Male circumcision has helped in controlling the speed of infection of HIV/AIDS. One factor that partly contributed to the spread of the virus in some parts of Africa is the huge number of people not circumcised - S. Zalanga.
The ground on which Samuel Zalanga premised the justification of male circumcision in Africa is wrong. Africa has never had HIV/AIDS problems except that Neo-Third Reich Politicians, Virologists and Medical Scientists have succeeded in brainwashing African rulers and their intellectual administrators that the Virus, Lymphadenopathy Associated Virus (LAV) or Human T-Cell Leukemia Virus (HTLV - III) originated in Africa and Africans were dying in millions of AIDS said to have been caused by the Franco-American named Virus. The Satanic Samaritans then stepped in to claim that Negroid Africa was on the verge of extinction as a result of the Franco-American LAV/HTLV -III infections in Africa. Let us go back to the history of the farce.
In the Autumn of 1980, the attention of Dr Michael Gottlieb at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Centre, was drawn to an unusual respiratory case. Subsequent medical examinations and tests showed that the young man's lungs were filled with Pneumocystis Carinii Pneumonia (PCP). Late in 1979, Dr Joel Weisman, a Los Angeles private practitioner with a sizable sodomite clientele, had noticed PCP cases among his clients of which one was eventually admitted to the UCLA Medical Centre, bringing the number of Patients under Dr Gottlieb's treatment to five. Similarities of the patients were striking: all the five patients were male Caucasians; they were aged between 29 and 36 years at the time of PCP diagnosis; they suffered PCP along with Candida and cytomegalovirus infections; they had abnormal immune responses; they all reported multiple sex partners; and they reportedly used amyl-nitrite 'poppers' as sexual stimulants to dilate the anal orifice so as to facilitate easy passage of the penis into the anus. One admitted using injectable narcotics (See p. 284-285, The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett). The strange illness affecting Sodomites was made known to the world by the US CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), published on Friday, June 5, 1981 and was based on Drs Michael Gottlieb and Joel Weisman's observations on the Los Angeles cases of Pneumocystis Carinii. In order to avoid offending the sensitivities of the homosexuals, Randy Shilts remarked, "The report, therefore, appeared not on page one of the CDC MMWR but in a more inconspicuous slot on page two. Any reference to homosexuality was dropped from the title and the headline simply read: Pneumocystis Pneumonia - Los Angeles. Don't offend the gays and don't inflame the homophobes. These were the twin horns on which the handling of this epidemic would be torn from the first day of this epidemic (p 68 - 69, AND THE BAND PLAYS ON by Randy Shilts)."
Nevertheless, since all the PCP affected were sodomites the medical establishments in USA, as from June 1981, named the disease GAY RELATED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY (GRID). Neither the homosexuals nor the Medical Scientists liked the name, GRID. While the homosexuals would not like to admit that the cause of their strange illness was due to sodomy, the Medical Scientists, especially the virologists, were certain that if the cause of GRID was attributed only to Sodomy, it would neither attract research funds from the government nor sympathy from the general public in USA. Thus, as GRID induced opportunistic infections in homosexuals, it also induced opportunistic Research funds in Medical Scientists/Virologists. With the appearance of GRID, Virologists discovered that they could gain access to research funds provided GRID could be projected not only as a disease that threatened all Americans but the entire world. Hence they decided to invent a propagandist and catchy name to replace GRID. Laurie Garrett explained how it happened thus, "In August (1982) the CDC had quietly dropped the name GRID, by changing the name of the disease to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) to reflect the recognition that it wasn't just a disease of gay men (p. 309, The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett)." Dr Peter Duesberg put it more succinctly, "Having decided that the syndrome was a single contagious disease, the CDC now worked to swing most biomedical and political institutions behind its new war. Support will be hard to gather unless the disease had an easily remembered name; and by July 1982, the CDC decided to call it Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). This name also swept under the rug any connection between the Syndrome and the risk groups (the Sodomites); a move favoured both by the CDC and the homosexual rights movements - who did not like emphasis on AIDS being a gay