The abandoned war: Why no one is stopping the genocide in Sudan • Hacker News Board

Re: The abandoned war: Why no one is stopping the genocide in Sudan

#151

Post by jvanderbot » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 4:24 PM UTC

voodooEntity wrote: post #88

jvanderbot wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's overly cynical. Donating to local warlords / psuedogovernment actors can be sketchy. Donating to e.g., UNICEF is much more likely to produce good results for refugees, especially children and mothers. I'm not aware of where to send money to stop wars - it's likely to have the opposite effect, sadly.

Even donations to organisations such as UNICEF often end up in the wrong hands. Lets go for the optimistic scenario in which UNICEF will only take a very small portion for the "processing" and really deliver lets say food and medical supplies to the region. Those warloard will simply come and take it away from those citizens and provide to their armies. Theres nothing those citizens can do against it. Do i wish it wo…

I'm not sure where you get your assumptions from, but UNICEF works in camps and outposts that people come to, often in safer areas to treat refugees and establish aid stations. They don't catapult money/food/water into warring nations and call it a wash.

UNICEF also works on a permissioned basis: They wait until they are asked, and so they often work in countries neighboring crisis centers, where it is much safer anyway. They are constantly negotiating to be "asked", yes, but this is through diplomatic ties. UNICEF works with refugees mostly, not in war zones. For famine/disease intervention, they are at ground zero, but again with permission.

And UNICEF's overhead is low - they are efficient, considering they sometimes have to establish, e.g., their own refueling station networks, cold storage logistics, flight controllers, etc. Often, powerful industrialists in the target nations provide significant help - or at least I know of one case of this.

Here's a good (not perfect) talk on the issue: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_abou...

I'm close to UNICEF, or was, so I got sneak peaks into some of the problems they deal with. I assure you, "processing" is not a revenue stream for them.

You're thinking of the breast cancer scams. UNICEF is not a charity, they're a logistics organization with nation-state level resources. When Amazon can do it cheaper - they use Amazon. No organization is perfect, but this one is good.

Re: The abandoned war: Why no one is stopping the genocide in Sudan

#152

Post by sfn42 » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 4:46 PM UTC

jvanderbot wrote: post #151

voodooEntity wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even donations to organisations such as UNICEF often end up in the wrong hands. Lets go for the optimistic scenario in which UNICEF will only take a very small portion for the "processing" and really deliver lets say food and medical supplies to the region. Those warloard will simply come and take it away from those citizens and provide to their armies. Theres nothing those citizens can do against it. Do i wish it wo…

I'm not sure where you get your assumptions from, but UNICEF works in camps and outposts that people come to, often in safer areas to treat refugees and establish aid stations. They don't catapult money/food/water into warring nations and call it a wash. UNICEF also works on a permissioned basis: They wait until they are asked, and so they often work in countries neighboring crisis centers, where it is much safer any…

I was approached on the street by a girl working for a marketing company, wanting me to start a subscription for $20 a month to Save the Children which I think is a pretty well regarded charity. We hit it off and met up later and I asked her about the job. For each person who signs up, she would get about $60. So that's the first three months of my subscription in her pocket. Furthermore, her employer would fly them around the country, staying about 2 weeks in a city, living in hotels and expenses paid. This girl did not even have a home, she lived permanently in hotels paid for by her employer. And of course the employer needs some profit on top, so I'd estimate that's at least like 3-6 more months of my subscription going towards her employer/expenses.

I wonder how many more of these private companies exist to just siphon off these donation streams? The charity itself may be efficient, but how many private companies provide goods and services to them for a healthy profit?

