African poverty.

Well, I don't know how badly these 'countries' were suffering before people came along, changed their languages, changed their religions, changed their borders, removed the point of tribes, changed how they lived, dressed and worked, changed how they were led/governed etc.
Maybe the people didn't look the way Westerners wanted them to look, didn't act the way Westerners wanted them to act, didn't live the same way as Westerners, weren't using their resources as efficiently as they could, didn't have the same values as Westerners had and obviously weren't even as 'healthy' as Westerners, but they were satisfied and survived.
It's possible that the actual main problem is that the 'White man' came and adjusted the Africans way and standard of living, shifted the power to where it suited them and then 'left' leaving the people aware of their 'inferiority' and differences and in the middle of a new way of living (i.e. with governments) that nobody left there was really used to or wanted. The problem isn't the poverty, low education and illness, because that has mostly improved, the problem is the awareness the people have of themselves now, which means they cannot go back, but to match up with the standards they have been shown, they would need to advance ridiculously quickly, in a much shorter space of time than the Westerners themselves did. I think that's why the spread of wealth and corruption is so extreme.

Just me thinking out load/rambling...

This is basically what I've been trying to argue. What we are doing in Africa is the equivalent of going back to Britain 3000 years ago, and trying to get them to implement a system created gradually over hundreds of years by some of the greatest minds that ever lived. It is like giving formal control of our government over to a bunch of semi-psychopathic 15 year olds.

Belgium created the divison between Hutus and Tutsis which led to extreme amounts of violence and death during the Rwandan genocide in 1995, which also took a great toll on Congo, having similar divisions initailly caused by the Belgians and being a neighbouring country to Rwanda only made the situation worse than one could possibly imagine.

Countries don't need to invest in Africa, giant TNCs and MNCs exploit its resources and a lot of corruption that is present there is useful for these companies and sometimes created by them.

Exmaples of would include Shell's exploitation of Oil in Nigeria. The suffering that ordinary people have to face because of companies like these is truly horrible.

Source:http://www.essentialaction.org/shell/issues.html

The elite I refer to are the upper-middle classes, rather than the purely upper classes. Look at the cabinet now - almost all Etonion descendants of Lords and the like - almost all of whom have IQs of over 120.


I didn't claim that colonialists did good on a single level, but rather they provided all the things needed for an advanced economy to flourish - roads, railways, educational establishments, farming techniques, and rule of law, to name but a few. Indeed India today is still using our railways, educating their children in the imperialist schools we left behind, and ruling using the parliament we set up.

The English weren't advanced at least until the late 1800s/early 1900s, that system devloped over hundreds of years, and from having no idea of anything but tribal governance Africa is supposed to just get it? They didn't even have a written language, or for that matter a very expansive spoken language either. I do not know why you are getting so offended by me stating that the majority of the world is currently superior to Africans, I'm not even saying they are superior on a fundamental biological level. Imagine, if you can, we built a time machine and went back to the Habsburg empire and tried to get them, with their lower IQs, to implement the systems we use today. It would be a catastrophe.

And with all your crying I very much doubt you are more conservative than I am, indeed debating with you whilst trying not to offend your sensibilities is proving impossible. It's like having an argument with the Guardian in human form.

I think posting on a troll account on a mobile would be rather difficult... It takes like 2 mins per page as it is. If it was my opinion why would I seek to protect this account?

YOU HAVE ENTIRELY MISSED THE POINT

Without colonialism, without European intervention there would BE NO EDUCATION IN AFRICA.

ALL knowledge in Sub-Saharan Africa comes from Europeans, EVERYTHING that they know has been taught and told to them by Europeans.

GET THE POINT

So you're saying that without any European intervention no education system would have developed at all? I think that's a rather ridiculous claim to make. You have to remember that at the start of colonialism the UK didn't have a comprehensive education system, and education was really only for the rich, yet look how fast we developed an education system for all. There's no logical reason why that couldn't have happened in Africa (Albeit on a later time frame), without European intervention.

My point is that had these societies developed organically, there's no logical reason why they would be in a worse state than they are now.

When the British went to Africa they were still living in the stone age. If Africans were to advance it would have taken them thousands of years to get where the British industrial revolution was at. Thats IF they started to devlop.

