In 793 the first Viking raid of any note took place at the monastery at Lindisfarne. It was quite a shock to the Christian people of Britain, but it was just a taste of what was coming. This was the dawn of the Viking age and warriors would be pouring out of Scandinavia for 250 years. In a short time, a piracy problem would turn into a threat to civilization, forcing the people of Europe to organize themselves in defense of their lands and people against the Norse raiders.
The problem over the horizon today is the population explosion in Sub-Saharan Africa. We get hints of it in the news from time to time, but policy makers in the West try hard to pretend it is not a problem. On slow news days, the state media has someone write a “think piece” on the topic, but otherwise, Africa may as well be Mars as far as public policy. As Steve Sailer is fond of pointing out, the math says this must change.
Sailer has a post up on this and he offers some ways to address what will be the defining issues of the next half century or more.
The solutions for the African threat to world peace and prosperity appear to me to require a threefold approach:
– Perimeter and in-depth defense of the West to shut off the magnet justifying guys with three wives and 17 children feeling optimistic and unworried about their selfishness.
– Strong campaigns promoting family planning in Africa.
– Outside investment in sustainable economic development in Africa, such as better agricultural practices that don’t contribute to desertification.
These will be expensive, but the cost is minimal compared to the alternative of turning Europe into a banlieue of Africa. The main problem is ideological: we need to break the taboo against talking about the need for Steps #1 and #2.
His first proposal could work and would certainly limit the flow of economic migrants into the West. The fantasy version of migration is that these people come to work. In reality, they come to go on welfare. Politically, this would be an easy sell to populations facing financial pressure due to bloated welfare systems and excessive government. But, politicians appear to be allergic to this notion. They would rather see the whole thing collapse than be thought rude to the invaders.
Math is not a social construct and the math says the West cannot afford to feed and clothe a billion Africans, plus the millions of others who wish to have the material benefits of the West without the work. You can choose to accept reality or be forced to accept reality. There is no third option so the West will eventually have to halt the flow of migrants into Europe..
The second proposal strikes me as odd, given Sailer’s views on human biology. The West has been flooding the Dark Continent with condoms to fight HIV for a couple of decades now. George Bush made a big deal of fighting AIDS in Africa. The thrust of the effort was the distribution of condoms. Even so, the population explosion has gone on, suggesting that the locals are not all that interested in birth control. Biological reality is not amenable to wishful thinking.
The last proposal has a similar problem. The West has been investing in Africa for as long as anyone has been alive. Ethiopia, for example, gets 90% of its government budget from foreign aid. Hundreds of billions have flowed into Africa through government, charity and combinations of the two. In many parts of the continent, the result has been worse than doing nothing. The book Dead Aid details how aid to Africa has mostly made things worse.
That leaves us with option one as the starting place. A million or so Muslim migrants into Europe has radically altered politics. Ten million more and instead of “right wing parties” the news is full of violent revolts and coups. Whether the current political class snaps out of their delusions or they are replaced with more practical men, Europe will put and end to the great migration.
There’s something else. The West is broke. That reality is going to become more apparent as we head to the denouement of the credit money age. That means economic development programs in Africa come to an end. They may not end dramatically, more like a slow winding down as economic reality makes aid to Africa less fashionable. Decades of delaying the inevitable means decades of facing the inevitable.
Africa is a fragile place. It does not take much to plunge it into anarchy. Think of Yemen but continent scale without rich neighbors willing to provide food aid. The inevitable result is famine and then plagues as the population starts to shift around looking for food. Throw in civil war and a massive spike in violence to the mix. That’s horrible, but it would fix the population problem in a decade or two.
That assumes the West has the willingness and ability to hold the line against mass migration. It’s not hard to see the math. The current migrant crisis leads to political instability in Europe. That retards food and medicine shipments to Africa, which puts pressure on the population to seek relief across the Mediterranean. Suddenly, the Viking age is looking pretty good.
This article goes a long way to explaining the cause of Africa’s problems: How Africans May Differ from Westerners
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It would be interesting to know if there are some African countries which are stable and low-crime.
