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On June 03 2011 17:54 FecalFrown wrote:
I think if the entire continent of Africa sunk into the ocean, no one would care. I would miss the giraffes and shit but thats about it.
User was temp banned for this post.
I'd care. I live there and I'm not really terribly good at holding my breath.
Also, an obscure fact. Sandstorms in the Sahara get picked up by the prevailing winds and drop nutrient rich sand in the amazon basin. The amazon basin has very bad soil so the rainforests depend on this. Thats right, Africa helps provide clean air to the world!
Back on topic, Africa has many rich and fertile countries. The sterotype of swollen bellied babies starving belies this fact. The problem is that most places are run by fucked up dictators whose corruption runs the countries into the ground. Zimbabwe is a good example of this. It was once called the "breadbasket of Africa" because of its highly productive farms but then Mugabe went batshit insane and took the farms from the people who used them productivly and gave them to his followers - the result is they lie fallow. The ordinary people then suffer as a result since staple foods become unavailable.
This is a typical African story and I have no clue how to change it. Throwing "aid" at it doesn't really help because I'm sceptical of how much gets to where it should go and how much is siphoned off by the ruling party. My only hope is that as the masses educate themselves they stop tolerating such rubbish and install proper accoutable Governments. Until they do history will repeat itself.
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On June 03 2011 14:55 garlicface wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2011 14:12 ghrur wrote:
I know I'm supposed to be shocked, but what action could possibly come from bringing to light such events? I've read the article. Now it'll take me about 10 minutes to decide to stop reading through this thread and move onto another, or I'll go to sleep. I'll forget about this in 15 minutes.
Does this type of journalism help Africa? No. I doubt any of them read this and suddenly decided to go around stopping these "baby factories." It doesn't affect their life either.
It's all for entertainment. Isn't it sad how a forum is basically like "Create Your Own News Show" with endless stories to report? Are you incapable of filtering out the good information from the bad information? If TL to you is like leaving the radio on in the background, and you can't separate what merits awareness and what merits ignorance, then you should probably find another hobby. There is no need to be so cynical. Many people will have read this article having learned something, and just because they may not be able to act on it immediately, doesn't mean it should be discarded as useless. No individual, after learning of this, will be able to put an end to it. No change can take place immediately. However, something can happen over time, after it becomes part of a group consciousness.
Clearly I'm able to filter out good information from bad information because I'm calling this out as useless information. I can also understand which threads merit awareness and which merit ignorance as I that's the point of the "create your own news show" idea. You get to choose which merit awareness and which don't. It honestly doesn't make that any less true.
I can't tell if that remark was intentioned as a jab or if you're just posting in a hostile tone. Saying I can't discriminate (a basic part of thinking) seems like quite an attack.
And become part of a group consciousness? My point is precisely that it'll never become part of ANY group consciousness. 10 minutes and forget. TL has already moved on, to Carnivores, to Vegans, to Chinese+North Koreans, to the "Deep web." How many people have read this and moved on? Clearly everyone who viewed the thread considering it's not even being posted in anymore. It'll take something extraordinary to become part of a group consciousness for longer than one news cycle at this rate.
That is why it's useless. We don't do anything with it except get an emotional shock. It's like watching Spongebob or Scooby-Doo. We get an emotional response, the next episode comes out, we forget the last, and we keep on watching. Haha, hehe, hoho! At least we know Scooby-Doo/Spongebob are for entertainment. This is marketed as news. As something that's supposed to help us into action as a collective group. Yeah, right.
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Why am I not surprised this happened in Lagos, Nigeria... Nigeria has a bad rep with the rest of the world for some good reasons and this is yet another one added to the list. Lagos is a cesspool of corruption and gangs.
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Baby factory?
Where can I get in on this very fun sounding job opportunity.
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It ranks up there with South African men raping toddlers because of their belief that sex with a virgin could cure AIDS.
Man this shit really pissed me off. Words can describe how.
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charities and those humanitarian aids are simply trying to bandage the big problem, and it will never work.
in order to fix their country, we have to fix their government.. more importantly we have to fix their people, by creating real business opportunities, improving their economy, implementing more education systems...
but thats not possible, unless we can "take over" their country, and force our "regime" on to them.
