The images of voracious famine leaking out of the steamy deserts of the Northwest African nation of Niger, cuts to the soul\u2019s quick.<\/p>\n
Babies barely able to grasp a breath.<\/p>\n
Mothers with breasts as flat, and milkless as boys.<\/p>\n
Men and women, dizzy with hunger, laid low in the barren dust, awaiting whatever release that either death or food may bring.<\/p>\n
Fathers weeping because there is a relentless drought, and there is nothing \u2014 nothing \u2014 to feed one\u2019s wife, one\u2019s children, one\u2019s aged mother.<\/p>\n
This is Niger, 2005, and according to broadcast reports, it will take about 4 weeks, or perhaps more, for any food relief to reach the nation.<\/p>\n
It is a telling reflection of the lives we live that here, in the heart of the Empire, there are millions of people who have so much to eat, that the fastest growing health threat is morbid obesity, and it\u2019s equally serious cousin, diabetes. Billions of dollars are spent annually on the latest fad diet, carbo diets, Atkins diets, grapefruit diets, and, if I\u2019m not mistaken, a donut diet (OK \u2014 I\u2019m joking about the last one).<\/p>\n
But just barely.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s wrong with this picture?<\/p>\n
How the world is organized, and how the world\u2019s economic business is done, is what\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n
Clearly, some people have too much; others have nothing.<\/p>\n
One also couldn\u2019t look face-on at these pictures, without thinking, almost immediately, of the recent worldwide music concerts which were designed to raise consciousness \u2014 not money! \u2014 about the starving millions in Africa.<\/p>\n
As I looked at these famished people, babies so weak and drawn by hunger that they could no longer eat, as one girl\u2019s tender mouth was a nest of parasites eating her tiny body alive, and wondered about the concerts that were designed to raise consciousness about the plight of the starving.<\/p>\n
It reminded me that we live in an age when TV becomes, not merely an image, but a fact.<\/p>\n
Millionaire musicians stage concerts around the globe, pulling in billions to the international media conglomerates, showing how nice and progressive and caring these stations are, while perhaps 600,000 people, in one country, will starve to death by week\u2019s end.<\/p>\n
Madness. Media madness. Corporate madness. Capitalist madness.<\/p>\n
With perhaps one-hundredth of one percent of the monies used to stage the broadcast blockbuster event, virtually all of these people could\u2019ve been fed, and saved, to live, at least through the rainy season. No doubt, those heart-rending pictures of human suffering will yet raise billions for organizations, NGOs, and charity agencies, and will continue to do so, long after these specific men, women and children, will have ceased living on this earth. Briefly consider the state of the world\u2019s wealth and poverty:<\/p>\n
[Excerpts from: Seabrook, Jeremy, The No-Nonsense Guide to Class, Caste, & Hierarchies<\/cite> (Oxford\/London: New Internationalist\/Verso, 2002), p. 11.]<\/p>\n We live in a world where madness passes for normalcy, where the raging logic of the marketplace leaves tens, and hundreds of millions of people, in dire peril.<\/p>\n And the gap between the rich and poor grows exponentially, daily.<\/p>\n Yet, like little Neros, we play musical accompaniments to massacres of hunger, which can be prevented with virtual ease.<\/p>\n But, this is Africa; Niger, poor people, agricultural people. These are expendable people. These are but flickering images on a screen.<\/p>\n Copyright 2005 Mumia Abu-Jamal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Column written by Mumia Abu-Jamal The images of voracious famine leaking out of the steamy deserts of the Northwest African nation of Niger, cuts to the soul\u2019s quick. Babies barely able to grasp a breath. Mothers with breasts as flat, and milkless as boys. Men and women, dizzy with hunger, laid low in the barren…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8975,81],"tags":[259],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emancipation-liberation","category-black-liberation","category-issue-11","tag-author-mumia-abu-jamal"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"views":9109,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17599,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions\/17599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}