{"id":12629,"date":"2021-10-20T01:28:43","date_gmt":"2021-10-20T08:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=12629"},"modified":"2021-10-25T06:18:15","modified_gmt":"2021-10-25T13:18:15","slug":"message-of-the-day-122","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=12629","title":{"rendered":"Message of the Day: War, Hunger, Disease, Human Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A grave humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Ethiopia<\/em>:\u00a0National Geographic, November 2021 Issue<\/span><\/p>\n

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“I never saw hell before, but now I have.”<\/p>\n

That’s a line that gets your attention.<\/p>\n

Or should.<\/p>\n

As we’ve written about too often, it’s not easy for issues that should have or would have gotten far more attention not long ago (even if often not to the extent needed) these days. For the purpose of this post, we’ve commented often enough about why.<\/p>\n

Hell, in this case, is to be found in Ethiopia, specifically the state of Tigray.<\/p>\n

What an extraodinarily tragic irony that this was the epicenter of the famine in Ethiopia in the mid 1980s which led to the single largest news media focus in history then in the context of world population and communications, starting three days from now on October 23, 1984 with an historic BBC report picked up as the news lead in the US and worldwide for days, weeks–then months.<\/p>\n

Leading to Live Aid in July 1985, the single largest media event ever experienced simultaneously globally at that point<\/a> (and in some ways still), which helped further galvanize a movement to end world hunger.<\/p>\n

And perhaps even more significantly tied the people of the world together as one in a new level of consciousness.<\/p>\n

Great progress. Then great regression. The ongoing dynamic, with arguably an agonizingly slow upward trajectory, but just as arguably a trajectory that moves too slowly to do anything but end in life on earth crashing.<\/p>\n

As we said in public service ads at the time, that’s up to all of us.<\/p>\n

To paraphrase the famous line of communal assertion of values, “So Say We All”, from the iconic Battlestar Galactica<\/em> multiyear TV series in the 2,000s:<\/p>\n

So say we still.<\/p>\n

Now, we salute National Geographic Magazine for a critical piece in the new edition that tells the story of one of the many hells on earth that if any of us, or our children, or loved ones were in, every part of us would be screaming to the rest of us on earth–where are you?<\/p>\n

“A grave humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Ethiopia. \u2018I never saw hell before, but now I have.\u2019”<\/a><\/p>\n

By Bylynsey<\/span>\u00a0Addario,<\/span><\/span>\u00a0Andra<\/span><\/span>chel Hartigan, Photographs<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0Bylyn<\/span>sey Addario, National Geographic Magazine, November 2021 Issue<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Millions have been displaced, thousands killed, and reports of human rights violations are rampant as a civil war escalates in Ethiopia\u2019s Tigray region.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fifteen soldiers raped her over the course of a week, this woman says, and now she doesn\u2019t know where her children are. \u201cWhy is this happening?\u201d she asks. \u201cThis is doomsday for me.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The only roads open<\/b> in the besieged state of Tigray in northern Ethiopia lead to endless tales of darkness.<\/p>\n

Along a path on the outskirts of Abiy Adi, in central Tigray, Araya Gebretekle tells his story, tragic in its simplicity. He had six sons. He sent five of them to harvest millet in the family\u2019s fields. Four never came home.<\/p>\n

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