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>Don’t tell us what to do with our animals when you allowed your own mountain lions to be hunted to near extinction in the eastern United States. Don’t bemoan t
by charlesray 11y ago
>Don’t tell us what to do with our animals when you allowed your own mountain lions to be hunted to near extinction in the eastern United States. Don’t bemoan the clear-cutting of our forests when you turned yours into concrete jungles.
So don't learn from our mistakes, basically?
This is among the most ignorant things I have ever read. Terrible article from a person with a terrible mentality.
- DarkTree 11y agoIt's really just the other side of the coin. I'm sure the truth is somewhere grounded a little towards the middle.
- giarc 11y agoI think they are saying "Solve your own problems, don't meddle in ours."
- Zikes 11y agoExcept for the part where they say there are other problems of theirs that they would prefer we cared about.
- gharial 11y agoThere is no "their" and "our" problems - extinction affects humanity on a global level.
- charlesray 11y agoExactly, thanks.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoDoes that mean they don't want the tens of millions of dollars in aid the US provides every year? Their problems are our problems. http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/countryprofile/zimbabwe http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/countryprofile/z...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- wehadfun 11y agoYea I love it when people quote the amount of aid these countries are given. The number that is left out is the amount basically stolen. I think for every $1 given like $1.50 is stolen. http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jul/15/aid-africa-west-looting-continent http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jul/15/ai...
- toomuchtodo 11y agoTwo problems. One, that's our fault (as a superpower) for not doing a better job of ensuring aid flows to where it needs to get. Two, that's the fault of the people. We can't do all the work.
- thescrewdriver 11y agoI think they are actually saying "Killing one lion is completely insignificant compared to the real issues Zimbabwe faces (thanks to the disastrous policies of the Mugabe government). So much publicity and so many tears in the US, yet virtually no public concern and tears for the complete meltdown of the country over the last 15 years."
- charlesray 11y agoAren't we constantly criticized for interfering in global politics? What the fuck should we do about Mugabe?
- thescrewdriver 11y agoYou don't need to do or interfere with anything. It's about how much public attention and coverage it's getting. One furry lion being killed trumps the misery and suffering of millions. Imagine a world where the US economy is reduced to ashes and people are starving in the streets of New York, and the rest of the world is only outraged by somebody shooting a specific moose in Alaska.
- charlesray 11y agoFirst off, you should be ashamed at how ridiculous that analogy is. I'm going to assume you understand that it's completely and utterly inaccurate and irrelevant to this conversation. Secondly, suffering happens everywhere every day. Are the American people supposed to maintain a constant level of outrage about every single instance of suffering?
- thescrewdriver 11y ago> First off, you should be ashamed at how ridiculous that analogy is. The analogy looks spot-on to me, just substitute 'Zim' for 'US' and 'Harare' for 'New York'.
- deleted 11y ago
- charlesray 11y agoBut we did solve our own problems, that's my point. I'm from Indiana, where at one point 99% of the state was clear cut. Now if you look around there are forests and trees everywhere. Rebuilding nature wasn't easy, and it doesn't "rebuild" exactly what you had before. It is the absolute height of ignorance and idiocy to suggest that they should be allowed to destroy their country as well and be forced to expend huge resources rebuilding it instead of just NOT DOING IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
- Zikes 11y agoThe author commits the same sins they rail against. Jingoist application of morals. Instead of using their time in the spotlight to draw attention to what they would consider to be more worthy pursuits, they are indignant that we are not already familiar with their country's most pressing issues and equally outraged about them.
- namecast 11y agoThe paragraph before the one you just quoted: "We Zimbabweans are left shaking our heads, wondering why Americans care more about African animals than about African people." And the paragraph directly after: "And please, don’t offer me condolences about Cecil unless you’re also willing to offer me condolences for villagers killed or left hungry by his brethren, by political violence, or by hunger." "Please don't care about the animals in my country more than you care about me and my countrymen" is a reasonable request. I don't see anything terrible about it. I'm not sure why you dropped the surrounding context.
- trhway 11y ago>"Please don't care about the animals in my country more than you care about me and my countrymen" is a reasonable request. the animals are defenseless objects of our actions. While people get the life they've built, and specifically what i understand about the Zimbabwe situation - a lot of the issues there are recent (couple decades) self-inflicted by the government upon their people with support of the people. Should US change the government there?
- mkaziz 11y agoWith the support of the people? Do you realize Zimbabwe has a dictatorship?
- trhway 11y agoi was born in the USSR. People have government they want to (except when forced upon by a foreign power). Dictatorships are the people, and the people do all these things. Dictatorships simply fall apart when they loose real support of their people.
- mkaziz 11y agoI disagree. Dictatorships aren't about single dictators, they're about institutions that lead to the rise of dictatorships. For example in Egypt, Mubarak is gone, but there is another general in place and nothing has changed. Institutions take generations to topple, and not just a season a la the Arab Spring.
- badmadrad 11y agoIts a different perspective from an actual African. Who are you to say he is more ignorant than you are? Ultimately, the human experience is about survival. And that experience will vary and form your perspective.
- charlesray 11y agoI'm not saying he's more or less ignorant than I am. I'm simply saying that he is clearly and objectively an ignorant person. One of the steps we took to stop lion hunting was to have airlines ban the transportation of lion caracasses. That's a pretty easy thing to do. Do you think there's anything similar we could to do to improve the human rights situation in Zimbabwe? Can Delta refuse to transport Mugabe? Will that help? It simply IS ignorance at the root of his childish complaints. It's ignorance to the fact that one problem - lions - is of a vastly smaller scale than another problem - human rights issues in Zimbawabe - and thus the solutions to said problem are far, far easier to apply. In short, we want to help where we actually CAN help. But decades of failed US intervention have proven one thing time and time again: our help never sticks until you start helping yourself.
- mylons 11y agoit is true, though, that the west has a "holier than thou" attitude towards most if not all of the developing world while deploying blatantly hypocritical policies.
- ctdonath 11y agoSo don't learn from our mistakes, basically? More like: don't criticize others for not learning from their mistakes when you're making a point of not learning from making the same mistakes yourself. He's pointing out the hypocrisy of berating others' treatment of nature when you live where everything natural has been bulldozed and paved over for hundreds of square miles.
- steego 11y agoA guy writes down one point you disagree with and you dismiss the article and person. While, I agree with your point that this sort of hypocrisy calling doesn't help anything, I can't agree with your overall conclusion. This article is import, even if it isn't particularly well-written or well thought out. It's important because it resonates a very important idea that the west is psychologically disconnected from Africa and Africans in the cruelest of ways. It reminds us that Africans must really scratch their heads as they struggle to figure out our unique branch of apathy/concern that's both cruel and emotionally unbalanced.
- dang 11y ago> This is among the most ignorant things I have ever read. Terrible article from a person with a terrible mentality. Comments like this violate the HN guidelines, which say: When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3. The comment would be better if shortened in this way, and perhaps also if it made its substantive point (about learning from mistakes) a bit more substantively.