Sunday, December 4, 2011
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Dinesh D’Souza’s Sociopathic Fundamentalism.
At its core, fundamentalism is an uncontrollable quest for political power. Fundamentalists are individuals who are highly offended when the rights they themselves enjoy are extended to others. To be able to deny others their fundamental human rights, the fundamentalist needs power, lots and lots of it. Most fundamentalists really prefer a dictatorship because it presents them with greater opportunity to practice oppression. In a democracy, because the practice of universal adult suffrage where the rich and poor have only one vote makes it almost impossible to be blatantly oppressive, oppression is carried out in a more nuanced manner and the effort to manipulate and marginalize others requires a lot of creativity. The fundamentalists’ most creative approach is to engage in a lot of religious moralizing to give the appearance of seeking the common good. This façade of morality confuses the unwary and makes them believe the fundamentalist is fighting their cause, when in reality the fundamentalist is their worst enemy. This is the deceptive manner by which fundamentalists gain the political power they need to carry out their acts of oppression. Dinesh D’Souza, who just wrote a hate piece in Forbes Magazine titled "How Obama Thinks," which is about President Obama’s supposed “anti-colonial roots,” is one such fundamentalist, but with a different and darker side.
Dinesh D’Souza is a fundamentalist of a different and more vicious persuasion, and he makes no effort to be nuanced in his promotion of oppression. He is one who is not ashamed to be an oppressor and he makes no effort to hide his love of oppression of those he considers as “lesser” or “other.” He loves oppression of others and is proud to admit it. How else does one explain his defense of colonialism which not only victimized Third World countries, but even the great America has been a victim of colonialism, or has Dinesh D’souza forgotten the Revolutionary War? Has he forgotten America’s Declaration of Independence? Does he not understand that the Declaration of Independence means independence from British oppression and colonialism? So in Dinesh D’Souza’s universe, anything anti-colonial is bad, and anything that is African anti-colonialism is even worse. He certainly doesn’t think that Africans deserve any freedom. So in one fell swoop he smears everyone who has ever fought for their freedom from colonialism and oppression, and the list includes America, and manages to denigrate Africa and Africans at the same time.
He accuses Obama of not having the American dream; that his vision does not square with that of the founding fathers. But it is he Dinesh Dsouza who does not subscribe to the American dream of freedom to become all that you can be. It is he who holds to the sick ideal that the colonialism is the greatest good. Has he never heard of Patrick Henry who said, concerning the fight for independence from colonial England, “Give me liberty, or give me death!?” He was a founding father. For an American who is originally a native of India, a nation which experienced some of the worst evils under British colonialism, where Indians were routinely subjected to murders and massacres bordering on genocide, it is extremely difficult to understand his romance with colonialism. As an oppressor, he appears to be of the mindset that his native country’s independence and by implication America’s independence from Britain is a bad thing. It’s a sad day indeed when the oppressed turns oppressor, but oppressors and fundamentalists exist everywhere. They are in all cultures and in every country. Dinesh D’souza ia a third world, third rate oppressor who is eager to demonstrate his love of oppression to his current masters by sanitizing and revising their history of oppression. He obviously has found one such master in Newt Gingrich, who surprise, surprise, happens to wholeheartedly agree with the inane vituperations of Dinesh D’Souza.
In his Forbes article, which took sleaze to a new low, Dinesh D’Souza digs deep into the gutter to “expose” phony connections between President’s Obama’s views on colonialism and those of his (Obama’s) father, whom he hardly knew. He then runs with his phony connections and weaves a mind-bending plot thick with innuendo, untruths and downright lies. Talking about the article on her show, Diane Rehm of NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show said in her Friday News Roundup of September 17, 2010 that, “Nothing has turned my stomach so much in recent years as reading that article.” Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post described the article as “scurrilous.” The dictionary defines scurrilous as “grossly or obscenely abusive or defamatory,” and “using such language as only the license of a buffoon can warrant.” Dinesh D’souza is a big buffoon and he has demonstrated his buffoonery by his scurrilous article.
Like his fellow travelers in the fundamentalist circuit, freedom is anathema, especially when sought by those they consider lesser creatures. That is why after the Haiti earthquake, Pat Robertson declared that it was tantamount to making a pact with the Devil for the Haitians to rid themselves of enslavement by the French. It is the very reason why a hate group like the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) is filing a lawsuit to deny peace-loving Muslims the right to build an interfaith center near ground zero. Only a fundamentalist organization like the ACLJ would subject the judicial process to the peculiar abuse of using the law to deny fellow Americans their fundamental human rights of freedom of association and worship, which includes the freedom to have a center that has already been approved by all relevant and appropriate authorities. What do the fundamentalists really want? If they had the power to do it right now they would intern all peace-loving American Muslims the same way they interned peace-loving Japanese Americans during the Second World War, and the reason they are so angry is because they are unable to carry out their acts of oppression. Their actions prove this fact, and this is the very reason that fundamentalists crave power at all costs.
When these conservatives perpetrate their acts of foolishness, it would be nice if the administration could call them out directly once in a while, because when they don’t and instead embark on a campaign to assign blame to the peripheral actors in the dram, it presents an appearance of weakness and fear which emboldens the evildoers. As it was in the case of Shirley Sherrod, when this administration curiously blamed the media for the deeds of Andrew Breitbart, so it is in this case where the administration, once again, is blaming the media, this time Forbes Magazine for the evils of Dinesh D’Souza’s article. Why is Dinesh D’Souza not taken to task for his own article? Why was Andrew Breitbart not take to task for the malicious editing that produced the distorted Shirley Sherrod video? And why have Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich not been called out directly for the evils they have done and continue to do.
It is not the responsibility of the media to fight the administration’s battles. The media cannot be the opponents of any political party. They simply serve as an echo chamber to promote the views that are in the market place. The reason we have two political parties it so that each can promote its own ideas of governance and show the electorate why its own ideas are superior. When one side is assiduously unwilling to do its part, we get the exasperating scenario that currently exists where all we hear is one lone, unopposed viewpoint. That’s the reason the Republicans are running away with victory while remaining the most unattractive political group in the minds of voters. When a president cannot call a spade a spade, something’s wrong. When a president’s instinctive response to the antics of an oppressor is to immediately go into appeasement mode, then something is desperately wrong.