disease. In addition, more federal money had to be appropriated to give this disease more respectability and to attract more experts to this new field (p. 150-151, INVENTING THE AIDS VIRUS; by Dr Peter Duesberg)." On the new name for GRID, Randy Shilts recorded, "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome gave the epidemic a snappy acronym, AIDS, and was sexually neutral. The word *acquired*, separated the immune deficiency syndrome from congenital defects or chemically induced immune problems, indicating the syndrome was acquired from somewhere even though nobody knew from where (p. 171, AND THE BAND PLAYS ON)." On the integrity of the people who were to find where AIDS came from and what caused it, Dr Alan Cantwell Jr., M.D. remarked thus, "The ill-fated and forgotten war on Cancer which began in the early 1970s has been quietly and unceremoniously transformed into the new war on AIDS. Ironically, many of the same scientists who failed to find the cause and cure for human cancer have now become new leaders in the assault against the AIDS VIRUS (p. 31-32; AIDS AND THE DOCTORS OF DEATH by Alan Cantwell)."
After transforming GRID, from non life-style sodomite disease, to AIDS that could afflict anybody, two American Virologists, Myron Max Essex and Robert Gallo, took the centre stage in finding the origin and cause of AIDS. James Curran of the CDC had approached Dr Robert Gallo in early 1982 to get involved in the research for the cause of AIDS and Gallo revealed his initial reaction thus, "Intellectually, I began to play out one scenario. What if AIDS were due to mutation of an HTLV, probably occurring in Africa, which has spread to Haiti, then to the United States (p. 136, Virus Hunting by Robert Gallo)." Earlier on page 131 of his book, Virus Hunting, Gallo had said about the origin of AIDS thus, "Probably starting in 1960s, perhaps even earlier, ... a previous unreported epidemic disease that was difficult to transmit and that had a long period of apparent latency was silently but relentlessly establishing itself. Its (HIV/AIDS) exact place of origin may not be fully certain but the time of its appearance seems more settled." But the US CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of Friday, 5 June 1981, never mentioned any African or Haitian in its report and it was never said that they had visited Africa or Haiti. Moreover no such illness were reported from Haiti or Africa as at June 1981. Why then must Gallo's scenario have to take place in Africa and Haiti? It was just like some Americans were caught being bedwetters and the cause of bedwetting was attributed to African rain-forest!! Gallo and his fellow virus hunters had decided to place the origin of AIDS in Africa and they spared no effort to concoct evidence to support their claims. Therefore, in an asterisk note on page 227 of his Virus Hunting, Gallo remarked, "Amazingly, in the early part of my research on AIDS (early 1983), I was visited by Ann Guidici Fettner, a freelance writer, who told me emphatically that the origin and epicentre of the disease were in a river basin near Lake Victoria. She also stated that she believed the virus came from African Green Monkeys, apparently, due to her experiences and observations in Central Africa." Gallo's book was published in 1991 that is to say eight years after he had his purported under-the-bedsheet gossip with Ann Guidici Fettner. If Ann Guidici Fettner really believed and actually told Gallo in 1983 that AIDS originated in Africa, she should have affirmed and highlighted it in a book, on AIDS, she co-authored in 1984 with Dr William A. Check and titled, *THE TRUTH ABOUT AIDS: Evolution of an Epidemic.* However, on page two, Guidici and Check wrote, "Another crystallization has occurred, its (AIDS) cause unknown, its origins obscure." Further on page 123, they asked, "Has an AIDS-like disease been seen in equatorial Africa before?" The authors answered, "Dr. Charles Olweny of Uganda, who for many years was associated with the then-prestigious Makerere University Medical School and hospital in Kampala, states unequivocally that he never saw illnesses in Africans that fulfilled the CDC criteria for AIDS. And other physicians with African experience agree." Earlier on page 4 the duo wrote, "Even in equatorial Africa, where some suspicion of the genesis of AIDS is focused, no previous reports of such an illness are known to physicians long treating these populations." Finally on page 244, Ann Guidici Fettner and Dr. William A. Check confirmed what everyone in the world knew, "AIDS STARTED AS AN AMERICAN DISEASE. But it is spreading in Europe and perhaps in black Africa." To the Authors the existence of the disease, AIDS, in black Africa was doubtful which was the cause of their expression *perhaps in black Africa.* I will get back to the alleged virus jumping from*African Green Monkeys* to humans in Africa later.
