There are more than 1200 billionaires in the world. They have absolutely an insane amount of money. It is true that the number of billionaires is increasing. It is also true that six million children die of hunger every year.
Every five seconds one child dies of hunger.
There are more hungry people in the world than the combined populations of USA, Canada, and the European Union. 925 million people do not have enough to eat and 98 percent of them live in developing countries. 578 million in Asia and the Pacific, 239 million in Sub-Saharan Africa, 53 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, 37 million in the Near East and North Africa, 19 million in developed countries.
There is enough food available to feed the entire global population of 7 billion people. But one in seven people go to bed hungry every night. Whereas good progress was made in reducing chronic hunger in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, hunger has been slowly rising.
There is a hunger map.
People somewhere starve to death, while we waste our food. Food waste always reminds me of the ‘famous’ picture of ‘a starving Sudanese girl who collapsed on her way to a feeding center while a vulture waited nearby.’ Kevin Carter, a free-lance photographer, took the picture in March 1993. He did not help the girl to reach the feeding center. She could have survived.The girl was probably eaten by the vulture. Critics said, ‘The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering, might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene.’ Kevin Carter got The Pulitzer Prize for this photograph.
The memories haunted him. In his suicide note he wrote “I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen”.
Trigger-happy madmen are on the rise. If we reduce arms production just a little bit, we will be able to save big money, and we will be able to provide food, water, shelter, clothes, health, education for everyone. I doubt we will do it. We are just apes with slightly larger brains. We love to kill people. We do not care if people die of hunger. In India, parents adopt new methods to kill their baby girls. They do not feed girls, girls must die.
In India, we hate our women with a vicious, unrelenting passion. Nothing, it seems, will change this cultural truth. That’s why I had rather my parents had aborted me before I was born than have had me and pretended it was my fault for being a girl. Better not to have been born at all than a life oF humiliation and diminishment., when you learn from every possible source that you are “less than.” That compared to the needs of the male, you don’t matter as much.
Of course, my parents will lie if you ask them if they wanted a son. Indians, especially educated middle-class Indians, are past masters of lying about this issue. “Oh no, boy or girl was welcome,” they will say. When the truth is that they hoped it would be a boy and they only welcomed me because I was the first-born; they hoped the next one would be a boy. When she too was a girl, my father was quite disgusted and showed his anger and disappointment. Things went from bad to worse in our family after that; he felt that life had dealt him a crushing blow from which our family never recovered. Oh, he did not say so often, but children know.
I knew.
Yes, I’d prefer it if they had aborted me in the womb. Why would I want to be born where I was not really wanted?
I will love to have a girl child .Please god bless me with girl child in future ( i am indian ) and whatever taru said is quite true with most parents in india
India sounds like a horrible place for women. Indeed, it sounds even worse than medieval Europe, if what you say is true.
Which is odd: The two culture zones share a lot in common, having come from the same prehistoric roots, having similar class structures throughout the ancient period, similar mythologies (“Aryan”: Arjun, Hindu god; “Arya”, ancient Irish goddess; etc.).
I’m thankful I don’t live in India.
when u don’t want to serve hungry people surrounded by…, u wont have right to say something which u don’t know anything about INDIA.
It seems like you haven’t started living… you are just pretending that you are a human being…
Taslima,
This is true:
We are just apes with slightly larger brains. We love to kill people.
We love to do things for ourselves. All of these different societies are just that: Different societies. Tribes.
What you seem to be doing is scolding humanity for not being what you want it to be.
Humans are exactly what they should be : animals.
Blaming people for not being what they might otherwise be is not a useful exercise. We shouldn’t be ashamed that we’re just animals with bigger brains. That’s what we are.
Not to say we can’t alleviate poverty – but that we *don’t* is entirely unsurprising.
Unless you believe in a “hell” where we go to after death, or that there’s some all-powerful being who will punish us for not living up to some standard, this kind of shaming is not useful.
There will always, always be poverty and wealth. It will alwyas be unequally distributed. This is our fate. Both luck, industry, skill, and inherent ability change our wealth. Some people are poor because of bad government, bad choices, a less productive culture, etc.
Not all cultures are equal. Some are just better than others at doing some things. Vikings were excellent navigators, conquerors, warriors, both men and women. Koreans, not so much.