I was thinking the main reason they have countless babies is because the chances for survival (of babies and of adults) are so very low. In fact, that might be part of the reason why back in the day when survival rates were lower in Europe, Europeans had more babies. At any rate in Africa, chances for survival were so low (lions, famines, plagues, wars) that biology or culture led to having very high birth-rates. Now they don’t need these high birthrates but the practice still remains.
Also, they weren’t so interested in condoms to prevent disease, but they might go for the pill. It’s important to present poverty as the enemy of Africans and to spread the news that having lots of babies makes an African an enemy to his people. That might work. African governments might be able to spread that message, for a fee.
Africa crime rates: http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=4376
Africa corruption rates: http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=4403
I have little faith that Europe is capable of #1. Far more likely is a scenario similar to what occurs in “The Camp of the Saints”: Millions of invaders welcomed by a denatured Europe. Test will likely come this summer as the pending flotilla in Libya sets sail.
Also, ironic that the modern Scandinavian descendants of the Vikings are among the main enablers of this invasion.
One wonders if those bad boys were taken out of the bloodline when the raiders took root all over Europe. Then they lost a bunch more to emigration in the 19th century. Adventure left the building.
I would argue “adventure” left Europe after the events of 1914-1918 combined with 1938-1945. These two single events made Europeans seriously re-think the ideas behind the “adventure and glory of war” as it was propagandized to everyone involved during these periods. Europe has only really enjoyed peace and prosperity since 1945, so the idea of another conflict on our soil is not something we embrace. America has never experienced the type of devastation and deprivation as many, still living today, have experienced here in Europe.
This is not a criticism of Americans but simply an observation that for a nation with world’s most powerful military, it’s very easy to talk about killing other people, especially when it’s done in places far away. When the killing done in your own back yard (as it was literally done here) and puts your own town, home and family at risk, one considers the idea and the cost very carefully.
You are talking about events changing attitudes. I am talking about events changing DNA–emigration, immigration, death by war, fertility or infertility, manorialism, on and on. The English bloodlines have changed little since AD 900, but the reshuffling of that same DNA has left a very different bloke in the present. Likewise, the 10th century Viking would look at his descendants for five minutes before raping his women, stealing his things, and burning his house down. These are not learned attitudes; that is what he was.
These are exactly the type of selection pressures which Africans have lacked, for two thousand years and perhaps sixty thousand.
@ James Wilson – One could argue European DNA hasn’t really changed that much given there has been little DNA mixing, at least in Northern Europe, over the past 5,000 years thanks in part to our distance and isolation from the rest of the world. However, southern Europe is a different story given its proximity to Africa and the Middle East. I would argue the advancement of and respect to laws, religion and culture are what have kept us from de-evolving back to what we, and our Norse neighbors, once were. But in that same way you are correct – the DNA of Africa (and the Middle East) hasn’t changed much either, thus the resulting chaos which has only been made worse by western influence. An adherence to a repressive/primitive religion and backward cultural norms do not allow cultures to advance. While one can more easily improve an environment, current events would prove good intentions and advanced technology won’t necessarily make a people more intelligent.
As a kid I used to play on what were little hills of bricks that were once houses: I expect children in Germany at about the same time were doing much the same, so yes there is a shared feeling that levelling cities is not a great idea. I can appreciate that were children in Manhattan able to get the chance to play on very large mountains of concrete and bricks then America might have a different view of war.
But reaching into Africa by Europeans wasn’t done originally to make war. The need for exploration ran deep in the European psyche. Perhaps it was to find resources or a new market, perhaps to spread a religious message or perhaps just because it was there and curiosity is a powerful thing. What got changed, sadly, is that we felt guilty about being there and in a strange reversal of thinking came to believe that Africans would be happier living in Europe.
Perhaps it is karma for all the ‘harm’ we did… who knows?
@ UKer – Piles of bricks is exactly what I’m talking about. You and I share a common connection to the effects of war in a way our American cousins can’t fully appreciate.
