Blogs For Victory

Over on X I saw one of the Lefty accounts post the assertion that Trump’s termination of USAID had denied this particular little African boy (adorable picture included in post) the 12 cents a day he needs for his AIDS medicine. What a rat Trump is!

Let’s see…12 cents a day times 365 is $43.80 per year, $43.92 in a leap year…looked up the country in question and its been independent since 1960…and in 65 years of independence they can’t come up with less than fifty bucks a year for one of their own children.

Do you see the actual problem?

Another thing I saw was clips from this documentary being made about the Chinese doing a construction project in Congo. The parts shown dealt mostly with the Chinese needing to get two truck loads of gravel delivered so that they could repair the road and thus actually get on with the main project (don’t recall what that is – and its not important for this). The road had been built in 1950 by the Belgians when they were the colonial rulers of Congo. Through the clips what you find is that the Chinese are frustrated that the Congolese never spent a cent maintaining the road after the Belgians built it, that there is so much theft of material that they have to check inventory over and over again (like checking the gas tanks on trucks after driving between point A and point B because the Congolese were stopping along the way and having gas siphoned out), that the Congolese would pretty much stop working as soon as someone wasn’t directly watching them work…and that the contractor for the gravel kept on lying about his ability to deliver the goods.

First off: welcome to colonial overlordship, China! Enjoy. The Brits and French had to deal with this way back when.

Now, why is this failing? Why, ultimately, did the Chinese need to go through a whole dog and pony show to get gravel to repair a road which had been built 75 years previously by the Belgians?

Because neither the Belgian road nor the new Chinese construction project means anything to the Congolese people. Nothing organic, that is. As a means of robbing the Chinese blind, the construction project is awesome for the Congolese…and I’m sure they robbed the Belgians blind when the road was built. You can do that, you see? When you have complete outsiders butting into your little area of the world they are fair game…that is how it goes all across Africa and Asia. That is the rule and always has been…Out East your primary problem is going to be the locals seeing you as an ATM. But as a road or construction project, what the heck do the Congolese care about it? They didn’t need either before the Europeans or Chinese showed up and they aren’t going to make the ultimate profit out of whatever it is the Chinese or Europeans are trying to do.

And this is where I think the world went wrong in the post-colonial world: it is still colonial. Just without the responsibility.

Do note that the Brits pretty much gave up on Africa at the first hint of local resistance but they fought for 12 years in Malaysia to get an exit satisfactory to them. Why? Because there was really no money to be made in Africa at the time but Malaysian rubber was (and remains) an exceptionally valuable global commodity (side note, the rubber of Malaysia was created by the Brits starting in 1877). The colonial powers tried to make their colonies pay but most of them never did – they were economic and strategic liabilities for the most part. I mean, sure, India had been exceptionally valuable to the British but by the 1930’s it was just a drain on the treasury. Trying to insert yourself into someone else’s life is enormously difficult. In the world of settler-colonialism, only the settler society works long term – like the Europeans come to America or the Boers to South Africa. The bottom line is that post-WWII, the world tried to maintain a colonial control of the Third World – and here we are; the Chinese repairing the road the Belgians built.

To be sure, just like in the older colonial period, there is some money to be made – and, in fact, probably more money. If you’re not responsible for the colony but can still extract the valuable materials, ka-ching! But it isn’t actually helping the Third Worlders…except those who are juiced in and able to transfer the bribes to a Western bank.

I’m not sure what exactly to say about Africans, themselves. They, being Africans, are not Americans and so I’m unfamiliar with their actual views except what crosses the TL of Life (as it were), and that might be just bits and pieces served up to the Western audience by Africans who have their own agenda. Why haven’t they gotten rich? The people of Singapore did. I realize it is a small country but it also has a large population and no natural resources…they do show that if people apply themselves diligently they will get ahead. The most successful mainland African country – Botswana – is about as rich per capita as Mexico. But most of them exist in quite grinding poverty with people just working to get their next meal. Sure, the ruthless exploitation of Africa by outsiders causes great harm (and the French have been the worst offenders here)…but, hey, it is still on them. Why not build rule-of-law societies and let people get to work? They don’t. I don’t know why.

And, in the end, I don’t really care. Sounds cruel, but it is just another step into the Real World. It is not my concern if Africans are poor or rich, free or slave. It is their concern. And I figure they can eventually sort it all out. Or not. Doesn’t matter. But what does matter is that my country pouring in aid clearly isn’t helping. If foreign aid made people rich then after nearly 80 years of it there shouldn’t be a nation in Africa that can’t pony up 12 cents a day for a kid’s AIDS medicine. I do want the kid to have his medicine…but it is the responsibility of his people to get it for him, not mine. I’m all-in on emergency aid – some country gets whacked by an earthquake or tsunami, I want us to be Johnny-on-the-spot…but this idea that I can send untold billions of dollars into the treasuries of African nations and it will magically turn Lagos into a copy of San Diego? Not happening. Apparently can’t happen, no matter how hard we try. I will be delighted if the people of Lagos eventually live like the people of San Diego…but if it is to happen then the people of Lagos will have to decide to make it happen…and if they do decide, they won’t need my help doing it. After all, the people of San Diego didn’t need foreign aid to make San Diego like San Diego.

And I can hear shrieks from the Neo-Con Globalists: if we don’t intervene in Africa then the Chinese will! Sure. So? The Chinese are finding out that intervening in Africa isn’t easy. I mean, sure; they will be able to extract resources after they’ve carefully bribed a lot of African officials but unless they continually pour in the money to maintain the infrastructure their resource-extraction will be useless. And, because of how things are, always subject to the next African civil war/coup/revolution as the out party tries to get in so they can get the bribes in return for resource extraction. There isn’t much in Africa that we need. What we do get from there we tend to get because the ruthless exploitation of cheap labor makes things like African uranium cheap…but I don’t see the moral aspect of getting a discount on our uranium that way. Better to pay a little bit more and not be morally responsible for some 12 year old kid working in a uranium mine to enrich Chinese and French businessmen.

I do want us to do business in Africa – but not exploitative business where we perpetuate a corrupt and clearly stupid African Ruling Class just so we can either extract resources or make ourselves feel good by providing running water to some African village…which will not be maintained and so collapse a few years later. If we can obtain something from Africa or if Africans want to obtain something from us, fine. Have at it! But only with honest deals; we buy from them, they buy from us. Cash on the barrel or goods for goods. And just leave the Africans alone to sort themselves out.