By Diana Holbourn
Becky and Other Students Discuss World Problems, How Some Have Been Unintentionally Made Worse, and How Some Have Been Diminished
Book three of the online Becky Bexley series. Chapter 3 continued.
This series accompanies the books about what Becky does at university and afterwards, which you can find out more about on my author website. (The online series is in draft form.)
(To recap: The previous page ended with a joke about torturing people by depriving them of tea, and one student remarking that it would be good if people who wanted to do cruel things really did do that instead of torturing people for real.
The one who'd been talking about dictators before said, "Yeah, like those dictators I was talking about earlier. I was talking about foreign aid before, wasn't I, like about how an unintended consequence of it is that it can help to keep tyrannical dictators in power. I'm not saying things would have been better without it, of course; I think it's improved the lives of loads of people by providing children with education they might not have got otherwise, and bringing clean water and medical care to places, and that kind of thing. And of course it must have saved a lot of lives, especially in times of famine. But it's not always well-spent, often because of things that are beyond the control of the people trying to give it.
"A lot of famines are actually man-made, caused by things like farmland being destroyed in civil wars or other wars. Like the famine in Ethiopia in 1984 that lots of popstars got together to raise money to relieve, as part of a campaign that loads of people donated money to.
"There was a long drought there at the time; but government policies made things way way worse than they would have been if the country had been at peace and run well. A lot of the effort and money that was raised turned out to be wasted, and worse, hijacked to help the oppressive communist Ethiopian military government of the time crush rebellions that had been going on there. Aid money was used by the government of Ethiopia to buy weapons, and lorries that were sent there to carry food to where it was needed were taken by the government and used instead to forcibly remove a lot of people from their homes so they wouldn't be able to help the rebels fighting the war. Tons of food aid was confiscated by the government so they could pay the army in grain instead of money, and a lot was used to trade for weapons from other countries. And some of the food aid was used by the government to lure people away from their homes in rebel areas so it would be easier to permanently remove them from them, just in case they helped the rebels.
"The famine had partly been caused in the first place because the government destroyed a lot of farmland in rebel areas, and killed a lot of the people who would have worked on it.
"It seems the organisers of the famine relief efforts the popstars started didn't realise how much of a need there was to plan how to get the food to where it was needed safely, or else were so enthusiastic to be seen to be getting the aid out there that they ignored warnings that careful preparation needed to be done. I read that even hundreds of thousands of tons of food rotted in the docks in Ethiopia, because the people who sent it there discovered when it got there that there weren't any decent roads and railways to transport it to where it was needed, and the government refused to give them any good-quality vehicles, wanting to use them all to help them fight the war and carry people forcibly away from their homes in rebel areas. The people who brought the aid bought a lot of broken-down lorries from another country and repaired them, but it took months.
"Anyway, that kind of thing just shows that things like giving aid, and the reasons for disasters caused by famines and other things, are often more complicated than they seem.
"The amount of famine in the world has gone down a lot recently, because of things like wars ending, and aid agencies being better at providing food relief before a famine even starts; but the amount of famine could go up again if more wars break out.
"A lot of famines have been caused or made a lot worse by wars, where farmland has been destroyed, or a lot of farmers have had to escape the areas they live and work in so as not to be caught up in the fighting, or markets have been bombed so people have found it harder to buy food, or countries' ports have been blockaded by other countries so they couldn't import enough food, or governments have confiscated farmland, supposedly to redistribute it to people who deserve it more, but really hoping they and their supporters who get given it can make money from it themselves, but then it turns out to be managed badly so it doesn't produce as much money as they hoped, and not nearly as much food as it did before.
"Or when war breaks out, governments can start spending less money on improving the food supply and making it easier for food to be transported from one part of the country to another, because they want to spend more of their money on fighting.
"And other things like that can happen. Sometimes starving the population of civilian areas where rebels or groups of people the government dislikes for some reason live, or trying to starve the populations of other countries, is a deliberate tactic used to win wars.
"Sometimes famines happen after food shortages cause conflict because groups of people raid the territory of other people to get their food.
"War's a lot less likely to happen between prosperous countries where most people are contented with their lives.
"And famines are less likely to happen in democratic countries where there's a free press, so the governments know they'd get a lot of bad publicity if they let something like that happen, which would almost certainly mean they'd lose the next election. In countries that don't have a free press, papers might be full of government propaganda a lot of the time, with anyone critical of the government being arrested or even killed. Some dictatorships pour masses of money into running their own television channels, that broadcast supposed news intended to stir up support for them and give the impression that everyone in the country needs to stand together under their leadership against a common enemy who's responsible for the bad things happening in the country, often blaming one or more Western countries. The truth gets twisted, and sometimes outright lies are told. And some dictators spend a lot of time cultivating an image of themselves as wise and attractive people who are doing their country good, so people will support them.
"Now that it's far easier to import food than it was a couple of centuries ago, and there are technologies that can increase the amount of food a farm can produce, such as by cultivating more drought-resistant crops, and insecticides that mean insects won't eat so much of the grain and other things on the plants that are being produced, it seems most famines tend to happen for man-made reasons. Weather can contribute a lot, like droughts and torrential rains that can wash away crops; but it's often easier than it used to be to bring food in from elsewhere. But if things are happening like wars, it won't be so easy, and the governments that started them might have other priorities, like running the fighting, so the needs of the people who are suffering can be neglected."
One of the students said, "You know, this is so depressing, I need to go and get some comfort food so I can tolerate hearing it more easily!"
Several of them decided to do the same.
