[HN Gopher] Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world's worst famin...
___________________________________________________________________
Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world's worst famine in 40 years
Author : WildestDreams_
Score : 227 points
Date : 2024-09-01 10:48 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| RobertJaTomsons wrote:
| https://archive.ph/6gFzL
| Log_out_ wrote:
| This is going to be the point where everyone blame the non
| interventionist movements for murder for the next thirty years.
| ben_w wrote:
| Unlikely. That didn't happen in response to the failure to
| intervene to prevent the Darfur genocide before it started
| rather than just patrolling afterward to keep violence "to a
| minimum", the "Effacer le tableau", the massacre of the Hutus,
| the Rwandan genocide, the Gukurahundi, or the Cambodian
| genocide.
|
| I think this is closer to the Onion story about American mass
| shootings: people shake their heads with sorrow while asserting
| nothing can be done.
| Log_out_ wrote:
| But things can be done. The world can be forced to watch and
| witness .weapons can be delivered to seld defense groups.
| ben_w wrote:
| Things can be done about mass shootings in the USA, too.
|
| I speak of the observed responses, not to the actual limits
| to those willing to champion for a better world.
| banach wrote:
| Ah yes, blame the lack of rulers and not colonialism or war.
| plouffy wrote:
| Have you read the article ? Where does it mention lack of
| rulers ?
| bogle wrote:
| Seeing as the link is to a single paragraph and the actual
| article appears not to exist, has anyone read it?
|
| "This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print
| edition under the headline "An intensifying calamity""
|
| You have to use the 'archive.ph' link in the HN commens to
| find it.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Why not all of the above?
|
| I lived in Nigeria, when they had the Biafra War[0]. That also
| killed a heck of a lot of folks. The problem, there, was sort
| of too many rulers.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Civil_War
| cherryteastain wrote:
| They have been independent since 1956. Other (majority non-
| European) British colonies/protectorates as diverse as
| Singapore (ind. 1965), Belize (ind. 1981), India (ind. 1947)
| and UAE (ind. 1971) managed to build peaceful societies.
|
| We need to recognize that the people of countries like Sudan
| are not children who don't know any better, contrary to
| European leftists' views. They are fully functioning adults who
| made a series of choices that led to the present situation.
| bogle wrote:
| I don't think India is a great example here. The Partition of
| India in 1947 resulted in over 1 million deaths.
| richbell wrote:
| On that note, reading about Bangladesh's split from
| Pakistan was gut wrenching.
|
| So much senseless violence.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_genocide
| dartharva wrote:
| That was before the country got its own constitution and
| had formed its national identity.
| bogle wrote:
| Not relevant as the partition was outlined in the Indian
| Independence Act 1947 which created the constitutions.
| The Act was agreed upon by the legislature
| representatives of the Indian National Congress, the
| Muslim League, and the Sikh community with Lord
| Mountbatten.
|
| The point stands that decolonisation was a mess and the
| colonisers played a large part in it.
| odux wrote:
| I think the point is in spite of decolonization being
| orders of magnitude more messy countries like India have
| established fully functioning peaceful societies.
| bogle wrote:
| On gaining independence in 1956 Sudan endured two civil wars
| with up to a million deaths in the first civil war and
| between one and two million deaths in the second civil war.
|
| Colonial governments like the British often (almost always)
| left a mess behind them.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > We need to recognize that the people of countries like
| Sudan are not children
|
| Nitpicking here, but Sudan specifically only passed the
| median population age of 18 in the 2020s.
| infrawhispers wrote:
| Comparing Sudan to Singapore, India and the UAE is comical.
| This level of analysis on HackerNews, that ignores the
| realities of how different countries evolve / are influenced
| is why we cannot have an honest conversation.
| cherryteastain wrote:
| Please enlighten us why it's comical. Economically, Sudan
| was richer per capita than India in 1960 and even as
| recently as 2017 [1][2]. It had, and still has, a more
| homogeneous population ethnically and linguistically. Yet
| India manages to keep things mostly calm while Sudan can't.
|
| [1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=sudan+nominal+gdp+
| per+c... [2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=india+nom
| inal+gdp+per+c...
| unnamed76ri wrote:
| Sudan has been a sovereign nation for 70 years. How many years
| must pass before you can no longer blame colonialism for their
| choices?
| sdenton4 wrote:
| It's a bit like asking why we still blame lead for lead
| poisoning 70 years after it was painted on the wall...
| nemo44x wrote:
| If anything I'd blame the lack of colonialism as being the root
| cause of their problems.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Are you perhaps assuming they have no chance of learning to
| govern themselves peacefully?
|
| I don't subscribe to this fixed mindset. I believe all
| peoples can learn to do well. It's hard, but possible. So the
| lack of conolialism isn't the answer, but lack of learning.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Perhaps they can, but there's 0 evidence for it. Regardless
| my point was that they have had tremendous suffering since
| being decolonized. Endless conflict with external meddling
| from all over. I suspect that had they been under colonial
| rule since then they'd have significantly less suffering
| and stable. But what can you do because that ship sailed.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| > Perhaps they can, but there's 0 evidence for it.
|
| Wouldn't this way of thinking prevent any improvement at
| all?
|
| If I must have accomplished something before believing I
| may be able to accomplish, how am I even going to try?
| nemo44x wrote:
| They've had endless civil war essentially for 70 years.
| Maybe "Sudan" isn't a real place and the people
| inhabiting those lands need to sort it out and figure out
| who rules what. The UN should stop recognizing Sudan as a
| state as it's obviously failed. Remove itself from the
| region and let the people there figure out borders. Rip
| the Bandai's off instead of prolonging this idea of Sudan
| that obviously isn't real.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| That's way different from something like 'what's missing
| in Sudan is a colonial power to rule them'.
| nemo44x wrote:
| People need to be ruled to maintain order. The
| alternative is chaos which leads to suffering until order
| is restored. The colonists ruled competently and
| maintained order even if your social justice reflex
| doesn't feel good about it. What they left,
| decolonization, is a soft colonization from afar, managed
| by entities with no skin in it. This is why it's
| disorderly and chaos reigns and suffering is a way of
| life for the people of those lands.
|
| Colonization is preferable to that. However, because
| that's not a palatable form of social order today the
| next best thing is complete abandonment and true self
| determination to discover where the borders are and who
| rules them. This will be bloody, yes, but have an outcome
| that leads to order if not tampered with. That's
| preferable to the last 70 years.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Every single piece of land on Earth has been attacked and
| colonized at least once. Why have some peoples managed to do
| well and others so bad? I think there's something more to
| learn.
| throwaway3521 wrote:
| At which point we admit that current approaches to helping these
| countries does nothing and we reach out for other, radical,
| approaches and ideas?
| tetris11 wrote:
| what are you suggesting
| throwaway3521 wrote:
| Bring back colonization for limited amount of time ie
| 50years. During that time establish government, educational,
| civil structures and start the economy. Re-educate the
| society, instill the values of high-trust society. Pull out
| of the country gradually replacing foreigners with local
| population. The name 'colonization' might evoke some
| sentiments, but we can call this some other name.
| newsclues wrote:
| If the west keeps allowing the best people from third world
| countries to immigrate, it's removing the business,
| political and social leaders who have the potential to
| improve their country.
|
| Come to the west, get trained and return home and build
| something better. Doctors and engineers driving a cab in
| New York is so broken.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Doctors and engineers drive a cab in New York because,
| for them, _it 's better than home_.
|
| It's broken, all right, but what's broken is "home", not
| the west. (All right, the west is broken too, but in this
| situation the brokenness of the west is not the primary
| issue.) And they didn't that they could fix "home", so
| they left, and for the most part they aren't interested
| in going back and trying to fix it. They probably have a
| better perception of how hard it would be to fix than we
| do.
| newsclues wrote:
| I understand why they do it, but I also understand it's
| short sighted for both nations.
|
| Best to ensure developing nations have their best talent
| to DEVELOP the nation rather to deprive them of the best
| people and hinder development and improvement. You take
| out the best people and what's left, poverty, corruption
| and conflict that forces more people to leave and
| requires more outside aid.
| bell-cot wrote:
| What's the strategy for when the locals violently resist
| colonization, with the aid of various countries which are
| hostile to the colonizing power?
| carlob wrote:
| Democracy export? That has worked so well in Iraq and
| Afghanistan...
| crop_rotation wrote:
| While I don't agree with the parent comment, 20 years is
| just nowhere enough for his strategy. Mullah Omar himself
| was alive for almost half of those. Something like 50
| years where the old regime leaders completely vanish can
| only work. Again I am not saying whether it is practical
| or whether it is even a good idea at all.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| We didn't do what throwaway3521 said, though. We tried to
| do it "on the cheap", just occupying, not actually
| transforming the society, and not staying for 50 years.
|
| For context: We occupied Japan for, what, 12 years? We
| technically occupied Germany longer, but practically it
| was about the same (I think - from memory and not
| researched). In that time, we transformed them from
| violent, racially superior, conquer-the-world militarists
| to more-or-less western-values democracies. But we put a
| _lot_ of people in there, and we controlled every aspect
| of their society.
