Guest essay by Eric Worrall
President for life Robert Mugabe wants the UN (meaning America) to provide $1.5 billion per year, to feed Zimbabwean people who are currently going hungry, thanks to his government’s decade long policy of looting and trashing productive farms. Naturally he blames his country’s problems on “climate change”.
According to the Zimbabwe Herald;
THE ink is still wet on a climate deal to “save the world” agreed at Paris last December, but Southern Africa is already counting the costs of climate change-linked catastrophes.
A severe drought caused by El Nino has left over 14 million people across the usually food secure region in need of food support, aid agencies say. El Nino may not be a direct result of climate change, but the line separating the two is becoming blurred with each passing year.
In Zimbabwe, which has seen a succession of droughts since 2012, a fifth of the population is facing hunger, says Government, particularly in rural settlements.
Feeding them will cost $1,5 billion or 11 percent of all the goods and services produced in Zimbabwe in a year – also known as the Gross Domestic Product.
The economic costs of coping with climate change impacts in Zimbabwe and elsewhere are evidently enormous and strenuous. But the Paris Agreement – touted as a stronger binding treaty – does not commit to an equally swift financial response to the immediate challenges faced by millions of vulnerable people in Africa. To adapt, African countries – who are least responsible for causing climate change – should wait until rich countries have had their fill of economic growth.
And that will happen sometime after 2020 when the West will start to lower emissions more rapidly, but still not enough to curb global temperature rise at the higher safe limit of 1,5 degrees Celsius by 2100.
In the meantime, Africa and the rest of the developing world continue to feed on the crumbs of a rigid UN financial system that has failed to deliver on the promise of $30 billion support in fast-start finance for mitigation and adaptation.
Rich countries claim they delivered the money in excess, but given the extent of accounting loopholes in a system that indulges wealthier nations’ overbearing tendencies to be both referee and player, many were left convinced the claims were overstated.
Read more: http://www.herald.co.zw/zim-counting-climate-change-costs/
Any money which falls into Mugabe’s hands is unlikely to be spent on food, or if it is, he will be very selective about who receives the food. His repellent sham democracy has a long track record of political violence, including the murder of 20,000 political opponents in 1983. Yet until a few weeks ago, Mugabe served as chairman of the African Union. His successor, Idriss Déby of Chad, the current head of the African Union – well, lets just say that Chad is not the top of my list of African countries which I would like to visit.
Make no mistake, if the promised UN climate cash starts flowing in Africa, its the Mugabes and the Débys, vicious political thugs who are well enmeshed in pan-African diplomacy, who will collar the lion’s share. It seems less than plausible, that any of this cash will help improve the lives of the ordinary African people whom they casually brutalise; far more likely, that the cash will help prop up dictators who have squeezed their own people dry, tyrants who are looking forward to an opportunity to help loot Western taxpayers.
Ask Bob Geldof where all the money went after he launched Christmas for Africa and wrote “Feed the World”. The African tyrants and tin pot dictators stole all the food, medicine and money and traded it all for weapons so that they could wipe out rival tribes.
After that he abandoned his socialist wealth redistribution illusion. I recall him meeting with GW Bush to take a swipe at the generational leadership problems in Africa.
Yup. Geldof teamed up with W.
Actually, some of that money is still working, albeit largely pillaged by corrupt leaders.
Most, but not all, nations in Africa are mired with corruption and incompetence. It starts with the leaders and filters down through the system. Zimbabwe was once the bread basket of Africa, but the ravings and actions of a bitter and twisted old man put paid to that.
In Africa, if anyone dares point out/expose instances of this corruption and incompetence, they are immediately branded as “racists”.
As there is so much corruption in ‘climate science’, it is only natural the more venal of African leaders would use this as an excuse to try and extort even more funds from the gullible West.
In the future, Zimbabwe will be used as a classic case of how a country should not be governed, just like today’s practices in climate science will be shown as an example of how not to conduct real science.
“Most, but not all, nations in Africa are mired with corruption and incompetence.”
Agreed. But then so is the USA.
markstoval
The corruption is a direct function of the amount of money coming from Washington, and the relative ratio of Washington/government money coming into each county compared to what is earned.
