An Alternative Look at Africa

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There has been an interesting discussion going on over in the More Pavilions in South Africa’s Folkfest entry about what is going wrong in Africa.

But what about what is going right in Africa?

I’d like to invite you to view these three videos before you decide.

  • Here’s professor Hans Rosling explaining how, even though Africa is behind the rest of the world (although it varies greatly from country to country), Africa is steadily improving.
  • Here’s Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, so-called Banker to the Poor, explaining how legitimate uncorrupted micro-financing enables the emergence of the private citizen class.
  • Here’s George Ayittey explaining how government and corruption are the problem in Africa. The problem is not Africans, the problem is that the systems they are operating under are stifling them, and are currently beyond their own control.

Old timers here at SDA know that I generally agree with ET’s model of the evolution of civilizations. In theory. Nevertheless, in practice, one has get from here to there. Pace Zeno, what now?

More Pavilions in South Africa’s Folkfest

More Pavilions At Folkfest 71 Comments

Xenophopic violence continues in South Africa– the toll so far being 62 dead and 670 wounded:

Attacks broke out in a poor neighbourhood of Johannesburg on May 11 and spread across the country, targeting immigrants including Zimbabweans and Mozambicans, whom locals blamed for taking their jobs.

The Ugandans aren’t impressed with South Africans:

We have always known South African black people to be even more discriminatory than the whites who rode roughshod over them during apartheid. We just didn’t think they’d go this far- beating and killing fellow blacks from other countries, blaming them for their economic woes.

The Nigerians are protesting at the South African embassy.
Mozambique claims there has been no retaliation against South Africans but they have absorbed 32,000 people fleeing the violence.
Of course none of this is really new to South Africa, it has just become more intense and is now making the news. Just check out the dismal photo gallery that has been documenting the death of Johannesburg since 2006.
doors_was-heaven_marshall.jpg

Reader Tips & SDA LNR Classics

Reader Tips 27 Comments

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Reader Tips and SDA Late Nite Radio Classics. And when I say classics, I mean that this new gig provides me the opportunity to highlight a dozen of our most favourite music videos here in the SDA LNR studios, as selected from previous SDA LNR shows, as a full entry in it’s own right here at SDA, and for bonus points this exercise gives me an excuse to experiment with SDA’s extended entry facility.

Your Reader Tips are of course, as always, welcome in the comments.

Continue reading →

The Triumph of the Political Class

What He Said 10 Comments

This sounds like an interesting book that would be worth the time for Canadians to read, too. While the book addresses British politics I think many of the same maladies and trends apply to Canada as well. We’ve certainly seen a rather stubborn trend of growth and power of the political class in Canada and getting Conservative parties elected has rather less effect on this trend than we would like.
Perhaps we haven’t descended as far or fast down this path as Britain has, and thankfully we don’t have the complications of the EU to deal with, but I think this book might offer some lessons for us in Canada.
Read the whole post here:

His basic argument is that today’s political class has little experience of the real world outside the corridors of power, is drawn from an insular group of metropolitan folk who consider themselves superior to, and cut off from, the ordinary mass; it craves power for its own sake and for its monetary rewards, is corrupt, venal, obsessed by controlling the media, and has damaged and is damaging any institutions and practices – such as the old House of Lords or judiciary – that get in its way. Oborne argues his case with a tremendous passion and penetrating use of argument. At the end of the 334 pages of text one is left – which I think is the idea – feeling rather depressed. With good reason.

And check out the book here.

Doing as the Leader Did

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Little by little, one person at a time, more Westerners are beginning to get it. Unfortunately, most Western elites aren’t getting it, despite the fact that the truth is right there under their noses … in black and white text:
My essay on the topic:

There may be any number of reasons why Islam is so uncompromisingly supremacist, but one reason stands out among all others. That is the fact that the foundational texts of Islam are supremacist in the extreme … to the point of advocating violence as the main form of enforcement. To read about Muhammad, whose example all Muslims are required to follow, is to read about a brutal chauvinist who used murder, deceit, theft and all kind of barbaric means to pursue his agenda. Furthermore, he took the chauvinism common in his time and expanded on it, making Christian chauvinism of the era pale in comparison.
Compare this to Christianity. Anyone at all familiar with Christian foundational texts understands immediately that Christianity is by and large a pacifist religion. Christian foundational texts focus on spirituality and are almost completely devoid of political guidance. Christian foundations can best be described as “turn the other cheek”. Muslim foundations can best be described as “smite the unbelievers.”

Jihad watch weighs in, taking a stab at Western politicians who march on, blinkers firmly in place:

Almost seven years have passed since 9/11, and we’re hearing the same thing from our leaders that we’ve heard since 9/12. It is a reminder that, at the highest level of government, policy decisions are driven — hijacked, if you will — by willful blindness to the roots of the ideology that motivates not only al-Qaeda, but is also common to Hizballah, Hamas, and other jihadist groups. Does anyone at the State Department, Homeland Security, or elsewhere, ever puzzle at how ingrained and widespread jihadist activity is, even outside of the Wahhabi sphere of influence, if it’s supposedly all just a big misunderstanding and “hijacking” of an otherwise peaceful belief system?