|
| Iraq and Afghanistan, we tried to do it with half-
| measures rather than a complete rebuild. And it failed.
| hobs wrote:
| For context, one of those events started in 1945, and one
| in 2003.
|
| One started because we won a decisive war against the
| nation, in the other we invaded the country on a flimsy
| excuse.
|
| We have entirely different cultures, times, mores, media
| landscapes, and different series of occupations, modern
| weaponry, 4th generation warefare (post vietnam) tactics,
| the list goes on.
|
| Why would "oh we didn't waste enough money occupying a
| country that we gained little from" be the right choice?
| How do we magically know that?
| distances wrote:
| I would assume a more important factor was that Germany
| and Japan were both very organized, successful
| industrialized societies long before facing their
| respective downfalls in the wars. Iraq and Afghanistan
| both had a very, very different starting position and it
| would be unreasonable to expect a similar outcome.
| Ekaros wrote:
| One thing to consider is that you have to have very
| functional central government to be able to execute types
| of wars of conquest that likes of them and USA did... So
| simply moderating them is often sufficient to keep
| stability.
| notahacker wrote:
| Other relevant context includes the fact that it was
| actually _West_ Germany, with the East providing strong
| incentives to both the US and the West Germans to make it
| work, and that this was not the first attempt to turn the
| successful, industrialized and well educated Germany into
| a democracy with peaceful relations with its
| neighbours...
| nkrisc wrote:
| Japan and Germany were already powerful, industrialized
| societies that rivaled the post-war occupiers in power.
| They just lost the war.
| abenga wrote:
| Yeah, because this worked so great last time.
| throwaway3521 wrote:
| Just for a context here: I actually live in almost-third-
| world country. Thankfully no famine and loss of live but
| extremely dysfunctional state and society and with
| educational system collapsing - probably no future. My
| countrymen, we, could not govern ourselves. I wish this
| country was occupied and someone built better society!
| 185504a9 wrote:
| Not even pretending to make a rational reply here, but
| I've seen a lot of despicable stuff on the internet and
| this comment may be the one that made me the angriest. I
| really hope this is some sort of satire because my blood
| is about to evaporate. Jesus fucking Christ
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| I'm from a dysfunctional third-world country, too
| (Nigeria), and I agree with the GP. Our population lacks
| the ability to cooperate for the greater good. Politics
| here is insanely tribal and corrupt. We're heading for
| the tatters, except something miraculous happens.
|
| If you've never lived in a poor, corrupt, dysfunctional
| place, you'll not understand how bad life is that'll make
| someone wish to be occupied.
| throwaway3521 wrote:
| It's actually not. I had no running water yesterday. Also
| two days ago as well. I'm sorry my comment made you
| angry. I hope you're doing well...
| tazu wrote:
| You should spend a few years in a third world country.
| Your righteous liberal rage will evaporate as quickly as
| your feeling of safety (which you take for granted).
| infrawhispers wrote:
| I am from a third-world country that has its own set of
| problems. To believe that an outside party will come in a
| build a "better society" for the inhabitants papers over
| recent history and is almost comical.
|
| "we could not govern ourselves" really belies how young
| many countries are and the unique challenges they face
| w.r.t. interference from developed nations. Nation
| building takes _time_ and I would implore you to think
| about the historical events that have shaped your nation.
| christkv wrote:
| Won't work. Loyalties are family, village, tribe, city,
| etc. There is no "State loyalty" in these countries to
| build democratic institutions on. One group will take power
| and then use that power to benefit their group. Sudan is a
| tribal war in everything but name. I think the best you can
| hope for is a beneficent dictator.
|
| In short term if you want to stop this particular war make
| UAE and Egypt hurt as they are funding the groups.
| Qem wrote:
| Because colonists are totally expected to do a good job
| this time, not just pillaging resources, setting new
| apartheid systems, generating even greater famines like
| what UK did in India and doubling down on the lazy job of
| drawing straight line borders not taking in consideration
| the human gropings in the land, what generated a lot of the
| current conflicts, by splitting affine people in different
| countries and bunching together rival groups under the same
| borders. As example of colonist promoted famine, if the one
| currently unfolding in Gaza not enough, see
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
| christkv wrote:
| Let's not pretend India was some sort of well run
| paradise before the British showed up.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_famine_of_1630-1632.
|
| The previous colonial/imperial regime of the Mughal
| Empire was just as much a burden on the population.
|
| The main reason India is able to feed its population
| today is the green revolution post WW2, especially the
| work of Dr. Swaminathan in India. Without it I think we
| would still see massive famines in India.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Wasn't that basically what Ian Smith suggested for
| Rhodesia? His argument was that the native Africans didn't
| have the education level or the experience required to run
| a "civil" society. So the white Rhodesians should do it for
| a number of years. I believe his target was the late 1980s,
| after which everyone would have the same rights.
|
| Hard to say if it would have worked, Ian Smiths comments
| was mostly made after Mugabe took over, so it was never
| tested if it would work, or if Smith was even sincere in
| his statements.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| That is, to some extent, what happened in South Africa.
| Of course, the whites didn't give power over easily, and
| the road since has not been smooth. There's no reason to
| think the Rhodesians would have handed it over any
| easier, when the time came.
|
| South Africa today is simultaneously a troubled place and
| yet doing well compared to many of its peers. Violent
| crime is very high, for example, but similar to
| 19th/early 20th century USA.
| nkrisc wrote:
| I find this idea perplexing. Even if you were to put
| emotions and politics aside, colonization doesn't have a
| very good track record for the colonized people.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| I am not advocating for colonisation, but most of human
| history has no good track record for the ruled people.
| Colonisation was able to uproot some very bad social
| evils by fiat which would be just very hard to remove in
| a democratic society (for good or bad). Colonisation
| might be a very bad idea maybe even the worst, but when
| no solution is working and none in sight, people might
| want to throw anything they can on the table and restart
| debating all approaches.
|
| I think the parent comment has shared their experience
| which makes them think this idea might be better than
| status quo in their country.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Colonization was negative ROI. No one would sign up for
| that.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Sudan is in a civil war that is being used as a proxy war by
| Iran, UAE, Egypt, Saudi, Ethiopia, and other regional states is
| NOT caused by issues with donors
| Eumenes wrote:
| Can't forget Russia and the US/NATO in that group of swell
| nation-states
| alephnerd wrote:
| Nowhere near as significant of a presence.
|
| There are Russian/Wagner troops present and most likely a
| USSOF detachment as well, but the actual enablement,
| training, and impetus is driven by regional states now.
|
| The era of "superpower" is over, and there are multiple
| proxy wars now like this (Syrian Civil War, Yemeni Civil
| War, Ethiopian Civil War, Myanmar Civil War, Libyan Civil
| War, etc)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Ummm, western led economic and technological development
| efforts have massively lowered poverty rates the last century.
| See China, India, etc.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| China was doing pretty poorly though before they lucked out
| on good leadership in Deng. But gambling on that luck doesn't
| work for most countries.
| eej71 wrote:
| You suggestion below is getting downvoted which isn't that
| surprising given the general tilt of HN. But I think there is a
| related question that's a bit better to ask.
|
| What are the social, political, cultural and intellectual
| preconditions of a free society? What ideals and values does
| the culture need to hold before you can have a stable
| government that in a general way - values liberty for its
| citizens?
|
| While I'd love to see many parts of Africa and the mideast
| embrace the enlightenment values that have created our modern
| governments built around such ideals as individual rights, rule
| of law, checks and balances, multiple political parties, free
| speech, independent court systems, a secular state, etc. I
| don't think those cultural values are in place. And yes, you
| can shake a finger at your choice of western country and point
| out the many ways they fall short of those ideals and you'd be
| right, but I think you're missing the forest for a diseased
| tree.
|
| So what to do? Provide free resources until they figure it out?
| Not sure that's worked out. Ignore them? Lecture them?
|
| How do you change a culture that in some ways doesn't want to
| change?
| octopoc wrote:
| My take is that we should leave them alone and try to keep
| others from meddling. They have to figure this out on their
| own. The idea that European enlightenment values are the only
| path to success is part of the problem though: they have a
| different culture and success will look different for them
| than it does for us. Look at China, Japan and other
| successful Asian countries: they are each different and it's
| hard for people of European cultures to judge them without
| judging them for not being European enough. They have to
| evolve out of the aftermath of imperialism just like Europe
| did after the Roman Empire collapsed. We were able to do it
| on our own and thinking they need us to help them is pretty
| demeaning IMO.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| Your take sounds reasonable and might be the best idea, but
| it means change will be very very slow (if at all) and
| millions of lives will be lost to famine and civil wars.
|
| > China, Japan and other successful Asian countries:
|
| Japan was kinda occupied by the Americans post WW2 and had
| an American dictated constitution, with a very American
| influenced society and everything.
