These concerts are really effective, huh?
“So far, the concerts have raised about $3 million to benefit AIDS awareness.
“An estimated 5.4 million South Africans are infected with the AIDS virus, more than any other country in the world. About 900 people die of the disease each day.”
So: was South Africa a safer, healthier nation under apartheid?
Discuss.
As safe and healthy as Iraq was under Saddam Hussein.
I shed no tears for the downfall of either regime.
AIDS, one damn nasty piece of business. I buried my cousin and best friend in the late 80’s. He was a flaming homo who refused to take precautions. But, we were very ignorant on the subject back then. Today, no friggin excuse! The people of Africa are totally to blame for the current problem(not bush, not cheney, not haliburton)and it is disgraceful how the disease is still spreading so rapidly. If these tin-pots would spend some money on rubbers instead of weapons, and men would keep their willies in their pants, the rate of this disease spreading would slow a bit. Very sad indeed that something so preventable is killing so many people.
“So: was South Africa a safer, healthier nation under apartheid?”
Nothing to discuss, the data exists to say one way or another. Maybe you could cite a source from the internet; I recommend Wikipedia.
And as if Canadians are capable of having an intelligent discussion about SA. They cry like babies if you point out their hero Mandela was a TERRORIST with strong ties to communism. I concur with Coyne; we are the stupidest friggin’ country on the face of the earth.
wait til us whites are in the minority in 30-60 years and the same happens here.
South Africa is a good place to look to see where Canada’s excessive immigration rates will take us they too have diversity with many Asians, whites and blacks all living in joyous harmony….
RE: AIDS on the African continent.
I’ve met people there who have been told by their physician that if they want to get rid of AIDS they need only have unprotected sex with a virgin, in SA there are young rape victims in line at the local clinic every day, including infants.
http://tinyurl.com/cjdmy
It is absolutely mind boggling considering that African Countries have been asking for and receiving lots western dollars to “tackle the AIDS problem”.
http://tinyurl.com/3xzj9g (old article but the amount is staggering)
The solution lies in education but the Africans in charge seem unwilling to solve the problem lest funding be cut off.
The UN is not in the business of peacekeeping and humanitarianism, it’s in peacekeeping and humanitarianism for the business.
IMO If you want to help Africa stop throwing money at them, it is little more than a feel good exercise.
Al fresh back from Africa
Re: the need for Feel-good AIDS awareness “concerts”
“What deserves mocking is the idea that easy, cost-free public gestures like this represent anything but self-dramatising narcissism dressed up as compassion for one’s fellow creatures.”
Some one came up with this profound observation in a thread yesterday where we discussed the superficial sanctimony of the corporate church.
It would seem the corporate church is in competition with the secular humanist cults of pop do-gooders for top position as the moral compass of humanity…of course their efforts are “self-dramatising narcissism dressed up as compassion”
That’s a lot of money. Anyone following the money?And don’t even try to compare ‘health and education costs’ to our economy or system.
A member of my family was overseas when she collapsed from dehydration. For a doctor and nurse to treat her in the home she was visiting, set up IV, plus administer meds, she paid a whopping $17.00 Cdn.
On another visit she and a team of volunteers built an AIDS orphanage. It was in a self sustaining community. They were able to grow their own chickens and veggies.And had schools.
So I ask again…who’s following the money?
If SA’s neighbour Mugabe gets his fingers on it you can be sure the people in the small communities won’t see a penny of it.
YES
Dan…is that YES to the first question, or the last?
The Comintern used to have a Party Line, to which all bien-pensant Communists adhered. While there is no longer an official Party Line, so far as I know, the unofficial line which bien-pensant leftists follow is as definite as ever the official Comintern doctrine was. The virtue of “AIDS awareness”, and of working for “AIDS awareness”, is part of that. However strange it may seem, “I believe what the Church believes; the Church believes what I believe” as mediaeval Christians would say, has its modern echo, and equally assures the true believer a place in …
Heaven? ah well, that is a problem. Entombment in the Red Wall is no longer available.
AIDS is not the biggest problem in Africa.
Tribalism and stupidity are the big killers.
