Uganda's army - kids

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Adam, May 10, 2002.

  1. Adam §Þ@ç€ MØnk€¥ Registered Senior Member

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    Okay, I'm watching the USA news right now. They are interviewing a 25-year-old woman from Uganda. She was basically sold into the Ugandan army when she was 9 years old by her rather crappy family. Not sold into some Rwandan nutters-with-guns mercenary or rebel army or whatever, but Uganda's standing army. What happened? She set about killing people during the day, and was a sex slave at night. According to her, this is the normal way of things there. Kids in the military, killing in the day, getting raped and fucked up for life at night.

    This is why nations should go to war. The UN should walk over Uganda with a massive military force from many nations, crush the place to shit, and rebuild it as a completely new state.

    People suck. I hate people.
     
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  3. *stRgrL* Kicks ass Valued Senior Member

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    Why? There doing a pretty good job at wiping themselves out. Also, if we did take military action, everyone would scream that we were butting in people business's. I guess its their country, their problems, let them deal with it. Even though it is a very tragic situation. I read a story of a boy there was in the same situation. It was very very sad.

    But your right, people suck. I just dont have that kind of hate in my heart to hate anyone.

    Take care

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  5. Shamoo Registered Member

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    i agree. im sure if the US went over there, all the ugandans would join together to crush the capalist pigs.
    i dont know how to decide when its right to intervene in another nations affairs, just because they do things differently.
     
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  7. orthogonal Registered Senior Member

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    An article about the rampant modern day slave trade in the Sudan appeared in the April 10, 2000 issue of Macleans Magazine. The following excerpt recounts the tale of three Sudanese slaves. The murahaleen are the slave traders. They swoop down on villages killing anyone brave enough to resist, then take the women and children to be sold as slaves for roughly $50 each. May I suggest you try to imagine this is your wife, your sister, or your sons speaking here:

    "Adut Yor Mawien's tale is typical. The 26-year-old woman rests against the trunk of a gigantic tamarind tree near the village of Mabok Tong in northern Bahr el Ghazal. Her belly is swollen in pregnancy. At her feet, her naked three-year-old daughter sits listlessly in the dust. Both the unborn child and the little girl were fathered by a man she knows only as Saleh, her master for eight years in the village of Meiram in southern Kordofan. "I hate him," she says, with venom. "He was very bad to me." She stretches out a wrist, where there is a huge patch of thorny scar tissue. It happened, she recounts, after she was captured by murahaleen and was being led northward. "I could not keep up because I had a little boy then," she recalls. "So they cut my wrist with a knife and ran a rope through it, right around the bone. I never saw my boy again."

    Not far away, Manut Atem Amet, 15, sits in the same village of Mabok Tong, describing the incident that cost him his arm. "I lost my master's bull," he says. "He cut off my hand when I could not find it again." Further east, in the village of Akoc, another teenage boy, totally naked and covered in fine dust, wanders aimlessly away from a fingerprinting session with Pearson and Roy. His name is Tong Tong, he says. He recounts his capture by a murahaleen raiding party that attacked his native village of Mair Noon. "I was running with my father when they got me," he says. "They took me to Meiram and sold me to Khalil. Khalil sent me to look after his goats." He glances down at his body. "I had clothes then, but they fell apart. Khalil would not give me any more."

    Besides slavery, there are civil wars, famine, diseases such as AIDS,...

    "Since 1998, ethnic and territorial fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 2.5 million at a rate of 2,700 per day. (By comparison, 6,000 men died per day in the First World War.) In Angola since 1975, another 1.5 million have been killed..." Harper's Magazine March 2002, page 84

    Now if you really want to be depressed, read, This House Has Fallen: Midnight in Nigeria, by Karl Maier.

    Africa is in the process of imploding. Very few of us care.

    Michael
     
    Last edited: May 12, 2002
  8. Chagur .Seeker. Registered Senior Member

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    orthogonal ...

    "Africa is in the process of imploding. Very few of us care."

    Or is it the silence of embarrassment felt by all those who cried out so
    loudly against Colonialism and Apartheid rather than just against the
    abuses that sometimes occurred?

    Take care

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    Edit: For clarity.
     
    Last edited: May 12, 2002
  9. orthogonal Registered Senior Member

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    Hey Chagur,

    Nice to hear from you. As usual, you've made a good point.

    I once played rugby with a kid from South Africa. As an eighteen year old, meeting this Afrikaner actually "broadened" my world-view. You see, I don't remember ever hearing my father call a black man anything other than a "nigger". However, the Afrikaner kid was generous in his use of this word; Indians, Blacks, Arabs, ... , the entire lot of them were "niggers" to him. If nothing else, I thought him remarkably even-handed in his characterizations.

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    Obviously, both my father and my Afrikaner teammate expressed views that any civilized man today would consider repugnant. Furthermore, I've no doubt our European ancestors exploited the people and resources across the continent of Africa. Shame on Cecil Rhodes, shame on them all.

    Yet having said as much, how many of those that decried apartheid are heard today speaking out against the situation in Zimbabwe; where white farmers are beaten and in some cases killed by mobs of blacks. Imagine the outcry if it were whites forcing black families off their land? I despise such hypocrisy.

    However, as evil as apartheid was, and as reprehensible as the mobs that do the bidding of "His Excellency" Robert Mugabe are, the death and degradations inflicted by black Africans upon black Africans today are more significant by some orders of magnitude.

