Post by: roo_ster on July 23, 2008, 05:47:03 AM
Of course, he is being brought up on hate-speech charges by the local stalinist apparatchik "human rights"/multi-cultist star chamber.
What follows is a succession of three of his columns of 10JULY, 22JULY, and 23ULY.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/africa-is-giving-nothing-to-anyone%E2%80%94apart-from-aids-1430428.html
Africa is giving nothing to anyone -- apart from AIDS
No. It will not do. Even as we see African states refusing to take action to restore something resembling civilisation in Zimbabwe, the begging bowl for Ethiopia is being passed around to us, yet again.
It is nearly 25 years since Ethiopia's (and Bob Geldof's) famous Feed The World campaign, and in that time Ethiopia's population has grown from 33.5 million to 78 million today.
So why on earth should I do anything to encourage further catastrophic demographic growth in that country? Where is the logic? There is none. To be sure, there are two things saying that logic doesn't count.
One is my conscience, and the other is the picture, yet again, of another wide-eyed child, yet again, gazing, yet again, at the camera, which yet again, captures the tragedy of . . .
Sorry. My conscience has toured this territory on foot and financially. Unlike most of you, I have been to Ethiopia; like most of you, I have stumped up the loot to charities to stop starvation there. The wide-eyed boy-child we saved, 20 years or so ago, is now a priapic, Kalashnikov-bearing hearty, siring children whenever the whim takes him.
There is, no doubt a good argument why we should prolong this predatory and dysfunctional economic, social and sexual system; but I do not know what it is. There is, on the other hand, every reason not to write a column like this.
It will win no friends, and will provoke the self-righteous wrath of, well, the self-righteous, letter-writing wrathful, a species which never fails to contaminate almost every debate in Irish life with its sneers and its moral superiority. It will also probably enrage some of the finest men in Irish life, like John O'Shea, of Goal; and the Finucane brothers, men whom I admire enormously. So be it.
But, please, please, you self-righteously wrathful, spare me mention of our own Famine, with this or that lazy analogy. There is no comparison. Within 20 years of the Famine, the Irish population was down by 30pc. Over the equivalent period, thanks to western food, the Mercedes 10-wheel truck and the Lockheed Hercules, Ethiopia's has more than doubled.
Alas, that wretched country is not alone in its madness. Somewhere, over the rainbow, lies Somalia, another fine land of violent, Kalashnikov-toting, khat-chewing, girl-circumcising, permanently tumescent layabouts.
Indeed, we now have almost an entire continent of sexually hyperactive indigents, with tens of millions of people who only survive because of help from the outside world.
This dependency has not stimulated political prudence or commonsense. Indeed, voodoo idiocy seems to be in the ascendant, with the next president of South Africa being a firm believer in the efficacy of a little tap water on the post-coital penis as a sure preventative against infection. Needless to say, poverty, hunger and societal meltdown have not prevented idiotic wars involving Tigre, Uganda, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea etcetera.
Broad brush-strokes, to be sure. But broad brush-strokes are often the way that history paints its gaudier, if more decisive, chapters. Japan, China, Russia, Korea, Poland, Germany, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the 20th century have endured worse broad brush-strokes than almost any part of Africa.
They are now -- one way or another -- virtually all giving aid to or investing in Africa, whereas Africa, with its vast savannahs and its lush pastures, is giving almost nothing to anyone, apart from AIDS.
Meanwhile, Africa's peoples are outstripping their resources, and causing catastrophic ecological degradation. By 2050, the population of Ethiopia will be 177 million: The equivalent of France, Germany and Benelux today, but located on the parched and increasingly protein-free wastelands of the Great Rift Valley.
So, how much sense does it make for us actively to increase the adult population of what is already a vastly over-populated, environmentally devastated and economically dependent country?
How much morality is there in saving an Ethiopian child from starvation today, for it to survive to a life of brutal circumcision, poverty, hunger, violence and sexual abuse, resulting in another half-dozen such wide-eyed children, with comparably jolly little lives ahead of them? Of course, it might make you feel better, which is a prime reason for so much charity. But that is not good enough.
For self-serving generosity has been one of the curses of Africa. It has sustained political systems which would otherwise have collapsed.
It prolonged the Eritrean-Ethiopian war by nearly a decade. It is inspiring Bill Gates' programme to rid the continent of malaria, when, in the almost complete absence of personal self-discipline, that disease is one of the most efficacious forms of population-control now operating.
If his programme is successful, tens of millions of children who would otherwise have died in infancy will survive to adulthood, he boasts. Oh good: then what? I know. Let them all come here. Yes, that's an idea.
kmyers@independent.ie
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/writing-what-i-should-have-written-so-many-years-ago-1437779.html
Writing what I should have written so many years ago
By Kevin Myers
Tuesday July 22 2008
Last Thursday week, with famine approaching yet again, I wondered about the wisdom of forking out yet more aid to Ethiopia. Since the great famine of the mid-1980s, Ethiopia's population has soared from 33.5 million to 78 million.
Now, I do not write civil service reports for the United Nations: I write a newspaper column, and I was deliberately strong in my use of language -- as indeed I had been when writing reports from Ethiopia at the height of that terrible Famine.
I was sure that my column would arouse some hostility: my concerns were intensified when I saw the headline: "Africa has given the world nothing but AIDS." Which was not quite what I said -- the missing "almost" goes a long way; and anyway, my article was about aid, not AIDS.
Since dear old Ireland can often enough resemble Lynch Mob Central on PC issues, I braced myself for the worst: and sure enough, in poured the emails. Three hundred on the first day, soon reaching over 800: but, amazingly, 90pc+ were in my support, and mostly from baffled, decent and worried people. The minority who attacked me were risibly predictable, expressing themselves with a vindictive and uninquiring moral superiority. (Why do so many of those who purport to love mankind actually hate people so?)
We did more in Ethiopia a quarter of a century ago than just rescue children from terrible death through starvation: we also saved an evil, misogynistic and dysfunctional social system. Presuming that half the existing population (say, 17 million) of the mid 1980s is now dead through non-famine causes, the total added population from that time is some 60 million, around half of them female.
That is, Ethiopia has effectively gained the entire population of the United Kingdom since the famine. But at least 80pc of Ethiopian girls are circumcised, meaning that no less than 24 million girls suffered this fate, usually without anaesthetics or antiseptic. The UN estimates that 12pc of girls die through septicaemia, spinal convulsions, trauma and blood-loss after circumcision which probably means that around three million little Ethiopian girls have been butchered since the famine -- roughly the same as the number of Jewish women who died in the Holocaust.
So what is the moral justification for saving a baby from death through hunger, in order to give her an even more agonising, almost sacrificial, death aged eight or 13? The practice could have been stamped out, with sufficient political will, as sutti in India once was. And the feminists of the west would never have allowed such unconditional aid to be given to such a wicked and brutal society if it had been run by white men.
But, instead, the state was run by black males, for whom a special race-and-gender dispensation apparently applies: thus the two most politically incorrect sins of our age -- sexism and racism -- by some mysterious moral process, akin to the mathematics of the double-negative, annul one another, and produce an unquestioned positive virtue, called Ethiopia.
I am not innocent in all this. The people of Ireland remained in ignorance of the reality of Africa because of cowardly journalists like me. When I went to Ethiopia just over 20 years ago, I saw many things I never reported -- such as the menacing effect of gangs of young men with Kalashnikovs everywhere, while women did all the work. In the very middle of starvation and death, men spent their time drinking the local hooch in the boonabate shebeens. Alongside the boonabates were shanty-brothels, to which drinkers would casually repair, to briefly relieve themselves in the scarred orifice of some wretched prostitute (whom God preserve and protect). I saw all this and did not report it, nor the anger of the Irish aid workers at the sexual incontinence and fecklessness of Ethiopian men. Why? Because I wanted to write much-acclaimed, tear-jerkingly purple prose about wide-eyed, fly-infested children -- not cold, unpopular and even "racist" accusations about African male culpability.
Am I able to rebut good and honourable people like John O'Shea, who are now warning us that once again, we must feed the starving Ethiopian children? No, of course I'm not. But I am lost in awe at the dreadful options open to us. This is the greatest moral quandary facing the world. We cannot allow the starving children of Ethiopia to die.
