famine

May we always be burdened with thinking of the suffering of others, for that is what it means to be human.

Behjet eased the horse forward again. "The harvest is failing. There will be no crop at all if this rain doesn't stop - not even hay."The rain. The rain she'd been so grateful for, the rain that concealed the warping of her shadow. It was going to kill people.

Famine sometimes increases the number of people who are overweight.

Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. thats all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread.

Nobody knows how many North Koreans have died or are dying in the famine__ome estimates by foreign-aid groups run as high as three million in the period from 1995 to 1998 alone__ut the rotund, jowly face of Kim Il Sung still beams down contentedly from every wall, and the 58-year-old son looks as chubby as ever, even as his slenderized subjects are mustered to applaud him.

As UC Berkeley economics professor Brad DeLong put it to me:You get famine if the price of food spikes far beyond that of some people's means. This can be because food is short, objectively. This can be because the rich have bid the resources normally used to produce food away to other uses. You also get famine when the price of food is moderate if the incomes of large groups collapse.... In all of this, the lesson is that a properly functioning market does not seek to advance human happiness but rather to advance human wealth. What speaks in the market is money: purchasing power. If you have no money, you have no voice in the market. The market acts as if it does not know you exist and does not care whether you live or die.DeLong describes a marketplace that leaves people to die - not out of malice , but out of indifference.

I once believed man was different from other animals, but Yodok showed me that reality doesn't support this opinion. In the camp, there was no difference between man and beast, except maybe that a very hungry human was capable of stealing food from its little ones while an animal, perhaps, was not.

People who get up early in the morning cause war, death and famine.

No man can rationally live, worship, or love his neighbour on an empty stomach.

They want us to be afraid. They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes. They want us to barricade our doors and hide our children. Their aim is to make us fear life itself! They want us to hate. They want us to hate 'the other'. They want us to practice aggression and perfect antagonism. Their aim is to divide us all! They want us to be inhuman. They want us to throw out our kindness. They want us to bury our love and burn our hope. Their aim is to take all our light! They think their bricked walls will separate us. They think their damned bombs will defeat us. They are so ignorant they don__ understand that my soul and your soul are old friends. They are so ignorant they don__ understand that when they cut you I bleed. They are so ignorant they don__ understand that we will never be afraid, we will never hate and we will never be silent for life is ours!

If we could change just one thing in time, what would we change?WARS, so that we could learn by our mistakes?FAMINE, so that we could feed the world's populace?DISEASE, so that we would never have any sick?POLLUTION, so that we would live in a pristine environment?GREED, so that we all learn that life isn't all about money?OLD AGE, so that we could all live forever?LOVE, so that we could all live in peace and harmony?BEING ALONE, so that we would never-ever be alone throughout life?MAN'S APATHY, so that he would truly understand what it's all about?The choice is hard, because no matter where we start, we will always leave out someone and something.

This is the body's nurse; but since man's witFound the art of cookery, to delight his sense,More bodies are consumed and kill'd with itThan with the sword, famine, or pestilence.

. . . every society that grows extensive lawns could produce all its food on the same area, using the same resources, and . . . world famine could be totally relieved if we devoted the same resources of lawn culture to food culture in poor areas. These facts are before us. Thus, we can look at lawns, like double garages and large guard dogs, [and Humvees and SUVs] as a badge of willful waste, conspicuous consumption, and lack of care for the earth or its people.Most lawns are purely cosmetic in function. Thus, affluent societies have, all unnoticed, developed an agriculture which produces a polluted waste product, in the presence of famine and erosion elsewhere, and the threat of water shortages at home.The lawn has become the curse of modern town landscapes as sugar cane is the curse of the lowland coastal tropics, and cattle the curse of the semi-arid and arid rangelands.It is past time to tax lawns (or any wasteful consumption), and to devote that tax to third world relief. I would suggest a tax of $5 per square metre for both public and private lawns, updated annually, until all but useful lawns are eliminated.

Here are two facts that should not both be true: - There is sufficient food produced in the world every year to feed every human being on the planet. - Nearly 800 million people literally go hungry every day, with more than a third of the earth's population -- 2 billion men and women -- malnourished one way or another, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Feel what it's like to truly starve, and I guarantee that you'll forever think twice before wasting food.