The contrasts between the so called third and first worlds are so stark one often wonders if this is the same planet. We have sent men to the moon but there are still children in Africa dying of preventable diseases. Women in the west are more and more progressive in society while in the Congo women are the battleground with rape used as a weapon of war. The misery etched on the faces of hungry little African children relying on foreign food aid to feed them breaks one's heart. What if there was no aid? What if the aid does not reach its intended targets? More lives lost? Some in Haiti have been reduced to eating mud pies for the saltiness found in the mud. How do these people survive?
Education is a privilege for some, teachers and schools are hard to maintain in war-zones like Eastern Congo, and Darfur. Refugees are forced to flee their homes and settle in countries where they are often not wanted, only about 1% of refugees are actually resettled to another country.
Somalia is only united by the letters in its name, otherwise on the ground there is anarchy. No government to speak of, warlords ready to kill and little hope for the future. When will the fighting ever end? The world watches, and then watches some more. One wonders whether the world is now numb to the suffering of fellow human beings. With Hitler like killings or worse occurring in different parts of the world, yes at a much smaller scale but we said, "never again." Calls to end poverty and end genocide in Darfur are heard frequently but it almost sees like they are done for the sake of it. They have become catch phrases that do not spur action.
I hope I am completely wrong but sometimes the world throws things right back at you. There are people making a difference today in evry region. These people must be credited for their hard work and life saving work. In man lies the potential to do great good or great evil. I just hope that more people will be moved to act and fix the disparities. We are not different people, it makes no sense that parts of the same world seem at least 300 years apart. The problem is shared, we are all in this.
We are only as strong as our weakest link, by the look of things we have work to do, and a lot of it too!
Where there is a will there is a way!
We live in a world in which Western countries are ok with the fact 3th world countries pay the price in order for their own welt to remain a reality!
It’s called greed!
In order to deal with the guild this greed brings forward, Westerners toss a coin once in a while to feel better or less guilty in the mind.
The funny part is that they can easily hide behind the idea or mental concept, they are not responsible for poverty abroad, something which is a total joke of course!
The West is in grotesque denial and will continue in doing so for as long they can keep up this charade of exploitation.
First of all, the West caries no desire in bringing positive change upon the African continent. The West (US, China included) love the chaos which is vivid and will do the necessary in order to keep this the way it is now!
This chaos allows to bring in weapons trough the backdoor while draining whatever resources they have their focus upon trough that same backdoor unnoticed and cheap!
Apart from the political criminals all over this globe, people are being dumbenized and told what to believe in regard to this continent!
The sad truth is, most people in the West carry no clue whatsoever about what, how and why things are the way they are upon this continent! It’s partly due to the fact, most don’t wish to know, while others look the other way and some have their head in the sand!
Reality is that people in the West don’t care, because they are simply not affected!
That’s just how sick westerners have become and will remain in their ignorance!
They will toss a coin once in a while!
http://www.wowzone.com/monkey.htm
so what do we do about it? Are we to accept this as fact and not try to change things?
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tinacho
Manny things can be done, it’s never too late to bring change.
http://www.wowzone.com/monkey.htm
I'm sick of what we are doing. It does no good and guarantees that the problem will be even worse in the future. It is morally repugnant. And providing even more aid makes matters worse and the people who give it will have untold suffering and blood on their hands.
I wrote a blog several months ago on this subject that is very different from yours and I doubt that you will agree with it.
Hunger and Tough Love
There is no fixing Africa because fundamentatlly they are screwed. They, along with most of the rest of the third world, have overpopulated their countries to the point where life is unsustainable. Things will get worse because their population problem is getting worse. They are adding 70 million net new people per year. Our aid is enabling this growth and it will ensure that when the population crash finally comes it will only be that much more horrible.
Our ability to provide aid is finite and small. Maybe you have not noticed but our government is bankrupt, our ability borrow is maxed out, our people along with most of the rest of the developed countries in the world are about to experience a severe recession that is going to remind many of the Great Depression, we have become a net importer of food and the food we do grow we are converting to energy. We'll be lucky if we don't find ourselves the newest member of the third world.
