Funny thing is that Muslims and Christians in Africa fight each other not realizing its something forced on upon them by colonizers. Hope Africans wake up and live peacefully
Fights were probably smaller and between tribes and not two monolithic groups? Also not quite sure about Ethiopia but the weapons were probably less bangy and more stabby pre colonization?
The lore of the church is fascinating, the story is that the line of Solomon came to Ethiopia by way of the Queen of Sheba, and the ark of the covenant made its way there. And that figures into Rastafarian beliefs.
To go back to the origin, all of us non-Africans are downstream of colonists from East Africa circa 70,000 years ago, e.g. the region where Ethiopia is now. Not sure if that is past the anthropological statute of limitations.
When the branch of christianity the Ethiopian church belonged to (Oriental orthodoxy) schismed from the western tradition, there were 5 centers of Christianity called the Pentarchy. Only one of them (Rome) was in what's now Europe, and at that point was more of a symbolic center than a seat of actual power.
Europe didn't exist as a cultural concept at that time. There was Rome, but that was a Mediterranean empire with hugely significant southern European, east Asian, and north African components. Citizens and elites came from all parts.
Eventually, we get a Europe united under Christianity, but I wouldn't call that fully developed until the end of the Viking age.
Ethiopia has a brief Italian intervention but did not form part of a European empire. In fact, before the Communists got in under Mengistu, it was ruled by an Emperor
Calling inflation an inconvenience is certainly an opinion. How many people will die across the world because they have to choose between healthcare, food, and rent?
They will eat, they will skip on rent and they will do what they can with healthcare (be that public or NGO healthcare initiatives, or the local "wise person")
"But won't they be evicted?" Is a question that has several answers, but none of which you expect
First worlders perception of how to deal with 3rd world problems are interesting
Inflation in mentioned above example was 3.4% year over year for a professional at the higher end of the income scale. In that case it is inconvenience.
I agree that higher level of inflation might be brutal.
We give attention to things that deserve our attention, i.e., things that affect us. The war in Ethiopia scores very low on that list, to the point of almost complete irrelevance.
That’s one of the reasons COVID got to spread. People in the West saw it as “a Chinese issue”. Me included. And I work with Chinese people every day. I would see them in lockdown and still think it couldn’t possibly affect me.
Because Israel is manipulating the US. We literally have laws curtailing freedom of speech just to stop people from boycotting Israel. The vast majority of our government is bribed or blackmailed by Israel. We currently have a Zionist hawk consolidating all of our mass media (Larry Ellison). TikTok was forced to move ownership to Zionists in the US due to Israel. Our tax dollars go to Israel. The last two presidents (and probably more) have gone on tv and lied to every US citizen on behalf of Israel...
It's a pressing and important issue, which is why it's getting a lot of attention.
other conflicts that to don't have any significant effect get plenty of attention like Ukraine or Palestine. the Russian Ukrainian conflict does have some effect on Europe but Israel Palestine has no tangible effect on the West and people talk about it frequently.
Because of history, how it was founded and people from both sides living in europe?
Germany as an extreme example has the survival of Israel as state doctrin. So that is a hot topic by definition.
Then there are many jews living in the west who sends weapons en masse to Israel - and there are also many Palestinian/Arabs living in the west. All that directly effects us.
Ethopia on the other hand is one of few african countries that was not (really) colonized. So there are not so much ties. The strongest is probably reggae and Haile Selassi chanting in songs, but most have no idea who that was. So, people are less interested naturally.
Speaking as a Jew in the West who is very anti-Israel, I think the weapons being sent to Israel are only partially explained by Jewish pro-Israel lobbies. Zionism happens to go beyond Judaism, and American imperialism, which Israel serves a role in, is a larger project than even that.
Israel has more impact on the West than any other country (and not in a good way). The Palestinians have brought light to it, but it's Israel's own bribing, blackmailing and industry influence in the US (and other Western countries) that people are upset about.
Saying that the Ukraine war has no significant effects is like saying that AI has no significant effects.
Europe started rapid remilitarization as a direct response to the war. The increase in military spending in European countries not participating in the war is comparable to worldwide investments in AI data centers and infrastructure.
Then there is the fact that a permanent member of the UN Security Council is waging an old-school war of conquest. If we assume that the post-WW2 world order is gone and wars of conquest are legitimate business again, the world will reassess other aspects of that order as well. Including the idea that people have inherent rights beyond those their government is willing to grant and capable of protecting.
> the Tigray war in Ethiopia may have killed as many as 600k, yet it barely registered in our public conversation. The same goes for Sudan. Attention is a weird beast.
If there are no white people to blame on either side of the war, nobody cares. It's the same shit with so many conflicts.
Chinese can't fight themselves. So I'm pretty sure everyone is in on this one.
One side wants the dam gone.
The other wants the dam generating electricity.
Will be fascinating to see which group of puppet masters wins. It'll tell us a lot about how the global power hierarchies are shaping up in the twenty-first century.