Yet the wide-eyed children of 1984-86, who were saved by western medicines and foodstuffs, helped begin the greatest population explosion in human history, which will bring Ethiopia's population to 170 million by 2050. By that time, Nigeria's population will be 340 million, (up from just 19 million in 1930). The same is true over much of Africa.
Thus we are heading towards a demographic holocaust, with a potential premature loss of life far exceeding that of all the wars of the 20th Century. This terrible truth cannot be ignored.
But back in Ireland, there are sanctimonious ginger-groups, which yearn to prevent discussion, and even to imprison those of us who try, however imperfectly, to expose the truth about Africa. And of that saccharine, sickly shower, more tomorrow.
kmyers@independent.ie
- Kevin Myers
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/is-this-the-tolerance-that-our-thoughtpolice-take-pride-in-1438547.html
Is this the tolerance that our thought-police take pride in?
By Kevin Myers
Wednesday July 23 2008
ON THE one hand, I expected some uproar in Ireland over my piece about Ethiopia on July 10. But there really wasn't any. On the other, I didn't expect an attempt to jail me by a state-sponsored body. Yet Denise Charlton, of the Immigrant Council of Ireland, has urged An Garda Siochana to investigate me under a special law, by which I could be tried and imprisoned for two years without even the benefit of a jury.
Oh, Denise, Denise, you silly, silly little girl: have you nothing better to do with your time and talents than to try to get someone jailed for saying something you dislike? So there we are. The apparatchiks of the equality industry merely have to contemplate the sector of their psyche wherein their self-righteous emotions reside: and if these are sufficiently overwrought, they decide that a hate-crime has been committed.
Actually, I hate no-one. Personal, political and racial hatreds are the most corrosive and ruinous of all passions. Why, I don't even hate Robert Mugabe, or his chum, the former Ethiopian dictator, the lovely Mengistu, who is hiding out in Zimbabwe, or the Emperor Bokassa, or Idi Amin, and any of those fine fellows who have brought such lustre to the name of Africa.
And so, not hating, I certainly don't want anyone to hate anyone else either. However, I know and feel and applaud measured hostility, the guardian of our civilisation, and the father of our laws. Measured hostility is what puts the gunman behind bars: it drives the mugger from the street and the burglar from our homes.
It also protects freedom of speech from those who would steal it from us -- most particularly in Ireland of today, the quango thought-police of doctrinaire liberalism, and single-issue vigilantes in the media.
This latter group is most conspicuous in Metro Eireann, the magazine of full-time, professional immigrants: that is, immigrants who write about immigration. Gosh: what interesting and varied lives you people lead!
METRO e-mailed me the following questions. "Do you agree with the charges levelled against you by the Immigrant Council of Ireland (namely that the article can be seen as inspiring racial hatred?) Why/why not?
"2. Do you agree that your article could be misunderstood in some quarters? If so then what is the main idea of it and what was it really trying to say?
"3. Do you agree that some of the statements you made could be offensive to people from Africa who live in Ireland? Did you think about them when writing the piece?
"4. It's definately (sic) not the first time that your writing offended somebody. Can you recall any other instances/ official complaints/death threats etc that you got from, say, the Irish republicans?
"That is all. It would be great if you could answer these questions or give your comment in any way you wish. I just want to add that there are a lot of Africans associated with Metro Eireann and they're all very offended. So we'll have to run comments from the African community, aid groups etc and it would be really great to have your comment to balance all of that."
So, "a lot of Africans" are "all very offended", are they? All of them? The poor dears. Well, if the countries on whose behalf they get so easily offended are so bloody marvellous -- Sudan? Rwanda? Zimbabwe? Sierre Leone? Congo? Somalia? Eritrea? Etcetera? -- why aren't they enjoying themselves back home?
Why are they here, working for a magazine which cheerfully invites me to incriminate myself before our new thought-police? Or which thinks that journalistic balance consists of Lots of Offended Africans of Metro, plus anyone else they can enlist, versus little old me?
And in that contest, by God, I know the sword whereby I stand: the measured hostility that comes from a Tolerant, European Secular Christian Order, the very one that allows Metro people come from all over the world to work here, and ask me stupid questions, and even be offended.
If the countries on whose behalf they get so easily offended are so marvellous -- Rwanda? Eritrea? Etcetera? -- why aren't they back home?
Its origins lie in the Christian ore of our history. It was forged in its present form in Europe's evil wars of the 20th century, where it was tempered in the Holocaust and shaped against the anvil of communism. TESCO stands for personal freedom, unlike the new authoritarian "liberalism" that neo-Leninist state functionaries are now making into an official political orthodoxy.
ONE of these orthodoxies is that Africa's woes are the legacy of "colonialism". But Ethiopia (formerly Abyssinia, and far older than any European state) was never colonised.
However, it was conquered by the Italians in 1936, and liberated in 1941 by a British army led by General Sir Allan Cunningham: a Dubliner, after whom a road in Addis Ababa is still named. This final titbit comes from one of a half-dozen Ethiopians who e-mailed me, supporting my attempts to broaden the discussion about Africa away from the grotesque pieties of simple victimhood.
Accepting criticism of one's own country, and from a foreigner like me, is not easy: so thank you, Oh gentlemen of Ethiopia, for truly embodying the principles of TESCO. Metro, please copy.
kmyers@independent.ie
- Kevin Myers
Post by: Werewolf on July 23, 2008, 07:07:07 AM
With the exception of Egypt I'd have to say that if GOD has bowel movements the excrement is deposited from and onto Africa.
Africa is a scumhole. Why is a big question because it is a continent rich in untapped mineral and agricultural resources.
I really can't explain it but I imagine someone will soon be explaining to us all how it's the fault of us evil westerners and our exploitatious, and corrupt capitalist corporations.
Post by: HankB on July 23, 2008, 07:17:27 AM
Quote
. . . Yet Denise Charlton, of the Immigrant Council of Ireland, has urged An Garda Siochana to investigate me under a special law, by which I could be tried and imprisoned for two years without even the benefit of a jury.
Jailed for years with no trial because of what a person said or wrote? Gee, this makes it sound like Ireland is a fascist police state . . .
Post by: AZRedhawk44 on July 23, 2008, 09:10:54 AM
Before, it was suggested to sell the babies of poor Irish to nobility as a form of luxury food. Obviously tongue-in-cheek, but uproarious.
Now, it is suggested to not feed the babies of another land in order to stamp out a hated culture. Less tongue-in-cheek and an argument craving logical discussion on the merits of blind charity versus earned charity, but uproarious nonetheless.
Post by: GigaBuist on July 23, 2008, 10:44:04 AM
Quote
With the exception of Egypt
What makes Egypt so different?
Post by: RevDisk on July 23, 2008, 10:58:08 AM
Quote
With the exception of Egypt
What makes Egypt so different?
More civilized, less open warfare, little famine, no roving militias, an actual economy, a functional educational system, and a military that doesn't overthrow the government every fake election. Egypt has its issues, but not nearly as large as the rest of Africa.
Post by: Manedwolf on July 23, 2008, 11:01:19 AM
Quote
With the exception of Egypt
What makes Egypt so different?
It was civilized for millennia while Europeans were still wearing bearskins and whacking each other over the head with bones.
Post by: De Selby on July 23, 2008, 11:34:01 AM
I'm sure living under conditions that made American slavery look like an exercise in philanthropy had at least a little bit to do with where Africa is today.
Post by: Manedwolf on July 23, 2008, 11:34:39 AM
Of course it's just "self loathing liberalism" to mention that most of Africa was colonized by brutal, racist European/white governments until fairly recently.
I'm sure living under conditions that made American slavery look like an exercise in philanthropy had at least a little bit to do with where Africa is today.
I'm sure living under conditions that made American slavery look like an exercise in philanthropy had at least a little bit to do with where Africa is today.
Are you just committed to excusing the worst bits of humanity and spitting on every single aspect of Western values, or what?
Post by: De Selby on July 23, 2008, 11:49:09 AM
Of course it's just "self loathing liberalism" to mention that most of Africa was colonized by brutal, racist European/white governments until fairly recently.
