Poverty in Africa

Leading up to and in the wake of Live 8, there are many opinions being expressed about Africa and its rather impoverished state. Blogs have been written as we try to come to grips with this topic. In most cases we blog sincerely and to the best of our ability but without much expertise.

The following article in The Toronto Star is written by Paul Dodds who appears to be genuinely knowledgeable on this topic. Interestingly, he posits that Africa might benefit from less, not more, global interference. Here is an excerpt.

Africans grew their own food, built their own houses, healed their diseases, developed their own transportation systems and created their own art, myths and music. This involved a vast array of skills and considerable knowledge. Colonization marked a brutal disruption of all of it. Africans were taken from their villages and farms in order to work in mines and on plantations. There they learned skills required to take a subservient role in the production of goods that other people wanted.

When the supply of these natural resources failed, when European demand for the goods faltered or when a cheaper source for them was found elsewhere in the world, these industries died and Africans were faced with economic and social collapse. Africans had lost the knowledge, infrastructure and the social arrangements needed to take care of themselves.

But why did Canada, the United States and Australia not end up poor if colonization is the cause of Africa's poverty? Ironically, these regions were blessed with being relatively resource poor. There was no gold or silver in those colonies. The early immigrants who arrived here came not to exploit wealth but to develop their own self-sufficient societies. Because we were resource poor we were left relatively alone by the colonizing power.

It is instructive to note that the native populations in these same developed nations continue to live at a level of poverty comparable to that of Africa. Our colonization, unlike that in Africa, never ceased and on both continents the original inhabitants remain impoverished.

Read the entire article at The Toronto Star.

 

Commenting Conundrum

Late last week I was contemplating blog comments. Specifically, I was wondering about following up comments made to my posts. Generally speaking, I haven't much responded to comments. For the most part, I don't have a controversial blog that stirs people up, so it's not a huge issue. Seldom do I feel the necessity of commenting back to you.

But if I do want to get back to you, I don't really know the best way to do it. Do you go back to comments that you posted and look for replies, or should I just go to your blog and comment there? Personally, I only sometimes think go back to see if there is has been any follow-up to comments that I have posted on someone else's blog, so I'm not too sure what everybody else does.

Then, in an odd sort of synchronicity, my Happy Fourth post seemed to fan a few flames. Keith made a long comment, and I felt that I should respond. Anonymous chimed in, making it clear that s/he did not think much of Keith's views. After that, -epm offered his usual trenchant observations, and Keith responded to him. If you haven't been back, you might find the dialog interesting. Click here to go directly to the comments.

Any comments?

 

Blog Links Updated

Partly because I don't use my blogroll as a launching pad to check other blogs, and partly because I have a mental thing about adding to the roll, I haven't made any additions for quite a while. I have finally got around to adding some. I have added some of the blogs that I have been reading for a while and that I think might appeal to others. I do read some other blogs that suit me fine but might not grab everyone, and I have recently begun to read others that please me a lot and that will probably get added when I next get to this task. Don't feel slighted if you're not listed at this point. It means naught.


New blogs in alphabetical order:

Anybody Home
blue2going
Black Currant Jam
Fumbling for Words
Just Another Day

 

Happy Fourth

Hello any American neighbor and friend who drops by this blog on or near The Fourth of July. I wish you a wonderful day of celebrating your wonderful and great country. As I have said before, in Bean American for example, I don't think that I've ever met an America whom I haven't liked. You are a warm, friendly, and generous people — salt of the earth, as it were.

When I thought of greeting you today, I recalled a radio broadcast that I once heard. Gordon Sinclair paid the following tribute to your country at a time when things seemingly could have been going better for you. I was shocked to learn, when I found the speech online that it first aired way back in 1973. Seems like just yesterday that I first heard it, but I guess all of the old fogies say that.

The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany. It has declined there by 41% since 1971 and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least-appreciated people in all the earth.

As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtze. Who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did.

They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges and the Niger. Today, the rich bottom land of the Misssissippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.

When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.

When distant cities are hit by earthquakes, it is the United States that hurries into help... Managua Nicaragua is one of the most recent examples. So far this spring, 59 American communities have been flattened by tornadoes. Nobody has helped.

The Marshall Plan .. the Truman Policy .. all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now, newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent war-mongering Americans.

I'd like to see one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplanes.

Come on... let's hear it! Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar or the Douglas 107? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all international lines except Russia fly American planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or women on the moon?

