The Special Relationship!

[Skydancer]

So Bush gets the British forces and Blair on board in his war!

And Blair gets from Bush..........

Yes thats right folks bugger all!

Africa is in dire need. Blair's Govt takes a lead on trying to put together a plan to do something about the problem, goes to his pal Bush for support and gets minimal derisory concessions.

Some special relationship. And they ask on the news tonight why Mr Bush isn't popular amongst British and European people?

Maybe its because he appears to treat our leaders with contempt!


From the BBC

"Aid agencies are urging Tony Blair not to "cave in to US pressure" and weaken his relief plan for Africa.
During the UK Prime minister's trip to Washington US President George Bush is set to pledge $674m (£350m) to fight hunger in Ethiopia and Eritrea.

But aid groups called it a "drop in the ocean" that fell far short of UK plans for debt relief, aid and fairer trade.

Mr Blair, though, insisted there had been "significant progress" on those aims, and said the US would offer more.

"There are still issues we need to resolve, but I am increasingly hopeful we will get a good deal on that," he said in Washington on Tuesday.

  To lower the ambition at this critical stage, would be seen by many as a betrayal of Africa

Oxfam


"It is important we deal with the situation in Ethiopia and Eritrea, but obviously, there's a lot more that needs to be dealt with... the [Bush] administration itself has made clear that this is not the only commitment." Mr Bush's $674m is part of the US aid budget that had already been announced but had not yet been allocated to a country.

Mr Blair has said he wants rich countries to add to their existing contributions - and help raise an extra $25bn (£13.5bn) in African aid at the G8 summit Britain is hosting at Gleneagles, Scotland in July.

'Not pulling weight'

However Mr Blair recognises that the US will not support all of his ideas.

He told the Financial Times newspaper: "There are certain things we know they are not going to do, that we are not asking them to do."

 
Mr Blair has called Africa 'a scar on the world's conscience'

Mr Bush has already opposed plans set out by the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, to use an international finance facility to fund vaccinations - funded by borrowing on the bond market - saying he cannot commit the US to future debt repayments.


The US has also refused to agree to give 0.7% of its national income in international aid.

Washington's reluctance to join Mr Blair's crusade against poverty has angered some development experts.

"The US is not pulling its weight right now," said Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University's Earth Institute.

He said there was "a great myth in the US" that aid was ineffective because of inefficiency and corruption.

"It's a nonsense. Aid works - the problem is it's on such a small scale that it's not commensurate with the challenge," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

 

Oxfam said Mr Blair "must not cave in to US pressure and water down proposals on aid, trade and debt... To lower the ambition at this critical stage, would be seen by many as a betrayal of Africa."

At a press conference on Tuesday evening Mr Bush and Mr Blair are also expected to make a joint announcement on climate change - another British priority for Gleneagles.

The two countries also have different approaches to that issue.

The US favours a technology-based solution to global warming over targets to curb greenhouse gases.

Mr Blair told the Financial Times he was not asking the US "to reverse [its] position on Kyoto. There's no way the Americans are going to do that."

But he said he was still hopeful of a breakthrough!"

( yeah right )


Source
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4071020.stm

[eagl]

I'm not sure why we need to send ANY money there.

I have pages upon pages of reasons why, but here's two.

AIDS.  This is a disease spread mostly by destructive and dangerous voluntary behavior.  It is tragic that raped women and their children suffer, but the men have no excuse.  Go about having indiscriminant unprotected sex with multiple partners, and you're gonna contract and spread diseases.  I feel zero obligation to pay out to fix this symptom of a degenerate society.

Food.  In South Africa, when the admittedly racist minority white government and landowners were thrown out (or murdered) and the farms turned over to "native" owners and managers, they managed to cut crop production to under 10% of it's previous levels.  Nearly 70% of South Africa's croplands go untended, and the remaining 30% is inefficiently managed.  They did this to themselves, refuse to cooperate with each other even to the bare minimum required to feed themselves, and then dare to hold their greedy hands out for free food.  Again, I feel zero obiligation to pay out to fix this symptom of a degenerate society.