I'm sure living under conditions that made American slavery look like an exercise in philanthropy had at least a little bit to do with where Africa is today.
I'm sure living under conditions that made American slavery look like an exercise in philanthropy had at least a little bit to do with where Africa is today.
Are you just committed to excusing the worst bits of humanity and spitting on every single aspect of Western values, or what?
No, I'm not excusing it, but I don't believe in completely self-congratulatory rants (which this article is) that do not take into account the help the Africans have had in arriving at this sad state.
A european writing about how pathetic Africa has become is like a rapist writing a column about how his victim is too depressed to get a job and a big loser.
Yeah, there are clearly other factors at play and the Africans are undeniably to be faulted for their behaviors, but that doesn't mean that colonizing and enslaving the place had no role in creating African society as it exists today. It's mind boggling that anyone would write an article about the widespread dysfunction that completely ignores the role that modern colonization played.
If you could add context to this article, it would read something like this:
"Hey, all the white europeans did was enslave and destroy every traditional society in Africa....now it's up to them to be decent, and they're failing. Not our fault at all!"
Post by: StopTheGrays on July 23, 2008, 12:04:41 PM
Of course it's just "self loathing liberalism" to mention that most of Africa was colonized by brutal, racist European/white governments until fairly recently.
I'm sure living under conditions that made American slavery look like an exercise in philanthropy had at least a little bit to do with where Africa is today.
I'm sure living under conditions that made American slavery look like an exercise in philanthropy had at least a little bit to do with where Africa is today.
Missed this part?
Quote
ONE of these orthodoxies is that Africa's woes are the legacy of "colonialism". But Ethiopia (formerly Abyssinia, and far older than any European state) was never colonised.
However, it was conquered by the Italians in 1936, and liberated in 1941 by a British army led by General Sir Allan Cunningham: a Dubliner, after whom a road in Addis Ababa is still named. This final titbit comes from one of a half-dozen Ethiopians who e-mailed me, supporting my attempts to broaden the discussion about Africa away from the grotesque pieties of simple victimhood.
However, it was conquered by the Italians in 1936, and liberated in 1941 by a British army led by General Sir Allan Cunningham: a Dubliner, after whom a road in Addis Ababa is still named. This final titbit comes from one of a half-dozen Ethiopians who e-mailed me, supporting my attempts to broaden the discussion about Africa away from the grotesque pieties of simple victimhood.
Post by: De Selby on July 23, 2008, 12:09:18 PM
Of course it's just "self loathing liberalism" to mention that most of Africa was colonized by brutal, racist European/white governments until fairly recently.
I'm sure living under conditions that made American slavery look like an exercise in philanthropy had at least a little bit to do with where Africa is today.
I'm sure living under conditions that made American slavery look like an exercise in philanthropy had at least a little bit to do with where Africa is today.
Missed this part?
Quote
ONE of these orthodoxies is that Africa's woes are the legacy of "colonialism". But Ethiopia (formerly Abyssinia, and far older than any European state) was never colonised.
However, it was conquered by the Italians in 1936, and liberated in 1941 by a British army led by General Sir Allan Cunningham: a Dubliner, after whom a road in Addis Ababa is still named. This final titbit comes from one of a half-dozen Ethiopians who e-mailed me, supporting my attempts to broaden the discussion about Africa away from the grotesque pieties of simple victimhood.
However, it was conquered by the Italians in 1936, and liberated in 1941 by a British army led by General Sir Allan Cunningham: a Dubliner, after whom a road in Addis Ababa is still named. This final titbit comes from one of a half-dozen Ethiopians who e-mailed me, supporting my attempts to broaden the discussion about Africa away from the grotesque pieties of simple victimhood.
No, I was referring to this article: http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/africa-is-giving-nothing-to-anyone%E2%80%94apart-from-aids-1430428.html
Post by: AZRedhawk44 on July 23, 2008, 12:23:29 PM
Quote
A european writing about how pathetic Africa has become is like a rapist writing a column about how his victim is too depressed to get a job and a big loser.
SS: How did this Irish author do anything to rape/pillage/plunder anyone in Ethiopia? Not his great-great-great-granduncle, but this guy?
As far as I can tell, he used to look at the world through the same rose-tinted John Lenon spectacles you've got on:
Quote
When I went to Ethiopia just over 20 years ago, I saw many things I never reported -- such as the menacing effect of gangs of young men with Kalashnikovs everywhere, while women did all the work. In the very middle of starvation and death, men spent their time drinking the local hooch in the boonabate shebeens. Alongside the boonabates were shanty-brothels, to which drinkers would casually repair, to briefly relieve themselves in the scarred orifice of some wretched prostitute (whom God preserve and protect). I saw all this and did not report it, nor the anger of the Irish aid workers at the sexual incontinence and fecklessness of Ethiopian men. Why? Because I wanted to write much-acclaimed, tear-jerkingly purple prose about wide-eyed, fly-infested children -- not cold, unpopular and even "racist" accusations about African male culpability.
He used to hang out with the UNICEF-types and the uberEuroLibs. He's got boots-on-the-ground experience and telling it just like he sees it, as his own personal perspective of the issue over the last 30 years has revealed the situation to him.
Post by: thebaldguy on July 23, 2008, 01:28:33 PM
African countries have received billions in foreign aid; where has it all gone? I'm old enough to remember Rhodesia, and have watched it go into the toilet as Zimbabawe. I've seen the same happen with other former colonies. "Give them some time" I've often heard, but how much time do they need? They are running their countries into the ground, and asking for help along the way. I knew AIDS would devistate the continent as well. It's been common knowledge for decades that condoms can help prevent AIDS, but it seems like no one in Africa uses them. Even Mandela's son died of AIDS, but African witchcraft states that AIDS can be cured by sex with a virgin.
Maybe it's time for colonialism again, but I'm not sure anyone wants to deal the problems that have been created over the last 30 years.
I won't give any money to any charity that does work in Africa. It's a waste of money.
Post by: Headless Thompson Gunner on July 23, 2008, 01:29:50 PM
Post by: De Selby on July 23, 2008, 02:11:51 PM
Quote
Leopold's agents held the wives and children of these men hostage until they returned with their rubber quota. Those who refused or failed to supply enough rubber had their villages burned down, children murdered, and hands cut off
Oh yeah....they just need some good old fashioned civilization.
http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/belgian_congo/index.html
Post by: MechAg94 on July 23, 2008, 02:17:55 PM
Post by: HankB on July 23, 2008, 04:00:39 PM
Quote
Leopold's agents held the wives and children of these men hostage until they returned with their rubber quota. Those who refused or failed to supply enough rubber had their villages burned down, children murdered, and hands cut off
Oh yeah....they just need some good old fashioned civilization.
http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/belgian_congo/index.html
With whites gone, we see women being bought and sold, slavery is still present, babies are being raped to cure AIDS, Zimbabwe's inflation rate dwarfs that of the Weimar Republic, we've seen black-on-black massacres in Rwanda, Burundi, and Darfour that dwarf Leopold's abuses, and there are even reports of cannibalism in the Congo.
European colonials would have to work - hard! - to be as rotten to Africans as native African leaders have been . . . and are being.
Post by: De Selby on July 23, 2008, 04:09:00 PM
Quote
Leopold's agents held the wives and children of these men hostage until they returned with their rubber quota. Those who refused or failed to supply enough rubber had their villages burned down, children murdered, and hands cut off
Oh yeah....they just need some good old fashioned civilization.
http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/belgian_congo/index.html
With whites gone, we see women being bought and sold, slavery is still present, babies are being raped to cure AIDS, Zimbabwe's inflation rate dwarfs that of the Weimar Republic, we've seen black-on-black massacres in Rwanda, Burundi, and Darfour that dwarf Leopold's abuses, and there are even reports of cannibalism in the Congo.
European colonials would have to work - hard! - to be as rotten to Africans as native African leaders have been . . . and are being.
I'm making a point about the causes of the current problems in Africa, not the solutions.
Actually I think you would find many African revoluationary types who agree perfectly with what MechAg is saying.
What's obscene though, is writing an article ripping on the Africans for being so savage and then refusing to assign any of the blame to Europe for the savagery that destroyed their continent.
