Africa is giving nothing to anyone -- apart from AIDS

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by M.R.

Actualy "we" gave AIDS to them, and not the other way around. It's a desease created in USA labs.

Originally Posted by Susi

That's one hypothesis -- that it came from a vaccine for.. hum was it polio or hepatitis? To me it's more likely it bridged the species gap.

The Origin of AIDS and HIV May Not Be What You Have Learned

AIDS origins opposed to scientific consensus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Early Hepatitis B Vaccines and the “Man-Made” Origin of HIV/AIDS:

[Stan]

Originally Posted by bombadillo

I have. Menydh is correct. It's difficult -- sorry, scrap that -- it's impossible to find one African state that's doing well. Many are failed states. South Africa might be an exception, but there it's really people of European descent who have been running things (as engineers, managers, and technocrats). Soon, with trends going the way they are, instead of the old colonialists (Brits, French, Belgians), it will be the Chinese who own and run everything from the state apparatus on down.

That's true for the most part, except with Nigeria, from all I've read and heard that's the one african state which is really in the ascendency. One of the fastest growiong economies on earth, and cities like Abuja and Lagos are really quite impressive compared to most african stereotypes in western media.
Even so 50% of the population do still live below the poverty line, and there are huge problems with kidnapping and corruption, corruption actually being the biggest problem to africa as a whole, and one the western nations fuel by pumping 'aid' to the very people who are corrupt.
Then you have the situation of crazy dictators spend half the domestic budget on extremly extravagent ceremonies and absolute shit like that. Essentially most aid to africa goes down a big black hole or just goes towards funding dodgy leaders tribalistic wars.
I've also heard there is a massive brain drain issue in africa, for example 21,000 nigerian doctors are working in the US alone. Are they that greedy that they don't think about their countries welfare?

[Marcus Marulus]

I also heard of Botswana doing moderately well.

Originally Posted by Stan

I've also heard there is a massive brain drain issue in africa, for example 21,000 nigerian doctors are working in the US alone.

Are you sure about this figure?

[Stan]

BRAIN DRAIN THE NIGERIAN EXPERIENCE

It says it here, which is not where I originally found the quote, but it can be found on many sites, was originally published in 1995 by the Health Minister at the time Ikechukwu Madubuike. Shockingly that is the same number of doctors working in Nigeria at the time.

It seems a custom almost, to leave and get better pay in western countries, and a achieve better standard of living and education for their children.

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by Stan

BRAIN DRAIN THE NIGERIAN EXPERIENCE

It says it here, which is not where I originally found the quote, but it can be found on many sites, was originally published in 1995 by the Health Minister at the time Ikechukwu Madubuike. Shockingly that is the same number of doctors working in Nigeria at the time.

It seems a custom almost, to leave and get better pay in western countries, and a achieve better standard of living and education for their children.

It happens quite often and is not confined to Nigeria, or to Africa for that matter. Countries who educated those doctors or whatever else are at great loss.

[bombadillo]

Originally Posted by Stan

That's true for the most part, except with Nigeria, from all I've read and heard that's the one african state which is really in the ascendency. One of the fastest growiong economies on earth, and cities like Abuja and Lagos are really quite impressive compared to most african stereotypes in western media.

You are pulling our leg, I hope? Nigeria is a basket case (I visited the country in 1982). A small number of multibillionaires and the rest of the country in abject poverty. Behind the glittering facade, Lagos must be one of the most dangerous and desperate cities on this planet (like Rio and Sao Paolo). Corruption and violent crime are endemic. The oil wealth goes into a few pockets. This is all well documented, and I don't think I need to provide references.

My favorite example of a failed state is Zaire in the time of Mobutu (a US ally). The national airline had a 747 and a Concorde. One day all long-distance flights had to be cancelled: Mobutu had taken the Concorde, and his wife the 747. Towards the end of his reign ("President-for-Life"), the Zairean Charge d'affaires to Poland was found sleeping rough in Warsaw's Central Railway Station; three Zairean diplomats were arrested for vagrancy in Italy; and the Zairean embassy in London had its electricity and gas cut off because of unpaid bills (the British Foreign Office stepped in to have them restored).