The British were exceptional in their expansion of their African and Indian colonies. But even after the British left India, the Indians took what was left behind in the way of bureaucracy and technology and were able to maintain these systems; e.g. government, railways, roads, etc. Despite their growing populations pushing these systems to their limits, for the most part they still work. However Africa has proven incapable of the same and trains, roads and government have come to a stand-still and complete disrepair. Everywhere the whites have left Africa, it has quickly returned to it’s original feral state.
Ironically, the only hope for the West is a massive credit collapse followed by a great depression. Actual economic hardship is the only thing that will get the powers that be to seriously address the issue of migration.
Or anything else of importance.
Hey Zman, did you see this?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DAeAbX4RLns
A local news anchor exposed the ‘Partnership for a New American Economy’, which is a immigrant based economy, more diversity and all that jazz, he mentions Soros and Rupert Murdoch, are the Neocons of the Project for a New Amercian Century also involved?
Back in my school days my minor was Economics. One of the first teachings being that natural population controls were “starvation, misery, and vice.” The West does (in the name of love as sung by”.Bono the giving”) this kindness to ward off these controls act by the metric tonne, all to no avail. Now even Mr. Bono says maybe capitalism is the answer, just dumping billions on these people seems to have little positive effect? Que the hallelujah chorus.
In a more normal world, ha ha, Africa should be the world center of progress, prosperity, and enlightenment, but appears to be lagging behind by just a few centuries?
Western aide to Africa is like adding gunpowder to a warehouse before you set it on fire – Confuscious
Here’s where I think automation, and our old friend Big Pharma, really earn their keep. Everyone I know who has been to Africa, even formerly starry-eyed save-the-worlders, says they aren’t interested in “family planning” because of their very low future time orientation (yep, that’s a “dog whistle” for IQ. I am a badthinker). I keep hearing how automation is going to render 1st world labor superfluous, and I know the boys at Pfizer could whip up one heck of a tranq without much effort. If we accept that Africa’s problems are intractable — as all of modern history suggests, with zero counterexamples — then here’s one instance where we need to step back and let the technocrats do their thing. Of course, there’s another alternative… with their economy cratering, and a very large army, China’s going to start thinking about imperialism sooner than later. Those guys will look at “King Leopold’s Ghost” as a how-to manual, and think: “We can do MUCH better.”
“China’s going to start thinking about imperialism sooner than later.”
Um, yeah, that already happened twenty years ago. The Chinese are in Africa in a huge way.
Openly, I meant. As in, “we’re annexing Nigeria to Shandong Prefecture; deal with it.” Think of Japan’s relationship with “Manchukuo,” but not as nice.
China will have it’s hands full with internal unrest for the next 20 or so years.
Not if they export the problem to Africa in the form of several million peasants. Lots of open space available…
awesome! Without all those pesky, “turn the other cheek” western sensibilities to hold them back, the chicoms will control lots of that open space in a hurry. machete carrying tutsis & hutus? No problem. They’ll dissapear quickly. Boko Haram? Some nice napalm on their easily IR camera found “camps” will calm that right down. Pass the popcorn!
I watched a two hour vid of a Chinese road building company in the (Belgian) Congo. They are by no means convinced they can do better than the Belgians, who must have been gods to do what they did; rather, they were constantly in awe of the fact that Africans cannot do better than Africans. The workarounds to get a days work done are nothing if not amusing. They took on a surprisingly good attitude about it, but they never lost their sense of awe that a people could be happy with the day without ever giving the next one a single thought. To the Chinese mind the African IS the missing link and is perfectly suited to his natural environment. The Chinese plow on with determination, not confidence. Good luck to them.
These are the same folks, remember, who got on with it when Mao decided that every peasant needed to smelt steel in his backyard on his off hours. They took WW1-level losses against us in Korea and just kept coming. They may not be as skilled as the Belgians at exploiting natural resources, but they’re a million times more determined, and a zillion times more ruthless. As I keep telling my liberal acquaintances, if you think white “racism” is bad, you’re gonna looooooove the Chinese version.
