I was thinking...

[Sternly]

I saw a program on the BBC which was about the Ethiopians and how people, specially in Britain reacted, when it was showed on television that they were dying of hunger. It was a documentary that showed the first images that the world had of people there, in that situation. (80's) And then it shows the Live Aid concert, the marathon, Margareth Thatcher and the Communist Goverment in Ethiopia, how in Europe you have thousands of kilos of grain unused (overproduction) and how there (Ethiopia) no one had a single thing to eat and when finally 'the rest of the world' send them food, they didn't have any roads to get the food where they wanted to.

 

This was not what called my atention though. The program was focus on two person: Bob Geldford (he was member of a British band, quite famous at the time) and a lady who worked for the Red Cross. She went to a very poor area and there were not hundred, but thousands of people starving and they didn't have enough food for everyone, so what the Red Cross did was to build four walls and the people inside the wall would get fed and the one outside, would not received food at all.

 

Twenty years later, she returns with the BBC correponsal and everyone salutes her and so and they showed videos of people and things like that, and that really didn't called my atention at all, what it did was the fact that now the number of people starving has doubled, and since in the 80's quite a lot of people was fed and survived, the population kept growing and they reproduced and now the problem is much bigger than it used to be. In a c ountry with 80% of the population living outside the cities, and dying of starvation (in the city that doesn't happen as in counry side) you realise is a big problem that has no solution in the short term (but politicians love things in the short term)

 

Everytime I think of this, I make a comparison with AIDS. I love the African Continent and I would work for free If you asked me to, just to help there - a thing that I probably wouldnt do here - but you just can't go and say like "We are going to buy food for eveyone starving". Besides of sounding unrealistic, it doesn't solve the problem from it's root. You have to teach people, you can't give them all, because you'll get to a point where you have nothing else to give and hundreds of people depending on you... as we say, "Teach them how to fish". But looking from a rather colder point of view, that continent would be overpopulated If it wasn't for AIDS and Food problems, which is the cause of most dieases there.

 

Suppose you find a cure for AIDS, well not a cure, but cheap medicines that stop the disease 'growing in your body' (a thing different to the retroviruals that they use now) Great! People will suffer less from it, the country won't loose so many people in their most productive years and families will not be tear apart by the disease, but that would mean that the number of infected people would rise at an impressive speed and sooner or later the organism will get used to it and will have an even bigger catastrophere.

 

We are having so much development but it's not going ahead with education, which is the key of all. What's more dangerous and useful than an educated society?

[fifi]

This is exactly what annoys me so much! There is so much money that could be spent on worthwhile things like helping all these starving people in the 3rd world but the government insist on spending an outrageous amount of money on something either not needed at all or for their own holidays and private jets! The government today is a joke! I mean our government here were perfectly fine with forking out E1,000,000 to place a big metal spike in the centre of dublin city and it serves absolutely no purpose and it doesn't even look attractive! This just makes me so angry! :angry:

 

Ok *rant over*

[DoogieJ]

It's only gonna get worse, North Africa has serious problems with arable land...there just isn't enough rainfall to grow enough crops to feed everyone...I remember reading some time back that the reason north africa is now mostly desert is due to deforestation caused by the Romans, now how much of that is true I don't know, they must've cut down a load of trees...but ever since then the desert has grown...with Global warming increasing the chances of Africa getting warmer and drier increases too, this is gonna be the next big factor to hurt the area...

 

If a cure for AIDS was found, that would be great, but then you have the downside for the arfricans, more people would be living, and therefore breeding, and then you'll have even more mouths to feed with less food available...it's a nasty situation that will self perpetuate...

 

You used the "Teach them how to fish" line..that was and is the line used a lot on MTV adverts trying to appeal to the youth of today..."Give the man a fish and he can feed his family for a day, but give him the means to catch his own fish and he will be able to provide for a lifetime." This sounds great, until you remember how many there are to feed.

 

There are 3 ways I can see to go about this...1) Keep sending food aid, and make them reliant on hand outs for ever...2) Make the governments of the countries in trouble responsible for what they do..but how much are they to blame? It's not their fault it never rains...3) Cut/Abolish 3rd world debt (as voiced by Bono). 3rd world countries owe over $20bn to 1st world nations $1.2bn to the UK alone..if that debt was removed, then maybe the governments of the countries could find some extra cash to plough into infrastructure, for towns, farming, water replenishment etc....we'll never know until it happens..but will it happen?

 

that's my take on africa atm.

