Famine spreads to Mogadishu

[Forkboy]

Famine spread to three new regions of Somalia, including the capital Mogadishu, as a US senator warned the catastrophe could be worse than the Ethiopian famine that claimed nearly 1 million lives in the 1980s.

The new famine areas designated by the UN include two sites where hundreds of thousands of Somalis have fled in search of food.

"Famine is now present," said Grainne Moloney, head of the UN Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit for Somalia (FSNAU).
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Up to 409,000 Somalis are reported to be in the Afgoye corridor area, the world's largest displacement camp, Ms Moloney said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-04/famine-spreads-in-africa/2824016?section=justin

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[pinboy3niner]

2. K&R

[sabrina 1]

3. What a failure this world is.

There is enough to feed the world, but greed, centuries of colonialism and violence have produced a world where this is happening in the 21st Century. We can't do much since we became the World's Policeman, and the newest Colonial Empire.

Imagine if after WW11 America had taken a different path, one other than starting wars and siding with dictators. We had the chance to do great things around the world.

This is so tragic ~

:kick:

[JitterbugPerfume]

4. Ya know what confounds me Forkboy?

Most people are perfectly capable of outrage over Casey Anthony and Jaycee Dugard (and rightly so) but when it comes to thousands, even millions of people starving ,being rape and contacting preventable disease they act like it isn't happening.


are we just wired that way?

yep--I think we are

[metalbot]

5. It's a complexity issue

The outrage over the cases you mentioned is really directed at very specific things: a verdict, and a total failure by parole authorities. In either one, there is a feeling that the "system" should have worked better.

When you look at starvation in Somalia, you have a much more complicated situation which is the result of internal corruption, drought, foreign intervention, and religious extremism. There's also no clear solution. There's no way for the US to "feed" Moghadishu without the use of our military, and the last time we did that, we ended up watching the corpses of US soldiers being dragged through the streets. We could throw a lot of money at the problem, but if you think that corporate greed is high, wait until you see warlord greed. We'd end up providing money to the very people who make a straightforward humanitarian mission impossible.

[Forkboy]

6. "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic."

A friend of mine pointed something out to me years ago, as I pondered the very thing you're pondering. Small problems like the ones you mention are easy for people to grasp, to make a judgment on, and then move on to the next simple story. Our brains can wrap themselves around these simple stories, but when we start talking about these big issues, our ability to process it becomes more and more difficult.

Then, on top of that, so many people are scrambling to survive themselves, working long hours for little pay, buried in debt, coming home and having dinner and maybe spending an hour or two with family before going to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat. People are so burnt out that not thinking about these issues is almost a defensive measure, a way to keep a little bit of sanity in an increasingly insane world.

Over the years I've brought these issues up to many people, and not one has indicated that they didn't care, and all of them wish there was something that could be done, but the problem is so enormous that none of them, myself included, even know where to begin. I actually think we're hardwired the opposite way, that people are by nature good people. But these problems are just so large, so depressing, that people are almost paralyzed on what to do. Facing a huge problem like this and not having any idea how to stop it is majorly depressing, and I think people just have a hard time facing this in the face of that helplessness. It's easier to focus on the smaller issues you mention.

I don't think we're hardwired to ignore suffering, I think we're hardwired to protect our sanity.