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Sunday, July 03, 2005
Our Africa problem?
Emigrant from South Africa Gideon Strauss (now, in Canada) has an interesting perspective on this, here, and a shorter and more recent post, here.
He doesn't think, um, more money -- alone, anyway -- will solve the problem . . .
Posted by Russ Kuykendall on July 3, 2005 in International Affairs | Permalink
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Canada's hodgepodge for a cause
Globe and Mail - 4 hours ago
By GUY DIXON. BARRIE, ONT. -- Concert organizer Michael Cohl was standing in the media tent after Canada's contribution to the Live 8 extravaganza Saturday, searching for words to describe the day -- beyond ...
Librano$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ cause
Words, searching for words...
Hoax, scam, corruption, phony, blah, blah, blah,...
Posted by: maz2 | 2005-07-04 10:01:38 AM
Live8 and Those Who Would Steal African Humanity
Word on the street is that Gordon Brown, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer will march with protestors in the ‘Long Walk to Justice’. So who and what precisely will they be marching against? Poverty?
This is simply an exercise in white, Western megalomania. Now that the age of empire has passed for these British Isles, now that the economic consensus will brook no extremes of the right or left variety, now that there are no great foes to contend with, there are only two extreme conditions that remain in a world that has moved to the ‘middle’: Western self aggrandizement and African suffering. To the liberals and assorted ‘put Africa right’ brigades, they exist at the centre of the moral universe. Africans shall live or die according to their wishes. Now we are to be saved, but it could be just the opposite as it has been in times past.
They will be marching to display the rude health of their souls and to confirm their power and magnanimity over the huddled, miserable wretches of Africa. The monies that they give, no doubt in the billions of dollars, will be used to maintain and extend a vast system of spiritual and material privilege. Every dollar shall confirm their superiority and the inverse inferiority of the African. And of course because they are a pragmatic people, each dollar shall be used to employ that army of aid workers who would otherwise be flipping burgers or working in retail. Statistics will be thrown about with wild abandon. Eyes will get misty at the thought of ‘30,000 children dying everyday of extreme poverty’. Pledges will be made by mouths set grimly in the emotion of the moment. The rhetoric will be high flown and every speech will include words like Humanity, Universal, We, Justice, Suffering, History, Community, Brotherhood…
These words will be used to strip Africans of their problems in the name of brotherhood. Geldof and company will lay claim to the very last thing so many Africans own: our problems. And it will be terrible and evil beyond imagining for owning your problem is at the heart of what it is to be human. It is when we wrestle and suffer and triumph over our problems that we are most human, but this alas is not to be if the soul stealers on show succeed. I do not want anyone to suffer needlessly. I would prefer everyone to live in a democratic, prosperous community that knows no war or want. But these are conditions that must be battled and struggled for; they have never arrived as a gift from a stranger. And all those who promise them have always turned out to be thieves or murderers if not both. Geldof and the Live8, the G8, these governments and the eager little, statistic spouting NGO types are thieves of African humanity.
http://www.bulletsandhoney.blogspot.com
Posted by: maz2 | 2005-07-04 10:10:37 AM
Exactly, maz2. Exactly, It is disgusting in the most vicious sense to see the display of self-glorifying flagellation carried out by those Geldorf singers and crowds; the ignorance and arrogance of the G-8 protestors; and the blatant conniving of the UN and the dictators of Africa.
The stupid, stupid songs and crowds..All gathered together in various love-ins, all busy blaming The Whites, The West, The Colonists..ignoring that those days are long past; and the corruption within Africa over the past 50 years is genuinely African. Yes -African corruption exists. Carried out by Africans, for Africans and done to Africans. No Western Evil need be involved.
So- any love fest held by some stupid socialist groupie in the West..will actually, if it raises money beyond their own fees and prestige, it will actually enable the continuance of corruption and poverty in Africa. That's right. The Geldorf Groupie Bang will enable the continuance of corruption and poverty in Africa.
Africa is, structurally, in a mess. It has to restructure itself, by itself, for itself. This is not superficial; it requires a deep structural change. Africa and Africans refuse to do this. Instead, Africans enable and permit dictators like Mugwabwe to destroy the land, destroy the farms and starve the people to death. All for the sake of power. His own power.
The same elsewhere in Africa. And - the other African countries do ...nothing.
They have to do it themselves; they have to stop the dictators; stop the corruption; give power to the people; set up proper economic and health measures...but...they won't do it.