Just before Christmas 1982, a thirty-three year-old Parisian homosexual and fashion designer, Frédéric Brugière was feeling unwell and called in at La Pitié Salpêtrière hospital. He complained of general debility, fatigue, enlarged rubbery nodes on the neck. He had a history of several episodes of gonorrhoea and had been treated for syphilis in September 1982. He enjoyed more than fifty sexual partners per annum and travelled a great deal, including travel to North America, though his last trip to New York had been in 1979. Lab tests showed that Brugière had cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus and herpes simplex virus. On January 3, 1983, Dr Willy Rozenbaum, removed an enlarged lymph node from the neck of Brugière. A tissue sample from the lymph nodes was sent to Luc Montagnier's lab at Pasteur Institute Paris where, virologists, Francoise Barré-Sinoussi and Jean-Claude Chermann set about growing lymphocytes in culture. The operations which were applied in the 'Départment de Virologie' of the Institut Pasteur in January 1983 were calculated to detect a retrovirus should one be present. They were not looking for the cause of AIDS, they were looking for a retrovirus.On 25th January 1983, evidence of reverse transcriptase activity in Brugière's cells was discovered(see p.51-52, AIDS: THE HIV MYTH; by JAD ADAMS). Montagnier and his group submitted their results to the journal *SCIENCE* in April 1983 and was published on May 20, 1983. The paper was titled, "Isolation of a T-Lymphotropic Retrovirus from a Patient at Risk for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome." In order to differentiate their discovery from Gallo's Human T-Cell Leukaemia Virus (HTLV) family, Montagnier's group named their discovery, Lymphadenopathy Associated Virus (LAV). It is worth noting their (Montagnier's group) caution, Jad Adams remarked on page 153, "The role of this virus in the etiology of AIDS remains to be determined." By 17 July 1983, the Pasteur Institute sent an isolate of LAV to Gallo which his lab was unable to grow. Another sample was sent on 23 September 1983, along with a contract specifying that the American Lab could not use the virus to develop commercial items. The Pasteur Institute filed for a British patent in September 1983 and a US patent in December of the same year. However, shortly after receiving the virus, Randy Shilts recorded, "Dr. Gallo had started forging major breakthroughs in his AIDS research (p. 386, AND THE BAND PLAYED ON)." Then on Monday, 23 April 1984, US Health and Human Services Secretary, flanked by dark goggled Robert Gallo, announced thus,".....the probable cause of AIDS has been found.....a new process has been developed to mass-produce this virus ....we now have a blood test for AIDS which we hope can be widely available within about six months. We have applied for the patent on this process today.... we can now identify AIDS victims with essentially 100 percent certainty...the new process will enable us to develop vaccine to prevent AIDS. We hope to have such vaccine ready for testing in about two years... (p.193, VIRUS HUNTING by Robert Gallo)." Robert Gallo's discovery of the *PROBABLE CAUSE OF AIDS* was named Human T-Cell Leukemia Virus - Three (HTLV -III).
