
Sudan, Africa's most misunderstood country - hwayern
http://www.bbc.com/travel/gallery/20170228-africas-most-misunderstood-country
======
Diederich
Very nice presentation.

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more_corn
WTF slideshow.

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AnimalMuppet
Sudan is "misunderstood"? I personally know several refugees from there.
Certainly their stories are their own experience, and certainly they were on
the receiving end of a religious and racial civil war. Still, I have a hard
time seeing the government as anything but a bunch of murderous thugs who,
rather than trying to deal with the grievances of those unlike them, instead
tried to bomb them into submission or non-existence. I've seen the effects of
that approach on the bodies of people I know. And beautiful scenery and
history don't make up for that, in my mind.

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oli5679
Really confused by the following error message:

"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our
international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run
commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the
profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new
BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital
activities at www.bbcworldwide.com."

Surely blocking UK citizens like me from seeing the page leaves both the BBC
and me strictly worse off vs letting me browse the page and see the same
adverts as international viewers?

~~~
didgeoridoo
Seems like the logical (but irrational) consequence of a few different UK
broadcasting laws colliding:

[http://www.baekdal.com/opinion/bbc-future-is-
blockingitself](http://www.baekdal.com/opinion/bbc-future-is-blockingitself)

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samirillian
Africa, mostly misunderstood as a country.

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crypt1d
I was unable to view a few slides in the presentation. I imagine its probably
because they are flash videos and Firefox on Linux has been a pain about it so
far. Anyone else experiencing this or knows how to fix it?

~~~
khedoros1
I'm using Firefox on Linux, and I don't have Flash installed. The animated
backgrounds are using the video tag, and provides "video/mp4", "video/webm",
and "video/ogg" files for each of the slides that include video (slides 3, 7,
and 9).

Slides 4, 6, 8, 11, and 13 looks like they're doing some kind of more
protected video, but I've never done any kind of web development, so I don't
know how to track down how it works. I'll note that I've got an h.264 plugin
from Cisco and a Widevine DRM module installed, and that might have something
to do with how it works for me.

Firefox 50.1.0 on Mint 18, if that makes a difference.

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panic
Saved you a click: the country is Sudan. (Maybe a title like "Sudan: Africa's
most misunderstood country" would be better)

~~~
Cyph0n
But then you'd get the obligatory "title is not the same as original!1!"
complaint. It's the HN way of life I guess.

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JPLeRouzic
I am really happy to see some nice information about Sudan. Some years ago I
got a bit angry at racism in myself and around me, and I did a little research
on Africa History.

I was deeply disturbed to understand that concepts that were deeply engraved
in me as Africa as a "terra nulla", without history, without writing systems
or even buildings, were huge lies. Sudan, Ethiopia and Erythrea have a rich
history which goes thousands years back linking Egypt, the middle east to
India. Later it was a milestone on the road from the Roman empire to India.
Most of what we call as Egyptian history is in fact a mix of Lybian, Assyrian,
Egyptian and Nubian (Sudanese) history. One thing that is not mentioned is
that Sudan and Ethiopia have their own writing system [0].

I suggest also to have a look at Jos Plateau (Nigeria) prehistory which goes
back hundred of thousand years. Jos Plateau is also probably one of the areas
at the origin of the great Bantu migration. And how those people mastered Iron
metallurgy and also to the rice invention in the mega lake Chad area where was
found the most ancient boat in the world.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meroitic_alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meroitic_alphabet)

(edited)

~~~
budu3
I just wanted to add a few more African civilizations, namely: Great
Zimbabwe[0], Axum[1], Asante Kingdom [2] Swahili Kingdoms[3] etc.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Zimbabwe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Zimbabwe)

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axum)

[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashanti_Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashanti_Empire)

[3][http://richard-
hooker.com/sites/worldcultures/CIVAFRCA/SWAHI...](http://richard-
hooker.com/sites/worldcultures/CIVAFRCA/SWAHILI.HTM)

~~~
kej
Needs more west Africa!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghana_Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghana_Empire)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_Empire)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songhai_Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songhai_Empire)

The Mali Empire was so wealthy that Musa I's pilgrimage to Mecca destabilized
the gold market of the eastern Mediterranean.

