Everything seemingly is spinning out of control:“Obesity is becoming more common among poor city dwellers in Africa….
81 Replies to “Western Nations Pledge Millions In AYDS Relief”
A group called & asked that I donate my clothes to the hungry in Africa – I told them to bugger off. Anyone that fat isn’t hungry!
I blame Sally Strothers
On the way to making obesity an international crisis affecting developing countries and worthy of more wealth redistribution and concert support from Geldoff and Hewson (Bono).
Interestingly enough, the same “global citzens” who anguish over the plight of Africa’s poor, are also the rank and file true believers in the AGW Copenhagen climate rip-off which will deeply impoverish these starving nations with carbon taxing – to a point where the food supplies in these starving nations will be further rationed killing many millions who cannot afford the inflation of food prices by carbon offset taxes.
Hypocracy thy name art “progressive”.
Tracing the roots of Oprah’s thyroid condition….
Kate: here’s an idea for a juxtaposition:
Story 1. Toronto: Area kids are breaking limbs falling onto hard surfaces from playground structures. Researchers suggest sand is a better/safer surface.
Story 2 Africa: Obesity on the rise in poor, urban centers. Lack of exercise 9as well as cheap, fat food) cited.
Solution: send Toronto kids and their playsets to Africa.
So, if I under it correctly, the new artifact of poverty is fat people.
The comments here and in the preceding thread are absolutely hilarious, especially bear’s and Texas Canuck’s. This all goes to granting me a merry and happy Christmas and New Year. You gotta laugh else you’d cry!
You’d think that here in Western Canada where we have four months to gather our crops from start to finish, we’d have way more trouble feeding ourselves than in a country where they can drop a seed in the ground year-round and have something to eat in six weeks. And WE feed THEM?!
Firstly, I know enough about Africa to not give a rat’s ass about Africans.
A couple of points why obesity may not be all bad.
– It helps us to identify poor people by their big fat bodies. A form of profiling so you know when you are in the wrong neighborhood.
– If everyone was obese, who would be fit to go and fight a war? That one would please the progressives.
– We would all be able to outrun pan handlers and other poor criminals.
On the downside, lesbians who seem to be mostly fat, may not like being mistaken for the poor, since most of them seem to have well-paying government jobs. They just like living in the wrong neighborhoods for the cheap character homes and lofts that they can decorate and decorate and decorate.
Abe Froman said “A form of profiling so you know when you are in the wrong neighborhood.”
I live in a working class neighborhood and I never ever see those little scooters around. I work in a poor neighborhood and the sidewalks are congested with fat people smoking cigarettes and driving around on the scooters.
Come on, people. Let’s have a little compassion.
I agree with 99.9% of what’s on this site. But that article did not say there was a lot of obesity among Africa’s urban poor, only that the rate was increasing. Going from 1% to 3% is a big increase, but it’s not like there’s not starvation in Africa.
I’ve worked in the Kipsongo slums in Kenya. We frequently visit an orphanage which is doing its best to be self-sufficient (it farms and exports french beans to the Netherlands; it’s started a fish farm; it’s started construction companies), and the kids there arrive severely malnourished. They have gotten their food from garbage dumps since they were 4. I saw an 8-year-old who weighed 23 pounds. She looked 2. She was close to death, but they rehabilitated her.
Yes, Africa’s governments are corrupt. The Kenyans would be the first to tell you that! But don’t paint all Africans as horrible. We’ve been working to start microbusinesses with teenage mothers who were gangraped after the violence in Eldoret. They have nothing else, but they want to stand on their own two feet. They eat meat maybe three times a year, but they eat lots of maize and kale. And they’re making plans to support their babies. They are the last thing from obese you can think of.
We have so much here in Canada. We are blessed with a government that as much as we complain about, at least has checks and balances.
Don’t go trash talking people who are desperate. How would you like to be alone in the world at 5 years of age because your mother died and your alcoholic step-father didn’t want you? How would you like to be desperate and looking for food in the dump, while police chase after you? Or how would you like to be a 13-year-old girl picked up for being homeless, put in prison, and then raped by the guards every night, until this orphanage rescued you?
People in this world live awful, awful lives. Much of it is caused by the government, and by the evil of their own countrymen. But please show a little compassion, at least around Christmastime, and stop sounding so hateful to a continent with so much suffering, especially among children.
Hate the government if you want to. I do. Hate the police if you want to (among the most corrupt in the world). But remember that there are honest innocent people suffering, and please be mindful of that in your tone.
You who are parents, picture your child at 5, alone on the street, and then see if you can sound as hateful as most of the above posters have done.
SheilaG- If I could picture my child starving, and alone, I wouldn’t have had children.
Of course they’re fat. They haven’t done an hour’s work in 3 generations, and we keep sending them money.
I urge, no, I implore you, stop sending money to Africa. Get busy, urging your MP to stop the madness. If they want to breed, they should be able to feed. It’s nature’s oldest, and most sensible rule.
Oh ya, Shiela, I don’t believe your sob stories. I’ve been bombarbed with sob stories from Africa for so long, they just go in one ear, and out the other. Lies, lies, and more lies.
SheilaG, there are huge problems in Africa, not unlike some of the things you described. I won’t dispute that those things happen and are horrible.
I also believe that Africa’s problems are largely cultural. How can a continent with the resources it has be poor? Corruption, violence and tribalism are the true problems, not cynical posters.
Just my thoughts.
dp–
Don’t be a jerk. I’m not making this up. My living room is covered with pictures of my kids with the kids there from our last two trips. The home is Mulli Children’s Family in Kenya. We’re leading a medical team in March. You can see the website here: http://mcfcf.ca. My mother was there when they rescued that little 8-year-old girl, and we have video.
Yes, the problem is cultural. Yes, it’s because of tribalism, and the inferior view of women, and corruption, and violence, and alcoholism, and spiritism, and all kinds of things. I don’t dispute that.
But none of it changes the fact that children are starving, being raped, and being left for dead.
If you truly believe in free-market principles (which I do, and which I assume all of you do if you read this blog), then why not try to use free-market principles to help Africa? I don’t give money to the government, or through large NGOs. I go over and do it myself.
But if you can’t go over, there are great sites that help with micro-businesses.
It’s easy to dismiss the world because it’s just a hellhole, and what’s the point?
But is that really how you want to be? Do you really want to not care that children are dying or being raped? Are you all really that hateful? Do you want to just make fun of African orphans, and think that that somehow makes you superior or cool?
