From: rlm@surfcty.com (Robert McMillin)
Newsgroups: ca.politics
Subject: We Are The Famine (was: We're Beatrice)
Date: 28 Jan 93 01:14:24 GMT
Distribution: ca
Organization: Surf City Software, Orange, Calfornia - DUDE!

cramer@optilink.COM (Clayton Cramer) writes:

> In article <74161@cup.portal.com>, Arthur_T_Hu@cup.portal.com writes:
> > I've just heard radio clips that the head of Beatrice was a Black American.
> > I never knew that, and I still haven't seen coverage in the newspapers
> > here. Anybody got the full story, and like Rush LImbaugh says, how come
> > young blacks don't ever hear about this guy, only the tough guys in the
> > hoods. Sounds like this guy had the right ticket to fortune and riches,
> > not the losers that told NPR that they sold drugs because "the money's good
> > admitted "yeah, it kinda destroys the race, but that's not my problem",
> > and "I've got a job, but I lookj like a hoodlum so I can't get a better
> > job". I also wonder about rap lyrics I heard on KPFA that "i'm going to
> > make you an orphan", homocide is my hobby, I have no value for life,
> > blah blah blah. What am I supposed to make of this?
> 
> Because there are a fair number of African-American success stories
> out there, and a heck of a lot of middle class African-Americans
> out there as well.  But if you talk about that too much, the excuses
> for dramatic expansions of governmental power and spending to help
> blacks wouldn't be so persuasive.
> 
> The theme of "helping blacks" as though they were some sort of
> incompetent child, is what liberals rely on to continue feeding
> at the public trough.

Sadly, the inner-city ghetto isn't the only place where welfare 
dependency has crippled, and yes, killed people.  In a devastating 
article in the January 19, 1993 issue of {The Village Voice}, ex-relief 
worker Michael Maren describes his experiences in Somalia, and how years 
of American aid caused the present catastrophe in that country.  Combined 
with ill-conceived foreign military aid programs from the Reagan and Bush 
administrations, Somalia became a case study in welfare dependancy on a
national scale.

According to Maren, private relief organizations promoted an ever-larger 
number of food aid projects, encouraged by public laws that enable the 
dumping of American grain in foreign countries.  This displaced people 
from their old ways of camel herding, and allowed the Barre regime to 
control them directly (simultaneously stripping them of their camels and 
their livelihoods).  And that's not all: the Barre regime consistently 
overcounted heads in each of the refugee camps.  American relief 
organizations responded by stepping up the amount of food sent to Somalia 
-- which went to feed Barre's soldiers, who then went on raids of 
Ethiopia and Kenya, creating hungry refugees who also needed the services 
of the camps.  The relief organizations, blinded by an increasing 
responsibility and increasing matching funds from the U.S. government, 
chose to ignore their part in the looming catastrophe, and so set the 
stage for the present collapse.

This article is a scathing rebuttal to the increasingly fashionable and 
oft-repeated nonsense that "welfare dependency is a lie".  A good chunk 
of an entire continent lies in thrall to cynical American agencies 
concerned only with the appearance of feeding people, and not with the 
larger questions of self-support.