Actually it did change. The life expectancy plummeted dramatically during the 90s after the collapse of the USSR and is still recovering, and the whole ideology of the government has shifted. It is a completely different country to what it was when the KGB was a thing.
Do you live there? If not, then you only know what information is fed to the public. The thing is, the information we have, is curated to appear better than it actually is.
Why does Africa, a continent with suitable climate and ample lands for crops need to import food from…Europe? Shouldn’t it be the reverse? Surely more than 4000 years of African agricultural history can be tapped into to ensure at least some food security for grains? Or are Africans not up to the challenge? Oh, I’m a racist? Or are African leaders too corrupt, inept and just plain lazy to develop their own agriculture? The world, wonders.
This is just a nieve view. Africa is a diverse and very large continent, with many different lands.
Sure some countries have fantastic and stable agricultural lands, particularly near the equator. Other countries suffer large multi year droughts that can rapidly and negatively impact large populations. These populations then heavily depend on imports, and relief from a country like Ukraine, Russia, or the US that all make easily transportable grain.
The US has had a similar problem during the dust bowl of the 1930s. This is not an African only problem.
Africa has been getting steadily worse over the last several decades. Countries that used to export food to the rest of the continent, like Zimbabwe, are now impoverished and people there depend on aid to survive. Even the “best” countries are just staying level, but the continent is not succeeding as it should and shows no signs of doing so.
Yet another bad consequence of building our cities wrong. If we fixed the zoning code to make them walkable, we wouldn’t “need” traffic stops in the first place.
It’s amazing how car dependency is an underlying causal factor in nearly every problem in the US, from climate change, to obesity, to the housing crisis, to apparently even police misconduct.
Police spend most of their time on routine traffic stops, and routine traffic stops could be eliminated by transit and walkable infrastructure. It's almost like it's a racket...
Lemmy is showing another year old post, but I actually met the person who drafted the letter at a bar. In a year or so we’re gonna hear about the results of their lawsuit. They were very fun to talk to and they mentioned being harassed by musk fans obsessively to the point of having to move multiple times.
I don’t live in the US. But I really wouldn’t want unpoliced roads. There are enough dangerous, angry morons on the streets who don’t care about the rules and endanger the people around them.
I think it’s absolutely necessary to police traffic. The only other option would be to get rid of private powered vehicles, which would also be a good option.
In a closing address to a Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg, he also said Putin had shown readiness to negotiate with Ukraine, and that "the other side" now needed to be persuaded.
"The President of Russia demonstrated that he is ready help us in the field of grain supply," Assoumani said. "Yes, this is important, but it may not be quite enough. We need to achieve a ceasefire."
He is acting like Putin's patsy here. The President of Rusia has caused this problem with his illegal war on Ukraine. Why should Ukraine accept a frozen conflict with Russia or accept Russian occupation of even an inch of their land? Why is he not demanding Russia, the aggressor, stop its illegal war and withdraw from Ukraine? Or demand Russia stop bmbing Odessa's ports and allow resumption of grain supply?
Why is he blaming the victimss of Putin's imperialism?
African countries in general doesn’t seem to have a grip on this conflict. I don’t know if they just don’t really have the right information, or don’t have the necessary experience with Putin.
One would think they would be against any type of imperialism and the taking of countries, but apparently it doesn’t upset them to see happen to others.
One can have objections but the reality is these countries rely on Ukraine/Russia's grain exports. So its a rock and a hard place. Realistically Ukraine ain't going to cut them off for these comments since it would be seen as a big dick move. Russia on the other hand, that is a toss up.
Nah, it’s just that blaming Russia gets them zero dollars while blaming Ukraine potentially gets them not zero dollars. Post colonial Africa has been provided so much international kool aid that not getting any gives them withdrawals. There is so much research around how providing aid to African nations is detrimental to their economy but is that goes against the interest of local politicians who use procurement of foreign aid as a measure of their performance in office.
I'll disagree here. IIRC, 3/4 African leaders refused to attend Putin's Russia-Africa summit, so it looks like only Putin's supporters travelled to St.Petersburg.
And those who had allied themselves closely with Russia still took the occasion to mark a disagreement with the war.
Sure, it could have been clearer in opposition to Russia's warfare, but that would also be extremely politically costly for them. The fact that they bring up the issue at all is great, even if they do so while trying not to lose their most powerful ally.
In the end, Putin wanted something and didn't get it because of the war.
They don’t care, they have no dog in this fight, both parties are too far away to be much of a threat, and many rely on Russian resources to help keep their populations in line, like wagner or russia arms.
The ideology looks much different from Africa, it’s just 2 groups of white people fighting over something irrelevant.
It’s just brinkmanship. They’re in a position to negotiate for more than they’re normally worth given the political climate/war. They’ll position towards that and then try to use it to negotiate a better deal with the west and take the best offer. Unfortunately best offer may be personally enriching not country enriching
Honestly, whole EV mania to became eco zero carbon whatev is just lobbying push from corporate conglomerates to simply make more money. It has nothing to do with saving our planet. Every intelligent human can investigate enough to find out that the whole EV industry is more polluting and dangerous to nature than classic cars. There are better ways to go, but they wouldn’t make much money of it. There is no way in hell that I will ever own an EV.
Totally agree, but he could also just not explicitly block/threaten grain ships and blow up grain stores. There’s no way to spin it but somehow people still buy his bullshit excuses
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