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Kenya is currently in negotiation with UAE to build (FINALLY) the first Fibre optic line ($110 million)(which will connect Kenya to Oman and the rest of the world ushering in a new era of cheap high speed internet...as opposed to relying on expensive vsat technology. Only then will data centres, voip ect... become universal. Perhaps Google is anticipating the next stage of the ICT revolution in E.Africa that will happen when the government finally (hopefully) builds the line in a year or so (negotiations are still being held up for the time being). More info here http://allafrica.com/stories/200706251543.html [p] I'm in Dar es Salaam ATM using the so called 'free' wireless' in my hotel room and its dreadfully slow (atleast it works). The fibre optic line will be heaven!

Large quantities are being shipped to China for stripping of components and recovery of the copper. Especially now the copper price is so high. So I don't believe just a small number is being recycled - in the USA maybe, but not world wide!

Another thing that needs to be recycled more are cellphones. Many electronics gadgets, especially cellphones, use coltan, and mining of coltan is fueling the conflict or fighting and war along with the dissemination of gorillas in the Congo. That new movie out about conflict diamonds can easily be applied to coltan mining in the Congo. Allafrica.com has had some good coverage of this.

Darn, I should of done a better job of previewing, the link for allAfrica didn't work.

Also, I'd love to see you provide a modern example of people being dislocated from their farm-land in order to build an oil field (or any other kind of business), and then having no option but to work for that company. For some reason I get the distinct impression that you're just talking out of your ass.

Ok, let's try the Ijaw in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. Those who live, have lived, there for generations, have had their land taken from them and given to multinational oil companies. In return they've had oil and chemical spills as well as constant gas flares. AllAfrica has a number of articles on the Nigeria oil delta and what those living there have to live through.

Also, I'd love to see you provide a modern example of people being dislocated from their farm-land in order to build an oil field (or any other kind of business), and then having no option but to work for that company. For some reason I get the distinct impression that you're just talking out of your ass.

Ok, let's try the Ijaw in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. Those who live, have lived, there for generations, have had their land taken from them and given to multinational oil companies. In return they've had oil and chemical spills as well as constant gas flares. AllAfrica has a number of articles on the Nigeria oil delta and what those living there have to live through.

OK, so why would a company want to spend many millions of dollars developing a new kind of corn, only to have a competitor buy a handful of seeds, and start selling them under their own label? Assuming all other things are equal, the company that developed the new strain is out many millions of dollars. Doesn't seem to smart to me to spend another red cent developing new strains of crops if they couldn't patent them. And if this were the case, we'd have a LOT more starving people in the world.

Are you another person who mistakening believes people starve because of the lack of food? Plenty of food is growth so no one has to starve. Most people starve because of politics. Those "illegal immigrants" from Mexico were likely to have been farmers or worked on farms but were driven off the farm because US agrobusinesses flooded the corn market in Mexico with US taxpayer subsidized corn. The US subsidizes agrobusinesses to the tune of billions of dollars a year. How about southern Africa? Before President Robert Mugabe rose to power in Zimbabwe Zimbabawe was the breadbasket of southern Africa. Once he gained power though he forced off the farms the farmers who worked the land, they were usually white, and gave the farms to his cronies who don't know how to farm. Where before there was enough food for everyone now many are starving. In India many farmers are being driven off their farms because of subsidized imports as well. That was the BIG reason the WTO talks in Geneva fell apart, India and other countries wanted to talk about the subsidizes the EU, Japan, and US pay their agrobusinesses. The US placed an offer on the table but the EU refused to lower their subsidizes enough.

...what the problem is with technology that can produce vast amounts of nutritious food that can feed people who may otherwise not have access to such a resoruce?

First get access to food out of the way. There is NO shortage of food, there are only problems of getting the food that is available to those who need it. There's also the fact that many farmers are being forced of their farms. Take farmers in Mexico for instance, many of whom grow or grew maize. US agrobusinesses, with the support of billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies can export US corn to mexico cheaper than Mexican farmers can grow it. So they leave their farms and become "illegal immigrants" in the US. Or look at Zimbabwa. Zimbabwa used to be the breadbasket of southern Africa. When President Robert Mugabe came to power he kicked off or sometimes forcibly removed from their farms those farmers, most of whom were white. He then gave the farms to his cronies, who don't know how to farm, so now many farms lay fallow or have gone to seed. A few years ago a warehouse full of enough produce to feed thousands rotted, while people were starving, in India because it wasn't distributed. In Sudan, remember where genocide was happening?, agriculturalists have been driven off land so they are doing less farming as well.

Simply the reason people are starving in not because of the lack of food but because of either conflict, farmers being driven off farms, or politics, ie it's all politics.

