Wikipedia article of the day

[Cyborg Girl]

So, this film is based on actual real events in Bosnia and Herzegovina:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Whistleblower

where a US military contractor payed sex traffickers for their services, and the UN did jack and shit about it.

I'll let you guys draw your own conclusions.

[Rommie]

My conclusion is people in power can abuse that power if given the discretion to do so. Not new, unfortunately.

[FZR1KG]

Yeah, pretty much.
Certain people tend to be cruel no matter what status they hold in society.
They higher up they go, the more impact they get to have.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Had never heard of the incident. Absolutely disgusting. The whole thing.

[SciFiFisher]

Sadly, many of the people who pay for sex with what amounts to a sexual slave don't realize that they are not having true consensual sex with a person who is willingly participating.

And some people don't want to know. Because it's easier to pretend that the prostitute is a willing participant who enjoys the work.

[Cyborg Girl]

@Fisher: agreed, willful ignorance is the root of a lot of evil. I'm not sure that's all that was going on there though, because (unless I'm reading it wrong?) DynCorp employees were not just johns, but were involved in the trafficking and knew what was going on.

Likewise corruption by power. The astounding thing to me here is that only a few people managed not to be wholly corrupted. I mean, I know doing the right thing can be hard, but... not a peep? Seriously? I realize peer pressure is also astoundingly powerful, but you generally don't expect a large number of functional adults to turn into amoral puppets like that, especially when their job revolves around ethical concepts.

OTOH I wonder what the command structure within DynCorp was like. Likewise within the part of the UN involved. Just guessing, but I wonder if there was some level of "command hierarchy making people feel absolved of responsibility" going on.

(i.e. "I'll just tell my boss and let it go up the chain of command, problem solved, not my responsibility." Or more going the other way, "My boss tells me it's not a problem, sounds like things are okay then." IIRC this is common when war crimes are committed, and I don't see why it couldn't apply to nonmilitary organizations.)

[FZR1KG]

Or they employ people with a certain profile, being more towards apathetic/sociopath who's goal is basically company loyalty is number one because I'll get rewarded.

[Cyborg Girl]

@FZ: it would be nice to believe that, but I don't think it's adequate to explain what happened there, especially with the UN involvement.

[FZR1KG]

Just because you're in the UN doesn't mean you are clean.
I just tend to think that people that are corrupt generally climb to the top more often than those who aren't.
They don't have to play by the same rules so naturally get there quicker.
Doesn't mean everyone, just that it tends to go that way.
Call it corporate evolution.

[Cyborg Girl]

My own experience is that the "comforting" explanation for something is usually the wrong one, but YMMV...

[FZR1KG]

It's not that comforting at all. It's probably one of the most dark ideas around.
Those that are morally corrupt tend to accumulate at the top.
The rest of humanity looks up to those at the top due to conditioning.
As an example, look at how Steve Jobs was revered yet was probably one of the most influencing sociopaths of the modern age.
Net result is that those that get high up and are morally corrupt start to corrupt those below them.
And so on.
Corruption works on opportunity.
When you are a peacekeeper or a soldier you have far more opportunity to do more human harm than someone in say an office at Walmart.
It says little about a person by what they have done at the lower levels because it's opportunity that defines how much they would do given the chance.

Think of it this way, in an office, things go missing, like paperwork, or equipment. Those in the right positions can profit from that directly or indirectly.
When your position has you deciding life or death, then losing a person here or there for your own personal advantage, is for them the same thing as losing or gaining office equipment for a person in Walmart.
It's why police and military corruption are usually really nasty at the personal level.
It's also why corruption at the political level is so widely impacting negatively on those that they are meant to be serving.
And the reason many countries go to war. When you control a large army and have a lot of equipment, the opportunity is there.
All it takes is the wrong person to abuse it. See Russia present day as an example.
See many cases of the USA in the past for more.

[Cyborg Girl]

Well yeah, it is a pretty grim view overall, but I meant on a personal level: "Corruption couldn't possibly happen to me, I'm not that sort of person! The really corrupt people were all born sociopaths." But in a lot of cases they're not.

Generally I feel like avoiding corruption is more a matter of dumb luck and prior conditioning than anything else. Certainly not biology, and even people with rigorously ethical backgrounds and training can show creeping amorality. I know that, day to day, my own thinking is influenced very heavily and unavoidably by my environment. I have no reason to believe that rule doesn't extend to others (and indeed lots of experimental data backs that up).

