Bill Gates is journeying down the road of philanthropy, but he does not travel alone. He has been joined recently by the prestige of former president Bill Clinton, the celebrity of Oprah Winfrey, and the enormous wealth of Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett has sweetened the philanthropy pot by a cool 37.5 billion dollars (potentially). This, when added to the millions pledged from the Gates Foundation, is easily greater than the GNP of many countries put together.
In the movie Out of Africa, the character played by Meryl Streep utters these pivotal words: “The world is round so that we don't see too far down the road.” Her statement was made parallel to the discovery in her own life of a syphilitic infection she acquired from her husband. And anyone who knows anything about STDs knows that they facilitate the transmission of the H.I.V. and AIDS virus.
In the early days (1920s) when genteel Europeans ruled East Africa there was no AIDS, H.I.V. or TB crises to fret over. The colonialists were welcomed, wealthy, and lived a life worthy of royalty. But the horizon on that road was clearly changing even during Isak Dinesen’s time. The Africa of today is still rife with political problems that began in the last centuries. That was then, this is now, and syphilis and STDs are endemic in Africa and the proliferation of highways, trucks, and job-related travel have helped, in my opinion, to make H.I.V. and AIDS the modern-day equivalent of the Black Death.
One of the main criticisms of this foray by Bill, Bill, Oprah, and now Warren into the huge continent that is Africa is that for all the billions in wealth and power that this foursome yields, they are up against a political impracticality and corruptness in Africa that makes their task as awesome as their monetary offerings. Africa is a populous country and this is not by accident. It is a natural population explosion common to Third World countries such as those of Africa.
Africa is a disaster that is not waiting to happen, but has happened — Bill Gates is aware of this when he says in an article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, "In Africa, we have the potential for some worst-case scenarios. It could completely come apart here... It could be horrific."
Article comments
1 - Nicholas Stix
A good way to pass the H.I.V. and AIDS viruses along an increasingly well-documented Trans-African heterosexual highway is to have the “three P’s” in place: promiscuity, polygamy and prostitution, a route that has taken a bumpy turn in many South African countries as well as the world.
I agree with everything you said, except for your implication that AIDS is exploding in Africa through heterosexual transmission. Everything we know about HIV transmission is that somehwere along the line, it was passed along via male homosexual activity or the sharing of an IV drug needle that had been infected by a man who had been infected with HIV via homosexual sex, or a woman who was infected by such a man. I don't know the exact route of transmission in Africa, but in the States, it all leads back to prison rape.
2 - Heloise
Hi Nicholas,
And thanks for your comment. Heloise has been following, reading and researching this topic since the early 1980s. I can't agree with your summation that it can be traced to prison rape here in the States.
From an excellent documentary "The Green River" the researchers for that film have traced the original transmission of H.I.V. and AIDS to the advent of polio vaccination in that country.
I will post something from my site about my own conclusions drawn from watching this. It is startling the similarity between the effects of polio and those of AIDS. The vector in that case would again be traceable to a monkey whose DNA is far too similar to our own. It is a form of cannibalism to use organs such as were done by these European doctors.
Did you know that Africans and blacks get a more virulent i.e., deadly form of AIDS?
More later
Heloise
3 - Heloise
AIDS--The Polio-look-alike disease Based on the documentary "The Green River"
Dear Readers,
An article on this new origin was first published in "Rolling Stones" magazine. But do you think that the medical community wants it out?
I have never seen this connection that I am making here and now:
between the way that polio strikes and creates a "new" body type for
the sufferer and the way that AIDS turns the sufferer into a "Slim"
version of himself. The disease is called "slim disease" in Africa.
In polio, the muscles of the legs are destroyed, and muscle cannot
regenerate itself, the same as brain and nerve cells. The documentary asserts that the Researcher: Kapolaski (sp) went against protocol and used the chimp - man's closest relative to create an oral polio vaccine. The Africans were literally fed the live polio, and the SIV, cultured on the blood and guts of chimps, to halt the progression of polio in late 1950s Africa.
This documentary shows the journey taken by simian immunovirus or SIV as it traveled the Congo and morphed itself into HIV and AIDS as it mixed with human blood. The first outbreak of AIDS--IN THE WORLD--
first in the Congo. It was called virus X, and broke out in 1980
near Leopaldville--a near 20-year incubation period. The creation of
this vaccine done in secrecy. The only way to get to its secret
location on "The River" was by boat. Those involved are still lying
about using chimps.
It makes sense that this would now give us not only a new genocidal
tool, but it is also known that disease for humans come from human
contact with domesticated or wild animals. Now we have all the
ingredients for a soup of destruction.
Video states that the disease which the other Sabin and Salk
immitators were trying to cure was Polio. One of the worse killers
and cripplers ever--FDR had it and it eventually caused his early
death.
Here is my conclusion: look at how polio and AIDS look alike! Think
about pictures of how polio affects the lower body: the limbs waste
away into skeletal things that cannot hold up the individual. Think
about how full-blown AIDS looks: The person becomes eventually
emaciated and so skinny they cannot stand up. They appear to be a
walking skeleton, only it is the whole body and not just the limbs.
What about the other things like Kaposi sarcoma (a rare cancer) and
the pneumonia (and fungal infections) that go with it? They are
opportunistic diseases and are not to be mistaken for the AIDS
itself because the system is weakened and thus anything can take
ahold of the system.
This is new in the News: The virulent form of AIDS found in Africa
is more potent, more likely to kill the person than any other form
of the virus anywhere in the world. Why is this? AIDS was created in
the heart and the dark belly of Africa from chimp blood and guts.
It dawned on me like a thunderbolt: polio and AIDS look just alike!!!
AIDS is a worse form of Polio--unbelievable. And the vector is not
sex but body fluids which include the sexual fluids.