When they came back and started eating it, one said, "You know, I know it was terrible what happened in Russia in the 1930s, when Stalin exiled loads of people to Siberia for opposing him, and for whatever other reasons he did it, and they were made to work all day in barbarically cold temperatures, doing things like cutting down trees. But I wrote a joke story on a forum once, about having another forum member, who for some reason called himself Valley-Dweller, sent to Siberia. We used to tease each other, and I told him that he'd better watch it, because if he carried on, I'd have him sent there. Not long afterwards I wrote a story, pretending I had had him transferred there. It went:
"'I've been granted special powers to have any forum member who gets on my nerves arrested and hauled off to a labour camp in Siberia. Here's what happened to one member when I had him sent there:
"'On my orders, Valley-Dweller was taken to a prison camp in Siberia in the dead of winter, where there were lots of other people in crowded conditions. Immediately he was freezing! Almost literally! That was especially because within an hour of his arrival, they'd set him to work outside.
"He shivered violently with his lack of adequate clothing, and worried that just as soon as his body lost the energy to shiver, his blood might all turn to ice crystals inside him, and not be able to circulate any more. Then he'd die, maybe alone, and his body might be discovered by a local person walking their dog in the forest somewhere. What would medical personnel say if they gave him a post mortem, he wondered. He imagined them saying, "This man is a very unusual specimen, never before seen. We must preserve him and give his body to scientific research. His body could tell us important things about what seems to be this strange genetic mutation that turns blood to ice, or else what humans were like when they lived packed in ice in asteroids, before they arrived on earth. He might be one of those, frozen in permafrost for millions of years that's recently melted."
"'In a few hundred years' time, that might seem like pure foolishness. But those really were the kinds of ideas circulating in the scientific community when Valley-Dweller was sent to Siberia. Asteroids were believed to have spawned life on earth by hurtling to earth, breaking apart and letting their cargo of icy amino acids flop out all over the ground around them, whereupon some mixed together and formed life, and there might have even been ready-made frozen humans among them.
"'So Valley-Dweller worried that if he got much colder and died, scientists would think his frozen blood was precious and enthralling evidence that he was a throwback to the time when life first began on earth, and they'd take all his blood out, send samples of it all over the world so scientists in lots of other labs could share it, and all discuss what it could tell them about the origins of life on earth.
"'Valley-Dweller worried that they might even want to analyse his family's blood, bringing them in to a lab, staring at them for ages, asking them endless questions, and pulling bits off them and giving them endless blood tests, so they could send samples of them flying this way and that way across the globe, so every interested scientist could discuss what they showed them about how life first began.
"'Still, since Valley-Dweller didn't like any of his family much, the thought didn't bother him much. He was far more worried about the immediate concern that his own blood would freeze into crunchy ice crystals, or a snow-like substance that clogged up his arteries and piled up layer upon layer around his bones till he died.
"'He used to like to play in the snow as a child. He imagined little children playing in piles of red snow, asking their mothers why it was a funny colour. He imagined them making snowballs out of it and throwing them at each other, laughing. He thought that if he froze, someone would be able to take all his blood out, make mounds of red snow, and then children really would be able to do that.
"'Valley-Dweller worried that someone might do that for real. He felt sure he had to stop them! He thought he could start by trying to get warm so it wouldn't happen. He crept into the prison, and stole someone else's coat. No guard was watching him outside, because they hated the cold as much as he did, so they liked to stay indoors, thinking no one would escape because there was nowhere much to escape to in the desolate wilderness where the prison camp was. But Valley-Dweller was caught by other prisoners and given a beating. They told him it simply was not done for a prisoner to endanger the life of others by stealing their clothes.
"'But Valley-Dweller worried his own life was in danger. Big tears began to roll down his face. But it was so cold they froze. They were like little marbles. He would like to have played with them, but his hands were too stiff with the cold. He reflected that the children who would enjoy playing in his snow-blood would probably enjoy playing with his marble-tears as well!
"'So who would get his body, he wondered, children or scientists?
"'He was still wondering that as he curled up under his thin blanket for the night. At least he was sleeping next to 15 others, he thought, so they would keep him a bit warmer, unless they froze as well, and then the children might have a whole street's worth of red snow to play in, or scientists might have bucketloads of blood-ice crystals to rave about and ponder the meaning of, and send zooming around the world for others to do the same. He went to sleep, not knowing if he'd wake up, or whether the morning would find him in bits, travelling all over the world, or having his blood trampled in by laughing children.
"'But he woke up still in one piece. He didn't know whether to be relieved, or distraught that he was still in Siberia! But he didn't have long to ponder on that. A guard loudly ordered everyone up, saying it was time to get into the forest to fell trees all day. They managed to snatch a quick breakfast of dry bread before they were off!
"'At least, most of them were off. Valley-Dweller was more reluctant than the rest, given the minus 40 degree temperature he thought might kill him and his lack of a coat. He asked a guard if there was a spare coat somewhere he could have.
"'The guard laughed and told him he wouldn't give him a coat, but that he had a dog who kept molting hairs all over the guard office floor. He told Valley-Dweller he could pick up dog hairs from the floor all day, and if he was lucky, and could find some material to sew them on, he could make himself a coat.
"'Valley-Dweller was sure he wouldn't be able to find anywhere near enough dog hairs to do that, but he realised that being allowed to stay in the lovely warm guard's office by the fire all day would be vastly preferable to being forced out into the freezing cold. So he agreed.
"'He scrabbled around on his hands and knees for hours picking up little hairs. Meanwhile, the guards were merrily passing the vodka round.
