of course our good old friend synthetic. thanks to. move.

in july two thousand and eleven the horn of africa was struck by a wave of famine and. again our screens were flooded with images of a may see that africans. over

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

you know the only thing you notice are children from the most horrific that we've seen over the years in fact we grew up learning about africa's hunger problems. that the african people always suffer from hunger and the so-called developed world always sends food. is there perhaps something wrong with the food aid mechanism. if you're looking at all this money that has been pumped in the fifty's and you're still starving then

it means that something's not right incomes or the interest of those who are putting to be assisted in kenya or any other african country to improve difficult security plan hate. will be popped. and you can see it even to be in a waste because it becomes almost like. a business. to do what. it gives once you can put together speaking we're looking at a very wealthy continent which has been now sustained into public teat just before the aid in the street and that's why we need to put two and. these approach both language aid as i would or you know changing the predicament. the afghan 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. am gary did that were 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 at all to qana region as seen. successive droughts of the past what we're seeing is the stress getting more and more frequent and the rain is becoming less less common. left many of the animal is very very weak so people didn't have that didn't have the usual income. of. money trisha live was really short on. what the global acute malnutrition rate is fifteen percent in some areas of true country it was up to fifty seven percent that is more than double. the. yard work i had to go to. i mean to go to not five and they all died.

even then we couldn't eat them. a yard of only 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. but there was great hunger. even the wild fruit became rare. room while my sister died last year during the long drought that she was old and as there was no food. no she died and i came to take care of her children.

while. there was no food or water because it was too dry and a lot of the. animal in the way. that 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 that all the guests they would be alive and these tombs wouldn't exist yet

gone. up she was complaining that she was hungry and thirsty for a while arguably. all of the above with she couldn't sustain herself. but everybody knows we need food and water to live. there he put 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 drugs does not happen just like switching on and off 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 the 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 to a 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 we know months in advance we've been warning about this since to four 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.

could be argued that their city countries set up the motive so grounds of islam that ultimately lead to that but i can say that there is a come to this group because i don't think that to use numbers among the people in the country.

more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are the day. so.

the problem is the government space national and international daryn is also the bush monitoring community. during its always acts as quickly as they can. and it takes unfortunately it takes you know those pitches on t.v. screens to really mobilize public opinion and get governments and politicians interested in the crisis. when it becomes more interest to the international media then you tend to get

a very strong public response which is extremely helpful which pushes the politicians into action because when the public has about it then the politicians know they need to to respond because. there is that public expects them to do so. unfortunately you know action should have been taken at the start of two thousand and eleven oilier in the year. pictured really of stops it becoming such a big crisis but unfortunately. far too often the action isn't taken until it's too late until people already suffering.

and it's not the first time that the turkana people receive help. international organizations and then goes have been visiting their area for the last fifteen years. and they always welcome them with joyous songs am. ever. did. about my little no no no no no your mother no me are not your mother and i don't know you but i do come in yeah i

could tell they provide them with food that accident the children and check them for signs of malnutrition. i'm no way did you come from nothing from the town of. not that i know how far is not to load. many hours away which means that i left for 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 die every day. so 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 us 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 you know 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. we have given much to the impoverished peoples of europe. but i'm sorry. but as

a counter measure against the attempt by the soviet union come you know. 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 the bonds of their. we play our best effort to help them help them. all whatever period is required not because the communists may be doing it not because we think they're both but we are getting it 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 we know 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 b. of many foreign policy through human kind. 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 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 bit of a subtle way of pushing a message of agenda. to another country you know because if you if you've seen even more so because the training elephants for their training in japan since they use food is that if you don't train much confidence like a human being you keep rewarding it with a little biscuit or something so next time vindictive 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 little peace is good as it 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 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 of lives we've done a number complied with needs from the american people. if they're 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 being the approach you to bring in that invests. you see the be very much willing to tell them that them come and if you're not just doing the the funding in the hole in last year. the child needs to study what the western companies would do 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. the interview. feel good.

do we speak your language or not advance. your music programs and documentaries in spanish more matches to you breaking news a little tentative angles kidneys stories. that the spanish find out more visit. 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 realize everything you thought you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. mission. cretaceous three. three.

three. three. three. videos. free media. the.

whistleblower on the run edward snowden could be heading to. brazil and russia have been targeted by the u.s. snooping program. egypt's walked by deadly clashes between opponents of the ousted leader mohamed morsi as russia's president. went all out civil war. right now into its six month prison guards resorting to new harsh techniques to end the standoff.