quote:Originally posted by akoben: "Doug M" you are truly the typical wild eyed lefty radical. Spend all your energy complaining about the unfairness of the system that you have little time left to come up with practical solutions if you had the chance to do so.
Did I say that capitalism was free and fair? Or that the Asians and Europeans in Africa are not looking out for their own interest? No. You are simply looking for another excuse to rant about the problem some more.
The nature of the capitalist system and foreigners in Africa is not the issue or up for debate. Yes we should want our own, who is disputing that? Yes most of our economies are controlled by the Dutch and British, followed by other Europeans, Chinese and foreigners, by "a few rich racist industrialists". Yes, we have to feed, clothe, house and educate ourselves but the question was how would you change the current situation given the challenges:
quote:imagine you are the president of Zimbabwe today. What practical solutions or alternatives would you be engaging in if you were in Mugabe's shoe right now? List these and the expected challenges envisioned for each alternative solution you give and how would you practically deal with these challenges if and when they come. Thanks.
Predictably you completely avoided the question only to rant some more! It's not so easy when you are in the shoe is it? Much easier to sit in the comfort of your home behind a computer and cut and paste all the problems of Africa. But put you in Mugabe's shoe right now and you go blank ......huh....what to do now?
So you want to give it another try "Doug M"?
This time don't tell me about the unfairness of the system, what IMF is doing and what we need to do, but how would you go about changing the situation and meeting the expected challenges.
But the point you are making is silly. If you LIKE things the way they are then just say so.
I never said I had a comprehensive problem for all the ills on this planet. This planet doesn't need a savior anyway.
The point I am making is that many people do not know the REAL situation in Africa and buy into the HYPE that is fed to them. No, everything is not ALL BAD in Africa. However, at the same token colonialism and exploitation are not dead either. So the point is to communicate the ACTUAL issues as food for thought.
Like I said, if you simply LIKE things the way they are and you AGREE with the agenda of foreigners, then why even FAKE the funk? You don't CARE about a solution, so why ASK for one.
For those who really CARE about a solution, it is multifaceted but really boils down to the following SIMPLE statement: the majority of wealth generated from the land, labor and industry of Africans can and SHOULD go to Africans before anyone else, in terms of goods produced as well as profits generated, not as HANDOUTS from foreign companies making ALL the money, but as DIRECT profit into the hands of black Africans. It is that simple and does not require extra clarification.
As I said, if you don't LIKE that idea then stop pretending that you can't understand it and admit you simply DON'T LIKE the idea of Africans making MOST off the resources of their OWN continent.
Don't play charade games with me.
ALL countries promote the economic interests of THEIR OWN countries and their OWN industries. The Americans promote THEIR OWN companies and WORKERS in Africa. The French promote THEIR OWN workers and companies in Africa. The Chinese promote THEIR OWN workers and companies in Africa. ALL of these interests are AIDED and SUPPORTED by their respective governments as KEY to economic growth for their OWN countries. Yet where is the African government promoting the interests of THEIR OWN industries and workers in all of this??? THAT is the disconnect. In all of this talk of development this and development that, it always boils down to the FOREIGN interests gaining the UPPER hand over the native governments of Africa, which means that the locals are left ON THEIR OWN with NOBODY defending THEIR INTERESTS.
Yep, I rest my case. LOL You never even attempted to reply to my post, only go off into your usual comfort zone of ranting and spamming.
Now you say I want things to remain as they are simply because I ask you for your practical solutions if you were in Mugabe's shoe. LOL Typical. Just admit it little Doug you don't have answer, only websites.