"'He didn't manage to make a coat. But he discovered after a few weeks that the cold stopped bothering him, when he found out that not being able to wash his clothes or himself had its advantages: He found out that when he sniffed his socks after he'd been wearing them for weeks every day without washing them, though the smell was horrendous, it gave him a high, the highest high he'd ever had, that stopped him noticing the cold or worrying about dying and being thought to be an interesting scientific specimen. After that, he spent as much time as he could sniffing his old unwashed socks. So he actually began to quite like his time there.
"'And everyone else there caught on to the idea, and started sniffing their old unwashed socks too, and found it put them on just as much of a high.'"
The students giggled.
Then there was a pause in the conversation, after which the one who'd been talking about dictators said, "I've got more to tell you about the cruelty of some dictators, and the reasons they can cause famines or food shortages, if you want to hear it:
"Sometimes, when governments in developing countries mismanage their countries' economies, it can lead to people starving, for reasons like that if inflation goes really really high, so prices rise really quickly, a lot of people won't be able to afford to buy food any more.
"That can happen for reasons such as a government printing more money because it wants to pay soldiers more easily because it wants to send them to war, but once there's more money in people's pockets, they want to buy more things; and if no more of those things are available than there were before, there won't be enough for everyone who wants them, so the prices of them will go up, partly because company bosses will think it's a good opportunity to make more money because their goods are so much in demand, or because they think that if demand for their products is going up, it would be nice to be able to make more profit so they can spend money making their factories bigger so they can produce more goods to sell, and that kind of thing. If there were loads of products like the ones they sell to go around, they'd want to lower their prices instead, to give people an incentive to buy the ones their own companies were producing in preference to other ones.
"Another reason prices can go up is that if shortages of goods make it more expensive for companies to buy the products they need to make the things people want to buy from them, they'll have no choice but to put their prices up so they can pay enough to buy them.
"But if the prices of lots of important things go up, like foods, then workers will demand higher wages so they can pay to have the standard of living they had before, especially if their wages were only just paying for it before.
"But if companies put wages up, they'll have to put the price of their products up to pay for them. If a lot of companies do that, a lot of workers will then want higher wages to pay for the things they used to be able to buy but now can't afford, so companies might put wages up again, and then put the prices of their products up again to pay for them, but then workers will want higher wages so they can still buy them, and it can go on and on like that.
"That kind of cycle's one thing that can contribute to ordinary inflation, and that's usually OK, because normally in Western countries, or ones that are being well-governed, it doesn't go up very high. But if there's suddenly a lot more money around, because a government's printed a load more, but there aren't well-developed industries in the country, there can easily get to be shortages of things if a lot more people start wanting them, so prices can go up a lot very quickly, which is especially bad with things like food.
"And then some people start hoarding food and other things, if they think the shops are running out, or that the prices will rise a lot soon so they'll be even less affordable. But that can lead to even more shortages, till a lot of people can't get food to eat and start starving.
"And then inflation can speed right up till prices are rising really really fast, because everyone's doing their best to spend their money before prices rise further or goods run out so they can't get them any more, and no one wants to keep money, since it's buying so much less as time goes on because of all the price rises, so shops buy in more goods as soon as they get enough money to, and then the people they buy them from buy more supplies with it as soon as they can, with everyone trying to get things before prices rise again, but finding it hard because of the shortages that are pushing prices up. In some countries, things have got so bad that prices have often been double at the end of the day what they were at the beginning. It's no wonder everyone wants to spend their money quickly before it can't buy nearly as much as it did just the day before.
"Some governments have to put price controls on things to stop them getting too expensive; but that's led to even worse problems, because when industries haven't been able to get enough money to make it worth carrying on producing the things, or it's become too expensive to do it and still make a profit, they've often stopped. So that can lead to even more shortages.
"Anyway, that's another thing that can lead to famines.
"I think often, lots of different things can happen together, or some can cause others to happen, and all of them working together cause a famine.
"I read that some of the worst famines of the 20th century happened mostly because of government policies that seem to have been ignorant or uncaring. One example is that there was a horrible famine in China for a few years, that started in the late 1950s, after the government leader at the time, who might have been hoping to get a lot of glory by trying to transform China into one of the most impressive countries in the world, made some drastic new government policies, without actually having much evidence that they worked. He wanted to turn China into a great communist powerhouse that would quickly start producing more goods than other countries.
"I think some of his policies did some good, but other ones caused catastrophes, including a famine that killed millions and millions of people! He made a law forbidding people to own their own farms, but to work on state-owned farms instead, because of his communist ideology. And millions of people who had worked on farmland before were ordered to work on other projects instead, some of which were failures, like producing iron and steel from supposedly scrap metal in mini furnaces in their backyards. It didn't seem to matter to the government leaders that most people didn't have any expertise in doing that; and they didn't want to listen to people who criticised the plan. They wanted so much iron and steel that people were forced to use their own furniture to burn so as to power the furnaces, and their own pots and pans to melt down and make the iron and steel that was demanded. So a whole load of shoddy lumps of iron were produced by people who were really needed to work on farms to produce food to feed people.
"And when the leader of the government finally discovered that it actually took some technical expertise to produce good-quality steel, he didn't change the policy for quite a while, because he thought it would be bad for morale ... or possibly bad for his ego or something.
"Also, the government wanted a lot of grain transferred from the countryside to cities that were being developed, to feed people there; and a lot was exported to other countries, even while the famine was going on.
