Josh How to Starve Africa: Ask the European Green Party
Jun 8, 2016 Bureaucrats EU Green Blob Greens Posted by Josh
I read this today on Risk-monger.com
There is a commonly shared neo-colonialist expression: The Europeans have the watches; the Africans have the time. Today, the European Green Party, with the support of countless environmentalist NGOs, proposed an initiative in the European Parliament to make Africa wait for at least another generation to be able to lift itself out of poverty.
It's a shocking read and ends:
A sad day for Africa
Today, in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, MEPs voted “overwhelmingly” by 577 MEPs, with only 24 against and 69 abstentions to accept the Green Party’s Heubuch Report and demand that the European Union stop funding the G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. It is with great hope that the world ignores this unfortunate act, considering it as a narrow-minded gesture towards appeasing a backward looking European green constituency.
In 2015, after 30 years of residence in the Brussels area, I became a Belgian citizen. Today, for the first time since officially becoming a European, I was ashamed of what ill-guided people in the European Parliament had done in the name of Europe. This act of selfish science denialism (with the potential for massive negative consequences) is no way for reasonable Europeans to act.
We need to let Africa have the chance to develop, not on our terms or demands, but on theirs. It is time to give Africans the watch and let them manage their affairs on their time, not ours.
Shame on Maria Heubuch and her band of eco-religious missionary zealots.
Shame on our MEPs too. Read the whole thing here.
Reader Comments (156)
I can not answer your direct question GC but there are now countries many hundreds of miles from China who are being robbed of their rights. Vietnam, Singapore, Japan and the Philipines have all had their vessels intercepted and threatened by Chinese ships, The US are trying to maintain free passage in what were/are International waters and there have been many close calls between the military of both sides.
The story of capitalism is one of ever increasing zones of absurdity.
When it can no longer expand it reveals itself as a grand farce.
We can all at least laugh at it even when it is killing us.
golf Charlie do you think we could interest the Chinese in taking over Cork as their European entropot? Imposition of their benevolent attitude to the internet might curtail one resident's economic diarrhoea. Alternatively he might turn his attention to reforming Chinese economic policy where he would experience equivalent success to what he achieves here.
The irony of Dork falling off the wagon so far and so hard and missing out the implosion of Venezuela's experiment with precisely the sort of economics he embraces is entertaining in a pathetic sort of way.
Dork.
Poetry help line here; a good first effort (7.39pm) but needs "improvement" Suggested changes -
"The absurdity of capitalism increases
When it stalls it reveals itself to be a grand mal
But we can laugh, even as it kills"
Tighter, with a literary allusion, but just as rubbish!
Better still - a haiku
Capitalism
Expansion ends in grand farce
Laugh as it kills us
A stronger form helps weak substance.
Capitalism. In its pure form, today's foregone consumption carefully reinvested for future benefit.
Of course, when the money starts appearing out of a magic barrel called QE it makes me rather more prone to agree with Dork.
She's gonna blow sooner or later, as the bishop said of the actress.
Maria HEUBUCH Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance.
Political career:
Offices held in a political party or national trade union:
11/1998-06/2014 : Federal Chair of the Working Group on Small-Scale Farming (AbL).
2008- ... : District team member of the Association of German Dairy Farmers (BDM).
1984-1997 : Board member of the Association for the Preservation of Family Farms.
====================================================
The motivation is clearly fear of competition.
For a representative of the coddled subsidised small farmers of Germany to claim concern or common cause with subsistence farmers in Africa is ‘Pecksniffian’ hypocrisy on stilts.
Christopher Hanley, she seems ideally experienced to impose her views on things she doesn't understand. A natural politician.
Osseo. The Poetry Help Line™ is an EU funded, not-for-profit organization, devoted to HELPING budding poets. The aid it offers, as in the Dork case, includes advice on excessive verbiage. The organisation does NOT seek to embarrass its clientele by showing off. We offer works in progress, encouraging a client to further refine their work. The Dork, as you might have realized, IF you had taken the time to review his extensive portfolio, requires an extensive workover, not wot you dun.
