I very much appreciate your thoughtful and balanced response, chicken sandwich. I resonate about your point of acting locally on local issues, but at times overriding that and acting locally on a global issue at certain times. That’s not at all to say that I’m not also in support of issues such as low-income housing or harm reduction strategies when it comes to addiction. (These issues also happen to be tied to the Olympics in a different way.)

You spoke of news media and how they play up in-group/ out-group differences. I agree but also add that the topics that they cover also reflects a sinister bias. For example, Martha Stewart, the sponsorship scandal, and the role of Canada in Afghanistan get huge amounts of coverage and Darfur almost none. Here’s a stat that shocks me: ABC dedicated *10* news segments to Darfur in 2005 and it dedicated *468* to Michael Jackson in the same year. See http://www.beawitness.org/methodology for a comprehensive report.

The media’s choices in coverage represent certain values–driven by money, not an interest in informing–that I think can have a corrupting effect on its viewership. One year ago, I knew almost nothing about Darfur, not because I don’t read the news (I read a variety of sources), but because Darfur wasn’t in the news. So when people look at me funny now when I talk about Darfur, I should be more understanding. By the way, all of my involvement in Darfur started after watching the movie The Devil Came on Horseback (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=498tOlnBQBY). After learning about what has been going on and the deliberate attempt of certain powers that be to keep us in the West in the dark about it, I felt an obligation to undermine their effort and free that information.

Chicken Sandwich mentioned China, and suspected that China was no different than other countries. Hm… perhaps they are similar in certain senses, but in terms the Communist Party’s utter disregard for human rights for the sake of maintaining power and building wealth, they are exemplary. What makes China particularly involved in Darfur is that they are the consumers of 70% of Khartoum’s oil exports, and are the supplier of weapons to the Khartoum government. The Khartoum government is using that money and those weapons for genocide in Darfur. China insists that they are not responsible for the human rights violations of their flourishing trade partners. I, and others, disagree. If China wanted to, they could demand that Khartoum end attacks on civilian populations, and Khartoum would have to oblige. Recently, Steven Spielberg (and others) dropped out of his involvement with the Beijing Olympics out of protest on Darfur. In fact, an entire brigade of athletes have joined up under the banner of Team Darfur with the same message. http://www.teamdarfur.org/. I would argue that connecting Canada’s relationship to China, and in turn their relationship to Darfur (with our own mini-Olympics) is an important message that Canadians should be aware of. And pressuring China has been having an effect. They have in turn changed their tune (to some degree) towards Sudan, telling them that China was losing patience. It’s a start. Got to keep up the pressure.

The point about Being self-serving and wanting to help others are not incompatible. I could not agree more. In fact, my PhD that I am currently working on aims to develop a scientifically validated psychological explanation for how moral acts are self-enhancing. My opinion is that once we understand the nature of our motivational system (that is, motivated partly but not just by fame and money), then we’ll see that altruism really doesn’t exist. For me, to not act on my conviction that genocide is wrong and I have a responsibility to intervene in some way would be a violation to my own self. In the end, I have to look myself in the mirror every night and ask myself what I see. That is reward/punishment enough, depending on what decisions or actions I have taken that day.

Thank you Chicken Sandwich for making this discussion interesting.

Josh Phelps, you said you’re pretty serious dude.

My response is that genocide is more than a pretty serious matter; Darfur represents what many are calling the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today. Regardless of whether it’s the worst or second worst or third worst, it deserves a serious response. Our prime minister is not serious about Darfur. We had a diplomatic envoy to Darfur; he canceled it and gave no justification. I think that he should be more pretty serious about it.

I can see that I’m wasting my time here. I’ll leave this nonsense at this point and get back to the important work.

Television is a business, these stats on what’s on TV merely represents what your fellow humans want to see.

There’s really nothing shocking or sinister about it, there is not a deliberate attempt to keep the west in the dark it cost money to send reporters across the world to cover something most people are not interested in. Instead you get a canned report that is sent out from one person and edited down to fit in with your other news

I am sorry but your event will not change the media’s view on what should be on TV, instead I would suggest you try and enlighten the public on what’s going and in turn get them to change what they want to see on TV

You mention you hope the media will be there on April 27, have you sent out a press release yet?

great. i do agree - raising awareness for those born into unfortunate and miserable situations is a good thing (almost makes me feel sorry for paris hilton though).
but yeah, I see your point and more power to ya.

BUT i do take issue with your bait and switch and i take issue with the insinuation that climbing is self-centered. I stick to my guns: if climbing is self-centered then any recreational activity is self-centered… likewise, if we keep sliding down your slippery slope, then this would also mean any distraction (TV, music etc…) is also self centered.
so i’m not buying in.

i can almost guarantee that, at least partially, it is BECAUSE you climb and are a climber, that you are doing this awareness campaign. perhaps you’ve travelled near the Darfur area for climbing and seen what’s going on. i don’t know. likely though, if you were world’s best bowler, you wouldn’t be doing this. Stoltman, Hillary, Clarke etc… these are all examples of people who, had they not been climbers would likely not have participated in the ways they did in making this world a better place.

my point is that climbing is not just a self serving activity. what you are doing, frimer, is proof of that. so, please, don’t go off guilting us into joining your awareness race.

because, quite frankly, this climbing thing that i enjoy so much, you basically attacked my motivations for participating in it. (narcissism may be Harding’s reason and your reason to climb, but it ain’t mine).

you pushed… so i pushed back.

next time dude…just tell us.

just ask us