Chistianity is a strange religion - senior Nazis were good christian family men and ira/protestant combatants in the irish troubles also.
Maybe its easy to kill 'with god and jesus on your side'.
Of course some christians find it easy to kill when the final judgement is god's.
Luckily many in Europe and elsewhere have moved beyond christianity.
S.

Atebey, what is the purpose of the article you posted? is it supposed to be definitive? i mean, there are scholars who have all types of reasons for the Great Depression. go read Murray Rothbard, from the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, who predicted it, and attributed it to the business cycle. what i am saying is that academic inquiry involves looking at several opinions. you just post articles that you THINK are meaningful, and believe that you have given some answers. that is anti academic.

Au contraire Dready. I've given an article that speaks to the issue and offers a take on that Historical Era. There are several academic opinions on the matter. And I've not stated that any is the definitive opinion That the Depression began under Hoover is beyond questioning. That the Depression worsen under the first FDR Administration is again, beyond questioning. I subscribe to the view that WWII was the event that propelled the USA economy out of the Depression. Although there are some who would say that keeping prices under control make the numbers of that era funny. Also, I think that Keynesian is more than just running up deficits; if I recall correctly, Keynes said that while fiscal stimulus was indeed plausible and right during recessionary times, during periods of growth the government should repay its deficits incurred during bad times. Problem is that governments often prefer handing out more contracts and running up more debt-helps with winning elections. And their constituents love the bacon.

what is that sound i hear? is it silence? yes...it is. it is coming from anthonyc, now that the website DreadyLeaks has published the evidence to prove two of the assertions it made about statements of anthonyc, which he vehemently denied. he went so far as to label me a lefty liar. now that the memorialisations have been unearthed, suddenly there is no sound. say something, anthonyc...this does not look so good for you.

I hear crickets.......

devin, i am not the kind of guy to make false , defamatory accusations against others. if i state something, it is not without good cause. i would rather err on the side of caution, and keep the silence. therefore, when i asserted that anthonyc claimed to have a doctorate, it was on solid authority. he figured that it would be too difficult to unearth the remark after nearly 3 years. DreadyLeaks will not be defeated, and will battle to the death for the relevant info. now i have it, and the bum has cut and run.

Another Global issue is that of massive starving populations, in this case in Africa. Tough as the image below is, we do ourselves great disservice if we think that feeding people will solve this great tragedy. Population control is Greatly needed as part of the "solution" to the problem. The long term solution is creating opportunities for people to be able to feed themselves via markets transactions. But in the mean time, strong anti-population growth solutions need to be applied. Might sound cruel but feeding a problem to then have a greater problem down the road is NO SOLUTION either

Somalis Waste Away as Insurgents Block Escape From Famine

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: August 1, 2011


MOGADISHU, Somalia — The Shabab Islamist insurgent group, which controls much of southern Somalia, is blocking starving people from fleeing the country and setting up a cantonment camp where it is imprisoning displaced people who were trying to escape Shabab territory.

Enlarge This Image
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

A malnourished child at Banadir Hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia. More than 500,000 Somali children are verging on starvation. More Photos »


The group is widely blamed for causing a famine in Somalia by forcing out many Western aid organizations, depriving drought victims of desperately needed food. The situation is growing bleaker by the day, with tens of thousands of Somalis already dead and more than 500,000 children on the brink of starvation.

Every morning, emaciated parents with emaciated children stagger into Banadir Hospital, a shell of a building with floors that stink of diesel fuel because that is all the nurses have to fight off the flies. Babies are dying because of the lack of equipment and medicine. Some get hooked up to adult-size intravenous drips — pediatric versions are hard to find — and their compromised bodies cannot handle the volume of fluid.

Most parents do not have money for medicine, so entire families sit on old-fashioned cholera beds, with basketball-size holes cut out of the middle, taking turns going to the bathroom as diarrhea streams out of them.

“This is worse than 1992,” said Dr. Lul Mohamed, Banadir’s head of pediatrics, referring to Somalia’s last famine. “Back then, at least we had some help.”

Aid groups are trying to scale up their operations, and the United Nations has begun airlifting emergency food. But many seasoned aid officials are speaking in grim tones because one of Africa’s worst humanitarian disasters in decades has struck one of the most inaccessible countries on earth. Somalia, especially the southern third where the famine is, has been considered a no-go zone for years, a lawless caldron that has claimed the lives of dozens of aid workers, peacekeepers and American soldiers, going back to the “Black Hawk Down” battle in 1993, spelling a legacy that has scared off many international organizations.

“If this were Haiti, we would have dozens of people on the ground by now,” said Eric James, an official with the American Refugee Committee, a private aid organization.

But Somalia is considered more dangerous and anarchic than Haiti, Iraq or even Afghanistan, and the American Refugee Committee, like other aid groups, is struggling to get trained personnel here.

“It is safe to say that many people are going to die as a result of little or no access,” Mr. James said.

This leaves millions of famished Somalis with two choices, aside from fleeing the country to neighboring Kenya or Ethiopia, where there is more assistance. They can beg for help from a weak and divided transitional government in Mogadishu, the capital. Just the other day there was a shootout between government forces at the gates of the presidential palace. “Things happen,” was the response of Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, Somalia’s new prime minister.