Chopping off the hands and killing the children of people who don't collect enough rubber (Belgium)? Gang raping the wives of dissident leaders (France)? Yeah...the Colonials already went where the African thugs have gone.
And all that mayhem, murdering, and raping perpetrated on the Africans in the past most definitely has something to do with how bad things are today in Africa. That's what I'm saying-yes, the Africans are in a horrific state today. But let's not forget that Europe had a hand in creating the Africa we know.
Post by: roo_ster on July 23, 2008, 04:23:21 PM
Of course it's just "self loathing liberalism" to mention that most of Africa was colonized by brutal, racist European/white governments until fairly recently.
Yeah, pretty much, given your refusal to deal with the articles' points.You might want to read the article. Or, if you have, re-read it and try to understand the man's thesis this time 'round.
The particular country he was writing about never was a colony of a euro power.
The main thrust of the article was that Western aid is harmful to Africa & Africans, as it perpetuates and props up the current savages.
Last, it is always good to know the current reality on the ground, without manipulative, mealy-mouthed media types filtering that reality.
Post by: GigaBuist on July 23, 2008, 04:24:26 PM
Quote
But let's not forget that Europe had a hand in creating the Africa we know.
As bad as it was it's hard to argue that things didn't get worse when the colonials pulled out. I'm thinking Rhodesia and South Africa are good examples of this.
Post by: seeker_two on July 24, 2008, 01:51:10 AM
Post by: wmenorr67 on July 24, 2008, 02:06:33 AM
Africa won't improve until we stop sending charity food aid (which gets confiscated by the local gov't or warlord of the day) and start sending guns & ammo to the Africans who just want to defend themselves and change their nation for the better...
So that we can then better arm said local gov't/warlord of the day?
Post by: MicroBalrog on July 24, 2008, 02:15:28 AM
Of course it's just "self loathing liberalism" to mention that most of Africa was colonized by brutal, racist European/white governments until fairly recently.
.
.
I'm sorry, doesn't wash.
Have been independent for fifty years.
Had enough time to figure crap out.
Some of the African nations HAD figured their crap out since, why can't all of them?
BTW, for the record:
I'm opposed to the current model of African aid NOT because I'm greedy, but because it harms Africa.
Post by: Perd Hapley on July 24, 2008, 02:21:56 AM
Quote
. . . Yet Denise Charlton, of the Immigrant Council of Ireland, has urged An Garda Siochana to investigate me under a special law, by which I could be tried and imprisoned for two years without even the benefit of a jury.
Jailed for years with no trial because of what a person said or wrote? Gee, this makes it sound like Ireland is a fascist police state . . . [/size]He didn't say there would be no trial, he said no jury. I presume that means a judge (or judges) would decide.
Post by: SteveS on July 24, 2008, 03:34:48 AM
I really can't explain it but I imagine someone will soon be explaining to us all how it's the fault of us evil westerners and our exploitatious, and corrupt capitalist corporations.
I tend to agree with SS, but there is certainly blame to go around. That being said, the past can't be changed and current pratices and policies don't seem to be improving the situation.
Post by: HankB on July 24, 2008, 03:42:47 AM
What's obscene though, is writing an article ripping on the Africans for being so savage and then refusing to assign any of the blame to Europe for the savagery that destroyed their continent . . .
With the exception of parts of North Africa (e.g., Egypt) there was nothing to destroy. Pre-colonial African "societies" (if you want to use the word) were savage, stone-age tribal groups, practicing cannibalism, female circumcision, slavery, female disfigurement (to "uglify" the women and make them less valuable to slavers) and a host of other barbaric practices. Africa was a mess before Europeans arrived, and it's returning to a mess now that most have left, with a descent into savagery that would revolt even the long-dead Leopold and his disgusting band of thugs.How many generations - think about it, generations - of "European-Free" self-government does it take for Africans to right their course?
Post by: HankB on July 24, 2008, 03:44:05 AM
Quote
. . . Yet Denise Charlton, of the Immigrant Council of Ireland, has urged An Garda Siochana to investigate me under a special law, by which I could be tried and imprisoned for two years without even the benefit of a jury.
Jailed for years with no trial because of what a person said or wrote? Gee, this makes it sound like Ireland is a fascist police state . . . [/size]He didn't say there would be no trial, he said no jury. I presume that means a judge (or judges) would decide.
Post by: Manedwolf on July 24, 2008, 05:09:03 AM
What's obscene though, is writing an article ripping on the Africans for being so savage and then refusing to assign any of the blame to Europe for the savagery that destroyed their continent . . .
With the exception of parts of North Africa (e.g., Egypt) there was nothing to destroy. Pre-colonial African "societies" (if you want to use the word) were savage, stone-age tribal groups, practicing cannibalism, female circumcision, slavery, female disfigurement (to "uglify" the women and make them less valuable to slavers) and a host of other barbaric practices. Africa was a mess before Europeans arrived, and it's returning to a mess now that most have left, with a descent into savagery that would revolt even the long-dead Leopold and his disgusting band of thugs.How many generations - think about it, generations - of "European-Free" self-government does it take for Africans to right their course?
The Egyptians wrote of the savagery of the tribes to the south, too.
Post by: Dannyboy on July 24, 2008, 05:22:41 AM
Post by: agricola on July 24, 2008, 05:25:57 AM
What's obscene though, is writing an article ripping on the Africans for being so savage and then refusing to assign any of the blame to Europe for the savagery that destroyed their continent . . .
With the exception of parts of North Africa (e.g., Egypt) there was nothing to destroy. Pre-colonial African "societies" (if you want to use the word) were savage, stone-age tribal groups, practicing cannibalism, female circumcision, slavery, female disfigurement (to "uglify" the women and make them less valuable to slavers) and a host of other barbaric practices. Africa was a mess before Europeans arrived, and it's returning to a mess now that most have left, with a descent into savagery that would revolt even the long-dead Leopold and his disgusting band of thugs.How many generations - think about it, generations - of "European-Free" self-government does it take for Africans to right their course?
This is quite misleading - there were quite a lot of reasonably advanced societies in Africa beyond the North for large parts of its history - places such as Mali, Dahomey, the Ashanti, Eithiopia etc. That these societies were not able to write their own history (or more accurately, were not able to defeat the people who wrote the history) should not detract from their achievements.
Also there is a great deal of hypocrisy from the West towards Africa and African political problems - how long did it take for us to become effectively involved with what was happening in the former Yugoslavia, after all? Why do we still allow our firms and corporations to become involved with (ie: corrupt, arm and support) some extremely dodgy people in Africa?
Post by: seeker_two on July 24, 2008, 09:36:25 AM
Africa won't improve until we stop sending charity food aid (which gets confiscated by the local gov't or warlord of the day) and start sending guns & ammo to the Africans who just want to defend themselves and change their nation for the better...
So that we can then better arm said local gov't/warlord of the day?
Touche'.....
Post by: BlueStarLizzard on July 24, 2008, 10:09:28 AM
besides, bemoaning the past isn't going to make things better. look at the atrocitys commited in europe, before it became what it became.
and as for the colonists leaving the mess, well india seems to be doing ok. and they only through off british rule in the past century.
i hate to say this, because the atrocities involved are horrendous, but unless some one makes a united and somewhat brutish effort at civilizing the entire continent (which would be expensive) then we have to leave them alone and let them find their own way, which nobody is going to do.
i have a feeling that non of this will be settled in our life times.
Post by: Werewolf on July 24, 2008, 11:20:14 AM
Quote
i hate to say this, because the atrocities involved are horrendous, but unless some one makes a united and somewhat brutish effort at civilizing the entire continent (which would be expensive) then we have to leave them alone and let them find their own way, which nobody is going to do.
Maybe...
Maybe NOT!
The untapped resources of Africa are immense. As the resources of the civilized world are used up there will be more and more incentive to go into Africa to get the resources there.
And at the current rate that AIDS is ravaging the population in a 100 years there may not be many Africans left to contest the taking.
It is just a matter of when - not if.
Post by: BlueStarLizzard on July 24, 2008, 01:32:07 PM
Quote
i hate to say this, because the atrocities involved are horrendous, but unless some one makes a united and somewhat brutish effort at civilizing the entire continent (which would be expensive) then we have to leave them alone and let them find their own way, which nobody is going to do.
