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Talk about "biting the hand that feeds"... That ship was delivering much needed food aid to SOMALIA, KENYA, etc... I say suspend all food shipments from here on out to that god forsaken continent.
Some people shouldn't breed, and usually those are the same people who should be isolated for extinction.
what has africa ever given us of value? god I hate that place.
Well, I say boycott africa and the mid-east as so much that folks fight over stems from there. (Religions, commodities, etc.) Like you, I'm not overly fond of the place.
But I do believe fact of the matter is, lots of commodities are coming out of africa. Cotton at one time. 2/3rds of the world's cocao, Tea, Coffee, and of course useless but pretty stuff like diamonds, tanzanite, etc. And some strategic metals at the very least.
So, though I maintain we simply need to find other sources and ways of doing things to get off of afro/mid-east commodities, I can't say "nothing of value" comes from over there. (Even if I don't particularly want any of it around me. Trust me, if you start researching the things you buy every day, and say "No afro goods for me... you have a difficult problem. A complete pain in the arse, actually. It's incorporated in so much that is sitting in your grocery store.)
But even so, let's say we could completely disengage. You'd still have to keep an eye on the region militarily. See there's a sort of two way problem here.
If Africa were to ever get on it's feet, the way say, the Africa Aid type people want, then essentially you've empowered the biggest "hood" on the planet. Imagine the Somali pirates with nukes, right? On the other hand some would say it's inhumane to let them starve, kill each other off, etc.
So you are stuck between the horns of a dilemma. Do you be humane and put them on thier feet and risk a continent of raging afro-dictators? Or let the place continue to be a crap hole? Or do you try to just help enough that people aren't suffering, but they can't quite pose a worldwide military threat?
Clearly no easy answer, and any answer carries with it both moral and practical considerations.
Well, it gave us people, coffee, cotton, cacoa beans, palm oil(in everything), tabacco, cloves, gold, diamonds, and OIL:
"A noose, not a bracelet"
by Naomi Klein
June, 2005
[SIZE=4]Africa is a rich continent made poor by rapacious western corporations. G8 leaders must be forced to deliver justice [/SIZE]
Gordon Brown has a new idea about how to "make poverty history" in time for the G8 summit. With Washington so far refusing to double its aid to Africa by 2015, the chancellor is appealing to the "richer oil-producing states" of the Middle East to fill the funding gap. "Oil wealth urged to save Africa," reads the headline in the Observer.
Here is a better idea: instead of Saudi Arabia's oil wealth being used to "save Africa", how about if Africa's oil wealth was used to save Africa -- along with its gas, diamond, gold, platinum, chromium, ferroalloy and coal wealth?
With all this noblesse oblige focused on saving Africa from its misery, it seems like a good time to remember someone else who tried to make poverty history: Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was killed 10 years ago this November by the Nigerian government -- along with eight other Ogoni activists, he was sentenced to death by hanging. Their crime was daring to insist that Nigeria was not poor at all but rich, and that political decisions made in the interests of western multinational corporations kept its people in desperate poverty. Saro-Wiwa gave his life to the idea that the vast oil wealth of the Niger Delta must leave behind more than polluted rivers, charred farmland, rancid air and crumbling schools. He asked not for charity, pity or "relief", but for justice.
The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People demanded that Shell compensate the people from whose land it had pumped roughly $30bn worth of oil since the 1950s. The company turned to the government for help, and the Nigerian military turned its guns on demonstrators. Before his state-ordered hanging, Saro-Wiwa told the tribunal: "I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is here on trial ... The company has, indeed, ducked this particular trial, but its day will surely come." Ten years later, 70% of Nigerians still live on less than $1 a day and Shell is still making superprofits. Equatorial Guinea, which has a major oil deal with ExxonMobil, "got to keep a mere 12% of the oil revenues in the first year of its contract", according to a report on the CBS news programme 60 Minutes -- a share so low it would have been scandalous even at the height of colonial oil pillage. """
Quick and honest question here. Who exactly among the Nigerians is profiting from this? Given that Nigerian military is suppressing the Nigerian peasants, we have another case like slavery. Africans are complicit in keeping Africa a crap hole?
Doesn't make what Shell may/may not be doing right, but still seems that at least part of the problem is coming from some sector of the Africans themselves?
(Of course I suspect a similar claim could be made about the current economic meltdown's effects on average people world-wide vrs. the financiers who concocted it.)
We're all waiting patiently for you to admit that you were DEAD WRONG about Obama - for about the 100th time...
Come on - stop hiding - come out and just admit that you tremendously underestimated Obama's great strength of character with your OP... it will make you feel good!!!
We're all waiting patiently for you to admit that you were DEAD WRONG about Obama - for about the 100th time...
Come on - stop hiding - come out and just admit that you tremendously underestimated Obama's great strength of character with your OP... it will make you feel good!!!
We're all waiting patiently for you to admit that you were DEAD WRONG about Obama - for about the 100th time...
Come on - stop hiding - come out and just admit that you tremendously underestimated Obama's great strength of character with your OP... it will make you feel good!!!
2.Bouncing in a dingy on the ocean, trying to hold a rifle still on water to aim it?
3. Try shooting a rifle from a boat sometime, you will then, "get it".
4. Too much of a chance of killing the captain.
Are you sure about all that????
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