I do feel horrible for the innocent people of Ethiopia, who only wanted lights so their kids could study at night. Instead, they'll get killed. That's what sucks about the activity of global powers in Africa for the past, what? 500 years? Probably longer.
Excuse my ignorance, but what dam? TFA doesn't mention either a dam or the Chinese, in fact it does an analysis of "Ethiopian wars of choice" completely unrelated to either thing.
Threads attract people with an opinion about the topic, so it's more like HN contains lots of subsets of sensitive people waiting in the wings. But of course, per Marvin Gaye, we're all sensitive people.
To be fair to HN, I mean, your comment kind of indicates your own political sensitivity as well right?
I, personally, don't mind political content. I find it interesting. That said, I'm not going to get on fellow HN'ers when they downvote or flag it. That, in and of itself, would be a political act rooted in sensitivities.
If you have reasons, in particular, that posts or comments should not be flagged, I'd personally encourage you to outline them. Then let the chips fall where they may. Getting emotional only decreases the overall quality of the conversation. And, presumably, outlining your own ideas would get whatever viewpoint it is that you wish to push, into the thread.
No I dont think so, Im not being sensitive to anything other than censorship? I believe on total free speech so I think every comment should be visible and I am happy to take offence. I see so many dead comments that are not even rude or offensive, its hard to see why anyone would censor them.
I am glad that this topic gets more attention, but the article itself doesn't provide any real analysis and could use some proof-reading. In its current shape, it's borderline engagement farming.
That was back when Aksum had a large Greek minority and other minorities, and even in some periods of time had coinage with Greek writing.
Also, Aksum probably overlaps much more with Eritrea than with Ethiopia. Aksum was also mostly surrounded by desert, mountains, at least one volcano, and the sea, and its territory tended to be close to the sea, also for trade. Surprisingly isolated from the rest of Africa south of the Sahara.
Ethiopia has been a great power since then too: under Constantine I (c. 1450) it was the preeminent power in East Africa, and while the kingdom subsequently fragmented it managed to recombine by the 1800s in time to take a stand against European colonialism. None of that was because of a "Greek minority", African people are perfectly capable of governing themselves (with the right social structures in place, as with all people).
Regarding Constantine 1 of the Ethiopian empire, also named Zara Yaqob:
I tried to find churches built by him, and there are mentions of him building a lot, but I have not succeeded in finding material or photos of specific church buildings.
This church is Ethiopian, and as far as I can tell built during the Ethiopian empire's period, later than Zara Yaqob, though it is not exactly impressive:
A large Greek minority? Please share your sources for that because I'd be very interested in reading that.
AFAIU, Greeks were there, but as traders who came because it was a prosperous kingdom. For the same reason other groups from around that region also had a presence, and vice-versa. Prosperous nations tend to exchange populations and build economic, cultural, and political ties.
But if you're implying the presence of Greeks or an adoption of Greek culture was the reason for the rise of the Aksum empire... I'd certainly like to read those sources.
The very early adoption of Christianity might have had something to do with it, at least in terms of creating a unifying identity within and among the broader region. But Greeks weren't the only Christians. Ethiopia already had ties to non-Greek Levante and non-Greek Arabian peninsula communities, and probably Persian traders, as well--Persians were the Greeks of the Indian Ocean.
They had coinage with Greek writing in some periods, as I mentioned, which implies that Greeks must have had a very large influence on Aksum. It was only centuries later that they switched to non-Greek, native writing, possibly around the decline of Aksum.
> The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea mentions that the Aksumite state imported brass (Ancient Greek: ὀρείχαλκος, oreíkhalkos), "which they use[d] for ornaments and for cutting as money", and they imported "a little money (denarion) for [use by] foreigners who live there."
Your other comments just seemed uninformed, but the thesis you are actually pushing is white civilizations are inherently better. Stop for a minute and think about other possibilities why you don’t know a lot about an empire that wasn’t part of what we in the west consider our lineage (Greece, Rome); is it not possible we didn’t value keeping other societies’ histories alive in the same way?
I’ll skip pointing out much of what you know about ancient scholars may be due to Arabic countries keeping them alive during the Dark Ages.
Wars are expensive, and the money has to come from somewhere:
> Lots of countries — including Egypt (the Nile/wider Red Sea supremacy), Eritrea (Ethiopia’s desire for access to the sea), Sudan (Ethiopian support for the RSF), Somalia (historical enmity/Ethiopian support for Somaliland), and Saudi Arabia (as benefactor of Egypt/Sudan/Eritrea axis) — have good reasons to keep Addis Ababa weak and preoccupied with unending domestic wars. These dynamics, coupled with the geography of war in Ethiopia mean that Addis Ababa will struggle to keep arms and fighters from easily moving across its borders with Sudan and Eritrea.
