Understanding world hunger*

First published in National Indigenous Times 2005
http://www.nit.com.au/secure/story.aspx?storyid=4980

There are many ways to understand world hunger.  We could:
look into the eyes of a child dying of malnutrition,
talk to the owner of an arms manufacturing firm,
watch looters raiding an aid convoy,
sit in the office of engineers building huge dams in Laos,
speak with Monsanto about it patenting peasants’ seeds,
watch the American military’s invasion of Iraq,
walk for sixty miles beside a mother carrying her malnourished child,
observe Janjaweed militias burning villages in Darfur,
tour every refugee camp in the world,
go to lunch at Maxim’s, in Paris, with a foreign currency trader,
ask the Australian Prime Minister why he’s cut the foreign aid budget,
sit with Aborigines in their camps on the fringes of country towns,
try to understand why you did not donate to the last African appeal,
listen to the cries of the hungry, or
watch the crops withering on the vine.
We could, we could ….we could do lots of things.

* If one twelfth of the money which is spent on the world’s military was diverted we could feed, house, clothe, educate and provide basic health services to every person on the planet. Feed, house, educate or bomb, maim, kill – your choice.