They know they have problems, and they damn well know how to fix them.  They need only to join the rest of the world in simple practices of civilized, society-friendly behavior.  But in many part of Africa schools are replaced by the societal norms of rape and plunder.  This is a conscious decision, and there is no excuse.  Even the native North American tribes prior to Columbus had societies that were far more productive, peaceful, cooperative, and supportive to their members.  Sure they had conflicts and some tribes were downright nasty, but to a great extent even their most troublesome tribal conflicts followed ritualized rules of warfare that prevented the decimation of any particular tribe or the mass starvation of entire regions out of spite.

What has happened in South Africa, where they HAD THEIR CHANCE, inheriting (taking) a functional society and infrastructure and destroyed it in a couple of decades, and what goes on in the rest of Africa in terms of the willing behavioral-based spread of AIDS and petty tribal warfare in the face of any sense of the "common good", makes me completely unwilling to voluntarily spend any money whatsoever to help perpetuate what goes on in that continent.  The South African example is only one of many cases that clearly show how if you gave them a birthday cake, they'd rather crap on it and fling chunks at each other than cooperate long enough to cut pieces and share.

If my Govt wishes to pour money down that sewer, so be it.  I only hope they minimize the wasted resources because there is no payback except to the greedy and violent who receive such aid.

[dedalos]

Eagl, I take it you must be a religius person?  

Ethiopia may be a little different than S. Africa (you can see that by opening a book).  As far as the production of S african farms goes, you are absolutly right.  Slavory produces a lot more.  Again you can see that by opening any US history book.

[Skydancer]

So in essence eagl  let them rot huh? Just so we get it strait.

[Stringer]

Other Donors: The leading bilateral donors for Ethiopia over the period 1997-2003, in order of levels of assistance, are the United States, Japan, Italy, Germany, the UK, Canada, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. The UK and Canada are planning to triple their assistance levels in coming years. The leading multilateral donors are the World Bank, the European Union (EU), the UN Agencies, and the African Development Bank. The World Bank is shifting more to grant assistance, as debt sustainability is a concern. The United States is the leading humanitarian assistance donor, followed by the EU and World Food Program.



Darfur Humanitarian Emergency
Total FY 2005 USG Humanitarian Assistance for the Darfur Emergency (to date): $379,501,535
Total FY 2003 – 2005 USG Humanitarian Assistance for the Darfur Emergency: $637,947,215


The $15 billion President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is focused on achieving the goals of treating at least two million HIV-infected persons with anti-retroviral therapy, preventing seven million new infections in 14 countries in Africa and the Caribbean, and caring for 10 million persons infected with or affected by HIV, including orphans and vulnerable children.


There's more, but I've got to go for now.......

[JimBear]

Skydancer must be getting a little woozy from bleeding out over whatever troll issues he has for the day

[Skydancer]

Bout all that idiot comment is worth jimbear! Thanks for contributing to the debate!

[eagl]

Haha.  Go ahead dedalos, try to pigeonhole me.

I'm calling it like it is, or at least how I see it.  It has nothing to do with religion.

Skydancer, my proposal would be to very strictly regulate ANY aid to ANY country based entirely on behavior and performance.  If a region has an AIDS problem due to rape, then treat the women and children, not the men.  If they need food due to unusual weather or other natural disasters, help them get their own crops cultivated and provide only enough aid to last until the next crop.  But if they're starving because they'd rather whail about with a machete or refuse to follow generally accepted agrocultural practices, tie future aid to the acceptance and adoption of behaviors that are progressive in nature.  

Simply giving aid to "those in need" only perpetuates the conditions that caused that need.  

This is why I donated a lot to the tsunami funds.  Because the areas that got wiped out by the tsunami were largely fully productive and functioning societies.  Sure like all societies theirs has some bad parts, but for the most part areas like toejamet were not dominated by centuries of tribal warfare and a culture of rape and murder to the exclusion of anything remotely like a common goal or regional stability.

Hell, I'd rather donate food/money to Iran or Syria because at least they're trying to hold together an honest society.  Sure many Muslim societies view my mere existence as a blasphemy that needs to be wiped from the earth, but at least they're not out raping everything that moves and then crying about how the US isn't helping them by handing out AIDS medication so they can go on raping and spreading AIDS to even more people.

I'd rather see Communism "win" than help perpetuate the culture of rape and murder in many "needy" African regions.  If they want to change and show ANY progress, then I'm very willing to help out.  But that's not what's going on.

