Africa is giving nothing to anyone -- apart from AIDS

[Galmudug]

Africa is giving nothing to anyone — apart from AIDS

By Kevin Myers

Thursday July 10 2008


Aethiopians are outstripping their resources, and causing catastrophic ecological degradation

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

[source]

[Marcus Marulus]

Criticism:

Rebutting Kevin Myers\' distasteful slanders

Irish columnist Kevin Myers accused of hate speech - Ethiopian Review

Why Kevin Myers is no longer a journalist

[Haraxvat]

his article sounds harsh to the common braindead men from the street, but its nevertheless the truth...

[orieleye]

"For God\'s sake, please stop the aid!"

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by orieleye

"For God\'s sake, please stop the aid!"

The part about the AIDS is especially interesting:

SPIEGEL: But AIDS didn't exist at that time.


Shikwati: If one were to believe all the horrorifying reports, then all Kenyans should actually be dead by now. But now, tests are being carried out everywhere, and it turns out that the figures were vastly exaggerated. It's not three million Kenyans that are infected. All of the sudden, it's only about one million. Malaria is just as much of a problem, but people rarely talk about that.


SPIEGEL: And why's that?

Shikwati: AIDS is big business, maybe Africa's biggest business. There's nothing else that can generate as much aid money as shocking figures on AIDS. AIDS is a political disease here, and we should be very skeptical.

[Germanicus]

I applaud your post Galmudug...........

[Kernunnos]

This man says what most people are forced to keep for them.

Be he thanked for it.

I totally concur with him.

Without the malthusian regulators mankind is doomed to burst into a major overpopulation drama.

on Malthus, who was strongly opposed to Rousseau, see Wikipedia

Thomas Malthus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An Essay on the Principle of Population by T. R. Malthus



for a critique to Malthus see

Influence of Malthus and Darwin on the European Elite

[Marcus Marulus]

Yet he is playing with some cheap stereotypes like wide-eyed child, AIDS, sexually hyperactive Africans etc.

[Stan]

Originally Posted by orieleye

"For God\'s sake, please stop the aid!"

I've always had the feeling that the huge amount of aid does more harm than anything for africa. That interview proves it.

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.

"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."

[Monolith]

Originally Posted by Stan

"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."

I find this hard to believe. Do you have some source for that?

[Menydh]

Originally Posted by Marulus

Yet he is playing with some cheap stereotpyes like wide-eyed child, AIDS, sexually hyperactive Africans etc.

Africa is worse than that, and it is not stereotypes.

But look into the mfecane to get an idea of how things work with Africans.

[Kernunnos]

Originally Posted by Menydh

Africa is worse than that, and it is not stereotypes.

But look into the mfecane to get an idea of how things work with Africans.

This part of the story seems to give fully reason to the malthusian philosophy: progress and more food cause even more disaster in term of ensuing overpopulation

"The causes of the mfecane were emerging by the end of the eighteenth century, when population levels increased rapidly, and ecological resources were sometimes scarce. Communities that previously had often spread across the countryside or had repeatedly divided and moved along the frontier became more settled and more concentrated. The introduction of corn from the Americas through the Portuguese in Mozambique was one major reason for this trend. Corn produced more food than indigenous grasses on the same land, and thus could sustain a larger population. Trade in ivory with the Portuguese in Delagoa Bay was another factor that induced people to settle just south of Mozambique. Moreover, possibilities for population movement had become much more limited by the end of the eighteenth century because land was in short supply. Bantu-speaking farmers had reached the margins of arable land on the edge of the Kalahari Desert in the northwest and in the mountains on the southern border of the Highveld, and people settling in the area found their access to water more and more limited.
Declining rainfall in the last decades of the eighteenth century, followed by a calamitous ten-year drought that began about 1800, caused massive disruption and suffering. The adoption of corn as a major staple gave this drought an even greater impact than those of the past because corn needed much more water than local grains in order to produce. When the rains failed, therefore, the effect was devastating. People fought one another for meager supplies of grain and cattle, hunted down whatever game they could find, and sought out any remaining water supplies in a desperate attempt to survive. Warfare erupted, and two kingdoms--the Ndwandwe under the leadership of Zwide, and the Mthethwa under Dingiswayo--battled for control of resources. Both kingdoms became more centralized and militarized, their young men banded together in age regiments that became the basis for standing armies, and their kings became more autocratic as they fought for survival. "

[Stan]

Originally Posted by Monolith

I find this hard to believe. Do you have some source for that?

no, I also find that hard to believe. but it's just quite ironic that he's more scathing about the scots than he is about africans.

Originally Posted by Menydh

Africa is worse than that, and it is not stereotypes.

You've visited then?

[Errigal]

Originally Posted by Stan

no, I also find that hard to believe. but it's just quite ironic that he's more scathing about the scots than he is about africans.

...

Perhaps it's because he knows the Scots are capable of doing better, while the Africans ...

[Marcus Marulus]

What is American White trash and euro-trash giving to anyone?

(apart from occasionally oral sex competitions on beaches etc)