Abdoulaye Wade of the Senegal has almost completed: Colossus

[Admiral Yi]

So that's what that is.  I thought it was:

I think you're right. We had this a while back and turned out she's wearing some headdress deal.

[Martinus]

Artistic value of the statue aside, I am not sure i buy the "the money could have been better spent helping people" argument, because if we followed it to its logical conclusion, no work of art, statue or a non-utilitarian building would ever be completed.

The Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, Mount Rushmore (not to mention stuff like the Pyramids) - all were useless from a purely utilitarian perspective, after all.

[Josquius]

Artistic value of the statue aside, I am not sure i buy the "the money could have been better spent helping people" argument, because if we followed it to its logical conclusion, no work of art, statue or a non-utilitarian building would ever be completed.

The Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, Mount Rushmore (not to mention stuff like the Pyramids) - all were useless from a purely utilitarian perspective, after all.

The west has money to waste though. Africa doesn't.
You're a rich European lawyer type, you can afford to think of buying a new mac just because your old one is scratched. Even the poorest people in western countries generally don't have to worry about where their next meal is coming from (yeah there are some like this but they're a tiny amount). In Senegal however....their poor on a whole different level of poor.
Its hierarchy of needs. Once you've established survival then you can concentrate on culture and other goodness, they enrich your life and make it even better. The Senegalese government though is ignoring this simple logic and being absolutely silly.

[derspiess]

Anyway, since Senegal apparently has enough cash to blow on monuments, I think the U.S. can confidently cancel our "economic assistance" to them.  Or at least cut it by the value of the monument, which adds up to about half the value of our 2008 aid.

[garbon]

The west has money to waste though. Africa doesn't.
You're a rich European lawyer type, you can afford to think of buying a new mac just because your old one is scratched. Even the poorest people in western countries generally don't have to worry about where their next meal is coming from (yeah there are some like this but they're a tiny amount). In Senegal however....their poor on a whole different level of poor.
Its hierarchy of needs. Once you've established survival then you can concentrate on culture and other goodness, they enrich your life and make it even better. The Senegalese government though is ignoring this simple logic and being absolutely silly.

aka No Senegal you can't have anything nice or notable. You are a shitty country and you need to remain that way.

[Camerus]

If you say that we can't have monuments because the money would be better spent on the poor, then nothing would ever be built.

On the other hand, that particular monument is a gaudy eyesore.

[Sheilbh]

I personally think it's hideous.

However I think it sort of makes sense.  Senegal is something of an African success story.  It's one of the only countries in Africa that's only had peaceful transitions of power and they were to begin with and in the past 20 years it's always happened democratically (Senghor, the first leader of a free Senegal, went through an authoritarian phase but then introduced a more democratic constitution and resigned), though there are problems with their elections that's still no mean achievement.  They were also lucky that their first leader was a poetry writing intellectual, who was an Immortal of the Academie Francaise, because he tended to emphasise education and compared with much of Africa Senegal's doing okay on that front and the economy seems to be doing well and inflation's under control.

So I don't know, I've less problem with this than if, say, Mugabe decided to build a giant monument or Kabila thought the time was right to redevelop Kinshasa

[garbon]

Oh and I agree that it is hideous. Should have hired a better architect.

[PDH]

I have no problem with Dakar being the Stalingrad of Africa.  Spend money on monuments, even hideous ones.

[Razgovory]

I have no problem with Dakar being the Stalingrad of Africa.  Spend money on monuments, even hideous ones.

It does sorta look like the Stalingrad monument doesn't it?  At least it has big tits.

[Ideologue]

I think it's a good looking piece of bronze, but then I like that kind of statuary.  It's obviously a waste of taxpayer funds; this sort of nonsense is better left to the crazy rich in the private sector.

[Darth Wagtaros]

I thought they were building a massive super-computer to control their nukes like the Forbin Project. 

This is disappointing. 

[Monoriu]

Artistic value of the statue aside, I am not sure i buy the "the money could have been better spent helping people" argument, because if we followed it to its logical conclusion, no work of art, statue or a non-utilitarian building would ever be completed.

The Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, Mount Rushmore (not to mention stuff like the Pyramids) - all were useless from a purely utilitarian perspective, after all.

They are not useless - they are profitable investments that made money by attracting tourists

[jimmy olsen]

It does have a very "Sovietesque" look to it.
Not that that's a bad thing - if there's one thing the Soviets did well, it was large, intimidating monuments and buildings.

The statue is done and I think it looks like it has much more of a fascist influence than a Soviet one. It has a distinct superheroic "Aryan" flair to it. Just need to change the facial features and it would like fine in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy.

[Neil]

Who cares?  It's not like many excellent European monuments weren't built while most of the citizenry lived in abject poverty.