The Reproach of Hunger: Food, Justice, and Money in the Twenty-First Century

by David Rieff

In a groundbreaking book, based on six years of on the ground reporting, expert David Rieff offers a masterly review about whether ending extreme poverty and widespread hunger is within our reach as increasingly promised.

Can we provide enough food for 9 billion (2 billion more than today) in 2050, especially the bottom poorest in the Global South? Some of the most brilliant scientists, world politicians, and aid and development persons forecast an end to the crisis of massive malnutrition in the next decades.

However, food rights campaigners (many associated with green parties in both the rich and poor world) and traditional farming advocates reject the intervention of technology, biotech solutions, and agribusiness. Many economists predict that with the right policies, poverty in Africa can end in twenty years. “Philanthrocapitalists” Bill Gates and Warren Buffett spend billions on technology to “solve” the problem, relying on technology.

Rieff, who has been studying and reporting on humanitarian aid and development for thirty years, puts the claims of both sides under a microscope and asks if any one of these efforts will solve the crisis. He cites climate change, unstable governments that receive aid, the cozy relationship between the philanthropic sector and agricultural giants like Monsanto and Syngenta, that are often glossed over.

The Reproach of Hunger is the only book to look at this debate refusing to take the cherished claims of either side at face value. Rieff answers a careful “yes” to this crucial challenge to humanity’s future. The answer to the central question is yes , if we don’t confuse our hopes with realities and good intensions with capacities.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Economics, Poverty, Sociology, Food, Anthropology

432 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2015

About the author

David Rieff is an American polemicist and pundit. His books have focused on issues of immigration, international conflict, and humanitarianism.

Reviews

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Rieff turns a critical eye to the holy trinity of modern international development and aid, the neoliberal holy trinity of the World Bank, the IMF, and willingly co-opted NGOs. For an additional splash of critique, his gimlet eye includes turns to the world of philanthrocapitalism and what Rieff calls Bill Gates' second monopoly, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Rieff does not buy into every critique of the neoliberal development machine as offered by peasants groups', other local Global South advocates and their non-neoliberal Global North supporters, but he does give an open listening to all of them and agrees with a fair amount. He even engages somewhat with Hayekian-type naked capitalism supporters in the development game, without agreeing with them at all.

So, to the degree this is a polemic, it's a well-argued, thought-out polemic, one that Rieff notes has been several years in the making.

His critique of the neoliberal development machine has several main points.
1. While it ostensibly calls for "transparency" and "accountability" it does NOT call for "democracy."
2. It does not bring human rights into issues of hunger and poverty in any great way.
3. The hypercapitalism of neoliberalism believes that it's "enough" for a rising tide to lift the global poor's boats out of poverty, even if income inequality increases.
4. Referencing Yevegny Morozov (mentioned once here, though his famous word is not) it has a "solutionist" approach to developing world agricultural problems.
5. It has a scientistic approach to its own ideas, along with that believing that if it does make mistakes, they're all self-correcting. Related to that, it believes that it knows better than natives what's good for their own countries and environments.
6. A naive, secular Success Gospel optimism that believes neoliberalism can conquer all — often at the expense of ignoring the realities of what destruction climate change is likely to wreak, and the possible wars and civil wars that will accompany that.

Beyond this are two other points, one implicit in Rieff's book, and one that's really not, and that could have been brought out more in this otherwise excellent volume.

The one other implicit thing, going along with his these that modern neoliberalism is a religion of sorts, is that the holy trinity plus the likes of Gates are often preaching at the developing world. Often, it's a developmental version of the Success Gospel, but sometimes, it's a developmental version of old-fashioned Calvinism, per the last part of my Point No. 5.

The thing that he didn't bring out more, and that he could have, relates to main point No. 3. And that is that, in modern hypercapitalism, "money = power." Per "Brave New World," which Rieff references near the end of the book, with governments acquiescing more and more to businesses, as well as NGOs that used to be more truly liberal not only is the alleged wisdom of "market forces" accepted as infallible, the power to enforce its alleged wisdom is also accepted as generally good. This is why, per Point No. 3, the big businesses, and the plutocratic foundations, don't want NGOs to focus on income inequality, or on democracy. They don't want developing world natives to be more empowered.