|
| The Chinese after years of socialism copied western
| capitalism (and lots of other things) with a very strong
| government being the only difference. And before that
| change they too kept having their share of extreme poverty
| and famines.
|
| > just like Europe did after the Roman Empire collapsed.
|
| Sadly this might mean waiting for a millennia which might
| have an unacceptable cost.
|
| > We were able to do it on our own and thinking they need
| us to help them is pretty demeaning IMO.
|
| Yes but in a millennia in which rest of the world made much
| less industrial progress than happens in less than a
| century now.
|
| I have no solutions in mind here. Just highlighting some
| points to think about.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| You raise some excellent points.
|
| > What are the social, political, cultural and intellectual
| preconditions of a free society?
|
| I think societies don't become free before they get
| prosperous. Having lived in dirt poor societies and posh
| societies, individual freedoms culturally seem to have a
| strong tie to prosperity. When you are so inter dependent for
| survival on your social network, the concept of freedom or
| individual dignity seems so distant. When everyone has more
| than enough resources for their own prosperous survival, the
| individual freedoms come to the forefront.
|
| Another problem is that countries and societies are almost
| always resistant to change in absence of a large event. It
| took WW1 to get women voting rights (and several other social
| changes) in the west for example.
|
| Sadly there is no magic potion to transform societies in
| absence of large scale events or them lucking out on a good
| dictator (LKY, Deng)
|
| > How do you change a culture that in some ways doesn't want
| to change?
|
| I think across history I find only two ways this happens,
| either very very slowly, or strongly pushed top down by an
| authority with the power and willingness to enforce.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >I think societies don't become free before they get
| prosperous.
|
| Put more bluntly: Freedoms don't put food on your table,
| but killing the bastard next door so you can use his land
| might. Guess what hungry people will do.
|
| So you are quite right; freedoms only become a concern once
| the people have most if not all their immediate needs
| satisfied. People need to enjoy life first before they will
| start caring about freedoms.
|
| Of course, the vicious cycle is that being poor is
| expensive. It's not easy to break it and start accumulating
| societal prosperity.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| This is simply untrue.
|
| The aspects of modern 'free society' evolved from the
| complex legal environment of rights and privileges in the
| middle ages.
| feedforward wrote:
| > While I'd love to see many parts of Africa and the mideast
| embrace the enlightenment values that have created our modern
| governments built around such ideals as individual rights,
| rule of law, checks and balances, multiple political parties,
| free speech, independent court systems, a secular state, etc.
| I don't think those cultural values are in place.
|
| Anyone who knows the history of the past decades and
| centuries of western interaction with the Middle East and
| Africa knows what a laugh this is.
|
| The US is currently paying Egypt's current rulers billions a
| year to prevent and violently crack down on anyone who wants
| "modern governments built around such ideals as individual
| rights, rule of law, checks and balances, multiple political
| parties, free speech, independent court systems, a secular
| state". I watched former Meet the Press host Chuck Todd
| question whether it was wise for Obama to allow the Arab
| Spring to push out the violent dictator Mubarak. Speaking of
| capability for "enlightenment values" - the citizens risk
| their bodies and lives to go out in the street and fight for
| free elections and such, while the US arms the dictator
| fighting against those values.
|
| And what would a free Egypt do? It certainly would not be as
| cooperative of these people "making aliyah" and then
| slaughtering Palestinians on Egypt's border in Gaza, that's
| for sure.
|
| As you mention Africa, I think back to when I watched Reagan
| cooperating with the apartheid South African government,
| again fighting against those who wanted "modern governments
| built around such ideals as individual rights, rule of law,
| checks and balances, multiple political parties, free speech,
| independent court systems, a secular state, etc."
|
| I could go on and on over the past decades - speaking of rule
| of law and all of that, I won't even go into what Israel is
| doing right now - they're showing Israeli soldiers raping
| Palestinians on Israeli TV now (and on Twitter too, for now
| at least) - nor will I go.into the US support of all of this.
| yyyk wrote:
| Yeah, the Muslim Brotherhood was such a swell brand, just
| tell the Copts that. Transnational Islamism doesn't make
| any trouble either. And to be frank, the US didn't want
| communism to take over after apartheid. One Mugabe was bad
| enough, and an even more badly mismanaged SA would be a
| disaster. On all issues you mention, the choices were often
| unpleasant, but always had their reasons.
| feedforward wrote:
| So what you're saying is the West wanted (and funded and
| armed) tough governments that kept a lid on things as
| opposed to "modern governments built around such ideals
| as individual rights, rule of law, checks and balances,
| multiple political parties, free speech, independent
| court systems, a secular state".
|
| People can be on your side or not, but at least you are
| rooted in the real world and actual history.
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| Egypt elected the Muslim Brotherhood into power. There's
| nothing about the Muslim Brotherhood pertaining to
| "modern governments built around such ideals as
| individual rights, rule of law, checks and balances,
| multiple political parties, free speech, independent
| court systems, a secular state".
|
| Better to deal with a secular dictator than an elected
| religious extremist. Elected Islamists always crap on
| democracy once they're elected.
| feedforward wrote:
| > There's nothing about the Muslim Brotherhood pertaining
| to "modern governments built around such ideals as
| individual rights, rule of law, checks and balances,
| multiple political parties..."...Better to deal with a
| secular dictator
|
| The Muslim Brotherhood has no appreciation for multiple
| political parties in Egypt. Nor do you, as you are openly
| supportive of a dictatorship.
|
| You and yyyk both support my point - the West does not
| support for Egypt what the original poster called "modern
| governments built around such ideals as individual
| rights, rule of law, checks and balances, multiple
| political parties, free speech, independent court
| systems, a secular state".
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I am confused. In the past decades free society is not the
| direction of the governments, things like free speech are
| regressing a lot in Anglophone countries (UK, Canada,
| Australia, New Zeeland) and even Germany. Are you talking
| about free society in terms of classical liberalism or modern
| governments that look more like China? Because Europe and
| down under are going in the direction of China, not freedom.
| So what do you want to see in Sudan, a China-like "democracy"
| or an US-style with 1st, 2nd and 4th amendments?
| willyt wrote:
| What do you mean by free speech is regressing in anglophone
| countries? That seems like a weird opinion to have? Do you
| have a particular example?
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Random: https://nypost.com/2024/06/29/world-news/german-
| woman-given-...
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15gn0lq7p5o (Misogyny
| to be treated as extremism by UK government)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Act_to_amend_the_Canadia
| n_H...
|
| One can easily find examples in all countries. These
| countries do not have a free speech right in their
| Constitutions, for example, and no plans to include it.
| bawolff wrote:
| Canada does indeed have free speech (expression) in its
| constitution.
|
| There are limits to speech, but that is true in every
| country, including the USA (if you dont believe me, try
| yelling "i have a bomb" in an american airport and see
| what happens next)
| VancouverMan wrote:
| Section 1 and Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of
| Rights and Freedoms guarantee that it's useless in
| practice.
|
| This was confirmed by how the Charter did nothing to stop
| the abuses that Canadians endured from 2020 through 2022.
| bawolff wrote:
| Which abuses specificly do you think section 33 enabled
| between 2020 to 2022?
|
| Or if its all section 1, do you feel that any country at
| all has freedom of speech? I can't think of any country
| that doesn't have something equivalent to section 1, even
| if only implicitly. Different countries draw the line
| somewhat differently, but there are none that dont have
| some sort of similar limited limits to freedom of speech.
| archgoon wrote:
| > What do you mean by free speech is regressing in
| anglophone countries? That seems like a weird opinion to
| have? Do you have a particular example?
|
| In the US at least, I'd say for most of the existence of
| the web, the prevalent idea was that the best way to
| counter 'bad' speech was more speech.
|
| The concern over 'misinformation' has resulted in a lot
| of people, whom previously had advocated for unrestricted
| speech, calling for regulation or removal of section 230.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/opinion/misinformation
| -di...
|
| Like many Zeitgeist trends, it is difficult to measure
| concretely and objectively, especially if it hasn't been
| tracked in the past. Especially when people's
| understanding of what constitutes "free" speech shifts
| over time.
| jksflkjl3jk3 wrote:
| How about going in the other direction? Completely stay out of
| their business and let whatever emerges from the chaos develop
| on its own?
|
| Central planning of societies doesn't have a good track record,
| especially when there are competing external interests. Look at
| the horrific consequences of the American meddling in
| geopolitics of the third world over the last 100 years. The CIA
| and war industry is responsible for the destruction of
| countless traditional cultures and the lives of hundreds of
| millions worldwide.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| Central planning has a very good record in countries like
| China/South Korea. Non central social changes are just very
| very slow.
| jajko wrote:
| Maybe but its doesn't work in democracies well. Main reason
| why EU won't ever compete with US economically, while being
| also very rich and actually more populous.
