Playstation 2’s Success Fueled African War, Report Says

my god.. i knew black people liked playing playstation.. but this shit is ridiculous... whats next the grape soda wars??
 
Western aid does shit for Africa right now anyway. A colleague of mine from my old job used to be an aid worker there. He was there for the opening of a new shelter building. This thing was a modern, attractive building with clean running water and enough space for hundreds of families. The locals tore it apart within a few weeks. Litterally tore it apart. Took the sinks, the fixtures, metal pipes, anything they could wrench off the walls. Ripped it all apart and dragged it all back to their corraguated iron huts.

tl;dr: You can only really help people that want to be helped.
 
bholstege said:
you have to be kidding me. It is a mineral used in tons of different things, with PlayStation being just one example. putting "Playstations started a war" in a headline is incredibly misleading.
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We'll send out a press release with your concerns. With any luck, all two billion news agencies that will change the name they have been using for years.

PRIME1 said:
Wow the [h] is really reaching for bad playstation news now. :rolleyes:
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How long have you been here again? We don't make the news, we just post it. I'll forward your complaint and tears to the author of the article.


With that said, keep the thread on track people.
 
Jaerb4 said:
Blaming Sony is silly, but I think you lack an intimate understanding of African history and general social development. We've introduced some technologies like irrigation, but we haven't made their lives any better.

Ironically, cell phones may end up playing a pivotal role in the development of many African countries.
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I disagree about the comment that we haven't made their lives any better. Look at South Africa, it was eurpeans who made that place one of the top places to live about a decade ago, it also made it one of the nations with the most influence and millitary power. As small as they were, they would have been compared to how Israel is, small but powerful.

Look at it now, it's torn to shit. You can make their lives better, but they would rather find a way to blame something (usually racism card does the trick) and destroy everything. Now it's the most dangerous place to live.

As for us not making their lives better, look at all the vacines, look at all the cars, cellphones, internet (nigerians loves us), look at all the improvements we have made. Prior to Europe coming in there, it was just village formats and they still killed eachother with weapons. We did provide them with guns, but lets be honest, its not like they didn't kill eachother before anyways.

GuiltyDragon said:
Western aid does shit for Africa right now anyway. A colleague of mine from my old job used to be an aid worker there. He was there for the opening of a new shelter building. This thing was a modern, attractive building with clean running water and enough space for hundreds of families. The locals tore it apart within a few weeks. Litterally tore it apart. Took the sinks, the fixtures, metal pipes, anything they could wrench off the walls. Ripped it all apart and dragged it all back to their corraguated iron huts.

tl;dr: You can only really help people that want to be helped.
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Western aid does a lot, it's the recepients who does shit right now. They don't care. I agree with you that they tear down things that are given to them... you should see home robberies. My neighbors home was torn down by thieves overnight, they even stole the lawn and the Italian tiles on the roof... copper theft (stealing power lines) is huge.

There is a saying down there, "you can take them out of the Jungle, but you can't take the Jungle out of them"... thats basically how we viewed it down there. You give them money, they buy liquor and guns... you give them food, they get pissed at you.
 
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people who think by raping babies they can cure their AIDS are backwards, ignorant and deserve to die in a fire.
 
eeyrjmr said:
...
EVERY electronics goods that use Tantilum capacitors are at fault here. Mobile phones are more to blame then Sony/PS2 since mobile phones aim to be compact and thus tant's with their high capacitance per unit volume and other characteristics (ripple,leakage..) at these operating voltages are key.

mobile wars maybe, ps2 wars?...
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QFT

Not to mention a lot more people own cell phones, and replace them yearly or even more frequently - at least a game console has a few years of longevity, as people tend to keep them to play old favorites or as a "backup" or travel deck, even when the new console plays previous generation games.

Great headline though - it got the attention of everyone in this thread (me too). I guess factual accuracy isn't among the primary criteria for a "good" headline - which isn't exactly news ;)
 
Jaerb4 said:
Blaming Sony is silly, but I think you lack an intimate understanding of African history and general social development. We've introduced some technologies like irrigation, but we haven't made their lives any better.

