via IPLagos is a modern third world megacity in a rapidly urbanizing world. Seventy per cent of its economy is grounded on unregulated markets. In anticipation of the future densification of the megalopolis, its transportation infrastructure will be atomized to facilitate an unprecedented magnitude of collective inhabitation
2011, regardless of what happens in the 2010 elections, will be a bad year for America due to the avalanche of tax increases that will hit everyone, specifically dead people, married people, rich people, investors, poor people, those with kids, those who save, those who buy medications, and small businesses. New tax increases of varying amounts will be levied on these groups starting in 2011, and the result of these tax increases will be lower spending, lower saving, lower investment, lower business activity, and increasing hiding of taxable income by those that can, with the end result being falling revenues to the government and less economic activity. That will mean less jobs, less income, and a lower quality of life for you. The blame for this can be laid 100% on politicians, namely anyone who voted for Obamacare and anyone who refused to vote to make permanent the 2001 tax cuts, both of whom are almost all Democrats and who are all liberals.
There are so many new taxes and taxes that are going to come back from the dead that it is tough to know where to begin, so let's start at the end- on midnight of December 31, the death tax returns. If you die before than, there is no tax on your beneficiaries property simply because you died, but if you die in 2011, the government will swoop in after you die and take more of your already-taxed before property simply because you are dead. They will take 55% of the property of those who have left behind $1 million or more in savings and redistribute that property to favored political groups in society. Of course this is immoral and unethical, but that's what you get when you vote Democrat. If you are a small business owner or farmer, you may very well have an estate that is valued in excess of $1 million, especially if you have worked hard your whole life and been successful, and after you are dead government agents will come in and figure out how to destroy your life's work and break it up and redistribute it to those who didn't work hard and earn it. This will obviously hurt our economy.
The Bush tax cuts are also set to expire in 2011. These tax cuts are not just 'for the rich'- the lowest bracket for the personal income tax, or the tax cuts 'for the poor', will jump 50% from 10% today to to 15% under Obama and the Democrats. You read that correctly- Obama and the Democrats will have worked to raise taxes on the most poor in our society by 50%.
The next lowest income bracket, we'll call that 'taxes on the lower-middle class' or 'taxes on the working class', will be increased from 25% to 28%, and 'taxes on the upper-middle class' or 'taxes on the hard-working class' will be increased from 28% to 31%. Again, these tax increases will strike the middle class as well, meaning that more of your money that you work hard for every day will be taken to you and transferred to the government who will then transfer that money to various politically connected groups. You will have less money to spend on goods and services, which will mean lower demand for those products, which will mean someone will lose a job who provides or makes those, which will mean someone else on welfare sucking down tax money. Unemployment will raise, consumer demand will fall, and our society will be more poor because of these tax increases.
Oh, I guess 'the rich' also will be taxed at higher levels too, although once you become rich, you are able to hire good tax attorneys who figure out how to hide your wealth from the government anyways. And I imagine with a more confiscatory government swooping in to take more of your wealth just because you are more successful will encourage more people to seek to hide their income and assets behind politically-engineering loopholes and accounting tricks, leading to the tax increases 'on the rich' not taking as much of their wealth as liberals and Democrats hope. The details are that those currently in the 33% taxable income bracket will have their taxes increased to 36% and the 'taxes on the super-rich' will be increased from 35% to 39.6%. I predict that the results of these massive tax increases on the rich will not provide the revenue that the government hopes it can steal from these people, and so they will demand higher and higher taxes on 'the rich' out of envy and greed. This immoral theft will result in more money and effort spent in hiding assets from an unethical government rather than in doing anything good for society, less money at the top for goods and services resulting in less demand for products resulting in unemployment and a falling economy, considerably less 'play money' for the 'rich' to put in the bank where it can be used for mortgages or small business loans, or less 'play money' for the 'rich' to invest in the stock market leading leading to depreciating assets and less business investment.
Democrats, liberals, and anyone who votes for them, are bringing this falling economy on us in 2011 by letting the Bush tax cuts expire and the death tax revive. But that isn't all- those who voted for Democrats in 2008 also share the blame for the massive amounts of taxes that come with the new Obamacare bill. That will be my next post.
Source: Investors Business Daily.
In SciDev Linda Nordling asks "Does Africa really need new idealism?" in its innovation policy.Commenting on a recent 'Knowledge Swaraj' manifesto which:
...suggests countries establish 'innovation fora' to debate technology investments and choices more broadly. And it wants funding for scientific 'centres of excellence' to give way to support for science that addresses local needs.In addition it:
...will go a step further in promoting the 'domestication' of science in Africa, says ATPS executive director, Kevin Urama.He says that Africa's confidence in its own science — traditional knowledge — dropped with colonialism and the arrival of Western science traditions. He argues that this cultural loss underpins Western-sponsored science's inability to improve the lives of ordinary Africans.More here
The Roman Republic was the period of time when Rome was governed by a complex constitution, which centred on the principles of a separation of powers and checks and balances and established a republican form of government. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy in 509 BC and lasted 482 years until its subversion in 27 BC into an Imperial form of government. A very interesting phase though is the last two generations of the Roman Republic, when it was falling apart and collapsing, and it is to this phase that I direct my comments today.
Towards the end of the Roman Republic, there were several Roman civil wars. Part of the reason for these civil wars was the increasing disregard of the Roman constitution and the breakdowns in separation of powers and checks and balances, combined with increasing militarism, rising debt, rising welfare policies, and increasing centralization of control in the executive offices in the capital of Rome.
