To all you who would volunteer...

[Hookus]

...to pass out relief overseas. For the "real" face of where your relief money ends up, just look at this picture. See if you see anything funny about the way food is passed out.

[CrispyDelicious]

I see desperate people willing to tear the face off their neighbour for a bite of food. For all our advancement, we are but a step away from our animalistic urges...

[Stingray89]

Hunger will make people resort to violence

[AnchorHoy]

The guy with the baseball bat

[Hookus]

Originally Posted by AnchorHoy

The guy with the baseball bat

Exactly. Pakistan just became perilously close to becoming the next Somalia.

[i_got_a_mohawk]

So lets just not send any aid?

[sloasdaylight]

I don't get what you're saying about the guy with the baseball bat... If they'd just drop that stuff off and leave it, no one would get any food at all cause they'd tear at each other and the bags until the flour/rice/pop-tarts/whatever just littered the ground. You've got to keep control of mobs, regardless of why they start.

[GregC]

Originally Posted by Hookus

Exactly. Pakistan just became perilously close to becoming the next Somalia.

Based on a single picture, I'm not inclined to jump to such a dire conclusion. Call me crazy, but I need more than that.

Originally Posted by i_got_a_mohawk

So lets just not send any aid?

I know, right? This is sounding like those Haiti threads.

Originally Posted by sloasdaylight

I don't get what you're saying about the guy with the baseball bat... If they'd just drop that stuff off and leave it, no one would get any food at all cause they'd tear at each other and the bags until the flour/rice/pop-tarts/whatever just littered the ground. You've got to keep control of mobs, regardless of why they start.

And then there's this.

[MJ5150]

I saw that kind of activity when I was in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. It broke my heart to see people so desperate for something we normally take for granted.

-Mike

[bass12]

First of all, what happens to the money one donates depends on which organization is being donated to. Secondly, any suggestion that money not be donated to relief funds because of what is portrayed in that one picture you posted is absolutely insane.

[L-A]

This picture is not to international aid as the one Ring is to them all.

[Pilgrim]

What I see is a good reason to send aid. Lots of it.

[Hookus]

The point is not that we should not send any aid. You have to send the right kind of aid. with 1/5 of pakistan underwater, the situation there is dire. Considering the prolific insurgent activity in that area, the power vacuum caused by this disaster is indeed alarming.

Just throwing money to a country in order to buy food, then have a baseball bat-wielding dude toss is to a mob is not really relief. You need adult supervision to pass out relief like this.

It was demonstrated that unsecured relief like this is very vulnerable to seizure by anyone with a gun. Aid needs to be secured a little more diligently, you cannot just hope to funnel money over there, buy a million bags of rice, then toss it through the air to a mob. That is a great way to allow insurgents to get a ready supply of food and control over the population.

I was in the Marines for 9 years, with two tours to the middle east, I have seen many scenes like this in real life, and unfortunately in my experience, this picture is the international one-ring.

My point is that I am not comfortable with the majority of the 500 million dollars or so donated to Pakistan being used in such an unsecured manner. Unsecured aid like this exacerbated problems present in Somalia, and we should be alarmed at what is happening in such a volatile part of the world. I don't think its okay for disaster relief to be handled this way, not even in Chop-off-your-headistan.

I don't remember seeing baseball bat wielding cronies after Katrina, but I wasn't there.