Genocide and Economic Renewal

[cronus]

We are, in fact, "achieving the desired effect." According to Steven Pinker, genocides since WWII have been falling, and the number killed each decade is less than the previous decade. He cheats in his argument by quoting real numbers. How low can you get?

Could be getting better at hiding bodies and embedding journalists away from the action? I don't doubt the great moderation was real, social and economic, but it is over...and history over historic time presents no reliable signature for social progress. The Holocaust came after a century of apparent social progress in Europe. It is not that Pinker is wrong but that he is dangerously wrong and presents a reason for complacency when vigilance is required.

Pinker presents the kind of graphs Taleb Nassim argues against in The Black Swan. Sweet curves of delight cannot fit well with a non-linear reality except by ignoring reality.

[Blind groper]

Scrumple

We can divide humanity into two groups.
1. The minority who, like me, relate to hard data, and especially numbers.
2. The majority who, like you seem to be, ignore numbers because they do not agree with personal and unsupported opinion.

[cronus]

Scrumple

We can divide humanity into two groups.
1. The minority who, like me, relate to hard data, and especially numbers.
2. The majority who, like you seem to be, ignore numbers because they do not agree with personal and unsupported opinion.

You can divide humanity into two grunts

1. The kind that count
2. The kind that have heard about counting....


Bet you weren't aware I don't represent humanity here.

[cronus]

Evidence anyway.

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/afr ... 85237.html

Rwanda: 20 years after the genocide, a nation emerges from the shadows

......The bumpy terrain of the so-called “Land of a Thousand Hills” was little changed. Rwanda is still a mass of knolls, peaks and valleys smothered in a patchwork of bright green crops and terracotta-coloured earth. However, its beauty has, until recently, been shrouded in a veil of darkness. For 20 years, Rwanda has lived with the ghost of the devastating genocide of 1994. In 100 days of frenzied horror, almost one million people – a tenth of the country’s total population – were slaughtered. Most of them were Tutsis, killed by the Hutu majority.

In 2004, on my last visit, people looked haunted, lost, their eyes shadowed by desperate sadness. But the atmosphere seemed different now, more at peace with itself. To suggest that the entire country is moving on would be facile, but life is changing and that veil of darkness is at last lifting. Appropriately, the theme for Kwibuka20, the 20th anniversary commemorations, is “Remember … Unite … Inspire.”

“We were the poorest country on Earth in 1994, we were a million dead and we couldn’t look each other in the eye,” Jacqui Sebageni told me. She is director of Thousand Hills Expeditions and a leading figure in Rwanda’s tourism sector. “If people could see us now, as a strong nation looking forward ... we’re in a really good place and we want the world to come and see it.”

......“It’s a miracle Akagera still exists,” explained Sarah Hall, African Parks’ Tourism Manager. “The government rescued it before it was too late, but it still had poachers and invasive exotic species that needed to be eradicated.”

(continued)

[cronus]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-36285889

Rwanda's technology revolution helps country forge new path after genocide

Returning to Rwanda after an absence of several years, the BBC's Milton Nkosi finds a country which has undergone astonishing technological change.
The Rwandan capital Kigali was a hive of activity this week as the city hosted the World Economic Forum on Africa.

The land of a thousand hills is shaking off its negative image as a country forever linked with the 1994 genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed.
It is breaking old stereotypes not just about itself but also as an African nation.

The technology and innovation projects dotted all around this city are generating a new, positive narrative, led by a new generation of young entrepreneurs, bursting with great ideas.
In the Kigali suburb of Gikondo, I caught the number 205 bus for the city centre, paying the fare with a quick tap of my pre-paid smart card.

Commuters along the route boarded the bus quickly and easily, taking advantage of the new cashless payment system.
There were no delays or arguments about change, the kind you are almost guaranteed to encounter when taking public transport in many other African cities.

(continued, cos the folks who'd argue are 6ft underground....)

[pErvinalia]

FBM.... :'(

[Tyrannical]

Europe had the same type of revival after the black death. Less people, same fixed assets like land and infrastructure.

[cronus]

Europe had the same type of revival after the black death. Less people, same fixed assets like land and infrastructure.

...Germany had a massive technological revival after WW2. All that graph paper taking their minds of the collective guiltiness...