This civil war period began with the Social War (91–88 BC), continued with wars between various top politicians and generals who pretended to want to restore the republic (Sulla's first civil war (88–87 BC), Sertorius' revolt in Hispania (83–72 BC), and Sulla's second civil war (82–81 BC)), then had a phase where people stopped pretending it was a republic anymore (Lepidus' rebellion (77 BC) and the Catiline Conspiracy (63–62 BC)), and ended with a series of wars over who would be the new dictator (Caesar's civil war (49–45 BC), Post-Caesarian civil war (44 BC), Liberators' civil war (44–42 BC), Sicilian revolt (44–36 BC), Fulvia's civil war (41–40 BC), and the Final war of the Roman Republic (32–30 BC)). I'm most fascinated by the Catiline Conspiracy, because it was at that point that I think people knew that the Republic was dead.
Catailine was a Roman politician and general who attempted to overthrow the Republic in 63-62 BC. His desire to do so lay mostly in ambition for power, but he and his followers appear to have been driven by a sense that they were being denied power that was due to them (their comments have a vague sense of entitlement to them) and it also appears that he and his followers had accrued massive amounts of debt that they wanted to cancel or wipe away in the fall of the government. He had multiple plots and schemes going, involving slave revolts, raising of various armies, and a plot to assassinate Senators in Rome, but before those schemes could come to fruition, he was exposed, fought valiantly, killed, and the plot collapsed. But the damage had been done- people had seen that the republic was dead, that the rule of law didn't exist any more, and that the age of rule of men had started. Even though he was unsuccessful, he demonstrated the template that one could follow to dictatorship, and soon the Republic was dead.
Jonah Goldberg began a recent article When Did the Rules Change? with the line "When Rome was “falling,” did it feel like it?". His article is about how the rules of the game are changing, how liberalism is dying and how are nation will once again be a conservative nation of rule of law, separation of powers, checks and balances, etc. I'm not as hopeful though.
Increasingly, I feel like the damage has been done by the Obama and the Democrats, damage that is too great and too traumatic for America to overcome. I'm still hopeful that it can be done, but the damage that they have inflicted in so many ways both big and small will take a generation to repair, if that generation has the intelligence and willpower to do so.
Although Obama might only be a one-term President and although the Democrats might lose power, they'll be back, sooner rather than later. They have seen how easy it is to get anyone elected President, even someone with no intelligence and terrorist friends who may not even like America. They have seen how easily it is to fool people into giving them large majorities, where they then jam through massive complicated bills changing the very fabric of our nation without even reading them. They'll fight a ferocious and tough rear-guard action to keep these in place, and eventually voters will get stupid again and put them back in power. Although we may have dodged a dictatorship this time, it is my great fear that the damage is done, and that after a couple Republican Presidents (Romney's two terms and Palin's one) we'll put a Caesar in power and that will be the end of great American experiment in republic.
Alison Flood reports on the work of Olufemi Terry:
More hereOne of the things Terry is trying to do with his writing, he said, is to explore the issues of the African diaspora. "Living in the diaspora, whether it's west or east, throws up a whole new set of challenges and questions which I don't feel have been properly explored or looked at," he said. "The label 'African writer' is not a particularly helpful one ... Whether it's journalism or fiction, there is too much emphasis put on issues such as poverty or disease, and I feel the label 'African writing' exacerbates that particular tendency. I would like to see more of a shift away from writing about Africa set on the continent, and more exploration of the issues of the diaspora."
Olufemi Terry courtesy of BookphotoSA
Many people know that Iran getting the Bomb is bad, but exactly how bad is it? For non-students of international relations, Walter Russell Mead conveys in simple terms what will happen if Iran acquires nuclear weapons in the next year or two:
If Iran gets the bomb, the world will change in ways that are deeply destructive of everything President Obama cares about. A world in which nuclear weapons are widespread isn’t just a world in which the collapse of the non-proliferation movement has brought discredit on the concept of international law and binding treaties on security issues. It won’t just be a world in which the bad guys have learned that the good guys will blink if you stand up to them. It won’t just be a world in which emboldened Iranian adventurism will work more rashly and unscrupulously than ever to destroy our alliances and friends in the Middle East.Mead is correct- once a nation acquires nuclear weapons, there is no more bossing it around at all. Many people think that is a good thing- both liberals and conservatives feel that the US should mind its own business. I used to think that way, but now I fully believe that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by God with certain unalienable rights, and that those rights include the right to live, the right to live in freedom free from tyranny, and the right to earn and keep property.
That brave new world that appears when Iran gets its nukes is an ultra-Westphalian world, a world of sovereign nation states forever emancipated from the dream of true international law. Nuclear weapons give every state — and every dictator — the ability to veto troublesome interventions in their affairs by treaty-citing busybodies and international lawyers waving documents and babbling about binding accords. If you have your finger on the button, nobody can make you do anything you truly don’t want to do: this is state sovereignty on steroids, and it is the what Barack Obama will leave as a legacy if he doesn’t stop Iran’s nuclear march.
President Obama is probably hoping that luck or fate will spare him the horrible fate of presiding over the death of his dearest ideals and of being the American president who destroyed the credibility of the international system and let the nuclear genie loose in the most dangerous part of the world. Maybe sanctions will work; maybe the Iranians will change their minds. Maybe new technical problems will crop up and slow the Iranians down enough so that he can pass the problem on to his successor — as, indeed, his predecessors handed it down to him.That doesn't make me feel any better for all those poor people who are soon to live in increasingly brutal tyranny- the one person who has the motive, means, and opportunity to stop this terrible fate is hoping luck or fate lets him push the problem on someone else's lap. But, elections have consequences, and everyone who sat home or voted something other than Republican on the ballots the last couple years had a part to play in this horrible comedy.