Now, for food GMOs. One, with a monoculture system one disease or pest can wipe out an entire crop. Two, with GMOs big agrobusiness owns the farmers. A few years ago Monsanto found genes from GMOs in a corn farmers crop in Alberta, Canada. He never used GE seed, instead as farmers throughout history have done he saved some of his crop for seeds for the following year. Now recall, well you may not know or remember, Monsanto repeatly stated their GE corn would never crossbreed with other corn. Well it did on this farmers farm, and Monsanto sued him for growing their corn. Unfortuantely they won. Many GE seeds are made to be immune to herbicides, poisons for plants most of which are petrochemical based. In studies these herbicide resistant crops have been shown to crossbreed with wild relatives. These new plants are then herbicide resistant as well so now there are superweeds.

Then there is an issue with health. In the late '90's a university study, in Wisconson I think, found that a crop that had a gene from the brazil nut inserted into it caused allergic reactions in people who are allergic to brazil nuts. Some people have gone into anaphylax shock which can cause death from eating brazil nuts. Others are allergic to peanuts. I don't know how many other plants or food items people have allergies to but what would happen if a gene responsibe for allergies ended up in food and people don't know? There's also the matter of binary reactions. Know what a binary is? Not just in information systems though, something like chemicals. It's been all over the news lately. Take two different common chemical that separately are relatively harmless but together are dangerous or explosive. Well what if inserting genes from one plant into another causes a binary reaction in people? There's no way to know what allergins or other health problems can happen by genetically engineered crops.

The thrid world countries I have been in did have starving/poor, but it wasn't due to having enough food/water/money. It was the political mechanisms in those countries that prevented many folks from gaining access to food/water/money.

For the most part I agree abut food. There's plenty of food but because of conflict and/or politics (doesn't politics invite conflict?) the food that is there doesn't get to where it's needed or it doesn't get distributed. Sudan is a good example. Zimbabwe is better. Zimbabwe used to be a breadbasket for southern Africa but after President Mugabe came to power he kicked off of the land many white farmers and they were the ones who made the country rich in food. Mugabe gave some of his cronies the vacated farms and now they sit fallow, hardly producing any food if they produce any. However Ethiopia is another matter, instead of conflicts they have been suffering droughts the past several years. And so the amount of food they produce has shrank. allAfrica has an article, Ethiopia: Millions Still Face Drought Hardship on the draught, and recent rains, that may cause widespread flooding.

The thrid world countries I have been in did have starving/poor, but it wasn't due to having enough food/water/money. It was the political mechanisms in those countries that prevented many folks from gaining access to food/water/money.

For the most part I agree abut food. There's plenty of food but because of conflict and/or politics (doesn't politics invite conflict?) the food that is there doesn't get to where it's needed or it doesn't get distributed. Sudan is a good example. Zimbabwe is better. Zimbabwe used to be a breadbasket for southern Africa but after President Mugabe came to power he kicked off of the land many white farmers and they were the ones who made the country rich in food. Mugabe gave some of his cronies the vacated farms and now they sit fallow, hardly producing any food if they produce any. However Ethiopia is another matter, instead of conflicts they have been suffering droughts the past several years. And so the amount of food they produce has shrank. allAfrica has an article, Ethiopia: Millions Still Face Drought Hardship on the draught, and recent rains, that may cause widespread flooding.

Worth pointing out that according to this, brief, article Nigeria has ordered 1 million of these laptops at $100 a throw.

Very funny. It is to laugh. Ha ha. A joke truely worthy of Slashdot.

Gates btw has been spending his summer vacation in central Africa: Rwanda: Bill Gates to Set Up $900,000 Research Centre

How many of the other half that does use the Internet regularly accesses international sites anyway?

I don't know about others but I frequently access AllAfrica and other international websites, especially Chinese and Indian websites. Between China and Formosa, Tiawan, I have 7 news sites bookmarked. Then again I have to admit I pay more attention to international and indigenous issues than most Americans do.

Yeah, uh, did you know that we currently actually produce 4 times as many calories of food a year that it would actually take to feed everybody on Earth? We have more than enough to fix everything here, the problem is with distribution. the problem is corrupt warlords that keep their people in poverty and hunger to have power over them.

How true! The problems with, what causes, hunger and people starving are distribution, warlords, and armed conflicts. A few years ago a news article described how while people were staving in a state in India a warehouse full of food rotted because it wasn't being distributed. Then there's what's been happening in Zimbabwe the last few years, Zimbabwe used to be a breadbasket of Africa and produced more than enough to feed everyone with plenty left for export. Now people are starving to death, even with food aid being sent there. When current President Robert Mugabe forced white farmers off their land, and gave much of it to his friends and cronies, he distroyed the farms and the food grown on them. Here's an excerpt from The Zimbabwe Independent:"

"The first focus should be upon the dismal failure of the land reform programme. Few can deny that, for the greater part of the 20th century, Zimbabwe had appalling, racially discriminatory land policies, and that reform was needed. But if there had been a deliberate attempt to destroy agriculture -- the foundation of the economy -- the government could not have done so more effectively than it did with its unjust and ill-conceived programme of land acquisition and redistribution.