Dinesh D’Souza is a fundamentalist of a different and more vicious persuasion, and he makes no effort to be nuanced in his promotion of oppression. He is one who is not ashamed to be an oppressor and he makes no effort to hide his love of oppression of those he considers as “lesser” or “other.” He loves oppression of others and is proud to admit it. How else does one explain his defense of colonialism which not only victimized Third World countries, but even the great America has been a victim of colonialism, or has Dinesh D’souza forgotten the Revolutionary War? Has he forgotten America’s Declaration of Independence? Does he not understand that the Declaration of Independence means independence from British oppression and colonialism? So in Dinesh D’Souza’s universe, anything anti-colonial is bad, and anything that is African anti-colonialism is even worse. He certainly doesn’t think that Africans deserve any freedom. So in one fell swoop he smears everyone who has ever fought for their freedom from colonialism and oppression, and the list includes America, and manages to denigrate Africa and Africans at the same time.
He accuses Obama of not having the American dream; that his vision does not square with that of the founding fathers. But it is he Dinesh Dsouza who does not subscribe to the American dream of freedom to become all that you can be. It is he who holds to the sick ideal that the colonialism is the greatest good. Has he never heard of Patrick Henry who said, concerning the fight for independence from colonial England, “Give me liberty, or give me death!?” He was a founding father. For an American who is originally a native of India, a nation which experienced some of the worst evils under British colonialism, where Indians were routinely subjected to murders and massacres bordering on genocide, it is extremely difficult to understand his romance with colonialism. As an oppressor, he appears to be of the mindset that his native country’s independence and by implication America’s independence from Britain is a bad thing. It’s a sad day indeed when the oppressed turns oppressor, but oppressors and fundamentalists exist everywhere. They are in all cultures and in every country. Dinesh D’souza ia a third world, third rate oppressor who is eager to demonstrate his love of oppression to his current masters by sanitizing and revising their history of oppression. He obviously has found one such master in Newt Gingrich, who surprise, surprise, happens to wholeheartedly agree with the inane vituperations of Dinesh D’Souza.
In his Forbes article, which took sleaze to a new low, Dinesh D’Souza digs deep into the gutter to “expose” phony connections between President’s Obama’s views on colonialism and those of his (Obama’s) father, whom he hardly knew. He then runs with his phony connections and weaves a mind-bending plot thick with innuendo, untruths and downright lies. Talking about the article on her show, Diane Rehm of NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show said in her Friday News Roundup of September 17, 2010 that, “Nothing has turned my stomach so much in recent years as reading that article.” Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post described the article as “scurrilous.” The dictionary defines scurrilous as “grossly or obscenely abusive or defamatory,” and “using such language as only the license of a buffoon can warrant.” Dinesh D’souza is a big buffoon and he has demonstrated his buffoonery by his scurrilous article.
Like his fellow travelers in the fundamentalist circuit, freedom is anathema, especially when sought by those they consider lesser creatures. That is why after the Haiti earthquake, Pat Robertson declared that it was tantamount to making a pact with the Devil for the Haitians to rid themselves of enslavement by the French. It is the very reason why a hate group like the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) is filing a lawsuit to deny peace-loving Muslims the right to build an interfaith center near ground zero. Only a fundamentalist organization like the ACLJ would subject the judicial process to the peculiar abuse of using the law to deny fellow Americans their fundamental human rights of freedom of association and worship, which includes the freedom to have a center that has already been approved by all relevant and appropriate authorities. What do the fundamentalists really want? If they had the power to do it right now they would intern all peace-loving American Muslims the same way they interned peace-loving Japanese Americans during the Second World War, and the reason they are so angry is because they are unable to carry out their acts of oppression. Their actions prove this fact, and this is the very reason that fundamentalists crave power at all costs.
When these conservatives perpetrate their acts of foolishness, it would be nice if the administration could call them out directly once in a while, because when they don’t and instead embark on a campaign to assign blame to the peripheral actors in the dram, it presents an appearance of weakness and fear which emboldens the evildoers. As it was in the case of Shirley Sherrod, when this administration curiously blamed the media for the deeds of Andrew Breitbart, so it is in this case where the administration, once again, is blaming the media, this time Forbes Magazine for the evils of Dinesh D’Souza’s article. Why is Dinesh D’Souza not taken to task for his own article? Why was Andrew Breitbart not take to task for the malicious editing that produced the distorted Shirley Sherrod video? And why have Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich not been called out directly for the evils they have done and continue to do.
It is not the responsibility of the media to fight the administration’s battles. The media cannot be the opponents of any political party. They simply serve as an echo chamber to promote the views that are in the market place. The reason we have two political parties it so that each can promote its own ideas of governance and show the electorate why its own ideas are superior. When one side is assiduously unwilling to do its part, we get the exasperating scenario that currently exists where all we hear is one lone, unopposed viewpoint. That’s the reason the Republicans are running away with victory while remaining the most unattractive political group in the minds of voters. When a president cannot call a spade a spade, something’s wrong. When a president’s instinctive response to the antics of an oppressor is to immediately go into appeasement mode, then something is desperately wrong.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
The Father who became a Hero: Acknowledging the Heroic Actions of Alhaji Umar Mutallab, Father of Christmas Day Underwear Bomber.
While there is the ungodliness that hides in plain sight, there is godliness in all kinds of hidden places. Just as a tree is known by its fruit, a godly man should be known by his godly actions. Such is the case with Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, father of The Christmas Day underwear bomber and terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. If the father is to be judged by the actions he took regarding his son, it is safe to say that he acted in a godly and heroic manner. And if this is the pattern of his life, and we do not yet have any reason to think otherwise, then it appears fair to surmise that the father is a godly man and an authentic African hero, whose part in the fight against extremism deserves to be acknowledged.
Sometimes, because we live in a three-dimensional world, we are unable to firmly grasp the intangible factors that are occasionally decisive in determining success or failure in life’s events. There is always an intangible, spiritual, or mystical part of any venture that could sometimes prove critical in a project’s success or failure, and it is possible that this father’s opposition his son’s nefarious activities may have prevented the ignited underwear bomb from exploding, even after the would be bomber had activated the bomb and set himself ablaze. I am sure that the father prayed that God should hinder his son from achieving any form of success in his evil intentions. It may indeed have been divine intervention that preserved all those precious lives on that airplane that fateful Christmas day.
