25 Comments

1. Buddy Larsen:

Revive the Lincoln Brigade.

Jun 8, 2005 - 10:05 am 2. Jamie Irons:

Buddy,

One of my teachers at Yale, Clement Markert, who later became a good friend, had, as a sophomore in college, joined the A.L.B.; his closest friend was killed in action before his eyes over there. He named his oldest son, Alan, after the friend.

Clement died in his eighties before 9/11 (summer of 2000). He was the farthest left person I have ever had as a friend. I am quite certain, though, that he would support the war on Islamic fascism just as he fought against the Spanish fascists.

Jamie Irons

Jun 8, 2005 - 10:35 am 3. Jamie Irons:

Roger,

I don’t know what to do about Africa either.

Would it possibly be a good idea for us to “adopt” a representative country (whatever that might mean!), one that would be willing to work with us, and pour all our aid into that one place, declaring before the whole world that our intention was not to fail (thus putting our prestige on the line and making it in our interest to follow through), and see what we can accomplish.

If we fail, at least we will have made (I hope) an honest effort.

If we succeed, perhaps we could later succeed elsewhere.

A myriad of piecemeal efforts, which seems to have been everybody’s approach, has clearly done little beyond enriching the various oligarchs and tryants.

Jamie Irons

Jun 8, 2005 - 10:41 am 4. Knucklehead:

Jamie,

I doubt anyone actually knows what to do about Africa. Leaving them to their own devices has not produced good results – it seems to only produce nasty despots.

Leaving it to the UN and NGOs seems to yield something akin to sending a case of bandaids and topical analgesic to a smallpox epidemic. It doesn’t stop the epidemic or do much for the victims but it does give some kleptocrat the opportunity to make a buck selling the donated bandaids and ointment to and gain power distributing and witholding the supplies.

You’re idea about picking some piece of the problem and going all out to solve it is probably a perfectly good one. Be prepared, however, to be relentlessly attacked for destroying the authenticity of the piece you’ve selected and also for doing nothing to solve the rest of the problem. And once you’ve gotten successful be prepared to own the remainder of the problems while being attacked as above with additional attacks should you fail to solve every bit of the entire problem.

Jun 8, 2005 - 11:00 am 5. Pat Curley:

Color me suspicious. Geldof did a good job impressing the guys on our side, but his bizarre plans for disrupting the G8 summit, including the reenactment of Dunkirk are a concern. I suspect there’s going to be quite a bit of trouble in Edinburgh (remember Seattle & Genoa?) and you can probably lay quite a bit of that at Geldof’s speech. While he talks a good game about free trade and open markets, I suspect that most of the people who show up will be the usual anti-globalization idiots–the Chomskyite hordes and the Black Bloc. I’d be happy to be proven wrong on this but I don’t expect it. Read some of the Brit papers on this; they’re a little more gimlet-eyed when it comes to Sir Robert.

Jun 8, 2005 - 11:52 am 6. Pat Curley:

Doh! speech=feet!

Jun 8, 2005 - 12:13 pm 7. Barbara Skolaut:

Leaving it to the UN and NGOs seems to yield something akin to sending a case of bandaids and topical analgesic to a smallpox epidemic.

No, knucklehead, it’s more like sending a more virulent strain of smallpox.

Jun 8, 2005 - 12:14 pm 8. Kevin P:

Roger:

The problems of Africa are heartbreaking but I am a bit wary of the “lets hold a concert and save the world idea.” Bono seems to be trying to work with the G-8 countries and not just use them as a rhetorical whipping post to promote his image. But as previous posters have noted unless there is some change in some of the kleptocracies that run some of the african countries the aid will not work.

Over a 7 day retreat I talked with a great man who spent 3 years in africa flying food and medical supplies into Africa, He was part of a missionary group that is still operating in Africa but he came back disillusioned. Not because of any failure in being able to spread his religous message. He said in most cases that he expierenced no interference in that activity. It was in getting the food and medicine to the people who needed it.