|
| You should also compare it to situation where those
| countries wouldn't be centrally planned. Not so possible
| without time machine, so let's leave out measuring of
| efficiency of such systems. Ie when in Eastern Europe
| communism and central planning failed and fell down
| overnight, literally all those economies experienced
| massive boosts. I know I've lived through such transition
| there, hard to describe with words.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| > Ie when in Eastern Europe communism and central
| planning failed
|
| I am not saying central planning is a cure all. Trying a
| bad economic system with any kind of planning will fail.
|
| > Maybe but its doesn't work in democracies well.
|
| Correct, in the absence of strong top down rule (whether
| democracy or not), social changes are just going to be
| very slow (this doesn't mean strong top down rule will
| result in good changes, just that otherwise it is slow).
| The US needed a civil war to abolish slavery and two
| world wars for many other social changes (similar to most
| of western Europe).
|
| I am not saying A or B is better. But without central
| planning the chances of any big cultural changes in Sudan
| type countries happening in the next 50 or even 100 years
| is very remote.
| joker99 wrote:
| That is not the main reason. Not even close. Here's a
| list of main reasons, in no particular order:
|
| - 8 different currencies across EU member states - 24
| languages - 27 sovereign countries with wildly different
| economic, social, foreign, military ... policies - laws
| and regulations are only slowly harmonised across the
| board - deep seating historic prejudices (which lead to
| major wars in the past) - unfriendly and downright
| hostile neighbours - a smaller amount of natural
| resources to exploit - etc etc
| walthamstow wrote:
| The EU has existed for less than a lifetime. Before that
| we were competing against each other, with bloody
| consequences.
|
| How many wars were fought on European soil between 1776
| and today? I couldn't even begin to answer that.
| feedforward wrote:
| With regards to central planning, neither China nor the
| US is fully in or out of it.
|
| China still has Five Year Plans and some central
| planning, but Deng Xioping took steps away from it in the
| 1980s.
|
| There's a mythology the US has no central planning, but
| it has had a lot of central planning since 1932 and
| certainly since 1941. Market makers watch for the
| presidentially nominated Powell to come out and announce
| the fed funds rate for our fiat currency, and the economy
| either speeds up or slows down in response. We are typing
| on a network the government paid BBN and other companies
| to create, on chips descended from the Fairchild chips
| that Air Force contracts funded. For various historical
| reasons, much of the central planning in the US is done
| via its very well funded military (then well funded
| military contractors pay think tanks and politicians to
| go out and say they're not so well funded)
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm not sure China is a good example of it working, unless
| you limit it to the past couple decades and ignore the
| human rights issues. South Korea may be a decent example,
| but also has some possible indirect negative effects, given
| all the protests, urban/rural divide, and social/birthrate
| issues. Sure they have the whole not starving thing
| handled, but so do the majority of countries regardless of
| central planning or not.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| Do you realise you are commenting in the context of a
| massive famine and millions of lives lost? All the
| countries in Africa and almost any non developed country
| will gladly take post Mao Chinese leadership and there
| current status quo over their current lives.
|
| Human rights don't come before people have a certain
| dignity to live. Trying to preach human rights to a
| starving population is just .....
| giantg2 wrote:
| Do you realize we're talking about approaches that work?
| What stages did China and South Korea go through to get
| to today? The 40s and 50s were pretty bad in either
| country. Show me a prosperous centralized government that
| didn't have some ethnic or political cleansing at it's
| roots.
|
| Or you could not red herring me and supply a proposed
| solution that could work instead of painting my
| opposition to central planning as an opposition to fixing
| famine in an emotional appeal.
| logicchains wrote:
| >Central planning has a very good record in countries like
| China
|
| It's got a very terrible track record in China; the
| government caused tens of millions of its own people to
| starve to death, and set the economic development back
| decades. The GDP per capita in Taiwan is more than double
| that of China currently, but both started at a similar
| position. If China had had a similar political system to
| Taiwan, its people's standard of living would be much
| better.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| > If China had had a similar political system to Taiwan,
| its people's standard of living would be much better.
|
| This is just absurd. Taiwan's entire economy is TSMC +
| some small things. Copying political systems doesn't get
| you per capita standard of living.
|
| Yes Mao's China did stupid things but post Mao China has
| done well economically atleast. They had an enviable job
| of bringing so many people out of extreme poverty and
| have done well.
| Ray20 wrote:
| >They had an enviable job of bringing so many people out
| of extreme poverty and have done well.
|
| Literally zero work is required for this. You just need
| to stop keeping people in extreme poverty - and that's
| it.
| albertopv wrote:
| China had an empire lasting about 2000 years, truly
| something different
| yorwba wrote:
| Central planning has an extremely bad record in China,
| _especially_ when it comes to famine.
|
| During the Great Leap forward, the central planners
| demanded the implementation of new Lysenkoist farming
| practices that were reportedly a great success and on track
| to deliver a record harvest. The central planners then
| dispensed generous daily rations from the granaries, so
| that everyone could eat their fill, causing farmers to
| spend less effort on the side crops they had been growing
| in addition to working on the state farms. The central
| planners decided that they didn't need quite so many
| agricultural workers, so they redirected the labor surplus
| to increasing steel production in order to catch up with
| the British Empire and overtake the United States. And they
| also increased food exports to other countries.
|
| Then it all came crashing down: the reports of huge
| productivity increases were made up, the record harvest was
| a record low, the surplus was a deficit, tens of millions
| of people starved. (Steel production did not meaningfully
| increase either.)
|
| You could argue that it was just a very expensive
| beginner's mistake because they'd only been doing the
| central planning thing for about a decade at that point,
| but then after Mao's death less than two decades later, the
| first big economic reform was the Household Responsibility
| System where farmers would decide for themselves what to
| grow, and the state would just buy it from them.
|
| So I think the verdict from the world's greatest experts in
| agricultural central planning is clear: don't do it.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| I have mentioned this elsewhere as well, no kind of
| planning saves one from bad economic policy. Post Deng
| China has a very very good record of bringing prosperity
| (and China still central planning).
| Jensson wrote:
| > and China still central planning
|
| Every country has some central planning, China doesn't
| have much more central planning today than your average
| European country. Or do you believe some CCP central
| planner decided to put in scantily clad anime girls in
| games from China?
|
| China today is very capitalist, they lack democracy, not
| capitalism.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| I would probably focus on the government-mandated
| construction of new cities and control over which
| citizens go to university and where they can live, and
| that there is a wide spectrum of control between the USA
| and central planners managing the graphics in video game
| production.
| Jensson wrote:
| > control over which citizens go to university and where
| they can live
|
| I am pretty sure Chinese citizens are allowed to live
| where they can afford and they are allowed to go to
| university if they score well enough on the public tests.
| Just like in Europe.
|
| If you are talking about the random arrests that happens
| in China, that is due to the undemocratic authoritarian
| regime and corruption, not due to central planning.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| No, they aren't. Look up the hukou residence permit
| system.
| Jensson wrote:
| That has already ended, there is no such discrimination
| any longer, the Hokou now is just a way to track people.
| Loosening that up is a big contributor to the Chinese
| miracle.
|
| Edit: Also class based societies are typically not called
| central planning, it is lack of human rights.
|
| Western nations do similar levels of planning just by
| deciding how many new houses are allowed to be built, you
| need a permit for every business to ensure you don't take
| too much electricity etc, tons of central planning
| everywhere.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Having worked at a school in China in which a large
| number of the students were there because their nonlocal
| hukou didn't entitle them to attend local public schools,
| it's pretty surreal to see someone claiming that the
| hukou controls where people are allowed to live. How are
| you imagining that happens?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I am pretty sure Chinese citizens are allowed to [...]
| go to university if they score well enough on the public
| tests. Just like in Europe.
|
| China implements a comprehensive system of geographic
| affirmative action to prevent universities from being
| taken over by southerners. A school participating in this
| system will publish a plan stating how many students it
| will enroll on a province-by-province basis. (It's also
| divided by whether the students will major in science or
| humanities.)
|
| Once the tests are scored, the students in a particular
| province are assigned in top-down order of score to the
| school of their choice, as long as that school's quota
| for accepting students from that province is not yet
| full. If your school of choice has filled its quota,
| technically you can have listed a second-choice school,
| but this is widely viewed as a disaster for the student.
| You need to get in to your first-choice school, or take a
| year off and try again next year.
|
| What's happening in admissions cells for other provinces
| at the school you apply to is not relevant to you. You
| can outscore 90% of students who get admitted that way
| and it won't matter.
|
| And this is not an especially unlikely scenario, because
| Chinese policy is that schools have much larger quotas
| for local students than otherwise. I think you need to
| score at about the 1 in 60 level, top 1.66%, to get into
| a top Shanghai university from Shanghai; you need to do a
| lot better than that to get in from outside Shanghai.
|
| Sanity checking that, the admission table for Fudan
| University in 2018 is here:
| https://ao.fudan.edu.cn/a7/19/c36333a435993/page.htm .
| This contains some annotations that I don't understand,
| but let's say you want to be admitted as a math major.
