Southern Sudan votes 99.57% for Independence!

It has been a LONG time in coming, but the Sudanese finally got a chance to vote for the independence of Southern Sudan. How sure are they of their desire for separation? They voted 99.57% for independence! And unlike most votes of this magnitude, there are no charges of fraud being bandied about in the international press.

Six of the ten southern states registered a 99.9 percent vote for separation, with the lowest vote in favor of secession came in at 95.5 percent in Western Bahr al-Ghazal state, which borders Darfur. The long-awaited referendum produced an overwhelming turnout of 99 percent among voters in the south, one of the poorest and least developed regions on earth.

In northern Sudan, voter turnout was only 60 percent, and a modest 58 percent of voters – southerners who live in the north – were in favor of the oil-rich south breaking away. Many southerners opted to leave their lives and work in the north to move home ahead of the referendum, and the United Nations says it expects another 100,000 southerners to make the north-south journey within the next month. More than 190,000 southerners have flooded back into the south since early October, though the most recent arrivals were not able to participate in the referendum, since they had not registered to vote in either the north or the south.

Keep in mind (and your prayers) that this does not end the matter. The North still wants large portions of the South, and especially their lucrative oil fields. There are a number of issues to be worked out. But the fact that the vote took place - without violence - is a hopeful sign that peace may finally come to this poor war-town nation.

Why is Tunisia important?

The question has been asked again and again - why should Americans care about Tunisia? After all, their main contribution to our culture was to serve as the shooting location for Tatooine in the Star Wars movies. The so-called Jasmine Revolution has been going on for days now, but still is not garnering much attention in the US press.

CNN has up a good explanation of why this is important, and why a revolution in this tiny nation could have far-reaching implications for the world.

It might be too soon to predict a populist revolution erupting throughout North Africa anytime soon following the example of Tunisia. But these recent social uprisings in a region of the world important to Europe and the United States should serve as a warning call that state stability achieved through intensified political oppression, economic marginalization and social injustice are certain guaranties of the kind of societal uncertainty from which future instability occurs without any guarantee of a democratic outcome.

Southern Sudan voting for Independence

My family spent the weekend watching the History channel's series The Revolution about America's split from England. So, it is with no small interest that I read Southern Sudan is ready to vote for independence from the North. But, like our Declaration of Independence, this vote may not be the end of the matter. The South contains 80% of Sudan's oil wealth, and the North has shown plenty of willingness to shed blood in order to protect their interests. Here's hoping the will of people prevails, and that the international community stands behind the vote.

"Do As I Say, Not As I Do" is again a failure

The New York Times has up an amazing story of an African country which turned itself from a net beggar to a net exporter of food by doing one simple thing. They defied Western "experts" and instituted a fertilizer subsidy program which mimicked those in place in the USA and Britain. Typically, the World Bank refuses to grant loans to countries which subsidize fertilizer, so most nations try to make due with depleted soil and wind up starving.

In Malawi itself, the prevalence of acute child hunger has fallen sharply. In October, the United Nations Children’s Fund sent three tons of powdered milk, stockpiled here to treat severely malnourished children, to Uganda instead. “We will not be able to use it!” Juan Ortiz-Iruri, Unicef’s deputy representative in Malawi, said jubilantly...In the 1980s and again in the 1990s, the World Bank pushed Malawi to eliminate fertilizer subsidies entirely. Its theory both times was that Malawi’s farmers should shift to growing cash crops for export and use the foreign exchange earnings to import food, according to Jane Harrigan, an economist at the University of London.

Here is proof yet again that the best way to succeed is to do what is proven to work, and not what bureaucrats theorize in office buildings. Of course, we still need to see what happens long-term, but for the moment the people of Malawi is fed and even able to bring in some capital by exporting food.

African Economist: PLEASE Stop Sending Aid

This is certainly a different take on the question of Western aid to Africa. It does make a certain amount of sense, though one wonders if it has a prayer of being heard in the halls of Congress.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?

Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.

I am reminded of the "We Are The World" era in Ethiopia where millions of tons of grain were collected to help with the famine, and the government of Ethiopia allowed it to rot on the docks, rather than help out their starving subjects who, if fed, might revolt and threaten their power base.