That programme displaced over 4 000 successful farmers, 300 000 farm workers and more than a million of their dependants. It reduced Zimbabwe from self-sufficiency in food to a nation of under-nourished. It lowered agricultural production by almost two-thirds. The government attributed the collapse of agriculture to drought. But the government, the populace and the world know otherwise."

The whole article can be found here, Another chance for economic revival or tinyurl. Here's another article, this one from allAfrica.com, Nigeria: Zimbabwean Farmers Move On to New Pastures North of the Equator.

The Language Interface Pack will require an additional 650,000 words and phrases. The important and unanswered question here is which set of linguistic constructs will become standard, the Microsoft project appears to have substantial institutional support. a Microsoft Launches Its Kiswahili Edition (October 29,2004)

Microsoft to launch in Kiswahili (June 17, 2004), Microsoft Launches Its Kiswahili Edition (October 29, 2004)

With out the patent the drug would simply not exist.

Stop right there.

That is not an assertion you can make to support your argument without proving it.

In fact, it is almost certainly false.

Innovation does not disappear if (enforceable, useful-to-innovators) patents don't exist. Check history.

AIDS drugs and other drugs where there is a strong demand are still very likely to be money makers regardless of the patent system. And the new malaria vaccine, I understand that was funded using money from a private individual (ugh, bleah, it is the least he can do, but I wonder what rights he may maintain on it??).

What was I saying??

I'm sure the Nigerian human trafficers are making tons of money. This is so much worse than US prostitution rings.

No, Bush isn't doing anything about AIDS.

Last year, he tripled the budget for foriegn aid earmarked to fighting AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean to $15 Billion over 3 years. There are lots of things to criticize Bush about, but this may be the one thing he's done right.

No, Bush isn't doing anything about AIDS.

Last year, he tripled the budget for foriegn aid earmarked to fighting AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean to $15 Billion over 3 years. There are lots of things to criticize Bush about, but this may be the one thing he's done right.

We became his sworn enemy only when he invaded Kuwait and we realized that oil would be far cheaper in the hands of people we saved from invasion.

Ok- he tried to illegally expand his borders, and we kicked is ass back out. Even if we did just do it for oil, it was the right thing to do. And do you realize that we only get about 2% of our oil imports from Kuwait, right? If the was was just about oil, we would have probably gone after Canada or Mexico or Saudi Arabia instead.

Before or after we invaded Iraq? Nobody had any proof to this speculation before we invaded

President Clinton knew about Iraq's terrorist links. According to this recently leaked memo, the CIA has been tracking an al qaeda/Iraq link for over 10 years.

Where exactly are these again?

If Saddam had complied with the UN, we would know now, wouldn't we...

A capitalistic Iraq will allow those who participated in the invasion to profit immensely from transforming the middle east into a "western" country.

The Iraqis themselves are very optimistic about their future after Saddam. Why aren't you?

African nations in which we can lord impossible debts over their heads and force them into low wage labor.

Yeah- lets blame the US for everything. Many African nations are struggling with poverty- must be our fault. Theres no other explanation.

North Korea did react by announcing their intentions to blow up South Korea and Japan

North Korea's actions have just confirmed why we have regarded them as a terrorist supporting rouge nation for years now.

BUT, you had the possibility of owning one. So, I had to shoot you.

If you had seen me shoot people in the past with a gun, and you had no evidence that I had got rid of my gun, then yes, you should shoot me if I threaten to kill you. That is the smart thing to do. We are not suicidal, after all.

Given all the hype about bio terrorism and the wrenching effects of this hemorrhagic fever, the public tends to think of Ebola as a foremost danger.

Meanwhile, AIDS, which was a big scare two decades ago, has not become an widespread epidemic in developed nations despite having been around a couple of decades, takes a long time for mortality when properly treated with the latest expensive drugs, and "seems to be something that only gays and drug users get". In the public mind, it's not considered much of a danger.

But AIDS is devastating Africa these days.

These days everyone has a satellite; Even Nigeria, the second most corrupt country in the world has one.

Well, on the one hand a few catholic cancer survivors get to live past their life expectancy. They're probably in first world countries anyway and have allready outlived most of the world pop. But it's nice because more people are alive cuz of prayer. Then they go back home, and continue to fund a murderous organization taht perpetuates spread of the aids virus in africa. And last time I checked, all the praying they were doing didn't help a damn soul. Religion carries too much baggage. It's a dangerous tool, can be used for good or evil. But mostly evil it seems.

I don't like e-voting any more than you do, as most of the e-voting that's around today is dangerously badly implemented, and ultimately anti-democratic. However, you argue instead that we need representative democracy because...

1. Because mob-rule (pure democracy) is a bad idea.
Mob rule is a bad idea, agreed, but please explain how is mob rule "pure democracy"? Do mobs hold votes on which person to lynch or which building to burn? Mob rule is pure feudalism, not pure democracy.

