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Tempus Fugit Memento Mori - Time Flies Remember Death
Note to Bono and Rich Do-Gooders - Please shut the hell up
Blaming the West and demanding free money is crass arrogance
by StFerdIII
Forgiving U$50 billion of tax payer funded money owed by African regimes is economic and political nonsense, but it is cool and hip and so the media love it. Apparently before God there was Bono. It is hard to know what the Pre-God idol looks like since he refuses to take off silly glasses that most teenagers would shun. But Pre-God Bono is feted by the media as the living incarnation of political goodness – an extremely rich rock star that wants to save Africa. Tears well up in appreciation of his godliness and holier than thou-ness.
Maybe Bono should put a sock in it. If he and other uber-rich weeping sentimentalists want to donate private capital to save corrupt regimes in Africa, be my guest. Forgiving regime debt is erasing tax payer money – all funds given by international banks and countries were of course donations by taxpayers in northern lands. The African regimes have used foreign money to mangle, destroy, incarcerate and wage war on domestic and international society. I don’t buy the argument that Africa and Iraq are the same. Forgiving Iraqi debt is sound politics and economics. It allows a struggling democracy some room to grow. There is no such reform taking place in Africa.
The idol worshipping of Bono’s silly idea is wrong on many accounts. First Africa is rich and needs institutional reform not money. Second, foreign aid is usually tied to service and arms contracts – in other words the Africans use foreign aid to purchase first world armaments. This is hypocritical and murderous aid. Third, if you want to reduce poverty increase African exports by lowering tariff barriers and erase the wealth destroying subsidies that exist in all rich countries for a pampered agricultural elite.
Africa is naturally rich. It possesses 90% of the world's cobalt, 90% of its platinum, 50% of its gold, 98% of its chromium, 64% of its manganese and one-third of its uranium. It is rich in diamonds, has more oil reserves than North America, and it is estimated to hold 40% of the world's potential hydroelectric power. I find it hard to justify foreign aid handouts to such a rich area of the world.
The Africans themselves has squandered their rich inheritance. A main problem is institutional violence abetted by corruption. According to the African Union's own estimate, Africa loses as much as US$148-billion a year to corruption. In other words you could relieve in one year much of Africa’s miserable poverty rates by ending corruption and transferring funds from overseas bank accounts to African economic and social assistance programs. How foreign aid and ‘Bonoism’ would change this, no one has bothered to explain.
Another nonsense is the entire idea of writing off debt. The World Bank states that 50 % of the value of all external African debt lies in offshore accounts. If you want to erase debt wouldn’t you first end corruption and then find, seize and use in debt repayments all illegally held overseas money ? There is no financial rationale to allow these funds to exist while Africans starve to death or northern taxpayers witness a loss of their wealth.
The World Bank summarises Africa’s problems:
"Corruption often flourishes where institutions are weak, where the rule of law and formal rules are not rigorously observed, where political patronage is rife, where the independence and professionalism of the public sector have been eroded, and where civil society lacks the means to generate public pressure," [World Bank report, Can Africa Claim the 21st Century? ]
Indeed the vast resources and potential of Africa have been stolen by power elites. Nigeria in the past 20 years has lost $500 billion in corruption and state theft. This is equivalent to all the foreign aid given to Africa. Kenya, Zimbabwe, Egypt, West Africa, Swaziland, indeed most every nation excepting South Africa to some extent and Botswana, has engaged in organised political theft. "The failure of democracy and economic development in Africa are due to a large part to the scramble for wealth by predator elites who have dominated African politics since independence," says Tunde Obadina, economics editor of Africa Today magazine. "They see the state as a source of personal wealth accumulation. Africa's tragedy is not that its nations are poor. That is a condition that is a product of history. The tragedy is that it lacks ruling classes that are committed to overcoming the state of poverty."
Forgiving debt and blaming Western governments for Africa’s descent into madness fits nicely with the anti-Western, liberal media and political elite and their neo-marxian analysis of world history. We should feel guilt over our relative prosperity and not only forgive debt, but give more. The $100 billion per annum that the Western world sends overseas is either money wasted or money used to buy arms and repress society. But in the age of Pre-God Bonoism and superstar tears of pain for Africa, such hypocrisy never makes the front pages. Only photos of a late 40’s something rocker wearing dumb glasses and offering dumber ideas do. What is really sad is that we buy into it.
