Hey, calm down fellas. No one has a corner on sympathy. The same thing almost happened in Europe, though on a smaller scale. About a year before the World Trade Center attack French authorities stumbled upon a plot to hijack a passenger plane and fly it into the Eiffel Tower. Currently the Germans are trying 4 suspects who were caught fairly red handed plotting to blow up Notre Dame Cathedral in Strasbourg. We're all in this together.
Philippe wrote:
every day 40000 die of hunger.
That number is way too inflated, though the point is well taken. The problem is that there is no such thing as natural starvation on any wide scale any more. The planet's food production is more than sufficient to feed everyone many times over, plus some - even locally. There is no region of the planet that is incapable of producing enough food currently to keep its population well-fed. The problem: politics. There are several famines in the world right now, and every one of them is caused by bad politics - corrupt regimes or civil wars where either the food supply chain has broken down or was intentionally sabotaged, using food as a weapon. Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Congo, Angola, Sierra Leone, etc.; all are famines caused exclueively by bad politics. Having aid agencies send food is great and necessary for the short term, but a wasted effort if the long term problem - greedy dictators and warlords - aren't dealt with.
Sodak wrote:
Vrylakas, your tales of eastern europe remind me - I was in Holland when Yugoslavia fell into war. I met a young Croatian man that morning. He was just sitting on a bench, staring into space. When prompted, he responded "I woke up this morning to find out my country is in a civil war." He was away for a week vacation, but had no idea when he would be able to return to find his family. Not a pleasant position to be in...
It was amazing to us that this kind of thing could happen in Europe again. Just today the whole Dutch government resigned because of its idiotic handling of the Srebrenica affair.
My university city, Pécs, was very close to the Yugoslav/Croatian border, so we had lots of excitement. We had a few fly-overs by Yugoslav jets (I remember once the Hungarian jets scrambling to chase one, scaring the hell out of me as they ripped building-level across the city's downtown), an "accidental" bombing of a Hungarian village connected to Pécs on the Hungarian side of the border, Yugoslav mines showing up on the Hungarian side of the Drava River, airraid siren drills, etc. Pécs was flooded with about 80,000 Croat refugees after the Serbs conquered Vukovar and Vinkovci. A friend of mine had a Serb girl stay over at my place one night early on in the crisis and she had some pointed things to say about the situation (surprise, surprise), but by the next year local feeling was so against the Serbs that I probably wouldn't have been able to have her over. Local shops started having their signs in both Hungarian and Serbo-Croat because of all the refugees.
BTW, the Gulf War came at a sensitive time for Hungarians and the government - not quite used to the political re-alignment in Europe - was very meek when asked about how Hungary might be involved in the war. A national newspaper printed a hilarious front page showing a map of the flight path that American warplanes took flying from their bases in Germany to Turkey, obviously through Central Europe and the Balkans. below the map was the official vague printed statement from the government, and on the map they'd shown wide red & blue streaked arrows flying out of Germany across Austria to the Hungarian border, where the arrows abruptly stopped - continuing suddenly on the other side of Hungary on towards Turkey....
I love good biting humor...
("All points bulletin for the pot calling the kettle black!")