Another favorite example is Uganda in the time of Idi Amin. Idi decided to name the country after himself. Then he was asked what the inhabitants of Cyprus were called -- Cypriots. So what would the people of Idi be called? Idea dropped (this is not a joke). Another time, there was a cabinet discussion on the absence of hard currency. One cabinet minister chimed in with: "Well, why don't we invite this fellow "hard currency" over here?"

Just about every African country I know of is a kleptocracy, operating hand-in-glove with multinational companies intent on looting its mineral resources. The kleptocrats tend to be either tribal chieftains or generals. The "aid" given to these countries is taxpayer money from the developed countries subsidising their own multinationals -- usually for white elephant projects, with exaggerated costs. None of it ever reaches the people to whom it's ostensibly addressed. Thus if some African country wants to buy state-of-the-art counterinsurgency weaponry from Britain, it will receive an "aid" package from Britain which will allow it to buy said weaponry. The British taxpayer will be told that it's to foster "development" in the African country, but it's really just a subsidy to British defence firms. There are scores of other examples from Britain, France, and the USA.

[Stan]

Originally Posted by bombadillo

You are pulling our leg, I hope? Nigeria is a basket case (I visited the country in 1982). A small number of multibillionaires and the rest of the country in abject poverty. Behind the glittering facade, Lagos must be one of the most dangerous and desperate cities on this planet (like Rio and Sao Paolo). Corruption and violent crime are endemic. The oil wealth goes into a few pockets. This is all well documented, and I don't think I need to provide references.

That was 1/4 of a century ago. 50% of the country are in poverty, so whilst that's not a good situation it's not as bad as you put it. There is a 2.3% aids infection, which is still a large amount of people due to the huge population of the country(nigeria is africa's most populous nation), but when compared to the nations in southern africa it's very small.
As you say, Lagos is one of the most dangerous cities on earth. Like Rio, Mumbai and Mexico City for example. However all those cities are at the center of countries which will be knocking countries like France and the UK out of the high spots on the GDP rankings in coming years. Just because a city is dangerous, desperate and dysfunctional doesn't mean the country isn't on the ascendency. New York and London were horrific during the industrial age. Countries like Nigeria are going through their own industrial age right now.


"The Next Eleven (or N-11) are eleven countries —Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Turkey, and Vietnam— identified by Goldman Sachs investment bank as having a high potential of becoming the world's largest economies along with the BRICs. The bank chose these nations, all with promising outlooks for investment and future growth, on December 12, 2005.

Goldman Sachs used macroeconomic stability, political maturity, openness of trade and investment policies, and the quality of education as criteria. The N-11 paper is a follow-up to the bank's 2003 paper on the four emerging "BRIC" economies, Brazil, Russia, India, and China.[1]

Eight of the eleven nations chosen are in Asia. South Korea is the only developed country in this list, having the largest economy and highest income per capita out of the eleven countries. All other countries are either developing countries or newly industrialized countries."

[Errigal]

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?




...continues

Is this the tolerance that our thought-police take pride in? - Kevin Myers, Columnists - Independent.ie

[Marcus Marulus]

Unbelievable. This man's superficiality and stereotypical discourse should be publicly denounced and countered with counter-arguments. Instead they threaten him with jail! So after all, all those who say the modern EU is a Stalinist dictatorship in making are right and they are not suffering from paranoia.

[orieleye]

Twisting the facts to make me appear a racist bigot

By Kevin Myers

Tuesday October 21 2008

"The Press Council has upheld a complaint against the Irish Independent that an article by its columnist Kevin Myers breached its Code of Practice relating to incitement to hatred."

Thus the opening words of a report -- with an equally toxic headline to match -- by the 'Irish Times' legal correspondent Carol Coulter. Ah! So, I'm a racist bigot who has finally been found guilty of incitement to hatred! Coulter's report then detailed some earlier allegations by Hans Zomer, of Dochas, and these no doubt reinforced readers' belief that I had been promoting hatred towards Africans.

But only at the end of her report, after some 700 words, and in her penultimate sentence, did Coulter disclose that the Press Council, "did not, however, find reason to conclude that it [my article] was likely to stir up hatred, or that it was intended to do so."

