This is what I'm sending him. His twin demons are Clinton and Socialism, so I put the spin on the situation thusly:
quote:--- mpstrex@cs.com wrote:
> I agree 100% with this.
>
> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,47442,00.html
Much as I like O'Reilly (and any former tabloidista), I think he's a little off-base here.
> The United States gave more than $10 billion to
> developing countries in the year 2000, yet we
> are still despised by much of the third world.
> This year alone, we will give the World Bank,
> which loans money to poor countries, nearly
> $900 million.
On why the World Bank isn't as swell as it seems: http://www.whirledbank.org/development/debt.html
Excerpt:
>>This international debt problem has become such a crisis that many poor countries pay more money to the World Bank and the IMF each year than they receive in loans. The World Bank¹s own figures indicate that the IMF extracted a net US$1 billion from Africa in 1997 and 1998 more than they loaned to the continent. <<
In other words, a net profit of $1 billion. That's a lot of interest. (By the way, charging interest on loans is in violation of the New Testament; it's called usury. In the European Middle Ages, it's one of the reasons why Jews were so scapegoated, because they were allowed to charge interest while everyone else wasn't allowed to.)
>> In the last few years the World Bank and the IMF have agreed to help countries that are suffering heavily from major debt burdens by creating the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative of 1996. But to qualify for HIPC, a country must complete three years under an IMF-designed Structural Adjustment Program. Even after that hurdle, the country must fulfill a further three years bound by another SAP before relief on multilateral debt is granted. The cruel paradox here is that the SAPs require them to cut spending on health care, food subsidies, and education.
Since the HIPC Initiative was adopted in 1996, only five countries-Uganda, Bolivia, Guyana, Mozambique, and Mali-have received or are in a position to receive any relief this year. And these countries have found HIPC relief to be worth relatively little. Uganda began to receive debt relief worth US$350 million in April 1998, but as a consequence lost access to other debt relief funding mechanisms. <<
Thus: Picture your Visa card mandating that you stop using any other card, and buy all your bread and bread products only with the Visa, and all foodstuffs only from Visa-sponsored merchants. That's close to the system we're outlining here.
On the US "donation" to developing countries, here are two reasons why those developing countries might be less-than-thrilled:
# 1: The "aid" is often in the form of arms and financial backing to oppressive regimes - because the firmer a dictator's control of the country, the less competition his favorite businesses have to put up with.
# 2. The support the US sends to other countries is quite often received not by the governments or people of those countries, but by American corporations located in those countries. Quite often it passes through the government's hands with the restriction that it only be used to buy from American corporations, usually arms dealers and defense contractors.
One example, Indonesia: http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/indoarms.html
>> The events of the past year have cast a harsh spotlight on the longstanding U.S. government policy of providing weapons and military training to Indonesia. The awarding of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize to Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo and José Ramos-Horta, activists in the struggle to reverse Indonesia's brutal occupation of East Timor, has reinforced international concerns about the legitimacy of continuing U.S. arms sales to the Suharto regime. Congressional investigators have been probing the role of contributions from the Indonesian-based Lippo group in the 1996 presidential campaign, and upcoming public hearings will address the question of how these foreign donations may have influenced U.S. policy toward Indonesia.<<
By the way, before you think this is some sort of pro-Democrat liberal bilge, this was actually done during the Clinton administration.
Some of the worst instances of this in history took place in Latin America when Kennedy was president. In the case of Indonesia, arms support actually dropped during the reign of the first President Bush.
Another, clearer example, Colombia: http://zmag.org/ZSustainers/ZDaily/2000-04/24chomsky.htm
>>> In 1999, Colombia became the leading recipient of US military and police assistance, replacing Turkey (Israel and Egypt are in a separate category). The figure is scheduled to increase sharply for the next two years. Through the 1990s, Colombia has been the leading recipient of US military aid in Latin America, and has also compiled the worst human rights record, in accord with a well-established correlation. <<<
>> Hailed as a leading democracy by Clinton and other US leaders, Colombia permitted a challenge to the elite system of power-sharing by an independent political party, which, however, faced certain difficulties, such as the assassination of about 3000 activists, including presidential candidates, mayors, and legislators. <<
You'll notice this also happened during the Clinton presidency. It's not really a partisan issue; if anything, it's the Republicans who should be shouting the loudest about this.
In fact, some do: http://www3.uakron.edu/worldciv/pascher/model.html , http://www.endtimesnetwork.com/crt_nws.html
Those links take you to fundamentalist Christian pages, linking these foreign aid plans to terrorism and the New World Order.
More on Clinton's "aid" to Colombia here: http://bostonglobewatchdog.com/1121.html
>>>Clinton waived the human rights concerns, citing "national security interest," and signed the legislation that will send $1.3 billion of our tax money to the Colombian army next year, with no incentive to improve their egregious record on human rights.
U.S. "Drug Czar" Barry McCaffrey justifies the military aid on the grounds that Colombia "is a democracy three hours from Miami. We simply have no choice but to understand that our interests are wrapped up in the success of Venezuela, Colombia, and other regional partners."
The concept of protecting "our interests" is a common one in U.S. foreign policy. Two interesting studies about levels of U.S. aid and investment as they relate to the level of human rights abuses were conducted in the 1980s by Lars Schoultz and Edward Herman. Professor Noam Chomsky, of MIT, cited Herman's work in a lecture he delivered fifteen years ago in Boston:
"Herman found the same correlation: the worse the human rights climate, the more American aid goes up. But he also carried out another study which gives you some insight into what's really happening. He compared American aid to changes in the investment climate, the climate for business operations, as measured, for example, by whether foreign firms can repatriate profits and that sort of thing. It turned out there was a very close correlation. The better the climate for business operations, the more American aid -- the more we support the foreign government. That gives you a plausible theory. U.S. foreign policy is in fact based on the principle that human rights are irrelevant, but that improving the climate for foreign business operations is highly relevant... Now, how do you improve the business climate in a Third World country? Well, it's easy. You murder priests, you torture peasant organizers, you destroy popular organizations, you institute mass murder and repression to prevent any popular organization. And that improves the investment climate."<<<
> Yet the USA has to fight worldwide terrorism at
> a staggering cost.
Does that include the expense of CIA advisors to future terrorist cadres? Sorry, that was a cynical joke.
> If all the money we send overseas was used wisely
> back here, America would be a much better
> place. We would not have a deficit or citizens
> with no health insurance or seniors going
> without medicine. We would have better roads,
> schools, and lower tax rates.
Can't argue with that....
But when O'Reilly says:
>> America has poured billions of dollars into the Middle East. Israel has used our money to build a fierce military machine. I'm not exactly sure how the Palestinians have used our money, as most of the people there are desperately poor, while the Palestinian leadership lives very well. <<
It's a bit misleading - for one thing, something like 50% of Israeli citizens are or were American citizens too, while 100% of Palestinians live in Israeli-controlled Palestine, making it a lot harder to get things like business loans or bank accounts. Also, America has armed the Israeli nation and supports that investment with enormous subsidies. Palestine gets a little bit of humanitarian aid, but that's it. It's comparing applesauce with orchards.
As for the people being poor while the leadership gets rich, I don't see Sharon living communally on the kibbutz -- which, by the way, is a socialist shared-resource lifestyle, nationally owned and popularly thought of as one's donation to the cause of Israel. Even though you don't really get a choice about going there - it's either the kibbutz or the army for two years.
- gab
I'll send this for real in about an hour or two, so if anyone thinks of anything else, lemme know....
thanks,
g
[ 12-03-2002: Message edited by: grant ] |
