Monday, May 12, 2025

conspiracy theory: save the world from global warming by keeping Africa poor

I have seen this pointed out elsewhere: The idea that raising prices for oil and other forms of energy lead to increased poverty.

the right wing conspiracy site Gateway pundit links to an article where Magette Wade lays out the details.

  

Wade highlights the hypocrisy of climate activists dictating restrictive energy policies from comfortable offices in Paris, London, and New York—policies that spur development in countries that haven't even had the chance to grow. “Africa remains poor because it lacks access to energy,” she explains. No energy means no industry. And no industry means no independence.

Most troubling, according to Wade, is that this system is enabled by African leaders themselves. “Why do the leaders of Senegal or Africa allow this to happen? For the same reason they allowed foreign aid to be the only relationship we had with the West,” she says. It’s a silent deal: African governments accept these imposed conditions and receive money, political favors, and international legitimacy—without ever being accountable to their people. The latest form of this control is called “climate aid.”  

A perverse twist on cooperation, climate aid tells African nations: “Don’t develop your own resources. Don’t use fossil fuels. And we’ll give you money.” But that money doesn’t create jobs or industry. It only finances bureaucracies and deepens dependency.  

 

 environmentalism is a two edged sword: as we see in the Philppines, the emphasis on organic farming (which is our business by the way) leads to healthier food, but it does mean a lower harvest and higher food prices. So they have to import food for the poor in the slums of Manila.

And stopping mining, which destroyed the environment because the mines were not forced to clean up their garbage, actually led to mom and pop mines, which were not reggulated at all and more prone to accidents and envirnomnetal destruction. Ditto for forestry: Stopping legal ways to harvest trees led to illegal cutting of trees (all it takes is a bribe to local authorities).

I suspect a similar problem in Africa, where those educated in the western mindset of environmentalism are unable or unwilling to see the big picture.

Sunday, May 11, 2025

what's up in the DRC?

 StrategyPage discusses the DRC conflict and possibilities of peace. StrategyPage discusses it from a historical and geopolitical point of view


an African point of view:


Thursday, May 01, 2025

Peace deal background

From HotAir, a right wing US site so it might be a bit biased in favor of Trumpieboy.

Tuesday, April 29, 2025

peace deal

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/congo-rwanda-sign-agreement-peace-economic-development-washington-sources-say-2025-04-25/


..update...

a long analysis.

lots of bitterness because this has it's roots in the Rwanda genocide, that was not stopped by the UN peacekeepers, and one that happened in open sight but Europe and Clinton refused to send in a small force that could have stopped it (most of the murders were by low level thugs). The invaders who took over the cities in the eastern DRC are called the bad guys, but one of my human rights newsletters insist they were merely intervening to protect their people who were refugees there. Like most of the news we get, it is complicated, and has it's roots in colonialism (where Europeans ruled by setting tribes who had a long history of antagaonism against each other so they could take over) and pressure from population growth, degredation of the farm lands, and of course that lovely mineral wealth. Complicated by a volcano, and disease outbreaks.

Sigh.

Both Qatar and Trumpieboy are essentially business oriented, and of course they want to develop the local valuable mineral resources. China has tried to take these over, but had made itself unpopular because (like they did here in the Philippines with Duterte) they insisted they were going to do local development in exchange for their take over, but of course they did nothing.

One doubts the US will send in their own peacekeepers, but there are professional military in some African countries who could do this, and of course, mercenaries have a long history of training locals (see what the Russian merc group is doing in Sudan, and now in other Northern African countries who threw out the French peacekeepers).

The American people will not put up with US military there: But hey if they can cause peace, set up businesses, take a cut in the profits, and make everyone rich and happy, it could work.... if the locals could forgive each other for past atrocities. (don't think this is an African thing: Think Ireland).


comments are welcome: My African work was 40 years ago, and not in this area...

Monday, April 28, 2025

how much stolen, how much went to inflated salaries

 

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Saturday, April 19, 2025

Silence on the Sudan

 
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