Of course the place is a mess, but I do believe that free market principles, if they are implemented, can help. And we have seen that happen. We’ve seen girls start a hairdressing business in Mombassa. Not glamorous, but these girls who were once forced into prostitution by their aunts and uncles are now supporting themselves honourably. To me that means something.
If you all think that these people don’t deserve help because the nation is pathetic and the culture is pathetic, than that’s your prerogative. But I hardly think that’s good publicity for conservativism. If conservativism is practical and workable, then let’s export it and help others wiht it. But let’s not let conservativism be equated with hatefulness and lack of compassion for those most desperate.
They are most desperate because the country doesn’t know anything about true conservative principles. So if we are true conservatives, then we would at least applaud those who are trying to help using those principles, rather than just hoping all those kids over there die because they deserve it.
Try showing a little compassion, at least at Christmas.
Africa is worse off now than when I was a child in the ’60s.
The Canadian Maritimes are worse off then when I was a child in the ’60s.
What, SheilaG, do these 2 places have in common?
Welfare, that’s what.
Socialism doesn’t work and neither do people on welfare.
You aren’t part of the solution, SheilaG.
I don’t think that the point of Kate’s post is about Africa. It’s about Reuters, “researchers” and professional do gooders who use Africans to line their own pockets either with money or “moral” vanity tokens.
Good on you Sheila, for helping even though it must have been a discouraging situation.
Hey, don’t yell at me and don’t give me the saccharine treatment! There are problems, as I said.
I absolutely agree that welfare has hurt Africa. I don’t support welfare. But business loans are not welfare, and they do work. And low-interest loans for some of these kids to go to university is entirely different from putting a whole country on welfare.
Talk to Charles Mully, a Kenyan who runs the Mully Children’s Family, and he would absolutely agree that countries should stop giving money to kleptomaniac African governments. He doesn’t want welfare, either. Neither do some other really amazing conservative entrepreneurs in the continent who are trying to make things better.
But don’t dump all aid into the same category. It isn’t. And what conservatives need to do is figure out a way to help people rise up through capitalist principles, rather than leaving them to languish in pathetic governments because somehow they “deserve what they get”.
Give these people a chance, and you will see how they will change the government. But they can’t do it when they’re being gang-raped at 14 in a refugee camp.
Sheila
Been there, done that.
I to believe that if you are giving assistance to Africa it must be given directly to those in need and not to the agencies or government intermediaries. If you must do charitable works, that is the least harmful direct assistance.
I myself think it is up to the local population to make the necessary change. That means they need (a partial list):
– real education (not the anti white and anti developed world propeganda that passes for education in most African countries),
– real rule of law (not democracy because that is just another way of selecting the big man),
– real freedom of expression (not government controled and influenced media and political parties),
– the population excercising control over the powers that be (responsible government and bureaucracy),
– the do gooders doing good elsewhere (at home with their families is preferred) (aid welfare is just providing them with fish)
But getting back to the main post – this portends the development of a new scare for the world government to address. Obesity is now an iternational plague affecting even Africa. Surely now the UN must step in and money must be taken from the rich countries and redistributed to the poor (just so long as some fall into the right hands along the way).
Obesity is caused by all that CO2 in the soda pop.
What?
You say soda pop has sugar in it?
Well, it’s the CO2 that forces the sugar to make the drinker become obese./CO2 scarmonger
Agree SheilaG. I like what Muhammad Yunis has done with microcredit. dp and Oz, you’re not striking the right tone, sorry! Oz, saying that SheilaG isn’t part of the solution is crazy talk.
We just got done wiping out $40 billion in debt to Africa, a continent full of dictators, cannibals, communists, Muslims, and tribal genocides, and you call me crazy, Erik Larsen, for saying Africa can’t be helped SheilaG’s way?
Look in the mirror, buckwheat.
Africa isn’t my problem, but SheilaG and you think it is.
You are wrong.
My problem is my government throwing my tax money down a dry well.
My problem is crazy commie tools like you handing the government a mandate on a silver platter to do it.
Have you read the book “IQ and the Wealth of Nations”?
The problem is caused by “cheap low quality food”. Well, the solution to that is easy, make the food expensive and voila the problem of obesity is solved.
Reminds me of one of PJ O’Rourke’s books when he was visiting the USSR and his guide told him with a straight face: “Our two main problems here are trying to buy food and losing weight”.
People who eat mainly carbohydrates tend to consume a lot more calories/day if they have access to food in amounts greater than they need to live on (one study showed that the caloric difference between the Atkins diet and a high carb diet was 1500 calories/day more for the high carb diet). This suggests that it’s time to start getting more protein in their diet and less carbs. Obviously they’re not getting that much exercise either. I’d be curious about how many of these poor obese people do any work at all. If the spherical patients I see here who are on welfare and constantly complaining about not having enough money for food and their being overweight (often in the same sentence) are representative then the best thing for them would be to put them to work doing manual labor as it would probably improve their mood, get them to lose weight and keep them out of my office.
This was obviously by design so that Opera could sell them diet remedies and set up private liposuction clinics across Africa.
Anyone who believes any of the starving baby African propaganda is a ………fool.
Africa is simply a money sinkhole capitalized on by big business, lefty idealism and religious zealotry. The Africans don’t care, just keep it coming.
40 years of western interference has created bigger tribal wars with modern weapons, more starvation, massive aids infected populations, generational welfare dependence and huge organized crime syndicates. All of which prey on YOU for sustenance, much of which we now import wholesale.
Keep up the love.
AP should know. Journalists all over the western world sit in front of computers regurgitating the pap that has been force fed to them. While some of their predecessors actually got up and went out investigating the stories they wrote, the current crop sit awaiting the next political plum that may come their way. This particular kind of obesity makes them fat from the neck up.
By the way Kate – love the double meaning on Aids with AYDS.
Oz, you just aren’t listening to what SheilaG is saying. And, nice invective [not].
The shouting and contempt I’m reading here makes me think I’ve stumbled on a left-wing forum.
Posted by: rroe at>
“this portends the development of a new scare for the world government to address”…………..“Surely now the UN must step in and money must be taken from the rich countries and redistributed to the poor (just so long as some fall into the right hands along the way).”
You were joking of course?
I do find it funny that people who really do feel that way, never mean their own money or wealth. It’s always someone else’s.