Watch Hirsi Ali struggle in vain to get through to a thick-skulled journalist.

Why Britain Struggles To Assimilate Immigrants

More Pavilions At Folkfest 29 Comments

When the concept of “multiculturalism” was introduced to Canadians, most assumed it meant more pavilions at Folkfest…

A third of London’s residents were born outside Britain, a higher percentage of newcomers than in any other city in the world except Miami, and the percentage continues to rise. Likewise, migration figures for the country as a whole—emigration and immigration—suggest that its population is undergoing swift replacement. Many of the newcomers are from Pakistan, India, and Africa; others are from Eastern Europe and China. If present trends continue, experts predict, in 20 years’ time, between a quarter and a third of the British population will have been born outside it, and at least a fifth of the native population will have emigrated. Britain has always had immigrants—from the French Huguenots after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes to Germans fleeing Prussian repression, from Jews escaping czarist oppression to Italian prisoners of war who stayed on after World War II—and absorbed them. But never so many, or so quickly.
To the anxiety about these unprecedented demographic changes—a substantial majority of the public, when asked, says that it wants a dramatic reduction in immigration—one can add a reticence in openly expressing it. Inducing this hesitancy are intellectuals of the self-hating variety, who welcome the destruction of the national identity and who argue—in part, correctly—that every person’s identity is multiple; that identity can and ought to change over time; and that too strong an emphasis on national identity has in the past led to barbarism. By reiteration, they have insinuated a sense of guilt into everyone’s mind, so that even to doubt the wisdom or viability of a society consisting of myriad ethnic and religious groups with no mutual sympathy (and often with mutual antagonisms) is to suspect oneself of sliding toward extreme nationalism or fascism; so that even to doubt the wisdom or viability of a society in which everyone feels himself part of an oppressed minority puts one in the same category as Jean-Marie Le Pen, or worse.

h/t Penny

Reader Tips

Reader Tips 54 Comments

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Reader Tips and SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, I have made newly available a rare performance from our SDA LNR studio collection of vintage 45 RPM singles. Here are Australia’s own Johnny Chester & the Chessmen performing The Old Copper Kettle, ca. 1960, this pressing by Canadian KiM records, K.M.1688, CT-30765, originally from W&G Recording in Australia. I would argue that one needs to listen to the end of this work ~ it’s only two minutes ~ to fully appreciate it, but I don’t want to say any more ’cause that would spoil it.

Your Reader Tips are of course, as always, welcome in the comments.

Nancy Pelosi on the surge

If Women Ran The World 13 Comments

Nancy Pelosi demonstrates her keen understanding of military affairs – and credits Iranian goodwill for the success of the surge:

Asked if she saw any evidence of the surge’s positive impact on her May 17 trip to Iraq she responded:
Well, the purpose of the surge was to provide a secure space, a time for the political change to occur to accomplish the reconciliation. That didn’t happen. Whatever the military success, and progress that may have been made, the surge didn’t accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians.

One hardly knows how to respond to such idiocy. The Iranians are finding it harder to blow up American troops these days, so it must be because of their goodwill. Of course.

Opera Lovers Delight

Uncategorized 17 Comments

I’d say that some things are beyond parody … but then, this is SDA:

MILAN, Italy (AP) — First it was the film and the book. Now the next stop for Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” is opera.
La Scala officials say the Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli has been commissioned to produce an opera on the international multiformat hit for the 2011 season at the Milan opera house. The composer is currently artistic director of the Arena in Verona.

The information gatekeepers, asleep at their posts

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Our mainstream media organs, providing context, probing investigation, and depth of knowledge to the Canadian consumer, as…
…oops, never mind:

The fact that Viking, located on Vancouver Island and the Buffalo design holder, was not contacted by any media outlet in order to better understand the support arrangements for the CC-115 Buffalo is, in my opinion, unacceptable [emphasis added].
– David Curtis is president and CEO of Viking Air Ltd.

Unacceptable? Ya think?

Making a Silk Purse out of a Pig’s Ear

Uncategorized 42 Comments

Are your Mullah’s getting you down? Sleepless nights?
Rest easy, because we’ve got the cure for you.
Read the following before bedtime and you’ll sleep as soundly as B. H. Obama during a Rev. Wright sermon:

Iranian Mullahs …
* Will never dare to use the bomb, even if they had it. To do so would be suicidal.
* Are years away from anything resembling a credible bomb, in any quantity.
* They lack the technological skills needed to make a workable bomb.
* Don’t have the means of hitting Israel with the bomb, their professed favorite target.
* Want the bomb for defensive purposes only.
* Would never hand the bomb over to proxy terrorists.
* Are using this whole bomb thing as a ploy to rally the populace and survive.
* Are visionary patriots planning for a future when the oil dries up.
* Are environmentalists aiming to curb global warming caused by the use of fossil fuel.
* Are striving to join the nuclear club for its prestige.


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crossposted @ Celestial Junk

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