Posted on 08/27/2002 3:24:51 PM PDT by knighthawk
By the lights of a globe-trotting do-goodnik, South Africa is an ideal place for a conference: As an African country, the choice of locale bespeaks solidarity with the world's poorest continent -- yet its major cities are full of the plush hotels and decent restaurants NGO types secretly cherish. Unfortunately, there's something about the country that invites snafus. We do not predict a happy ending for this week's World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.
Things started going downhill two years ago at the 13th World AIDS Conference. Invoking his privilege as national host, South African President Thabo Mbeki told the audience in Durban that poverty, as opposed to HIV, was Africa's biggest killer. Mr. Mbeki has a history of giving credence to screwball AIDS theories, and it struck the assembled scientists that this was another variation on his usual theme. Hundreds walked out before he finished speaking.
Last year, Durban again hosted a major meeting -- the UN-sponsored World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. As is now well-known, the event degenerated into an orgy of Jew-bashing and anti-Western venom. African nations asked for trillions in reparations for centuries-old slave practices -- but were mute about the slave trade going on in parts of Africa right now. The agenda was so idiotic that even Canada, which usually goes in for this sort of self-flagellation, downgraded its delegation.
There are already signs this year's World Summit on Sustainable Development will similarly be dominated by tiresome Tier-Mondiste sloganeering. Mr. Mbeki certainly wasted no time in blaming all of Africa's problems on the West. Repeating a phrase he first invoked at last year's Durban conference, he claimed in a pre-summit speech on Sunday that the international economic system constitutes a program of "global apartheid." Riffing on the sound-bite, Nitin Desai, the summit's secretary-general, declared the next day that: "This global apartheid between the rich and the poor has to be eliminated."
This line of rhetoric is absurd. The word "apartheid" refers to a racist form of social engineering that is based on theories of genetic superiority, brutally planned and enforced by the state, and which carries the aim of keeping a disadvantaged group in virtual enslavement. The world economy, by contrast, is a spontaneous, largely self-governing system in which people of all races compete freely on the basis of merit. Millionaires come in every colour -- including black. That many African nations have not managed to advance themselves since the end of colonial rule is a product of many factors, including corruption and bad leadership. "Apartheid" plays no role.
The Sustainable Development conference in Johannesburg is supposed to be a reprise of the influential 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit -- a venue for nations to work together to produce environmentally friendly growth. But there is little chance of a meeting of the minds if Third World leaders alienate Western governments by falsely recasting economic inequality as a form of racial crime. Mr. Mbeki should choose his words more carefully. The next time he holds a conference, many Western delegates may just stay home.
No more UN for US
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Barf ping.
He refused to recognise that HIV is a precursor to AIDS and used the money saved on drugs to upgrade the presidential aircraft.
Details on his AIDS attitudes at http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/oneworld/20020827/wl_oneworld/1032_1030413972
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