2. Because most people don't even give a shit about who's PRESIDENT, let alone every minor issue our representatives get paid (well) to address.

Most people in Zimbabwe, Iraq, Palestine, Venezuela etc. care very deeply about who's president. You must be talking about "most people in the USA", right? The evidence certainly supports you there, but there is the matter of the other 6 billion people on the planet.

• US largest donor in Liberia
  
• US largest donor in Ethiopia
  
• US largest donor in Uganda
  

• US largest donor in Liberia
  
• US largest donor in Ethiopia
  
• US largest donor in Uganda
  

Yeah, I can't remember a day that has gone by where I didn't say to myself, man, I wish I lived in that democratic paradise of South Africa.

It must be hard for the South African border guards, keeping a vigilant watch on the western shores for the American boat people, drifting lazily across the ocean. Pity even more the American refugee, who's only seeking better life for them and their families.

Sorry for the tone, but you had it coming.

I think society has you a bit trained about what is acceptable. I put it simply: Diamonds are murder. Diamonds support terror.

So-called conflict diamonds are re-sourced via Amsterdam, just like oil from Iraq was re-routed via Turkey. Diamonds only have value because of their monopoly status, too. Please think of this before committing to diamonds.

Much better to go with semi-precious stones. Can you imagine the trouble over losing a ring worth over $1000? It still surprises me that this is often the most expensive item a person wears. Certainly there are more useful things one can buy or do to show one's devotion.

No, actually, piracy is still alive and kicking...

Story 1 (search the page for 'piracy' to see statistics on deaths)
Story 2
Story 3
Story 4
Story 5
Story 6
Story 7

Note that most piracy occurs in the South China Sea, and off the coast of Africa, but there is still piracy in the Caribbean, which is very close to U.S. shores.

Just because modern day pirates don't usually have eye patches, and sail in many masted schooners with a black skull-and-crossbones 'Jolly Roger' flag, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It just tends to happen more often to pleasure craft than to cargo vessels, like it did centuries ago.

And the Renaissance was well under way and piracy was still common, as the U.S. Marine Corps was formed in 1775 specifically to combat the rampant piracy on vessels travelling to and from America. (Yes, the United States Marine Corps is technically older than the United States of America as a country.)

Hope this isn't redundant, So, I went to the first link mentioned and nothing. I'm thinking /. effect is taking place, just come back later... so I do, and what do I see, but a VB script error. No story. Here's a link I found on Google to the story on another site - all africa.com VB script error? Man, I'm just going to shake my head and get some sleep.

Is it really what we want/need as humans? I'm not sure. But I for one won't wager a guess until there's more research done in the area, so I say let's explore it more before we defame it conclusively or support it as a technological breakthrough.

Some other recent news items:
Nabda, Unesco Collaborate in Bioinformatics Training
AllAfrica.com,Africa-05 Dec 2002
... Development Agency (NABDA) and the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural
Organisation (UNESCO), penultimate Tuesday held a two-day Bioinformatics ...

Bioinformatics ahead for Danville
Danville Register and Bee,VA-30 Nov 2002
... Developing these plants will involve both horticulture and bioinformatics and will
be one major focus of Danville's Institute for Advanced Learning and Research ...

The race to computerise biology
Economist (subscription),UK-12 Dec 2002
Welcome to the world of bioinformatics--a branch of computing concerned
with the acquisition, storage and analysis of biological data. ...

Observing Proteins And Cells In The Wild: Quantum Dots May ...
Science Daily-13 Dec 2002
... Today it is internationally renowned for research and graduate education
in the biomedical sciences, chemistry, bioinformatics and physics. ...

wouldn't it have made more sense to donate to the #1 country (Africa) dealing with an AIDS epidemic than #2 (India)?

Silly American, don't you even know that Africa is a continent, not a country? What makes you think you are qualified to comment on anything outside of Iowa?

Fortunately, Gates does.

Land Reform: an Audit of Death, Rape, Destruction.

With internet access becoming more common, it'll only be a matter of time before viruses start to propagate across the airwaves. Never fear though, all you need to do is put a floppy into an machine that isn't online yet and the virus will be cured! Honest!

At the linked summary, it sounds like Lessig failed to address an essential portion of his argument. According to his reply brief, there is a huge difference between an equally applied retroactive extension and an equally applied proactive extension. He suggests, with references, that court precedent has shown that a retroactive extension requires a quid-pro-quo. If the law said copyrights were only extended for people that gave congress $5, or republished the work, or *something*, then the law would fly. Since there's no exchange, the law breaks judicial precedent.

I have *no* idea if this argument is correct. Please do not rely on my description of it. Read the brief (they're not hard to read at all). Is there a lawyer out there that can tell us if his quid-pro-quo argument is obviously valid, obviously wrong, or open for debate?

Does it make a difference if an essential point is only made in a brief, but not in oral arguments?