Maybe...
Maybe NOT!
The untapped resources of Africa are immense. As the resources of the civilized world are used up there will be more and more incentive to go into Africa to get the resources there.
And at the current rate that AIDS is ravaging the population in a 100 years there may not be many Africans left to contest the taking.
It is just a matter of when - not if.
errrrr... werewolf. i already admited it won't work. even if you could get the libtards to leave it alone, i doubt you could get the western run businesses out of there. they make good money on resources.
though your theroy may be right. and it could happen more quickly if another desiease pops up. isn't africa the worst spot for odd ball infectious desieases?
Post by: De Selby on July 24, 2008, 01:33:52 PM
Quote
i hate to say this, because the atrocities involved are horrendous, but unless some one makes a united and somewhat brutish effort at civilizing the entire continent (which would be expensive) then we have to leave them alone and let them find their own way, which nobody is going to do.
Maybe...
Maybe NOT!
The untapped resources of Africa are immense. As the resources of the civilized world are used up there will be more and more incentive to go into Africa to get the resources there.
And at the current rate that AIDS is ravaging the population in a 100 years there may not be many Africans left to contest the taking.
It is just a matter of when - not if.
The civilized world that desperately waits for another contintent's population to die in agony because there are resources there?
Yeah right.
Post by: Headless Thompson Gunner on July 24, 2008, 01:39:34 PM
Quote
i hate to say this, because the atrocities involved are horrendous, but unless some one makes a united and somewhat brutish effort at civilizing the entire continent (which would be expensive) then we have to leave them alone and let them find their own way, which nobody is going to do.
Maybe...
Maybe NOT!
The untapped resources of Africa are immense. As the resources of the civilized world are used up there will be more and more incentive to go into Africa to get the resources there.
And at the current rate that AIDS is ravaging the population in a 100 years there may not be many Africans left to contest the taking.
It is just a matter of when - not if.
The civilized world that desperately waits for another contintent's population to die in agony because there are resources there?
Yeah right.
Of course, the mess Africa has gotten herself into is so bad they couldn't manage to sell anything, not even to eager buyers. Heck, even the Middle East has managed to order itself well enough to do that. But Africa? Forget it.
Post by: BlueStarLizzard on July 24, 2008, 01:48:48 PM
Quote
i hate to say this, because the atrocities involved are horrendous, but unless some one makes a united and somewhat brutish effort at civilizing the entire continent (which would be expensive) then we have to leave them alone and let them find their own way, which nobody is going to do.
Maybe...
Maybe NOT!
The untapped resources of Africa are immense. As the resources of the civilized world are used up there will be more and more incentive to go into Africa to get the resources there.
And at the current rate that AIDS is ravaging the population in a 100 years there may not be many Africans left to contest the taking.
It is just a matter of when - not if.
The civilized world that desperately waits for another contintent's population to die in agony because there are resources there?
Yeah right.
because aiding them is really paying off. [/sarcasm]
almost all attepts at stabilizing the various problems are not working. so what else are we supposed to do? i don't think anybody is eagerly awaiting the day when the african population has so decimated itself that the civilized countrys can take what they want.
we're just stating that at this rate, they are going to kill themselves off.
and how is it our fault. we tried. they get help. they have the means to solve these issues themselves. but they haven't.
and i, for one, am not going to beat myselve up over it. if i see something that might actually help, i'll support it. but so far, that hasn't happened.
Post by: xavier fremboe on July 24, 2008, 02:12:16 PM
Famine is a political tool, just like warfare.
Read The Botany of Desire, or even P.J. O'Rourke's reporting of famine in Africa from back in the 80's. There's food there. It's just not there for the people who are being photographed. There was plenty of grain being loaded onto ships sailing back to England during the potato famine, but the Irish had adopted essentially a monoculture of potatoes. This was decimated by a fungus. The grain that they were raising was a cash crop heading back to London under the colonial model.
O'Rourke talks about heading out in a U.N. Convoy with Ethiopian Soldiers who refuse the U.N. Rations because the want 'Ethiopian Food'. As P.J. points out, there isn't supposed to be any Ethiopian Food. Hence the convoy.
During the 80's, much was made of the peanut depleting the soil of Ethiopia of nutrients, thereby robbing the next (now current) generation of fertile land. Seems to me that doubling the population would put that to rest.
If the neighboring countries are experiencing the same thing, then it might be an environmental phenomenon, but the fact that it is Ethiopia, which the author points out has experienced a miraculous population boom in the intervening years, points more towards a political famine.
Post by: Leatherneck on July 24, 2008, 02:32:22 PM
Quote
The civilized world that desperately waits for another contintent's population to die in agony because there are resources there?
Do you believe that for even a second? Is your world view really that shallow? Are you using your brain? 
TC
Post by: De Selby on July 24, 2008, 03:02:23 PM
SS:
TC
Quote
The civilized world that desperately waits for another contintent's population to die in agony because there are resources there?
Do you believe that for even a second? Is your world view really that shallow? Are you using your brain? TC
I was referring to Werewolf's comment specifically, which seemed gleeful for the resources post-extinction of Africa.
Of course I do not believe (nor is there a reasonable argument to be made) that most people feel that way here in America nor in Europe.
Post by: Werewolf on July 24, 2008, 03:39:52 PM
SS:
TC
Quote
The civilized world that desperately waits for another contintent's population to die in agony because there are resources there?
Do you believe that for even a second? Is your world view really that shallow? Are you using your brain? TC
I was referring to Werewolf's comment specifically, which seemed gleeful for the resources post-extinction of Africa.
Of course I do not believe (nor is there a reasonable argument to be made) that most people feel that way here in America nor in Europe.
Gleeful, no. Realistic, yes.
As I said in another post. I been there, done that. Africa is a pit. A scumhole. The cultures of west and sw africa are barbaric and though I've not been there I don't imagine the cultures of e africa are any better. Unless they wake up and smell the coffee they are doomed. All the west can do is prolong the misery.
In my estimation they aren't going to wake up and smell the coffee, the west is gonna prop them up and in 50 to 100 years there won't be enough native africans left to matter. They'll kill themselves, expire from aids or die from some horrible disease like ebola. A new wave of colonization will then sweep over the continent and 100 years after that there will be modern, industrialized and civilized peoples there - maybe european, maybe oriental, maybe even middle eastern.
One thing is for sure there's not even a snow ball's chance in hell that it'll be african.
It's inevitable IMO. Once the rest of the world's resources start to run out for real the world will look at africa, see it has what it wants and take it.
Post by: RevDisk on July 24, 2008, 04:32:50 PM
Of course it's just "self loathing liberalism" to mention that most of Africa was colonized by brutal, racist European/white governments until fairly recently.
I'm sure living under conditions that made American slavery look like an exercise in philanthropy had at least a little bit to do with where Africa is today.
I'm sure living under conditions that made American slavery look like an exercise in philanthropy had at least a little bit to do with where Africa is today.
Do you have as much sympathy towards the Boers who suffered just as greatly from the British?
Aye, the European masters were brutal and racist. So are the current and previous African tribes and governments going back as far as Egyptian records have been maintained. You've lost your mind if you believe that Africa's current trouble is entirely of European cause. As others pointed out, India is a direct parallel in terms of occupation and brutal treatment. Yet, they've made extremely decent progress. Far to go in killing their caste system, but on their way. What is your thoughts to India's progress and Southern Africa's stagnation for thousands of years?
Post by: De Selby on July 24, 2008, 04:44:36 PM
Of course it's just "self loathing liberalism" to mention that most of Africa was colonized by brutal, racist European/white governments until fairly recently.
I'm sure living under conditions that made American slavery look like an exercise in philanthropy had at least a little bit to do with where Africa is today.
I'm sure living under conditions that made American slavery look like an exercise in philanthropy had at least a little bit to do with where Africa is today.
Do you have as much sympathy towards the Boers who suffered just as greatly from the British?
In a word-YES. And the disastrous effects of the Boer wars are still recognized by many, including the invention of the concentration camp. Of course that doesn't excuse the people who engineered apartheid either, which is consistent with my view here: you don't have to excuse the modern thugs from responsibility in order to point out that European colonization had a big hand in creating the mess that is Africa today.