With the backing of the government of USA, the Bio/Pharmaceutical companies and the Gay lobby, Gallo moved fast to put the origin of his HTLV-III in Africa. In the TIME Magazine of April 30, 1984, Gallo claimed that the new HTLV-III strain of the AIDS virus evolved in Africa. TIME Magazine quoted him, "The virus may have been around in the bush for some time, but with mass migration into cities, crowding and prostitution, what was contained at a low level became a problem." Further, the NEWSWEEK Magazine of May 7, 1984, pictured a world map showing arrows pointing to probable routes of the AIDS virus "on the move" out of central Africa. The accompanying description read: 1. AIDS probably appeared first in Africa, as the result of a minor genetic change in a less lethal virus, or when rural people who harboured the virus moved to urban areas. 2. French and Belgians who lived in central Africa presumably carried the disease back to Western Europe. AIDS also travelled to the Caribbean, possibly brought there by Haitians. 3. From Haiti, vacationing homosexuals from the United States may have brought AIDS home. By April 1985, Professor Myron Max Essex of Harvard University and colleagues gave prominence to the hypothesis of AIDS originating from Africa when they announced the discovery of SIMIAN T-LYMPHOTROPIC VIRUS IN WILD CAUGHT AFRICAN GREEN MONKEYS (STLV-III, AGM) in April 1985. Based on their discovery Essex concluded that "it was reasonable to assume that AIDS started as an African monkey disease, and only recently, through an unknown means, entered the human population (in Africa). It was not until 1987 that other scientists began to look into Professor Essex and colleagues' claim of AIDS originating from African Green Monkeys in Africa. The title on page 27 of the New Scientist of October 15, 1987, read, "Evidence of Origin is Weak." Skin and Allergy News of January 1988, on page 28 had the headline, HIV Origin "A Continuing Mystery": GREEN MONKEY THEORY DISPUTED. A Professor of Pharmacology, Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, USA, Karel Mulder, proved that what Essex and colleagues presented as AIDS virus from wild caught African Green Monkey was a laboratory contaminant from Asian Macaque Monkeys that did not even exist in the animal in the forest of Asia. Professor Mulder and Colleagues got their findings published in NATURE, Volume 331 of February 18, 1988, on p.562-563, captioned, A Case of Mistaken Non-Identity. In the same volume of NATURE, Essex and Kanki admitted that their STLV-III (agm) was a laboratory mixed up on p.621-622. Under the headline, LABORATORY MIX-UP SOLVES AIDS MYSTERY, the New Scientist of February 25, 1988, discussed on p. 32 Essex false African Green Monkey AIDS Virus. Finally, in Nature's Volume 333, of June 2, 1988, p. 396, Professor Mulder stated emphatically that Human Virus was not from monkeys.
At the Bangui Conference on AIDS, 22-24 October 1985, presided over by World Health Organisation (WHO), something unusual happened. A director of WHO for communicable disease programme did the bidding of US by threatening to cut off WHO shipments of cholera vaccines to African countries that refused to give figures of AIDS infected in their countries. The following day, Rwanda reported 319 AIDS cases, Kenya 10 cases, Zaire (now D. M. R. Congo) gave 6% of Kinshasa population, Zambia reported 17 adult and 15 children (p. 359, The Coming Plague, by Laurie Garrett). At the Bangui Conference in Central African Republic, a clinical definition of AIDS was proposed and adopted.WHO claimed that the clinical definition was necessary because HIV screening kits were too expensive for use in Africa. Thus the agreed clinical definition of AIDS included symptoms such as persistent fever, weight loss and chronic diarrhoea which could be indicative of any diseases other than AIDS. Armed with the WHO's clinical definition of AIDS, the neo-Third Reich medical Scientists and Doctors thereafter, proceeded to quantify HIV infected Africans through presumptive diagnoses whereby every illness and death in Africa, South of Sahara, was attributed to HIV/AIDS. By 1997, the Chief for United Nations AIDS program, Dr. Peter Piot could say, "We are now realizing that the rates of HIV transmission have been grossly underestimated, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the bulk of the infections have been concentrated.UNAIDS now estimates that 7.4 percent of Africans between 15 to 49 years old are infected. Because voluntary testing is so rare, at least 90 percent don't even know that the virus is lurking in their body fluids (Newsweek, December 8, 1997, p 41-42)." Up till date, the HIV statistics for Africa are nothing but presumptive diagnoses otherwise known as estimates.
