Can Heaven Possibly Be Attained Without Thinking About Africa?
— A continent of so much, where so many have so little!
The American Struggle
The best way to enslave people is to make them think they are free … and so America!
It always disturbed me every time I’ve heard Donald Trump brag about his stock market, as if the market wasn’t already on an upward trajectory from his predecessor's presidency. It’s even more disturbing, and certainly undercuts Trump’s bravado, when you realize 83% of those invested in the market are already the fat cats at the top.
How well Dow Jones Averages perform is not the best way to judge how a society performs for its people. This is especially true given unions and worker pensions have been destroyed in America. Most folks do not have retirement plans. Only 32% hold a 401(k) which nets only tiny gains, even from a well-performing market.
How many times, since the Reagan-Bush Administration, have you heard the phrase the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Since Reagan introduced his Trickle Down Theory, American unions became decimated. Presently, CEO pay increased by 1,322% with only an 18% increase for workers, this coupled to an increase in productivity. Today in America, only 11.6% of workers are unionized.
Are we supposed to jump with joy and yelp out Whoopie-Doopie-Do whenever we hear solid stock market reports on our nightly newscasts? But the better question is: Why are rank and file citizens even fed such information? In a country of 327 million people, very few read The Wall Street Journal, and pretty much they are the only ones who care about Dow Jones Averages.
Most folks are living the daily grind trying to make ends meet, many with two jobs just to stay afloat. Keeping a healthy family in a happy home in a safe community, for too many, has become a difficult reach. Most folks aren’t even working for a living wage and the average US household is riddled with $155,622 in debt.
America’s middle class has become a thing of the past as too many have already slipped through the cracks.
Worse, poor folk are forced to live within a very dangerous underground economy. It’s an economy where drugs provide relief as people attempt to self-medicate when America’s medical system fails them. Harder drugs become used to help soothe the pain of despair and hopelessness. Drugs also become a source of opportunity whereby a petty drug deal can help raise cash to meet needs of daily survival.
It’s become a rat race whereby drug profiteering meets a very heavy market demand. In essence, armed drug gangs have become the middlemen as the wealthy supplier needs to engage the desperate consumer. It’s part of why America annually sees 45,222 gun deaths! These drug gangs also serve a role as they also help to prop up third world dictators. Indeed, the drug and weapons smuggling routes are often one and the same.
It has come to a point where one of the best hopes for today’s American has become cashing in on a scratch ticket or winning the local meat raffles at the VFW, Legion, Elks or Moose club. Early arrival at the food pantry has also become The New American Imperative!
And it gets worse than this!
Twelve percent of all Americans now hold felony convictions. Approximately, 70,000,000 Americans have arrest records. One of every 100 Americans is jailed somehow; one in 55 are on probation; and one of every 25 citizens executed is as an innocent person.
A 1991 law forced states to suspend a driver license for a drug conviction. Any state not complying had federal transportation money withheld. Nixon did this similarly with pot during the heyday of his repression. His administration stipulated federal transportation money would be withheld if a state did not comport its state marijuana law to the federal law. In 2016, of all license suspensions, 40% were for non-driving related reasons.
Isn’t it great to know that your typical look good/look busy politician is protecting you? Meanwhile, most of ’em have an uncle or a buddy who owns a urine-testing, breathalyzer or ankle device-related company. And how many politicians sharply invested into the private prison industry when it IPO’s onto the stock market? It’s almost like a politician making obscene profits off of America’s military industrial complex wasn’t good enough!
Meanwhile, below is an example as to what they do with prisoners in America (make sure you read all eight tweets authored by Eric Feigl-Ding)!
Okay, so the USA, as great as it is for a few folks, has got many, many problems.
Africans Especially Struggle
Indeed, the very best way to enslave people is to make them think they are free … and so America … and so Africa!
Shockingly, for Africa, the Median Age (half older/half younger) is only 19.7.
Does this bother you? It bothers me!
It should be especially bothersome for everybody. But it isn’t!
Comparatively, the median age for the US is 38.5. It’s 37.4 for China and 39.6 for Russia. For all of Europe it is 42.5.
One must ask: Is it fair or moral in life that some folks get to live twice as long as other people? Is there something we can do to change this?
The question becomes even more interesting when socialist Cuba is brought in as a comparative. Cuba has a Gross Domestic Product ranking of 63rd. It has a considerably smaller economy than the larger nations. But, amazingly, although poor in resources and virtually shunned by the wider world, the median age for Cuba is 42.2!
When one compares Cuba’s median age with Europe’s median age of 42.5, a bell should instantly ring. Perhaps free health care for all is not only important, but it should be viewed as an imperative for sound government policy. As a side note, for a long time, as a helping hand, Cuba has been sending doctors and teachers into Africa without expectation of any economic gain in return.
