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The West Is Partly Responsible for the Ebola Crisis In Africa
Everyone’s seen the stories …
Ebola has become an epidemic in Liberia and Sierra Leone because those West African countries don’t have the resources to cope with the disaster. This is largely true because both countries have been torn apart by war.
Wikipedia notes regarding Liberia … the epicenter of the Ebola crisis:
Under Taylor’s leadership, Liberia became internationally known as a pariah state due to the use of blood diamonds and illegal timber exports to fund the Revolutionary United Front in the Sierra Leone Civil War.
***
The Liberian economy began a steady decline due to economic mismanagement following the 1980 coup. This decline was accelerated by the outbreak of civil war in 1989; GDP was reduced by an estimated 90% between 1989 and 1995, one of the fastest declines in history.
***
Civil war strife ended in 2003 after destroying approximately 95% of the country’s healthcare facilities. In 2009, government expenditure on health care per capita was US$22, accounting for 10.6% of total GDP. In 2008, Liberia had only 1 doctor and 27 nurses per 100,000 people.
As to Sierra Leone, Wikipedia points out:
Government corruption and mismanagement of the country’s natural resources contributed to the Sierra Leone Civil War (1991 to 2002), which over more than a decade devastated the country. It left more than 50,000 people dead, much of the country’s infrastructure destroyed, and over two million people displaced as refugees in neighbouring countries.
But what most Westerners don’t know is that our governments are partly responsible for the war that ravaged those countries’ healthcare infrastructure.
Liberia
The Boston Globe reported in 2009:
Former Liberian president and accused war criminal Charles G. Taylor said today that his infamous prison break from the Plymouth County Correctional Facility in 1985 was aided by the US government …
Agence France-Presse noted in 2008:
A former Liberian warlord allied to Charles Taylor has told the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that the United States released the strongman from jail in 1985 to engineer the overthrow of president Samuel Doe.
[Prince Johnson, now a Liberian senator] has already made allegations about Washington’s dubious role in the 1989 to 1997 war ….
Taylor and Johnson were allies in the early 1980s, but they later fell out, with Johnson forming a rival organisation to Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL).
So both dictator Taylor – and his rival, a current Liberian Senator – testified that the U.S. broke Taylor out of jail.
In addition, the Boston Globe reported in 2012 that U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency documents confirmed that Taylor had CIA ties. Editors later largely retracted the story. However, other sources allegedly confirm it.
Sierra Leone
Taylor was instrumental in destroying Sierra Leone, as well …
As the Daily Mail wrote last year, Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in prison for his war crimes, crimes against humanity and terrorism in Sierra Leone:
The former president of Liberia was convicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including terrorism, murder, rape and using child soldiers.
***
The court’s ruling came more than a decade after Taylor helped rebels go on a murderous rampage across war-torn Sierra Leone, raping, murdering and mutilating tens of thousands of innocent victims.
Taylor had aided and abetted crimes committed by Revolutionary United Front and Armed Forces Revolutionary Council rebels, while knowing well the kinds of crimes they were committing.
Presiding Judge George Gelaga King said: ‘Their primary purpose was to spread terror. Brutal violence was purposefully unleashed against civilians with the purpose of making them afraid, afraid that there would be more violence if they continued to resist.’
***
The court found Taylor provided crucial aid to rebels in Sierra Leone during that country’s 11-year civil war, which left an estimated 50,000 people dead before its conclusion in 2002.
Thousands more were left mutilated in a conflict that became known for its extreme cruelty, as rival rebel groups hacked off the limbs of their victims and carved their groups’ initials into opponents.
The rebels developed gruesome terms for the mutilations, offering victims the choice of ‘long sleeves’ or ‘short sleeves’ – having their hands hacked off or their arms sliced off above the elbow.
And it’s not just Taylor …
The Chicago Tribune reported in 2002:
The story of the American involvement in Sierra Leone is coming out in bits and pieces, but we can already see that the Clinton administration’s unrepentant policy there has been to empower one of the cruelest torturers and mass murderers of our times. And the story is far from over.
Let us focus first only on events in the spring of 1999: Foday Sankoh, whose savage Revolutionary United Front movement had massacred thousands and cut off the limbs of thousands more, had been arrested by Nigerian peacekeeping troops. Finally, he was in the hands of the at least nominally decent government in Sierra Leone. The long-suffering Sierra Leoneans, whose country had been a moderately prosperous former British colony, prayed that the worst was over.
