By: Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
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What happens these days in today’s world demonstrates very well that Muslims and Christians have been caught victims of an unnecessary and malicious plan.

At the other end, Christians in Europe and America have been misled — through an incessant brainwash orchestrated by their mass media, politicians and intellectuals — and believe that the average Muslim has been radicalized, and is now ready for a Jihad against Christianity and the West.

This is all wrong. In fact, it is a false debate where both clashing parts have a distorted perception of the “other”, and of themselves. What is at stake involves both religions, all the religions of the world, and the world peace.

What Muslims failed to understand: the West is not Christian.

Muslims seem to forget that the Western countries are not Christian countries; they are merely countries with Christian populations, but the principles and the ideas of Christianity have been systematically disrespected and marginalized there. These countries were Christian indeed in the past, but confusing 15th century Europe with today’s Anti-Christian Europe is sheer proof of ignorance.

The Muslims confuse Medieval, Christian Europe’s Anti-Islamic stance with today’s Europe’s Anti-Islamic delirium. Terrible mistake with calamitous consequences!

Never ever has a Modern Muslim undertaken a critical examination of Europe’ identity; even worse, not a single Muslim today imagines as possible for him to undertake a research based let’s say on Ibn Khaldoun’s systematic investigative approach. Muslim historians have been accustomed with Western analytical methods in their explorations and investigations, thus enslaving themselves to a system that is not theirs, and to conclusions that are genuinely wrong for a Muslim to draw.

Simple observation and criticism would however be enough for a Muslim to understand that all the Christian values, principles and concepts on which the Christian Western societies were based have totally disappeared. These values, principles and concepts may perhaps be shared by many average people in the West, but they ceased to be the axis around which evolve the Western societies, their administrations and policy-making.

In fact, the values, principles and concepts that form the essence of today’s Western ruling class mindset, policy making and Weltanschauung are at the very antipodes of Christianity. Materialism, consumerism, immoral behaviour, corruption, relativism, nihilism, conformism, conventionalism, formalism, evolutionism and individualism prevail along with a foolish inclination for technological innovation, luxurious leisure, debauchery, incommensurable selfishness and overwhelming hypocrisy.

The driving force that eliminated Christianity brought forth the aforementioned, purely Anti-Christian situation. All this is due to the subversive tactics of Free Masonry, an ages-old society that in the process of its opposition to Vatican and to the official Christianity was transformed from inside and turned to an apostate guild. The subversive tactics undertaken by the Apostate Freemasonic Lodge in its search for prevalence condemned it to apostasy. Without deeply understanding these developments, no one can understand the evolution of the Western societies, and the phenomena of colonization (as practiced mainly by France and England) and globalization (as practiced mainly by America).

This subversion makes it possible that even in an institution that has been traditionally opposed to Freemasonry, like Vatican, one can possibly find members of the organization — and at times its head — who are Freemasons and act subversively in order to control and guide at will the organization in question.

This is precisely what happens with Vatican today; the present pope has been repeatedly accused by important Christian organizations as being a Freemason, which is absolutely incompatible with the quality of a Christian, and of a Muslim as well (http://www.virgo-maria.org/#). This imposes differentiation policies, and if they are not introduced, Muslims will simply fail in their approach to Europe, America and the Western world.

What Christians failed to understand: the East is not Islamic.

Similarly, Christians seem to forget that the Eastern countries are not Islamic / Muslim countries; they are countries with Muslim populations but the principles and the ideas of Islam have been systematically disrespected and marginalized at the level of the ruling elites, their mindset, lifestyle, behavioural system, administrative choices and policies, and more particularly their foreign policy making. These countries were Muslim indeed, but confusing 16th century Ottoman Empire with today’s pseudo-Muslim states is sheer proof of ignorance.

The Christians confuse Islamic Ages’ Islamic expansion at the detriment of Christianity with today’s Islamic World’s Anti-Western rhetoric. Terrible mistake with calamitous consequences!

Even worse, few Christians realize in the West that the same forces that demolished systematically the Christian values for the past three centuries, principles and concepts are those who shaped and imposed an interpretative method of the Oriental civilizations (Islamic included), which was adjusted to their sociopolitical, economic and global interests, and therefore is absolutely untrue.

Christians in the West failed to understand that one of the nefarious counterparts of Darwinism and evolutionism was the Orientalist doctrine of Islamology, which was geared to both, prevent Westerners from knowing the true Islam and let Muslim scholars persist on their obsolete analyses and approaches that further drag them to irrevocable ignorance and permanent impotence.

