Africa stopped in development. Unfortunately, this situation suits Europe and the U.S. Thanks from crazy taxi.

Andy—Food Not Bombs does not do handouts or charity.  Share International is mentioned in the Wikipedia article on Maitreya, although in orthodox Buddhist thought he is not due to come around for a few millennia yet.  Since FNB is already sharing food, perhaps he is secretly active in their midst.  However, most of the Food Not Bombers I know seem to be atheists or agnostics.

Stephen, November 23 at 5:11 pm:
‘There is an extraodinary man who is about to step forward publicly.

His solution is this:  Nations sharing the world’s food, creating true justice, is the only real way to end hunger forever, to ease the tension between nations, and to end war. ...’

When people become conscious enough to share the world’s food, they won’t need a great leader.  Some of them have already begun—see http://www.foodnotbombs.net/

Free trade?  Is there anything left in Africa that hasn’t been stolen?

Ironically, a cash injection is not required to relieve millions of their hunger - in fact, it can be done while SAVING billions of taxpayer dollars…

What is this miracle solution you ask? Just end the American and Western European subsidies for no-profitable agrarian projects (which ensure that world food-prices remain artificially high)... pretty damn simple really… save yourself some money (all the more to hand over to crooked banks) and at the same take the greatest single step toward reviving the greater African economy - the Western world owes them this, the practice of sending millions of aid-dollars directly into the private bank-accounts of the world’s most awful dictators is passe.

Fat Americans are disgusting, but not the problem - (genuine) free-trade is the answer, always was.

There maybe thousands or even millions dying everyday from hunger but that
has been as it is for a long long time or since the beginning of the agricultural age because with people starving to death it basically isn’t about the lack of food, it is what the ‘big food conglomerate businesses’ want to do with that supposedly surplus of food to maximize profits and minimize costs as the british so diligently demonstrated in the late victorian years, money rules over all including the feeding of those sacred cows, the people, where it is acceptable behavior to starve people to death in the pursuit of profits.

But this article fails me in that there is NO mention of the issues of trying to
keep feeding almost 7,000,000,000 people as if there just needs a few more
forests to be knocked down and turned into fields and pastures to feed this
over abundance of humanity who are nothing more than the planetary cancer
that will without some kind of control have serious and dire consequences for
the whole of the human population, because like blackmail, this will require radical treatment if humane ways can’t or won’t do it.

Obese people are often poorly nourished.

An obese woman standing in front of me with a food stamp benefit card had two
wagons full of goodies. I asked her why she needed so much food and she replied
that she was HUNGRY.  This took place in the US, but there are millions around
the world that truly need more food.

I thought the world, or some of it, was angry at “us” for dropping bombs on them; it’s news to me that anyone abroad is angry at “us” for throwing “our” funny money at moribund corporations.  Well, maybe Chinese bankers—but they encouraged “us” in the first place, so they have no one to blame but themselves.

Also, maybe they’re annoyed with “us” for sending them trashy movies which they snap up as fast as “we” put them out. Let them eat DVDs.

to melpol: Have you seen the condition of Calif. lately? Oh, and look what we’ve got in Okla. now. Inhoufe & Coburn. Boy, are we making progress!

Stories of the drought in Oklahoma which took place in the early part of the 20th
century and its victims should serve as an inspiration to the unemployed and
dispossessed. A hundred thousand unemployed farm workers hitched a ride or
walked to California where they got jobs harvesting grapes. Many of them are now
the land owners of the state.

to anarcissie: god is love; love is blind; Stevie Wonder is blind; Stevie Wonder is…...?

God is love.

To say that problems like world hunger, war, cruelty and disease are unsolvable is to cause people who don’t know the facts to feel helpless, to sign off and do nothing.  That’s why the cliches like “powerless,” inevitable,” “out of control,” “humans have always ... this or that” and “you can’t change human nature” are so beloved by people who are either ignorant or unkind. It lets them off the hook of responsibility and guilt.  If there’s nothing worth doing, they need not do it. It’s not their fault if kids die of hunger. 

