Zimbabwe children eating toxic roots, rats -agency

[inanna]

Source: Reuters

LONDON, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Children in Zimbabwe are eating rats and inedible roots riddled with toxic parasites to stave off hunger because of chronic food shortages, an aid agency said on Thursday.

<snip>

Jacobs said many people in the Zambezi Valley, the poorest and driest area, were now surviving on a vile-tasting, fibrous root called makuri.

"It's got no nutritional value whatsoever. It tastes disgusting and it also has a parasite which attaches to it which is toxic," said Jacobs, who has just returned from the region.

"This is all they have to eat. You see babies eating it and toddlers eating it, and it's not digestible. It creates terrible stomach pains."

Read more: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/B273559.htm

[whistle]

1. That's compassionate globalization at work

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

2. no... that is what happens when you ban agriculture

and turn over all the farmland in the country to corrupt party loyalists only interested in land speculation and not farming. Although the DU Robert Mugabe Fan Club will be by shortly to explain how this is not his fault and if not for Tony Blair and Bill Clinton the Mugabe land reform plan would have been successful.

[izquierdista]

3. Same result

Globalization is just local cronyism on a larger scale. The REAL cause is not letting local people grow locally suitable crops and trade them in local markets unaltered by disruptive import subsidies.

Africa has the potential to produce plenty of food. Grains, http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309049903, vegetables, http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11763 and fruits, http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11879

What they DO need is the governmental support that is taken for granted in the US: water projects, county agricultural agents, roads to get their crops to market, rural electrification, and financing.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

6. This has nothing to do with globalization

The famine in Zimbabwe is a result of Robert Mugabe's criminal gangs running every last farmer in the country off their land, until very recently Zimbabwe was a functioning country with all the infrastructure you speak of and a significant exporter of food.

Unfortunately all the farmers black, white or otherwise have fled into the warm embrace of other African nations all to open to their agricultural expertise and in a country where most people bought their food at the local supermarket, subsistance agriculture is not a common skill among the urban population.

[Zhade]

20. CHILDREN ARE STARVING AND YOU TWO ARGUE OVER WHO STOLE THEIR BREAD?

A little perspective, like what to do to help - isn't THAT the priority?

[Dr. Strange]

21. The problem is...

how are you going to help if you don't know who/what stole the bread? Solving all of the globalization problems won't help those kids. policypunk is right: the problem was/is Mugabe. If you don't deal with him, the kids are almost certainly going to continue starving.

[reggie the dog]

17. they wanted to take the land from white people

and give it back to blacks, except that the black people that got the land were not farmers, they were, as you said, party loyal land speculators.

Bob Marley must be so sad to see what has happened after independence....

[Dorian Gray]

13. It has more to do

with the corrupt government and their cronies who have taken over Zimbabwe.

It's horrible. Those poor children.

[LeftishBrit]

14. True. Their country used to be one of the best places in Africa for growing food..

now they can't feed themselves and children are starving. It is truly awful.

[OKthatsIT]

4. Another reason to put the Federal Reserve CARTEL in jail.

squandering our hard earned money when we could help these babies.

[LeftishBrit]

15. Mugabe et al are the ones who really need to be in jail for this..

they have enriched themselves on the backs of their own people, and have robbed these poor babies of the basic necessities.

[WriteDown]

18. And how would the Fed do that?

Send money to Mugabe to distribute to the people? :eyes:

[AlphaCentauri]

5. What could they do with 700 billions?

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

7. well...

Mugabe would probably build a new palace with solid gold diamond encrusted toilets,

[AlphaCentauri]

8. is he living in a castle?

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

9. half white house \ half gene simmons house

[AlphaCentauri]

10. all presidents reside in a mansion

why he has to be the exception?

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

11. priorities

Robert Mugabe already had a mansion, but as his country was starving to death he decided he needed a new one a little more MTV Cribz worthy.

[AlphaCentauri]

12. I think there are other arguments that we can use to criticize him

Building a mansion is the less of them, many historic buildings have been build during hard times in many countries and there is always that RW dilemma that anyone who call him self socialist has to be in total misery while tyrants advocating free market can have all they want when their own people starve to death.

[jbane]

19. Are you actually taking up for this a-hole?

I guess Idi Amin and Pol Pot were freedom fighters, Stalin was a reformer and Mussolini a patriot.

[cobalt1999]

16. How long before people hang Mugabe from his new mansion?

It's amazing to me he has lasted as long as he has.

[Freddie Stubbs]

23. He'll live a comfortable retirement in exile

[iandhr]

22. Zimbabwe is in crisis...

...because of Mugabe. If right wing people were defending Augusta Pinochet we would flip out. I am new to posing on this sight I like most of it. But I can not stand anyone who tries to defend the thug. (Mugabe) His "land reform program" was not giving land to the people. He took land from wealthy people who were is appoints and gave it to his cronies. It would be like the administration seizing Pelosi's vineyards and giving them to Karl Rove.

[entanglement]

24. Tragic. However, Mugabe's thuggery shouldn't make anyone blind to the game being played by the UK

They don't care a whit for the suffering of Zimbabwe's people. (Read the smug, borderline racist and self-congratulatory articles in the loathsome UK press if you're in any doubt.) The real plan is to replace him with a more pliant leader (Tsvangirai) to gain easy access to that nation's immense mineral wealth. This is all the more urgent for them since they've seen the swift expansion of Chinese interests in that region. Caught between competing imperialist and capitalist powers and a brutal dictator, Zimbabwean toilers and workers are the real losers.

[LeftishBrit]

25. You are out of date by decades about the UK's role.

The UK has no power or influence in Zimbabwe. Not for a very long time.

I do agree that much of the British press is pretty loathsome; but that is another matter.