> On its part, the Ethiopian state will likely continue to enjoy support from the United Arab Emirates; and maintain the capacity to produce the weapons needed to keep rebels at bay. Ominously, divisions among elites in Tigray and other regions mean that the rebellion may not clear the threshold needed to incentivize a quick resolution either militarily or at the negotiating table. Therefore, slow-burning, but still catastrophically deadly conflicts may be on the cards.
> …
> Notably, a prolonged conflict will likely also be significantly civilianized. Careful to avoid being overstretched, the Ethiopian state may decide to deputize regional militias and other violence entrepreneurs in its fights against subnational armed groups. To this end, it will lean heavily on divisions across armed groups and within the regional states that have witnessed rebellions.
Part of a unifying the nation will be convincing these players that they will do better with a peaceful, stable Ethiopia.
The main culprit of poverty in Africa (and other countries) is the widespread corruption. It's the destroyer of all entrepreneurial and business activity in those countries. Any business is continuously being robbed, ransomed and conned into paying "protection" money by gangs and law enforcement alike. In addition the civil servants demand payment for the most trivial licenses you need to operate your business. These all add up and make any business unprofitable because you cannot pass on those costs to customers.
To combat corruption these countries need to educate their population of its effects plus hefty penalties, including capital punishment, to get it under control. The higher up the tree the more severe the punishment should be. Politicians and senior civil servants should always be put to death since their corruption has the greatest impact.
Corruption depends on the rule of law. And you can not have rule of law, when the primary state-forming institution is the clan-family. Its just not possible.
So any culture, that can not produce state-builders, is doomed to fail forever, with the history dotted with failures. Its hard to understand- but these states you see on the map, named and infamed- are not real. The clan who rules and the cityparts and cities they own and live in, that is the state. The rest- is conquered territories, ruled by other clan-families, who are subjugated and extracted from.
Which is why these countries are so much more prosperous when outsiders rule them, supressing the clan systems for anything more meritocratic.
It’s hard to see from a US perspective, but for us in Africa it _is_ an improvement. China is actively growing client economies in a continent that has seen little but exploitation for the longest time. Despite all the fear mongering, they are yet to take adverse possession of a state utility or force the sale of a national asset when loans have defaulted. You know who does do things like that? The world bank and the IMF.
I’m not a big fan of China or their politics, but they have certainly been much more beneficial for Africa than the West has in recent memory.
> Which is why these countries are so much more prosperous when outsiders rule them, supressing the clan systems for anything more meritocratic.
That's generally not how colonization worked. Quite often, colonization intentionally created the large scale tribal identities. Allegiance to clans grows because of deep suspicion of extractive governments put in place by outsiders.
The colonial system was meritocratic. It has a lot of bad things, but an absolutely staggering amount of Englishmen and Scotsmen and Welshman got their start and career through their hard work in India. A lot of whom, especially those minorities, would never have had a chance in G.B.
- Heart of Darkness on British imperialism in the Congo
The cost of the socio-economic mobility provided to lower classes in colonizing societies was absolutely staggering. Unimaginable cruelty, suffering and destruction was visited upon the native populations.
When those countries were ruled by outsiders, the people who ran them weren't picking capable locals to have power, they were picking capable outsiders to have power.
The locals were only used for manual labour and filling out conscript armies (overseen by coloniser officers). This creates societies where none of the natives have any experience with doing any of the jobs necessary to actually govern a country.
You do know that Ethiopia wasn't technically colonized ever, right? It had a single 5 year period of military occupation by Mussolini and co in 1936...
Lol I don't know if this is a dog whistle so much as a dog call.
There is nothing inherently unique to African culture that means Africans need western saviors to understand why their primitive clannish ways are holding them back. The same social unit is native to all human culture.
The problem is that the rest of the world wants African natural resources and a weak, distributed African power structure is good for that.
Well, a broader interpretation of this idea is that paradoxically there needs to be a certain level of authoritarianism in order to have a civil functioning republic.
In the 1900s this was communism. A lot of people (either disingenuously or not) interpreted this as anti-democratic. But if you look at what actually happened where conditions were right, it turned out to work well- China and Vietnam, and if you just look at authoritarianism, not just communist authoritarianism, then Singapore, S. Korea, Taiwan as well. Some would also argue that the USA falls into this category- that the same arm of the government suppressing corruption is also going after marginalized groups.
There aren't that many examples in history where the ideal balance is actually struck.
They need a Bukkele to come in and suspend human rights and execute all the politicians associated with corruption and use the military to throw all the warlords and criminals in jail.
The people in those countries deserve to live a life free from corruption and the only way to do it is Bukkele-style
In South Africa, the gangs infiltrated the government. This isn't just paranoia or extremist political ideology, this was recently exposed in the Madlanga Commission.
> To combat corruption these countries need to educate their population of its effects plus hefty penalties, including capital punishment, to get it under control. The higher up the tree the more severe the punishment should be. Politicians and senior civil servants should always be put to death since their corruption has the greatest impact.
Giving the government the power to exert these punishments will only give the corrupt officials the power to legally do this to their enemies.