African Review interviews Mukoma wa Ngugi.Answering a question on the funding of culture he states:
National cultures cannot be undergirded by foreign funding. The problem with the African elite is that they have no sense of culture and no ambition beyond the stomach. Western capitalists understood that a nation with culture makes better business decisions – the Rockefellers and Carnegies. A nation with a sense of culture has a sense of what it is worth. It can take pride in what is locally manufactured and at same time be weary of outside exploitation.The African elite, and they are the ones with the money have no notion of legacy building, or being remembered through endowments – it’s the politics of the stomach, of immediate money-making and spending, usually abroad.More here
Last year, as my wife, five kids, and I were all wandering around Washington DC, I though the following (from Deep Thoughts on DC Trip- LaHood, Palaces, Rainbows, Washington, and Lincoln):
Washington DC is booming. I think it is one of the few states in the nation to actually have increasingly employment, job growth, and GDP growth. There are signs everywhere of prosperity and building- roads are being repaired, monuments are being revamped, buildings are adding on, and fresh paint and plaster is in abundance. On a guidebook of DC I read that our capitol was designed to look like the capitols of the Emperors and despots of Europe, but it was okay because we lived in a free nation that celebrated liberty and property. Well, as our country becomes more despotic and tyrannical, it is going to look increasingly like those capitols of the old days, when the Emperor took money from the countryside to build himself new statues and bigger palaces.A new POLITICO poll proves that while the countryside is being plundered, the Democratic lords and Emperor Obama are living in a different world based on luxury, hope, and change. In Washington, Obama is far more popular than he is in the rest of the country, while Palin, the former Alaska governor, is considerably less popular in DC than in the rest of the country. To the vast majority of D.C. elites, the tea party movement is a fad, but for the vast majority of Americans, the Tea Party is a revolutionary phenomonum.
According to the poll, roughly 45 percent of “Washington elites” said the country and the economy are headed in the right direction, while roughly 25 percent of the general population said they felt that way. Seventy-four percent of those 'Washington elites' surveyed said the economic downturn has hurt them less than most Americans.Yeah, it's pretty clear that Washington DC, the home of the imperial palaces of our rulers, is living large on taxpayers money and enjoying doing so. Therefore it isn't surprising that the lords and ladies that inhabit our nation's capital-of-consumption have different views than the rest of the reality-based Americans out of DC.
Sixty-five percent of the general population views Social Security as “very important,” compared with only 41 percent of Washington elites. The same goes for immigration — 53 percent of the general public says it’s very important, compared with 36 percent of Washington elites — and family values — 62 percent versus 23 percent, respectively.
Taxes are another issue where Washington does not appear to have its finger on the pulse of the country. Fifty-three percent of the general public ranked taxes as a “very important” issue, while 37 percent of elites said the same.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is viewed favorably by 45 percent of Washington elites but by only 23 percent of the rest of the country. When asked which party they would vote for if November’s midterm election were held today, the general population is split among Democrats and Republicans, 32 percent to 31 percent. Washington elites however, chose Democrats by 53 percent to 26 percent for Republicans.
Blessing-Miles Tendi writing in the Guardian:
The standard explanation offered by Africans opposed to gay rights is that homosexuality is alien to their culture and was introduced to Africa by European colonialists. A good deal of African-American homophobia relies on the same justification. But late 19th-century records on Africa and African oral history show that homosexual practices existed in pre-colonial Africa. One case in point are the Azande people in the north-east of modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where it was acceptable for kings, princes and soldiers to take young male lovers.More here
Further evidence for the existence of homosexuality is that pre-colonial African ethnic groups ascribed tribal classifications to gay people. While some of these categorisations had negative associations, many had neutral connotations. Certain tribes in pre-colonial Burkina Faso and South Africa regarded lesbians as astrologers and traditional healers. A number of tribal groups in Cameroon and Gabon believed homosexuality had a medicinal effect. In pre-colonial Benin, homosexuality was viewed as a boyhood phase that males passed through and eventually grew out of.
Many people are asking me 'who are you voting for'. They know that I am a solid conservative, they know that I read and research all of the candidates, and they know that I teach government for a living so I know my stuff, so they feel I can offer advice to them on who to vote for. Every person's vote is their own, and I've always been a little shy about trying to tell people who to vote for, but because there is a demand for my opinions on the subject, I will suggest some options for voting in the coming primary election here in Michigan.
For Governor of Michigan, the options for the Republicans are Pete Hoekstra, Rick Snyder, Mike Bouchard, Mike Cox, and Tom George. I recommend that you vote for Pete Hoekstra. Tom George is not Governor material. Mike Bouchard is a #2. Rich Snyder I've written about several times (Analyzing Rick Snyder's 10 Point Plan, Exclusive: Rick Synder Blackmailed Young Supporters for Votes in Straw Poll on Mackinac Island, Rick Snyder- Do Not Support). That leaves it down to two serious candidates- Cox and Hoekstra. Both are solid conservatives in my opinion. Cox has shown that he knows how to lead and has solid executive experience, but is slimy and personally treated me badly. Hoekstra on the other hand has a good record in Congress and people speak well about him. So I'm going with Hoekstra, although I really like Cox too. For more in-depth discussion on these candidates, see theblogprof's I endorse Mike Cox for MI Governor, and here's why.
