19 replies to this topic

[duke_Qa]

Been a while since we had a GNP post to talk about. Anyway, this situation is interesting and troublesome at the same time. Wikipedia calls it the In Aménas hostage crisis

Basically, around 20 islamists with connections to the conflict in Mali attacked the facility wednesday morning, taking hostages of around 20-60 western workers. An unknown number of hostages have escaped(30-50ish). But today Algerie attacked in the middle of the day with its army, most likely causing the death of all the hostages still under control of the islamists, which looks to include at least 8 Norwegians, 7 Americans, 5 Japanese and an unknown amount of French, Romanian and British workers.

Right now the situation is chaotic. Because Algerie isn't exactly a democratic beacon of light and press-freedom to begin with, its hard to say whats going on on the ground. News say now that the situation is over, and that many have died during the military assault on the plant.

Anyway, Death is certain, but not every death ripples through the GNP. I suspect this is a flashpoint in the Mali conflict, or as wikipedia calls it, The Insurgency in Maghreb. As you might see in that picture, that's practically all of northwestern Africa, and just recently, France started aiding the AU troops in fighting the islamists who've taken over 2/3rds of northern Mali. This will be a perfect excuse for Western forces to start a powerful retaliation on the Mali insurgents, which they've had trouble getting blesssings from the UN for so far.

I'm guessing we will see more drones and more spec-ops on the ground in the desert the next few years.

[Pasidon]

Africa is just a giant poop stain of death and inhumanity. They're constantly at war with everything, they still have slaves, they underpay and mistreat their population, their governments constantly are involved in acts of terrorism and black market deals... and we pretty much only send them water and food. Carry on... we didn't see anything. And here we are, at war with Islam cuz they 9/11'ed Amerrrika to death. Makes sense, but maybe we'll be seeing some proper administration of justice dealt since they decided to kill white people. But Dukie already said that, but let's pretend I said it first.

[duke_Qa]

Oh no you didn't!

 

Anyway, the situation seems to still be ongoing, people still hiding in different parts of the plant and at least 20 hostages still under terrorist control.

 

What makes this sound more interesting is that escaped hostages have said that there is a western/blonde terrorist among them that talked to the Norwegian hostages in a non-english language they could understand and that he went by the name "The Norwegian", who also read the Koran and was acting pretty zealous. The plot thickens, at least until we figure out who this guy is.

 

If he is a ethnic Norwegian that has gone rogue/radical, it will be fun to see what that does to the political discussion.

[duke_Qa]

Also, you keep talking of Africa like its a single country

[Gen.Kenobi]

Blond terrorist. That's new...

 

**Wonders if there's a connection with some other governament agency...**

[duke_Qa]

Blond Muslim terrorists are usually quite rare, smart ones even more so. I suspect its one of those lost souls who found purpose in the wrong places and spent the Norwegian style of hard-work to get far.

[Pasidon]

Africa is a single state, in a 1st world perspective.  It's a hole of immorality and incoherent powers.  In reality, each individual state has its own set of culture and people and problems, but most people don't look at each individual state, and for good reason. What you hear about are things like this hostage situation... this probably being one of the more decent acts of violence in the African states.  We see it in the news and have shock from it only because some of our own 1st world counterparts died in it, instead of just some African slaves, or child soldiers, or religious figures.

 

I don't have to tell you things are bad... everyone knows things are bad.  It's a depression. Everybody's out of work... or scared of loosing their job... the dollar buys a nickle's worth.  Banks are going bust... shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter... punks are running wild in the streets, and nobody anywhere seems to know what to with it; an end to it.  We know the air is unfit to breath... the food is unfit to eat. We sit watching our TVs while some local news caster tells us, today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes... as if that's the way it's supposed to be!  We know things are bad... worse than bad.  They're crazy.  It's like everything, everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore.  We sit in our house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller and all we say is, "Please!"  and "Please leave us alone in our living rooms... let me have my toaster, and my TV, and my steel belted radios, and I won't say anything! Just leave us alone!"  Well, I'm not going to leave you alone.  I want you to get mad.  I don't want you to throw a fit and whine, I don't want you to write to your congressmen, for I wouldn't want to tell you what to write... I don't know what to do about the depression, the inflation, and the Russians... and the crime in the street.  All I know is that, first, you got to get mad!  You gotta' say, "I'm a human being, god damn it!  My life has value!"

[Hostile]

Interesting read pas, first time I saw you curse. Interesting and true.

[mike_]

Not all of Africa is not in as dire straits as you prophesize.  Ethiopia, South Africa, and the Ivory Coast are all rapidly growing and expanding their national GDP and standard quality of living.  Are they going to be as influential as the Big Six will be over the next few years?  No, not at all.  But when speaking of deplorable societal conditions you can't gloss over it all with one brush.