You seem to think corruption is part of local culture. In reality corruption is implemented and maintained by foreign colonialists as a tactic to maintain power over local resources. It is coldly planned for in think tanks and other dark corners of foreign colonial democracies
Hang on now: someone breaks into my house, strip mines it for anything valuable I have, takes multiple generations of my offspring out of schooling, beats and kills any offspring that request they stop and leave and it’s my fault the kids struggle to organize? And then when they do get “free”, lacking any example or group memory for how to fairly manage things, the worst of the kids take by strength and starve the rest. That’s my fault too?
All of us foreign colonialists would much prefer countries to be run by competent adults. There’s far more wealth to be gotten by trading with a state that functions properly, like say, Australia or even India where plenty of corruption exists but is kept in check… compared to the circus that is countries ruled by warring clans and outright 100% corruption like the worst cases in Africa.
> To combat corruption these countries need to educate their population of its effects plus hefty penalties, including capital punishment, to get it under control
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A lot of people who didn't know how corruption works in practice are getting a crash-course with the second Trump administration: which of your recommendations should be applied to the Trump family, and who's going to do it?
I’m a lot less worried about corruption in a country that has real elections. Trump is corrupt. He is exceptionally corrupt. But he won’t be President forever. If we elect Trump Jr. or something, well, that’s on us.
In Africa, the winner of elections is usually known up front because they’re not real. One clan/party rules until another one stages a successful bloody coup, and repeat on a 1/5/10/20 year cycle depending on the country.
Yes, in our advanced utopia the winning politician is not known up front, we get to pick from the two politicians who managed to accumulate the most debts to corporate interests! It's much better.
I'd like to point out that at least we still have that blunt instrument of a two-party system: The ability to vote The Other Team into power to punish The Current Team. We used this power most recently to punish Team Blue for causing runaway inflation and pushing for unpopular social policies. And we used it 4 years before to punish Team Red for being unprofessional and doing a chaotic job of managing the first year of COVID.
Compare this to China or Russia, where the way to punish the ruling party is "you don't" - or Africa where the way to punish the ruling party is to try to amass enough Kalashnikovs and get enough of the various clans on board to stage the next coup.
Oh, my bad for not considering that America has never had any attempts to meddle with elections, or a bloody coup attempt. Its institutions are strong and irs system of checks and balances is unimpeachable.
> The main culprit of poverty in Africa (and other countries) is the widespread corruption. The main culprit of poverty in Africa (and other countries) is the widespread corruption.
I disagree with this. The core culprit is that most people in Africa depend on the government, most are employed by it. So effectively the government is just taxing itself with no new money coming in. The solution is a revolution in SMEs, the entrepreneurial spirit and a private sector are missing across Africa.
>The core culprit is that most people in Africa depend on the government, most are employed by it.
Just curious. What nations are you talking about when you say that "most people in Africa depend on the government"?
Only asking because this has not been my experience at all!
In fact I would say that most people in every nation I visited was dependent on themselves, their family and whatever support they could get from their larger clan. Poverty was rampant. Most of the middle class had clawed their way to that height through creating some kind of business. The degree to which these economies were dependent on remittances was alarming in my uneducated view. I would say far less than .5% of the people I interacted with had a government paycheck or even a government benefit coming in.
That said, I've never been to the wealthier nations like South Africa or Morocco or what have you. Maybe it's different in those places?
Most are employed by the government because there's no substantial business activity in those countries. Every successful business gets robbed by both the government and gangsters.
Only menial businesses like supermarkets exist in those countries (people have to eat no matter how corrupt a country is).
As soon as an entrepreneur becomes successful and makes healthy profits they'll get raided by leeches. Usually they'll have to pay government officials for "protection" and politicians demand that their family members become part of the Board or management.
Educate the populace is not going to work in the short term. What a lot of sub Saharan African countries need right now is a benevolent dictator/king. Strong emphasis on the benevolent part, someone truly looking to improve the countries and their populace. This person needs to put in strong rule of law and build out institutions and crush corruption. Once you have a stable working order, that is a much better time for democracy to be re-introduced. This is how most countries in the world were formed. Unfortunately due to colonization and a later progression, Africans were never able to complete that part of their development cycle.
That being said finding a benevolent dictator is easier said than done. I can’t really think of anyone that has fit that bill over the last 75 years in Africa, the closest might be Paul Kagame in Rwanda.
> I can’t really think of anyone that has fit that bill over the last 75 years in Africa, the closest might be Paul Kagame in Rwanda.
Seemed to be at least a few in the immediate era of independence for certain African states. Unfortunately for them the cold war was raging and I think most of them were brutally murdered and replaced "strong men" who crippled their country with rampant corruption and cowardly paranoia.
There is an inverse relationship between capital punishment and how advanced a country is. People who spread nonsense like this should be put to death.
