What is happening in Europe and Africa, and the people and culture thereof?

Boko Haram: Abducted Nigerian girl, 15, reunited with family

The Nigerian military say they have freed 700 women and children from Boko Haram in the last week. This latest operation is part of advances by the army in the group's last stronghold, the vast Sambisa forest. But there is still no sign of any of the girls abducted from Chibok in April 2014, which caused an international outcry.

Boko Haram abducted an estimated 2,000 women and girls last year.

This looks like a job for the EU!

There's more:

The governments of Europe are confronting an epochal choice in the Mediterranean. Do they allow Europe to remain on course toward inundation by the African population explosion, inevitably turning Florence into Ferguson and Barcelona into Baltimore?

The conventional wisdom is that it's unthinkable to stop the African tsunami. Veteran public radio correspondent Sylvia Poggioli assured gullible NPR listeners on Monday:

This is a human tide that cannot be stopped," she says. ... Europeans have to start providing legal channels that will allow them to seek asylum here. This is a humanitarian crisis, says Mascena, that cannot be solved by use of force -- or by leaving these desperate human beings bottled up in Africa and the Middle East.

Or will Europeans adopt the sensible policies of Australia and Israel that have succeeded at turning back Camp of the Saints-style invasions by boat?
(source)

I especially liked the erudite mentions of elephants...!

Tusks are not -to us or the Europeans- very valuable. Can we say the same about Africans? No. They have an ancient grudge!

Erudite? You seem to have a knack for picking writers who clearly have no idea what they are talking about. This one marginally better than the previous, I see they are both from the same magazine/blog collection. There are discussions to be had, but this would be like discussing web standards with Oprah.

As soon as I saw map #2 I was inclined to think "to Americans" at the end of that title.

Happily, it didn't include my home state of Michigan. Romans on the border, though.

I especially liked the erudite mentions of elephants...!

Like this one?

These African traditions of quantity over quality in raising children are now obsolete in a world where elephants are no longer rivals. Africans now have AK-47s, so it's more likely that four billion Africans will kill off all the wild game than that the elephants will get the upper hand again.

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The way so many African countries are run I much pref the elephants.

As soon as I saw map #2 I was inclined to think "to Americans" at the end of that title.

Happily, it didn't include my home state of Michigan. Romans on the border, though.

I never said that, I suppose it was Frenzie, a much more American condescending European than myself.
Notice the following difference in style:

To me Americans can't even read a map, that's why they need so much those irritating and useless GPS devices.
They are always lost anyway, maps, gps, whatever.

@jax: Is your home, your house, open to all and any, at any hour? But perhaps you've never had one...
I'd appreciate it if you'd resume your Charity vs. Government Subsidy thread! It would be enlightening.

I have several homes. Here is a curio from my latest, Södertälje:  Drowning for Hope -- On Their Way to Sweden, Södertälje for Any Price

It is April 26. One hundred years and two days have passed since the leaders of the Ottoman Empire decided that all Christians would be exterminated. My family originates from Midyat in Turabdin (Mountain of Worshippers), known for the world's densest concentration of church and monasteries. My ancestors were butchered during extremely dramatic circumstances and only a few children survived -- they were my grandparents. Stories of rape, abduction and eradication attempts abound.

My mom and I are in the car on the way to the Syriac Orthodox Church to attend a memorial service for those victims of the genocide in 1915. In the same church there are also other activities going on. Some relatives are there to pray for and remember their uncles, who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea as they were heading to Sweden.

"Stop, she looks lost, she must be heading for the church." Mom has caught sight of a woman who is dressed in black, just as we are. I wind down the car window. It is true, she was heading for the church as well.

She says she came to Sweden -- and freedom -- just three weeks ago. She paid smugglers 13,000 Euro for the trip. She coughs and looks rough. She caught chronic bronchitis during the boat trip between Turkey and Greece. She was also suffocated in a truck packed with refugees. Two women in the truck died.

"Sweden should take the money, get paid to pick us up, and let us in. Then we would avoid paying cynical smugglers, criminals who do not care about human life."

If you are feeling nostalgic, the original thread on charity is here.

Raw capitalism essentially functions on the principle that "the consumer is always right", by prioritising consumer choice over supplier convenience. This means that resources will naturally flow to where the price is highest.

State capitalism and regulation is based on the principle of common good, that there are resources that can be better governed by dedicated people than by consumer choice alone, in the communist form "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs".

Of course there is a lot more to be said about the two than the above, but that should be the gist of it, and that there have never been a pure capitalist system that has lasted long without governance, and no state system that has lasted long without reintroducing some measure of capitalism. The shortcomings and weaknesses of either system should also be well enough known.