There you have it. A news 'report' which began with a headline declaring that I was guilty of incitement to hatred, then ended by accepting that I wasn't guilty of anything of the kind. In between, a selective and tendentious manipulation of the findings had created a poisonous and personally damaging falsehood about me. Yet the truth was far easier. Coulter could simply have reported the council's main findings: that my article was NOT likely to stir up hatred, and it had NOT been intended to; and moreover, that three of the four complaints against me were dismissed without mention.

Only one was upheld: that my article was likely to cause grave offence. And it was this which allowed Coulter to fabricate the essential untruth that I had engaged in incitement to hatred, upon a mere textual technicality. Because the term "causing grave offence" is, bizarrely, included within the Code of Practice's general category against "incitement to hatred". But there is a profound difference between "inciting hatred" and "causing offence". An inciter uses hate to rouse mobs against a third party: but he who offends, does so to his audience alone.

Now I believe that a political columnist who deliberately incites racial hatred should be sacked; but, actually, so too should a columnist who never offends anyone. For it's sometimes inevitable that we who ply this trade will hurt people's feelings, especially when confronting dearly held beliefs, or a long-established intellectual status quo. And the status quo on the subject of aid to Africa is now utterly ruinous, as under its aegis, Africa is river-dancingto disaster. So, in my original article, I tried to jolt people into some sort of reaction, for I am sick and tired of the doctrinal sanctimony with which Africa is treated in the Irish media.

The Press Council's main finding against me was that I employed "a level of generalisation that was distorting and seriously insulting to Africans".

Oh really? Well, regardless of Press Council adumbrations, I still believe Africans are the authors of most of their own misfortunes. The AIDS plague and the continent's population explosion were certainly not caused by a continental epidemic of African chastity: and the regular eruptions of murderous, tribal violence are hardly the fault of the white man.

Moreover, if Africans are offended by my thoughts, that's a shame, etc: but those hurt feelings aside, what future has Africa, unless reproductive continence and an abolition of homicidal tribalism are embraced as social norms, as they largely are across most of the world? We who give aid to Africa must have free and open debates, in which some people will inevitably be in error, both in what they say and how they say it: allowing individuals to be wrong is what defines freedom of speech and thought and inquiry. For what I say today -- having heard the opinions of others who follow -- I might disagree with, in both tone and content, tomorrow.

Yet who is going to challenge the dominant media consensus in Ireland with any sort of iconoclastic vigour when a national newspaper can effectively turn a general acquittal of charges of inciting race hatred, made against an unfashionable, non-liberal columnist, into a headlined declaration of his guilt? What kind of public discussion is possible, not just on Africa but on any issue dear to the liberal-left heart, if such disingenuous journalistic practices are allowed to corrupt the truth?

At work, here, of course, is the all-conquering agenda of political correctness. This gibbering dogma presumes the existence of permanent victim-groups -- women, gays, Africans, the unemployed, asylum-seekers, yawn -- who are down-trodden by an evil caste of middle-class, heterosexual males (generically known as 'Kevin Myers').

Yet despite the infantile banality of this belief system, it is now the established orthodoxy within our universities and schools of journalism, and has become especially powerful within the many quasi-autonomous, state-funded bodies which dominate the administration of this state.

And listen: if you want to find a perfect example of both the "moral integrity" and the "intellectual seriousness" underlying this world view, Coulter's sly and mendacious report on the Press Council's findings about me is actually rather hard to improve upon.

(Irish Times report here)

[Pro Hibernia]

Originally Posted by Stan

On the issue of this report, I've read into this kevin myers guy. He's not a very nice person, christ, the man speaks as disdainfully for his fellow celts in scotland as he does for the africans.

"Fellow Celts"? Scotland is far from being "Celtic". But, even then, I don't see what it matters if they are "Celtic" or not.

"There lies the ruin of Scotland - subsidies. Guaranteed transfers of capital from England have created a political culture of sloth which is now endemic and even personalised. Scottish people are the most obese in Europe, in which regard they resemble the wretched Scottish statelet. Only a minority of Scottish people work for a living - and most of those who have jobs are employed by the state: 577,300. In other words, they are employed by the English to manage themselves. The rest of the Scots are on the dole or pensions, living in state-owned housing estates, sending their children to state-run schools, where the most likely form of personal enterprise they will ever encounter is their local heroin-dealer."

Coming from someone who lives in Glasgow, Scotland, I 100% agree with everything this man has said except in regards to eployment. I believe that a slight majority do work for a living.