Starting from May 1983, there was Lymphadenopathy Associated Virus (LAV) and from May 1984, there was Human T-Cell Leukaemia Virus-Three (HTLV-III), but no HIV. Late in 1985, Pasteur Institute in Paris filed a lawsuit against the National Cancer Institute at a federal court in USA. The lawsuit was an indirect indictment of Gallo for viral theft concerning his HTLV-III. Randy Shilts quoted Dr. Don Francis on the potentials of the lawsuit thus, "If this litigation gets into open court, all of the less-than-admirable aspects will become public and, I think, hurt science and the Public Health Service. The French clearly found the cause of AIDS first and Dr. Gallo clearly tried to upstage them one year later (p.592-593)." In March 1987, President Ronald Reagan and his French colleague, Jacques Chirac met together with Gallo and Montagnier to broker an agreement and settlement out of court. Earlier in 1986, a nomenclature Committee at National Institute of Health, under the Chairmanship of Harold Varmus was set up to find a single new name for LAV and HTLV-III. The committee, subsequently, arrived at a compromise name: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Thus, LAV = HTLV-III = HIV, which is probable cause of AIDS. Yet in his 1991 book, Virus Hunting, Robert Gallo argued that Montagnier has never proved/concluded that LAV was the cause of AIDS (see p. 167, 169, 187, 190, 193, 204 and 209). Fortunately or unfortunately, Robert Gallo admitted on page 211 of the Virus Hunting that the photographs of HTLV-III which was published in the Science at the end of May 1984 was that of LAV which was grown in his Lab. Hence, if LAV was not probable cause of AIDS, HTLV -III, that was cultured from LAV could not be probable cause of AIDS. And we have the words of Dr. Kary Mullis, Nobel prize winner, Chemistry, in 1993, for inventing Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) used by AIDS officials to claim finding HIV in almost every antibody-positive AIDS, when he said, "Human beings are full of retroviruses, and neither HIV nor any other retrovirus by itself poses any kind of threat. Which is not to say that there is no such thing as AIDS - only that Hiv doesn't cause it (p. 154, POSITIVELY FALSE:Exposing the Myths around HIV and AIDS, By JOAN Shenton)." Further in Neville Hodgkinson's book, AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science, Dr Kary Mullis said, "If there is evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be Scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There is no such documents ... If you ask a virologist for that information, you don't get an answer, you get a fury (p. 182)." And on page 346 Mullis asked for a reason why HIV moved from being probable cause of AIDS, according to Gallo's press conference of 23rd April 1984, to the definite cause of AIDS without any experiments that actually verify that relationship. At the Sixth International Conference on AIDS held in San Francisco, June 1990, Professor Luc Montagnier declared that 'HIV could not itself be enough to cause AIDS. The virus needed a co-factor..'
Thanks to the Beckley University Virologist, Professor Peter Duesberg, AIDS was confirmed to be a life-style disease. Hear him, "During 1960s, males homosexuals discovered the aphrodisiac effects of nitrites. Receptive anal intercourse became less painful because the anal sphincter (muscle) would relax; therefore, receptive men (women prostitutes) used far more of the drug than did their inserting partners. Nitrites also helped maintain erection and intensified orgaism... The alkylated nitrites (poppers) .. react more violently with almost anything. Upon mixing with water, as in human body, these nitrites form the unstable nitrous acid, which in turn destroys any biological molecules within reach. The nitrites and their breakdown products have long been known to Scientists for their ability to mutate DNA,... In addition, nitrites are some of the most powerful cancer causing chemical in existence.