I was born and grew up in Nigeria, and as a Christian in a country with a large Muslim population, I have had some experience with radical Muslims. In Nigeria we were used to the never-ending conflicts between radical Muslims and their Christian neighbors, and also between radical Muslims and the rest of the society, including conflicts against their fellow Muslims. These conflicts always ended in significant loss of life and property, loss of life that usually numbered in the hundreds and sometimes in the thousands (some recent clashes here and here). Such incidents are not uncommon. Contrariwise, I have lived among Muslims who were very good and decent people, who totally abhorred these acts of violence and desired nothing more than to live in peace with their fellow human beings. If the behavior of the father, Alhaji Mutallab is any indication of how he has lived his life, then he certainly numbers among those good Muslims who have no connection with radicalism.
It is important to understand that by the time the father gave information to the US embassy, his son had not yet engaged in any overt acts of terrorism. Notice that even after he received information about the possibility of his son joining up with terrorists, he had no way of knowing that his son Umaru Farouk would eventually participate in a terrorist act. He simply acted on his worst suspicions. Notice that even if he did know that there was the possibility of his son being a terrorist, he could still have chosen not to rat out his own son. But he did. Acting on nothing more than a whim, even one as flimsy as an unusual telephone call from his estranged son, he immediately went to the American authorities and gave them all the relevant information. On the merits of his actions in this regard, his courage deserves to be acknowledged. It is perhaps fitting that the father may indeed get this recognition, which is as it should be.
Contrast this case with that of Eric Rudolph, the Atlanta Olympics Park bomber and pro-life extremist. Even after he had committed his heinous crime – the Olympic Park bomb killed at least one person and injured over one hundred – he remained a fugitive from justice for a considerable length of time, fully aided and abetted by his supporters in the pro-life movement. It was only by a stroke of luck that he was eventually captured and brought to justice, and if his supporters in the pro-life movement had their way, this hero of theirs would never have been apprehended. But it is the same people who are now telling us why we should not have read Abdulmutallab any Miranda rights, who worked overtime to protect Eric Rudolph while he was a fugitive from justice. These are the same people working relentlessly to undermine America from within and without.
A word in passing – it is unfortunate that the American Intelligence agencies failed America and the world once again, like they have done on so many occasions. For the CIA, it appears that while they are very effective at being used by American conservatives to destabilize the governments of other nations, working hard to protect Americans is beyond their competence. After living and breathing the Cold War mindset for so long, they seem considerably limited in their capacity to provide adequate security for American citizens.
But as happy as we are that this near tragedy had a happy ending, I am unable to fully rejoice because subsequent developments reveal that the omens are still not good. After the event, a poll found that 58% of Americans would like to have the Christmas Day Bomber water-boarded (See here). Newt Gingrich would like a return to racial profiling (here). The same Newt Gingrich who called Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor a racist. How racial profiling would have prevented this attack is difficult to understand, but American conservatives never miss any opportunity to act out their prejudices of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, xenophobia, religious bigotry and all manner of oppressive tendencies. Indeed it was profiling that led to the CIA and intelligence agencies refusing to take the threat seriously in the first place. They were so busy concentrating on Middle Eastern and other “common” terrorist hotbeds that they refused to use the information that the father of the bomber gave to them. The reason Abdulmutallab was missed was because Nigeria had never been on the terrorist radar, according to the profiling at the time. They forgot that it is not through profiling that you catch the bad guys, but by doing the long, hard, tedious work of intelligence and information analysis.
One voice of reason I have heard in all of this was that of Cynthia Tucker of Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) who said on This Week with George Stephanopoulos that the father would not have been forthcoming with information if he expected the US authorities to torture his son (See here). Key quote:
This is the voice of reason. But instead of a voice of reason, we are having the conservatives returning to some of the very tendencies that created the problem of terrorism in the first place, insisting on oppressing those they want to oppress. A word about Newt Gingrich, if it was ever possible to have a Department of Idiocy, Newt Gingrich would have been a leading candidate to head it. It is indeed my hope, and the hope of people all over the world who have been watching helplessly as American conservatives put America in a vice-grip that is gradually destroying this country, that American liberals will exercise their job description, and rise up to fulfill their destiny and rescue America from this slide into decay.
Sometimes, because we live in a three-dimensional world, we are unable to firmly grasp the intangible factors that are occasionally decisive in determining success or failure in life’s events. There is always an intangible, spiritual, or mystical part of any venture that could sometimes prove critical in a project’s success or failure, and it is possible that this father’s opposition his son’s nefarious activities may have prevented the ignited underwear bomb from exploding, even after the would be bomber had activated the bomb and set himself ablaze. I am sure that the father prayed that God should hinder his son from achieving any form of success in his evil intentions. It may indeed have been divine intervention that preserved all those precious lives on that airplane that fateful Christmas day.
I was born and grew up in Nigeria, and as a Christian in a country with a large Muslim population, I have had some experience with radical Muslims. In Nigeria we were used to the never-ending conflicts between radical Muslims and their Christian neighbors, and also between radical Muslims and the rest of the society, including conflicts against their fellow Muslims. These conflicts always ended in significant loss of life and property, loss of life that usually numbered in the hundreds and sometimes in the thousands (some recent clashes here and here). Such incidents are not uncommon. Contrariwise, I have lived among Muslims who were very good and decent people, who totally abhorred these acts of violence and desired nothing more than to live in peace with their fellow human beings. If the behavior of the father, Alhaji Mutallab is any indication of how he has lived his life, then he certainly numbers among those good Muslims who have no connection with radicalism.
It is important to understand that by the time the father gave information to the US embassy, his son had not yet engaged in any overt acts of terrorism. Notice that even after he received information about the possibility of his son joining up with terrorists, he had no way of knowing that his son Umaru Farouk would eventually participate in a terrorist act. He simply acted on his worst suspicions. Notice that even if he did know that there was the possibility of his son being a terrorist, he could still have chosen not to rat out his own son. But he did. Acting on nothing more than a whim, even one as flimsy as an unusual telephone call from his estranged son, he immediately went to the American authorities and gave them all the relevant information. On the merits of his actions in this regard, his courage deserves to be acknowledged. It is perhaps fitting that the father may indeed get this recognition, which is as it should be.