A critique of your own effort would include a) the current fad for fusion should not be encouraged and the Irish-Japanese mix we consider particularly noxious, and b) your removal of our suggested literary allusion is considered a retrograde step. On the other hand we praise the link between the skeletal form of your piece with your nom-de-blog. B+
AK, your assessment is appreciated.
As to b) I'm ashamed of missing the literary allusion – can you help further here? On a) I tend to disagree – the Irish-Japanese fusion can be productive. Example – complaints were made some decades ago about Japanese-produced 'Irish' souvenirs in Irish gift shops. The Japanese were well up to this – they marked their goods 'Made in Japan' – in Gaelic, unintelligible to tourists, so rather appearing to add to their authenticity. Finally, I don't think 'The Poetry Help Line' is registerable as a trade mark – it's too descriptive (this is not professional advice).
Osseo. Your defence of irish-japanese fusion gives further proof of your artistic qualities, and of Japanese perfidy. Presumably some misguided Japanese tourists purchased the items (= tat) believing they were authentic blarny. We at Poetry Help Line™ * will have no truck with such perversions.
a) is so obvious that f you cannot discern it, you have no europoetry future.
We encourage you to be true to your roots and develop your talents. We can help, we have euros coming out of our ears and few places to spend it. But you must adopt the Ayla ethic and denounce carbon sin in your poetic constructions.
* We are an organisation of the EU Directorate, we can damn well trade mark what we like!
Osseo. A translation error has occurred: for a) read b). A 20 page memorandum on this matter will appear in 2020 in all recognized European languages.
Dork : Python's Anne Elk.
AK/Osseo,
As I pointed out before, I do not like to leave errors uncorrected. The use of "™" to denote a trademark has no legal standing. You are simply saying "we use this as a shorthand to something that is core to our business".
For it to have any legal standing a trademark has to be registered. Then it appears as an (R) (but in a circle, not brackets, of course!).
On that basis Alan is strictly correct. "You can damn well trademark"™ what you like!. You just might not be able to register it.
thinkingscientist
we at Poetry Helpline ™(R)®©¢¥%~¿ can do whatever we damn well please, we are part of the EU and have diplomatic immunity. Thinkingscientist don't think you can get away from the outcomes of your gross interference. We know who you are and where you live. Your poetry's crap; it doesn't scan and has no inner feeling.
thinkingscientist, I don't dissent from what you say, but only note that I didn't say it wasn't a trade mark, only that it wasn't registrable as such (it was not legal advice - ['performative utterance' - obviously it was legal advice, but, by saying it wasn't, I hope to avoid liability for it]).
AK
The sky is falling
Build windmills to prop it up
You know it makes sense
I think this embodies the spirit of Ayla - do you need my banking details?
Osseo.
We are a EU sponsored entity so away with your haiku muck*. Try the Japanese Embassy (haiku promotions unit).
We agree your work has an Aylaesque signature but where is her outrage, her bile? We also suggest replacing "windmills" (outmoded) with "turbines" (new, modern, more European), for added bite. Some of us also perceive a degree of insincerity, but heavily muted.
If you would care to submit in a more European style, say in iambic pentameter, we would reconsider. Initial awards are for €100, but you must collect it yourself from either Brussels or Strasbourg (whichever is further) and we cannot pay travel costs. We await your pleasure.
* why not try Tanka, its 19 (5-7-5-7-7) line format might suit you, but don't call us.
Dork
PHL™ here.
We have received your latest effort, it shows both promise and a retrenchment from your true style. The first two lines (beginning South Kerry) are interesting, but from thereonin it goes to pot, much too verbose. We are also confused by the euphemisms "cane toads" and "pythons". In europoetry you have to help the reader more. Try again? C-
Dork
EroPoetHel™ here. You are now making too much sense; poetry shouldn't make it too easy. You are regressing, you were better with your first attempt when readers pondered your inner meaning. We regret our interference with your purer initial visions. We will add another layer of bureaucracy to prevent such retrograde meddling with our clients' talent.