"Local officials in rural areas were given quotas for how much grain to send to the cities, and a lot of people died of starvation outside warehouses full of grain, that the officials refused to open because the grain was earmarked to be sent to the new cities, and they thought they'd be punished if they didn't obey the order to send it.
"And the government made orders about new farming techniques, based on the recommendations of a couple of government advisers in Russia who fancied themselves as scientists, but didn't actually have any evidence that their ideas really worked, it seems. I don't know why they had so much influence. Maybe they were friends of the communist party leaders in China and Russia or something.
"Anyway, one of the ideas of one of them that the Chinese government ordered farm workers to obey was that they should plant seeds much closer together than they had before, so they could plant more. They did, but the seeds were too crowded together to grow well. Another one of their orders was that they should plough the soil to a depth of a couple of metres instead of the usual twenty centimetres or so, feeling sure there would be more fertile soil underneath so the plants would grow better. But the soil underneath was actually often full of little stones and sand that made it more difficult for plants to grow. The fertile soil that had been on the top of them ended up being buried underneath the shoddy soil after it was ploughed.
"And the government ordered that sparrows and other wild birds should all be killed, since they were eating some of the grain. But then they weren't around to eat insects any more, so those thrived and ate the grain instead.
"And another reason people didn't get enough food was because a lot of people were made to work on projects like building reservoirs at the times of year when not much work was needed on their farms, like when it wasn't the time for planting or harvesting. The reservoirs were a good development in themselves, which would have made farmers' lives easier in the future because irrigation channels could be dug from them into fields to supply water for grain, I think. The trouble was that the custom among the peasants made to work on the projects was that they always had to ration their food, because there was never enough for them to be well-fed all year round, so they ate a lot more during the busy seasons on the farms, and ate less, and lower-quality food, during the times when the work wasn't nearly as demanding. But when they were made to work on building projects during those times, since they weren't given any more food, they didn't have enough to give them enough energy to work well. I read that some even died of exhaustion.
"And local officials were scared of being punished if they didn't transfer enough grain to the cities, so they lied and claimed they were transferring more than they really were. So the government assumed loads of grain was being produced and transferred to the cities, so not so much needed to be produced, so they ordered lots of farm workers to go to the cities to take up industrial work, and then ordered that more grain be transferred there to feed them, and ordered that a lot of fields should start producing crops like cotton that could be turned into things that could be sold to make money instead of grain. And they exported more grain to other countries to make money. So those things made the famine worse.
"And other bad things happened, like people being cruelly punished, even being tortured and killed, by local officials, for speaking out against the policies, or even for being too weak to work because they were starving. That's what I read anyway. I don't know how often that really happened. And a lot of people who criticised the government were killed.
"But I read that government leaders blamed the disasters on other people, claiming they weren't following their orders properly, and they also blamed bad weather, which might have played a part, at least at first.
"I read that the famine was so terrible that some people resorted to eating their own children to try to survive, as well as eating dead people.
"Anyway, that just shows how bad government decisions can be really terrible for the people they affect."
One of the students said, "Blimey this stuff's depressing! Didn't reading all about it drive you to drink? If we ever see you staggering around campus doing things like singing songs out of tune, we'll know you've probably been reading more of it!"
The students chuckled.
Another one said, "This is sick stuff! I could do with a bit of light relief for a while! It just makes you realise how horrible the world can be! At least things are much better in China nowadays, as far as I know."
One of the others said, "If you want some light relief, I could tell you a story, about a conversation I had on a forum not long ago.
"There were a couple of people there who liked to pretend they were CIA agents for a while. One called himself DJ, and the other one called himself Vigilante. One day, Vigilante said DJ had gone to Moscow for a week. But then DJ wrote something on the forum soon afterwards. I joked,
"'So you're not in Moscow after all then like Vigilante said you were? Oh good. I was beginning to think the CIA were so behind-the-times they thought it was still 1985 or something, and they thought they just had to spy on those Russians, in case they were cooking up some dastardly plan to install a communist in the White House and turn all America's churches into warehouses for grain and barns to keep cattle in and things. That would never do!
"Vigilante said, 'DJ's not in the CIA, (dumb dumb) He is Ex-CIA. And he went to Moscow on holiday.'
"I joked, 'What? So did he used to be in the CIA and go to Moscow to spy on the Russians to see if they had any dastardly plans to turn American churches into cattle barns and storehouses for grain and things, but he doesn't do that any more? What made him stop? I mean, isn't the threat from communism just as bad? Isn't it possible the Russians will one day turn all American schoolchildren into rampant communists who are only too keen to chase the pastors away from all the churches, and will refuse to obey their parents? The CIA have to make it stop! They need all the help they can get! Surely?'
"Vigilante said, 'DJ says he had fun beating up commies and thieves from this forum in the Vietnam War with me.'
"I joked, 'Wow, you were both in the Vietnam War? You must both be about 60 years old now then!'
"Vigilante said, 'Actually that's not our age. Thanks to a few experiments conducted with the knowledge of NATO, well we managed to keep young for some time, so now we are kinda about 3000 years old or maybe even more. ... Well it's less than your age. I've heard that you could be up to a million years old.'
"I joked, 'Yes, actually I'm a few hundred thousand years old. I used to go around the caves of early humans whispering mischievous things in their ears, having lots of fun. I was there when the Egyptians built the pyramids. They built them out of wood at first, but I thought it would be fun to persuade someone to put loads of termites in them to eat the wood. Well, they ate it faster than I imagined they would, so the pyramids collapsed. That's why they decided to rebuild them out of stone. They were determined they weren't going to be destroyed this time.'