Contrast this case with that of Eric Rudolph, the Atlanta Olympics Park bomber and pro-life extremist. Even after he had committed his heinous crime – the Olympic Park bomb killed at least one person and injured over one hundred – he remained a fugitive from justice for a considerable length of time, fully aided and abetted by his supporters in the pro-life movement. It was only by a stroke of luck that he was eventually captured and brought to justice, and if his supporters in the pro-life movement had their way, this hero of theirs would never have been apprehended. But it is the same people who are now telling us why we should not have read Abdulmutallab any Miranda rights, who worked overtime to protect Eric Rudolph while he was a fugitive from justice. These are the same people working relentlessly to undermine America from within and without.
A word in passing – it is unfortunate that the American Intelligence agencies failed America and the world once again, like they have done on so many occasions. For the CIA, it appears that while they are very effective at being used by American conservatives to destabilize the governments of other nations, working hard to protect Americans is beyond their competence. After living and breathing the Cold War mindset for so long, they seem considerably limited in their capacity to provide adequate security for American citizens.
But as happy as we are that this near tragedy had a happy ending, I am unable to fully rejoice because subsequent developments reveal that the omens are still not good. After the event, a poll found that 58% of Americans would like to have the Christmas Day Bomber water-boarded (See here). Newt Gingrich would like a return to racial profiling (here). The same Newt Gingrich who called Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor a racist. How racial profiling would have prevented this attack is difficult to understand, but American conservatives never miss any opportunity to act out their prejudices of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, xenophobia, religious bigotry and all manner of oppressive tendencies. Indeed it was profiling that led to the CIA and intelligence agencies refusing to take the threat seriously in the first place. They were so busy concentrating on Middle Eastern and other “common” terrorist hotbeds that they refused to use the information that the father of the bomber gave to them. The reason Abdulmutallab was missed was because Nigeria had never been on the terrorist radar, according to the profiling at the time. They forgot that it is not through profiling that you catch the bad guys, but by doing the long, hard, tedious work of intelligence and information analysis.
One voice of reason I have heard in all of this was that of Cynthia Tucker of Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) who said on This Week with George Stephanopoulos that the father would not have been forthcoming with information if he expected the US authorities to torture his son (See here). Key quote:
“I have to disagree with George (i.e. George Will) on two of his points. The first is, yes, they had millions of dots to connect. There was a failure of common sense here. How many times does a father who is prominent, who is credible, go into an embassy and say, “I’m worried about my son?” He used two magic words, extremism and Yemen. That should have immediately moved Abdulmutallab onto the top of every watch list we have. The one with half a million people, the one with a hundred people if there is such a watch list. The other thing I disagree about is this notion of not trying Abdulmutallab in a civilian court. President Obama is handling him just as President Bush handled Richard Reed. That’s the right thing to do. We should follow the rule of law, because it helps us to get those intelligence tips. Would this father have walked into an American Embassy and given up his son if he thought he would be shipped off to some black site and tortured? I don’t think so.” (Italics added)
This is the voice of reason. But instead of a voice of reason, we are having the conservatives returning to some of the very tendencies that created the problem of terrorism in the first place, insisting on oppressing those they want to oppress. A word about Newt Gingrich, if it was ever possible to have a Department of Idiocy, Newt Gingrich would have been a leading candidate to head it. It is indeed my hope, and the hope of people all over the world who have been watching helplessly as American conservatives put America in a vice-grip that is gradually destroying this country, that American liberals will exercise their job description, and rise up to fulfill their destiny and rescue America from this slide into decay.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Dead Aid or Death Sentence? Why Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid could be a Death Sentence for Africa.
In her book, Dead Aid: Why Aid is not Working and how there is a Better Way for Africa, African economist and author, Dr. Dambisa Moyo presumptuously declares that Africa’s present economic woes are the direct result of financial aid that Africa has received from the West, long before and since attaining independence from the colonial powers. She likens this aid to a form of drug addiction and states:
Ms. Moyo concludes that for Africa to develop, all economic aid should be discontinued forthwith, or at the latest, over the next few years, certainly not more than five.
The thinking that informs her worldview appears to be, “Everyman for himself, God for us all.” For those like her who are fortunate enough in this life, this philosophy may well apply, but not every African has a doctorate degree, or has parents who have doctorate degrees. In fact, in many parts of Africa, having a secondary school education is a considerable achievement. There are those who think that Africa contributes little or nothing to the world’s economy and this backhanded swipe is their indirect way of expressing contempt for what they perceive as Africa’s lack of performance. Their true intention is to ensure that Africa is denied any help whatsoever, and these intentions are couched in grand statements such as, “We don’t want your pity,” or “We can do it ourselves,” or other similar statements. We have heard these kinds of statements before, they mean nothing. The truth is, we live in an interdependent world, and no matter how much we may consider the contributions from certain parts of the world as inconsequential, we still need one another, and when we help one another we all do well. When we are selfish, we all lose.
That is the very reason even the big American banks got “bailed out” in the current global economic crisis, despite the fact that these banks engaged in questionable banking activities that caused the crisis in the first instance; from questionable financial activities to creating what was essentially a housing ponzi scheme, as well as other dubious activities, it was nothing but sheer greed. The worst part was that unsuspecting home buyers and investors were lured into schemes that resulted in these individuals’ financial ruin, while the banks themselves raked in ungodly profits, until the bottom fell out from under them. United States Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said the US government had to bail out the banks that were considered “too big to fail” because of fear of a financial collapse that could have equaled or surpassed the Great Depression. Ms. Moyo should be well advised to take a page out of the Bernanke playbook. Helping those in difficulty for the good of all is not a crime, even in this case where those receiving the help engaged in activities that bordered on criminality. And helping those in dire straits largely through no fault of theirs should be considered a real virtue. It was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who in 1937 said, concerning the economic crisis that led to the Great Depression, “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals. We now know that it is also bad economics.”
The basis for Dead Aid is heedless self-interest. It is bad morals. It is also bad economics. While there are those who might find Ms. Moyo’s views attractive, the very thought that stopping all economic aid to Africa would usher in a new period of prosperity is totally repugnant with common sense. Particular attention should be given to the above quote from the book, because it is emblematic of the book’s tone and tenor. Whatever message she is trying to convey, it is delivered with a level of insensitivity bordering on callousness that is hard to comprehend. The problem with the book is not just its insensitivity, it is also that its policy prescriptions are based on fuzzy math, and even fuzzier economic analysis. Its reasoning is remarkably superficial, and there is near-total ignorance of the fact that politics and economics are inextricably bound, and that every nation’s economic performance is directly correlated with its social and political history.
