speeches and traditional Somali dances. Many people seemed deeply moved.
“I came here to denounce the Shabab’s massacre on the students,” said Halima Ulusow, an elderly woman whose face was wet with tears. “We have to oppose all the bad culture imported to our country by the Shabab.”
Somalia has languished without a functioning central government for more than 20 years, and there have been endless rounds of conflict between clan warlords, religious groups and militia-for-hire. The country has fragmented into fiefs, and in southern Somalia, which includes Mogadishu, a weak, transitional government has been battling the Shabab militants for several years. It was the transitional government which organized the rally on Sunday.
A smaller rally, organized by a local youth group, took place in the Wadajir neighborhood of the capital. A local official, Ahmed Hassan Daaci, said that those who killed the students were “cowards,” and saying “Let’s fight against them,
In August, the Shabab announced that they were withdrawing from Mogadishu and switching to guerilla tactics, and it seems the unusually large suicide bomb on Tuesday was proof of their resolve to carry on an asymmetrical war, with no hesitation over slaughtering civilians. The bomber struck a government compound on a busy street where hundreds of students had gathered to check exam results. Many had been hoping for scholarships to Sudan and Turkey. s Somalia’s universities, like just about all the country’s public institutions, have been eviscerated by war.
Witnesses reported horrific scenes of burning bodies, twisted in agony, strewn across the streets. Somali officials said at least 70 people were killed and that the toll could be as high as 100. Floods of wounded people stumbled into this city’s dilapidated hospitals, which were already full of victims of the country’s widening famine.
The Shabab have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and have blocked many Western aid groups from delivering food to starving people in the areas the Shabab control.
LBmuskoka
Posted on: 10/10/2011 05:50
EasternOrthodox wrote:
Yes, the Somalia famine is man-made, but this time not by the West. From The New York Times
Man made famine is not a border issue. It is a global issue.
The fact is other countries could influence what is happening in Somalia but are choosing to turn a blind eye. Saudi Arabia, for example, is Somalia's largest trading partner and guess what is exported - food, livestock and bananas the principal items.
Somebody is supplying both the military and the guerrillas with guns. Arms monitors say the guns come from a surreal mix of sources that includes China, the United States, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Ukraine, Finland and North Korea. (Toronto Star, 2009) An international solution to this famine factor was put forth but is not supported by the world's largest arms seller, the United States, nor Russia and China. Enforcement would be difficult without the agreement of such major players. (IBID)
So man-made famine is not a border issue. It is a global issue. It is supported either directly or indirectly by decisions made within and without a single country. War in Somalia impacts on its neighbours, Chad, Ethiopia, Uganda, Eritrea, and Uganda. It then spreads to their neighbours and becomes a continental issue. The anger, frustration, hunger and human migration spreads and becomes a global issue.
Our government supported the International Gun Treaty mentioned above and we can be proud of that because it is a sign, that at least in this case, our government recognizes that the problem is global and can only be stopped when all parties are involved. Our government leaders of the past strived for international cooperation to preserve peace because they rightly recognized that by forging international ties our economy, our country, would prosper.
The world has been conducting global trade since the dawn of nations. People have crossed borders to trade food and goods for centuries. There are no economic borders and when famine occurs it is the responsibility of those controlling that flow of goods, senders and recipients, to act to stem the growing famine.
LB
-------------------------------
Since the narrower or wider community of the peoples of the earth has developed so far that a violation of rights in one place is felt throughout the world, the idea of a law of world citizenship is no high-flown or exaggerated notion. It is a supplement to the unwritten code of the civil and international law, indispensable for the maintenance of the public human rights and hence also of perpetual peace. One cannot flatter oneself into believing one can approach this peace except under the condition outlined here.
You missed my point, EO. The west cannot intervene with aid BECAUSE it is intervening with bombs in Libya . It is also drone bombing Both Somalia and Yemen., as well as Pakistan. There is no money to spare to feed people.
To say that bad people are preventing the aid is absurd. A fraction of the military force that west is expending would easily create a safe zone.
Get used to it. The West is a dying empire, trying to take a way out by a desperate fling at world domination. As it has repeatedly shown, it really doesn't give a damn about people starving.
There are no forces preventing food aid and other aid to Haiti. But it still isn't getting there.
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 10/10/2011 13:41
graeme wrote:
Get used to it. The West is a dying empire, trying to take a way out by a desperate fling at world domination. As it has repeatedly shown, it really doesn't give a damn about people starving.
Graeme, get a grip. You are starting to lose it.