He said that everytime he landed his plane he was forced to run a gauntlet of men who expected some form of bribery to let him proceed. They treated the goods that were being sent in to save their fellow citizens lives as some sort of taxable item. He sometimes would have to spend days at the airport negotiating his way to the needy. The people who impeded their work knew who they were and had no suspicions about there intent , nor did they have a problem with the religous nature of his group. It was strictly a shakedown. The non religous aid groups go thru the same hustle. After 3 years of struggling he came to the sad conclusion that until the governments of the african countries dealt with the issue of NGO shakedowns the problems of these needy people will never change.

Jun 8, 2005 - 12:20 pm 9. PJ:

I’ve read, too, that a poll was taken in an African country–can’t remember the name now–and that 77 percent of the people there would choose to return to British colonial rule over their present government.

The anti-west, anti-colonial movement best explains the tolerance for Darfur and now Mugage and his increasingly insane violence.

Jun 8, 2005 - 12:26 pm 10. Terrye:

I checked google news when I came on line and there was a story from Salon entitled Broken Promises. Of course the broken promise is that the richest country in the world will not agree to open the spicket and just pour an unlimited amount of money into Africa. Believe it or not there are poor people right here. We are not a bottomless pit of greenbacks.

I can see where this will go. No matter what we do it will not be enough. I am afraid this initiative will just be another excuse to spread antiAmericanism.

I hope I am wrong.

BTW, haven’t we tripled aid to Africa this decade? I now that even if it is true it will not pacify the parasites at Salon who are no doubt living pretty high on the hog themselves but I seem to remember that aid was increased before this.

I hope it is not just money down a rat hole. So much of the third world is dysfunctional that money seems to offer only temporary relief, if that.

look at Bolivia. They never got over losing a war to Chile ages and ages ago. I read that was why they really did not want the pipeline, they felt it would benefit Chile because they have the shore line. go figure.

Jun 8, 2005 - 12:49 pm 11. ahem:

Continuing to throw money down the rabbit hole is not gonna do it. If anything, it offers only temporary relief to a few while rewarding corruption.

No, the only thing that will save Africa is if the United States can mentor it into the 21st century–give it all the tools and institutions it needs in order to take care of itself. I’d like to see more money sunk into educational programs that teach Africans the joys of living under a constitutional democracy and working in a free market economy.

The problem is how the hell to do it when all of Europe and half the United States don’t understand the idea themselves.

Jun 8, 2005 - 1:22 pm 12. Knucklehead:

Barbara,

Point taken. I yield to your superior analogy.

Jun 8, 2005 - 1:41 pm 13. PSGInfinity:

Someone else said (more eloquently than I) that transparancy, accountability, the Rule of Law, and a worthy education system (including the adults) are what Africa needs. With those, he opined, all was not only possible, but would require surprisingly little added help from us. Without them, not much would, COULD change.

…can’t find the link. Ah well, karmic hat tip, oh eloquent one…

Jun 8, 2005 - 1:47 pm 14. freetotem:

The good intentions of First World countries, and the sometimes mixed intentions of NGOs have created a permanent welfare culture in Africa. Over half a century of “aid’ to the region later and things are worse, not better. And the aid boosters, like America’s teachers’ unions talking about our public schools, say the solution is always and evermore, more money. Money to be stolen by kleptocrat governments, spent by NGOs on fancy white Toyota Land Cruisers and safari hats, and squandered down the drain of whatever the latest “aid” fad of the week is. Are all forms of aid to Africa futile? Probably not. For example, the Gates Foundation’s efforts to combat certain diseases look promising. But the old liberal notion that money and infrastructure will solve problems that are cultural has always failed, and it always will.

Jun 8, 2005 - 2:54 pm 15. Morgan:

I second Jamie Irons’s notion of adopting a country, and add that we need to work with it as a partner, not a parent.

We need to pick one that is, above all, not a sinkhole of corruption (did I steal that phrase from above?). The relationship should be contractual – we will do this, you will do that – because, as freetotem notes, there is nothing more destructive than welfare.

The contract should benefit both parties.

Elected representatives of both countries should approve it.