| The score threshold if you're coming from Shanghai
| appears to be 586 ("Xuan Kao Ke Mu 999"?); 586 on the
| Shanghai 2017 gaokao is top 1.1%, or in perfect detail
| the top 473 people out of 43,103 who took the test. (
| https://news.koolearn.com/20170623/1127786.html )
|
| The score threshold if you're coming from Fujian appears
| to be 680 on the science test. A 680 on the 2017 science
| test in Fujian means you were one of the top 72 scorers
| out of 86,368 people who took the test, or the top
| 0.00083%. ( https://max.book118.com/html/2021/0817/810400
| 4033003135.shtm )
|
| That admissions table for Fudan is divided into two
| categories, Ti Qian Pi ("advance admission"?) and Ben Yi
| Pi ("freshman admission"??). I'm not sure what they
| mean; I used the Ben Yi Pi numbers, which are stricter.
|
| Relevant here, I knew someone who attended a high school
| affiliated with Fudan (a lot of Chinese universities have
| these), and she informed me that before taking the
| gaokao, she had an interview with someone at Fudan, and
| their approval of her meant that she needed a lower score
| for admission to Fudan than would otherwise have been
| necessary. I suspect that this may be related to the
| difference between "advance admission" and "freshman
| admission".
|
| (There is also affirmative action given for non-
| geographic reasons. Sometimes they combine in interesting
| ways. A friend of mine who was admitted to Shang Hai Cai
| Jing Da Xue benefited from a program for minorities. She
| was a Mongol, and would have been given a direct bonus to
| her gaokao score for that reason, but this program
| additionally involved (1) attending a special high school
| in Beijing, and (2) counting as a resident of Beijing,
| and therefore also benefiting from the geographic scheme,
| for admissions purposes.)
| shadowgovt wrote:
| That's what the world tried with Germany after World War I.
|
| There's a reason we stopped believing "just let sovereign
| nations sort themselves out" is the best approach. It's a
| pretty selfish reason.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| that's too wrong to even behind to address.
| ericd wrote:
| Other countries didn't exactly stay out of their business -
| the WW1 allies were demanding unsustainably large war
| reparations _paid in gold_ , rather than a currency they
| had control over the supply of. My understanding is that
| this directly led to their hyperinflation, massive amounts
| of resentment, and the eventual fall of the Weimar
| Republic. And everyone knows the rest.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| This is an excellent option if you are willing to accept
| hundreds of millions of people will die in the process and
| that it will take a hundred years or more for that to happen.
| Development does not happen overnight and it takes a toll.
|
| That being said, my impression is that the people leaning
| left in politics are strongly against non-interventionism.
| This means it will become a political issue in the countries
| that can help (or intervene), especially because most of
| these countries have a very strong left leaning. Sudan will
| become ammunition in electoral fights in elections, politics
| will win and interventions will happen just because of that,
| not because the interventionists care in any way about people
| of Sudan, they are just simple pawns on their chess board.
| marxisttemp wrote:
| I think you'll find it is the right wing who find
| themselves invariably attracted to war.
|
| Unless you're using "the left" to mean "neoliberals", as
| seems to be common among the American right, in which case
| let me refer you to the first paragraph (since the American
| Democratic Party is by all measures a right wing party).
| Jensson wrote:
| > since the American Democratic Party is by all measures
| a right wing party
|
| Only fiscally, if you look at social issues they are very
| left.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I find the left wing in general (not just US) to be
| etatist. That makes it interventionist in everyone's life
| by definition.
| cen4 wrote:
| "Security" as provided by the Pentagon/MIL complex is an
| evolution of what the Brits used to do to maintain order
| across the Empire. After the Empire fell, the Americans
| basically cut and paste that policy, where the goal is mainly
| about protecting the flows of capital and trade. Colonial
| legacy and thinking needs a total reboot. Will die out
| naturally as boomers trained in that kind of thinking pre-
| globalization die out.
| bawolff wrote:
| > Will die out naturally as boomers trained in that kind of
| thinking pre-globalization die out.
|
| I don't think it will. There will always be powerful people
| who want to maintain that power, and wannabe powerful
| people who want to get that power.
|
| So long as that way of thinking leads to power, there will
| be people who will follow it.
|
| The problem is not that people are tainted by colonial
| thinking - its that humans are tainted by ambition.
| cen4 wrote:
| Look at the Brits. The current gen can't play the same
| games their grand parents did even if they are well
| programmed and super ambitious. They have to invent new
| games. And agree mindless ambition is a big issue.
| yunohn wrote:
| > Completely stay out of their business and let whatever
| emerges from the chaos develop on its own?
|
| This simply never happens. The developed world is constantly
| putting its nose into everyone else's business, and through
| globalization and industrialization, there's nothing on this
| world that the Western economy doesn't touch.
| csomar wrote:
| > This simply never happens.
|
| China did well after their cultural revolution. Took time
| but the page has been turned on that episode.
| golergka wrote:
| It did well because of Kissinger and relationship with
| US.
| carapace wrote:
| "episode"? You're casually dismissing the _Cultural
| Revolution_ to argue for non-interference. I don 't think
| you're making the point you hope to make.
|
| _Absolutely_ somebody should have intervened if possible
| to halt that madness.
|
| Things got so bad that people actually ate human flesh,
| not because they were starving, but to demonstrate
| unquestionable loyalty to the party. Students literally
| ate their teachers.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Or China or Russia or .....?
| yunohn wrote:
| I'm not actually sure which universe you're referring to,
| in which the West does not constantly try to interfere
| with China/Russia and their activities.
| Jensson wrote:
| He meant China and Russia are meddling with the world as
| well.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Because humans feel compassion for their fellow human beings
| and if we don't then what's the point? It doesn't cost that
| much to feed a famine to be honest, much less than blowing up
| the same country when it's starts hosting a terrorist org
| that makes you the next great Satan to blow up because you
| exist?
| asdf6969 wrote:
| Have they asked you for help? Mind your own business
| px43 wrote:
| Maybe that's something. Maybe goodwill would be more
| effective when laundered through existing family
| connections. Surely someone in the midst of the famine
| has family in the US. Maybe support groups should be
| working directly with family members in wealthier
| countries, and then resources hand delivered to family
| members living in impoverished areas who can then
| distribute the resources through their local networks.
| Rather than just drop shipping a bunch of boxes full of
| food or whatever.
|
| Let the heroes be local heroes, not just some abstract
| alien organization that no one has any social connection
| to.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| https://mutualaidsudan.org/
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Yes. https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-
| justice/2024/08/02/food-k...
|
| https://mutualaidsudan.org/
| asdf6969 wrote:
| This has a diagram showing the funding structure with 5
| layers of bureaucracy between donors and the recipients
| of aid. This organization reduces that to 3 (The
| "coalition" that owns the website -> financial service
| providers -> mutual aid societies -> actual people in
| need).
|
| So I ask again, have these people actually requested your
| help? How do you know what they actually need? Maybe the
| best solution is a way to gtfo of Sudan and let it
| collapse. Maybe they want weapons or chickens. I don't
| know!
| keiferski wrote:
| Not to excuse the various bad decisions and bungled coups
| supported by the US during the Cold War, but - had they just
| "completely stayed out of their business" then the Soviets
| merely would have intervened (as they actually did in many,
| many places). In real life, geopolitics is a complex game
| theory problem.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_S.
| ..
| jksflkjl3jk3 wrote:
| I suppose the status quo is an inevitable consequence of
| technology expanding the practical spheres of influence of
| world powers. It sure would be nice though to have a world
| without globalization, still full of cultural diversity.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Works for natural ecosystems because we accept that mass
| casualties is "normal" in the natural world; if some species
| doesn't survive a mass fire/drought/etc, welp, that's nature.
| When millions of people starve to death, we don't accept
| that.
|
| (lol, well, we _do_ accept it, as history has shown us time
| and time again, but we tend to not _want_ to do nothing)
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Agreed. Parent is ignoring the positive effects of
| intervention while highlighting the negative.
|
| USAID funds USD$50b / year, and the US funds UNICEF to the
| tune of USD$1.4b / year.
|
| Which, among other things, supports the polio vaccination
| campaign being rolled out in Gaza, to prevent a public
| health catastrophe and possible resurgence of polio in the
| Middle East.
|
| It's easy to say "Let them eat cake" when one is sitting in
| the palace and opining about CIA boondoggles.
|
| In the real world, that means people are starving and
| children are crippled.
|
| We can (and should) strive for better than nasty, brutish,
| and short lives, regardless of a person's nationality.
| doikor wrote:
| The current chaos is a result of UAE and Saudi having a proxy
| war there. Basically the developed world stepping out to let
| these countries figure shit out for themselves just led to
| another group of countries stepping in.
| pfdietz wrote:
| In practice that becomes, "they are genociding themselves,
| how convenient".
| oezi wrote:
| If we look at the havoc of any conflict region (Syria,
| Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia,...) we can see that both
| engaging in the conflict and staying out of it is
| tremendously expensive.