Christians in the West failed to understand that the inventors of the fallacious term “Arab — Muslim civilization” (civilisation arabo-musulmane) are identical with the promoters of the gay marriages in the West; even worse, real Catholic and Orthodox Christians failed to overtly accuse of apostasy the pseudo-Christian Evangelical puppets of the Freemasons who are those who promote both, the Zionisation of Christianity and the Anti-Islamic hysteria that deepens the unnecessary chasm between Christians and Muslims.

Even worse, never ever has a Modern Christian undertaken a critical examination of the Islamic World’s identity, other than the Islamological Orientalist fallacy of the Freemasons; even worse, not a single Christian today imagines as possible for him to undertake a research based on let’s say Theophanes’, George Syncellus’, Michel Psellos’ or John Damascenus’ theoretical approaches. Christian Western historians have been accustomed to use Freemasonic Orientalist analytical methods in their explorations and investigations, thus enslaving themselves to a system that is not theirs, and to conclusions that are genuinely wrong for a Christian to draw.

Simple observation and criticism would however be enough for a Christian to understand that all the Islamic values, principles and concepts on which the Islamic societies were traditionally based have by now disappeared. These values, principles and concepts may perhaps be shared by average people in many Muslim countries, but they ceased to be the axis around which the Muslim societies, their administrations and policy-making evolve.

In fact, the values, principles and concepts that form the essence of the Modern Muslim ruling classes mindset, policy making and Weltanschauung are at the very antipodes of genuine, traditional Islam. Filthy liars and bogus sheikhs ready to justify anything are therefore hired in the Islamic World’s leading mosques and universities in order to serve their criminal and pseudo-Islamic presidents, tyrants, emirs and bogus-kings, and they lecture the besotted masses that one Muslim can play football, spend his holidays in 5 stars hotels, organize Marketing campaigns for Coca Cola and Mc Donald’s, and go shopping in the malls.

Islam is thus reduced to a meaningless pseudo-prayer and the besotted pseudo-Muslim masses are told that this is enough to ensure good judgment in the Hereafter. At the same time, due to the advanced Westernization of the pseudo-Muslim societies, materialism, consumerism, immoral behaviour, corruption, relativism, nihilism, conformism, conventionalism, formalism, evolutionism and individualism prevail among pseudo-Muslims along with a foolish inclination for technological innovation, luxurious leisure, debauchery, incommensurable selfishness and overwhelming hypocrisy.

In fact, Islam had fallen into desuetude and coma before Napoleon arrived in Egypt, and even before the English set foot in India. The decadence was due to the rise in force of several negative and nefarious elements and doctrines that at first had been rejected and castigated; however, quite unfortunately, these doctrines managed to survive, expand and even give birth to lower and more degraded doctrinal systems. From Ahmed Ibn Hanbal to Ibn Taimiya and thence to Abdel Wahhab, a grave deterioration of thought, intellect, mental and intellectual processes, and a dramatic degradation and elimination of wisdom, knowledge, art, research and behaviour turned the Islamic civilization into a filthy realm of fanaticism, ignorance, hatred, negativism, and barbarism. This became the realm where tolerance is customarily shown for every attempt of lowering, vulgarizing and bestializing the human being. When Napoleon arrived in Egypt, the Islamic civilization — as assimilated, assessed, expanded and elevated by Masters of the World Thought like Tabari, Khwarismi, Ferdowsi, Ibn Sina, Qurtubi, Mohyieldin Ibn Arabi, Ibn Hazm, Ibn Rushd and many others — simply did not exist anymore.

The early Orientalists, who were all European Freemasons and, under the pretext of search and exploration, did their best to offer false interpretations of the historical phenomena (not only those pertaining to the Islamic Ages), noticed the aforementioned disastrous fall of the Islamic world, and to capitalize on their early colonial success, they triggered among the Muslim societies a series of socioeconomic, political and intellectual, pre-calculated reactions that pushed the colonized Muslim societies further deeper in the bottom. Through this, the Freemasonic Orientalist academia of England and France managed to control and exploit the Muslim societies in a way that made them stronger back home.

Robbing Muslims’ Wealth to Destroy Christianity: Typically Freemasonic

This is the truth that obliges today Christians and Muslims to merge against their common enemy: the wealth extracted from occupied Muslim lands was indeed used by the Freemasonic socioeconomic and political establishment of the West in order to finance the destruction of Christianity in the West.

The driving force that perpetuated Islam’s putrefaction is identical with those who destroyed the Christian identity of the West, and plunged the Western societies into endless crimes, such as abortion, homosexual marriages, and generalized corruption. The same subversive tactics applied by the criminal Freemasonic establishment in the Islamic World damaged the Christians in the West, although the colonial powers’ victories in Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans and South Asia were effectively depicted as a success for the entire Christianity.