Quote
Aye, the European masters were brutal and racist. So are the current and previous African tribes and governments going back as far as Egyptian records have been maintained. You've lost your mind if you believe that Africa's current trouble is entirely of European cause. As others pointed out, India is a direct parallel in terms of occupation and brutal treatment. Yet, they've made extremely decent progress. Far to go in killing their caste system, but on their way. What is your thoughts to India's progress and Southern Africa's stagnation for thousands of years?
Again, if you reread my posts, you will find no statement to the effect that Africa is entirely the fault of Europeans. But certainly colonizing the entire countryside didn't have little or no effect, and it's not irrelevant today.
The India example does not square, because the European powers were never able to conquer India by outright brute force in the same way that they did in Africa. The Mughals were not weaklings, and most of the conquest was accomplished much more gradually by means of divide and conquer (financing was the primary way that the British managed to crack open Mughal rule.) That fact meant that the Colonial rule simply could not be as brutal and destructive as it was in Africa; the relative capabilities of the Indians to resist overloadship when it become too oppressive foreclosed that possibility. The colonials needed a higher level of voluntary cooperation to make the system work.
When the massacres really kicked off in the subcontinent, Colonial rule was promptly defeated. Contrast that to Africa, where chopping off hands, murder and rape were methods that pervaded the colonial experience. There you have a big explanation for the difference-the level of destruction simply was not remotely similar between India and Africa.
Post by: Perd Hapley on July 24, 2008, 05:13:58 PM
No, I'm not excusing it, but I don't believe in completely self-congratulatory rants (which this article is) that do not take into account the help the Africans have had in arriving at this sad state.
A european writing about how pathetic Africa has become is like a rapist writing a column about how his victim is too depressed to get a job and a big loser.
It's mind boggling that anyone would write an article about the widespread dysfunction that completely ignores the role that modern colonization played.
If you could add context to this article, it would read something like this:
"Hey, all the white europeans did was enslave and destroy every traditional society in Africa....now it's up to them to be decent, and they're failing. Not our fault at all!"
A european writing about how pathetic Africa has become is like a rapist writing a column about how his victim is too depressed to get a job and a big loser.
It's mind boggling that anyone would write an article about the widespread dysfunction that completely ignores the role that modern colonization played.
If you could add context to this article, it would read something like this:
"Hey, all the white europeans did was enslave and destroy every traditional society in Africa....now it's up to them to be decent, and they're failing. Not our fault at all!"
Quote
What's obscene though, is writing an article ripping on the Africans for being so savage and then refusing to assign any of the blame to Europe for the savagery that destroyed their continent.
I only skimmed the articles, but from what I saw, he is accusing Westerners of screwing up Africa, via alleged charity, govt. aid, etc. I guess he could have blabbered about Europe's past sins of imperialism, but why? Is that some obscure fact that we don't hear much about? Would that help us to understand why the West's current practices are wrong, and how they should be changed?
Quote
I'm making a point about the causes of the current problems in Africa, not the solutions.
Indeed you are. So are a lot of people. The political left insists on constant mea culpas for Western guilt, which do little but help Westerners feel better by distancing themselves from the sins of their ancestors. But why do you demand that the author of these articles follow suit? He is, thankfully, not engaging in played-out hand-wringing about past evils, he is urging one possible solution for the future.
Post by: roo_ster on July 27, 2008, 05:49:23 AM
http://www.amazon.com/Out-America-Black-Confronts-Africa/dp/0156005832/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217169914&sr=1-1
Reviews on Amazon page:
Amazon.com
From 1991 to 1994, Keith Richburg was based in Nairobi as the Africa bureau chief for the Washington Post. He traveled throughout Africa, from Rwanda to Zaire, witnessing and reporting on wars, famines, mass murders, and the complexity and corruption of African politics. Unlike many black Americans who romanticize Africa, Richburg looks back on his time there and concludes that he is simply an American, not an African American. This is a powerful, hard-hitting book, filled with anguished soul-searching as Richburg makes his way toward that uncomfortable conclusion.
The New York Times Book Review, William Finnegan
To his credit, Mr. Richburg lays out his own confusion and guilt about saying some of the things he does . . . he is candid about his gratitude that his ancestors made it to America. Mr. Richburg lambastes whites in the West who, for fear of appearing racist, hesitate to place responsibility for Africa's woes on African shoulders, and then he extends this criticism to white Americans who are allegedly afraid to hold black Americans responsible for their own woes.
Post by: Bigjake on July 27, 2008, 06:06:21 AM
President Bush plans to sign a bill next week that commits the United States to spending about $40 billion over the next five years to fight AIDS overseas, a major expansion of what many consider his most successful foreign policy initiative.
The legislation also extends an implicit pledge that has little precedent in the history of U.S. foreign assistance: to continue purchasing lifesaving drugs for millions of individual people in developing countries for an indefinite period of time.
...
Bushs program is fundamentally different. So far, it has purchased vast quantities of antiretroviral drugs and supported day-to-day medical care for more than 1.4 million people whose survival depends on continued treatment.
Post by: Tallpine on July 27, 2008, 11:01:05 AM
Post by: Bigjake on July 27, 2008, 12:10:33 PM
Explain to me why we send Africa money in the first place??
Post by: Iain on July 27, 2008, 12:14:15 PM
That's a horrible diabolical scheme I agree. Bush is really as bad as everyone says.
Post by: xavier fremboe on July 27, 2008, 12:23:20 PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7518049.stm
Post by: Werewolf on July 27, 2008, 04:26:10 PM
Maybe it's to help treat people with a terrible disease.
Yeah...
People who can't even acknowledge that AIDS is a disease; a disease that originated on their stinking cess pit of a continent and was exported to the rest of the world and GOD only knows how.
Right 40B! - 40B down the tubes! - treating people that are going to die anyway no matter what we do while spreading it to others of their ilk because they're too stupid and backwards to do something as simple as wear a freaking condom.
40B could put a lot of deserving young americans thru college.
40B could go a long ways towards solving the problem of getting cheap hydrogen for fuel.
40B could build quite a few oil refineries and pay for a lot of offshore oil rigs.
And for the bleeding hearts - 40B could feed a whole hell of a lot of hungry and homeless people in the USA.
In other words - when we've got all of our own problems taken care of then, and only then, should we be sending money over seas.
Post by: Bigjake on July 27, 2008, 04:42:08 PM
Maybe it's to help treat people with a terrible disease.
That's a horrible diabolical scheme I agree. Bush is really as bad as everyone says.
That's a horrible diabolical scheme I agree. Bush is really as bad as everyone says.
Then go petition YOUR government to piss whatever the equivalent in euros or pounds or whatever you use down that tube.
Post by: roo_ster on July 27, 2008, 05:53:55 PM
Maybe it's to help treat people with a terrible disease.
That's a horrible diabolical scheme I agree. Bush is really as bad as everyone says.
That's a horrible diabolical scheme I agree. Bush is really as bad as everyone says.
Then go petition YOUR government to piss whatever the equivalent in euros or pounds or whatever you use down that tube.
Oh, the UK & other euro gov'ts will pledge $40B & more...but not deliver.
Kinda like the SE Asian tsunami.
Unless that $40B is being used in a--ahem--prophylactic sense with regard to infection disease spread FROM Africa To the USA, I think it the fiscal equivalent of piling it up, dousing it with kerosene, and lighting it up.
Post by: RevDisk on July 27, 2008, 08:28:27 PM
Oh, the UK & other euro gov'ts will pledge $40B & more...but not deliver.
Kinda like the SE Asian tsunami.
Unless that $40B is being used in a--ahem--prophylactic sense with regard to infection disease spread FROM Africa To the USA, I think it the fiscal equivalent of piling it up, dousing it with kerosene, and lighting it up.
Kinda like the SE Asian tsunami.
Unless that $40B is being used in a--ahem--prophylactic sense with regard to infection disease spread FROM Africa To the USA, I think it the fiscal equivalent of piling it up, dousing it with kerosene, and lighting it up.