For instance, she says that Africa’s political situation may not necessarily benefit from democratically elected governance. As a solution she recommends a “benevolent dictatorship,” and for an example of a benevolent dictator, she names Augusto Pinochet. One may ask Augusto Who? The same Augusto Pinochet, former military dictator of Chile. It is a baffling choice. Augusto Pinochet has been described by Chalmers Johnson, former CIA consultant and author of the book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (American Empire Project), as “probably the most odious dictator (5:00 minutes into video, see transcript also) on either side in the cold war.” As a former CIA consultant, Chalmers Johnson should know, and he reveals in the linked C-Span video that it was the CIA-backed coup that helped overthrow Chile’s democratically elected government of Salvadore Allende on September 11, 1973 and installed Augusto Pinochet as military dictator. During his regime, Augusto Pinochet introduced death squads under whose clandestine operations thousands of Chileans simply disappeared, vanished, never to be heard from again by their friends, families, and loved ones. This was the man who by the time he died in 2006, had over 300 criminal cases pending against him, for crimes he committed while in office as Chile’s leader.
And so in Dambisa Moyo’s vision for Africa, what we need is for Augusto Pinochet-type dictators to bestride the African landscape, wreaking untold havoc on longsuffering Africans, as if we have not had enough of that already. Maybe Dambisa Moyo is right. Maybe what we really need in Africa – since according to her we are not yet deserving of fully functioning democratic governments – are Pinochet-type dictators who will turn us into the proverbial sacrificial lambs and make some of us disappear so that economic salvation can rain down on us like manna from above, that is, if we survive the death squads long enough to enjoy the benefits of this great benevolence! Perhaps that is the only way we will be ushered into the promised land of economic prosperity. And the question that should automatically follow becomes, as she herself asks in her book, “Who will bell the cat?” Who will be the first to go? Since some of us must disappear, how many will have to make the ultimate sacrifice that the rest may prosper?
This would all be immensely laughable if it were not so dangerous. The truth is, the very term “benevolent dictator” is an oxymoron, and for anyone to believe that this is the way to achieve economic success is really the quintessence of naïveté. There is no such person in human history for the simple reason that dictators are never benevolent. We describe people as dictators usually because we find their actions malevolent, not benevolent. It is therefore utterly naïve to believe that there are those who can be dictators and be benevolent at the same time. If in doubt, take a look at all the dictators already firmly ensconced in Africa, and show the world a benevolent one among them. This recommendation of hers is again one of the many problematic ideas in her book.
Niall Ferguson, who wrote the foreword to her book, enthusiastically endorses the idea of a “benevolent dictator,” as well as her other policy recommendations for Africa. Together they mercilessly mock the good faith efforts of Bob Gerdof and rock musician Bono; men who have been tireless in their efforts to promote development and reduce hunger, poverty and suffering on the African continent, a totally selfless effort, for which they receive no personal benefits whatsoever. In his foreword, Ferguson states with patronizing irony that Africans, not Europeans should be speaking for Africans. But he, Ferguson goes ahead to speak for us anyway, stating that we should all listen to Dambisa Moyo, and that reading Dead Aid left him “wanting a lot more Moyo and a lot less Bono.” Well maybe Ferguson should take his own advice and not speak for Africa. Maybe he should be well advised that we Africans know that not all Europeans are enemies of Africa, just as not all Africans are Africa’s friends. As an African, I feel a stronger bond of kinship with the European Bono, than with the African Moyo.
At any rate, Niall Ferguson is no economist. He is a historian who engages in a lot of historical revisionism, arguing that British colonialism and imperialism were good for the world, especially the Third World. This, after British colonial governments engaged in massacres against their former colonies, in places as far apart as Kenya and India. (10:00 minutes into video). All this occurred after the entire world, including Indians and Africans, stood and fought alongside Britain to rescue it from Hitler during World War II. Niall Ferguson unapologetically insists that British imperialism was good for the world. If Niall Ferguson’s sense of history is bad, his economic advice is much worse, and economics Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman has dutifully alerted us to the truth that Ferguson’s economic analyses involve nothing more than mere posturing. Since it is impossible for me to match the eloquence of the irrepressible Paul Krugman, I will quote him verbatim. He says of Niall Ferguson, “I think he’s a poseur. I’m told that some of his straight historical work is very good. When it comes to economics, however, he hasn’t bothered to understand the basics, relying on snide comments and surface cleverness to convey the impression of wisdom. It’s all style, no comprehension of substance.” And that’s all there is to it. As they say, Ferguson’s economic knowledge boils down to nothing more than mere “sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
But this view of ending aid to Africa is nothing new. It is actually an old narrative that is steadily gaining new popularity. Paul Wolfowitz, while he was President of the World Bank, expressed similar views, insisting that African countries did not deserve to receive financial help from the World Bank because they were all corrupt, even as he was engaging in corrupt practices of his own, right within the Bank; corrupt practices that eventually led to his ouster. What is indeed possible is that some in the West, who have never believed that Africa deserves anything good, have found a willing ally in this African daughter of privilege to team up with to do their dirty work. Maybe they want to reintroduce a new era of colonialism through the back door, because in their minds colonialism never really ended but was temporarily abandoned as a matter of convenience when it was no longer feasible to continue the practice. The truth of the matter is, if aid disappears, Africa may well disappear with it. What Africa needs is not aid elimination but aid reform that will make aid work for Africa. With the ravages of hunger and poverty and disease, and in the absence of aid, we may come back in another one hundred years and find that what is left of Africa is nothing but a wasteland. Maybe that will provide justification for another round of “The Scramble for Africa.”
