over thirteen million people in somalia kenya ethiopia eritrea and djibouti are once again threatened by famine. the un approaches the international community for immediate food aid.

something miles for them and we've seen in years in the east where we grew up learning about africa's hunger problems.

the african people always suffer from hunger and the so-called developed world always stands food. is there perhaps something wrong with the food aid mechanism. if you're looking at all this money that has been pumped into the fifty's and you're still starving then it means that something's not right incomes or the interest of those will put you to be assisted in kenya or any other african country to improve their food security put in hate. what i'm to movie people. and you can see it in a bit of the many ways because it becomes almost like. a business is. to do what. is given once

you can do practically speaking we're looking at a very wealthy continent which has been now sustained into public teat just see for the aid in the street and and that's why we need to put two and. these approach both relying on aid as i would or you know changing the predicament of the african people.

yeah. perhaps. northern kenya was one of the regions affected during this recent famine wave. the land is arid and barren. that was. how i never. am carried here that was written i am the turkana are this region's inhabitants one of kenya's most traditional tribes that were never. forgotten my. dad did that with. their nomadic pastoralists for centuries they have learned to survive on this harsh land depending on the rain periods.

i. have never yet. i. but in recent years the ongoing droughts threaten their very existence. i guess that yeah. i guess in northern kenya we had a year with basically no rain and tools to con a region as seen. successive droughts of the past few years and what we're seeing is the stress of getting more and more frequent so the rain is becoming less and less common. the traps left many of the animal was very very weak so people didn't have that didn't have the usual income. of. manu titian level is really short term. not what the global acute malnutrition rate

is fifteen percent in some areas of true country it was up to thirty seven percent that is more than double. the. yardwork i had to go out. i mean to go to not five and they all died. even then we couldn't eat them. your little boy in my small field was of no help the seeds died before they could sprout. a year young it was a bad year without trained we couldn't plant anything. there was great hunger. even the wild fruit became rare.

a rule while my sister died last year during the long drought and she was old and as there was no food. she died and i came to take care of her children. there was no food or water because it was too dry and a lot of the. animal in the way. you probably know how bad it was last year on the way most animals died.

you get this is a man's tomb and the other two are women. they died of hunger. there was no food and the government didn't help. if hope would come sooner with these people have been saved a year they are all the guests they would be alive and these tombs wouldn't exist you've gone. up she was complaining that she was hungry and thirsty all up well arguably. all of the above with it she couldn't sustain herself there weren't enough but everybody knows we need food and water to live. with it in.

how long after her death did the food arrive. after five months. it is chilling to say the least to hear that the two thousand and one drought had been predicted and that lives could have been saved if the system functioned differently drug does not happen just like switching on and of electricity. drugs is something that comes with being a period of time. after

ethiopia's famine in one thousand nine hundred fourteen one thousand nine hundred five which left one million victims the us created a forecast system for dangerous droughts in order to avoid similar tragedies in the future. in two thousand and ten this system had already warned of things to come. yeah we saw it coming and we've been warning for months before you know people were paying attention that's sometimes the problem you know the problem often with the world attention is that sometimes. people only play pay attention if you

see the dying children. but i will warning systems nowadays our knowledge is so sophisticated that we know months in advance we've been warning about this since the for the before the crisis happened because we could see that the rains weren't good enough. but people were left to starve. they had to die before the international community was mobilized. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom hartman welcome to the big picture.

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report. let me let me i want to know would not let me ask you a question. here on this network is what we're having a debate we have our knives out. to do is this really what it's about staying there to get here in a situation where being i don't even talk about the name and wheat.

from. the problem is that it's government space national and international donors and also the bush monitoring community. during its always acts as quickly as they can. and it takes unfortunately it takes you know those pictures on t.v. screens to really mobilize public opinion and get governments and politicians interested in the crisis. when it becomes of more interest to the international media then you tend to get a very strong public response which is extremely helpful wish pushes the politicians into action because when the public has about it. then the politicians

know they need to respond because. the public expects them to do something. unfortunately you know action could have been taken at the start of two thousand and eleven oilier in the year. victory to really have stopped it becoming such a big crisis but unfortunately. far too often the action isn't taken until it's too late and so people are already suffering. and it's not the first time that the turkana people receive help. international

organizations and ngos have been visiting their area for the last fifteen years. and they always welcomed them with joyous songs am. i am. every. now that we have heard. about my little note that i don't know. your mother and they are not your mother and i don't know how you want to come again i could tell they provide them with food that accident the children and check them for signs of malnutrition.

oh no way did you come from nothing from the tell of. not that i don't know how far is going to tell of. many hours away which means that i left with the sunrise. for decades to turkana have been living in a constant state of hunger. they belong to one billion people around the world who have no access to their daily nourishment while at the same time more food than ever is being produced on the planet.

contrary to crisis periods this chronic hunger phenomenon rarely reaches the evening news. never the less it is deadly. it kills over fifteen million people yearly. three times more than those killed during the gear of the second world war. approximately six and a half million of them are children eighteen thousand dollars every day. to fight hunger the international community decided to distribute food to those in need. however since its birth in one nine hundred fifty four and until today food

aid has never been a matter of sheer humanitarianism it's been a matter of economic and political correlations with the u.s. playing the leading role the simple reason everyone focuses on u.s. food aid policy is us accounts for more than half of all the world's food aid so as goes the united states so goes the global food aid regime and of the united states is providing fifty to sixty percent of the world's food aid any given year all of europe combined only provide fifteen to twenty percent. of the. we have given much to the impoverished peoples of europe one simple thing about i'm sorry. but as a countermeasure against the attempt by the soviet union come you know if you're up

the american people sharpen the strategy for cooperating with the non communist countries in a comprehensive bipartisan european recovery program. after the success of the marshall plan which delivered tons of food to western europe. in one thousand nine hundred eighty four president eisenhower signed the famous public law for eighty whatever. the new laws purpose was to distribute the u.s. agricultural surpluses serving at the same time as a tool for economic and foreign policy which would help promote the country's interests. according to the president's own words the new law lays the basis for expanding our exports of agricultural products with lasting benefits to ourselves and peoples of other lands. oh and the pope and the deleterious our football. team are going to break that

bond of their pedigree we play that effort to help them help them. all at her very quiet not because the communists may be doing it not because we think they're both but the audience right in one thousand nine hundred eighty one president kennedy acknowledged public love for eighty as being a fundamental importance to the united states and renamed it food for peace. so the primary objective of food aid policy was surplus disposal but it had a secondary objectives the hope that it would also build future export markets for u.s. agricultural commodities and that it could achieve humanitarian objectives associated with reducing hunger and under-nutrition and that it could perhaps with some our allies abroad. with the same law kennedy founded usaid

the u.s. organization responsible for international development which would administer civilian foreign aid. is. the u.s. government for spreading beyond many cunning flurried policy through human dignity and to systems. during the cold war large quantities of food were sent to countries of strategic importance to the united states like india indonesia and pakistan. likewise large cargoes were sent to eastern asia during the korean and vietnam wars. during the seventy's a large bulk of food aid went to the middle east. during the ninety's after the

fall of the berlin wall today it was directed to countries the former eastern bloc the same pattern was repeated in afghanistan and iraq during the war on terror. if you have took aboard diplomacy it's a very subtle way of pushing a message of agenda. to another country you know because you've seen even more so because the training elephants for their training even cheap and since they use food is that if you don't train much upon such a dance like a human being you keep rewarding it with a little biscuit or something so next day and then they tell you jump up american people saying jump up you jump up see what i mean. from very early on africa became the focus of attention as the u.s.

and soviet union were trying to gain zones of influence countries like somalia ethiopia and kenya received help. there's a lot of pieces that the u.s. would be easy to prove to them or the police doesn't mean that the united states is doing business to actually be providing you know the same time. there's no politics behind going in there we're trying to do things in a way that is most effective way to save lives so i don't think that criticism really holds true.

i'm honored to work for this organization i think we do fabulous were partners in the united nations and it's really inspiring. when the bug elias with the american plug on needs from the american people. if the first thing is this the appreciation of the american people because if somebody helps you then you have to appreciate the. country that assists your people in this tough in the approach you to bring in the investments. you see the be very much willing to tell them good them come and if you're not just doing the the funding in the hole in last year. the child needs to study what their wisdom comes with the chinese also for the first time brought their food aid complete with trucks there was almost as much as that wait

a minute this food aid thing is not just the tusk another soaked up torch in terms of winning over a country to dominate over to push their value such across the globe. apart from helping foreign policy food aid also had other benefits and help with internal affairs and leave the large american agribusiness and shipping companies. but there are other important beneficiaries lurking in the shadows one are agribusinesses and i emphasize agribusinesses rather than for. farmers because very little food aid is sold by farmers directly that sold by large firms the great hidden beneficiary for u.s. food aid and this is distinct from any other food aid program in the world are the shippers.

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huge you're covered. potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit stunning in a few hours from new york to maine we have team coverage of the storm. but what we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston proper earlier today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more powdery down to the bottom line there is still a lot of snow out here a good place for snowball fight. jason it is going a pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout what's been like bilbies long three driving lessons some emergency vehicles are exceptional.

on. morning news today violence is once again flared up. and these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. china operations are all today. please please. please. please please please. please. please please please

. logs are in our washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. why do we let wealthy white men like enron executive jeffrey skilling get off so easily in this country was miked up and tony in just a moment also although the postal service is one of the most successful government programs in history republicans want to bankrupt it i'll talk with congressman peter de fazio about his plan to save the u.s. postal service later on in tonight's episode and the story of amanda berry gina de souza and michelle knight has captivated the nation but their ordeal could have easily been prevented i'll tell you how infantile take.