"Vigilante told me to guess his and DJ's ages. I joked, 'Well I've heard that the Vietnam War ended in 1975. So at the least you must be 35. You must have gone there to fight when you were only about six months old, before you could even walk or even crawl! I can imagine what the headlines must have been like:
"Bullet-proof nappy saves the day for baby soldier". "So young he has to be carried into battle, but the enemy have to be carried out". "All your fears about kids playing with guns have come true. While other babies are at home playing with rattles, this one shoots people for fun". "He'll bayonet an enemy, then he'll be back to mum for a nappy change and a feed". "Military getting desperate! Now they make babies who are too young to even talk do their fighting!" "If this six-month-old baby can fight so well, mothers, you've got no excuse not to send your own babies into battle!"
"DJ said, 'Actually, I was twelve. You see, it happened when I put My Life On The Line for my nation. Then I discovered too late that I'd gone and put my life on the neighbours' washing line by mistake. And horror of horrors, they were just about to use that washing line for a game of tug-of-war! As the rope was pulled, it stretched. And my poor life which was on it stretched as well. So now, what would be ten years in your life would only be one in mine.'
"I said, 'That's good. It means you'll still be alive in 500 years' time. How about trying to invent a time machine and going forward in time about 300 years? Then you can try and meet up with your older self and ask him what's been going on in the last few hundred years. Then you can come back here and tell us what's going to happen in the world. Or you could send your older self back here while you stay in the future and have yet another 500 years to live.
"He said he wouldn't do that, and I said, 'You mean you're not going to make a time machine? I think it would be great if you did. You could go forward a couple of centuries, and bring me back some chocolate from the 23rd century! I wonder if they'll have new and interesting kinds of chocolate then, or whether they'll still be doing the same stuff they do now. I wonder what new things they might think up. Perhaps the best thing of all would be chocolate a person could eat as much as they liked of without getting fat. Actually, have a go at inventing that for me yourself, will you? See if you can get it done by the end of the year so I can have it for Christmas. Thanks.'
"Then Vigilante said, 'Oh no! I forgot to tell you, DJ hates chocolate. I don't know the full story, but it seems one of our buddies got poisoned with a bar of chocolate. He was French, a dear friend and a brave soldier - an asset to his country. Somehow DJ never got over it. I guessed that because he shot the guy who gifted the chocolate in the head with a rifle.
"'As for the time machine, the thing is, NATO has close tabs on anyone leaking out info these days, so even us trusted veterans must keep hush hush; but I can tell you from what they have found out during research that a German has already built a time machine 205 years in the future, and he's trying to come back in time to help Hitler win World War Two. It's a war of time.
"'And also another thing they've found is that the future is not as pleasant as it is now(well at least comparatively). Nuclear waste has increased, and there's nowhere to dump it, so they've built toxic dump sites. Humans mutate extra arms and legs. It's not a pleasant site. Our doom approaches unless we can rectify our past actions.'
"I said, 'Yikes! Still, I think there are a few people around like that now. Have you noticed there are some people on this board who seem to manage to post in about six threads all at the same time? Or at least surprisingly quickly one after the other. Spooky!
"'The only explanation I can think of is that they have about six pairs of hands! Actually it's possible they have even more. How do we know they're not doing the washing-up, chatting on the phone, chopping vegetables, mowing the lawn, climbing up a ladder to clean the windows on the outside of their houses, buttering bread, building sandcastles in a sand pit, and driving a car, all at the exact same time as they're posting here? That's even more spooky! Maybe they have about twenty pairs of hands, and spookier still, about ten bodies, all joined together with loads of elastic! Perhaps they're so scary and clever they can be in about six or seven places at once! That would mean they could be hiding under someone's bed and in their kitchen across the other side of their house at the same time, at the exact time they're posting several things on the forum! Scary!'
"DJ put some kind of mathematical babbling on the forum, asking me to define the difference between possibility and probability, and I joked, 'How dare you use such vulgar mathematical principles to analyse something I said! You're supposed to be using them to invent me something ingenious, remember! If not a time machine, then how about inventing me a sun trapping machine, which sucks up excess sun in the summer and lets it out over my head when the sun begins to retreat behind clouds, so there's always enough sun for me, just when I want it? You'll do that? Good. Thanks. Soon, I hope. Can I expect it in a week or two?'
"Then I said, 'Anyway, I can now declare with certainty that there are in fact people around with many more fingers, toes, hands and bodies than those we're familiar with even now. This morning, I was reminded of that when I heard a song on the radio called Hazard by Richard Marx. One line of it goes, "A man with a badge came knocking one morning; there was I surrounded by a thousand fingers suddenly pointed right at me!" So there we have it: A man with a thousand fingers! I wonder how many more people like that there are in America! It must have been a scary sight; no wonder the song writer wanted to go and jump in the river, or whatever he wanted to do there!'
"DJ objected to my objection to his mathematical question, and asked me out. I joked, 'How could we go out together when we live half a world away from each other? Are you going to invent a couple of mini robots, one representing you and the other one representing me, and then program them to act out dates on our behalf? Very technical of you!
"'Anyway, does that mean you won't invent the sun trapping device for me? That's a great pity, since if you could have got it finished this afternoon, it would have come in very handy. There was some glorious sunshine outside, but some nasty clouds have come up and obscured it. Could you come over here in a flying machine and chase them all away for me? Thanks. Perhaps you have some kind of cloud-busting gun that'll smash them to smithereens? I hope so. They think they can get away with blocking out the sun whenever they like around here! I'll go out with you if you can have them all smashed to bits within the next hour or so.'