It is also instructive to note that the book is dedicated to Peter Bauer. Peter Thomas Bauer was a Hungarian-born British economist who taught in the London School of Economics. He was adamantly opposed to any form of economic aid and was an early proponent of the supply side, trickledown economics that promotes the idea that if the rich get even richer, some goodies will trickle down to the poor. But everywhere this economic model has been tried, nothing has ever trickled down. Instead what it always creates is a medieval economy, where the rich get super-rich, the poor become extremely poor, and the whole economy is in total chaos engendering a state of real and potential social, economic and political instability similar to what we are experiencing with the current global economic crisis. He was a darling of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, herself a strong advocate of this economic model. As Secretary of State for Education in Britain, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher became known as “Thatcher the milk snatcher,” when she implemented budget cuts that included taking away from school children, their daily ration of milk which the British schools had hitherto provided as a boost to adequate nutrition for the schoolchildren.
It is impossible to address all of Dead Aid’s factual errors in one blog article. I can only address a few here. On page 35 of her book, Dambisa Moyo writes:
But there’s more! Even the aforementioned one trillion US dollars is sheer fantasy. In a debate with John McArthur, Chief Executive of Millennium Promise on NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook (26:00 minutes into interview), McArthur took her to task on her one trillion dollar figure and pointed out to her that estimates on amounts spent so far on aid to Africa were in the region of 800 billion dollars. She dismissively replied that she did not want to “quibble” about the difference! Well, if she doesn’t want to quibble, a difference of 200 billion dollars seems like an awful lot of money, especially when we are talking about amounts between 800 billion to one trillion dollars. It would mean that her numbers are off by as much as 25 per cent! If you are going to make a case that Africa has squandered aid money, then by all means use accurate figures. If she had good intentions in using approximate figures to support her argument, there would have been no need to exaggerate her numbers in Africa’s disfavor. This would seem the honest thing to do. It is better to truthfully state your case than building an entire thesis on incorrect information.
But perhaps the worst part of that statement is that she includes the 1940s as the time that Africa started receiving aid. In the 1940s, there were no independent African nations collecting aid money, since the only independent nations then were Ethiopia and Liberia, and there is no record that any of them received aid money. The push for African nations to gain independence began after WW II when the United Nations Organization was formed. This was when the process of African independence began on a serious note. If she is including as aid, money that colonial governments used to develop railroads and other means of transportation to enable them move goods out of Africa, that would be terrible indeed because it would really be incredibly misleading and rather insulting for an African to misrepresent as aid, money that was spent by colonial powers for Africa’s exploitation.
Finally, I will discuss two more aspects of her faulty economic analysis. One example she gives is how foreign aid could kill local entrepreneurship. In her example she states that providing free mosquito nets to a malaria-infested enclave would deny local mosquito net manufacturers the ability to remain in business. This conclusion is really incredible. Did she really imply that we should allow sickness and disease to ravage a population while waiting for local manufacturers to catch up with their production, in the name of promoting local enterprise? It is impossible to find anything sensible in this kind of reasoning. Do we allow people to suffer and die from malaria to promote local entrepreneurship? Is this really the way forward for Africa that Dambisa Moyo advocates? I hope not. Providing mosquito nets is a health issue which is as important, if not more important, than the economy, because the health of a community is the wealth of its people. A responsible government can work to improve the health of its people by accepting donated free mosquito nets to reduce the prevalence of malaria in its population, and still keep local production going so that job creation is not jeopardized. It’s simply a matter of adequate planning and proper prioritization.
For instance, the US is among the world’s greatest food producers, if not the greatest, but it still imports a lot of food. This has not killed off local production. The US simply gives subsidies to its farmers to ensure that they make reasonable profits, create employment for the local economy, and maintain an acceptable level of food production, because as a responsible government it wants to be able to feed itself and not have to rely too heavily on external sources for its food supply. A government that is serious can subsidize the mosquito net producers to help them remain in business and maintain their contribution to the local economy, while still working to maintain a healthy population and workforce. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive as Dr. Moyo’s analysis seems to suggest.
Also the bond market which she so insistently recommends as the solution to Africa’s economic problems is hardly a panacea. It was the bond market that nearly ruined Latin America’s economy in the 1990’s in the infamous tequila crisis, which she mentions in her book, but without the proper economic perspective or context. The US had to bail out the Mexican economy with about 50 billion dollars in 1995 to prevent total economic collapse, precipitated by the crisis in the bond market. If relatively sophisticated economies like those that exist in Latin America could be so easily devastated by the bond market, it is not difficult to see how it could be much for worse for Africa to follow this path.
This article will continue at a later date with a statement about the sources of Africa’s economic problems and how to move forward for the future. Africa’s problems do not stem from mismanagement alone. The toxic political structure that subsists in much of Africa did not happen by accident. Much of it is the direct result of social engineering that is a relic of Western colonialism. This will be the subject of discussion in future posts.
Africa is addicted to aid. For the past sixty years it has been fed aid. Like
any addict it needs and depends on its regular fix, finding it hard, if not
impossible, to contemplate existence in an aid-less world. In Africa, the West
has found its perfect client to deal to…And like the challenges someone addicted
to drugs might face, the withdrawal is bound to be painful. Drug-taker or
drug-pusher, in the end someone has to have the courage to say no. (Dambisa
Moyo: Dead Aid, page 75)
Ms. Moyo concludes that for Africa to develop, all economic aid should be discontinued forthwith, or at the latest, over the next few years, certainly not more than five.
The thinking that informs her worldview appears to be, “Everyman for himself, God for us all.” For those like her who are fortunate enough in this life, this philosophy may well apply, but not every African has a doctorate degree, or has parents who have doctorate degrees. In fact, in many parts of Africa, having a secondary school education is a considerable achievement. There are those who think that Africa contributes little or nothing to the world’s economy and this backhanded swipe is their indirect way of expressing contempt for what they perceive as Africa’s lack of performance. Their true intention is to ensure that Africa is denied any help whatsoever, and these intentions are couched in grand statements such as, “We don’t want your pity,” or “We can do it ourselves,” or other similar statements. We have heard these kinds of statements before, they mean nothing. The truth is, we live in an interdependent world, and no matter how much we may consider the contributions from certain parts of the world as inconsequential, we still need one another, and when we help one another we all do well. When we are selfish, we all lose.