For Governor of Michigan, the options for the Democrats are Andy Dillon and Virg Bernero. I recommend that you vote for Andy Dillon. Although I worked for Dillon's recall several years ago due to his role in pushing for the largest increase ever in Michigan's history, since then he has obviously learned his lesson, and has been much more moderate. He has tried to pass legislation that every side likes and be a leader. If you vote for Dillon, expect a slightly better version of Granholm. Virg Bernero is a communist with a streak of Stalinism in him. I heard him interviewed on the radio, and he sounded proud to be a thuggish communist. Putting him in the Governor's office would be an unmitigated disaster for Michigan and would destroy hope for ever emerging from the molasses of Granholm's administration. I know the unions are backing him and funneling money into his coffers, but that's a joke too- it's sad when the MEA backs a guy who sent his kids to private schools over people who sent their kids to public schools (like Mike Cox).
For Representative in Congress from Michigan's 9th District the options are Rocky Racqkowski, Paul Welday, Anna Janek, and Richard Kuhn. I recommend that you vote for Rocky Racqkowski. Our district needs a solid leader who will fight for what our district wants (not a bought-off partisan hack like Gary Peters). Anna Janek is unprepared and Richard Kuhn lacks the energy the office might require. Paul Welday is a serious challenger, but his years in Washington appear to have tainted him a bit- he's a lobbyist and policy advisor who wants to now be the boss. Rocky is a veteran, business leader, was a leader in Michigan's Congress, and will be a great leader for our district. See my post on this race 9th Congressional District Republican Primary Debate for more analysis.
For State Senator of the 26th District of Michigan the options are Tim Terpening, Fran Amos, Michael Matheny, and David Robertson. I recommend that you vote for. I recommend that you vote for David Robertson. I've never heard of Tim Terpening and Michael Matheny before, although I see they are decent people. Fran Amos was a good Representative, but has a limited base and rubs a lot of people the wrong way. The 26th District is a pretty Democrat district, and we need someone who can win in those areas. David Robertson has shown that he can win in those areas, and is a solid Tea Party guy too.
For Judge of the Probate Court in Oakland County Michigan the options are Kathleen Ryan, Jamie Marie Verdi, J. Martin Brennan, Dana Margaret Hathaway, and Barbara B. Murphy. To be honest, I don't know much about these candidates, so I would direct you to look at the League of Women Voters Voting Guide Questionnaire that each filled out, and also take a look at OpenSecrets.org. I recommend that you vote for Marie Verdi though, because Kathleen Ryan donated money to Debbie Stabmenow (D), J. Martin Brennan has donated thousands to Democrats over the years, and Barbara Murphy has also donated thousands to Democrats over the years, and Verdi's answers on the questionnaire were decent.
For anyone who is curious, I am not on the ballot this year.
To any candidate who reads my blog, and I know there are a few of you out there, I want to pass on the following message- I've talked to you personally or attempted to do so several times, and so I gave you all a chance to earn my vote. Some of you blew me off, some of you offended me, and some of you insulted me, all without knowing the power of my pen, so I hope that because you treated me (a voter) that way, you suffer. Thus my wrath is great and probably powerless.
In SciDev:
"When the new African Agricultural Revolution is eventually implemented, it is likely to be built on Africa's own indigenous technology and knowledge requirements and the nutrition and food security needs of its people," says an UNCTAD report...It recommends strengthening the 'innovation systems' — a wide range of interconnecting issues, from providing financial incentives and ensuring technology transfer to promoting education — for agriculture in each country in Africa. "This means enhancing links between knowledge research institutes to make sure any innovation they come up with is diffused to the farmer,"More here
R. Todd Johnson writing in Friends of Ethiopia:
Outside of direct relief aid and some of the amazing health and education research and development, much (perhaps most) of what is done in the developing world through non-profits and NGO's, could actually be accomplished through a business model, even if it would be harder to raise investment funding. Instead, someone begins selling tax subsidized and donor subsidized water pumps in Africa, because it is easier to raise the funding through tax deductible donations rather than through the rigors of proving out the business model for investment dollars, with the great result of increased deployment of inexpensive water moving technology in the developing world to aid rural farmers, but the negative results of (1) killing the market for future indigenous entrepreneurs attempting to sell water pumps at a profit and (2) locking a potentially valuable distribution channel in a non-profit, making it difficult for other for-profits to use.A friend of his an entrepreneur in answer to a question about how he was doing stated:
"Africans don't see a reward system in place for being entrepreneurial. In fact, they view it as a matter of survival, not an opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty. Rather, what they learn at a very early age, is that in order to make good money, they should learn to speak English incredibly well and then maybe, just maybe, they can get a job driving for an NGO. In a few years, if they play their cards right, they might be able to land an NGO job as a project manager and even advance further."More here
Via Big Hollywood, I read this random thought from Victoria Jackson in her post Sunbathing Naked (Day One):
….I was reading in 1 Samuel 8 how Israel wanted a king and God did not want them to have a human king. God was the King of Israel. He gave them The Ten Commandments and other super smart laws, like not eating pork (it was not sanitary) and getting circumcised (prevention of disease), and ”an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” (crime prevention). God wanted people to obey Him because He is the smartest leader and loves us the most. But, Israel wanted a king really, really bad. A human King. God relented.As many people do, every Sunday we read the Bible together as a family at bedtime, and right now I'm also making my way through the Book of Samuel. To me, the strongest passages in Samuel was Chapter 12, when Samuel recounts for the people of Israel all that God has done for them- he lists all the amazing things that the Lord did for his people. That is powerful, and evidence of the real power of the Lord. Having a King rule over you and attacking your enemies and saying nice stuff like 'change' and 'hope' is nothing, and I'm always surprised when people want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Things were good when you follow the Lord, and abide by his laws, which I believe include the laws of natural law and the laws of the free market. God gave us life, liberty, and the ability to pursue and keep property, and the closer we stick to those beliefs, the more we will prosper. We should have been happy enough with the way America was going, but instead, like the people of Israel, we weren't happy enough with that and demanded a King to rule over us to decree hope and change, and the result is bad for us.
