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medpundit |
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Saturday, July 13, 2002Unfortunately, sending food is likely as unproductive as the money and drugs. These countries are starving because their government (aka current thugs in power) have chosen to destroy the farms and steal the food. In three of them (Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Mozambique) the government makes no effort to hide the fact that food aid goes only to government supporters. The remainder is sold on the world market to get cash for the government. The others hide it better, and in a few cases are so close to total chaos that massive theft is as much the result of lack of government as it is government. Zimbabwe used to export 50% of its agro production and used to be one of the best fed of the sub-saharan countries. The difference is pure politics. The farmers are political enemies of the government. They are being murdered. Their farms are being destroyed. And now the government refuses to distribute food to the surviving opposition. So what do you do? Sending food does nothing to help the starving. It helps those who are killing them. Overthrowing the government is politically unpalatable. It is a great tragedy. Yes, it is a great tragedy. And it makes the grandstanding by people like Clinton and Mandela on AIDS funding all the more shameful. Clinton has it exactly backwards. He's blaming all the governmental chaos on AIDS. It's the government chaos and resulting famine that is responsible for the AIDS crisis. It's disheartening to hear someone of Clinton's stature and world-standing echo the blather of the AIDS political activists rather than using his position to highlight the hard truths about the issue. posted by Sydney on 7/13/2002 07:28:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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