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My little rant
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| EvilTree |
I have to talk about this, because it's been haunting me all day.
I took a nap and woke up, hoping that I can keep this from bothering me, but I keep coming back to the images I've seen today.
So I share this in hopes that it'll ease what troubles me. Normally I'm a big boy and I thought I was well prepared for the realities of the world, but stuff like this... It just... bothers me.
Today for political science class, I watched a documentary about Sierra Leone. Some of you may be saying, where?
It's a little West African nation with natural resources, main one being diamonds. If you said, 'where?', you probably don't know that there was a civil war during the mid 90s.
During this civil war, much atrocities was committed. Perhaps not to the scale of Rwanda, but similarly gruesome. I saw some clips of people being summarily executed. I saw clips of people with their hands cut off from psychotic rebels who wanted to take over power. Because the govt slogan for an upcoming election was 'take the future in your hands,' so the rebels took to cutting off people's hands. Suffice to say I was never this disturbed since seeing a documentary about Rwanda.
What horrified me the most was the use of child soldiers. What the rebels did was killing the children's parents, then take the children and use them as soldiers. By drugging them, they got the kids to do their bidding, including killing and mutilation of others.
Kids. No more than 10 by the look of most of them.
Another clip showed Nigerian peacekeepers and the Sierra Leone govt and allies fighting in the streets of Freetown, the capital city. 2 Nigerian officers were killed by a sniper in a building. They eventually took the building and only person found was a child who they believed to be the sniper. According to the documentarian who filmed this, they also did summary executions to suspected rebels.
What really got me was that the Nigerian peacekeepers (who were not well trained) was forced to believe everyone, including the children were potential enemies and treated them as such. Kids as enemies.
It is a mad world out there. And we, the West, probably did nothing about Sierra Leone because I certainly don't remember anything about it. Later in my studies, I've read about it and it didn't seem that big of a conflict.
But today, the reality hit me with that documentary and I've realized that there is so much suffering in this world that we do not know about, and worse don't do anything about and even more worse, don't care about.
Thanks for listening. |
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| TheNeonAlien |
i think we can agree........
the world is ed....end of story. |
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| VERTiG0 |
| YEAH BUT HOT DAMN THEMS BE SOME FIIIINE DIAMONDS AND YA GOTTA GET YER WOMAN WUNNA THOSE IF YA WANNA MURRY HURR HYUK |
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| 4-play |
| quote: | Originally posted by TheNeonAlien
the world is ed....end of story. |
+1
there is way too much we all are ignorant about. |
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| Mag1k |
scary
Now imagine being in a place like that. Imagine what that does to your mind. This type of is the exact reason for the crap that went on with the Canadian Airborne in Somalia. Which as we know, ultimately resulted in the disbandment of the Regiment. As the world gets more and more screwed up, our goverment decides to aproach this issue, by taking away the last special trained force we had.
Screwed up world we live in. |
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| EvilTree |
| quote: | Originally posted by Mag1k
scary
Now imagine being in a place like that. Imagine what that does to your mind. This type of is the exact reason for the crap that went on with the Canadian Airborne in Somalia. Which as we know, ultimately resulted in the disbandment of the Regiment. As the world gets more and more screwed up, our goverment decides to aproach this issue, by taking away the last special trained force we had.
Screwed up world we live in. |
*mild anger mode*
I suggest you read the somalia journal at http://www.commando.org/somalia.php before you pass judgement on few bad apples that tarnished an entire regiment. |
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| VERTiG0 |
| quote: | Originally posted by EvilTree
*mild anger mode*
I suggest you read the somalia journal at http://www.commando.org/somalia.php before you pass judgement on few bad apples that tarnished an entire regiment. |
Wow, that was one helluva good read. |
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| EvilTree |
| quote: | Originally posted by VERTiG0
Wow, that was one helluva good read. |
Eh. I can recommend few more good readings on same subject if anyone wants them.
I hate it when people make judgements on any aspects of Canadian Armed Forces without knowing dick all about it. |
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| MarkT |
accounts such as that should infuriate people even more with regards to the bull reasons Bush gave for invading Iraq...'to liberate the people from a brutal dictator'...uh...yeah, sure :rolleyes:
keep researching and you'll find many more examples of horrific human rights violations, civil war, famine, corruption, etc. around the globe with little international response, if any.
why no intervention in these other places by the U.S. or other countries? No significant economic or political benefit to doing so...which is the same reason that a ridiculously high % of people in Africa are suffering from AIDS and the world, relatively speaking, doesn't give a .
very sad. |
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| EvilTree |
| quote: | Originally posted by MarkT
accounts such as that should infuriate people even more with regards to the bull reasons Bush gave for invading Iraq...'to liberate the people from a brutal dictator'...uh...yeah, sure :rolleyes:
keep researching and you'll find many more examples of horrific human rights violations, civil war, famine, corruption, etc. around the globe with little international response, if any.
why no intervention in these other places by the U.S. or other countries? No significant economic or political benefit to doing so...which is the same reason that a ridiculously high % of people in Africa are suffering from AIDS and the world, relatively speaking, doesn't give a .
very sad. |
Well, to get the job done properly, you want good troops. Only place to get those sort is US, Canada, EU, Australia, NZ, Japan. Why so many UN peacekeeping missions fail or do so horrid is that third rate soldiers with crappy training get tossed in, plus poor equipment, toss in some political interests.
So if only certain nations with first rate militaries end up doing all the missions, they'll quickly burn itself out. Plus it's damn freaking expensive to send troops overseas. (And why some countries go on UN missions a lot. It gets them a lot of cash) |
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| [NFC]Wave |
You guys need to watch more movies to desensitize yourselves from reality.
Allows you to sit there and watch video's like this without blinking an eye. Rotten to think about, but just what it does.
Imagine the youth of tommorow and what they will do when being shown a holocaust video or the like.
The fictitious world we are presented is sometimes worse on the reality of the real world that we live in. |
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| EvilTree |
| quote: | Originally posted by [NFC]Wave
You guys need to watch more movies to desensitize yourselves from reality.
Allows you to sit there and watch video's like this without blinking an eye. Rotten to think about, but just what it does.
Imagine the youth of tommorow and what they will do when being shown a holocaust video or the like.
The fictitious world we are presented is sometimes worse on the reality of the real world that we live in. |
You can sorta distance yourself from that sort of stuff if you can convince yourself that it's just fiction and not real.
But documentaries like this, you know it's for real and it's real people getting shot and maimed. |
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