Christ, no-one got yet that I wasn't serious yet by that comment? Genetics would never affect morals and ethics in a single country *facepalms*

I said that in a sarcastic way because I didn't get why it was mostly just happened in Nigeria - there's a reason they call it a NIGERIAN scam - far more than in any other country with similar problems. Nigeria is sticking out head and shoulders above similar countries with similar problems when it comes to scamming so it's not like you can just go "oh it happens everywhere" - that's not true.

Heck, I see a difference between hacking a bank and getting credit card data, and lying to someone's face directly - the latter should be a lot harder to do psychologically and if you take the time to read one of the many many MANY scam stories, you'll see what I mean (and I've read 100s myself).

Plus, it's very very ignorant to say "oh those poor people are badly off, that's why they do it" if you know anything about these scammers, you'd know they're NOT poorly off. These people have access to phones, computers, cameras, etc. Every time they bait these folks, it shows they have nice houses, in a nice neighbourhood etc. They don't live in slums - don't kid yourself and hide behind the "they don't have anything" nonsense - it's not true. It's simple: it's greed. It's a culture of a greed - and that's what that father told me as well. The mentality is incredibly different and there's a great many who would sell their grandmothers to make money which he hadn't seen in other countries he had gone to - he said that, the poorest people often had the best ethics and that it's the ones that are reasonably well off that were the worst and I can see that being true.

You have a point there, if you stretch matters, but it's all about scale not to mention, as I said above, it's not the poorest people who do these things - I mean, you need to be quite well off to be able to afford international phone calls, etc. Like I said, that father had been all over Africa and there were countries with just as much poverty and corruption and there wasn't that same attitude that money was the world, and that you should do anything to get it. In the end, Nigeria is known to be a country of scammers for a reason - the governement doesn't do anything, the population doesn't mind at all because they benefit ... so they still condone it one way or another.

I say they should just get on with gold farming like other countries and stop ripping off sick 60 year old women and lying to her face. That's beyond low and I stick with my disgust at their mentality.

^

Do you really think the Nigerian population "doesn't mind" the corruption around them?

I personally think they're intimidated, and won't speak for fear of violent retaliation.


@ WhiteElk

Thanks for sharing that news about Bolivia. I had no idea such a thing was going on. Fucking incredible.

Time to send in the Liam Neeson.

Well, if you really weren't serious, then it's ok, no harm done =)

You might be a little more careful with your sarcasm, though. I wasn't the only one who thought that was serious. But let's just forget about it.

It's hard to say. My own government is pretty corrupt, and yet people keep voting on the same politicians over and over. So yes, in a way, they just don't mind the corruption. Or maybe they do mind, but they just aren't educated enough to know how to change it.

I doubt most of the population understands even the basic differences between, let's say, left or right. They're really voting almost at random, probably on whoever has the most immediate appeal to them. Populism ensues, and every case of corruption we get to know is forgotten.

National origin is often considered a form of race. Scottish, English, American, Chinese, native American, et cetera. Saying these are not races is pedantic at best. If people are talking bad about Nigerians as if they are genetically inferior due to their ancestry/origin, then yes it is racism.

Though perhaps somewhat inappropriate, racism is the only accepted term I've heard used to refer to prejudice against people from a certain culture. The line between that and prejudice against an ancestral origin is murky anyway.

You know what's worse than Nigerian scammers? The bloody dutch, and carnies......

What exactly do you mean by this?

I believe it's the latter, that your folk aren't aware of how to change it; more specifically, don't know how to change it while keeping their loved ones safe.

Populism? Obviously I'm not in your country (though from what I've seen from TV & the 'net, it's beautiful), but I figure the only way a politician in such a country could become popular would be by promising to improve the economy & promise to eliminate the corruption. Obama did an excellent job of this in '08 (mainly due to how brutal the Dubya Admin was), and well....

All logic dictates it should be like that. However, every government has it's major corruption-related scandals, yet no politician is ever punished and a lot of them get reelected, or elected to a position of even more importance.

I think our logic simply fails to predict the level of ignorance that rampages the majority of the population.

It's not all bad though. Lula was elected, let's be honest, just because he was born poor, and so had a major appeal to the poor majority (who don't have the slightest understanding of economics, or anything of real importance, I guess). Some of my friends worked on the last elections, and many reported a lot of people asking how to vote on him (and he was not participating!). Yet, while it still had all the corruption, his government was one of the best in our history, and it put the country in just the right direction, though progress will be very slow.

I'm betting you understand my point.

The context I replied to, was one of genetic inferiority. Within a nation there is a genetic pool. Bigots and pinheads frequently direct racist attacks against people of specific nations. Saying similar things as was said in post #2...

We can't be politically correct all the time, now can we? Now don't misunderstand, i'm against hating anyone because of their race/gender/handicap/nation....but sometimes it's ok to let off a joke or two because it's thought always having to watch that you're not stepping on anyone's toes & also because joking about something doesn't mean you hate the subject of the joke or feel that way.

I agree the post#2 could've been better worded though.

This.
Corruption is the source of evil everywhere in the world.

I'm with you completely on the subject. Europeans only "boosted" the already inhuman society that were in many parts of Africa. Sadly that made it much harder to promote human right in the countries and therefore some blame is justified. But it's also the individual's responsibility to make things better in the country and not only blame others for the faults.

Hi, I'm back. Went away for a couple days & didn't expect the topic to explode like this.

As GR said, yes I'm singling out Nigerians because they were the subject of the story I read & posted a link to. They've tried to scam me in the past and everyone I know (in real life, not internet friends) has gotten emails from Nigerians trying to scam them as well. Put that all together & this story just put me over the edge. I've never seen widespread scam-mails from...oh, lets say Sweden...but if I had seen them from Sweden & then read about this type of story happening in Sweden, then this would've been a rant about Sweden. Its not like I picked Nigeria out of a hat & decided to dig up as much dirt on them as possible...they brought their own dirt, and I'm just talking about it.

I'm aware of all the crap that goes on here in America, but again, the story I read was about Nigeria. I'm certainly not proud of America for its criminal activity, especially when it comes to our own government. Which is why I added the line about bombing a country whose people are actively going after us...I'm still very angry & bitter towards GW Bush and his bogus unwarranted war on Iraq, which has cost thousands of American & Iraqi (and other nations) lives, cost our country billions of dollars, taken us from our greatest monetary surplus in history to our greatest debt in history, and all the other negative effects Bush has had on our country & others countries.

So was I serious about bombing Nigeria? No. But it would've at least made more sense than GW deciding we needed to invade Iraq.

That's the case in most parts of the US, the reason being that if you don't have water rights to cover it that water already belongs to somebody else, and in many parts of the country, the water rights are over committed as is. Around here it's completely legal to have rain barrels and such because Seattle paid to buy the water rights for all the water falling on most of the city. Which is somewhat silly because a significant portion of that water just went into our storm sewers completely unused. And on the occasions where we get 5" of rain in 24 hours having rain barrels or similar can help to reduce the amount of water going down the store drains at once.

The main difference between here and Bolivia during that period is that water is still easily affordable by all but the poorest, and even the homeless can get water, albeit with some challenge.

As for the rest of the post that I cut out, that was what made that last Bond film so incredibly awful. They used the same scheme that you referenced from Bolivia and didn't even bother to make it as severe. Plus, the writing for the villain was completely terrible, they managed to get an amazing actor and give him a crap role.