The little CYA add-on the end of your statement was especially typical of the lefts flighty rationality “(just so long as some fall into the right hands along the way).” Yea right! Like that will ever happen, and what is “so long as SOME fall into the right hands along the way”? I suppose that it really doesn’t matter if you don’t feel that it’s your money being handed over to corrupt UN officials or murderous warlords, so long as SOME of someone else’s money goes to the right place.
“this portends the development of a new scare for the world government to address”
A one world government is a good thing?
Why don’t countries clear off their opposition parties, senates, and congress’s etcetera entirely? Just allow the biggest African warlord who can murder his way to the top (on our money) to claim victory as leader of the next World Government. Then no more elections and no more worries, right?
I am not going to respond to Oz because he is being deliberately inciteful and hateful, and I don’t think that’s representative of SmallDeadanimals at all.
I’m almost sorry I started all of this; I know this wasn’t Kate’s original point, it’s just that the comments were devolving into a “we hate Africans” thing, and that really makes me mad.
Erik, thanks for the kind words.
I, too, believe that local populations are the solutions to most problems. That’s what happening at the Mulli Children’s Home (and many like it that are growing all over Africa, using his model of self-sustainability). But one thing he isn’t is entirely local, because local means tribal. Charles Mulli has children in his home from every single tribe in Kenya. He is working to end tribalism, and let’s remember that “local cures” in Africa often means tribal ones, which perpetuate the problem.
They are building on self-sustainability; I’m excited by that and want to participate. And though local communities should be the solution, that’s hard when there’s no real infrastructure and a drought going on. Sometimes a gift of a bore hole so a community can have clean water can go a long way in empowering those local solutions.
Okay, I’m off of my soapbox now. Like I said, I agree with what Kate writes; it’s the comments here I found completely out of place. Like Erik said, it’s as if we’re on a left-wing blog, not a right-wing one where we honestly want real solutions for everyone’s betterment.
Sorry, one more thing, and then that’s really it.
When did I ever say I approve of government giving aid? I don’t. I think PEOPLE should step up to the plate and lend a helping hand through microbusiness loans. Government, when it tries, usually messes things up. With individuals, there’s more accountability.
Good for you, SheilaG.
I’ll still support my girl in Senegal and see her happy face when she is able to buy rice with the extra gift I send the family. And the animals.
And the school supplies. And the school fees. And the mats to sleep on. And the flipflops to walk to school. And the oil lantern so the kids can do their homework. And the…
Oh, what’s the use.
Give to your local food bank. The smokers and drinkers in Canada need your help also.
“Oz, saying that SheilaG isn’t part of the solution is crazy talk.”
~Erik Larsen
Look, Erik Larsen, SheilaG is whining and puling about African “children…starving, being raped, and being left for dead.”
Well the place is unstable and a chaotic third world toilet.
SheilaG and you are not part of the solution.
If there is a solution it is Ann Coulter’s solution:
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.
That I’d be willing to spend taxes on because it would be an attainable solution.
Going there and helping a few individuals start micro-businesses isn’t going to stop the raping and killing and being left for dead.
Loaning money to people in such circumstances is giving it to them as welfare because they aren’t going to pay it back and pretending they will is a flat out lie.
SheilaG called dp a jerk, you, Erik Larsen, called me crazy(crazy talk comes from crazy people) and you are the ones who are wrong. “I saw an 8-year-old who weighed 23 pounds. She looked 2. She was close to death, but they rehabilitated her.”
~SheilaG
Rehabilitated?
Yeah, about as rehabilitated as you can get someone who has brain damage from malnutrition.
Get a grip on reality.
And don’t pretend I started the invective, Larsen.
Everyone can read what is upthread.
SheilaG, calling people “hateful” is a typical socialist ad hominem attack which usually follows the realization that they have lost the argument.
SheilaG, your Leftist talking points are banal, trite, and larded with useless appeals to sentimental images.
Posted by: gellen>
“Give to your local food bank. The smokers and drinkers in Canada need your help also.”
Wow, now there’s some real empathy, national pride and patriotism all rolled up into one neat little package.
“Those damned grubby little Canadian Indians, nothing like the imperial satisfaction of giving $1.00 a month to Africa”.
Oz, you are still not reading things correctly. I did not call you crazy. My comment re “crazy talk” was directed towards your posting, whereby you said that someone who was providing aid directly to people who required it was not part of the solution.
I’ve read a fair bit about microcredit, and while initially skeptical, I think it’s a useful way of solving a lot of problems. It is a direct counterpoint to conventional “foreign aid”.
Why would the powers that be care about soaring death rates due to obesity? Don’t they want the population drastically cut to mitigate climate change (TM)? There you go.
Let’s see, in the past little while, I’ve been called a twit, buckwheat, a socialist, and I forget what else. . . . by people who are in theory politically similarly like-minded to me. So I’ll keep on my roll, with my following comment:
Knight99, sometimes I enjoy reading your posts, sometimes I don’t. I know that this will likely not affect your world, but your post above I do not enjoy. Thanks for considering my comment.
Look, Eric Larsen, if people want to give any aid they want I can’t stand in their way.
It’s putting a band aid on a sucking chest wound, but hey, it’s their money.
If they want to pretend to “lend” their own personal money that is never going to be repaid to someone on the other side of the world who could be killed along with 100,000 others in the same unstable place in the next tribal genocide then fine.
Oakley dokely.
The thread is about the government taking my money and throwing it away.
Nobody is going to tell me Africa or anywhere else is my problem and get away with it, especially if it will be used as an overture to coerce my taxes to pay for it.
And it will be used as such an overture, many of the current evils in our own society started out as voluntary efforts, just like SheilaG’s and then those volunteers got all self righteous and forced us to their cause as if none of us have causes of our own.
We have enough problems here in Canada, over taxation is one of them, and misuse of tax funds is another.
Oz, I agree with you re overtaxation and misuse of tax funds. I think sadly a lot of foreign aid is just for “Bono-pleasing purposes”.
I mentioned microcredit – the interesting thing is that the repayment rate is 95-98%, which is way more morally justifiable than giving money to kleptocratic dictators. I hate the argument that “well, some money filters down to those who need it”. Microcredit is direct aid.
I wouldn’t be surprised that with microcredit, and subsequently improving the quality of life there, reproductive rates would also decrease, solving a variety of other problems.
Posted by: Erik Larsen>
I agree with you. It’s like SDA has been hijacked by a pack of lefty loons since I’ve been AFK for the last couple of months (Travelling many of these same cesspits, without full internet access).