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 10/10/2011 13:43
LBmuskoka wrote:
EasternOrthodox wrote:
Yes, the Somalia famine is man-made, but this time not by the West. From The New York Times
The fact is other countries could influence what is happening in Somalia but are choosing to turn a blind eye. Saudi Arabia, for example, is Somalia's largest trading partner and guess what is exported - food, livestock and bananas the principal items.
Somebody is supplying both the military and the guerrillas with guns. Arms monitors say the guns come from a surreal mix of sources that includes China, the United States, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Ukraine, Finland and North Korea. (Toronto Star, 2009) An international solution to this famine factor was put forth but is not supported by the world's largest arms seller, the United States, nor Russia and China. Enforcement would be difficult without the agreement of such major players. (IBID)
I would say our chances of influencing Saudi Arabia, China, Iran or North Korea are zero.
LBmuskoka
Posted on: 10/10/2011 14:05
EasternOrthodox wrote:
I would say our chances of influencing Saudi Arabia, China, Iran or North Korea are zero.
We are major trading partners with China. The US is a major trading partner to Saudi Arabia. As they say in Corporate America, money talks and we can choose where our money holds a conversation.
LB
--------------------
We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence...on pain of liquidation.
George Bernard Shaw
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 10/10/2011 14:13
LBmuskoka wrote:
EasternOrthodox wrote:
I would say our chances of influencing Saudi Arabia, China, Iran or North Korea are zero.
We are major trading partners with China. The US is a major trading partner to Saudi Arabia. As they say in Corporate America, money talks and we can choose where our money holds a conversation.
Although Graeme's statement that the West is dying is somewhat exaggerated, it does have an element of truth. We no longer have the power to influence China or Saudi Arabia. In fact, due to the West's reliance on Saudi oil, we lost that power a long time ago.
Still, I suppose the Western countries could at least make a statement about it, to show they were thinking about it.
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 10/10/2011 14:43
This issue extends beyond outright famine and into food shortages and high food prices. (If you want me to start a new thread on it LBM, let me know, I don't want to take over your thread).
The event that tipped that already developing forces behind the Russian Revolution was food prices.
Consider the growing instability in Egypt (including violence of the last few days) in light of this report, from an Egyptian newspaper:
....state-owned Al-Dostour reports on an “insane” increase in the prices of commodities and services that has left citizens “screaming,” presumably in despair. In its report, Al-Dostour claims that the “current state of lawlessness has left merchants and businesses with no supervision,” giving them free reign to raise prices without fear of repercussion. After a string of powerful metaphors depicting consumers as helpless prey in the grips of some fiercer yet unspecified predator, the report turns into an onslaught of numbers and percentages - food products up 80 percent since January of this year, LE7 for a kilo of sugar and LE13.75 for a liter of vegetable oil, 50 percent increase in the price of flour and LE22 for a kilo of duck meat, and on and on. LE9 for a kilo of humus, too.
LBmuskoka
Posted on: 10/10/2011 15:07
EasternOrthodox wrote:
This issue extends beyond outright famine and into food shortages and high food prices.
All of which are man made constructs: Humans set the prices, humans consume more than they need for sustenance.
There has to come a point where humans start recognizing that *we* are the problem and therefore the solution is our hands.
LB
---------------------------------------
Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten. And seeing them...he cried, "Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?"...God said, "I did do something. I made you."
Comments
RevMatt
Posted on: 10/07/2011 08:10
This needs to be kept at the top of the topic list. It's nothing new - Jesus said the same thing, ffs. But clearly, some people refuse to listen. Roughly 73% of Ontarians who voted yesterday, for example.
LBmuskoka
Posted on: 10/08/2011 07:15
Agreed RevMatt.
History provides ample evidence. Take for example the Irish Potato famine (1845-1852): There were other food sources, in particular grain, however the government of the day preferred that grain to be exported. Throughout the famine Ireland was a "net exporter" of grain and livestock exports actually increased while thousands starved to death. To further show that times never change, doesn't this sound familiar,
"Sir Charles Trevelyan, who was in charge of the administration of Government relief to the victims of the Irish Famine, limited the Government's actual relief because he thought "the judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson".
(wikipedia, Great Famine (Ireland)
The history of famine in Ireland provides another lesson for those that need to hear. The Great Famine of the 1800s was not the first time Ireland had experienced a famine. In 1740, Ireland, as was much of Europe, was hit with unusual cold weather. Crops failed on a grand scale. However the response in 1740 was different. People still died, there were food riots, but in 1741 exports of food was stopped and available stocks were distributed within the country. Unlike the famine 105 years later, there was no mass immigration and the crisis lasted for two years not 8. The other lasting effect of the 1845 famine, that persists even now, over 150 years later, is that the Irish still hold the British responsible for starving their people. The pangs of hunger never go away and will be remembered long after the body is fed.
