Last week we were all horrified with the blasts in London. But today, 24 children died in Iraq after a terrorist attack, and I haven’t seen any of the polititians in the western countries that last week condemned the blasts in London, condemn the ones in Iraq. Of course, none of those polititians have neither condemned any of the more than 20,000 Iraqi people dead during the war.
Also, every day thousands of people die in Africa because of AIDS, hunger, wars and diseases that can be easily cured in western countries, and, again, none of those polititians condemn them, or, even better, do something to put them to an end. It seems deaths are different depending on where they happen.
Also, less important compared to the things above, Europe interior ministers are talking these days about spying all communications, that is, phone calls, email messages, from any single citizen accross Europe. Seems they have what happened in the US after 9/11 as an example of what to do.
Claiming that the world’s governments do nothing to combat hunger and the spread of disease in Africa is inaccurate. Each year, the US and other governments collectively give many billions of dollars in aid to these countries.
Unfortunately, the problem is far too large to solve in this way. Fundamentally these problems cannot be solved by foreign aid, because of the incredibly vast scope of the problem, and indeed, there is good evidence that foreign aid to Africa is actually exascerbating the crisis.
In the end, they will only be solved by the formation of an economy capable of sustaining economic growth in these countries. Hand in hand with that goal is stamping out the corruption and strife that runs rampant especially in Africa. There is no force for improving human lives greater than economic growth.
The problem is an extremely challenging one to solve, and no good solutions have presented themselves. Entrenched regimes prevent reform and often even prevent aid from reaching the intended recipients. Widespread corruption makes economic growth impossible.
I can assure you that there are many in the US and Europe who do see these problems and are desparately seeking real solutions to them. The crisis has proven resistant to all attempts to solve it.
The billions of help from the US and other countries (including mine) are usually lends, which means that the more money they give to those countries, the bigger is the debt of those countries.
About the formation of sustaining economy, you are right, that’s what they need, but it’s very difficult since mostly all resources in those countries belong to foreign companies, or, even worst, to dictatorial governments, so, as you say, the money they get from those resources (a lot, since Africa is plenty of resources) mostly doesn’t get to the people in those countries.
I find it difficult to say anything sensible in response to this. In fact I wrote a long response a few hours ago but decided against it.
I found your first paragraph terrible. Not only for its excusing of terrorism but I can’t see anyone who has been in the UK for the last year could say that no-one is appalled at the deaths in Iraq.
I hope that the rest of your views are through a lack of knowledge or poor writing.
I can’t understand why you think I am justifying terrorism. I’m not, since I know what terrorism is (we’ve suffered it in Spain, and still are suffering, for more than 30 years), so not only I don’t justify it, but am strongly against it, as a I am against any kind of violence.
What I was protesting about is the difference of treatment the polititians do to that terrorism, depending on where it happens.
And the rest of my views are based on facts, that western countries do nothing to fight hunger, diseases, etc in Africa, apart from lending huge amounts of money, which increases the debt of those countries.
While I don’t doubt that there is more western nations can do I believe it is utter horse-shit to state “western countries do nothing to fight hunger, diseases, etc in Africa, apart from lending huge amounts of money”.
I’m all for more and better aid, but that will be achieved by looking at what we are doing and seeing what is working and what doesn’t. I don’t see anything to be gained from denying the existance of the various food and health programs that _do_ exist.
Right, the food and health programs that exist are a good thing, although they usually don’t come from governments, but from not-for-profit organizations, which are indeed the ones that are really doing something to change the situation.
Also, those programs just solve the problem of a few people, which is of course good, but still not enough to put an end to poverty and diseases. Like Rob says, what they need is a good economy, and that is very difficult with the huge debt the African countries have and with all the barriers they have to enter the international markets