Update: We Irish have more than a passing familiarity with famine, hunger and despair

Link: .

1. The Famine Song - Johnny McEvoy

But, the scale of the world emergency, where what happened to the Irish in Black 47 could be a world wide debacle is incredible. While the bronze coffin-ship memorial and the other famine memorials stir up empathy, we need to be conscious  that empathy is not enough.

I got enthused enough about this post to contact the great Larry Kirwan of Black 47 and recommend that he arrange the Famine Song for their sort of Irish-Rock-Reggae world music beat. Larry wrote back, and reminded me of this number, from which the band got it's name...

Black 47 by Black 47

Comments

[Josh]

This reminds me of this NYT article from around St Patty's

"Between 1845 and 1851, a million people died, and another million left — a human rights tragedy on a scale of Darfur today. In some counties, one in four people starved to death.

Listless, their bellies bloated before death, many Irish were reduced to foraging in fields; contemporary accounts mentioned the green stains on their teeth from eating grass."
(http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/true-irish/)

I feel lucky now that my ancestors had the luxury of eating grass instead of having to resort to dirt cakes

[Crusader AXE]

Yeah, I was thinking about that a little earlier. Haiti is of course an ecological disaster in a lot of ways -- over populated and the land ruined by excessive burning of forests to clear land and the failure to control run off and Tiffany only knows what else. Not that she cares. At least the Irish could eat dirt and grass that were full of nutrients...not, as I recall, that it was all that successful a diet. If it were, we'd all go on the famine diet...not a lot of difference in the nutrition in lettuce versus the nutritional value of peat, I guess. "Peat burgers...peat chops...peat steaks..." could have all been the forefathers of Baja Burgers and haut vegan cuisine, if only the dumb Micks hadn't all been starving and could see the Freidmanian upside to the whole thing.

[uncle buck]

One of my sisters works with Doctors Without Borders and has been in some ugly situations involving mass famine. From her depictions, starving to death is one of the most painful ways to go....
Another favorite of mine is Jim Kunstler. He concludes his post today thusly: "I'm hardly even convinced that it matters who wins the presidential race this year. It could end up being the world's biggest boby prize".
Sounds like he's almost ready to join The Defeatists!