I will not contribute one red cent to Africa until they start behaving like men rather than monkeys.
4 decades of black control, and these morons still can’t feed themselves.
Time to give it up fellas.
Dr Albert Schweitzer, who spent most of his life in Africa, “uplifting” Negroes, received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1952. He held several doctorate degrees. Shortly before his death, he said:
“I have given my life to alleviate the sufferings of Africa. There is something that all white men that have lived here must learn and know; that these individuals are a sub-race; they have neither the intellectual, mental or emotional abilities to equate or share in any of the functions of our civilization. I have given my life to try and bring them the advantages which our civilization must offer, but I have become well aware that we must retain this status; white, the superior, and they the inferior, for whenever a white man seeks to live among them as their equal, they will either destroy him or devour him, and they will destroy all his work; and so for any existing relationship or for any benefit to this people let white men from anywhere in the world who would come to help Africa remember that you must continually retain the status; you the master, and they inferior, like children that you would help or teach. Never fraternize with them as equals, never accept them as your social equals; or they will devour you; they will destroy you.”
Follow the money indeed.
I don’t for a second blame Bush or the western world for AIDs or HIV. On the contrary, much has been done.
But much too has been promised by politicians trying to curry votes. Bush made a surprise and enormous promise of $15 billion toward AIDs/HIV African assistance in his State of the Union address in 2003 (“I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years” – http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html). He even went on to say in interviews that he was not convinced of the need but, after speaking with Catholic and evangelical missionaries and friends, he realized the need to help.
So what of all that money? First, he imposed a condition that not a dime would go to anyone dying of AIDs if that country’s government permitted abortions. Second, he imposed a condition that not a dime would go to anyone dying of AIDs if that country’s government distributed condoms or taught anything but abstinence. And even then, how much money has even flowed? And where? Like his grandiose promises of funding up to $80 million toward faith-based charitable initiatives, it turns out it was all driven by politics and hardly a dime has been seen by any AIDs/HIV patient or faith-based organization through either plan.
I pick on Bush not because he’s a demonic idiot, but because he’s a bloody typical politician, not much different than any other and not much different than the rock stars and to whom the quotation “What deserves mocking is the idea that easy, cost-free public gestures like this represent anything but self-dramatising narcissism dressed up as compassion for one’s fellow creatures” could not apply more.
There are lots of things Africans could be doing for themselves. But let’s not get so self-righteous as to pat ourselves on the back and say ‘we’ve done our bit, now bugger off’.
The only thing more vile than such an attitude is to suggest that enslavement, segregation and racial supremacy are superior.
Al:
not sure if “physician” is the right word for the individual dispensing that kind of advice (unprotected sex with a virgin). i’ve read other reports categorizing these individuals as “tribal witch doctors” or something.
Nope …. the responsibility for growing and prospering rests solely on the shoulders of the African native peoples.
As an earlier commenter stated the biggest enemy is tribalism.
Until this world outlook is outgrown there will never be any change in the prospects for positive change.
For those of you who insist that it is your role to be your brothers keeper…. perhaps making an effort to end this root cause of tribalism would be a better use of your energy than the sanctimonious do gooder demands for ever increased financial sustenance.
All cultures are NOT equal.
Actually, ignorance of sanitation, ie. dirty hands is the biggest killer in Africa.
That’s root cause of evil … tribalism.
It is absolutely incompatible with a modern technologically driven world.
That Schweitzer quote reveals a terrible ignorance, inferiority is cultural not racial. 1952 was a very long time ago, in more than just years. I personally have met many black Africans who have come from mud huts and gone on to the finest universities in the world, they are as intelligent and civilized as anyone I’ve ever met. I have also met many Canadians of pure European stock who do not seem to have any of “the intellectual, mental or emotional abilities to equate or share in any of the functions of our civilization”. (ALL left-wingers of course.)
Africa might be the big surprise of the 21st century. Europe went through a series of plagues, worse than the AIDS epidemic, in the 14th century and its civilization kept on rolling, from a historian’s perspective the plagues were almost a good thing, creating an environment for progress and reducing a surplus population. On a human level the African AIDS plague is a terrible tragedy but, in the big picture, it means very little. Humanity will adapt over generations. People will continue to be born and die every day.
