Africa has more than 50 political entities and more than a billion people with some of the highest concentrations of genetic and cultural diversity on the planet.
For every destitute failure like Niger, you have some country that bucks the stereotype and dispels some of the doom and gloom that predominates in HBD-realistic commentary about the “dark continent”. One of the biggest and most striking exceptions is Ethiopia, noteworthy as the only African country to successfully resist European colonization.
Reprinting Al’s comment from my post trying to counter some of the extreme skepticism towards Africa:
For a supposedly reality-based community, the HBDosphere has a major blind spot regarding where Africa is today and possible scenarios for its future. Africa has 55 countries; doom and gloom is not applicable to them all.
I’m in broad agreement with your major points, and I which to illustrate them with some examples from the one case I know best, and which has been mentioned in the comment thread. Ethiopia. I lived there for several years in the last decade as an expat, still visit regularly, have invested not only other people’s money, but my own, in there. This is going to be long, sorry.
First of all, keep in mind that Ethiopia is landlocked, has few useful minerals (just a little gold), has no oil and therefore must pay a hefty energy bill in imports, and as a very montainous place it is really difficult and expensive to build modern infrastructure. They speak their own language (Amharic) and, never having been colonized, don’t have the head start that other Africans have in speaking/understanding English or French. It’s also in an exciting neighborhood: Sudan (terrorism and civil war), South Sudan (civil war), Eritrea (formal state of war, tenuous ceasefire at the border), Somalia (’nuff said), Kenya (terrorism), Djibouti (only decent neighbor). That’s on top of whatever ancestral disadvantages it might possess on HBD grounds.
Someone expressed doubts about the increasing crop yields. They’re true. Ethiopia has been growing at or over 10% year-on-year since the turn of the millenium. This growth has been obtained by investment on family farms (there are very few large private estates in Ethiopia, since the Communist dictatorship of 1974-1992 had expropriated all land). This means growth has been broad and benefited a large proportion of the population. It also means it is sustainable. Ethiopia is set to be the fastest growing economy in the world this year, despite suffering from a drought (more below).
Foreign investment is pouring in, mainly Chinese, Korean and Turkish, but with non-negligible and rising amounts coming from the West (U.S., Netherlands, Germany) and Japan. They have made some inroads in products such as flowers, leather, and the textile industry, i.e., the first-tier, labor-intensive stages of industrialization. This is almost certain to go on.
They have also turned Ethiopian Airlines into a major player in world long-haul cheap air transportation, despite not having the bottomless amount of cash the Arab sheikdoms can give Qatar, Etihad, Emirates &c. Ethiopian Airlines revenue has been growing at 25% year-on-year for the last decade or so. It has surpassed South African as the largest African carrier.
Foreign investment (mainly Chinese here) has been pouring into infrastructure. The Chinese have built a major new railway to Djibouti (Ethiopia’s outlet to the sea) and motorways between the major cities. I have used them several times and the quality is generally very good in an absolute sense (in Africa, they have few peers).
Sub-Saharan Africa is famous for electricity shortages, and that kills any possible industrialization. Ethiopia is building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile, which has already started producing a small amount of energy and is set to be completed shortly. It is the seventh largest dam in the world and will supply several times Ethiopia’s current electricity needs. The shortages will not only disappear, but prices will be dirt cheap in global terms – cheap enough to attract foreign investors. Best part? The whole cost of the dam, some USD 7 billion, is being financed from the government budget – not donors, not foreign aid, not outfits like World Bank, and such. It is their own money.
Another thing the Ethiopians are doing is at least trying in education. They have now achieved full primary school enrollment; that is, very nearly all school-aged children really are attending school. This is a major achievement for a Third World country, and one as poor as Ethiopia. They have also created about a dozen universities, and are busy churning out engineers and agronomers. I mean, really: the government has a cap of about 15% on how much social science (that includes law) degrees the universities can grant. They have the priorities in the right place.
Of course, the standards of this education are low on an absolute scale, but even then… Several times I’ve spoken about this with other expats (Asians and Westerners) who were directly involved with supervising their Ethiopian workforce. To the question, ” you know, is someone with a degree in engineering from an Ethiopian university really an engineer?”, the answer almost unanimously was: “well, not really, of course it’s not the same thing as an engineering degree from back home in [China, Netherlands, Korea], but it is much better than we expected. The balance between expertise/salary levels is excellent and headquarters is really pleased. Plus, there are more than enough people capable of continuing to receive training and achieve higher productivity levels”. I myself did not run a large team, but my experience has been much the same.
Ethiopia is world-famous for the 1980s famine. That had nothing much to do with “incompetence”, though. It was planned, and very well planned if I may say so, by the then ruling Communist government (who else?) to genocide the population of the heartland of the opposition. The global repercussion took them by surprise and they had to appear to do something; so they happily received the world’s donations of food and money, gave them to their soldiers or sold them to get guns, and kept the people starving. They lost in the end, thank God (the opposition guerrillas took over the capital in 1992, and they are the basis of the current ruling party).
From late 2015 or so, Ethiopia (and East Africa from Eritrea to Mozambique generally) has been suffering from the effects of the latest El Nino phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean, which interferes in the framework of air currents in the southern hemisphere with the result that in East Africa the rainy season is shortened by one or two months. As Karlin’s piece shows, there is barely any major irrigation works in Africa. (In the case of Ethiopia, the topography makes it nearly impossible in most of the country, and in all the more densely settled regions). Well, the current Prime Minister gathered the high-ranking foreigners in there (ambassadors and businessmen) to tell them, in effect: “if you say you’re our ally, this is the time to chip in. By the love of God, if you want to help, don’t give us food. What we need is money that we can funnel to the peasantry of the most affected areas, so they can buy food, and seeds and cattle to replenish their decimated holdings. If you give us food, more of our peasants will be priced out of the market and things will only get worse. And by the way, if you don’t help us, we will do this ourselves with our own money”. Funds from abroad were not forthcoming, and none of you has heard of any major famine in Ethiopia in the last two years. The economy did not even slow down! Why? Becase Ethiopia has been achieving nearly 40% of investment/GDP ratio, and invests over two thirds of its budget on capital investment (infrastructure); numbers almost unheard-of in the Third World, and particularly in countries as poor as Ethiopia.
Of course, this has focused on the positive side of the picture, because few people know about this, and – as I see – none in the HBDosphere. (Those who do, are making money out of it). There are of course, major, enormous, obstacles for Ethiopia to continue improving; the most immediate is, what else, rivarly between the ethnic groups. (Today, the minority Tigrayans, just some 4 million people out of 100 million, hold the upper hand and buy out the elites of the other way more populous ethnies. The Oromo have been staging demonstrations since last year, and large parts of the country are currently under a relatively mild martial law). Acute foreign exchange shortage is another difficulty; exports are growing, and growing well, but are still too small to finance industrialization-driven growth, so the government is very careful with the foreign exchange it gets (this is a major pain in the ass for foreign investors; but if the government did not do this, the now-more-numerous middle and upper classes would spend this money away importing luxury goods from Asia and the West).
The Ethiopian economic strategy proclaims the relatively modest objective of achieving middle-income status by the end of the 2020s. (If they keep up their current rates of growth, they’ll get there well ahead of schedule). That’s a pittance if you’re a Westerner, but a genuine achievement if you were the world’s poster-child for abject poverty just a few decades ago.
I could tell you a lot more, about politics, security. terrorism, crime, the problem of Islam, etc, but I’m sure your eyes glazed over into TL;DR long ago. Anyway, if someone read this far and is interested in more information, look up the name of Arkebe Oqubay.
What makes this all the more impressive is that Ethiopia was subjected to an IQ shredder of sorts during the Italian occupation.
A reader and long-term correspondent on primarily Eurasian matters sent me the following email:
I’ve been there a couple of times. Ethiopia is fucking amazing. It’s like what visiting Korea in 1960 must have been: still poor, but with all the numbers going up, up, up.
Anyway, here’s a depressing bit of historical trivia about Ethiopia: when the Italians took over, back in 1936? Mussolini literally told the new colonial regime to “liquidate” as many educated Ethiopians as possible. Which they enthusiastically did. Haile Selassie’s government had laboriously scraped together the cash to send a couple of hundred Ethiopians abroad to university. Almost all of them were killed, as were most of the country’s literate administrators and technicians. If you want the depressing details, google Yekatit 12 or the Graziani Massacre. The exact numbers are of course contested, but it looks like the Italians killed 20,000 to 30,000 (out of a population that was then 9 – 10 million), disproportionately targeting the educated and skilled.
That is similar to the Katyn massacre in absolute terms, twice as bad in relative population terms, and perhaps an order of magnide or two worse in terms of its impact on the educated, technically competent fraction of the population of Ethiopia relative to Poland. And yet the former is an order of magnitude or two better known. I’ve read several books covering the lead-up to WW2 and this is the first time I’d heard of Yekatit 12.
Additional wrinkle: this ended up being a double whammy for Ethiopia, because after the war, they very reasonably asked for war crimes trials for the people who did this. This was terribly embarrassing to the Allies, because some of these exact same people had switched sides and were now key players in the new postwar Italian government. (In particular Marshal Badoglio, the first postwar prime minister, had been implicated in all sorts of horrors in Ethiopia.) The Allies did not want an Italian equivalent to the Nuremberg trials! So, to shut up the Ethiopians, they made a deal: they gave them Italian Somaliland — modern Eritrea. This turned out to be a poisoned gift, because Eritrea is ethnically and linguistically distinct from Ethiopia. Before long there was an independence movement, and then a grinding twenty five year long guerrilla war that helped keep both countries poor and miserable.
The last war with Eritrea ended in 2000. Ethiopian GDP per capita (PPP) – i.e., adjusted for population growth – has expanded by 150% since 2000 ($620 to $1600 constant 2005 international dollars), if from a very low base. I think that’s the highest rate of expansion of any Sub-Saharan Africa with the exception of some small resource exporters.