King Saul was elected. And it was bad for everyone.
This reminds me of America. When God was the King of America we were blessed. Our founding fathers built our country on the Judeo-Christian foundation of The Ten Commandments and the presence of no human King. The colonists were escaping the human king of England, seeking religious freedom and they set up our Government purposefully to prevent the corruption of power; thus, the legislative, executive and judicial branches of Government – all balancing out one another. No one man in charge. No human king. King God was engraved onto our money, put in our pledge, and carved into our buildings in Washington, D.C. But, as time went on, just like Israel, we gradually started to take His blessings for granted, and abandon His laws. We kicked God out of the courts, the public school system, our families, and our personal lives. So, now we had no King. And we wanted a king really, really bad. A human king. God relented.
King Obama was elected. And it was bad for everyone...
The election of Democrats to Congress in 2006 and Obama to President in 2008 has caused the federal budget deficit to explode. While George Bush and the Republicans ran deficits too (about $400 billion a year), those deficits grew steadily in 2007 and 2008, and exploded to record highs in 2008, set new records in 2009, and according to the White House, will set records again this year and next.
Democrats are spent a record $1.4 trillion last year, and will spend more than $1.4 trillion that they don't have this year, and plan on spending another $1.4 trillion that they don't have next year. This reckless and immoral spending of money that they don't have to provide goods and services to people today is an attack on the futures of my children and grandchildren.
The spending of today will mean that my children will have to massive amounts of interest to pay back so that hippies and baby-boomers don't have to cut back when they lose their jobs. My children are going to be holding depreciating dollars because their parents didn't pay for health care insurance but now are old and want it for free. My grandchildren are going to be faced with security challenges when bossed around by the other nations that lent their grandparents money so that they could have nice smooth roads and shiny schools and fancy monuments.
My children's future is being ruined by Democrats and their irresponsible spending habits right now in Congress. Any member of Congress who has voted for these large spending bills deserves to be thrown out of Congress. Times are tough right now, yes, but it is immoral and wrong to borrow money from your children and grandchildren to provide goods and services today, especially when you have no intention of ever paying it back.
The election of Obama and the Democrats was indeed historic- it has destroyed the future and hope of our nation.
PS: Don't be a sucker either- these numbers will be revised again when tax receipts continue to fall due to continued Democratic legislation, and once the 2011 tax increases go in, expect a crashing economy to create ever more debt. My children are going to owe something closer to $2 trillion for 2011 and 2012, meaning that my grand kids someday are going to have to pay back the $7 trillion Barack Obama experiment in hope and change.
More hereThe Westminster model was, with the exception of Ghana, belatedly transplanted during rapid decolonisation processes in Africa. Britain did not consider that it could not be handed down to African colonies regardless of historical, cultural and education contexts. Transplanting the Westminster model also meant that there was no real ownership of the system in African colonies. There was no emphasis on the necessity of having a significant transition period during which it might have taken root in Africa.
Blessing-Miles Tendi
In view of this, it is unsurprising that the imported political system collapsed in the vast majority of former British colonies in Africa. Single-party rule and military coup d'états became the norm. The blame was often directed at the Africans. The British model was not the problem: Africans were not ready for democracy. It is, however, more accurate to say that the system of the colonisers was unworkable in many former African colonies for the reasons outlined above. And despite ongoing problems, parts of Africa have democratised considerably since decolonisation.
Sometimes a foreign perspective provides fresh insight into the situation at hand. Andrew Osborn of the Telegraph echo's some of my thoughts (see my post Obama's Failures in Foreign Policy) in his article Hillary Clinton talks tough with the Kremlin, but Russia has won the geopolitical war:
(US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) could only offer two pieces of advice to ordinary Georgians on how they could get the rest of their country back. Do not react to Russian provocations and grow your own democracy and economy so that people living in the two breakaway regions will one day want to reunite. It was sound advice but it was also a tacit admission that Russia had won the geopolitical as well as the hot war, that the territory is perhaps irreparably lost, and that there is nothing that anyone can do about it.So, to review, in the waning months of the Bush Presidency, Russia takes advantage of the US preoccupation with the election to invade a key US ally, Georgia. After driving the Georgia army back, Russia's army then withdraws back to two key provinces in Georgia and proclaims them 'independent.' It is understandable that the US was able to do little directly to force the Russian troops to withdraw and to cease with the charade of the 'independent provinces', but it is not understandable that the US was not able to make this look bad and make other nations around the world condemn Russia for invading another nation, breaking it up, and then occupying parts of the pieces of a former nation.
In Pambazuka Ronald Elly Wanda makes a case for re-instituting the indigenous institution of traditional jurisprudence:
More hereSince flag independence in the 1960s, African governments have been in a rush to normalise authoritarian rule and human rights abuses under the auspices of maendeleo (development) and economic growth. A short stroll in any African village today confirms that the globalised Western culture of justice delivery or innovation that most African leaders seem to trust has not improved the well-being of our local communities or delivered justice for them. On the contrary, it has often blocked viable indigenous innovation of cultures and suffocated African justice. Here in East Africa, cultures of innovation have largely accrued from the jua kali (informal), and not the formal sector. Indigenous cultural innovations have also been at the centre of development in most highly indebted poor countries (HIPC), such as in Uganda or its slightly richer sister Kenya, notably because of wanainchi (citizens) exceptionally limited access to capital.