> The main culprit of poverty in Africa (and other countries) is the widespread corruption. It's the destroyer of all entrepreneurial and business activity in those countries. Any business is continuously being robbed, ransomed and conned into paying "protection" money by gangs and law enforcement alike.
Isaac Bacirongo's autobiography, Still a Pygmy, has plenty of interesting comments on this topic. The main business theme seems to be that in Africa it's not really possible to extend (or receive) credit - if someone says they'll pay you later, they won't, and if you were foolish enough to believe them you're going to take a loss.
And yet, here we are with one of our greatest legacies- The Roman Republic/Empire which did do exactly that. Cleanse a horridly corrupt system with liberal use of the death penalty. "Every man is always thinking of the Roman Empire" except when it explains what we don't want to know.
Both countries are not super-rich and some of the arabic countries constantly destabilize the area - we could see this in Sudan and elsewhere. Ask where all the various terrorist groups got high-quality weapons.
The war between Eritrea is Ethiopia is especially stupid. The main issue is access to the ocean/water which Ethiopia wants. Since it is the bigger country, it wants to bully its way through. Eritrea has only about 6 million people; Ethiopia has almost 140 million people. IMO there should be a diplomatic solution. Give Ethiopia access while not giving up land, negotiate payments (should be reasonable for both sides), invest into the corridor for both sides to profit. To me it seems as if Ethiopia has committed to the decision to wage war though. It's similar to Putin in that he committed to both genocide and expansion of land. Though Eritrea is really very small compared to Ethiopia; I don't see them being able to offset Ethiopia.
That's an outdated take at this point though right?
I mean pretty much everyone, today, (Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South sudan, etc etc), has settled on Kenya being the answer to all those questions. No one wants to access the sea in the Eritrea direction anymore since everything going on in Kenya is making Kenyan coastal access such a no-brainer. (And all of that was even before the Iran war showed that making your shipping dependent on the Eritrea route, and mideast chokepoints in general, is just, I mean, I'll be diplomatic and call it "ill-considered"). Now, with the newest attachments being considered for the LAPSSET corridor, going through Eritrea is just insanity by comparison.
So even without the geography problem, there is still war is my point. Now, of course, you could argue it's still a geography problem since the proxy-masters are mostly concerned about getting rid of the dam long term. But that's another issue is all I'm saying.
Eritrea/ns have historically, significant cost, demonstrated that they will resist Ethiopian occupation (see 1961-1991 and 1998-2000 conflicts). Ethiopia could re-negotiate access (see 1993-1998 agreements), however Ethiopia (state) argues for "access" in English while arguing for "ownership" in Amharic. Eritrea/ns are reasonably suspicious.
From an outsider standpoint it all seems so insane. The water is there — the way we do it in the world I know isn’t to have, say, Czechs slaughter Germans for decades until they get to the sea, in this case they made a deal to be part of a common market which makes it simple. But even in the absence of the EU etc. I still think they’d (at least in this century) negotiate for access to a convenient railroad, offer to pay to expand a port so both sides profit, etc.
I maintain that war in Ethiopia (and the wider Horn) is not inevitable. The current outbreak of war reflects the fact that Ethiopian elites keep choosing war over peace. Unfortunately, despite repeatedly choosing war, Ethiopian leaders continue to enjoy support from a cast of warmongering academics, journalists, public intellectuals, civil society actors, and a whole host of foreign actors — all of whom have long taken sides and become cheerleaders for their respective camps.
In name only. But they are actors.
The anti-intellectual movement of the last quarter century is such a perversion of values that I have trouble recognizing the world today. It's a slap in the face to everything that I believe in, and what society used to value when I was growing up in the 1980s and 90s.
Reductionism has consumed tech and the scientific community. Because the wrong people won the internet lottery and promoted their brand of anti-intellectualism to the world, gaining esteem from sycophants hoping to ride their coattails and get rich too.
Now those same billionaires actively work to dismantle the institutions which were once heralded as bastions of democracy. Is it any wonder that peace is crumbling as they conspire to hoard the world's remaining resources? Doubling down on colonization, stealing them from developing nations that we've already victimized, without their consent?
Witnessing Elon Musk become a trillionaire at the same moment that a child somewhere died of dehydration was one of the grossest experiences of my life. We're talking Elysium, District 9, but real. Yet Greta Thunberg is mocked for her activism.
Instead of learning from history and doing better, we're papering over our colonizer past and doubling down on our malfeasance.
That anti-intellectualism developed because the self proclaimed intellectuals were so persistently, consistently wrong about so many things that many people lost all trust in them. Academia moved away from the foundational principles of the scientific method, that the truth of a model lies in its ability to repeatedly make correct predictions, to treating what they thought sounded morally good as true regardless of how far from reality it was.
I’m in this camp as well. I can’t stand the anti-intellectual trend, but the cultural elites in America got high on their own supply and just untethered themselves from reality, while our economic elites betrayed everyone by changing the economy into a machine that only benefits some people with college degrees while tricking another giant swath into buying useless degrees on credit. It’s more anti-elitism going on than anti-intellectualism. And they brought it on themselves. They should have offered something better.