Charity has none of the benefit and most of the shortcomings of both, and adding peculiar some maladies of their own. Its reason for existence is that there are needs that neither the private nor the public sector has been able to cover, making charity "economic activity of the gaps". The natural approach then would be to find ways to fill those gaps rather than praise charity.

Let's imagine you were narcoleptically destitute, that Frenzie decided to start a charity to alleviate the destruction wrecked by this overlooked ailment, and I were the major donor.

I became dedicated to this cause after my beloved grand-aunt destroyed herself and her family in a freak narcoleptic attack. Just before that she had thrown away the green trousers she always wore, and I have become convinced that this very action was the cause of this calamity. Thus my one requirement for Frenzie giving you sorely needed aid is that you always will wear green trousers, as a prophylactic mind you.

Frenzie, being a rational fellow, will know that this is nonsense, but it is something he will have to put up with, as he can do narcoleptic good with my money, and after all, wearing green trousers doesn't hurt (much).

If he managed to secure funding without having to cater the vagaries of us donors, he would operate pretty much like a government agency. It would still be no guarantee that what he did would benefit the sufferers, let alone optimise those benefits, but at least his focus would no longer be the donors, but the sufferers.

Americans and maps? They usually haven't a clue about where places are that their military expensive juggernaut starts wars!

Americans and maps? They usually haven't a clue about where places are that their military expensive juggernaut starts wars!

Sez the ex-colonist. Falklands now, Falklands forever!

Cannot disagree with that!

Eritrean Authorities Must Clarify Fate of Dawit Isaak, Detained Without Trial for 5,000 Days

Egypt wanted to spy via Egypt's Free Basics shenanigans.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-egypt-idUSKCN0WY3JZ

Egypt blocked Facebook Inc's (FB.O) Free Basics Internet service at the end of last year after the U.S. company refused to give the Egyptian government the ability to spy on users, two people familiar with the matter said.

[...]

Any move to shut down Facebook completely in Egypt would likely bring a harsh popular backlash, said Ramy Raoof, a digital security researcher and consultant. But blocking Free Basics can crimp Facebook's growth among lower income people, without alienating middle-class Internet users and businesses.

"Shutting down Facebook completely is an idea that is far-fetched and would lead to great consequences," Raoof said.

I used to think that blocking Facebook and Twitter in China was a mistake. These social media are perfect for spying on the populace. Even if somebody suspicious were to stay away from them, she certainly would have family and friends that wouldn't. However, fastforward a few years and they are back in a Chinese tapping, in the process creating a couple more Chinese IT behemoths.

I wouldn't think Egypt would be able to pull off something like that, and WeChat is probably too Chinese for Egyptian tastes, but they certainly would look to China.

Letting the gay lobby infect another formerly fine thread:

https://youtu.be/3gaDAeWKTjU

Since this is about Eurafrica, I have a plan.
Get a few English ladies living from UK's unemployment subside here in Algarve, take them to Morroco, trade them for camels and cross the Sahara.

You would get more with Scots ladies maybe.

The world as it ought to be shown.

And...
http://www.destsetters.com/destination/KzjNgbLZk6/gay-algarve-portugal

We are selling renewable energy to Morocco.
Making a lot of trade agreements with the Moors.
Ain't history ironic... or not. The Reconquest was basically about trade and culture and a few fights so each part could honor his side...

By the way, just to inform my American friends, I remember them that the Sultan of Morocco was the first to recognize the USA as a nation. 
What an enlightened Sultan they had at the time.

By the way, just to inform my American friends, I remember them that the Sultan of Morocco was the first to recognize the USA as a nation.    
What an enlightened Sultan they had at the time.

And, yet, within a decade we had to go to war against them -- because piracy in the name of Islam was "by the book"...
That line from the Marine Corps hymn "to the shores of Tripoli" has a historical basis. (Europeans wouldn't know this: They've forgotten more history than there's ever been; nowadays, there's only "critical theory" and its progenitors.)

That line from the Marine Corps hymn "to the shores of Tripoli" has a historical basis. (Europeans wouldn't know this: They've forgotten more history than there's ever been; nowadays, there's only "critical theory" and its progenitors.)

Tripoli is Libya, the capital of Morocco is Rabat.
And you pretend to give geography and history lessons to Europeans...

United States of Africa? African Union launches all-Africa passport

Cool. Africans have a lot going for them nowadays, unlike in the previous century.

Where hope goes to die.
https://www.facebook.com/AfricanUnionCommission/