But what sort of Pyrrhic victory is it for the true Christians of the West the fact of an African becoming Christian, if this person’s children, living in America, carry out a totally Anti-Christian life full of materialism, sexualism, amoral behaviour, consumerism, and oblivion of all faiths?

As a matter of fact, the Ottoman Oil stolen by France, England and the US through the illegal occupation of the Ottoman territories (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Emirates and Oman) was not “good” for the Christians in the West. It merely helped elect Freemasonic popes in the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, and the 2000s.

That is why Christian organizations should form a great platform with Muslims who are able to carry out self-criticism and understand that today’s Muslim fanatics trying to radicalize the Muslim societies and escalate the Christian — Muslim clash are merely playing into the Freemasonic game of Islam’s ultimate disaster and annihilation.

Note — Picture: “Cardinal” O’Connor (an intimate friend of anti-pope John Paul 2) Pictured Smiling with Two Full Aproned Freemasons. From: http://www.todayscatholicworld.com/nov05tcw.htm

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WASHINGTON: Private contractors hired by the US government have jeopardized security at the American embassy in Kabul with lewd, drunken conduct and an understaffed guard force at a time of rising violence in the Afghan capital, a watchdog group said on Tuesday.

The non-partisan Project on Government Oversight sent US secretary of state Hillary Clinton a letter documenting complaints about guards working for ArmorGroup, North America, and photos of nearly naked men behaving lewdly at their camp.

The firm employs 450 guards to provide security at the Kabul embassy under a five-year, $189 million State Department contract. The department extended the contract in June.

Pictures obtained by the group showed male guards, scantily dressed in G-string style garments, dancing around a bonfire and urinating while others snapped photographs. Video showed them pouring alcohol down the bare backside of a new recruit and trying to drink it as it spilled from the man’s buttocks. [ SEE PICTURES BELOW ]

According to one whistle-blower, these naked pool parties involving sexually deviant acts have been held regularly for at least a year and a half, at the urging of senior officers.

These are the latest of many allegations of misconduct by private security contractors hired by the US government to perform duties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“These are very serious allegations and we are treating them that way,” State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said at a briefing, adding that the issue had been turned over to the department’s inspector general.

About 150 guards are Americans or from other English-speaking countries. The remaining 300 are identified by the Project on Government Oversight as Gurkhas from India and Nepal who speak little or no English. The group said the language barrier between English-speakers and Gurkhas was so severe it would be difficult for them to communicate in a crisis.

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References: ABCNews | Reuters |
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This is ample proof that Abu Ghraib was not an isolated incident. Sexually deviant behavior (accompanied with prisoner torture) amongst US Military personnel and hired guns (guards) who are mostly ex-military, is rampant in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Why?

Because this animal behavior is tolerated and orchestrated by deviant senior military officers — who get a sexual kick out of it. The hierarchical command structure of a military force, especially the most potent one in the world, cannot witness such behavior without putting a stop to it — unless, as in this instance, and many others, the crude animalistic rituals are encouraged and sanctioned by senior military and private militia officials. In fact, in an interview with ABC News, one guard, a U.S. military veteran, said top supervisors of the ArmorGroup were not only aware of the “deviant sexual acts” but helped to organize them.

Torture and sexual abuse are part of a systematic military/militia program deployed by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, unbeknownst to Obama, who is busy fending other menacing tea-bagging hyenas at home front.

The Bush Conservatives worked overtime to portray the events at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq, as nothing more than fraternity pranks, and not blatant violations of the Geneva Convention. Right-wing pundits, like Rush Limbaugh, tried to sweep under the rug any investigations into prisoner abuse, whether it was at Abu Ghraib or at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It was all an isolated incident involving a few soldiers, the Bush administration said.

The problem with that analysis is this: it was not true then and it’s not now. The Bush torture program is still intact, and it seems Obama thinks it ended — when he decided to holding back thousands of pictures depicting homosexual torture and bestiality — involving guard dogs.

Imperialist torture is nothing new. The Brits were masters at it, and the United States picked up where the European colonialists left of. The British — the greediest land grabbing thieves the world has ever known, ran horrific torture camps. They invaded countries, stole massive tracts land, and imprisoned entire civilian population in detention camps — wherein testicles were crushed, electric shocks were administered, cigarettes and fire were used to wantonly inflict physical and mental suffering on natives. Broken bottles, gun barrels, knives, snakes, vermin and hot eggs were thrust up men’s rectums and women’s vaginas. The British whipped, shot, burned, and mutilated “suspects.”

I am not surprised at the lewd behavior of these “Guards” (soldiers of fortune) — it’s in the DNA — the horrors of European colonialism, the American lynchings during slavery, and the 500 pound bombings on Iraqi civilians in the last eight years, is testament.