Am I misunderstanding the argument, or how it applies?

I was at the oral arguments this morning, and since I have press credentials, I was able to take lots of notes.

My summary tries to cover all of the main points the Justices raised in their questioning of both sides.

I was a bit discouraged by how much attention the Justices paid to problems with Lessig's Article I arguments, and how little -- none at all -- they paid to the claim he makes in the brief (and mentioned briefly during the questioning) that the birth of a new technology regime (the Internet) should have a profound impact on how we craft copyright law.

I don't think there's much grounds for guessing which way the court will go on this case. Certainly the people in the pressroom and in the lawyers' lounge today weren't making many predictions. Lessig's argument is so narrowly constructed, and the copyright clause of the constitution is both so clear in intent and non-specific in its wording, that the court really could go either way. Certainly four justices had to think the possibility is there to decide for the petitioners or the Court wouldn't have taken the case. But there was a lot of hard questioning of Lessig, today, and I didn't think he was able to definitively reframe any of the issues that the Justices were concerned about.

No more torturing or beatings?

Maybe "gotten worse" is uncalled for, but it isn't all peaches and cream there either. The violence may not be state sponsored anymore, but still exists. These and other things I have read are what I was refering to. If they aren't true depictions of life in South Africa, I would like to be enlightened. I understand a lot of things have gotten better, but that doesn't mean it is the greatest place on earth to live.

• Is Mugabe the President of Swaziland?
• Is Mugabe the President of Lesotho?
• Is Mugabe the President of Malawi?
• Is Mugabe the President of Zambia?
• Is Mugabe the President of Mozambique?
• No, Mugabe is the President of Zimbabwe, only one of many countries in Southern Africa faced with famine.

The government of Zimbabwe has agreed to accept the corn, with the proviso that it be milled either before being shipped, or immediately on arrival.

AllAfrica story
Financial Gazette story

There have been a lot of thoughtful comments on this story. It's true that Zimbabwe's immediate economic problems -- plumeting agricultural production, inflation, industrial collapse, an exodus of skilled workers -- are the result of a corrupt and repressive regime that is determined to hold onto power at all costs. But it's also worth considering how difficult it would be to solve the country's problems even were a democratic and functional government in place.

Like most African countries, Zimbabwe's foreign debt load is enormous (US$1 billion; the country has a GDP of roughly US$5 billion). Even if the country were to somehow turn itself around and bring production back up to pre-turmoil levels, the debt ratio is almost unbelievable. And the country has been terribly affected by the AIDS epidimic. It is estimated that one quarter of the adult population is infected with HIV/AIDS. There are predictions that within a decade, half of Zimbabwe's children will be orphans.

And what do you do about land ownership? The violence against white farmers is indefensible, and Mugabe's cynical manipulation of that violence is vile. But the problem is serious. At independence (in 1980), perhaps half the country's farm land was owned by 1% of the population. These (white) farmers had been on the land for generations, and believed that the land belonged to them -- legally, morally, emotionally. But this economically- and racially-skewed distribution didn't come about by accident. The colonial government systematically expropriated and "re-settled" the "native" population. Most of this redistribution happened this century, so we're not talking about ancient history, here. And even if you choose not to think about the problem in historical terms, how do you build a free and egalitarian society in an agricultural economy with such unequal land ownership?

I work at allAfrica.com. We distribute news about Africa, most of it from African newspapers and magazines. If you want to understand what's going on in a country, it's worth reading the local press occasionally. We have half a dozen Zimbawean papers, from across the political spectrum. (Which is a polite way of saying that one of them is controlled by the ruling party. We don't make judgements about a newspaper's integrity; we try to get as many "read-on-the-street" papers as possible and let readers make their own judgements.)

You can take a look at our Zimbabwe headlines page. Here are some stories relating to the issues I've mentioned:

• The government line on land reform
• Debt load
• Falling GDP

The government of Zimbabwe has agreed to accept the corn, with the proviso that it be milled either before being shipped, or immediately on arrival.

AllAfrica story
Financial Gazette story

There have been a lot of thoughtful comments on this story. It's true that Zimbabwe's immediate economic problems -- plumeting agricultural production, inflation, industrial collapse, an exodus of skilled workers -- are the result of a corrupt and repressive regime that is determined to hold onto power at all costs. But it's also worth considering how difficult it would be to solve the country's problems even were a democratic and functional government in place.

Like most African countries, Zimbabwe's foreign debt load is enormous (US$1 billion; the country has a GDP of roughly US$5 billion). Even if the country were to somehow turn itself around and bring production back up to pre-turmoil levels, the debt ratio is almost unbelievable. And the country has been terribly affected by the AIDS epidimic. It is estimated that one quarter of the adult population is infected with HIV/AIDS. There are predictions that within a decade, half of Zimbabwe's children will be orphans.

