Bg Oswald HANCILES
Hey!! Don’t read this!! Put it down!! I just warned you. Yeah…yeah!! I know you have a Master’s degree in Economics. Of course, I am aware of your doctorate degree in History. But, this piece is not for your type. The thoughts are too big for your intellectually-lazy educationally-
malnourished mind. Hon. I.B. Kargbo, APC Member of Parliament for some district in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone, when we were both advisers to the President some four years ago, once said my articles are “too dense”. I reflected on it. To me, I see it as the problem of most of Africa’s educated elite who have been providing leadership within African countries. Their intensity has been directed towards “state capture” through some political party. Then, they flagrantly steal the people’s money, and fool the majority that they steal on their behalf. They build marble houses. They send their children overseas to study in the best universities. To our governing elites, reading complex or “dense” materials, and thinking to confront and solve the existential threat-problems of Africa are not for them. The few enlightened Africans who are well-read, who know that the PURPOSE of education is not just to put food in your stomach and drink the best wine; not just to live in an air-conditioned house with a swimming pool, but, to solve collective problems of your society, indeed, global problems…at worse, catalyze solutions for problems…. READ ON.
Worse COVID-19 and Ebola-tyle Viruses Likely
“Humanity faces an unknown number of new and potentially fatal viruses emerging from Africa’s tropical rainforests, according to Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum, who helped discover the Ebola virus in 1976 and has been on the frontline of the hunt for new pathogens ever since….’We are now in a world where new pathogens will come out,’ he told CNN. ‘And that’s what constitutes a threat for humanity.’…The identification of Ebola relied on a chain that connected the most remote parts of Africa’s rainforests to high-tech laboratories in the West…..Now, the West must rely on African scientists in the Congo and elsewhere to act as the sentinels to warn against future diseases”
(SOURCE: In the Congo rainforest, the doctor who discovered Ebola warns of deadly viruses yet to come.
Hunting for ‘Disease X’: In Congo; yahoo.com)
PLEASE!! Read the words above of Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum at least three times. Think. Almost daily on CNN and other global television networks over the past one year, there is a public notice which informs humanity to stop the accelerated destruction of the tropical rainforests, for as man does that, and species in them mingle with humanity, we have had HIV, Ebola, SARS… COVID-19. The biggest culprit in the destruction of the tropical rainforests, and the unleashing of viruses on humanity; the biggest culprit for the existential threat humanity faces in man-made Climate Change, are the “West”. Who are the “West”?
The Enemy is the “West”
“Know thy enemy, and half the battle is won” – Sun Tzu, in the Art of War. The West is the enemy of the rest of humanity; and, perversely, the West is enemy to itself.
The “West” consists of the majority of countries in Europe, North America, and Australia and parts of Asia (like Singapore and Japan). One of the first people to use the terms East and West was Herodotus (of ancient Greece, widely considered to have been the first writer to have treated historical subjects using a method of systematic investigation) regarded as the
“Father of History, in the fifth century BC. The civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome are generally considered to be the birthplaces of Western civilization. During the last days of the ancient Egyptian civilization, the Roman Empire consolidated its position as the center of power, and learning, in philosophy, democratic ideas, science, aesthetics, engineering, etc. The West, later influenced by Christianity, was over a hundred years ahead of other regions of the world.
Fourteen centuries later, the term “West” proved useful in describing the impact of the Great Schism in the Christian Church that culminated in the 11th century. The term “West” has also emanated from the evolution of the Christian church in Europe. They were fighting among themselves. By 1054, the Christian church divided into the Western Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Another vital difference that helped to define the “West” was the Industrial Revolution, the greatest leap forward for humanity since human beings became sedentary about 15,000 years earlier. In the modern era, the culture of the West have been influenced by the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, scientific discoveries; at a time the rest of the world was shackled with superstition – it was also the time from the 15th century to the 20th century when the West conquered almost the rest of the world; committing genocide on indigenous peoples; brutally suppressing other people; subjugating them; taking over their lands; and ruling them directly – the Age of Imperialism. In the First World War and Second World War, the West fought two cataclysmic world wars among themselves in the first half of the 20th century; and after that, the West retreated from direct rule, but, established institutions like the United Nations, World Bank, IMF… that ensured that they continued to be masters of the world. Today, the West is probably a THOUSAND TIMES more powerful than at the time they had enslaved Negroid Africans, and colonized nearly all the lands in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Awesome Might of the West in the 21st Century
The most militarily powerful nation in the West is the United States – with a yearly military expenditure of about $700 billion; alone, that is about 40% of global military expenditure of almost $2trillion. Compare that to China’s military’s expenditure of $237,000,000,000, and Russia’s laughable $48 billion military expenditure; and then cry, when you realize that all of sub-Saharan Africa’s military expenditure is just $21billion; and for West Africa, even our regional superpower, Nigeria, has a military expenditure of less than $2billion. The might of the West is even more awesome when one looks at their economies vis-à-vis Africa’s.
