I know art is subjective, and anything can be art. But do any of those paintings look like master pieces to anyone here? I mean, could you not give paints to any toddler and have them smear paint on a canvas and call them the youngest artist in the world?
Months after some Israelis started to protest against aid lorries entering Gaza at the main Kerem Shalom crossing, the battle has moved to other key junctions, where rival groups of activists do their best to block or protect aid convoys […]
Right-wing activists, including Jewish settlers living in the occupied West Bank, have uploaded dozens of videos of crowds, including some very young children, hurling food onto the ground and stamping on boxes of aid.
You’ll find a short video embedded in the linked article.
No matter how far we have come as a society, you look again and realize on some things we have really not moved much. if anything, there might be regression. Think of Belgium owning forests in DR Congo for “carbon credits”!!!
Yes, we could update the snake with Alrosa, Lobaye, all the foreign-owned mining companies and their mercenaries in DRC. Whoever M23 sells its plunder to, as well (Apple, according to recent reports).
[…] when rulers in autocracies with semi-competitive elections […] have a weak hold on power, their desire for Chinese spending is amplified. This relates to clientelism, or the delivery of goods and services in exchange for political support.
A higher level of state control in autocracies grants political leaders greater influence over the allocation of clientelist benefits, which aids leaders’ reelection efforts.
[…]
For decades, the World Bank and affiliated regional development banks were the only game in town for development financing to low- and middle-income countries. Consequently, these global lenders could demand liberalizing reforms that were sometimes contrary to the interests of incumbent rulers, especially autocrats.
China’s rise has created an attractive alternative for autocratic regimes, especially since it does not impose the same kinds of conditions that often require loosening state controls on the corporate sector and reducing clientelism. Between 2014 and 2019, I find that 77% of total BRI spending on construction projects went to autocracies, and primarily to those with semi-competitive elections.
This kind of research is interesting. There are several of these that I know of (Ethiopia’s Injera cost, Kenya’s Kikapu, Tanzania’s gharama etc). Hopefully someone can put these indices in comparison to other cost-of-living/inflation measures. Link to the report page - sbmintel.com/…/the-sbm-jollof-index-crisis-at-the…
I am not into the political economy weeds of this situation but is there a reason why this is so hard to do? I can think of a host of reasons but is there agreement within African(-ist) thinking why this is usually the case?
They most likely bribe the politicians into contracts they know they can’t pay in time or will fail. Then the politicians leave and live the life of luxury but the country still owes them money and the next guy in power does the same to avoid paying the last guys debt. Now the chinese has the country by the balls.
Last year, researchers at AidData, the World Bank, the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany found that Beijing has dramatically expanded emergency rescue lending to sovereign borrowers in financial distress—or outright default.
Essentially, however, China has been bailing out its own banks, the study found. You can download the study here.
TLDR:
China had undertaken 128 rescue loan operations across 22 debtor countries worth $240 billion [by March 2023 when the study was published]. These include many so-called “rollovers,” in which the same short-term loans are extended again and again to refinance maturing debts.
Less than 5 percent of Beijing’s overseas lending portfolio supported borrower countries in distress in 2010, but that figure soared to 60 percent by 2022. Therefore, China’s new funding schemes pivoted away from infrastructure project lending to ramping up liquidity support operations. Nearly 80% of its emergency rescue lending was issued between 2016 and 2021.
China does not offer bailouts to all BRI borrowers: low-income countries are typically offered a debt restructuring that involves a grace period or final repayment date extension but no new money, while middle-income countries tend to receive new money to avoid default. The reason is that these middle-income countries represent 80% or more than $500 billion of China’s total overseas lending, thus posing major balance sheet risks, so Chinese banks have incentives to keep them afloat via bailouts.
Borrowing from Beijing in emergency situations comes at a high price. Rescue loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) carries a 2% interest rate, while the average interest rate attached to a Chinese rescue loan is 5% in comparable situations.
Is there enough in the way of local large-scale miners to support this? It’s robbery the way Nigeria’s mineral wealth is handled, particularly the oil, but leaving it in the ground isn’t so helpful either.
Contemporary written accounts describe widespread looting of the fortress and church by soldiers and the released hostages. Many of the pillaged objects were subsequently re-assembled and auctioned. This auction was presented as a means of generating ‘prize money’ for the troops. After Maqdala was destroyed the expedition force soon left Maqdala and shortly afterwards departed Ethiopia.
Accompanying the expedition in an official capacity as ‘archaeologist’ was Richard Rivington Holmes, assistant in the Department of Manuscripts at the British Museum. Holmes was one of the principal buyers at the auction and returned to the UK with a significant collection of objects including over 300 manuscripts (now in the collections of the British Library (Opens in new window)), regalia, sacred vessels and liturgical equipment from the imperial treasury, library and church at Maqdala. Objects entered the British Museum collections via Holmes and through the Secretary of State for India in 1868.
Those are not “thieves”. The real thieves are these AngloAmericans who stole hundreds of thousands of prime land then forced natives to work there (state forced taxation that could only be paid in cash which could only be got from these settler farms). Fuxked up system.
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