That is the very reason even the big American banks got “bailed out” in the current global economic crisis, despite the fact that these banks engaged in questionable banking activities that caused the crisis in the first instance; from questionable financial activities to creating what was essentially a housing ponzi scheme, as well as other dubious activities, it was nothing but sheer greed. The worst part was that unsuspecting home buyers and investors were lured into schemes that resulted in these individuals’ financial ruin, while the banks themselves raked in ungodly profits, until the bottom fell out from under them. United States Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said the US government had to bail out the banks that were considered “too big to fail” because of fear of a financial collapse that could have equaled or surpassed the Great Depression. Ms. Moyo should be well advised to take a page out of the Bernanke playbook. Helping those in difficulty for the good of all is not a crime, even in this case where those receiving the help engaged in activities that bordered on criminality. And helping those in dire straits largely through no fault of theirs should be considered a real virtue. It was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who in 1937 said, concerning the economic crisis that led to the Great Depression, “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals. We now know that it is also bad economics.”
The basis for Dead Aid is heedless self-interest. It is bad morals. It is also bad economics. While there are those who might find Ms. Moyo’s views attractive, the very thought that stopping all economic aid to Africa would usher in a new period of prosperity is totally repugnant with common sense. Particular attention should be given to the above quote from the book, because it is emblematic of the book’s tone and tenor. Whatever message she is trying to convey, it is delivered with a level of insensitivity bordering on callousness that is hard to comprehend. The problem with the book is not just its insensitivity, it is also that its policy prescriptions are based on fuzzy math, and even fuzzier economic analysis. Its reasoning is remarkably superficial, and there is near-total ignorance of the fact that politics and economics are inextricably bound, and that every nation’s economic performance is directly correlated with its social and political history.
For instance, she says that Africa’s political situation may not necessarily benefit from democratically elected governance. As a solution she recommends a “benevolent dictatorship,” and for an example of a benevolent dictator, she names Augusto Pinochet. One may ask Augusto Who? The same Augusto Pinochet, former military dictator of Chile. It is a baffling choice. Augusto Pinochet has been described by Chalmers Johnson, former CIA consultant and author of the book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (American Empire Project), as “probably the most odious dictator (5:00 minutes into video, see transcript also) on either side in the cold war.” As a former CIA consultant, Chalmers Johnson should know, and he reveals in the linked C-Span video that it was the CIA-backed coup that helped overthrow Chile’s democratically elected government of Salvadore Allende on September 11, 1973 and installed Augusto Pinochet as military dictator. During his regime, Augusto Pinochet introduced death squads under whose clandestine operations thousands of Chileans simply disappeared, vanished, never to be heard from again by their friends, families, and loved ones. This was the man who by the time he died in 2006, had over 300 criminal cases pending against him, for crimes he committed while in office as Chile’s leader.
And so in Dambisa Moyo’s vision for Africa, what we need is for Augusto Pinochet-type dictators to bestride the African landscape, wreaking untold havoc on longsuffering Africans, as if we have not had enough of that already. Maybe Dambisa Moyo is right. Maybe what we really need in Africa – since according to her we are not yet deserving of fully functioning democratic governments – are Pinochet-type dictators who will turn us into the proverbial sacrificial lambs and make some of us disappear so that economic salvation can rain down on us like manna from above, that is, if we survive the death squads long enough to enjoy the benefits of this great benevolence! Perhaps that is the only way we will be ushered into the promised land of economic prosperity. And the question that should automatically follow becomes, as she herself asks in her book, “Who will bell the cat?” Who will be the first to go? Since some of us must disappear, how many will have to make the ultimate sacrifice that the rest may prosper?
This would all be immensely laughable if it were not so dangerous. The truth is, the very term “benevolent dictator” is an oxymoron, and for anyone to believe that this is the way to achieve economic success is really the quintessence of naïveté. There is no such person in human history for the simple reason that dictators are never benevolent. We describe people as dictators usually because we find their actions malevolent, not benevolent. It is therefore utterly naïve to believe that there are those who can be dictators and be benevolent at the same time. If in doubt, take a look at all the dictators already firmly ensconced in Africa, and show the world a benevolent one among them. This recommendation of hers is again one of the many problematic ideas in her book.
Niall Ferguson, who wrote the foreword to her book, enthusiastically endorses the idea of a “benevolent dictator,” as well as her other policy recommendations for Africa. Together they mercilessly mock the good faith efforts of Bob Gerdof and rock musician Bono; men who have been tireless in their efforts to promote development and reduce hunger, poverty and suffering on the African continent, a totally selfless effort, for which they receive no personal benefits whatsoever. In his foreword, Ferguson states with patronizing irony that Africans, not Europeans should be speaking for Africans. But he, Ferguson goes ahead to speak for us anyway, stating that we should all listen to Dambisa Moyo, and that reading Dead Aid left him “wanting a lot more Moyo and a lot less Bono.” Well maybe Ferguson should take his own advice and not speak for Africa. Maybe he should be well advised that we Africans know that not all Europeans are enemies of Africa, just as not all Africans are Africa’s friends. As an African, I feel a stronger bond of kinship with the European Bono, than with the African Moyo.
At any rate, Niall Ferguson is no economist. He is a historian who engages in a lot of historical revisionism, arguing that British colonialism and imperialism were good for the world, especially the Third World. This, after British colonial governments engaged in massacres against their former colonies, in places as far apart as Kenya and India. (10:00 minutes into video). All this occurred after the entire world, including Indians and Africans, stood and fought alongside Britain to rescue it from Hitler during World War II. Niall Ferguson unapologetically insists that British imperialism was good for the world. If Niall Ferguson’s sense of history is bad, his economic advice is much worse, and economics Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman has dutifully alerted us to the truth that Ferguson’s economic analyses involve nothing more than mere posturing. Since it is impossible for me to match the eloquence of the irrepressible Paul Krugman, I will quote him verbatim. He says of Niall Ferguson, “I think he’s a poseur. I’m told that some of his straight historical work is very good. When it comes to economics, however, he hasn’t bothered to understand the basics, relying on snide comments and surface cleverness to convey the impression of wisdom. It’s all style, no comprehension of substance.” And that’s all there is to it. As they say, Ferguson’s economic knowledge boils down to nothing more than mere “sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
But this view of ending aid to Africa is nothing new. It is actually an old narrative that is steadily gaining new popularity. Paul Wolfowitz, while he was President of the World Bank, expressed similar views, insisting that African countries did not deserve to receive financial help from the World Bank because they were all corrupt, even as he was engaging in corrupt practices of his own, right within the Bank; corrupt practices that eventually led to his ouster. What is indeed possible is that some in the West, who have never believed that Africa deserves anything good, have found a willing ally in this African daughter of privilege to team up with to do their dirty work. Maybe they want to reintroduce a new era of colonialism through the back door, because in their minds colonialism never really ended but was temporarily abandoned as a matter of convenience when it was no longer feasible to continue the practice. The truth of the matter is, if aid disappears, Africa may well disappear with it. What Africa needs is not aid elimination but aid reform that will make aid work for Africa. With the ravages of hunger and poverty and disease, and in the absence of aid, we may come back in another one hundred years and find that what is left of Africa is nothing but a wasteland. Maybe that will provide justification for another round of “The Scramble for Africa.”