If you know what Mugabe's doing "wrong" then obviously you should know, or at least have some idea, how to do the "right". What would you do different, "Doug M", and how would you met each challenge? Still no answer; you sir are pathetic. A frustrated little middle class kid who surfs the internet for info to validate his image of Africa as a land of hapless victims and sell out leaders. When asked what would he do different, he goes blank....LOL
Why are you worried about Mugabe? He only cares about one thing and that is being president for life. Whether I sit here and try and pretend to be a messiah for Africa or pass your "smoke test" of credibility, that still wont change Mugabe's real ambitions. Whether you like it or not Mugabe is really part of the problem not the solution, because he is only using rhetoric and ploys to maintain power not really liberate Africans in Zimbabwe from white economic domination.
Posts: 8893 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Doug M: Why are you worried about Mugabe? He only cares about one thing and that is being president for life. Whether I sit here and try and pretend to be a messiah for Africa or pass your "smoke test" of credibility, that still wont change Mugabe's real ambitions. Whether you like it or not Mugabe is really part of the problem not the solution, because he is only using rhetoric and ploys to maintain power not really liberate Africans in Zimbabwe from white economic domination. [/QB]
He's probably part of both.
Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006
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posted
And while everyone is harping about the Chinese "slave empire" in Africa, why aren't they worried about the WHITE slave empire in Africa, which is still there:
quote: Mr. Watt left the country of his birth about a year ago after what has become a common sort of encounter there. The husband of a worker in the office of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe politely told Mr. Watt that he was taking over his farm and that Mr. Watt had 90 days to get out.
Today Mr. Watt is one of about 140 white Zimbabwean farmers who have relocated to neighboring Zambia hoping, many say, for a mix of racial harmony and political stability that will enable them to prosper and contribute to black Africa.
For the farmers and for the Zambian government, the migration amounts to a new experiment on an issue central to the whole region: how do whites fit in?
While Zimbabwe has been uprooting its white farmers in an aggressive effort to redistribute colonial era landholdings, Zambian officials, if a trifle warily, have rolled out the welcome mat. They are hoping that farmers like Mr. Watt will breathe new life into the nation's moribund farming economy, which has been mired at the rake-and-hoe level since the mid-1970's.
For their part, some transplanted farmers say they have learned from their experience in Zimbabwe that they need to integrate, not just prosper, if they want to be accepted.
Mr. Watt drove around Zambia for three weeks before he found 1,600 acres to lease near this one-street village with a post office, police station and food market north of Lusaka, the capital. Pasture and brush a year ago, the gently rolling land is now five feet high in green tobacco plants tended by 240 workers. Huge yellow sheaves of tobacco are hung to cure in 15 shiny sheds by a new blocklong warehouse.
Mr. Watt has sunk $900,000 into his new farm, most of it borrowed from a bank and from the Universal Leaf Tobacco Company, based in Richmond, Va. ''I have put every cent I have into this,'' Mr. Watt, 38, said, sitting in the dining room of his new ranch-style house. ''I've got more invested here than I ever did in Zimbabwe. We will be an asset to the country.''
Mr. Watt's move continues a long pattern of whites, increasingly uncertain of their welcome, who have hopscotched around the southern end of Africa in the last four decades.
His shift reverses that of his parents, 40 years ago. Back when this Texas-size nation was still called Northern Rhodesia and chafed under colonial rule, Roy and Ria Watt grew tobacco and corn on 4,000 lush acres. In 1964, when white minority rule crumbled and the country became Zambia, the Watts, fearful of their future under a new black-led government, fled to Zimbabwe. Today their son is convinced that his parents bet on the wrong country.
Douglas Watt describes Zambia as everything that Zimbabwe is no longer: racially tolerant, law-abiding and moderate. It had been desperate for investment after disastrous postindependence economic policies reduced the nation to a beggar for foreign handouts and loans. Critics say President Mugabe's policies in Zimbabwe are creating the same conditions for disaster there today.
Also unlike Zimbabwe, or South Africa for that matter, Zambia has good land in abundance: about 60 percent of the countryside is arable, but less than 10 percent is actively farmed. In a country of 10 million, there are no more than 450 commercial farmers, including the Zimbabweans.
