http://themedium.blogs.nytimes.com/ 2007/ 12/ 26/ editors-note-the-ron-paul-vid-lash/

Editors’ Note: The Ron Paul Vid-Lash

By The New York Times

A post in The Medium that appeared on Monday about the Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul and his purported adoption by white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups contained several errors. Stormfront, which describes itself as a “white nationalist” Internet community, did not give money to Ron Paul’s presidential campaign; according to Jesse Benton, a spokesman for Paul’s campaign, it was Don Black, the founder of Stormfront, who donated $500 to Paul. The original post also repeated a string of assertions by Bill White, the commander of the American National Socialist Workers Party, including the allegation that Paul meets regularly “with members of the Stormfront set, American Renaissance, the Institute for Historic Review and others” at a restaurant in Arlington, Va. Paul never attended these dinners, according to Benton, who also says that Paul has never knowingly met Bill White. Norman Singleton, a congressional aide in Paul’s office, says that he met Bill White at a dinner gathering of conservatives several years ago, after which Singleton expressed his indignation at the views espoused by White to the organizer of the dinner. The original post should not have been published with these unverified assertions and without any response from Paul.

You mean how the Democrats wanted to fund upgrading NO’s levies in 2001, and how the Republicans cut funding so that they could help some people in Alaska help themselves build a bridge to nowhere?

A desire to use tax dollars to kill would be far more merciful than Dem / Prog designs to use the tax dollars to reinforce non-viable behaviours that lead to far greater catastrophes like the one witnessed in New Orleans.

I want tax dollars directed towards things that would allow individuals to help themselves, not perpetuate denial and decline.

G’night good people. Peace and joy to you and your’s.

You too trolls.

Actually, if the West pulled out of Africa, then China and India would move in, as it is their Manifest Destiny.

Do you know what will happen if you pull out all support?

Africa will starve, it will curse, it will be destabilised, and then it will get its act together and start fixing itself. Oh, and Africa will actually have an easier time of it because a lot of western aid is nothing but thinly vieled stock dumping anyway.

Africa’s dictatorships have long used foreign aid to buy guns. This is the central problem with African aid, it is used by the governments of Africa to bolster their frankly dictatorial regimes, and it is why Bush’s African AIDS aid was such a stuffup.

Bush has spent more on AIDS in Africa than any president before him, but unlike the presidents before him, he didn’t bother to make sure the money was going where it was supposed to, even to the point of not even having proper books being kept on the project. This is Africa, you do not just throw money at the problem.

And you do not send in missionaries. Missionaries cannot solve the problem of Africa, only Africa can solve the problem of Africa.

Missionary styled farming is subsistance farming, which takes up land from larger scale farming efforts and leaves the people with just enough to eat but not enough to actually go compete with the larger farms that are already there.

Not only that, with the subsistance level of agriculture plaguing Africa, Africa is left highly vulnerable to famines because while large scale farming produces a surplus for the lean years, the surplusses from subsistance farming are negligable.

In order to create wealth in Africa you need to move Africa away from being a primary producer. We have a continent which has most of the world’s remaining untapped resources which is poor as heck because we sell our gold, iron and oil unprocessed to the first world and then buy back jewellry, cars and petrol.

Wealth creation is not based on subsistance farming and a bit of pottery on the side, it is not based of creating curios and interesting beadwork, it is based on taking raw materials and creating something that actually has a purpose to it other than to make tourists think they have been to Africa.

It comes from technological advance and the ability to adapt to being a technologically based economy. Missionaries don’t teach good science, they teach what they deem the bare basics of survival which the locals generally already know.

No need to argue this further, by all means, let’s pull all Western support out of Africa and see what happens.

Didn’t say Africans never new how to grow food or raise livestock prior to missionaries, but after war, disease and famine shatters an area, it is the missionaries who take care of the countless orphans left behind, and teaches them in place of their deceased parents. On top of that, they teach all the other wealth creating things needed to sustain their population.

Except:

1: Africans already know how to grow crops on a level which shows just how much of an insult missionary teaching on the subject really is. Most African cultures, such as the Xhosas are long term agricultural cultures.

2: Raising livestock? Do you know what Lebola is? It is the bride price of a Zulu female and it is paid in cows. This tradition looong predates missionaries teaching Africans how to raise cattle. In fact the Nguni cow, renowned for its resistance to disease is an African bred cow that has nothing to do with missionaries teaching Africans how to breed it.