To make matters worse, the US military has been granting more waivers to recruits with criminal backgrounds — this process has grown nearly 65 percent in the last five years, increasing to 8,129 in 2006 from 4,918 in 2003 …., Department of Defense records show. The sharpest increase was in waivers issued for serious misdemeanors, which make up the bulk of all the Army’s moral waivers. These include aggravated assault, burglary, robbery and vehicular homicide. The number of waivers issued for felony convictions also increased, from 8 percent to 11 percent of the 8,129 moral waivers granted in 2006. [ Source: New York Times ]

One can only imagine how lax the “for profit” private militia companies like ArmorGroup are in their recruitment process. It must be horrible!

Yes, deviant criminals with a license to kill!!

Before Army Sgt. 1st Class Randal Ruby was accused in Iraq of beating prisoners and of conspiring to plant rifles on dead civilians, he amassed a 10-year criminal record in Colorado and Washington state for assaulting his wife and in Maine for a drunken high-speed police chase, for which he remains wanted.

Before Lance Cpl. Delano Holmes stabbed an Iraqi private to death, angering the soldier’s unit of coalition soldiers, he was hospitalized after threatening suicide in high school, accused of assault, disorderly conduct and trespassing, and, in the months leading up to deployment, twice linked to drug use.

Before Army Spc. Shane Carl Gonyon was convicted of stealing a pistol at Abu Ghraib prison, he was convicted twice on felony charges and arrested four times, once for allegedly giving a 13-year-old girl marijuana in exchange for oral sex. He enlisted weeks after his release from a federal prison in Oregon.

…..and more here

The lax regulations have also opened the military’s doors to neo-Nazis, white supremacists and gang members — with drastic consequences. Some neo-Nazis have been charged with crimes inside the military, and others have been linked to recruitment efforts for the white right. A recent Department of Homeland Security report, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” stated: “The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.”

Therefore, it should not surprise anyone that a sizeable chunk of “America’s Finest” are dangerous criminals, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and tea-bagger terrorists out to lynch anyone who doesn’t look like them — and while doing so, involve themselves in lewd, sexually deviant and animalistic acts as we see in the pictures below, and previously in Abu Ghraib:

	Image 1 Image 2 Image 3 Image 4 Image 5 Image 6 Image 7 Image 8 Image 9 Image 10 Image 11 Image 12 Image 13 Image 14 Image 15 Image 16 Image 17 Image 18 Image 19 Image 20

Morning Joe Team Tries To Justify Lewd Behavior!

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   By: Dr. Wolassa Kumo
Introduction

Africa is the second largest continent in the World. Africa’s massive land mass of 30.3 million km2 makes it larger than the combination of China (9,6 million km²), the US (9,4 million km²), Western Europe (4,9 million km²), India (3,2 million km²), Argentina (2,8 million km²), and a number of other smaller countries. The continent consists of 54 countries with the population of over 900 million people.

However, sadly, Africa’s share in global wealth is insignificant. The combined GDP of the continent in 2007 was US$1.15 trillion (US $2.57 trillion based on Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)). This compares with the combined World GDP of US$65.6 trillion (PPP) and that of China US$6.99 trillion (PPP) in 2007. Africa’s share in world trade is also minimal. This has declined further since recently following the global economic down turn. Africa’s share in World trade fell to 3% in 2008.

Africa’s share in global wealth (GDP) is less than 4% while its share in global population is nearly 16%. Africa’s dismal economic performance has puzzled many analysts. Some emphasize historical factors such as slave trade, colonialism and its legacies, and geographical features as the root causes of Africa’s development disaster.

Others go beyond historical legacies and analyze the combination of geographic and demographic factors, technology, the role of state and the current challenges of globalization. There is no single root cause that fully explains the dismal economic performance of the continent particularly to the South of the Sahara with notable exception of South Africa.

This brief article is organized as follows: the next section presents an overview of some root causes of underdevelopment in Africa while the last section highlights opportunities for revival.

Root causes of African Underdevelopment

Different researches on the causes of African underdevelopment emphasis varieties of factors as the root causes of African underdevelopment. Among these the most important ones can be grouped into the following categories: (a) hostile natural environment, (b) archaic production technology, (c) demographic factors, (d) slave trade, (e) colonialism and its extractive institutions, and (f) political instability and predatory states.

a)   Hostile Natural Environment

Most of the African landmass lies within the tropical climate with no access to either the Atlantic or the Indian ocean. This made the vast areas of the interior continent home to malaria and tsetse fly which afflict humans and animals respectively. This made some researchers on the causes of African underdevelopment to test the hypothesis of malaria as the dominant cause of the underdevelopment in the continent.