"DJ said, 'Now what on earth do you mean by "flying machines"? Dont you know that only birds can - oh, one moment - I know what you mean! You're talking about those big, big monsters that go "BRRRR! BRRR!" in the sky, right? Yes, I remember now, I've heard of them too! They're called "aeroplanes"! Silly name, isn't it?'
"I replied, 'I'm disappointed in you, DJ! You must know as well as I do that conventional aeroplanes do not chase clouds away. They have no capacity to do such a thing. No, I meant a special cloud-chasing little flying machine I expect you to invent. But it's too late; the deadline's passed now. I said I'd go out with you if you could have the clouds smashed within the hour. But we still have clouds! You are a miserable failure! Just admit it: Your ability to invent new technology within an hour of when it's ordered is simply abysmal! In fact it's non-existent. And I would have married you if you'd been good at that!'
"Then Vigilante said, 'Hey DJ, why the hell did you remove that cloud cover? I'm on a tropical island, and you go removing clouds with that "you know what"! What the hell? I'm getting grilled Here! The things some people do to please others.'
"I said, 'Wow, thanks for getting rid of all those clouds for me, DJ. Better late than never. It's a lovely sunny day now. The trouble is, the wretches will keep coming back. Do you think you could come around here and hover over the place every day this summer in your cloud-busting machine and get rid of them for me? Thanks.
"'Could you work out how to make clouds as well as busting them though? It seems Vigilante wants some. It'll be good if you can deliver them right over his head. I think he'd like that. Hey Vigilante, if he dropped clouds all over you, you really could call that cloud cover.'
"Then I said, 'Unfortunately, it seems I wrote my last post in a burst of mad optimism. I thought the clouds had gone, but it turned out they'd only gone for 90 seconds or so. DJ's cloud busting machine looks promising, but I think he needs to make it more powerful.'"
The students laughed.
Then after a short pause in the conversation, the one who'd been talking before about dictators said, "I don't want to depress you all some more, but are you interested in hearing any more about dictators?"
Some of the students said they were. So the one talking carried on, "Lots of really sick stuff goes on, like aid agencies wanting to help countries after cyclones and tsunamis, but governments insisting the aid's handed over to them, and then using it to make themselves rich, while lots of people in their countries die, or getting money in other ways, like insisting charities pay absolutely massive import duties if they want to bring truckloads of aid into the countries to help people, and refusing to let the trucks in till the massive tax has been paid, which might take ages if a charity needs to raise the money.
"And there have been really severe floods in some countries that have killed lots of people and left millions of people homeless, and governments have organised flood protection projects, building dikes to stop rivers flooding towns and other areas, but they've been built in such a way as to protect the areas their backers live in, while leaving poor areas with a lot of opposition supporters and ethnic minorities in them to still flood; and then the floods there can be all the worse, because the rivers contain all the water that would have flooded the areas where the rich government supporters lived as well as the water that would have still flooded the other areas if the dikes hadn't been built. It's possible that causing worse flooding there can be deliberate. I read that that happened in Pakistan.
"It might not have just been favouritism that made the government do that, but also a kind of emotional blackmail; when the government supporters saw how opposition areas were treated, it would have been a strong incentive for them to stay loyal to the government. A lot of international aid was given to the government to help with the project; but it became clear that it wasn't being used efficiently to benefit everyone, or so I've read.
"And after a government's got lots of aid to deal with a disaster, things can get worse in the long term, because governments can enjoy using the aid money they've siphoned off from it so much that they've got an extra incentive not to fix things properly, because they know that once they do, they won't get any more aid to help with future problems of the same kind, because they won't be so bad, such as if houses that were damaged by an earthquake are replaced with sturdier ones that can stand up against them. As long as there's still a problem, they'll know they'll get more aid when the next disaster strikes. And the worse the disaster is, the more aid they'll get.
"It seems it was like that with America's so-called War on Terror too; Osama Bin Laden was hiding out in a remote area of Pakistan, and according to something I read, America gave the Pakistani government loads of aid money to help try to find him, but they knew that if they were successful, the aid money would stop. So they had an incentive to look as if they were trying, but fail.
"Tyrannical presidents and people like that don't entirely do that kind of thing because they're nasty, but also because they need to pay the strongmen who keep them in power.
"I read that it's been recommended that instead of paying the governments of other countries to help find terrorists, and even to help people when natural disasters strike, governments could promise them aid, and put money aside to give them, which will only be given to them if they fix the problems well, so it'll be an incentive for them to do that. I'm not sure how well that would work in poor countries where there isn't all that much money to help people; but maybe a lot of the governments in those places have masses of money squirrelled away in secret bank accounts that they could use if they really had to, and thought they'd get the money back if they did. I don't really know. Perhaps they could sometimes get the money if they could show they were making impressive efforts to work towards solving the problems or something. I don't know enough about this stuff to know if that would really work though.
"But what I read said that if they were promised a certain amount of aid but told it would be spread over a certain number of years once they'd fixed the problem, then tyrannical governments would no longer have an incentive to make sure problems didn't get fixed properly so they'd know they could get a lot more aid money when a disaster struck again.
"I don't think it would always work, since there must be governments that genuinely haven't got the money to fix things properly. But maybe in some cases it would work.
"Having said all that though, I expect there are still a lot of aid schemes that have done a lot of good, like I said before.
