Mass shootings again

Pkiernan

Honestly, how come mass shootings in Africa get basically 1 report in the news, but in so called developed nations they get weeks of international outrage?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47680836

Because as much as people don't like to admit it because a certain person said it, there are a lot of ****holes in Africa.

Tacklebox

I suppose the western world are very well connected through the media and they have all their facts as right as can be.

So word gets around quite fast, we're probably more empathic with our first world problems rather than third world issues.

We're basically world's apart.

Those villager's probably didn't care when they heard or if they heard about the Omagh bombings in northern Ireland.

It's nothing personal just the dynamics of society and culture.

corminators

Africa pops up a lot on this list. I keep an eye on it to see what's going on there. Can't get much from Western news.

Auntie Semite

Because far from caring about racism or the plight of Africans, many people have not the slightest interest whatsoever in the endless atrocities which blight Africa.

biko

Unfortunately this is very true ^^^

Ethnic and/or religious killings is happening every day in some African country.









I predict this thread will fall off the AH front page with less than 200 comments, no-one gives a damn.. I hope I'm wrong.

Poor Uncle Tom

biko wrote: »

Unfortunately this is very true ^^^

Ethnic and/or religious killings is happening every day in some African country.









I predict this thread will fall off the AH front page with less than 200 comments, no-one gives a damn.. I hope I'm wrong.

I'll keep it bumped to at least 201, just to prove you wrong....

Way too much violence in Africa (collectively) to dwell on one aspect of it, let alone one incident of it, I'm aware that sounds callous but it is actually factual.

Wibbs

What I posted in the thread about the leader of UAE thanking New Zealand over the recent tragedy works here too.

Mass murders of any faith or sort are generally ignored by western media because in the vast majority of cases it's brown people being murdered by other brown people(or by pale people by proxy or technology). If pale people were getting murdered in similar numbers the poo would hit the fan. When brown people are murdered by pale people in majority pale countries the poo hits the fan because it's local and suburban and makes us pale people look bad. Add in either "our culture is best culture" or the opposing "Pale people are to blame for all badness", both generally opinions majority held by pale people and you get the craw thumping. Mix all that in a bowl of always on news and social media and you get the craw thumbing and temporary and simplistic responses to long standing and complex problems. Thoughts and prayers, hearts and minds. Blah. Until the next event that can be mewled over in a picture.

It would in my humble be actual and practical racism. Collectively we're essentially continuing the very old prejudice and opinion of the not White parts of the world that boils down to: Ah sure that's what you expect "them" to do. And off it slips from the front page. No photo ops, no thoughts and prayers, no flags on Facebook avatars, no political grandstanding, no never agains.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

People are quite selective in what they pay attention.

Just look at the difference in coverage of Venezuela (An enemy of the US) and Colombia (A US ally). If Maduro's troops carried out the atrocities that his neighbours did, you'd never hear the end of it.

_Whimsical_

Also quite surprising is that the almost systematic killing of Christians by extremist Muslims in African and other countries like Syria and Iraq gets no real media traction, yet we are familiar with the plight of other ethnic/ religious minorities from those areas, eg. Yazidis. Of course we should be familiar with them, but it's hard to understand how the equally horrific plight of Christians doesn't get the same coverage or response. You'd think that a strong point of reference that the western world identifies with would get at least equal highlighting as an oppressed minority.

McMurphy

Read the title and thought a Sunday service was attacked.

Wibbs

_Whimsical_ wrote: »

Also quite surprising is that the almost systematic killing of Christians by extremist Muslims in African and other countries like Syria and Iraq gets no real media traction, yet we are familiar with the plight of other ethnic/ religious minorities from those areas, eg. Yazidis.

Indeed or even mass murders of other Muslims in those areas. Like I said it's the psychology of low expectations along "racial" and cultural lines. When "one of our own" does something horrific and in our back yard like in New Zealand the west loses its shit. It's not "expected" of us y'know, he wasn't a "wog" is the subconscious under the breath reality of much of it. Like I said, I reckon it's in many ways a worse racism than the more obvious examples we point to.

kneemos

I'll be honest and say I couldn't even be bothered reading much of the article.