Re: The abandoned war: Why no one is stopping the genocide in Sudan

#153

Post by ahhhhnoooo » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 4:59 PM UTC

WarmWash wrote: post #145

ahhhhnoooo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would. I regularly do. One of the underpinning core beliefs of anarchist theory is "wellbeing for all". Every human deserves the best conditions we can collectively give each other, and we should all be working not for our individual enrichment, but for the enrichment of us all. Some people genuinely believe that helping others get bigger quality of life is more important than helping themselves get rich. It's not…

It's a great idea that never works. Never. Inevitably you end up with people who do the absolute bare minimum to qualify for "the communal take" and a small cadre of power players who carry many multiples of their weight. Eventually the strong players get sick of carrying, and the whole thing collapses. You can have pockets of like minded individuals who understand the give and take, happy communes (which also seem t…

I've fed and housed people for decades, provided transportation, donated skills, and rehabilitated wild lands. The people who receive the benefits from that didn't do anything to get them. They simply needed them. If I have extra and you need some, you can have some. Simple as.

Most people want to contribute, pay it forward, or give in their own way. Almost no one wants to do nothing to give back. (Usually, the people who do are the people who have been stepped on their whole lives, and by receiving aid it buys them a chance to rest. Once they've rested, they tend to help out where they can.)

I guess I'm going to believe my decades of lived experience with mutual aid over some stranger telling me things I've observed sustaining themselves are impossible.

Re: The abandoned war: Why no one is stopping the genocide in Sudan

#154

Post by enrightened » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 5:03 PM UTC

It’s abandoned because the killings are being done by Arab supremacists.

Re: The abandoned war: Why no one is stopping the genocide in Sudan

#155

Post by ahhhhnoooo » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 5:17 PM UTC

yostrovs wrote: post #119

ahhhhnoooo wrote: post #95

Is anyone stopping any of the genocides around the world? Governments and citizenry are engaged in many attempts to wholly eradicate cultures and minorities. Sometimes fast, like Israel attempting to eradicate Palestinians. Sometimes they are slow, like the barriers put into place against indigenous communities after generations of genocide against them. It's not new either. Sudan, Uyghers, Rohingya, Yazidi, Armenian…

"The world" cares about some more than others. That's why the plight of the Palestinians is daily on the news, while that of the Yazidis or Druze is not.

Maybe read better news? I've been hearing about the Yazidi through reporting on the YPJ/YPG since circa 2015.

But I think theres multiple factors happening. One is scale. Millions of Palestinians are currently experiencing displacement, bombings, and settler colonialism.

Thats a large group of people. Multiple times the size of the Yazidi or Druze populations.

There's also the scale of the conflict and the weapons deployed. Israel deployed somewhere around 80,000 tonnes of explosives on Gaza. Thats more explosives than were deployed in World War 2. Add in evidence of white phosphorus being deployed, and the scale of the devastation is newsworthy.

And I think access to communication is different, people care about what they can see. Footage of Gaza is readily available and terrible to behold.

Finally, and I'm not pleased about this one, I think many in the west excuse behavior of some countries because they have racist ideas about those countries. Like, many Americans probably expect developing nations to have atrocities, but then look at Israel and go, "I thought this was supposed to be a model democracy! We aren't supposed to do genocide!" (Of course this idea is nonsense, developed countries have done genocide many many times, but I think it does drive news cycles.)

Re: The abandoned war: Why no one is stopping the genocide in Sudan

#156

Post by therobots927 » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

thevinter wrote: post #118

lostlogin wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can any downvoters explain the downvotes?

It's a very simplistic and radical point of view that doesn't take into account the reality of the world we live in. It also doesn't take into account the intricacies of foreign politics and seems to assume that the gulf states are the only bad actors here. Finally "gulf states" is a catch-all so big that it's borderline funny. (What did Bahrain do?)

You know being against slavery used to be considered radical, right?

If it’s so simplistic how about you explain why it’s so important for Saudi Arabia to perpetuate a genocide in order to acquire gold.

And how about you explain how it’s okay to be economically linked to that type of behavior by proxy. I’m assuming you have some kind of expertise in this subject matter as opposed to just vomiting up whatever the neoliberal talking head “experts” tell you to believe.

