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And NOW all are starving...well except for Mugabes cronies.
Inflation is running at 1000%....
There is not enough food to feed the people.
Funny thing is under the evil white men,there wasn't 1000% inflation and there was EXTRA food that could be sold to other impoverished nations.
Perhaps it would be appropriate at this time to borrow the famous words if Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meier, when she spoke of the Palestinians. Perhaps we could say something like "Africans will advance in security, happiness, and standard of living, as soon as the day arrives when they decide they hate the corruption and tribal violence of their neighbors MORE than they hate whites."......
First of all I said South Africa is turning itself into a first world country. There is plenty of jungle out in the united states and plenty of tigers and lions. Didn't two young men just get killed by a tiger in san francisco only a while back. In florida you can be jogging down the street and be eaten up by a alligator. Last time i check south africa has hotels, and resturants just like any major american city today.
No, you said "South Africa has turned itself into a first world country".
I am pretty sure there is no jungle in the US. Are you pulling my leg?
If you buy Esso gasoline, you put a tiger in your tank. Does that make your car a first world country or only if you park it at a five star hotel?
Last edited by Bob The Builder; 02-18-2008 at 01:57 PM..
Blaming Europeans just reinforces the theory that Africans were stupid and too stupid to realize they were being over taken by Europeans, which I find hard to believe. Clearly they were capable of rational decision in trading away slaves. Perhaps whatever was being given to them by Europeans, they thought would be more valuable to their own civilizations. They all did not operate under one unified nation.
It's also a fact people that lived on coast or major trading routes were more intelligent than those that lived in isolated areas in the center of a country.
Rather than turn this into a history argument. My point centerd on what went wrong after they were given power from colonization.
There is no "blaming" going on. It's called providing context. Contextualization is a necessity when it comes to analyzing social issues. The context that you seem to want to operate from--the social environments of African nations after colonialization--is an inherently flawed position to start from. It assumes--rather bizarrely--that the social and cultural influences of colonization suddenly dissipated when African nations won their independence. No serious scholar or researcher in African affairs could ever take such a position. Why? It represents shoddy scholarship.
If you are unwilling to discuss the present social problems facing Africa today without a socio-historical context then you are being intellectually dishonest.
The idea of redistributing the land and wealth in Southern Africa from whites to blacks sounds nice to us sitting in the US. But by that logic, a farmer in South Dakota should be forced to give up his land to the Sioux people because of past colonization,
NO!!! Either you're not understanding the discussion or you are attempting to introduce a strawman! So I'll restate my position:
The point of contention in some African countries--I'm thinking particularly of Zimbabwe--is that a very tiny minority of farmers, a group who happens to be white, own most of the farmland, therefore making it impossible for the majority of farmers, a group who happens to be black, to make any kind of living. Such a situation requires land reform.
That's not the same problem as the Sioux and South Dakota farmers. If it were then land reform should be instituted.
If your position is the US should not meddle in others affairs, which is my posistion too, that means all affairs not just white countries or black countries should be left to their own devices etc.
Hahahahahaha, that is an impossibility Capitalism is by nature imperialistic. A truth that has escaped many a poster on this thread.
SEveral species of palm do quite well in such cool rainy marine climates--among them "Trachycarpus Fortunei" (the 'windmill palm'), and a number of others.
The coast of Oregon has a number of large old palms in Coos Bay, Coquille, Reedsport, Seaside, and other locations, and I saw a real "beaut" in Edmonds, Washington (at least a 30-footer). They're not 'prominent' like in California, but they're there. On the East Coast, palms can be found at LEAST as far north as Norfolk, VA. There are even a few on Vancouver Island-it's pretty 'mild', you may know...
I'm a Palm Grower and 'know a little'. Ireland is entirely "mild' enough for MANY palm species...in its Southwest 'fringes', freezing temperatures are pretty rare. There are EVEN apparently areas of southern Switzerland where they grow, also...(such as "Lugano")
Surprises a LOT of people.... (you can "google" several sites on this info--photos, etc.)...
PS Did you know palms are just about the TOUGHEST plant around, in some ways? If I'm not mistaken, the all-time world record for a temperature change in 24 hours occurred some years ago at an oasis in Libya. The temp went from something like 24 degrees before dawn, to 126 that afternoon. Few plants could survive this, but the oasis is in a date grove. (Some palms, of course' like the coconut, can't take ANY freeze at all...so we don't have them here in CAL.)
My brother in law lives 60 miles north of Dublin, and he has huge palm trees in his backyard. No kidding! (he purchased them in Spain, had them shipped over, but they are thriving nicely)
My brother in law lives 60 miles north of Dublin, and he has huge palm trees in his backyard. No kidding! (he purchased them in Spain, had them shipped over, but they are thriving nicely)
Thanks for this 'tidbit'.....This is interesting as I'd expect that area of the island would be farthest from the mild Gulf-Stream influence. But they DO grow in some surprising places....interesting post..
NO!!! Either
The point of contention in some African countries--I'm thinking particularly of Zimbabwe--is that a very tiny minority of farmers, a group who happens to be white, own most of the farmland, therefore making it impossible for the majority of farmers, a group who happens to be black, to make any kind of living. Such a situation requires land reform.
.
This makes sense to a point---but remember the farming in Zimbabwe is highly modern and mechanized. It's like saying the US Auto industry, or the Chemical industry, is concentrated in the hands of a few "big guys", and the tiny, backyard auto maker, or chemical producer, is "cut out" of the competition. Remember some years ago in China, when they built thousands of tiny "neighborhood steel mills"? The project was a disaster, and the steel was unusable.
The point is, that if they want to "equalize" the benefits for all Zimbabweans, that's one thing...but if they want to just break up huge industrial mechanized farms into 2-acre vegetable patches, that's counterproductive---and THAT is precisely what HAS happened in many "communist takeovers". I remember in Chile, the huge dairy industry in the South (mostly run by German-Chileans) was "seized" when the communists there were FREELY elected. As a result, the Chilean dairy industry just about collapsed. Each "little guy" ran his own tiny dairy, and nothing fit together at all...
Mostly from what I hear out of Zimbabwe, it's just thugs tossing white farmers off the land (or killing them), rather than any well-planned agricultural decisions...
Communist wealth redistribution is what any country needs? History would say different. Should we do this in the US also, would that solve all of our problems?
You can't discount history in the one post and tell us to look at history in the next.
Which is it?
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