Africa - Because atrocities happen to more than Muslims and Israelis

[Ahiga]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15704030/site/newsweek/

I admit that I don't have much to say about it. Not saying 'oh god, this is horrible, we should go send our army down there now', as is a gag reflex for many, but I guess one point I'd want to make is that we have been dominated with stories of atrocities by Muslims or by Israelis or to one or the other. We've forgotten the problems other parts of the world have. We, and myself entirely included in that we, only care about the atrocities which we feel connected to.

I don't want to seem like I'm being racist, but honestly, I never heard of this in the balkans, or even afghanistan or pakistan. Am I wrong, or are we seeing the worst atrocities in Africa? Maybe it's because those who do them feel they can do so without anyone noticing?

[Da Skinna]

I remember about a year ago, it was said nearly four million have died in the Congo, the most in any war since WW2. Africa has little to offer, one in four have HIV/AIDS, countless thousands of tribes roaming through all the borders, they are a superstitious bunch.

Sorry to sound mean or something, I'm thinking out loud on why nobody does anything on that continent. This isn't news to me, it can't be news to world leaders, they just don't care about African black people. Not enough money in such an exhausting effort.

I'm more outraged at the media coverage. If the media brought this to the attention of the West's populations, and not something about some pretty white girl going missing, then we just might see some kind of change.

[Erik]

Africa has nothing to offer, one in four have HIV/AIDS, countless thousands of tribes roaming through all the borders, they are a superstitious bunch, believing in the most gruesome kinds of magic rituals, and they have big noses and broad lips.

Uhmmm...are you talking about Africa in general?
Because in that case you need to get yourself educated.

[Da Skinna]

Uhmmm...are you talking about Africa in general?
Because in that case you need to get yourself educated.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't mean it like that, I was just trying to get into the mindset of those world leaders who don't seem to give a damn about African countries, mainly I'm thinking of Rwanda, since it's the prime example for African catastrophe's and Western negligence.

The magic I maintain, the HIV thing, for the most part as I'm not sure the ratio, I maintain, as well as the statement that Africa has largely nothing to offer world powers if they went in and helped.

And anyways, I go to school to get my learn on.

[Erik]

The magic I maintain

46.3% of all Africans are Christians and another 40.5% are Muslims. Roughly 11.8% of Africans primarily follow indigenous African religions

So only a small percentage of Africans follow indigenous religions, and of those not all are animists.

also:

Today Animists live in significant numbers in countries such as Zambia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Gabon, the Republic of Guinea Bissau, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Thailand, Timor Leste, and the United States.

Notice there are large numbers of animists on almost every continent, even in Canada and the USA.
So if Africans are "a superstitious bunch, believing in the most gruesome kinds of magic rituals" then so are Americans.

the HIV thing, for the most part as I'm not sure the ratio, I maintain,

According to this:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_in_Africa it's 11%.

as well as the statement that Africa has largely nothing to offer world powers if they went in and helped.

Africa has large quantities of natural resources.
This is why China wants to build a railroad there.
There is also an abundance of cheap labor and agricultural products.

[Lord Rahl]

This is just sick.

I will admit that I haven't thought about Africa in awhile. In some respects Africa is much more messed up than the Middle East. I can't even fathom how much money and other resources it would take to fix things there. The atrocities in Rawanda just keep coming. I feel sick now. Anyway, this was a good reminder and a very good wake up.

[Da Skinna]

I'm on the same page as Rahl, I hadn't heard about anything from Africa in a while, and reading that article now, I think our priorities are all wrong. Middle East is freakin' Switzerland compared to Africa.

Here's another article about the same thing, their kind of terrorism: http://www.exile.ru/2005-June-17/war_nerd.html

[Carach]

erik thought Africa will 'rise' as a continent within a hundred years.

still stand by that erik?

[Da Skinna]

Erik: in relation to the wars and rapes and slaughters, magic is a dominant thing to those committing the crimes.

As for the HIV thing, I always thought the number and percentage was much higher, I mean Africa=lots of AIDS. (And yes, I do see how badly that can be misconstrued.)

Africa may have all those things, but China isn't looking to help them in any kind of humanitarian way, the UN failed to help Rwanda, cheap labor is everywhere either way, and their large quantities of natural resources go to companies and governing peoples, if it's not in the equation to help them during a crisis, I don't count on any country to help them.

[Siblesz]

Eric, sure... most people in Africa are either Muslim or Christian, but if you go south from North Africa, starting in Sudan, going down to Congo, Zambia, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, etc, though most are still either Christian or Muslim, they have mixed many of their own local beliefs into these two religions and still practice in huge percentages many forms of 'cults of magic'. The point being that most are not exclusively Christian/Muslim.