By the way - something else that enrages me about these juvenile irresponsible and ignorant Love Fests of the West...is their personal irresponsibility. The Love-In of the Day of Useless Songs is over. What's left? Mountains and mountains and mountains..of gargage. All these caring, nurturing, sympathetic individuals have actually the mentality of three year olds. They consume, and consume..all that fast food...and drop their garbage on the ground..like a child, expecting someone else to pick up, to clean up, to nurture them.
Disgusting.
Posted by: ET | 2005-07-04 10:26:30 AM
The permalink is fixed: http://www.gideonstrauss.com/2005/07/how-africa-can-escape-poverty-if.html
Posted by: Gideon Strauss | 2005-07-04 11:09:39 AM
Not to mention the consumption of drugs during those events.
How about Haiti? Is it not a microcosm of Africa in America? Stop pouring money there.
Compare with La Martinique, La Guadeloupe.
Suggestion: transform Haiti into a French Department.
I know misionaries living in Guinea. They told me how money given to build a hydro electric power unit was diverted to people in charge and friends. And electrical power is no better than before.
Posted by: rémi houle | 2005-07-04 11:39:12 AM
ET is right about one thing: “They have to do it themselves.” It does not, however, logically follow that they have to do it BY themselves anymore than the Lebanese, Iraqis and Bosnians did. Neither did the Soviets need to gain freedom without western help, the French shake off the Nazis without American help, the Americans win their revolution without French help or the British gain parliament without church help. Yes, it is possible for outsiders to help.
ET is also right that giving money directly to African governments is more likely to buttress the ruler than empower the populace. The best aid is local aid that bypasses the government.
Posted by: Pete E | 2005-07-04 6:58:48 PM
What good can we do? Here is my prioritized list:
Free trade: Trade will give an immediate boost to African agriculture. Strong local agriculture will give Africans a buffer against those periodic famines.
It will also send money and power directly to the common people of Africa. No doubt the rulers will try to tax it back but it puts the commoners in a better position: to have money that the government will take away than to have needs and approach the government for money.
Immigration: Cretien used to tell us how Canadians did well in the immigration deal: that we gain more skilled workers than we lose*. He’s right. The flipside of this argument is that we are robbing Africa of its best and brightest. It’s a good deal for Canada. It’s a good deal for the immigrant. It’s bad news for South Africa. The humanitarian thing to do is to REDUCE economic immigration from poor countries.
(*BTW This was Cretien’s response to concerns of a brain drain to the US, which makes it disingenuous. To say Canada has a positive “intellectual balance of trade” says nothing of its “balance of trade” with the US.)
Malaria: Get western NGOs out of the way. Let the local governments choose whether DDT or mosquito nets are the most sensible way to fight.
AIDS: Work WITH the churches and imams who have the social connections on the front lines instead of against the churches. (Better yet, work through them!)
International Pressure: If the UN has a purpose, this is it. We should be hearing about the bad guys and how we know they are bad. If Canadian MPs and UN officials want to go on international junkets, let them be accountants, free market economy planners and trainers of honest police forces.
Donate to Small NGOs: These folks have their own expertise on the ground and work at the village level. Most provide long term infrastructure ((ie. wells, irrigation), training in agriculture, commerce and culture as well as emergency aid. My favorite is Canadian Food for the Hungry though I also admire World Vision and MCC. I think Canada’s best foreign aid has been the CIDA matching funds to these groups (a program that we recently cancelled).
While donations will do the least good of anything I have mentioned, they are the only good that I can do right now.
Posted by: Pete E | 2005-07-04 7:05:21 PM
"The humanitarian thing to do is to REDUCE economic immigration from poor countries." Another good reason for ending immigration; it's the humanitarian thing to do.
While the notion that African's must refrom themselves is noble, in the classical liberal sense, the point is that they are unable to make the reforms necessary. With an average IQ of 70, according to Lynn and Vanhanen, the implication for domestic and foreign policy is obvious.
http://www.vdare.com/misc/rushton_african_iq.htm
Posted by: DJ | 2005-07-05 12:30:16 AM
DJ- your racist ideology is based on Bad Science. Rushton is not a scientist but an activist, as are you, with a specific racist agenda. You simply add to his racism a fascist political nationalist agenda. But it's all the same - fallacious nonsense..filled with emotive fascist ideals of 'purity' and 'power'.
The 'Africans'...the original 'first peoples' of the earth...are the same species as everyone else. They have the same IQ. OK? So, they don't have an 'average IQ' of 70...which would put them all, on average, in the 'simple-minded realm'. They are the same as us- and that includes you.