The happy thing is that cultures can change.
But there’s more than one reason why Somalia is poor and starving. It has as much to do with its internal cultural structures as it has to do with the rest of the world.
If you transplanted 100 Japanese people into a new environment, they would likely create another Japan.
If you transplanted modern SOmalis into the same environment, their new country would likely look like Somalia.
This is how cultures work. it’s how they’re always worked. This is the very nature of culture.
In response to the post saying that humans are just acting like animals and that’s why Indians kill their girl children…that’s a load of crap. No animal systematically kills half its own species because of gender. Oh, and before you say “but female spiders kill the males after mating”, know that female spiders don’t hunt down and kill any male they see, and they don’t kill young male spiders as they hatch from their eggs. Femicide is a product of culture, not our animal nature.
What makes this our fate? How is inequality on the scale we have globally humanity’s destiny? That’s ridiculous. Do you have anything but excuses and poorly thought out thought experiments to make your case.
P.S. If you took 100 people from any country and expected them to recreate that country you know nothing of the diversity people share. 100 USians? North or South? Liberal, Republicans, Social Conservatives, who? Are they educated? Do they understand governance? Seriously this has to be the dumbest thing I’ve read today.
Um, yes it is. That’s how you point out when people cause harm by not living up to their potential.
Blaming people for not being what they cannot be is pointless.
This is the only good point in your post.
(Though it’s not like the OP tried to make anyone feel ashamed for that, it was rather an appeal to use that extra portion of brains more to make our lives nicer than that of a standard ape with standard brains.)
Look, you tend to have one pretty good point, and then devalue it by burying it all in totally overdone ev-psych.
Like when you lump together people in a country as one homogeneous “culture” in this post, or fail to notice that many “cultural” behaviours are highly dependent on local conditions.
And such explanations usually take a nosedive, and sound like “the status quo with all its flaws is the natural state, so changing it is wrong and impossible”.
If this is not what you’re trying to say, please have a good hard think about the popular deterministic ev-psych ideas, in particular their general validity and their simple applicability to complex questions.
Oh dear, oh, dear, the same old lies – that Taslima is “shaming” and her approach is oh so wrong. Yeah – her and Jonathan Swift and George Orwell. They’re not in the company of the millennium’s great intellect, as represented here by Gorbachev.
Shaming is only OK when the white racist imam Gorbachev does it to non-white women – not otherwise. Otherwise, we have to get his permission first.
I’m sure thankful not to be Gorbachev. Ay, and to have the honesty to face what first-world countries do to third-world countries in the name of “bringing democracy” – every bit as horrible and lunatic and savage as any treatment India metes out to Indian women. My ability to criticize is not the kind that sees little wrong with what my culture does while shaming other cultures. Oops – of course, if it’s Gorbachev doing the shaming, it’s OK.
“Blaming people for not being what they might otherwise be is not a useful exercise.” There’s blame, and there’s responsibility. The latter is what Taslima’s talking about. The former is what you do to her. Learn to tell the difference. I know it’s hard, but you can do it.
I hope.
Pst. Thanks for calling the Creepy Guy on his shit.
Is everyone else as creeped out as I am by the number of personal attacks against Taslima? It’s sorta like watching Creepy Bus Guy harassing an underage girl. The rest of the people on the bus really hate having our mellow harshed by Creepy Bus Guy, the rest of us are grateful when someone calls CBG on his shit and when CBG stomps off at the next stop, the rest of us point and laugh and wonder aloud if the reason CBG dumps his negs on girls is that he’s still mad at his mommy for making him use the potty.
If Taslima writes like a baby feminist who is just learning how horrific the world can be and her prose is nearly incoherent with grief and rage and you’ve decided to make snarky comments about her, consider this your warning: the rest of us reading her blog assume that you’re just missing your diaper.
Creepy fucker is super creepy. Stalkerish. Hateful. Unhinged.
I like this blog a lot, and I have to skip past his bizarre walls of text attacking Taslima on every post.
Unhinged and in a diaper, stamping his feet at all mommies who’d tell him that we should use the potty. FSM! We can’t even have an adult conversation about creating a more equitable culture (one that doesn’t take millions of starving children as a given) without foot stamping and diaper stink. Super Creepy Diaper Guy.
