You want to give pirates some legit commando training ? I can think of some light PR difficulties on that one ;).
Yes, I know that’s not what you’re saying, or meaning. That’s how the media circus would play it though.
ETA: and besides, I don’t think the Somali themselves would be too keen on being essentially re-colonized (since that’s half of what the colonies provided: cheap bodies for the grinder, whether they were Sepoys or Harkis, Zouaves, Montagnards, etc…)
25 million $ in a televised donation drive this Saturday. Which was a record. I wonder how much will actually do any good on the ground. Some evaluations have shown that much of the aid with regard to Haiti was wasted. The television aid program showed how it had become something of a tradition in Denmark to host these programs, starting with Ethiopia mid 80s, and the going on to another starvation late 80s, a couple of starvations in the area in the 90s, some more in the 00s. Supposedly there were less than 40 million Ethiopians back then with BandAid in the 80s, and today 80+ million. The land is still the same though. Marginal, given to recurring droughts. Recurring starvations are about as predictable as a Swiss watch. They really need to get their own shit together. Nobody can do it for them.
The Danish hostages are still there. Two of them young girls (12yo), which may have been married off to the pirate chief. I’ve advocated the Cesar solution since the start. Pony up and revisit the pirates and their local community with the wrath of God. Instead Danish warships in the area keep catching and releasing pirates, like some silly game, because there are no court that will hear their cases.
If it were cellists killing other cellists would you give a shit?
If they cultivated a culture of violence that lionized murder then I wouldn’t be too upset. Like Hells Angels clashing with Banditos. You are not responsible for saving people from themselves.
Incidentally here is our Development Aid minister on a recent visit to Africa:
That doesn’t seem very likely. Do you really think one of the world’s major military powers would do something so silly and convoluted?
So is anyone allowed to kill rappers or just other rappers?
For a secretary of evil you sure fret a lot over a few lousy rappers.
Why didn’t we just let the Islamic Courts Union take over the country when we had the chance? They provided a reasonable semblence of order and I think even tried to curtail piracy. But since we got rid of them, we’ve got a ‘transistional’ government which is heavily reliant on AU aid and support, and Al Shabab who look like the African Taliban.
No, the obvious answer to this joke is not all Somalis can afford boats!
I can’t remember the name of the book right now, but there was a very well received book which argued that giving aid anywhere in Africa is actually detrimental to future growth and development. Damn I wish I could remember the title. But yeah most of sub-Saharan African is so broken that simple aid doesn’t do much unless the entire political and educational systems are revamped. They really give corruption a bad name over there, it’s crazy.
Although there is the “throwing one starfish at a time back into the ocean” argument… but still you could argue that there are plenty of kids elsewhere who also need help and who actually live in countries with a system set up that will really allow for advancement.
My understanding is that it’s more than just predation , random violence, or warlordism; that the suffering, population displacement, and starvation in Somalia is a deliberate act of war conducted intentionally. Certain ethnic groups are bent on killing off others, or at least driving them off their land, and occupying the land themselves.
It’s not that they “can’t be bothered to care about” other Somalis, it’s that “they intend to kill them and take their stuff.”
We have three possible responses:
Send aid to the displaced. This is of little use and the bad guys will seize it/prevent it.
Send in “peacekeepers” until we get tired. The bad guys will outwait us, or even drive off the peacekeepers.
Identify the bad guys and kill them. Since, in order to work permanently, this might mean exterminating every single member of their ethnicity, i. e., genocide, it’s distasteful and we won’t do it. If it’s a choice between allowing one group to commit genocide or doing it ourselves, we’d rather watch from a distance and feel bad.
He basically just described the old School of the Americas.
You probably wouldn’t want to build it inside Somalia proper though.
I would see this as a threat to the oboe section and respond accordingly.
Basic human empathy.
I’ve read that too - was in “Freakonomics,” maybe?
The OP makes a good point; I don’t have a problem donating to Somalian famine relief efforts, but I have a problem donating to Somalian warlords. How do I know how my donations are used? And as others have said, this is an ongoing problem; feed starving kids now so they can grow up to give birth to starving babies 15 years from now? I don’t want any kids to starve, but there’s a bigger picture here that needs to be addressed, not just, “Show them pictures of big-eyed starving kids and they’ll send us money.”
Which is more humane: Them dying now, vs suffering war, starvation, rape, etc for the next 15 years, then watching their own kids starve to death in the next famine?
If you want to argue that allowing people to starve to death en masse is humane, good luck. But Revtim didn’t say humane, he said empathy. Empathy is understanding and sharing what other people are feeling. Most of us recognize that starving to death would be horrible, so we don’t wish that on others.
Well I thought the idea of placing it in Somalia was the silliest part. That’s not really what the School of the Americas was about though. The School of the Americas was about training Right-Wing Latin American military officers to fight communism in their own countries. It’s hard to mention that school without pointing out that it trained a lot of bad men to do bad things. Argent’s idea was that Somalia could be used by a major power as a recruiting ground for private military contractors, or in simpler terms, mercenaries. These mercenaries would presumably be used by countries to fight wars in other countries.
I could see some desperate third rate despot recruiting some Somali mercenaries. But a major military power? 2/3 of Somalis are illiterate. Most of them speak Somali, which isn’t a terribly common language outside of Somalia. If a Western power was looking for a cheap supply of foreign soldiers wouldn’t Latin America or Eastern Europe be a much better recruiting ground? People from those places would be more likely to possess general education or formal military training, and would have more cultural similarities to their employers. I can’t see countries like China or India recruiting Somalis, since cheap labor is hardly in short supply in those countries.
I just like to know who I can get away with killing. Because I’m evil. Duh.
You oboists think you have the right to police the world.