On Mon, 17 Jun 2013 19:15:47 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 6/17/2013 3:34 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 16 Jun 2013 21:22:42 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 6/16/2013 5:41 PM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On Sun, 16 Jun 2013 16:00:07 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:




I wonder how far $100 million would go helping rural African medical
clinics keeping "The Children" alive and preventing them from going
blind by providing proper nutrition for the little tykes? Gosh, I
imagine there are a lot of things $100 million could help fix like the
storm damage done to the various communities around the U.S. o_O

TDD

You could feed a million Africans for a few months, but that would
spoil the First Family Vacation.

OTOH, I've read that food aid is spoiling in warehouses in some
countries where the corrupt government is not allowing distribution or
is selling it on the black market.


It's a real shame when folks try to help the unfortunate but the despots
and warlords who have seized control of those impoverished countries
take all the relief supplies for themselves. It's one of those
situations where your political beliefs may tell you not to interfere
with the government of other countries but your conscience
tells you to kick somebody's ass for what they're doing to helpless
people, especially children. o_O

TDD
Another problem with food aid is when cheap or free food is brought in
from outside it kills the market for locally grown food when there IS
a good crop - so the small farmer gets nothing for his cash crops and
cannot afford to buy anything from anyone else.

When the small farmer can't get anything for his rice because the
market has been flooded with free USAID rice shipped in from
where-ever, he soon cannot afford to grow rice any more, so now the
food shortage is even worse.

Food aid only when necessary, and help and education to allow the
locals to grow and produce their own food, or to earn the money to buy
food, is MUCH more effective.

Transportation is also a problem. Both for locally produced food and
for foof aid. The food grows after the rainy season - and the roads
are washed out by the rains to the point you cannot get trucks through
to pick up the crops to move them to market. Then the food aid comes
in, and the locals are out of food - the neew crop has not grown yet -
and the roads are impassible to deliver the food aid to where it is
needed..

It's a WHOLE LOT more complex than most who only see it from this side
of the pond (wherever that may be) can even begin to imagine.
Yes, there are societal and political reasons - but it goes a lot
deeper than that.

African development is a very DIFFICULT subject. Much moreso than even
south American, central American, or Asian development - all of which
have their own issues.

You need to see the situation from within to even BEGIN to understand
it.


So it is the White Mans fault after all. It's a conspiracy to keep The
Africans enslaved. I suppose Whitey is afraid of a strong Sub-Saharan
Africa so all the charity and religious relief agencies are being used
to keep The Black Man down. They're not there to help even though they
truly believe they're doing God's work. They're a tool of the evil
multinational corporations which wish to steal Sub-Saharan Africa from
the people who own it. Darn, we must let all the church groups know the
truth so they can stop what they're doing. o_O

TDD
That is NOT what I said - and you know it.