I would also commend SheilaG, because she sounds like someone who cares to help others on her own dime with her own time. Nothing wrong with that, everyone can make their own choices in life and it’s commendable when someone puts their energy, time and money where their mouth is.
Unfortunately others commenting here are spouting off about one world governments and distributing the wealth of so called rich countries. Even going as far as citing Bob Geldoff and that world renowned megalomaniac nutball Bono from U2.
Bono quote “I do not give of my own money, but do give of my time”!
*This is a super multimillionaire who lobbies your government for mandatory taxation to go directly to Africa. In the meantime he has moved his multimillion dollar music empire out of Ireland to Holland because of changes to the tax exempt status he enjoyed for years for “artists” there. He owns everything from 5 star hotels, restaurant chains, co-owns Forbes magazine along with another 15 companies and financial trusts………….But he “does not give of his own money”!
The fact that others would righteously quote this hypocritical crank as a justification of their misguided ideologies on SDA and not be properly challenged is disheartening to say the least.
Thanks Knight99 – you said things way better than I did, and I tried hard.
Posted by: Erik Larsen>
“…….but your post above I do not enjoy. Thanks for considering my comment.”
Considered! Sometimes I do not enjoy the outcome of some of my own posts either Erik!
As with anyone, there are good days and bad, at times things meant to be said appear to have an almost opposite meaning once re-read in print.
I suppose if you elaborated as to which post or comment I made that was “not to your liking” I could give a proper rebuttal or explanation.
Speaking of Bono, I was sad to hear that the clapping story was not true – distilled down:
At a concert, Bono started to rhythmically clap, and said “Every time I clap, a child in Africa dies”
“Stop clapping then” someone yelled
The one about the Indians. I think I understand your point, but it just doesn’t sound right. I don’t want to start another major discussion though! I think I’ve said too much here already. 🙂
re. Oz – I don’t think any non-troll here wants to deliver taxpayer money to Robert Mugabe’s Swiss bank account. But what on earth is wrong with micro-loans?
However screwed up Africa is politically, which is of course for the most part very, what is the problem with helping ordinary people accumulate a little hard-earned wealth? What’s “leftist” about that? Even in Africa, you know, everyone isn’t constantly being massacred.
SheilaG makes all the sense in the world.
(Erik @6:49 – a few days ago I called you a schmuck, but in a nice way.)
I would also commend SheilaG, because she sounds like someone who cares to help others on her own dime with her own time. Nothing wrong with that, everyone can make their own choices in life and it’s commendable when someone puts their energy, time and money where their mouth is.
~Knight 99
Yeah, commendable.
But she played the guilt card and lost the commendation: You who are parents, picture your child at 5, alone on the street, and then see if you can sound as hateful as most of the above posters have done.
~SheilaG at December 15, 2009 2:26 PM
“It takes a village to raise a child.”~insipid traditional African saying
Too bad SheilaG can’t understand that, unlike Africans, the people on this thread take care of their own children.
SheilaG puts herself up on a pedestal and pretends that the people who are upthread and angry because the government is going to take their taxes and throw the money at Africa, AGAIN, should feel guilty because, in addition to her taxes being ripped off, she gives personally to Africa.
Well SheilaG, commendation revoked!
Posted by: Erik Larsen>
“The one about the Indians……”
Oh – Ha ha……….Yes that was one that probably came out wrong.
My intended comment was twofold. First, Gellens earlier comments came across to me as very sanctimonious and secondly veiled racism. Veiled racism in the way of typical self loathing white hating racism. He cryptically stated that somehow poor Black Africans are more worthy of his magnanimous charity than supposedly beer swilling, tobacco chewing poor White dregs on Canadian society.
My response was intended to be a returned cryptic reply pointing out the typical lefty hypocrisy in his tongue in cheek comment. The fact I was trying to point out – was that it was not just poor white people that he was besmirching but also the little brown people who also have needs back home. Knowing of course that the radical left only see’s racism as a one way street, and that they are somehow above it if they throw themselves at Africa with self serving 10th century indulgences.
I will agree with you though, the comment most probably will be seen by many in another light.
Nothing wrong with pointing that out to me Erik – Thanks!
re. Oz – I don’t think any non-troll here wants to deliver taxpayer money to Robert Mugabe’s Swiss bank account. But what on earth is wrong with micro-loans?
~Black Mamba
Not a thing wrong with microloans, especially if they are loans and are being repaid.
I’m not convinced that they are.
If they aren’t being repaid they are microwelfare.
The thread is about our governments giving our taxes to Africa, again.
Ask SheilaG if she understood that was what the thread was about, not her and her microloans or her pet cause.
Okay, I’ve got to say something else.
Oz, to repeat, when did I ever say that I thought the government should give aid? Why do you keep saying that I think the government should? Get your facts straight and read what I wrote.
I’m glad everyone on this thread looks after their own kids. So do I.
Many, many in Africa don’t. Many abuse their children. Many sell them into prostitution. Many gang-rape teenage girls and get them pregnant.
Of course they should look after their own kids. Of course they should stop having so many kids if they can’t afford them. No one disputes that.
But it doesn’t change the fact that there are millions of children out there right now who are not being cared for, and many millions more with parents who would like to care for them but can’t because they have no money and the country is in a drought.
You may not care about them. That is your prerogative. But I do, as does anybody with a heart. You may think it’s okay to say that because African ADULTS don’t look after their kids (or Cambodian adults, or Brazilian adults, or Haitian adults, or whatever), we shouldn’t help the KIDS at all because they’ll just grow up to do the same thing. You may think it’s okay to let little kids starve or get sold into prostitution.
But I do not think it is okay. I have a hard time comprehending how anybody cannot be moved by their plight. Do you think foster kids in Canada are to be blamed for their parents, too (yes, we’ve done emergency foster care work, too. I guess that makes me part of another problem, too, by perpetuating the foster system in Canada or something according to your logic).
These kids are not to blame. They desperately need help. And from what I’ve seen, they do incredibly well when given the chance. They try at school. They succeed. We’ve seen former street kids go through university and start businesses.
Microbusiness and microfinance helps, as does simply building wells in areas with no water. I don’t think it’s the government’s job to do it. I think it’s our job, as it should be for anybody who cares about this world.
You may not fall into that category, and that’s okay. But personally, I’d rather fall on the side of those who helps orphans and abused children than the side of one who thinks they should fend for themselves because it’s all their own fault. Or whatever point it is you’re trying to make.
