EFL
BY JOHN DONNELLY - The Boston Globe
BATAKAYE, Nigeria - In this village of 3,000 people, 12 cars, one college graduate and no telephones, the final push to erase polio from the earth hit a dead end....four of the village’s youngest residents, who lost the use of one or two limbs. The virus thrived here in part because of the usual obstacles to better healthcare: internal political struggles, misspent money, alleged corruption. But an unusual additional factor came into play in the hamlets along the fault line between Christians and Muslims in West Africa: Local Muslim clerics told villagers to reject the polio vaccine because it was part of an American plot.
Muslim leaders in hundreds of northern Nigerian communities limited or halted door-to-door polio immunization last year. They told millions of faithful in this Muslim-dominated region that the American government had tainted the vaccine with either infertility drugs or HIV, the virus that causes AIDS — statements later proved false by independent laboratory tests.
[ but independent labs use steel slides made by a subsidiary of Halliburton so obviously they are part of the plot ].
Some leaders admitted in interviews late last year that they never believed such a thing. But they remained silent, they said, in order to stop anything associated with the United States...
[ and because they don’t have the guts to stand up to the Imams ]
The U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, several said, had led them to believe that America wants to control the Islamic world,
[ or as the Globe would say, It’s Bush’s fault ]
and the polio vaccination effort gave them an opportunity to resist a U.S.-funded initiative.
| "So, face! How's it feel to be without a nose? Ha! (Ow!)" |
They vowed to preach against polio vaccinations as long as the United States pays for them, even though it puts their own children at risk. ’’People believe that America hates Muslims, and so whatever comes from the United States, no matter how good it is, people will reject it,’’ said Sheik Muhammed Nasir Muhammed, chief imam at the second largest mosque in Kano, the Muslim political center in northern Nigeria. ...’’What most of them are worried about now is this gulf between the Americans and the Islamic world,’’ Mabogunje said. ``To them, almost all the difficulties are caused by some Americans. It’s the only language people seem to know.’’
once again, the victims of Islam are Muslims
| No skin off my fore. If they want their kids to die or be paralyzed by polio while the rest of the world is happily moving on to battling the scrourge of obesity, let them. My sympathy meter's in the shop for overhaul. Things like this just don't seem to register. |
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