Somalia – East Africa 1992: Years of warfare among rival clans causes famine on a Biblical scale. 300,000 civilians died of starvation. Black Hawk Down 2001 starring Orlando Bloom & Ewan McGregor & Josh Hartnett & Eric Bana & Tim Sizemore & William Fichtner & Sam Shepard & Kim Coates & Hugh Dancy et al, director Ridley Scott, opening caption
The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
North Korea is a famine state. In the fields, you can see people picking up loose grains of rice and kernels of corn, gleaning every scrap. They look pinched and exhausted. In the few, dingy restaurants in the city, and even in the few modern hotels, you can read the Pyongyang Times through the soup, or the tea, or the coffee. Morsels of inexplicable fat or gristle are served as ‘duck’. Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essay
That bowl of soup – it was dearer than freedom, dearer than life itself, past, present, and future. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
A couple of ounces ruled your life. ibid.
When you consume more food in one meal than a village of people eat in a day something is wrong. Stanley Victor Paskavich
The intelligent poor individual was a much finer observer than the intelligent rich one. The poor individual looks around him at every step, listens suspiciously to every word he hears from the people he meets; thus, every step he takes presents a problem, a task, for his thoughts and feelings. He is alert and sensitive, he is experienced, his soul has been burned. Knut Hamsun, Hunger
Hunger has always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at my gauntly. Richard Wright, Black Boy
The mighty peril is the entire starvation of the country [India] by foreign exploiters and its complete and hopeless dependence on aliens for almost all articles of common use. Sri Aurobindo
You see somewhere a man who is starving and if you misunderstand karma – as too many of you do, to the shame of India, in a land where this teaching is of immemorial antiquity – you turn aside from that starving man and say that it is his karma to starve and perish; in those hardened heart of yours you use the will of God as a cover for your lack of love. That man’s karma to starve? Aye, and therefore he is starving! But if a Deva guides you to the place where your brother is starving, it is because he would make you the agent of his beneficence to that man whose evil karma of the present moment has been exhausted by his suffering; the Deva thus says to you: ‘Man your brother man is starving give him the relief it is his karma to receive, and be my agent in carrying out the law.’ Annie Besant
To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse than starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body. Mahatma Gandhi
Should we really let our [Tanzanian] people starve so we can pay our debts? Julius Nyerere, Guardian 21st March 1985
The ‘Pandorama’ consisted of a stage-front made of painted cardboard and fixed on the front of a wooden box about three feet long by two feet six inches high, and about one foot deep from back to front. The ‘Show’ was a lot of pictures cut out of illustrated weekly papers and pasted together, end to end, so as to form a long strip or ribbon. Bert had coloured all the pictures with water-colours.
Just behind the wings of the stage-front at each end of the box – was an upright roller, and the long strip of pictures was rolled up on this ... ‘Our next picture is called ‘An Englishman’s ome’. ’Ere we see the inside of another room in Slumtown, with the father and mother and four children sitting down to dinner – bread and drippin’ and tea. It says underneath the pitcher that there’s Thirteen millions of people in England always on the verge of starvation.’ Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist
He would enquire into the case and lay his application before the committee at the next meeting, which was to held on the following Thursday – it was then Monday.
Linden explained to him that they were actually starving. He had been out of work for sixteen weeks. ibid.
The case had been duly considered by the committee, who had come to the conclusion that as it was a ‘chronic’ case they were unable to deal with it, and advised him to apply to the Board of Guardians. ibid.
The majority of the people are in a condition of more or less abject poverty – living from hand to mouth. It is an admitted fact that about thirteen millions of our people are always on the verge of starvation. ibid.
1981, Belfast, Northern Ireland: The conflict in Northern Ireland seems to be just on and on in a relentless cycle of violence, and then suddenly in 1981 it took the strangest darkest most dramatic twist when Bobby Sands and 9 of his young comrades insisting they be recognised as political prisoners went on hunger strike. Bobby Sands: 66 Days, BBC 2017
‘The march in West Belfast was the first test of public support for this second republican hunger strike.’ ibid. television news
‘There was no-one to save us but the boys … At 18 and a half I joined the Provos.’ ibid. Sands
In 1920 Irish Republican Terence MacSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork, began a hunger strike against his imprisonment without trial by the British government. ibid.
After four years in the Long Kesh Internment Camp Bobby Sands was released in 1976. ibid.
By 1976 over 1,500 lives had been lost in the conflict. ibid.
When Bobby Sands returned in prison in 1976 special category status had been abolished. ibid.
‘The blanket protest was born.’ ibid.
‘There can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign oppressive British presence is removed.’ ibid. Sands
Their Hunger Their Pain Our Struggle. ibid. wall art protest mural
‘The body fights back sure enough.’ ibid.
Every year 15 million children die from hunger. Wolvoman80, Government and New World Order Corruption Exposed aka Planet Earth, Youtube 3.00.26
What no-one foresaw was how a protest within the H blocks of the Maze prison would ignite the Republican political project. The government had stopped treating jailed Republicans like prisoners of war. In protest, cells were covered in excrement, blankets replace prison uniform, and prisoners began to go on hunger strike. The Troubles: A Secret History III, BBC 2019
Sands was put forward as an independent candidate in the by-election in Fermanagh, South Tyrone … and died on Day 66 of his strike. ibid.
Ten men had starved to death before the protest ended. ibid.
The number of lives lost due to hunger and starvation as a result of the lockdown may never be known. Covid 19: World in Danger, Discovery 2020
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our successes. The fertile Earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And the children dying of (hunger) must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates – died of malnutrition – because the food must rot (if not sold at a profit) … and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
[Danita Tutt] faces allegations of medical child abuse including lying about her son’s safety … of starving her son Colby. Accused: Guilty or Innocent: Attempted Murder or Protective Mother? news, ITVX 2022
Danita is alleged to have starved and attempted to murder Colby during his time in hospice care. ibid. caption
Colby had 3 surgeries within 8 weeks to help him swallow, digest food, and eliminate waste. But they caused further complications. ibid.
In 2016, Colby was removed by Child Protective Services. A week later, Colton was also removed. Danita and her husbant Clint fought a legal battle for custody of their children. After 9 months, the court ruled in their favour, and the children were returned to the parents. ibid.
The Prosecution alleges Danita’s Facebook activity may indicate that she is suffering from a mental illness known as Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. ibid.
We have this little flood of Munchausen by Proxy cases coming from Cook’s County Hospital … ibid. defense
The defense call 17 witnesses over 5 days. ibid. caption
Found guilty of starvation and attempted murder … Danita was sentenced to five years in prison. ibid.