Poverty // Current

Afghan girl begs for bread, prays for help

I am not a rich man but I can no longer read things like this and wait for things to get better. My home is open to them.... more

Raven6
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Memories of US Depression still sear

Stories from the elderly that endured the great depression is interesting, the one that I found important is Mr. Dickinson below.... more

wlwatkins
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Using a prostitute to be made a criminal offence

The Home Secretary today attacked the 'bizarre' practice of City firms taking clients to lapdancing clubs, as the... more

mischabarrett
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Inside the life of an impoverished Afghan girl.

Banafsha is an eleven-year-old girl living in Afghanistan. She may be young, but she if the primary provider for her family.... more

nazbags
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Leaders gather in Washington for crisis summit

World leaders have begun arriving in Washington for this weekend’s crucial summit on the global financial crisis.

bmltv
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War in the Congo, please not another act of mass genocide!

The United Nations has started distributing food deep in rebel-held territory in eastern Congo, the first large-scale delivery in... more

arcticspirit
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A Tibetan Street Hawker's Beijing Journey

Reforestation programs are forcing Tibetans in Zanta's remote village to leave their tiny farms to make a living. Zanta, a... more

China4Real
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Canada's dirty Secret

Just sayin',,,if a person has EIGHTY ONE submissions on problems in USA (with 3 exceptions), just maybe they should care as... more

barbara3d
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A walk to Beautiful

You may have to choose the video: A walk to Beautiful. I saw this on Oprah. Five Ethiopian women documented as having a fistula... more

barbara3d
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Could 4% of bailout end world hunger?

World hunger seems like one of those grand unsolvable problems – the perennial favorite wish of beauty pageant queens. The truth is, it's not unsolvable at all.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) stated that it would only take $30 billion a year to launch the necessary agricultural programs to completely solve global food insecurity. (Severe hunger afflicts 862 million people annually.)

$30 billion sounds like a lot of money, but considering we've just bailed out Wall Street to the tune of nearly a trillion, it's trifling. After I did a little digging, all I could think was...really? $30 billion is all we need to end world hunger? That's it? I thought such a major goal would require some unreachable, vast sum. Here are six things I learned we're doing with that money instead.

Global military and arms trade expenditures hit high at about $1 trillion annually. Approximately $540 billion is spent by the United States alone. (I don't mean to single out defense here, but...wow!)

The United States Department of Energy spends $23.4 billion yearly just to develop and maintain nuclear warheads.

How could we forget the recent $700 (and growing) billion housing bailout bill? In other words, 4% of the Wall Street bailout would end world hunger.

The U.S. Congress has approved $44 billion of U.S. funds for Iraqi construction projects (meanwhile, 39% of bridges in the United States have been deemed structurally deficient – but that’s another story. Am I being partisan?)

$30 billion was spent on Homeland Security in 2008, and they’re requesting $35 billion for 2009.

Lest we pick on ourselves only, residents of the United Kingdom waste about âÂ¤20 billion worth of food every year. That translates to about $31.7 billion U.S. dollars.

You’ll notice that the big spenders are on corporations, defense and military organizations, but in my research I didn't intend to focus on this. It's just what we spend on! I can't help but think that if we could channel even a few of those war dollars into peace spending (like helping alleviate world hunger), there might not be much left to fight about in the future. This idealist believes it’s worth a try. What do you think?World hunger seems like one of those grand unsolvable problems – the perennial favorite wish of beauty pageant queens. The... more

iloveravi
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65 responses

8 days ago

Niger government suspends Doctors Without Borders leaving children malnourished

This is unconscienable.

JanforGore
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9 responses

8 days ago

Drought and food crisis in Afghanistan driving people from villages

Severe drought and food shortages have caused thousands of people to leave their villages in Afghanistan's north and west to find work and aid. Many more are expected to move in desperation as winter approaches.

Provinces such as Badghis, Faryab, Jawzjan, Ghor, Saripul, Balkh and Samangan have been hard hit by a harsh winter earlier this year, followed by a debilitating drought and poor harvest. The production of wheat an Afghan staple is reportedly down by 36 percent compared to last year, while the Ministry of Agriculture has said the country is facing a deficit of 2 million tonnes of mixed food items over the next six months.

Soaring global food prices have exacerbated the problem of food insecurity. A UN appeal in July reported that the prices of wheat and wheat flour have gone up by 200 percent countrywide over the past year. The worst affected people are the small farmers, landless people, nomads and casual labourers.

"There's no rain this year," complains Qadir, 25, who left his village in Balkh three months ago to find work in Kabul. "Back home, I own a plot of rain-fed land and grew wheat on it. It's small but was enough to feed my family until the drought. I just left the land. It's useless."

snip

The numbers of the drought-displaced vary. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre estimates that more than 6,500 Afghans have left their homes in the north and west as a result of the drought this year. The International Committee of the Red Cross believes some 280,000 people are suffering from its effects, and that thousands of families could leave their homes in search of food and work as winter looms.

In the last six months, UNHCR has reported the displacement of more than 2,700 families (approximately 19,000 people), mostly from or within Badghis, Balkh, Saripul and Samangan provinces. Some have gone to district centres like Mazar-e-Sharif, to nearby provinces like Herat, or to neighbouring countries such as Iran and Pakistan. All were forced to move because of food insecurity, drought or poverty.

