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The Global War on Terror 5.0: Putin on the Risk

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Re: The Global War on Terror 5.0: Putin on the Risk

Kepler said:
When a peer of my wife was assigned to BF a few years ago, his going away party was like a funeral. It used to have the distinction of "most hellish country in the world," but the DRC and Sudan have passed it. For oldies and philatelists out there: Burkina Faso is what used to be called "Upper Volta," back when it was, comparatively, a functional nation.

All you need to know about Africa is that Somalia isn't the most dangerous country on the continent.
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True. Sadly the competition for that title is stiff and getting stiffer each year. I remember being in Ghana, staying with a family there, and the dad was reading the paper one morning and on the radio they were reporting that the Ivory Coast (next door to Ghana) had had a coup the previous evening. It was considered no big deal, kind of just business as usual in Africa. He did make the point that, while Africans complained about the negative impacts of colonialism, the Africans by and large had done very poorly governing themselves once the colonial power were gone. The folks I've met over the years from Africa are generally really great people, but somehow the nations for the most part can't govern themselves very well.
 
Bob Gray said:
True. Sadly the competition for that title is stiff and getting stiffer each year. I remember being in Ghana, staying with a family there, and the dad was reading the paper one morning and on the radio they were reporting that the Ivory Coast (next door to Ghana) had had a coup the previous evening. It was considered no big deal, kind of just business as usual in Africa. He did make the point that, while Africans complained about the negative impacts of colonialism, the Africans by and large had done very poorly governing themselves once the colonial power were gone. The folks I've met over the years from Africa are generally really great people, but somehow the nations for the most part can't govern themselves very well.
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I would argue that the nations are artificial boundaries drawn up by colonial powers a long time ago. It may be better to redraw the boundaries based on tribes.
Zululand
Berberland
Mandikaland
etc.
 
Re: The Global War on Terror 5.0: Putin on the Risk

We have some people that want to try to extend our business to Africa...if that comes up, I may have to draw the line, and say No to travel. There are some countries I'd be OK with, there was a project in South Africa earlier this year, that would have been OK, but there are some countries that I have no desire to set foot in.
 
Re: The Global War on Terror 5.0: Putin on the Risk

joecct said:
I would argue that the nations are artificial boundaries drawn up by colonial powers a long time ago. It may be better to redraw the boundaries based on tribes.
Zululand
Berberland
Mandikaland
etc.
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It's an interesting idea and certainly has some merit. How it would actually be done is hard to fathom.
 
Re: The Global War on Terror 5.0: Putin on the Risk

Bob Gray said:
It's an interesting idea and certainly has some merit. How it would actually be done is hard to fathom.
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Only way I can imagine this happening is a pan-African Congress where they erase all the lines and then redraw them by tribe, in one go. I worked with a (aside: unbelievably attractive, as in good god they make people who look like that?!) Kenyan guy who explained the 1001 reasons why this will never happen, only about half of which are bad reasons.

If Africa ever got its act together it would be as or more productive and wealthy as any other continent -- even after 200 years of extractive rape by the west and now Asia it still has more resources than anybody else -- but barring some revolutionary transformation, they're permanently jammed.

Tell us more cool Ghana stories. Why were you there? That's really interesting.
 
Re: The Global War on Terror 5.0: Putin on the Risk

Yeah, I don't see Africa getting its act together anytime soon, as in, in my lifetime. They are just too far away, and it will be a slow process. Not saying that they can't get there, I'm just saying that it is going to take a while.

I don't think the idea of re-drawing the lines would work, mainly because there is no way you'd get buy-in from even 50% of the countries. All it would do is cause more war in the short-term, I'm afraid.
 
Re: The Global War on Terror 5.0: Putin on the Risk

Kepler said:
Tell us more cool Ghana stories. Why were you there? That's really interesting.
Click to expand...

Bob got a little depressed after Obama's re-election and was looking for a new country to reside in. ;) Unfortunately he didn't take my suggestion of North Korea, where true conservative leadership reigns. :eek: :D
 
Re: The Global War on Terror 5.0: Putin on the Risk

Apparently some just can't participate in a productive conversation without bringing partisan BS into it. Sad, but par for the course for here, or really anywhere on the internet.
 
Re: The Global War on Terror 5.0: Putin on the Risk

Kepler said:
Only way I can imagine this happening is a pan-African Congress where they erase all the lines and then redraw them by tribe, in one go. I worked with a (aside: unbelievably attractive, as in good god they make people who look like that?!) Kenyan guy who explained the 1001 reasons why this will never happen, only about half of which are bad reasons.

If Africa ever got its act together it would be as or more productive and wealthy as any other continent -- even after 200 years of extractive rape by the west and now Asia it still has more resources than anybody else -- but barring some revolutionary transformation, they're permanently jammed.