''We think there is a large vacuum to fill,'' said Chance Kabaghe, deputy minister for agriculture, in an interview in a dilapidated office building in Lusaka. ''That's why we have been so open.''
Still, he added: ''We are encouraging them to respect our norms and mix with the local people. We are watching the situation very closely.''
For Zambia, the white farmers' money and knowledge may help the nation climb out of the hole it fell into with the decline of its copper mines and nationalization of land after independence.
Aided by open government policies on leasing and investment -- and by America's tobacco industry, which is underwriting much of the farm-building -- farmers like Mr. Watt are already creating a more modest version of Zimbabwe's once mighty tobacco industry, which has been left in ruins after three years of land seizures.
Which begs the question, why is it that black Africans cannot farm for themselves without whites? Why is it that they NEED whites to have successful farms when BLACKS make up the majority of the SLAVE LABOR on these farms to begin with?
The obvious answer is that the network of white controlled industry and finance inside and outside of Africa WILL NOT support black farmers or black owned and operated industry. It goes AGAINST everything whites in Africa stand for. Whites were ENCOURAGED by various European governments and banks to "settle" in Africa. The purpose was the same as the purpose for the white land owners in America importing Europeans to "settle" the West. The white elite needed a power base and a way to TAKE the land from the indigenous people. The settlers were given various types of incentives to create farms and create "communities" that would SHARE the wealth of the land taken from blacks and other natives, in order to create SELF SUPPORTING industries to help the settlers prosper and grow their settlements. This means that they developed industries to produce infrastructure, pipes, electricity, irrigation and all the other things they needed to prosper on the black lands they had stolen. And these communities were openly socialist, with massive amounts of money being spent to build roads, bridges, housing and everything else for whites to live well, all off the backs of black slave labor, in industry and agriculture, who got LITTLE benefit from the WEALTH of their OWN LAND. South Africa was always envisioned, by the British industrial and banking cartels as the home base for white industrial southern Africa. All of southern Africa was envisioned as becoming one massive series of game reserves, plantations an mines built on African slave labor with whites as the PERMANENT upper crust elite of the elite who owned and controlled the industry, agriculture and resources of southern Africa. This is the agenda of people like Cecil Rhodes and corporations like Lonrho and Debeers (AngloAmerican). ALL of these industrial cartels are tied into the wealth and power of European and American white elites who have been using them and following the plan of white domination for African economics all along, both during and AFTER the so-called independence of African countries. Lonrho is now expanding its operations throughout Africa and is based in Kenya.
quote: History
The Company was incorporated in the United Kingdom on 13 May 1909 as the London and Rhodesian Mining Company Limited.
Businessman Tiny Rowland was recruited as chief executive in 1962.[1] For many years during the second half of the twentieth century it was frequently in the news, not only due to the politically-sensitive part of the world in which it had mining businesses, but also – as it strove to become a conglomerate not wholly dependent on these businesses – in a number of takeover battles, most notably for the Harrods of Knightsbridge department store.[1]
In 1968, Lonrho acquired Ashanti Goldfields Corporation, a gold mining business in Ghana.[2] The former Conservative minister Duncan Sandys, a director of Ashanti, became Lonrho's chairman in 1972.[3]
During the 80s, Lonrho entered the British newspaper market, buying the Sunday newspaper The Observer in 1981[4] and the newly launched daily Today in 1986.[5] Today was sold to News International the following year,[6] while the Guardian Media Group bought the Observer in 1993.[4]
Sir Angus Ogilvy, married to a member of the British royal family (Princess Alexandra of Kent), was a Lonrho director and this increased media interest in the company's affairs. Ogilvy's career ended when Lonrho was involved in a sanctions-busting scandal concerning trade with Rhodesia. Prime Minister, Edward Heath, criticised the company, describing it in the House of Commons in 1973 as "an unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism."[7]
Tiny Rowland was finally ejected from Lonrho in October 1993 after a boardroom tussle with director Dieter Bock. However, Rowland's parting shot was to get the board to appoint his nominee, Sir John Leahy, to succeed him as chairman.[8]
Two months before Rowland's death (on July 26, 1998) the assets of Lonrho were demerged. Two publicly listed companies, Lonrho plc and Lonrho Africa plc were created – the former retaining all the non-African businesses and mining assets.[9] In 1999 Lonrho plc was renamed as Lonmin plc and a new era as a focused mining company began. Since then it has divested itself of all non-core assets.
