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Mogadishu

le bossman

I just stumbled across this in Flickr. I don't know who took them, but pretty wild.

http://flickr.com/photos/ctsnow/sets/72157600871632748/

 
Apr 14, 08 10:12 am
med.

Damn it looks like it could have been a nice capital if people there were such crazies.

I noticed that for such an embattled war-torn capital, the streets are mighty clean... Baghdad was/is practically a shithole.

Apr 14, 08 10:47 am  · 
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le bossman

yeah, it actually looks like a really beautiful place.

Apr 14, 08 11:13 am  · 
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Apurimac

despite the suspicious lack of people... looks like a ghost town to me.

But that water!

Apr 14, 08 11:25 am  · 
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med.

I hope the people there are proud to see such a potentially beautiful place turn into such a bullet-ridden, bombed out, embarrassment to humanity.

Civil wars are so stupid (the term is an oxymoron in itself). You would think that after so much history and so many examples and precedents, people would have learned their lesson...

Apr 14, 08 11:30 am  · 
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le bossman

do you notice though that every single building has been shelled? there must be no end for these people.

Apr 14, 08 11:45 am  · 
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med.

eXACTLY. i HOPE ......

Oops I forgot to hit the CAPS lock button from using CAD...

Exactly. I hope they are now officially proud of themselves.

Apr 14, 08 12:03 pm  · 
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chupacabra

I am sure there are plenty of Somalis that did not want it to happen, war is not something you can blame with a large brush washed over a whole society...it is a tad more complex than that.

Are you culpable for everything that has happened in your country?

Amazing images.

Apr 14, 08 12:06 pm  · 
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farwest1

The last photo says it all: delapidated jeep filled with guys in flipflops and ragged clothing, but with MASSIVE firepower.

Apr 14, 08 12:35 pm  · 
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brian buchalski

i'm assuming that everybody has seen the blackhawk down movie. mogadishu looked like an absolute nightmare...relentless waves of poor people with guns. very scary.

Apr 14, 08 12:43 pm  · 
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Man, for such a "war-torn" city the images provide a beautiful counterpoint. A very old looking, walkable coastal city...
If the fightin would stop imagine the possibilities for re-building.

Apr 14, 08 1:45 pm  · 
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xtbl

what a shame.

great images, though. i can almost imagine those buildings and streetscapes intact. almost.

Apr 14, 08 1:48 pm  · 
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med.

jasoncross, that's fine and dandy but we're probably just talking about a FEW people and they probably were all killed or left by now.


puddles, that was just an American movie. Situations like that should never be judged in appallingly simplistic ways.



namhenderson, a city like that requires people who CARE first.

Apr 14, 08 1:52 pm  · 
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le bossman

archmed, no offense man but isn't just saying "i hope they are happy with themselves" a pretty simplistic way way of judging the situation as well? i'm sure it was a complex series of issues which led to the decline, especially considering this was once a european colony. i know little about it but would assume it to be the classic post-colonial issue, where the europeans drew lines that essentially ignored tribal sentiments.

Apr 14, 08 2:06 pm  · 
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brian buchalski

archmed, i could actually careless about the "situation"...but that movie scared the shit out me. i do my best to avoid poor people now.

Apr 14, 08 2:19 pm  · 
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med.

bossman, I understand it's more complicated. It was just easy to say. when I went back to visit my own third-world shithole county of origin that's how I described it.

Back to the photographs, they are truly amazing and like I said it's too bad that a place with such potential could be treated like that.

puddles, I agree I can't stand bums. That's why I've made a moratorium to stay away from the "third world."

Apr 14, 08 2:44 pm  · 
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4arch

I am always impressed with how daring people in third world countries tend to be with cast in place concrete structures compared to those of us in the "first" world.

Apr 14, 08 4:32 pm  · 
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le bossman

my response to that is only that many of the daring in-situ structures you see, especially in this series of images, are fifty years old. there are lots of older cip concrete structures in the first world, but in terms of new construction we've simply moved on. concrete shells and so on really were a post-war thing. and labor prices are generally too high in the first world for really nice cast concrete anyway, with high-end stuff by calatrava being an exception of course.

Apr 14, 08 4:41 pm  · 
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lletdownl

judging from the caption of this picture... this set of pictures was taken in the mid 90's. i wonder what picture of Mogadishu look like today. Likely not much better, unfortunately it seems not much progress has been made there since.

Apr 14, 08 4:43 pm  · 
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4arch

There is still a lot of cip being done here for less than high-end projects, at least for skeletal structure and slabs, but we tend to obscure it behind any cladding/finish materials we can get our hands on. In any third world city they tend to just let that shoddy concrete stay exposed (probably because the budget doesn't allow otherwise) and there is something I find appealing about that.

Apr 14, 08 5:03 pm  · 
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med.

lletdown, probably exactly like that but with more bullet holes and perhaps some satellite dishes.

The civil war was re-ignited in 2006.

Would it really kill people to live together? I live in the same building with an Orthodox Jewish family, a bunch of hardcore evangelical Christian people, a bunch of atheists, and a Buddhist. I'm sure each and every one of us have different political predilections too. But you don't see us bombing one another.

Apr 14, 08 5:20 pm  · 
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lletdownl

thats probably cause you have things... like enough food, clean water, a visible future, a relatively stable neighborhood, obviously access to internet which means access to computers and likely good education, and health care etc etc etc...

"Would it really kill people to live together? I live in the same building with an Orthodox Jewish family, a bunch of hardcore evangelical Christian people, a bunch of atheists, and a Buddhist. I'm sure each and every one of us have different political predilections too. But you don't see us bombing one another."

thats one of the silliest things iver read in a long time archmed... i hope youre joking

Apr 14, 08 5:26 pm  · 
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med.

Being cynical like in the rest of the thread is you've read it.

Apr 14, 08 5:33 pm  · 
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lletdownl

probably too quick to jump on stuff like that, it irks me... my appologies if you were indeed joking

Apr 14, 08 5:35 pm  · 
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le bossman

maybe this is naive, but i think all societies go through phases. in all likelyhood, los angeles may look like mogadishu in 700 years. mogadishu may look like sao paolo. who knows? rome has looked like this several times.

Apr 14, 08 5:44 pm  · 
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le bossman

4arch don't you think though that cip concrete is also not very well suited to colder climates where most first world nations are? generally you have to thermally break it with something. yeah, we still build cip structures, but the concrete is usually protected from the elements, unless it is a parking garage.

Apr 14, 08 6:50 pm  · 
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****melt

le bossman - Thanks for sharing those photos. They are hauntingly beautiful. I tend to agree with you, although I know little about the region, it wouldn't surprise me at all if it all came back to the issue that colonialism oftentimes drew arbitrary lines in the sand without ever taking into consideration the will of the people. The only question I have is how long will it take for them to figure it all out. Hell, how long did it take the former Yugoslavia to figure it out?

Apr 14, 08 8:33 pm  · 
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Renewable

Looks like South Beach in 1995

Apr 14, 08 8:39 pm  · 
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sameolddoctor

i think the US should sell more arms to the warlords. Anyone seen the movie 'Lord of War'?

Apr 14, 08 9:03 pm  · 
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