Rieff, while not cynical about the possibility of change, is indeed pessimistic. This is part of where he departs from peasants' movements and their supporters in the North. He does note they've had some local successes in resistance but that, in general, they've lost ground to the neoliberal machine.

"I am convinced that the truly powerful revolution that is occurring today is not in (these) insurrectionary episodes ... but rather in what Jon Cray has called 'the emancipation of market forces from social and political control.' "

Sadly, I think he is right.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

An investigative reporter gives a carefully fair yet damning appraisal of today's development programs, players and ideology. The book starts slowly and the style is somewhat convoluted, but stick with it; by the end the book makes clear the folly of today's de rigueur pollyannaish optimism, both about the possibility - even the inevitability - of eradicating hunger in the near future and about private sector corporations and charities as the best agents to disinterestedly and altruistically help the poor and control the world's agriculture. The author doesn't impute motives to players on any side of the issues, but points out where the emperor has no clothes. How, he asks, can you have a "partnership" when one side has all the money and power and no contractual obligation to follow through while the other side is legally bound to the terms of agreements? For example, the financial analysis of aid in and profit out of Africa is a strong indication of the colonial-like nature of relationships there.

I wasn't aware of how tightly interconnected the financial and corporate entities, philanthrocapitalists and NGOs in the development field are. Feeling that peasant and other anti-agribusiness/anti-capitalist activists don't have the ability to overcome their well-funded establishment opponents, he believes the only institution that could protect citizens' interests is the nation state, which has been weakened to a great extent; also that solutions must be political and social, not merely economic and ideological, if they are going to embody a society's moral values and bring about a just situation, particularly for the poor. I recommend this book.

[Badr Mokrai · Rating 2 out of 5]

الكتاب كموضوع جيد جدا، حيث يناقش مشكلة الجوع و كذا الفقر و مختلف المجهودات التي بذلت و كذا النظريات التي طرحت لحل المعضلة، لكن الكتاب من ناحية طرح الموضوع و معالجته سيء جدا، لا يساعد لا على الفهم ولا على التركيز و لا على اتباع خط مناقشة الموضوع، وصفة ممتازة للتشتت و الملل. مع كل احترامي و تقديري للكاتب الا انه اراد التطويل دون مبرر معقول، كان بامكانه اختصار هذا الكتاب في 100 صفحة و ربما أقل و لن ينقص من محتواه شيء مهم الا ما هو من الحشو و كثرة الاستشهادات الممكن الاستغناء عنها.

على العموم يرى الكاتب ان حل أزمة الغذاء لا يلوح في الأفق، فالأزمة في اساسها ليست ناتجة عن ظواهر طبيعية فقط كما يدعي البعض و لا هي نقص في انتاج الغذاء بحيث أن الرفع منه سينهي المشكل؛ إنما هي نتاج أسباب كثيرة متشابكة و معقدة منها السياسات الداخلية و الخارجية الفاشلة للدول، طمع شركات الانتاج، استفادت الشركات الفلاحية الكبرى مقابل خنق الفلاحيين و الضيعات الصغيرة، استنزاف جزء كبير من المنتوج الفلاحي لاطعام الماشية مقابل اللحم و جزء آخر لصناعة وقود الميثان، الاحتباس الحراري و تأثيره على الانتاج الزراعي و هو راجع لتأثير الصناعات البشرية على المناخ، الانظمة الاقتصادية الرأسمالية الليبرالية المتوحشة التي تسبب فوارق لا منطقية في الأجور و بالتالي عجز الفقراء عن مسايرة تكاليف الغذاء، فساد الأنظمة السياسية في الدول الفقيرة،...

صحيح أن تردد المجاعات و كذا تأثيرها قد انخفض مع تقدم الانسان، و صحيح أن العلم و التكنولوجيا و المنظمات الدولية ببرامجها و كذا البرامج السياسية الاصلاحية الداخلية للدول (كالصين) قد ساهمت في الحد من الفقر و الجوع، إلا أن كل هذه المجهودات لا تزال غير كافية؛ بل و حتى التعويل على الزمن و التكنولوجيا و الأمل لن يحل المشكل. لا بد من اصلاحات جذرية سياسية و اقتصادية و زراعية في العالم باسره حتى نستطيع جعل الحلم بالقضاء التام على الجوع و اعتبار الغذاء حقا انسانيا حقيقة في أرض الواقع.

