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November 21, 2005
The silent genocide
It kills without hesitation, without pause, without mercy. Its victims are the young and the old, from parents to children, with no thought of race or creed. It strangles out life slowly, brutally, watching coldly as people waste away, their limbs decaying, their minds disintegrating. It leaves families shorn of strength, dignity, and hope. Its mere existence is a blot on all of us - the fact that it can thrive in our so-called enlightened age makes a mockery of us all.
One thousand people are dying every hour. Twenty-four thousand a day, more than eight million a year - it matters little how you count, only that it is too many.
Its name is hunger. Chronic hunger. Not just the hunger of droughts and wars and refugees, but the insidious, long-term hunger, the hunger that persists even in fast-growing economies, even in the face of bountiful yields and seemingly generous aid.
We cannot believe that 800 million people around the world are chronically undernourished, for want of just a few dollars a year to help them. The money the Western world spends on lipstick, alone, would be enough to feed them all. But there is political will for lipstick, and there is none for the hungry. Their governments are corrupt, it is said, they themselves are lazy and ignorant and untrustworthy. There is time to wring hands and issue platitudes, but there is no sense of crisis, no feeling of urgency, little belief that this is an outrage that cannot be allowed to continue.
Who is to blame? There, we have no shortage. We can blame warlords who burn crops and rape women for plunder. We can blame imperalists who carved up a continent and sucked it dry. We can blame kleptocrats who pad their Swiss bank accounts with their taxpayers' money. We can blame oversubsidized cows. We can blame international loan sharks for wringing blood - or interest, as they call it - from a stone.
But we cannot think of any way to feed these people. And so they die. They continue to die. The silent genocide marches on, and none even dare notice it, let alone stop it.
Posted by Tyrone at November 21, 2005 06:19 PM
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