Month: November 2000

The United Nations is once again appealing for hundreds of millions of dollars to avert famine in North Korea, where it estimates millions of people risk starvation if aid donations to the Communist state don’t increase dramatically.

U.S. congressman Tony Hall recently visited North Korea and reported that food production was down by almost half over last year’s already poor harvest. The North Korean government blames the ongoing famine on drought and other natural conditions, but the main cause of the 6-year long famine that has claimed up to 2 million lives is the closed, totalitarian state.

North Korea’s government is extraordinarily xenophobic and rarely lets any foreigners venture outside of its capitol of Pyongyang — which is one of the reasons some countries are reticent about donating aid since they often aren’t given the ability to track how such aid is used.

Hall, who was allowed to venture into rural areas of North Korea, reports that in many parts of the country that he visited hospitals were in such poor condition that, “Electricity ran for no more than two hours a day, and patients were fed less than half the food a human being needs to survive.” According to Hall, many North Koreans have turned to “alternative foods” made from 40 percent grain and 60 percent twigs, leaves and barks. Such pseudo-foods are a common feature of any famine area, but in the end usually do far more harm to starving people than good.

Unfortunately barring some sort of dramatic coup or fall of the North Korean government, life for those within the Communist state is unlikely to improve as the government has proven able to main tight military and political control over its territory even in the midst of very high death rates from famine.

Sources:

N. Koreans eating twigs. The BBC, November 29, 2000.

North Korea’s lost generation. The BBC, November 29, 2000.

Dr. Ingo Potrykus’ amazing work with genetically modified rice has been mentioned on this site before (see Genetically Modified Rice Could Save Hundreds of Millions of Lives and Monsanto to Give Genetically Modified Rice Away). Working in Sweden, Potrykus genetically modified a strain of rice so that it produces beta carotene in its seeds.

Beta carotene is an excellent source of vitamin A, and vitamin A deficiency is an enormous health problem in the developing world. Up to 124 million children do not receive enough vitamin A in their diets, contributing to an estimated 1 million deaths and 300,000 cases of childhood blindness every year.

The New York Times recently ran a profile of Dr. Potrykus on the trials and travails he’s had bringing the GM rice to poor people. You’d think this would be a win-win situation. He worked out arrangements with the companies who hold the patents on the genes and techniques he used to allow him to give his vitamin A-enriched rice to any farmer with an annual income less than $10,000 which covers most small farmers in the developing world. The rice is self-pollinating so once they farmers have the rice and are growing it, they won’t be forced at some later date to buy new seeds. And, of course, it could save millions of lives.

But pressure is so great against so-called “Frankenfoods,” especially in Europe, that Potrykus housed his rice plants in a grenade-proof greenhouse. That was probably wise since throughout Europe and the United States anti-biotechnology activists are destroying experimental crops right and left.

The activists see Potrykus’ rice as a publicity stunt by the biotech companies to gain widespread acceptance of genetically modified plants and animals, and so would sentence millions of children in the developing world to death and blindness to prevent scientists such as Potrykus from gaining the world’s appreciation — not to mention better understanding of the value of genetic engineering.

In Sweden, for example, anti-biotech forces are trying to pass a law that would make it illegal for corporations in that nation to export genetically modified organisms. That law, if passed, would make it illegal for the GM rice to be given to poor farmers in the developing world.

Leave it to extremists in the environmental movement to once again argue that people in the developing world must pay with their lives for the irrational anti-science views of a minority of First Worlders.

Golden rice in a grenade-proof greenhouse. Jon Christensen, The New York Times, November 21, 2000.

With all of the controversy in Florida over who go more votes than who, it was a sign of how far the United States has come toward sexual equality that it was a woman, Katherine Harris, who was at the storm of the controversy with her decision on whether or not to certify the election. The amazing (or not so-amazing, depending your point of view) thing was that the same liberal female columnists who advise us to treat women and men as moral equals, immediately degenerated into comments about Harris’ looks.

Some examples,

• Washington Post writer Robin Givhan described a Harris press conference by writing that, “Her [Harris’s] skin had been plastered and powdered to the texture of pre-war walls in need of a skim coat. And her eyesl, rimmed in liner and frosted with blue shadow, bore the tell-tale homgeneous spikes of false eyelashes. Caterpillars seemd to rise and fall with every bat of her eyelid…” How, Givhan asked, will a “woman, who can’t use restraint when she’s wielding a mascara wand, … manage to use it and make sound decisions in this game of partisan one-upsmanship.”
• Boston Herald columnist Margery Eagan argued that, “Most likely… [Harris] will be remembered for looking just ghastly Tuesday night. … Much as one would like to blame such nasty lookism on The Evil Patriarchy, I must admit it occurred to me instantly how old and hard she appeared. (Is she really just 43?)”
• Time‘s Margaret Carlson wrote that Harris “is often compared to Cruella de Vil, snatching ballots rather than puppies…”
• The Boston Globe‘s Joan Venocchi compared Harris to Lady MacBeth

I guess it turns out that looks do matter — at least for conservative women.

Source:

Venom directed at Harris aggravates national split. James P. Pinkerton, Los Angeles Times, November 27, 2000.

Sisterhood isn’t just powerful, it’s mean. Danielle Crittenden, The Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2000.

A new report claims that 50 million children in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union live in poverty, and that more than 160 million people — a full 40 percent of the region’s population — live in poverty. In some former Soviet Republics, such as Kyrgyzstan, up to 88 percent of the population is in poverty. What happened?

The bottom line is that the transition from a communist dictatorship to democratic forms of government went very badly. European Children’s Trust, which issued the report, blames privatization and the lack of price controls, but the bottom line is that in large measure privatization Eastern Europe simply transferred assets from the state to the very same corrupt bureaucrats who were ran the economy before the collapse of the USSR. Corruption has been endemic in Eastern Europe as well.

Which is why the European Children’s Trust’s recommendation for more aid to Eastern Europe seems so bizarre. Have they bothered to look at what happened to the last large amount of foreign aid the West sent to Eastern Europe? Much of it ended up in the bank accounts of corrupt officials. Future aid would likely end up the same and only help prop up and reward such corruption.

Eastern Europe’s position is not going to get better until people there decide to throw the bums out, punish official corruption and require accountability of their political leaders.

Source:

Child poverty soars in eastern Europe. The BBC, October 11, 2000.

Poverty ‘Great Depression’ sweeps eastern Europe. CNN, October 12, 2000.