Comments on: Tough love for Africa http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/02/tough_love_for_africa.html black looks Mon, 08 Sep 2008 05:05:45 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.2 By: Beauty http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/02/tough_love_for_africa.html#comment-93895 Beauty Sat, 16 Feb 2008 11:42:04 +0000 http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/02/tough_love_for_africa.html#comment-93895 "The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind - computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind — creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers. These people — poets, artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers — will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys." Dan Pink, A Whole New Mind. I embraced a potentially useful stranger in order to get a result for our selfish interests and our future will be about reason and mathematics. Those figures and percentages are relevant baselines that will help to map that future. The past is full of sorrows and to continue in the same path spells disasters yet seen anywhere. How will the 3rd world become part of of a free future? Our people in Africa have been subjected to servitude and as such hails the next person that brings the cola. How can we turn that around in order live free? How do we stop our leaders using our national treasuries as their personal piggy banks? How do we stop the big banks help our looters stash our stolen monies? How do we stop gas flaring in our back yards? The answers to these questions have become too complex and refining them is a reason for adding the Iraqi style terror which may either way turn out to be outcome in Africa. Downtrodden people always find a way out of any bad deal. “The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind - computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind — creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers. These people — poets, artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers — will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.” Dan Pink, A Whole New Mind.

I embraced a potentially useful stranger in order to get a result for our selfish interests and our future will be about reason and mathematics. Those figures and percentages are relevant baselines that will help to map that future.

The past is full of sorrows and to continue in the same path spells disasters yet seen anywhere. How will the 3rd world become part of of a free future?

Our people in Africa have been subjected to servitude and as such hails the next person that brings the cola. How can we turn that around in order live free? How do we stop our leaders using our national treasuries as their personal piggy banks? How do we stop the big banks help our looters stash our stolen monies? How do we stop gas flaring in our back yards?

The answers to these questions have become too complex and refining them is a reason for adding the Iraqi style terror which may either way turn out to be outcome in Africa. Downtrodden people always find a way out of any bad deal.

]]> By: Rethabile http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/02/tough_love_for_africa.html#comment-93527 Rethabile Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:16:38 +0000 http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/02/tough_love_for_africa.html#comment-93527 Beauty, Nyet. Proposing Iraqi style terror is bad all the way through. It means that the terrorist who invades my country "to straighten it out," inherently believes that (s)he or their way is superior. And I disagree. It just means (s)he has the gun, and knows how to shoot with it. The reason Africa was colonised in the first place, next to greed and hegemony, is that the coloniser thought (s)he was helping educate, civilise, and so on, exactly what Mr Grover is re-suggesting. Instead, things were broken, beliefs, customs, administrations, families, and so on. The Atlanticist blog post flashes a lot of figures and percentages, but I could easily come up with my own figures and percentages for an argument against the west. What counts here, if I dare insist, isn't mathematics, but reason, and that unidentifiable thing that makes us different from animals. Beauty,
Nyet. Proposing Iraqi style terror is bad all the way through. It means that the terrorist who invades my country “to straighten it out,” inherently believes that (s)he or their way is superior. And I disagree. It just means (s)he has the gun, and knows how to shoot with it.

The reason Africa was colonised in the first place, next to greed and hegemony, is that the coloniser thought (s)he was helping educate, civilise, and so on, exactly what Mr Grover is re-suggesting. Instead, things were broken, beliefs, customs, administrations, families, and so on.

The Atlanticist blog post flashes a lot of figures and percentages, but I could easily come up with my own figures and percentages for an argument against the west. What counts here, if I dare insist, isn’t mathematics, but reason, and that unidentifiable thing that makes us different from animals.

]]> By: Beauty http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/02/tough_love_for_africa.html#comment-93402 Beauty Fri, 08 Feb 2008 10:09:02 +0000 http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/02/tough_love_for_africa.html#comment-93402 Stripping out the fact that the Atlanticist blog was written with its self serving benefit in mind, I believe that thinking outside of the box will be our salvation. Africa has been considered as a zoo (how else would you describe Bob, Bono & Bill shows?) for so long that radical change will probably be our only way out. One who is coerced to the purposes, objectives, or preferences of another is not a follower in any true sense of the word, but an object of manipulation. The US, EU & China use us and abuse us in every way possible but their collaborators (our governments) are ineffective, inefficient and irrelevant. They must be made accountable. How? See the Atlanticist blog again. May I remind you that Africa and the rest of the world runs on institutional failures. Schools that can't teach, police that can't enforce the law, judiciary that cannot deliver justice, inefficient/non existent logistics systems; but there are exceptions. It is these tiny windows that led us into diaspora, open it wider for a little bit more light in Africa. Our countries, no matter how bad/well they are run, they are only as good as the people who live and work in them. We must find a little bit of ethics, morality and deep concern about order and relationships in a more productive and constructive way of life. Proposing Iraqi style terror might not be so bad after all. Stripping out the fact that the Atlanticist blog was written with its self serving benefit in mind, I believe that thinking outside of the box will be our salvation. Africa has been considered as a zoo (how else would you describe Bob, Bono & Bill shows?) for so long that radical change will probably be our only way out.

One who is coerced to the purposes, objectives, or preferences of another is not a follower in any true sense of the word, but an object of manipulation. The US, EU & China use us and abuse us in every way possible but their collaborators (our governments) are ineffective, inefficient and irrelevant. They must be made accountable. How? See the Atlanticist blog again.

May I remind you that Africa and the rest of the world runs on institutional failures. Schools that can’t teach, police that can’t enforce the law, judiciary that cannot deliver justice, inefficient/non existent logistics systems; but there are exceptions. It is these tiny windows that led us into diaspora, open it wider for a little bit more light in Africa.

Our countries, no matter how bad/well they are run, they are only as good as the people who live and work in them. We must find a little bit of ethics, morality and deep concern about order and relationships in a more productive and constructive way of life. Proposing Iraqi style terror might not be so bad after all.

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