    I actually wish that whites were responsible for the problems facing blacks today in Africa. Since we whites are hyper-sensitive to the charge of racist; a deafening cry would rise among us forthright to correct the situation.

    Though admittedly anecdotal evidence, I heard a story on the radio last year that a black girl was shot and killed while walking across a field owned by a white South African farmer. The radio reported that the farmer was a known "nut" case. He was duely arrested and charged with murder. The report went on to say that a number of Black-American activists flew to South Africa to be present at the trial of this crazy farmer. That these Black-American civil rights activists would go to such lengths to express their outrage, in selecting this single tragedy among the massive daily carnage in Africa, spoke volumes to me.

    Blacks are responsible for the current horrors in Africa; the butchery, the slavery, ... , the misery. And as such, neither indignant activists nor the Western press are beating a path to Africa's door. Hopefully Chagur, I've better explained my lament that not many of us seem to care about the current plight of Africa.

    To right the problems of the world might not be within the West's power. I also understand that our past attempts at social-engineering have landed us in hot water. Perhaps we would be idiots for trying to help Africa. My argument is that we might indeed be idiots, but we'd be compassionate idiots nonetheless.

    My beloved Thomas Jefferson once advised a friend in a letter; "An honest heart being the first blessing, a knowing head is the second."

    Michael
     
    Last edited: May 12, 2002
  10. Adam §Þ@ç€ MØnk€¥ Registered Senior Member

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    The reason I think many white people so strongly object to being called racist is because people say it so often. The fact is the African slave trade has existed for thousands of years, was in full swing long before any European slave traders arrived, and was always a lot more brutal and racially motivated than any outside forces were in that trade. Africa has always had this problem.

    Apart from slavery, there's the colonialism thing. Big fuggin deal. Again, African nations/tribes have been doing the same and worse to each other for thousands of years. White people can not be singled out as "bad" for doing such things. It is common across all races/nationalities/cultures/whatever.

    As for racism crap in general, from my travels in a few countries I came to the conclusion that it has more to do with numbers than with any actual physical differences. If a black chap in Mississippi faces some prejudice for example, a white chap will face the same or similar in China or Zimbabwe; a Japanese chap will face the same in India; and so on. It's minorities which are targeted, not physical differences. Why? People have an us-and-them attitude caused by old pressures of natural selection. My group is more important than yours, this is our food supply, and so on.

    I was discussing this with a Malaysian buddy here at uni last week, and he said that he calls his own Asian friends "gooks" (a dergatory term for Asians here, rarely used these days). I said it's odd that he uses such a word, that I being white am unable to say such things for fear of being pulicly stoned (only half jesting). He said "That's because you whites think you're a superior race". And he was serious. That attitude, to me, is racism. It's dumb. I think I am superior, simply because that is part of biology; my genes are far more important than anyone else's. But to assume all white people have the attitude that white people are better than all others is racist. I prefer the continuance of my own genes even over those of other white people. I wonder how common this belief is, that white people think they are superior as a group?


    EDIT: I meant "I wonder how common this belief is, that other people think white people think they are superior as a group?" Referring to what this Malaysian chap said.


    PS: Don't get all fussy about terms such as black and white, I use them for discussion purposes, and the fact is they are differences which can be used to indicate geographical descent and such, blah blah blah...
     
    Last edited: May 12, 2002
  11. *stRgrL* Kicks ass Valued Senior Member

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    Its extremely common. Its very rare that I meet a non-white person who does not like - or talk sh*t about white people. Especially here in California. It is not cool to be white. White people suck, white people are rascist pigs, everything is white peoples fault. Trust me, that is the mentality here. My daughter (who is 4) came home crying the other day and when I asked why she was crying she said "Because Im white". Im not joking either. Kids in DAYCARE mind you, are telling her that she is not good because she is white. And the funny thing is, she is not white, she is part white, mexican, spanish, indian, etc. but she is not predominent in any race - so she is white.
    Its funny that people hate us because were white and then have the nerve to call us prejudice.

    And please correct me if Im wrong - but didnt slavery originate in Africa?
     
  12. Adam §Þ@ç€ MØnk€¥ Registered Senior Member

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    The African slave trade originated in Africa. There was also slavery in Europe, between and among Europeans.
     
  13. Joeman Eviiiiiiiil Clown Registered Senior Member

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    Speaking as a half Chink and half American, I think white people are the least racist amoung all races. There are always idiots everywhere. I believe (hypothetically speaking) if white people never discovered America and the Japanese got here first instead, black people will still be slaves today. African American offsprings actually benefited from slavery more than white people did. The average income of blacks in US is higher than white people Sweden. If slaves haven't been brought here then blacks would have been more miserable in Africa.
     
  14. Lesion42 Deranged Hermit Registered Senior Member

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    I think your missing a few too many problems with the whole slavery issue there... Give me a list of benefits and I can probably give you a list nearly twice as long about why it was bad.:bugeye:
     
  15. Joeman Eviiiiiiiil Clown Registered Senior Member

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    Okay you are right. No argument from me here. But the point I was trying to make is white people are hardly the most racist in US. There are racist people within each race. In fact statistics showed blacks commit more hate crime than any groups in US. I don't see too many white people who think they are so great. In contrary based on my personal experience, white people are suffering from academic inferiority complex. A lot of Caucasians don't think they can compete against Asians and Indians in academics, especially math and science.
     

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