Here is an echo from the past, it sings a familiar song....
I thirst beside the heather-laden bogs –
no samaritan for me;
no one here to see
that I shall die amidst the
plenty, in the field –
and that its yield
will sail to shores beyond the sea.
How can it be
that flocks of sheep can find their fill
while I lie empty and in pain?
or is it vain
to beg attention to my plight?
How can I fight
when I am listless, drained alone,
shrunken to the bone
while others eat what I have
grown in toil?
Woman of the soil –
I fade against a wall of human greed
and - sower of the seed –
I languish as it grows...
DARK ROSALEEN
By Sister Anne Therese Dillen
Irish Famine, FAMINE POETRY
graeme
Posted on: 10/08/2011 10:01
Corporations don't care who or how many they kill. They are based on the principle that greed is good, and that the acquisition of wealth is the main purpose of life.
They don't care how many they kill or starve or impoverish. Let us not kid ourselves that applies only to moslems and foreigners. that will, and have, quite as happily done it to us.
LBmuskoka
Posted on: 10/08/2011 12:20
Corporations are created, ruled and supported by people.
Turning corporations into self entities allows all the people involved to abdicate their, our, the collective responsibility.
It is like blaming shootings on guns. The reality is; people kill people.
LB
-------------------
But, unlike someone under a banyan tree, all publicly traded corporations have been structured, through a series of legal decisions, to have a peculiar and disturbing characteristic. They are required, by law, to place the financial interests of their owners above competing interests. In fact, the corporation is legally bound to put its bottom line ahead of everything else, even the public good.
The Corporation, 2003
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 10/08/2011 14:39
The Irish famine is an excellent example of how people might have helped, but did not. The English deserve the criticism they have received about this.
I am not so sure the situation in Somalia is the same, unless you want to blame the fanatics who won't let aid agencies into Somalia.
LBmuskoka
Posted on: 10/08/2011 15:35
War destroys the land. It kills the livestock. It kills the farmer.
The situation in the Horn of Africa is man made. Like the Irish famine there are resources available to feed the people but these resources are being denied by those in power and those seeking it.
LB
--------------------
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
graeme
Posted on: 10/08/2011 16:07
The occupy Wall st. movement is not at all like the movement against the Vietnam war. That one was just against the war. This is one is against the whole political and economic structure of the western world.
I don't know where it's going. But it has the makings of a revolution. And it's spreading across Europe.
Governments may well beat it down with force. But no democracy would survive that. The politicians and, I presume, the business leaders are scared. That explains why Obama and t he governor of New York gave pretend sympathy speeches.
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 10/09/2011 15:07
LMB
Yes, the Somalia famine is man-made, but this time not by the West. From The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/05/world/africa/truck-bomb-kills-dozens-i...
Excerpt:
Truck Bomb Kills Dozens in Somalia’s Capital
By MOHAMED IBRAHIM and JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: October 4, 2011
MOGADISHU, Somalia — This particular area of Mogadishu was supposed to be safe, a highly fortified government compound in one of the few neighborhoods that Somalia’s transitional government actually controls.
But on Tuesday morning, that illusion was shattered when an enormous truck bomb was detonated right outside the compound’s gates, killing dozens of people — many of them students standing around waiting for exam results — and sending the signal that the Shabab Islamist group may be making a comeback after several months of losing ground.
....
The Shabab are also widely blamed for causing Somalia’s famine. Much of the Horn of Africa, including Kenya, Ethiopia and other parts of Somalia, has been hit this year by one of the worst droughts in decades. But just about the only areas where that drought has spelled famine, as defined by certain thresholds of death and malnutrition rates, are Shabab-controlled areas.
The Shabab have refused to allow many Western aid organizations into their territory and have even blocked famine victims from fleeing to seek help.
The United Nations says that tens of thousands of people have already died and that as many as 750,000 may soon starve to death unless aid efforts are rapidly scaled up.
graeme
Posted on: 10/09/2011 15:22
The west has greedily and brutally interfered with Africa for centuries, destroying societies and economies for short tem gain. That's a major reason it has famines and terrible governments.
Immediately, we are running hinto hatred and opposition to our aid preciesly becasue we have created hatred.
Nor does most of the West give a damn about sdening aid. We have yet to send any link adequate aid to Haiti - on our doorstep.
