11–20 of 55 posts
What impressed me this time, however, is the quick read / deep read switch articles on this website have. It's the first time I see such and I bloody freakin wish every website had it!
But the Irish/Choctaw friendship is one of my favorite uplifting stories if only because it's about those who have little giving it away to people in a similar predicament. It's still sad but there's so much kindness in that gesture.
I think I remember a similar story where an Indian or Shri Lankan city sent some livestock to a starving European city, but can't find anything at the moment.
"In 1985 Ethiopia could justly lay claim to the greatest suffering and privation in the world. Its economy was in ruin. Its food supply had been ravaged by years of drought and internal war. Its inhabitants were dying by the thousands from disease and starvation. Under these circumstances, I would not have been surprised to learn of a five-thousand-dollar relief donation from Mexico to that wrenchingly needy country. I remember my chin hitting my chest, though, when a brief newspaper item I was reading insisted that the aid had gone in the opposite direction. Native officials of the Ethiopian Red Cross had decided to send the money to help the victims of that year’s earthquakes in Mexico City...Despite the enormous needs prevailing in Ethiopia, the money was being sent because Mexico had sent aid to Ethiopia in 1935, when it was invaded by Italy."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindred_Spirits_(sculpture)
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kindred-spirits-sculptur...
We're also aware 'Choctaw' and 'Hopi' and 'Navajo' are all different tribes and Native Americans aren't a monolithic group. It's just hard if not nigh on impossible to give back to the exact people that helped us. It's the sentiment that counts in this sense.
There is a similar story described by Robert Cialdini in his classic book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion [1]: "In 1985 Ethiopia could justly lay claim to the greatest suffering and privation in the world. Its economy was in ruin. Its food supply had been ravaged by years of drought and internal war. Its inhabitants were dying by the thousands from disease and starvation. Under these circumstances, I would n…
Disturbing pictures on the news are now so routine as to be ignored .. or vanish altogether.
There's good and bad here (there's a tendency to see the world as 'oppressor' and 'oppressed'), but it comes from good intentions.
There is a similar story described by Robert Cialdini in his classic book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion [1]: "In 1985 Ethiopia could justly lay claim to the greatest suffering and privation in the world. Its economy was in ruin. Its food supply had been ravaged by years of drought and internal war. Its inhabitants were dying by the thousands from disease and starvation. Under these circumstances, I would n…
Extraordinary thing to happen at the time of Band Aid and the big donations from the UK to Ethiopia following the first disturbing pictures of the famine being broadcast on the news. Disturbing pictures on the news are now so routine as to be ignored .. or vanish altogether.
Hong Kong protests took over the news for a while, but then there was the Coronavirus and suddenly the Hong Kong protests seem to no longer be a thing and the people forgotten.
Ireland had plenty of food at the time. They even continued to export food to England. It's just that due to systematic oppression, Irish natives couldn't afford anything that weren't (now blighted) potatoes.
That's where the parallel comes from with the Native Americans.