The Africa you don’t hear about… It’s all about progression 😃
(Source: journeyofelle)
"If the United States has entered an era in which mega-storms, perhaps related to climate change, are becoming the “new normal,” it will create new spending pressures at a time when federal revenues every year are falling roughly $1 trillion short of outlays. If you factor in a growing population and development in coastal areas, then storm damage is likely to become even more expensive over time."
— NBC boldly takes on the reality of balancing disaster planning with perpetual growth. Let’s embrace mainstream coverage that questions our growth patterns. (via climateadaptation)
(via climateadaptation)
The hypocrisy of western criticism is, she says, quite breathtaking. We accuse the Chinese government of meddling in free-market capitalism, clean forgetting that US farm subsidy programmes and Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy have condemned Africa’s farmers topoverty. The US is perfectly happy to take China’s money – more than $1tn worth of government bonds – yet expects the emerging markets to say: “No, we don’t want Chinese money because there’s an issue of human rights.” We complain that the Chinese are paying too much for commodities, instead of wondering whether China might in fact have grasped their true value. And we have the nerve, she marvels, to accuse China of neocolonialism, failing to understand that “the rest of the world actually thinks what China is doing is pretty damn clever”. It was the west which got rich by invading and plundering the rest of the world, whereas China is engaging with it on respectful, peaceful, generous terms.
“What the Chinese are trying to do – move a billion people out of poverty – is just an unheard-of thing in history. The fact that they have moved 300 million in 30 years is unheard of. It took Britain 156 years to double its per capita income. It took America 57 years, Germany 65 years. It’s taken the Chinese 12-and-a-half years.”
Moyo stresses more than once: “I’m an economist, not a political scientist,” and her writing is full of the maddeningly opaque jargon of commodity trading.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/jun/24/natural-resources-and-development-china
I still don’t trust the Chinese politics in Africa. But, I don’t trust the West’s politics in Africa either. Africa for the Africans.
(via theeducatedfieldnegro)