Or they can remain in territory controlled by the Shabab, who have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and have tried to rid their areas of anything Western — Western music, Western dress, even Western aid groups during a time of famine.

Much of the Horn of Africa, which includes Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti, has been struck this summer by one of the worst droughts in 60 years. But two Shabab-controlled parts of southern Somalia are the only areas where the United Nations has declared a famine, using scientific criteria of death and malnutrition rates.

People from those areas who were interviewed in Mogadishu say Shabab fighters are blocking rivers to steal water from impoverished villagers and divert it to commercial farmers who pay them taxes. The Shabab are intercepting displaced people who are trying to reach Mogadishu and forcing them to stay in a Shabab-run camp about 25 miles outside the city. The camp now holds several thousand people and receives only a trickle of food.

“I was taken off a bus and put here,” said a woman at the camp who asked not to be identified.

Several drought victims who have succeeded in making it to Mogadishu said that the Shabab were threatening to kill anyone who left their areas, either for refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, or for government zones in Somalia, and that the only way out was to sneak away at night and avoid the main roads.

A few years ago, the Shabab began banning immunizations, deeming them a Western plot to kill Somali children. Now countless unvaccinated children are dying from measles and cholera as tens of thousands of malnourished, immunity-suppressed people flee the drought areas and pack into filthy, crowded camps.

The other day, Kufow Ali Abdi, a destitute herder who lost all his cattle, trudged out of Banadir Hospital, gently carrying a small package in his arms wrapped in blue cloth. It looked almost like a swaddled newborn but it was the opposite. It was the body of his 3-year-old daughter, Kadija, who had just succumbed to measles.

“I just hope they can save the others,” he said, referring to his two remaining children, down to skin and bone.

The magnitude of suffering could shift the political landscape, which has been dominated by chaos since 1991, when clan warlords overthrew the central government and then tore apart the country. The Transitional Federal Government — the 15th attempt at a government — is trying to assert itself and beat back the Shabab, and the famine and attendant relief effort could mean an enormous opportunity.

“It could be a face-lift for them, an opportunity to deliver services and show they are committed,” said Sheik Abdulkadir, a militia leader. “But if a lot of people die here, people will say it’s the government’s fault.”

The famine could affect the Shabab as well, deepening the fissures in their organization. Shabab leaders are now beginning to cut their own deals in the face of mass starvation. Unicef recently delivered a planeload of food and medicine to Baidoa, a Shabab stronghold. In Xarardheere, another Shabab-controlled town and a notorious pirate den, a Shabab commander said in an interview on Saturday that he would welcome Western aid organizations despite the anti-Western policies imposed by his leadership, which has been hit by the deaths of several prominent figures recently.

Sheik Yoonis, a Shabab spokesman, said in an e-mail that the declaration of a famine was “an exaggeration.” He said that Shabab fighters were not imprisoning people in the camp, but that the people were attracted to it by “this sense of serenity and security.” He also denied that the Shabab were diverting river water or scaring away aid agencies.

Still, many aid organizations are reluctant to venture into Shabab areas because of the obvious dangers — the Shabab have killed dozens of aid workers — and because of American government restrictions. In 2008, the State Department declared the Shabab a terrorist group, making it a crime to provide material assistance to them. Aid officials say the restrictions have had a chilling effect because it is nearly impossible to guarantee that the Shabab will not skim off some of the aid delivered in their areas.

Even United Nations contractors have been accused of siphoning food aid, resulting in extensive investigations and cuts in life-saving assistance.

Western aid agencies are now trying to work through Islamic and local organizations as much as possible, but the Somali partners do not usually have as much technical expertise. And heavy fighting has erupted in Mogadishu again, making it dangerous even for Somali aid workers.

“Somalia is one of the most complicated places in the world to deliver aid, more complicated than Afghanistan,” said Stefano Porretti, who heads the World Food Progam’s efforts in Somalia and recently worked in Afghanistan.

Mohammed Ibrahim contributed reporting.

Very bad News for all concerned. Especially for the tourist dependent economies of the Caribbean region. The political show of force by the GOP is reaping more harm than they could have imagined.


5 August 2011 Last updated at 20:39 ET


US AAA credit rating downgraded
breaking news

One of the top credit rating agencies, Standard & Poor's, has downgraded the United States' top-notch AAA rating.

S&P cut the long-term US credit rating by one notch to AA+, citing concerns about growing budget deficits.

As rumours swirled earlier about the downgrade, unnamed US officials had told US media that S&P's analysis of the US economic situation was flawed.

The move follows the long political battle in Washington in recent months over raising the US debt ceiling.

Analysts have said a downgrade would further erode global investors' confidence in the US economy, which is already struggling with huge debts and unemployment of 9.1%.

Atabey states

Very bad News for all concerned. Especially for the tourist dependent economies of the Caribbean region.

NONSENSE!! besides, only S and P downgraded. Moody´s and Fitch kept the same tripleA. S and P are the same idiots who downgraded 6300 bond ratings from AAA to junk on one day, JANUARY 28, 2008. institutional investors like insurance companies and pension funds had to dump billions of dollars worth of bonds, because, by law, they can only hold investment grade paper. trust me, they are not going to do a heck of a lot of damage with this attention getter gambit. a lot of folks do not put too much stock in what they say, anyway. at least, not after January 28, 2008.