But instead of insisting upon justice, President Clinton placed a now-famous phone call to Sankoh and persuaded him to enter a “peace accord.” The psychopathic Sankoh was told kindly by the American president that he could soon run for president! In the meantime, he would share power in the government and, supposedly, disarm his savage and often drugged teenaged troops, many of whom were ushered into the movement by being forced to kill their parents.
There was more to come. While taking Sankoh out of jail, where he was to be executed, the U.S. administration also refused to seriously support the UN-sponsored Nigerian troops because they had engaged in some minor “human-rights abuses.” The administration further refused to allow mercenaries, like the South African Executive Outcomes, to defeat Sankoh’s movement.
Thus, the only two groups that had the effective power to settle the situation were held back by this odd Clintonesque purism, while a homicidal killer went free. Once loosed again upon his people, Sankoh broke all of his promises –and what even reasonably rational person could not have predicted that? He called his latest convulsion of killing and maiming “Operation No Living Thing.” But now he is under arrest again–and the Clinton people have still another chance!
So the president sent the Rev. Jesse Jackson to West Africa to “mediate.” Before he left for Sierra Leone, he compared Foday Sankoh’s murderous RUF to Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in South Africa, which fought for and gained equality for all South Africans. Sankoh, Jackson said sagely, could play a “positive role.”
Jackson traveled first to Liberia, which neighbors Sierra Leone, to meet with his “friend,” the other unspeakable dictator of West Africa, Charles Taylor. Once there, Jackson praised Taylor, who is responsible both for the terrible bloodletting in his own country as well as in Sierra Leone, as someone who could play a “very positive role” (please note that his role is slightly upgraded from Sankoh’s)
Guinea
The brutality and war brought by Charles Taylor also spilled over into Guinea … the third West African country hit with Ebola. Indeed:
Combatants from Sierra Leone and Liberia inevitably attacked border communities in neighboring Guinea in 1999-2000, pushing the violence into that otherwise peaceful country.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees also flooded into Guinea to escape the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone:
Guinea remains the primary asylum country for West Africa’s refugees. Refugee influxes during the 1990s were so overwhelming that, for several years, Guinea hosted the largest refugee population on the continent. Some 120,000 Liberian and up to 50,000 Sierra Leonean refugees continued to reside in Guinea as of July 2003.
And the destruction of infrastructure in Sierra Leone means that people with Ebola are crossing the border into Guinea.
The big picture: All of the countries which the U.S. tinkers with descend into chaos.
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How do you know who those are? The chemtrails in the sky spell out their screen names?(trollish comment)
Honestly, what was trollish about pointing out that the country this epidemic originated from is populated by unintelligent people? You think individuals with an IQ of 67(AVG. IQ in Liberia) understand the germ theory of disease?
Don't question yourself, GW is an absolute douchebag. To show how long you've been visiting site is an indication what an inferior cunt, he knows himself to be. Fuck him.
Don't question yourself, GW is an absolute douchebag. To show how long you've been visiting site is an indication what an inferior cunt, he knows himself to be. Fuck him.
"what was trollish about pointing out that the country this epidemic originated from is populated by unintelligent people?'
Nothing. The guy's just a dickhead who likes to pull rank.
http://www.photius.com/rankings/national_iq_scores_country_ranks.html
(notice how far down the list the USA is?)
Those scores/rankngs have GOT to be bogus.
First of all, Italy at #4 with 102!?! No Way.
The lower level scores would mean the average person couldn't find their way home from across the street. Naw.
It's a bad habit of some long-timers who believe they own the rights to this site. Frankly, I give you more credit since you're new. A lot of the long-timers have come off the rails. Or, they were always off the rails and now feel free to display it because, after all, they're long-timers.
Sounds like peer pressure to facilitate one long portfolio for profiling. If you value your freedom, switch screen names continuously.
I see your point, and I do value my freedom. But, I couldn't be less concerned about the people on this site profiling me! Let alone whoever else might be looking in. This is like an interactive sit-com, and I like being a recurring, yet reviled, character.
http://www.photius.com/rankings/national_iq_scores_country_ranks.html
Link to IQ data.
Thanks for the warm welcome GW!