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while a few are either killed or tortured in black magic rituals.
^I'd like to see sources for this. Sounds like some skewed prejudice to me.
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^I'd like to see sources for this. Sounds like some skewed prejudice to me.
"Black magic rituals" is a weird way to put it, but people are tortured and killed in Africa (albinos are a good example) sometimes because of animist or other indigenous beliefs about "magic."
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On June 04 2011 11:56 Thrill wrote:
while a few are either killed or tortured in black magic rituals.
^I'd like to see sources for this. Sounds like some skewed prejudice to me.
Voodoo is actually pretty big in Africa and still practiced. In certain countries albinos are very likely to get killed because they are considered to bring luck.
You gotta understand that Africa is a really fucked up place and a lot of that "prejudice" is actually just the truth about how fucked up it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_people_with_albinism
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Thats the kind of shit that I can only imagine in horror stories.
Reality > fiction
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oh yeah
they have them in America too, witches and satanists buy babies for human sacrifice
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That is one crazy story. It reminds me of the fact that the world can be a f***** up place sometimes. Stuff "like this" happens all the time, everywhere - do not think it's just Africa. But the OP asked for sharing thoughts specifically about Africa.
Having a insight into cultural anthropology, politics and economics, I can understand why certain things "work" like they do. I'll try to keep my view as brief as possible. But am aware that it's really not as brief as I say. The story is horrible, but not unique. It's not much different than certain religions/cults do in our own western society. But we have the advantage of a more "matured" society. One where we have a fairly solid system with rights as civilians, that has a bigger and better way of dealing with harmful crap. This is where Africa as a whole is behind quite a bit still.
Western governments have a great past with Africa. We want(ed) to colonize it, implement democracies (or install dictators that we think are a pretty cool guy - who doesn't afraid of anything) and basically try to shape it after the values we think are universal. While - as a western civilian - I think the value of freedom is an awesome thing, I am well aware of the road we had to take to get there. And looking at people around me today in the western world, I doubt many of them realize this awesome fact. But I digress.
Africa has a much different history than the western world. The fact that we westerners have to do what we think is right is a good thing, I think. Sadly we fail in a lot of ways when it comes to Africa. Intentional or not. Africa has a culture that consists of/comes from tribes, and a whole different mentality as a whole. Add to this the western influence. The "white man" plundering, claiming land, drawing borders with rulers, then pulling out wanting to be all good: it's a very short summary of a few things that the western world contributed in a negative way to what Africa is this very day. Not saying in any way that Africa has it a lot tougher than the western world did in its history, but from our point of view the very least we can at least agree with is that (most countries in) Africa aren't near the western world standards by a long shot yet. If they ever get there isn't important. Freedom, democracy, free market, public healthcare: all these are just a few examples of things that can improve the life(span) of a person/society drastically. While I think some of these - if not all - things are indeed good and probably supported by the vast majority of any society as a whole, I don't think shoving them down someone's (society) throat helps a whole lot.
Because the next thing is corruption. People with power and money are a wonderful (read: f***** up) thing. If he who makes the law can be relatively easy bribed, down goes the intention of the system. Throwing a sack of coins and a .pdf-file with a blueprint of "How to democracy v13.76", and thinking stuff will solve itself is a very naive way of helping. Luckily the western countries learned from that (a bit). But the most important thing is acknowledging the (huge) differences in culture, and trying to find a way through that to get a better system going. Knowing however that the free market on guns - for instance - flourishes greatly to this very day thanks to the state Africa is in, I fear the road ahead is a long one indeed. But many gas stations filled with a good load of dialogue-fuel that can at least keep people moving on that very road. Helping out with a healthy supply of said kind of fuel can contribute in a good way, I think.
Understanding why we/others do things the way we/others do them and acknowledging that is the key. Unless it's about horrible stuff like the story in the OP, or pain/hurt/etc in general, understanding ourselves/the others is a need to survive for the human species as a whole. Because differences are awesome.
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EPT