So: was South Africa a safer, healthier nation under apartheid?
Discuss.
Tatty countercultural remnants and their acolytes make their pilgrimage to the football stadium to show their obeisance to yet another Great Cause. Dress code: jeans and a Che Guevara t-shirt. Sacraments: beer and pot.
Under the old Apartheid system, a lot of working age men left their farms and other rural homes to work in the mines. They lived in barracks in the mine areas, and used the services of prostitutes since they were away from home for 6 months at a time. Thus they caught AIDS and other STDs, which they then transmitted to their wives when they went back to the farm to visit or live. Apartheid surely did mot cause AIDs, but the racial pass laws which resulted in the living arrangements described above exacerbated its spread. South Africa really is the perfect storm for AIDS – poverty, ignorance and primitive medicine, combined with a modern transportation infrastructure to ensure a speedy spread.
To answer the original question – not really. The end of Apartheid coincided with the worsening spread of AIDs in Africa generally. It is possible that the Apartheid regime would have been able to organize a more draconian response (and I actually mean that in a good way) but really, I don’t know what they could have done. You cannot outlaw screwing or superstitions (ok, it would help if the President wasn’t a superstitous rube).
Doing the math with a total population of 47 million, that’s 10% of SA’s population infected with HIV which is catastrophic. I can’t think of a more vacuous and irresponsible response than another “awareness” concert. God forbid that anyone would take responsible measures to treat HIV at this point in SA as an infectious disease like TB, impose serious measures to quarantine the infected, imprison those that refuse to change their behavior and protected the public.
Nothing is going to change the course of HIV in Africa until Africans take responsibility for their predatory and irresponsible sexual behavior which is inherent in the culture. White donors throwing money down that rat hole are deluding themselves.
Africa’s biggest problem is that African self-government is not any less cruel than Boer Racist Oppression.
Give SA another 10-20 years and they’ll match Mugabe’s misery.
Stats are readily available on the incidence and intensity of AIDS in Africa.
African countries with predominantly Christian or Muslim populations have AIDS rates not much different than the rest of the world.
It’s not that big of a leap to say the answer to AIDS would be to encourage a stronger moral code among its younger populations and that it would be worth articulating the reasons for the difference in incidence.
It all comes down to a question of personal responsibility, a concept that seems foreign to progressive secularism.
Well, it didn’t take long to blame Bush for Africa’s woes.
I have seen money pumped into Africa for over 50 years, nothing has changed except the fact that we used to be able to save them for a penny per day, now it’s a dollar per day.
Healthier nation under apartheid? Indeed !
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but is not South Africa’s political direction more toward the socialist model?
Ted, you are going to have to stop agreeing with me all the time. Its making me twitch.
Obviously there is no such thing as “racial” inferiority. If there’s one thing that has been established beyond any doubt by the classical Western liberal tradition, that would be it. Individuals vary, environments vary, races do not.
One more thing that has been established beyond doubt, all cultural traditions are NOT equal. The biggest problem in South Africa (and Africa generally) is traditional magic. People don’t believe in antibiotics etc. they believe in magic.
This leads to things like Al’s mention of sex with a virgin as a cure for AIDS. It also makes for things like guys running across busy streets without looking. There’s a recurring phenomenon of young black men being killed on highways because they run right out in front of traffic just like a rabbit. Happens all the time. They think they are invulnerable because of some magic ritual, so they just don’t pay attention to the traffic. Interestingly, the ones that survive never seem to get it that the magic doesn’t work.
You can’t run a Western farm or factory if the guy in charge believes in stuff like that. He’s liable to try fixing a broken tractor with magic, and when it doesn’t work assume the guy from the next farm over has cursed him.
That’s what goes on in South Africa these days. The only reason it didn’t go on there pre-Mandela is because the government kept all the black people locked up in the Townships. Thus we find that whether South Africa is safer or not depends on what colour you are. Better for blacks than the townships, by far. Not so good for whites, they have to live with politicians who use magic to get things done.
