Why the US did not help Somalia

In Skypeland, we get very complex discussions that are made even more complicated by people that do not understand what they are talking about, do not speak English, and talk on top of each other.

A perfect example of this was a man from Brazil that we knew from previous conversations. The Brazillian stated that the US is in Afghanistan to steal oil from Afghanistan (Afghanistan has no oil to steal and the US gets no oil from Afghanistan. Take a look at my article "The US went to Iraq for its oil").

The Brazillian man wanted to know why the United States did not help Somalia. I said the US had previously tried to help Somalia, and I described the Battle for Mogadishu. He asked if this operation was done alone or in association with the United Nations. Some in the room pointed out that it was a United Nations operation. The Brazillian became irate and asked if this was true, then why didn't the United States work with other countries in the recent military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. I said that they did, and had also gone into both Iraq and Afghanistan with UN approval. When the Brazillian heard this, he said he did not care about the United Nations since the "United Nations is in Washington DC" (man are any of his facts correct? Last time I checked the UN was in New York...).

The Brazillian man asked about oil imports, and we gave him oil import information. However, the Brazillian did not want to hear this information, and got angrier and angrier when we directed him to the appropriate websites (he had done this a few times previously, so it was nothing new). He started to scream that we are killers and that we are horrible and he began speaking over everyone else. He expressed an interest in being a suicide bomber to kill Americans. Finally we asked the Brazillian man to be quiet.

A girl in the room thought this was unfair and tried to lecture us about asking the Brazillian man to be quiet. Then someone belched loudly, and the host asked who the pig was. Finally we got the girl to understand that we have known the Brazillian man for weeks, and this was a long term and difficult problem; he refused to listen or learn anything. I think she started to understand. Amazing how people want to lecture us about things they do not know much about.

Then a young man complained that Chavez' speech in the United Nations was not fully-covered in the media. I asked him why he thought the media only showed a few seconds of the speech instead of the entire speech, which was over 20 minutes long. He waffled and waffled for more than 10 minutes, describing a book he was reading about the New York Times, and an interview he had seen in which the "former" owner of Fox News, Ruport Murdoch, was speaking about the first Gulf War (Murdoch is the former owner? Not last time I checked...). I asked him repeatedly why he thought that the media showed such a small portion of the Chavez speech. He refused to answer and people became irate at me for asking.

Finally I answered for him, and pointed out that commercial enterprises were presenting the news to make money. I said that the reason they didn't show more of the speech is that they decided they wouldn't make money by showing more of the Chavez speech. That pretty much shut him up. Some people love to give long speeches to very simple questions, and want to just hold forth for long extended periods, saying nothing at all. Then a left-wing character complained that this is the problem with corporated, unregulated news sources. Oh brother...

Somehow the conversation slid into a discussion about health care and funding it through taxing cigarettes. Someone interjected that he wet his bed last night. He said, "I had to. It was on fire". Someone ranted and raved that cigarettes should not be taxed to pay for health care. He asked, "why are cigarettes always taxed?".

People started laughing as the discussion became more and more ridiculous. Someone came in from another room and wanted to continue an argument about who had created the world. He was quickly cut off, since he was off-topic (thank goodness).

Some guy from the Cayman Islands said that there is a secret "One World Government" run by the Masons (at least it was not the Jews or the Rothschilds or the Bilderbergs or the Illumanti this time). At first, he complained about the US a bit, but then admitted that the US had not hurt his country. When he was asked if Cayman Islands received aid from the US, someone piped up that if any gay Americans visited the Cayman Islands, the Cayman Islands might get AIDs from the US.

A drunken Irishman came in to pose a question, and no one could understand what he said. He also did not know the topic of the room. He was offended that we could not understand him. The drunken Irishman said, "It is immature of you to beat up on me since I watch American television and I grew up on it." (huh? what does that have to do with anything?) I said that he was full of nonsense, and others agreed, so he was moved out of the talking area. Then someone mentioned that others thought Americans were closed-minded, and an American retorted, "I am not clothes-minded. I run around naked all the time."

When the Irishman was allowed to speak again, he tried to talk about Darfour, but he repeatedly used the word "baby" when talking to the female host. This was not a good idea, since she had repeatedly told him previously that she objected to being called "baby" or "honey" or "sweetheart" or anything similar. Somehow, he never seems to learn and just uses these terms of endearment over and over when talking to her, adopting a degrading and demeaning tone.

To answer the Irishman, a man played a recording of Canadian commentator Gordon Sinclair praising the US in 1973. Some of the left-wing characters in the cast started to wax nostalgic about how wonderful the United States was in 1973. Maybe they do not remember Watergate, Richard Nixon, and the Vietnam War... I was astounded.

