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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (108983)	5/2/2000 5:57:00 AM
From: Bert Herman	Respond to of 1577293

Famine in Africa is not caused by US farmers driving the local farmers out of production. It is usually caused by either war, or by corupt opressive governments. Drought is also a factor but without the other too most countries could make it through a drought. Bullets, land mines and stupid and/or opressive government officals controling the food market are much greater disincentives then American compitition. I partially agree that political problems are important, but better local markets can prevent a lot of this problems. I see international trade between neighbour countries as one of the best weapons against war. Those thousands of micro-connections between several countries and the personal contacts between people of different countries is very important.You may find me naive, but just like business, war has a lot to do with money and greed. And if a country can earn more by trading with a neighbour than it can earn by fighting, they will take that way. And then, like you say, drought problems can be solved in the regio. Imagine you are a small farmer in Africa with two cows and a small piece of land. You can sell on the local market your vegetables, milk and from time to time some meat. Producing in income for you and your family. Then large trucks with tons of food products come from here and they start selling or even wurse, they give it away right next to you. Not difficult to imagine that you are out of business in no time. The next time there is a drought or some other problem, you are standing in the row, just like the other thousands to receive some food from the so generous western countries, who allow you on there markets but in the mean time destroy your own. While you are perfectly capable to produce yourself, if only you could earn something with it. Bert P.S. Feel free to answer, but this will be my last post on this subject.