Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/3/84; site talcott.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!hpda!fortune!amdcad!decwrl!decvax!genrad!wjh12!talcott!gjk From: gjk@talcott.UUCP (Greg Kuperberg) Newsgroups: net.flame Subject: Re: How about helping our own Message-ID: <191@talcott.UUCP> Date: Tue, 18-Dec-84 01:42:37 EST Article-I.D.: talcott.191 Posted: Tue Dec 18 01:42:37 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 19-Dec-84 00:35:32 EST References: <709@loral.UUCP> Organization: Harvard Lines: 78 *****************************************BOOOOM!!!!!!!! ********A car bomb!!!!! *******The gas tank explodes!!!! ******A fireball erupts and rises into the sky!!!! FLAME ON!!!!!!!! >How about the farmers that are going bankrupt at a record rate and have to ask >for food stamps just to feed their children. Lets face the fact and wake up >and smell the coffee. This is one screwed up country. We'll break our asses >to help others with billions of dollars and turn our back on our own people. Bullshit. You read in the papers about Joe Schmo the farmer who can't afford a second TV set. In America, the phrase, "there are poor people" means that some reporter found some somewhere and gave it national press. In absolutely any non-Western country, "there are poor people" means that *everyone*, yes everyone, is poor. Food lines in Poland doesn't mean that the New York Times took a photograph of a busy store somewhere, it means that my relatives have to wait in line for five hours for some meat, unless of course the shipment runs out before it's their turn. Not someone in Poland, not a friend of a friend of a friend, but *my* relatives. In Ethiopia, it's much worse than that. It means that there are no lines, there are no shipments, and there is no food. It means that if I had relatives in Ethiopia, they would probably be walking skeletons. Either that or dead. >Cliff Roberts and Charalton Heston seem to be the media spokesmen for the >relief effort in Ethiopia. I'm sure each of them have cut big fat checks >for the relief effort. Have each of them given a 'dime' to any needy people >in their own country. I doubt it!. You see its politically fashonable to >contribute to the starving people in Ethiopia. I don't give a fuck about Roberts and Heston. Damn right it's politically fashionable. The whole country is starving. And I don't mean they are hungry or that they eat in a soup kitchen. Those people are *dying*. > Hey!, I have a great idea. Fifty cents out of every dollar for the relief > effort should be distributed to the farmers about ready to go bankrupt and > the street people in all cities of this country. Now you say well thats > welfare. No matter who we give relief to its still welfare. By the way > the farmers being proud people that they are will pay it back some day. The proud people who lobby in Congress to set up price fixing schemes. In Eithiopia, there are no food stamps. There is no food, either. > Just before you give away a check to the Ethiopia relief drive find out > if there are any charity organizations for our street people or farmers > relief funds. I say when every person in america is fat and healthy and > we don't know what else to do with our money then send it over seas. And our street people. Sure, they exist. But there aren't that many of them, not compared to the poor in other countries. But let's pick a random street person: Johnny the crazy man, who can't keep a job because he forgets he has one. Sending him food might help some, but Johnny's real problem is not that he's hungry; it's that he's crazy. And no amount of money in the world will change that. How about this: Almost everyone in America is fat and healthy. Isn't that enough for now? Couldn't we at least feed *someone* in Ethiopia? It's only 11 million people, you know, and half of them might keel over any day now. > LETS QUIT SHIT'NT ON OUR OWN PEOPLE for the sake of others! I don't think we did anything to Johnny the crazy man. I think he did it to himself. And it's time for you to read up on your statistics: we spend more money on food stamps alone than we do on all our foreign aid put together. Our foreign aid comes to less than one percent of our GNP---we can afford to spend a little more. In fact, you could afford to give a little food, couldn't you? Wouldn't it be better than giving bullshit? [SSssssss.... the fire trucks arrive. The charred chassis gets hosed over...] --- Greg Kuperberg harvard!talcott!gjk " " -Charlie Chaplin, for IBM