"I'm sorry they're once again using Rape as a Weapon. Count on HIV rates skyrocketing."

Me too.

And, because women who are raped are often considered unmarriageable, expect more poverty and misery as these women try to raise their kids alone.

After reading the comments posted here regarding the vile situation in Kenya, it amazes me, in a very negative way, how people not only lack compassion but lack any sense of historical context to what is currently happening in Kenya. It isn't really about colonization or tribes or economic development or any of that. Rape as a tool of war and subjugation has happened throughout patriarchal history and in places other than Africa. For example, in the 1990s the fighting in the former Yugoslavia between the Serbs and the Bosnians involved actual rape camps where (mostly) women were held in order to be raped by police among others. Rape is also used as a means for cleansing or purifying a race or ethnicity, a means for impregnating women so they will have babies of the oppressor. It leads to women who are ostracized for birthing something dirty and it serves to have children who do not feel legitimate in the eyes of their community. It adds to tension and cleavages within and between groups. And it serves to increase the population of those who committed the rapes even though they don't formally recognize any resulting children.

Please remember that the spoils of war have long included women and girls and that systematic rape is more than a tool of war. If you google Human Rights Watch and rape history you'll find all sorts of research on rape and how it is used around the world as a military and political tool of oppression and repression.

to tell us how it's all the women's fault for enticing the men?

These days, imperialism manifests itself in the neoliberal economic policies that Western elites (in collusion with African elites) push on Africa. Obama made it clear in his Nairobi press conference that he does not oppose this sort of thing.

There's a reason Botswana is an exception to this story. They've avoided the worst aspects of neoliberalism, though AIDS has obscured many of the resulting gains.

There's a reason that South Korea looks like it does, and Kenya looks like it does.

given the very fact that they established clans and tribes and ethnicities dedicated to exterminating one another long before Evil Honkey showed up. What Europeans did is try to overlay a political order on what was basically incongruous communities that already had lethal animosity against each other.

I'm sorry they're once again using Rape as a Weapon. Count on HIV rates skyrocketing.

Well, hasn't that kind of been the policy until colonial times? Did that really work so well? And why has every other populated continent been able to acheive some sort of peace, but not Africa? There have been warring tribes since the beginning of time.

I'm not saying its a US responsibility to fix this situation, it is a global responsibility to intervene and protect innocent people. I don't know what the solution is, but I will never be one to say to give up and let them kill each other off. In the meantime, donations to relief funds are all we can really do, short of going over there ourselves.

Its just seems to be that a lot of Africa's woes are due to the fact that a lot of Africans want nothing more than the opportunity to kill and control other Africans.

When 1 million X-tribers rise en masse and try to kill 1.5 million Y-tribers, what can be done? Is the world at large supposed to airlift 500K to a million people out of the hotspot, feed and house them in safe and healthy environments - until the warring factions either kill themselves or reach detente - and then fly the million refugees back? Making sure of course that all of the refugees gain full possesion of the lands and things left behind?

Is this what we do? Everytime some group gets a bee in their bonnet and decides to massacre another group?

It would be the equivalent of marshalling WW2 levels of manpower, arms, money, sacrifice - at every major African hotpoint. Rwanda, Darfur, etc.

And that wouldn't fix anything - the fighting and killing would start all over again elsewhere in that enormous continent.

If we wrote of all of Africa's debt, and left all of the wealth and infrastructure intact, with selfless personnel to run the infrastructure and teach Africans how to take the reins - there would still be an ugly and violent grab for all the goodies - and dollars to donuts the power grabs will fall along tribal lines and the massacres would start all over again.

So maybe just let them kill each other until they're sick of killing each other - or the assholes have killed each other - and the survivors are ready to run their shit in a humane and efficient manner?

So compassionate. You were obviously pleased with Bill Clinton's decision to not help out Rwanda. You're statement above is akin to saying "Who cares about genocide? Who cares about mass rape? As long as its not happening here, I don't care." We should do whatever it takes to stop this kind of thing. You don't see what's really happening Africa on the news too much, mainly because you can't show it on TV, because its too gruesome.

And blaming this on Europe, what good does that really do?

P.S. In regards to Kenya, check out the Obama-Odinga link.

So if a good amount of the blame for all of Africa's woes is due to Europe's callous establishment of countries with no consideration given to native tribal distribution - What would happen if we just let them split into whatever demarcation they wanted?

In other words if Tutsis want to live in X, then let'em. If they butt heads against Hutus or whoever wants X for themselves, so be it, let'em fight/hash it out for themselves.

I mean the continent's already mired in wars and massacres and grinding poverty, religious extremism, female circumcision, child rape, etc. - just let'em do to themselves what they want.

Luckily no one over there is nuclear (right?) and the access to any really scary bio-agents is probably low - so the possibility of any really bad spillover effects of their nonsense to the outside world is as low as it'll ever be - so let'em do what they gotta do.

Additionally, we cannot take their refugees. If their grand plans causes hundreds of millions to uproot and flee, the warring factions will have to deal with their mess.

The millions of refugees may also come to realize that they number in the millions and that such a large mass of humanity can carry immense political/martial/economic might.

What do y'all think?