Are you a nigger or wigger, boy? We're a pretty a high IQ'd bunch of snarky misfits around here. Primary or secondary school level misuse of statistical data ain't going to impress the locals...
IQ variations across time, race, and nationality: an artifact of differences in literacy skills.
"We're a pretty a high IQ'd bunch of snarky misfits around here."
Don't kid yourself.
I've read many of your posts UR. You are not stupid, so why did you go straight to the race card on me in this post? Is it really verboten to question the relative education/intelligence of nations? Aren't we told that stupid people hold to superstition and religion? And who gives FUCK when I got a login to this site? That is a total non sequitor. You think a nation with an average IQ in the imbecile range isn't responsible for an infectious disease calamity? That is what an imbecile named George W. Bush called the soft bigotry of low expectations.
A nigger or a wigger? boy? honestly...
An NIH link is evidence of your high IQ? Wow.
Apparently you have difficulty with anything more complex than monosyllabic acronyms.
It's a PubMed citation for Volume 106, Issue 3 of Psychological Reports. The actual paper (not even the journal it was published in) is what is important.
Do you really want to get spanked by some guy named "Redneck"?
"These findings suggest that racial IQ distributions will converge if opportunities are equalized for different population groups to achieve the same high level of literacy skills. "
Yeah, call us when that happens.
Whenever someone named "Redneck" spanks me, I'll concede. Psychological Reports is my "go to" source for objective information. Your citations thereof don't rise to the spanking level. Glad that you figured out Google, however. Your citing of the volume and issue is quite impressive, though... it seems you put at least 10 minutes into your research.
cause dats not rayciss.
We're a pretty a high IQ'd bunch of snarky misfits around here.
lol
Wow ... Singapore is really high! It also happens to be a practitioner of free market capitalism. Interesting ...
Correlation is not causation, General.
Singaporeans can't even walk and chew gum at the same time.
Singapore is a mixed economy. Although the country strongly advocates free-market policies and practices, this has come along with strong government intervention, particularly in macroeconomic management and major factors of production such as land, labor and capital resources. Hmm. Strong government intervention in the major factors of production. Sounds like the hallmark of a command economy to me.
But what do I know. I've only been here for four years, so I must be discredited.
Thank you. You know a lot more about it than I do.
?
?
Forgive me if my sarcasm alarm works overtime on this site. If it wasn't sarcasm, I apologize.
No, it WASN'T intended as sarcasm. When someone knows more than I do on a subject, I feel free to:
(1) stop saying what I've been previously saying
(2) change my views
(3) thank them
Another example is Bumbu Sauce's IQ rankings by nation. I've never seen anything like that before ...
GW I cribbed that IQ info from Ann Barnhardt. She had an interesting post about Thomas Eric Duncan. Thank you for not getting contentious about it. Link here: http://www.barnhardt.biz/2014/10/02/important-ebola-note/
Goddammit, stop being so nice! All of you! This is supposed to be fight club. What good is it if we all agree on stuff?
It's bizarre isn't it? When a person says "thankyou" for being challenged by facts rather than getting all pissy because their ego is bruised. Whaaaat? Green GW.
Green also Minge for the apology. Maturity? What is this?
Fine form gentlemen....now don't do it again! This is ZH and you're lifting the standard goddammit! FFS, your name is "Minge", WTF were you thinking??
"When a person says "thankyou" for being challenged by facts rather than getting all pissy because their ego is bruised."
It's even better when they do some research and get their facts straight in the first place.
No wait. Then it wouldn't be as much fun, would it?
Great post! While I do go by "minge," I had considered axe wound, spam purse, and gash... yet minge seemed to be more of a blog-appropriate tag.
You're all class :-)
Singapore is notable for one very important controlled market. A market that dominates all else in nations like Canada and Australia: real estate.
2013 data, 81.9% of the population live in government housing ( http://www.singstat.gov.sg/statistics/latest_data.html#20 ) HDB is Housing and Development Board ( http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Development_Board )
Hat tip to Cool Clo at SHTF who says:
Comment ID: 3241244
October 8, 2014 at 12:00 pm
Could this be the same guy? Maybe not….
But if so, then not the innocent random that they suggest…
Liberia
Director of Management and Operations Overseas Peacecorps.