Ironically, cell phones may end up playing a pivotal role in the development of many African countries.
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I do understand. I'm just tired of this senseless war and corruption. That's the whole problem, there IS no social development, particularly in their government of thugs and madmen. We taught them so many things yet they remain ignorant. I've said this many times before: as long as we continue to feed them, they'll continue to be dependent on us and not care for themselves.
 
SpeedRunner said:
Yes let's all feel guilty and responsible for the conflicts in Africa, as of course everything is the fault of Europe and the Americans. :rolleyes:
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Yes I for one feel giving away assault rifles to countries that abuse them isn't our fault if they are using them for malicious use.
 
Ockie said:
I disagree about the comment that we haven't made their lives any better. Look at South Africa, it was eurpeans who made that place one of the top places to live about a decade ago, it also made it one of the nations with the most influence and millitary power. As small as they were, they would have been compared to how Israel is, small but powerful.
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I'm not even going to touch the rest of this discussion with a ten-foot poll, but one little point here. South Africa is not a small country by any means. Not the largest in the world, perhaps, but South Africa, at 1.2 million km^3, is the 25th largest nation in the world, larger than the European countries (France is 40 at 640,000 km^3), and a huge amount larger than Israel, which is 151st at 20,000 km^3, about the size of New Jersey.

In terms of population, the statistics are similar: South Africa 25th with 48 million people. France 20th with 65 million (Europe does have an edge population-wise), and Israel 96th with a mere 7.2 million souls. Also, South Africa has tons of natural resources; why do you think Europe want that land in the first place? Israel does not. Its main resources are religious/historical sites for tourism, and most importantly its extremely highly educated populace. It has no oil, and doesn't even have enough water. The two countries cannot really be compared.
 
i agree that blaming Sony doesn't seem right despite how much I despise Sony's businesss practices. however, all the hateful comments towards Africa - tho partially warranted - we have to think about how the West have exploited these people for decades, some for more than a century. The West went in, worked them like slaves for their primary resources and did little to invest in improving their infrastructure for longer-term prosperity. The West just left when opposition became too strong and here's where they are now. Warlords control the nations and endless strife and hunger.
 
Deliximus said:
i agree that blaming Sony doesn't seem right despite how much I despise Sony's businesss practices. however, all the hateful comments towards Africa - tho partially warranted - we have to think about how the West have exploited these people for decades, some for more than a century. The West went in, worked them like slaves for their primary resources and did little to invest in improving their infrastructure for longer-term prosperity. The West just left when opposition became too strong and here's where they are now. Warlords control the nations and endless strife and hunger.
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Hmm, Warlords that do nothing to help people, other than themselves?
The real issue is that, bad shit happened in Africa before "the West" aka Whitey came to town. They already had slaves, they had famine in parts, and continual war. The West just showed them how to industrialize brutality.
Did you ever hear about the whites that were killed and run off of highly successful farms in Africa because it was "their land" only to be given to people that didn't know shit about farming, they just want land as a power symbol. This is partly to blame for the food shortages of that continent. The yhad a plan to remove the evil white man and gain real independence, but the pissed it away because they'd rather kill and be powerful and eat UN provided food stolen from the peasants, than invest in making themselves and their continent great.
 
dagas said:
I assume you are joking? We already did that! The colonization of Africa is what started a lot of the problems we see today. It's because we thought "we need to teach these savages how to run a country" that they ended up in the mess they are today with borders drawn by European explorers. There may have been war in Africa before, but so it were in Europe and other continents. If we had never interfered, they may have had the chance to build a civilization of their own. Sure it might have taken some time, but eventually it would have happened just like the Egypt's in Northern Africa.
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Oh please. I don't buy the argument that Europe is to blame for Africa's problems. The problem with Africa is that the people need to learn how to fuckin' EVOLVE.
 
It seems some bleeding hearts want to stick up for africa and blame thier shit on everyone else...

I have a 2 part plan to solve africas bullshit,

1) Stop fucking.
2) Stop killing each other for money.

Well would ya look at that with 8 words i just came up with a solution to africas troubles.
 
