From: covici@ccs.covici.com (John Covici)
Reply-To: covici@ccs.covici.com
Newsgroups: alt.activism,bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: If You Want to Feedd Somalia -- You Must Demand Development!!
Date: 12 Dec 92 19:38:34 GMT
Organization: Covici Computer Systems


                - If You Want to Feed Somalia, -
                - You Must Demand Development! -

For more than a year now, the world has sat by while the nation
of Somalia, and many others, have starved to death. Hideous
pictures of starving children have come into your living room,
reinforcing the idea that there is nothing you can do.
   Now, President Bush has sent troops into Somalia, claiming
that they will ensure the delivery of food supplies to the
starving. But will this solve the problem? No, not unless you
mobilize to force through a full development program for not only
Somalia, but Africa as a whole.
   Somalia is dying as a nation. Africa is dying as a
continent. You have been told that it's their fault, for having
too many babies, or corrupt leaders. But that's not true. The
fact is that Africa, and Somalia, have been killed by a
systematic policy of underdevelopment--underpayment for their
exports, underinvestment for their infrastructure, and massive
looting through usurious debt policies.

               - The Development Program -
   With development, Somalia could be feeding itself today. The
United States should implement the following action program.
  1. Food must be brought to people, not the people to the
food. Special trucks and overland transport vehicles are
required. Food must be delivered together with the means of
transport.
   2. U.S. soldiers must not only deliver food supplies, but
begin immediate construction of roads and bridges for lasting
infrastructure. U.S. soldiers must act like a corps of
engineers, building, not killing. The U.S military deployment
must not be used as a pretext to set up a new colonial
protectorate system, nor to establish a new U.S military base in
Mogadishu.
   3. Africa's debt must be frozen or cancelled. During
1986-91, Africa paid out more money to the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) than it received! It is like sucking blood to take any
debt payments from starving people.
   4. Feed the 23 million people in the Horn of Africa, not
only the 4 million people in Somalia. This is the only way to
prevent mass migrations, leading to further regional
disintegration. Food reserves must be mobilized now from the
``surplus'' of Europe, the U.S.A., and elsewhere.
   5. Start new development projects. According to the
United Nations, the area in southern Somalia between the Jubba
and Shabeelle rivers, with technology, can feed 50 million people
a year--ten times Somalia's present population.
   6. The IMF and other bloodsucking financial institutions
which have bled Africa, as well as other nations and peoples,
must be replaced with a new just world economic order.

                - Fight for Development -
   Therefore, to feed Africa on a longterm basis, we must not
just send soldiers into Somalia, or elsewhere. What we must do is
create the conditions for Africa to develop, so that it can feed
itself and grow.
    Join our fight today--for Africa, for all humanity. Hold
rallies, vigils, and marches. Call and visit your congressman.
Call the White House and the President-elect. Distribute this
leaflet at places of worship, shopping centers, and schools.


   The following statement was issued by the Rev. James Bevel,
former candidate for vice president on the LaRouche independent
ticket, on Dec. 10.
   "Today, we suffer mass destruction, because yesterday, we
did not lay the foundation for reconstruction. In the midst of
this nightmare, even the best minds seek magical solutions.
However, no stable construction, or reconstruction, can proceed
from anything less than a properly conceived and correctly laid
base.
   With the fundamental principles that undergird a working,
constitutional-democratic republic under attack and uprooted in
our nation, we as a nation cannot give constitutional, or moral
leadership. So, we offer brute force, and another form of
colonial rule.
   Now in this crisis, if African-Americans do not work for the
constitutional rights of the African people, I would say they
were hard pressed to prove they are not anti-African, and
anti-American. If Christians refuse a Christian economy to
Africa, are they not anti-Christian?
   Who are you? And which side are you on? Let it not be said
of you that ``ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have
lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth
good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden underfoot
of men.''
   I call on statesmen, religious leaders, and labor,
community, and student leaders, to come together to forge a new,
constitutional self-hood and nationhood document, that can serve
as a catalyst and guide to a new thrust for freedom and justice.
This should use the principles and methods that are in keeping
with the freedom and justice sought.
   If we react to the present-day destruction, rather than lay
a foundation, then tomorrow there will be another reaction,
rather than reconstruction."


Leaflet of The Schiller Institute.

----
         John Covici
          covici@ccs.covici.com

Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.current-events.somalia