AIDS 3

In East Asia, India and other places, there is an incredible amount of shame associated with AIDS. So it is really difficult to put a number on how many people actually have AIDS. I would guesstimate about 70,000,000 million people are living with AIDS. Contraceptives are not perfect, but they do work to prevent the spread of STD's. Also, it should be noted that oral transmission can happen also.

It is hard to say exactly how much Anglo-American and European imperialism is to be blamed for AIDS in Africa. So much about apartheid and other forms of control seems to have been swept under the rug. Even in the novels of Nadine Gordimer, one does not get a full view of apartheid. Nadine Gordimer actively fought to try to reverse the current of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa.

Anglo-Dutch imperialism tends to support the established ruling class. The terror experienced from Anglo-Dutch imperialism is psychological. Foucault mentions a pendulum between the purely physical pain the power structure afflicts on those who will not conform and the psychological pain that a society inflicts on those who will not conform. At least, this is the way that I interpret Foucault. The Middle Ages would represent the purely physical pain.

I'm sure that there were probably some mob-like officers who were hired to keep order. Most Africans could not become lawyers or be a part of the professional class. They were probably forced to work long hours for meager pay. Families lived in thatched mud huts, etc.

But those circumstances do not cause AIDS. At the same time, I think that Western nations should and ought to do something about AIDS in Africa.