"Some democratic governments have an incentive to support dictators in preference to democracies though if the dictators have policies that are unpopular in their own countries but they're good for the democratic governments or their supporters, - policies that wouldn't be so likely to be followed by democratic governments that were more constrained to do what their people wanted if they wanted to stay in power. I'll give you an example of what kinds of things I mean in a minute.
"Democratic leaders have actually been deposed and dictators put in their places in coups organised by democratic countries like America, because they thought the democratic governments' policies were bad for their business and other interests, and there were men who wanted to be dictators there who'd create conditions that were good for them instead, like in Guatemala in Central America in the 1950s, where a massive American fruit company used to employ lots of people they paid very low wages, owning lots of land that they hardly paid any tax on. A new Guatemalan president wanted to redistribute land to a lot of very poor peasant farmers so they could make a better living. They would have been able to produce more food for the country on it too, since the fruit company wasn't doing anything with that land at the time.
"But that involved buying it cheaply from this company, and they really didn't like it, even though the land that was bought, - or I think it was confiscated and then they were offered compensation for it - wasn't actually being cultivated at the time, for some reason.
"According to some articles I read, in the first part of the 20th century, Guatemala, and I think some other countries in the area, had dictatorships that were supported by America because they made it easy for American big businesses to make a lot of money in their countries. Of course, big businesses employing people there wasn't a problem in itself, but working conditions and low wages could be.
"I read that in Guatemala, one president pretty much made a lot of people work for this fruit company, that used to bribe the presidents there to make laws that favoured them, even when they made things hard for ordinary people. It seems conditions for workers in the country had always been horrible, especially since the Spanish had conquered countries in the area, and this fruit company actually improved things a bit, by giving people basic education and providing a bit of healthcare, and giving their workers housing. But they didn't actually pay them with money, but vouchers they couldn't spend anywhere but in shops owned by the company. Actually, I've heard that kind of thing was common in a lot of places, sometimes where things were more expensive to buy in shops owned by the companies the people had to buy things from.
"But in the 1940s, there was this popular uprising in Guatemala that ended with a president being democratically elected who wanted to try to eliminate poverty in the country, it seems, and he wanted to redistribute land so very poor people could make a living from a lot of it. The president who was elected after him actually did that. This American fruit company had declared before that the land they held wasn't worth much, so as to evade having to pay anywhere near as much tax on it as they would have done if they'd declared its true value. A previous president had maybe accepted that in return for a big bribe or something. I don't understand all that much about it; but it seems from what I've read that the new government offered to pay the fruit company what they'd claimed the land was worth for it, and they rejected the offer because they knew it was really worth a lot more.
"The company convinced the American government that the government in Guatemala was a threat, trying to convince them it was spreading communism, which was seen as a real threat to Western governments at the time. Some of the Guatemalan government leaders did have communist sympathies, it seems, although they weren't communists themselves. But it seems they really did want to make things better for a lot of poor people in their country.
"From what I've read, it seems that the fruit company first wanted to launch a coup in the country so they could get their land back in the early 1950s when some people in the American government were opposed to the idea, so they couldn't persuade them to support it. But then a new government came to power in America, with quite a few people who had masses of shares in the company or were even more involved, some having relatives with high-up positions in it, I think, and they agreed to it, so it went ahead. The government in Guatemala was overthrown in favour of a dictatorship that would give the land back to the company, and it led to about fifty years of really vicious civil war.
"I don't suppose the people who plotted to coup could have known it would do that; but you'd have thought that if they actually cared about civilians, they'd have been a bit concerned that it might be a possibility, so they would have been more cautious about launching the coup, and tried to negotiate with the Guatemalan government instead. I don't know all that much about what happened. But it does seem as if they were quite ruthless when they launched the coup.
"And then it seems America supported the new dictatorship they put in power, as it went on to cruelly crush people who rose up against it, and any civilians who happened to be in the way.
"I would have thought that it would have made more sense and been a lot more humane if the American government could have told the president of Guatemala who was trying to make things better for poor people that they didn't think it was acceptable for him to have paid such a low price for the company's land, and offered to negotiate and come to some kind of compromise.
"I mean, they might have thought that compromise wouldn't do, because, say, if the company was allowed to hold on to its land but the Guatemalan government ordered that the wages of anyone they employed on it would have to rise as part of the compromise, it would mean their products would become more expensive, since they wouldn't be able to afford to pay their workers more or give them more vouchers for things without people paying more in the shops for what they were producing, since the money for them would have to have come from somewhere.
"But I bet if they'd tried, they could have come to some kind of agreement where wages could be put up to a level that would have made the lives of the workers better, but wouldn't have made the price of the fruit increase so much it would have put loads of people off buying it. That would have been especially if they'd run a PR campaign that had convinced the people who were buying the fruit that the price increases meant the people working to harvest it were getting more money that they could spend on healthcare and education for their children, and things to make their lives more comfortable and enjoyable, so it would seem as if the extra money people were going to have to pay was a bit like giving to a good cause.
"I mean, I think a lot of people like to buy fair trade products, even though they're often more expensive, because they're told it benefits the people who produce them more than buying products that aren't fair trade does. I mean, the government that ordered the coup in Guatemala might have been living before fair trade brands became a thing, but they still must have known it was possible to get people enthusiastic about donating to good causes, so I would have thought that if they'd just had a bit more imagination, they could have had a go at putting some kind of scheme into operation where prices might have increased a bit, but where people would be told what kinds of improvements were being made to people's lives as a result.