I’m glad to hear that Ethiopia is doing very well right now! Indeed, let’s hope that this will continue and that Ethiopia will eventually reach its full potential (which perhaps might be somewhere at Brazil’s level if the full genetic potential of Ethiopian IQs is close to the African-American level in the U.S.)! 🙂
Also, off-topic, but in terms of IQ shredding, I wonder how much of an impact the Holocaust had by this metric. I mean, out of 6 million people (more if you include potential descendants of those 6 million) with an average IQ of 110-115, there should be several thousand people (more if you include potential descendants) with an IQ above 155-160. Indeed, I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if we would have had 10+% more people with an IQ above 155-160 right now in a scenario where the Holocaust never occurred.
This is an odd thing to say, because many parts of Ethiopia (formerly the Empire of Abyssinia) are ethnographically distinct from each other. Notably the Oromo or Galla as they were sometimes called supported the Italians in the war. Unfortunately there my knowledge of the country pretty much ends, so I can’t comment on the rest of the material, except to say that it sounds quite interesting.
Thanks for reporting on this – this is good news and hopefully some kind of a model for other African countries though Ethiopia is quite distinct – being a very old Semetic African people. What is interesting is that it looks to be high on the corruption index, but that might be due to what was reported; the small ethnic group holding the reigns financially.
I would be interested to know what the Sudanese and Egyptians think about the Ethiopian dam project as that can obviously affect their water supply.
Anyway – good stuff!
Peace.
I’ve always thought Ethiopia was one of those good examples to throw in people’s faces who blamed all the third world’s troubles on colonialism. They do seem to be in a little better shape than much of Africa though. For one thing, slightly lower fertility rate (4.4 in 2014). A bit higher life expectancy (64).
From an HBD perspective, one could postulate that this might have something to do with having more Eurasian introgression than West or South Africa. But, surely, some of those neighboring problem countries must be pretty similar. Maybe there was some selective factor, like hillier terrain encouraging a certain psychological adaptation. They are physically adapted for altitude. Though observed IQ doesn’t seem much to speak of.
Or maybe, it is because they weren’t a colony and so have had a harder time scapegoating. Quite a lot of that seems to go on, for instance the genocides in Rwanda are often blamed on the Belgiums socially constructing the tribal animus.
It’s odd since, from an HBD perspective and taking Yekatit 12 (which I never even heard of before; have to say it worsens my opinion of Mussolini and his government considerably) into account, they would have a much more plausible case for the White Man being to blame for their misfortunes than many.
This was quite interesting. I’ve been thinking a bit about Ethiopia recently, but had no knowledge of the “IQ shredding”. Quite shameful, in my view. Of course, Poland suffered not just the Katyn massacre, but so far as I grasp things, the even more extreme efforts by Hitler to obliterate elites. (Someone correct me if I’m wrong!) Poland seems to be back on the world stage though, and I wish the best to Ethiopia.
At work I have an Ethiopian immigrant colleague who is extremely bright and mild mannered. We both attend lectures on Catholic church history even though he is an Orthodox Christian. I had mentioned his intelligence to a fellow attendee (well known in paleoconservative circles). He attributed his intelligence to Caucasian racial admixture. While I will admit that my colleague does not look like “the” American negro, yet to me he definitely has many negroid features.
Are their any studies on the Caucasian component in the Ethiopian gene pool?
Just in passing, I have a great amount of respect and affection for this individual and categorize him among the general American black population as being the exception which proves the general rule
P.S. I found Al’s essay fascinating. I will show it to my colleague.
Ethiopians are partly caucasoid and most of them have not destructive religion such as Islam like somalis have, so obviously Ethiopians have best chances to be successful in black Africa. Ethiopians are like 40% caucasoid, that will make HUGE difference in terms of they behave.
Genetically Ethiopians are really not that close with other sub-saharan africans so just because Ethiopia would be successful does not mean that Nigeria would do the same.
““On the basis of historical, linguistic, and genetic data, it has been suggested that the Ethiopian population has been strongly affected by Caucasoid migrations since Neolithic times. On the basis of autosomal polymorphic loci, it has been estimated that 60% of the Ethiopian gene pool has an African origin, whereas ~40% is of Caucasoid derivation…. Our Ethiopian sample also lacks the sY81-G allele, which was associated with 86% and 69% of Senegalese and mixed-African YAP+ chromosomes, respectively. This suggests that male-mediated gene flow from Niger-Congo speakers to the Ethiopian population was probably very limited … Caucasoid gene flow into the Ethiopian gene pool occurred predominantly through males. Conversely, the Niger-Congo contribution to the Ethiopian population occurred mainly through females.“”
Ethiopians are not black. They are whites with black skin. Just look at their facial features.
The question is not can Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea become developed countries, but can the other sub Saharan African countries? I think the only reasonable answer based the evidence we currently have is “no”.
Statistics out of Africa are fantasy. So are wartime atrocity stories. Ethiopians have done worse things than they have suffered throughout history, including in Eritrea, which they have often possessed and always demanded. They are negroes. Just a Homeric LOL at the idea that their next fifty years will be like the last fifty of Korea.
They sure look African to me:
http://imgur.com/a/pa6DJ
We must secure the existence of the Ethiopian people, and a future for sun tanned white children!
About Ethiopian Africanness or lack thereof, I can only quote my correspondent once again, who seems very well informed on the matter:
Kenya is one of the most successfully resource-less African countries, is considerably richer than Ethiopia.
It also got the highest math test scores within a sample of African countries: https://www.unz.com/jthompson/africa-and-the-cold-beauty-of-maths/
Eritrea is a disaster but does apparently have the organizational capacity to run a super-militarized authoritarian state.
But Sudan has nothing to write home about, while Somalia is the byword for state failure.
Ethiopia had (and maybe has) a very interesting music scene. Check out the “Ethiopiques” volumes (available for instance on the Apple music library). I like Mulatu Astatke in particular.
(For what it’s worth, melodic music is g-loaded, though g(music)<g(math)<g(classics), according to Spearman's correlation matrix in Jensen's "The g factor". The second inequality is a bit puzzling to me. Gauss is known to have had a hard time deciding between classics and mathematics, but surely Gauss's achievements in mathematics far surpass the achievements of any classicist anywhere and anytime.)
Antoly, see also a successful fledgling military industrial sector.
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/ethiopia-spends-very-little-money-on-its-military-and-it-works-1be0d725f8a9
Somalia is the byword for state failure but breakaway Somaliland is doing reasonably well.
Speaking of breakaway regions doing better: I really think if Biafra had won the war against Nigeria they would be doing pretty great today. Not Switzerland or South Korea great but better than anyone in the neighborhood.
The Italian massacred mattered very little. They killed a very small portion of the population. Even if they managed to kill the top 10% of the population, it would have a relatively small effect, I think maybe a percentage point or less. One-off selections have little effect in general, unless it’s some really horrible selection event, like killing the top (or bottom) 90% of the population could result in a large move in the population mean. That’s what breeders do, they prevent 90% of the population from breeding, and even they do that for several generations.
As has been pointed out, the Poles have been subjected to a similar selection. Russians had something similar in the first couple decades after the revolution (including emigration of some of the most valuable people). In Hungary (besides a significant chunk of the Ashkenazi being murdered) it was mostly people leaving the country, but it was a lot of people, hundreds of thousands from the most educated groups of the population in a country of just under 10 million. It probably had some effect, but probably under one IQ point.
In the case of Ethiopia there are a few things going for it. For example, it has one of the very few Sub-Saharan African countries with a respectable history, which must mean something. I mean, most of the argument is that after the start of agriculture there was some selection for intelligence and pro-social behavior. Another argument is that the selection landscape might have been different in Europe or Asia – but that’s changed by the Arab admixture (even if some of it apparently happened in prehistory).
Ruanda ruled by the similar Tutsis is another example. Though the Tutsis have not always been so successful (they had some horrible massacres etc. of their own), but who is not a fan of General Nkunda?
OT
At the same website I found this article belittling the Chinese military. While some of its conclusions are questionable, some are not, for example that China has really few real friends or reliable allies. In fact, it has basically none, or at most a few (Russia and the Central Asian ex-Soviet republics and a few similar countries like Pakistan). Otherwise, its relationship with a lot of its neighbors is quite hostile, it has territorial disputes with India, Bhutan, Vietnam, Taiwan (it claims the whole of the island…), the Philippines, South Korea, Japan, and its relationship with North Korea soured just recently.
Who wants to bet that Ethiopia gets nowhere near South Korea in terms of per capita GDP? Not even close to Malaysia. Hell, not even Thailand.
And sure, Ethiopia in terms of HBD is the sub-saharan country most likely to develop. But we’re talking of Arabs + Nilotics. So you should expect much less development than any Arab country, unless you believe that Islam is this black magic that keeps people poor when they shouldn’t really have to.
The link cites numerous studies suggesting that Ethiopians are on average of 40% Caucasian descent. That would make them somewhat less Caucasian that Puerto Ricans (52%). For Ethiopians, the Caucasian descent is mostly Semitic (rather than European) though.
Most of the Caucasian descent is from paternal origins: thousands of years ago people from places like Yemen and Judea “returned” to this part of Africa and mixed with native females. The peoples of Ethiopia are a product of that mixture.
Absolutely. But how did it perform relative to its neighbors? Back in my ancap days, there was this running joke, analog to ”so move to Russia”, so some economists looked at the prospect and concluded that it’s not as bad as it may appear, at least relatively. Suffice to say, this is what the CIA Factbook has to say about Somalia:
”Despite the lack of effective national governance, Somalia maintains an informal economy largely based on livestock, remittance/money transfer companies, and telecommunications.”
But more to the point, I would like to bring to your attention a paper that tries to measure its socio-economic performance compared to its formal authority neighbors:
http://www.peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf
Ethiopia contains many different ethnicities. Your link is to someone from a more typical Sub-Saharan African tribal group. This is a minority within Ethiopia. The numerically and politically dominant ethnic groups (Oromo and especially Amhara) in Ethiopia are mixed Semites-Africans.
This article by Razib Khan has a picture of a pretty Amhara woman.
