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Kilkrazy wrote:The UNICEF people said the important thing at first is to distribute money among the population so they can buy food.

There are traders in the surrounding countries who have food and want to sell it.

It's much easier to distribute money than food. The people will then organise markets themselves.

You must be kidding me. The last thing you want to do is to give money.

In my last we have a bunch somalian kids in our school from ages 13 to 15 and they are in the "troubled kid -class". They are not there because they can't read or study they are there because they are douchebags (note that these are refugees not immigrants).

I say nuke 'em.

Something something "it's the only way to be sure."

Nah, but seriously, is natural selection evil in and of itself?

avantgarde wrote:

dogma wrote:

Ensis Ferrae wrote:
I do fail to see why anyone should help a country that tore itself apart, goes the same way for much of the continent. More often than not, IMO the famines that we see in the regions are caused more by wars and internecine conflicts than by the weather.

Yeah, I would expect a European to say that.

loling

me too.. because I'm not European. Like I said, we have our own people within the US to look after before we go helping others who really shouldn't be helped by us. I'm actually surprised that certain UN countries haven't demanded that we send stuff over to somalia, even though I think that it would make things worse in many respects.

dogma wrote:

Ensis Ferrae wrote:
I do fail to see why anyone should help a country that tore itself apart, goes the same way for much of the continent. More often than not, IMO the famines that we see in the regions are caused more by wars and internecine conflicts than by the weather.

Yeah, I would expect a European to say that.

I believe that he's is an American Stationed in Germany.

We should just let them all move to America. Maybe Minnesota? Oh, they are.

Bromsy wrote:We should just let them all move to America. Maybe Minnesota? Oh, they are.

LOL, they're quite the cab driving force aren't they?

avantgarde wrote:

dogma wrote:

Ensis Ferrae wrote:
I do fail to see why anyone should help a country that tore itself apart, goes the same way for much of the continent. More often than not, IMO the famines that we see in the regions are caused more by wars and internecine conflicts than by the weather.

Yeah, I would expect a European to say that.

loling

I'm not sure whether or not you got the joke.

Kilkrazy wrote:What about helping people?

Charity starts at home. I see mini dabaab refugee camps in certain parts of Baltimore, and thats why all of my charitable donations go to local charities. I just don't have the means to care about foreigners.

Personally I'm not at all moved by their plight. Clinton gave them a decent shot, but October 3rd 1993 happened. Why should I care about people who paraded the corpses of American service members (who were going about freeing them from warlords) through Mogadishu like trophies?

4M2A wrote:Because it's not our responsibility.

How would an absence of responsibility deny the opportunity to do good?

If there is a child who through no fault of his own is born into a wartorn, impoverished country, and you can help him to survive and equip him to look after himself for the rest of his life, then that is a good thing, whether he is from your country or any other. Responsibility might add an obligation on top of that, but there's simply no denying that helping someone is a good thing in and of itself.

There are thousands of people in our own countries that are starving or getting ill because the have no money.

Have you seen the size of social welfare programs in any western democracy? It's the biggest line item in every budget, everywhere in the world. This is because it costs a lot of money to help someone in a developed country, because the minimum standard of living is quite high. On the other hand, the problems among the world's utterly destitute are much, much cheaper to fix. This is why first aid spending does so much good around the world, despite being so utterly tiny compared to social welfare spending.

The culture is not suited to maintaining a peaceful country.

People have said that about every wartorn country. Every time they make the mistake of thinking culture is permanent, ever lasting, and not the product of the surrounding political climate. One might have said it about the US during the very violent history of the 18th and 19th centuries. One might have said it about the British throughout the 17th century.

Yet in every case, once there's no longer an incentive to fight, people move to other things.


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Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:Something something "it's the only way to be sure."

Nah, but seriously, is natural selection evil in and of itself?

No, in and of itself it's entirely amoral, and no different to gravity or any other scientific phenomena.