In particular, Bhattacharya (2009) argues that malaria and other tropical diseases have fatal as well as debilitating effects on human population in Africa. It negatively affects productivity, savings, and investments in physical and human capital and directly affects economic performance of the continent.

Using statistical method Bhattacharyya (2009) emphasizes the relative importance of malaria in Africa’s underdevelopment. He finds statistically significant relationship between low economic development and prevalence of malaria in the continent. According to this author, malaria impacts African development by increasing both mortality and morbidity. Increased mortality induces households to increase current consumption and save less for the future. Increased morbidity on the other hand adversely affects productivity reducing household income and savings. This slows down capital accumulation and economic growth shedding some light on why malaria is so persistent in Africa.

He argues further that the high incidence of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa reduces the annual growth rate of the continent by 1.3 percentage points a year and eradication of malaria in the 1950s would have resulted into a doubling of per capita income (Bhattacharyya, 2009).

Although others doubt the link between malaria and economic development, a significant number of recent studies tend to support the malaria view both at the macro as well as micro level. It is an established fact that low mortality as a result of better health contributes to economic growth.

In addition to malaria the animal disease carrying tsetse fly, which is found all over the continent and can incapacitate draught animals, may itself explain the traditional low use of ploughs and other animal-drawn implements and hence the lower productivity of the agricultural sector.

b)   Archaic Production Technology

For centuries the African continent depended on archaic methods of agricultural production. Even the use of ploughs and other animal drawn implements were limited. The agricultural revolution and the use of iron tools came to sub-Saharan Africa later than to other parts of the world; indeed some have talked of a “1000-year lag” (Simensen, 2009). It is a fact that many African small holder farmers relied on wooden implements until as recently as the second half of the 20th century.

An important reason for the continent’s technological underdevelopment is the geographical obstacles to communication both internally and with the rest of the world. The Sahara has been a barrier in the north, and the Atlantic coast had no contact with the rest of the world until the first Europeans arrived around 1500. Influence from the Arab world and India came mainly via the Nile Valley and the East African coast, and had little spillover effect further inland. With the exception of the Niger and the Nile, the continent’s rivers with their large waterfalls have not provided a navigable route to the interior, in contrast to the rivers of Europe and Asia. The problems of today’s land-locked states illustrate the great importance of communication for economic and cultural development (Simensen , 2009).

c)   Demographic Factors

Africa’s demographic history has been characterized by low density of population and continuous migration and settlement of new areas. The continent with a massive land mass of over 30 million km2 has inhabitants less than that of India at present. Migration has continued right up to the present day, and there is still more migration on this continent — including migration between urban and rural areas — than anywhere else in the world (Simensen 2009). This continued migration may be due to a hostile geographical environment that debilitates the livelihoods of the population.

Except the early Kushitic and Egyptian, Niger River based and Aksumite civilizations, Africa lacked stable settlements with established social structures that could form the basis for enduring states and empires of the kind that have fostered advanced civilizations in other parts of the world.

However, at present the demographic picture of the continent is totally different. Rapidly growing population with limited demographic windows of opportunity has caused further strain on the development efforts and environmental sustainability in the continent. Rapid deforestation following population explosion has further aggravated the environmental problems. The rapid deforestation is fueling desertification with its negative impacts on agricultural production in many parts of sub Saharan Africa. Consequently, Africa is more food insecure today than the era of wooden agricultural implements.

d)   The Slave Trade

The slave trade theory is one of the dominant views on the historic root causes of the African underdevelopment. According to this view, Africa’s engagement in slave trade caused massive depopulation of the continent over two centuries. Inikori (1992) (in Bhattacharyya 2009) and Nunn (2008) are some of the key proponents of this view.

According to Inikori (1992), the result of engagement in slave trade was a significant slowdown in division of labour, demographic transition, human capital accumulation and long-run economic growth.

Depopulation also resulted into an implosion of the continent’s production possibility Frontier and an unambiguous reduction in welfare . The secular decline in welfare continued over more than two centuries plunging the continent into economic backwardness.

Furthermore, a Harvard economist, Nathan Nunn argues that the African countries with the biggest slave exports are by and large the countries with the lowest incomes now (based on per capita gross domestic product in 2000). That relationship, he contends, is no coincidence. One actually helped to cause the other.

Nunn (2008) reports a negative causal relationship between slave trade and current economic performance in Africa. He shows that slave trade prevented state development, encouraged ethnic fractionalisation and weakened legal institutions and through these channels it affected economic development.