A group called & asked that I donate my clothes to the hungry in Africa – I told them to bugger off. Anyone that fat isn’t hungry!
I blame Sally Strothers
On the way to making obesity an international crisis affecting developing countries and worthy of more wealth redistribution and concert support from Geldoff and Hewson (Bono).
Interestingly enough, the same “global citzens” who anguish over the plight of Africa’s poor, are also the rank and file true believers in the AGW Copenhagen climate rip-off which will deeply impoverish these starving nations with carbon taxing – to a point where the food supplies in these starving nations will be further rationed killing many millions who cannot afford the inflation of food prices by carbon offset taxes.
Hypocracy thy name art “progressive”.
Tracing the roots of Oprah’s thyroid condition….
Kate: here’s an idea for a juxtaposition:
Story 1. Toronto: Area kids are breaking limbs falling onto hard surfaces from playground structures. Researchers suggest sand is a better/safer surface.
Story 2 Africa: Obesity on the rise in poor, urban centers. Lack of exercise 9as well as cheap, fat food) cited.
Solution: send Toronto kids and their playsets to Africa.
So, if I under it correctly, the new artifact of poverty is fat people.
The comments here and in the preceding thread are absolutely hilarious, especially bear’s and Texas Canuck’s. This all goes to granting me a merry and happy Christmas and New Year. You gotta laugh else you’d cry!
You’d think that here in Western Canada where we have four months to gather our crops from start to finish, we’d have way more trouble feeding ourselves than in a country where they can drop a seed in the ground year-round and have something to eat in six weeks. And WE feed THEM?!
Firstly, I know enough about Africa to not give a rat’s ass about Africans.
A couple of points why obesity may not be all bad.
– It helps us to identify poor people by their big fat bodies. A form of profiling so you know when you are in the wrong neighborhood.
– If everyone was obese, who would be fit to go and fight a war? That one would please the progressives.
– We would all be able to outrun pan handlers and other poor criminals.
On the downside, lesbians who seem to be mostly fat, may not like being mistaken for the poor, since most of them seem to have well-paying government jobs. They just like living in the wrong neighborhoods for the cheap character homes and lofts that they can decorate and decorate and decorate.
Abe Froman said “A form of profiling so you know when you are in the wrong neighborhood.”
I live in a working class neighborhood and I never ever see those little scooters around. I work in a poor neighborhood and the sidewalks are congested with fat people smoking cigarettes and driving around on the scooters.
Come on, people. Let’s have a little compassion.
I agree with 99.9% of what’s on this site. But that article did not say there was a lot of obesity among Africa’s urban poor, only that the rate was increasing. Going from 1% to 3% is a big increase, but it’s not like there’s not starvation in Africa.
I’ve worked in the Kipsongo slums in Kenya. We frequently visit an orphanage which is doing its best to be self-sufficient (it farms and exports french beans to the Netherlands; it’s started a fish farm; it’s started construction companies), and the kids there arrive severely malnourished. They have gotten their food from garbage dumps since they were 4. I saw an 8-year-old who weighed 23 pounds. She looked 2. She was close to death, but they rehabilitated her.
Yes, Africa’s governments are corrupt. The Kenyans would be the first to tell you that! But don’t paint all Africans as horrible. We’ve been working to start microbusinesses with teenage mothers who were gangraped after the violence in Eldoret. They have nothing else, but they want to stand on their own two feet. They eat meat maybe three times a year, but they eat lots of maize and kale. And they’re making plans to support their babies. They are the last thing from obese you can think of.
We have so much here in Canada. We are blessed with a government that as much as we complain about, at least has checks and balances.
Don’t go trash talking people who are desperate. How would you like to be alone in the world at 5 years of age because your mother died and your alcoholic step-father didn’t want you? How would you like to be desperate and looking for food in the dump, while police chase after you? Or how would you like to be a 13-year-old girl picked up for being homeless, put in prison, and then raped by the guards every night, until this orphanage rescued you?
People in this world live awful, awful lives. Much of it is caused by the government, and by the evil of their own countrymen. But please show a little compassion, at least around Christmastime, and stop sounding so hateful to a continent with so much suffering, especially among children.
Hate the government if you want to. I do. Hate the police if you want to (among the most corrupt in the world). But remember that there are honest innocent people suffering, and please be mindful of that in your tone.
You who are parents, picture your child at 5, alone on the street, and then see if you can sound as hateful as most of the above posters have done.
SheilaG- If I could picture my child starving, and alone, I wouldn’t have had children.
Of course they’re fat. They haven’t done an hour’s work in 3 generations, and we keep sending them money.
I urge, no, I implore you, stop sending money to Africa. Get busy, urging your MP to stop the madness. If they want to breed, they should be able to feed. It’s nature’s oldest, and most sensible rule.
Oh ya, Shiela, I don’t believe your sob stories. I’ve been bombarbed with sob stories from Africa for so long, they just go in one ear, and out the other. Lies, lies, and more lies.
SheilaG, there are huge problems in Africa, not unlike some of the things you described. I won’t dispute that those things happen and are horrible.
I also believe that Africa’s problems are largely cultural. How can a continent with the resources it has be poor? Corruption, violence and tribalism are the true problems, not cynical posters.
Just my thoughts.
dp–
Don’t be a jerk. I’m not making this up. My living room is covered with pictures of my kids with the kids there from our last two trips. The home is Mulli Children’s Family in Kenya. We’re leading a medical team in March. You can see the website here: http://mcfcf.ca. My mother was there when they rescued that little 8-year-old girl, and we have video.
Yes, the problem is cultural. Yes, it’s because of tribalism, and the inferior view of women, and corruption, and violence, and alcoholism, and spiritism, and all kinds of things. I don’t dispute that.
But none of it changes the fact that children are starving, being raped, and being left for dead.
If you truly believe in free-market principles (which I do, and which I assume all of you do if you read this blog), then why not try to use free-market principles to help Africa? I don’t give money to the government, or through large NGOs. I go over and do it myself.
But if you can’t go over, there are great sites that help with micro-businesses.
It’s easy to dismiss the world because it’s just a hellhole, and what’s the point?
But is that really how you want to be? Do you really want to not care that children are dying or being raped? Are you all really that hateful? Do you want to just make fun of African orphans, and think that that somehow makes you superior or cool?
