rating: +1+x  Africa (n.) A large continent that acts as a
prison for most of the world's poor black people.  Conveniently,
Africa is also very resource rich, so the combination of an
impoverished labor force with extractable mineral and natural
resources has been extremely profitable for Northern businesses
since the Arabs, and then Portuguese turned this into a global
business model.  In modern day Africa the prison walls are
carefully maintained by a cartel of foreign trade interests
backed up by political and military force, and local business
partners who run their fiefdoms with the help of military
assistance. The attitude of those outside the prison varies from
contempt to pity to mockery. There is rarely, if ever, any
discussion of the prison itself, only of the apparently self-
inflicted plight of those trapped within. So-called "foreign
aid" is largely taken to maintain the walls. Foreign loans are
stolen by the prison guards while the debt is assigned to those
inside. As for those prisoners, the lif