[Sasha Alyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The big money says "we can solve the problem of world hunger, just leave the details to us. Trust us." That "us" includes Monsanto, Coke, the World Bank, various UN agencies, USAID, the Gates Foundation, and many others.

How will they eliminate hunger? Lots of partnering. The Gates Foundation has already partnered with Coca-Cola in East Africa; USAID partners with Monsanto. The partners won't be happy till every poor farmer borrows money to pay for their new improved seeds. And all the partners come from wealthy countries, with occasional local elites getting a small role.

Thoroughly researched and adeptly linking many themes, reading The Reproach of Hunger is a bit like being wrapped in an intricate tapestry of nightmares. Quite intricate -- more than once, I got lost in a sentence. But Rieff fills his sentences with intelligence and usually writes them with grace. While I don't always agree -- it seems to me that what he describes is colonialism, yet he won't use that word -- I appreciate his depth of research and his thoughtful perspective. I was sorry to see the book end.

[Emma]

I promise I care about the topic and that I want to learn more about that, but I’m having a really hard time getting through this book and it can’t be that great anyway considering Brandy only gave it three stars

[Jan Peregrine · Rating 4 out of 5]

While i did skim and even skip parts of this well-argued book, I'm a wiser person fog having read it. i now realize that the dire food shortage in places like Africa and Asia are mainly caused by the great increase in food costs that prevent accessibility to the very poor. The author also points out that malnutrition is more of a problem because junk food is what the very poor can afford, as well as crave emotionally. Even if they have the money to buy produce and nutritious food, they prefer to eat comfort foods, which causes obesity.

Rieff isn't too optimistic that our current food development and distribution system will change. It must be seen as a problem of political will and not one of traditional morality. Until that changes we will have starving and malnourished people as well as generations of children growing up mentally and physically underdeveloped. Very sad!

There's a lot more to the book, such as his criticism of philanthrocapitalism whose proponents like Bill Gates believe that technological innovation will get rid of the hunger crisis in a couple of decades.

This may be helping the situation, he says, but the solution cannot be that simple because it's an emotional and political struggle as well. Well worth checking out.

[Kate]

Holy wow. Why use a simple sentence when you can use an entire paragraph of convoluted language that loses any idea by the time it gets to where it was trying to go? And despite slogging through several chapters, the author's main thesis eluded me. Had such high hopes for this book, but no regrets about abandonment.

[Fatima Mohamed · Rating 3 out of 5]

كتاب جيد لولا كثرة تكرار بعض الأفكار وتعارض بعضها أحيانا. الترجمة سيئة كالعادة.

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my favorite. He seems confused about the meaning of words like "quantifiable" and generally doesn't seem to prioritize looking at evidence of what works as opposed to talking about assorted theories and making tenuous analogies. Among other red flags was his praising The Great Escape by Deaton, even though that's full of factual problems. I think there are more readable books covering the same ground.


The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of CapitalismThe New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

[Justus Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Review first published in Shelf Awareness)

After extensive research and two decades of observation, David Rieff, in The Reproach of Hunger, offers a nuanced perspective on hunger and poverty. In this critical look at those entrusted to solve food crises and end hunger, including farming advocates and tech-savvy "philanthrocapitalists," Rieff (Swimming in a Sea of Death) examines what solutions they have pursued and questions whether they, often without oversight by governments or the people suffering, actually understand the complexity of the problem.

According to Rieff, hunger is a problem rooted in economic, political and technological choices. He argues that many of the problem-solvers put their energies into optimistic fantasies that are doomed to fail, such as the Millennium Development Goals, which unrealistically aimed to "eradicate extreme poverty and hunger" by 2015. Modern assumptions surrounding food crises suggest hunger and poverty will end permanently if people try hard enough and throw enough money at the problem. Blinded by good intentions, these people and organizations fail to see their goals are not feasible. More than that, Reiff argues that the changes that have occurred are not sustainable, nor do they empower the people who are suffering.