 

Go buy Band Aid 20 single :D

[mc_squared]

This is exactly what annoys me so much! There is so much money that could be spent on worthwhile things like helping all these starving people in the 3rd world but the government insist on spending an outrageous amount of money on something either not needed at all or for their own holidays and private jets! The government today is a joke! I mean our government here were perfectly fine with forking out E1,000,000 to place a big metal spike in the centre of dublin city and it serves absolutely no purpose and it doesn't even look attractive! This just makes me so angry! :angry:

 

Ok *rant over*

 

*Drop in the ocean compared to the amount wasted on the Millennium Dome!!

[DoogieJ]

i flew over that on the way to germany...its huge!!! and a major waste of taxpayers pounds :angry:

[mc_squared]

i flew over that on the way to germany...its huge!!! and a major waste of taxpayers pounds :angry:

 

*And I've actually been inside it - for the Christmas (un)spectacular last year. That was a waste of money, too!!

[Sternly]

It's only gonna get worse, North Africa has serious problems with arable land...there just isn't enough rainfall to grow enough crops to feed everyone...I remember reading some time back that the reason north africa is now mostly desert is due to deforestation caused by the Romans, now how much of that is true I don't know, they must've cut down a load of trees...but ever since then the desert has grown...with Global warming increasing the chances of Africa getting warmer and drier increases too, this is gonna be the next big factor to hurt the area...

 

If a cure for AIDS was found, that would be great, but then you have the downside for the arfricans, more people would be living, and therefore breeding, and then you'll have even more mouths to feed with less food available...it's a nasty situation that will self perpetuate...

 

You used the "Teach them how to fish" line..that was and is the line used a lot on MTV adverts trying to appeal to the youth of today..."Give the man a fish and he can feed his family for a day, but give him the means to catch his own fish and he will be able to provide for a lifetime." This sounds great, until you remember how many there are to feed.

 

There are 3 ways I can see to go about this...1) Keep sending food aid, and make them reliant on hand outs for ever...2) Make the governments of the countries in trouble responsible for what they do..but how much are they to blame? It's not their fault it never rains...3) Cut/Abolish 3rd world debt (as voiced by Bono). 3rd world countries owe over $20bn to 1st world nations $1.2bn to the UK alone..if that debt was removed, then maybe the governments of the countries could find some extra cash to plough into infrastructure, for towns, farming, water replenishment etc....we'll never know until it happens..but will it happen?

 

that's my take on africa atm.

 

Go buy Band Aid 20 single :D

 

 

Well I don't think their biggest problem has to do with the Rainfall. Its true the weather they have at the moment, plus the conditions of the ground, are not the greatest to plant crops or any other kind of cereal, but it's not like they can't plant nothing at all.

 

We have the driest desert on eart, The Atacama desert, and still you have flowers growing on it and trees. It's a very special variety of trees (called Chañaral) and they can grow in extredimely hot weather, with almost no rain at all; their biggest advantage is that it stops erosion and the land getting acid (that it's what happens with the Pines, for instance).

 

You also have that Israel, which is located in a very hot zone, with a very high percentage of it's land erosionated, has been able to combat this and has depeloved a very good agricultural system, taking the maximum advantages that they can, with a land that had no resources really (what I mean with that is that it's not like here, where the ground is very fertil and we have rain, and quite a lot, and a hot season ... good for agriculture). If you are thinking in doing 'productive' things, you could try with Olives, and make oil for instance, which does not require a lot of water, they need sun and with salty water (countries on the coast) you get a very special taste. And like that, you have many, many other things.

 

Erotion, which is worst that not having rain at all (and that's also, in some cases, a consequence of the erosion) can be reverted. Just look at

Kurshskiy Zaliv, in Lithuania, it's an inlet that had a 'strip' which used to be covered with forrest and they were all cutted down and dunes started to appear and covered all the surface that was once a forrest. A group of very dedicated people try to revert the situation, and the zone has more forrest that dunes now.

 

When I use the term "Teach them how to fish" (which is a saying here) I don't mean that you have to teach everyone how to fish. If you follow that, you'll see that you'll have many fishermen, but we don't want so many. But you can teach some how to fish, others how to pack the fish, how to sell it, how to do marketing campaigns, how to take seaproducts out aswell..... there is a lot of things that you can teach them, that are related with the fish but are not exactly fishing. Now, If you put that onto a bigger scale, I don't see how and why it wouldn't work. But for that, and for the previous (about the trees, deforestation,. erotion and so) you need to educate people. You need to teach them, to spend a lot of time with them,, not money, but time.

 

I am not very sure If cutting the 3rd World debt is such a good idea, and I am not to fond of this massive fund raising things either. I believe, I know it by heart, that the key is education, and that does not require a lot of money, it just requires time and dedication.

 

You can't expect all problems to be solved there; there will always be people dying of hunger, poor people, people with AIDS, eroted land, etc, but with a lot more of education, this can be lower down to a minnimun.

[Sternly]

 

The inlet (that's the correct word, right?)