Mining the Panama Papers and other leaks to reveal the hidden looting of West Africa by its corrupt elite

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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/24/risking-all-for-truth.html

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Lest we forget…

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Thanks, Cory. I will look at this ASAP.

I worked in West Africa. I have people I would like to call friends there. Some of them knew Norbert Zongo, I think.I’ll see what they make of this.

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I was just arguing about this the other day with the wife. My point was that the failure of postcolonial Africa cannot be blamed on the long gone colonials, the majority cause is now the brain drain and cash drain of it’s elites. If all the cash and educated people had left post colonial America, it probably would have looked like Africa today, an extraction kleptocracy.

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I’d look carefully at how much “nudging” has been going on by external powers (government and commercial). They’re quite happy to have kleptocrats in power who can keep the lid on, and stay away from their stuff.

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No doubt, I’ve read “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”, but I don’t buy that there should be no accountability. Sure for decades we interfered in Latin America keeping guys like Chavez out of power or killing them when they got elected. But his regime and successor seems to have driven Venezuela off a cliff all by itself without our help. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t? Is it still our fault no matter what? Should we not have fracked oil prices down?

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To hell with fracked oil prices. Electric cars charged with solar panels can be run cheaper than oil powered cars.

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What relevance is that? I was speaking solely of what was the immediate cause of the crisis in Venezuela. Their socialist economy was thrown into crisis by the sudden drop in oil.

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Aaaah!
Actually, the Venezuela problem is that they won’t let the bolivar devalue. That’s how you whip inflation.

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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-economy/venezuela-announces-99-6-percent-devaluation-of-official-forex-rate-idUSKBN1FP2WK.

Doesn’t seem to be the case. But AFAICT this crisis is homemade. I’m just reacting to the viewpoint that everything wrong in the world is the fault of the Western Imperialists, no matter how much time has passed or who is now or has been in power.

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