And what do you do about land ownership? The violence against white farmers is indefensible, and Mugabe's cynical manipulation of that violence is vile. But the problem is serious. At independence (in 1980), perhaps half the country's farm land was owned by 1% of the population. These (white) farmers had been on the land for generations, and believed that the land belonged to them -- legally, morally, emotionally. But this economically- and racially-skewed distribution didn't come about by accident. The colonial government systematically expropriated and "re-settled" the "native" population. Most of this redistribution happened this century, so we're not talking about ancient history, here. And even if you choose not to think about the problem in historical terms, how do you build a free and egalitarian society in an agricultural economy with such unequal land ownership?

I work at allAfrica.com. We distribute news about Africa, most of it from African newspapers and magazines. If you want to understand what's going on in a country, it's worth reading the local press occasionally. We have half a dozen Zimbawean papers, from across the political spectrum. (Which is a polite way of saying that one of them is controlled by the ruling party. We don't make judgements about a newspaper's integrity; we try to get as many "read-on-the-street" papers as possible and let readers make their own judgements.)

You can take a look at our Zimbabwe headlines page. Here are some stories relating to the issues I've mentioned:

• The government line on land reform
• Debt load
• Falling GDP

The government of Zimbabwe has agreed to accept the corn, with the proviso that it be milled either before being shipped, or immediately on arrival.

AllAfrica story
Financial Gazette story

There have been a lot of thoughtful comments on this story. It's true that Zimbabwe's immediate economic problems -- plumeting agricultural production, inflation, industrial collapse, an exodus of skilled workers -- are the result of a corrupt and repressive regime that is determined to hold onto power at all costs. But it's also worth considering how difficult it would be to solve the country's problems even were a democratic and functional government in place.

Like most African countries, Zimbabwe's foreign debt load is enormous (US$1 billion; the country has a GDP of roughly US$5 billion). Even if the country were to somehow turn itself around and bring production back up to pre-turmoil levels, the debt ratio is almost unbelievable. And the country has been terribly affected by the AIDS epidimic. It is estimated that one quarter of the adult population is infected with HIV/AIDS. There are predictions that within a decade, half of Zimbabwe's children will be orphans.

And what do you do about land ownership? The violence against white farmers is indefensible, and Mugabe's cynical manipulation of that violence is vile. But the problem is serious. At independence (in 1980), perhaps half the country's farm land was owned by 1% of the population. These (white) farmers had been on the land for generations, and believed that the land belonged to them -- legally, morally, emotionally. But this economically- and racially-skewed distribution didn't come about by accident. The colonial government systematically expropriated and "re-settled" the "native" population. Most of this redistribution happened this century, so we're not talking about ancient history, here. And even if you choose not to think about the problem in historical terms, how do you build a free and egalitarian society in an agricultural economy with such unequal land ownership?

I work at allAfrica.com. We distribute news about Africa, most of it from African newspapers and magazines. If you want to understand what's going on in a country, it's worth reading the local press occasionally. We have half a dozen Zimbawean papers, from across the political spectrum. (Which is a polite way of saying that one of them is controlled by the ruling party. We don't make judgements about a newspaper's integrity; we try to get as many "read-on-the-street" papers as possible and let readers make their own judgements.)

You can take a look at our Zimbabwe headlines page. Here are some stories relating to the issues I've mentioned:

• The government line on land reform
• Debt load
• Falling GDP

The government of Zimbabwe has agreed to accept the corn, with the proviso that it be milled either before being shipped, or immediately on arrival.

AllAfrica story
Financial Gazette story

There have been a lot of thoughtful comments on this story. It's true that Zimbabwe's immediate economic problems -- plumeting agricultural production, inflation, industrial collapse, an exodus of skilled workers -- are the result of a corrupt and repressive regime that is determined to hold onto power at all costs. But it's also worth considering how difficult it would be to solve the country's problems even were a democratic and functional government in place.

Like most African countries, Zimbabwe's foreign debt load is enormous (US$1 billion; the country has a GDP of roughly US$5 billion). Even if the country were to somehow turn itself around and bring production back up to pre-turmoil levels, the debt ratio is almost unbelievable. And the country has been terribly affected by the AIDS epidimic. It is estimated that one quarter of the adult population is infected with HIV/AIDS. There are predictions that within a decade, half of Zimbabwe's children will be orphans.

And what do you do about land ownership? The violence against white farmers is indefensible, and Mugabe's cynical manipulation of that violence is vile. But the problem is serious. At independence (in 1980), perhaps half the country's farm land was owned by 1% of the population. These (white) farmers had been on the land for generations, and believed that the land belonged to them -- legally, morally, emotionally. But this economically- and racially-skewed distribution didn't come about by accident. The colonial government systematically expropriated and "re-settled" the "native" population. Most of this redistribution happened this century, so we're not talking about ancient history, here. And even if you choose not to think about the problem in historical terms, how do you build a free and egalitarian society in an agricultural economy with such unequal land ownership?

