In this thread: Liberal hypocrits luxuriate in their 'caring' about people they do nothing to help. Indeed, when challenged, they sarcastically say they are flying over with their AK47 to take care of business.

lulz

Fiedler, you are so amazingly unintelligent and unimaginative, it boggles the mind. I have said before and will say again that I am doing what I can, but I do not air it like some kind of laundry list to brag over on this forum. I think that would reflect poorly on me so I don't do it.

But rest assured - words have real, physical results. Words and thoughts are also actions themselves.

People who essentially argue against caring about problems in Africa - exemplified in this thread by fiedler, invictus, trprado - are the reason that Africa gets unfairly ignored - because their narrative is one of "they don't matter, there's nothing we can do to help them, it's natural not to care about people who are so miserable and so far."

It's disgusting. It's literally disgusting to watch people try to insinuate that someone should not care about other human beings.

All these shouts of hypocrisy, all this mocking of "the college freshman" - and little else.

Are you all so cynical that you care nothing at all for human beings? You're being so utterly crass. Rather than spare even just a "useless" word or feeling, you instead mock that anyone might care at all. Sad. You're what makes this a sad world.

Nope. Grow up.

The shit I am talking about isn't going away. Sorry to disrupt your wavelengths and rile up your cynical side, but the world is really bad for some people, and not everyone is willing to check out and become numb to it. So you're going to have to keep hearing about it. Maybe you feel nothing, but you should get out of the way if you don't and let the rest of us act like human beings should.

I hope you enjoy the miserable isolation of pride.

Go Thucy! What a pompous fuckwit. Enjoy your delusional interpretation of what I have written. Actually you illustrate perfectly the point I am trying to make - all your talk about the tragic goings on in exotic parts of the world is all about making yourself feel morally superior. Pro tip: you're not.

Jesus take a look at what you have written - and seek metal help.

@Thucy,

"You're what makes this a sad world."

You believe everybody is one, though; so really, you mean *you're* what makes this a sad world.

Again, please don't be so hard on yourself, Thucy.

"This whole narrative of "they are thousands of miles away - it's hard to care" is patently absurd."

Agreed completely.

"Clearly many of us do care. "

Replace many with some and I agree. When some terrible things happen abroad and make it to the news, I tend to see people worried that Ebola comes to us, hoping Ukraine doesn't join the EU because that would be bad for us, hoping ISIS doesn't come to us..
Quite frankly I rarely hear someone say 'poor people' in those cases. Only when westerners die they are shocked. In other cases, it seems to me that people are content as long as it stays 'over there'.

One should try to gather the people who do give a shit about people on the other side of the planet and get things done with them I suppose.
I am working on that bit in my own way, FYI.

"Should we rank our concern based on the number of dead or not?"

Some irrationality is inevitable, but in general, yes. I'm absolutely more concerned with Syria than Israel. Not sure if you were referring to me with the "same fucks" but that's my guess anyway.

I know I'm the odd one out but still.
Anyway, gotta go now.

We should send all American troops into Nigeria and wage a full-scale invasion to oust Boko Haram because it is *clearly* in our national interest to do so.

Discuss.

Nigeria's two major problems are Boko Haram's heavily armed bastards, and Saudi Arabia making aggressive moves with the oil trade and catching Nigeria extremely hard in the crossfire. There is sadly very little we can do about either without making things a hell of a lot worse.

We can commit more resources to ending poverty in SSA, which is the underlying cause of the bleak situation

@fiedler

There is nothing "exotic" about Africa. It's a continent home to one billion of our brothers and sisters. Simple as that. And Africa doesnt have a monopoly on suffering either, Lord knows. But it is true that much of the continent is systematically ignored and exploited. What has happened to africa in the course of our history is one of the greatest injustices of our race, and anyone with a shred of humanity sees that clearly.

Not sure where the hate for me in this thread is coming from, Thucydides. I'm saying something quite different than the others, and something I'd assume you'd be fairly sympathetic with.

@semck

I hardly think refusing to look away from suffering and asking others to do the same is the cause of the suffering. It is a sad world because we can end our problems, but we appear unwilling or unable to do so. It would seem incredible that the human race does not simply abolish poverty in SSA in one fell swoop, until of course you meet people like fielder, and then it becomes depressingly clear why nothing has been done.

@invctus:

That's a clever tack for you to take, but pointing out that there are even more neglected parts of Africa than northeastern Nigeria while mocking OP's intentions with this post is the opposite of productive. You were only raising those issues to make OP look hypocritical and erode his credibility and hence the credibility of his message that maybe other parts of the world than France deserve more attention and resources.

I don't recall us giving France any resources... Aside from the CAP, of course, but that's more daylight robbery than a gift.

Not sure how "productive" anything we do here can ever be.

And what's wrong with pointing out his hypocrisy? He is, after all, using the far and away most well reported ongoing conflict in Africa to say we in the West value some lives over others. In doing so, he's a part of the same problem he's supposedly attacking, since he's also focusing on the more widely known crisis rather than the lesser know but just-as-bad-or-worse ones elsewhere. I see nothing wrong with deflating his sanctimonious balloon a little.

Who is us? The world itself has allocated more resources to France.

Nigeria should allocate more of its resources to law enforcement.

The reason it's appropriate is that the timing was right after the Charlie Hebdo attack, and also it's scale compared with the attention it received in the global press was so disproportionate compared to the attack in France that it merits comparison. Yes, the CAR conflict and others are ongoing, but none of them had a bloodbath of thousands of innocents and the loss of a major strategic base in the last few weeks.

In terms of something productive the rich world can do - we can share our wealth and stop hoarding it. Cash transfers in the amount of $5,000 per year to each African. Price tag, $6 billion. Chump change. We could end poverty if we wanted to. We just don't want to.

$500 bn, whoops. Point is the same though - it's money we have, but we would rather spend it on ourselves, for our economy, which of course is worth trillions of dollars.

You may have heard me mention before that it is estimated world hunger can be ended for $30 billion per year. If the above price tag is too much for you, we can at least end starvation. But we won't. We won't even end it in our own country. It's greed.

There is no starvation in the US

A problem! Throw money at it!

Of course there is. They just don't show it.

Yes, throw money at it. How else do you fix the fact that there isn't enough money being allocated to it?

Methinks you oversimplify the solution somewhat. Give everyone a ton of gold and you don't create a world full of rich people. You create a world full of people with a ton of worthless metal.

Here you go, bo_sox48.

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

Throwing money at other rich people doesn't work. But direct cash transfers to poor people do work.