Mood:
a-okTopic: Politics
World Bank launches new AIDS strategy for Africa
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From the author of The Fate of Africa: A vivid, gripping history of the turbulent years leading up to the founding of the modern state of South Africa in 1910
Once called: "“the most sterile and worthless in the whole [British] Empire”
South Africa was the locus point for the costliest, bloodiest, and most humiliating war that Britain had waged in nearly a century(circa 1910).
Based on significant new research, the author provides a 'many-faceted, sensibly incisive overview of events that could easily be oversimplified' as has been done in the past.
"Dismissing reductive ideas like the thesis that capitalism and imperialism collided to create a war that would benefit both, he shows how one misstep led to another, how fear yielded miscalculations, how national pride and arrogance created such poisonous conditions."
You can find an excerpt from the book located here.
"[an] astute history… Meredith expertly shows how the exigencies of the diamond (and then gold) rush laid the foundation for apartheid." "engrossing…Anyone interested in African history and the British Empire will find this book fascinating." "Meredith offers an unvarnished portrait of what might be called 'Britain's worst hour… Diamonds, Gold, and War is a fine history of the formation of the most powerful country in Africa. It will certainly make uncomfortable reading for Rhodes' scholars, who may be shocked to learn of the bloodshed caused by the man whose name they wear with pride." Given that Mr Rhodes had finagled permission from Queen Victoria to wield private police power as well as public authority, I wonder if that meant he thought he had been granted license to kill?
—The New Yorker
— Winnipeg Free Press
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The American
Canada announces boost of foreign aid to Africa
"Of all the Prime Minister's press releases, statements and speeches in the last year, not a single one mentions Africa - not the statement announcing support for HIV-AIDS research, not on the retirement of Kofi Annan, nor the Speech from the Throne..." Rt Hon Joe Clark , Former Progressive Conservative Party Leader and past Prime Minister of Canada, on Stephen Harpers inclusion of Africa in foreign-policy announcments.
When the world showed up at our door vis a vis an international conference on AIDS, Mr Harper was in the Artic protecting our sovereignty there instead.
And Prime Minister Stephen Harper snubbed U2 singer and activist Bono at the last G8 summit, saying he is too busy to discuss the African AIDS crisis with him.
Harper says meeting Bono isn't his 'shtick'
And now, well,.... for the first time since his Prime Ministerial inception, Stephen Harper has set foot on the soil of Africa.
Stopping over in Uganda (145th among 177 nations in the UN Human Development Index) on his way to Tanzania where he would go on to announce 110 million dollars in aid. (Doncha' know? Thats where the Canadian mining companies are?)
But it was Chretien in the Rocky Mountains of beautiful Banff (Canadas own Crown jewel) who first rolled his sleeves up and made monumental marches towards lifting Africa out of its grinding poverty.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2069632.stm
Whereas outgoing PM Paul Martin continues to make Africas poverty the focus of his lifes work.
... the Harper government has referred to Africa as “Europe’s backyard:
CIGI event hosts experts on Africa
“the biggest danger in Africa is driving.”
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