Friday 29th of March 2024

on the value of busking .....

The Editor

Sydney Morning Herald                                                              June 13, 2005

   

So Bono & Bob Geldorf have welcomed the G7 decision to write-off US$40billion in debt owed by the world’s poorest nations (‘Debt deal just the beginning, says Geldorf’, Herald, June 13)?

Would it were true.  

Sadly, our well-intentioned prancing pop stars, like those they so badly wish to help, seem to have fallen victim to the latest cynical instalment of the west’s ongoing imperialistic shell-game.

Only US$10 billion owed by the world’s poorest is to be ‘forgiven’, as this is the amount owed to multilateral institutions such as the IMF & the World Bank: the rest is owed to individual countries & the private sector.  

Further, suggestions by British Chancellor, Gordon Brown, that aid to poor African countries will rise to US$50 billion over the next three years are also misleading, with the funds concerned to be raised through the international bond market in the first instance but to be backed by future government aid promises ie: no new money.

The reality is that the proposals approved by the G7 offer very little in the form of genuine debt reduction & the little that is offered is conditional on the countries concerned adopting policies supportive of the activities of trans-national corporations in exploiting their natural resources, in particular oil & minerals.  

Hidden by the noise of the G7’s latest self-congratulatory announcements was news from the World Bank that more than US$20 billion or 40% of the world’s current aid budgets is misdirected or recycled in the form of ‘fees’ paid to consultants & has no direct impact on poverty.

And, if further perspective is required, British arms sales to the ‘new wild west’, as George Bush refers to Africa, have quietly quadrupled to more than £1 billion annually in the past four years, whilst the US has spent US$200 billion thus far on its war to bring ‘freedom & democracy’ to Iraq.  

Keep busking boys.

...Talking to meself in the blue corner

Well said, John. I already had a few cynical (unfortunately) pointers in my blog on the world bank, sadly concluding: ... Is the goal of “fighting corruption

a nice little earner .....

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.

 

A Nice Little Earner

Victory Over Want vs. Carnival of Busking

For many years a former Australian Ambassador James Cumes has been gathering expressions of support for the Democratic Initiative which he entitled in 2002 'Victory Over Want.' His life long laments were echoed in the BBC Dimbleby Lecture on 29 December 2001, by the former President Clinton who told us that "the burdens of the twenty-first century...are formidable. Global poverty - half the people on earth are not part of the new economy...Half the people on earth live on less than two dollars a day. A billion people, less than a dollar a day. A billion people go to bed hungry every night and a billion and a half people - one quarter of the people on earth - never get a glass of clean water. One woman dies every minute in childbirth....We have to reduce global poverty and increase the economic empowerment of poor people. We know how to do this and it doesn't cost that much money." As Solomon Burke sang in his Grammy winning CD, Don't Give Up on Me – “None of us are free, if one of us is chained, none of us are free.