Joey Sawyer March 28 12:30
I was browsing Al Jazeera website and I am finding it a very useful tool to find info about food shortages outside the US. Although this is a very big problem in many areas, it is not exactly "news" because most of it is not new. While this is true, I can see that things are getting worse, and it seems to me that huge droughts all over the world are the main culprit. It is amazing that what we do to the air blows across the world and causes disasters in a place I have never seen and kills people I have never known and never will. It is a small world, or else I could set an oil field ablaze and no one would bat an eye for another millennium.
Things have gone from bad to worse in Somalia since the time I first heard about them. I grew up seeing that chubby bearded fellow hugging emaciated doe-eyed African babies on the TV hearing that a few cents a day could change their lives forever. Apparantly just forking over some pocket jinglies was not enough, because your brand new 1997 ford explorer that gets you from your inexpensive factory-built mansion in the latest cheesily named community just outside of Atlanta to your cubicle downtown sends out enough toxic gas to cause huge drought riots ten years later. So your ten cents a day that saved that kids life, but left him hungry for a decade was well spent so that he could pick up a cheap chinese made russian assault rifle and blast anyone that got in the way of his now untamable sweet tooth because of those tootsie rolls you kept sending him in those care packages. Now they have to BS you in phony postcards from him about how he is in school and loves jesus when he is killing his neighbors for flour and sugar and oil so he can make the cookies he so desperately craves.
I got a little carried away there. The point is things are getting worse, even though we are trying to help these people. It is obviously not a cure all to send food to people in these struggling areas. It would be better to help them grow there own food, but now even that is out of the question. It is hard to find a realistic solution to a problem as big as an overpopulated desert. There are a lot of people and absolutely no resources. The only thing that can help these people is to get out now. People will either have to get over their reservations about other people and make large personal sacrifices in how they live their daily lives if they want to genuinely help anyone in such a situation, but the fact of the matter is more people would rather ignore it and let them die. They will die, they have to. The earth cannot sustain them this way. The guns these people have are kind of a form of euthanasia. It hurts less to be shot and killed than forgotten while you slowly starve to death.
So if you want to help, don't send these people ten cents a day. They can't even get it right now, aid organizations are afraid to go to Somalia. I forgot that that was my point, I got carried away again. Aid workers are getting killed in the cross fire or robbed of their care packages. It is survival of the fittest now. If someone is lucky enough to get to safety in some refugee camp, and you are willing to let a stranger come into your home and live and eat your food then you are able to help a little. Short of that you have to let them fight it out and the desert will claim them.
2 comments:
You have made so many good points in your discussion. I think that all Americans need to start thinking the way you do! I feel that there is little regard for others in our complex society. This is not something that we should boast by any means! We pride ourselves on being "worldly" and "post-industrial," yet we CHOOSE to ignore situatinos like these that occur all around the world everyday. It is celar to see that it is time to re-evaluate what is really important in our lives and how our choices WILL effect someone, somewhere, some day.
Yes, thank you for drawing the direct connection between what we do and how it affects other people around the world. These tragedies don't happen in a vacuum! Of course, just like when we read earlier this week about the connection between Pat Robertson and Charles Taylor, people in this country that we trust to tell us the truth are telling us only what they want us to hear and believe. And honestly, is it such a huge sacrifice to buy a hybrid, flex-fuel, or electric car rather than a Hummer?
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