I work at allAfrica.com. We distribute news about Africa, most of it from African newspapers and magazines. If you want to understand what's going on in a country, it's worth reading the local press occasionally. We have half a dozen Zimbawean papers, from across the political spectrum. (Which is a polite way of saying that one of them is controlled by the ruling party. We don't make judgements about a newspaper's integrity; we try to get as many "read-on-the-street" papers as possible and let readers make their own judgements.)

You can take a look at our Zimbabwe headlines page. Here are some stories relating to the issues I've mentioned:

• The government line on land reform
• Debt load
• Falling GDP

The government of Zimbabwe has agreed to accept the corn, with the proviso that it be milled either before being shipped, or immediately on arrival.

AllAfrica story
Financial Gazette story

There have been a lot of thoughtful comments on this story. It's true that Zimbabwe's immediate economic problems -- plumeting agricultural production, inflation, industrial collapse, an exodus of skilled workers -- are the result of a corrupt and repressive regime that is determined to hold onto power at all costs. But it's also worth considering how difficult it would be to solve the country's problems even were a democratic and functional government in place.

Like most African countries, Zimbabwe's foreign debt load is enormous (US$1 billion; the country has a GDP of roughly US$5 billion). Even if the country were to somehow turn itself around and bring production back up to pre-turmoil levels, the debt ratio is almost unbelievable. And the country has been terribly affected by the AIDS epidimic. It is estimated that one quarter of the adult population is infected with HIV/AIDS. There are predictions that within a decade, half of Zimbabwe's children will be orphans.

And what do you do about land ownership? The violence against white farmers is indefensible, and Mugabe's cynical manipulation of that violence is vile. But the problem is serious. At independence (in 1980), perhaps half the country's farm land was owned by 1% of the population. These (white) farmers had been on the land for generations, and believed that the land belonged to them -- legally, morally, emotionally. But this economically- and racially-skewed distribution didn't come about by accident. The colonial government systematically expropriated and "re-settled" the "native" population. Most of this redistribution happened this century, so we're not talking about ancient history, here. And even if you choose not to think about the problem in historical terms, how do you build a free and egalitarian society in an agricultural economy with such unequal land ownership?

I work at allAfrica.com. We distribute news about Africa, most of it from African newspapers and magazines. If you want to understand what's going on in a country, it's worth reading the local press occasionally. We have half a dozen Zimbawean papers, from across the political spectrum. (Which is a polite way of saying that one of them is controlled by the ruling party. We don't make judgements about a newspaper's integrity; we try to get as many "read-on-the-street" papers as possible and let readers make their own judgements.)

You can take a look at our Zimbabwe headlines page. Here are some stories relating to the issues I've mentioned:

• The government line on land reform
• Debt load
• Falling GDP

The government of Zimbabwe has agreed to accept the corn, with the proviso that it be milled either before being shipped, or immediately on arrival.

AllAfrica story
Financial Gazette story

There have been a lot of thoughtful comments on this story. It's true that Zimbabwe's immediate economic problems -- plumeting agricultural production, inflation, industrial collapse, an exodus of skilled workers -- are the result of a corrupt and repressive regime that is determined to hold onto power at all costs. But it's also worth considering how difficult it would be to solve the country's problems even were a democratic and functional government in place.

Like most African countries, Zimbabwe's foreign debt load is enormous (US$1 billion; the country has a GDP of roughly US$5 billion). Even if the country were to somehow turn itself around and bring production back up to pre-turmoil levels, the debt ratio is almost unbelievable. And the country has been terribly affected by the AIDS epidimic. It is estimated that one quarter of the adult population is infected with HIV/AIDS. There are predictions that within a decade, half of Zimbabwe's children will be orphans.

And what do you do about land ownership? The violence against white farmers is indefensible, and Mugabe's cynical manipulation of that violence is vile. But the problem is serious. At independence (in 1980), perhaps half the country's farm land was owned by 1% of the population. These (white) farmers had been on the land for generations, and believed that the land belonged to them -- legally, morally, emotionally. But this economically- and racially-skewed distribution didn't come about by accident. The colonial government systematically expropriated and "re-settled" the "native" population. Most of this redistribution happened this century, so we're not talking about ancient history, here. And even if you choose not to think about the problem in historical terms, how do you build a free and egalitarian society in an agricultural economy with such unequal land ownership?

I work at allAfrica.com. We distribute news about Africa, most of it from African newspapers and magazines. If you want to understand what's going on in a country, it's worth reading the local press occasionally. We have half a dozen Zimbawean papers, from across the political spectrum. (Which is a polite way of saying that one of them is controlled by the ruling party. We don't make judgements about a newspaper's integrity; we try to get as many "read-on-the-street" papers as possible and let readers make their own judgements.)

You can take a look at our Zimbabwe headlines page. Here are some stories relating to the issues I've mentioned:

• The government line on land reform
• Debt load
• Falling GDP

Maybe next time you should check google before asking.

