LIVE8 a waste

[Dromikaites]

Nationalist_Cause: One of the problems is that the aid actually has certain conditions attached by the IMF. These include a maximum limt on the public service spending, meaning teachers have rock-bottom pay and very few are available, in some cases 1/100. This continues down the line as tese poorly educated people take the reins and try to run the country. There are of course others, but that and the privatisation are the most crippling effects; ie, many industries and so on that the state could makew money out of have to be privatised by the government in order to recieve aid and loans. Now tell me how this makes sense: We lend you money, but only on condition that you wreck any chances you ever had of paying it back. Not sensilbe, right? Debt write-offs are necessary because of the loan conditions. So don't blame the nationa, look at the IMF first and see if it has a part to play in this continuing crisis.

IMF is not interested in reducing the budget for education or health. It requests the reduction of the budget deficit, which means the state should try to spend not much more than it collects in taxes. Now, a state budget has lots of items and, unfortunately, in many 3rd world countries the military expenses are eating up most of the resources.

In many other instances the state doesn't collect the taxes because the corruption is so high that tax authorities, police and the judges don't bother to enforce the law. As for privatising the state-own companies, let me give you another angle to look at this: in the countries we're talking about, the politicians are corrupt, the police is corrupt, the judges are crooked and the tax collectors collect bribes instead of taxes. Now guess what happens with the state-owned companies: a lot of the money they make go into the pockets of the guys in power. I'll tell you what has happened in my country, Romania, in the early '90s, before the main companies were privatised: all politicians owned companies that were either suppliers or distributors of the state-owned companies. They were selling stuff at exorbitant prices to the state-owned companies and were buying the products of the state-owned companies at ridiculosly low prices, on several occasions even below the production costs. So the politicians were making all the money and were not paying taxes while the profits of the state-owned companies were slim or non-existant. Not to mention what was going on when the banks belonged to the state: a lot of "businessmen" were making huge loans and then forgot to pay.

[Last_Crusader]

"No. We can industrialize Africa using our multinational corporations; put them to some semi-altruistic good for once, the Microsoft legacy being an excpetion. We can force them through economic sanctions to open factories etc in African nations, alleviating unemployment etc and therefore creating the first step to reform. A watchdog would have to be introduced of course to ensure that conditions were goodf within these factories but that would be easy if some of the aid poured into Africa was used. There we are, now to just get that suggestion across to the G8 summit..."

That's how Africa got into the mess in the first place. The West presuaded the African leaders to modernise and produce cash crops, using loaned money... the cash crops failed in their purpose, and Africa got into debt, leaving the west with cheap goods such as strawberries all year round and Africa generally ruined.

[PacSubCom]

Life8 might leave an impression on the general population, not the leaders. G8 is not intent to help the poor, but the rich. Africa is not about Africans, but geopolitics and resources. That's it. Help goes to Africans to help YOU stabilize the resource flow. It's a free fire zone for multi-nationals who pay their own private armies to protect "their" assets.

"Democratization" is just newspeak for "we take it all - you maybe get a low paid job." But hey it's a job, better than nothing, right? When the natives make steps toward REAL democracy (aka souvereign government set up by the people), that is actually a threat to the "democratization" desribed above, and needs to be crushed. Because if the population starts to control their country, they control their recources. That cannot be allowed to happen. Prices may rise!

See Central America for a plethora of examples; see Nigeria, where a popular movement (who was out there to stop ecological devastation of their home) was bloodily crushed by Royal Dutch Shell henchmen. See Angola, where Rebel groups fight for control of recources for decades, all sides paid by outside governments and corps; see Zaire, where 2 million+ died for Diamonds and Coltan. It's not just Rwanda style ethnical cleansing, it's business.

The problem is not only idiotic african fascists bent on ethnic purity, but the civilized west and east paying those for sweet deals afterwards. The solution would be to support real democratic movements, and cut the dictators off, without regard how cheaply they sell their Tantal ore. But as we live in a capitalist system, we would be punished for that by losing money. And we are afraid to lose the dictator as business partner, for economic rivals might then get the sweet deal.

But anyway, that is out of the question. To help africans to establish democracy would mean us loosing lots of control of the continent. Poor people are subservient people. The tragic thing is that everything is there to help. We've got enough food, we have enough medical supplies, we are rich beyond measure, and they die by the thousands every day?

THINK ABOUT IT FOR ONE SECOND: ISN'T THAT STRANGE?

What would impress the leaders would be 2.000.000 Americans besieging the White House for 2 weeks with storming it in the end, setting fire to it and then proceeing to the Senate/House to show who's the souvereign (parliaments can convene in wooden shacks, too. You can cast a ballot and speak everywhere).