Ronald Elly Wanda
As such, when it comes to delivering justice in Africa, we ought to revise our priorities by doing away with existing preconceived ideas that might have worked within the European cultural setting. They have clearly not worked in the face of the socio-cultural heritages of African societies, and neither has the opposite, the Africanisation of Western concepts of justice delivery.
Usually I don't post round-ups, but I'm falling behind trying to keep up with all these scandals that going down right now. Oh, I know it doesn't compare to the Bush era (although I can't remember exactly what the horrible scandals were during his time period, I know the media was hysterically yelling about it every day), there are a stunning amount of real scandals going down. I'm going to point you towards TheBlogProf's website for a review of all of these since it does a much better job than I am doing of keeping up with them all.
Typical: Obama's ambush on Pete Hoekstra in Michigan was coordinated with the media:
Obama ambushed Hoekstra with a classless joke- I covered it here- but it turns out that the White House had clued the media in on the ambush and everyone in the media knew that the White House was going to ambush Hoekstra and was just waiting to see his reaction when it did. Classless collusion.
Gallup: Congress Ranks Dead Last in Confidence in Institutions, Lowest Rating For Congress In Recorded History:
Latest Gallup poll shows a marked decrease in confidence in Congress ever since the Democrats took control of it in 2006- it looks like only 11% of people trust it to make decisions- and yet it is making more and more decisions of bigger and bigger impact. That's not right.
Breaking: Charles Rangel charged with ethics violations
Culture of corruption, thy name is and always has been Democrat.
When McCain picked Palin, liberal journalists colluded on best line of attack, called themselves Obama’s “non-official campaign”:
The growing JournoList scandal reveals that journalists colluded to attack Palin, the media then did attack Palin, and so the vast left-wing media conspiracy myth may in fact have truth to it.
Great News: Race was factor in which GM,Chrysler dealerships Obama forced to close:
The election of Obama did not lead to a post-racial era- it did the opposite in yet another example of Bizarro world's sense of humor. Turns out that that President was using racial criteria to determine which private businesses his goons would shut down. Tyranny?
Bombastic Elements asks "Can You Sketch Journalism?":
More hereWhen it comes to sound byte punditry, parachute-in reporting, and most of the sensational photojournalism associated with the "dark" continent, the devil isn't so much in the missing details as in the missing context(s) - Scarlett Lion has a good example. Mind you, this is not context to make the bad look good; rather context to show the bad is not all there is. The fact that a sketch renders a reality trapped in a duration as opposed to one captured in an instant, implies the guarantee that the representation, for me at least, will contain added context; at least as much context as the reality being depicted can get across in the time and effort it takes the artist to absorb it, lose much of it, doubt what to emphasize, ponder what to leave out, reevaluate prior decisions and assumptions, solve problems of scale, perspective, symmetry and so on.
Tailor at work and fabrics/ by George Butler
During the Rhee administration, her education plan which was released 18 months into her administration promised to terminate a significant share of the DCPS teacher workforce. Well the Rhee firing squad strikes once again. On July 23, Leah Fabel of the Washington Examiner newspaper reported that D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee will fire a sizable number of teachers and school staff by next week. Rhee did not appear in a Thursday briefing and left the dirty work to her deputy, Kaya Henderson to announce the bad news. Fabel reported the numbers of the terminations was not revealed in the briefing. The firings are based on a new evaluation instrument (IMPACT) which was introduced in school year 2009-10. Many have argued that IMPACT had inadequate training which was offered after the evaluation cycle began and takes into consideration fifty percent of DC-CAS student test scores for those in testing grades. WTU's President, George Parker whose term ended June 30, 2010 reported in the Examiner article that grievances would "definitely" be filed for each fired teacher, based on what many teachers perceived as a botched process. Parker stated "The Impact evaluation is flawed, and we requested that DCPS not terminate teachers or inflict adverse actions in its first year. The document should've been piloted first." Terminated teachers would join a very long waiting list of DCPS employees who have already been fired by Rhee's administration over the past three years. Many WTU members believe that Parker's response to IMPACT evaluation has been reactionary and a little to late. In union meetings during last school year, members insisted that Parker fight IMPACT as an evaluation tool that is unfair. These requests made by union members of Parker have fallen on deaf ears. Bill Turque, Washington Post writer for the DC Schools Insider blog also covered this story. Click the School Insider link for Turque's story. Stay tuned for more on updates on teacher and school staff terminations in the upcoming week. While Kaya Henderson would not give reporters a ball park figure of the number of terminations, what's your best guess of the number of DCPS teachers and school staff to be terminated?
Via Powerlineblog I discover this Wall Street Journal Story A Water Fight Over Luxury Showers:
(Government) regulators are going after some of the luxury shower fixtures that took off in the housing boom. In May, the DOE stunned the plumbing-products industry when it said it would adopt a strict definition of the term "showerhead" in enforcing standards that have been on the books—but largely unenforced—for nearly 20 years.I particularly enjoyed how the government changed the rules, didn't inform anyone (or didn't give manufactures the years it would take to comply with the new rules), and then fined them. Those are the actions of a tyrannical government that is disconnected from law and human decency, a government that should be opposed and fought.
The showdown is a challenge to President Barack Obama and his energy secretary, Steven Chu, as they try to cajole—or compel—Americans to use water and energy more efficiently. Mr. Chu, a self-described "zealot" for energy efficiency, says he crawls around in his attic in his spare time installing extra insulation.