Misogynists always try to silence their critics, whether it be by belittling them, threatening them, or murdering them.
THANK YOU —
“…the number of personal attacks…” I’ve been blown away at the demands and ultimatums. These posts help me in my life and I read them as sheer poetry. So, I’m a Taslima sycophant I guess, if I’m using that word correctly.
My ultimatum — Taslima, if you dare change a thing, I’m NEVER going to read you again!!
(yes i will)
I don’t understand how anyone can be a billionaire and live with themselves. I can understand wanting 5 or 6 million. Wanting for you and your family to have a nice life without money worries.
But a Billion? No one needs that kind of money. If I ever became a billionaire I would quicky educate myself on where I could do the most good donating it.
I think instead of getting celebrities to make pleas to the general public, it should be people in this country who can barely aford their house going “You know what Bono? Things are a bit tight at the moment, but I’ll do my best to donate a twenty to comic relief. But why don’t you just donate a fucking Billion!”.
These blog enteries are important because it snaps us out of our little bubbles, and makes us face up to just how many shit, selfish people there are in the world. It’s so depressing I can barely even stand it.
Yes we are just animals, and I guess no one can really help their personality, but those of us who are capable of empathy can at least be awakened with articles like this. Most people are sheep and their morals are based on what the people around them tell them is right and wrong. It seems people who can actually think for themselves are pretty rare. So somehow we need to get those idiots to comprehend that it’s actually not ok to kill youre daughter. How many people who are disgusted that goes on would have killed their own daugher if they had been brought up in India? I would hate to think.
It’s always the most shit selfish people (ok MEN) who get into power, when the people who possess enough inteligence and empathy to make good leaders, don’t have the ego to want to run the world, so they become doctors.
Simple cruel fact is that the rich have the money and power and the poor have children, ever more children. When wealth depended upon having the hands to do the work the rich needed the poor. Used to be a workable compromise there somewhere in the middle. Not so much any more. Automation, gains in efficiencies, and compound interest (money making money) the people with money and power don’t want or need the poor so very much.
The second cruel fact is that humans are just as subject to commoditization as anything else. When supply exceeds demand the price goes down. Human life is the one commodity that has almost always gotten cheaper. That unpleasantness with the black death killing off a third of the population may have triggered the industrial revolution by making labor more expensive. But with that exception it has been a relatively smooth slide down. According to rich mans accounting rules the per unit price for a life in much of the world is less than the cost of providing the wherewithal for maintaining that life. And with better than seven billion of us, going to ten billions all too soon, the price is only going to go down.
On the individual experiential side of things the bad news is that dying is never easy. There are no good ways to die. The good news is that death by starvation is, according to people voluntarily starving themselves to death, not one of the more terrible ways to go. Near the end the mind drifts off into dreamlike state and the body simply loses power.
Of course no suffering is so bad that it can’t be made worse. Given the calculus of the situation, the area under the curve of time and sufering, a little food is far more cruel than no food. To die from starvation isn’t nice or pretty. It sucks. But the terrible thing about starvation is the opportunity for sadist, often cloaked in sweet words and good intentions, to bring people to the doorstep of death, and then drag them back so they can do it all over again. Each iteration of this process takes a toll on the mind and body. That is the sad story of how guilt driven charity works in all to many places. Anyone touched to lend a hand needs to either commit to saving a group for their entire natural lifetime or accept the limitation of their good intentions.
That has been the story for thousands of years. The only change has been that the numbers of people and amount of capital have increased on both sides even as they two stay almost entirely separate. Separate except for one small exception, war. War, that bastard child of our good intentions and desire to have what we cannot get by words alone.
Both sides make war. The poor make war to gain power and wealth. The rich make war to keep power and wealth. War is the one remaining use that the rich have for their own poor. For the rich do not fight wars. They send poor people to do it for them. As cruel as this exploitation may be it is not one they visit on their own children. An all volunteer military is a marvelous salve for the conscience. Soldiering is more than a calling, its a job.
Cruel and heartless it is, but not so much as it is for the poor. For they send off their own children. Marriage may have had its origin in the desire to produce an army and maintain fidelity while men were away killing each other. Socially enforced fidelity and childbearing are at the root of misogyny. Right beside the divine right of kings to have armies and make war.
