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

economist.com

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

#211

Post by gizmo »

gryzzly wrote: post #140
gizmo wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resolutions to the conflicts Israel has with its neighbors are complicated for many reasons. Lasting peace requires a willingness to compromise and to stick to agreements made, which is extremely difficult politically. The moral questions are not that difficult. Do Jewish and Palestinian people have a right to live in their holy land? Yes. Do they have the right to unlawfully occupy land, murder or terrorize or tortu…

both sides will say they "murder" or "terrorise" as a defence. that’s where the moral question comes from and proving "who shot first" etc.

You can't prove "who shot first" because the answer depends entirely on where history starts. People who want to argue about unanswerable questions like these don't want peace. They just seek justifications for further bloodshed. The actual moral questions are not difficult if you believe a Palestinian life is worth as much as any other life.

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

#212

Post by logicchains »

JohnMakin wrote: post #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 leas…

[flagged]

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

#213

Post by AdrianB1 »

willyt wrote: post #206
AdrianB1 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

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_Canadian_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.

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

#214

Post by aaron695 »

JohnMakin wrote: post #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 leas…

[dead]

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

#215

Post by perihelions »

energy123 wrote: post #119
apexalpha wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously doubt the indirect support for the war in Yemen or in Sudan through proxies even comes close to the direct support for Israel. Also please dont dismiss opposing views as irrelevant copy pastas. Im not blind to your argument either. If you have sources that say the level of support is similar after all ill consider them.

Labelling support for one as "indirect" and the other as "direct" is begging the question via rhetorical framing. The Saudis wouldn't have a functioning military if it wasn't for US support, they receive more weapons as a percentage of their arms from the US than Israel does. I don't want to split hairs and do bean counting. But the level of passion surrounding the war in Gaza and the level of detachment surrounding…

You're drastically underselling your point: the US didn't just passively sell arms to the Saudis—US foreign policy deliberately supported their bombing campaign in Yemen, since the Houthi group is a common enemy to both (and to most of the world, really). It was only very late into the Saudi atrocities that the US government started to balk—late, because, as is our topic, US domestic media narratives entirely ignored the civilian consequences of what the Saudis did in Yemen.

There's an entire Wiki entry devoted to this question,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Saud... ("United States support for Saudi Arabian–led operations in Yemen")

(It might be clarifying to remember that the start of this conflict, the Saudis weren't the aggressors. The Houthis (at least from the US PoV) were the aggressors. The US (and others) viewed this as a defensive war against the Houthi rebellion, in which war the Saudis were allies and partners in defending the legitimate Yemeni government against a violent, Iran-backed, terroristic insurgency. This was the context in which the US sided with the Saudi military).

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

#216

Post by albertopv »

crop_rotation wrote: post #155
jksflkjl3jk3 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

China had an empire lasting about 2000 years, truly something different

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

#218

Post by yorwba »

crop_rotation wrote: post #155
jksflkjl3jk3 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

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.

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

#219

Post by [deleted] »

shadowgovt wrote: post #182
jksflkjl3jk3 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#220

Post by gruez »

Qem wrote: post #61
dotancohen wrote: post #23

[flagged]

The famine in Gaza generates a lot of outrage because there was a line of trucks loaded with food rotting outside, as there is an apartheid system in place actively withholding food to generate said famine. We have even instances were soldiers were caught in camera gunning down starving people trying to get food, like the infamous flour massacre: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour_massacre

>The famine in Gaza generates a lot of outrage because there was a line of trucks loaded with food rotting outside, as there is an apartheid system in place actively withholding food to generate said famine.

That sounds... pretty similar to what's happening in Sudan? From the OP:

>[...] Some of the shortage is down to theft and damage by the RSF and other militias. But much blame lies also with the SAF, which is loth to allow food into areas, including most of Darfur, under the control of the RSF.

>A single convoy of aid trucks can wait six weeks or more in Port Sudan to be cleared by the SAF for onward travel. Even then, almost all of it goes to SAF-controlled areas. Only a tiny fraction has reached Darfur. [...]

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