|
| Paying Turkey to hold the Syrian refugees back and housing
| those that passed through costs Europe tens of billions each
| year. Engagement would have been hard, but one is left to
| wonder if we shouldn't try harder for own benefit.
| bawolff wrote:
| Most of the time the current approach does work (for famines at
| least). Famines used to be much more common than they are
| today.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Would the other approaches be any better, or just a trade off
| of evils. Sounds like white savior complex to think we can go
| in and just fix everything.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| >radical, approaches and ideas?
|
| Like colonialism? Can't get much more radical than that, and
| some implementations actually worked pretty well to build up
| some countries, to the point where those countries are now
| major players in the world, like India. In others, it failed,
| either due to the brutality of the colonists or the pride of
| the colonized.
|
| Could just leave these people alone though.
|
| Many of these peoples have deeply-embedded cultural traits that
| prohibit them from establishing the standard of living that
| many of us take for granted. These debilitating cultural traits
| are likely a product of the harsh climates these people reside
| in, but only in part. Much more effective cultural traits could
| be introduced to and imposed on them (colonialism), and in
| exchange they'd receive the opportunity to participate in and
| contribute to the regional and even global economy, as well as
| benefit from mitigations against things like famine.
|
| But maybe we should just leave them alone. _Tikkun olam_ is
| noble indeed, but many peoples are just completely unreceptive
| to it, and many adherents of this ideal have no business
| worrying about other people 's trash when their own backyards
| are a mess.
|
| So, maybe just leave these people alone.
| grecy wrote:
| I am very sad to watch this situation.
|
| I spent 3 weeks driving my 4x4 through Sudan in early 2019 [1],
| just a month before they finally got rid of Al-Bashir, and it was
| incredible.
|
| The people of Sudan were some of the kindest and friendliest I
| have ever encountered on the planet. When I asked for directions
| to buy bread and it turned out to be complicated, the following
| morning locals brought a bag of fresh-baked bread to my campsite
| and refused to let me pay for it no matter how much I insisted.
| Their currency was already falling so fast I was getting a better
| rate for USD cash every day.
|
| Gas at the time was $0.35USD / gallon - though the lineups were
| days long. The locals never let me wait in line and insisted I
| skip it every time.
|
| Later in the North I met a very kind man who invited me for
| delicious coffee every day just to sit and talk. He again refused
| to let me pay for it and was clearly very proud of his country
| and people. On the second and third day I brought pastries to
| share. He said for decades it would have been unthinkable to talk
| out loud about getting rid of Al-Bashir, but during my visit it
| was starting to _almost_ be acceptable. He did warn me to keep my
| voice down and leave my big camera in my 4x4 - people were edgy.
|
| Sudan is on the list of 5 "evil" countries, just because I
| visited for three weeks I can never again get an ESTA (visa
| waiver) to enter the USA. It makes crossing the border much
| harder, especially when I live in Canada (not yet a Canadian
| citizen).
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pqtfwlfDAw
|
| or text if you prefer (hit next article at the bottom of each
| post) http://theroadchoseme.com/to-khartoum
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| This ESTA thing is weird. I had to go through Syria many times
| in transit to Jordan when it was cheaper to drive than to fly,
| but I never thought this will cause problems in the future.
| Same for Iran and Iraq, lots of Romanians used to work there in
| electricity projects. Iran is still a destination for
| motorcycle rides, I have a friend who was married to an Iranian
| woman and we had plans to go there with the bikes, he was
| traveling regularly to visit his wife's family. But I guess
| these exceptions are rare enough to be ignored.
| csomar wrote:
| While your experience sounds exceptional, tourism used to be
| like that before it went mainstream. Essentially, normal people
| (not traders) will travel with very little resources. There are
| no credit cards or international banking. So they had to rely
| on strangers for food and housing.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| I don't think I've heard of a single group that was _not_
| described as the 'kindest and friendliest'.
| ainiriand wrote:
| Germans.
| Freestyler_3 wrote:
| And speaking of kind individuals, you are no longer in the
| competition.
| ainiriand wrote:
| It was meant as a joke. I live in Germany and I'm very
| happy here, and they even joke about that.
| seper8 wrote:
| Dutch (as a Dutch guy I think I'm allowed to say it). Not
| exactly known for our hospitality or generosity
| grecy wrote:
| I was very happy to see Ethiopia in my review mirror.
|
| I've driven through 55 countries in the undeveloped and
| developing world. Many were friendly or kinda neutral. Sudan
| is a very clear standout.
|
| Sudanese were way more friendly than Australians, Canadians,
| Brits
| briankelly wrote:
| Seattleites.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >It is official: for only the third time in the past 20 years,
| the un has declared a full-blown famine.
|
| Looking into this, it's because the UN will only declare a famine
| if there's no functioning government. If there is one, they have
| the government declare a famine.
|
| Presumably that's why the UN declared a famine at the refugee
| camp, not the country or region.
|
| This story from last month discusses this aspect.
| https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2024/08/21/g-s1-...
| Narretz wrote:
| As per the submitted article, famine is also only declared in
| the refugee "camp" (which houses about 500.000 people as per
| this article https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqv5nvq69lwo)
| because the UN doesn't have enough information about other
| parts of the country.
| begueradj wrote:
| The article you linked to says famine was declared in Sudan on
| 2017. But the situation on 2017 is different from nowadays (to
| keep it short, at least on 2017, Sudan had a president, and
| that means a lot in such a country)
| moffkalast wrote:
| "I just wanted you to know that you can't just say the word
| "famine" and expect anything to happen."
|
| UN: "I didn't say it. I declared it."
| dredmorbius wrote:
| NYT ran a recent 'splainer on the who and why of declaring
| famines as well:
|
| _Food insecurity experts working on the Integrated Food
| Security Phase Classification, or I.P.C., an initiative
| controlled by U.N. bodies and major relief agencies, identify a
| famine in an area on the basis of three conditions: 1. At least
| 20 percent of households face an extreme lack of food. 2. At
| least 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition. 3.
| At least two adults or four children for every 10,000 people
| die each day from starvation or disease linked to
| malnutrition._
|
| <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/world/middleeast/what-
| is-...>
|
| Archive / paywall: <https://archive.is/Hf5f5>
|
| The classification was created in 2004, and has been used to
| identify two famines: Somalia (2011) and South Sudan (2017).
| Aeolun wrote:
| > only the third time in the past 20 years
|
| _Only_ the third time in the last 20 years? I thought we were
| firmly past this...
| jksflkjl3jk3 wrote:
| War and conflict and the resulting devastation is part of human
| nature, as it has been for all of our species' history. Why
| would you expect that to have changed in the last 20 years?
| squigz wrote:
| We've managed to generally stop doing lots of things that one
| might say are 'part of human nature' - because the most
| important part of human nature is our ability to reflect on
| our nature and improve it.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| It is not that we've stopped, we've made it harder in some
| parts of the world, by adopting a liberal form of
| government and splitting powers. Remember what happened
| just few years back with Trump and the assault on congress.
|
| Or extremists gaining power, it's not that we've improved,
| it's that people had enough to eat. But it's slowly changed
| also here, you can be pragmatic or starving, but not both.
|
| But other democracies and governments are not as strong,
| and of course, in the west we're enjoying some level of
| stability that also is a result of exploitation of other
| parts of the world that is then fighting over a limited
| amount of remaining resources
| drivebycomment wrote:
| https://ourworldindata.org/famines
|
| Humanity has reduced famine dramatically over the past 100+
| years. If Sudan famine ends up having the higher end of the
| estimate for deaths, it will likely reverse the clear
| downward trend, which should be alarming.
| hggh wrote:
| That's not anarchy, obviously
| kibwen wrote:
| It may not be _anarchism_ as professed by _anarchists_ (which
| is itself a broad and fractious array of philosophies generally
| having to do with abolishing involuntary hierarchies, related
| to classical libertarianism), but it is a form of anarchy, at
| least as it is popularly understood. Terminology fails here; at
| this point any serious anarchists need to come to grips with
| the fact that this sort of "chaotic anarchy" is what people
| think of when they hear "anarchy", and that trying to reclaim
| the word is pointless.
| NewJazz wrote:
| On the contrary, the article's use of the word is what is
| pointless.
|
| At no point, besides the title, does the article make mention
| of anarchy or chaos. Rather, the article pretty clearly
| states that the famine is a result of a civil war between the
| government and a paramilitary group that was previously given
| weapons by the government.
|
| Liberal politicians (and less commonly journalists) like to
| latch onto the words anarchy and chaos to fear monger and
| dramatize, but often the so-called anarchy and chaos they
| call out is a direct result of their own ruthless attempts to
| keep order.
| Jensson wrote:
| Civil wars tend to create anarchy, it is the anarchy that
| causes the famine wars themselves doesn't inherently do it.
|
| For example the American civil war didn't create anarchy,
| the states continued to function on both sides so there
| were no mass starvation events.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Anarchy is when two factions try to govern instead of
| one? It is an interesting take. I can't say it makes
| sense.
| Jensson wrote:
| Yes, if nobody currently governs then it is an anarchy.