Another Amhara woman:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/56/a2/c1/56a2c1f40257d766ecd1c9f99b1a1007.jpg
Oromo people are a bit more “African” but one would not confuse them for a Nigerian.
It would be a surprise enough if it really became a middle income country. And it doesn’t seem out of the question.
contrary to what your Afrophile friend implies, I am not racist against blacks. Well, I regard them as intellectually inferior but I am not against them doing well and I would prefer that they do indeed succeed.
But it is plainly obvious just by looking at Ethiopians, Somalis and Eritreans that they are not really black. They just aren’t. I’m not really sure what else to say cause it is just plainly obvious.
Show me real black nations that are having success and then I will re-evaluate my position.
Ethopia was one of the ancient Christian kingdoms. In broad terms, in recent centuries, just as it is hard to think of Muslim success stories, so it is hard to think of stories of abject Christian failure.
Hey Mr. Karlin,
Certainly – the better question is; does the nation state fail the Somalis? And the answer to that was measured a while back:
“Such was the case with Somalia’s government, which did more harm to its citizens than good. The government’s collapse and subsequent emergence of statelessness opened the opportunity for Somali progress. This paper investigates the impact of anarchy on Somali development. The data suggest that while the state of this development remains low, on nearly all of 18 key indicators that allow pre- and post-stateless welfare comparisons, Somalis are better off under anarchy than they were under government.”
http://www.peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf
The nation state is a foreign concept and does not fit well over certain people. If it fails them, why should they keep trying something when it is simply a disaster every time it’s implemented?
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
And this includes the right to be governed by tribes.
Peace.
Hey Greasy,
Everyone is on a spectrum. They have plenty black admixture in them, but sure they aren’t supa-black. Eastern Africans have always struck me as extremely beautiful people.
There are some nations from Africa that have less corruption than certain Eastern European countries:
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/corruption-index
That might not be saying all that much though.
Now Senegal has always stood out to me as a reasonable place. I know a Senegalese brother who is going to move back to Senegal after living in the US, France and some other country in Europe. All the travel blogs I’ve seen give it high marks for being a safe and respectable place. And my daughter’s French club in high school organizes trips there to practice French and because of how safe and relatively inexpensive it is.
If you are looking for an African country to rival, say Belgium, in success, my question would be; why?
Peace.
Doh – should have read your post first – good stuff!
Isn’t it fairly evident that Northeast Africans of these types are not really “negroid” as, say, Bantu are? They have some admixture from various places, but are almost certainly of a different racial origin. Their complexion isn’t really pertinent to the matter, considering they share it with such disparate groups as Tamils and Aborigines.
Less suffering.
A more prosperous Africa means less starvation, less war, less overpopulation and less disease.
But that isn’t even really the point. Anatoly has all but come out and said that blacks are capable of building functional modern states and that is so obviously false that I can’t believe an HBD aware person would say such a thing.
HBD is not a religion. We can easily change our positions as new evidence emerges. What we are unwilling to do is change our position based on browbeating by Huffington Post or because of the threat of losing our jobs or businesses.
Sure – but as the other poster linked they are 40% Caucasian which means a significant level of Black African, right? This would account for the differences in phenotype.
So – like I said, they ain’t supa-black!
Peace.
Hey Greasy,
I think they can. Again, if you hold that only nation-states that function to the European benchmark are truly functional then it’s not just Blacks that are left out – plenty of South America and Asia also can’t meet the standard. I personally do not want them to – I’d hate for the nomadic Tuareg to lose their ancient nomadic ways and their humble open-air desert mosques – (post)modernity comes with its own set of problems – all depends on perspective.
Peace.
How so? Unless on the analogy that they are as Negroid as Caucasoid, or under the theory that all African races are identical? Africa is quite diverse genetically. Not even all Ethiopian races are identical, and I highly doubt the 40% figure (and what Caucasian means in this study I’m not sure exactly) holds for all of them, among the pagan and formerly pagan Oromo especially.
can’t see the comments again so I’m posting this comment in hopes that it will allow me to see them
What new evidence? All I see is data showing that clearly non black Ethiopians are slowly making their nation into less of a Hell hole then it has historically been. I see nothing to indicate Nigeria or South Africa will ever be capable of doing the same for their own nations.
Blacks are cool*. I’m rooting for them. But facts are facts.
I think what probably happened is Anatoly has met some African girl studying in Moscow that he likes and it is causing him to go through an Afrophile phase. He will probably be blaming Africa’s failures on Western imperialism by this time next year. But life has a way of breaking us down and eventually he will reach enlightenment about the intellectual inferiority of the negro.
*Not including BLM types who another group included in the Greasy Global Genocide initiative
That’s what the study shows. It varies by ethnic group within Ethiopia, of course. Amhara people seem to be the most Caucasian.
The Caucasians that provide 40% of the Ethiopians’ ancestry are basically dark-eyed, dark-haired Semitic ones, not northern Europeans. Apparently some of those Semites were ancient Jews.
Since African-Americans are about 18% Caucasian on average, Ethiopians are like biracial Americans. Except, again, Ethiopian Caucasian descent is from dark-eyed, dark-haired Semites rather than American whites who tend to be light northern Europeans.
Sorry for the math fail. Such a person would be about 60% Caucasian, of course.
An old article from Khan:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/01/the-genetic-affinities-of-ethiopians/#.WW-dTYjyuUk
He concludes:
Ethiopians, in particular highland Ethiopians, seem to me likely an ancient stabilized hybrid population between a population from Arabia, and a local Sub-Saharan population. This population seems unlikely to have been related to the peoples of West-Central Africa, who are associated with the Bantus across eastern and southern Africa. The Bantu agricultural toolkit runs into ecological constraints in various regions, and it is in those regions that non-Bantu populations have persisted. Ethiopia, with its unique climate and topography, naturally remains non-Bantu (as well as the Horn of Africa as a whole).
No (subsaharan) Africans are succeeding though, by even the most lenient standards that would be applied to anyone else. So the question is moot.
Sure – they seem to be on that spectrum of both. This map puts them on some mixed-zone as with some other overlap zones:
http://ukrmap.su/en-g6/789.html
100% agree.
OK – see – this is where things get tricky. How are you defining “race” here? This is the crux of the issue. If you see Oromo and Amhara and others as a “race” then you are going to naturally conclude this. If you say, well there are about 5-6 major categories of “race” then the discussion shifts.
I don’t care all that much for it – I usually give more credence to nations (ethno-linguistic groups) and tribes – those have been around forever.
Peace.
Here is the real deal, the amount of Sub-Saharan DNA in Ethiopians as shown by the combined “Northeast African” + “Sub-Saharan” scores of participants in the Eurogenes K15 ADMIXTURE test:
Tigray: 51.76
Amhara: 54.52
Oromo: 66.19
Wolayta: 69.92
Ari Cultivator: 88.4
Gumuz: 99.44
Anuak: 99.94
one thing I know for sure is that Ethiopian men are much less wanted by European women than West African men. So to reach to wealth, they have to work for it, unlike West Africans, for whom it would be the rational choice, to simply go to Europe and marry a white women with high income.
Have IQ scores in Ethiopia changed much over the last few years in line with its development? Also, how about IQ scores by peoples in Ethiopia?
What a coindence my bout of jungle fever happened at the same time as Steve Sailer went on an extended post storm about the imminent doom of Africa. 🙂
Anyhow tbh I feel zero attraction to black girls, they might as well be a separate species so far as I’m concerned. I almost exclusively dated Asian chicks in my first few years in Berkeley, which I suppose you can make fun of, but that’s basically a white nationalist rite of passage at this point abyway.
I also think I was pretty clear on what I think the actual civilizational potential of Negroes is:
I am and long have been extremely skeptical about blaming Africa’s problems on Europeans, even if the Alt Right overdoes it in the other direction, but the case of Ethiopia does seem to be an exception.
@Anatoly Karlin: An outright regression in the stock of knowledge by a century seems extremely pessimistic, no?
Well, some of the commenters here assume Africans will return to the state of Piltdown Man, I think I’m pretty generous by Unz.com commenter standards.
Just as you need a certain threshold level of IQ to make new discoveries, so you need a certain level of average IQ to maintain a set technological level. Africans are 2 S.D. below the First World, and if the First World vanishes, we can be reasonably sure that the Flynn effect in Africa will peter out (at least on a sub-millennial timescale).
I think they’ll maintain things like the germ theory of disease, the calculus, radio, probably the internal combustion engine, but I very much doubt things like rocketry or the integrated circuit will preserved, or that anybody will be able to repeat (or perhaps even understand, if Perelman’s papers were to be found in some university library) the proof of the Poincare conjecture.
I wrote a reply about a couple of hours ago; either I forgot to post or it got caught in the wheels. Anyway, my definition of “race” is pretty flexible, conforming more to general usage than attempting to be scientific. Your (Ukrainian?) source is rather interesting, somewhat odd in many details (for example, the races on the map do not quite correspond to the races in the text) though.
My point in bringing up those Ethiopians with less Caucasian admixture (I presume, and, again, I really can’t judge such a study) was that even then they don’t necessarily physically match Bantu or West Africans, or follow the characteristics of the “equatorial race” in the Ukrainian schoolbook, viz. “thicker lips and wider nose”. Someone below brought up “Northeast African” as a genetic grouping, which sounds about right.
It doesn’t seem really that important an issue; it just seems to me that if all people exist on a genetic or racial “spectrum” of sorts it must be a multidimensional one.
@Anatoly Karlin: Fair points. Of course, I am curious as to what the IQ level (in comparison to today) of White people was when the Flynn Effect first made its appearance. Indeed, that would be interesting to know to get some perspective on whether or not Africans would be able to have a Flynn Effect without the help of higher-IQ northern peoples.
Also, do you think that the Internet would be preserved in such a scenario?
Yeah – this “Race” thing is tough to get a bead on. First, is it something that be classified in a purely scientific way? In which case, if it’s a scientific classification, and they have a majority opinion on the subject, then I will defer to them as they are the experts in the field. Otherwise, I agree with you about the spectrum.