Another character claimed that more than 50% of the population in the US now works for the government. Hmm..I have to check that...I looked it up, and the total number of Federal, State and Local employees in the US at the end of 2006, including full and part time employees, is 19.6 million, according to the US census:
http://www.census.gov/govs/www/apes.html
Total US employment is around 140 million:
http://www.bizstats.com/employment.htm
By my calculations, that is about 14%, which sure seems a ways away from 50%. Funny how stupid people look when you check their claims... Why bother to say something so dumb if you have no idea what you are talking about?

The Irishman returned and started to spew nonsense. For about the 50th time, he said the US is awful since the US is not giving any foreign aid to Zimbabwe. The Israeli host asked him what Ireland was doing to help Zimbabwe but the Irishman would not answer, and just descended into drunken babbling.

I did check the statistics, and sure enough, Zimbabwe is still receiving many millions of dollars of US aid, from both government and private sources, contrary to the claims of the Irishman:
http://www.usaid.gov/policy/budget/cbj2006/afr/zw.html
http://www.wfp.org/english/?ModuleID=137&Key=2587
http://www.socialfunds.com/news/release.cgi?sfArticleId=2352
http://www.africare.org/about/where-we-work/zimbabwe/index.html
Funny how almost all the claims of these people are wrong, isn't it?

A man told us that he had sent some articles about the situation in Iraq to China and that this had impressed the Chinese people who received them. The man noted that there is censorship in China and if the government does not agree with what the journalists write, they put the journalists in jail.

Someone who just returned from China objected vehemently to these comments and disagreed with what had been said. We tried to ask the man who had just returned from China what he meant, but then he denied he had said what we just heard him say. He did not seem to make much sense. When I asked him what he meant, he said that it was about the War. We then said we were not talking about the War. He took umbrage at this and maintained he had never said anything about the War. Then he said if a Chinese journalist did not want to get in trouble with the Chinese government, the journalist had to write about how huge the sexual organs were of the government leaders. Holy cow...what do I say to that?

The host was talking in her Israeli accent and the man who had allegedly just returned from China said the host was speaking like she was chewing a "camel cud." At this point, his microphone was shut off, and when he was allowed to speak again, he claimed that the US was responsible for killing more people than any other country on earth (huh?). He was asked about Mao and Stalin and he said he was not talking about Mao and Stalin. He said "I am not talking about that. I am talking about walking into the fire." (Whatever that means...I guess he had forgotten about Hitler and Ghengis Khan and the Roman Empire and a host of others...) He seemed completely incoherent and people were not able to follow his statements.

The man who had just returned from China asked an Iraqi where he lived. He said that many parts of Iraq are just like Manhattan, and that Nieman Marcus would be there soon (huh? this guy is delusional...). He said he had been in Baghdad recently.

However, we soon started to doubt anything he said. At first he said he had just left China, and then he said he had last been in Baghdad 2 years ago, and then he said he had last been in Baghdad 10 days ago. He was asked what time it is in Iraq at the moment, and he refused to answer. He implied that he could not tell us the time in Iraq because he was involved in secret missions (What the heck? Time zones are secret?). He started screaming about how people should say the "pledge-o-legance". He recited, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, undefeatable..." At this point, it became clear he might be drunk...

Several Americans in the room started attacking the American/Israeli host for not being an American since she was not born in the US. They claimed that if people are not born in the US they are not American (what about immigrants?). The room descended into nonsense with one person who promotes anti-American material claiming that anyone who is foreign or who was not born in the US, has no right to talk about the US. He claimed that anyone with a dual citizenship (like me) is "greedy". I asked him if he knew anything about international treaties dealing with citizenship, and challenged him to speak on the subject. Of course, he had nothing to say at all. Another person came up to say the international treaties about citizenship were under the World Health Organization (where do they get this stuff??). Then we asked if the Chinese wife of the man who just returned from China, who holds a green card, was American. The person who said I was greedy for having two passports said that the Chinese lady with a green card was American, but I was not, even though I hold a US passport. Hmm...

The promoter of anti-American material said anyone who was "of America" was American, since they embraced what America stood for. This promoter of anti-American nonsense said he was "of America" but I was not. He said the Israeli/American host was not "of America" or American since she did not embrace what America stood for. She asked if she could not embrace both what Israel stands for and what America stands for. She was told she could embrace both but only cherish one. We asked what America stands for. He said "liberty and the pursuit of freedom and happiness". He claimed that Israel does not stand for this. I challenged him to tell me how I was not "of America" and how I do not embrace America, and of course he had nothing to say. These blowhards are just ridiculous... I remember that this person who promotes anti-American material had previously told us he was broadcasting from outside the US and refused to give his location. Later he told us he is in Ohio. This guy seems really reliable and trustworthy, and a real "American"....