And the problems with Africa are not its resources, but its variety of backward cultures, that in some areas, still need to progress centuries in order to compete with the West.

[Erik]

As for the HIV thing, I always thought the number and percentage was much higher, I mean Africa=lots of AIDS. (And yes, I do see how badly that can be misconstrued.)

The thing is: in some areas and some countries there are extremely high numbers of AIDS infections.
South Africa is one such country.

But in other regions there is far less AIDS.

The media always reports on the worst areas, and completely ignores the best parts (why report from an African country with very few AIDS infections?).
So the media gave you a twisted view, and I just wanted to correct this view.

Eric, sure... most people in Africa are either Muslim or Christian, but if you go south from North Africa, starting in Sudan, going down to Congo, Zambia, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, etc, though most are still either Christian or Muslim, they have mixed many of their own local beliefs into these two religions and still practice in huge percentages many forms of 'cults of magic'. The point being that most are not exclusively Christian/Muslim.

Do you have anything to back this up?
I haven't encountered many people who believe in magic in the 6 years that I lived in Africa, almost everybody was 100% Christian (ie: without any magic business).
There were some animists too, but they stuck to their own villages and they were pretty much no go areas for us.

People from South America are far more into the whole magic thing than Africans are.
I think this is because they were forced into Christianity by their slave masters, while most of Africa converted to Christianity on their own account.

[Siblesz]

Do you have anything to back this up?
I haven't encountered many people who believe in magic in the 6 years that I lived in Africa, almost everybody was 100% Christian (ie: without any magic business).
There were some animists too, but they stuck to their own villages and they were pretty much no go areas for us.

People from South America are far more into the whole magic thing than Africans are.
I think this is because they were forced into Christianity by their slave masters, while most of Africa converted to Christianity on their own account.

Statistics of religious practice in Africa:
http://www.reingex.com/aniaboutafricareli.asp

In some cases, animism is existent in over 50% of the population, undoubtably influencing Christian/Muslim practices.

Second,

A second assumption is that Africans are becoming theists, that submission to Allah and relationship with God are displacing traditional animistic beliefs. The fact that millions of Africans have become Muslims and Christians is used as proof. Some even claim that the mantle of Christian leadership, which has passed from Europe to North America, now rests on Africa.

The reality, however, is that Islam and Christianity in Africa continue to be a “mile wide and an inch deep.” During times of crises, many Muslims and Christians return to the succor of African Traditional Religion (ATR). Christ is accepted as Savior and spirits and ancestors are manipulated and appeased simultaneously. Dal Congdon’s discovery that 69.6% of all professing Christians among the Zulu of South Africa believe that ancestral spirits accompany people to protect them and bring them good fortune (1985, 297) continues to be true among many African peoples. Christ is acknowledged as Savior on a cosmic level, but everyday dilemmas of life (illness, death, drought) are handled using ATR. School systems in many countries teach ATR along with Islam and Christianity, and African scholars who desire authentic African experiences aggressively advocate ATR.

http://missiology.org/mmr/mmr32.htm

Third,

1.) Widespread spirituality in all African communities, an expression of a sophisticated and articulate approach to life and to the universe which tends to produce specific effects as regards ethics.

On this level, animism may be considered as a "religion" which is compatible with any faith (Christian, Islamic or other)

2.) "Positive" religion, or of a system of positive religions in the narrowest sense, called animism or even "traditional African religions", "ancestral African religions" and so on.

On this level, too, there is an actual statistical controversy concerning the real extent of animist practices in various countries, and it is no mystery that, in some cases, there is an actual stigmatising of those countries where the majority of the population is animist.

An example would be the racist laws preventing the original peoples of Northern America from practicing animism. The label "savage" is a racist label designating "refusal to be assimilated into civilization."

3.) Forms of animism which survive even in the context of religious practices linked to Christianity or Islam - animism coexists with them.

http://www.gortbusters.org/?q=node/1989

Fourth, nice page detailing merge of animism and Christianity in some African cultures:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=002...2-O&size=LARGE


Further reading,
Animism in Brazil:

An Illustration: Gods and Spirits in Brazil

Although Brazil is officially a Catholic nation, it has been called "the land where spirits thrive" (Maust 1985, 48). In fact, more Brazilians participate in spiritistic rituals than go to mass (Nielson 1988, 94). Spiritism is a new religion derived both consciously and unconsciously from the blending of many different heritages of Brazilian thought and culture. Early Portugese settlers, although nominally Catholic, were animistic. Their worship "centered on a cult of the saints, promises, communications with the dead . . . largely to the exclusion of doctrinal matters and the sacraments" (Bruneau 1982, 24). Religious reforms which touched other parts of the European continent had little influence upon the Christo-pagan Catholicism of Portugal. African slaves added another element to Brazilian spiritism. These slaves were forced to outwardly embrace Catholicism, but the gods that they from Africa became intertwined with this new religion. They thought that if their African gods could not help in a certain situation, maybe the other deities could be induced to act. In time the West African gods became interchangeable with Catholic deities (St. Clair 1971, 62).[2] Brazilian Spiritism was also influenced by the writings of Denizard Rivail, a French doctor who claimed to be the reincarnation of the Druid Allan Kardec. A high class Spiritism, called Kardecism and characterized by "reincarnation, seances, healings, and enough Christian terminology to confuse people" (Maust 1985, 49), developed from this French influence upon Brazil. Finally, Brazilian Spiritism was also influenced by the animistic beliefs of indigenous Indians.

This merging of Catholic, African, French, and Indian heritages of animism has led to new forms of Spiritism in Brazil. For example, Umbanda, the largest of the Spiritist groups, has effectively syncretized animistic belief in spiritual beings to fit the Brazilian context. Zelio de Moraes, Umbanda's founder, divined solutions to people's problems while possessed by the spirit of a Brazilian half-breed named Caboclo of the Seven Crossroads. Caboclo was half-Indian and half-African. Because of his mixed breeding, he communicated directly with the local Indian spirits who once inhabited the land and the African spirits of Condomble. Brazilians understood this mixing of blood. Caboclo was one of them. As a half-breed, he could understand their nation and their problems. Caboclo told Zelio that neither Kardecism nor Condomble was right. He began to dictate a new set of rules incorporating parts of Kardecism, Condomble, and Catholicism with other distinctive elements into a new whole (St. Clair 1971, 136-137). Like Caboclo and the nation of Brazil, Umbanda seeks to unify a people of many different heritages by integrating animistic beliefs from each tradition.

Spiritism, whatever its distinctive form, is based on the belief that humans can contact spirits and influence them to act on their behalf. Hundreds of believers come to spiritist centers to seek guidance from spirit-gods. During an orunko ceremony, the spirit-gods come down and "ride" the mediums, who are considered the cavalos ("horses") of the spirit-gods. Through the mediums these gods divine solutions to all types of human problems: A woman estranged from her lover seeks the cause of the disrupted relationship and the course of action to bring reconciliation; the sick yearn to know what has caused the illness and how health can be restored; and the businessman seeks the reason his business has fallen apart and how it might be rejuvenated.

Condomble, Kardecism, and Umbanda are distinct contextualizations of animistic beliefs drawn from various cultural streams. Christians generally classify these pagan gods as demonic forces dressed up in contemporary garments.

http://missiology.org/mongolianlectu...cworldview.htm

[Erik]

Sib: my argument was not that there aren't animists in Africa, but that they aren't the majority in the whole continent.

Some places, like the Congo and South Africa (Zulu's) have a lot of animism, yes.
But in the vast majority of Africa, and over Africa as a whole, animism is just a minority religion and plays no significant role.
So to qualify Africans as "a superstitious bunch" is a generalization that doesn't match with the majority of Africans.

I think Venezuelans are a lot more superstitious, with all their native American nature worship stuff. Don't they all sniff cocaine to summon spirits or something?

[Siblesz]

Sib: my argument was not that there aren't animists in Africa, but that they aren't the majority in the whole continent.

Some places, like the Congo and South Africa (Zulu's) have a lot of animism, yes.
But in the vast majority of Africa, and over Africa as a whole, animism is just a minority religion and plays no significant role.
So to qualify Africans as "a superstitious bunch" is a generalization that doesn't match with the majority of Africans.

I never generalized and I never said animism was the majority religion. Point to one single instance when I did so. My point was refuting your post that said animism is not prevalent in most of Central and South African societal traditions, Christian and Muslim alike, which is not at all true, as the evidence I posted above suffices to explain.

I think Venezuelans are a lot more superstitious, with all their native American nature worship stuff. Don't they all sniff cocaine to summon spirits or something?

Most Native Americans in Venezuela were either exterminated or mixed in with other races. And cocaine is not grown in Venezuela at all. Only Colombia and Bolivia.

I know it's sarcasm (at least I hope it is), but it's not good sarcasm. The comparison you drew out had nothing to do with my analysis of the situation, which, if you read kid's post, is verified by his claims as well as mine.

[Erik]

I never generalized and I never said animism was the majority religion.

No, but Da Skinna did, and my argument was aimed at him, not at you.