Of course the rich and poor don’t make war the same way. Until the Boer war any poor people who got too uppity and inconvenient were treated to a going over with the best arms money could buy and quickly defeated. Guerrilla tactics didn’t really change the balance of power, the big guys still won, mostly. Generally guerrilla tactics, the art of fighting without losing decisively, just increased the time and cost of domination. It wasn’t an automatic walk-over any more.
And then a little known Russian designer came up with the AK-47. A wonderful weapon. Cheap to produce, reliable, easy to use, and with a nearly endless useful life. A fifty year old AK is still quite effective and there is every expectation that, with a little care and luck, it will still be shooting for another fifty years.
No longer is sending our poor to fight their poor enough. It suddenly got real in a way the wealthy cannot ignore. The price went up. Suddenly poor people in impoverished lands are not a problem that can be ignored. They have the means to renegotiate the contract. There is literally no structure, physical or social, that cannot be made non-functional by a relatively small band of people wielding AKs. The wealthy nations, run by wealthy people, can no longer ignore the plight of the distant poor because they are now armed and dangerous to their plans and bank accounts.
I would think that there would be some sort of compromise based upon trading food, water, and livelihood for not having children and not causing problems but both sides think this proposal is the height of stupidity. It seems to violates the prerogatives of both parties. The right of the poor to have as many children as they like, and use their suffering as proof of victimisation, and the right of the rich to do as they damn well please with money.
Neither side is willing to contemplate that deal. Children are cheap and easy to produce and wars haven’t bankrupted any billionaires so far. But modern warfare is still young and energy is still cheap. Neither side wants to give up on winning it all and accept compromise. Give it time. That is where we will end up.
ouch that’s got to be one of the most goddamded, fucking profound things i’ve ever read in my entire life..??something to think about – thanks, sincerely
On the hunger issue: As harsh and a humanitarian crisis these deaths are. I can’t help but wonder about the change in populations in these areas since this time when we had apparently dealt with world hunger.
I can’t help but feel that sending aid will just lead to a bigger problem next year.
Also, while I agree that having billionaires is more or less ludicrous, it is not worth the effort to put all Earth’s resources into feeding the population (ceteris paribus). It, for instance, is a much better idea to put that money into developing drought resistant crop etc.
Do not sacrifice tomorrow for today…
On the female infanticide: Not sure what to say, but the problem will eventually rectify itself. Females will run out if you keep killing them. These things won’t change unless the culture changes. Cultures are slow changing reservoirs of ideas and rituals, especially collectivistic cultures have proven extremely resilient against rational change.
I do not really see a reasonable solution here aside from military intervention.
Your point that simply feeding every mouth will only result in more mouths to feed next year is a good one, and the same one I wanted to make.
The simple truth is that human beings are not immune to the simple ecological fact that a population will always expand to fill its available resources. Where food is the limiting factor, increasing the food supply will increase the population, almost invariably. Humans lived as essentially modern people, anatomically and mentally, for perhaps 200,000 years at a low and mostly stable population, not through any conscious effort, but because our food supply was limited by the naturally sustainable yield per acre of wild spaces. Once we started producing food technologically, though, we uncoupled ourselves from that limiter and the train started barreling forward at exponentially-increasing speeds.
So there is no apparent end to hunger, outside of lowering birth rates through a non-ecological process (what we’re seeing right now is the result of the ecological process–systemic starvation of a portion of the population). And that is a tricky thing to do.
Western countries seem to have managed it somehow, though I’m not sure a consensus exists on exactly how. I’m sure it has more than a little to do with the empowerment of women to control their own mate choices, reproduction, and life roles.
So just maybe, fighting the oppression of women, the systemic denial of their humanity, their intelligence, their competence and their agency, will do more than just liberate women. It might just save us all in the end. Certainly worth a thought. 🙂
As Uncephalized says,
So just maybe, fighting the oppression of women, the systemic denial of their humanity, their intelligence, their competence and their agency, will do more than just liberate women. It might just save humanity
I agree completely.