EroPoetHel™ is now undergoing a much needed audit and has been implicated in a severe outbreak of Dorkishness across the continent. Encouragement given by EroPoetHel is blamed for the magnitude of the infestation and its former director appolgizes to all the English speaking world for inflicting such speculative (= fantastical) econopoetry on us all. This was not an attempt "to control the British referendum" the incoming director said in an apologetic statement.
Speculation is rife that EroPoetHel will combine with the IPCC to make future reports more lyrical.
This is just nonsensical rubbish and it makes my head hurt. Please Dork, do us all a favour and be quiet.
Phil C's an environmentalist.
Phil, do you support the nastiness these Greens have put in place? Surely you want to put it on record that you believe their actions to be reprehensible? Enquiring minds want to know...
35 minutes of Dorkish hell this afternoon, feels like a bombardment on the Western Front. Five unremitting salvos. The shell shocked retreat into their private Valhalla, ears bleeding, minds numb, shattered. There was no respite.
Violent tolerance has been ineffective, is it now time for Monty Python's soft pillows? Oh, the inhumanity!
Even I, a consummate European, am considering Brexit, to put up barriers against the Gomorrah that Cork has become.
Who will rid us of this turbulent pr**k?
@AK: If you're so fed up with the plastic paddy's incoherent rantings, why don't you just stop feeding the troll?
In my naive mind, we don't need to fund anything in Africa, we just need to allow them to sell us what they have. If that offends the French farmers then tough shit. Result, it costs us as a nation nothing and African countries gain foreign currency. Isn't that how capitalism works?
Off-topic remarks removed.
Lovely story about light pollution at the BBC:
Artificial lights brightening nights across world
By Rebecca MorelleScience Correspondent, BBC News
10 June 2016
Shame it fails to mention it is actually how satellites can mention poverty. Africa is looking rather dark.
Oh Marcher Lord. I acknowledge your complaint but reject it on the basis of my research. Over the past months I have read much from the archives and, of course by now have some first-hand knowledge of how this site operates. After retirement and with a) time on my hands, and b) a still enquiring mind I decided to make this activity into a mini-research project. I offer two relevant observations.
1) There have been multiple Dork infestations in the past with varying reactions to them. I find no evidence that "feeding" has much effect upon the severity of the infestation. They last just as long if he is ignored as when there is communication. Dork would seem to have a pre-prepared content that he will get through regardless. Yesterday's outbreak is especially significant, five posts in 35 minutes including several URLs. This strongly suggests the outbreak content was ready for transmission beforehand.
There is, of course, evidence of Dork interacting with other BH posters, but it is impossible to determine if the length of his posts has been extended as a result. What may occur is that interactions do focus the Dork mind and he becomes more coherent. He commonly then does have interesting things to say; unfortunately not on the topic of the thread. (However many of us are guilty of this, particularly at the "fag end" of a thread, when much that is relevant to a topic has already been written).
I have been unable to discover whether there is anything specific that instigates an outbreak.
2) if you use a definition of "troll" that insists it must include the abuse of another person, then Dork (and EM) are not trolls, they should probably be classified as "irritants". (I realize that this is a change in my position, but then good research may cause such changes). What is evident, however, is that those who do abuse others on BH, are those that commonly accuse their opponents of being trolls. This would be difficult to independently verify because my definition of abuse is subjective. Make of this what you will.
I am currently looking at PhilC, and the accusation that he is only a mouthpiece for others. I have been unable to find confirming evidence for this, but "early days".
Your Grace, you have contaminated my research! You have "hidden the decline" so to speak.
Removal of Dork content makes much of my conclusions a nonsense because it cannot be now established whether previous removal of Dorkisms have changed my results.
It also makes the efforts of EroPoetHel™ a laughing stock.
Could we have a judicial review?
John in Cheshire please consider the following
1) The people the programme was supposed to help are subsistence farmers or worse. They cannot change their production to something that might be exported without starving.
2) Many parts of Africa are so impoverished that they have no resources that the West would wish to purchase
3) Creating an export business requires investment - seed money to set up manufacturing, refining and transport routes.
