How much to end world hunger, disease, suffering?

August 2011
Newly arrived Somali women sit in a queue
outside a food distribution center

$70,000,000 a Quarter
By Carolyn Bennett

They took in $42.8 million for their incumbent candidate, $27.3 million for their party • 606,027 people totaled 766,000 donations

Third quarter of this year people made a 70 million dollar down payment on corrupt elections and empty promises —

Supporting global wars

August 2011 Somali refugees wait outside
the registration area of the
Dagahaley refugee camp

“The United States is creating a base in ETHIOPIA,” Africa News reported late last month, “to coordinate and fly drones over the Horn of Africa countries, especially SOMALIA.

“The drones known as MQ-9 Reaper based in Seychelles can supplement air strikes on targets inside the war torn Somalia. The U.S. military has had a base for years in DJIBOUTI.”

The Australian reported today, “KENYA hunted al Shabab ‘militants’ deep inside Somalia, claiming self-defense for an unprecedented incursion which the Somali insurgents warned would trigger reprisals in the heart of Nairobi.

“Backed by aerial bombings and guided by pro-government Somali forces, Kenyan troops moved deeper into southern Somalia, a day after Nairobi declared war on the al Shabab militia and confirmed that it had sent its army across the border.”

Horn of Africa

In the Horn of Africa today, “more than 13 million people are affected by one of the region’s worst droughts in 60 years.”

The crisis in Somalia alone has already killed tens of thousands of people, put 750,000 more at risk of death in the next few months, and affected four million others.

On October 17, 2011, World Food Day, the United Nations and international figures called for immediate aid and longer-term solutions and warned that factors such as price swings and gender discrimination keep hundreds of millions mired in hunger.

These are the suffering people the United States bombs, in a region the nuclear-armed U.S. and its proxies continuously destabilize — while shamelessly wasting millions on a discredited system, a farce in political campaigning and electoral processes.

Somalia

Displaced woman from Somalia
sits with her malnourished child
at Banadir hospital

Since the fall of Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, years of fighting between rival warlords combined with frequent drought and rampant inflation have turned Somalia into one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises, says the United Nations.

“A bloodied ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Somalia in 1993 embarrassed U.S. military might” and, for a while, led to “a period of more cautious overseas engagement by Washington” says a country profile of Somalia at AlertNet.

Somalia today is viewed as the world’s most corrupt state, and it “remains of deep concern to the West as rises the star of the al-Shabab (‘The Youth’) Islamist group, which in 2010 declared allegiance to al-Qaeda and is strong enough to threaten Somalia's capital, Mogadishu.”

Since 2007, huge numbers of Somalis have been displaced within the country. Over the past two decades, famine, fighting and drought have left hundreds of thousands of Somalis dead.

Horn in emergency

Though Somalia’s two biggest neighbors, Kenya and Ethiopia, have helped promote peace efforts, they have also interfered militarily.

Start of Ramadan fast
A displaced woman from Somalia
stands with her malnourished child

The United States is at war with the peoples of at least eleven countries.

Somali woman and her severely malnourished child
wait for medical assistance

Sources and notes

“Maximizing the incumbent advantage — President Barack Obama continues to be a fund-raising juggernaut, practically exceeding the fund-raising total of the entire GOP field combined. During the third quarter, Obama raised $70.1 million, his campaign announced today. That sum includes $42.8 million that went directly into his own campaign war chest and $27.3 million raised for the Democratic National Committee,” Center for

Somali child all but dead
A woman with her child sit
near their makeshift shelter in Mogadishu, Somalia.

Horn of Africa Britannica image

Responsive Politics Open secrets, http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/10/barack-obama-fundraising-juggernaut-

August 2011
Newly arrived Somali men jostle to queue
outside a food distribution center

“The Obama campaign announced in an email this morning that the president’s reelection effort and the Democratic National Committee raised a combined $70 million in the third quarter of the year” (Alexander Burns) October 13, 2011, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65845.html

http://www.africanews.com/site/US_sets_new_drones_base_in_the_Ethiopia/list_messages/39850

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/kenya-hunts-islamist-militants-in-somalia/story-e6frg6so-1226169492814

“Food price swings threaten to push millions more people into hunger, UN warns,” October 17, 2011, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40081&Cr=food+security&Cr1=

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/country-profiles/somalia/

Captions

Reuters

A displaced woman from Somalia stands with her malnourished child. Somalia's famine refugees, weakened by months of drought, on Monday began Islam's punishing Ramadan fast amid the tents and shacks of the world's largest refugee camp

A displaced woman from Somalia sits with her malnourished child at Banadir hospital

AP

A woman with her child sit near their makeshift shelter in Mogadishu, Somalia. Tens of thousands of famine-stricken Somali refugees were cold and drenched after torrential rains overnight pounded their makeshift structures in the capital August 2011

Reuters

Newly arrived Somali women sit in a queue outside a food distribution center August 2011

Newly arrived Somali men jostle to queue outside a food distribution center at the Ifo refugee camp in Dadaab August 2011

(Oli Scarff - AFP/Getty Images)

Somali refugees wait outside the registration area of the Dagahaley refugee camp, which makes up part of the giant Dadaab refugee settlement on July 23, 2011 in Dadaab, Kenya.

UN

A Somali woman and her severely malnourished child wait for medical assistance from the African Union Mission in Somalia

Maps Britannica

U.S. AT WAR WITH THE PEOPLES of [how many] countries

1.     Afghanistan	2.     Bahrain
3.     Cuba	4.     Djibouti
5.     Haiti	6.     Honduras
7.     Iran	8.     Iraq
9.     Libya	10.  Nigeria
11.  North Korea Pakistan	12.  Palestine
13.  Saudi Arabia	14.  Somalia
15.  Uganda [Possibly South Sudan, CARC and DRC]	16.  Yemen
17.	18.
19.	20.
21.	22.
23.	24.
25.	26.

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire

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