However, the idea that we should just stand by and watch people suffer is completely evil, whether you dress it up 'natural selection' or any other nonsense.


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NELS1031 wrote:Personally I'm not at all moved by their plight. Clinton gave them a decent shot, but October 3rd 1993 happened. Why should I care about people who paraded the corpses of American service members (who were going about freeing them from warlords) through Mogadishu like trophies?

While a fantastically produced war movie, one of the biggest problems of Blackhawk Down is that it gave no context for the events of the US military operation. In doesn't consider the incredibly inept and just plain evil over-reaction of the Pakistani peacekeepers in firing missiles from a helicopter into a crowd of people around an aid station, nor the UN's decision to pretend the missile was fired by some other helicopter. This brought the total number of civilians killed by peacekeepers during the aid mission to over 700. The US then made the terrible decision to respond to the deteriorating situation by targetting Aidid - a policy that only gave Aidid increased standing and ultimately just made the UN forces another warband in the region.

The result of that movie in the mainstream was to see a bunch of crazies taking horrendous casualties, leading to the popular belief that we shouldn't go near the place. Placed in it's proper context, we should ask what made the Somalis so pissed that they took over 1,000 casualties just to get us out of their city. And the answer to that question is that we ran an incredibly incompetent peacekeeping operation.

sebster wrote:

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:Something something "it's the only way to be sure."

Nah, but seriously, is natural selection evil in and of itself?

No, in and of itself it's entirely amoral, and no different to gravity or any other scientific phenomena.

However, the idea that we should just stand by and watch people suffer is completely evil, whether you dress it up 'natural selection' or any other nonsense.

Darwin said that survival of the fittest was the mechanism of nature but that the mechanism of civilization was empathy.

sebster wrote:

NELS1031 wrote:Personally I'm not at all moved by their plight. Clinton gave them a decent shot, but October 3rd 1993 happened. Why should I care about people who paraded the corpses of American service members (who were going about freeing them from warlords) through Mogadishu like trophies?

While a fantastically produced war movie, one of the biggest problems of Blackhawk Down is that it gave no context for the events of the US military operation.

The result of that movie

Its a fantastically written book based on first hand accounts that became a decent but highly innacurate war movie. Also, I had the honor of being trained and later serving with veterans of the Somali operation that were there from start to finish. The (1st) Battle of Mogadishu is more then a movie to some of us. I'm not saying that to sound high and mighty, just to point out that there are some of us who get our info and inform our opinions from sources other then Hollywood.

All of the first hand accounts I had from my NCO's (and one officer) about the Somali peacekeeping op were that the Somalis were always ambivalent to the aid flowing their way and the UN peacekeepers were an obstacle preventing them from killing each other. And peacekeeping missions require indigenous support to be successful, otherwise it will become a clusterfeth, like it did in Somalia, regardless of how well it is run. I learned that peacekeeping in the Balkans, where for the most part, everyone wanted peace and its now relatively stable (as far as that powderkeg area goes).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the region where this is all taking place has some fundamental flaws that can't be fixed by feeding them alone, nor will any amount of international interference help, unless its overwhelming force, which no one cares to do.

NELS1031 wrote:Its a fantastically written book based on first hand accounts that became a decent but highly innacurate war movie.

Umm, yes it was a just a movie. You were making the same point I was making, what were you trying to achieve there?

Also, I had the honor of being trained and later serving with veterans of the Somali operation that were there from start to finish. The (1st) Battle of Mogadishu is more then a movie to some of us. I'm not saying that to sound high and mighty, just to point out that there are some of us who get our info and inform our opinions from sources other then Hollywood.

Yeah, and you'll note that as I was commenting on the information not contained in the movie, you'd have to realise that I wasn't getting my information just from the movie either, so I'm not really sure what you're suggesting there.

Anyhow, it's great that you got first hand accounts of operation, but you need to realise that there is a very important reason that people investigating events don't just ask one side what happened and leave it at that. Their information, by it's nature, is going to be limited to just their perspective. Instead we look at a range of views and also historical aggregates to gain a much better picture of the event.

