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Vice Guide to Liberia. Google video it.
#64 – agreed: most countries are great until the politicians ruin it. Do you know any countries that haven’t been ruined by politicians yet?
CJ, there is another relevant clip from the debate episode of Season 7 if you can find it.
So how many times will Hong Kong fit onto that map? Why did that colony do OK, but not Africa?
#65–Mr Fu==thats the most heart sickening thing I have ever seen. Sometimes, ignorance can be blissful.
http://vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-vice-guide-to-liberia-1-of-8
Any land that’s not crossed by freeways full of SUVs is is not being utilized properly by evolved humans.
Animby–and anyone else: I’m watching Vanguard: The World Toilet Shortage aka Deadly to Drink. They just said 65% of India’s population does not have access to a toilet. They show a river passing thru Delhi that is but a sewer–the water is black, producing methane bubbles, and the bank is literally covered in human feces. The reporter says: “I’d throwup in the water but I’m afraid some of the water would splash back onto my face.”
I have already thought this on shows about the Ganges: people bathing, shitting, drinking the water. So my question is: just how much a threat is cholera and all the other shit born diseases? We are warned against a single turd in the ocean, or in reality, overrun sewers during a flood event, but India presents evidence that humans adapt quite well? Is water born disease a threat only to those who are susceptible or not previously exposed or what accounts for the seeming hardiness of the Indian people?
To bad we humans don’t have a cultural meme for collective shitting in one place and not in our drinking water?
#64
Spent about 18 months all together and yes most was spent Somalia, Zimbabwe(Rhodesia), and Eritrea. I got to go on some mission trips to Mozambique came to the conclusion that some people can’t be helped.
I’ll admit I didn’t get to hang out with tourists and tour “wine country” so, may my vision of the continent is not through rose colored glasses.
cloewe–wow, who did you piss off? Without going into exactly what you were doing in those failed states, have you seen “Not on our Watch” about that Canadian general working for the UN who wanted his troops to stop the genocide taking place right under his nose? He said just a few thousand troops could stop it all.
Isn’t that a “help” that is eminently doable? Violence doesn’t solve everything, some say anything, but it does provide a breathing space so that more rational/humane elements have a chance to take hold?
Its said the USA/UN cannot/should not become the worlds policemen. But the other analogy would be to yes, become the worlds fire fighters: go in, put out the wild fire. Go Home.
Seems to me that minimum effort could have great results. Then death, disease, poverty, hunger would result only from over population and criminal control of food and water?
Ha, ha. Yes. Civilization is a fragile thing.
#72, the problem with the US/UN becoming the worlds firefighters is that just going in putting out the wild fire and leaving is not enough. If you do that you will be back putting out another fire in 5 – 10 years, you really need a long term presence to solve the problem for a long period of time. Which of course has problems of its own.
The US is not going to do it, since the president does not want to get thrown out, from a pissed off voting public, who has really gotten tired of foreign wars, and high death toles, and bad public perception from other countries.
And lets be honest here, the UN will never do it since the people causing the problem have so much power in the UN to begin with. Why would they want the UN to come in and stop the genocide in their own country, or a neighboring country? About the only thing you are going to get from the UN is limited peace keeping actions, or humanitarian relief missions which will never amount to much in the long term.
#73–Bob, my older brother?==you missed the analogy entirely. In essence you are saying that firefighters putting out fires is not useful because there will be another fire 5-10 years from now. Would you therefore shutdown all the firehouses across America? If your answer is “no” then you need to rethink your analysis and come up with something much better – a new realization?
Firefighting in short: works.
Nation building in short: does not work.
Do what you can do, avoid a “better” solution that you can’t do.
Sadly, you do represent the majority lack of thinking on the issue.
Saving the world, one blog entry at a time.
#70 Bobbo said:
I have already thought this on shows about the Ganges: people bathing, shitting, drinking the water
And don’t forget the families who can’t afford the firewood for a funeral pyre. They throw their dead into the Ganges.
“The Ganges is a sacred river, held in high spiritual esteem by many Hindu faithful. It is a mark of the highest honor for one’s earthly remains to be set adrift in the Ganges after one’s soul is done with the body.”
So the Indian government has devised a solution for the most unsightly problem: specially bred snapping turtles that eat what is left of the corpses but do not nip at religious bathers.
Bobbo
If came across trying to p*ss off somone, I apologize. I just have come to the conclusion that to a large degree that some people and cultures are just downright mean, for lack of a better word.
I wasn’t covert or anything like that just mostly security duties for State Dept. or DOD.
Yes, we could step in and stop the violence at hotspots but a lot of our UN forces are just not that interested in getting involved.
This will sound harsh but having the press around military actions especially in areas where defined forces are foggy at best is a detriment. The public wants “clean” wars and it would be better if they saw less of what actually happens. Sometimes you have to be more brutal than the next guy. It’s not right but sometimes reason and thought are not enough.
cloewe : If I gave the impression I was a tourist, please forgive me. The wine country tour was tourism, yes, right after I’d finished my duties in Angola during the war. Most of my time in Africa was work. Madagascar was totally pleasure.
bobbo : your question about water borne illnesses. I’ve only been to India once – and that was enough. Everyplace I went smelled like shit. I was sitting in a small restaurant once and I watched in morbid fascination as a man took a dump in the gutter outside. I don’t know how they survive. Maybe the constant doses of curry act as a constant infusion of low grade antibiotics?
Large bodies of moving water have a way of cleaning themselves. Dilution, flora, fauna, UV exposure, etc. Possibly there is some sort of immunity conferred by constant exposure from early in life. Or maybe the Ganges really is holy! I do know that, although you can watch everything from babies to ancients bathing in the river, they warn tourists to stay out of the water…
I was only in India for a couple of weeks on my way to Kathmandu but it remains one of the few places I’ve visited that I have absolutely no desire to return to.
That info graphic is off a bit since it doesn’t include Alaska in the illustration but (at least according to wikipedia) it is included in the stat about the area of the USA. Alaska is 1.2 million km in size.
I think the HDNet channel had a film about India a while back and it showed how they handle their “human waste”. They actually use it to irrigate their farms and the farmers are walking ankle deep in it.
There’s actually a weird thing I experienced with a family from India. I was a member of an athletic club and this family would walk in and the whole place would wreak like urine. I mean the whole 10,000 square foot facility would smell! My friend actually worked with the guy from the family from India and he told me they bathe in their urine or something. I just did a wiki search and it turns out it’s called Amaroli or “urine therapy” and it’s in the Sanskrit text.
SimonSezz – sort of a bass-ackwards version of soylent green, huh?
A map of an area, with many nations/countries that abound on it..
Displayed with a few countries OVER IT..
Why not use ALL of S. america, or ALL of N. america..
This is actually good news. I grew up being taught how big Africa is. Kids nowadays…meh, they probably can’t find Africa on Earth let alone know how big it is.
Hey Morons.
Africa is a CONTINENT, not a country or PART of a CONTINENT>
Bobbo for GOVERNOR>….
Man, you know fucking EVERYTHING!