Africa’s problems today are solely the result of racism, imperialism and colonialism. Stop blaming the victims. AIDS is a disease created by whites to exterminate Africans, thus making it easier to steal their mineral wealth. Advocating the use of condoms in nothing more than a genocide to prevent Africans from reproducing. Having sex with child virgins to cure AIDS? It’s worth a try.
…not sure if “physician” is the right word for the individual dispensing that kind of advice…
Oh, boy, you are still measuring 3d world by Canadian standards… Indeed, Canada is the stupidest country on Earth!
It is about standards. Their standard of phys is someone with a golden ring and glasses, dispensing medical advise about moon phases, white virgins and baboon tails. Your standard is different. That’s why I will never vote for a party, who plans to allow foreign doctors to practice in Canada without formal training.
…AIDS is a disease created by whites to exterminate Africans…
Piss off, moron! AIDS is a disease, that existed in apes of Kongo and finally spilled into human population when a hunter has been beaten by an infected ape in 50s or 60s IIRC. The scientists managed recently to trace the virus to a particular family of apes that still lives.
Idiot! Whites don’t need Africa with its endless infectious diseases spread by water, insects, animals and present in soil. If whites only wanted to commit genocide, they would have explicitly done so. Instead we tried missionaries who mostly got eaten. The continent has to be sealed and left to its own fate.
Africa’s problems today are solely the result of racism, imperialism and colonialism
Sock puppet.
Mystery Meat, you have convinced me of the error of my ways, sir and/or ma’am. I’m going to run out and get me some magic beans to make my fortune! ~:D
Don’t you guys know satire when you see it? Jeeze!
So: was South Africa a safer, healthier nation under apartheid?
Discuss.
AIDS awareness is still needed, especially when you have AIDS ignorance being preached by people at the highest levels.
S. African bishop: Condoms tainted with AIDS
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20999747/
That bishop personifies pure evil, IMHO.
I don’t believe the Brits and Dutch thought of the blacks as subhuman in South Africa; they were just aware of the blacks’ behaviour in their own neck of the woods and didn’t find it conducive to their own way of life – meaning, the blacks treated each other like subhumans, and the Brits and Dutch didn’t want to live in that type of environment. South Africa is crime ridden, and who are the criminals – Blacks!!! Now nowhere in South Africa is it safe to live – great! The world bitched about apartheid in South Africa, but as soon as that changed, South Africa went straight to the dogs – and well, not a peep out of all those dumbasses who had jumped on the bandwagon now. Bloody typical.
AIDS isn’t just a disease; it is a plague. People can think that AIDS is preventable and it is one’s own fault, but in reality, the decision to contract AIDS is often not in the hands of the victims, but in the hands of the perpetrators.
Next up from the rightwing-The economic benefits of slavery!
Prisons are “safe” too. Canadians STILL do not understand liberty. Only a Canadian or a European degenerate could ask such a question.
Next up from the rightwing-The economic benefits of slavery!
It is the leftist retrogrades that promote 21st century slavery through unfettered illegal immigration. Liberal idiots [redundancy] love exploiting third world peasants.
There is no economic benefit in slavery, it’s a dead end.
There is economic benefit in colonial government keeping idiots in line until they are a tad more educated than a voodoo doll.
Oh, how tired I am of the idiots, specially of those in government and UN!
There is something in Marx theory that makes it possible to explain it to weak-minded. It must be the simplicity of the statement: steal from the rich and waste…
People can think that AIDS is preventable and it is one’s own fault, but in reality, the decision to contract AIDS is often not in the hands of the victims, but in the hands of the perpetrators.
The reality is AIDS/HIV is the most preventable disease amongst the big killers. As stated here already AIDS is spread almost without exception through irresponsible behavior [not using condoms]. You’ll notice liberal idiots [redundancy] never point out homosexual promiscuity as one of the leading causes of AIDS in the western world. Why are they silent? Because the gayhadists [among other leftist miscreants] control the leftist movement and sexual responsibility is outright rejected by these dimwitted sexual deviants.
Awareness, dialogue, chanting, thinking nice thoughts, empty moralizing, take two bromides and call me in the morning, victimism, sloganeering, widdle wed wibbons ….
Give Peace a Chance.
Give Dissolution a Chance!