In showing how and why attempts to feed the world have failed, Rieff reveals how deeply rooted popular thinking about poverty has become. His outlook is bleak, but not hopeless. While Reiff does not offer a solution, he instead calls for a complete rethink and deconstruction of the status quo, without which there will not be meaningful, lasting change.

[Mohammed omran · Rating 5 out of 5]

نعم ، هناك أزمة جوع على هذا الكوكب ، لكن الجوع لا ينتج عن ندرة الغذاء بل ندرة الديمقراطية.

آنا لابي


تنتج الأرض ما يكفي لإطعام ساكنيها وأكثر، يوجد نصف مليار جائع! وبالتحليل والأرقام والوقائع، يتبين أن ثلاثة في المئة من سكان العالم يتحكمون في نحو 77 في المئة من مساحة الأراضي الزراعية، وأن ما يزرع من مجمل تلك الأراضي لا يتجاوز 44 في المئة، بينما لا تصل النسبة في بلدان العالم الثالث إلى 20 في المئة. ويقول المؤلفان: "إن من أكثر الخرافات الغذائية ظلماً، تلك التي تقول إن البلدان المتخلفة لا يمكنها أن تزرع سوى محاصيل مدارية، وفي الحقيقة بإمكان هذه البلدان أن تزرع مجموعة كثيرة التنوع من المحاصيل، لأن التركيز على عدد محدود من المحاصيل يخلق حالاً من ضعف البنية الاقتصادية التي تتميز بها البلدان المتخلفة، وضعف البنية هذا يعني عدم القدرة على السيطرة على مصيرها، والحقيقة أيضاً هي أن المزارعين يكدحون في الزراعة، ولكن هذه الحقيقة لا تعني أنهم هم الذين يأكلون ما زرعوا، فإنتاجهم يذهب بالأحرى إلى سوبر ماركت عالمي لا يستطيع أي شخص بلا نقود أن يقف في طابور الدفع فيه، وأن الشركات الزراعية تتحدث عن إنتاج الغذاء في البلدان المتخلفة، ولكنها لا تتحدث عن الأغذية الأساسية التي يحتاج إليها الجياع، مثل الفول والذرة والأرز، وإنما تشير إلى محاصيل الترفيه، مثل المانجو والأناناس، وحتى الزهور".



صوت البطن

[Jacob Fox McGuire · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is some time-crunched grad student's awful fever dream, trying to flog 100 pages of content into a 250-page book. Hold onto your butts, boys, we're decreasing margin sizes by 10% and quoting Zizek, let's get wild!

Okay that's uncharitable, but this is not easy to get through. There's a lot of fluff and general dead-horse-beating in which Rieff makes a point and then reinforces it and then does it again, and then returns to the point later in two chapters. Like seriously, I am reading your book about food policy, I am not dumb, I got it the first time. Here's the major things he has to say:

Aid Organizations Overpromise and Underperform The Millenium Development Goals adopted by the UN included eradicating hunger and extreme poverty by 2015. Well, that didn't exactly work out. So what are our Sustainable Development Goals for 2030? #1 is to eradicate poverty and #2 is to eradicate hunger! Clearly this is possible in the stated time frame. On the one hand the grandiosity is contemptible but on the other it's hard to feel very scandalized, I mean, politicians and salespeople, lying about things, to get grant money?! By Jove.

Food Security Is Not An Engineering Problem The world considered generally makes enough food for everyone to be able to eat a surplus of calories, and this has been true since like 1980. At this point it's not a question of improving yields or rolling out new technologies. But aid organizations and major donors keep talking about malnutrition like it will get solved if we just farm better. Or even more nebulously in the case of the Silicon Valley philanthrocapitalist crowd, technology itself will save the world. The world is better now than before we had computers, and so the world will keep getting better as our computers improve. It's more of an article of faith than an actual explanation of how things will get fixed. Also for the actual real problems that do need to be solved, that's not sexy. For instance, no one in the aid community is talking about global warming. Why? No one wants to run around screaming, and it's really depressing that the Sahara is going to get a lot bigger over the next 50 years. And we don't have the political will to come even close to working on reversing that process. But it's totally ridiculous to say that we're going to engineer our way into having more food for enough people but ignore how much of the food-growing areas in the world are going to be underwater.