~~~
vidarh
And the Benin empire:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin_Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin_Empire)

Not so large, but noteworthy for the admiration Europeans showed for Benin
City / Edo, and for its centuries of history of trading extensively with
Europe (and even employing European mercenaries to assist in attacks on
surrounding states). E.g. a Dutch account from the 17th century (from the
Wikipedia link):

> The king's palace or court is a square, and is as large as the town of
> Haarlem and entirely surrounded by a special wall, like that which encircles
> the town. It is divided into many magnificent palaces, houses, and
> apartments of the courtiers, and comprises beautiful and long square
> galleries, about as large as the Exchange at Amsterdam, but one larger than
> another, resting on wooden pillars, from top to bottom covered with cast
> copper, on which are engraved the pictures of their war exploits and
> battles...

The "special wall" was the Benin Earthworks[1]:

> They extend for some 9,900 miles (16,000 kilometres) in all, in a mosaic of
> more than 500 interconnected settlement boundaries. They cover 2,510 sq.
> miles (6,500 square kilometres) and were all dug by the Edo people. In all,
> they are four times longer than the Great Wall of China, and consumed a
> hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops. They took an
> estimated 150 million hours of digging to construct, and are perhaps the
> largest single archaeological phenomenon on the planet.[3]

... and it was destroyed by the British [2] as they conquered, burned and
looted the city.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walls_of_Benin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walls_of_Benin)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin_Expedition_of_1897](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin_Expedition_of_1897)

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jibbit
Ugh can't view from the uk

~~~
dmix
You can't view a BBC article from the UK? Don't your taxes pay for this
content?

~~~
harel
We "prefer" to call that a "TV License" because if we called it "tax" it would
have negative connotations. It is also paid separately to "tax".

~~~
ilugaslifg
The term "TV License" is 1000% more offensive and outrageous, to my Canadian
ears, than "TV Tax" would be.

A "license" is a permit from the government to do or use something, and
carries the implication that it's something that can be denied.

I know it 100% functions as a tax and not in any sense as a license. And the
idea of requiring government permission to have a TV carries less weight in
the internet age than it would have in the past. But the wording alone still
makes my blood boil. It sounds like something you'd find in North Korea.

~~~
Udik
> I know it 100% functions as a tax

You wish. Taxes are mostly proportional to the payer's income, or wealth, or
to the value of some owned good. Instead, so called "tv licenses" are fixed,
such that the poorest citizen, owner of a 10inch tv found in the trash bin, is
bound to pay as much as the richest taxpayer, with his multi wall-sized home
cinema devices.

In this respect it works exactly as the annual subscription to a TV service
(it's actually called "subscription" in some countries) and it's clearly a
remnant of the times when TVs were rare, expensive objects that were in
themselves a proof of the wealth of their owners.

~~~
ilugaslifg
You're right, that is much more rightfully offensive than just the naming
problem.

We have a similar bit of bullshit in British Columbia, where government health
insurance is paid through premiums, administered outside of the tax system
(which is annoying as hell, and doesn't happen in other Canadian provinces),
which are progressive only up until $30k (£18k) annual income, and fixed after
that at $900 (£550) /person/year. Which is 3% of $30k/year, but 1% of
$100k/year, etc.

... actually laid out like that and looking at the inhuman shitshow in the US,
I think I might withdraw my complaint.

But, back to naming because obviously that is what really matters, a
regressive tax[0] is still a tax.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_tax)

~~~
uiri
_We have a similar bit of bullshit in British Columbia, where government
health insurance is paid through premiums, administered outside of the tax
system_

Those premiums come no where near actually covering the cost of government
health insurance.

Ontario has a similar scheme - although administered inside of the tax system
- which brings in approximately $3.5B from health premiums. The province
spends over $50B on health and long-term care.[0] The health "premium" should
really be called a surtax because that is what it is.

Looking at BC's provincial budget[1], which plans to cut them, MSP premiums
will bring in just over $2.5B in revenue this year. This is inline with a
previous year's forecast[2]. According to both of these sources', BC spends
over $17B on health care.

Its 2017 budget claims that BC is the only province which charges health
premiums - I suspect that this refers to the method which BC uses to charge
people. In Ontario, the "health premium" is collected along with provincial
income taxes.

[0]
[http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/budget/ontariobudgets/2016/ch3b....](http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/budget/ontariobudgets/2016/ch3b.html#t3-21)
Scroll down to table 3.22 for expenses

[1]
[http://bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/2017/bfp/2017_Budget_and_Fiscal_Pl...](http://bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/2017/bfp/2017_Budget_and_Fiscal_Plan.pdf)
Table 1.7

[2]
[http://bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/2015/bfp/2015_budget_and_fiscal_pl...](http://bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/2015/bfp/2015_budget_and_fiscal_plan.pdf)
Table 1.7