These thing are barely a one day headline anymore wherever they happen.

biko

biko wrote: »

I predict this thread will fall off the AH front page with less than 200 comments, no-one gives a damn.. I hope I'm wrong.

Brought back from page 2 with less than 20 comments...

And tbh, it's not surprising. The list of messed up African countries go on and on.There is no way people can have the attention span to cover all the conflicts and human rights violations that goes on daily.

branie2

Makes you wonder what the world is coming to

Sweetemotion

corminators wrote: »

Africa pops up a lot on this list. I keep an eye on it to see what's going on there. Can't get much from Western news.

The descriptions on that site are just horrifying.

screamer

Because in countries where life is cheap......

meeeeh

In the same way as nobody cares about political crisis in Serbia or drug wars in Brazilian favelas, factory explosions in China or huge hurricane death toll in Africa. Those are countries with more crime, less infrastructure, poverty, political corruption etc. It's what we expect in countries like that. It's shocking when it happens somewhere we can relate to and we can't relate to them.

goose2005

Tacklebox wrote: »

I suppose the western world are very well connected through the media and they have all their facts as right as can be.

So word gets around quite fast, we're probably more empathic with our first world problems rather than third world issues.

We're basically world's apart.

Those villager's probably didn't care when they heard or if they heard about the Omagh bombings in northern Ireland.

It's nothing personal just the dynamics of society and culture.

There's no excuse nowadays, news companies should make an effort to cover "third world" stories more. The amount of times an event will make the front page of Wikipedia but nowhere else is shocking (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Xiangshui_chemical_plant_explosion or the resignation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nursultan_Nazarbayev are nowhere, but we hear wall-to-wall Trump and Mueller nonsense)

Your Face

Pkiernan wrote: »

Honestly, how come mass shootings in Africa get basically 1 report in the news, but in so called developed nations they get weeks of international outrage?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47680836

A lot of developed countries have a lot common.
So if something happens in one of these countries, the others will take notice as it affects them to varying degrees and proportions.

Wibbs

branie2 wrote: »

Makes you wonder what the world is coming to

What the world has always been B. In fact we've never been better off, even in the third, sorry... developing world.

Worldwide, murders and the like are way down compared to damned near every era in history. The ISIS stuff would have barely been idle gossip at the height of the Roman Empire and would have been snuffed out as quickly as legions could get to it and any who publicly sympathised with them would have been nailed to a tree in double quick time.

The difference today is the increasing feed of slanted and targeted info to the best consumers straight to whatever device you pray to. So it seems more, and more terrifying, and closer the stories are get the most push. No point pushing the "news" to the "fuzzy wuzzies" on a dollar a day and those on a 100 dollars a day are too distant to care enough to buy into something they're selling.

DS86DS

Pkiernan wrote: »

Honestly, how come mass shootings in Africa get basically 1 report in the news, but in so called developed nations they get weeks of international outrage?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47680836

Had the shooter been a white Christian, we'd be hearing about it into 2020.

NIMAN

meeeeh wrote: »

In the same way as nobody cares about political crisis in Serbia or drug wars in Brazilian favelas, factory explosions in China or huge hurricane death toll in Africa. Those are countries with more crime, less infrastructure, poverty, political corruption etc. It's what we expect in countries like that. It's shocking when it happens somewhere we can relate to and we can't relate to them.

To be fair, is it not the governments of these countries responsibility to sort themselves out?

Its like with all the disasters, famines etc. They expect everyone else to pick up the tab while they buy the latest fighters for their air force to fight with their neighbours.

Airyfairy12

Its not uncommon in Africa, its so common that its expected, news would be something positive happening in Africa. I dont think its that people dont care its just most of Africa has been plagued by poverty, famine, corruption, wars, gang violence for so long that I dont think anyone can remember a time when the continent was right, its never been in my life time. Its like hearing the same story repeatedly over and over and over and over again, people lose interest. There's nothing any of us can do to help the problems in Africa so whats the point in getting depressed reading or hearing about it in the news everyday.