Re: The abandoned war: Why no one is stopping the genocide in Sudan

#157

Post by WarmWash » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 6:14 PM UTC

ahhhhnoooo wrote: post #153

WarmWash wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a great idea that never works. Never. Inevitably you end up with people who do the absolute bare minimum to qualify for "the communal take" and a small cadre of power players who carry many multiples of their weight. Eventually the strong players get sick of carrying, and the whole thing collapses. You can have pockets of like minded individuals who understand the give and take, happy communes (which also seem t…

I've fed and housed people for decades, provided transportation, donated skills, and rehabilitated wild lands. The people who receive the benefits from that didn't do anything to get them. They simply needed them. If I have extra and you need some, you can have some. Simple as. Most people want to contribute, pay it forward, or give in their own way. Almost no one wants to do nothing to give back. (Usually, the peopl…

OK, that's great and respectable.

But you don't address the core problem which is "How do you handle the people faking (often even faking out themselves!) the need for selfish gain?" and "How do you handle the people who see others lying for gain, and they themselves convert from the helpers to the helped"?

Most people just sweep this under the rug, because it is an obvious and fatal flaw in the system. It's also ideologically uncomfortable that powerless people (have nots) can be just as shitty and morally awry as powerful people (haves).

The world shouldn't be a place devoid of charity and helping out those who need it. In fact it's critical to maximizing society for everyone. But building a system with those ideals being the center pillar is backwards, because it puts the rewards before the work. A side spoke of support? Sure. But the center framework? Doesn't work, and there are ample examples, because every kid votes to get cookies first with the promise of eating their veggies later.

Re: The abandoned war: Why no one is stopping the genocide in Sudan

#158

Post by quietbritishjim » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 6:29 PM UTC

goodcanadian wrote: post #105

b450 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a section of the article covering precisely this, headed "The external actors: arms to both sides"

It is not covered in anywhere the same level of detail, in my opinion.

I'm not familiar with this topic and it seemed clear to me.

It could have been more detailed, but then do could then rest of the article, and then it would've been too long.

Re: The abandoned war: Why no one is stopping the genocide in Sudan

#159

Post by tovej » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 7:15 PM UTC

testdelacc1 wrote: post #149

tovej wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany, Great Britain, Finland, many other European partners. They are purchasing military equipment from Israel, funding their development. Many European institutions also have investments in Israel. And arms used in the Palestinian genocide are being produced in European countries.

I don’t think that would be the common meaning of funding. Funding doesn’t mean “have a commercial relationship with”.

It's not just a commercial relationship, Israel is dependent on US subsidies and European trade to fund its war effort, and Europe has shown itself to be very slow at reacting to the genocide.

Effectively Europes stance is funding the genocide. Whether a lawyer would consider this funding is besides the point. I think there are very concrete ways to argue that what Europe does would constitute funding, but I don't particularly care about that semantic argument. The main point is that Europes actions support the genocide.

Re: The abandoned war: Why no one is stopping the genocide in Sudan

#160

Post by jvanderbot » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 7:20 PM UTC

sfn42 wrote: post #152

jvanderbot wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure where you get your assumptions from, but UNICEF works in camps and outposts that people come to, often in safer areas to treat refugees and establish aid stations. They don't catapult money/food/water into warring nations and call it a wash. UNICEF also works on a permissioned basis: They wait until they are asked, and so they often work in countries neighboring crisis centers, where it is much safer any…

I was approached on the street by a girl working for a marketing company, wanting me to start a subscription for $20 a month to Save the Children which I think is a pretty well regarded charity. We hit it off and met up later and I asked her about the job. For each person who signs up, she would get about $60. So that's the first three months of my subscription in her pocket. Furthermore, her employer would fly them…

There are many.

But it's reductive to the extreme to

1) group charities as "charities" when large "nonprofit / ngo" term is more suitable.

2) assume that wasteful _free_ money to a charity makes the charity less good. If a third party takes 90% of the money they raise and gives 10% to the charity, then that's free money for the charity. It's deceptive, and they are cutting a huge profit on the back of the good work the charity does, but that does not mean they are complicit, necessarily. The charity would have to sue that third party company to shut them down, and for what? Do reduce their own project budgets and also lose the money?