3: Reading and math? Yes, I will grant you that missionary schools teach basic literacy and numeracy, but along with that they teach following authoritarian lines, which in turn leads to Africa’s dictatorships.

4: Avoiding injury and disease, African cultures include washing your hands before eating (Unlike Christianity which is unique in world religions for not having particular cleanliness codes) and avoiding injury is something you learn by, you know, growing up. It is not like Africans were saying “Ooh a big blade like object lets jump on it repeatedly so we can all get bloody.”

If missionaries teach people how to grow crops, fix / build homes, dig wells, raise livestock, educate in reading and math, avoid injury and disease, then they ARE teaching wealth creation.

Wealth acquisition, in sub-Saharan African terms, requires theft, murder, rape, etc.

Wealth creation, on a basic level, isn’t about banking, stock exchanges and retail.

That’s why the American missionaries distributed polio blankets amongst the Indians. Yeah sure boet.

Missionaries are a bad influence in Africa, they teach the ideal of faith, and they don’t teach wealth creation. I have seen the results of missionaries in Africa, they do some good work but they don’t teach wealth creation.

This is because most missionaries are entirely unequiped to teach wealth creation. Wealth creation requires learning from business people, not from some guy taking a bit of a gap before finding a real job.

Religion does not cause the strife directly. As I laid out for you earlier, missionary work allows some small segment of the population to flourish, which then makes it a target by the rest of the population, which doesn’t.

Missionaries DO NOT strive to take wealth and prosperity from others, but to teach those how to generate it for themselves. When missionaries teach these things, it is a threat to existing power structures, who then resort to brutal tactics to stop it.

Hmmmm, sometimes force is necessary to ensure a safe environment for individuals to develop, so I guess that is where you and I will diverge.

Perhaps it is, but those are not the policies of the Democratic Party, not even its “progressive” wing.

Dems and progs seek to seize wealth from those who know how to create it, and then redistribute that wealth to people exhibiting non-viable behaviours. Subsidizing a non-viable behaviour merely causes that behaviour to persist, weakening those who continue to subsist, while burdoning those who do know how to create wealth.

Brazil has never really been free of ethnic strife.

Anyway, the problem with Sub-Saharan Africa is that it is actually too religious. You see it in American history with the impact of the missionaries there, and in Australian history with the impact of the missionaries there – where you get missionaries to get misery, murder and mayhem.

The Christian religion reinforces authoritatianism – which is why where you have missionaries its a countdown to genocide. Those who do not accept the authority of the Church or of the Temple, get killed by those who do because it is just wrong to deny that higher authority.

Africa needs a healthy dose of atheist skepticism where it stops following things on faith. Africans tend to follow the words of their Church, their leaders, and their cultural chiefs, but seldom stop to think for themselves. They support their leaders eerily like Republicans support Bush – no matter what those leaders do they will win those elections.

(Note; If you are black and an American you do not get to call yourself an African American without having duel citizenship. I am an African, you are an American – skin colour doesn’t come into it.)

Religious thinking teaches faith as a virtue, whereas what is needed is doubt. If you doubt your leaders they lose the best of their ability to nail you when they turn dictator – because you don’t believe them worthy of the power and thus don’t hand over that power. Dictators as much as any bad government, rule by the consent of the ruled.

Thus what Africa really needs is not religious missionaries seeking to spread misinformation regarding condoms, it needs atheist missionaries teaching people to think. Africa lacks thought more than anything, the willingness to stop and consider what you are being told, the ability to reject the false America sold to us.

And what is the false America? MTV, gangsta’ rap, Jerry Springer, Gordon Gecko and Britney Spears. You see it as trash entertainment, Africa sees it as a model for success. The fancy suit, the fancy car, the fancy jet, generate faith and the profits can go hang.

You talk about the need to respect property rights like Africa is afflicted with thieves, Africa is afflicted with poor hungry people who have never stopped to consider that with a better government they needn’t be poor and hungry. Property rights don’t come into it, the illusion versus the reality of success does.

Right now South Africa, in a bid to avoid another Mugabe in office, has chosen as the head of the ANC (The ruling party by over 2/3rds majority) Jacob Zuma, a man famous for thinking that a cold shower somehow prevents AIDS. It is because the Youth League has faith, and not doubt when it comes to the leadership of the ANC.

They may be poor, but they aren’t committing genocide in Brazil, etc. Something about the cultures in Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, that allows them to guiltlessly slaughter entire villages and tribes.

Again, if those cultures don’t develop respect and enforcement of property rights, they will never end their cycle of not merely poverty, but genocide, rape, disease and destruction.