In contact with living cells, nitrite inhalants are cytotoxic (cell killing), which means they either poison or kill cells including, of course, the blood-forming cells and the epithelial lining of the lungs. Since these are among the fastest growing cells in the body; they will also be among the first cells to be in short supply if the sources are intoxicated. This is the reason that nitrites cause anemia, immunodeficiency, and pneumonia in experimental animals and humans (p. 270-271 in INVENTING THE AIDS VIRUS By Peter Duesberg)."
"The toxicity of nitrites to the cells of the lung and the immune system also explains the proclivity of male homosexual nitrite users for pneumonia, which is the most common AIDS disease in the United States and Europe (p. 274-275)." Earlier on page 209, Professor Duesberg wrote, "AIDS is a syndrome of about thirty diseases, not a disease. It displays no unique combination of diseases in the patient. clinically, it is identified by the diagnosis of specific diseases known to medical science for decades or centuries. ... The (CDC) list of AIDS now includes brain dementia, chronic diarrhoea, cancers such as Kaposi's sarcoma and several lymphomas, and such opportunistic infections as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, cytomegalovirus infection, herpes, candidiasis (yeast infections), and tuberculosis. Even low T-cell counts in the blood can now be called *AIDS* with or without real clinical symptoms. Cervical cancer has recently been added to the list, the first AIDS disease that can affect only one gender (in this case, women). The purpose behind adding this disease was entirely political, admittedly to increase the number of female AIDS patients, creating an illusion that the syndrome is*spreading* into hetrosexual population."
The neo-Third Reich Politicians, Medical Scientists and Virologists began their Goebel propaganda that the entire Black Africa was on the verge of extinction as a result of HIV/ AIDS which they claimed is hetersexually transmitted contrary to United States and Europe that was limited only to homosexuals, female prostitutes, and drug addicts. By year 2000 the World Bank and its owners had succeeded to force all Black African governments to embrace and prioritise the fight against HIV/AIDS as the only means to economic and industrial progress. As usual we are being killed with false charity and kindness. While the UNAID an organ of the United Nations was campaigning about the decimation of black Africa because of HIV/AIDS another organ of the UN, UNFPA, was clamouring that the population of Black Africa was increasing at explosive rate. We are told that in 1994, the population of Africa was 570 million compared to Europe's 700 million but in 2009 Europe with the population of 732 million had been overtaken by Africa which had 967 million inhabitants. In October 2011, the UNFPA released its estimated figures for world's population whereby Africa as well as India had 1. 25 billion each and China had 1.35 billion. Consequently, on November 16, 2011, an international reproductive health adviser and former Senior Population Adviser to the World Bank, Dr. Frederick Sai, urged African leaders to do more in ensuring family planning access. Therefore, when the UNFPA International Conference on Family Planning was held in Dakar, Senegal November 29 to December 2, 2011, the Western Media reported that the Conference was taking place in West Africa where women have some of the highest fertility rates, lowest contraceptive usage and the highest unmet needs for contraception in the world. Access to reproductive health in Africa has now become another expression for family planning and the propaganda about saving Africa from HIV/AIDS, is nothing but a pretext to invade the Continent with Condoms and other contraceptives, oral or injectable. So, my dear Zalanga, there was no HIV infections in Africa and much less reducing it through male circumcisions.
Finally, it is only a grave that one starts digging from the top but if one wants to solve the problems of Africa, one should start from the bottom. I don't think that the greatest ambition of any parent in Africa today is to get her daughter circumcised. We have to address the immediate needs of our people and for me the most barbaric thing is to herd our people into shelters, as we have seen from the pictures from Marburg Virus infected West African countries, that are considered criminal for cattles in Europe and USA.