I’ve always seen these human differences (in the physical sense) much like what you might see in different breeds, in say like a horse.
Some horses have been bred for speed, others – endurance, others – strength, others – friendliness, others – fearlessness, etc. Which horse is better? Well, what do you want it to do?
And the breeding of one horse with another doesn’t negate the previous breeds, it simply defines a new one.
Peace.
Not well informed on Ethiopia. You speak of the Italian “occupation” which was actually a colonialization ie the first national postal service, the first national telegraph and telephone service, the first national railway network etc all were done under the Italians.
The Oromos were colonized by the “Abyssinian Empire” with the critical help of Italian weaponry though it still took decades to do so.
Ethiopia is under a particularly brutal matial law/state of emergency with the recent AU meeting, where the UN honcho stated all so embarrasingly that Ethiopia was “a pillar of stability”, saw the internet and even mobile service shut down completely, once again, nationally. At least 20,000 in prison since the outbreak of the rebellion?
Shoot on site is the policy outside of the capital were foreign journalists are not allowed.
As for the so called economic miracle Ethiopia is begging for a billion dollars in emergency food aid, again. Some $40-50 billion in mainly western aid and investment is the only thing keeping the extremely unpopular regime afloat.
When the final collapse comes articles like this will end up egg on your face. Best to run what you write by someone from the region who knows what is going on first, but then when have westerners ever done this?
Selam and rain for the Horn of Africa
Thomas C. Mountain
Asmara, Eritrea
ps. at least you didnt talk any rubbish about Eritrea though you dont seem to know how successful the food security program the government has instituted has been in the face of record breaking droughts that have devasted the rest of the region.
Thomas C Mountain:
Thanks for a contrary viewpoint on the actual situation in Ethiopia.
I don’t know which viewpoint is correct (or perhaps more correct), but the give-and-take is very interesting and rewarding.
Contrary viewpoint is interesting and valuable. He is writing from Eritrea, however, so he may be getting biased anti-Ethiopian information (or not).
Taiwan isn’t a country.
Not even Bhutan.
PT Barnum told us there would be many people who believed “success stories” out of Africa.
Never heard about the killing of intelligentsia by Mussolini.
Under Mengistu rule 500,000 were killed with the help of Soviet, East German and Cuban specialists. It is safe to assume that the upper strata of society were targeted. There were many refugees at this time from Ethiopia.
In early 1980’s I knew many Ethiopian refugees in the US. They were mostly from intelligentsia. Very mild mannered people and every handsome with many strikingly pretty women. They certainly do not have Negroid features that are predominant among African Americans. Some of them almost seem like Europeans with very dark complexion.
Ethiopians, at least the educated ones have a strong sense of their long history and heritage. They are proud for being the people who were not subjugated by Europeans unlike other Africans. Italian occupation to them is a brief episode and some of them actually feel some affinity to Italy. Also their original Christianity (62%) that was not brought by western colonist missionaries must be playing an important role to their identity and pride.
It seems that in Washington, DC Ethiopians monopolized jobs as taxi drivers and airport and hotel workers. It is estimated that there are 480,000 people of Ethiopian ancestry in the US.
20,000 in prison since the outbreak of the rebellion
You are not going to impress us here in the US. Over 2 millions in prisons and no rebellion in sight.
Corruption?
Interesting post.
One would expect Sub-Saharan Africa, as with the rest of the “Second/Third World,” to see partial convergence with the West and East Asia with technological diffusion.
What has been particularly discouraging with Sub-Saharan Africans and the Black Diaspora is that they alone, presumably due to their evolutionary history, low IQ, and high time preference, have a tendency to regress and collapse into anarchy. You get these cases of self-sustaining entropy (Haiti, Liberia, Congo, U.S. inner cities..). Sad to say, but civilization among Sub-Saharans seems like fascism among Europeans: if in place, it can sustain itself in a fragile balance, but once knocked down it tends not to recover. (People rightly oppose Muslim and Mestizo immigration, but really you rarely see that kind of civilizational collapse among them.)
This raises an interesting question: what factors enable Sub-Saharan Africans and the Black Diaspora to sustain a decent level of civility? e.g. Haiti vs. Jamaica or (apparently) Congo vs. Ethiopia? Knowing the answer could make 21st century migratory pressures a lot more manageable.
Is it possible there are no foreign banks in Ethiopia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banks_in_Ethiopia
https://www.export.gov/article?id=Ethiopia-Banking-Systems
Ethiopian (Somali etc.) chicks look better than other African women because of their less negroid features and because of their being thin. African American women can also occasionally be pretty (especially if they are outright mixed race), usually depending on the degree of white admixture in the individual in question. And of course it would be stupid to deny that there are a few attractive West African women, too. The dark skin is always a liability in that respect, unfortunately.
Majority black nations that do well are rare, but some black-majority small island nations do very well – Barbados, Bermuda, Antigua.
According to the same fiction which insists that the Crimea is not part of Russia but South Ossetia is part of Georgia. The same fiction that the Chinese government was seated in Taipei until 1971 when it suddenly teleported to Beijing.
There is very little black-white IQ difference in Bermuda: http://humanvarietiesdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/table2bermuda.jpg
You would think this would give HBD types food for thought, but they appear to be completely uninterested.
Your correspondent is indeed a hell of a lot more informed than the racist crackpots who post here. These ignoramuses imagine that the west African phenotype is the only black African one, thus the small noses of many Ethiopians and Somalis must be a result of admixture with neighboring semites. Never mind that semites are stereotyped as possessing large, fleshy noses…
It is true that Ethiopians conquered Yemen in the arabian peninsula. They even attacked Mecca the holy city of the pre-Islamic pagan Arabs, a traumatic event for the Arabs which is recorded in the Koran itself. Interestingly, according to the Koran, Allah came to the defense of the pagan Arab idol worshippers against the invading christians aka “people of the book”. Another fine example of Koranic contradictions.
True dat. Ditto for North American women.
Being contrarian for the sake of it is not intelligent, though, Anatoly. Ethiopia isn’t doing well compared to virtually every other economy in the world which isn’t a basket-case.
Their per capita GDP (in 2010 constant nominal dollars) is around where India was in 1990. They basically need 30 years more growth to catch-up to where India is today, and that’s no small task since India has done very well. Despite that, India is the poorest (per capita) country in the G20 by a long shot. Added China to the chart for illustrative purposes.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=ET-IN-CN
Hey Bliss,
Though there certainly are contradicting/qualifying verses in the Quran, this was not one of them. The Abyssinian king had sworn to destroy the Kabah and had no cause to do so other than some random Arab defiling a church he had recently built in Yemen. The Kabah had always been the house built by Abraham (pbuh) and his son Ishmael (pbuh), thus even though it was defiled with idols, it had its original sanctity and would be important in serving the upcoming monotheistic revival.
The other thing that the event solidified in the minds of the entire Arab peninsula was:
1) Makkah was a seriously important city
2) The Quraysh had a special rank among the Arabs
3) That year was remembered as a blessed year (The Year of the Elephant) and any events that were associated with it (like the birth of the Prophet [pbuh] in the same year)
All of this was indispensable to its rapid success once the Quraysh accepted Islam and its ability to unite the tribes across the peninsula.
Peace.
The power ratio is very different in this case, and because of that, before too long the real situation will be brought back in line with the legal.
“zero attraction to black girls”
Not even to Himba women?
NSFW:
https://www.google.ru/search?q=himba+women&newwindow=1&safe=off&rlz=1C9BKJA_enRU723RU723&hl=en-GB&prmd=ivsn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved
Until that happens, Taiwan is still a separate country in control of its own territory.
It has a first world economy, its own government, laws, writing systems, police forces, military (relative to the size of the country, a quite strong military, actually), participating in sports competitions (including the Olympics), issuing its own passports (which are accepted in most or maybe all countries around the world, including in the People’s Republic of China), issuing its own separate visas, stamping in other countries’ passports (including those of the People’s Republic of China; theoretically if your toddler stamps a squirrel into your passport, it could render your passport invalid; this is so exactly to prevent random non-recognized entities stamp in passports; yet, my passport is still considered valid in all countries around the world, including in the People’s Republic of China, despite the Taiwanese stamp in it), and it is importing weapons from some countries (most notably the very strongest country on the planet) without consent from (and actually amid protests of) the government of the People’s Republic of China. It is also a case that the People’s Republic of China has never effectively controlled any part of the area that is currently under the rule of the Taiwan government. The majority of the population of Taiwan also doesn’t consider Taiwan to be part of the People’s Republic of China, instead they consider their country a separate one.
Yes, it’s likely (but by no means a certainty) that this situation will change in the (near or not so near) future, but until then, Taiwan will stay a separate country, and if we are talking about allies, especially in a potential military or at least cold war style confrontation between China and the US, then it should be counted among the American allies and enemies of China. In any event, this country obviously has a territorial dispute with China involving the whole of its territory.
This is his blog:
https://www.blackagendareport.com/blog/1711
He does seem to have it out for Ethiopia.
Ethiopia probably won’t be first world any time soon. It still seems better than the majority of black countries. For example I think it’s way better than South Africa, which is only richer because of the whites.
Taiwan will never be re-united with China. It is like what happened with Austria and Germany, the separation was artificial but eventually became real with the passage of enough time.
It also helps if outsiders dont ‘meddle’…….for a country to develop.
Sounds like Canada and the US.
“Became real with the passage of enough time”?
Try “became real with the outcome of the biggest war in history”.
That will be a hint to you of how stupid your prophecy is.
Unrelated, but Anatoly, could you write on this topic? If you have some thoughts on it anyway.
https://icpc.baylor.edu/scoreboard/ – that’s from this year.
https://blog.hackerrank.com/which-country-would-win-in-the-programming-olympics/ – that’s from last year. Though I’ve heard hackerrank is less reliable than ICPC.
EE and East Asia seems to do well on computer science, much better than WE in terms of native talent. (Over 50% of SV are immigrants after all). I wonder what this means going forward. I mean, it’s essentially two demographic models. One is quality, the other is quantity(unless if you’re China, and you’re blessed with both).
