It's almost insulting to African culture as a whole that the United States continues its meddling in the affairs of African society with a subtle combination of ignorance and arrogance.
For example: our government continues to make food and supply drops into areas that are completely controlled by militant regimes. These regimes guard with machine guns the food that we've dropped after they confiscate it and cram it into silos, where it rots, without reaching the population because American food is unacceptable for consumption due to the high percentage of foods that are genetically modified in our country (some 60%). Ergo, the groups in Africa won't use it anyway.
We throw money at South Africa's persistent AIDS crisis, as well. We send in psuedo doctors with medication and condoms. Problem is: more than half of them are women, and white to boot. Women are the lesser sex in Africa, and still considered property in many of the African states. Sending women in with valuable information about safe sex is useless, not to mention the general distrust of white people.
Then there are the real cultural problems, such as the fact that it is believed in South Africa that AIDS can be cured via intercourse with three virgins. What Africa needs is education not medications that are dropped with too few doses to be effective and too few syringes to actually be administered and information conveyed by white women.
Africa's poverty is in the global spotlight, but the spotlight could stand to shift toward a focus on inhumane legislation that exists across the continent.
It is horrifying that barbaric pulic executions are the norm. Recently a thirteen year old Somalian girl was buried up to her neck in sand and stoned to death by fifty men with thousands of onlookers that were shot if they attempted to intervene. The girl's "crime"? She had been raped by three military officials, and for this was convicted of adultry.
When the U.S. waged war in Iraq, the rest of the world demanded that we citizens take action against our government-wo why don't we, and the rest of the world demand the same of Africa, where every year mass genocide is committed by every state and province, and these barbaric practices are the norm? The least we could do is cut Africa out of our foreign aid until they straighten up and fly right.
Monday, December 29, 2008
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