World Food Programme cuts food aid for N.Korea, says worse ahead

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PEK65611.htm

BEIJING, March 26 (Reuters) - The World Food Programme is slashing food rations for North Korea's hungry children, women and the elderly and said on Saturday that the problem would worsen if it is unable to raise new cash and food pledges.

The WFP has been active in the isolated North Korea since 1995, when it was invited to help ease widespread famine after natural disasters and bad harvests. Aid experts say more than 1 million people have died.

"We've already had to make some cutbacks. We stopped giving vegetable oil to 900,000 elderly people already," Anthony Banbury, the WFP's Asia regional director, told a news conference in Beijing after a five-day trip to North Korea -- his third.

"As of next week, we have to stop providing vegetable oil ration to kindergarten children, nurseries and pregnant and nursing women," said Banbury, who made a stopover in Beijing on his way to Bangkok where he is based.

Cutting rations of vegetable oil, which is enriched with vitamins, would have a significant nutritional impact on the recipients, many of whom are malnourished children.

more

[Deja Q]

1. Oh. Good. That'll make them a peaceful country.

Not.

It's generally a truism that if you be a friend, you'll become a friend.

Of course, making enemies is sometimes inevitable as, for some those you're dealing with, may be subhuman backstabbing slime. N Korea is surely no friend and likely won't ever be, but if they perceive events to be acts of aggression, they might respond with real aggression. And they've got nukes.

How do you tell a country full of starving, malnourished, people that there aren't enough resources to go around and ask them to merely sit back and continue to rot in pain? It's a human truism that people belittled, battered, or betrayed don't respond kindly to negative happenstances.

[Toots]

4. Why is it you feel like this about N Korea but S Koreans don't?

South Korea is the country that was attacked not the US and yet the South Koreans want to heal their wounds and become friendly nations. What do you know about the N Koreans that the South Koreans don't know?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

6. I think you need to read HypnoToad's post again....

If I'm reading it correctly he feels, as do I, that N. Korea is being backed into a corner by outside forces led by the rightwing rulers of the US.

Historically, when countries have been left with little or no options they come out swinging. I really believe that Herr Busch and his merry band of NeoCons wants N. Korea to attack somewhere so that the NeoCons will get a chance to use some of those nukes that are just sitting around.

None of this has anything to do with how S. Korea feels one way or another.

None of this has anything to do with what's right or unfair.

It has everything to do with the PNAC plan for world domination through economic, political and military means.

[cliss]

9. As the world's attention is focused on the Middle East......

the Korean peninsula becomes less stable. I agree with you that North Korea is being backed into a corner. We need to look at this from Washington's point of view. From a power-mongering point of view, not in terms of what is right or fair.

1) Bush has already antagonized Kim Jong Il by including him in the 'Axis of Evil'. N.Korea comes out with statements on a regular basis threatening to take action, or that they have nukes, or that Cheney is "a pile of garbage". Think of a terrified little chihuahua, backed into a corner in the kitchen, with a very large Rottweiler hovering over him. That little dog is going to yap and screech and snap.

2) Now watch the situation get magnified with food subsidies getting cut off. The desperation level will get worse as people start dying in greater numbers. This could trigger some kind of nuclear event, as Washington looks on.

This instability is going to affect South Korea, by the way. They will not be able to sit on the sidelines as millions starve to death nearby. This could cause some kind of domino effect.

Vegetable oil? WTF is that?

[ckramer]

15. "Vegetable oil? WTF is that?"

Never cook yourself?

[teryang]

2. This was inevitable once we breached the agreed framework

Lack of energy leads to decreased irrigation and cultivation. We also cut off the food shipments we had promised. It all goes back to the failure to build the nuclear power plants we promised them. The Agreed Framework was something targeted by the neo-cons before they were elected.

[hippywife]

7. Yep...

this was a very enlightening and interesting program:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/

[Karmadillo]

3. Another starvation story! I bet the liberal media covers this day

after day after day. And I can't wait for the Republican/Democratic coalition that is so concerned about starvation to take action. If there's one thing we won't stand for in this country, it's starvation (these North Korean folks do have feeding tubes we can insert, right?).

[acmavm]

5. I totally agree with what you say. I always wonder how anyone would

think that they're really accomplishing anything by victimizing people who are already victims.

[NNN0LHI]

10. I bet they don't n/t

[Karmadillo]

11. Hour after hour. Day after day. This is starvation, man.

The liberal media will be all over like Tom DeLay on an illegal campaign contribution. Pictures of starving children, interviews with religious fundamentalists outraged at how our leaders are ignoring the plight of the suffering, you just wait. Probably a whole new cable channel devoted to the calamity. This is America. We care about life, and we won't stand for the starvation of innocents.

[seriousstan]

8. CHILD MALNUTRITION RATES IN NORTH KOREA FALL

BEIJING, 7 March 2005 – Malnutrition rates among children in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have declined in the past two years but remain relatively high, according to a new survey. UN agencies announcing the findings today said that substantial, well-targeted international assistance must be sustained to build on the gains.


The large-scale, random sample survey covered both child and maternal nutrition and was carried out last October by the government’s Central Bureau of Statistics and Institute of Child Nutrition, in collaboration with UNICEF and the World Food Programme.


The survey assessed 4,800 children under six years of age and 2,109 mothers with children under two across seven of the DPRK’s nine provinces and in the capital, Pyongyang.


The two UN agencies said that although the new assessment is not strictly comparable with the previous survey conducted in October 2002, positive trends are apparent:

- the proportion of young children chronically malnourished, or stunted (height-for-age), has fallen from 42 percent to 37 percent; and

- acute malnutrition, or wasting (weight-for-height), has declined from 9 percent to 7 percent.

http://www.wfp.org/index.asp?section=2

[solinvictus]

12. Great..

now we're facing a hungry nation that's politically backed into a corner with nuclear capability and a delivery system that could reach Hawaii or our west coast.

[Moderator]

13. kick to combine

[ckramer]

14. WFP cuts food aid for N.Korea, says worse ahead

The World Food Programme is slashing food rations for North Korea's hungry children, women and the elderly and said on Saturday that the problem would worsen if it is unable to raise new cash and food pledges.

The WFP has been active in the isolated North Korea since 1995, when it was invited to help ease widespread famine after natural disasters and bad harvests. Aid experts say more than 1 million people have died.

"We've already had to make some cutbacks. We stopped giving vegetable oil to 900,000 elderly people already," Anthony Banbury, the WFP's Asia regional director, told a news conference in Beijing after a five-day trip to North Korea -- his third.

"As of next week, we have to stop providing vegetable oil ration to kindergarten children, nurseries and pregnant and nursing women," said Banbury, who made a stopover in Beijing on his way to Bangkok where he is based.


link

The question is why all of the sudden they stop giving out food to NK?