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InvisibleAlex213
Stranger
Registered: 08/22/05
Posts: 1,839
Re: Best government on earth? [Re: Sycronica]
    #4673150 - 09/17/05 05:50 AM (18 years, 6 months ago)

Just focusing on relieving starvation could be done tomorrow. It wouldn't take anything like the Iraq war budget to feed every last starving person in Africa and get them clean water.

Free market "reforms" such as "privatisation" helping the Africans is pie in the sky. Privatisation doesn't help anyone but the bastards buying up services and then ratcheting prices through the roof so the poor can't afford them.

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InvisibleSilversoul
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Registered: 01/01/05
Posts: 23,576
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Re: Best government on earth? [Re: Alex213]
    #4673744 - 09/17/05 11:03 AM (18 years, 6 months ago)

Quote:

Alex213 said:
Just focusing on relieving starvation could be done tomorrow.



You haven't the slightest clue how massive an undertaking that would be. It's not just a matter of getting the food. If you think it took a while to get help to New Orleans, just imagine how many aid workers you'd have to get to all the places in the world that have starving people. There aren't enough people in the world who aren't starving to send the food to people who are. And in the meantime, even if you could do such a thing, that would mean that no one would be buying the crops from the third world farmers. Do you understand what this means? That means that by the time these reforms have taken place, billions of poor people would be robbed of the only source of income they've ever had! Thank god people like you aren't running the country. You'd be twice the disaster that Bush is.


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OfflineSycronica
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Registered: 06/15/05
Posts: 376
Loc: Inside my head
Last seen: 18 years, 6 months
Re: Best government on earth? [Re: Silversoul]
    #4674158 - 09/17/05 01:23 PM (18 years, 6 months ago)

It is very sadding that we have come to a point where feeding starving people actually hurts them...

If there is billions of third world farmers why are they not feeding the starving people then? Cuz the starving people don't have money to buy the food? So then who are these "farmers" selling to if not their own people?

So if starving people don't have money to buy their own food, then why would it fuck up the economy if they aren't buying the food anway? To me it sounds like there is some very devious shit going on in africa, and I don't think it's being done 100% by their own people.

Can just imagine a child saying, "Why are those people so skinny daddy?" Then I'd have to answer, "Because we can't feed them or it would ruin their economy". Child then asks, "What's an economy?".


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Think for yourself. Question authority.

Forgiveness is the ultimate sacrifice.

You can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool all the people all the time.

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Invisiblelooner2
ABBA fan

Registered: 06/20/04
Posts: 3,849
Re: Best government on earth? [Re: Sycronica]
    #4674316 - 09/17/05 02:23 PM (18 years, 6 months ago)

Quote:

Sycronica said:
Can just imagine a child saying, "Why are those people so skinny daddy?" Then I'd have to answer, "Because we can't feed them or it would ruin their economy". Child then asks, "What's an economy?".




And the liberal trump card: Desperate plea to emotion.


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I am in love with Acidic_Sloth


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OfflineSycronica
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Re: Best government on earth? [Re: looner2]
    #4674363 - 09/17/05 02:42 PM (18 years, 6 months ago)

And it's bad to show emotion?


--------------------
Think for yourself. Question authority.

Forgiveness is the ultimate sacrifice.

You can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool all the people all the time.

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InvisibleSilversoul
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Registered: 01/01/05
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Re: Best government on earth? [Re: Sycronica]
    #4674366 - 09/17/05 02:43 PM (18 years, 6 months ago)

Quote:

Sycronica said:
And it's bad to show emotion?



If used as a replacement for reason, then yes.


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OfflineSycronica
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Re: Best government on earth? [Re: Silversoul]
    #4674404 - 09/17/05 02:54 PM (18 years, 6 months ago)

/shrug...didn't use it as a replacement for anything.


--------------------
Think for yourself. Question authority.

Forgiveness is the ultimate sacrifice.

You can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool all the people all the time.

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InvisibleSilversoul
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Re: Best government on earth? [Re: Sycronica]
    #4674721 - 09/17/05 04:51 PM (18 years, 6 months ago)

Can't replace what you don't have in the first place.


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InvisibleAlex213
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Registered: 08/22/05
Posts: 1,839
Re: Best government on earth? [Re: Sycronica]
    #4676350 - 09/18/05 01:01 AM (18 years, 6 months ago)

It is very sadding that we have come to a point where feeding starving people actually hurts them...


Well, that's what the free-marketeers would have us believe but of course it's complete bollocks.

So if starving people don't have money to buy their own food, then why would it fuck up the economy if they aren't buying the food anway? To me it sounds like there is some very devious shit going on in africa, and I don't think it's being done 100% by their own people.


Very devious shit indeed Syc...

To qualify for debt relief, developing countries must "tackle corruption, boost private-sector development" and eliminate "impediments to private investment, both domestic and foreign".

These are called conditionalities. Conditionalities are the policies governments must follow before they receive aid and loans and debt relief. At first sight they look like a good idea. Corruption cripples poor nations, especially in Africa. The money which could have given everyone a reasonable standard of living has instead made a handful unbelievably rich. The powerful nations are justified in seeking to discourage it.