Musk becoming a trillionaire because people value the shares of his ventures for stupid amounts doesn't actually make the poor poorer. If anything things like starlink help connect the more distant places.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 18.2 ms ] thread(something I learned from watching random unrelated YouTube history videos)
Imagine the shit we're gonna see in 2100 caused from that..
Any instability or faults of its government will be explained through "not US way" lens. This article doesn't seem any different
And they would be correct. Most people never "chose" their beliefs. It was systematically embedded by people who have had power over them.
People can question if they want to.
That is European colonization, possibly the most effective form.
Eventually, we get a Europe united under Christianity, but I wouldn't call that fully developed until the end of the Viking age.
Sure Italy certainly wanted to colonize Ethiopia, but they were driven out with the help of the British before they could.
There’s broad acceptance that Ethiopia is an uncolonized country.
Come on.
"But won't they be evicted?" Is a question that has several answers, but none of which you expect
First worlders perception of how to deal with 3rd world problems are interesting
I agree that higher level of inflation might be brutal.
Not nice, but somewhat rational? Inflation where you live affects you directly. A massacre somewhere far away usually not so much.
(But yes, all is connected, people fleeing the wars, then bringing their traumatas with them, etc)
And then… well.
Attention is indeed weird.
It's a pressing and important issue, which is why it's getting a lot of attention.
Germany as an extreme example has the survival of Israel as state doctrin. So that is a hot topic by definition.
Then there are many jews living in the west who sends weapons en masse to Israel - and there are also many Palestinian/Arabs living in the west. All that directly effects us.
Ethopia on the other hand is one of few african countries that was not (really) colonized. So there are not so much ties. The strongest is probably reggae and Haile Selassi chanting in songs, but most have no idea who that was. So, people are less interested naturally.
Individuals in the west can't buy and send weapons to other countries.
Europe started rapid remilitarization as a direct response to the war. The increase in military spending in European countries not participating in the war is comparable to worldwide investments in AI data centers and infrastructure.
Then there is the fact that a permanent member of the UN Security Council is waging an old-school war of conquest. If we assume that the post-WW2 world order is gone and wars of conquest are legitimate business again, the world will reassess other aspects of that order as well. Including the idea that people have inherent rights beyond those their government is willing to grant and capable of protecting.
I think the problem is that modern brain is overloaded with information. We can't care about everything fully, or we'd go insane.
Correction: The mass media serving a select few interests is a weird beast
..well not really weird if you think about it that way :)
If there are no white people to blame on either side of the war, nobody cares. It's the same shit with so many conflicts.
Chinese can't fight themselves. So I'm pretty sure everyone is in on this one.
One side wants the dam gone.
The other wants the dam generating electricity.
Will be fascinating to see which group of puppet masters wins. It'll tell us a lot about how the global power hierarchies are shaping up in the twenty-first century.
I do feel horrible for the innocent people of Ethiopia, who only wanted lights so their kids could study at night. Instead, they'll get killed. That's what sucks about the activity of global powers in Africa for the past, what? 500 years? Probably longer.
I, personally, don't mind political content. I find it interesting. That said, I'm not going to get on fellow HN'ers when they downvote or flag it. That, in and of itself, would be a political act rooted in sensitivities.
If you have reasons, in particular, that posts or comments should not be flagged, I'd personally encourage you to outline them. Then let the chips fall where they may. Getting emotional only decreases the overall quality of the conversation. And, presumably, outlining your own ideas would get whatever viewpoint it is that you wish to push, into the thread.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Aksum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songhai_Empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock-Hewn_Churches,_Lalibela
??? This comment was dead the second I posted it, how/why is that? Oh, visible again now, fair enough.
Maybe I should have included some context: these are a couple of Ethiopian cultural things that I think are neat. Uh, that's about it, really.
Given (enough) time, it’ll also happen to the ones at the peak now.
Also, Aksum probably overlaps much more with Eritrea than with Ethiopia. Aksum was also mostly surrounded by desert, mountains, at least one volcano, and the sea, and its territory tended to be close to the sea, also for trade. Surprisingly isolated from the rest of Africa south of the Sahara.
I tried to find churches built by him, and there are mentions of him building a lot, but I have not succeeded in finding material or photos of specific church buildings.
This church is Ethiopian, and as far as I can tell built during the Ethiopian empire's period, later than Zara Yaqob, though it is not exactly impressive:
https://www.brilliant-ethiopia.com/debre-birhan-selassie-chu...
But, why do the paintings and murals depict people with light or light brown skin and demons with black skin? I am genuinely and deeply confused.
AFAIU, Greeks were there, but as traders who came because it was a prosperous kingdom. For the same reason other groups from around that region also had a presence, and vice-versa. Prosperous nations tend to exchange populations and build economic, cultural, and political ties.