Interested to see a nominating list of countries in the “but not all” category. Tanzania? Ethiopia? Doubtful they even qualify but it’s a short list indeed.
Our stupid leaders go along with this. I despair that common sense will ever show up.
How many decades has the U.S and the world been sending food and cash to Africa ?? What did it help ?
Well……….it gave Africa more Africans.
There is the risk of falling into the old trap of the sunk cost fallacy when it comes to Africa, i.e. throwing good money after bad.
It would probably be best to leave them to crack on and sort out their own problems.
A lot of problems in Africa resulted from colonisation from countries like England, France, Germany and Holland. The only country I know of in Africa that was not colonised was Ethiopia. The Italians had a go, but they ultimately lost fairly quickly. No African nation enslaved people’s from another nation, put them on ships, took them to foreign lands or threw them overboard, still chained together, when there was not enough food and water.
I am not saying there were no troubles between tribes in Africa over time however, it is clear to see modern day leaders like Mugabe and the likes of Amin were clearly corrupt to the core and probably mad. Amin was said to have known when he would die. Maybe true, maybe not. He died in 2003 and Uganda still has not recovered. One thing is clear, he wasn’t too bright, and looked, to me, to suffer paranoid delusions (Watch the tail end of the film The Last King of Scotland).
Patrick, I don’t know where you learned your history, but you’ve been seriously misled. Africans have been enslaving Africans for the last 5,000 years. Slavery was well established before the Pharaonic Period in Egypt. African slavers raided Italy, Spain, England, Ireland and Wales for centuries.
One pressing reason for the Catholic church getting into Morocco was to buy back Europeans that had been captured in slave raids.
You cannot blame European colonisation for what Africans have been doing for millennia.
At the time he was said to be suffering from the treminal effects of veneral disease!
Patric, maybe you do not know, but, during the period when Europeans were taking African slaves, it was Africans who enslaved Africans, and then sold them to Europeans. The Europeans did not enslave anyone (or very few). I’m not justifying the slave trade, but don’t pretend that Africans were somehow innocent.
“No African nation enslaved people’s from another nation, put them on ships, took them to foreign lands or threw them overboard, still chained together, when there was not enough food and water.”
Totally incorrect, better check your history of the slave trade, starting with the Muslim atrocities dealing with complicit North African tribes from the 7th century on and the Western alliances with the West African coastal tribes during the 16 century on. You will find that there were no Westerners in Africa capturing slaves during the earlier periods of the slave trade as no westerner could survive beyond the coast for a month or more due to African disease and pestilence, thus they had to contract with coastal tribes to go inland and capture other tribes for trade. A totally different scenario than you are trying to promulgate.
I said “Patrick PMJ says: February 15, 2016 at 1:13 am I am not saying there were no troubles between tribes in Africa over time however,…” I then go on to talk about MODERN DAY LEADERS.
I said “no African nation enslaved people’s from another nation, put them on ships, took them to foreign lands or threw them overboard, still chained together, when there was not enough food and water.”
I did not say there were no tribal issues in Africa between other nations (Largely driven by religion, superstition, mistrust and disputed lands such as the land dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea and the border between Ethiopia and Kenya for instance).
I have long discussons with Ethiopians, Ganans, Sierra Leonians, Kenyans (In particular with the Kikuyu tribe, the tribe that was fundamental in negotiating independence from Britain), Ugandans, Nigerians and Zimbabweans to name a few nations in Africa about the history of Africa.
Patrick, I think part of the problem is your sentence, “no African nation enslaved people’s from another nation” which conflates a continent with the word nation.
Certainly nations (or tribes) in Africa enslave and murdered and committed genocide against other nations in Africa. Human history is remarkably consistent. Also John B’s comment says they went outside of the African continent as well, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/02/14/brutal-dictatorship-seeks-climate-cash-to-fund-continued-attrocities/#comment-2145460
Well who knows. History written by victors and all that. But what I know is that people comment on African culture without actually having being there and experienced it.
Patrick, you are obviously well intentioned, perhaps even laden with white guilt. Possibly I can help you get a better understanding. Let me tell you a true story.