You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, not once, but several times ... and safely home again. You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everyone to look at. Even the draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, most of them ... unless they are breaking Canadian laws .. are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here.

When the Americans get out of this bind ... as they will... who could blame them if they said 'the hell with the rest of the world'. Let someone else buy the Israel bonds, Let someone else build or repair foreign dams or design foreign buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes.

When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke. I can name to you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble.

Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.

Our neighbours have faced it alone and I am one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles.

I hope Canada is not one of these. But there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians. And finally, the American Red Cross was told at its 48th Annual meeting in New Orleans this morning that it was broke.

This year's disasters .. with the year less than half-over… has taken it all and nobody...but nobody... has helped.

 

Shasta Daisy

What a miserable night! I had the hot body, cold shoulder thing going on again, and I was in a rather wretched state. Nighttime has been pretty good since my last formal complaint to you, back on May 28, so I'll do my best to refrain from whingeing too very much, but really M' Lord ...

It any event, I was up on the early side this morning, and I spent some time with my camera and came up with the following photo. I was rather lucky with it, I think. The background simply came out fuzzy and dark, so the whole photo is of two slightly out-of-focus Shasta Daisies. It was also taken from the back side, so you don't see their sunny faces, but I think that's okay too. Aside from a feeble attempt to frame the photo, no post-processing has been done. I can't make that claim very often!

 

Happy Canada Day ...

... and Happy Us Day, Thirty-Eight Years Later

Thirty-eight years ago (plus a few hours ago now), Canada turned 100. After Young Peoples on June 30, 1967, many of us headed to downtown Toronto and Nathan Phillips Square to witness the turning of the calendar to July 01. It was Canada Day, and we were 100 years old.

Cuppa and I were only on the verge of becoming a couple. In fact, we got there (downtown) in separate cars that night. I was actually with two other girls — in a pretty innocent way, of course. I remember hoping against hope that I might find Cuppa in the crowd, and I did. I grabbed her hand and we walked along Yonge Street together, celebrating the birthday of the country and, as much as we didn't know it then, our own birthday — as a couple.

It was the night that seemed to seal us together (no not that way). We'd had a few dates if you can call them that before, but, after that night, we were an item and have been together ever since.

Today we rode our bikes for the first time in almost three weeks. We packed, gardened, and didn't celebrate ... but we were together, still together, always together.

Happy Birthday to Us and to Canada

 

777

And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.

---

If seven if a good and heavenly number, then I must indeed be under the grace of divine benediction.

Early last week, I was gimping around Butterfly's place near Ottawa with a bad back, and our bicycles were languishing in the garage. With little else to do, Cuppa and I decided to view some properties. We have been looking around the province for several years now but have never been able to find that perfect (or almost perfect) little place.

We began our search several years ago by looking in the country, near Riverwood, where we love to vacation with chickadees and any other critters who wish to touch our lives in passing (start here and look in January to early February blogs for photos if you weren't with me then and care to look). The first [real] blog that I ever posted, in May 2004, City Mouse or Country Mouse, dealt with this theme: of living in the country. However, after looking prodigiously at rural properties, nothing fell into place. For one thing, almost anything that we could afford was on a small lot. Who wants to live on a small lot in the big country? We wanted to have woods to walk in and trails to follow, not be cramped onto a city-size lot without any of the benefits of city life.

Then, last autumn, we turned our attention to towns near Butterfly and The Boy: near but not right there in the same town. We came closer but were unable to finalize an agreement. This spring, we more or less gave up and decided to start sprucing up our existing domicile, beginning with the guest bedroom and extending into a major kitchen renovation.

So, we hadn't exactly intended on even looking at properties on this visit with the kids, but with my back problems providing scant other diversion, we ended up calling a real estate agent. We looked at a few places, saw one we liked and, after mulling it over, decided to have another look at it the next day, Tuesday, the 19th. We put in an offer and had an agreement within a short period of time.

It's a little townhouse, a place without too much upkeep, about seven minutes from the kids' place. Several days later we drove back home: a seven hour drive across the province. We soon put our house up for sale and both received and accepted an offer almost as soon as the ink was dry. That was on June 26, only seven days after we had agreed to purchase our new house.

So, it is my fond wish that finding this 777 sequence augurs well: seven minutes, seven hours, seven days. It sure seems much more than 111 points better than the infamous 666 combination.