"Prices might not have had to increase that much to make a real difference to people's lives; I mean, I don't know, but the cost of living's often a lot cheaper in places like that than in developed countries, as far as I know, so it might not have taken that much of a wage rise for really poor people to have been able to afford things that would have made quite a big difference to their lives.
"Or if the company didn't want to use the land for some time, maybe an agreement could have been reached where they could have loaned it out for years to people who could have made use of it, like the poor people the Guatemalan government had wanted to redistribute it to in the first place.
"I mean, I don't really know; but I bet they could have thought of some non-violent solution if they'd wanted to!
"I think that wasn't the first time America had sparked off a war to protect the interests of big business, and probably not the last.
"And one reason why so many people want to leave countries in Central America and get into the USA is because of poverty and violent conditions made worse in some of those countries because of that kind of thing.
"I read that in quite a few countries in Central America in the early 20th century, the American government sent the military in to deal with rebellions, and even just strikes where people were protesting about bad working conditions and very low wages in big American businesses that employed lots of people there. I don't know much about it though.
"But anyway, all that just shows you that governments can do things that are really inhumane. And they often won't tell their people what they're really doing.
"But it's not just because they supported big business that the American government did that kind of thing, but also I think because they knew their people wanted cheap fruit and oil, and they thought that if it became a lot more expensive under their watch, they'd be more likely to lose power at the next election. If they'd seen that there was major support for developing countries, and if they'd found out that the majority of people in America were willing to suck up the extra expenses caused by policies that would have helped poor people, maybe they would have thought twice about trying to depose democratic governments in favour of ones that allowed big business to pay their people really low wages so their products would be cheaper, although most people in America probably didn't even know what was going on.
"Apparently, to disguise the fact that they were behind the coup in Guatemala, the American government got the CIA to recruit army officers from Guatemala itself to do most of the fighting in the coup.
"I think American governments often supported dictators in power as well when it meant some policy of theirs at the time was supported by the dictators, such as not developing close relations with Russia, while the Cold War was going on."
One student said, "You know, when I hear about stuff like government policies leading to horrible wars, I can find it so depressing, it makes me want to drink alcohol to try and soothe myself! Other depressing things make me want to do that as well. I'd never make it as a doctor, having to deal with horrible injuries and diseases all day!
"I hope my feelings don't get worse with age! Imagine if I eventually couldn't stand to even hear the news without drinking! Imagine if every time I heard the news, I just had to drink some alcohol, and I was working somewhere where someone insisted on putting the news on a few times a day! If I drove to work sometimes, I'd have to ask for a lift home, or go home by train or something, and leave my car there, so as not to drink and drive. I suppose if I kept asking the person who put the news on to drive me home, saying it had depressed me into drinking so I couldn't drive myself, they might eventually get so fed up of giving me a lift they'd stop wanting the news on. I suppose that would be one upside of drinking at work at least! ... That's if I hadn't been sacked by then for making too many drunken mistakes!
"Imagine if I was working in a computer company, writing code for new computer programs, and in a drunken state, I accidentally wrote code that made people's computers crash, or reformat their entire computers, or download and automatically play podcasts about the best way to grow beans or something when they opened one of the programs! And imagine if no one found out till customers bought the programs and it started happening! ... Well, maybe the company would test them before they sold them. But imagine how bad my excuse would sound, when I had to tell the boss that I did it because I was depressed about having to hear the news!"
The students sniggered.
Then another one said, "On an Internet forum I used to post on, someone once said that when you hear about anti-American protests, or anti-British protests or whatever, the people protesting aren't really anti the ordinary people, but they're against things the leaders of their countries do, or have done."
One of the students grinned and joked, "Does that mean that when you hear about people in places like Iran burning American flags and yelling 'Death to America!' over and over again, it's just short-hand for things like, 'Death to those politicians and CIA members - who, come to think of it, are probably already dead actually, - who arranged a coup that deposed a leader who could have turned Iran into a great place for lots of its ordinary people in the early 1950s!'?"
They smiled.
Then one of them said, "I had a rant on a forum not long ago about how America seemed to be a bit barbaric for invading places like Iraq. Then I thought I might have gone a bit over-the-top; so I wrote another post where I made a joke that said,
"'Ouch; sorry about the American-bashing I did in my previous post. I must get out of the habit of doing that when I'm annoyed. I hope to succeed, but it'll be a bit difficult, due to the fact that it's caused by a genetic mutation that makes people want to bash America - a recent evolutionary advance, spreading quickly across Europe and other areas of the world. It's actually a great pity. When they can locate it on the genome, perhaps they can discover how to switch it off. If they can't, it'll spread and spread, so even if America turns into a peaceful nation for the next few thousand years that only does good in the world, people will still feel compelled to bash it.
"'They won't understand why they want to. They just will. In fact, the genetic mutation is so sophisticated that it doesn't just give people a vague urge to Bash America - it makes them want to say specific things, like about how the invasion of Iraq's a bad thing, and how it seems Ronald Reagan was a sociopath. (I don't know much about Ronald Reagan myself, because he was before my time; but from what I've heard, he had policies that really disadvantaged a lot of poor people in his country, and he ordered the invasion of some countries he thought were too communist for his liking or something.) But in several thousand years' time, people all over the world will be ranting about how terrible it is that America's just invaded Iraq, and how awful it is that Americans elected the seemingly sociopathic Ronald Reagan as their president a couple of decades ago, when America won't have invaded Iraq for thousands of years, and no one will have ever heard of Ronald Reagan apart from ancient historians. Yes, this genetic mutation will make people say all kinds of strange things!'"
The others giggled.
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