Posted on 09/29/2002 4:46:06 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Rich countries face "a moment of truth" over their plan to halve global poverty, which is endangered by turmoil in global stock markets and the threat of war against Iraq, the World Bank warned yesterday.
James Wolfensohn, the Bank's president, said the west must "put its money where its mouth is" and stump up the cash to meet the agreed target of halving the number of people living on less than a dollar a day by 2015.
"The time has come to move from words to action to implement this new deal between rich countries and poor countries," he said.
Speaking to the Guardian, ahead of this week's IMF and World Bank annual meetings, Mr Wolfensohn said he feared that worries about the global outlook would distract attention from the plight of developing countries.
"If you find countries that are dirt poor, they are the places that extremists flourish. I personally believe that if we don't get rid of poverty we are not going to have peace."
Rich countries must open their highly protected markets to textiles and agricultural goods from the developing world, and stop subsidising its farmers, according to the Bank. Western countries pay out $350bn a year supporting agriculture, seven times what they spend on aid.
Mr Wolfensohn called on the west to come up with the extra money it promised for debt relief at a summit in Canada this year.
Bull. The kamikazes of 9/11 didn't come from black Africa or from Laos - the world's poorest countries; they came from rich Saudi Arabia and were led by zillionaire Saudi heir Osama bin Laden.
Terrorism has fluorished among the affluent - the "Mustang Maoists" of the U.S. during Nam, the West Germans who spawned the Baader-Meinhof Gang of the 1970s.
If you really want to increase terrorism, just create a "The Mouse That Roared" scenario making it pay.
Wolfensohn's latest shakedown attempt is just more proof that the antiglobalist protesters at every World Bank or IMF meeting are right when they call for disbanding the World Bank and the IMF.
I certainly appreciate your sentiment and I am probably as alarmed as you at this news article. But your statement is not actually accurate. You see the west supports the WTO and the various globalist organizations known as the new world order. One thing that this WTO is trying to do is to open the Indian market to the cheap food of the big corporations. The Indian government you see protects its domestic market. When this food is in the Indian market, then the hundreds of millions of Indians engaged in their extremely inefficient food production systems will be likely without work. The west is actually targeting their jobs for destruction. I guess it will all be OK for this to be done because the globalist organizations will be taking money from us to pay these people 1 or 2 dollars a day so that they can buy the cheap food from the corps. That will benefit americans right, because our corps which will not even produce most of this food here will be benefiting. So, the west technically wants to tax us so that we can replace the money that they lose when they lose their jobs due to pressure from us to accept our demands. Then, afterwards there will be hundreds of millions of Indians with no jobs, but enough money to live on. That will be a paradise for the big corps who want to hire from among a massive labor pool of desperate people. It may be the ordinary person in the west that doesn't support this scheme, but that doesn't matter. The institutions of the west that matter do support it.
Get rid of Marxism. Teach people to work. The left can't keep sucking the blood out of the host forever. Eventually, everyone suffers.
Western countries pay out $350bn a year supporting agriculture, seven times what they spend on aid.
So, buy goods, and let them starve to death? Some deal, aye? Idiots.
And what the heck are we doing sending that much money over there when their leaders are filthy rich? Let their leaders share THEIR wealth first, then we'll talk!
The world is one big fishin' hole. If the place you're fishing isn't netting you a catch, you either change your tactics or pull up anchor and move. Do we have to give away our secret fishing spots to those "less forutnate," or do we let them discover their own productive spots?
We need to export freedom and eliminate tyrants. Dismantle the UN, start over with a new organization that is committed to only helping those countries that establish free and fair elections, a constitution and bill of rights giving maximum freedom to the people. Not the freedom to vote themselves bread and a circus, but freedom from bureaucracies, graft, extortion, tax collectors, with freedom to sink or swim, freedom to engage in starting their own businesses.
Micro loans to individuals to pursue free enterprise, none granted to governments.
Socialist rag paper, BTW.
Then they could go on strike for better pay, they could vote for politicians who promise an increase in minimum wage, they could demand health care, paid family leave, holidays, vacations, sick days.
This is so easy.
That's hitting the nail on the head alright, but I suspect they're looking for substantially more than a peg or two.
It is amazing how many people want to know, "When are the Americans going to send us money?"
The thing is, money will not change their objective situation one little bit.
Money is a unit of account that denotes production of goods and services. Africa produces nothing. Africa's lack of production is not caused by a lack of money-it's the reverse, there is no money because Africa produces nothing that anyone else anywhere in the world wants.
The few schemes to produce export goods, mostly in SA, founder because state run or state sponsored enterprises demand much more than the value of their goods (even assuming those goods were of sufficient quality to be competitive) so that they can pay workers who don't work and pay taxes for redistribution.
Africa is a rich land, oppressed by horrible governments which promote worse ideas.
And those Africans who say it's all the fault of the white man aren't entirely wrong-the white men at the Sorbonne and the London School of Economics who taught socialism to a generation of Africans certainly have a lot to answer for.
I missed the part where the space aliens came down and gave the "rich countries" all their money. I look over at some of these places where people are so damned poor, and I see places that are sitting on a sea of oil and other natural resources. Of course, it's all going into the pockets of some royal family or socialist dictator, but whose fault is that? Not mine.
I fail to see how throwing my money at people who won't get off their own duffs is going to get them off their duffs.
It didn't help the welfare problem. We had to stop throwing money at it to get them working. It's called "tough love." It was actually a blessing in disquise.
Can we get some of that here, too? ;^)
Not quite. If you teach him to fish, he'll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.
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