If you are actually interested, I recommend reading any of the volumous UN reports in the wake of the event (the UN has the strange quirk of being incredibly dishonest in it's reporting during any operation, but incredibly honest in the aftermath). There you can look plainly at the 700 or more civilians that were killed by the UN in its 'peacekeeping', and you can look at the devolution of the UN operation into becoming just another warlord.

But what you cannot do is pretend those things didn't happen. You can't pretend they were inevitable. You have to accept that the UN operation was poorly executed, and that led directly to the events of the First Battle of Mogadishu.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the region where this is all taking place has some fundamental flaws

What does this mean?


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Ahtman wrote:Darwin said that survival of the fittest was the mechanism of nature but that the mechanism of civilization was empathy.

That is a much, much better way of putting it. Turns out as well as being the founder of modern biology, Darwin is also better with a turn of phrase than I am.

sebster wrote:Umm, yes it was a just a movie. You were making the same point I was making, what were you trying to achieve there?

Yeah, and you'll note that as I was commenting on the information not contained in the movie, you'd have to realise that I wasn't getting my information just from the movie either, so I'm not really sure what you're suggesting there.

Way I read it was that you were assuming that the movie was where I was getting my info and I felt the need to point out where I informed my opinion.

if you are actually interested,

I'm not. If you read my first post you'd know their plight doesn't move me, nor do I have the means to effectively help if it did.

What does this mean?

You are obtuse or trolling.

Either way, I said my opinion and I'm out,

It seems that we (the 'western' world) spend an awful lot of time trying to 'fix' these places and waste lots of money when our own countries are fethed and we have homeless people, poor children and high university fees!

Phototoxin wrote:It seems that we (the 'western' world) spend an awful lot of time trying to 'fix' these places and waste lots of money when our own countries are fethed and we have homeless people, poor children and high university fees!

But, as I pointed out before, these numbers simply don't scale against each other. With the spare change from any developed nation's social welfare or tertiary education budget you could double the foreign aid budget. You could help scores of Somalis in refugee camps with the money you'd spend on subsidising a tertiary student for a year.

And what's more, if we wanted to do both, we could easily do so.


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NELS1031 wrote:I'm not. If you read my first post you'd know their plight doesn't move me, nor do I have the means to effectively help if it did.

The idea that one can simply declare that a thing doesn't move them, and assume that no more greater knowledge or learning could change that is incredible. It's a declaration of moral self-satisfaction.

You are obtuse or trolling.

Either way, I said my opinion and I'm out,

No, I'm questioning an easily formed but entirely incorrect conclusion.

But you've 'said your piece', presumably happy and satisified with your knowledge don't think you've got anymore to learn about the issue. Not much we can do about that.

dogma wrote:

Ensis Ferrae wrote:
I do fail to see why anyone should help a country that tore itself apart, goes the same way for much of the continent. More often than not, IMO the famines that we see in the regions are caused more by wars and internecine conflicts than by the weather.

Yeah, I would expect a European to say that.

.

In fairness there is a link. If they actually took the time to build an infrastructure instead of being greedy and killing each other, there would be a better support system. This would mean that when droughts happened they would have a better chance of coping with it.

In the 27 years since Live Aid happened, how far forward are we in getting a handle on this? How much money has been poured into supporting African nations in this time? Surely by now they should have some workable system in place?

Sebster- The only way we are going to change their culture is by either leaving them to it or forcign them to change. We have no right to force a country to change its culture, if they want to fight and kill each other they have the right to, it is their country no ours. It's easier to look at the poor guys who are being denied peace but to help them would involve entering a country and forcing it's inhabitants to change. Sad as it is the warlords have as much right to somalia as those looking for peace. For us it looks like they are bad but we need to realise our culture isn't the only one and by forcing countries to change isn't right.