Some ISP's in kenya tried to set up an internet exchange point so that traffic local to kenya could stay local, rather than going to the US and back.

Their goverment prevented them.

Luckily it looks like commen sense is breaking through.

But with this kind of policy being laid down by african goverments it's no wonder the continent is in trouble.

I'm one of the developers on a GPL'ed, perl-based XML web-app framework. It's called XML::Comma, and the basic idea is to provide an abstraction that make it easy to deal with very large collections of structured information -- particularly in a web-development context.

XML::Comma is the platform for allAfrica.com and for www.democrats.org. Both of those sites have "document collections" numbering in the hundreds of thousands. (For AllAfrica the most complex part of the job is managing a news-feed that pushes 500 stories a day through the system into an archive of 300,000 articles. For democrats.org the problems revolve more around user-customization and credit-card transaction processing. Very different systems, but the Comma API tries to expose a unified set of tools for dealing with both, and more besides.)

Zope is great, AxKit is great. Cocoon is great too, although my personal opinion is that there's a lot more "friction" when developing in Java than in Perl and Python. Sometimes certain kinds of friction are helpful: for large teams of only-moderately-experienced programmers, for example, Java's static typing can help you hold the chaos at bay. But in lots of web-systems-development contexts the emphasis is on getting new sets of features built as quickly as possible, and there's a strong pressure to be in "permanent protyping" mode. You can prototype a lot faster in Perl or Python than in Java, and experienced programmers can write clean, self-documenting stable code without static typing and a Beans API.

The XML::Comma website is xml-comma.org. There's an in-depth user's guide there. Check it out and let us know what you think.

LOL indeed. For the other side of that rather paranoid argument, go here for a piece on women eliminating men and still perpetuating the species!

The USA killed ~7000 innocent Somalian civilians in -93 while failing to kill one single warlord.

Stop showing your ignorance. You may not have liked the Somalian mission, but lets be honest about what the mission was. Killing Somalian warlords was *not* the mission.

Originally the mission was humanitarian, under Bush the elder- "open supply routes, get food moving, prepare the way for a UN peacekeeping force."
Under Clinton, in part due to the deliberate killing of 24 UN peacekeepers, the mission changed somewhat to capturing (that's right, *capturing*, not killing) one warlord, Gen. Mohamed Farrah Aidid, as well as commanders under him. If you find the deaths of 7,000 civilians deeply troubling, as I do, you might try reading BlackHawk Down to get some perspective on how such things occur.

You might pause to consider how (and if, of course) the USA should use its power when attempting to prevent a million starving people from dying due to the fact that food supplies can't get into a country during yet another civil war. Keep in perspective that while the US did sacrifice 34 of its own lives (and a billion or so in cash) and 7000 Somalis died, we were trying to prevent the starvation deaths which had already killed 300,000 Somalis, with the International Red Cross warning at the time of a potential 1.5 million deaths without greater food distribution. (I don't hear you trying to hold any warlords responsible for those 300,000 deaths now, do I? Why didn't the person who handed you that one-liner set of facts bother to mention them?)

Being concerned about the safety of food distribution (having watched rival Somali clans attempt to use food as a weapon by stealing, hoarding, and denying it to particular people), the UN first sent 50 unarmed monitors, then 500 security guards, then 5000, then ultimately 25000 US troops to insure that food aid could get through without being intercepted by warring local warlords. Yeah, USA- those bastards!

After it was clear to the US that its presence wasn't being effective (and the conflict was getting personal), it left, arranged for 25,000 UN troops from scattered countries to replace it, and after 8 more years, the UN has finally helped install Somalia's first government in a decade, the Transitional National Government (interview here). Meanwhile US food aid continues to stream into the country. Man, the USA really sucks, doesn't it!

--LP

Anyway as an African, I would like to say that although the article probably accurately conveyed the realities of Eastern Congo, that place is majorly F*****ED up even by African standards, because of the long running civil war and lack of ANY govermental infrastructure. Many neighbouring countries such as Tanzania, Kenya and even Uganda are a lot more stable.(OK Uganda has some rebels in the Northern part of the country but it is still much much better than Eastern Congo overall. Congo is the worst case scenario.) For example in the Arusha and Shinyanga regions of Tanzania we have exactly this same kind of mining going on but at least the miners aren't terrorized by random soldiers,(Ok, so they probably have to pay a "commission" to some people... I didn't say it was perfect) the trade is somewhat regulated, and foreign companies that invest are monitored and can work peacefully.

So my basic point is that the lawlessness in Eastern Congo is a sad situation, if this tantalum had been found elsewhere it might have been very beneficial. e.g Botswana has managed to benefit greatly from its diamonds.

Also Congo was a very artificial creation of Colonial powers with many different ethnic groups that don't always get along. This makes a viable political system somewhat difficult. The same problems plague many African states, some more than others.

Here is a good website for on African current events: http://allafrica.com

Rob in Dar Es Salaam