Well, years ago it dawned on a lot of people that they could do something, and they did it.  They began by writing down words like:  “Do unto others as you would want others to do unto you.”  And “Do not ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.”  And “So long as one person has less than he needs and I have more than I need, I am a theif.”  And “You get what you give.” And “It is harder for a rich man to get into Heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.” The idea caught on.

Besides, we in the U.S. use at least 4 times more of the world’s resources as ..(I forget the rest of the comparison, but it doesn’t matter anyhow.  The first 15 words ought to be enough to make a stone bring forth water).  We owe them.

anarcrissie: your final paragraph speaks directly to the insolubility of the problem. Be fruitful and multiply for the lord has given you dominion over the Earth!

I offered a fact which directly contradicts the popular cliché that present hunger and starvation are due to excess population.  I am surprised I have to spell that out.

The next move will probably someone writing that the Earth cannot support an infinitely large population, the script decorated with various apocalyptic images and dire predictions.  However, as I have not said that the Earth can support an infinitely large population, it will be irrelevant.  In fact, I have not said that the Earth can sustain even the present population.  I have merely noted an interesting fact which I will forbear to repeat.

The reason I make note of this fact is that the idea that hunger and starvation are due to population means the problem is insoluble.  You just can’t stop all those people from having a lot of children, and even if you started exterminating them now, it would take a long time and they would probably grow back.

However, if hunger and starvation are due to politics, maybe something can be done about them.

I also encourage people to reject natalism, but this requires most of them to reject their favorite religion or superstition, so it isn’t going to be easy to bring about.

Travesty.

To Anarcissie: AND YOUR POINT?

Actually, there was more hunger, more starvation, more famines, when the world’s population was much smaller.

There’s only so much agar on our planetary petrie dish and we the bacteria just can’t stop our feed/reproduce cycle.

Why is Amy Goodman so completely insensitive to Thanksgiving being a day of genocide celebration?  Is it because she is a Jew?  Perhaps!  Jew’s have a news blackout on any genocide other than the Jewish Holocaust.  So, it is not just zionists who practice genocide exclusivity. 

The American Indian genocide killed over one hundred million Natives, either by killing or the purposeful spreading of disease.  The early invaders celebrated Thanksgiving each time they wasted an American Indian village.  Thanksgiving was a celebration of death and genocide. 

I have grown sick of Jews walking on American Indians.  Goodman should be condemned for her careless writing and intellectual dishonesty. 

Apologists need not respond.

There’s also Food Not Bombs if you’d like to actually give people actual food instead of write a check to some organization.  http://www.foodnotbombs.net/

Let me say, though, that hungry people don’t always smile when you give them food; they are often depressed or angry and handing them a can of beans doesn’t make it all instantly all right.

That hunger, malnutrition and starvation are not caused by lack of food or an abstraction like poverty but by politics is demonstrated by the fact that there are so many hungry people in the U.S., a country with agricultural surpluses and a major exporter of food.  The fact is, some people profit from the deprivation of others—that’s the kind of system we live under—and you can do something about it if you don’t like it.

War, to your average politician, is so much more exciting and lucrative compared to fighting famine.

Raj Patel;
“The reason that we have this huge increase in hunger
in the United States, as around the world, isn’t
because there isn’t enough food around. Actually, we
produced a pretty reliable solid crop last year. ...
The reason people go hungry is because of poverty.”
=============================================
This isn’t new knowledge for me, but I only heard
this for the first time just over a year ago,
probably on Democracy Now. MSM would have us believe
there is a world food shortage and it’s the opposite;
there is a surplus. Poverty is the most violent form
of terrorism.

Places to donate and help feed hungry children:
  Oxfam International, Goodwill, Salvation Army, United Nations World Food Program, Mercy Corps, NetAid.com, Stop Hunger Now, Freedom from Hunger, Care, Mennonite Service Committee. Friends Service Committee.
  Look any of them up via Google, or find others.
  Imagine the smiles, and do it again next week, or next month. And after that, again.  And again.
Think what just one million x $10.00 would do, especially if it came in regularly, like kids need to eat regularly.  And ... STOP THE WARS and redirect that money.  So much can be done—if people like us will do it.  Thanks, Amy.