| That some people try to establish order doesn't change
| that currently there is none.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Neither the article author, nor you, have shown that the
| situation here is caused by a lack of government. In fact
| the article explicitly states that an important
| agricultural region is governed by one of the warring
| factions.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Anarchy is when two factions fail to govern. Thus, lack
| of government.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Anarchy is lack of government.
|
| That is one possible consequence of civil war.
| igorkraw wrote:
| 1. I agree that anarchists probably need to grapple with the
| fact that people think of this as a first association...
|
| 2. ...but terminology does not at all fail here, there is a
| separate term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie which
| describes a breakdown in order and social function.
|
| Notably, anarchists would probably claim that the fact that
| there's a civil war of various warlord factions and wannabe-
| states going on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudanese_civil_
| war_(2023%E2%80...
|
| is a good example why anomie and anarchy probably _should_ be
| distinct concepts, as there's probably plenty of hierarchy,
| localized state power and centralized decision making going
| on in Sudan, while e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapatis
| ta_Army_of_National_Lib... appear to have done absolutely
| fine keeping and improving a social fabric for the last 30
| yeras (until recently, gangs arrived and brought the anomie
| that comes with organized crime).
|
| Again, I don't think it's a winning strategy for political
| anarchists to try and convince people that "acshually it's
| anomie, not anarchy", but I think on this page, peoples
| professed self-identity makes sharing out this separation of
| concept worth it
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| I assumed the nuance there would be nitpicked (as the thread
| proves) which is why I didn't post this but I'm glad you did.
|
| This famine is the expected result of 20 years of post-
| colonialist civil war, which the article goes on to explain
| lightly.
|
| The economist is a capitalist magazine, so they of course are
| going to choose terms which resonate with capitalists.
|
| The majority in this thread look at this situation as a failure
| of "valid liberal government" rather than the results of
| capitalist colonialism, which is what it is.
|
| Colonialist resource extraction by Western powers, exemplified
| by companies like Chevron, exacerbated ethnic and regional
| tensions in Sudan and Darfur by prioritizing profits over local
| communities.
|
| Specifically Chevron's involvement in Sudan's oil industry
| during the 1970s and 80s led to the displacement of populations
| and the allocation of resources to specific ethnic groups,
| heightening grievances and competition over land and wealth.
|
| The infrastructure and political systems left by colonial
| powers were designed to facilitate such extraction, rather than
| fostering equitable development, creating a legacy of economic
| disparity and weak governance. This upended centuries of
| pastoral farming, and created conditions for this massive civil
| war, as marginalized groups rebelled against a state that was
| perceived as both complicit in and shaped by foreign
| exploitation.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > This famine is the expected result of 20 years of post-
| colonialist civil war
|
| There are other actors playing here: See the Grain from
| Ukraine program
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_From_Ukraine_program
|
| _" The blockade of Ukrainian ports by the Black Sea Fleet in
| the first weeks of the invasion interrupted grain exports,
| rapidly increasing global food prices and fueling food
| crises, greatly increasing the risk of famine in the poorest
| countries"_
|
| _" the Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme,
| has estimated that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has pushed
| around 70 million people to the brink of starvation
| worldwide"_
|
| The scope of the program includes Sudan
| paulddraper wrote:
| What is it?
| hggh wrote:
| Chaos, anomie
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Still cannot get the images of the Ethiopian famine out of my
| head - truly horrific stuff. I'll let people smarter and more
| powerful than me debate what could/should be done - I'd
| personally hazard a guess nothing short of military intervention
| can stop something like this but that has its whole slew of
| unintended side effects. It seems like there are enough resources
| in the world to prevent things like this, at least for now - and
| if not, a conversation needs to be had very soon how this should
| be handled because I don't think this will become a situation
| that becomes less common.
| bawolff wrote:
| I guess the problem is nobody wants to "own" countries anymore.
| Probably for good reason, colonization caused a lot of evil.
| However if you want to make a country do what you want, you
| can't just blow it up and then expect them to listen to you.
| Controlling people requires actually controlling them, and that
| is icky.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Debt bondage is much cleaner.
| nirav72 wrote:
| Yeah. The PRC has this process down. None of the long term
| side effects of colonialism, but the benefits of immediate
| access to resources.
| tim333 wrote:
| While the old prememant ownership thing has gone out of
| fashion, maybe we could have something like a 20 year lease
| where the Brits go in again and bring law and order? This
| kind of thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-
| Egyptian_Sudan
| dilawar wrote:
| Meh. We had the great Bengal famine under British rule. And
| none of it was due to lack of this and that.
|
| Amrtya Sen "Nobel" in economics was related to this.
| manishsharan wrote:
| Several famines.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_famines_i
| n_I....
| bojan wrote:
| The first step would have been leaving the African Union.
| csomar wrote:
| > I'd personally hazard a guess nothing short of military
| intervention can stop something like this
|
| Please don't guess, then? The famine started because of a
| military intervention gone south. The reality is that the
| Sudanese are a victim of circumstance. A war between some Arab
| rulers over who controls the Sudan.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Luckily my thoughts on this site don't dictate what
| international governments do, but thanks for your input?
| istinetz wrote:
| If you don't want your opinion to be critiqued, you can
| simply not post.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| There's no critique though - simply tone policing while
| trying to push another argument entirely. I'm not even
| making whatever argument is being "critiqued" here. It's
| simply bad posting.
| wolfram74 wrote:
| but there was a critique, your proposal was "something
| something let an army fix it" and they provided context
| "something something various armies caused it."
| stale2002 wrote:
| Then that would be an unrelated critique/strawman that
| doesn't accurately respond to what they said.
|
| They did not propose to fix it via an army. Instead they
| said "nothing short of military intervention can stop
| something like this" That is not a recommendation.
| Instead it is describing how difficult the problem is to
| solve.
|
| They then followed it up by saying "but that has its
| whole slew of unintended side effects". This is
| significantly hedging the claim, saying that the military
| could actually make things worse!
|
| Maybe one of the side effects that he is saying could
| happen is exactly the issue brought up, meaning that the
| famine would get worse. Therefore bringing this up as a
| possibility is not a critique, and actually agrees with
| the original statement.
|
| And they also previously had said "I'll let people
| smarter and more powerful than me debate what
| could/should be done". That statement explicitly saying
| that they aren't proposing things.
|
| They even finished up the statement by saying "a
| conversation needs to be had very soon how this should be
| handled ", which only suggesting that this should be
| talked about, because he quite clearly thinks that this
| is a complicated and difficult problem to solve, for
| which a military intervention could very well not be a
| good idea!
|
| If you actually read the original statement it is
| extremely conservative in its statements, and you have to
| almost intentionally be obtuse to attack such a hedging
| non recommendation that merely describes how bad and hard
| it is to solve!
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Instead of being an asshole, people could just respond to
| the idea.
| sorokod wrote:
| You make it sound as if it is not a civil war waged by the
| Sudanese on the Sudanese.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I don't know anything about it but I would be surprised if
| each side of the war manufactured their own guns. Foreign
| powers love to throw a fight.
| sorokod wrote:
| The vultures are there as they always are in such
| circumstances, what is your point?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| That the people shipping weapons to one side or another
| are not merely vultures but foreigners who nonetheless
| have an interest in the civil war's outcome, making it
| not solely Sudanese vs Sudanese
| mikrotikker wrote:
| At it's heart it's a Christianity vs Islam thing and should
| be a lesson in the failings of Multiculturalism and a vision
| of Europe's future.
| piva00 wrote:
| > I'd personally hazard a guess nothing short of military
| intervention can stop something like this but that has its
| whole slew of unintended side effects
|
| Military interventions most often fail to secure a country than
| the opposite. Haiti had a long peacekeeping mission from the UN
| and fell back into anarchy, Sudan has also had a military
| intervention. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc. are other examples
| of interventions gone south.
|
| Probably one of the few more successful interventions was the
| Yugoslavian Civil War, nowadays the appetite of the world for
| NATO bombing a country isn't really there.
|
| No one has figured out how to do nation building from the
| outside, that often has come from the people in those nations
| themselves.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > It seems like there are enough resources in the world to
| prevent things like this
|
| There will always be more greed than resources
| pvaldes wrote:
| Ethiopian famine was linked with previous massive deforestation
| projects. No trees = no water and no water = no food. War was a
| logical consequence of that. After several decades they finally
| grasp the idea, and are trying to bring the trees again with
| the "green legacy" project.
| mikrotikker wrote:
| That project is really amazing I have seen it in a
| documentary I just can't remember the name of it.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Just a reminder that all famine is political. The world, as a
| whole, produces more than it consumes. Famine is a political
| willingness to let certain people starve and die. It could be one
| internal group in a country willing to starve another. It could
| be entities external to the country willing to let it starve.
|
| Functionally, famine is little different to death squads.
|
| Further to this, we have a sanitized term in the modern era for
| intentionally starving people to death. It's called "economic
| sanctions" [1].