Some families leaving Keshendeh district in Balkh dismantled their houses, indicating they had no intention to return. Those who remain said that without food and water assistance, 70 percent of the population or some 500 families could leave the area. UNHCR is working with other UN agencies and the government to start bringing water tankers as soon as possible.

"Meeting humanitarian needs in areas of origin is the best way to prevent food and drought-related displacement," said Ewen Macleod, the UN refugee agency's acting representative in Afghanistan. "This means pre-positioning aid before snow and the cold weather cut off access to some of these areas."

Returnees have been affected too, including 183 families who returned from Pakistan to Saripul last year and recently left again for Quetta in south-western Pakistan. In the central Afghan provinces of Logar and Ghazni, food insecurity meant that returnees were too busy trying to support themselves to complete construction on their UNHCR-funded shelters. The agency worked with the World Food Programme to provide food to 700 families so that they could focus on finishing their homes before the onset of winter.

As security deteriorates in parts of the country, the UN has appealed for humanitarian access to allow aid workers to distribute food to needy communities ahead of winter. A recent report by British think tank, the Royal United Services Institute, warned that a looming famine in Afghanistan could pose a greater threat to international efforts to rebuild the country than the conflict there.
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And we will commit even more troops to this already drought and poverty stricken wartorn region to do what exactly? Precipitate more poverty and terrorism? Doesn't look as though our presence there is doing any good now.

Severe drought and food shortages have caused thousands of people to leave their villages in Afghanistan's north and west to... more

JanforGore
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4 responses

8 days ago

Working on water well brings antagonistic groups together

Water can bring peace because it is the essence of all life on Earth. While it is sad to see so many people without it, this... more

JanforGore
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14 responses

9 days ago

More pets turned over to shelters in ailing economy

A distressed pet owner told Potts she'd lost her home and business and could no longer afford to take care of her beloved... more

bmltv
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12 responses

10 days ago

Rogues Gallery of Righties

A rogue's gallery of now-irrelevant right-wing ....

uppityprogressive
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0 responses

10 days ago

A Poem for Election Day

Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be... more

uppityprogressive
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3 responses

10 days ago

Inaugurate Change

Please visit Worldchanging's Inaugurate Change campaign to add your name to this letter that will urge Obama's... more

uppityprogressive
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5 responses

10 days ago

Statistical Study: if Obama 'loses', it's because the GOP stole it

Unless the GOP Steals the election, Obama's chances of victory are ONE HUNDRED PERCENT! Professionals and university... more

lenhart
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0 responses

16 days ago

How the GOP enriched the rich and made everyone else poor!

The 'L-curve' helps one imagine the degree to which wealth in the United States in inequitably distributed by policy and by design. The US population is represented 'stretched across a football field in order of income, from poorest, on the left, to richest. Imagine a stack of $100 bills 'representing each person's income.' For example: a stack one inch high represents a stack of one hundred dollars bills, i.e, $25,000. The red line on the graph represents the height of that stack compared to an American football field.

"The red line in the first picture is the beginning of the U. S. income distribution. On the scale of the football field the line slopes gradually from zero on the left to less than 2-inches high at the 50-yard line ($39,000), to about 4-inches high at the 95-yard line ($132,000). On this scale the entire graph is less than one pixel high, up to this point. It is not until you are well past the 99-yard line that you hit the $1 million mark: a stack of $100 bills 40-inches high. There were over 144,000 people who turned in IRS returns in 1997 with adjusted gross incomes of $1 million or more." [See: Houston Independent Media Center, Wealth Distribution in the US http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2003/07/14100.php ]

Although the US economy produces tremendous wealth, it is always accompanied in GOP regimes by tremendous poverty. The US, for example, was most egalitarian in the years immediately following WWII. During GOP regimes, income inequality increased and is, in fact, measured with the GINI index. Higher Ginis indicate greater levels of income inequality. These indices have been significantly greater in every GOP regime since World War II.

Certainly --there is enough wealth to go around. Instead, wealth flows upward ---not down, as the propagandists of 'supply side' i.e. 'trickle down theory' would have you believe. The problem is systemic --the result of identifiable, right wing policies that can be identified.

The primary culprits are GOP tax cuts by Mssrs Ronald Reagan and Bush; the effect of those cuts have been the deliberate transfer of wealth first to the upper quintile and, most recently, to an increasingly tiny elite of about one percent of the total population [See: Dr. Daniel Weinberger, US Census Bureau Briefings; Also see: The Quarterly Journal of Economics: Income Inequality in the United States at the following URL: http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/pikettyqje.pdf]. It's a PDF and cites academic and official, original sources of data.

As wealth is transferred to the very top with tax cuts for only the very, very wealthy and practitioners of 'corporate socialism', the masses are left to fight over the crumbs. There is no poverty in America that could not be addressed by simply addressing GOP tax policies --give aways -- which deliberately make the rich richer, the working class significantly poorer.

If you are in the middle class now, don't kid yourself. Unless you stand to inherit a fortune of several billions from a rich and long lost Uncle, the chances are almost exponentially high against you. Chances are --you will NOT progress upward in this society. Moreover, this aspect of American society is the work of one party primarily: the GOP! The GOP is the party of a rich elites who have learned how to 'sell' a fairy tale: supply side economics, or, derisively --"trickle down theory". To sum it all up: wealth has never, does not, will not 'trickle down'. The 'L-curve' helps one imagine the degree to which wealth in the United States in inequitably distributed by policy and... more