Somalia is not a humanitarian disaster;

[questa]

Kevin Myers (born 30 March 1947) is an Irish journalist and writer.

He writes for the Irish edition of the Sunday Times, having previously been a columnist for the Irish Independent and a former contributor to The Irish Times, where he wrote the "An Irishman's Diary" opinion column several times weekly.

Until 2005, he wrote for the UK Sunday Telegraph.
His articles criticize left-wing opinion and the "liberal consensus", sometimes incorporating hyperbole, sarcasm and parody.
This is an essay he wrote.

Somalia is not a humanitarian disaster; it is an evolutionary disaster. The current drought is not the worst in 50 years, as the BBC and all the aid organizations claim.
It is nothing compared to the droughts in 1960/61 or 73/74. And there are continuing droughts every 5 years or so.
It's just that there are now four times the population; having been kept alive by famine relief, supplied by aid organizations, over the past 50 years.
So, of course, the effects of any drought now, is a famine. They cannot even feed themselves in a normal rainfall year.

Worst yet, the effects of these droughts, and poor nutrition in the first 3 years of the a child's life, have a lasting effect on the development of the infant brain,

so that if they survive, they will never achieve a normal IQ .
Consequently, they are selectively breeding a population who cannot be educated, let alone one that is not being educated; a recipe for disaster

We are seeing this impact now, and it can only exacerbate, to the detriment of their neighbours, and their environment as well.

This scenario can only end in an even worse disaster; with even worse suffering, for those benighted people, and their descendants. Eventually, some mechanism will intervene, be it war, disease or starvation.

So what do we do? Let them starve?


What a dilemma for our Judeo/Christian/Islamic Ethos; as well as Hindu/Buddhist morality. And this is beginning to happen in Kenya, Ethiopia and other countries in Asia, like Pakistan. Is this the beginning of the end of civilization?

AFRICA is giving nothing to anyone outside Africa -- apart from AIDS and new diseases. Even as we see African states refusing to take action to restore something resembling civilization in Zimbabwe, the begging bowl for Ethiopia is being passed around to us out of Africa, yet again.
It is nearly 25 years since the famous Feed The World campaign began in Ethiopia, 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. Now they want to move to other countries to continue to breed and commit crime.

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 children starving.

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 low IQ, AK 47-bearing moron, siring children whenever the whim takes him and blaming the world because he is uneducated, poor and left behind. 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 hand wringing, letter writing wrathful individuals; 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 Irish Famine, with this or that lazy analogy. There is no comparison!
Within 20 years of the Famine, the Irish population was down by 30%. Over the equivalent period, thanks to western food, the Mercedes 10-wheel truck

and the Lockheed Hercules plane, Ethiopia's population 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, AK 47-toting, khat-chewing, girl-circumcising, permanently tumescent layabouts and housing pirates of the ocean. Indeed, we now have almost an entire continent of sexually hyperactive, illiterate indigents, with tens of millions of people who only survive because of help from the outside world or allowances by the semi-communist Governments they voted for, money supplied by borrowing it from

the World Bank!

This dependency has not stimulated political prudence or common sense.
Indeed, voodoo idiocy seems to be in the ascendant, with the 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 AIDS 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 (to Ireland). Germany and the rest of Europe is already inundated and there are literally millions queuing

up who want a hand out, taking in refugees because you feel sorry for them will end in the demise of those countries taking part.


You will note that; No Gulf State is taking any refugees, and the head of the human rights commission is Saudi Arabian!

So what do the Any Port people think?

[cheerypeabrain]

It's an opinion. A friend of mine raises money for a charity that provides medical equipment and training for a hospital in Ethiopia. We all participate in either sponsoring or taking part in fund raising activities, our hospital donates equipment and several medical personnel go out to Ethiopia to help with training and to set up labs and wards there. Don't we have a moral responsibility to offer this sort of training and help when we have so much?

And isn't it 'our' politicians and big corporations encouraging these so called third world countries to buy arms and prop up our economy? Wasn't there a scandal in the news about a baby milk company providing new mothers in poor countries with an experimental new baby milk formula so that they didn't establish breast feeding in a timely manner...then they withdrew the free milk powder! Western Drug companies use poorer countries to trial their new drugs. The west has exploited these countries for hundreds of years so now they just walk away? am I being brainwashed by social media? One world etc...

