AID TO AFRICA?

African economist says aid is poisonous: "The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem.... 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"

Africa already choking on aid: "Rambak threatens to become a bitter example of how development aid doesn't really help. Again and again finance is hurriedly provided for one project after another, without any evidence of a convincing overall concept. The money is just thrown at projects as quickly as possible. In this case, Norway has made $500,000 available for just 500 refugees in the camps. The windfall immediately sparked off further need and a second camp, this time home to 345 people, has sprung up. It is the Italians who are footing the bill for the new camp. Money is, for the Europeans, the solution to all of Africa's problems. But despite yearly payments of, at last count, some $26 billion, the majority of the continent resembles something approaching one big emergency military hospital. Already today there are increasing numbers of Africans who call for an end to this sort of support"

Even the L.A. Times says it: "Africa is filled with good intentions that ended badly. Half-completed hydroelectric dams covered with weeds, empty irrigation pipes decaying in the equatorial sun and roads that literally lead to nowhere dot the continent, testaments to corruption and bad judgment. Despite billions of dollars in aid, Africa has gone backward since the 1970s on every measurable level"

Africa's vast corruption: "The example of Nigeria says it all. Figures released last month by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, as reported in the London Daily Telegraph, reveal that in the 45 years since Britain granted independence in 1960 a succession of despots squandered $387 billion (that's a "b," not an "m"), almost to the dollar the sum of all Western aid to all of Africa between 1960 and 1997. One of the despots, Gen. Sani Abacha, now safely dead, is believed to have looted Nigeria's vast oil reserves of more than $5 billion in just five years. William Bellamy, the U.S. ambassador to neighboring Kenya, startled the guests at his Fourth of July garden party yesterday with just the kind of bluntness needed to keep African aid in realistic perspective. "Turning on the fire hose of international compassion and asking Kenya and other African nations to drink from it is not a serious strategy for promoting growth or ending poverty."

A view from South Africa: "African countries, including South Africa, have refused to give even the vaguest criticism of the almost unimaginably abusive Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, maintaining that the crimes committed by that government are an internal matter. It is difficult to understand why no African leader will speak out and condemn such a clear case of evil, but in remaining silent they give their tacit approval and encouragement of the destruction of peoples' lives and livelihoods. Perhaps African leaders are just so removed from the lives of ordinary Africans that they cannot fathom any individual's need to provide for him or herself, to be self reliant and to take pride in what he or she produces.... So when the G8 countries, encouraged by Geldof and his platitudinous popstar friends, give money to Africa, they are rewarding the very people that cause poverty, destruction and death. If Africa wants to advance, it does not need more money.... They should be removing the harmful laws that give power to brutal policemen and frustrate enterprise and self-reliance. But of course it suits this political elite to get handouts from rich countries as it means they have to do less work to reform themselves and means they don't have to muddy their shoes by being concerned with the little people"

Australia thinks handouts are no answer: "Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has strongly defended Australia's foreign aid contributions, amid opposition claims the nation is not doing enough to eliminate global poverty..... Mr Downer said setting financial targets alone would not solve the problem of global poverty. "We think that the central issue here is targeting the quality of governance in countries and the quality of public administration, because that is why these countries are poor," he told ABC radio. "It's not the volume of aid, it's the quality of government on the ground which is the issue. "If governance is bad, if corruption is high, then issues like the volume of aid or debt relief ... they're just going to be meaningless."

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ELSEWHERE

Phenomenal!: "Japan's lower house of parliament has narrowly approved plans to privatise the country's huge postal system. The move is set to create the world's largest bank, as Japan Post controls 350 trillion yen ($3.2 trillion) in savings and insurance funds. The 233-228 vote was a victory for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who had pledged to push the reforms through before leaving office in 2006. But it was a tight call, with members of his own party voting against him. Under the proposed reforms, Japan Post would be split into four entities in 2007 in the hope of stimulating competition. Its savings and insurance arms would have to be sold by 2017. Advocates of the reforms claim that privatisation will make more efficient use of the service's huge funds for investment. But the country's 300,000 postal employees - a powerful lobbying group who are also instrumental in mobilising rural voters - opposed the bill, fearing for their jobs."

The Iranian election: Most Westerners seem to have accepted the recent election as in some sense legitimate and as representing the will of the Iranian people. That is incredibly naive. The election was thoroughly rigged. Some of the overlooked factors: "Most of the Iranian people rejected the elections and even stayed home in order to avoid being forced to go to the polls; The minimum age requirement to vote was reduced from sixteen to fourteen; The use of food coupons and admission in high school, college and university examinations required a seal on one's birth certificate indicating that the person had participated in the elections; Threatening hospitalized patients that if they did not vote, they would not receive their medications and other services; Threatening government employees that if they did not vote, they would lose their jobs; Increasing the hours of voting during the last minutes of the election day and transporting regime agents by bus from one polling place to others in order to increase the number of votes; Printing more than three million birth certificates with fake names and announcing that birth certificates without pictures would also be accepted as well as passports; Cheating in counting of votes which caused different voting results being announced by the Guardian Council and the Interior Ministry".

In case you have not seen it, there is a 2002 report here from country music star Charlie Daniels about what he saw when he visited Guantanamo Bay to entertain the troops. One thing I had not realized is that the Red Cross have people there watching everything.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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