I have lived in Nigeria. There are a lot of decent, educated people there who feel just as frustrated as we do.

They have only recently come out of years of devastating civil war and have honestly done a heck of a lot to stabilise a country that is dominated by two main religions: Muslim and Christian.

They need a lot of help and support from the West to show they are on the right path, and help with cleaning up their environment would be a good start.

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I don't know if Freedom or Death is trolling or just making a brutally honest point.

I've read all the posts here so far and while I agree that yes, ATS is a group unto itself, the overwhelming majority of the western world (and the world as a whole) is accurately portrayed by Freedom or Death's comments. We may not like it, but that does not make it any less true.

Are the comments posted crass and uncaring? Yes, but so are the actions of our countries....

-3 000 000 Killed in Rwandan Genocide ignored

-Estimates of 40% of the continent infected with HIV/AIDS unreported

-One of the only places on Earth where Typhoid still occurs (Small Pox too, but there are questions about it emerging naturally from the environment)

-Conflicts everywhere and no attempts by anyone to stop them

If any one of the things above was going on in the WHITE world there would be un-ending coverage, minute-by-minute updates and protests over inactivity.

Do we see any of that? No, we see Somali pirates and Muslim Extremists.

What is the West (and many others) doing in Africa? We are buying up what little fertile land there is available to grow food for ourselves. We are buying up mineral rights so we can have access to the resources somewhere where we don't have to look at the environmental impact.

When someone does step up to help (Bill and Melinda Gates via their self titled foundation) they get criticised for wasting their money; they have to defend why they would bother giving aid to that area. What little we do provide via our governments for those desperate people is merely a token gesture to bribe their governments to open the borders so our corporations can steal everything that isn't tied down.

Do I agree with Freedom or Death?

Yes, I do.

I find it disgusting that the West (and the world) has blatantly turned it's back on Africa. Sadly, the cruel truth of the matter is that regardless of a minority being aware and sympthetic, the majority is totally ignorant about what is going on over there.

...and that's not an accident

Don't get self righteous or in PC mode. The world does not give a damn about Africa.



[edit on 31-5-2010 by {davinci}]

you are all full of sympathy for Nigeria and bash freedomordeath for speaking the truth.

how many $ have you donated to Nigeria
how many of you volunteered for red cross in Nigeria

if you didn't, shut up because you don't care about them like the rest of the whole world

feeling sorry for them on ATS doesn't change rat's ass in their lives

Listen, it is injust to suggest that if something bad is going on in Nigeria, it's because the USA doesn't care "because they're black and it's far away."

The governments in Africa are often so ridiculously corrupt there is little that anybody can do. Food gets shipped in and rots on docks while children starve, for political reasons. The same for medicine and other things. I'm not even surprised to hear that it's an ecological disaster.

It's terrible. But as hard as it is for some people to comprehend, not every bad thing in the universe is the fault of the USA.

RC

Originally posted by Dinamo
you are all full of sympathy for Nigeria and bash freedomordeath for speaking the truth.

how many $ have you donated to Nigeria
how many of you volunteered for red cross in Nigeria

if you didn't, shut up because you don't care about them like the rest of the whole world

feeling sorry for them on ATS doesn't change rat's ass in their lives

Not sure if you were referring to me or not but for the record, while i have not given actual $$$ to Nigeria or Sudan, i have been actively involved in local action groups trying to raise awareness over some of the horrendous situations occurring on the continent in recent times.

i was not referring to anyone specially

i am saying that alot of people are saying they are sorry but doing nothing.
and when you tell the truth - painfull and ugly - but truth - they feel attacked, hurt and surprised.

i will say this again - world doesn't give a crap about africa, black people, and wonderfull wildlife going to hell as long as they have their F***ing capuccinos, meat and football game sunday afternoon. and that is situation in America, Croatia and every half-developed country that exists. and when i say why goverments don't help - i get answer that USA can't solve every problem on earth - thank god that you solved iraq's problem

sorry can't help africa, only will to change something. and i apologize to those who are doing something concrete for africa that might feel attacked by me. that was not my plan

Oh brother. (Responding to overall-threads 'in general' here.)

It *could* be a thread about 'an 'issue' instead of just yet-another thread about why everybody white, american or with a dollar is evil.

There is only so much emotion, money and attention that any single human being has. If you are spending your time worried about Nigeria, plenty of other groups could rant about how you are not properly worried about Tibet, Somalia, Croatia, the dolphins, the whales, the melting ice caps, the destruction of North American groundwater, the rising disease rates correlated with navy technology, the state of miseducation -- I mean for godssakes, the list is ENDLESS.

There is no possible way that every person can be obsessed about every problem in every place on the planet. That does not make them horrible or insensitive or indirect murderers or whatever -- it just makes them mere-mortals who have limited resources like everybody else.

This is especially an issue when there is not much they can do about it from afar and what little resources they DO have, go to the quite useful saying about "charity starts at home" (like raising your kids, supporting your local food banks and ecology issues, donating to whatever charities you feel do the most good, etc.). The implication that if someone drives a decent car it must prove their immoral soulless corruption if "somewhere, someone in the world is poor or oppressed", is absurd.

As much as the chronic frothing venomous rage on the forum can be entertaining at times, it's a little overdone that for some folks everything they see is evil. Maybe a little less anger displaced onto the rest of the world would go a long way socially. Nobody is going to 'care more about Africa' simply because they were insulted. There are probably more effective ways to raise consciousness of certain issues.

RC


[edit on 31-5-2010 by RedCairo]

I tend to agree with Freedom or Death in a sense, but not with the same tone.

Africa is a terribly screwed up place with government that is either negligent, totally corrupt, or oppressive, aside from the northern coast (maybe).

I really don't think people care much about Africa because we do what we always do, throw a little money at the problem.

The problems in Africa are systemic, cultural, and mostly of their own making (although I won't discount some terribly crude tinkering by western and some eastern powers).

There is only 2 ways to fix Africa.

1) Overthrow their governments by force and install new ones

2) Leave them alone and let them do what America did.

Also, Catholicism and Islam haven't done a whole lot of good there, or at least it's balanced by the bad doctrine they teach.