Dr Malthus is about to pay the world a visit.
As much as the problems of the world are seemingly easy to categorize and simplify they are not. I think the age of isolating yourself as a country and ignoring the rest of the world is done with. Yes aid has been misused, yes there are cases of poor family planning but surely education can help this. For you to say that Africa is "screwed" is similar to the ideals of some of the people who give aid to third world countries without seeking long term solutions. In the long run it is cheaper to work for peace in countries, rather than having to pour in more aid every year. My theory is that there is a culture of dependence that is promoted by governments and organizations like the IMF and World Bank. If you didn't notice the western world's industrial revolution was "sponsored" by the third world, sponsored is an understatement really, exploitation might be a better word. If the third world was not as far back as it is now, the "first world" will not be the same. A little help would not hurt, Africa needs help to be able to sustain itself, and a jump start is what the continent needs.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tinacho
Educate away. See how well it works.
Eqypt almost five decades ago declared that college tuition would be free and made a promise to their people that anybody who got a college education would be guaranteed a job. They had an educational revolution and there are lots of educated Egyptians. They also had a population explosion. Even though they are more educated then they used to be they are more screwed then ever. Life is miserable there and pretty much guaranteed to remain that way or proably get much worse.
The only solution to the world's vast over-population is utltimately going to be to lower population. The longer people take to recognize this and start taking steps to effect the current runaway population growth, the worse the crash is going to be.
I have to say, I know very little about Egypt, but I can certainly say there are similar examples around Africa. How do you think the population boom can be curbed?
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tinacho
there is an actual theory out there. they says because of our American ideology we create this need to have poorer more "screwed" countries.
one of our values is individual success.
this value pours all of the responsibility and guilt on developing countries for their actions.
this may be one reason why we seem to ignore third world countries
I'd like for you "blame America firsters" to be more specific.
What did we do to cause Angola's problems? What did we do to cause Zimbabwe's problems? What did we do to cause Ethiopia's problems? What did we do to cause Somalia's problems? What did we do to cause any of Northern Africas problems.
I'm not buying it.
exploitation of their resources and foreign invasions( european countries). but america is not to blame.
i am just trying to explain why we ignore it.
Why do people like you always get pissed whenever anyone points out something negative about the U.S? Keanan just gave one of the reasons that contribute to people ignoring third world countries. That's not blaming "America" first, that's much needed criticism.
I get angry because we have not ignored their problems. For my entire lifetime we have been pumping "aid" into these countries and for the most part we have made their problems far worse by doing so. You probably have not paid much taxes in your lifetime but I have paid lots. My money has been used to provide so-called "aid" which did the opposite of "aiding" these countries or these people. This blog was a call for even more of the same and I find it morally repugnant. We are helping them go down a path that is an environmentally disasterous and guarantees that hundreds of millions or perhaps billions of yet unborn babies will suffer a miserable short life followed by an even more miserable death.
The plight of these people is not our fault but it is within our power through so-called aid to make their plight in the future far worse. The reason these countries are poor has nothing to do with us exploiting their natural resources. The ones with natural resources are the lucky ones whose self-made disaster is partially mitigated by the luck of having something valuable to sell. The unlucky ones are the places like Haiti that have created the same self-made disaster but don't have any resources to sell to mitigate the pain that results from hopelessly overpopulating your home.
Read my blog that I linked to above because I explained myself fully.
The reason these countries are poor has nothing to do with us exploiting their natural resources.
Do you really believe this?
Lots of countries have exploited and still are exploiting Africa's resources. If we stopped sending aid AND if countries stopped exploiting various African, then improvement would happen.
If we stop exploiting them they will be like Haiti.
Then let them be like Haiti. You say that as if exploited countries are prosperous.
I'm all for letting them be like Haiti.
My whole point is that we should leave them alone and let nature run its course.
Pretty quick they will be starving like they are in Haiti and then they will be dying. It will be really grim but eventually their population will adjust so that it is in harmony with their environment.