Then again, bombarding it with leaflets instead of molotov cocktails would probably leave an impression too . Just the crowd being there would suffice too. Then you must repeat it every 2 months.

Repeat in Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Italy, Japan and Canada. THEN you can make demands for Africa.

[Tom Paine]

Repeat not every two months, but every day. Block members of the national government from entering the building. Become a picket line. And for God's sake, have an organiser/negotiator. Then you can exert serious power on these leaders. Bombard them not with leaflets but letters; ten personal letters makes more of an impression than 100 impersonal leaflets. How long would they prevaricate and pontificate then? Not long at all, really.

[Dromikaites]

PacSubCom raises a valid point: the current lack of true democracy is used and abused by various interest groups (mostly multinationals and big companies) from the developped world. However things are not simple when it comes to correcting the situation.

Think for a moment: even a perfectly functional democracy doesn't equal social justice. Just to give you an example: all the democratic countries have immigration and working permit laws. Those laws limit the posibility that people who would work for, say, 200 euros/month to come and compete with the locals on the labor market. As a result the locals would always vote for immigration control laws, etc. Now the same thing works for the big companies: they will influence the politicians by explaining how many jobs (=votes) would be lost in the country if resources become expensive in Africa (look at the impact the rise of the oil price has on our economies).

The only way the 3rd world countries can improve their situation is through their own efforts. Unfortunately history shows that the only way to do that effectively is by means of a truly nationalist dictatorship. By truly nationalist I mean some guy who's not merely on the payroll of a foreign power. The problem is that any dictatorship brings a lot of suffering and can be easily hijacked to serve the guys on top and not the nation. In Asia the system worked in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Koreea, the Philippines, Turkey, Taiwan. In South America it seems to have worked only in Chile. In Africa we don't really have any success story (no example of dictatorship bringing prosprerity). And for every success of a dictatorial system we have much more examples where dictators simply killed lots of people and robbed their own country blind.

The other alternative that seems to work to some extent is to have a large US presence in that country, almost to the point where US efectively runs that country. Japan, South Koreea, Philippines could be seen as owing part of their succes to the large US presence and support. Viet Nam, Somalia and Columbia, on the other hand, show this solution doesn't always work. Iraq is to early to tell :-D

[Tom Paine]

The thing is, it has to bring properity for the people not the nation. Prosperity for the nation is different; prosperity for the people is the important one.
And US presence? Only when accepted by the populace and invited in would it be successful now. They have too much negative image to really boost a nation's economy except as a threat: be good or the US will come and get you.

[Casanova]

Africa today is white man's fault yesterday. And now is the world's problem today. We need to help them, and get not necessarily democratic governments, but able ones up to develop the countries so they can be self-sufficient and contributing to Africa whole.- Da Skinna

Yes thats right its all the white man's fault that Africa is the world's toilet today. Because we all know that before the white man showed up Africa was the land of milk and honey. The same with the middle east, and India and every other place the white man left his footprint. Yes everyone that lived in Africa , South America, and the middle east was living a happy and healthy life until the evil white man came along and screwed it all up.

[Da Skinna]

I never said anything about milk and honey, and that it was all sunshine and smiles. Africa was stable in its cultured way. So was the Middle East and India. I'm not sure if you're arguing colonialism was good, so I'm not gonna go there.

But the white man DID screw it up. They brought the place out of balance, the clash of cultures was too great, and after the colonials left, it created a rift, and many many problems leaving the Africans to either fend for themselves, or try to govern a destabilized country.

[Tom Paine]

We did not create a clash of cultures, we tried to destroy them. Important difference. And then we abandoned the nations to develope into good societies far faster than we ever managed, and seem surprised that some dictators appeared!

[Dominicus of Byzantium]

The fact that the colonials left did not create a rift, it was the actions perpetrated by the colonialos that caused the rift.

[Tom Paine]

It created something far more dangerouis than a rift, it created a void into which any charismatic man could step into. In the case of South Afdrica, however, the Boers were gifted the land as the British left; handing it over to racists.

[Dominicus of Byzantium]

Any government set up by the colonials is pro-occidental and usually despicable, this is then cause for a revolution which can end up going to far and putting an even more despicable tyrant in charge. That is why we have Mugabe, Saddam and others.

[Tom Paine]

Saddam was a result of the US , in fact, putting him in power. A better study would be other African nations and Iran, which was ruled for a short period by a US-installed leader until the theocratic coup put the ayatollahs in charge. And it is not governments installed by the colonials that are the problem it is the non-democratic ones, that is the ones which did not respect the rights and equality of all their members.

[Dominicus of Byzantium]

I said pro-western, and the Shah was installed by the UK. The colonials didn't really install many democratic governments.

