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Comment by _xajm | Hacker News Reader

You may notice that this letter is not to a private citizen working with their own resources - it's to one of the wealthiest individuals leading one of the wealthiest companies in the world. A company that is not primarily owned by him, but by investors all over the world. This is about using Google - a multi-national giant funded by the investments of others to take a large risk alienating users to help a cause that already has wealthy and vocal advocates. Big risk with other people's resources and little potential upside for those people - doesn't seem like a great idea.

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Today you help gay people, tommorow you help aids. Not mutually exclusive, one does not prevent the other. One step at a time, and try for real change.

Look at Bill Gates - they open this "charity" and then invites all his friends to save on their taxes by donating money in there. Utter bullcrap. Charities are the new Tax Havens. And they just hit people like you with propaganda on what needs to be done. It's all about:

Aids, Cancer, Malaria, Darfur, Earthquake in Sichuan, Tsunami, Pandas, Eagles, Dolphins, Whales, Cats & Dogs, Zimbabwe.

The media topics are almost always the same, but are you telling me you really think that the bulk of the worlds suffering is in any of those topics? Are Dolphins more worthy than Hyenas?

Charity is a big-industry, and they use marketing techniques to get money from people. And in marketing, you need to get a clear brand - Darfur is a brand, Aids is a brand, Starving Children are a brand. They don't run billboards with real and unsexy problems in the world.

I spent a lot of time in Africa and in China, and the people I really respect are very small - I met this American couple who have been running a haven for monkeys in the border of Cameroun for the last 20 years. They make a real difference - they have put everything they have into that project, and they have saved so many animals. But these large charities will collect millions and do nothing there! I've met doctors who go to villages and treat the poor people there for free. Those are REAL heroes! They touch disgusting wounds and look at wretched people without flinching. They are people to look up to, people to admire.

Not cigar smoking men sitting in offices in New York and meeting with advertising agencies on how best to create a fundraiser for the new batch of teenage stars.

I would just ignore these people if I could, but when I see them influencing otherwise intelligent people, it really pisses me off.

THINK! If people are asking you for money, don't believe everything they tell you!

Aids, Cancer, Malaria, Darfur, Earthquake in Sichuan, Tsunami, Pandas, Eagles, Dolphins, Whales, Cats & Dogs, Zimbabwe.

Don't be so quick to trivialize cancer and aids. I assure you: if you ever have to see someone close to you suffer and ultimately die of one of those nasty diseases, the problem of getting a marriage license for gay people will pale in comparison.

Sometimes the media serves a good purpose. Not all the time, but sometimes. I personally think that cancer and aids, darfur (last i checked something like 400,000 people, mostly innocent, were massacred), are much weightier issues, and therefore deserve the bulk of media attention.

This is not to discredit the honorable work of people working on relatively small societal problems such as gay marriage, but in most of the above problems, the core argument is that lives are being lost. Think about that.

Darfur is utter nonsense. Remember Sierra Leone? Liberia? I saw the videos coming out of those countries, and yes, that place was a war - a REAL war. Remember the Hutu Tutsi thing? Another real massacre. There are pictures all over the net.

But Darfur is just wierd. In this age of Cameras, Camera People, Live streaming, how come 400,000 people have died, and there are no videos of actual combat? Darfur is the strangest "war" I've ever heard of - it seems to be a theoretical war. I've never met the people running from there, I've never seen the videos of the actual war, I've never seen real photographic evidence of any massacres.

People want to constantly hear about wars in Africa. But that age has suddenly ended. All the wars in Africa have ended, what's just left is just local clashes and conflicts between ethnic groups, and various organisations who have a vested interest in there being conflicts in Africa push up these topics. Do some real research, you'll see how wierd the Darfur war comes across compared to Sierra Leone or Liberia. Also, research the role of China in the region.

Cancer sucks, but cancer has been there since the beginning of time. People get it, people die. The only reason so much focus is given on it is that it is the one disease that being rich has no effect on. So the rich people have vested interest in getting rid of cancer before other diseases like Malaria.

Aids is of course a problem, but seriously, remember 10 years ago? 1998? The news about Aids was the same panic as right now. But the thing is this - for an exponentially growing disease, with drugs that are ensuring that the people infected stay alive longer, should it not have been more devastating than it turned out?

The Aids projection seem to be staying at roughly the same number. I'm not saying it's not there, I'm just saying that it's not an explosive epidemic.

In this age of Cameras, Camera People, Live streaming, how come 400,000 people have died, and there are no videos of actual combat?

Perhaps if you did more research you would actually find that its kind of hard to get videos of actual combat. Even if you could get said footage,how easy do you think it is to publish stuff like this when there is a suppressive government? Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

And i'm not arguing about whether or not these are problems. I'm saying that they are bigger problems than the one posted.

Then how come there is so much footage of Liberia and Sierra Leone? And Sudan is not a supressive government, it's a failed state where the central government is weak and cannot control the country.

Mark,

Have you heard of the phrase, stop while you're ahead.

I followed your rebuttal essentially stating that one should not lose sight of small problems for the larger ones, but your derivative spiel about charities and about Darfur is incoherent babble.

Seriously.

Darfur was a non-issue in the US/ world-media until perhaps 2006, and even now, most Americans (and perhaps Germans as well?) don't know much about Darfur, don't care, and most importantly to your argument, they don't donate time or money to the issue. So what charities exactly are benefitting by distributing the 'propaganda' about the 'war' in Darfur.

It's not war, it's genocide.

Are you one of those who also didn't believe Holocaust Germany happened? Not enough evidence for you?

Stick to a logical argument backed up by either logic and data, or please do not argue here again. I'm tired of seeing your pointless rants where you spew this ridiculous, utter, nonsense.

Ridiculous, utter, nonsense? And what other pointless rants of mine are you talking about? If you want to make a point, then make a point based off my argument, not by descending into personal name calling.

What other pointless rants are you talking about?

(And by the way, I've been several times in the general conflict zone area. What are your info sources that make you so sure I am wrong?)

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