Linkedin
Director of Management and Operations Overseas Peace Corps
Government Agency; 5001-10,000 employees; International Affairs industry
June 2013 – Present (1 year 5 months) Monrovia, Liberia
Director of Management and Operations Overseas Peace Corps
Government Agency; 5001-10,000 employees; International Affairs industry
October 2010 – May 2013 (2 years 8 months)Georgetown, Guyana
District AIDS Coordinator Peace Corps
Government Agency; 5001-10,000 employees; International Affairs industry
2007 – 2009 (2 years)
Botswana Ministry of Local Government
Senior Vice President – Market Executive Business Banking Bank of America
Public Company; 10,001+ employees; BAC; Banking industry
2005 – 2007 (2 years) Greater Los Angeles Area
Senior Vice President – Market Executive Business Banking Bank of America
Public Company; 10,001+ employees; BAC; Banking industry
2002 – 2005 (3 years) Las Vegas, Nevada
Vice President – Regional Market Sales ManagerBank of America
Public Company; 10,001+ employees; BAC; Banking industry
2000 – 2002 (2 years) Scottsdale & Central Phoenix
Vice President – Regional Service & Operations Manager Bank of America
Public Company; 10,001+ employees; BAC; Banking industry
1994 – 2000 (6 years) Scottsdale & Central Phoenix
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/eric-duncan/15/591/687
Anyone who has followed this disease previous to this outbreak would have noted the unusual and alarming lack of international response. They let this bug take its leisure time skipping right to major cities and airports.
I can't wait to hear the first government official claim that the Ebola went airborn through mutation. I can hear it now "it's not our fault, it mutated, we could have never seen this coming. We are just incompetent." "Who could have ever envisioned planes flying into buildings?"
What was that deal about Thrice? Enemy action....
George,
The west is responsible for everything bad. If the west gets involved, the west is manipulating the situation. If the west does nothing, then we are not doing enough to help. Leftist are never happy.
Give me one example where the west has been accused of not doing enough. Support your argument with examples or I will not take your contentions seriously. George has backed his up with examples- where are yours?
P.S. the left/right paradigm is a farce- get up to speed will you. Most everyone on this site already knows that one party sets the stage while the other executes the take down. Here is my example. Under Clinton banking regulations were removed- under Bush the bankers crashed the economy. Under Clinton legislation regarding media monopolies removed- under Bush no media voice to challenge Iraq war. That's how you form an argument- you are just stirring the pot when you go to the left/right bullshit,
Warmongers are anti-American:
The Pillars of American Thinking – The “Father of the Constitution “and the “Father of Free Market Capitalism” – Both Warned Against War … 200 Hundred Years Ago
So it's nothing to do with people in Liberia eating bats and sharing body fluids with corpses?
I was thinking maybe lack of hygiene had something to do with it along with dead bodies lying in the street, silly me I should have known Obama was to blame.
Actually it has nothing to do with people in Liberia eating bats and sharing body fluids with corpses.
1) there is exactly ONE suspected case of zoonotic transmission, and it was in Guinea back in 2013 (based on genetic sequencing of ebola samples from the current outbreak).
2) In regards to dead bodies there are several issues - none of which involve sharing bodily fluids.
a) the process of transporting the body back to the decedent's home town (that's not a ride in a cab or the bed of pickup you want to share, especially when normally it's just a corpse with a blanket
b) the process of washing the dead body before burial (and not wearing a hazmat suit while doing so)
c) since a lot of people aren't buried in coffins, the "open coffin" memorial and interment is SOP, and if a mourner touches touches the hand or head of the rapidly liquefying mass of ebola virus masquerading as corpse and makes the sign of the cross... well, we know what happens one to three weeks later - Rinse, Repeat.
d) so now the memorial is over and the grave diggers (who don't wear hazmat suits) have to pick up the rapidly liquefying mass of ebola virus by hand in carefully lower it into the grave... before going back to their families, neighbors, et al.
As to the "superior" hygiene in the civilized west:
a) Using pressure washer to aerosolize ebola puke in a mutli-unit residential dwelling (even with a hazmat suit) would make pulling a Kenneth Douglas routine at the ebola morgue look like safe sex...
b) I'm sure the deputy who visited the apartment Duncan was staying in washed his hands...
c) Dallas is a "car city" -- when ebola gets loose in the communal NYC subway, it's going to be "interesting"
No fair about that Kenneth Douglas remark!