India in 1990 was not a landlocked country that had experienced multiple regime changes within a few decades. They are performing better than India in 1990.
In that case, why does “Taiwan” claim to be China?
There is no Taiwan government because the “Taiwanese government” does not claim to be Taiwanese.
How many Taiwanese do you know? There is a real Taiwanese identity now just like there is a real Austrian identity, a real Kuwaiti identity and a real Pakistani identity.
But yeah, once you crack the secret of time travel you should have no problem reuniting the renegade province of Taiwan with the Motherland.
p.s.: I don’t give a shit about this topic at all. China can have all of Asia for all I care, but my righteous nature will not allow me to let you continue to live in ignorance.
I talked with a Taiwanese person about this once.
He said while most would prefer independence, nobody (at least in the lower ranks) is going to fight the PLA for it.
Because China made it known that it will attack Taiwan with military force should Taiwan declare independence. Otherwise usually over 50% of Taiwanese support a declaration of independence, with less than 40% opposed to it.
I think that a lot will depend on the exact circumstances. It doesn’t matter much until the invasion begins. Until then, Chinese military planners cannot simply assume this mass surrender to happen.
But there is no Taiwanese state.
Exactly, unlike Georgia or the Ukraine, the PRC can force their “separatists” to maintain an outdated policy which they would want to replace sooner than later.
Also the Chinese army is a total joke. They wouldn’t even be able to make it to the beaches because the Taiwanese air force would sink them all on the way over. The Chinese gov is not planning on an invasion anytime in the next 20 years or so or else they would be building up their army to do just that. An opposed crossing of a major body of water was beyond even the WWII Germans and the Western allies needed absolute air supremacy, 2 other major fronts and an overwhelming material advantage to pull it off in 44.
The real question is when China becomes a democracy, will the Taiwanese still want independence? Of course people are going to want to be independent of a backwards totalitarian state, but when China is a free country they might no longer feel the same way.
There is a de facto Taiwanese state.
Why are we even talking about this? Are there a lot of Chinese nationalists amongst Anatoly’s fans?
The Taiwanese soldiers are conscripts, who on average must have lower motivation than the professionals in the (however corrupt) PLA. The ratio of forces will be overwhelmingly stacked against them. Taiwan also has a lower birthrate than China, which could easily depress willingness to sacrifice one’s life in battle.
So it’s likely that Taiwan’s forces won’t resist much. But anything can happen, and Chinese military planners will need to plan for the worst case scenario (for them), which is a strong Taiwanese resistance.
And deception: they made Hitler believe there was another invasion force at Dover waiting to cross to Pas-de-Calais. Hitler had 15 divisions in France, of which only a few fought in Normandy in the middle of June 1944.
On the other hand, just a few countries accept Donetsk or Abkhazian passports.
Why does the “Taiwanese state” claim the Chinese mainland?
Or control a part of the Fujian province and maintains Chinese claims on the SCS?
Until recently, the pro-Taiwanese parties were never able to control executive and legislative at the same time.
The correct statement is that the RoC is becoming a de facto Taiwanese state.
The DPR is still quite new and Abkhazia can count on Russian support.
How much can the Taiwanese count on American support?
Did you miss the naval buildup of the PLA?
Did you miss that the PLA did manage to liberate Hainan?
Did you miss the 20+ years of neglect of the air force that the Chinese government has carried out?
You can’t conquer Taiwan without air supremacy. You can’t gain air supremacy over one of the best air forces on earth without putting at least some effort into building up your own air force.
My guess is that you are some kind of Chinese nationalist, and I’m not saying that you can’t have Taiwan back. I don’t care about the issue one way or the other. I’m just pointing out that the people of Taiwan don’t want it and China is in no position to use force to gain Taiwan back at this time.
Maybe when China becomes a free country Taiwan will want to re-unite. If they don’t want to re-unite, perhaps when China has less incompetent leaders they will be able to force Taiwan back in. But those things are way down the road.
Good to see that long rambling comment of mine has set off some debate. Thanks for highlighting it, Anatoly.
Now, into the discussion.
On Mussolini
While it pains me to say so, and despite the utter lack of justification for the 1936 invasion and the Yekatit and other massacres, it cannot be said that the brief Italian occupation of 1936-1941 left no positive legacy. The Fascists built unprecedented infrastructure in Ethiopia, particularly in the capital (the names of most neighborhoods of Addis Ababa are Italian, now Amharicized) and highways in the interior. The short-lived colonial administration was the first modern one to exist in the country. And slavery was effectively abolished only then.
Of course, this required enormous resources which had to come from Europe. The occupation was always a money-losing enterprise. And many of the improvements the Italians made were possible precisely because they ruled by force and could disregard existing traditions. Ethiopia was a feudal monarchy, so of course it did not have, and could not have, a modern administration, and a weak government could not, e.g., enforce its theoretical ban on slavery. The restored Haile Selassie must have been mightily pleased that the Italians had inadvertently
removed most of the traditional restraints on the Imperial power.
A different question is, why did Ethiopia not modernize in the 19th century? It needed a Meiji Emperor, but only one country got it in time; Tewodros II was half-baked, and he failed; Lij Iyasu might have been the real deal, but he was too late and too weak for the role. And this question leads us to the real problem: why did Ethiopia, which possessed an urban civilization, plough agriculture and writing since the late first millenium BC, fail to progress and expand? It is here that the HBD perspective might be helpful. The rise of Islam and nearly complete isolation for a thousand years sure didn’t help, though.
The long-term impact of the Italian massacres is debatable. I do think they’re somewhat comparable to Katyn in purpose and scope, but not so sure on effects. Small numbers of Ethiopians had been studying abroad for some time, and what happened from the 1920s onwards is that they returned as Marxists. This same policy was resumed from the 1950s, and
it led to the downfall of the empire in 1974 and the rise of a genocidal Communist regime. So it can be argued that, in the long run, the existence of a Western-educated segment of the elite was a disaster. Again, the moment to do that was the 19th century, and we can only speculate what an Ethiopian Iwakura mission might have done.
Italian Somaliland – modern Eritrea
Minor nit to pick, but Italian Somaliland is not modern Eritrea, it was joined to British Somaliland to create Somalia in the 1960s.
But we’re talking of Arabs + Nilotics
The core historic Ethiopian ethnicities (Tigrayans and Amharas) are very ancient, stable compounds of Semites and Africans. But they are around 30% of today’s total population. Even if we were to exclude them, which I wouldn’t, the majority of today’s Ethiopian population is “African” by any reasonable standard.
Kenya is one of the most successfully resource-less African countries, is considerably richer than Ethiopia.
Not that much:
http://www.nation.co.ke/business/Ethiopia-to-overtake-Kenya-as-Eastern-Africas-top-economy/996-3408274-x8dsv4z/index.html
Of course, the Kenyans are ahead in per capita terms. They are also growing relatively fast despite much more political instability than Ethiopia in the last decade. Not having had a genocidal Communist government in the near past helps too.
Ethiopia is under a particularly brutal matial law/state of emergency
The “particularly brutal” bit doesn’t fit with my impression, but the Oromo demonstrations really were quashed before they could develop into a political threat. But since the demonstrations also targeted some foreign-owned factories in the interior, this can also be read as a positive: unlike many countries, particularly in Africa, the Ethiopians are willing to protect the investments they receive, they don’t want to kill the golden goose. (Compare with the current South African debate about whether white-owned property is to be expropriated with or without reimbursement, it being taken for granted that expropriation is a perfectly reasonable political decision). Also, the governments of Lee Kuan Yew, Park Chung Hee, Chiang Kai Shek, etc. were hardly models of democracy and human rights…
Ethiopia is begging for a billion dollars in emergency food aid, again. Some $40-50 billion in mainly western aid and investment is the only thing keeping the extremely unpopular regime afloat
This is quite misleading. Ethiopia has asked for aid to fight the drought, but received little of it, IIRC less than USD 500 million all told, and as a result is paying most of the bill with its own resources. The drought has caused no famine, which in itself is notable. “Some $40-50 billion in mainly Western aid and investment” muddles the fundamental distinction between aid and investment… I’d be surprised is total foreign aid to Ethiopia should rise to as much as USD 2 billion/year. Neither is the total investment that high: USD 50 billion is almost China-level.
Their per capita GDP (in 2010 constant nominal dollars) is around where India was in 1990. They basically need 30 years more growth to catch-up to where India is today, and that’s no small task since India has done very well.
This can be read as a compliment, you know. No country chooses from where it’s starting from, only what it can do with what history has provided. If Ethiopia should reach “2017 India” levels by 2045, that would be quite an achievement.
Why don’t you use a handle?
Hainan was captured (I wouldn’t call it “liberated”) because at the time the nationalist army was disorganized and in a state of flight. They could’ve captured Taiwan as well, but instead sent the army gathered for the task to Korea. After the Korean War the PLA was licking its wounds, and the nationalist army got way better prepared (with American help). Since then, China didn’t have the ability to invade until relatively recently, and maybe it still doesn’t have it.
Taiwanese identity is a challenge of how to cuck either to homomania West or halcyon fantasies of Japan.
None of that was inevitable, it was their own political system which created that. Switzerland is also landlocked. It’s still rich as hell.
Yes, the neighbourhood matters in the case of Switzerland, but Ethiopia is also a hell of a lot bigger than either Somalia or Eritrea, as should be able to dominate the area.
I’m making the obvious point that resorting to shitlib arguments (“muh geography”) or making continued arguments which all pan out to the notion that bad stuff(like repeated coups) “just happens”, it apparently falls out of the sky, is a typical retort to those who don’t want to assign blame where it belongs. It’s the old question: why is the dominican republic so much richer than Haiti? Both have very similar geography. One of them has worse demographics.
Ethiopia may do better than Eritrea or Somalia, but that isn’t saying much. If they end up where India is today 20-30 years from now, it’ll be a different story.
