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Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

economist.com

171–180 of 415 posts

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#171
post #11

[flagged]

You know the deal about unnatural borders people keep saying? This is actually true regarding Sudan. South Sudan didn't want to be a part and didn't get its autonomy, and Darfur was internal colonialism in all but name. Sudan had to create a big military sector and militias to try to keep them, with the result of said militias later turning on each other.

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#172
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.

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#174
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Central planning has a very good record in countries like China/South Korea. Non central social changes are just very very slow.

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 an…

> 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.

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#175

>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:/…

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.

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#176
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

> 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 o…

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.

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#177
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

But things can be done. The world can be forced to watch and witness .weapons can be delivered to seld defense groups.

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.

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#178
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Central planning has a very good record in countries like China/South Korea. Non central social changes are just very very slow.

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 an…

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

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#179
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#180
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

> 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 o…

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