A 1992 federal law says a showerhead can deliver no more than 2.5 gallons per minute at a flowing water pressure of 80 pounds per square inch. For years, the term "showerhead" in federal regulations was understood by many manufacturers to mean a device that directs water onto a bather. Each nozzle in a shower was considered separate and in compliance if it delivered no more than the 2.5-gallon maximum. But in May, the DOE said a "showerhead" may incorporate "one or more sprays, nozzles or openings." Under the new interpretation, all nozzles would count as a single showerhead and be deemed noncompliant if, taken together, they exceed the 2.5 gallons-a-minute maximum.
In May, the DOE's general counsel, Scott Blake Harris, fined four showerhead makers $165,104 in civil penalties, alleging they failed to demonstrate compliance for some devices.
Jonathan Jones in the Guardian:
Art is as natural as breathing to the peoples of Africa. If there is ever another Picasso, she will be an African. And yet the problem with exhibiting it abroad is that if people are so modest about what they create, it is easy to come in as the big man and reinvent this art for yourself by selecting what to export, and what to say about it. If I'm suspicious that curators too easily impose their own aesthetic on African visual culture when they select from it what to call "art", it is because I've done it myself...More here
Via Doug Ross, on Moonbattery today I discovered that Blogetery.com, a little-known WordPress platform used by more than 70,000 blogs, was shut down by its Web hosting company more than a week ago and nobody seems willing to say why or who is responsible. Apparently some sort of law enforcement agency, which no one seems willing to disclose, shut down the blogs for unknown reasons. Usually a move like this would be because of copyright violations, but the operator of blogetery says that he didn't allow copyright violations and also usually there is some warning for moves like this. That makes it a suspicious and curious move.
Apparently the shutdown was inflicted without a court order. This doesn't shock me- increasingly our society is falling into tyranny where the rule of law does not matter as much as the rule of men. As a blog that fights this slide and works to return man to his life, liberty, and property rights, I can expect that someday some unknown government agency will likely shut me down. I can only hope that before they do that I've planted again the seeds of liberty and freedom that will grow up another tree of liberty.
Andrew Mwenda contends that:
The most enduring democratic reforms in Africa over the last two decades have not been in the sphere of politics but the economy. Governments across our continent have liberalised our economies, privatised public enterprises and deregulated economic activity. These reforms have created sufficient economic freedom and with it, the structural and technological foundations of democracy are growing.More here
The growth of the private sector in Uganda, for example, is creating opportunities for many professional Ugandans outside of the state. Those who work for private companies have greater space to speak their minds than state employees. The spread of internet and telecommunications is rapidly liberating information flow from state control. The boom in education is producing an enlightened population who are using Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in and other social networking sites to debate public policy.
Via Dissecting Leftism I came across this article called 'Econophysics' points way to fair salaries in free market':
A Purdue University researcher has used "econophysics" to show that under ideal circumstances free markets promote fair salaries for workers and do not support CEO compensation practices common today.
"It is generally believed that the free market cares only about efficiency and not fairness. However, my theory shows that even though companies focus primarily on making profits and individuals are only looking out for themselves, the collective self-organizing free market dynamics, under ideal conditions, leads to fairness as an emergent property," said Venkat Venkatasubramanian, a professor of chemical engineering. "In reality, the self-correcting free market mechanisms have broken down for CEOs and other top executives in the market, but they seem to be working fine for the remaining 95 percent of employees."
In the new work, the researcher has determined that fairness is integral to a normally functioning free market economy. Findings are detailed in a research paper that appeared in June in the online journal Entropy and is available at http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/12/6/1514/This is pretty interesting, and provides hope that our society will finally begin making progress on psychohistory. Pshychohistory, invented by science fiction author Isaac Asimov and a key point to The Foundation Series, is a concept of mathematical sociology analogous to mathematical physics that uses the law of mass action so that it can predict the future, but only on a large scale; it is error-prone on a small scale. It works on the principle that the behaviour of a mass of people is predictable if the quantity of this mass is very large (equal to the population of the galaxy, which has a population of quadrillions of humans, inhabiting millions of star systems). The larger the number, the more predictable is the future. Using pshychohistory, you can predict the future.
Wetlands International highlights the importance of maintaining the 'Dambos' of Malawi and Zambia:
Are the winds changing under Chancellor Michelle Rhee ? Given the recent announcement of low standardized test scores on the elementary level in DCPS, Efavorite poses some interesting questions for us to consider. Written by Efavorite, guest writer Have you noticed that Chancellor Rhee has not pointed the finger of blame at DC teachers for the 2010 DC CAS score decline in the elementary grades? How weird for someone who, up to now, has given teachers complete responsibility for student achievement, and has pushed for additional and easier ways to rid the system of teachers who she feels are not up to the task. Rhee’s been complaining about the low quality of DCPS teachers since her arrival here, so these new declining scores could have been positioned as proof that her major reform of firing more teachers needs to be stepped up immediately! At the press conference announcing the scores, instead of the vague “we have to take responsibility” and “dig into the data,” Rhee could have simply blamed teachers and promised to fire more of them, using the new options at her disposal in her historic, ground-breaking union contract. So what’s up? Maybe her $100,000 media consultant is worried that mentioning teacher quality right now would reflect poorly on the 900 new teachers Rhee hired last summer, breaking the budget and instigating an October RIF. These recent hires make up almost a quarter of the teaching corps now, so in theory they could be having quite an effect on student achievement. It could be that Rhee is hesitant to bash teachers in the middle of a rough recruiting season, especially knowing that a bunch of current teachers, including some of her own hires, are now up for dismissal based on their students’ declining DC-CAS scores. Perhaps it’s more personal. Rhee may have decided not to attract too much attention to herself during the press conference, thus allowing more time to weigh her own options. With the DC mayoral election right around the corner, anything could happen. Future DC teacher-bashing and teacher-firing opportunities could abound! Then again, she could opt to go national, much as Sarah Palin did, extending her star power over the whole country. Meanwhile, keep you ears open. The Chancellor has to mention teachers sometime soon. “Effective teachers” have been the cornerstone of her reform efforts. Remember, she thinks “Teachers are everything” and “the only solution we have.” Surely she won’t abandon them now. Rhee must be waiting for the right moment and the right spin.