Why would it have taken them thousands of years? You probably ought to reason your argument rather than just posting statements without explaining them. There's no logical reason why it would have taken thousands of years, particularly when other parts of the world had already industrialized which instantly creates knowledge and expertise that African societies can look to.

You're also assuming that by adhering to our definition of 'better' they'd be better countries, despite the fact that in reality they should be allowed to develop into societies that they please and find natural, not have capitalism (Which whilst we may deem better, is not organic to their society) forced upon them instantly.

So you're saying that without any European intervention no education system would have developed at all? I think that's a rather ridiculous claim to make. You have to remember that at the start of colonialism the UK didn't have a comprehensive education system, and education was really only for the rich, yet look how fast we developed an education system for all. There's no logical reason why that couldn't have happened in Africa (Albeit on a later time frame), without European intervention.

My point is that had these societies developed organically, there's no logical reason why they would be in a worse state than they are now.

I think your confidence in IQ tests is pretty absurd. Any decent sociologist will tell you that IQ, although partly related to innate intelligence, has a much stronger correlation with factors such as education, social class and cultural inheritance.

The most prominent finding of behavioral genetics has been summarized by the psychologist Eric Turkheimer: “The nature-nurture debate is over. . . . All human behavioral traits are heritable.” By this he meant that a substantial fraction of the variation among individuals within a culture can be linked to variation in their genes. Whether you measure intelligence or personality, religiosity or political orientation, television watching or cigarette smoking, the outcome is the same. Identical twins (who share all their genes) are more similar than fraternal twins (who share half their genes that vary among people). Biological siblings (who share half those genes too) are more similar than adopted siblings (who share no more genes than do strangers). And identical twins separated at birth and raised in different adoptive homes (who share their genes but not their environments) are uncannily similar.

So you're saying that without any European intervention no education system would have developed at all? I think that's a rather ridiculous claim to make. You have to remember that at the start of colonialism the UK didn't have a comprehensive education system, and education was really only for the rich, yet look how fast we developed an education system for all. There's no logical reason why that couldn't have happened in Africa (Albeit on a later time frame), without European intervention.

My point is that had these societies developed organically, there's no logical reason why they would be in a worse state than they are now.

In my recent book, A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World I argue two things. First that all societies remained in a state I label the “Malthusian economy” up until the onset of the Industrial Revolution around 1800. In that state crucially the economic laws governing all human societies before 1800 were those that govern all animal societies. Second that was thus subject to natural selection throughout the Malthusian era, even after the arrival of settled agrarian societies with the Neolithic Revolution.

The Darwinian struggle that shaped human nature did not end with the Neolithic Revolution but continued right up until the Industrial Revolution.

But the arrival of settled agriculture and stable property rights set natural selection on a very different course. It created an accelerated period of evolution, rewarding with reproductive success a new repertoire of human behaviors – patience, self-control, passivity, and hard work – which consequently spread widely.

And we see in England, from at least 1250, that the kind of people who succeeded in the economic system – who accumulated assets, got skills, got literacy – increased their representation in each generation. Through the long agrarian passage leading up to the Industrial Revolution man was becoming biologically more adapted to the modern economic world. Modern people are thus in part a creation of the market economies that emerged with the Neolithic Revolution. Just as people shaped economies, the pre-industrial economy shaped people. This has left the people of long settled agrarian societies substantially different now from our hunter gatherer ancestors, in terms of culture, and likely also in terms of biology.

We colonialised Hong Kong right up to the 90s, and it's one of the best places in the world. Clearly colonialism isn't to blame. If anything a lack of colonialism is Africa's problem. We left, thereby pulling the rug out from under the local population because there was never going to be a viable elite to take over and run things in an at least vaguely fair way. The most prosperous state in Africa is South Africa - where whites stayed to govern and although they had to be forced to, eventually transferred power to blacks. Unfortunately Africans seem extremely resistant to education - in Africa the elite's IQs at present average around the 100 mark, whereas the UKs are around 130-140. The average adult there hovers around 70, which roughly equates to the intelligence of a Western 8 year old and is borderline retarded. So the situation is that we have a bunch of 15 year olds trying to bring order to a country full of 8 year olds. Here we were lucky, our population was allowed to regulate itself naturally, so when our elite had lower IQs they didn't have to try and keep order amongst a country of more than a few million at most. Like the poster above states, these countries cannot handle our 'advanced' forms of democracy.

