“Either way, owing to these approaches of command and control, “independent” Africa has over the last 50 years pawned away much of her economic capital and today we have precious little left. Save for the politicians and the ruling party bigwigs, the rest of us have to be content with the miniscule royalty revenue earned from “our” extractive industries. It is an outrageous state of affairs, really.

As the largest repository of the world’s industrial resources, Africa has a key role to play in averting such a disaster.”

which is it – did they take everything or not?

Anyway the earth’s crust is between 10 and 100km thick and no one, not even the voracious Americans you refer to have, or in fact ever will do more than scratch it’s surface. Although the Chinese seem to be having a good go right now.

Economic imperialism is rapidly coming to an end – evident worldwide, from the guerrilla wars in Central America to the international trade treaties and currency negotiations. With the internet and other freedoms it really is a new world order compared to the dark days of colonialism. Africa can finally be hopeful of achieving true independence once more by vigilantly guarding against the corruptive influences of economic imperialism.

Placing all the blame of Africa’s economic subjugation squarely on America is unfair.
Consider that much of American foreign policy, peddled through the IMF is also dictated by European, British and other ex-colonial powers with huge economic interests in ex-colonies. Obama had the best advice for Africa – put away your begging bowls!
contd….

It in disproving this delusion (well, they have all had the ‘political kingdom’ for decades by now) that all his dictatorial followers have blindly wrecked the economic potential of Africa in favour of tribalist partisanship, vote- catching lies to the ignorant and unread and and the cult of political personality and self enrichment -as opposed to sensible economy building and rule of law competence.

I have no idea of Jeremiah’s intellectual credentials but I suggest he reads some 20C history, not issued by the ex-Soviet Union. I am not a particular pro-US person but I am passionately anti-ignorance.

The Germans were not alone in using mustard gas and flame throwers during 2 world wars. It’s called giving as good as you get. Most people on both sides of those wars would have preferred to stay at peace.

Man is dominant by nature. He is the only animal that wages wars, devises party politics, economic systems, maims, kills, cheats, holds elections, passes laws to constrain his own species, etc.

These are all forms of male domination, that no other animal uses against its own species. Where language fails, man uses force to consolidate dominion, be it in the form of tribal wars, colonial wars, world wars, the church, liberation wars, etc.

Nation-states themselves are political creations that reflect the interests of those involved in their creations. Otherwise there is one human

@ B steyn 3000 americans died on that day but payback is payback. 100000 iraqis died for this alqaeda taliban adventurism.(whats Iraq got to do with it?) Oh another 100000 died in Pakistan and afghanistan. I guess those Iraqis pakistanis and afghans would want to take revenge at some point. At that 30:1 ratio of revenge tehy need to kill a illion americans to make it even

Where I am starting to differ from you is that I fail to see the logic in this statement:

“demand a model of progress based on cooperation as opposed to competition”

You are still fighting for scraps from the table when you could be eating your own food from your own table and all it will earn you is the scorn of the one’s controlling the table. No-one likes cry-babies.

I wish Africa would wake up, stop whingeying at the “gross injustices” of “the West” and start doing some development of its own. Africa is sitting with the lion-share of world resources and a vast pool of human capital that it is not using! No-one gave the West a hand up, why should they help Africa? To exploit Africa, they have to make deals with African leaders. There is your real hipocracy, the people you should get angry with: leaders that claim to be for the people whilst selling of your birthright to the West.

The advantage of established democracies is that people’s conscience is not locked up in party political prisons. They vote according to their interests, not those of a party – which represents interests of the most powerful with a party.

Ours is the most hypocritical democracy. A party wins elections by using an organising muscle of a trade union. The unions use employee’s time and money to campaign for a political party. The employees’ themselves may not necessarily support the party, or even politics. But when they lose their job they have to join the poor, the majority.

In other words, the poor support their own poverty.

The hypocricy is that union leaders, and “political analysts” have from-time-to-time, to arrogate the right to represent the interests of the poor against their own party, on one hand, while claiming high wages, on the other.