In Libya, we have spend billions on bombs and other weapons to destroy stability in Libya (and it will get worse.) A fraction of that money would have enabled aid workers too help in Somalia.
The skies are, indeed, getting drak. That's because of the flights of pigeons coming home to roost.
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 10/09/2011 16:29
The US Govt may be cutting back aid, but there are still lots of private aid groups, supported by private individuals, like Oxfam. They cannot get into Somalia either.
Most Somalians do not support Shabbab. They would prefer to see the foreign aid!
According to NYT, there has been an anti-Shabbab protest, over the truck-bombing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/world/africa/in-rare-rally-somalis-pro...
In Rare Rally, Somalis Protest Shabab
By MOHAMED IBRAHIM and JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: October 9, 2011
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Thousands of residents of this bullet-scarred city packed into a stadium on Sunday to denounce the Shabab Islamist group for the suicide bombing last week that killed scores of people, many of them students.
It was one of the largest rallies in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, in years.
Many participants cried as politicians and others took turns heaping scorn on the Shabab, the militant group that claimed the Tuesday truck bombing.
“Should we abandon our country because of fugitive criminals from abroad and children who have disobeyed their parents?” said Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, Somalia’s president. “The answer is no.”
The rally was held around noon on a steamy day. Many people were soaked in sweat by the time they walked from their neighborhoods to the old soccer stadium, located in central Mogadishu. The program included speeches and traditional Somali dances. Many people seemed deeply moved.
“I came here to denounce the Shabab’s massacre on the students,” said Halima Ulusow, an elderly woman whose face was wet with tears. “We have to oppose all the bad culture imported to our country by the Shabab.”
Somalia has languished without a functioning central government for more than 20 years, and there have been endless rounds of conflict between clan warlords, religious groups and militia-for-hire. The country has fragmented into fiefs, and in southern Somalia, which includes Mogadishu, a weak, transitional government has been battling the Shabab militants for several years. It was the transitional government which organized the rally on Sunday.
A smaller rally, organized by a local youth group, took place in the Wadajir neighborhood of the capital. A local official, Ahmed Hassan Daaci, said that those who killed the students were “cowards,” and saying “Let’s fight against them,
In August, the Shabab announced that they were withdrawing from Mogadishu and switching to guerilla tactics, and it seems the unusually large suicide bomb on Tuesday was proof of their resolve to carry on an asymmetrical war, with no hesitation over slaughtering civilians. The bomber struck a government compound on a busy street where hundreds of students had gathered to check exam results. Many had been hoping for scholarships to Sudan and Turkey. s Somalia’s universities, like just about all the country’s public institutions, have been eviscerated by war.
Witnesses reported horrific scenes of burning bodies, twisted in agony, strewn across the streets. Somali officials said at least 70 people were killed and that the toll could be as high as 100. Floods of wounded people stumbled into this city’s dilapidated hospitals, which were already full of victims of the country’s widening famine.
The Shabab have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and have blocked many Western aid groups from delivering food to starving people in the areas the Shabab control.
LBmuskoka
Posted on: 10/10/2011 05:50
Yes, the Somalia famine is man-made, but this time not by the West. From The New York Times
Man made famine is not a border issue. It is a global issue.
The fact is other countries could influence what is happening in Somalia but are choosing to turn a blind eye. Saudi Arabia, for example, is Somalia's largest trading partner and guess what is exported - food, livestock and bananas the principal items.
Somebody is supplying both the military and the guerrillas with guns. Arms monitors say the guns come from a surreal mix of sources that includes China, the United States, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Ukraine, Finland and North Korea. (Toronto Star, 2009) An international solution to this famine factor was put forth but is not supported by the world's largest arms seller, the United States, nor Russia and China. Enforcement would be difficult without the agreement of such major players. (IBID)
So man-made famine is not a border issue. It is a global issue. It is supported either directly or indirectly by decisions made within and without a single country. War in Somalia impacts on its neighbours, Chad, Ethiopia, Uganda, Eritrea, and Uganda. It then spreads to their neighbours and becomes a continental issue. The anger, frustration, hunger and human migration spreads and becomes a global issue.
Our government supported the International Gun Treaty mentioned above and we can be proud of that because it is a sign, that at least in this case, our government recognizes that the problem is global and can only be stopped when all parties are involved. Our government leaders of the past strived for international cooperation to preserve peace because they rightly recognized that by forging international ties our economy, our country, would prosper.
The world has been conducting global trade since the dawn of nations. People have crossed borders to trade food and goods for centuries. There are no economic borders and when famine occurs it is the responsibility of those controlling that flow of goods, senders and recipients, to act to stem the growing famine.