My point was refuting your post that said animism is not prevalent in most of Central and South African societal traditions

I did not say animism wasn't widespread in Africa.
All I said was that less than 50% of Africans are animists, and as such it's wrong to generalize all Africans as animists (refering to Da Skinna's posts, not yours).

I know it's sarcasm (at least I hope it is), but it's not good sarcasm.

It wasn't sarcasm.
I was generalizing on purpose to show how silly it is.

Saying Africans are a bunch of animists is like saying South Americans are a bunch of cocaine addicts or saying Australians are a bunch of criminals....utter nonsense.
The only difference: generalizing over Africa has somehow become the norm rather than the exception (and I blame the media for that).

Kid: great posts.
People here can learn a lot more about Africa from you than from msnbc articles.

[Siblesz]

No, but Da Skinna did, and my argument was aimed at him, not at you.



I did not say animism wasn't widespread in Africa.
All I said was that less than 50% of Africans are animists, and as such it's wrong to generalize all Africans as animists (refering to Da Skinna's posts, not yours).



It wasn't sarcasm.
I was generalizing on purpose to show how silly it is.

Saying Africans are a bunch of animists is like saying South Americans are a bunch of cocaine addicts or saying Australians are a bunch of criminals....utter nonsense.
The only difference: generalizing over Africa has somehow become the norm rather than the exception (and I blame the media for that).

Kid: great posts.
People here can learn a lot more about Africa from you than from msnbc articles.

Fair enough. Misunderstanding, as most debates often are.

[Aristophanes]

What even the ones that overtook the western empire? That innovative capable empire that effectively ended itself?

Rome, much like many other empires, saw the decline of its formative institutions and ideas, factors which had made it, at one time, a very flexible and robust empire. Rome, with the resources at its disposal, was able to long continue an unsustainable economic relationship with its conquered territories. It's largely unreported, but the main reasons for the fall of Rome were economic and financial: inflation, debt, etc...Had Rome's finances been in good shape, it would have been quite capable of sustaining field armies more than a match for the 'hordes' of so-called 'barbarians'.

[Carach]

Rome, much like many other empires, saw the decline of its formative institutions and ideas, factors which had made it, at one time, a very flexible and robust empire. Rome, with the resources at its disposal, was able to long continue an unsustainable economic relationship with its conquered territories. It's largely unreported, but the main reasons for the fall of Rome were economic and financial: inflation, debt, etc...Had Rome's finances been in good shape, it would have been quite capable of sustaining field armies more than a match for the 'hordes' of so-called 'barbarians'.

True the western portion was the poorer of the 2, there is a large amount of evidence though to suggest the economy was not in tatters, its farming was doing well and farming was the economy during that time (mostly).

What really helped destroy it was the switching of sides by administrative people in the provinces (such as in Gual) who wanted to keep their positions and their towns safe and as a result changed to the new lord's sides (be it the goths, whoever..)

Even after Africa had been lost there was still hope for a revived western portion when the East sent a huge fleet to supply the west's invasion plans - unfortunately it went to crap.

Meh theres waaaaaaaay too much details in the collapse of the western roman empire for me to remember or put down here, but debts and inflation was not a major part of the collapse.

...and its offtopic :/

[Denny Crane!]

Rome, much like many other empires, saw the decline of its formative institutions and ideas, factors which had made it, at one time, a very flexible and robust empire. Rome, with the resources at its disposal, was able to long continue an unsustainable economic relationship with its conquered territories. It's largely unreported, but the main reasons for the fall of Rome were economic and financial: inflation, debt, etc...Had Rome's finances been in good shape, it would have been quite capable of sustaining field armies more than a match for the 'hordes' of so-called 'barbarians'.

I could agree with that, but the fact that the culture descended so rapidly while others rose in its place emphasises my point. Europe saw new empires arise that equalled the might of Rome. Civilisations rise and fall, the history written around and focused on Rome leads most to have a very negative perception of what is termed as Barbarians (a term which encompasses tens if not hundreds of cultures) just like European history has a Bias against Africa.

We as the conquerers would portray the Africans as being ignoble savages, and that bias prevails today where because they live in poverty and suffer war after war after tragedy that they are somehow less capable to govern themselves than we are.

Peter

[ForgottenImmortal]

This is what you get when you mix too many people, too few reasources and an overabundance of high powered weaponry. Add in ethnic and genocidal boundaries, even hauntings from a colonial past and you get a cesspool of violence that is beyond salvation.

Pouring money into Africa is fruitless, no matter how much you put into it, it will never work. And even if it did, Global warming will then come along and destroy it all. Remember nations like Chad are so close to mass starvation that a flux in degrees even a few will offset the rainy season even slightly causing mass starvation and death.