Not quite, Severian. The Chinese are more skilled than the Belgians, and less ruthless. The Red Guards had nothing on the Belgian forms of terror in the Congo. At any rate, the African immunity to work or a time horizon beyond sixteen hours is the greatest impediment to Chinese development in Africa. Africans know what Chinese think of them and could care less….it’s pretty much what they think of each other. The intransigent Chinese attitude makes race less of an issue, not more. The Chinese will either take a huge bath in Africa–likely–or show that the way forward in
Africa is not love, peace, and equality. But bondage is no longer profitable anywhere. Good luck to them, in Africa if no where else.
The ‘feel good’ push for Brits to send money to Africa began to make itself apparent in the 60s and 70s, especially our concern that Africans were killing each other in pointless civil wars. So we had lots of images on TV of starving children, but little explanation why Africa had got itself into such a mess. I think it was assumed that knowledge wasn’t important. Maybe helping feed them maybe assuaged our guilt that we had gone there and given them knowledge, structure and a sense of purpose.
Today, our feelings of guilt means we are bringing lots of Africans to Britain’s cold and damp shores (and muslim Africans top the list by far) by pretending they are here to help Europe be a better place. More, British students are screaming that at one top university there is a statue to Cecil Rhodes who was one of those who thought once that Africa could be pointed in the right direction. Well, Rhodesia has long been replaced by an all-African ideal that somehow doesn’t work, other than corruption and hyper-inflatioon and the failure to develop anything other than greed.
I know of someone who visited Uganda and was appalled that the car they were travelling in not only had to avoid horrendous pot-holes in the road but that the police would stop the vehicle for no cause and demand payment, again unspecified. It was, he was told, just Africa being Africa.
Watching the steady descent of South Africa and what will probably happen to Whites there isn’t going to help European opinions any.
Hardly anybody in Europe knows what’s happening in SA. It’s not something nice media people talk about.
It’s going to be interesting to see how the western media ignores this. They have just ignored it so far, but pressure is building in SA. If white SA breaks away as a walled city then that cannot be ignored. On the other hand, a collapse into Zimbabwe like chaos cannot be ignored either. But, ethno-masochism is strong in the western media so maybe they will celebrate the latter.
The United States encouraged the collapse of both SA and Rhodesia, did it not? I have some Boer friend and they won’t speak honestly about the situation with other Westerners. My recent conversation with a prissy Brit perhaps explains why: Westerners love Mandela and think the African blacks are on a “long walk” to catch up with whites economically and that Europeans are the cause of the situation in Africa.
I think that if the Boers could throw off the Anglo-American yoke they could successfully achieve independence in a low intensity 4th generation conflict.
The added irony is that the Zulu nation would be squarely behind the Boers in a bid for power.
Not-so-minor historical fact: the Zulu Kingdom made it a point to keep the Bantus out of that region, frequently at iklwa point.
And yes, the ANC is dominated by the Bantu… go figure.
What’s known and what’s published are not always the same. Lack of publication does not equal ignorance of facts. We know. Now, whether we can do anything about what we know is a different topic.
Link: http://fride.org/descarga/COM_Nigeria_ENG_sep07.pdf
Good read on white survival in Zim: “The Last Resort”, Douglas Rogers.
I remember being told back in the 1950’s if we contributed some of our pennies toward digging wells and building schools that African kids could have a good life. My kids were taught the same thing, no doubt my grandkids are reading it in today’s equivalent of The Weekly Reader. Billions or trillions of wasted dollars later Africans still piss in their drinking water and those schools we built don’t appear to have turned them into anything close to civilized people.
Dictators and their cronies who stash aid money in Swiss banks, tribal warfare, the inability to feed themselves, plagues of horrible diseases that other societies have successfully eliminated and on and on. Pennies and tax dollars, all wasted. About all that’s changed is our modern world has shrunk the moat around Africa.
But the Nigerian Space program?