Posted on Jan 12, 2018
Anderson Cooper delivers emotional tribute to Haiti
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The quote-unquote $#it#ole...
Anderson Cooper delivers emotional tribute to Haiti
Posted from cnn.it
CNN
Haiti
Posted 7 y ago
Responses: 3
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I'll give you the point. A most un-presidential comment, but not untruthful. I spent two and a half years in Africa and saw most of the sub-Saharan African Capitals. The label fits. here are some examples.
Dead body lies in the street, a main thoroughfare in Nairobi, Kenya for three days before the government gets around to picking it up.
Major thoroughfare in Conakry, Guinea is unsafe because semi-feral pigs protecting their litters attack pedestrians, while I was in country a six year old that didn't move fast enough was killed.
Air Ivoire flight - Definitions: First class gets to board first. Economy class everyone is put on a line on the Tarmac and they race/fight for a seat. Six of the seats on the flight - no chair just bolts sticking up out of the floor. Someone still had to sit there.
Ethiopian Air Flight - unscheduled stop over, armed soldiers board the plane and put a bundle (appoximately 1'x2'x6" of khat, a narcotic weed, in each passengers lap) Then they pull out a pistol put it in your face and tell you if the package is opened or damaged when you get to Addis Ababa Someone there will shoot you in the face.
Antananarivo Madagascar The local currency is so worthless that it takes a bundle of bills the size of a square bale of hay to pay a two day hotel bill.
Kinshasa (at that time Zaire) The Congo, the airport customs officials ask to see your shot record while coming through customs. They excuse themselves, then come back, and ask to see your shot record. Since you don't have it anymore, they have one they'll sell you (its yours) or you can get your shots from their medic, who pulls out an old antique style re-useable glass and metal syringe with a re-useable needle.
The ferry from Brazzaville to Kinshasa, to try and get more passengers on the ferry, the beat passengers with meter long sections of rubber hose to get them grouped tighter. There is enough on board when they start to fall into the water.
Kampala Uganda on payday they issued the boy soldiers booze and bullets and told them to go steal what they needed because there wasn't any cash to pay them. 12 year old drunk armed tax collectors.
So yup the label fits.
Dead body lies in the street, a main thoroughfare in Nairobi, Kenya for three days before the government gets around to picking it up.
Major thoroughfare in Conakry, Guinea is unsafe because semi-feral pigs protecting their litters attack pedestrians, while I was in country a six year old that didn't move fast enough was killed.
Air Ivoire flight - Definitions: First class gets to board first. Economy class everyone is put on a line on the Tarmac and they race/fight for a seat. Six of the seats on the flight - no chair just bolts sticking up out of the floor. Someone still had to sit there.
Ethiopian Air Flight - unscheduled stop over, armed soldiers board the plane and put a bundle (appoximately 1'x2'x6" of khat, a narcotic weed, in each passengers lap) Then they pull out a pistol put it in your face and tell you if the package is opened or damaged when you get to Addis Ababa Someone there will shoot you in the face.
Antananarivo Madagascar The local currency is so worthless that it takes a bundle of bills the size of a square bale of hay to pay a two day hotel bill.
Kinshasa (at that time Zaire) The Congo, the airport customs officials ask to see your shot record while coming through customs. They excuse themselves, then come back, and ask to see your shot record. Since you don't have it anymore, they have one they'll sell you (its yours) or you can get your shots from their medic, who pulls out an old antique style re-useable glass and metal syringe with a re-useable needle.
The ferry from Brazzaville to Kinshasa, to try and get more passengers on the ferry, the beat passengers with meter long sections of rubber hose to get them grouped tighter. There is enough on board when they start to fall into the water.
Kampala Uganda on payday they issued the boy soldiers booze and bullets and told them to go steal what they needed because there wasn't any cash to pay them. 12 year old drunk armed tax collectors.
So yup the label fits.
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Maj John Bell
I do not know the extent of your experience in Africa. I can assure you that I did not spend my time locked in embassy compounds. I did not by any means list all of the things that would shock Americans. Ex Patriate living in the third world is not for the weak kneed.