You know zilch about cognition, about
Posted by: ET | 2005-07-05 6:39:29 AM
"your racist ideology is based on Bad Science."
Evidence please.
http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/psychology/faculty/rushtonpdfs/RavensIVb.pdf
Posted by: DJ | 2005-07-05 10:22:04 AM
DJ- you are a racist and a fascist. Neither ideology is based on, and can ever be based on, factual EVIDENCE, for both ideologies rest on non-factual beliefs. There is no evidence, ever, for dividing up the one human species, homo sapiens, into different 'intelligence gene pools'. There is simply no evidence. Don't cite Rushton as evidence. His variables, tests and conclusions are without substance or logic. Rushton ignores that intelligence is not a variable that can be mechanically deconstructed (as one can with the chemicals in a complex molecule). It is a qualitative, not a quantitative variable, and therefore, can't be reduced to a mechanical formula. Yet - he attempts to quantify the qualitative! Further, Rushton ignores that 'races' are not, and have never been, 'pure'. How does he control genetic influences from ancestral contacts? He doesn't and can't. Furthermore, Rushton, in defining intelligence as a quantitative variable rather than qualitative, ignores context and social history. So- he has his own narrow, ignorant agenda.
You know nothing of cognition and the cognitive process; you know nothing of tests for intelligence. The western IQ test is unusable for non-western educated people.
Rushton's scores of test results are inadequate as evidence of 'innate intelligence', for the variation in different scores is too low to be anything other than trivial. Got that? The variation is statistically trivial!
I'm not interested in debating with you. You are a racist and fascist. Neither ideology is ever open to reason or debate, for both ideologies are instead - emotional Beliefs, immune to reason and logic, immune to evidence - Emotional beliefs are held only because the individual finds some deep psychological need satisfied by these beliefs - namely - the superiority of self induced by racism and the hatred of others induced by racism - and the pride, the domineering control induced by fascism. Why you, psychologically, need these beliefs - is something in which I am not interested. But - you obviously do need them.
I'm not interested in your emotional need for both ideologies - So- that's it for any debate.
Posted by: ET | 2005-07-05 11:02:07 AM
It's both amusing and not just a little sad, to see the Popgun continue to reinforce all the negative stereotypes of conservatives. In addition to all the ignorant rednecks and logic-challenged schoolchildren, lately we've been witness to the out-and-out racist kook fringe.
I swear, sometimes I wonder if this site isn't just a massive Liberal Party hoax. Warren Kinsella must be laughing his ass off.
Posted by: Jim in Toronto | 2005-07-05 11:36:28 AM
But Warren Kinsella is himself a stereotype of the Liberal Trudeaupian-Chretien worshipper.
Someone who, as a Liberal, has no ability for critical thought, for reason, for a requirement for facts, no ability for analysis, no understanding of economic or political infrastructures or their history, no ethics, no moral standards, no principles...no capacity for anything other than the sophistry of relativism, and the meaningless rhetoric of 'toleration', an empty emotion further smothered within one focus - hero-worship.
That's the Liberal stereotype...and there are LOTS of them around.
Posted by: ET | 2005-07-05 12:14:03 PM
"all the ignorant rednecks "
Stereotyping and bigotry. Classy.
Posted by: jhuck | 2005-07-05 12:26:49 PM
A fascist and racist kook...no racial differences...well at least the companies good.
"Canadian police have been quietly using a controversial new genetic technology to reveal the racial background and physical appearance of criminals they are hunting, according to the Florida company that sells the test."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/freeheadlines/LAC/20050625/DNA25/national/National
Even those nasty fascists at Scotland Yard are in on the hoax. Frightfully beastly, wot?
Posted by: DJ | 2005-07-05 1:25:37 PM
ET - rather than your hysterical name calling and denunciation of IQ tests you'd be far more convincing if you actually responded to these types of studies with facts, logic and intelligent arguments, as Thomas Sowell does:
http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/bell-curve/sowell.html
"The great danger in this emotional atmosphere is that there will develop a two-tiered set of reactions--violent public outcries against the message of The Bell Curve by some, and uncritical private acceptance of it by many others, who hear no rational arguments being used against it. Both reactions are unwarranted, but not unprecedented, in the over-heated environment surrounding so many touchy social issues today."
He'd be talking to you, there.
"Empirical data from a wide variety of sources establish that even the differing educational backgrounds or socioeconomic levels of families in which individuals were raised are not as good predictors of future income, academic success, job performance ratings, or even divorce rates, as IQ scores are. It is not that IQ results are infallible, or even that correlations between IQ and these other social phenomena are high. Rather, the correlations simply tend to be higher than correlations involving other factors that might seem more relevant on the surface. Even in non-intellectual occupations, pen-and-paper tests of general mental ability produce higher correlations with future job performance than do "practical" tests of the particular skills involved in those jobs.