If you haven't gotten a chance yet to read the essay America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution that was recently in the American Spectator, you should do so. It is long (took me about 5-10 minutes to read through it), but very well done. What I do like about the essay is that it lays out quite clearly the two classes that are evolving in our nation- what Codevilla calls the 'ruling class' and the 'country class.' Codevilla echo's what I tell my students every year- it is getting increasingly important to understand how the ruling class in our society works and how they use government to maintain their ruling status, because our society is increasingly about what the government does and less so about what you do. Oh, I also enjoyed how Codevilla explained how we have gotten to this state. What I didn't like about the essay is the end of it- although Codevilla identifies the problem and describes it exactly, he does not lay out a remedy for the problem. He writes about how some time in the future a third party should be created, but as I have written about before, that's not a realistic option (see my posts US Has Two Party System- Deal With It and Vote Republican and Libertarians Screwed Themselves Again by Not-Voting or Voting Libertarian).
Please take some time though to read the full essay- it is one of the most inspiring and inspired pieces of commentary that I have read in some time.
UPDATE: I've already picked up on some of this when I noticed that the The New Counter Culture in today's youth is Liberty:
So what then is the new counter culture? It is those people who love liberty and freedom- the new counter-culture are those people who have been raised on the soaring rhetoric of the Bible and the Declaration of Independence- the new rebels are the old rebels once again, those who fight against tyranny and oppression again.
Is the Government in Accra about to shoot itself and cross-border integration in the foot? Thompson Ayodele and Olusegun Sotola of IPPA write:
The Ghana Investment Protection Council, GIPC, recently revived a regulation that requires foreign-owned businesses based in Ghana to raise at least $300,000 before they are allowed to operate. These measures are imposed to shield indigenous business owners from foreign competitors. This is hinged on the belief that there is a need to curtail the influx of neighbouring countries‘ nationals from crowding out local business interests and creating job loss for Ghanaians.
Although the argument that the policy is designed to witch-hunt the nationals of any country has been debunked by the Ghanaian authorities, industry watchers and experts are not convinced. What is evident in view of the investment pattern is that the regulation is directly aimed at local entrepreneurs from West African countries who want to invest in Ghana and not against Chinese or Indian entrepreneurs whose chunk of foreign investments‘ loans are guaranteed by their governments. Thus, raising the specified amount won‘t be a problem for the Chinese and the Indians. By and large the policy will have more direct bearing on small and medium, scale businesses owned by nationals of West African countries as they do not enjoy the protection offered by their Chinese and Indian counterparts.
As many of you know, in addition to teaching AP Government, Military History, and US History, I also teach World History (yeah, I know- 4 preps!). At the end of each year that I have taught World History, I have my students do a capstone project or final project that requires students to integrate, interpret, analyze, synthesize, and link together different ideas, concepts, people, and events from world history.
It's not a complicated project. First, I take all the important words from our course, including people, places, events, concepts, and terms, and put them on a list and then randomly sort them. Then I break the list up into 10 separate groups. Students are to pick one word from each group. Then they are to create a timeline that demonstrates the relationship of the words through time. Then they are to write a paper linking together all of the words into a coherent and comprehensive essay that hopefully displays some sort of big understanding of history, religion, science, government, economics, social structures, etc. The theme drives which words are chosen and that in turn drives the timeline and essay.
Reading through the essays written by my regular World History High School students, I was struck by the wisdom that even high school students sometimes can exhibit.
One student wrote about an interesting pattern that she saw after looking back on world history- she wrote about the long history of anti-Semitism that stretched from burning Jews in the Middle Ages to the Holocaust to events of today (for this example, she used the biased coverage of the Gaza boat controversy). Another high school student wrote that one pattern he saw was the continuing struggle of freedom vs tyranny, even in countries that seemed to have had it figured out- he pointed out that at various times in history freedom has seemed to have won, but then later tyranny rose up and overwhelmed freedom (examples used were Greece, Rome, Germany in 1920, Japan in 1910, and the USA today), demonstrating how fragile and fleeting freedom really is. Another student pointed out how it has been such a long struggle for women's rights in our world, and documented all the progress that we have made, but ended her paper by concluding that our society still doesn't treat women equally (as an example she used the Sarah Palin Boobgate controversy). Another one of my high school students pointed out that history is always seems to be more of the same- that although there are the occasional true revolutionaries (Locke, Socrates, Newton, Einstein, Da Vinci were the examples used) that turn things on their head and advance ideas that are brand-new, most of history has been filled with more of the same- people promoting old theories as new or recycling bad ideas all over again (Marx, Lenin, Mao, Hitler, Napoleon, and Obama were all used as examples).
People lose hope in our next generation, feeling that the years of public schooling and liberal indoctrination that goes on in those facilities has created a group of people who are somehow less than future generations. But they are wrong- students today, just like students in the past, are as smart, hard-working, intuitive, and creative as previous generations, as long as the previous generations get out of the way and let them be all that they can be. Have hope- after a year of going through World History, you can clearly see that students recognize the big themes that are out there, and I'd be more than happy to have them as voters someday, provided they are not crushed, demoralized, and further indoctrinated by those previous generations.
