in Ghana, how well are property laws enforced? Is there violence against farmers, like there is in South Africa? Article does not touch on this, but could be another reason why people choose not to farm.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
To give this article a fairer chance at having its actual content discussed, I'm going to collapse this subthread.
On HN, we're trying to open up a space to discuss new things, unexpected things, curious things. Those exert a weaker force on attention than the sensationalized hot topics that already exist in people's minds. When comments hop from a new topic to an intense pre-existing topic, that creates a path to flamewar hell. It's moderation's job to restrain and undo that, so that the more curious, weaker topic can get attention again. Does that answer your question?
Have you considered you’re not in the right, when both Congress and the Whitehouse have investigated social media censorship?
In the unlikely event that Congress or the Whitehouse take an interest in HN moderation, I'll be happy to share with them how we approach this.
“I’m doing the same things that triggered Congressional and Presidential investigations, and plan to continue until they harass me directly.”
You’re such an upstanding member of society.
I sincerely hope they do investigate you, because I believe your authoritarian censorship has infected other technology websites, and is the place many people at Google et al learned to censor for “civility”.
The exact thing that is under investigation.
And to anyone who feels silenced by dang, I suggest you reach out to your congressional representatives — and report the instances of censorship for narrative control you observe. This is an issue, and dang’s pretenses aside, it is being investigated as a serious social problem.
It’s time to standup to leftwing bullies silencing people who don’t agree as “offensive”, because those same leftwing bullies devolve into angry shouting when confronted by opposing views.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Please do not use such generalizations on HN.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/23/white-farmers-...
Sometimes they're not: https://www.thelocal.se/20180508/why-sweden-doesnt-keep-stat...
Here is an article about the farm attacks https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/south-africa...
To bring us back to OP's question, property rights in Ghana are listed here [3] as "weak".
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/ozatp-safrica-racism-2010033... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_Zimbabwe [3]: https://www.propertymarketsscorecard.com/countries/ghana/pro...
“Mostly” because there obviously are some cases, but those do not statistically differ from crime in general.
Also strange to immediately think of South Africa when reading about Ghana. Ghana is closer to Brazil and Spain than it is to SA.
Which does not say farmers, or white farmers specifically, are targeted disproportionately - I was unable to find statistics on this. But they are targeted:
"Yet the available research shows that most crime against white farmers is criminally motivated, the perpetrators seeking firearms, money, or vehicles, and that the violence used is instrumental to these purposes. Farms, remote and scattered, are seen as easy targets. In a small number of cases, the motive may be revenge for eviction or past ill-treatment." [1]
Note that South Africa has 6x the murder rate of the USA, so saying farmers are under attack is certainly true, even if they're not disproportionately under attack.
Edit: I looked around some more, and there does not appear to be very reliable data, but depending on how you slice the numbers, farmers may be disproportionately under attack by a factor as high as 6 [2].
Let me also remark on how curious it is that the media would so confidently call this theory 'debunked' (and racist!), when by their own admission, there is insufficient official data (gathered by the majority black government) to conclude either way [2]. I do not recall this level of skepticism being so widely applied to the Black Lives Matters movement.
Edit 2: User angersock (whose post is dead) did find what looks to be official statistics: "According to the South African Institute for Race Relations, commercial farmers, who are predominantly white, were twice as likely to be killed as the average citizen." [3]
I am confident that, should this be brought to the BBCs attention, they will run a front-page story correcting their earlier claims that this is a racist myth.
[1] https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/safrica2/Safarms1.htm#_1_1
See the Wikipedia article someone else linked for more recent sources of data, and the observation that farm attacks today are actually decreasing.
I’m reading this thread with no context or agenda and I don’t see the first commenter saying anything about white farmers.
When you say “started this thread” that seems misleading because you brought an interesting perspective about allegations regarding the victimizations of white farmers in to this. But it didn’t seem to be at all what the original commented was elucidating.
Actually the vulnerability of farmers to violent depredation in contrast to hunters or herders has been proposed as a huge factor throughout history and prehistory guiding physical and social evolution.
That was my first association.
So, I don’t know what the original commenter meant but I’m not certain you do either.
Quote: “it is unclear whether farmers are at greater risk of being murdered than other South Africans”
Later: “Fact-checkers have widely identified the notion of a "white genocide" in South Africa as a falsehood or myth.[12][17]”