Life's Basic Necessities
Thirteen starving women and two men entered China from North Korea, in a desperate search for food. They were apprehended by North Korean authorities. And the fifteen impoverished, hungry people were shot to death on a bridge in Juwongu district in the northeastern town of Onseong, while local residents looked on.Lesson learned. This was the purpose, after all, to demonstrate to North Koreans that their condition of starvation is one they must accept.
The summary executions' purpose was to demonstrate what might avail any others who might seek out food. "It has become a daily routine for a few residents to disappear and illegally cross the border to visit relatives in China. We shot them to send a warning to people over this", according to a government official.
As for those silently watching, one woman was sufficiently brazen to observe: "Everyone is anxious about a lack of food. The shooting has made people angry."
Kim Jong il, the "Dear Leader" suffers no lack of food, nor do his supporters. This loving tyrant rules over a starving population. Yet he is the head of the fifth largest army in the world. People starve, but the acquisition of armaments remains a greater priority.
Hugo Chavez is once again on his high horse, condemning Colombia for crossing the border into Ecuador in pursuit of a key rebel commander of terrorist FARC. This Dear Leader has arrayed Venezuela's troops on the border between Venezuela and Colombia in protest on behalf of Ecuador.
A captured computer hard drive belonging to the FARC commander has revealed Venezuela's generous funding of FARC, and Ecuador's complicity with that terror group, but there's no embarrassment over those facts where neighbours encourage terror militias to prey on another neighbour.
Ecuador, whose sovereign territory had been invaded is huffy about it, but it is Hugo Chavez, the saviour of the Andean region who is clamouring for the engines of war to churn into Colombia, a neighbour whose ties with the hated U.S. makes them the enemy of Venezuela.
Trade remains brisk between Colombia and Ecuador, and the contretemps will soon blow over there. But Chavez has undertaken to severely limit trade between Venezuela and Colombia to bare necessities. Only perishable goods are permitted to enter Venezuela from Colombia.
As though that measure will harm Colombia. For it is Venezuela's population that has been facing hardship and food shortages. Inflation in that country along with a severe shortage of the most basic of foodstuffs imperils the economic stability of Hugh Chavez's great social experiment.
Zimbabwe's Dear Leader Robert Mugabe has assured an frantic and starving population during an election rally that the country is embarking on a huge import of maize from southern African states. Irony there, in that agricultural exports from Zimbabwe to other less-fortunate states was once the norm, and the engine of that country's prosperity.
Widely endemic food shortages have become a fact of life in Zimbabwe, and the situation is only deteriorating. A government report indicated that Zimbabwe is certain to fail its targeted harvest again, this year.
This is an economy in the steely grip of hyper-inflation and people are starving. "Maize is there [in Zambia] ... but we are having problems moving it", Mr. Mugabe assured thousands of his party supporters in a settlement south of Harare. His recent birthday party saw no shortage of food; there in abundance for the celebrants.
The United Nations Vienna-based International Narcotics Control Board expresses deep concern about the cultivation of the coca bush, long a tradition and a staple for indigenous South Americans. For when food is absent, chewing coca in a millennia-old tradition in that culture aids considerably in keeping the pangs of hunger at bay.
And it is, furthermore, a medicinal long used by indigenous Andeans for pain control. Physical pain due to medical conditions beyond the understanding of indigenous peoples living on the edge of prosperity seen in the urban centres. Perhaps psychological pain too, in the misfortune of maladaptive governance.
So much for the concerns of those tasked to govern, to ensure the most basic provisions of life's necessities are available for their people. So much for universal governing bodies tasked to address grievous problems the world faces, where emerging and fairly successful economies backtrack on their responsibilities in favour of ideological fascism.
Labels: Justice, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, March 06, 2008
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