I, a white, was born and grew up in black Africa and as a young boy I spent my time running through the African bush with black playmates. I could speak an African languages before I spoke English. As I got older I attended senior school and university in England. In those days the UN selected people on competence, not race and political ideology, and so I got a job managing census preparation in Africa.
I returned to Africa with my wife and we spent time in East and Southern Africa training census takers and managers to conduct censuses. A census is a difficult thing in Africa because in many cases certain groups ‘live with their ancestors’ as it were. So, for example, you see five people in the house, but the owner insists there are nine people living there. Four are dead ancestors. Also people are superstitious and don’t want to be counted. The hide or run away and one has to be patient in explaining the use of a census for planning.
It was the late 1970 and early 1980s and I mixed with a lot of senior black managers – usually called District Commissioners – who managed various areas or regions in their countries. These were decent sincere men keen to do the best for their countries.
Frequently they would say things like (to my surprise) thank you for coming to help us in Africa ‘son and daughter of the British Empire’. Yes really. When I asked why some of the older ones would say things like before the British came there were no schools, no hospitals, no shoes, no roads, no electricity. One fellow even pointed out there were no matches to light fires! And no pants. They would say the British brought light to Africa. Indeed ‘bringing light’ was and is a recurring theme. Many schools still today are called names like Ekhukanyene, which means place of light in some of the Nguni languages.
Of course, now those men are all dead and I have no doubt that the younger generation have similar feeling to those you espoused in your comment. But you should know that there once was a different view that is now forgotten under the heavy layers of political correctness. A view that may even be closer to the truth.
Patrick,
Here’s what’s not taught in History courses anymore.
No Africans put slaves on ships because Africans never built any ships, but that didn’t stop them from being prolific slavers and selling massive numbers of their fellows to Arab Muslims for many centuries before Europeans ever arrived in Africa.
In fact, the African-Arab slave trade dwarfed the African-European slave trade in both size and duration, but the reason why there isn’t an African Arabian population (like the African American population) today is because they castrated all of the men and boys and murdered the children born to their female sex slaves.
http://youtu.be/31E1gHowYcA
Yes, they sort out their own problem by moving on to Europe. Easier, free money and even if they do not qualify for refuge status, refuse to return and just go illegal.
A survey some years ago by a French (renown) magazine revealed that the combined total debt of African countries equals the combined wealth of all leaders !!!! that’s where the money goes.
I like the Chinese proverb in this context: Give a man a fish and you will feed him for one day, teach him how to fish and you feed him for a life time.
Compare this with Vietnam; has been in war with the French and the US, under communist regime for years thereafter. Yet now they export rice, become industrial and have tourism, all without external aid and collections in church. But Asians are different from Africans (I lived and worked in both continents, so know what I am talking about)
But they will get the money, don’t worry. It is (climate) business……
But, especially in Africa, the quote becomes “give a man somebody else’s fish, and he’ll vote for you”. Oh yes, and despite growing hunger in Zimbabwe, their Government has refused free consignments of GM food.
It’s a hit piece on Mugabe with Jeffrey Gogo’s climate change scare mongering to boot…
Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive
It’s regime change that’s needed there, that will change their climate for the good
I have a really hard time understanding why this POS is still wasting oxygen.
Pres. Trump can tell the two-bit thugs, “Sorry guys, we’re broke … go get money from China.” The stunned silence will be a real blessing.
They have already gone to China, Chinese currency is now legal tender in Zimbabwe!
Soon it will replace the dollar, too! At least when that happens, we’ll have a stable currency!
Maybe Stevie Wonder should write another song.
Asked what kind of society he hoped to lead, Mugabe replied, “A truly democratic society devoid of racism … a society where there is equality, where there are civil liberties. … And as far as our own program is concerned, we are for a socialist society, you see.”
rerun.
Could it be that statements from 195 world leaders — among whom, for example, is Robert Mugabe, just to hint at the quality of some of those leaders in whom the UN reposes such trust and faith — do not carry the persuasive force, the power of reassurance, that the delegates blithely assumed they have?
