Deep and meaningful

Over the weekend I watched The Constant Gardener... it's based on a john le carre novel, and I thought it was absolutely excellent. Story of a diplomat's wife who is murdered in africa, and the diplomat starts investigating, finding a complex conspiracy involving big pharmac companies, drug testing on illiterate blacks in poverty...

 

i BAWLED my eyes out for about half the movie, mainly for the plight of africa... whenever i see movies like that, it makes me despair. that continent is so ravaged... it is such a beautiful place, the land, the flora and fauna, the people are so beautiful, and yet they are torn on every side by war, drought, famine, disease and corruption. Everyone rapes africa. Their own people - dictators, tyrants, tribal wars and corruption all the way through. The western nations - unwilling to write off debt, unwilling to contribute meaningfully. The corporations - pharmacy companies, weapons companies. It is like the people are in an abyss, unable to find a way out.

 

How is it that atrocities of poverty and war are visited on this continent on such a large scale, but we are unable to find any method or approach that will help? Is it basically that no one can help them unless their own people become educated and rise up and create change? But then, given the state of the nations, how will there ever be enough food, enough water, enough health to enable them to access that next level of the hierarchy of needs? As America spends three trillion dollars on their "war on terror", who is interested in spending on a war on poverty?

 

One solution I considered - foreign run schools and educational institutions that are not only funded but actually run, staffed, managed by overseas people. Thus eliminating some of the corruption. Make them accountable to the highest bodies like the UN, and subject to strict audits and checks. Feed and educate the children. They are the only people who can agitate for change...

 

As the western world gets swept up in anxiety over climate change, sustainability and carbon footprints... this movie made me think... how fickle we are, to move from social trend to social trend... as the children in africa keep dying.

 

So basically, fck global warming... can someone please think about the children!