War
War is a distinctly first world problem. How so you may ask? Well, it's the first world that supplies the weaponry to the third world. It's the first world that colonised the 3rd world and riled the natives and set them off in the first place. For goodness sakes it's almost 300 years later and most of Africa is still arguing over where their country ends and the next one starts. All the while doing so with weapons sold by the first world.

And it would be doing the western civilised world a great disservice to say that they actually want peace. Because they don't. War is big business. It serves the economies of most the worlds super powers very nicely. The justification in all cases being that if we don't sell that under developed 3rd world country with millions of starving Africans weapons then someone else will. So lets just leave our morals at the door and ship tons of ammo and guns over there and forget about the consequences. Good job everyone.
(The Archduke of South London I'm in your Girlfriend eating her organs, Tue 6 Mar 2012, 15:17, 28 replies)

If only they still had those civilised times before they were colonised,
centuries of peaceful co-existence epitomised by the use of spears, maces and bows and arrows. Hang on...
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Tue 6 Mar 2012, 15:26, closed)

small tribal skirmishes
are not the same as the scale we have today after centuries of western exploitation so the OP has a point. On the surface it's easy to see things like Rwanda and say it has nothing to do with the west but if you look past the surface you see a different story. For example in Kenya when the railway was put in it created disproportionate prosperity favouring the tribes on land the rail brough wealth to, creating tensions and inequality so you evntually get the sort of tribal violence seen in the recent elections between Luo and Kikuyu. Also look at the Congo with the rebel controlled Coltan mines the west needs for mobile phone manufacture, the huge proping up of unstable dictatorships because they favour western interests . you know the rest
( Clay hopes this bit is long enough to promote my websi, Tue 6 Mar 2012, 20:02, closed)

Scale and aggravating factors are
,in terms of the OP, irrelevant. The suggestion was that war did not/would not exist without the first world. This is clearly a false statement. Clearly the modern commercialisation of arms and proliferation of so called 'foreign interests' has made war not only easier to facilitate but virtually desirable for some to do just that. I do not dispute this. My assertion was towards the myth of the 'lost innocence of the poor savages' .
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Tue 6 Mar 2012, 20:40, closed)

I think there was war in Africa before the West moved in, actually.
Indeed, I'd hazard a bet that there were wars before gunpowder was brought over.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 6 Mar 2012, 15:27, closed)

Um...what?

( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Tue 6 Mar 2012, 15:29, closed)

huh, yeah
What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again. War...
( sutit only the crumbliest, flakiest posts, Tue 6 Mar 2012, 15:32, closed)

Damn you, now you have me wishing I was born in a more peaceful time.
Maybe back in the days of some reknowned pacifist leader such as Charlemagne, Hannibal or Atilla The Hun.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Tue 6 Mar 2012, 15:40, closed)

Bring back Ghengis Khan!
He knew how to get things done in a peaceful and reasonable manner with absolutely no bloodshed whatsoever.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Tue 6 Mar 2012, 15:45, closed)

And he made the trains run on time.
...no..wait...that's not right.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Tue 6 Mar 2012, 15:46, closed)

You're thinking of Ethelred the Unready
or was that the introduction of the minimum wage?
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Tue 6 Mar 2012, 15:49, closed)

I believe he invented child benefit payments.
If only he'd thought it through a little more though.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Tue 6 Mar 2012, 15:52, closed)

He asked King Menes of Egypt to help
but he was bogged down with devising an efficient method of promoting maternity leave, shortening the working week for single parents and the compulsory attendance of 'loving other tribes' workshops.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Tue 6 Mar 2012, 16:00, closed)

You're thinking of Red Ethel,
the sock-knitting sidekick of Conan the Librarian.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Tue 6 Mar 2012, 18:38, closed)

Ahhhhh

( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Tue 6 Mar 2012, 19:22, closed)

In fact fuck it let's restart the Mayan empire.
At no point did they ever brutally massacre opposing tribes in central and south America and make human sacrifices of their own tribespeople, not even the once.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Tue 6 Mar 2012, 15:48, closed)

Ninja edit possibly?
I feel this whole post could carry more clopper clout if, instead of the first line being: 'War is a distinctly first world problem', it was: 'War has become a first world problem'. But there you go.

Good god, say it again etc. HUUUUURGH!
(King Nightmare, Tue 6 Mar 2012, 16:03, closed)

I'm not convinced that would be enough,
based, as it appears to be, on the premise that all the peoples of the non-European world used to skip hand in hand through the plains and meadows until the bad white man turned up with his magic fire sticks to 'fuck some shit up'!
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Tue 6 Mar 2012, 16:22, closed)

Your reply is awesome.
I bow down before it.
(King Nightmare, Tue 6 Mar 2012, 16:24, closed)

Ha.
I was trying to find a way of saying "that wouldn't help a great deal" without being too rude about why it wouldn't.

You did it very well indeed.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Tue 6 Mar 2012, 16:30, closed)

Why, thank you both.

( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Tue 6 Mar 2012, 16:40, closed)

Breasts are bouncy.

( The Mock Turtle ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Tue 6 Mar 2012, 16:09, closed)

Until the PiP implants start leaking...

( P-MONKE We're all fucked, Tue 6 Mar 2012, 17:01, closed)

but if we don't ship them the best boom-inducing weaponry..
how are they going to properly blow up their infrastructure so we can 'help them' by rebuilding it in return for their natural resources? it's as if you don't know how this works by now..
(UppityDamnPrimate LET'S OPEN THIS F*CKING PIT UP, Tue 6 Mar 2012, 17:06, closed)

I don't remember the peace-lovin' people of Rwanda
using 1st world technology when they decided to machete the shit out of each other just a couple of decades ago.

And I don't think they make machetes in Sheffield anymore either.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Tue 6 Mar 2012, 17:11, closed)

Pedantic point
We didn't "colonise the 3rd world" - the term "3rd world" didn't even exsist until 1975, when it was used to describe nations that were neutral in the Cold War (the US and it's allies being 1st World and the Soviets and their allies being 2nd world). It just so happens that most of these neutral countries are what we now consider to pretty much be "3rd world shitholes".

What we did (and by "we", I mean "England") did was colonised the world...
(ScousersPet, Wed 7 Mar 2012, 9:40, closed)

That just makes me think about pink bits.

(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Wed 7 Mar 2012, 11:26, closed)

We were quite insistant about that
We wanted the pink, and tried to eradicate anything brown...
(ScousersPet, Wed 7 Mar 2012, 13:14, closed)

Not sure
generating massive amounts of cash is technically what you'd call a "problem".

Unless this is all a carefully disguised dig at our post industrial revolution manufacturing class and the collective myth of social mobility? In which case; spot-on, defo a first world problem. Well played.
(Go on , touch it, Wed 7 Mar 2012, 15:18, closed)