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/rex-murphy-so-why-arent-we-celebrating-saving-the-planet
Grrr… messed up blockquote
[What is the correct blockquote? It is not clear what words should be corrected from what and into what from this observation. .mod]
Good read, and a very good point – where is the “celebration” about saving the world 🙂
It’s a balancing act between encouraging and maintaining the faith of the True Believers while continuing to plead for more money because everything’s still so terrible. Think juggling, maybe.
especially after “the conclave of the convinced”
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/rex-murphy-so-why-arent-we-celebrating-saving-the-planet
The human race has moved beyond the role and the need for dictators.
It is time to kick them all out. Every single one of them.
This is what the UN should be focused on.
Not a single UN dollar should go to a country run by a dictator. 5,000 troops and an election tribunal should go instead.
Dear Bill,
The whole point of the UN has been to create moral equivalence among free and tyrannized nations, so that the tyrants can posture and preen as “leaders” of noble peoples. If anything, the UN has a distinct bias toward tyranny. Don’t imagine the UN will ever be the man on the white horse. (And there are no “UN dollars.” They are all US dollars mulcted from Americans.)
–Mike
I didn’t know the UN was printing dollars. I’m not a bit surprised, however!
AGW has produced nothing but money grabbers who all realize the hoax was created to only redistribute wealth from the successful. A Socialist’s and criminal’s delight.
This documentary was so ahead of its time, and unbelievably accurate. This clip highlights how this issue was highly predictable.
https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o?t=35m29s
The Neolithic subpluvial, in the period 9.000 to 5,000 years before present, featured greening of the Sahara and a lake larger than the Caspian Sea. It corresponds to the Holocene Climate Optimum period 8,000 to 6,000 years ago when temperature was 2 degrees Celsius higher than current warming. Periodic greening of arid areas of Africa correspond to increased warming of the North Atlantic, as the dry periods correspond to a cooling of the North Atlantic. The cause of the fluctuations is orbital eccentricity that follow 100,000- and 41,000-year cycles. See http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/green-sahara-african-humid-periods-paced-by-82884405
Since we are now living in the coldest 10% period of the past 10,000 years, it is no wonder that African drought is significant. Studies indicate Africa should get wetter when natural climate changes cause warmer than average periods.
But the American public never gets wise enough to see that we don’t interfere in dictatorships or other abusive governments as long as they are on our side or don’t bother us. Now if it’s someone that is causing us problems (like Assad and Hussein) then we say that they “must” become democracies with our military assistance of course up to and including military assassination; even though they usually know nothing about democracies and have not lived under such for centuries. Hypocrisy at it’s best. In addition, this attitude about the Middle East and the resulting chaos will apparently, historically, result in the eventual cultural destruction of Europe (thank you America).
BFL. All you need to do is control your borders. N
Robert Mugabe = affirmative action on steroids
From The Economist http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2011/07/travelling-through-zimbabwe :
“The road to Bulawayo
[..]The road takes us through what used to be some of the best farming land in the country, now an endless wasteland of tall dried-blonde grasses, thorn trees, broken fences and crumbling farm buildings—no animals, no villages, no people—following Mr Mugabe’s land grabs.[..]Zimbabwe is now the second poorest in the world (after Congo) with a GDP per person last year of just $365. Yet its potential wealth is vast.[..]So much history, so much potential, so much waste.”
And see http://www.aei.org/publication/the-truth-about-mugabes-land-reform/
The road to Bulawayo is very much a ground version of the air approach to Havana. I flew there (legally) several years ago, and the approach from Miami came west of Havana, circled around, and landed from the south after crossing half the width of the socialist paradise isle. I had a window seat, and was impressed by the miles and miles of scrubland that obviously were formerly farms in the years when Cuba was a food exporter. Now they import most of their edibles, paid for with rubles from the USSR, er, Venezuela, er, well, Obama?
BTW, I visited what had just been Rhodesia 34 years ago, and the farms were quite lush and the newly “liberated” Zimbabwe was still the breadbasket of Africa, Pity how two men – Castro and Mugabe – can so totally ruin a country. But not singlehandedly. They have the socilaist hordes behind them.
Sorry about the southern spelling. Socialist.