4) Even when a viable business is established (export of flowers from Kenya for example) profits may not accrue to the people most in need and may even go outside the sourcing country.
5) Some of the most successful projects have been the supply of small monies to individuals (especially women) that instigate major local changes and promote continued improvements. Commonly these are so small scale that they would be of no interest to an exporter.
Enough to chew on?
Africa is in the 17th century phase of European capitalism.
Marxists call it not incorrectly primitive accumulation.
It is not off topic to point out the final phase of the farce in Ireland.
All plantations exhibit the same problems.
Production is not designed to service local demand, money is substituted for otherwise basic domestic diverse production.
Products are scarce given all energy is directed to export.
The creation of slums is part of the design.
People get concentrated into urban areas.
It is a more efficient means of production but very unproductive if your goal is to satisfy real demand.
But the goal is not to satisfy demand.
This is old hat stuff and should be understood by everybody with a thinking brain.
Sorry to go off on a tangent but my examples assume your readers have a basic understanding of capitalistic dynamics.
I have become fascinated by propaganda in all its forms.
You have the regular and predictable eurocommunism of both Irish and British state broadcasters but also the more sophisticated non state propagandists be it the naked capitalist website covering leftist diversions or the right wing conservatism of your blog.
On balance I prefer the Peter Hitchens grumpy old man look of the world but it remains incorrect.
I wish to get to the source of this misinformation
Your Grace, further to my 10.03 am complaint, might I make the case for some of Dork's contribution to be reconsidered. As I recall it, the Dork was making a point that less developed parts of the world (and he incorporated South Kerry in this category) are treated by the rich West as plantations that are devoted to the export of a limited number of products. When products are plants or plant-based this commonly results in monocultures and these create environmental, social and other problems in the sourcing areas. These, I submit are valid points relevant or tangentially relevant to the topic of the thread. Yes they were buried in excessive verbiage and somewhat obscured by this, but, nevertheless, in this instance, he made valid points.
I believe the wholesale removal of the latest Dork outbreak to have been unwise, and I beg you to reconsider.
My own contributions regarding what ended up as EroPoetHel™ were just as irrelevant to the thread topic and, using the same argument, should be removed in their entirety. I'm sure if this is done I'll be able to inflict the organization more relevantly here, sometime in the future. This would of course also remove two of Osseo's fine haikus.
The Joker in the Batman series best illustrates a rational reaction to capitalism.
The only sane response to these wildly contradictory stimuli (please consume, please do not consume etc etc) is to go completely insane.
Generally when capitalism asks you to consume stuff it wants you to consume the products of the various plantation monocultures which are in gross production surplus... a crisis of consumption in the core capitalist countries creates money shortages in the periphery plantations who depend on physical export money to buy products which are now also sourced worldwide.
Advertising is a fundamental part of this unstable construction.
In Ireland the local corporatists ask you to take a drive on "The Wild Atlantic Way" or more directly they might get the Hollywood /Manhatten set to film Star Wars on the island as reward for being good well behaved pets.
This injects enough money into the system so that residents can afford inflated cost world production.
To argue that Venezuela is more or less communist then Europe is indeed insane.
As far as I can gather Europe is a extreme
Soviet.
There is only two types of peripheral economy.
There is the favoured and unfavoured type.
You see your Grace, even wholesale lobotomy fails to stem the Dorkish torrent. He has something to say and will continue saying it, come what may. Note also he continues to make points that are relevant to this thread (marginally) and, I think, deserve some consideration.
Would it be possible to automatically divert Dork material.to a Discussion thread (a Dork Bin), where it could languish unread or be studied by interested scholars? Anything relevant could be condensed, translated and transferred to any relevant active thread by those willing to suffer head bleeds, for the edification of the general BH readership.
Alan Kendall
Oysters need "irritants" to produce pearls.
Alan my boy - the opening piece of the thread is downright boring.
If the discussion cannot expand it will die.
Peter Hitchens observations on English Tory voters (rather then their neo Marxist leaders) seems to be correct.
Yee guys are as dull as ditchwater.
I cannot ignite any spark from yee - therefore I myself cannot learn anything.
