There is no role for the USA in multi-lateral organizations - the USA has made this clear for decades now - it should withdraw from all of them and let the rest of the world get on with creating a world that is based on the dignity of all people.
Sub-Saharan Africa is deeply humanistic, in a way that is close to unfathomable to Westeners. Scaling or "going viral" requires painstaking building of human connection. Models that have worked elsewhere don't necessarily work. I believe that this has a lot to teach us about how to fight the dark scourge that inhabits Facebook and other social media, in which "scaling" is simple, cheap and so easily corrupted
The honesty and bravery of the speech is remarkable - that a leader can tell those he leads painful and difficult truths - rather than tell them merely what will appease them. Everyday we see evidence of how easy it is to appeal to base and superficial feelings, rather than what is noble and honest.
There is so much we can learn from both the causes of the tyranny and how the aftermath was handled, politically, personally and socially.
I don’t think that the “nerd porn” is as negative as the writer believes. If we compare FOSS to proprietary enterprise software we see how little regard proprietary vendors often pay to what engineers need at the expense of adding check-list features that attract “business” decision makers. The ability to enhance, operate, monitor, test are so much stronger in FOSS products because they are written for engineers by engineer. This can of course be taken too far, but it is, IMO, a reason why FOSS can succeed in displacing proprietary technology.
South Africa has a proportional representation system for similar reasons - to recognise plurality. It has some significant downsides. It weakens the ties between a representative and a specific district / constituency. In exchange it strengthens the hands of party decision makers who are the final brokers of how seats are apportioned.
Having grown up in South Africa and having spent a reasonable amount of time in the USA, I admire the local civic mindedness of American communities and the accountability of the political representatives. I am also appalled by the partisanship. I worry that proportional representation could make it worse.
Propotional representation is not with out its problems, but I think given that our current system has a bicameral legislature where one body (the Senate) basically just represents entrenched power interests and is badly divorced from the will of the people, and grossly unrepresentative (since it's 2 per state where states have differing populations), I think we could gain a lot by making that body proportional.
Would it be perfect? Nah. Would it be -a lot- better than what we have? Yes.
With the Senate proportional party, and the House still geographically representative, and then if you add in ranked choice voting, you could break the two party system and have a much, much more representative government.
This the easiest and most realistic step in my opinion; the people lobbying heavily to preserve the current Senate system would just be entrenched local tyrants. I think the vast bulk of Americans would be swayed by the idea of having at least one Senator who almost completely shares their politics.
If the result is that the Senate becomes the most interesting and representative body, gradually shift the bulk of power there on whatever issues it's best at. If the result is that the Senate becomes a disaster, abolish the entire body.
Right, always easy to see the good sides of other systems, but much harder to anticipate their failure modes. Besides the one you mention (of politicians being pawns of a party boss -- they owe their local seat only to their place on his list) proportional systems also have a habit of handing undue power to small, often extreme, parties when they have a tie-breaking vote.
Read (and converse) voraciously and follow the directions it may lead you... Into art, philosophy, psychology, business, politics, literature. This will help you to find things you love, it will also give you insight into adjacent topics that will allow you to shine in an area of CS that is right for you. You will never have such a perfect chance to do this as your university years.
Maybe it had greater assets under management, that doesn’t translate to power or direct ownership. They are custodians and facilitators. Their worth is traded on NYSE and doesn’t exceed top internet companies, who imo have more power.
90 billion is not systemic though. It would hurt the profits of some of the other companies, sure, but it's not anywhere near threatening the entire system.
It is staggering to hear arguments justifying occupied land that has absolutely no connection to the uk. It shows how poorly the west still understands the evil of colonialism.
Regardless of the ancestry of the people living in any territory, they deserve to have sovereignty over their lives.
how many generations of people have to live somewhere to be considered "native" then.
In this case we're talking what 4-5 generations, depending on how you count it, that sounds fairly native to me.
The UK acted poorly here and the pressure that this vote applies to them is good, as if anyone has a right to the islands it's the people who lived there for hundreds of years.
So when do we get to stop wringing our hands about the Israelis?
They've been there well over 100 years now, settlement by the Israelis started in the 1870s. Are they now native?
It's never going to be an easy thing to resolve. Ultimately, if you settle someone else's sovereign land, don't be surprised if you don't get to just claim it unless you've got the guns, tanks and bombers to back it up.
I'm not sure what the connection here is to the Israeli situation, an entirely different and also complex situation.
Here the UK government acted unethically and (according to the UN) illegally in displacing people who had been resident on these islands for a long time.
That pressure is being brought to bear on them for this, seems like a good thing.
Predominantly white colonials buying Palestinian land, forming an independent state and then kicking out all the indigenous people.
You can't see the connection? At all?
I don't see what the point is in discussing this with you, some how you've decided that land bought and paid for should be given back to a people that didn't even come from there past a handful of generations.
And somehow this is 'ethical'.
What a load of nonsense.
I would point out that there were a huge number of abstentions. So don't think the UN were unanimous on this.
So the Chagosian situation didn't have individuals buying land, it was a state (the UK) insisting on a deal to a much less powerful nation and then evicting all the citizens by force.