I freely admit that there were places that were beautiful and had every appearance of being peaceful. By the nature of my assignment I was well aware that any feeling of peacefulness was always tenuous, in the majority of those countries. Kenya was held out as a shining example of what could be. The people who made those assertions were not people that lived there.
The plain and simple fact is that there is a reason people are not lining up to immigrate to third world countries. That doesn't mean the majority of people are not warm, welcoming, and friendly. But in those countries, the majority does not determine the "ambience."
One has to determine what is the purpose of our immigration policy. The immigration policies of an under populated nation rich in natural resources but lacking the population to capitalize on those natural resources (America after revolution) may not well serve a fully developed super power; may not keep us competitive on the global stage. It is not wrong to be selective in our immigration policy. Superficial discriminators like race, religion, ethnicity should not be used.
http://www.heritage.org/report/the-principles-immigration
I freely admit that there were places that were beautiful and had every appearance of being peaceful. By the nature of my assignment I was well aware that any feeling of peacefulness was always tenuous, in the majority of those countries. Kenya was held out as a shining example of what could be. The people who made those assertions were not people that lived there.
The plain and simple fact is that there is a reason people are not lining up to immigrate to third world countries. That doesn't mean the majority of people are not warm, welcoming, and friendly. But in those countries, the majority does not determine the "ambience."
One has to determine what is the purpose of our immigration policy. The immigration policies of an under populated nation rich in natural resources but lacking the population to capitalize on those natural resources (America after revolution) may not well serve a fully developed super power; may not keep us competitive on the global stage. It is not wrong to be selective in our immigration policy. Superficial discriminators like race, religion, ethnicity should not be used.
http://www.heritage.org/report/the-principles-immigration
More than anyother nation in history, our country and its system of equaljustice and economic freedom beckons not only the downtroddenand the persecuted-indeed, all those "yearning to breathe free"-butalso those who seek opportunity and a better future for themselvesand their posterity.
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Susan Foster
Maj John Bell - I agree we can be selective and ensure people can become self supporting. I also agree that the discriminators you mentioned should not be used.
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Capt Dwayne Conyers
I have friends in Africa who send pictures of paradise. But imagine a foreigner in an Americana ghetto or barrio or in the poorest areas of Appalachia!
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Maj John Bell
Capt Dwayne Conyers - These scenes were not in the ghetto or barrios of the countries. They were the major thoroughfares in the heart of the business district. There are undoubtedly "antiseptic" neighborhoods and shopping centers, mostly seen by tourists. But the vast majority of even the most prosperous areas frequented by locals would give most Americans, the "oogy boogies." In rural areas, if you visit "sponsored" by some tour group, a part of your fee is paying for "protection."
I grew up in Tucson as a half-Mexican kid. I spent quite a bit of time in the barrio. After getting out of the Marines, I've been to visit some of my former troops in Watts CA; Bedford Stuyvesant, NY; Cabrini Green in Chicago, IL - No comparison. I've also been to an entire "Mountain Proud" community outside Elkins West Virginia where not a single home had indoor plumbing and everyone had dirt floors - No Comparison.
Americans living below the poverty level in the roughest neighborhoods still have it better than 75% of the people living in sub-Saharan Africa. Plus our government doesn't bulldoze the shanty towns and burn everything when an International Monetary Fund inspection is coming. They can't get it together politically because the colonial powers did everything possible to make sure they couldn't. Colonial boundaries were intentionally drawn to put unpopular ethnic minorities in economic control of resource starved majorities. In many cases the colonial powers exacerbated these ethnic rivalries, and when de-colonization started in the 60's they threw gas on the fire on the way out the door.
Botswana, the only ethnically homogeneous country in all of sub-Saharan Africa is prosperous, organized, safe and stable. While there are people who are poor by comparison to most Botswanans, you could not tell it by the look and feel of their neighborhoods. If a good employment opportunity arose, I'd go there with my family in a heart beat. At least when I was there, Botswana had more people killed by lions each year than by the combined total of crime, auto accidents, and drugs.
