Even when lack of food, like James Joyce's famous snow, is "general over Ireland" it is never been (to date) general over all the world.
A caring world puts all its energy to rushing food from when it is plentiful or at least sufficient to where it is in very short supply, so that while many may be hungry, at least they are not starving.
Shortages are shared, as is the available food, in a caring world.
We place the highest odium on famines that are caused by human government and societal indifference rather than government inabilities, natural causes or the deliberate design of enemy governments.
Who blames anyone for the deaths from famine caused by the Black Death disrupting farm work and grain transporting?
WWII had millions die in some famous sieges but we don't blame the governments of the areas under siege for their deaths : in Leningrad, Stalingrad, Guadalcanal the Russians, Germans and Japanese tried very hard to feed their encircled citizens.
Only in the 1944-1945 famine in western Netherlands should we fault the western Allies for having to be shamed by food shipments of the neutral Swedes into themselves trying to feed the starving Dutch held captive by the Germans.
German deliberately starved millions to death , mostly in the borderlands of the old Russian Empire - as did the Japanese in China.
But we tend to question why the wartime Russian and Chinese governments kill millions of their own citizens by diverting food away from their hungry to feed their offensive war machines.
It can be a morally dubious criticism.
Stalin choose to starve his general population in order to divert food manpower fuel etc away from civilian food production towards his efforts to recapture the western part of the old Russian Empire from the Germans as fast as he could.
Given how fast the Germans were killing the population in the old western Russian Empire, more lives might have been saved than lost in this rush.
Perhaps the same can be argued in China.
The wartime famines in Greece, Bengal , Rwanda and Vietnam are more clearcut : the civilian authorities killed millions by indifference to human plight in situations where nearby food was not in short supply and where violent conflict was not active in the areas affected.
Modern transportation networks, increased farm productivity, better food storage methods, instant global communication systems : they all go for nought if the moral weft is not in place, parallel to these technological wefts connecting the human fabric in times of famine ....
A caring world puts all its energy to rushing food from when it is plentiful or at least sufficient to where it is in very short supply, so that while many may be hungry, at least they are not starving.
Shortages are shared, as is the available food, in a caring world.
We place the highest odium on famines that are caused by human government and societal indifference rather than government inabilities, natural causes or the deliberate design of enemy governments.
Who blames anyone for the deaths from famine caused by the Black Death disrupting farm work and grain transporting?
WWII had millions die in some famous sieges but we don't blame the governments of the areas under siege for their deaths : in Leningrad, Stalingrad, Guadalcanal the Russians, Germans and Japanese tried very hard to feed their encircled citizens.
Only in the 1944-1945 famine in western Netherlands should we fault the western Allies for having to be shamed by food shipments of the neutral Swedes into themselves trying to feed the starving Dutch held captive by the Germans.
German deliberately starved millions to death , mostly in the borderlands of the old Russian Empire - as did the Japanese in China.
But we tend to question why the wartime Russian and Chinese governments kill millions of their own citizens by diverting food away from their hungry to feed their offensive war machines.
It can be a morally dubious criticism.
Stalin choose to starve his general population in order to divert food manpower fuel etc away from civilian food production towards his efforts to recapture the western part of the old Russian Empire from the Germans as fast as he could.
Given how fast the Germans were killing the population in the old western Russian Empire, more lives might have been saved than lost in this rush.
Perhaps the same can be argued in China.
The wartime famines in Greece, Bengal , Rwanda and Vietnam are more clearcut : the civilian authorities killed millions by indifference to human plight in situations where nearby food was not in short supply and where violent conflict was not active in the areas affected.
Modern transportation networks, increased farm productivity, better food storage methods, instant global communication systems : they all go for nought if the moral weft is not in place, parallel to these technological wefts connecting the human fabric in times of famine ....
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