I'm not against helping them but we should do it in a way that encourages them to change rather than forces them. We can help the people who want peace without forcing change on others. Encouraging peopleto leave somalia would work.

Nah, but seriously, is natural selection evil in and of itself?

Only if you are an European.

This is why first aid spending does so much good around the world, despite being so utterly tiny compared to social welfare spending.

Not true. Corruption and even the local mentality can turn this upside down.
In the history of mankind no people have ever got so much "aid" for so little as the palestinians and look what they have accomplished, even destroyed the greenhouses they were given.

Some s hole countries should simply be left to darwinism, if we could evolve from which burning to a functioning society then so can they given time.

People have said that about every wartorn country. Every time they make the mistake of thinking culture is permanent, ever lasting, and not the product of the surrounding political climate. One might have said it about the US during the very violent history of the 18th and 19th centuries. One might have said it about the British throughout the 17th century.

Time!
Those all took time and intern self made changes. Do you honestly believe that your examples would have changed to the better in just a few years only if an outside source kept throwing money at them?

However, the idea that we should just stand by and watch people suffer is completely evil, whether you dress it up 'natural selection' or any other nonsense.

As always, the socialists wet dream is to use other peoples money to pay for what they want themselves. If forcefully imposed even better. No wonder this creates friction.

While a fantastically produced war movie, one of the biggest problems of Blackhawk Down is that it gave no context for the events of the US military operation.

Then I suggest you should read the book "black hawk down". The movie is simply an overly cleaned up politically correct piece of "entertainment".
You would know why things like shooting into masses of "civilians" happened from the best sources there are, the guys on the ground.
After reading the book I was sick to my stomach and totally, utterly disgusted by the somalis themselves. Charity in all its glory has its means and uses and I give a little myself now and then but I wouldnt in my wildest dreams even piss on that country if it so was on fire.

just to point out that there are some of us who get our info and inform our opinions from sources other then Hollywood.

All of the first hand accounts I had from my NCO's (and one officer) about the Somali peacekeeping op were that the Somalis were always ambivalent to the aid flowing their way and the UN peacekeepers were an obstacle preventing them from killing each other. And peacekeeping missions require indigenous support to be successful, otherwise it will become a clusterfeth, like it did in Somalia, regardless of how well it is run. I learned that peacekeeping in the Balkans, where for the most part, everyone wanted peace and its now relatively stable (as far as that powderkeg area goes).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the region where this is all taking place has some fundamental flaws that can't be fixed by feeding them alone, nor will any amount of international interference help, unless its overwhelming force, which no one cares to do.

Amen to that!

Personally I'm not trying to change Somail culture, I'm just trying to get some cash to the mothers of starving children.

By setting up trade and markets, the situation will be relieved and the social system will start to normalise.

avantgarde wrote:I find it incredible, absolutely incredible that the US can't find a single charismatic strong man with pro-western leanings to run the country. All the US has to do is front the money for weapons, ammunition, aid and maybe some special forces "advisers". It shouldn't even cost too much since we'd be training shoddy Somalian militia to beat up on other shoddy Somalian militia. It's not like teaching Afghan tribals to shoot down Hinds.

I bet the US could have a fully functional pro US dictatorship running the country within 5 years if we wanted. It's a shame we're too selfish to do something about the situation in Somalia.

Yeah we did that before. Then the Ayatollah wrecked up the pro-west government we put in there. The CIA learned this lesson after that; you don't play government anywhere but home. Fact of the matter is I really don't think there is anything most governments will do for them because people really are too worried about how jewish Amy Winehouse's funeral is going to be. Before anyone freaks out yes, that was a news headline I saw.

As much as I want to refute the idea that the CIA is no longer creating puppet states in third world countries after one failure by pointing out that through most of the latter half of the twentieth century they were propping up pro-western dictators, every instance of which ultimately ended in unmitigated disaster (although given the circumstances, even a short-term victory might have more than outweighed the ultimate cost, since it was all a game being played against the Soviets), no instance of them doing that after Somalia comes to mind. They're still meddling, but they seemed to have moved to more subtle tactics, though the ending of the Cold War and the sort of "any cost is justified because we stand on the brink of annihilation" mentality it brought to the table probably has more to do with it than losing a puppet state in a worthless piece of territory.