[mickthecactus]

That is a very powerful and thought provoking article.

Overpopulation is very likely to be the thing that ends this world. I have been saying that for decades.

[kerouac2]

I know that President Macron was severely criticised last year for saying that as long as certain African countries have a birthrate of 7 or 8 children, it will not help to keep throwing billions of euros at Africa. He was branded a racist by some.

[kerouac2]

Well, if we dig a little deeper, I suppose we would have to mention the fact that Africans took other Africans as slaves over the previous centuries (pyramids, anyone?). They might even have taught the white invaders how to do it.

[bjd]

Nov 29, 2018 14:47:03 GMT kerouac2 said:

Well, if we dig a little deeper, I suppose we would have to mention the fact that Africans took other Africans as slaves over the previous centuries (pyramids, anyone?). They might even have taught the white invaders how to do it.

With that kind of reasoning: Russia had serfs until 1862, the USA had slavery until 1865.

That article is written in a way to get people worked up about feckless Africans. I do think that many African countries have big problems, not all of which were caused by overpopulation. But the legacy of colonialism and the continued pillaging of resources by China and wealthy countries, the sale of arms, the corruption of politicians encouraged by Swiss and offshore banks all have a big part to play in the state of the continent.

Things will improve when African politicians have to be treated in hospitals in their own country rather than flying to the States or Europe. When proxy wars are no longer fought on African soil. When huge fishing vessels stop dragging nets offshore and depriving local fishermen of their livelihoods, when terrorist groups stop kidnapping schoolchildren. And when women have more rights.

[kerouac2]

One former French government minister (Jean-Louis Borloo) has made it his mission to electrify Africa. He is convinced (and he might be correct) that if more Africans had access to electricity, things would improve very quickly. As regards Somalia, only 16% of the population has electricity (in a country like Mali, it is only 3%!).

On periodic seminars, I met with a really delightful colleague from Mogadishu, who would tell us about her life there. Perhaps her proudest possession was an electric stove. Let's not even try to figure out what makes such a thing prestigious when many forms of traditional cooking are often more appropriate. She said she only used it maybe 3 or 4 times a year when there was an important family event with many guests. Why was this? "If I use it for one day, it costs about half a month of my salary." And I will point out that she was working for a major international corporation (like me), only at Somali salary.

[kerouac2]

Ethiopia has made tremendous progress in the last 10 years -- with Chinese money.

[rikita]

i'd like to say something about the article, but find myself a bit lost for words ... claiming africa is giving nothing to the world, for one thing - that's pretty silly ... and then implying that any child saved will basically become a rapist, kind of taking an image that is supposed to wake empathy (whether it is good that we need such an image is a different question, i suppose) and twisting it, to make people angry at it ... also, i thought that usually the poorer and less educated people are, the more children they tend to have (on average), so wouldn't helping them (beyond just feeding them, but helping them to have access to education and all those things) be a better way to approach overpopulation?

[rikita]

also, couldn't we then say that westerners use up most resources and put most strain on the environment per person, so when we see, for example, european or american babies that need some kind of help, we shouldn't provide that help, else they'll just grow into SUV-driving, over-consuming, meat-eating grown ups? hm, maybe people that are against health care in their countries just want to protect the environment ...

[questa]

I am still trying to get my head around this. I've worked in villages where mothers and babies died through plain ignorance and superstition. One woman had delivered 24 babies, 12 had lived past 5 years old.
I guess the only thing that can help is in the here and now.

Yes, the colonial powers raped the countries, enslaved the people and now don't want them pitching their tent cities next door to our nice homes.

Yes, the kids that you are working with now...is it worth it? What sort of results will there be when millions more people are calling for their share of the planet.
We can't undo what has happened. We have no clear sight of the future.The climate itself and the Earth's very crust is changing

Yes, all we can do today is as much as we can, to keep the old, young, poor, criminal, trouble making, and all the faults and failures alive for another month. They all are our family.

[kerouac2]

One of the reasons that France has propped up the corrupt regime in Côte d'Ivoire for so long is that if the country collapsed into chaos, it would wreak absolute havoc with the chocolate and coffee market.

Is that a good enough reason? I am not qualified to say.