Of course the place is a mess, but I do believe that free market principles, if they are implemented, can help. And we have seen that happen. We’ve seen girls start a hairdressing business in Mombassa. Not glamorous, but these girls who were once forced into prostitution by their aunts and uncles are now supporting themselves honourably. To me that means something.
If you all think that these people don’t deserve help because the nation is pathetic and the culture is pathetic, than that’s your prerogative. But I hardly think that’s good publicity for conservativism. If conservativism is practical and workable, then let’s export it and help others wiht it. But let’s not let conservativism be equated with hatefulness and lack of compassion for those most desperate.
They are most desperate because the country doesn’t know anything about true conservative principles. So if we are true conservatives, then we would at least applaud those who are trying to help using those principles, rather than just hoping all those kids over there die because they deserve it.
Try showing a little compassion, at least at Christmas.
Africa is worse off now than when I was a child in the ’60s.
The Canadian Maritimes are worse off then when I was a child in the ’60s.
What, SheilaG, do these 2 places have in common?
Welfare, that’s what.
Socialism doesn’t work and neither do people on welfare.
You aren’t part of the solution, SheilaG.
I don’t think that the point of Kate’s post is about Africa. It’s about Reuters, “researchers” and professional do gooders who use Africans to line their own pockets either with money or “moral” vanity tokens.
Good on you Sheila, for helping even though it must have been a discouraging situation.
Hey, don’t yell at me and don’t give me the saccharine treatment! There are problems, as I said.
I absolutely agree that welfare has hurt Africa. I don’t support welfare. But business loans are not welfare, and they do work. And low-interest loans for some of these kids to go to university is entirely different from putting a whole country on welfare.
Talk to Charles Mully, a Kenyan who runs the Mully Children’s Family, and he would absolutely agree that countries should stop giving money to kleptomaniac African governments. He doesn’t want welfare, either. Neither do some other really amazing conservative entrepreneurs in the continent who are trying to make things better.
But don’t dump all aid into the same category. It isn’t. And what conservatives need to do is figure out a way to help people rise up through capitalist principles, rather than leaving them to languish in pathetic governments because somehow they “deserve what they get”.
Give these people a chance, and you will see how they will change the government. But they can’t do it when they’re being gang-raped at 14 in a refugee camp.
Sheila
Been there, done that.
I to believe that if you are giving assistance to Africa it must be given directly to those in need and not to the agencies or government intermediaries. If you must do charitable works, that is the least harmful direct assistance.
I myself think it is up to the local population to make the necessary change. That means they need (a partial list):
– real education (not the anti white and anti developed world propeganda that passes for education in most African countries),
– real rule of law (not democracy because that is just another way of selecting the big man),
– real freedom of expression (not government controled and influenced media and political parties),
– the population excercising control over the powers that be (responsible government and bureaucracy),
– the do gooders doing good elsewhere (at home with their families is preferred) (aid welfare is just providing them with fish)
But getting back to the main post – this portends the development of a new scare for the world government to address. Obesity is now an iternational plague affecting even Africa. Surely now the UN must step in and money must be taken from the rich countries and redistributed to the poor (just so long as some fall into the right hands along the way).
Obesity is caused by all that CO2 in the soda pop.
What?
You say soda pop has sugar in it?
Well, it’s the CO2 that forces the sugar to make the drinker become obese./CO2 scarmonger
Agree SheilaG. I like what Muhammad Yunis has done with microcredit. dp and Oz, you’re not striking the right tone, sorry! Oz, saying that SheilaG isn’t part of the solution is crazy talk.
We just got done wiping out $40 billion in debt to Africa, a continent full of dictators, cannibals, communists, Muslims, and tribal genocides, and you call me crazy, Erik Larsen, for saying Africa can’t be helped SheilaG’s way?
Look in the mirror, buckwheat.
Africa isn’t my problem, but SheilaG and you think it is.
You are wrong.
My problem is my government throwing my tax money down a dry well.
My problem is crazy commie tools like you handing the government a mandate on a silver platter to do it.
Have you read the book “IQ and the Wealth of Nations”?
The problem is caused by “cheap low quality food”. Well, the solution to that is easy, make the food expensive and voila the problem of obesity is solved.
Reminds me of one of PJ O’Rourke’s books when he was visiting the USSR and his guide told him with a straight face: “Our two main problems here are trying to buy food and losing weight”.
People who eat mainly carbohydrates tend to consume a lot more calories/day if they have access to food in amounts greater than they need to live on (one study showed that the caloric difference between the Atkins diet and a high carb diet was 1500 calories/day more for the high carb diet). This suggests that it’s time to start getting more protein in their diet and less carbs. Obviously they’re not getting that much exercise either. I’d be curious about how many of these poor obese people do any work at all. If the spherical patients I see here who are on welfare and constantly complaining about not having enough money for food and their being overweight (often in the same sentence) are representative then the best thing for them would be to put them to work doing manual labor as it would probably improve their mood, get them to lose weight and keep them out of my office.
This was obviously by design so that Opera could sell them diet remedies and set up private liposuction clinics across Africa.
Anyone who believes any of the starving baby African propaganda is a ………fool.
Africa is simply a money sinkhole capitalized on by big business, lefty idealism and religious zealotry. The Africans don’t care, just keep it coming.
40 years of western interference has created bigger tribal wars with modern weapons, more starvation, massive aids infected populations, generational welfare dependence and huge organized crime syndicates. All of which prey on YOU for sustenance, much of which we now import wholesale.
Keep up the love.
AP should know. Journalists all over the western world sit in front of computers regurgitating the pap that has been force fed to them. While some of their predecessors actually got up and went out investigating the stories they wrote, the current crop sit awaiting the next political plum that may come their way. This particular kind of obesity makes them fat from the neck up.
By the way Kate – love the double meaning on Aids with AYDS.
Oz, you just aren’t listening to what SheilaG is saying. And, nice invective [not].
The shouting and contempt I’m reading here makes me think I’ve stumbled on a left-wing forum.
Posted by: rroe at>
“this portends the development of a new scare for the world government to address”…………..“Surely now the UN must step in and money must be taken from the rich countries and redistributed to the poor (just so long as some fall into the right hands along the way).”
You were joking of course?
I do find it funny that people who really do feel that way, never mean their own money or wealth. It’s always someone else’s.