They came onto him laying there all supine, mouths agape- what was he suppoed to do?
lets see, 4 of the top 5 zero hdge stories at this moment mention eboda in the title. clearly zh is told what to do. joining the ranks of the scare squads, I am reminded about how many professionals, in so many fields, support the directives without knowing who actually rules. And what the plans are really. The plans are like smaugs, but without the black arrow waiting.
So you do realise that this isnt the first outbreak of hemorrhagic fever in modern times right? The others were contained and it burned out, why? Because there was a response.... not coming from ground zero but coming from outside. Your argument reminds me of the oppologists for the response to Hurrican Katrina.
It stopped because those who had the disease died and those caring for them fled into the jungle. Hospitals are focal points for Ebola. The more you send in those to help the more hosts you give this virus. It is estimated only 150 virions are infective. Only handling this agent in a biohazard safety level 4 is safe. Field personal treating the sick are at risk. Anyone entering an area of outbreak must not leave or the cycle can potentially continue. What is this " response" you deem so worthy to stop Ebola?
Miffed
Rapid response and isolation has worked repeatedly in the past. Yes medical staff will become infected, especially if they don't treat the disease as airborn. It would also help if medical staff were kept contained away from the population until incubation period has expired from date of last contact with patients. Certainly, once it gets entrenched in a large population containment becomes much less likely. Responding quickly seems to be the key. We are at least 5 months into this now.
Also, proper supplies for mass containment should have been rushing in, they could be air dropped if necessary. Saintly and/or insane volunteers should be paid exorbitant hazard pay and be provided on site separate facilities. No one leaves until TRULY cleared, NO ONE. If that doesn't work you shut down their airports.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/how-nigeria-contained-its-ebola-outbreak-1.2785632
I don't even read Georgy's post but as usual blames America or the Jews but I will say this.
After WWII we assumed the role of super power status and did not require Europe
to participate as a result we are the only country with the logistics to deal with crisis's
Regardless of I ,We or You "feel" about it, this shit pile in Africa may kill allot of people
I'm talking a collapsed world.
It has happened before remember the Dark Ages where all human knowledge was basically lost for what? 600-800 yrs.
Our response and yes this Pres. response has been tepid almost sick.
When A.ID.S. first came to the U.S. through a gay French steward the gay community knew something was wrong.
I knew gay people then, they were telling me about a gay "cancer" they were freaking out this was in 1978.
It was politically incorrect to shut down gay bath house's because of their "civil rights".
It wasn't pc to stop taking blood donations, the hemophiliac's knew something was up they all died.
A lot kids, people having surgery died.
I don't know how many American's died so far of AIDS last I looked it was over a million.
Globally at least 30 million and you know what?
Forget the propaganda AIDS is pretty fucking hard to get you almost have to go out of you're way to get AIDS.
Germany has 3 military transports, 1 works according to Der Spiegel.
So we can be all pissy, wring or hands and talk about the past or call our fucking politicians and demand action.
This can be made a midterm election issue.
Too much who has been given much will be asked ............. GOD.
anyways gotta bounce!
"It has happened before remember the Dark Ages where all human knowledge was basically lost for what? 600-800 yrs."
Wrong. The Dark Ages were a time when the Christian West lost it's memory and descended into chaos. Fortunately we were rescued by Islam! We have them to thank for preserving and building on Greek science, which was itself built upon ancient eastern knowledge. Alexander brought much science back to Greece from India (such as Ayurvedic Medicine).
Much of Algebra was developed by Middle eastern Arabs, and of course Algorithms are named after a ninth-century Persian Muslim - thanks Iran! Meanwhile Europeans were busy killing each other or sending crusading thugs out to the Middle East to attack the locals (sounds familiar).
The American Empire is over - get used to it.
It is failure to comprehend other perspectives that puts us most at risk of another Dark Age, to be brought about by psychological isolation. If our response to the present crises is to turn inwards then indeed we may 'lose human knowledge' but that does not mean the rest of the world will.
Winning the Human Race means discovering and sharing our own humanity.
Welcome:
Awesome! George you could have asked.
Been reading this site for 4 yrs.
But I ran out of my meds one day and decided to "apply" for membership.
Don't sweat it, Bouncy, I've been here almost three years and they still haven't sent me my membership card.
Bouncy- with a narrative like the one you provided there is no way you could keep your mouth shut for four years with or without meds.