Furthermore, Simensen (2009) argues that Africa’s integration into the world market following 1500 — during what he terms the “protoglobalisation era” — took on a perverted form when slaves became the dominant merchandise from around 1650. He further states that the cruelties of this trade have left deep scars in both the African and the European psyche. “The export of an estimated 12 million people across the Atlantic, and possibly a similar number to the Arab world in the course of a full millennium may have been a factor in Africa’s lower population growth compared with that of other continents. In economic terms, the slave trade tended to overshadow trade in other goods, and although it enabled certain strong kingdoms to increase their power, it was devastating for the groups affected by the kidnappings and conflicts that the trade entailed. In political terms, the rulers who controlled the trade on the African side were caught up in a particular form of dependence that had profound effects on African political culture” (Simensen 2009).

e)   The Colonial Extraction System

Colonialism in Africa took different form compared to Asia. Unlike in Asia, hostile tropical environment prevented colonizers from settling in Africa as a result of which they erected extractive institutions in these colonies. These colonial institutions have persisted over time and they continue to influence the economic performance of the colonies even long after independence.

Nunn (2007), using a stylised model for Africa, shows that colonial extraction when severe enough can cause a society to move from a high to low production level equilibrium. Due to the stability of low level equilibrium, a society can remain trapped in this equilibrium even after the period of colonial extraction is over.

However, many African as well nonAfrican scholars do not agree on the link between colonial extraction and the current underdevelopment in Africa. Ethiopia was never colonized but it is one of the least development countries in the continent while many Asian countries which have achieved development miracle since 1960s have been former European colonies.

However, there is one crucial link between colonialism and underdevelopment in Africa. This is the creation of a political map that is economically irrational and dysfunctional. According to Simensen (2009) Basil Davidson sums up this state of affairs in the title of one of his books: The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation State.

Colonialism created artificial and non viable nation states that lacked legitimacy. This is the root cause of continued ethnic conflicts and civil wars that ravage the continent since the day of decolonization. Thus unless Africa does away with the current artificial colonial boundaries either through realignment of the current state boundaries wherever there are contestations or through more regional integration similar to the European model but not through hasty “United States of Africa” rhetoric, the continent will never achieve sustainable development.

f)   Political Instability and Predatory States

The post colonial Africa has been characterized by lack of political stability. This has deep historic roots. Africa’s participation in slave trade promoted strife and broke down political and social cohesion in the continent. There has been historic resentment by Africans whose tribes were victims of slave raids by stronger tribes during the centuries of slave trade. The ethnic diversity of the continent is extraordinary; linguists have identified around 900 separate language groups while today there are about 2000 known ethnic groups in the continent.

Colonial political boundaries lumped many of these ethnic and linguistic groups into few pseudo nation states. When these “nations” became independent nation-building proved practically difficult. National endeavours have been hampered by internal conflicts and civil wars, and at worst a form of anarchy, as seen in Democratic Republic of Congo. The forces behind these conflicts are often complex. But once the parties have resorted to violence, we see in Africa, just as in the Balkans and the Caucasus, that ethnicity overrides all other forms of loyalty with a ferocity that defies belief, but is easier to understand if we bear in mind the role that nationalism has played in European history (Simensen, 2009).

Not every ethnic tension in Africa is the making of colonial conspiracy, however. Post independence African politics was dominated by authoritarian regimes and kleptocracies. These rent seeking dictators often intentionally sow seeds of ethnic conflicts by deliberate political exclusion and marginalization of various ethnic groups that reside within the country.

Even after two decades of democratic reforms in the continent, today about 50% of authoritarian states in the world are found in Africa. About 24 out of 54 states in Africa are authoritarian regimes. Only Mauritius qualifies as a full democracy in the continent out of about 30 full democracies in the world while 6 more countries in the continent are flawed democracies.

Opportunities for Africa’s Revival

The wave of democratic reforms since the 1990s and the commodity price boom since 2001 lead many to believe that Africa could claim the 21st century. In fact, following the commodity boom African economy grew by over 5% on average for more than 6 years which was unprecedented in the history of the continent. Many argued that Africa needed about 7% annual average growth rate to achieve the Millennium Development Goals; but 5% was just as good.

However, this hope was dashed when the global economic downturn abruptly ended the commodity price boom in mid 2008. As a result, African economic growth plummeted to less than 3% in 2009. The recent revival in oil and other commodity prices and signs of global economic resilience are causes for optimism. However, reduced capital inflows coupled with widening budget deficits in many African countries are sure to delay any hope for faster recovery. Apart from this, the current revival in commodity prices may be short lived. Commodity prices may settle at much lower equilibrium levels even after the global economic recovery dashing further any hope for faster economic growth recovery in Africa.

