From: Hank Roth <odin@world.std.com>
Subject: Somalia:Starved by System.
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 08:33:19 GMT

<<< via P_news/p.news >>>
{From Socialist Worker, newspaper of the 
International Socialist Organization, December 
1992, #188} 
 
NIGHTMARE IN SOMALIA
STARVED TO DEATH BY THE SYSTEM
"Famines do not simply occur. They are organized 
by the grain trade." Bertolt Brecht
 
Ten months ago the United Nations agreed to help 
the starving people of Somalia. Last month, the 
daily death toll reached 1,000, and relief seemed 
further away than ever.
 
Compare this pitiful effort with the time it took 
to mount a war against Iraq.
 
Bush's new world order has meant more of the 
same---scarcity--for the starving people of 
Somalia.
 
Banks and Western governments are responsible for 
Somalia tragedy and the 40 million other Africans 
who are at risk.
 
THEIR POLIICIES CONDEMN CHILDREN AND POOR PEOPLE 
TO A LIFE OF POVERTY AND THE THREAT OF STARVATION 
AND WAR.
 
The pleading faces of starving children that have 
filed the television screens and newspapers fo 
the last several months ar a stark reminder of 
the cruel effects of the world market system.
 
Food stockpiled in the warehouses of the developed 
nations could have prevented the famine now 
claiming a life every 12 seconds in Somalia.
 
The 146,000 tons of grain promised by the U.S. 
government last January have yet to be delivered. 
Officials blamed the delay on bookkeeping 
problems.
 
Compare this with the speed that goods and 
services are distributed when profits are at 
stake.
 
Excuse for any delays are criminal in the face of 
growing disaster. 
 
President Bush and his successor, President-elect 
Clinton, are blaming the strategy on the warlords 
who will not allow food to be distributed. They 
have endorsed a call for military intervention.
 
THE RELIEF EFFORT
 
But the warlords have told relief officials of 
the International Red Cross and other agencies 
that they welcome the relief effort.
 
What they don't want is an armed invasion.
 
According to reports from the private relief 
agencies, the UN has been slow to negotiate with 
the various factions in the Somalia civil war on 
getting food distributed. 
 
While the Red Cross has been able to get better 
cooperation by paying incentives to truck convoy 
operators for safe delivery of supplies, the UN 
operation actually invites looting. 
 
The war that makes food distribution difficult is 
a further legacy of post-Cold War policies.
 
WHILE THE U.S. AND ITS ALLIES IN THE UN COMPLAIN 
THAT FOOD CANNOT BE DISTRUBITED, THEY HAVE 
COMMITTED ONLY THE MOST MEAGER OF RESOURCES TO 
THE TASK.
 
Through October, the U.S. had assigned only three 
transport planes to the effort. 
 
Compare this to the number of boats and planes 
which still blockade Iran and now Yugolslavia.
 
No one needs to starve in Africa or anywhere else 
in the world.
 
The supplies of grain in U.S. warehouses alone 
could feed the people of Somalia for the rest of 
this decade and still not be empty.
 
But the giant companies and their capitalist 
governments put profit before the whimpers of 
starving babies. Their first priority is to their 
balance sheets.
 
Under such a system, profits and guns will always 
come first and human needs last.
------------------------------------------
SW is published monthly by the ISO, P.O. Box 
16085, Chicago, Il. 60616.
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