S. Kadiri
From: szalanga7994@msn.com
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 17:41:50 -0500
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From: szalanga7994@msn.com
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 17:41:50 -0500
Thank you very much Professor Mbaku. This is a very sensitive discussion for some people and I appreciate your intervention out of concern. I hope in the name of defending mother Africa, sometimes we Africans do not condone something that is not actually healthy. Male circumcision has helped in controlling the speed of infection of HIV/ AIDS. One factor that partly contributed to the spread of the virus in some parts of Africa is the huge number of people not circumcised. But that aside, from an anthropological point of view, what some people seem to be saying is that simply because a practice is in existence, it must necessarily have a value and the value must be healthy for everyone in the society. Ruling classes or powerful people can initiate an act and institutionalize it even though the act serves some people more than others. My vision of a society is one of shared risk and shared prosperity.
I think we should work hard, as difficult as it may be, to come up with principles or criteria for healthy and dignified human existence that takes into cognizance solid scientific knowledge. And there are persons with impressive scientific credentials: male and female. Once we have that, we can use that to evaluate a situation and arrive at whether it is healthy for our people or not. In my view, even if we go around the world and find out that poor people are oppressed in the U.S., Middle East, China, India, Europe or Latin America, that is not a reason why we should condone the oppression of poor people in Africa, if our sense of judgement rooted in solid scientific evidence says doing so is bad for our people. In the same, even if women are treated like second class citizens in other societies, we should use our solid sense of judgement rooted in science and human dignity of the person and ask whether simply because it is happening in all societies, it is a reason for us to go and and hold a party to celebrate what is happening to women in Africa. The African should be able to judge if something is not healthy for his or her people and not wait for the outsider to help us make the call.
I truly believe that as Africans we are able to, with a sense of humility, commitment to justice and fairness make the right decision about what truly dignifies our people and on that basis stop what dehumanizes them. Constantly blaming someone else for our problem is not in the long run going to help us. To ignore what oppresses fellow Africans or any group of human beings in the world for that matter, because someone in the U.S. or somewhere is doing it also or did it in the past, suggests to me more a lack of courage to face one owns reality, as in defending Africa, the person is still relying on foreign models.
In any case, there are educated women who are trained and informed and can give fellow Africans honest assessment about this problem of genital mutilation. As a sociologist, to me, it is a weak argument to say it is part of our culture. There are hundreds of things that used to be part of African culture but now such things are not practiced. There are reasons for that.
Some years ago, I was part of an educational tour to South Africa for two weeks. As part of it, the organizers took us to a Black theatre where Black women and men are performing traditional South African dance, often the Zulu type. My seat was in front and amazingly, the women came out almost naked with their chest open. It is true there were men on stage but the real attention was on the body of the women. It was a "free pay per view." At the end, there was a debate in our group and some used African culture to justify it. My response is why is it that the Zulu have stopped practicing many aspects of their culture that used to be existing three hundred years ago but the one that allows women to expose their bodies in a global culture that commodifies sex and women's body is justified to continue? Of course because someone sees it as an industry of making money. Without the women exposing themselves, the attendance would not be as high as it was. The point is not that Zulu people should not practice their culture, but culture is dynamic, and people with power in a culture can influence the change more than others. So, simply hiding behind a cultural argument as such does not help if we cannot as Africans think deeper.
We should remember that many women are not granted same rights as men in Africa. At least in the conference I attended in Sokoto Nigeria, where Professor Falola was the keynote speaker, this issue came up and it is glaring. In one session, in spite of being careful about what I say, I had to intervene to say that scholars attacked a woman's presentation on the representation of women in Nigerian literature was a veiled attack on any concern about gender; even though the frame of argument used by Europeans to put down we Africans down or to put racial minorities down is the same used to justify keeping women down: i.e., biology, intelligence, culture, emotional expression etc.