But if you're implying the presence of Greeks or an adoption of Greek culture was the reason for the rise of the Aksum empire... I'd certainly like to read those sources.
The very early adoption of Christianity might have had something to do with it, at least in terms of creating a unifying identity within and among the broader region. But Greeks weren't the only Christians. Ethiopia already had ties to non-Greek Levante and non-Greek Arabian peninsula communities, and probably Persian traders, as well--Persians were the Greeks of the Indian Ocean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endybis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aksumite_currency
> The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea mentions that the Aksumite state imported brass (Ancient Greek: ὀρείχαλκος, oreíkhalkos), "which they use[d] for ornaments and for cutting as money", and they imported "a little money (denarion) for [use by] foreigners who live there."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Aksum
> Aksum also had a sizeable Greek population, which resided in the cities of Ptolemais Theron and Adulis.[52]
I’ll skip pointing out much of what you know about ancient scholars may be due to Arabic countries keeping them alive during the Dark Ages.
> Lots of countries — including Egypt (the Nile/wider Red Sea supremacy), Eritrea (Ethiopia’s desire for access to the sea), Sudan (Ethiopian support for the RSF), Somalia (historical enmity/Ethiopian support for Somaliland), and Saudi Arabia (as benefactor of Egypt/Sudan/Eritrea axis) — have good reasons to keep Addis Ababa weak and preoccupied with unending domestic wars. These dynamics, coupled with the geography of war in Ethiopia mean that Addis Ababa will struggle to keep arms and fighters from easily moving across its borders with Sudan and Eritrea.
> On its part, the Ethiopian state will likely continue to enjoy support from the United Arab Emirates; and maintain the capacity to produce the weapons needed to keep rebels at bay. Ominously, divisions among elites in Tigray and other regions mean that the rebellion may not clear the threshold needed to incentivize a quick resolution either militarily or at the negotiating table. Therefore, slow-burning, but still catastrophically deadly conflicts may be on the cards.
> …
> Notably, a prolonged conflict will likely also be significantly civilianized. Careful to avoid being overstretched, the Ethiopian state may decide to deputize regional militias and other violence entrepreneurs in its fights against subnational armed groups. To this end, it will lean heavily on divisions across armed groups and within the regional states that have witnessed rebellions.
Part of a unifying the nation will be convincing these players that they will do better with a peaceful, stable Ethiopia.
To combat corruption these countries need to educate their population of its effects plus hefty penalties, including capital punishment, to get it under control. The higher up the tree the more severe the punishment should be. Politicians and senior civil servants should always be put to death since their corruption has the greatest impact.
Which is why these countries are so much more prosperous when outsiders rule them, supressing the clan systems for anything more meritocratic.
Which almost makes China's mercantilist foothold on the continent seem like an improvement.
I’m not a big fan of China or their politics, but they have certainly been much more beneficial for Africa than the West has in recent memory.
That's generally not how colonization worked. Quite often, colonization intentionally created the large scale tribal identities. Allegiance to clans grows because of deep suspicion of extractive governments put in place by outsiders.
Look into:
- the Mau Mau in Kenya (https://radiolab.org/podcast/mau-mau)
- prerevolutionary Haitian society from the Black Jacobins by CLR James (https://politicaleducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CL...)
- what King Leopold of Belgium did to the Congo
- what happened to Rapa Nui (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCyzrie_les)
- Heart of Darkness on British imperialism in the Congo
The cost of the socio-economic mobility provided to lower classes in colonizing societies was absolutely staggering. Unimaginable cruelty, suffering and destruction was visited upon the native populations.
The locals were only used for manual labour and filling out conscript armies (overseen by coloniser officers). This creates societies where none of the natives have any experience with doing any of the jobs necessary to actually govern a country.
There is nothing inherently unique to African culture that means Africans need western saviors to understand why their primitive clannish ways are holding them back. The same social unit is native to all human culture.
The problem is that the rest of the world wants African natural resources and a weak, distributed African power structure is good for that.
In the 1900s this was communism. A lot of people (either disingenuously or not) interpreted this as anti-democratic. But if you look at what actually happened where conditions were right, it turned out to work well- China and Vietnam, and if you just look at authoritarianism, not just communist authoritarianism, then Singapore, S. Korea, Taiwan as well. Some would also argue that the USA falls into this category- that the same arm of the government suppressing corruption is also going after marginalized groups.
There aren't that many examples in history where the ideal balance is actually struck.
You can. See US (Boeing, Rockefeller etc), UK (Royal "family", house of lords, etc), Germany ( Porsche and others)
The people in those countries deserve to live a life free from corruption and the only way to do it is Bukkele-style
> To combat corruption these countries need to educate their population of its effects plus hefty penalties, including capital punishment, to get it under control. The higher up the tree the more severe the punishment should be. Politicians and senior civil servants should always be put to death since their corruption has the greatest impact.
Giving the government the power to exert these punishments will only give the corrupt officials the power to legally do this to their enemies.