|
| [1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/25/lets-
| remember-m...
| datavirtue wrote:
| A philosophy of self-reliance, freedom, dignity and community has
| spawned the world's worst famine in 40 years? Hmmm....
| owenpalmer wrote:
| Sam Kinison would have something to say about this.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| There's this awful semi-famous photograph online of a previous
| African famine that depicts a man walking past a child who he
| stole U.N supplied foodstuffs from.
|
| This might be naive but what's stopping the U.S, Russia, E.U,
| China or any capable world power from just air dropping tons of
| food onto Sudans population centers? You can't tell me Sudan's
| military has the ability to shoot down advanced aircraft. Am I
| missing something? The country has no government currently so
| claiming it's a violation of sovereignty would also be
| questionable imo.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Airdropping "tons of food" wouldn't move the needle.
|
| Airdropping thousands of tons of food per day, every day, for
| years on end would temporarily reduce famine. It wouldn't
| prevent famine (armed groupings who would gain control over of
| the airdrops wouldn't necessarily share), and would destroy
| local farming, and would be horrendously expensive but it's
| possible (see e.g. Berlin airlift) if someone major really
| wanted to dedicate all their airforce (again, see e.g. Berlin
| airlift for what it takes) to that.
| bhouston wrote:
| > just air dropping tons of food onto Sudans population
| centers?
|
| Super inefficient, but makes for great photos. Good piece on
| NPR US airdrops of food into Gaza here:
|
| "the first thing to understand about airdrops is they are
| probably the most inefficient possible way to deliver aid. So
| they're used very, very sparingly and only when there is truly
| no other way to get aid in.
|
| "...ballpark eight to 10 times as expensive logistically to
| deliver by air as by overland transport"
|
| https://www.npr.org/2024/03/06/1236019060/gaza-israel-airdro...
|
| Basically because of the logistical nightmare it is to airdrop
| food, there is no way that you can feed millions in famine with
| it. You need trucks on the ground bringing in food.
| jopsen wrote:
| Air drops might be cheaper than boots on the ground, if
| that's what it really takes.
|
| I'm not seriously advocating anything. It's a pretty hard
| problem to solve. Famine in itself, is not so hard, we can
| solve that with money -- the civil war thing is difficult
| though.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Thousands of tons if you intend to do it over a meaningful
| time.
|
| And this way of distributing food is virtually worthless
| without corresponding ground operations.
| logankeenan wrote:
| I donate to UNICEF on a monthly basis. These sorts of things are
| terrible, but I'd like to think donating helps a little.
|
| https://www.unicef.org/
| bhouston wrote:
| I also donate regularly. It is a great organization. Also other
| great charities in this space is Medecins Sans Frontieres and
| World Food Program and of course the Red Cross.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| MSF for sure. Less certain about the Red Cross, feels like a
| lot of admin for the impact (low dollars-to-impact).
| SaintSeiya wrote:
| yet while people here debate the semantic meaning of this or
| that, real people are starving and dying over there.
| hereme888 wrote:
| In the article's picture, zoom in to look at the white horse.
| It's so famished it looks like it came from an apocalyptic
| painting.
| Yawrehto wrote:
| It's odd how many people pay attention to a few big crises --
| Ukraine, Gaza, etc -- when there are many other crises which are,
| by most measures, more important.
|
| For instance, current major crises are ongoing in (per Wikipedia)
| the DRC, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Myanmar,
| Yemen, Sudan (of course), the Sahel, Somalia, Syria, Nigeria,
| Afghanistan, Haiti, and South Sudan -- but most of those are
| rarely mentioned in the media.
|
| The Gaza war is of course a major humanitarian crisis, but it's
| not as important as many of the other things. All of Gaza, for
| instance, has around 2 million people; the whole of Palestine has
| a population of under 6 million. Assuming a horrific genocide
| with a death rate of 100 percent, the number of deaths is still
| less than the optimistic scenario in Sudan of 6 million excess
| deaths. I wouldn't be surprised if other regions (the Sahel,
| Yemen, Nigeria, the DRC and Ethiopia, in rough order of
| likelihood) also likely have expected number of deaths greater
| than the population of Palestine; the first two because of major
| crises, the last three because of crises but also because they
| have so many people (all over 100 million).
|
| I get why Ukraine gets more attention than Somalia (racism), but
| why would Gaza get more attention than, say, Yemen, Afghanistan,
| or Syria? All are somewhat Middle Eastern, after all, so it would
| be hard for racism to be as much of a factor, if at all.
| Log_out_ wrote:
| the bulbbelt boiling over into permawar is scary.
|
| also a major component in sudan is arab racism against black
| africans and arab hate for jews. As soon as its muslim on
| muslim violence its okay.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > why would Gaza get more attention than, say, Yemen,
| Afghanistan, or Syria? All are somewhat Middle Eastern, after
| all, so it would be hard for racism to be as much of a factor,
| if at all.
|
| The Palestinian crisis has always gotten more attention in the
| US because of Israel's close political relationship with the US
| and Jews having a strong cultural influence in the US
| especially since WW2. It's similar to the reason why almost no
| one in the US knows about the Nazi's oppression and genocide of
| the Roma.
|
| Also, tragically, the US has never cared about how many people
| die in Africa. We're so used to hearing about "hundreds of
| thousands dying of X" in Africa that we're completely
| desensitized to it, whereas one American hostage dying will be
| major headlines for weeks.
| pvaldes wrote:
| I guess that in part because only a small minority of the
| Ethiopia citizens own phones.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| ~60% of Ethiopia's population have a cell phone contract.
| Given how among the poorer parts of society, only one
| person in a family has one, that's near 100% penetration.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Correct. I should have expressed myself better. They have
| phones but don't use it to post on internet. 80% of the
| population don't have internet, and of those that have
| it, only 5,5% use social media. This is the people that
| could be recording videos and sending it to the world.
|
| https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2024-ethiopia
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I don't know who we is but an enormous amount of aid makes it
| from US to Africa so I don't know how you get by saying we
| don't care, it's merely not news.
| fractallyte wrote:
| Ukraine gets attention because it's happening in Europe, next
| to NATO countries, with nuclear weapons lurking in the shadows,
| and it happened as a result of filthy policy decisions by four
| of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council in the
| 1990s and now. Nothing remotely related to 'racism'.
|
| And turn this around: how much attention is Somalia, or Sudan,
| getting on the African continent? Do events in either of those
| two countries make it to national headlines?
| aguaviva wrote:
| Partly because it's happening in Europe and the nuclear
| context, yes.
|
| But not simply because of that. It gets attention because the
| nature of the aggression is extremely clear, and highly
| unusual (in its brazenness and openness); and due to the
| clear and present threat to the (at least approximately)
| rule-based world order that human beings have been trying to
| keep in place since 1945. And it "happened" because the
| regime currently installed in the aggressor country chose to
| take the action that it did (and falsely calculated that the
| invasion would be a brilliant success, and face very little
| effective resistance).
|
| Not because of anything that went down in the 1990s.
|
| _Nothing remotely related to 'racism'._
|
| On the contrary -- this decision was intimately tied to
| Putin's racist conception of Ukrainians as a people (and his
| supremacist views of his own people, or what he believes to
| be "his" people anyway). This is eminently clear from his own
| statements and numerous other indications.
|
| If you wish to explore this topic further, then I invite you
| to consider the writings of e.g. Terrell Jermaine Starr:
|
| https://www.oprahdaily.com/entertainment/a40137153/terrell-j.
| ..
|
| However you choose to ignore these indications and the openly
| available history of the region, and build your narratives
| accordingly -- that's up to you.
| mikrotikker wrote:
| I think it's because the Russia vs Ukraine is more
| consequential for the country you live in as the outcome could
| cause a switch to multi polar world.
|
| As for Gaza, well it's good old fashioned anti semitism. People
| love to hate the Jews. It's shown in the double standards, e.g.
| the insane levels to which Israel has gone to reduce collateral
| damage that no other country has ever tried to do vs an enemy
| that deliberately seeks to increase collateral damage in both
| targeting Israeli citizens and using it's own citizens in ways
| that ensure their deaths.
| geenkeuse wrote:
| Such a lively (but mostly soulless, heartless and completely
| cold) discussion.
|
| People are dying. Their misfortune is that they were born there.
|
| What if you were born there?Would you still be on your high
| horse, or would your coding skills and upstanding morality have
| saved you?
|
| I do not take pride in accidents of birth.
|
| And being born in a thriving society is one such example.
|
| If you have it easy, enjoy it. But don't for a moment think you
| have the receipts to engage in a conversation like this, with
| your callous heart and supreme lack of empathy.
|
| It just shows your face without the mask.
|
| Those who know what suffering is, and have a heart for people are
| obviously excused.
|
| The rest of you can go change the world, because you are
| obviously so awesome and amazing.
|
| Typed from my internet enabled cellphone, in one of the poorest
| and most dangerous places in Africa.
| gosub100 wrote:
| how much have you donated?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-09-01 23:01 UTC)