Tell us more cool Ghana stories. Why were you there? That's really interesting.
Click to expand...
A handful of us from my church went over and visited some church groups there we had gotten to know. They have an end of year conference every year, with folks from across West Africa, so we joined them for that. So, there's like six of us white folks in a gathering of a thousand Africans. And you know what, it didn't matter, as we felt totally at home. Really, you go to a place like that and meet folks that are happy with nowhere near the material goods we have, and you start thinking a lot more than the American way may not be so great in some ways and American influence isn't always a positive thing. A fun thing is that we flew back on New Year's Eve (and this was going from 1999 to 2000, so the Y2K thing was in full furor). So, we take off in the evening of December 31, 1999 from Ghana. At some point in the air we go into 2000. Then later (after a stop over), we're back in 1999 and remain there until we land in Phoenix. Then we tick into 2000 again. So I can tell people I've experienced cross over from once century to the next twice! Que to comments about how much of an oldie I must be!
 
Re: The Global War on Terror 5.0: Putin on the Risk

Rover said:
Bob got a little depressed after Obama's re-election and was looking for a new country to reside in. ;) Unfortunately he didn't take my suggestion of North Korea, where true conservative leadership reigns. :eek: :D
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After spending a couple weeks in Ghana, we had more than a passing thought that we could see ourselves sticking around there, though that was well pre-Obama, so that part of your narrative doesn't stick. ;)
 
Re: The Global War on Terror 5.0: Putin on the Risk

Bob Gray said:
A handful of us from my church went over and visited some church groups there we had gotten to know. They have an end of year conference every year, with folks from across West Africa, so we joined them for that. So, there's like six of us white folks in a gathering of a thousand Africans. And you know what, it didn't matter, as we felt totally at home. Really, you go to a place like that and meet folks that are happy with nowhere near the material goods we have, and you start thinking a lot more than the American way may not be so great in some ways and American influence isn't always a positive thing. A fun thing is that we flew back on New Year's Eve (and this was going from 1999 to 2000, so the Y2K thing was in full furor). So, we take off in the evening of December 31, 1999 from Ghana. At some point in the air we go into 2000. Then later (after a stop over), we're back in 1999 and remain there until we land in Phoenix. Then we tick into 2000 again. So I can tell people I've experienced cross over from once century to the next twice! Que to comments about how much of an oldie I must be!
Click to expand...

We only make those jokes because of your balloon trip from Tonga to Samoa on 12/31/1899. ;)

Great story.

The people I've known who have spent time in poor countries have, pretty much to a man, been strongly affected by the experience. Some got angry, some became much more peaceful.
 
Re: The Global War on Terror 5.0: Putin on the Risk

I'm sure this will make things calmer in Ukraine.

From the President's statement:

“The decision of two factions to pull out of the coalition demonstrates that part of people's deputies do not clutch onto their chairs but feel the mood of voters and are guided by it. All public opinion polls, as well as direct communication with people, demonstrate that the society wants a complete reload of state power.
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I really hope that's a good translation, because "clutch onto their chairs" is a great image.

It's unclear whether this was an orchestrated move or a genuine "collapse." The context seems to favor the former explanation, but then why would the far right party do it, since they're the ones who are going to get creamed in the next election? For that matter, how are they going to handle the parts of the country that are not under central government control? Declare them under marshal law and suspend their voting privileges?
 
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bigblue_dl said:
Apparently some just can't participate in a productive conversation without bringing partisan BS into it. Sad, but par for the course for here, or really anywhere on the internet.
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Ok, I'll make it better by bringing up soccer. :D

In all honesty, soccer in Africa is just like everything else in Africa. There's more than a few nations that have enough raw talent they could win a World Cup but, like everything else, there's so much graft, corruption, and greed they can't get the infrastructure together to do it.
 
Re: The Global War on Terror 5.0: Putin on the Risk

bigblue_dl said:
I don't think the idea of re-drawing the lines would work, mainly because there is no way you'd get buy-in from even 50% of the countries. All it would do is cause more war in the short-term, I'm afraid.
Click to expand...

That would be the same if it was tried in the Middle East. Lines in the sand really haven't worked for the past 100 years.
 
Re: The Global War on Terror 5.0: Putin on the Risk

Kepler said:
I'm sure this will make things calmer in Ukraine.

From the President's statement:



I really hope that's a good translation, because "clutch onto their chairs" is a great image.

It's unclear whether this was an orchestrated move or a genuine "collapse." The context seems to favor the former explanation, but then why would the far right party do it, since they're the ones who are going to get creamed in the next election? For that matter, how are they going to handle the parts of the country that are not under central government control? Declare them under marshal law and suspend their voting privileges?
Click to expand...

Red Army enters to "restore order."
 
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