Journalist for Life
Sometimes I wonder why the people of Africa do not positively detest Europe and North America. We have exploited, colonized and raped their continent for centuries and continue to sell arms to their dictators whom we have put in place and then condemn them for spending money on wars. We invaded their countries, destroyed their culture and enforced white privilege and now moan that they are corrupt and inefficient.
We enslaved them, then imported them as cheap labour, then complained that immigration was destroying our way of life. Perhaps most pernicious of all, while imposing our supposedly superior values on them we allowed wealthy men from the United States in particular to travel to Africa for cheap sex and then bring the AIDS virus back to the west.
Men, women, and children had been dying of AIDS in their millions for decades in Africa before this but we heard hardly a word about it. Once it killed Californians it became a major issue and every celebrity worth the name appeared at a fundraiser and screamed at politicians to do more. Why? Africans are black and often poor and don’t matter. North Americans and Europeans are much nicer and better.
This has become horribly evident earlier this year when western media reacted so hysterically to a proposed bill in Uganda that could have led to gay men facing the death penalty. That was a repugnant idea, which is why the Ugandan President and establishment, the Roman Catholic Church in Uganda, and evangelical leaders throughout the world opposed it.
The bill did not become law in its original form and was always the initiative of a single politician. Even so, there were endless calls for foreign aid to be withdrawn from Uganda, which would have meant, of course, the deaths of many people because of the poor health and living conditions that still exist in a country that was a European colony and then the plaything of western governments. Aid is our moral duty – their right and not their privilege.
The agonizing deaths of Ugandan women and children, it seems, are nowhere near as important as punishing a man who dared to say some nasty things about homosexuals. Entire pages of Canadian newspapers have been devoted to the story but mass starvation in the same region hardly receives a mention in our press.
Africans are not animals or fools. They do not exist to be patronized by western gay activists. While punishment and even death for one’s sexuality is an abhorrent idea, worse is the contrived neglect and abuse of an entire continent that leads to a suffering so vast and so long that it is beyond the comprehension of most of us.
Uganda has come through war and instability to develop an increasingly peaceful society, a promising economy, an evolving democracy and an anti-AIDS campaign that is the envy of Africa. Instead of encouraging this great country we threaten it. That anti-AIDS campaign was based not on an obsession with condoms but with an informed and compelling chastity education campaign that changed the hearts as well as the minds and actions of millions throughout the country.
More recently we have seen the usual suspects creep ghoul-like out of their political coffins to moan and yell as the abortion issue is discussed once again in Ottawa – as well as knew it would one day. It wasn’t pro-lifers who made this a discussion, but pro-abortion fanatics who tried to insist that our government demand African women abort their babies as part of Canada ’s international maternal aid agenda.
These zealots assumed that the people of the country would once again say little but this time enough people in the media made enough noise that enough politicians developed enough spine to say, well, enough is enough. The argument for linking abortion facilities to aid to African women was based on dark logic. African women often die in or after childbirth because they do not have access to the most basic health care that Canadian women take for granted. The solution? Help them to kill their babies.
No, no, no! The solution is to make sure that they have their babies in a clean hospital with good doctors and first-class facilities. It’s rather like saying we can stop all human suffering if we kill all humans. Which is perhaps not that far from what the aborticrazies wants. Africa says no, Canada says no, we say no, humanity says no.
Michael Coren can be booked for speaking engagements at michaelcoren.com.