What an entertaining fantasy world you reside in. If China seriously wanted to take Taiwan missing all other political concerns and with the absence of the Americans, it would probably manage in less than two weeks. This is the assessment, incidentally, of the R.O.C military in the 2000s.
These days, probably even less time. The issues are more political than military, though you wouldn’t know given your fascination with assuming that China is a “backward totalitarian state.” If you were actually familiar with the area, then you would know that China has effectively executed most of her plans for Taiwan already in the usual less than overt, but steady grinding down method.
Most of the residents feel like dead men walking. Its one of the reasons why their TFR is abysmal.
Used to have one. Then it got banned.
The Americans and their navy was the main reason why the PLA did not liberate Taiwan decades ago.
You seem to have some familiarity with the situation. Then you would know that Taiwan is gradually being economically and politically isolated, to the point of suffering declining infrastructure and a near total brain drain. The residents know exactly why this is happening, being targeted by China, but are incapable of stopping it. In not so many words, China has made it clear that they are screwing the island and there’s nothing the island can do about it.
Much of the weird obsession over liberal cultural points such as same-sex marriage, seem to be, an effort to feel like their opinion still matters somehow in a world where they are being actively marginalized. The sense of hopelessness is pervasive.
They can’t win. Its just a question of how many years they can hold out. A decade? Two? Three?
Which was needlessly destabilized by others.
Last time Switzerland was invaded and occupied by another county was centuries ago.
Ethiopia’s neighborhood is also much poorer than Switzerland’s.
Dominating the area would not make more developed by default.
Air forces of India and RoC wish they were as “neglected” as the PLAAF.
There is still the problem that it would be a demotion of the RoC to a mere province.
That was exactly what I was thinking of: people getting educated in Europe without an obvious trade. Arguably learning nothing useful, but returning home with out-sized political ambition. Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot and many others.
With what, skeleton power?
Taiwan has one of the best air forces in the world, China’s air force is for show and a playground for sons of the Chinese elite. You cannot get the troops to Taiwan without air cover. It is just an impossibility.
If China isn’t a backwards totalitarian state, and Taiwanese are really just Chinese, then why don’t the Taiwanese want they want to be reunited with the mainland?
If you are a real Chinese nationalist, then you should be angry at the idiots who are currently running China. If China had the leadership of Japan, South Korea or even Taiwan, China would be the world’s most powerful country right now. When China gets real leadership, look out. But for today, it is nothing special.
Yeah, that much is true. The question is, can we still regard Taiwan as a state, while it still possesses all attributes of statehood bar international recognition.
Dang – was it like “Kill Ron Unz” or something? Thugg lyfe!
Peace.
you’re obviously correct to a point – people generalize the worst bits of Africa – but unless the bad bits of Africa are fixed or fenced off the good bits of Africa will be swamped by people from the bad bits the same as the West is being
My grandfather was a Taiwanese air force general.
You are overestimating the ability of planes to operate in impunity when their airfields are destroyed by IRBMs. The ability of planes to operate in impunity when in an AA bubble. And the ability of modern PLA air force. Even the Cold War sorties incurred serious losses among the ROC fighters, and in the long run, China can replace losses. Taiwan can’t. It was obvious even then, its far more obvious now.
The Taiwanese know they’re outgunned. The Chinese S-400 AA system bought from Russians means that their planes can’t even take off without being shot down, all from the mainland. Say what you will about the Russians, they know what they’re doing with anti-aircraft systems.
This is part of the entire parcel of constant demoralization that Beijing has effectively inflicted upon the island as I described above.
And no cluster of special interests wants to be submerged into a larger pool. You seem to believe that there’s actually democracy anywhere. Entertaining fantasy, yes.
As far as Chinese leadership goes, its pretty competent given the difficulties involved. The idea that China would be better off being led by a gay-loving, sterile woman from Taiwan is pretty funny, but no. Just no.
Oh, its definitely a de facto state, I would say. Chinese ultranationalists might call it a “rogue state” or an “outlaw state” but it is still a state. The day, as you say, when China refuses to acknowledge Taiwanese stamps in passports, then we know that something is up.
Dang – Taiwan gets serious signalling points for that! Eat that Scandinavia!
Peace.
China is never going to be a democracy, and the RoC hasn’t been capable of defending against an invasion for many years.
Do I really need to list the GDP per capita of Taiwan, SK and Japan in comparison to China?
Had the Nationalist army won the civil war China would be the world’s most powerful country today and the US wouldn’t even be a close second.
The financial crisis that China is going to hit in the next 10 years will be entirely the result of the utter ineptitude for the Communist Party*.
SK wants to reunite with the North even though it will mean importing massive poverty. West Germany wanted to reunite with with East Germany even though they knew it would cause tons of problems. HK wants to remain part of China instead of being independent. There are no cases in history of people who regard themselves as the same nation wanting to be in separate states.
The Taiwanese see themselves as a separate nation just like today’s Austrians see themselves as a separate nation from Germany even though everybody knows that they really aren’t.
*InB4 “the Chinese economy is doing awesome and will continue to grow at a billion percent a year forever”. China has a private sector debt of over 200% GDP. Japan’s number was 180% before hit hit it’s Lost (3) Decade(s). Even worse, China’s private debt is growing at an insane 30% per year. You can blame these horrific numbers on the incompetent retards who are currently running China. When China has real leadership it will be the strongest country on earth and when that happens, maybe Taiwan voluntarily comes back. If Taiwan doesn’t do so, it won’t matter as China will then be strong enough to force Taiwan back in the fold. But the “China Strong!” propaganda that is being spewed on this thread simply has no relation to the reality of 2017.
China will be a democracy in the next 20 years at most
The other de facto states are Kosovo, Somaliland and (a small part of the territory claimed by) Western Sahara. (Not counting those that are de facto dependent on the presence of another state’s troops). So not illustrious company.
So it can be argued that, in the long run, the existence of a Western-educated segment of the elite was a disaster.
On bad days I feel the same way about the US.
Apart from possessing an ill-stocked and underpowered brain, you are a clown, and I regret relapsing into interaction with you.
Then how did Kosovo join your list? Would it be able to withstand the Serbs?
Though it now enjoys widespread international recognition, most rich countries recognized it.
There is little doubt that Taiwan is qualitatively different from the others and had a very real chance of independence before 1990s or so; the opportunity was squandered and its doomed nowadays. Perhaps hilariously, part of the reason the opportunity was skipped was because the KMT government at the time believed that the mainland government would collapse and then beg before leadership from the ROC.
That hasn’t panned out, though Gordan Chang is still making money.
Kosovo’s dependence on a whole coalition of the US and its vassals confuses the issue in both respects, but its international recognition will never be general.
You should bet money on this!
It doesn’t look like an independent country, more like a protectorate, and it seems likely that it will never change. Should a great turmoil come, it could only make things worse for them.
And yes, recognition is not forthcoming from China or Russia. Not from countries hostile to the US, nor from countries with separatist provinces, unless US or EU bribes can make them recognize it.
Unless Serbia itself recognizes it. Which is not an impossibility.
I’m ready to let this subject drop cause I don’t care about China/Taiwan or any countries in the region. I don’t care if China conquers all of Asia and I don’t care if China becomes a modern version of the Warring States period, but I do think I should at least explain myself.
History shows us that economic liberalization leads to democracy. The reason that countries like North Korea are so economically oppressive is because economic development weakens the hold autocratic regimes have on power.
Chile, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea are all states that started out as dictatorships but became democracies as the result of economic liberalization. Economic liberalization led to dramatically more democratic governments in 19th and 20th century Europe, even the Russian Tsar was forced to make concessions to democratic rule in the early 20th century.
China began it’s own economic liberalization program nearly 30 years ago and, lo and behold, the country has become much more democratic than it was in Mao’s time. This is set to continue.
To say that China is not going to become a democracy is to say that China is going to buck the trend that every other autocracy that pursued capitalism did. It is also saying that the democratization trend that has been ongoing in China itself for the last 30 years will not continue.
Is Singapore democratic, though? Much of what looks like internal pressure to democratization was in reality actually just US pressure and in general American influence (cultural or political) and we all know how “democratic” and “free” the West has become.
@Anatoly Karlin: I have little doubt that China would eventually be able to conquer Taiwan if it so desired (even if the U.S. militarily intervenes but no nukes are used).
However, does China genuinely want to reacquire Taiwan or is it all empty talk? The reason that I am asking is because, in addition to the Chinese lives which will be lost in an invasion of Taiwan, Taiwan might very well be to China what the Baltic states were to the Soviet Union–in other words, a pain in the ass!
Indeed, does China genuinely want that?
All are the results of US pressure, and all became less economically competitive after they became more “democratic”, and even then, for a given value of democracy. Japan, for example, remains heavily controlled by its unelected governances(one could argue the US Deep State is similar).
At any rate, the notion of a “democratization trend” in China is misinformed and the Party is pervasive in ways that is unimaginable, and indeed, is pretty unique in the world. It is simultaneously cancerous in its feelers are in every single company but also allows an surprising degree of resilience and responsiveness from governance. It is, for all practical purposes, irreplaceable unless the Chinese want to embrace the Warring States. They do not.
China nowadays is certainly not Mao’s China. But there’s zero evidence it’ll ever turn into a liberal democracy, or that there is even much interest in that. Its basically a mandarin bureaucracy in how it skims off gaokao students into the government, which China was historically, and it seems set to endure.
Lately, the West has managed to embarrass itself enough that China literally points at the West as an example of “this is what happens when you let idiots vote. You get France/Sweden/Germany.”
Its not empty talk.
The locals are divided and ultimately don’t have any cultural resistance, unlike Eastern Europe, which could cohesively argue for their own culture. You can’t build a culture out of celebration of human degeneracy, really, no matter how much they try to do so.
I’m sure to a lot of Chinese, the leader who successfully does so gains the Mandate of Heaven. This is highly motivating.
What does this mean, liberal democracy? Is Tunisia a liberal democracy? Is Pakistan? Is Turkey?