[Tom Paine]

The one before the revolution may not have been called a shah, but was US-installed. A weak leader who was unpopular and easily overthrown.
And while they installed few, if any, truly democratic governments, they took the first steps toward it in some cases, like S. Africa, which was a democratic nation for the Boers and a repressive regime for the native africans.

[Casanova]

Did you ever stop to think what these nations would be like if Colonials never had arrived? Did you ever read about the dark ages? There would be no such thing as medical care, education, jobs, nothing. They would still be illiterates, with absolutely no technology. Now i know that most people in africa are still uneducated and illiterate. But i guarentee the average African's lifespan is alot more than it was 300 years ago. And in the case of India, the middle east, and South America i would say the average person has alot more oportunity than they had 300 years ago living in the equivilant of a dark age kingdom.

[ajimenez3]

The one before the revolution may not have been called a shah, but was US-installed. A weak leader who was unpopular and easily overthrown.
And while they installed few, if any, truly democratic governments, they took the first steps toward it in some cases, like S. Africa, which was a democratic nation for the Boers and a repressive regime for the native africans.

The Shah of Iran succeeded his Father after he was deposed by the British and USSR in 1941. He was Shah until 1979. It was the British and USSR that installed him not the US.


Semper Fi

[Tom Paine]

Did you ever stop to think what these nations would be like if Colonials never had arrived? Did you ever read about the dark ages? There would be no such thing as medical care, education, jobs, nothing. They would still be illiterates, with absolutely no technology. Now i know that most people in africa are still uneducated and illiterate. But i guarentee the average African's lifespan is alot more than it was 300 years ago. And in the case of India, the middle east, and South America i would say the average person has alot more oportunity than they had 300 years ago living in the equivilant of a dark age kingdom.

Yes, they have more opportunity: to be raped, abused, kidnapped, etc. A civil war does that. And the civil wars? The fault of colonial powers. 300 years ago, we had shorter lifespans; less medical care; lower literacy; etc, etc. We improved. So would they have. For example, Britain was not a democracy until about 100 years ago (I am talking with suffrage as well). You cannot guarantee that, for a start it goes downm the "If..., then..." which is a conjecture with no backup. The main change is that they nw know how badly off they are and have somewhere to look for help. If we turn our backs, then what do they do? How fast can you say "terrorism"?

[The Knight 2100]

If the money that has been raised is simply going to go to some African governments, Live 8 will be a failure. A lot of the governments in Africa are extremely corrupt, and this means that hardly a penny of the money raised will go toward improving the lives of the average person. A lot of these government leaders and officials just pocket the money to use for themselves and their own families.

My Mother's friend was a missionary in Africa, and just yesterday she was telling me about how when she was in Liberia, the US government sent free rice to Liberia. Well, the rice was sent to the Liberian government and not private aid organizations or the Church. So the government decided to sell the rice to the people at the price of about a month or maybe two month's wages.

I'm sure there are probably some honest officials somewhere, but we cannot rely on giving money to the African governments or to the UN to get the job done. The only way to help Africa would be to use private organizations, missionaries and the Church to give aid to the African people and help them to be able to stand by themselves so that they don't need help anymore. Of course there will be some corruption here and there among the private organizations and the Church, but not every one is bad. And they will certainly help the African people much more than simply giving money to the governments will help them.

And it's not all Europe's fault for the state that Africa is in. Nor is it entirely the Africans' fault either. You can't just blame one side because it's the politically correct thing to do now days. People are responsible for their own actions. Did the Europeans create many circumstances that have led to problems in Africa today? Yes. Are the Africans responsible for their own actions? Yes. The African geurrilla that murders civilians is responsible for his own actions, the corrupt government officials are responsible for their own actions, and you cannot blame the Europeans for their decisions. But you can blame the European individuals who were responsible for creating the circumstances in Africa for their own actions.

And contrary to the politically correct views you see so often in the media, the idea that Africans were living an idyllic peaceful existence before the arrival of greedy Europeans is false. The problems facing Africa today are not that different from those that faced Africa before the arrival of the Europeans. Before the Europeans there was slavery, war, disease, inequality, poverty etc. It may be easy for those who don't know history to just blame all of the world's problems on the West, but when you really look into it, you can't. There will always be war, disease and poverty, no amount of aid can ever stop that, but the point of the whole idea of helping Africa should be to prepare Africa so that it can stand by itself and solve its own problems without being dependant on other countries.

Even though things look bleak in Africa, I think that one day, if you give it time, Africa will be alright.

To sum it up- I think private organizations and the Church are the best way to help Africa.

[Tom Paine]

Can we trust the Church and missionaries not to use food as a wayt to get converts? i do not mean that all will, or even a majority, but can we take the risk? I fear we cannot.

And what do you mean by private organisations? I will se if I can accept that one when I see what you mean by it.