White Mans Burden....eh ? See...white brits came up with this idea that the west is actually saving everybody else from something the others were not aware untill the west told them so. They come into your house, kill, steal and convert your beliefs and claim that they are trying to civilize you.

• Whites Brits destroyed the civilizations of the Aztecs, Incas and West Africans.
• They robbed Africa of its riches and made its people into slaves.
• They wiped out the people of North America and Australia and took their land.
• By 1900 they ruled most of the world, robbing it of its wealth and freedom.
• They turned on each other in two world wars, killing tens of millions.
• They undermine democracies in other countries and keep bad men in power when it suits them.
• They discriminate against everyone who is not white.
• They spent $2.3 trillion on Africa over the past 50 years and yet over a million die of malaria every year as if it were some strange, incurable disease.

Despite all that they still think they are better than everyone else, that they are a force for good, that they are well-meaning. You couldn't make it up. Power corrupts. The west is powerful enough that it can believe whatever it wants about its motives – with no one to tell them otherwise who will widely be believed.

Firstly I know first hand that most African countries DECLINE aid because aid creates dependency. Oh sure, if you watch TV then you will see the usually african child with flies on there face asking you to donate. These stories proceed from and help support white racist ways of thinking : WHITES ARE BETTER. The natives therefore need their help and are, in fact, being helped. That is what whites like to believe. The truth is whites are no better than anyone else – just more powerful. And most of the time they use that power to serve their own ends, often screwing up the natives in the process – who then become objects of pity in need of saving. Whites know the ugly truth, at least at some level.

Britain NEVER does nothing for nothing. There is new term for slavery in the 21st century is a four letter word : DEBT.The world bank has given out credits to African countries for building up their infrastructures. The world bank does this to insure the interests of the multinationals and their Western resource junkies. The resource rich African countries are held hostage by the West through debt. The payback is done to a large part as “rebate in kind” by even more resources at ridiculously low prices. The higher the debt the tougher the negotiation basis and the least favourable for the producing country. Those countries are drawn into handcuff contracts of globally or regionally exclusive authorisations to exploit certain local resources.

In contrast, local infrastructures are crumbling, social programmes and local developments are cut because of the paybacks of interests and the debt itself. The so-called debt relief by western powers comes with a price. The resource producing countries have to sell everything for a special discount price which opens the doors to all sorts of speculations from foreign investors demanding high returns. Another byproduct the west is expecting from their ‘generous gestures’ is to get some more positive votes at the next UN assembly. In case of non-compliance to their conditions, they threaten the local authorities to pull their funds out or threaten them to initiate another ‘government turnover’.

It’s looting, plain and simple.

No-one talks about unfairness which the white man is putting on this planet by depleting it of its resources as if there’s no tomorrow.

Energy consumption per capita in kg of oil per year (2009) :

Bangladesh 160
Sénégal 240
Morocco 360
India 520
Angola 610
Indonesia 770
China 1200
Portugal 2500
Italy 3200
UK 4000
USA 8000

O yes because if the shoe was on the other foot, and African's came here to colonise us they would be really kind, wouldn't they? No... They would treat us like animals and give us nothing in return. I know it suits your cause to blame what a corrupt mess Africa is on whitey but it is just as much Africans fault as ours. You say that they didn't know their quality of life was poor before we got there and I agree, but they also had no use for the resources they were sat on either. You can't have it both ways. And it's not like any of the resources our country had is distributed evenly amongst the citizenry either.

Yet blacks are frequently presented screwed up. Like it has absolutely nothing to do with the racism in society is built on.

Most African tribes practice all the abusive and neglectful childrearing practices described above for New Guinea and Australian families. Infanticide of course is a routine practice in African tribes, as in tribal cultures around the world, with more girls than boys killed at birth.124..

Throughout African history, slavery was rife, and “three men could not be sent on a journey together for fear two of them may combine and sell the third…[in some tribes] any man falling into their hands is killed and eaten.”135 With the development of slavery, kingship and the early state, we move to the next chapter on “Child Abuse and War in Early States.”

That is because the problems aren't due to white racism. They are present in non-european countries and stem from a complex web of genetic and cultural issues. For instance, differences in cognitive abilities and testosterone levels. Also, tribal child abuse & slavery well before europeans showed up.
http://www.psychohistory.com/originsofwar/07_childAbuse.html