There is no hope for these countries.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A lot of people who didn't know how corruption works in practice are getting a crash-course with the second Trump administration: which of your recommendations should be applied to the Trump family, and who's going to do it?
In Africa, the winner of elections is usually known up front because they’re not real. One clan/party rules until another one stages a successful bloody coup, and repeat on a 1/5/10/20 year cycle depending on the country.
Compare this to China or Russia, where the way to punish the ruling party is "you don't" - or Africa where the way to punish the ruling party is to try to amass enough Kalashnikovs and get enough of the various clans on board to stage the next coup.
I disagree with this. The core culprit is that most people in Africa depend on the government, most are employed by it. So effectively the government is just taxing itself with no new money coming in. The solution is a revolution in SMEs, the entrepreneurial spirit and a private sector are missing across Africa.
Just curious. What nations are you talking about when you say that "most people in Africa depend on the government"?
Only asking because this has not been my experience at all!
In fact I would say that most people in every nation I visited was dependent on themselves, their family and whatever support they could get from their larger clan. Poverty was rampant. Most of the middle class had clawed their way to that height through creating some kind of business. The degree to which these economies were dependent on remittances was alarming in my uneducated view. I would say far less than .5% of the people I interacted with had a government paycheck or even a government benefit coming in.
That said, I've never been to the wealthier nations like South Africa or Morocco or what have you. Maybe it's different in those places?
Only menial businesses like supermarkets exist in those countries (people have to eat no matter how corrupt a country is).
As soon as an entrepreneur becomes successful and makes healthy profits they'll get raided by leeches. Usually they'll have to pay government officials for "protection" and politicians demand that their family members become part of the Board or management.
That being said finding a benevolent dictator is easier said than done. I can’t really think of anyone that has fit that bill over the last 75 years in Africa, the closest might be Paul Kagame in Rwanda.
Seemed to be at least a few in the immediate era of independence for certain African states. Unfortunately for them the cold war was raging and I think most of them were brutally murdered and replaced "strong men" who crippled their country with rampant corruption and cowardly paranoia.
Isaac Bacirongo's autobiography, Still a Pygmy, has plenty of interesting comments on this topic. The main business theme seems to be that in Africa it's not really possible to extend (or receive) credit - if someone says they'll pay you later, they won't, and if you were foolish enough to believe them you're going to take a loss.
Corruption was a smaller concern.
A country with high levels of corruption cannot be trusted to fairly carry out capital punishment.
The war between Eritrea is Ethiopia is especially stupid. The main issue is access to the ocean/water which Ethiopia wants. Since it is the bigger country, it wants to bully its way through. Eritrea has only about 6 million people; Ethiopia has almost 140 million people. IMO there should be a diplomatic solution. Give Ethiopia access while not giving up land, negotiate payments (should be reasonable for both sides), invest into the corridor for both sides to profit. To me it seems as if Ethiopia has committed to the decision to wage war though. It's similar to Putin in that he committed to both genocide and expansion of land. Though Eritrea is really very small compared to Ethiopia; I don't see them being able to offset Ethiopia.
I mean pretty much everyone, today, (Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South sudan, etc etc), has settled on Kenya being the answer to all those questions. No one wants to access the sea in the Eritrea direction anymore since everything going on in Kenya is making Kenyan coastal access such a no-brainer. (And all of that was even before the Iran war showed that making your shipping dependent on the Eritrea route, and mideast chokepoints in general, is just, I mean, I'll be diplomatic and call it "ill-considered"). Now, with the newest attachments being considered for the LAPSSET corridor, going through Eritrea is just insanity by comparison.
So even without the geography problem, there is still war is my point. Now, of course, you could argue it's still a geography problem since the proxy-masters are mostly concerned about getting rid of the dam long term. But that's another issue is all I'm saying.
In name only. But they are actors.
The anti-intellectual movement of the last quarter century is such a perversion of values that I have trouble recognizing the world today. It's a slap in the face to everything that I believe in, and what society used to value when I was growing up in the 1980s and 90s.
Reductionism has consumed tech and the scientific community. Because the wrong people won the internet lottery and promoted their brand of anti-intellectualism to the world, gaining esteem from sycophants hoping to ride their coattails and get rich too.
Now those same billionaires actively work to dismantle the institutions which were once heralded as bastions of democracy. Is it any wonder that peace is crumbling as they conspire to hoard the world's remaining resources? Doubling down on colonization, stealing them from developing nations that we've already victimized, without their consent?
Witnessing Elon Musk become a trillionaire at the same moment that a child somewhere died of dehydration was one of the grossest experiences of my life. We're talking Elysium, District 9, but real. Yet Greta Thunberg is mocked for her activism.
Instead of learning from history and doing better, we're papering over our colonizer past and doubling down on our malfeasance.
What a sick joke the future has become.
Musk becoming a trillionaire because people value the shares of his ventures for stupid amounts doesn't actually make the poor poorer. If anything things like starlink help connect the more distant places.