In face of such reality, the only hope for Africa is to radically adjust its businesses in three key areas. First, Africa needs to institute transparent and accountable governance faster than ever. The prevalence of authoritarian regimes in the continent is seriously harming its image. This will scare the flow of FDI crucially needed to spur growth and development. The 24 authoritarian regimes in the continent should transform as a matter of urgency or perish.

Second, rapid investment in infrastructure. FDI will not come if there is no adequate road network, electricity or efficient telecommunication systems even if a country is near perfect democracy. One might ask where will the money come under current economic difficulties? That is a crucial question. However, there is no alternative. There must be adequate infrastructure if the continent is to revive from the current economic quagmire.

Finally, pursue export led growth strategy. Enough is enough with continued dependency on export of primary commodities. The current commodity price doom has proved to Africa that no matter how much wealth of natural resources the continent is endowed with, it will not be able to rely on export of primary commodity to achieve sustained economic revival. Manufactured export led growth strategy is the only way out of the current low level poverty trap in the continent.

References

•   Bhattacharyya, S. 2009. Root Causes of African Underdevelopment, Journal of African Economies.

•   Simensen J. Africa: the causes of under-development and the challenges of globalization. http://www.regjeringen.no/. Retrieved on August 9, 2009.

•   Nunn, N. (2007). Historical Legacies: A Model Linking Africa’s Past to its Current Underdevelopment, Journal of Development Economics, 83(1), 157-175.

•   Nunn, N. (2008). The Long-Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123(1), 139-176.

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The Ghosts of Empire Are Returning To Haunt Britain – and the U.S.

   By: Johann Hari
In a few weeks, a group of quiet, dignified elderly men and women will arrive in London to explain how the forces of the British state crushed their testicles or breasts with pliers. It was part of a deliberate policy of breaking a civilian population who we regarded as “baboons,” “barbarians” and “terrorists.” They will come bearing the story of how Britain invaded a country, stole its land, and imprisoned an entire civilian population in detention camps – and they ask only for justice, after all this time.

As a small symbol of how we as a country have not come to terms with our history, compare the bemused reaction to the arrival of these Kenyan survivors of Britain’s gulags to the recent campaign supporting the Gurkhas. We have all waxed lyrical over the Nepalese mercenaries who were, for two centuries, hired by the British Empire to fight its least savory battles. Sometimes they were used in great causes, like the defeat of Nazism. Sometimes they were used to viciously crush democratic movements in India or Malaya or Pakistan. But they obediently did the bidding of the Empire – so they are a rare bunch of foreigners who the right will turn moist over and welcome to our island.

I too strongly supported their rights to reside in Britain, out of simple humanity – if they’re good enough to die for us, they’re good enough to live with us. But isn’t it revealing that even in 2009, we can cheer the servants of Empire but blank the people mutilated and murdered by it? There will be no press campaigns or celebrity endorsements for the survivors of the Kenyan suppression when they issue a reparations claim in London next month. They will be met with a bemused shrug. Yet their story tells us far more.

The British arrived in Kenya in the 1880s, at a time when our economic dominance was waning and new colonies were needed. The Colonial Office sent in waves of white settlers to seize the land from the local “apes” and mark it with the Union Jack. Francis Hall was the officer of the East India Company tasked with mounting armed raids against the Kikuyu – the most populous local tribe – to break their resistance. He said: “There is only one way of improving the [Kikuyu] and that is to wipe them out; I would only be too delighted to do so but we have to depend on them for food supplies.”

The British troops stole over sixty thousand acres from the Kikuyu, and renamed the area “the White Highlands.” But the white settlers were aristocratic dilettantes with little experience of farming, and they were soon outraged to discover that the “primitives” were growing food far more efficiently on the reserves they had been driven into. So they forced the local black population to work “their” land, and passed a law banning the local Africans from independently growing the most profitable cash crops – tea, coffee, and sisal.

The people of Kenya objected, and tried to repel the invaders. They called for “ithaka na wiyathi” – land and freedom. After peaceful protests were met with violence, they formed a group, dubbed the Mau Mau, to stop the suppression any way they could. They started killing the leaders appointed by the British, and some of the settlers too. As a result, the London press described them as “evil savages” and “terrorists” motivated by hatred of Christianity and civilisation. They had been “brainwashed” by “Mau Mau cult leaders,” the reports shrieked.

The 1.5 million Kikuyu overwhelmingly supported the Mau Mau and independence – so the British declared war on them all. A State of Emergency was announced, and it began with forced removals of all Kikuyu. Anybody living outside the reserves – in any of the cities, for example – was rounded up at gunpoint, packed into lorries, and sent to “transit camps,” There, they were “screened” to see if they were Mau Mau supporters. One of the people locked up this way for months was Barack Obama’s grandfather.