Ensis Ferrae wrote:
me too.. because I'm not European. Like I said, we have our own people within the US to look after before we go helping others who really shouldn't be helped by us. I'm actually surprised that certain UN countries haven't demanded that we send stuff over to somalia, even though I think that it would make things worse in many respects.

I'll revise:

I would expect an American living in a reconstructed European country to say that.

Kilkrazy wrote:Personally I'm not trying to change Somail culture, I'm just trying to get some cash to the mothers of starving children.

It disgusts me that people ignore this.

I donate $60 a month to UNICEF, that's about $2 a day. I'm a student and I barely even notice that, imagine what could be achieved if people or countries put just a little more than a pittance into stopping this kind of gak?

Nevermind, that comes across as awfully morally superior. It's not like I'm actually doing anything actually helpful.

Wolfstan wrote:
In the 27 years since Live Aid happened, how far forward are we in getting a handle on this? How much money has been poured into supporting African nations in this time? Surely by now they should have some workable system in place?

The only real cases of comparison are Japan and Germany, both of which took much longer than ~30 years to stabilize.

Kilkrazy wrote:Personally I'm not trying to change Somail culture, I'm just trying to get some cash to the mothers of starving children.

By setting up trade and markets, the situation will be relieved and the social system will start to normalise.

The problem is that when you send money and food to these regions you're not actually helping to improve the situation. All you're doing is propping up a system that doesn't work.

When you give people food for free it eliminates the incentive to farm. Why buy food from the local farmer when you can get it for free from the UN.

Not that all charity is a bad thing, but when you're supporting most of an entire population on foreign aid, something has gone terribly wrong.

Kilkrazy wrote:Personally I'm not trying to change Somail culture, I'm just trying to get some cash to the mothers of starving children.

By setting up trade and markets, the situation will be relieved and the social system will start to normalise.

Frankly that is very naive. Money does not GET to the mothers of starving children and you cannot set up trade and markets with the situation as it is. And if you go in and make it safe to do so, and to enforce the money getting to Mama and her starving kids, you will be changing the culture. Period.


Simple and workable solution to Somalia is to keep working with the Kenyan military and the Ethiopeans so they can contain the chaos. Continue to use Djibouti as a staging area to hunt and take out high value crap bags as they pop up. It ain't a place you can fix.

Look at Haiti. Closer to the US, easier to influence, a culture not as hostile as Somalia, and still a crap hole, and will always be a crap hole no matter how many resources we pour into it. And that was before their earthquake...

Jake

4M2A wrote:Sebster- The only way we are going to change their culture is by either leaving them to it or forcign them to change.

Again, this is just the assumption that constant fighting between warlords is somehow inherent to their 'culture'. It isn't. It's a product of weak government, easy access to guns, and a level of economic development where relative wealth can be achieved by simply controlling an area with enough armed goons.

It's easier to look at the poor guys who are being denied peace but to help them would involve entering a country and forcing it's inhabitants to change.

It's not only easier to look at it that way, it's the only way that makes any sense. Honestly, cultural relativism can just go hang as far as I'm concerned, because I'm really, really not interested in any kind of moral position that says we should leave orphans starving because we don't have the 'right' to interfere.


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Pyriel- wrote:In the history of mankind no people have ever got so much "aid" for so little as the palestinians and look what they have accomplished, even destroyed the greenhouses they were given.

Are you honest to God claiming the problem in Palestine is too much foreign intervention? Seriously?

Some s hole countries should simply be left to darwinism, if we could evolve from which burning to a functioning society then so can they given time.

Lovely. You know people live there, right?

Time!
Those all took time and intern self made changes. Do you honestly believe that your examples would have changed to the better in just a few years only if an outside source kept throwing money at them?