"In such a comprehensive study of IQ scores and their social implications, there is no way to leave out questions of intergroup differences in IQ without the absence of such a discussion being glaring evidence of moral cowardice. "
Being no moral coward himself, he wades in and provides a powerful, convincing case not that the IQ tests are invalid, as you state, but that the differences in results are much better explained by factors other than genetics. I suggest all the participants in this read would learn more by reading Sowell than by hurling insults at one another.
Posted by: Kevin Jaeger | 2005-07-05 8:47:27 PM
"Couldn't the mean of blacks move 15 points as well through environmental changes?" Maybe, but also maybe not. Sailer plots the Lynn & Vanhanen finding "In European's countries (blue dots), scores have stayed quite stable over several generations. Likewise, in black's countries (black triangles), average IQs have not gone up, and may have slightly declined. Thus, the white-black gap hasn't changed much over the decades.
My conclusion: there is no evidence that the Lynn-Flynn Effect is narrowing the white-black disparity. (Similarly, it hasn't narrowed it in the U.S.) "
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/lynn_and_flynn.htm
Sailer still holds out hope that the LF effect might work if "African countries became better governed" however that returns us to the reason for this post. It appears the only way of bringing better govn't to Africa is to re-instate European/American colonialism. Of course, that puppy won't fly. And even if it did, why would Europeans be interested?
Sowell's point about the IQ of black men & women not being of genetic origin is interesting considering the furor over Summers pronouncements at Harvard. His data purportedly shows men and women with the same average IQ, however men have a greater variance. Thus, as many women realize there are a whole bunch more dumb guys than dumb gals. However, contrarily, more really smart guys than than smart gals. The reason could still be genetic.
Posted by: DJ | 2005-07-06 11:47:57 AM
In reply to Kevin Jaeger - nothing that I have said rejects Sowell - an excellent analyst by the way - In fact, I'm saying the same thing.
I'm rejecting DJ's racist and fascist claim that ethnic groups comprise a genetic whole, with distinct genetic variables that include intelligence. I reject that - and so do the Bell Curve researchers and so does Sowell. So- what's your beef?
"First of all, Herrnstein and Murray make a clear distinction between saying that IQ is genetically inheritable among individuals in general and saying that the differences among particular groups are due to different genetic inheritances. "
Get it? Sure, IQ is differentiated between individuals - but - a group, per se, does not have a distinctive IQ as a group. That's what DJ is saying. And that's what I object to. There's absolutely no proof of this 'group-genetic-identity'- which is the basic axiom of DJ's constant iterations.
, "the empirical literature showed repeatedly that IQ and other mental tests do not predict a lower subsequent performance for minorities than the performance that in fact emerges."
Again - none of what they say is in contradiction to what I'm saying. And I see nothing wrong in my strong opposition to racism and fascism...because both function within the same perspective as DJ- namely, an assertion of a group-genetic identity. I reject that.
We just 'celebrated' the 60th anniversary of the end of WWII and its fascist racism..and are now watching other racism genocides in the Sudan. What's to celebrate about either ideology?
And Summer's Harvard announcement was not about differences in IQ, but differences in excellence in different scholastic areas. That's nothing new; it's a long held axiom that men and women DO, despite the feminist froth, think differently.
Posted by: ET | 2005-07-06 12:13:17 PM
Even Sowell admits there is a group 'mean' and suggests the "mean of blacks (a genetically identifiable group)(could )move 15 points."
Mean is defined as..."average: approximating the statistical norm or average or expected value; "the average income in New England is below that of the nation".
"But none of this saves them from the wrath of those who promote the more "politically correct" view that the tests are culturally biased and lack predictive validity for non-white minorities." Which is ET's assertion that IQ tests are biased. Sowell totally contradicts ET's position. This is the meaning of the empirical data quotation. IQ tests are a good predictor of performance.
Group-genetic identity is neither racist (The inherent belief in the superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance)nor fascist (A social and political ideology with the primary guiding principle that the state or nation is the highest priority). It is simply a strategy to defend the European Christian principles upon which this country was founded.
PM R.B. Bennett said it best..."We earnestly and sincerely believe that the civilization which we call the British civilization is the standard by which we must measure our own civilization..."
That is worth celebrating.
Summers did not talk about differing IQs; he spoke of IQ variance. Read the post.
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