"our" people should come first?

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I get really irritated when there's something like an event on TV where they're raising money for children and families in Africa or wherever and someone will say, "how come that money isn't going to help out our own people?"

Okay, define "our people" or have cartographers done that for us? Just because these people happen to be on another continent or across some imaginary political line, that means they should be denied aid in favor of the people what live in our own country?

Second, I think that famine-ridden people in Africa deserve more help because of their plight. They have NO FOOD and NO SHELTER and NO MEDICINE. We have those things. Granted for some it might be harder to get than others but it can be obtained. Some poor children in the Sudan can't. Not because there's a waiting list or because they're outside the income limits but because there isn't any of the things they need.

Even if you look up US homeless children on Google, you'd find kids that are reasonably well fed and have someplace to sleep even if it's in a car. Now compare that image to this one:



there's a difference between hunger and famine.

Oh my, that kid is a walking mummy
It pains me to see it

digger1, you are free to send your money wherever you want. So am I for that matter. The charity I have chosen is in the USA. It does not waste millions or more like the Red Cross, the United Way or UNICEF does. Making sure that your chosen charity uses the money effectively rather than chastising others for not agreeing with your choice of charity would probably go further to help those who you wish to help.

I'd never donate money, because I do not know where the money will go. These "relief" organizations aren't always so enthusiastic about helping the needy as much as they are helping themselves, or their rich corporate puppett masters..... Hurricane Katrina hits, or the tsunami in Indonesia hits, the first thing on the Red Cross's mind is "ching ching bling bling! Pay day!". They thrive on disasters because disasters keeps their pay checks coming.
I'd be more likely to adopt a child, so I can see to it that the child finds guidance and nourishment. If I could afford to, that is. I don't want to see anyone die like that. But I don't trust these "relief efforts" ...... where we may end up dropping a buttload of bombs and then a buttload of food. And we wonder why 3rd world countries are so resentful of us nations like US and UK....

Put it this way.... Red Cross took "donations" for Katrina. Yet, many people left homeless from Katrina, are still without homes. The donations went to funding the war in Iraq, not for helping the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Interesting points.

Makes me wonder which then is worse as a fate. To starve to death surrounded by millions of other starving unfed individuals, as far as the eye can see, where there is no sustenance to be had for miles, having never understood or lived long enough to conceive of the politics and idiocy (synonym?) of hundreds of years of mismanagement, tribalism, invasion, slavery etc etc that have condemned you, your family, friends and neighbours to a lingering and unpleasant death...assuming that you arent first slaughtered by machete-wielding "freedom fighters"... or to die in plain view of the neon-lit windows of "FastFoodKing" tm whilst wrapped in the filth-stained cast-offs of other peoples waste, stinking of your own bodily fluids, watching the self-satisfied and self-congratulating lard-asses sending their arteries into paroxysms of shock in celebration of the fact that they have just sent two quid to "CharityTVcollectathon 2008" to help build a well in some godforsaken desert hellhole run by a bunch of kalashnikov-waving buccaneers and all because somebody in an office somewhere decided that it would be economical to make a few cuts before driving home in his BMW M series.

Either way, methinks it is a b*tch. That either event occurs is horrific. That such things can and do happen outside your front door is frankly unspeakable. Is it any more right to ignore the charitable causes in your own home town than it is to send money to some distant land?
Is it worth noting that the regrettable picture of the malnourished child is in fact almost undateable? Because aid has been poured into various parts of Africa for longer than I can recall, with virtually no meaningful effect. Why? See earlier comments about Kalashnikov-waving buccaneers.....