I spent 6 months in Africa last year doing a humanitarian mission in Guinea-Bissau.

Let me just say this, from my time living there... Iran and Isreal will be best buddies and Africa will still be jacked. That place cannot be fixed. They don't want to be fixed. They aren't ready to be fixed. And they never will be until as a country they do it themselves. You can't give it to them, we've been trying that for 400 years.
 
wow, with the weird name of the ore, it almost sounds like the setting for a scifi novel/movie.
 
Ockie said:
I disagree about the comment that we haven't made their lives any better. Look at South Africa, it was eurpeans who made that place one of the top places to live about a decade ago, it also made it one of the nations with the most influence and millitary power. As small as they were, they would have been compared to how Israel is, small but powerful.
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Israel is on an entirely different plane than any other small country in the world. Greenbook's servers are having issues right now, but South Africa was never close to Israel- obviously not in history and culture nor in development either.
Look at it now, it's torn to shit. You can make their lives better, but they would rather find a way to blame something (usually racism card does the trick) and destroy everything. Now it's the most dangerous place to live.
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Rural poverty always beats urban poverty. It's the same in Africa, Americas, Europe and Asia. Relative poverty is more important than absolute poverty, and I'd argue many countries were better off when their populations were self sufficient and in control of their lives, albeit far less productive. Now it's likely that in 50 or 100 years their quality of living will surpass all of that, just as first world countries have done, but for the time being many peoples' lives have gotten worse. People forget that development is a slow, slow process. The IMF, World Bank and UN are trying to create the type of growth in third world countries over a 50 year span that most first world countries took many, many centuries to accomplish.

I always hear ignorant people say "don't have so many kids if you can't afford them." That concept only comes to fruition once countries have prospered and living conditions are good. In the US, families were quite large for the first couple hundred years of our existence, because the average person didn't live to 70.
As for us not making their lives better, look at all the vacines, look at all the cars, cellphones, internet (nigerians loves us), look at all the improvements we have made. Prior to Europe coming in there, it was just village formats and they still killed eachother with weapons. We did provide them with guns, but lets be honest, its not like they didn't kill eachother before anyways.
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The vaccines have been very beneficial. If there is one downside, it's that they've caused a population spike which is a very large contributor to poverty and hunger, but my guess is that it will only be a temporary effect, until the next few generations come around.

Cell phones and the internet are getting huge. They really are making a big, important difference for many people in third world countries, and not just by scamming stupid people.

And they were killing people before, but history shows they were much less violent than Europeans were during the same time period. Things only got especially horrid when we threw up completely arbitrary borders and lumped enemies together.
Western aid does a lot, it's the recepients who does shit right now. They don't care. I agree with you that they tear down things that are given to them... you should see home robberies. My neighbors home was torn down by thieves overnight, they even stole the lawn and the Italian tiles on the roof... copper theft (stealing power lines) is huge.

There is a saying down there, "you can take them out of the Jungle, but you can't take the Jungle out of them"... thats basically how we viewed it down there. You give them money, they buy liquor and guns... you give them food, they get pissed at you.
Click to expand...
Western aid has been quite a failure over the past 50 years. Know what happens when you give them food or money? You cause someone else to go out of business, so when you stop giving, there's no one left to provide the food.

Top down solutions like the bs Millennium Goals are the main reason we've wasted 3 trillion dollars in aid and have gotten relatively little done. You can't force someone to help themselves, but you can encourage entrepreneurs and business people to build their countries from the bottom up. That's beginning to happen, especially because of the aforementioned technologies, and if internal corruption can be somewhat controlled (and it's both our fault and theirs), then maybe in 20 or 30 years we can talk about the incoming African industrial Rhinos, like we're talking about Tigers today.
 
pfunkman said:
It seems some bleeding hearts want to stick up for africa and blame thier shit on everyone else...
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It's not about bleeding hearts. It's about people who are actually educated on the matter and study this sort of thing.

I'm sure you would be equally appreciative if your 80 year old grandmother tried to tell you what parts to buy for your next rig.
 
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