appeal.

[substitute]

Famine in Niger, war and famine in Sudan, famine and disease after the tsunami, predatory landlords, dirty drinking water, the abuse of women and children, yet more war everywhere, AIDS, hurricanes, the impossible life of the subsistence farmer, drought, endless cycles of poverty and corruption, malaria, and still more war.

What's a person to do?

Give a few bucks to Oxfam if nothing else. 77% of their donations and 90% of their emergency fund donations go directly to operations. They help in emergencies and crises, and they fight the root causes of the world's miseries too. They do it locally, with global reach.

For those outside the U.S., the donation link is this one.

Comments

[stimps.livejournal.com]

They are goooood people. When I went to Haiti for hospital-building, they were the guys I was working for.

[bruisedhips.livejournal.com]

I love oxfam. I never understood why it's all about the red cross here? and not oxfam?

[substitute.livejournal.com]

Because the Red Cross is America, and particularly supports the American military, and is particularly tied in with American business. The Red Cross sells the blood they take from donors to private businesses who then sell it to hospitals, and they use the money as they please.

They're very much a national charity and a Christian charity, as much as they'd like to be seen as more universal. And I won't give them a fucking dime. Partly because of that, and partly because they charged my grandfather for coffee in the first world war and he said never to give them anything.

Oxfam is too involved in the root causes of poverty and political activism in poor countries for most Americans; they find it suspiciously lefty.

[eyeteeth.livejournal.com]

The Red Cross claims it only sells the blood to cover the cost of handling it and testing it for diseases and stuff. Do you think that's a lie or an oversimplification? Because if it's true it doesn't seem so bad, except for the part about the middlemen.

[substitute.livejournal.com]

From my understanding it is simply a lie. They get way more blood than they can ever use when they make an appeal, and then it's just another way to make money for their chosen purposes, including their huge overhead and their executives with six figure salaries.

Famine (sorry if this is out of place)

[eamajyn.livejournal.com]

The following is not to say that I disagree with charity, because if I had the money I would totally be a philanthropist. I just thought it was an interesting applicable point and felt like sharing.

Your species is not exempt from the biological realities that govern all other species. Famine isn't unique to humans. All species are subject to it everywhere in the world. When the population of any species outstrips its food resources, that population declines until it's once again in balance with its resources. Mother Culture says that humans should be exempt from that process, so when she finds a population that has outstripped its resources, she rushes in food from the outside, thus making it a certainty that there will be even more of them to starve in the next generation. Because the population is never allowed to decline to the point at which it can be supported by its own resources, famine becomes a chronic feature of their lives.
If you can move food in, you can also move people out, can't you? Move them out to some part of the world where there's an abundance of food. Instead, you'd rather exercise your philanthropy by maintaining them in a state of chronic starvation. So much for benevolence.

~Ishmael

I don't really see a solution, but until there is one I think doing something is better than doing nothing.

Re: Famine (sorry if this is out of place)

[substitute.livejournal.com]

Oxfam is exactly intended to attack the causes of poverty and famine simultaneously with helping in emergencies; it's not just charity, it's change.

I also had a pretty violent reaction to that paragraph, which seems to have been written by a very well-fed person.

Re: Famine (sorry if this is out of place)

[eamajyn.livejournal.com]

It's awesome that there is an organization that addresses the causes and not just the effects, which I think was the point of the paragraph. Sorry it came off negatively.