The death and dying from hunger we see now is the result not just of billionaires, it’s the result of biology: food is not equitably distributed, and there’s always been hunger. If you increase the supply of food, then the animals increase, until they’re in the same situation as they were before.
The problem with most redistributionist schemes, communism or socialism included, is that they don’t address *making* new food or products – just spreading around what exists. Also, they reward lack of production.
The problem with most feudal / capitalist models is that they reward concentration of resources, and the maintenance of lack of opportunity among the masses – deilberately, in order to maintain relative power and control.
Both of these mechanisms are offshoots of natural human instincts: Share and keep for yourself.
All aspects of our lives are governed by larger systems built on the most basic human instincts.
Liberating women changes everything. FOr one, it liberates men. Ultimately, feminism will lead to a situation where men are no longer held automatically on the hook for paternity support, or whatever else is thrown at them – largely as a result of feminism. Just because your GF gets pregnant, doesn’t mean you have any connection to the child at all. At some point, the old patriarchal codes, in which a man was held just as resonsible if not moreso, but not given any paternal rights, will be discarded. It’s already happening. Already, the “male pill” is in the works, with several models. When this is widely distributed, it will fundamentally re-alter the balance of power when it comes to reproduction: it will no longer be possible for women to get pregnant without the wilfull consent of men.
At that point, reproductive politics will balance out, for maximal freedom for both genders. This means almost all pregnancies will be carefully planned and negotiated. It also means, almost assuredly, a drop in population.
At least in advanced countries. Who knows what will prevail in Africa or South Asia.
But it certainly means that feminism, in its liberating form, is a net positive.
I think that can be greatly simplified by simply insisting on equality for individuals.
I am quite confident that full equality of all sexes/genders etc. will help. Considering that some women even in more secular countries can barely tell their spouse ‘no’ when this spouse desires more children (But barely takes part in raising them).
Individuals have better things to do than to pop out child after child, so there would at least be a stronger measure of population control, which in turn could hopefully lead to an improvement in the quality of life.
Or at the very least would make it actually possibly to implement structural changes that would lead to improvement.
For that matter, that’s the core of the problem I think – this hunger and its causes *are* structural. Just attacking the symptoms, by throwing food at it, just directly feeds into the causes. Not to mention most of the aid never reaches those in need, but instead fuels into causes as well.
And then there’s religion preventing many changes as well, many of which had led to the enlightenment in the west.
It’s as if the predominent religions in that area learned from the ‘mistakes’ of the (now) more westernized religions. It seems to me that they now *know* that, for instance, science does not ever lead to the same thing as their relative holy books. Therefore they will not give it free reign, hardly, the contrary is more true.
The best solution I can so far think of is perhaps to offer solid free lower level education to whomever is willing, in a safe way. It’d be quite a long-term plan though, and most people would probably be too busy to survive.
Harshly, it won’t go on forever though. Farmable land is eroding away really fast, and will soon sustain even less population than before. Perhaps the future will come with those lower numbers.
I am quite willing to hear other alternatives, but the question is: can the world wait? Production is finite, and we still need to propel ourselves into a new age, preferably one of fusion and solar power, lest we will all find ourselves in that situation.
Look,
it’s one thing to accuse me of being a creep, but the way it’s used, it’s nothing more than a stereotypical word used solely against men you don’t like. It actually has no meaning whatsoever – it’s a catch-all female word, used only by women, by and large, to silence men. “Oh, you’re a creep.”
So I’m calling you out on that.
But the gist of these kinds of posts is this:
“Humans did this, they’re evil, blah blah blah, and men kill women. (the last two sentences)”.
This contributes little. it presumes we’re not supposed to do this. I’m not saying it’s good: But it presumes that this is not part and parcel of the human experience.
Religious moralists do the same thing with sex, with food, with everything: Natural instincts are attacked.
In this case, we’re not living on the savannas or the edges of forests in Africa. We’re living in state societies. People are rich and poor, often based on luck of birth or work or tragedy.
I challenge anyone to ocme up with positive solutions to these vexing issues of the human soul. How to combat and eliminate poverty? Is simply taking it from those with resources good enough? We tried that; it was an abysmal failure. The communist world was bankrupted within 3 generations. Socialism is a great idea, but it’s not well-suited to the human psyche or spirit. Paradoxically, it grinds people and societies down.