Professor Caroline Elkins, who studied the detention camps for five years for her remarkable book ‘Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya‘, explains the tactics adopted by the British to snuffle out Mau Mau. “Electric shock was widely used, as well as cigarettes and fire,” she writes. “Bottles (often broken), gun barrels, knives, snakes, vermin and hot eggs were thrust up men’s rectums and women’s vaginas. The screening teams whipped, shot, burned, and mutilated Mau Mau suspects.”

The people judged to be guilty of Mau Mau sympathies were transferred to torture camps. There, each detainee was given a number which they had to wear on a band on their wrist. They were then stripped naked and sent through a cattle dip, before the torture would begin again. “Detainees were frog-marched around the compound and beaten until blood ran from their ears,” Elkins writes.

The Kikuyu survivor Pascasio Macharia describes some of the tortures he witnessed: “The askaris [guards] brought in fire buckets full of water, and the detainees were called on by one, [my friend] Peterson first. The askaris then put his head in the bucket of water and lifted his legs high in the air so he was upside down. That’s when [one of the camp commandants] started cramming sand in Peterson’s anus and stuffed it in with a stick. The other askari would put water in, and then more sand. They kept doing this back and forth… Eventually they finished with Peterson and carried him off, only to start on the next detainee in the compound.”

Another favoured torment was to roll a man in barbed wire and kick him around until he bled to death. Typhoid, dysentery and lice scythed through the population. Castration was common. At least 80,000 people were locked away and tortured like this. When I reported from Kenya earlier this year, I met elderly people who still shake with fear as they talk about the gulags. William Baldwin, a British member of the Kenya Police Reserve, wrote a memoir in which he cheerfully admits to murdering Kikuyu “baboons” in cold blood. He bragged about how he gutted them with knives while other suspects watched. Another British officer, Tony Cross, proudly called their tactics “Gestapo stuff.”

For the civilians outside, life was only slightly better. Women and children were trapped in eight hundred “sealed villages” throughout the countryside. They were surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards, and forced at gunpoint to dig trenches that sealed them off from the world.

The British Torture Camps in Colonial Kenya

There was always another, honourable Britain who fought against these crimes. The Labour left – especially Barbra Castle and Nye Bevan – fought for the camps to be exposed and shut. They didn’t succeed until the British imperialists were finally forced to scuttle away from the country entirely. We will never know how many people they murdered, because the colonial administration built a bonfire of all the paperwork on their way out the door. Elkins calculates it is far more than the 11,000 claimed by the British government, and could be as many as 300,000.

Yet in Britain today, there is a blood-encrusted blank spot about Empire. On the reality show The Apprentice, the contestants recently had to pick a name for their team, and they said they wanted “something that represented the best of British” – so they settled on “Empire.” Nobody objected. Imagine young Germans blithely naming a team “Reich”: it’s unthinkable, because they have had to study what their fathers and grandfathers did, and expunge these barbarous instincts from their national DNA.

This failure to absorb the lessons of Empire is not only unjust to the victims; it leads us to repeat horrifying mistakes. Today, we are – with the Americans – using unmanned drones to bomb the Pakistan-Afghan borderland, as we did a few years ago in Iraq. Nobody here seems to remember that the British invented aerial counter-insurgency in this very spot – with disastrous consequences. In 1924, Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris bragged that all rebellion could be stopped with this tactic. We have shown them “what real bombing means, in casualties and damage: they know that within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed,” he said. Yet instead of “pacifying” them, it radically alienated the population and lead to an uprising. If we knew our history, we would not be running the same script and expecting a different ending.

Gordon Brown said last year (in India, of all places) that “the days of Britain having to apologise for its colonial history are over.” The survivors of England’s blanked-out torture camps are entitled to ask: when did we start?

References:

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LOS ANGELES — Despite lying on the ground with his arms and legs spread, a suspect — who police say is a known gang member — got a face full of police boot on Wednesday. The kicking cop added insult to injury by giving a post-beating high five. The incident has sparked outrage on both sides of the argument. [ READ MORE ]

Other Police Assaults:

A Biker is Assaulted

Driver Assaulted By Policeman

Policeman Shoots Unarmed Surrendering Man

After Angela Garbarino was arrested in Shreveport, Louisiana last November on suspicion of drunk driving, she wound up lying on the police station floor in a pool of her own blood with two black eyes, a broken nose, two broken teeth, and other cuts and bruises. Garbarino says that Officer Wiley Willis beat her up after turning off the police video camera. Willis’s attorney insists that Garbarino slipped and fell when Willis tried to prevent her from leaving the room. However, Garbarino says that the extent of her injuries are proof that she was beaten.

….and Why Should Anyone Be Surprised!

   Jim Crow Policemen    [ Enlarge ]

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