Left In Lowell

The developed nations and their corporate slavemasters seem to invest a lot in taking plentiful food from starving places in the world. This diarist has some interesting background on what’s going on in Africa that is well worth the read.

There are some essays that make you realize the problem goes way beyond one corrupt president and his cronies:

Locals began to fish the perch from Lake Victoria, using them and selling them locally. Once the extent of the fishery in Lake Victoria was realized, foreign companies displaced the local fisheries just as neatly as the perch had done in the competitors in the lake. Locals did get some jobs in return catching, preparing, and packing the fish for overseas shipment. Their pay for these jobs was (and is) about ninety cents a day. There was only one problem: the price they could get for the fish in foreign markets was so high that locals couldn’t afford it.
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Any time an African country threatens to get on its feet, a rebellion miraculously appears. A rebellion well stocked with weapons. How this miracle occurs is simple enough: foreign companies play “angel” to the rebels, providing them with the tools they need to destabilize their countries.

Why? To ensure that the tropical world is there to act as a cupboard for the temperate world, and not competition. The nations and corporations of the temperate world make sure that the tropical world is never organized toward raising its own people out of misery. Instead, Europe, America, and the rest of the temperate world work to see that Africa in particular stays a land of despots and poverty, a land where a moderate bribe is enough to relieve temperate companies of any burdensome laws and a case of Kalashnikovs delivered to the right people will always get you access to resources you might otherwise have to buy at market value.

To make sure we get our goods at a discount, we will stop at nothing.

Buy local, buy local, buy local. Help the small farmer and move towards sustainable food sources, while at the same time not rewarding corporations who exploit the third world.