Yes China will eventually become at least as democratic as those states. For it to not do so is to say that Greasy’s Law of Capitalist Nations does not apply to China but does to literally every other country in the world.
I do not see China becoming a cucked out open air prison camp for it’s core population the way that the Western countries have, but that has nothing to do with democracy. Democracy is not a value, it is just a way to run things.
@ Chieh
Yeah – every time I hear nonsense about how the Muslim world doesn’t have democracy, I’m asking myself; yeah, so?
Democracy is kind of cool and kind of nuts too.
@Greasy
This is the way I see it – democracy doesn’t have to be a value system like liberalism or post-modernism or multi-culturalism. It can simply be an organizational paradigm. As such, there is a lot of flexibility in it. For instance, I would argue that Iran is democratic in that it observes the forms and fairly well, but it does have gate keepers that ensure the preservation of a certain value system.
Peace.
@Daniel Chieh: You could be surprised at how easily separate cultures could be built, though. For instance, the Austrians built a culture out of a myth that they were Nazism’ first victims. Likewise, I don’t know what exactly, say, Moldovan or Macedonian or Laotian culture is based on.
As for your point about the Mandate of Heaven, perhaps you are correct in regards to this. Indeed, establishing a reputation as the re-gatherer of the Chinese nation could certainly appeal to a Chinese leader.
Also, out of curiosity–do you eventually expect China to make a grab for Mongolia and/or Kokang (in Burma)? Or would that be out of the question?
In addition to this, I don’t see why exactly China can’t eventually become a democracy. After all, Mongolia managed to do it in spite of the fact that it had a common history with China for centuries and in spite of the fact that it was never under U.S. influence (unlike, say, South Korea or Taiwan or Japan). Now, I’m not saying that this will necessarily happen within the next several decades; however, I do expect China to eventually become a democracy–whether it takes several decades or several centuries. Indeed, had the KMT won the Chinese Civil War, I suspect that China would already be a democracy right now. (Also, in regards to democracy, while you could point to Western Europe as alleged “failures” of democracy, you could also look at Poland and Hungary for countries which are democratic and yet are hostile to multiculturalism).
Finally, in regards to your claim about Taiwan having a brain drain, Taiwan’s PISA results suggest that this claim is doubtful, at the very least.
@Greasy William: Democracy doesn’t necessarily equal multiculturalism. Heck, just look at Poland and Hungary!
Ew, no.
Was that a joke?
PS. I apologize to any Himba reading this…
Ethiopia and Ethiopians are amazing in many respects. I speak from personal observation. To begin with, Ethiopians value culture, education, spirituality, politeness, and good manners above all. Talk to almost any thirty-something urban Ethiopian and you will find an earnest student pursuing his second Masters degree while working and raising a family. A nation of perpetual students must sooner or later produce a nation of engineers, scientists, and innovators. And they have their priorities right. The article mentions, “I mean, really: the government has a cap of about 15% on how much social science (that includes law) degrees the universities can grant”. Now that is evidence of a really, really intelligent government and shows that the educated Ethiopians have not fallen prey to the intellectual decline that accompanies an educational focus on fluff, irrelevance, and political correctness. I wish these people good luck.
To minimize this topic from whizzing away any further, the brain drain effected would not reasonably affect PISA scores. PISA is a measure of kids, and depending on your beliefs, the health of the schooling system and/or the IQ of the students.
China instead targets and hires away all successful professionals, more or less effectively torpedoing local industries(especially technology); such industries already have weaker economies of scale and connection, and the combination of being less profitable, and constantly bleeding talent is harsh on the local economy.
This probably won’t affect PISA, at least not right away, but it its part of the effective soft attack that gradually destroys the targeted country’s economy.
At any rate, the failures of democracy go well beyond self-destructive multiculturalism. Some of it is far more fundamental, like the tendency toward short-term planning in order to be reelected. At any rate, Mongolia, Turkey, etc, are not exactly thrilling examples of success. As our kind and brilliant host Mr. Karlin might say, democracy can become the trappings of a cargo cult, but cargo cultism is ultimately pretty useless in terms of efficacy.
Taiwan is done. finito.
http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/taiwans-sluggish-economy-on-the-brink-of-death-says-economist
https://international.thenewslens.com/article/39713
This just happened a couple days ago.
Taiwan’s parliament resumes brawl – BBC News
https://youtu.be/B8aZHxUap9Y
Nonsense.
If their father Abraham had built a temple don’t you think the Jews would consider it their holiest site?
The Kaaba is an ancient pagan Arab temple, and Mecca was a pagan holy city, and Allah Taala was the primary pagan Arab god.
Hey Bliss,
Thanks, but the Torah (an oral then written tradition centuries after the events) isn’t a good starting point for a discussion on the matter as far as we’re concerned. If you believe in its inerrancy, most welcome – but we’ll pass. You don’t have to believe our version of events but let’s not kid ourselves as if either one of us has some kind of solid empirical evidence for our claims.
As far as #2, of course not – they have always only been concerned with the line of Isaac (pbuh). As far as they’re concerned, Ishmael (pbuh) has as much significance as Esau – a supporting cast member, nothing more.
The rest is conjecture that is refuted by the narrative that the former pagans themselves brought out of the sands of Arabia. Who do you think the first Muslims were?
Peace.
My theory is that democracy can work great for a while in a state inherited as a homogeneous, educated and stable entity from some authoritarian state but it decays over time into systems of professional politicians and parties that rig the system to their own advantage. That’s why it sort of works in much of Eastern Europe but no longer works at all in Western Europe – the system has had less time to corrupt itself.
When we moved from a quasi-feudal system of estates to full democracy a hundred years ago, the first elected parliaments did not of course have career politicians nor were there lock-ins like state financing of the establishment parties that we have now. Instead people ran on reputations that they had gained elsewhere so landowners picked one of theirs that they trusted the most and campaigned for him, the workers picked the union guy among them who had been good at negotiating with the bosses and so on.
This is totally different now when a lot of the people in parliament have no experience of career outside of politics at all. Every party offers drones who’ve been training to be professional politicians since they were teenagers. They have image consulting companies tell them which clothes to wear and which buzzwords to repeat on TV and then they have the party machine tell them which button to press in the parliamentary votes. We didn’t have those party machines back in the day – most political parties were originally just somewhat vetted lists of people with a common interest.
There is no mechanism whatsoever to enforce a connection between the pre-election promises and actual parliamentary votes of politicians but the party machines ruthlessly enforce most voting choices on their politicians. The evolution of our so called democracy over the century has been one big story of moving power away from the directly elected representatives to the party organizations who are only influenced by donors and people who have made professional careers in the party organization.
In Hungary it’s extremely corrupt, though. The only way I can see it being better is that the top leaders grew up without efficient brainwashing (communist brainwashing was never too effective in Hungary), so people like Orbán have more based views. It will change after a few generations.
Orbán never had a job outside politics. His reputation was originally based on his speech at the 1989 funeral of Imre Nagy, the communist prime minister turned revolutionary, who was executed in 1958 for his role in the 1956 anti-communist revolution. Despite a previous agreement between the organizers and the communist party leaders according to which no political topics were to be touched in the speeches (a pretty absurd requirement for such a political funeral of someone hanged for political reasons), Orbán demanded multi-party elections and the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops from the country. He took some risks: at the time nobody knew if the Soviets would crush democratic aspirations once more, as they had done in 1956. Had that happened, Orbán might have been hanged or at least sentenced to prison, too.
I don’t think any Western politician ever took that kind of risks. Granted, Orbán was in his twenties, but he’s still a risk-taker, much more so than any other politician in Hungary or in Europe or the Western world elsewhere.
Japan is a democracy with no signs of being cucked. Turkey same thing. Argentina same thing. Mexico same thing. And say what you want about Hitler, but he was definitely no cuck and it was Democracy that brought him to power.
There is no relation between Democracy and cuckedness.
Ethiopia, LOL.
Claim: Photograph shows a famine stricken child crawling on the ground while a vulture waits in the background. Status: True.
Scores killed in Ethiopia protest crackdown
American Killed in Ethiopia Protests was California University Researcher
Later, they got a Communist revolution and lost and order of magnitude more people than what was alledgedly done by the Fascist Italians:
Ethiopian Red Terror
Mengistu Haile Mariam
Who to believe…
yawn Been there, done that.
Ethiopia has won zero Nobel Prizes, Britain has won a hundred and twenty
Confederate States of America and United States of America?
Why are Nigerians taken as the gold standard of “African-ness”? It’s sufficient to say that East Africans and West Africans have distinct genes and phenotypes. Some of that is due to admixture with surrounding populations, but some of it presumably due to native selective pressures. The ectomorphic body type you see in East Africans distinguishes them from both Middle Easterners and Bantus.
That photo was a child from Sudan.
South Africa is not a hellhole I don’t know what you’re talking about.
South Africa is paradise defined. I look forward to the first fusion reactor coming from them!
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2017-03-31/south-africas-sacp-warns-of-looting-at-treasury-after-zuma-axes-finance-minister
Worsens your opinion of Mussolini?
Was it good earlier?
That would be unfortunate if your name is really Daniil Adamov:
“When dealing with such a race as Slavic – inferior and barbaric – we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy. We should not be afraid of new victims… …I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians.”
— Benito Mussolini, 20 September 1920
On top of that, in the Italian concentration camp of Rab, which was primarily for these ‘barbaric Slavs’, they put Slavs in tents and Jews in houses to show these lowly Slavs they’re inferior to Jews in the eyes of fascists.
Weak countries get dominated by stronger countries, but who is weak or strong is is not set in stone. But given Ethiopia’s massive demographic advantage over its much smaller neighbours it had literally no excuse.
Precisely. And that wasn’t inevitable either. As I already told you: you’re treating historic events as if they are falling from the sky rather than as a result of guile and skill of their political leaders, which must come from the national culture.
It would provide political stability. Ethiopia wouldn’t have made it to Taiwanese levels but surely to where India is today, but they failed to dominate much smaller states. It’s actually incredible how incompetent that turned out to be.