My personal hypothesis that we all have thresholds of personal power, beyond which corruption is inevitable. Maybe higher for some people, maybe lower for others, but always there. A more ideal society would try to limit any one person's power over others, in order to keep them below their threshold.

Easier said than done obviously. But when I consider that royalty and nobility have been in charge through the bulk of human history, it seems to me that maybe we're making progress... Or at least were for a while.

[SciFiFisher]

It actually wouldn't have involved "everyone" in the group. Just a few well placed ones. The average dynacorp worker wouldn't have a clue that the girls weren't willing participants. The usual panacea is to tell those who don't know that they hire the girls away from a life that is "worse". A PR story or two about how the girls are hired from object poverty, rescued from families that only want males, and saved from a life time of back breaking labor "down on the farm" usually suffices. You train the girls to repeat similar stories in case anyone asks.

The few with morals and ethics who do find out are usually threatened with losing their jobs and kicked to the curb in a foreign (possibly hostile) country. If they are "fired for cause" the contract usually says they have to pay their own way home to boot. Plus, the prospect of being blacklisted for life.

You don't have to be a sociopath or even a self centered narcissist when faced with that kind of pressure. It's a very rare person who doesn't fold and just keep their mouth shut.

[Yosh]

So, this film is based on actual real events in Bosnia and Herzegovina:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Whistleblower

where a US military contractor payed sex traffickers for their services, and the UN did jack and shit about it.

I'll let you guys draw your own conclusions.

Hell, UN Peacekeepers have been caught sex trafficking in Africa, including kids.

Doesn't make the first instance right or better. Just means that, alas, it ain't really news.

[squ1d]

Geez, if the UN aren't careful they'll end up as bad as the Catholic church

[FZR1KG]

Many years of catching up to do there.

[Rommie]

Geez, if the UN aren't careful they'll end up as bad as the Catholic church

Been reading a book about the genocide in Rwanda lately (yeah, I know, just a little light reading on weird topics). Let's just say I'm pretty sure they've been there the past 20 years.

[Sigma_Orionis]

What I found the most infuriating about the Rwandan debacle is Koffi Annan's bland response to it.

[Rommie]

What I found the most infuriating about the Rwandan debacle is Koffi Annan's bland response to it.

Yeah, my opinion of him has definitely decreased very dramatically after reading this book. It wasn't just that he was a politician who didn't quite realize the issues- he was in the fucking office where the UN troops were sending in faxes detailing the massacres and how they just needed authority to use their weapons, and he essentially put them in a drawer and didn't let it come up for a vote. Fucking asshole.

[SciFiFisher]

What I found the most infuriating about the Rwandan debacle is Koffi Annan's bland response to it.

Yeah, my opinion of him has definitely decreased very dramatically after reading this book. It wasn't just that he was a politician who didn't quite realize the issues- he was in the fucking office where the UN troops were sending in faxes detailing the massacres and how they just needed authority to use their weapons, and he essentially put them in a drawer and didn't let it come up for a vote. Fucking asshole.

He did something about this.

The UN has designated 7 April as international day of reflection on the genocide.

Mr Annan announced he was backing a call from the Rwandan government for the world to observe a minute of silence to remember the victims and resolve to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again.

What more do you want from a politician?

[Sigma_Orionis]

What more do you want from a politician?

To fall on his sword for being a spineless bureaucrat who ignored genocide as not "to make waves"

[FZR1KG]

What I found the most infuriating about the Rwandan debacle is Koffi Annan's bland response to it.

"Pfft. It was only about 800,000 balck people and not one of them had the decency to offer me a bribe. wtf???"

[Cyborg Girl]

And another:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_My_Life

God! I try to avoid thinking of human beings as evil, but there are some incredibly evil people in this world. How can they even think of doing such things to other humans, let alone to children?

[SciFiFisher]

And another:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_My_Life

God! I try to avoid thinking of human beings as evil, but there are some incredibly evil people in this world. How can they even think of doing such things to other humans, let alone to children?

empathy. or rather the lack of empathy. For those who are truly evil there is no sense that what they are doing is wrong. Because what they want to do is not wrong.