I'm a Canadian Conservative, and I do take a lot of issues with Bush and the GOP, but his record on Africa aid is to be proud of and he deserves credit. http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/economonitor/244566 Even left wing critics on the news piece the other day on this were giving him credit where credit is due.
It's a joke. The US loans these countries money through the IMF and World Bank. The money always ends up in the hands of the corrupt leaders of these countries. When these countries cannot pay back the money that was loaned to them, NATO forces, on behalf of the IMF and World Bank, go in to claim the land and its resources as collateral.
^ " There is no law which requires African leaders and governments to accept foreign aid or loans from the World Bank. Nor is the World Bank the only place where African governments can borrow money. If the World Bank is such a "monster," as President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe claims, then African governments should not go to the Bank for loans. In fact, if African leaders and the corrupt ruling elite were to disgorge the loot they have stashed in foreign bank accounts, they..." LINK " The other fact is that they're lending most of their money to the countries that could easily borrow the money in the capital markets. They have plenty of insurers to finance their own programs. They don't do it in the countries that need the help the most. So the demonstrators are wrong to say the World Bank should..." Link ----------------------- Rat, If all that you say is true then why is it that it's taking so long for some countries to get hip to the WB & IMF? I mean there are alternatives. Also the biggest critics of these organizations aren't just street protestors but fiscal-conservatives which I find kinda interesting.
Ugh. It's so easy to parade around Africa and pass out cheques. Bush did piss all when Sudan and Chad needed it, I think Canada took in as many refugees from Sudan as the United States did in total last year, and he's doing fuck all about Mugabe's totalitarian government in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe's economy has essentially crashed and been bankrupted fivefold. They've got the highest inflation in the world, but you don't see Mr. Bush doing anything to help. You can't buy feminine hygiene products in Zimbabwe, there is no consistent running public water system in their metropolitan areas and large cities, and most of the aid that is given to these companies and government agencies are on the condition that it be loaned to them as an investment. It's ladled to them with expectations of economic growth, and fails to meet the needs of what Africans require most: basic infrastructure. It makes me sick to see the pillage and plunders of Africa. And I've never even been there.
He's was withheld aid from the IMF and there are several trade embargoes imposed on his country by most Commonwealth countries because of his involvement with the second Congolese war, as well as the blatant rape and pillaging of his own people. He's done fuck all but seize land, destroy whatever farmland production and sustainable agricultural industry they had in Zimbabwe and he fixes his elections. He beats and kills his opposing politicians, and he restricts basic goods and services from entering his country. Essentially, he has done fuck all but prolong his ultimate demise. The place is hell on earth because of him. I remember inflation was 9,000% last summer and rising. The worst part to the tale, is that over half of the population in Zimbabwe are people under the age of 18. People living in the United States and Canada have a life expectancy that is double what they have in Zimbabwe. It's mostly women and children that are taking the brunt of Mugabe's dominance. That shit makes me sick.
I suggest you read this article/interview: http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/chossudovsky/imf_interview.htm As economist and University of Ottawa economics professor Michel Chossudovsky points out: [...] And there's a good deal of coordination between the IMF and NATO. You saw it in Kosovo. The IMF and the World Bank had set up a postwar economic plan including free market reforms well before the onset of bombing.1 They work together. If a country refuses IMF intervention, NATO steps in, or NATO and various covert agencies, and they create the proper conditions for IMF programs to be imposed. Chossudovsky goes on to explain... The countries that accept the IMF, like Bulgaria and Romania, they may not get bombed but they are destroyed with the pen. In Bulgaria the IMF implemented the most drastic reforms, IMF medicine, which decimated social conditions - pensions slashed, factories closed, dumping of cheap finished goods, elimination of free medical care and transportation services and so on. And it's not just NATO. We see that in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Hand in hand with the imposition of IMF and World Bank reforms and privatization program we have not only NATO but also CIA covert intelligence operations - the institutions of war and economic management interface with one another at a global level. So right now various countries are being softened up with regional conflicts that are financed overtly and covertly by the Western elite. The KLA is just one example of an externally financed insurgency. You see these manipulated conflicts especially wherever there are strategic pipelines, and they are linked to the drug trade and the CIA, covertly, then openly linked to NATO and official US foreign policy, and finally to the IMF, the World Bank and regional banks and private investors. Links in a chain. Let's categorize these global institutions: you've got the United Nations system and peace keeping; they play a role and they are interfacing with NATO as well. Then you've got the IMF and the World Bank, and the regional development banks like the ADB, the Asian Development Bank, and so on. In Europe it's the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. These are the main arms. Sometimes war creates the conditions, and then the economic institutions come in and pick up the pieces. Or conversely the IMF itself does the destabilizing, as they did in Indonesia. They insisted on cutting off transfer payments to the various states in the federation. Now that fractures a country like Indonesia which has 2,000 islands with a system of local governments. It is the geography of the bloody place. So they leave these islands to their own devices.
True enough Bush isn't doing much about Zimbabwe's troubles, but is it really Bush's responsibility? The last time Bush "did something" about a totalarian dictatorship, we got Iraq. No, its more than Bush. How bout a little multi lateralism. Why isn't the United Nations doing anything about Zimbabwe? The Orginization of African States? What about our media and press, why aren't they "raising awareness" about the plight of the people there. Some in-depth news coverage of the failures of the Mugabe system would be educational. A lesson on the gross failure of a system that does not recognize private property rights, the rule of law, and engages in a racial spoils system. Confiscation and redistribution run amok. Perhaps the Mugabe narritave would clash with the self-held beliefs of our own journo warriors. .
