Current events and the state of the world

It has been a very sad August when we allow the media to affect us.  Thousands of people dying unnecessarily, in war and conflict, in protests and on the streets, from Missouri to Gaza, from Kurdistan to Damascus, from Donetsk to Santiago, armies, states, police, brutally slaughter their perceived enemies. In Syria the latest count of deaths since the uprising begun has reached 170,000 people and with the ISIS the numbers are climbing.  In Gaza 2,100 is the last count in a few weeks.  In Ukraine it is questionable what the numbers are but lately different sides refer to 2,000.  In Africa the numbers are never so important to the western media to report, until the Ebola epidemic  came and the media took an interest as far as this epidemic may cause a threat elsewhere.  Yet there is one constant statistic that not many are reporting in the mass media.  Over 60,000 people a day, nearly half being children, are dying from the simple cause of the lack of nutrients and clean water.  Meanwhile if one is to divide the annual world production of corn (alone) by the population one will find the corn produced alone can prevent death from hunger.  An enormous amount of food is produced worldwide, maybe "too much" according to economists who are waged by corporations that benefit from the rise of the price of commodities.

On power and violence

This was a book summary we found on http://www.fsmitha.com/review/arendt.html and we believe it is a good starting point on the discussion of how social organization leads to power, from coexistence with other powers will come conflict, and how can conflict be managed so power is not lost at the stage where coexistence of powers is impossible.  Also under what conditions can there be no conflicting powers and therefore avoidance of conflict and violence.  Could comments here start an open and public discussion?  In political circles this subject is systematically overseen and avoided.

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On Violence

Author: Hannah Arendt

A Harvest Book, 1970

In Arendt's own words:

The end of human action, as distinct from the end products of fabrication, can never be reliably predicted.  The means used to achieve political goals are more often than not of greater relevance to the future world than the intended goals.
There are, indeed, few things that are more frightening than the steadily increasing prestige of scientifically minded brain trusters in the councils of government during the last decades [the 1950s and '60s] ... they reckon with the consequences of certain hypothetically assumed constellations without, however, being able to test their hypotheses against actual occurrences.