Jun 8, 2005 - 3:29 pm 16. Tumbleweeds:

I must disagree. The problem with Africa is not despotism. The core problem is tribalism.

Anything potentially good will be invariably consumed by this societal blight.

Jun 8, 2005 - 4:05 pm 17. Buddy Larsen:

A Treaty. A treaty with a district government. O jeez, i don’t even know what I’m talking about. I just need a name, I need an address of a family that needs help, I want to send ‘em a hundred bucks from time to time for something like putting the kids back in school.

Jun 8, 2005 - 4:10 pm 18. Buddy Larsen:

See what the Pseudo Left has done to us? We can’t even trust the charities to not use our donations to attack that which we must to defend.

Jun 8, 2005 - 4:12 pm 19. Les Nessman:

Read Kim du Toit’s essay ‘Let Africa Sink”.

It’s a year or two old (more?), but well worth reading; especially since Kim was born and raised in Africa.

Jun 8, 2005 - 8:36 pm 20. rgvdh:

“The question is how to do that… ”

I have an idea how to help at least one African country.

Unfortunately, US law probably prohibits us from taking up a collection to put a contract on Mugabe.

Jun 8, 2005 - 10:00 pm 21. Buddy Larsen:

Well, you can vote against Ted Kennedy, who did so much to turn Rhodesia–which was liberalizing nicely without him–over to the bunch now run by Mugabe. But Teddy forgot all about it once he got his swag.

Jun 8, 2005 - 10:38 pm 22. nittypig:

There are multiple African countries where foreign aid is a big chunk of government budgets. In these case the aid is enabling the despotism – isn’t that what happened with the original live aid.

I think current efforts from the left and right to tie aid more closely to governance are a huge step in the right direction, but what Geldof et al. ought to focus on (they do mention it, but it’s always secodnary) is access to markets. If all this aid money were instead spent placating (say) the sugar and cotton lobbies in the US so that free imports of those products could be happen everyone would be mcuh better off, particularly the African nations that produce those products.

Jun 9, 2005 - 8:18 am 23. Buddy Larsen:

nittypig is right that we need to learn more, out here in the great nevermind, about what exactly USA trade barriers exist, that do not benefit the free trade that might offer some areas of the subcontinent disaster zones some long-term free-market hope.

Jun 9, 2005 - 9:08 am 24. Tom Grey - Liberty Dad:

You should be ashamed of yourself for not knowing:

stop forcing Westerners to buy high-priced Western food instead of low-cost African grown food — end agriculture protectionism and subsidies to rich Western farmers.

See the Kick_AAS (all agro subsidies) by the Guardian (not usually a free market newsgroup.)

Virtually everybody who is poor is poor for one reason — they don’t have a job.

Solution: use as much money as you have, and loan it to poor people to start small businesses — micro businesses.

I loved Bob Geldof’s book after Live Aid, 20 years ago; he cares enough to be honest. I would have asked him how many sustainable (profit-making) businesses his “aid” has helped found.

Profit is the business term, AND measure, for sustainability. Every quarter most big capitalist companies give a report on their “sustainability, and sustainability forecasts” — profit. Sustainability is why capitalism works — plus the fact that investors, owners, managers, and workers all voluntarily agree to work together in peace and trust (and harmony? not quite).

A “peace” economy, in practice, looks like — capitalism.

Jun 9, 2005 - 2:32 pm 25. Buddy Larsen:

You is right as rain, Tom. I always see profit as a future, a paid-for call option on a piece of it. But, I really like your more streamlined version. You’re right, the capitalist way is nature’s way. Modified to whatever ability we have to put a reasonable safety net under our most vulnerable. Micro-loans are doing wonders in some parts of the world. Usually it’s circles of civilians making them, hard to invest in a bank that does it. Guess that’s the political weakness of the need for sustainability; since micro-biz is risky, and risk is a natural fact, here come the G-Man to take all that risk away for ya. Unfortunaltely, an equation with a missing integer don’t work so good, and sooner or later there’ll have to be a robbery or invasion to keep the sustainability going.

Jun 9, 2005 - 3:12 pm

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