Will Africa become a second Chinese continent?

In the Most Important News, Michael Snyder writes about the tremendous investments China is making on the African continent.

Today, more than 10,000 Chinese-owned firms are operating in Africa, and virtually every major road, bridge, railway and skyscraper is being built by the Chinese. As a result, most African nations are very deeply indebted to China at this point. And as you will see below, when those debts go bad that gives the Chinese a tremendous amount of leverage.

Read more here.

Did you know that Africa is bigger than China, India, the contiguous U.S. and most of Europe—combined!

Read more here.

The importance of free markets

Weird Dave posts at Ace of Spades a wonderful piece on the importance of free markets. He also links to a piece by Maetenloch on why trophy hunting for lions is so important to Africa's local economies. Read them here.

How the left is keeping Africans poor

Matt Ridley writes about

the undeniable truth that western countries are preventing Africans getting access to the cheapest power, which is fossil-fueled.

Much of the world's farmland has been diverted

into making motor fuel, in the form of ethanol and biodiesel, for the rich to salve their green consciences.

...Many refugees are fleeing Islamist persecution in Libya and the Sahel but as Dr Kandeh Yumkella, UN under-secretary-general, told the BBC, the “long-term push factors” that are driving people to make the “miserable journey” include the lack of energy in sub-Saharan Africa.

Without abundant fuel and power, prosperity is impossible: workers cannot amplify their productivity, doctors cannot preserve vaccines, students cannot learn after dark, goods cannot get to market. Nearly 700 million Africans rely mainly on wood or dung to cook and heat with, and 600 million have no access to electric light.

...Africa is awash with fossil fuels — but not the capital to build plants to turn them into electricity.

... the US passed a bill prohibiting the Overseas Private Investment Corporation — a federal agency responsible for underwriting American companies that invest in developing countries — from investing in energy projects that involve fossil fuels.

And Donald Kaberuka, president of the African Development Bank, says it is hypocritical for western governments, made rich by fossil fuels, “to say to African countries, ‘You cannot develop dams, you cannot develop coal, just rely on these very expensive renewables’. African countries will not listen.”

...Meanwhile, China’s new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, is stepping in as the Americans and Europeans step back. Its willingness to fund coal projects is one of the reasons other Asian countries are rushing to join the project, to the irritation of Washington. The Australian government is joining forces with Japan to push for the construction of “clean coal” plants in the developing world — power stations that burn coal more efficiently.

Read more here.

Ethnic cleansing and genocide in Iraq

Yezidi children killed by ISIS in Syria

Razib Khan writes:

The delusion of a multi-ethnic and multi-religious Iraq and Syria has collapsed.

There is no point in pretending that we are neutral in the clash between antinomian barbarians and ethno-religious autocrats. The latter are imperfect, but they have a vision of life which we recognize as life.** We must stand in some way with imperfect humans when they are battling against organic automata, motivating by an ideology which bears false witness to any traditional social order. People can disagree on the details, but there is a moderate position between total detachment and taking upon the burdens of the world upon one’s shoulders.

Read much more here.

Arming our enemies

Michael Ledeen posts another must read column today on Iran and what Obama is doing to help the Mullahs arm. Obama has just granted Iran spare parts for its commercial aircraft. Ledeen writes,

Iran uses its commercial aircraft for military purposes (one of the reasons that eery flight between Tehran and Caracas is so worrisome), and the mullahs have been limited by the degradation of the national fleet. The Boeing planes and GE engines date to the 1970s, and very few of them are in service. Back in the mid-eighties, when I spent quite a bit of time with Iranian officials, they repeatedly asked for spare parts, both for the passenger planes and for the aging military craft, the F4s and F5s. Secretary of Defense Weinberger of course vetoed any such discussions, and the embargo has held until just now.

Meanwhile, as my buddy/boss/colleague Mark Dubowitz explains, the Russians and Iranians are working on ways to bust the oil sanctions on Tehran. They’re gonna swap stuff: Russian goodies (probably including military equipment such as submarines, torpedoes and antiaircraft missiles) for Iranian oil.

Mark rightly insists that if this deal is consummated, we should come down on the Russians with all four claws, but how likely is that? As I write, Soviet — no, make that Russian — special forces are hard at work in Ukraine, stirring up ethnic conflict, the better to justify forceful action against Ukrainian territory. We’re clucking our tongues and sending some fighter planes to Romania, but Putin won’t worry much about that sort of gesture; he doesn’t believe Obama has the courage or the will to confront Russia.

Commentators are looking for ways to describe the current situation, and John Schindler, a smart man with a real talent for telling it straight, is calling it Cold War II. I love his words here: “While it’s certainly true that the U.S. and NATO don’t seek confrontation with Russia, it’s worthwhile remembering Trotsky’s line that you might not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”

And so it is, indeed the war has been on for some time, and it’s a bit hotter than Cold War 1.0 was for most of the twentieth century. Kiev burned, and may burn again soon. Caracas is burning, as are many of Venezuela’s cities and towns. Crimea has been annexed, and Syria is still aflame, as is Iraq, and also Yemen. Estonia and Finland are seriously frightened, as well they should be. If we pull back from the crisis du jour, we can see it’s a global conflict. Iran and Russia are fighting in Syria, sometimes with and sometimes against the jihadi marauders. Cuba is fighting in Venezuela, a country the Castros largely command, and Hezbollah is in there, too. And for those of you who follow Africa, know that the Iranians are up to their necks in Nigeria, buying influence and supporting the mass murderers in Boko Haram.

Our enemies are indeed vulnerable. I keep pointing to their fear of their own people. Assad in Damascus, Khamenei in Tehran and Maduro in Caracas are all cases in point. We could do a lot in those places, probably bring down the dictators without firing a shot. But for that to happen, we need a president that believes in America. As Schindler says, “We will have many allies in resisting Russian aggression if we focus on issues of freedom and sovereignty, standing up for the rights of smaller countries to choose their own destiny.”

The same applies to Putin’s comrades from Pyongyang to Nicaragua.

But, as the Ukrainian revolutionaries have found, and as the aftermath of our victory in Iraq has demonstrated, the battle against evil is not going to end on this earth, and if you fail to challenge the heart of the current darkness, you may well find things worse than they were before. Our enemies are bursting with confidence. They think they’ve got us. Bret Stephens: “Mr. Putin knows Mr. Obama. He knows that the U.S. president has the digestive fortitude of a tourist in Tijuana.”

As Mr Obama runs for the Pepto Bismol, he’s arming our enemies for the next round. So it’s gonna get worse.

Look how many countries could be stuffed into Africa!

Bill Whittle calls it the Greenland effect.