Amina wrote:

Mali isn’t just an “African Afghanistan” but the face of a moribund capitalism.
Here’s a country in total decomposition which can offer no viable perspective to its population and to its children, many of whom, in order to survive, are manipulated or recruited by various mafias and traffickers who transforms them into soldiers and mercenaries. This is how these simple young victims of capitalist misery can become, from one day to the next, killers and cruel “apprentice hangmen”. All these youths, unemployed and those that have not worked, all those who have nothing find themselves at the mercy of all the criminal brigands thirsty for profits and blood: civilian or military “democrats”, putchists, independentists and nationalists, “jihadists” and other “people of God".

It appears that capitalism just can't leave the kids alone, or keep it's hands off them, no matter where they be. This miserable state of affairs is as true of North Wales, and highly civilized England, as it is true of Mali and other areas of Africa unfortunate enough to have hydro-carbons or diamonds or whatever, that rival bourgeois gangs - often deeply religious of course - can fight over and use to involve the kids in. An "apprentice hangman" must be a fine calling for a youth! It should stand him well in place of any alternative form of education. After all, everyone should have a skill should they not? And as deep decomposition spreads north across Africa - will it stop at the Mediterranean? - and as Jihadist civilization becomes the norm, can we look forward to a sort of restoration of Nazi and Gestapo values in Europe once again; this time courtesy of God not the Fuehrer and thus a more respectable version of that rule? Perhaps we can.

The rampant horror in Mali, brought dramatically to life in this article, illustrates what awaits us all if we are unable to bring capitalism to a halt. It appears a trend that children suffer as much as anyone as the bourgeoisie collapse - but maybe this class of insatiable exploiters were never great on the practice of morality, just on it's presentation as a part of religiosity, and it's justification for sadism on a massive scale (sadism = god's punishment). So whether you're a kid sexually abused for the satisfaction of the bourgeoisie in the "advanced" countries (is this the much-vaunted "culture of entitlement" in it's bourgeois version?) or an apprentice hangman in Africa, you have little to look forward to unless the international working class is able to bring an end to the brutal and barbarous rule of the bourgeoisie. Let's hope it can.