The little CYA add-on the end of your statement was especially typical of the lefts flighty rationality “(just so long as some fall into the right hands along the way).” Yea right! Like that will ever happen, and what is “so long as SOME fall into the right hands along the way”? I suppose that it really doesn’t matter if you don’t feel that it’s your money being handed over to corrupt UN officials or murderous warlords, so long as SOME of someone else’s money goes to the right place.
“this portends the development of a new scare for the world government to address”
A one world government is a good thing?
Why don’t countries clear off their opposition parties, senates, and congress’s etcetera entirely? Just allow the biggest African warlord who can murder his way to the top (on our money) to claim victory as leader of the next World Government. Then no more elections and no more worries, right?
I am not going to respond to Oz because he is being deliberately inciteful and hateful, and I don’t think that’s representative of SmallDeadanimals at all.
I’m almost sorry I started all of this; I know this wasn’t Kate’s original point, it’s just that the comments were devolving into a “we hate Africans” thing, and that really makes me mad.
Erik, thanks for the kind words.
I, too, believe that local populations are the solutions to most problems. That’s what happening at the Mulli Children’s Home (and many like it that are growing all over Africa, using his model of self-sustainability). But one thing he isn’t is entirely local, because local means tribal. Charles Mulli has children in his home from every single tribe in Kenya. He is working to end tribalism, and let’s remember that “local cures” in Africa often means tribal ones, which perpetuate the problem.
They are building on self-sustainability; I’m excited by that and want to participate. And though local communities should be the solution, that’s hard when there’s no real infrastructure and a drought going on. Sometimes a gift of a bore hole so a community can have clean water can go a long way in empowering those local solutions.
Okay, I’m off of my soapbox now. Like I said, I agree with what Kate writes; it’s the comments here I found completely out of place. Like Erik said, it’s as if we’re on a left-wing blog, not a right-wing one where we honestly want real solutions for everyone’s betterment.
Sorry, one more thing, and then that’s really it.
When did I ever say I approve of government giving aid? I don’t. I think PEOPLE should step up to the plate and lend a helping hand through microbusiness loans. Government, when it tries, usually messes things up. With individuals, there’s more accountability.
Good for you, SheilaG.
I’ll still support my girl in Senegal and see her happy face when she is able to buy rice with the extra gift I send the family. And the animals.
And the school supplies. And the school fees. And the mats to sleep on. And the flipflops to walk to school. And the oil lantern so the kids can do their homework. And the…
Oh, what’s the use.
Give to your local food bank. The smokers and drinkers in Canada need your help also.
“Oz, saying that SheilaG isn’t part of the solution is crazy talk.”
~Erik Larsen
Look, Erik Larsen, SheilaG is whining and puling about African “children…starving, being raped, and being left for dead.”
Well the place is unstable and a chaotic third world toilet.
SheilaG and you are not part of the solution.
If there is a solution it is Ann Coulter’s solution:
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.
That I’d be willing to spend taxes on because it would be an attainable solution.
Going there and helping a few individuals start micro-businesses isn’t going to stop the raping and killing and being left for dead.
Loaning money to people in such circumstances is giving it to them as welfare because they aren’t going to pay it back and pretending they will is a flat out lie.
SheilaG called dp a jerk, you, Erik Larsen, called me crazy(crazy talk comes from crazy people) and you are the ones who are wrong.
“I saw an 8-year-old who weighed 23 pounds. She looked 2. She was close to death, but they rehabilitated her.”
~SheilaG
Rehabilitated?
Yeah, about as rehabilitated as you can get someone who has brain damage from malnutrition.
Get a grip on reality.
And don’t pretend I started the invective, Larsen.
Everyone can read what is upthread.
SheilaG, calling people “hateful” is a typical socialist ad hominem attack which usually follows the realization that they have lost the argument.
SheilaG, your Leftist talking points are banal, trite, and larded with useless appeals to sentimental images.
Posted by: gellen>
“Give to your local food bank. The smokers and drinkers in Canada need your help also.”
Wow, now there’s some real empathy, national pride and patriotism all rolled up into one neat little package.
“Those damned grubby little Canadian Indians, nothing like the imperial satisfaction of giving $1.00 a month to Africa”.
Oz, you are still not reading things correctly. I did not call you crazy. My comment re “crazy talk” was directed towards your posting, whereby you said that someone who was providing aid directly to people who required it was not part of the solution.
I’ve read a fair bit about microcredit, and while initially skeptical, I think it’s a useful way of solving a lot of problems. It is a direct counterpoint to conventional “foreign aid”.
Why would the powers that be care about soaring death rates due to obesity? Don’t they want the population drastically cut to mitigate climate change (TM)? There you go.
Let’s see, in the past little while, I’ve been called a twit, buckwheat, a socialist, and I forget what else. . . . by people who are in theory politically similarly like-minded to me. So I’ll keep on my roll, with my following comment:
Knight99, sometimes I enjoy reading your posts, sometimes I don’t. I know that this will likely not affect your world, but your post above I do not enjoy. Thanks for considering my comment.
Look, Eric Larsen, if people want to give any aid they want I can’t stand in their way.
It’s putting a band aid on a sucking chest wound, but hey, it’s their money.
If they want to pretend to “lend” their own personal money that is never going to be repaid to someone on the other side of the world who could be killed along with 100,000 others in the same unstable place in the next tribal genocide then fine.
Oakley dokely.
The thread is about the government taking my money and throwing it away.
Nobody is going to tell me Africa or anywhere else is my problem and get away with it, especially if it will be used as an overture to coerce my taxes to pay for it.
And it will be used as such an overture, many of the current evils in our own society started out as voluntary efforts, just like SheilaG’s and then those volunteers got all self righteous and forced us to their cause as if none of us have causes of our own.
We have enough problems here in Canada, over taxation is one of them, and misuse of tax funds is another.
Oz, I agree with you re overtaxation and misuse of tax funds. I think sadly a lot of foreign aid is just for “Bono-pleasing purposes”.
I mentioned microcredit – the interesting thing is that the repayment rate is 95-98%, which is way more morally justifiable than giving money to kleptocratic dictators. I hate the argument that “well, some money filters down to those who need it”. Microcredit is direct aid.
I wouldn’t be surprised that with microcredit, and subsequently improving the quality of life there, reproductive rates would also decrease, solving a variety of other problems.
Posted by: Erik Larsen>
I agree with you. It’s like SDA has been hijacked by a pack of lefty loons since I’ve been AFK for the last couple of months (Travelling many of these same cesspits, without full internet access).