Hence my repetition.
Hitchens background should somehow be repeated in a boys from Brazil experiment.
RN post war family background - hence the sense of betrayal as the money power leaves for greener pastures.
Overpowering and venomous brother.
A deep deep flirtation with Marxism under his siblings wing.
A subsequent rejection of its gross materialism as this modern Saul travels to yet another metro center.
One must at least attempt to understand capitalism (Marxism is a form of capitalism, perhaps in its most extreme manifestation ) by looking at its inner workings.
Seriously it would be good if that life was replicated more often.
It would make life more entertaining at the very least.
Dork
1. I am not "your boy"..
2. You are your own worst enemy
3. To categorize this thread as "boring" reveals much. Perhaps all is sham with you, and you do employ a troop of monkeys spilling out garbage within which there may only be a few nuggets that appear at random.
EM
1. To many here you are an irritant, but personally I would rather be identified as one than be falsely called a troll. There was no intent by me to insult you. For some at BH l'm a considerable irritant.
2. Research has shown that many, perhaps most, quality oyster pearls have no foreign nucleus. The irritant hypothesis is therefore unproven.
Ok , Andrew Z made the point that decisions are made elsewhere.
It could be still claimed that the British Parliament remains a viable oligarchy but the same cannot be said for the European parliament.
Therefore it's words hold little water.
I might add I hope that institution never aggregates power as it would confer on this newer banking union democratic legitimacy with no real impact on the typical Euro/ British / national drone other then the feeling of togetherness you experience as a group sinks slowly into a slurry pit.
And yes it's all a sham to me.
Never forget I grew up inside the Free state experiment of painting the post office boxes green.
Everything I see passes through a prism of surreal comedy, perhaps shifted toward the green end of the spectrum.
Puritanism /capitalism was greatly helped during the post 1920s period.
The island became infested with corporate drones, first of the "national" Bord Failte / Aer Lingus variety and later with the multinational variant.
It's a very very long trajectory of absurdity.
Alan Kendall
I quite like being called an irritant.
It is noticeable that BH threads without irritants tend to run out of steam quickly, as the denizens run out of ways to agree with each other. BH would be much less active. OTOH a good controversy can keep a thread going for hundreds of posts.
If we irritants did not exist BH would have to invent us.
Dork ,Ayla , Entropic
So drunken middle aged fat slobbering England fans viciously attacked by armed highly organised motivated neo nazi Russian Ultras (holigans)
Absolutely disgusting behaviour
Blame Climate Change.
Jamspid
Tribes have been fighting each other for 200,000 years and football fans since football was invented.
Why are you bringing climate change into a football riot in Marseilles?
EM. I think that's irony, if not it's Irn Bru
Russian last minute equaliser .What a load of wank
So Entropic 200 000 years of human conflict
So you're finally admitting the Syrian Civiil War and the rise of ISIS has nothing to do with increased CO2
Jamspid
You are making some strange leaps of logic.
How does a football riot in Marseilles show whether climate change contributed to a civil war in Syria?
For the record. I do think the drought that preceded the Syrian civil war contributed to the unrest.
Russian equalizer due to climate change!
No more or less feasible than blaming the Syrian civil war on a drought.
So known Russian Football hooligans were able to enter into France from Switzerland avoiding detection and cause appalling carnage and injury .
So much for EU border security . They wonder why the UK want a Brexit
The latest Brexit campaign has taken a ten point lead over the Remainers
Project Fear hasn't worked in the European Debate.
Project Fear hasn't worked in the Climate Debate either.
Jamspid.
Hangover?
Bpitterness over the footie result?
Might I suggest your Brexitophillia would be much appreciated over on the devoted discussion thread. This thread was devoted to the EU vote on aid to Africa (and latterly to Europoetry). I don't think poetry and football really go together - not for England anyway. But Wales now.....
Sleep well Jamspid (what were your parents thinking of when they named you), dream on about English glory.
[I suppose Stewgreen will now berate me for telling people what to do here, when my only purpose is to redirect a poor lost soul to his real home. I don't want the Bishop to subject him to the "snip"].