It is also instructive to note that the book is dedicated to Peter Bauer. Peter Thomas Bauer was a Hungarian-born British economist who taught in the London School of Economics. He was adamantly opposed to any form of economic aid and was an early proponent of the supply side, trickledown economics that promotes the idea that if the rich get even richer, some goodies will trickle down to the poor. But everywhere this economic model has been tried, nothing has ever trickled down. Instead what it always creates is a medieval economy, where the rich get super-rich, the poor become extremely poor, and the whole economy is in total chaos engendering a state of real and potential social, economic and political instability similar to what we are experiencing with the current global economic crisis. He was a darling of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, herself a strong advocate of this economic model. As Secretary of State for Education in Britain, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher became known as “Thatcher the milk snatcher,” when she implemented budget cuts that included taking away from school children, their daily ration of milk which the British schools had hitherto provided as a boost to adequate nutrition for the schoolchildren.
It is impossible to address all of Dead Aid’s factual errors in one blog article. I can only address a few here. On page 35 of her book, Dambisa Moyo writes:
This is another of the many factual errors in the book, and this one is particularly troubling, because it is erroneous on so many levels. Whether it is due to fuzzy math or sloppy proofreading is difficult to determine. But with this particular error as with others in the book, her bias is clearly predictable. It is to unfairly stack her case against aid for Africa. Dividing one trillion dollars among the world’s over six and a half billion people does not result in “nearly US$1,000 dollars for every man, woman and child on the planet today.” The actual figure is closer to $150 each! Her numbers are off by over 500 percent!!Since the 1940s, approximately US$1 trillion of aid has been transferred
from rich countries to Africa. That is nearly US$1,000 for every man, woman
and child on the planet today. (Dead Aid, page 35).
But there’s more! Even the aforementioned one trillion US dollars is sheer fantasy. In a debate with John McArthur, Chief Executive of Millennium Promise on NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook (26:00 minutes into interview), McArthur took her to task on her one trillion dollar figure and pointed out to her that estimates on amounts spent so far on aid to Africa were in the region of 800 billion dollars. She dismissively replied that she did not want to “quibble” about the difference! Well, if she doesn’t want to quibble, a difference of 200 billion dollars seems like an awful lot of money, especially when we are talking about amounts between 800 billion to one trillion dollars. It would mean that her numbers are off by as much as 25 per cent! If you are going to make a case that Africa has squandered aid money, then by all means use accurate figures. If she had good intentions in using approximate figures to support her argument, there would have been no need to exaggerate her numbers in Africa’s disfavor. This would seem the honest thing to do. It is better to truthfully state your case than building an entire thesis on incorrect information.
But perhaps the worst part of that statement is that she includes the 1940s as the time that Africa started receiving aid. In the 1940s, there were no independent African nations collecting aid money, since the only independent nations then were Ethiopia and Liberia, and there is no record that any of them received aid money. The push for African nations to gain independence began after WW II when the United Nations Organization was formed. This was when the process of African independence began on a serious note. If she is including as aid, money that colonial governments used to develop railroads and other means of transportation to enable them move goods out of Africa, that would be terrible indeed because it would really be incredibly misleading and rather insulting for an African to misrepresent as aid, money that was spent by colonial powers for Africa’s exploitation.
Finally, I will discuss two more aspects of her faulty economic analysis. One example she gives is how foreign aid could kill local entrepreneurship. In her example she states that providing free mosquito nets to a malaria-infested enclave would deny local mosquito net manufacturers the ability to remain in business. This conclusion is really incredible. Did she really imply that we should allow sickness and disease to ravage a population while waiting for local manufacturers to catch up with their production, in the name of promoting local enterprise? It is impossible to find anything sensible in this kind of reasoning. Do we allow people to suffer and die from malaria to promote local entrepreneurship? Is this really the way forward for Africa that Dambisa Moyo advocates? I hope not. Providing mosquito nets is a health issue which is as important, if not more important, than the economy, because the health of a community is the wealth of its people. A responsible government can work to improve the health of its people by accepting donated free mosquito nets to reduce the prevalence of malaria in its population, and still keep local production going so that job creation is not jeopardized. It’s simply a matter of adequate planning and proper prioritization.
For instance, the US is among the world’s greatest food producers, if not the greatest, but it still imports a lot of food. This has not killed off local production. The US simply gives subsidies to its farmers to ensure that they make reasonable profits, create employment for the local economy, and maintain an acceptable level of food production, because as a responsible government it wants to be able to feed itself and not have to rely too heavily on external sources for its food supply. A government that is serious can subsidize the mosquito net producers to help them remain in business and maintain their contribution to the local economy, while still working to maintain a healthy population and workforce. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive as Dr. Moyo’s analysis seems to suggest.
Also the bond market which she so insistently recommends as the solution to Africa’s economic problems is hardly a panacea. It was the bond market that nearly ruined Latin America’s economy in the 1990’s in the infamous tequila crisis, which she mentions in her book, but without the proper economic perspective or context. The US had to bail out the Mexican economy with about 50 billion dollars in 1995 to prevent total economic collapse, precipitated by the crisis in the bond market. If relatively sophisticated economies like those that exist in Latin America could be so easily devastated by the bond market, it is not difficult to see how it could be much for worse for Africa to follow this path.
This article will continue at a later date with a statement about the sources of Africa’s economic problems and how to move forward for the future. Africa’s problems do not stem from mismanagement alone. The toxic political structure that subsists in much of Africa did not happen by accident. Much of it is the direct result of social engineering that is a relic of Western colonialism. This will be the subject of discussion in future posts.
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