It's relatively clear from the wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagos_Archipelago_sovereignty...) that the government of Mauritius were under the impression that their being granted independence from the UK depended on their agreeing to hand over the Chagos Islands
the key quote from British records being
"in theory, there were a number of possibilities. The Premier and his colleagues could return to Mauritius either with Independence or without it. On the Defence point, Diego Garcia could either be detached by order in Council or with the agreement of the Premier and his colleagues. The best solution of all might be Independence and detachment by agreement, although he could not of course commit the Colonial Secretary at this point."
Well, principally yes. Or, at least, the US could acknowledge the massive genocide that European settlers have committed in the past, rather than glorifying the "good ol' days" of expansion and slaughtering people and their cattle, and give the indigenous people some real recompensation for the atrocities that have been done to their ancestors.
What Africa needs are institutions and infrastructure that can buy and refine gold and thereby ensure that the benefits of our resources accrue to the countries (and their people) from where they originate. The pirate miners are not necessarily the source of the problem, neither are the traders in UAE and China. All are just filling a vacuum. Similarly the traditional institutions in Switzerland and other western countries that control precious metal markets are also somewhat part of the problem.
To the extent that political elites in Africa benefit from the exploitation of resources, establishing
local institutions and infrastructure is narrowly seen as not in their interests. African people and global institutions who truly care about a peaceful, prosperous and free world need to commit investment and political focus to see this happen.
> What Africa needs are institutions and infrastructure that can buy and refine gold and thereby ensure that the benefits of our resources accrue to the countries (and their people) from where they originate.
As an African - what Africa needs is for Africans to stop supporting despots.
That’s not a uniquely African problem, although one could argue it’s on the more extreme end of the spectrum.
Really thinking about it, it’s a need for people to work for the common good. “Rather than voting in the guy who will give me money, I’ll vote in the guy who will make sure everyone has clean water.”
I assume the reason that doesn’t happen is because they tried the 2nd option and it failed.
They do have - they are called western mining companies. I invest in many of them and they are doing great things for these very poor countries.
It is a pity more people don't invest in these companies as they tend to be priced at a significant discount to mining companies working in western countries. This is especially acute at the exploration/development stage which makes it hard for them to raise the money to develop new mines.
What exactly are some of the great things Western mining companies are doing for poor countries? The only thing that I'm aware of which might be construed as positive is that through exfiltrating resources from the country and channeling the profits of this venture into the pockets of Western shareholders, they lift the country of its resource curse, by lifting it of its resources. However, this is neither ethically nor, in the short and medium term, practically, actually a good thing. And besides that, there just isn't much: mining ventures do not require much infrastructure, which will therefore not see much improvement from those investments, and the wages paid to local workers are laughable compared to the revenue mining generates, to the point where getting that revenue into the pockets of local warlord kleptocrats might actually be better, because if nothing else, at least their lavish lifestyle drives demand and powers the local economy.
Or is there a different force at play that I'm not seeing?
I think you have a misinformed understanding about the current legal and ethical standards that public western mining companies operate under in Africa. They pay a huge amount of taxes and royalities and many have the host government as a major shareholder (10-15%). It is not western mining companies that are smuggling gold out to the UAE.
Serious mines need an amazing amount of infrustructure and capital - hundreds of millions dollars is typical and often much more. A typical mine employs thousand of locals in what are middle class or better paying jobs - the western run mines are all mechanised - you don't pay $5 day to some local and put them in charge of a $200,000 truck.
Yes the host governments often waste or steal the money, but even with this a huge amount of good is still done. It is the areas of Africa that are not being "exploited" by the West that are the poorest.
The local companies and companies from countries outside the West are still a problem. We should be supporting the good companies and driving out the bad. Unfortunately few investors are willing to do this.
What you describe is some sort of lesser evil - I still fail to see the massive positive force. Modus operandi for centuries has been to exploit the hell out of any country, be it Africa, Indonesia or South America and give nothing and take everything.
Only if government is not utterly corrupt and doesn't pocket nearly 100% of income from the mine can there be some lasting benefits for the country. Its just a continuation of theft and exploitation that made Europe so rich for last few hundreds of years, albeit with 21st century 'we care' face. Travel a bit in countries that were raped like this, ie Potosi in Bolivia to get full picture of where this sort of business came from.
So while few pocket some average income while the mine lasts, country is stripped blank of its most precious resources... and that is supposed to be something positive? I have somewhat higher moral standards than this to consider these kind of operations at least slightly moral and justifiable.
Every decision in the real world is a choice of the lesser evil. Investing in companies that are doing the right thing is the way to make a difference to world.
Instead of pulling down those companies that are making an actually real difference to the people in Africa, what is your solution?
The ones I am invested in are all Australian listed (some have a dual listing in Canada). The Australian and Canadian markets (also AIM in London) are where most of the companies are listed.
Take a look at the following gold companies that I really like. Gold is easier to deal with the poor logistics of Africa than the base metals which require shipping large volumes of ore.
My current favourites are Galina (ASX:G1A) which is a lead/silver developer and Aeris Resources (ASX:AIS) a copper producer, but which is currently drilling a very large IOCG deposit in South Australia.
If you are interested in learning about Australian mining companies then take a look at Hot Copper. Watch out as like most stock internet message boards there is a lot of ramping, but there is also a huge amount of useful information there too. Just make sure to check everything you read yourself.