I lived in Chile in the early eighties when the country was recovering from the attempt by the Allende regime to turn it into a socialist paradise like Cuba. The farmers in the south were faced with similar idiotic/criminal land “reforms”. The result was that they tried to liquidise whatever assets they had and then get out. Thus during the last year of the Allende regime the market was flooded with beef from slaughtered cattle then followed by a total lack of supply. Same story for many other commodities. This, of course, was all the fault of the Americans, in particular the cia.
Pinochets coup d’etat put an end to the idiocy just in time to avoid a total collapse and start a rebuild. Chile is now the most advanced country of South America, a major exporter of foodstuffs including my favourite wine.
Ed Zuiderwijk says: February 15, 2016 at 7:16 am … I lived in Chile …
Chile was another case where a dictator won an election with a minority “plurality” vote against multiple other candidates. Other cases would be the 1933 elections in Germany and 1948 in Czechoslovakia. In those two earlier cases the victors had the smarts to immediately take over the military and police, and set up their own guards. Allende thought all he needed was a pistol to proctect his power.
For that matter, Clinton won both terms with minority votes, as did GWB in 2000.
“Please” report to the Climate Change Correction Booth to receive wisdom from the Frankfurt School instructors.
The best foreign aid the U.S. could send his country might come from a drone …..
Sam Kinison had world hunger pegged 33 years ago…
https://youtu.be/MMyb0vPtaj0
Tekov,
Thanks for that.
So called rich countries cant even prevent the death of a homeless person on their own streets. Context…
The homeless person has responsibility for preventing his own death, which usually is caused by drug and alcohol abuse. Many refuse shelter because of restrictions in the shelter on alcohol and drugs.It’s a waster to give help to those who won’t help themselves. Context…
Many addictions stem from untreated mental illness, often caused by childhood trauma. Context…
Elitist Class, Worker Class, Victim class.
The three types of people according to bleeding heart liberals.
Liberals whose guilty consciences render them grist for the Progressive mill.
Majormike1,
Every person has a responsibility for preventing his own death and that of others where possible in my opinion, You are being unreasonably unrealistic with this falsehood associating Homelessness with drug and alcohol abuse, it simply isn’t true, and it’s inaccurate to say “but but but… there are homeless people who have drug and alcohol problems” because you know very well that there are more people who are not homeless who have drug and alcohol problems than there are homeless people.
Homelessness can happen over a wide variety circumstances, My own personal experience opened my eyes to this nonsense about homeless people, My house burnt down one Christmas day when my dog got into a room where there was a heater left on, being a dog he jumped onto the bed and accidentally knocked a blanket onto the floor where it caught fire, and as I was in another part of the house at the time it obviously got out of control, to cut a long story short… I was referred to temporary accommodation the reason I had to take it was because it was local to where I worked, after losing everything including the dog (which I frantically tried to safe three times running into a burning until I was burnt and my clothes were melted to me and on fire) keeping my job was a priority, while staying in the temporary accommodation a very basic small one bed room flat (my dog had a larger more attractive accommodation) it wasn’t so hard to understand how living in such gloomy conditions after such a traumatic experience could break a persons spirit, and cause them to maybe fall into that lifestyle of alcohol abuse and drugs, fortunately I had my job, friends and family, many people would have came out much worse than I did, I also met other homeless residents, there were women with babies one step from the street, there were a lot of nice people I could tell you about, all of them were unemployed, most of them ended up homeless over family, financial and relationship breakdowns or medical problems and deaths that left them without a home and vulnerable, I know a of a few who stayed there that weren’t able to deal with their situation and spiralled down that slippery path, and it’s really not their fault and to see men to proud to ask for help disintegrate without hope is inhuman…
You’re such a hero turning your back on people like that aren’t you Mike… 😉
Sparks commented: “…You’re such a hero turning your back on people like that aren’t you Mike… ;)…”
My, such sanctimony from someone who wasn’t/isn’t chronically homeless. The homeless I know and am aware of prefer their lifestyle. Many are substance abusers. Many are sadly mentally deficient. None of them would take a job if you gave it to them nor could they hold on to it. Those that become homeless….like you…..through a quirk of circumstances claw their way back to normal society quickly. Most like their “independence” (as they call it) and choose to stay that way. Those that don’t want to remain homeless don’t.
One wonders what will happen to the [pruned] Ban Ki Moon when he is disposed.
Ha ha