The GDP of the United States is $22 trillion, with a GDP per capita of $67,000. The GDP of Germany is $3.16 trillion, with a GDP per capita of $49,000. Compare that to Sierra Leone’s GDP of $4.22 billion and a GDP per capita of $529. Even the largest economy in Africa, Nigeria, has a GDP of just $496 billion, and, Nigeria, with 60% of its people living below the United Nations’ Poverty Level, has a GDP per capita of $2,407. When we look at the ‘brain industry’, the chasm is staggering.
Among the top 100 universities in the world (based on their intellectual output; their scientific ‘produce’) 27 are in the United States, and 18 are in the United Kingdom, if you add Australia’s 6 to that of the UK, it is 24. So, the English-speaking countries of the West, the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada’s 3 universities, comprise 54 of the top 100 universities of the world of about 200 nations.
Research and Development expenditure in the United States alone is $511,000,000,000 – only China comes close with an expenditure of $275billion. Germany is next, spending the highest in R & D in Europe, at only $118,000,000,000. That means, the United States alone spends more in R&D than all the other nations of the world put together. And, countries in sub-Saharan Africa? Don’t even mention us. When you look at figures for science and engineering papers published in peer review journals you would would think Africans are a different species. In 2018, the United States published 528,263; China – 422,808; United Kingdom – 97,000; Russia – 8,574. And, African countries? One or two in each country. Not only are the West staggeringly powerful and rich today, but, in their scientific and technological output, they are ensuring that they become super-giants. There is a catch!! The ‘secret weapon’.
Africa’s Secret Weapon for the $2trillion Annually
Climate Change! The tropical rainforests! About 60% of plant and animal life can be found only in the tropical rainforests, the region that hugs the equator, a lot of them in Africa. A significant number of the raw materials used in the global pharmaceutical industry have been sourced from these forests. Disease mutate. Disease emerge. The source for curatives of diseases are best found in the tropical rainforests. All of the best scientists in all the best universities aforementioned and scientific institutions do not know up to 2% of the use of genetic materials found in these tropical rainforests. The indigenous people who live within these forests – a lot of our herbalists with specialized knowledge – know far more of the use use of the genetic materials within these forests than all the best scientists in the world. What the likes of D.R. Congo-practising Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum are saying is for the West to release some of its vast wealth so we can develop the stunted scientific base of Africa. That had been my message in my call for a “Marshal Plan for Africa” in the cover story of the magazine I was the brain, and editor for, GREENLOVE magazine, published in Liberia in 1989. That is also embedded in the mantra of the SLAVE SHIP-FREEDOM SHIP Movement I am Founder and CEO for: “$2trillion annually for man-made Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation measures in Africa from the richest countries of the world”. It includes Reparations for the Protracted Holocaust of the Atlantic Slave Trade; it includes global equity in finance and economics and international relations. It is a call to free the ‘slaves’ to consumerism and obsolete economic systems of the West; and this can only be catalyzed when the ‘slaves’ of Africa are made to realize they must fight for their freedom. Those of you who have read this article to the end should think; get to me, and let’s take action to prevent the nightmarish scenarios being predicted for Africa when Climate Change gains momentum in just about two decades; and to help to save the rest of humanity.
I pause,
Oswald Hanciles, The Guru, writes from Freetown, Sierra Leone
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