Greetings, you're listening to Podcast No. 112 of Blast the Right.

I'm your host Jack Clark, great to have you on board.

Today you'll hear how extreme right-wing policies of the United States literally cause

starvation and death in the third world, and I'll show you the link between this unfortunate

situation and two hot button front page issues in the US, healthcare and the occupation

of Iraq.

Warning this week is an intense podcast, let's get right into it.

The sources you'll hear include an amazing article in the New York Times by Celia W.

Dugger, New Internationalist magazine, the CIA Factbook, Common Dreams.org, Harper's

magazine and the Associated Press.

Imagine you live in Malawi, a landlocked country in Africa.

You, like 85% of your fellow Malawi citizens, live in the countryside, you're a farmer.

Each successive generation of your family has inherited smaller and smaller individual

plots of land.

Where's the smaller than your father's was?

In order to feed your family, you have to plan every single inch of ground.

You can't afford to let any of the landliefellow, and you certainly can't afford commercial

fertilizer.

But you're in a catch-22 because without letting the landliefellow or fertilizing it,

the soil becomes depleted and each year your land has provided less and less food for

you and your family.

You're falling deeper and deeper into poverty.

...