Africa is giving nothing to anyone -- apart from AIDS

[roo_ster]

A plucky Irish fellow is giving a literary wedgie to all who perpetuate and excuse the ignorance and depravity that is found in Africa.

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

[Werewolf]

While serving in the NAVY I spent weeks to months in a number of African countries, namely: Egypt, Tunisia, Nigeria, Liberia, Ghana, Senegal and Ivory Coast.

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.

[HankB]

. . . 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 . . .

[AZRedhawk44]

This from the land of Swift's "A Modest Proposal."

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.

[GigaBuist]

With the exception of Egypt

What makes Egypt so different?

[RevDisk]

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.

[Manedwolf]

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.

[De Selby]

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.

[Manedwolf]

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.

Are you just committed to excusing the worst bits of humanity and spitting on every single aspect of Western values, or what?

[De Selby]

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.

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!"

[StopTheGrays]

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.

Missed this part?

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.

[De Selby]

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.

Missed this part?

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.

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

[AZRedhawk44]

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:

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.

[thebaldguy]

Oh, and be prepared to be called a racist if you talk negatively about Africa. I love that part.

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.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Maybe we need to have Europe go back and recolonize Africa.  Much of the downslide in those African nations took place after the colonials left.  New colonials certainly can't make things any worse than they've become.  At least that way there'd be some civilized administration in those places, something that is sorely lacking these days.

[De Selby]

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

[MechAg94]

I have forgotten who said it, but I remember one or more commentaries I saw in the US that thought Western aide was hurting Africa more than helping it.  They wished there was a way to put up a big barrier around Africa and 1) force the Western world to stay out and 2) force Africans to address their own problems and solve them themselves. 

[HankB]

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

Leopold and company are long dead . . . as are those who were abused.

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.

[De Selby]

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

Leopold and company are long dead . . . as are those who were abused.

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.

[roo_ster]

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.

[GigaBuist]

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.

[seeker_two]

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...

[wmenorr67]

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?

[MicroBalrog]

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.

[Perd Hapley]

. . . 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.