Where do you draw the line? One million dollars? Two?
Given the paucity of actual billionaires, even if you took all their money, there isn’t nearly enough to dent the levle of poverty in the world.
Only wealth *creation* can do this.
Unfortunately, our models for wealth creation are second-rate. Either they end up in feudal systems like ours (a few billionaires try to control everything and have no interest in making others wealthy) or a government steps in and always fails to generate wealth, due to inevitable and unavoidable corruption, waste and lack of motivation.
It’s not really distribution that’s the problem. It’s a problem.
The poor could grow their wealth if we had a consistent way for them to do it. it wouldn’t matter how rich the rich were. Alas, no matter how well elaborated either *redistribution* or *market capitalist* models are, neither seems to work well.
Simply taking from one to give to another is no long-term solution, and it also requires force.
Simply waiting for those without to generate their own wealth also may not work.
Again: We’re up against human nature. Both capitalist and anti-capitalist mechanisms refuse to deal with the perverse nature of humans.
it’s not a question of balance. I’m convinced the basics of human psychology have not been incorporated into our idealized economic and social models.
We idealize people, one way or another. We need to stop doing this. We need to stop expecting all that much from people. if we do this, we might actually be able to provide for everyone.
There are a number of stories about photographer Kevin Carter and his famous picture. Wikipedia has a couple of the more believable ones listed in the article about Carter. I always recommend checking into the background of morally polarizing news stories and photos of this sort. Sometimes they are fakes or photo illusions, sometimes the stories are better or worse than rumor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Carter
The ultimate proof we’re just a bunch of social mammals:
We’re breeding and eating our way to vast numbers. As the ecological machine grinds to a halt because we over-consume, our populations will crash, and reach a new equilibrium.
Sounds a lot like we’re just a bunch of rats, voles, or deer. Pretty much all animals do this. We’re doing nothing that our biosocial programs don’t tell us to do.
Some animals have more (mate more, are more successful); some males are left out and die on their own (social homelessness is a common fate for male social primates, rarer for females), and most animals breed until they max out their resources.
if you create more food, the population just increases again. And the same problem.
If you want to stpo this, you need to change the animal nature of humans. But most of this comes from the logic of being alive in the first place. The basic game theory, the logic, of life almost inevitably results in the same scenarios for all lifeforms.
We’re just better at it than most other animals. What we acdtually do is no different, really.
Except that our populations actually seem to decrease at a certain level of education / wealth. In many Western countries birth-rates are quite a bit below 2 per couple.
So we can quite well be sustained easily on this world.
you could have a great blog right here! would you like to make some invite posts on my blog?
i’m actually only a teenager. my dream is to help starving people and do all sorts of volunteer work. reading this blog pushes me to achieve my dream
It is sad that there are kids out there that are going through this and nobody is thinking about when you eat a whole meal what that would mean to them I personally think america should stand up and do something about it cause right now not much has changed comment or send a friend request on facebook to Kayleah Qualls if you agree if you are those people with a heart you would do one of those things thankyou to the ones that do
Why are we fighting hunger instead of birthrates? Less mating would mean less deaths and less drain on earth’s resources.
Oh the beautiful world and so beautiful human beings why we are fighting for what we are fighting. If we can’t stop.it means we seems like a human but we not.maybe am wrong but its truth.if all will die then no need to think about tomorrow and share our life spend with them they need our help pls live like a flower behave like a bird.am so sorry if I hurt you.lord always be with you with peace and love.
i like to know the reason why our india become hunger country though it is a agricultural country.
Thousands of human beings dying of hunger in this world and the people from food shows WASTING AND PLAYING!!! with it just for fun…e.g. “Epic Meal Empire” among others!
i am ready to do some thing for them plese do some thing
Hi,
Please tell me how can we prevent this from the planet man? Enough is Enough. What to do now.
Mam you are too good, I think we can solved this problem, If we want. You say 578 million in Asia, I know we can not solved full problem but we can try our level best. Mam I am ready please tale me what is next, How may i help this people.
“Six million children die of hunger every year”
With another words, we have every Year one Holocaust!!!
its really hard to believe for me…..
and…
waiting for change…
I wish a world with equal opportunities for all.