Sweden was a one-party state and only a democracy on paper from the 1930s to mid-70s. It did just fine in that period. Japan was the same for much of the postwar period and they are doing fine. I’ve been reading about their imminent collapse – any day now! – for 20 years. It isn’t happening. Their per capita GDP is highest ever once you adjust for currency/inflation(or deflation in their case). Meanwhile ‘positive demographics’ France is struggling.
Point is, I think it’s puerile to blame a system for a cultural failure. Same reason why I chuckle when I see Indians blaming democracy(then explain America) or large population(explain China) for their country’s woes.
Your comment smells the same. We’re dealing with a deeper cultural rot here. It isn’t so simple to blame it on democracy. Cuba imported lots of Africans because Che wanted a less white country. It was done under a de facto dictatorship.
Point is, democracy or not is really a red herring and a total diversion. You can have a nationalist culture and you’ll be fine with or without democracy. If you don’t, you’ll be fucked eventually with whichever system you choose. Western countries don’t want to face the fact that their culture may have gotten them where they are, but it’s total shit at keeping them there. I’m not even talking about always dominating the world. Just basic survival instinct. That’s what is at play here, not democracy or autocracy or any other political system. It’s the cultural rot.
Doesn’t Mussolini get any credit for freeing 420,000 slaves when he occupied Etiopia?
LOL. Black countries are poor because they are surrounded by other poor black countries. And those other countries are poor because they are next to Ethiopia, which is a poor black country.
Why would I blame culture and not the system when my country votes in right-wing and anti-poz politicians who then give us left-wing turbo-poz policies once they’re in power? We’ve been voting for anti-immigration for a long time now, our candidates get through and then they give us more immigration once in power.
It’s not even about immigration, the same holds for every issue. Democracy is a lie and our system is just rule by unelected party elites; we only get to vote for which puppet pushes the vote button in the parliament according to however his party bosses want him to vote. Democracy was supposed to be a system where we can depose the ruling class without a violent revolution, instead it’s just another tool of legitimizing rule by an entrenched elite class that cannot be removed without revolution.
Its easy to claim “its just culture” without noting that democracy tends to enable the social welfare state, shifting into a top heavy situation where eventually insane solutions like mass immigration become reasonable; not to mention the original ridiculousness of increasing the vote to build your base. Long before immigration was a thought, the US extended franchise first to all white men, then to all men, and then to universal suffrage and soon will rapidly proceed to include the entire world of living, breathing dummies. The main source of this was almost always because one party felt that by increasing the voter base of a favorable bloc, the party would benefit.
Its the rules of the game. Win through votes. To maximize winning, increase your voting base however possible.
So yes, democracy innately brings about structural problems which seem to pretty inevitably take us to cultural destruction. This isn’t to indicate that there aren’t problems with autocracy, but democracy is indeed a god that fails.
Sounds like a party primary system for political candidates would be a breath of fresh air. At the very least, each district would get to select its preferred electoral candidate, not the party leaders.
What an ass-backwards, illogical point. Could only be made by a brainwashed fool. You really think the imitation should be considered the “starting point” instead of the original?
Show us where the story of Abraham originates if not in the Torah. Nowhere in the Torah/Old Testament will you find that Abraham built a temple. Or that he ventured anywhere near the vicinity of Mecca.
Hey Bliss,
You say it is an imitation – I mean how else does one explain the similarities right? Well, there are two rational explanations:
1) It is a rip-off.
2) It is exactly what it says it is – a revelation from the same Divine source that has come to set the record straight.
Correct, it is not concerned with his travels to visit his son Ishmael (pbuh) in the desert wilderness to which he was exiled.
When the Muslims first made contact with the greater Christian world it was not seen as a new religion. Rather, it was seen as a heresy. The Muslims were called everything from “The Sons of Hagar” to “Ishmaelites” to “Saracens”. The first polemic penned against Islam was by John of Damascus – it was called the “Heresy of the Ismaelites”:
“They are descended from Ishmael, [who] was born to Abraham of Agar, and for this reason they are called both Agarenes and Ishmaelites. They are also called Saracens, which is derived from Sarras kenoi, or destitute of Sara, because of what Agar said to the angel: ‘Sara hath sent me away destitute.’ [99] These used to be idolaters and worshiped the morning star and Aphrodite, whom in their own language they called Khabár, which means great. [100] And so down to the time of Heraclius they were very great idolaters.”
http://orthodoxinfo.com/general/stjohn_islam.aspx
“..but despite the inauspicious beginning, the conquest of Jerusalem by Caliph Omar in 637 was welcomed by some Jews as a release from Christian oppression. In the following Jewish apocalyptic tract composed soon afterward, Esau stands for Rome/Byzantium.Christendom and Ishmael for the Muslims:
…The angel Metatron at once answered him. ‘Fear not, O son of man! The Holy One, blessed be He, brings the kingdom of Ishmael only to save you from this wicked one (Rome) He will send a prophet to them and conquer the Land [of Israel]…And the second king who arises from Ishmael will love [the people of] Israel and conquer all the kingdoms.'”
Historical Dictionary of Judaism
Why were both Jews and Christians of late antiquity calling the conquering Arabs Ishmaelites?
Peace.
This is absurd. You reject the veracity of the “revealed” Torah/Old Testament in favor of the opinions of people who were not “prophets” writing many centuries later, after the Muslim conquests.
Show us where any of the people you quote agree that the pagan Kaaba was actually built by Abraham?
Don’t be rude to Talha.
Muslims are our enemies but their religion deserves our respect. I would say Judaism and Islam agree on about 95% of the major issues.
Yeah – this is getting pretty absurd.
Why would they care? It is evidence enough that they called them Ishmaelites to affirm their Abrahamic origins. The Ishmaelites recorded their own history. You don’t believe in the veracity of the Ishmaelite narrative – which is fine with us. Why should that bother me?
As far as the Torah is concerned – since you keep bringing it up:
“And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation.” Genesis 17:20
Is there anybody else that can historically lay claim to being the Ishmaelite “great nation”? Or are we waiting for somebody out of Peru or maybe Tuvalu?
Peace.
Sheer stupidity. They care enough to call them “ishmaelites” but not enough to agree that the Kaaba was built by their prophet Abraham? Neither Jews nor Christians have ever given a damn about the Kaaba. What does that tell you?
Did anyone call arabs ishmaelites before they became muslims and started claiming that heritage? Of course not. Again, what does that tell you?
Hey Bliss,
Yup.
That neither Jews nor Christians have ever given a damn about the Kaaba.
Only the famous 1st century Jewish-Roman historian, Josephus:
“Chapter 12.
“Concerning Abimelech: and concerning Ismael the son of Abraham: and concerning the Arabians, which were his posterity.
“But as for the Arabians, they circumcise after the thirteenth year: because Ismael, the founder of their nation, who was born to Abraham of the concubine, was circumcised at that age; concerning whom I will presently give a particular account, with great exactness.”
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/ant-1.html
That I’ve been taking you way too seriously?
I need a little respite from the intellectual butt-kicking I’m receiving at your capable hands – I won’t be able to sit down for a week. I’d appreciate that the conversation ends here.
Peace.
Ethiopia’s economy ranks smack in the middle of African countries. Despite this ordinal rank, its per capita GDP is closer to the countries at the bottom than to countries at the top, so it is far from being a top performer.
The only way to consider it “way better” than South Africa is in terms of its apparently rosy prospects. I too wish them well, but it’s surely too early to consider their rise a foregone conclusion.
I had this Chinese friend once. Later I found out he was from Taiwan. One day we were talking about the PLA’s victory in the civil war and I asked him why the PLA didn’t just continue onto Taiwan and finish the job. He became somewhat upset and told me I shouldn’t ask questions like that because for him it’s a sensitive ethnic issue, rather than merely political or economic.
Interesting article. I will definitely continue doing research on Ethiopia. The country has always fascinated me. As mentioned above, they are the only African country that wasn’t colonized. Also, they have a written history as opposed to most other black African countries that only recorded history orally. I’m of Nigerian descent and I’ve always been jealous of Ethiopian women and other East African women. Most of the Ethiopian women I know have to beat men of all races off them with a stick. Also, they can have white looking children if they intermarry with whites.
I will keep my fingers crossed that Ethiopia manages to develop. Many Ethiopians are not black like your typical sub-saharan African person, but it’d still be great to see them succeed.
It won’t happen any time soon. The electoral prospects of the ruling party at the time Kosovo declared independence immediately disintegrated, even though they opposed independence.
Pardon me if I’m wrong, but you appear to believe that uncontrollable environmental factors never prove decisive in history.
Put aside obvious ones like famine or drought, plain old luck is sometimes all it takes to lay waste to the best made plans. You could be the best server in tennis history, but that doesn’t mean you’ll never double-fault. If you double-fault facing match point, you’re toast – I bet the international relations equivalent has happened more than a few times throughout the long history of mankind.
I wonder how long it’ll take the usual suspects to quash this like they did to China’s investment in Pireaus, (Greece), so they could bring the country to its knees as a warning to others.
They have very few natural resources, and subsistence farming or export-oriented monoculture by multinational corporations (most of the non-mining economy in other countries) is quite difficult, too. As to South Africa, subtract the whites, and you get Zimbabwe. Obviously Ethiopia is better than that, and without the toxic “anti-racist” looter mentality.
Maybe. As far as I know both countries are engaging in EU accession talks.
As a point of fact, highland Ethiopians such as the Amhara and Tigryna speak actual Semitic languages. This implies a closer cultural and historical connection of highland Ethiopians to the Middle East than would apply to non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic speakers elsewhere in Africa.
Afro-Asiatic is a language superfamily analogous to Indo-European. Semitic is a much more closely related sub-family family within Afro-Asiatic, analogous to maybe Slavic languages.
Why is there so much misinformation on this website?
That’s not a Habesha , that’s some random ethnic group on the periphery
HBD types will say those Bermudan blacks have a drop of white blood, and thats what makes them smart.
I doubt if the percentages of white blood in Bermudan blacks is very different to US blacks.