I would also commend SheilaG, because she sounds like someone who cares to help others on her own dime with her own time. Nothing wrong with that, everyone can make their own choices in life and it’s commendable when someone puts their energy, time and money where their mouth is.
Unfortunately others commenting here are spouting off about one world governments and distributing the wealth of so called rich countries. Even going as far as citing Bob Geldoff and that world renowned megalomaniac nutball Bono from U2.
Bono quote “I do not give of my own money, but do give of my time”!
*This is a super multimillionaire who lobbies your government for mandatory taxation to go directly to Africa. In the meantime he has moved his multimillion dollar music empire out of Ireland to Holland because of changes to the tax exempt status he enjoyed for years for “artists” there. He owns everything from 5 star hotels, restaurant chains, co-owns Forbes magazine along with another 15 companies and financial trusts………….But he “does not give of his own money”!
The fact that others would righteously quote this hypocritical crank as a justification of their misguided ideologies on SDA and not be properly challenged is disheartening to say the least.
Thanks Knight99 – you said things way better than I did, and I tried hard.
Posted by: Erik Larsen>
“…….but your post above I do not enjoy. Thanks for considering my comment.”
Considered! Sometimes I do not enjoy the outcome of some of my own posts either Erik!
As with anyone, there are good days and bad, at times things meant to be said appear to have an almost opposite meaning once re-read in print.
I suppose if you elaborated as to which post or comment I made that was “not to your liking” I could give a proper rebuttal or explanation.
Speaking of Bono, I was sad to hear that the clapping story was not true – distilled down:
At a concert, Bono started to rhythmically clap, and said “Every time I clap, a child in Africa dies”
“Stop clapping then” someone yelled
The one about the Indians. I think I understand your point, but it just doesn’t sound right. I don’t want to start another major discussion though! I think I’ve said too much here already. 🙂
re. Oz – I don’t think any non-troll here wants to deliver taxpayer money to Robert Mugabe’s Swiss bank account. But what on earth is wrong with micro-loans?
However screwed up Africa is politically, which is of course for the most part very, what is the problem with helping ordinary people accumulate a little hard-earned wealth? What’s “leftist” about that? Even in Africa, you know, everyone isn’t constantly being massacred.
SheilaG makes all the sense in the world.
(Erik @6:49 – a few days ago I called you a schmuck, but in a nice way.)
I would also commend SheilaG, because she sounds like someone who cares to help others on her own dime with her own time. Nothing wrong with that, everyone can make their own choices in life and it’s commendable when someone puts their energy, time and money where their mouth is.
~Knight 99
Yeah, commendable.
But she played the guilt card and lost the commendation:
You who are parents, picture your child at 5, alone on the street, and then see if you can sound as hateful as most of the above posters have done.
~SheilaG at December 15, 2009 2:26 PM
“It takes a village to raise a child.”~insipid traditional African saying
Too bad SheilaG can’t understand that, unlike Africans, the people on this thread take care of their own children.
SheilaG puts herself up on a pedestal and pretends that the people who are upthread and angry because the government is going to take their taxes and throw the money at Africa, AGAIN, should feel guilty because, in addition to her taxes being ripped off, she gives personally to Africa.
Well SheilaG, commendation revoked!
Posted by: Erik Larsen>
“The one about the Indians……”
Oh – Ha ha……….Yes that was one that probably came out wrong.
My intended comment was twofold. First, Gellens earlier comments came across to me as very sanctimonious and secondly veiled racism. Veiled racism in the way of typical self loathing white hating racism. He cryptically stated that somehow poor Black Africans are more worthy of his magnanimous charity than supposedly beer swilling, tobacco chewing poor White dregs on Canadian society.
My response was intended to be a returned cryptic reply pointing out the typical lefty hypocrisy in his tongue in cheek comment. The fact I was trying to point out – was that it was not just poor white people that he was besmirching but also the little brown people who also have needs back home. Knowing of course that the radical left only see’s racism as a one way street, and that they are somehow above it if they throw themselves at Africa with self serving 10th century indulgences.
I will agree with you though, the comment most probably will be seen by many in another light.
Nothing wrong with pointing that out to me Erik – Thanks!
re. Oz – I don’t think any non-troll here wants to deliver taxpayer money to Robert Mugabe’s Swiss bank account. But what on earth is wrong with micro-loans?
~Black Mamba
Not a thing wrong with microloans, especially if they are loans and are being repaid.
I’m not convinced that they are.
If they aren’t being repaid they are microwelfare.
The thread is about our governments giving our taxes to Africa, again.
Ask SheilaG if she understood that was what the thread was about, not her and her microloans or her pet cause.
Okay, I’ve got to say something else.
Oz, to repeat, when did I ever say that I thought the government should give aid? Why do you keep saying that I think the government should? Get your facts straight and read what I wrote.
I’m glad everyone on this thread looks after their own kids. So do I.
Many, many in Africa don’t. Many abuse their children. Many sell them into prostitution. Many gang-rape teenage girls and get them pregnant.
Of course they should look after their own kids. Of course they should stop having so many kids if they can’t afford them. No one disputes that.
But it doesn’t change the fact that there are millions of children out there right now who are not being cared for, and many millions more with parents who would like to care for them but can’t because they have no money and the country is in a drought.
You may not care about them. That is your prerogative. But I do, as does anybody with a heart. You may think it’s okay to say that because African ADULTS don’t look after their kids (or Cambodian adults, or Brazilian adults, or Haitian adults, or whatever), we shouldn’t help the KIDS at all because they’ll just grow up to do the same thing. You may think it’s okay to let little kids starve or get sold into prostitution.
But I do not think it is okay. I have a hard time comprehending how anybody cannot be moved by their plight. Do you think foster kids in Canada are to be blamed for their parents, too (yes, we’ve done emergency foster care work, too. I guess that makes me part of another problem, too, by perpetuating the foster system in Canada or something according to your logic).
These kids are not to blame. They desperately need help. And from what I’ve seen, they do incredibly well when given the chance. They try at school. They succeed. We’ve seen former street kids go through university and start businesses.
Microbusiness and microfinance helps, as does simply building wells in areas with no water. I don’t think it’s the government’s job to do it. I think it’s our job, as it should be for anybody who cares about this world.
You may not fall into that category, and that’s okay. But personally, I’d rather fall on the side of those who helps orphans and abused children than the side of one who thinks they should fend for themselves because it’s all their own fault. Or whatever point it is you’re trying to make.