Better that they starve now rather than multiply their population by 2x, 4x. or 10x and then starve.
I have to agree with Keanan here, there is a certain level of ignorance of some of these problems that is worrying. I am certainly not blaming America for all the problems of Africa. Consider Cold war politics though, in the 1970s Mobutu Sese Seko, took over in a country known as Zaire, the United States was quick to become his ally so the Russians did not. He was a ruthless dictator who ensured his own people suffered from his greed. He was an ally to the US even though he was plundering his own country. Now Congo reals in the aftermath of Mobutus 30 or so years in power which ended in 1997. There has been war ever since and the world has watched and moved reluctantly. Funny how now it is their problem, as if it came out of the blue. There are always contributing factors to each crisis and all I am saying is that we have to take a closer look, too many are dying because of oversight.
I have blogged about the Congolese situation before: http://takasimba.blogspot.com/2008/07/crisis-in-congo.html
You will find video showing the United State's support of Mobutu
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tinacho
By the way, Congo is one of the world's largest exporters of Cobalt, its probably in your cell phone battery.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tinacho
In man lies the potential to do great good or great evil.
And too many have made the latter choice.
There are quite a few reasons why this continent is lingering in a constant struggle.
Misery upon this continent is being sustained by all that abuse from it from the outside!
800 children die every day because of aids, these numbers taken in account only 10% of those who enter this world are being tested to be or not to be HIV positive!
To believe this misery is self-inflicted is complete nonsense and exactly what they are trying to make everyone believe!
There is always a way to solve misery, it’s called proper attention!
http://www.wowzone.com/monkey.htm
unfortunately a lot of people really believe that Africans woke up one day and decided to start fighting each other. There is always a reason, we have to look closer before we generalize..
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tinacho
When Africa became divided or better say brought upon the world map, all countries which gained interest in this continent, drew random lines which still today are a fine example of how the African cake got shared amongst those who set foot upon this continent.
To understand still today these lines which have been draw to split up the cake, have put (forced) natives to live together just because most lines went straight trough invisible barriers of language.
Off course during the oppression, conflicts between natives remained limited, but once independence became a reality, the past itself got itself back to surface too.
For colonials to stir up hate in between natives was of course another issue which has engulfed this continent in war.
Something similar can be witnessed in Irak between Sunnis and Shiites.
Your picture is gone, :-( I liked you T-shirt, :-)
http://www.wowzone.com/monkey.htm
In the case of Rwanda the Tutsi were shown preferential treatment compared to the Hutus by the Belgian colonialists, which brought about resentment between people who look very similar. In Sudan the 20 year civil war was between Arabs of Nubian origin in the north against black Africans in the south. These are a few examples of the random lines drawn, the legacy of colonialism still exists.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tinacho
It actually never ended, colonialism just shifted its approach into becoming abuse-ism, this to make it all look more human to the eyes of the world, one must not forget,
it’s only these last 20 years or so, camera’s have changed their angle while still only few start to focus and capture what’s really going on upon the continent. Before that, only those who carried financial interest could go unaffected and have their way in manners which are no other than grotesque!
Nothing has changed today, only the approach.
Even in the very beginning already, David Livingstone was disgusted by those who shaped this continent into what it has become today!
Reason why Europe is filled with bombastic sceneries of architecture that rose during colonial high times, is a perfect example of the little amount of time it took to display the greed which has pushed many to exploit the African continent.
When this greed became too obvious (shamefully), a simple change of tactics made them to change from displaying to hiding the acquired welt, still today nothing has changed, while people on the continent thought independence would bring change and freedom of abuse.
Those who are driven by greed, are the same individuals who have put the African political puppets upon the pedestal, regardless of whatever African country which is dwelling in dictatorship ever since!
The sickness of colonialism still exists!
http://www.wowzone.com/monkey.htm
the picture might make a come back sometime!http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tinacho
I understand why, you are right...
http://www.wowzone.com/monkey.htm