I do not blame people from underdeveloped countries for wanting to emigrate to the US. But we simply cannot afford to bring in large numbers of relatively unskilled labor that will not put in to the system more than they will eventually take out. That is why I included the link. I believe it to be a fact that NO ONE that is a citizen of another country has a RIGHT to come to the US, hoping to be a citizen. If you don't bring a strong portfolio of skills and pretty clear evidence of economic potential, I'm sorry, but we have enough poor of our own making.
I also understand that there are a few people who want to emigrate from developed nations to these "third world paradises." They go with the resources to live as "landed gentry," relatively safe living in and experiencing "paradise" from an Ivory Tower.
As I have said I did not spend my time locked away in the ivory tower, which is what many Foreign Service Officers do. Particularly in Nairobi, my social circles were local Kenyans. I am a wood carver. One of the warnings for tourists was "Don't go to wood carver's alley." I spent much of my liberty time there, taking lessons from wood carver's. I was welcome in their homes, many of which were shanties built from pallets, cardboard boxes, and flattened tin cans.
I was offered the top position in the combined Law Enforcement/Military of a small former French colony off the coast of East Africa when I was leaving the service. If I didn't have kids I would have jumped on it. But I would have lived as "landed gentry" in an Ivory Tower. I also understand that there are a few people who want to emigrate from developed nations to these "third world paradises;" but they go with the resources to live as "landed gentry."
I grew up in Tucson as a half-Mexican kid. I spent quite a bit of time in the barrio. After getting out of the Marines, I've been to visit some of my former troops in Watts CA; Bedford Stuyvesant, NY; Cabrini Green in Chicago, IL - No comparison. I've also been to an entire "Mountain Proud" community outside Elkins West Virginia where not a single home had indoor plumbing and everyone had dirt floors - No Comparison.
Americans living below the poverty level in the roughest neighborhoods still have it better than 75% of the people living in sub-Saharan Africa. Plus our government doesn't bulldoze the shanty towns and burn everything when an International Monetary Fund inspection is coming. They can't get it together politically because the colonial powers did everything possible to make sure they couldn't. Colonial boundaries were intentionally drawn to put unpopular ethnic minorities in economic control of resource starved majorities. In many cases the colonial powers exacerbated these ethnic rivalries, and when de-colonization started in the 60's they threw gas on the fire on the way out the door.
Botswana, the only ethnically homogeneous country in all of sub-Saharan Africa is prosperous, organized, safe and stable. While there are people who are poor by comparison to most Botswanans, you could not tell it by the look and feel of their neighborhoods. If a good employment opportunity arose, I'd go there with my family in a heart beat. At least when I was there, Botswana had more people killed by lions each year than by the combined total of crime, auto accidents, and drugs.
I do not blame people from underdeveloped countries for wanting to emigrate to the US. But we simply cannot afford to bring in large numbers of relatively unskilled labor that will not put in to the system more than they will eventually take out. That is why I included the link. I believe it to be a fact that NO ONE that is a citizen of another country has a RIGHT to come to the US, hoping to be a citizen. If you don't bring a strong portfolio of skills and pretty clear evidence of economic potential, I'm sorry, but we have enough poor of our own making.
I also understand that there are a few people who want to emigrate from developed nations to these "third world paradises." They go with the resources to live as "landed gentry," relatively safe living in and experiencing "paradise" from an Ivory Tower.
As I have said I did not spend my time locked away in the ivory tower, which is what many Foreign Service Officers do. Particularly in Nairobi, my social circles were local Kenyans. I am a wood carver. One of the warnings for tourists was "Don't go to wood carver's alley." I spent much of my liberty time there, taking lessons from wood carver's. I was welcome in their homes, many of which were shanties built from pallets, cardboard boxes, and flattened tin cans.
I was offered the top position in the combined Law Enforcement/Military of a small former French colony off the coast of East Africa when I was leaving the service. If I didn't have kids I would have jumped on it. But I would have lived as "landed gentry" in an Ivory Tower. I also understand that there are a few people who want to emigrate from developed nations to these "third world paradises;" but they go with the resources to live as "landed gentry."
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