This pattern of white controlled industry supporting the interests of white industrialists and settlers has not changed one bit. Africans get NOTHING from this system of industrial apartheid, except jobs as virtual slaves. They get NO SUPPORT from white industry to develop infrastructure (unless it is being built and developed by whites), they get no pipes, no food, no housing, no medicine, no textbooks, no nothing from these networks. Yet when whites show up, all of a sudden money, technology and all sorts of support is provided for these people to succeed. ALL of it reflecting an APARTHEID state of economics and industry in Africa where the wealth and control of resources lies primarily in the hands of whites and is used PRIMARILY for the benefit and development of WHITE communities and DEFINITELY NOT for the benefits of blacks.
Case in point, why did the white tobacco companies and banks from Europe and America give BLACKS loans to have tobacco farms in Zimbabwe? Aren't blacks capable of running their OWN farms, not only for tobacco but fruit, vegetables and everything else?
So who is kidding. Now, given this history of oppression and destruction, how on earth does this continue to go on. NOBODY on earth is that stupid not to know what whites are about, especially those who have been SUFFERING from white oppression for so long.
Of course, none of this has stopped places like Zambia from openly declaring that the only way they can prosper is from FOREIGNERS coming in and owning all their mines, which is absolutely BACKWARDS. The BEST way for them to develop is through the growth and development of an INDIGENOUS AFRICAN mining industry, that can take the wealth of the resources in Zambia and put it into the Zambian economy.
quote: The purpose of this web site is to help the mining industry to realize it's potential and enhance the sectors contribution to the resources derived from mining to our economic well-being and quality of life. A reliable supply of minerals is essential to the nation's economic growth and to our quality of life.
Our aim is to involve all aspects of the mining industry including coal, metal and industrial mineral producers, mineral processors, equipment manufacturers, state associations, bulk transporters, engineering firms, consultants, financial institutions and other companies that supply goods and services to the mining industry.
To achieve our common goals for the future, requires not only a strong vision, but a set of robust values supported by all members.
The core values include:
* community well-being above self-interest * professional competence * fair competition * fostering fraternity * honour, integrity and dignity * impartial advice to the community * compliance with laws and regulations * professional development and knowledge enhancement; and * support of the environment, the community and the economy through sustainable development
Many thanks go to the European Commission here in Zambia for making this web site a reality, and a tool that can be used by the miners and so help in the advancement of the industry.
It kills me how they always include "code words" in these proposals for GIVING AWAY African mineral wealth to foreigners, like 'sustatinable development', 'ethics' and so on. If you are worried about foreigners taking advantage of you and leaving you broke then stop BEGGING them to come in and do for you what you can't do for yourself. ANY people can and should be able to FEED, CLOTHE and HOUSE themselves WITH NO HELP whatsoever. This is A FUNDAMENTAL of human existence. Zambians don't need FOREIGNERS, what they need is infrastructure, doctors, lawyers, engineers, pharmacists, industries, medical companies, steel companies, construction companies, mining companies, textile companies and so forth, mostly owned by blacks and FOCUSED on providing for the development of BLACK communities and wealth. That is what ALL OTHER companies do for FOREIGNERS in Africa, which is to grow and develop their OWN communities and wealth and they don't care d*ck about the Africans. Therefore the answer is for Africans to do for themselves and stop pretending that foreigners have ANY INTEREST other than THEIR OWN when they do business in Africa. They don't. That is the name of the game of economics: do for self.
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