How is it that the smaller among us attempts to do the most, while the largest amongst us tries to get away with not only doing the least while also offering the least?
I guess this is how profits get spawned, why we have Dow Jones Averages, emerging markets, commodity markets, healthy dividends, financial loopholes and whatnot. As for the whatnot? The 2014 Princeton Study on Oligarchy shows America’s politicians always govern on the side of the wealthy.
Politically? There is no progressive relief! The unipolar American nation is only about center-right/rightwing politics! In America, being liberal only has to do with how you come down on god, gun and gay issues. When it comes to economics and foreign policy? America is full of rightwing Dick Cheneys!
Back to basics. For people, Median Age marks a better indicator index than do Dow Jones Averages? But what about Quality of Life, Status of Health (including obesity rates), Range of Education, Cleanliness of Climate or Economic Equality indexes? What about how many people of a nation get to become musicians, artists or dancers? Is this too important? As important as the Dow Jones and leading indicators.
For the most part, these crucial statistical realities get tucked away into the rarely seen CIA Factbook or they become emboweled within a non-profit institution so only an academic or lonely nerd can later on make rhyme or reason of what otherwise should be considered important information.
Perhaps every five years or so The New Yorker, The Atlantic, PBS, Fast Company, Vanity Fair or some corporate Forbes-like journal will do a deep investigative report and cause a pause, enabling some to think: Isn’t that interesting! This, while most people who are victims of various daily branding schemes remain clueless as to scale of knowledge or understanding relative to what’s really going on in their own world.
The dumbing down of America has never been better. It’s made so much easier due to everyone conditioned to think: We’re Number One!
But let’s not get lost. This is about Africa!
Indeed, let’s talk about pricing our planet. Africa is the richest continent on earth what with its mineral resources, abundant with 30% of the world’s mineral resources: cobalt, uranium, tantalum, diamonds, gold, silver, copper, timber, cocoa and fruits, plus impressive oil and gas reserves.
The fact is more wealth leaves Africa than money invested into Africa!
Forty billion dollars leaves Africa annually through a variety of shell companies and various money laundering strategies. The money leaving mostly finds pockets of a very few, most of whom hold offshore tax havens. This rampant and obscene profiteering largely remains untaxed and does not benefit African people.
One way or another, the folks from Africa are always being screwed.
Now you understand why African people have long lived under colonial, dictatorial or military rule. Whether taking money from slave trades, typical exploitation of labor or from extraction of precious mineral resources, profiteering out of Africa has long been brutal.
Few folks in America ever thought what a poor African might have had to encounter in order to create that smile resulting from placing a diamond onto a ring finger and the popular a wedding trip to Las Vegas.
Only in recent decades have many African nations determined their independence, this largely resulting from a combination of extreme guilt on the part of the oppressor when this guilt gets coupled to increased worldwide communications. So these African nations now fall under the hook of a kinder and gentler banking methodology, one that seemingly has replaced the brutal ways of the past.
For example, in 2015, African governments received 32 billion in banking loans. Why are they being given loans when their precious resources are simultaneously being drained? But the worst part is these African nations, upon then receiving these loans, end up paying 18 billion in debt interest. How can this be fair? Who are the actuaries who are pricing Africa? How does this measure against the enormous wealth that routinely is extracted out of Africa?
Twenty-two of the 25 poorest nations on the planet are from Africa. Of the 1.2 billion citizens of Africa, 780 million people live in extreme poverty, functioning on less than $1.90 per day.
Please read the above paragraph again!
Africa’s mineral resources continue to enrich Western capitalists, but solely at the expense of African people. I suppose it helps to ask why the US has 29 military bases secretly placed throughout in Africa and at least a military presence in 50 of Africa’s 54 nations? What is the line of distinction between US military and US corporate? Is the US ambassador respectively assigned to an African nation engaged more in people relations, population control or corporate-military relations?
Below, is an example of America’s traditional past with African and Latino American nations. Although dated, one can easily imagine these below-described scenarios against today’s backdrop.
Theoretically today, independent African nations politically are free. However, economically they remain in prison. Militarily, the west continues to destabilize the African continent by smuggling weaponry that helps to ensure tribal bloodshed will never cease.
Eric Prince Blackwater-like military mercenaries are frequently dispersed all throughout Africa They work with US special ops, other governments and conglomerate corporations. All of this helps to create a condition whereby American oversight is presumably needed. It’s like the military is used to open protective doors for corporate feasting.
Perhaps this writing opens a glimpse into how millionaires and billionaires feed, and upon whom they feed upon?
With respect to entering the Gates of Heaven? How can anyone possibly get in there without a clean conscience?