RobertKK

I was reading that in Mozambique only 5% of the population have internet access.
Internet coverage affects reporting and I saw it argued it is why when a city in Mozambique is described as totally destroyed and a half million people left homeless, an estimated 1,000 people dead is less of a story than the New Zealand gun attack massacre because the gun attack was filmed and spread on the internet, while there was little to no reporting of the cyclone that hit south east Africa until days after the event.

meeeeh

NIMAN wrote: »

To be fair, is it not the governments of these countries responsibility to sort themselves out?

Its like with all the disasters, famines etc. They expect everyone else to pick up the tab while they buy the latest fighters for their air force to fight with their neighbours.

I didn't say anything about whose fault it is, I said we don't relate to them in the same way as we relate to people who live in similar type of society as us.

Tacklebox

meeeeh wrote: »

I didn't say anything about whose fault it is, I said we don't relate to them in the same way as we relate to people who live in similar type of society as us.

That's only natural, because we've our own culture and needs.

They're from a different culture and have different outlooks.
They don't relate to us either, it goes both ways.

Each person and loved one's for themselves.
If you're really passionate about it, there's nothing stopping you from saving up money and taking a visit to their culture, and show them compassion.

I wouldn't hedge my bets on you getting a warm welcome though.

Danzy

Wibbs wrote: »

Indeed or even mass murders of other Muslims in those areas. Like I said it's the psychology of low expectations along "racial" and cultural lines. When "one of our own" does something horrific and in our back yard like in New Zealand the west loses its shit. It's not "expected" of us y'know, he wasn't a "wog" is the subconscious under the breath reality of much of it. Like I said, I reckon it's in many ways a worse racism than the more obvious examples we point to.

More the Psychology of just another day there, rather than low expectations.

The New Zealand attack stood out for its difference, in Europe this week there was 1 successful attack and 2 botched ones, ie no dead or noteworthyness.

Most will not know about the Jewish man and his son stabbed in Amsterdam or the guy who tried killing policemen in a Bordeaux police station.

Dog bites man vs man bites dog.

meeeeh

Tacklebox wrote: »

That's only natural, because we've our own culture and needs.

They're from a different culture and have different outlooks.
They don't relate to us either, it goes both ways.

Each person and loved one's for themselves.
If you're really passionate about it, there's nothing stopping you from saving up money and taking a visit to their culture, and show them compassion.

I wouldn't hedge my bets on you getting a warm welcome though.

What amazes me in responses to my posts is that I made absolutely no statements weather I find that understandable or not. In fact I think it perfectly natural that we will empathize with those we can relate more. Yet because of the chip on your (and Niman's) shoulder you have to go on a soapbox about foreign aid and attribute statements to me that I didn't make.

Tacklebox

meeeeh wrote: »

What amazes me in responses to my posts is that I made absolutely no statements weather I find that understandable or not. In fact I think it perfectly natural that we will empathize with those we can relate more. Yet because of the chip on your (and Niman's) shoulder you have to go on a soapbox about foreign aid and attribute statements to me that I didn't make.

I think you're way off the mark there, neither of us mentioned foreign aid and attribute statement's to you.

Take it personal if you like, but fact's are fact's.

It's tiring discussing with people who are triggered by one's opinion.

I'm balanced I've a chip on both shoulder's

meeeeh

Tacklebox wrote: »

I think you're way off the mark there, neither of us mentioned foreign aid and attribute statement's to you.

Take it personal if you like, but fact's are fact's.

It's tiring discussing with people who are triggered by one's opinion.

I'm balanced I've a chip on both shoulder's

NIMAN did and you attributed arguments to me that I didn't make. You are right I'm triggered by blind stupidity and lack of basic understanding. And I well believe you have chip on both shoulders.