Joanne,
I must respectfully disagree with you. If in the same room you have a sink from Whites and one for Blacks, and the whites made the room it’s because the whites don’t want to be in any contact with the “dirty” blacks. If white people build a bridge for themselves, and a second one from the blacks, it is because they want to avoid contact with the “dangerous” blacks. When whites train their dogs to attack the blacks (which they did, because I’ve seen it), it’s because they have no respect for the lives of blacks.
The whites treated the blacks as subhuman, or at least sub-white. Nelson Mandela, who has unfortunately aligned himself with leftist idiots, was a terrorist for the same reason that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were terrorists. To rid yourselves of an oppressive ruler who has no respect for your life, you must have no respect for their lives.
And before you try to push the issue, try to find out about the massacres of blacks in 1960s South Africa, and ask yourself if that’s is less terror than Mandela’s MK wing of the ANC blowing up army barracks and boarder gates.
Some people on the right have the same tendencies as those on the left. You are anti-black-led-South Africa because of the leftist idiots you hate who pushed for the end of apartheid. As someone who loves freedom, and who has written about loving freedom on your page, I would expect more sympathy for those who fought against all odds for it.
Jon
“AIDS isn’t just a disease; it is a plague. People can think that AIDS is preventable and it is one’s own fault, but in reality, the decision to contract AIDS is often not in the hands of the victims, but in the hands of the perpetrators.”
How exactly do you contract AIDS? Breathing? Nonsense. AIDS is primarily a sexually transmitted disease. Victims of rape are obviously inncocent. Likewise the small, small percentage of infected blood transfusion vixtims are innocent.
That leaves people who have unprotected sex when they know better. If they are not taught, shame on the government. If they do it anyway, they are the guilty party, not victims any longer. Irrational beleif in magic is not my responsibility.
Shame on the Joannes who allow AIDS to continue.
enough
……Nelson Mandela, who has unfortunately aligned himself with leftist idiots, was a terrorist for the same reason that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were terrorists.
I’m not a Mandela fan but to characterize him as a terrorist along with Washington and Jefferson is revisionist history at best. Based on your other reasonable statements I’m surprised you could reach such a conclusion.
Education in poor SA is so far behind our standard, as previous posters have said. I was there in 2003, and all these crazy stories are real.
Their experience with rape, and the justification for abortion, is completely different than our society’s feminist agenda of “abortion-as-birth-control”, i/e the missing generation which justifies immigration.
Rape in SA is extremely common – it is a tool of suppression and subjugation. And this is not a Muslim country, where rape has even more sinister consequences for women and their families.
Yet Dr. Barnard performed the first heart transplant in Cape Town. General Smuts helped set the table for the new world order after WW2.
There is great hope in SA. We should all remain hopeful they can find their way out of the shadow of apartheid, and in particular resist the evils of communism. So many of the ANC veterans were trained as freedom fighters by the Soviets. Thabo Mbeki was a full fledged communist while attending Oxford. His leadership is questionable and worrisome, particularly in light of the disaster that has become Zimbabwe (I wonder if Bob Marley anticipated such horrors would come from the transition from Rhodesia, in which he was a propoganda tool)
Madiba, while working to broker peace between the white corporate masters, international secret services and his ANC party, has made some questionable allegiances, but he did build a nation. From the back of a outhouse/cave in a lime pit he worked in for decades. Respect, people.
“It is the leftist retrogrades that promote 21st century slavery through unfettered illegal immigration.”
This is such specious didactics. The EMPLOYERS are ultimately responsible for the exploitation of these people. Similarly, employers exploit people in jurisdictions with inadequate labour protections. These employers are NOT noted liberal confederates.
This is such specious didactics. The EMPLOYERS are ultimately responsible for the exploitation of these people.
As far as here in America it is the liberal idiots that run state legislatures and municipalities that refuse to enforce immigration laws that translate into more votes and constituents for the socialists. Of course you’ll have employers that use illegal labor but it is liberals who promote this practice and squeal racism anytime you mention that latinos must follow US immigration laws like everyone else. The liberal welfare state is also a huge contributor to illegal immigration, much more so than all the employers in the US combined.