Internal self made changes?! As if over time people started saying 'you know what, I'm going to stop using violence to achieve or maintain my social position, and start competing in the production of goods'

These things come about because of changes in the economic and political situation, which gives people as a whole more incentive to act in more peaceful, constructive ways.

As always, the socialists wet dream is to use other peoples money to pay for what they want themselves. If forcefully imposed even better. No wonder this creates friction.

There's no dream here, just an understanding that there is a serious problem

When I suggest you should read the book "black hawk down". The movie is simply an overly cleaned up politically correct piece of "entertainment".
You would know why things like shooting into masses of "civilians" happened from the best sources there are, the guys on the ground.

Uhh, given you seem to have missed the point that the incident involved Pakistani troops, who were not interviewed in Black Hawk Down, I suggest you do a lot more than read Black Hawk Down if you want to understand the reasons behind the failure of the Somali peacekeeping operation.

After reading the book I was sick to my stomach and totally, utterly disgusted by the somalis themselves. Charity in all its glory has its means and uses and I give a little myself now and then but I wouldnt in my wildest dreams even piss on that country if it so was on fire.

Which, again, is why I recommend you read a lot more broadly than one book, which while excellently pieced thgether, took an intentionally narrow look at the situation.

They wouldn't fight if they didn't want to. We could introduce guns to the UK and remove goverment but I can't see it going the same way as somalia. There would be bad areas but nothing like it is over there. They have no desire for a united country and are happy to take what they want.

Just doing whatever you feel like regardless of the moral position is a stupid arguement and just gets worse as soon as you let others live by the same rules. How would you react if a country did the same thing to you? If someone walked into your house with a gun and started giving orders because they didn't like your life style you wouldn't think it was ok but your fine doing that to others. Terrorists use exactly the same arguement to justify their actions. They strongly believe what the "enemy " is doing is wrong so whatever they do to stop it is right because any position that allows it is right- however i'm guessing that your don't have the same views when it applies to ideas you don't like. Your views don't get special treatment just because you believe them.

biccat wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Personally I'm not trying to change Somail culture, I'm just trying to get some cash to the mothers of starving children.

By setting up trade and markets, the situation will be relieved and the social system will start to normalise.

The problem is that when you send money and food to these regions you're not actually helping to improve the situation. All you're doing is propping up a system that doesn't work.

When you give people food for free it eliminates the incentive to farm. Why buy food from the local farmer when you can get it for free from the UN.

Not that all charity is a bad thing, but when you're supporting most of an entire population on foreign aid, something has gone terribly wrong.

Something has gone terribly wrong -- the worst drought for 60 years.

UNICEF gives the money to the refugees. They spend it on food. This encourages traders from other areas to import food.

Markets are set up and normalisation of trade and daily life ensues.

Kilkrazy wrote:

biccat wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Personally I'm not trying to change Somail culture, I'm just trying to get some cash to the mothers of starving children.

By setting up trade and markets, the situation will be relieved and the social system will start to normalise.

The problem is that when you send money and food to these regions you're not actually helping to improve the situation. All you're doing is propping up a system that doesn't work.

When you give people food for free it eliminates the incentive to farm. Why buy food from the local farmer when you can get it for free from the UN.

Not that all charity is a bad thing, but when you're supporting most of an entire population on foreign aid, something has gone terribly wrong.

Something has gone terribly wrong -- the worst drought for 60 years.

UNICEF gives the money to the refugees. They spend it on food. This encourages traders from other areas to import food.

Markets are set up and normalisation of trade and daily life ensues.

The money and food do not get to the refugees in any amounts that have a chance to make a difference. The warlords control distribution and use the resources as a control mechanism on the population. The food and money are actually better weapons for them than if you had shipped in AK47s. No matter how many tons of food get shipped in, they WILL still have a famine. Unless of course you send in a large security force and are willing to kill a lot of folks, accept casualties, in other words, willing to fight a war.