That's the theory. In truth, corruption has seldom been a barrier to foreign aid and loans: look at the money we have given, directly and through the World Bank and IMF, to Mobutu, Suharto, Marcos, Moi and every other premier-league crook. Robert Mugabe, the west's demon king, has deservedly been frozen out by the rich nations. But he has caused less suffering and is responsible for less corruption than Rwanda's Paul Kagame or Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, both of whom are repeatedly cited by the G8 countries as practitioners of "good governance". Their armies, as the UN has shown, are largely responsible for the meltdown in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which has so far claimed 4 million lives, and have walked off with billions of dollars' worth of natural resources. Yet Britain, which is hosting the G8 summit, remains their main bilateral funder. It has so far refused to make their withdrawal from the DRC a conditionality for foreign aid.

The difference, of course, is that Mugabe has not confined his attacks to black people; he has also dispossessed white farmers and confiscated foreign assets. Kagame, on the other hand, has eagerly supplied us with the materials we need for our mobile phones and computers: materials that his troops have stolen from the DRC. "Corrupt" is often used by our governments and newspapers to mean regimes that won't do what they're told.

Genuine corruption, on the other hand, is tolerated and even encouraged. Twenty-five countries have so far ratified the UN convention against corruption, but none is a member of the G8. Why? Because our own corporations do very nicely out of it. In the UK companies can legally bribe the governments of Africa if they operate through our (profoundly corrupt) tax haven of Jersey. Lord Falconer, the minister responsible for sorting this out, refuses to act. When you see the list of the island's clients, many of which sit in the FTSE 100 index, you begin to understand.

The idea, swallowed by most commentators, that the conditions our governments impose help to prevent corruption is laughable. To qualify for World Bank funding, our model client Uganda was forced to privatise most of its state-owned companies before it had any means of regulating their sale. A sell-off that should have raised $500m for the Ugandan exchequer instead raised $2m. The rest was nicked by government officials. Unchastened, the World Bank insisted that - to qualify for the debt-relief programme the G8 has now extended - the Ugandan government sell off its water supplies, agricultural services and commercial bank, again with minimal regulation.


And here we meet the real problem with the G8's conditionalities. They do not stop at pretending to prevent corruption, but intrude into every aspect of sovereign government. When the finance ministers say "good governance" and "eliminating impediments to private investment", what they mean is commercialisation, privatisation and the liberalisation of trade and capital flows. And what this means is new opportunities for western money.


Let's stick for a moment with Uganda. In the late 80s, the IMF and World Bank forced it to impose "user fees" for basic healthcare and primary education. The purpose appears to have been to create new markets for private capital. School attendance, especially for girls, collapsed. So did health services, particularly for the rural poor. To stave off a possible revolution, Museveni reinstated free primary education in 1997 and free basic healthcare in 2001. Enrolment in primary school leapt from 2.5 million to 6 million, and the number of outpatients almost doubled. The World Bank and the IMF -which the G8 nations control - were furious. At the donors' meeting in April 2001, the head of the bank's delegation made it clear that, as a result of the change in policy, he now saw the health ministry as a "bad investment".

There is an obvious conflict of interest in this relationship. The G8 governments claim they want to help poor countries develop and compete successfully. But they have a powerful commercial incentive to ensure that they compete unsuccessfully, and that our companies can grab their public services and obtain their commodities at rock-bottom prices. The conditionalities we impose on the poor nations keep them on a short leash.

That's not the only conflict. The G8 finance ministers' statement insists that the World Bank and IMF will monitor the indebted countries' progress, and decide whether they are fit to be relieved of their burden. The World Bank and IMF, of course, are the agencies which have the most to lose from this redemption. They have a vested interest in ensuring that debt relief takes place as slowly as possible.

Attaching conditions like these to aid is bad enough. It amounts to saying: "We will give you a trickle of money if you give us the crown jewels." Attaching them to debt relief is in a different moral league: "We will stop punching you in the face if you give us the crown jewels." The G8's plan for saving Africa is little better than an extortion racket.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1505816,00.html

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OfflineSycronica
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Registered: 06/15/05
Posts: 376
Loc: Inside my head
Last seen: 18 years, 6 months
Re: Best government on earth? [Re: Silversoul]
    #4678062 - 09/18/05 03:31 PM (18 years, 6 months ago)

Quote:

Paradigm said:
Can't replace what you don't have in the first place.




Ouch, low blow. Puts your fangs back in, no one is pissing in your corn flakes.


--------------------
Think for yourself. Question authority.

Forgiveness is the ultimate sacrifice.

You can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool all the people all the time.

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InvisibleSilversoul
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Registered: 01/01/05
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Re: Best government on earth? [Re: Sycronica]
    #4680897 - 09/19/05 03:26 AM (18 years, 6 months ago)

No fangs involved. I was simply making an observation.


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InvisibleAlex213
Stranger
Registered: 08/22/05
Posts: 1,839
Re: Best government on earth? [Re: Sycronica]
    #4681319 - 09/19/05 09:53 AM (18 years, 6 months ago)

Ouch, low blow. Puts your fangs back in, no one is pissing in your corn flakes.

:dielaughing:

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