Are you saying that there is no path to genuine cooperation between Europe and Africa, because it can only be about exploitation of Africa by Europe? Or what?
The Mediteranean basin was a single world centuries ago, and the links have never really left. Quite frankly, quite often it feels like there is more in common between a Marseillais, a Sicilian, a Tunisian or a Lebanese than between a Marseillais and a Dane... Wind power
I have been focusing my efforts for some time on the historic 'Hanseatic' area around the North and Baltic Seas, but extensible to (say) Ireland, Iceland, Faroes and so on.
It seems to me that the Mediterranean basin is in many ways a more natural geo-political, cultural and economic nexus than the national and international accidents of history we have. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Unless you care to discuss adventures in Angola.
Are you saying that there is no path to genuine cooperation between Europe and Africa, because it can only be about exploitation of Africa by Europe?
If there were a "path to genuine cooperation" --in contrast to resource exploitation and postcolonial suzeraignty-- it would be self-evident at this point in time in the "genuine" integration of cultural and material enterprises among and between peoples in Africa and Europe.
We be celebrating "liberalization" of capital flows and human migration assured by intergovernmental administration of EU and African Union members. We would be celebrating the resolution of COP15.
But no.
And I am walking a ring of a self-deception about "natural" barriers to cooperation. The fantasy that French West Africa does not exist. But a cosmopolitan metropolis of antiquity is risen.
To serve the purposes of a Greater Europe. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
It is true that the current relationship between European countries (mainly France and the UK) and most of the Sub-Saharan African countries is still shamefully neocolonialist.
But do you mean that because a genuinely cooperative relationship doesn't exist, it cannot exist? At the end of the 1940s, one could have said a European Union was not possible... "Ce qui vient au monde pour ne rien troubler ne mérite ni égards ni patience." René Char
As I've described "a genuinely cooperative relationship": Not in my lifetime. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
Not in my lifetime.
Ah, but I was thinking long term. And, as Jérôme Keynes would tell you: "In the long term, we're all dead"... "Ce qui vient au monde pour ne rien troubler ne mérite ni égards ni patience." René Char
Now I know better.
good-bye. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
So,non the comparison is not valid.
In any case, I'm not denying Europe's colonialist past, nor the continued exploitative beahavior of many of its companies in Africa today, but your blanket rejection that anything done with Africa is going to be exploitative by definition is just not acceptable. Wind power
It's a different thing to say "there is a significant risk, given the past and some still current European behavior in Africa, that a partnership would end up being unfair" and to say "any partnership will be exploitative because that's what Europeans are and do" Wind power
That's your inner, patronizing imperialist speaking
While many of us in the US and Europe are critical of the nature of our societies and do not wish them to continue to have the impacts that they have had on much of the rest of the world we have been signally ineffective in bringing about such change -- to the extent that total system collapse is more likely than orderly internal change.
This is not to say that Jerome, Melanchthon and others are not sincere in their desires to bring about such change, but that has not made it so. I took Cat's comments as being directed at the fact and the likely probability of outcome concerning the relationship between the USA, Europe and Africa. On that I personally suspect she is right. "Not in my lifetime" -- unless via collapse. The poison in the soul of our shared cultures is deep and at the root of its organization. We all have to take responsibility for that, whether we are benificiaries, victims or both. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
However, the risk of an exploitative economic relationship is, I would argue, an argument for increased involvement of people who are not in favour of colonialism and who know how to spot an economic hit man and beat him at his own game. Because if we do not beat the economic hit men in some way, we'll end up with this, at least if history is any guide:
another scenario would be that Siemens et al build multi-billion-dollar facilities but keep complete control of it, without tech transfer or ownership, and thus it's them selling both to Spain and Algeria even if they also pay rent for the desert land;
Now, project finance and economic and political integration isn't the only battlefield in this particular revolution. But it's an important one, and one that we should not abdicate entirely simply because the rules are tilted against us.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
