Yes it fucking was a colony. Calling somewhere “independent” and puppeting it while maintaining all colonial extractions is not freedom from colonialism.
You only learned the country’s name this week, and your entire understanding of this topic is from wikipedia. I am very much willing to give them, Burkina Faso and Mali an opportunity to be better, or not. At which point I will adjust my opinion.
Nigerian
At least get the name of the fucking country right. You’re naming the wrong ass country.
Every single african nation that today is no longer a colony achieved so through either a coup or revolutionary regime. What exactly are you expecting people to do? Vote colonialism out? How childish.
We disagree on the definition of imperialism. You are using this word to mean “of empire”. Whereas I use this word to describe an economic system, the highest stage of capitalism.
I agree that these actions are “of empire”, so we don’t really disagree on most of what you’re saying. I just wouldn’t use the word imperialism for it because of the difference in definitions we have.
I’m less concerned about democracy in the poorest country in the world and significantly more concerned with building out the infrastructure it requires. Getting out from underneath colonial rule is a pre-requisite to progress in that domain. That either comes from a coup or from a revolution, I don’t particularly care which.
If Castro was a religious zealot I’d also prefer Batista stay in power tbh. Castro was more secular though so I don’t see it as inherently doomed to an even more fucked up level of abuse and control and wouldn’t hold the same perspective.
Even if it did have a level of religious control and involvement(there’s no evidence of that so far) we shouldn’t let that cloud our judgement of whether it would be progressive politically for the country. If it results in the construction of infrastructure, or independent political structures, and a foundation from which the country can go its own way, then it is progressive.
Let me put it to you this way. If progress is impossible under whatever the current regime is (in this case it was a French colony) then anything and everything that moves the dial away from that becomes progressive as it opens the door to further movement in the direction that we would like to see.
In months/years to come will opposing this government and calling for progress be something I end up doing? Probably. (and that would represent further progress that was not possible under the previous French colonial arrangement) But for this exact moment in time I am mostly optimistic.
The main apprehension I have is over where France goes to get their uranium next. This take was doing the rounds yesterday. However I think it’s probably wrong as there are quite a lot of different places to get uranium from, and also Niger’s own uranium will end up on the global market anyway. But I’ll be keeping an eye on what the French response to its energy needs are just in case.
The attitude “they’re poor and starving and being exploited to the hilt… but at least they’re not religious” does not hold much sway with me. I’ll take the latter if it improves some of the former where it previously could not have been achieved, then deal with the latter in further steps.
With that said there was some more context there. The USSR sought to deploy missiles in Cuba because the US was deploying them in Turkey. Missiles were removed from Turkey and everything chilled out.
You can’t end these things without addressing all of the causes. Do you or do you not think the US should stop interfering? If you don’t, then you aren’t really trying to stop this you’re just trying to advance US interests. Trying to stand on the moral high ground while supporting the cause.
Calling one of France’s last remaining colonies democratic is absolutely absurd. Do you also argue that Batista was democratically elected?
I thought it was a bit of a joke that many westerners are still supporters of colonialism but it’s apparently true. That or there is really no understanding of history here. Niger was literally still a colony of France, unlike many other African nations that managed to break free of colonial dominance with the help of the soviets through the 60s-80s it did not. France is the last remaining operator of colonies around the world.
Who said I want an invasion to happen? Drum beating and invasion are very different things. I would like the US to fuck off and mind its own business as it is causing all of this. The result of which achieves avoiding both of the above.
You clearly don’t support that though? Which makes me question whether you’re actually committed to avoiding war or whether your real interest here is in advancing US interests.
Are we going to go around in circles here? Because the drum beating is being driven by the foreign interference. If the US steps back from trying to interfere with it politically then there will no longer be any need to beat the drums. In the preceding 50 years there was basically no problem because the US had a largely pro-China policy and wasn’t interfering. This didn’t start spontaneously without material conditions that drive it.
Which is again much like my understanding of why the US beat its drums when the USSR interfered with Cuba. I don’t condemn the US for drum beating over that event (despite my obvious distaste for the US and support for Cuba), its extremely obvious what caused it and it’s extremely obvious what is causing this.
You either have to believe the new state is becoming a colony of Russia(it obviously isn’t), or accept that its improved from the colonial arrangement and that’s what makes it attractive to make deals with Russia.
Russia gets plenty out of it without doing anything colonial. The export deals France had were basically stripping the country of all of its wealth, Uranium and Gold in particular, which Niger are nationalising.
Russia will certainly get some beneficial deals out of their help offered but don’t have to make themselves as bad as France to come out on top of this, and in fact simply the act of weakening France and by extension the rest of the western bloc is a win for them by itself. I don’t see Russia as anywhere near as good as the Soviets were but the Soviet strategy was basically “liberate african countries entirely in order to weaken the west who are the colonial holders of these countries”. The history of soviet liberation of africa is also the primary reason many in africa still hold a lot of positivity to Russia, even though the two are not remotely comparable.
We won’t get to 2100 before things really get awful either. We’ll get to 2035-2050 and then things like cascading crop failure will happen, causing a global collapse in the food supply.
If we reach that event occurring it will functionally prevent governments from cooperating to reduce carbon emissions. They will all be focused internally on turmoil and massive unrest generated by mass famine. Many will turn up the carbon dial in order to try and address this. Others will simply have revolutions that take considerable time afterwards to stabilise making organised effort unviable.
Huh? No it’s not cultural insensitivity preventing me from having an opinion on that, it’s having very little contextual knowledge.
Why are you saying something that I did not say? The part that was probably culturally insensitive was clearly the part about indigenous people owning the island, I have no idea what they want, whether that’s true, or whether nationalism is even compatible with their culture.
You are doing the thing people do on reddit where they ignore what someone actually writes and then substitute it with the worst possible interpretation that you want to attack. You’re really not having a conversation with me in good faith are you? The hostility is entirely unnecessary, childish even.
I think the peak 4 degrees this century is extremely possible. A lot of the community studying this now thinks we have underestimated feedback loops, much of what is currently happening was not supposed to happen as quickly as it has.
Watching France lose control of its remaining colonial holdings while the French population simultaneously cause chaos at home is a pleasure I did not expect to get until at least 2030.
I’m not familiar enough with this one to form an opinion, I’m not in the habit of holding opinions without proper investigation first and placing of things in their historical context, I can’t really do that right now I’m afraid. We’re both fortunate that for your previous questions I’m already fairly well read on to be honest.
So, maybe? Maybe not? lol. Aren’t these islands where the Ainu were from? They probably should be in control of the indigenous peoples so neither, but that’s unrealistic if they’re basically gone now. I’m probably saying something culturally incentive in my ignorance of the subject though.
and let Russia be the only one committing war crimes by doing that
Anyone that has been following this war properly knows that’s not really true. Donetsk city has been the subject of indiscriminate ukrainian shelling and missiles since the start. These drone attacks against civilians aren’t changing some sort of unbroken streak of not attacking civilians.
I don’t think it’s fair to blame the civilian population, much like I don’t really think the civilian population of america is blameable for iraq or afghanistan. These are things that leadership does and the civilian population are very easily led to follow in the moment. They get no say in the matter.
Consider also: https://www.hexbear.net/post/281425