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Originally Posted by Almost a Christian
I'm not interested in watching people die. But let's make one thing clear. All the strutting ego-driven concerts don't add up to a dime...
What can be done is to develop an international trade consensus to compel multinationals to behave ethically, remove their support for junta's and a system of tair trade should then regulate commerce. If people are actually dying at a catastrophic rate then aid should be rendered, otherwise hand-outs breed dependence although technical advisors are permissable...
If such measures are implemented (they won't be, the status quo is too profitable) then positive improvements will be seen in Africa within 50 years. Naturally that won't satisfy that whiney Corr woman but waving a magic wand was never realistic proposition was it..?
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As you say, the present arrangements are too convenient for Western financial and political elites -- which is the only thing that matters -- so nothing will change. The present world system has evolved gradually over the last few centuries and I believe it affords the best perspective with which to view conditions in any specific part of the world. This world system operates with structural inequality that is enforced militarily if need be, and most of the rest of the time by manifestly one-sided rules and regulations administered by bodies like the WTO and IMF.
But even before this system came into being, life in the Third World was no bed of roses. As Plethon has indicated, Africa has been in a state of low-intensity warfare for centuries. Are we our brother's keeper? How can we change human nature? If the way they have decided to live causes them problems, is that our responsibility? Western exploitation would be impossible, in fact, without local complicity, incompetence, apathy, corruption, and division. This is the gist of the matter. And our good intentions -- if we have them -- are powerless in the face of this. In light of this, the best we can probably do is try to live our lives and let them get on with theirs -- whatever it is.
Postscript: To drive home my point, an article in today's Guardian:
Zimbabwe runs out of bread | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited
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Zimbabwe's bakeries have shut and supermarkets have warned there will be no bread for the foreseeable future as the government admitted that wheat production had collapsed following the seizure of white-owned farms.
The agricultural ministry announcement that the wheat harvest is only about a third of what is required, and that imports are held up by lack of hard currency, came as a deadline passed today for the last white farmers to leave their land or face prosecution for trespass.
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