This is another genocide upon humanity. This will be the genocide
that kills Africa, just as smallpox killed the Indians. BTW Africans
were somewhat immune to smallpox compared to Indians.
This genocidal tool, and that is what it is, did come about from the
race that is mentally "superior" to these dark peoples: The Aryan
the fifth root race. However, the whites employed the black Africans
to do the live surgeries and to kill the chimps and mix some of the
vaccines, but they did not do the research.
Genocide is an inescapable fact of life.
an original essay by: Heloise
PS: This week there will be a program on the crisis in black America and death by AIDS...look for it.
Reposted from Thesophy Talks Truth
4 - Uche Amadi
Heloise,
I absolutely agree on the mismanagement issues raised about HIV/AIDS either with the donations or the epidemic itself in Africa. The fact is that ignoring the African culture while trying to put up a fight with the pandemic in Africa is a waste of time, money, lifes and efforts.
I am not sure why but the truth is that Africans and their cultures are inseparable. It does not matter what anyone thinks about these cultures.
A cultural approach to HIV/AIDS management on every sector will go a long way in making the funds achieve more in the struggles against the epidemic especially in Africa.
Thanks for the great piece! It is and has always been a food for thought for so many of us.
Culture is a big issue in Africa!
Uche
5 - Heloise
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. Yes, it's culture, culture and more culture as far as any country is concerned.
With the AIDS problem here at home why not do something about it? It is too close to home. Will it have to devastate white teenagers and people before that happens? Probably so.
Heloise
6 - Heloise
One of the best damn articles ever written on BC and Heloise wrote it.
7 - doug m.
If you have to point out how good your own article, it likely isn't
8 - Alan Kurtz
Heloise, I twice read your article but remain confused. Part of the trouble is inept hyperlinking. Your first, under the name Bill Gates, embeds a nonfunctioning URL: www.bill&melindagatesfoundation.com/.
There is an actual Gates Foundation web site here. But it's huge. Where would you have us look?
Specially, I'd like to know what you mean by the "foray" of Gates, Clinton, Oprah and Buffett "into the huge continent that is Africa." You don't explain this in your article, and the link you provide to Gates's statement in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporter is from March 2001! What is this mysterious foray?
Next you claim the word charity "more accurately describes" what they are attempting than philanthropy. But again, your hyperlink is useless, leading to the front page of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, which contains no mention of charity. Alas, my dictionary doesn't help, since it defines charity as "generous actions or donations to aid persons in need," and philanthropy as "altruistic concern for human welfare and advancement, usually manifested by donations of money, property, or work to needy persons." What distinction are you making?
Moreover, I can't parse your conclusions about Africa. On the one hand, you tell us, Gates cannot teach Africans to live and think differently when it comes to their health and to their sexual practices because, as you put it, there isn't "enough light in the world to change the clothes on that elephant." You also reiterate your conclusion that "it is the color of AIDS - black [race] and green [money] - that will make it a deeply unrelenting problem."
On the other hand, you add, "When I wrote that I believed it was still a non-winnable war; but it was before I looked and saw Bill, Bill, Oprah, and Warren walking down that road together." In other words, you are now saying it's a winnable war. Is that right? The fortunes of Gates, Clinton, Oprah and Buffett will shed enough light to change the clothes on that elephant.
I hope you will clarify these issues for me.
9 - Alan Kurtz
And while you're at it, perhaps you could explain your "original essay by Heloise" reproduced in comment #3 above.
As you tell it, a researcher who may or may not have been named "Kapolaski" used chimps to create an oral polio vaccine, which Africans were fed to halt the progression of polio in late 1950s Africa.
I presume you're alluding here to the discredited OPV AIDS hypothesis, which argued circa 1990 that AIDS originated from live polio vaccines prepared in chimpanzee tissue cultures and administered in experimental mass vaccination campaigns. The supposed fiend behind this scheme was Dr. Hilary Koprowski, inventor of the world's first effective live polio vaccine.
In fact, the OPV AIDS hypothesis has been refuted by members of the scientific and medical communities as being unsupported or directly contradicted by available data, and inconsistent with HIV epidemiology. In October 1992, the journal Science concluded, "it can be stated with almost complete certainty that the large polio vaccine trial was not the origin of AIDS."
Anyhow, you proceed to tell us that "simian immunovirus or SIV morphed into HIV and AIDS as it mixed with human blood." In this form, it became what you repeatedly call a "genocidal tool. … This is another genocide upon humanity. This will be the genocide that kills Africa. … This genocidal tool, and that is what it is, did come about from the race that is mentally 'superior' to these dark peoples: The Aryan the fifth root race."
Actually, Dr. Koprowski's Aryan credentials are not in order. Born in Poland, he and his wife Irena, a medical doctor, hastily fled Warsaw after the Nazi invasion in 1939, so as not to be stomped by the true fifth root race.
Please tell me, Heloise, at what point did AIDS become a genocidal tool? And who was behind it? No, wait, let me guess: the United States of America. Am I right?
10 - Alan Kurtz
UPDATE (re #8): Heloise, I apologize for faulting your use of hyperlinks. I honestly did not realize that this was a four-year-old article. Naturally hyperlinks come and go, and it's not your fault that they're no longer functional.
Nevertheless, I'd still like to know what "foray" you were alluding to, and what distinction you make between charity and philanthropy.
Moreover, since this is such an old article, perhaps you'll fill in the gap by explaining how the "foray" turned out. Did Gates, Clinton, Oprah and Buffett change the clothes on that elephant? Or is AIDS in Africa still a "deeply unrelenting" problem?
Finally, my comment #9 needs no apology, since it's unaffected by the age of your article. I hope you'll address my questions raised therein.