Tuesday, September 22, 2009

No change

Do you remember 2005? Cast your mind back .540 NGOs, unions . church and charitable organisations marching in Edinburgh during the G-8 government conference to "Make Poverty History" with minstrel Bob Geldof providing the soundtrack. A quarter of a million on the streets expressing good will and empathy with suffering fellow humans. They had no blueprint for change other than the three demands put forward by the Make Poverty History campaign – fair trade, more aid and debt cancellation. All failed to address the root cause of the problems of capitalism and , regardless of whatever good intentions , they ended up promoting the damnable system they were all so critical of by applauding any meagre reform that emerged from Gleneagles.

What is the situation in Africa today in 2009 ?

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said nearly 20 million persons in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia had become dependent on relief following poor harvest this year, combined with armed conflicts and population displacements.

FAO's Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit said Somalia was facing the worst humanitarian crisis in 18 years, with approximately half the population--an estimated 3.6 million--in need of emergency life-saving assistance.

Mozambique's National Institute of Disaster management (INGC) said on Tuesday about 275,000 people in the country need food aid.

Capitalism cannot be reformed in the interests of the world’s suffering billions, because reform does not address the basic contradiction between profit and need. It is now no utopian fantasy – but a practical, revolutionary proposition – to suggest we can live in a world without waste or want or war, in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation.We certainly have the science, the technology and the know-how. All that is missing is the will – the global desire for change that can make that next great historical advance possible; a belief in ourselves as masters of our own destiny; a belief that it is possible to free production from the artificial constraints of profit and to fashion a world in our own interests.

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