Saying "so you'll just let them rot" is exactly the false dilemma that the bleeding heart commie pinko liberals in the world ALWAYS put forward when the subject of aid to third world countries comes up.  It's not an either-or situation, and I refuse to let someone else make me feel guilty for not giving medicine to a rapist or food to a lazy, sociopathic tribal militia murderer.  If they want to eat, put down the machete or gun and pick up a shovel or plow.  Every society worth helping knows, understands, and internalizes the realization that if you don't help pick yourself up out of the gutter or at least halt your own selfish destructive behavior, then you'll live a short miserable life wondering why everyone else is so cruel as to let you continue being "not worth saving".

[Skydancer]

"bleeding heart commie pinko liberals "

Your words betray you. You try to act like you are making a rational argument then resort to this.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/default.stm

Go learn.

[eagl]

Piss off skydancer.  Take your holier-than-thou attitude and stuff it up your bung.  What have you added to the discussion other than one-liners, quotes from articles others have written, and the usual guilt-trip laden accusations against those who may want to see some sort of return on their investment?

If the shoe fits, if you see that your argument is made up entirely of the slogans of the liberal do-gooders of the world, then your reaction is understandable.  You are fixated on a colorful description of an argumentative fallacy that you are perpetuating.

Try an original thought for once.  If I thought your entire argument was based on "the US should give more because the rest of the world wants us to", then I'd probably not have replied in the first place.  I rather hoped you could come up with an original thought or opinion of your own, but you'd rather parrot the words of anyone who wants someone else to give money to those who simply do not deserve it, and follow it up by more one-line accusations of insensitivity and heartless greed.

Pot.  Kettle.

Learn?  Heh.  You can read and parrot, but have you learned to synthesize your own thoughts and come up with your own conclusions?  My info comes from Time and National Geographic Explorer.  Unlike many however, an article about how rapists die of AIDS does not strike me as a tragedy that needs my help to fix.  It strikes me as the result that should logically be expected from following a particular course of behavior.  Likewise, taking a productive farm from landowners who have been producing an abundance of food, and then being totally unable to manage that farm also strikes me as the logical result of the actions taken.  A reasonable person would not shoot the farmers who feed him and his family, and again I don't feel any impulse to feed the man who has shot his grocer or farmer, or the man who raids and murders instead of spending time tilling his own land.  Giving aid to those people without demanding behavioral change does nothing but perpetuate their poor behavior.

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by Skydancer
So Bush gets the British forces and Blair on board in his war!

And Blair gets from Bush..........

Yes thats right folks bugger all!

I thought Blair got a third term...

[thrila]

eagl would you be against money educating africans about the cause and preventation of AIDS.   An awful lot of aid money is spent on it.

[GtoRA2]

Spot on Eagl
 I am with you.


 I would even go so far as to say we should cut money on aids cure research, and spend it on cancer, or diseases were people do not have a choice about getting them.

[eagl]

Thrila,

I'm in favor of education, but there should be some sort of response.  For example, a recent national geographic article I read noted that in many subsidized schools, young girls often attend only until they learn enough to get by in degrading "traditional" roles.  Once they reach a certain age, they're either discouraged from attending or they're simply raped and forced into submission in those traditional roles.  I'm not too comfortable funding those schools as long as they perpetuate that sort of status quo.  I'd prefer that money spent on a school be used to educate the whole population, not just the boys.

It's not about equality, because there is no such thing.  It's about setting up a culture of progressive cooperation, and that requires the participation of the entire population in a reasonably safe environment, without coercion.  Call it bribe money if you like, because I'm happy to bribe someone to become productive.  There is a return on an investment if the recipient can offer goods or services back to you later on.  That's one of the cornerstones of civilized society, offering bribes (investment capital) to people or groups in order to raise them to a level where they can be trading partners.  That trade may be food, industrial products, or even purely intellectual or artistic goods.

Yea, education is good but again it should be tied to acceptable behavioral norms to keep the aid from perpetuating a dysfunctional society.

[Dowding]

Eagl, I think you have South Africa confused with Zimbabwe.

It would seem Time and National Geographic are not the publications they were... or perhaps starting with an atlas would be a more 'productive' use of your time.