LB
-------------------------------
Since the narrower or wider community of the peoples of the earth has developed so far that a violation of rights in one place is felt throughout the world, the idea of a law of world citizenship is no high-flown or exaggerated notion. It is a supplement to the unwritten code of the civil and international law, indispensable for the maintenance of the public human rights and hence also of perpetual peace. One cannot flatter oneself into believing one can approach this peace except under the condition outlined here.
Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, 1795
graeme
Posted on: 10/10/2011 07:48
You missed my point, EO. The west cannot intervene with aid BECAUSE it is intervening with bombs in Libya . It is also drone bombing Both Somalia and Yemen., as well as Pakistan. There is no money to spare to feed people.
To say that bad people are preventing the aid is absurd. A fraction of the military force that west is expending would easily create a safe zone.
Get used to it. The West is a dying empire, trying to take a way out by a desperate fling at world domination. As it has repeatedly shown, it really doesn't give a damn about people starving.
There are no forces preventing food aid and other aid to Haiti. But it still isn't getting there.
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 10/10/2011 13:41
Get used to it. The West is a dying empire, trying to take a way out by a desperate fling at world domination. As it has repeatedly shown, it really doesn't give a damn about people starving.
Graeme, get a grip. You are starting to lose it.
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 10/10/2011 13:43
Yes, the Somalia famine is man-made, but this time not by the West. From The New York Times
The fact is other countries could influence what is happening in Somalia but are choosing to turn a blind eye. Saudi Arabia, for example, is Somalia's largest trading partner and guess what is exported - food, livestock and bananas the principal items.
Somebody is supplying both the military and the guerrillas with guns. Arms monitors say the guns come from a surreal mix of sources that includes China, the United States, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Ukraine, Finland and North Korea. (Toronto Star, 2009) An international solution to this famine factor was put forth but is not supported by the world's largest arms seller, the United States, nor Russia and China. Enforcement would be difficult without the agreement of such major players. (IBID)
I would say our chances of influencing Saudi Arabia, China, Iran or North Korea are zero.
LBmuskoka
Posted on: 10/10/2011 14:05
I would say our chances of influencing Saudi Arabia, China, Iran or North Korea are zero.
We are major trading partners with China. The US is a major trading partner to Saudi Arabia. As they say in Corporate America, money talks and we can choose where our money holds a conversation.
LB
--------------------
We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence...on pain of liquidation.
George Bernard Shaw
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 10/10/2011 14:13
I would say our chances of influencing Saudi Arabia, China, Iran or North Korea are zero.
We are major trading partners with China. The US is a major trading partner to Saudi Arabia. As they say in Corporate America, money talks and we can choose where our money holds a conversation.
Although Graeme's statement that the West is dying is somewhat exaggerated, it does have an element of truth. We no longer have the power to influence China or Saudi Arabia. In fact, due to the West's reliance on Saudi oil, we lost that power a long time ago.
Still, I suppose the Western countries could at least make a statement about it, to show they were thinking about it.
EasternOrthodox
Posted on: 10/10/2011 14:43
This issue extends beyond outright famine and into food shortages and high food prices. (If you want me to start a new thread on it LBM, let me know, I don't want to take over your thread).
The event that tipped that already developing forces behind the Russian Revolution was food prices.
Consider the growing instability in Egypt (including violence of the last few days) in light of this report, from an Egyptian newspaper:
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/499452
....state-owned Al-Dostour reports on an “insane” increase in the prices of commodities and services that has left citizens “screaming,” presumably in despair. In its report, Al-Dostour claims that the “current state of lawlessness has left merchants and businesses with no supervision,” giving them free reign to raise prices without fear of repercussion. After a string of powerful metaphors depicting consumers as helpless prey in the grips of some fiercer yet unspecified predator, the report turns into an onslaught of numbers and percentages - food products up 80 percent since January of this year, LE7 for a kilo of sugar and LE13.75 for a liter of vegetable oil, 50 percent increase in the price of flour and LE22 for a kilo of duck meat, and on and on. LE9 for a kilo of humus, too.
LBmuskoka
Posted on: 10/10/2011 15:07
This issue extends beyond outright famine and into food shortages and high food prices.
All of which are man made constructs: Humans set the prices, humans consume more than they need for sustenance.
There has to come a point where humans start recognizing that *we* are the problem and therefore the solution is our hands.
LB
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Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten. And seeing them...he cried, "Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?"...God said, "I did do something. I made you."
Sufi Teaching