Can’t tell if you’re talking about Somali (?) entities or bbs commenters of the “wrong” gender! 
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Or at least that’s how I sometimes feel around here! 
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No, I agree. feeding people is generally a good thing. But in many failed states, that food just becomes another tool that warlords or corrupt officials use to leverage power, by supplying or denying it to selected groups. That is something we see regularly, but at least I am in no position to do anything about it beyond reporting my observations.
It is frustrating for everyone involved. And we are aware that the food deliveries are only a short term and incompletely effective treatment of what is really a symptom of a larger set of problems.
What they need is irrigation and agriculture, but those things are hard to organize when you are having continuous sectarian conflict and regular drought.
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And it’s not like local people suffering due to a greedy ruling apparatus aligning with western state-craft and corporate imperialism is anything new on the continent…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_in_the_Niger_Delta#Piracy_and_kidnapping_.282006.E2.80.932014.29
Yeah, I’ve been surprised before by the hostile attitude of some African nationals toward foreign aid workers and agencies. I was left with the impression many locals don’t want bags of grain and cans of cooking oil as much as they want
- a return to conditions that allow them access to their own clean land, water, fish stocks, and labour.
- foreign corporations to stop pillaging resources and dumping toxic waste in their lands and waters,
- and the powerful states who offer “aid” to stop imposing/supporting the puppet regimes that prioritise the interests of foreign investors over local wellbeing.
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I don’t know, you do seem to be drawing some unstated conclusions, at least to me. Maybe you don’t intend that, but that’s how your comments have come across.
Some people were addressing these issues for a while now. for example…
I’m not at all. They are far too often associated with imperial power, even if the aid workers are there with the best of intentions. It’s not too far removed from colonial governments taking all the good land/resources for the metropole and then sending in missionaries to convert them and withholding food aid if they don’t.
All this is the core of their demands, at least from what I’ve known and read on these issues.
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Thank you!
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Just remember, this is the zero-regulation utopia your average far-right politician wishes to apply to every level of society.
Free for all! Might is right!™
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Ever hear of a little seafood chain called “Long John Silver’s?”
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Other options include: impressment into a warlord’s militia, sweatshop work out of the playbook of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, competing with your neighbor in roadside tire repair, … when it means starving or picking up a gun, wouldn’t you rather work for yourself on your uncle’s boat?
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That’s the thing though. It might technically be your uncle’s boat but you and your uncle are not independent businessmen, or you won’t be for very long at any rate. Pirates are sponsored and organized by the warlords. That’s who has the means to get cargo off the ships and move it or hoard it. That’s who has the RPGs. You and your uncle aren’t doing anything without the warlord’s backing — maybe robbing or kidnapping foolish pleasure yachts, and even then you’re going to pay tribute.
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Working for wages from a series of criminal scumbags who can only maximize the profit from “development work” by being in bed with the biggest gangsters in and outside the continent. No surprise your vision is coloured by your experience.
Maybe I’m giving you too much credit for being close to the font of post-colonial prosperity. It’s much more likely you just had to deal with the fallout of not keeping rich western pirates in check.
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Chinese plutocrats can count as the west, I think. Especially in Ethiopia.
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I forgot to use the sarcasm tag again.
Apparently.
It’s a tricky one. I feel for the people who are forced to this life by circumstances not of their choosing, but the ship crews that they’re trying to kidnap and hold for ransom are just as innocent.
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Hey that’s interesting. I was watching similar videos on youtube two days ago when the topic popped up on reddit and then here.
Can you tell more? What was your job?
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Maybe. Do you think they see it that way? Or rather this might be more about competition for resources in the region?
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Competition among billionaires maybe… and to keep the CCP happy. The Party’s concerned about keeping a lid on things at home, for sure. You’re right in that resource competition concerns the PRC, but it’s also a convenient justification for the actions of colonial middlemen. It always has been that way.
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The more things change…
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