Food Security Is A Moral Problem The real problem with the previous point isn't even so much that it's wrong so much as it obfuscates the real factors which lead to food insecurity. If food is a commodity then the Martin Shkreli's of the world can cause the ultra-poor to go hungry by speculating on staple crops. Or if we find another brilliant non-food use for corn. Oil companies can spend more on ethanol than sub-Saharan Africans can on their staple crops. There are a lot of other complicating factors in very impoverished countries like political instability, which aid organizations are loath to address because the solutions are murky and any attempts risk coming off as paternalistic. See also: birth control--one of the major factors in countries clawing their way out of food insecurity is readily available prophylaxis, but you can't make a strong stand for that because most of the affected people are black, and no one wants to be perceived as advocating eugenics. This is kind of the weakest section, which is unfortunate because it's probably the most interesting. Rieff touches on the fact that China and to a lesser extent India have managed to reframe food insecurity as a moral problem and make large steps to resolve it, but declines to go into much detail. You get the feeling he is most interested in doing a critical review of aid literature, not actually discussing positive solutions.

Foreign Aid Is Corporate Neocolonialism I don't think that this even fits into the thesis of his book but it's actually a perspective I haven't thought about much. Companies set up their operations in haven countries to shelter their tax burden, this much is obvious. A fringe effect is that this leads to billions in revenue which is earned in third-world countries ends up just extracted. Gone to Ireland and the Canaries. If major multinational corporations paid 35% tax on their operations in Africa you would have a drastically diminished need for foreign aid, but it's not like Uganda can push around Monsanto. Western companies sell their interest in aid to domestic audiences as altruism, but internally regard the extreme poverty as an emerging market. It's not really charity if you're using the power dynamic of food aid as leverage to negotiate favorable deals. And you'll never have true food security in such an unbalanced relationships: there's little to stop aid providers from walking away.

I wish I liked the book better so I could recommend it. The topic is important and some of the sections are thought-provoking. Unfortunately the pacing is terrible and getting through to the finish feels like a slog. It comes across, as I said earlier, as more of a rebuttal to everything positive anyone has written about foreign aid in the past 10 years. The author is trying to hit on everything in his reading list, rather than trying to make a point or educate, and it gets dull quickly.

[Anggie Rachmadevi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Reproach of Hunger is a biting reflections on the twenty-first century’s development paradigm. This was a very well-researched and argued book that explores the matter of hunger, poverty, and justice and how impactful the actions and sole existence of these mainline philanthropic giants and agribusiness multinationals can be in bolstering these cases. Though I’d say Rieff can get too long-winding in his explanations at times and it took me quite a while to digest the informations mentioned, this was definitely still a very very wholesome read that could provide a perspective of what’s currently urgent in today’s development agenda.

[pawi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book provides an interesting perspective / opinion on the world politics of the recent decades regarding hunger, agriculture, food, Africa and the role that is dealt to technology therein.

I learned a lot from the book and I am glad that I read it.

The cons: at some point the book gets quite repetitive. The structure of the chapters is not very clear. It can read a bit like a rant. Was hard to finish.

[Joe Oaster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book handling complex problem. A lot of acronyms makes it difficult to read at times.

This topic would take not only money but new laws, new ideas and people willing to change. It really needs bold leadership.

[Benja Graeber · Rating 3 out of 5]

De cómo el optimismo empresarial de las ONGs, el Filantrocapitalismo y la activa monopolización del sector privado, no va a evitar la desnutrición crónica y la falta de alimento en paises menos desarrollados, y de hecho la forma en que perjudica a estas naciones.

[Peter Day · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book made some interesting points, it was very difficult to read. The sentences were unnecessarily long and full of qualifying statements.

It’s worth the read if you’re able to digest it but be prepared to work hard.

[Pj Zettle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly Recommend it.