Na. A good part of that 40b will go to improving Switzerland's economy. The rest will be enriching former Soviet arms manufacturing companies.
Post by: seeker_two on July 28, 2008, 12:42:33 AM
....after awhile, the problems of Africa will solve itself.....and we'll have an easier time getting oil and diamonds, too....
Post by: Bigjake on July 28, 2008, 03:23:47 AM
http://www.theothersideofkim.com/index.php/essays/36/
Let Africa Sink
Kim du Toit
May 26, 2002
1:40 PM CST
When it comes to any analysis of the problems facing Africa, Western society, and particularly people from the United States, encounter a logical disconnect that makes clear analysis impossible. That disconnect is the way life is regarded in the West (its precious, must be protected at all costs etc.), compared to the way life, and death, are regarded in Africa. Let me try to quantify this statement.
In Africa, life is cheap. There are so many ways to die in Africa that death is far more commonplace than in the West. You can die from so many things--snakebite, insect bite, wild animal attack, disease, starvation, food poisoning& the list goes on and on. At one time, crocodiles accounted for more deaths in sub-Saharan Africa than gunfire, for example. Now add the usual human tragedy (murder, assault, warfare and the rest), and you can begin to understand why the life expectancy for an African is low--in fact, horrifyingly low, if you remove White Africans from the statistics (they tend to be more urbanized, and more Western in behavior and outlook). Finally, if you add the horrifying spread of AIDS into the equation, anyone born in sub-Saharan Africa this century will be lucky to reach age forty.
I lived in Africa for over thirty years. Growing up there, I was infused with several African traits--traits which are not common in Western civilization. The almost-casual attitude towards death was one. (Another is a morbid fear of snakes.)
So because of my African background, I am seldom moved at the sight of death, unless its accidental, or it affects someone close to me. (Death which strikes at strangers, of course, is mostly ignored.) Of my circle of about eighteen or so friends with whom I grew up, and whom I would consider "close", only about ten survive today--and not one of the survivors is over the age of fifty. Two friends died from stepping on landmines while on Army duty in Namibia. Three died in horrific car accidents (and lest one thinks that this is not confined to Africa, one was caused by a kudu flying through a windshield and impaling the guy through the chest with its hoof--not your everyday traffic accident in, say, Florida). One was bitten by a snake, and died from heart failure. Another also died of heart failure, but he was a hopeless drunkard. Two were shot by muggers. The last went out on his surfboard one day and was never seen again (did I mention that sharks are plentiful off the African coasts and in the major rivers?). My situation is not uncommon in South Africa--and north of the Limpopo River (the border with Zimbabwe), I suspect that others would show worse statistics.
The death toll wasnt just confined to my friends. When I was still living in Johannesburg, the newspaper carried daily stories of people mauled by lions, or attacked by rival tribesmen, or dying from some unspeakable disease (and this was pre-AIDS Africa too) and in general, succumbing to some of Africas many answers to the population explosion. Add to that the normal death toll from rampant crime, illness, poverty, flood, famine, traffic, and the police, and youll begin to get the idea.
My favorite African story actually happened after I left the country. An American executive took a job over there, and on his very first day, the newspaper headlines read: "Three Headless Bodies Found".
The next day: "Three Heads Found".
The third day: "Heads Dont Match Bodies".
You cant make this stuff up.
As a result of all this, death is treated more casually by Africans than by Westerners. I, and I suspect most Africans, am completely inured to reports of African suffering, for whatever cause. Drought causes crops to fail, thousands face starvation? Yup, that happened many times while I was growing up. Inter-tribal rivalry and warfare causes wholesale slaughter? Yep, been happening there for millennia, long before Whitey got there. Governments becoming rich and corrupt while their populations starved? Not more than nine or ten of those. In my lifetime, the following tragedies have occurred, causing untold millions of deaths: famine in Biafra, genocide in Rwanda, civil war in Angola, floods in South Africa, famine in Somalia, civil war in Sudan, famine in Ethiopia, floods in Mozambique, wholesale slaughter in Uganda, and tribal warfare in every single country. There are others, but you get the point.
Yes, all this was also true in Europe--maybe a thousand years ago. But not any more. And Europe doesnt teem with crocodiles, ultra-venomous snakes and so on.
The Dutch controlled the floods. All of Europe controls famine--its non-existent now. Apart from a couple of examples of massive, state-sponsored slaughter (Nazi Germany, Communist Russia), Europe since 1700 doesnt even begin to compare to Africa today. Casual slaughter is another thing altogether--rare in Europe, common in Africa.
More to the point, the West has evolved into a society with a stable system of government, which follows the rule of law, and has respect for the rights and life of the individual--none of which is true in Africa.
Among old Africa hands, we have a saying, usually accompanied by a shrug: "Africa wins again." This is usually said after an incident such as:
* a beloved missionary is butchered by his congregation, for no apparent reason
* a tribal chief prefers to let his tribe starve to death rather than accepting food from the Red Cross (would mean he wasnt all-powerful, you see)
* an entire nation starves to death, while its ruler accumulates wealth in foreign banks
* a new government comes into power, promising democracy, free elections etc., provided that the freedom doesnt extend to the other tribe
* the other tribe comes to power in a bloody coup, then promptly sets about slaughtering the first tribe
* etc, etc, etc, ad nauseam, ad infinitum.
The prognosis is bleak, because none of this mayhem shows any sign of ending. The conclusions are equally bleak, because, quite frankly, there is no answer to Africas problems, no solution that hasnt been tried before, and failed.
Just go to the CIA World Fact Book, pick any of the African countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi etc.), and compare the statistics to any Western country (eg. Portugal, Italy, Spain, Ireland). The disparities are appalling--and its going to get worse, not better. It has certainly got worse since 1960, when most African countries achieved independence. We, and by this I mean the West, have tried many ways to help Africa. All such attempts have failed.
Charity is no answer. Money simply gets appropriated by the first, or second, or third person to touch it (17 countries saw a decline in real per capita GNP between 1970 and 1999, despite receiving well over $100 billion in World Bank assistance).
Food isnt distributed. This happens either because there is no transportation infrastructure (bad), or the local leader deliberately withholds the supplies to starve people into submission (worse).
Materiel is broken, stolen or sold off for a fraction of its worth. The result of decades of "foreign aid" has resulted in a continental infrastructure which, if one excludes South Africa, couldnt support Pittsburgh.
Add to this, as I mentioned above, the endless cycle of Natures little bag of tricks--persistent drought followed by violent flooding, a plethora of animals, reptiles and insects so dangerous that life is already cheap before Man starts playing his little reindeer games with his fellow Man--and what you are left with is: catastrophe.
The inescapable conclusion is simply one of resignation. This goes against the grain of our humanity--we are accustomed to ridding the world of this or that problem (smallpox, polio, whatever), and accepting failure is anathema to us. But, to give a classic African scenario, a polio vaccine wont work if the kids are prevented from getting the vaccine by a venal overlord, or a frightened chieftain, or a lack of roads, or by criminals who steal the vaccine and sell it to someone else. If a cure for AIDS was found tomorrow, and offered to every African nation free of charge, the growth of the disease would scarcely be checked, let alone reversed. Basically, youd have to try to inoculate as many two-year old children as possible, and write off the two older generations.
So that is the only one response, and its a brutal one: accept that we are powerless to change Africa, and leave them to sink or swim, by themselves.
It sounds dreadful to say it, but if the entire African continent dissolves into a seething maelstrom of disease, famine and brutality, thats just too damn bad. We have better things to do--sometimes, you just have to say, "Cant do anything about it.
The viciousness, the cruelty, the corruption, the duplicity, the savagery, and the incompetence is endemic to the entire continent, and is so much of an anathema to any right-thinking person that the civilized imagination simply stalls when faced with its ubiquity, and with the enormity of trying to fix it. The Western media shouldnt even bother reporting on it. All that does is arouse our feelings of horror, and the instinctive need to do something, anything--but everything has been tried before, and failed. Everything, of course, except self-reliance.
All we should do is make sure that none of Africa gets transplanted over to the U.S., because the danger to our society is dire if it does. I note that several U.S. churches are attempting to bring groups of African refugees over to the United States, European churches the same for Europe. Mistake. Mark my words, this misplaced charity will turn around and bite us, big time.