Promoting the rights of women does not mean as some think that one is promoting an anarchic society because I know in the part of Nigeria I come from, some think this way. To say that it is also western suggests that we Africans do not have the capacity to think of our fellow Africans as full human beings. Any society that denies a portion of its people to develop their full human potential is losing something very important. The idea that education or freedom can lead someone astray is not a uniquely female problem, but a human problem. Young men can get educated or have freedom and be irresponsible with it and ignore the wisdom from the elders. Frankly this is not a uniquely female problem. If it is a female problem, it is because most people judge the woman differently in the first place. And this boils down to: what does it mean to be HUMAN?
For those who have the time and patience, below is a weblink to a documentary film from the series: "WHY POVERTY?" It shows how cultural assumptions can suppress people from discovering their full potential, in this case, a Jordanian woman. Of course, as she realized something new about her, it changed her sense of what she is or capable of doing, contrary to where her husband and people categorized. This is true of all humans. If looked from the point of view of pursuing human dignity and potential, this is a very inspiring film. I am not sure that I can do what the woman did in terms of accomplishment. Here is the link: "SOLAR MAMAS"
I suggested to the president of Northern Nigerian association in the U.S. (Zumunta Association) to screen it during the last annual convention and he did. It generated very much discussion. What the woman accomplished in the film is phenomenal if you look at it in context. And there are Masai women too in the training to produce solar energy.
Samuel
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 12:11:30 -0600
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London
From: jmbaku@weber.edu
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
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Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 12:11:30 -0600
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London
From: jmbaku@weber.edu
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Salimonu Kadiri wrote:
"Gynecologists in the nineteenth century Europe and America used to remove woman's clitoris in order to curb female masturbation. It was called CLITODECTOMY. When the same thing is done in Africa, it is derogatively Called, FEMALE GENITATAL MUTILATION. Males and females are circumcised in some African countries but if it were to be in Euro-America it would have been propagated as GENDER EQUALITY! Males' circumcisions in Africa are never referred to as Male Genital Mutilation probably because the Jews and Arabs also circumcise their males. However, both males and females in Euro-America nowadays are engaged in what is called PIERCING OF THE GENITALS (VAGINA AND PENIS)."
Please, Salimonu Kadiri, what do you mean when you say "derogatively Called, FEMALE GENITATAL(sic) MUTILATION"? Are you by anyway implying that FGM, as a practice in Africa, is justified? I hope you are not trying to justify FGM on any grounds, including those you appear to state above.
Please, explain yourself.
On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 12:39 PM, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com> wrote:
Gynecologists in the nineteenth century Europe and America used to remove woman's clitoris in order to curb female masturbation. It was called CLITODECTOMY. When the same thing is done in Africa, it is derogatively Called, FEMALE GENITATAL MUTILATION. Males and females are circumcised in some African countries but if it were to be in Euro-America it would have been propagated as GENDER EQUALITY! Males' circumcisions in Africa are never referred to as Male Genital Mutilation probably because the Jews and Arabs also circumcise their males. However, both males and females in Euro-America nowadays are engaged in what is called PIERCING OF THE GENITALS (VAGINA AND PENIS).
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 10:32:53 -0600
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - RE: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London
From: jmbaku@weber.edu
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.comFGM=Female Genital Mutilation; centuries old, not new.On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 6:36 AM, Mario Fenyo <MFenyo@bowiestate.edu> wrote:PLease forgive me for being so ignorant. FGM --- is it some new (or old) disease?
Respectfully, Mario
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Assensoh, Akwasi B. [aassenso@indiana.edu]
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 2:11 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Cc: anthonyakinola@yahoo.co.uk; minapeggy@yahoo.com; Charles.Quist-Adade@kpu.ca; dmwhiteh@iupui.edu; Afoaku, Osita; Nnaemeka, Obioma G; Obeng, Samuel Gyasi; McCluskey, Audrey T.
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - FW: Tireless campaigner against FGM dies in London
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JOHN MUKUM MBAKU, ESQ.
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(801) 626-7423 Fax
J.D. (Law), Ph.D. (Economics)
Graduate Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
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