...What is the most practical assistance Australia can contribute to the crisis which has again developed in the Horn of Africa. Should we play the “blame game” as populations perish from hunger? Or do we open the gate wider to refugees from the area.

...What is the genuine level of sympathy in Australia towards these people? Do we simply add money to the crisis and resist increased genuine refugee immigration from the area.

...How should Australians deal with the spectacle of hunger and suffering from this area of the globe which lurches in a perpetual crisis.

It eventually hit Bob Geldorf, what part of the problem was, when
he went back 20 years later, after his first attempt with Live Aid.
There were now twice as many people!

Somalia has one of the highest fertility rates on the planet at
over 6 children per woman. Ship in all the food you want, you will
land up with an ever larger problem. Until we start to address this
fundamental issue, there is little hope for this part of the planet.

Sad but true.

...But…Twenty years of civil war and anarchy are now combining as the perfect storm with the worst drought in sixty years. So Yabby, other factors are at play here. For a population reliant on, and an economy built on animals as representing everything necessary for survival; when animals are unable to survive, accordingly, neither do people attached to that economy survive without urgent foreign aid. I would suggest that population of any size is in jeopardy under such conditions.

...Of course one option is for the world to sit back and watch as Ethiopia mutates into a scorched desert of white and bleached bones of millions starved and dead from thirst, glistening in the sun. That is one option. Blame it on overpopulation if you wish.

DD, I think that you will find that every aid agency on the planet
will rush there. It is where all these billions in foreign aid
go. Mind you helping Somalia is not so easy, as Somali pirates will
hijack much of that aid and flog it on the open market.

Personally, you are of course free to sell all your belongings
and send the money to Africa, to save the starving babies.

So what do you care about more? A computer to fool around on OLO,
or those starving babies? We shall see the result.

Reality does not go away, when we close our eyes and wish it would.

To Yabby...

...I agree with your sentiment on the apparent hopelessness of the situation in Ethiopia. Just setting aside the emotive questions of personal support to hopeless causes (which Ethiopia is), and the long list of dictatorships which have become the only healthy growth industry through decades of perfecting the art of butchery, North Africa has produced; where did these avoidable situations leave the populations of tribesmen? Well the answer which constantly raises its head, is hungry and thirsty; and homeless, (if you wish to add that one in): And as nature contrives with the dictators to extend the misery to a scene from hell, contained in desperate camps of fleeing refugees covering fifty square kilometres, as is Dadaab in NE Kenya; mostly Ethiopians; a concluding future of hopelessness.

...Can we ignore their plight, and accept their condition is a result of their own making, one which they must pay with the token of hunger, the ultimate price of the lives of themselves and their families, by simply curling up and dying: A new paradigm for the West; we simply ignore human suffering by inuring ourselves to the pain and suffering of others and calm our disturbed conscience, by the self-justified argument that we are not to blame for the calamities of others: A calamity of their own making, listed under the heading of personal responsibility.

...This is a free and open discussion Yabby, we could go there, and maybe the argument is justified to actually ignore them to the end. After-all, whose responsibility are they?

Its not all gloom and doom, DD. I note in today's press that the
Australian Govt had already sent 40 million $ to assist with the
crisis, so we are doing our share. But I also noted an article
which reminded me that when the West tried to assist the starving
in Somalia in the early 90s, their troops and aid were attacked by
the local militia. So they pulled out, fair enough, Somalia is
a failed state.

I was once privy to a conversation between an Ethiopian and an
Eritrean, where one reminded the other how their nation had become
experts at dangling starving babies in front of Western tv cameras,
lo and behold, over the horizon boatloads of food would turn up.
It had become a huge business for them.

You may well find my comments heartless, but I have learned not
to have sleepless nights about the things which I cannot change.
At the end of the day, people have to want to help themselves.
I am all for assisting the third world with family planning, with
micro credit, with lobbying for peasants to have land title, for
things which help them help themselves.

But for the West to keep shipping more food which creates more people,
which increases the problem of drought and living within
a given environment, is really not going to solve anything, heartless
at is sounds.