One Campaign, One God, and What War?
Excerpt:

“But during the press conference part we had celebrities, a eloquent man from Africa, and three reverends from various Christian churches. Sound like the beginning to a joke? Well it was.

The final speaker, a Christian reverend, led the crowd in prayer. A fine tradition of gathering unity in the crowd duplicated from the civil rights struggle. But when listing singular unity of one, such as one person, one vote, and one voice he included ONE GOD. A man in the audience booed. Another man looked upon this dissent and stared angrily.”

…and this was the closing remarks of the article:

“No campaign to end poverty in Africa will succeed with a monotheistic, Eurocentric, blindness to the fact that all war in the world must cease.”

My problem with the anti-Religious overtones of these misguided youths is the complete lack of understanding of why poverty exists and how it came about. It has little to do with war and elite non-governmental organizations or corrupt regimes and filthy rich tyrants. The bible says that “The LORD killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up. The LORD maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the LORD’s, and he hath set the world upon them.” — 1 Samuel 2:6-8 (King James Version)

So, what have we learned? That God has, Himself, ordained that there would always be poor among us. That there is a difference between being poor and being impoverished. And that indeed, the “liberal” methodology of throwing more money, collecting more “taxes” for a problem, doesn’t necessarily solve it. Indeed, it can even make the problem worse.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa…

Shikwati: … for God’s sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, told der Spiegel that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem.