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United States43960 Posts
On November 24 2012 05:44 sometimesfall wrote:Show nested quote +On November 22 2012 17:03 KwarK wrote:
Things were better when we owned the damn place. If it weren't for all the anti-imperialist protests we could invade, steal 90% of the natural wealth of the country and still be doing everyone a favour. These countries ought to be among the richest in the world, even in the grips of civil war and anarchy there is still enough wealth to fund constant warfare.
Unfortunately nobody wants the bad PR involved with imperialism these days, far better to indirectly sponsor it with demand for the riches of the country while ensuring that a black guy pulls the trigger. What an absolutely absurd thing to say. British control of African colonies contributed to the subjugation and enslavement of an entire race. I'd suggest you re-evaluate your position, as it is inherently biased and lacks the comprehensive analysis of an impartial observer.
You've attempted to critique my position without understanding a single word of it and therefore failed utterly. I'm well aware of the immorality of the empire, I make that explicitly clear in every post on the subject.
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Africa is always fighting.
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just curious
anyone know if China is reacting to this or whether the fighting is anywhere near the resources in Congo that China controls?
pretty sure China wants a stable Congo to keep mining Congo's resources
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On November 24 2012 03:17 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2012 20:11 smokeyhoodoo wrote:On November 22 2012 19:38 KwarK wrote:On November 22 2012 19:34 1Dhalism wrote:
takes a special kind of ignorance to, while talking in hypotheticals, out of all possible imaginable situations to pick a murderous and oppressive regime and talk about it with such pride and affection.
There is something very wrong with you Kwark. If you have a computer you're probably indirectly complicit in the vast majority of the atrocities going on around the world. There's a reason the first world has so much money and it's not that we all just work harder than everyone else. You're right. The reason is that we have more infrastructure and machinery that enables higher productivity. We get more for the same amount of work. Sigh, it's not merely the multiplicative effect of capital investment which lies at the bottom of the disparities between the West and the Congo. It's the fact that our political science is attempting to apply a uniform model of analysis to two vastly disparate civilisations. When the Belgians annexed the Congo, they encountered a population which was much smaller than today (approximately 10 millions.) which was subjected to annual famines. This is because a mere century ago the indiginous tribes of the Congo had not even developed a system of surplus agriculture whereby they would hoard or trade excessive production through any system of economic exchange. It's senseless to talk about indirect development through investment into a foreign economy, where there is no economy to begin with. While it would be wrong to say that the indigenous congoese were lazy, they did not work on the basis of patterns which responded to what we call rational profit motives. The virtue of men was to engage in hunting and warfare, and agriculture was despised as the vocation of women or slaves. Women had to perform the back-breaking labour of tilling the infertile soil of the Congo, but distained to expand plots which would multiply their burdens. There was no common medium of exchange such as money, and thus no incentive to organise what little productive labour that existed. The hazards and violence of life in equatorial Africa is neither created by Western exploitation, nor is it within our capability to solve. People who believe that neo-liberal economic incentives are the surest way to peace are probably the same people who wonder at the foolishness of Mardonius not to have bribed the Spartans at Platea. The same Spartans, who (albeit for more complex reasons) also distained gold, lived for fighting, and distained agriculture. Nancy Mitford, writing of the wars of Louis XIV wrote flippantly that back then people didn't realise that countries could achieve far greater prosperity by living in peace rather than war. The truth is probably in the aphorism of French economist Jean-Baptise Say two centuries ago: "Whereas in France the greatest shame is to lack courage...in England it is to lack money."
Uh... none of that long random rant relates to me or what I said. I guess you felt compelled to share that information with me. Very strange post.
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Libya is in no way comparable to Congo and should not be discussed here in my opinion. Most of the oil money stays in the country btw, before and after the intervention.
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On November 23 2012 19:02 AngryMag wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2012 17:55 Maenander wrote:
I can't understand why people so often assume a prosperous Africa is not in the interests of the developed world. Some resources might become a tad more expensive, but the benefits for the world economy would far outweigh that. It's not like the fact that Australia, South Africa and Canada - all major resource exporters - are developed, independent countries hurts the large economies of the world. On the contrary: Resource exploitation is way more efficient and the generated wealth creates consumers. Canada is one of the founding members of the NATO block. Rather bully than victim in the playing field of international politics. Australia is part of the Commonwealth and in tight Alliance with the NATO via Commonwealth. South Africa's wealth was created under Apartheid on the back of the majorily black population. Very wealthy white elite, dirt poor majority. Second or third highest Gini coefficient in the world. In South Africa a very small elite organizes ressource trade with international business. In other countries this situation gets created via proxy dictators or via military force. EDIT: Just looked it up, in South Africa the average income of a white person is ten (!!!!) times higher than the average income of a black person.
What does this have to do with the core of my argument, namely that stable, prosperous countries in Africa would benefit the first world countries rather than harm them?
It's a sad fact that many economies around the world are dominated by corrupt elites.
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On November 24 2012 06:17 udgnim wrote:
just curious
anyone know if China is reacting to this or whether the fighting is anywhere near the resources in Congo that China controls?
pretty sure China wants a stable Congo to keep mining Congo's resources
Nah, China's been squeezed out of the big concessions there a while back by Freeport McMoran. Plus, China (contrary to what Westerners say) actually tend to prefer stable, somewhat non-corrupt governments as operating partners, since those governments tend to do things like build roads, keep the lights on, and keep the Chinese staff from getting kidnapped. Given that the repayment period of a typical infrastructure investment tied to a natural resource deposit is between fifteen and thirty years, and that most Chinese firms tend to build their own on-site infrastructure, most Chinese firms tend to prefer governments that are long-term stable, even if they cost more to work with in the near-term.
(Part of my duties while interning for the Chinese state bank was interacting with their stake in the China-Africa Development Fund, so I got to see firsthand the project terms involved)
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On November 24 2012 03:36 Lumi wrote:
It's pretty silly to say that "Sub-Sahara Africa is beyond hope."
Exactly. Apart from the Kivus that are in the shitter again Africa is doing better than ever. If they only figure out a good way to stop corruption they will take an even bigger leap forward. Countries like Angola, Botswana, Gabon, Ghana and Rwanda are some examples (taken "on the top of my head") of African countries on the way "up". The Malawi agricultural thingy is also worth mentioning.
As I mentioned in my previous post North Kivu was improving quite rapidly until recently. Perhaps you should just split up Congo into smaller parts and that way they can sort out their problems without some rebel group trying to take over every now and then. Unfortunately thats what started the war in Katanga.
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On November 22 2012 20:42 Slaughter wrote:Oh USA. If only Europe hadn't fucked you up so much back in the day 
fixed
User was warned for this post
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On November 24 2012 07:54 Napoleon53 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 22 2012 20:42 Slaughter wrote:Oh USA. If only Europe hadn't fucked you up so much back in the day fixed
I don't get it. Is this just some completely unrelated jab at the US, or are you trying to somehow tie in a point that relates to the relevant topic of European imperialism in Africa?
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On November 22 2012 17:03 KwarK wrote:
Things were better when we owned the damn place. If it weren't for all the anti-imperialist protests we could invade, steal 90% of the natural wealth of the country and still be doing everyone a favour. These countries ought to be among the richest in the world, even in the grips of civil war and anarchy there is still enough wealth to fund constant warfare.
Unfortunately nobody wants the bad PR involved with imperialism these days, far better to indirectly sponsor it with demand for the riches of the country while ensuring that a black guy pulls the trigger.
This is not really accurate.
Post-colonial experience always leads to civil wars between/among warlords who were kept fat and at bay during the colonial regime. The problem is unless there is assimilation by a larger country, like China-Taipei, or the social politics is developed enough in transition, colonial countries always become a loot basket for the leaders or whoever becomes is power after the colonialists have left. And this has a lot to do by the colonialist not having a post-colonial program for the states in question.
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Post-colonial experience always leads to civil wars between/among warlords who were kept fat and at bay during the colonial regime.
This is not really accurate.
You find the problem of lack of stability and endemic warfare in former colonies where lack of stability and endemic warfare were the norm before the Europeans arrived. And even some of those places didn't have post-colonial violence, or only had limited violence, or didn't have major violence until decades or centuries later (Colombia is an example), for reasons unconnected to their colonial past.
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United States43960 Posts
On November 24 2012 15:41 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +Post-colonial experience always leads to civil wars between/among warlords who were kept fat and at bay during the colonial regime. You find the problem of lack of stability and endemic warfare in former colonies where lack of stability and endemic warfare were the norm before the Europeans arrived. And even some of those places didn't have post-colonial violence, or only had limited violence, or didn't have major violence until decades or centuries later (Colombia is an example), for reasons unconnected to their colonial past.
I don't believe you can readily detach Columbia from the imperial system. Imperialism goes well beyond physical occupation and direct governing of colonies, South America was still part of the imperial system, it's just the elites there knew the game and followed the rules so you don't end up in the situation where financial interests need political interests to use military power to secure their investments. Once those elites became destabilised by the rise of communism in Latin America the normal pattern was followed, economic concerns became political concerns and the CIA become involved in proxy wars.
That the elites lasted longer before they became unable to guarantee the stability needed for western exploitation of natural resources does not alter the fundamental pattern. A fixation on the colour a country is shaded in on the map often misses the point, the economic imperialism system did not require direct control, military intervention was the result of a failure of the normal running of the system. You cannot simply detach a country from the system on a given date and then say it suffered no negative consequences.
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On November 24 2012 16:10 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 24 2012 15:41 DeepElemBlues wrote:Post-colonial experience always leads to civil wars between/among warlords who were kept fat and at bay during the colonial regime. This is not really accurate. You find the problem of lack of stability and endemic warfare in former colonies where lack of stability and endemic warfare were the norm before the Europeans arrived. And even some of those places didn't have post-colonial violence, or only had limited violence, or didn't have major violence until decades or centuries later (Colombia is an example), for reasons unconnected to their colonial past. I don't believe you can readily detach Columbia from the imperial system. Imperialism goes well beyond physical occupation and direct governing of colonies, South America was still part of the imperial system, it's just the elites there knew the game and followed the rules so you don't end up in the situation where financial interests need political interests to use military power to secure their investments. Once those elites became destabilised by the rise of communism in Latin America the normal pattern was followed, economic concerns became political concerns and the CIA become involved in proxy wars. That the elites lasted longer before they became unable to guarantee the stability needed for western exploitation of natural resources does not alter the fundamental pattern.
South America was physically occupied and directly governed for several centuries. Most countries there also gained their freedom a generation before Europe started colonizing Africa in earnest. What I'm saying is that they had a lengthy amount of time for political development both before and after European direct rule stopped, and a significant European - well Spanish and Portuguese - mixing into the populace. And so for most of them they avoided the kind of endemic warfare seen in post-colonial Africa.
Proxy wars in Latin and South America were caused by the United States not wanting to allow the Soviet Union to gain another foothold in the region after we naively believed the bullcrap Castro fed us about not being a Red. Save for popular support for Soviet puppets (or at least Soviet friends) getting a boost because of hostility against the old elite and "Yanqui imperialism," pretty unconnected to their colonial past. And even if there had never been European colonization, there would still have been an elite, susceptible to the criticisms of Marxism.
And again, my point wasn't that you can dismiss all connections between colonialism and Cold War problems or current problems in Latin and South America, it's that you can't simply say 'Oh well the violence is always inevitable because the imperialists set up a bad situation and then leave the natives drifting in the wind' because the violence was not always inevitable and the situation left behind by the imperialists was not always so bad as to be crippling for the newly free nations.
I said Colombia and nowhere else because I think the violence in Colombia was simply inevitable thanks to cocaine and other drugs. Regardless of Colombia's past, the opportunity to make a basically unlimited amount of cash off drugs would have led to instability and violence. If the FARC hadn't existed, the cartels would have had direct control over its areas of production, instead of having their own areas and also buying coca and weed from the FARC.
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EPT
