I read an interesting article on Ethiopia years ago that proposed that international aid was perpetuating starvation by easing immediate concerns to the point that it creates an increase in birth rates without providing the infrastructure to support the resulting population.
In short, I'm with Monroe.
This is pretty much it. All of the aid we are sending to Africa is only prolonging the problem since we are doing jack shit to put in place infrastructure for functioning countries. I mean there are other concerns that are preventing that from happening anyway ie: warlords.
Exactly.
We'll reduce the population to levels sustainable with current infrastructure, then pull out all aid so that the birth rate remains more in line with the country's ability to sustain growth.
Er. I was agreeing with the assessment of the problem, not the solution. Although I'm pretty sure we are all joking here I am still uncomfortable with "olol nuke Africa"
Oh yeah, I completely agree. That'd be unimaginable.
We can't just throw out the whole continent because most of it needs a solution. We'll probably leave 20-30% of it standing.
We'll never again have a war that is almost universally agreed to be necessary to stop the spread of real evil
It's all just shades of gray in this world
The vast majority of wars throughout history were of this sort. It's nothing new.
Even most modern wars were like this. WWII was just such an extreme counterexample that it colors our perception of a just war nearly in the absolute.
Even then, you have shit like the bombing of Dresden that makes you go ":(" again.
The methods were somewhat ambiguous, but the causes were significantly less so. One both fronts, there was a clear aggressor without reasonable cause accompanied by inhumane behavior in the extreme.
Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki play major roles in keeping it away from an absolutely black and white situation, but aren't nearly enough to make it nearly as gray as the norm.
I suppose you're right when it comes to the practices of the war, and the common consensus is that Roosevelt, Churchill, and Truman bombed to bring an end to the war, not to exterminate the Italian, German, Japanese, Romanian nationalities. But there's also a whole lot that needs to be acknowledged more openly in regards to what the Western Allies wanted out of the war, and this often involved a whole lot of ethnic cleansing (in terms of population movement - not murder, of course), economic de facto imperialism and colonialism, screwing over lots of smaller groups in Europe and elsewhere - and not just Poland. And of course that's not even considering the atrocities the Red Army and NKVD committed simply marching into Germany, not to mention what happened in the occupation of Eastern Europe.
Granted, none of it was done simply to exterminate peoples based on race, ethnicity, language, nationality, etc., and it was often on what was a smaller scale than what the Nazis did in Eastern Europe or the Japanese did in China and other locales in East Asia. But it all was pretty horrible, and often was motivated by greed and misinformation (i.e. early Cold War years) more than anything else. A good read on the subject of how much of a clusterfuck WWII was for everyone involved is The War of the World by Niall Ferguson, simply because he delves into a lot of material that is usually just simply ignored because the good guys won.
And just to cover my own ass I'm not saying the Western Allies - and the USSR, because it was invaded, and it did take the brunt of Axis aggresion - weren't on some level fighting the good fight, but that there were a lot of other motives that need to acknowledged on a grand level.
Ol' Sparky on
0
ArtreusI'm a wizardAnd that looks fucked upRegistered Userregular
edited June 2009
Hey guys remember the Spanish American War and the shit that followed it in the phillipenes? McKinley for president '12.
Ahmadinejad called the opposition a bunch of insignificant dirt who try to make the taste of victory bitter to the nation. He also called the western leaders a bunch of 'filthy homosexuals'. All these disgusting remarks was today answered by that largest demonstration ever. All these disgusting remarks was today answered by that largest demonstration ever. Older people compared the demonstration of today with the Ashura Demonstration of 1979 which marks the downfall of the Shah regime and even said that it outnumbered that event.
There's not really any fact checking going on here, though.
Posts
Oh yeah, I completely agree. That'd be unimaginable.
We can't just throw out the whole continent because most of it needs a solution. We'll probably leave 20-30% of it standing.
"Waste not, want not" and all that.
I suppose you're right when it comes to the practices of the war, and the common consensus is that Roosevelt, Churchill, and Truman bombed to bring an end to the war, not to exterminate the Italian, German, Japanese, Romanian nationalities. But there's also a whole lot that needs to be acknowledged more openly in regards to what the Western Allies wanted out of the war, and this often involved a whole lot of ethnic cleansing (in terms of population movement - not murder, of course), economic de facto imperialism and colonialism, screwing over lots of smaller groups in Europe and elsewhere - and not just Poland. And of course that's not even considering the atrocities the Red Army and NKVD committed simply marching into Germany, not to mention what happened in the occupation of Eastern Europe.
Granted, none of it was done simply to exterminate peoples based on race, ethnicity, language, nationality, etc., and it was often on what was a smaller scale than what the Nazis did in Eastern Europe or the Japanese did in China and other locales in East Asia. But it all was pretty horrible, and often was motivated by greed and misinformation (i.e. early Cold War years) more than anything else. A good read on the subject of how much of a clusterfuck WWII was for everyone involved is The War of the World by Niall Ferguson, simply because he delves into a lot of material that is usually just simply ignored because the good guys won.
And just to cover my own ass I'm not saying the Western Allies - and the USSR, because it was invaded, and it did take the brunt of Axis aggresion - weren't on some level fighting the good fight, but that there were a lot of other motives that need to acknowledged on a grand level.
and the IRA in Ireland, Algeria, Vietnam, Chechnya, Afghanistan in the 80s, and even the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.
and the British in Malaya especially, considering they won pretty much hands down.
There's not really any fact checking going on here, though.
Previous account
Fucking animals.
:winky:
how would you even
why would you even
how does one go about calculating
NYAAARGHGHAGAH
I can still barely perform that kind of simple math (because I am legally retarded)
Kim-Jong Il really is an internet expert
The age of consent in the Philippines is 12 human years
E: Factoring hectopascals!
Like 1:1000
thailand?
I learned SOHCAHTOA as the great Indian chief, but everyone learned it differently
Junior year we had a student teacher who goes "You guys know SOHCAHTOA right? Some Old Hippie Caught Another Hippie Tripping On Acid"
Whole class is just like what the fuck dude we didn't learn it as a drug joke
What a terrible name for a city
lovely beaches though.
You're a terrible name for a city
Some Old Horses Can Always Hear Their Owner's Approach
The World Ends With You taught me so many mnemonics I didn't need for SOHCAHTOA
And then a few of us that had the same math teacher in middle school knew the great Indian chief
And then everyone in my precalc class remembered it as Some Old Hippie after that
It's not hard to remember
99 problems and a beach ain't one?
actually the island was relatively whore free
Bangkok now, that was a real shithole
no that's how I remembered it for a long time
the some old hippie thing just stuck with me
Hahaha shit
This came up on my iPod the other day and I haven't stopped singing it since
it's just such a catchy song