[Faisal Jamal · Rating 4 out of 5]

رغم المليارات اللي يوعد اساطين المال في التبرع بها لحل مشكلة الفقر والتغذية الا ان المشكلة لم تحل حتى الان

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rieff presents a strong critique of the mainstream development community that has embraced the private sector as an equal partner (if not more) in deciding what is or is not the development agenda. Perhaps more significantly, he identifies the ways in which this partnership has shifted the types of questions that subject to debate. In the UN, the boardrooms of major foundations, and the minds of "philanthrocapitalists" like Bill Gates, we really are living at the "end of history." Rieff's indictment of the failures of conventional approaches to development is supported by the evidence that, while there has been some real progress, we have yet to accomplish the first of the Millennium Development Goals (To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger) that were meant to guide the development agenda through 2015, let alone all eight.

And yet, despite the forcefulness of Rieff's arguments, The Reproach of Hunger seems to run out of steam in the final chapter. Rieff gestures toward his difference with the activists associated with the more critical "right to food" movement in this chapter and throughout the text, and it would have been nice to see these differences more fully fleshed out. This could have offered, if not the way forward, at least the beginnings of a way forward for those who agree with Rieff's critique of the mainstream consensus, but are also unsure of how the right to food approach can succeed in today's political and economic environment. Maybe Rieff feels that he doesn't have the answers. That's fine, and even refreshing, given the willingness of so many to pontificate whether they have expertise in the area or not (I'm looking at you, Bill Gates).

Still, toward the end of the conclusion, Rieff's brief comments on Brazil's Fome Zero program (Zero Hunger, a program implemented by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) offer a glimpse of what could have been an interesting chapter in its own right. Perhaps, even in today's environment of "public-private partnerships" and "corporate social responsibility" there's room for the state after all. A more developed discussion on such efforts would have provided a powerful and constructive counterargument to Gates and company, and it's a shame that it's missing here.

[Guifré B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muy inspirador.
Mi crítica (català) -->
https://ekonomicus.com/2016/10/27/cri...

[Jason von Meding · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was quite a challenge to get through. Many times I had to reread paragraphs several times because they were unnecessary verbose. As other reviews have mentioned, Rieff does repeat similar arguments in multiple chapters and, while reinforcing his position, this can be off-putting.

However, once you get to chapter 10 it gets really good and is hard to put down. His 'democratic' perspective is certainly not popular amongst the aid and development elite, but neither is he counted amongst the anti-globalists. I found his critique of the Gates Foundation monopoly, NGOs embracing of the private sector, philanthrocapitalism and liberal capitalism more broadly refreshingly balanced.

It is disheartening that dissent is simply not allowed in this arena and that the great majority of development actors believe so strongly in technocratic solutions. On this, Chapter 15, Optimism and Moral Victory, Pessimism as Moral Affront is quite brilliant.

Overall I learned a lot about a range of viewpoints on hunger and poverty. Rieff does not hide his personal opinion, but I felt that he also gave others a fair representation. I highly recommend the book. For a shorter read, start at chapter 10!

[Neil Bhatiya · Rating 3 out of 5]

A stinging critique of the current state of consensus around economic development in low-income countries (particularly around agriculture), Rieff is dubious that the calls for a Second Green Revolution will succeed unless they deal more directly questions of social justice and politics. Too often, in Rieff's view, the aid community (the IFIs, State/USAID, and well-meaning global philanthropies like Gates and Rockefeller Foundations) is in thrall to a sort of anti-politics, where open markets are understood as the default solution to hunger, regardless of the impact it has on farmers in the communities it targets. While light on actual solutions to reverse this trend (Rieff is pessimistic it is doable) he shows how to be a well-informed skeptic.

[Margie · Rating 3 out of 5]

another tough read, and I only read the Introduction, the first chapter, and last chapter...main thing I got out of it is that hunger is a complex problem. There is (IS) enough food in the world to feed us all, but something like more than 1 billion (BILLION) make less than an equivalent of $1/day, 2 billion (BILLION) make less than $2/day and can't afford to buy enough food.

[Terry Tonon · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was interesting and gave an informative review of the effect and implications of big money "philanthropists" but did not come to any conclusion and the author seemed only able to muse about the situation. It was okay.

[hl]

dropped 12/10/16... for now...