Edited by mike_, 24 January 2013 - 08:18 PM.

[Mathijs]

Hello there, Howard Beale.

[OmegaBolt]

Sounds like Die Hard, they had blond terrorists.

[Pasidon]

Interesting read pas, first time I saw you curse. Interesting and true.

Har... I can't believe no one has called me out yet on my plagiarism..

[Mathijs]

I did, Howard Beale. 

[Pasidon]

Oh sake... I didn't even realize there were more posts after Mike.  Well done, Mati.  You now have permission to arrest me for stealing intellectual property.

 

Sounds like Die Hard, they had blond terrorists.

 

The ef' you on about?

[Mathijs]

The funny thing is that I didn't even get the reference. I merely figured that the writing was just too good for you to produce, so I googled it. I apologise. 

[Pasidon]

Ah man... gotta' listen to I am the Night until it's permanently perturbator'ed into your brain cavities.  It's good for mental health, or lack-there-of.

 

What was this topic about again, anyway?  People not in consensus that Africa is sandwiched with murderous nut'jobs?  Not sure what was news here.

[duke_Qa]

Yeah I noticed, but I had nothing else to say about the topic so I didn't answer just for that

 

Anyway, I wonder how this became about Africa in general. To me things seem to be quieting down, although two of the five missing norwegians have been confirmed killed today. As far as I have read, a bunch of hostages got shot and burned in a pyre, so it was a bit tricky to figure out who was who. A nice bonfire to pick through I'm sure.

 

I suspect that we within the year will see more western forces around the place, more drones more terrorist kills. Less Iraq and more Pakistan sort of military intervention.

[OmegaBolt]

Recolonisation time. To be fair we fucked it up in the first place.

[Duke]

Hello there gentlemen,

 

I've been lurking a wee bit lately and I thought I might explore this a little. Not so much the topic in question (sorry Duke!) but more this discussion on Africa. A couple of things caught my lurker's eye!

 

Africa is just a giant poop stain of death and inhumanity. They're constantly at war with everything, they still have slaves, they underpay and mistreat their population, their governments constantly are involved in acts of terrorism and black market deals... 

 

Yes. I suppose, though as Mike_ says, not all "Africa" is terrible and most people aren't bold enough as to make such a sweeping generalised and politically incorrect statement. Though you have to wonder, based on the past few hundred years of industrialisation - whether Africa really did have much of a chance.

 

We've invaded, kidnapped and armed with weapons beyond practicality or need countless innocent souls and then, for the most part (and again more generalisations), we've buggered off! We preferred to focus on our own economics leaving behind a rather painfully diluted muddle of injustice, introduced diseases, pillaged natural resources and a half attempted colonisation project where the number of states with your flag on it became more important than what was actually going on under that flag.

 

The point is, you mess around with nations for years and things get, as you say, "giant poop stain (esq.)".

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's fine to slag off our African buddies as a ginormous mess but our ancestors kinda messed it up for them. That said, there are a lot of people doing a lot of amazing things in that continent (this Albino cause that Hostile's thrown himself into is one excellent, generous hearted example).

 

... That and Bill Gates has nearly wiped out polio... that's pretty cool. 

 

Negative thinking about Africa's future is probably the worst thing we can do as privileged citizens. I reckon that if we sort our act out we'll actually get to see some tremendous changes for good during our lifetimes in the troubled continent. There are real people doing really great things there and there are genuine, wonderful "African people" that I'm excited to see what can happen with some more solidified governments and an open world, as their oyster so to speak.

 

I read somewhere that if the US spent its military budget for one year on food we'd wipe out world hunger forever. I'm not sure on the validity of this and there's obviously a huge raft of follow on consequences of such an action but it makes me think that this is on the right track. 

 

It's exciting to think of what Africa could be in 50 years from now if we don't write it off

 

[duke_Qa]

I saw a show here the other weekend where they were down in Angola and looked at the situation there. Since people found oil and all those valuables below, they fell into civil war from 1975 to 2002. But since 2002 Angola have rapidly grown their economy and they produce as much oil as Norway. But it still only falls on a very small percentage of the population.

 

What was interesting however was the people working for the poor had a different argument than you usually see. They consider the western attitude of giving aid to the "poor, poor africans" a patronising thing that halted constructive action from happening. Instead of fighting the corruption and the elites from grabbing all the wealth of Africa, the news say that Africa is so very poor that we have to give them a few bucks to keep them alive. There's plenty of wealth in Africa, more than enough to be self-sufficient and a economic power-house, but the elites rather we in the west give pocket-change and feel we've done our part, rather than encourage reform.