Even worse would be to think that the simplicity of Africa holds some kind of answers for Western society: remember Mrs. Clintons little book, "It Takes A Village"? Trust me on this: there is not one thing that Africa can give the West which hasnt been tried before and failed, not one thing that isnt a step backwards, and not one thing which is worse than, or that contradicts, what we have already.
So heres my (tongue-in-cheek) solution for the African fiasco: a high wall around the whole continent, all the guns and bombs in the world for everyone inside, and at the end, the last one alive should do us all a favor and kill himself.
Inevitably, some Kissingerian realpolitiker is going to argue in favor of intervention, because in the vacuum of Western aid, perhaps the Communist Chinese would step in and increase their influence in the area. There are two reasons why this isnt going to happen.
Firstly, the PRC doesnt have that kind of money to throw around; and secondly, the result of any communist assistance will be precisely the same as if it were Western assistance. For the record, Mozambique and Angola are both communist countries--and both are economic disaster areas. The prognosis for both countries is disastrous--and would be the same for any other African country.
The West cant help Africa. Nor should we. The record speaks for itself.
Post by: yesitsloaded on July 28, 2008, 05:27:26 AM
Post by: roo_ster on July 28, 2008, 06:16:29 AM
We had to burn down the village to save it.
Two points:
1. We don't have to burn down the village, as the villagers are happy to do it for us.
2. Assuming we can "save" it is a false assumption.
Post by: Werewolf on July 28, 2008, 06:53:31 AM
Too bad the bleeding hearts who live in a if only type of world just won't get it.
I'm forced to remember a short prayer I learned - in the Army of all places - that goes like this:
God
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
AND the wisdom to tell the difference.
The bleeding hearts seem as if they can never tell the difference.
Post by: Manedwolf on July 28, 2008, 06:55:10 AM
Nice article BigJake. Validates everything I learned during my time in Africa.
Too bad the bleeding hearts who live in a if only type of world just won't get it.
I'm forced to remember a short prayer I learned - in the Army of all places - that goes like this:
The bleeding hearts seem as if they can never tell the difference.
Too bad the bleeding hearts who live in a if only type of world just won't get it.
I'm forced to remember a short prayer I learned - in the Army of all places - that goes like this:
God
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
AND the wisdom to tell the difference.
The bleeding hearts seem as if they can never tell the difference.
An excellent view of how most of Africa is run may be viewed in the movie "Lord of War".
Post by: yesitsloaded on July 28, 2008, 07:07:10 AM
Post by: Manedwolf on July 28, 2008, 07:09:04 AM
Considering one of the Africans I know here said that when she left (3 years ago) it was still stone age bats**t crazy. The people in the village killed an old lady because they thought she was a witch that stuck needles into their children at night. WTF? I'd rather find a solution, but you can only help those that want to be helped. Like it has been mentioned before, Egypt doesn't seem to have these issues and hasn't in thousands of years. They were colonizing Africa before whitey ever was on the scene.
Their gold mines were in Nubia (modern Ethiopia, etc)...were they bad and evil colonial sorts as well?
Post by: yesitsloaded on July 28, 2008, 07:20:18 AM
Post by: The Annoyed Man on July 28, 2008, 09:18:46 AM
Africa may be taking matters into their own hands as far as medicinal research is concerned. They've killed 23 albinos in Tanzania this year for use in witch doctor ceremonies. That's 23 albino humans.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7518049.stm
Well, isn't that just LOVELY. Natural medicine and such. Lovely, all of it. Who are we to impose our beliefs on these people, who are WE to judge their culture? Theirs is so obviously superior to anything in the civilizsed world, that we should immedietly adopt the same practices. We need to start rapin' babies as well, that's a sure cure for AIDS. I know this because the local http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7518049.stm
Post by: Joe Demko on July 28, 2008, 12:36:27 PM
But just for the record, those of you who so vehemently deny that you, personally, had anything to do with the excesses and evils of colonialism also had nothing personally to do with the positive achievements of Western Civilization, either. Don't boast about it. Don't brag about it. Don't feel smug about it. You had nothing to do with it. You're part of it only by an accident of birth.
Post by: Perd Hapley on July 28, 2008, 12:52:08 PM
Of course, it can be argued that different sides of the social divide preserve or destroy different parts of the tradition. And I think there would be some truth to that, as well.
Post by: Joe Demko on July 28, 2008, 01:09:27 PM
Post by: Perd Hapley on July 28, 2008, 01:46:53 PM
Post by: AZRedhawk44 on July 28, 2008, 02:18:00 PM
If the continent becomes a haven for radicalized terror and is capable of distributing that terror, we end up with another billion potential enemies.
I guess nothing says we can't have military operations routinely go in and out of that cesspool and decapitate the snake(s) routinely, but that's a great way to breed generational enmity that would never die. We'd be bombing and assassinating in Africa for 500 years if that's the route we took.
Frankly, I kinda like the idea of encroaching forced colonization. Build an international coalition and start from all the coasts and work inland, maybe 10 miles a year or so. In 20 years the problem could be solved.
Post by: Bigjake on July 28, 2008, 02:45:04 PM
I usually agree with you man, but not here.
How well, exactly, have International Coalitions worked in the past century? Specifically ones with "UN" somewhere in the acronym? Hell, the current crop of UN "Peacekeepers" are getting better at the rape and pillage game than the natives.
I see only 2 options;
Walk, and nuke the problem areas occasionally, or seriously colonize the hell out of the place, on a larger scale than we did in the Old West, and probably much more brutal.
Post by: MicroBalrog on August 18, 2008, 12:47:09 PM
Quote
40B could put a lot of deserving young americans thru college.
40B could go a long ways towards solving the problem of getting cheap hydrogen for fuel.
40B could build quite a few oil refineries and pay for a lot of offshore oil rigs.
And for the bleeding hearts - 40B could feed a whole hell of a lot of hungry and homeless people in the USA.
40B could go a long ways towards solving the problem of getting cheap hydrogen for fuel.
40B could build quite a few oil refineries and pay for a lot of offshore oil rigs.
And for the bleeding hearts - 40B could feed a whole hell of a lot of hungry and homeless people in the USA.
None of these things are constitutional.
Why not, say, give the taxpayers their money back?
Post by: mtnbkr on August 19, 2008, 06:03:16 AM
Quote
40B could put a lot of deserving young americans thru college.
40B could go a long ways towards solving the problem of getting cheap hydrogen for fuel.
40B could build quite a few oil refineries and pay for a lot of offshore oil rigs.
And for the bleeding hearts - 40B could feed a whole hell of a lot of hungry and homeless people in the USA.
40B could go a long ways towards solving the problem of getting cheap hydrogen for fuel.
40B could build quite a few oil refineries and pay for a lot of offshore oil rigs.
And for the bleeding hearts - 40B could feed a whole hell of a lot of hungry and homeless people in the USA.
None of these things are constitutional.
Why not, say, give the taxpayers their money back?
Absolutely, but I think the point was if we're going to spend 40b, let's spend it on the US.
Chris
Post by: Werewolf on August 19, 2008, 03:09:38 PM
Quote
40B could put a lot of deserving young americans thru college.
40B could go a long ways towards solving the problem of getting cheap hydrogen for fuel.
40B could build quite a few oil refineries and pay for a lot of offshore oil rigs.
And for the bleeding hearts - 40B could feed a whole hell of a lot of hungry and homeless people in the USA.
40B could go a long ways towards solving the problem of getting cheap hydrogen for fuel.
40B could build quite a few oil refineries and pay for a lot of offshore oil rigs.
And for the bleeding hearts - 40B could feed a whole hell of a lot of hungry and homeless people in the USA.
None of these things are constitutional.
Say WHAT? The government paid for my college degree thru a program called JTPA. The government gives money to colleges, universities and private citizens to do research all the time. Probably haven't given money to build any refineries or offshore rigs but man do those subsidies add up. As for the homeless - I could care less if each and every one dropped dead in the next 10 seconds but I had to throw at least one bone the bleeding heart's way.
None of that is unconstitutional...
Quote
Why not, say, give the taxpayers their money back?
OK... With that I can agree.