[MD] No more SOM and no more money!

[Heather Perella]

     [Ham] 
> I was not aware that the people of Angola, Ghana,
> Mauritania, Nigeria,
> Zimbabwe, etc., enjoy the opportunities of a
> capitalistic system.  Since I
> haven't been following this thread...

     Hey Ham, as you said, you haven't been following
this thread, and Micah's saying there is NO
capitalistic system, so, since you, Ham, think there
is, then what is it.  Just a heads up.


     [Ham]
 I had no idea
> that what you really meant
> was why capitalists allow poverty to exist in
> underdeveloped countries.

     I do know the remnants of colonialism are still
in Africa, and a colonial system is still in place,
yet, not run on slavery and brute force so much
anymore.  It is those that were lucky to gain power
during those colonial periods, that didn't end for the
most part until after World War 2 by the way.  Those
lucky enough to gain power during that system, has the
power now, due to the hands full of $ and the law is
on their side to exploit.  Raw resources, even that
dehumanized word, are what are now exploited for gains
many in those countries will not see.  Their whole way
of living have been turned upside down.  What feed
them before, the forest, is what they kill now.  So,
we have conservatory groups trying to save the
forests.  This is today's story.  Just trying to catch
you up on this, Ham. 


     [Ham]
> The Bush administration has pledged $674 million for
> famine relief in
> Africa, plus debt relief for 18 African nations
> totaling about $16.7
> billion.  Tony Blair's Commission for Africa is
> calling for increases in
> official development assistance that could reach $75
> billion annually.  But,
> as Richard A. Joseph, director of the Program of
> African Studies, notes:

     This is not how to gain independence.  This is
how to gain more dependence.

     [Ham quotes] 
> "At the core of the continent's problems has been
> the failure to effectively
> use and distribute resources, whether they come from
> inside or outside.

     Marxism/Communism, right?

     [Ham]
  The G-8 leaders can double, triple or quadruple aid
to
> the continent and strike
> from their books billions of unrepayable loans.  But
> unless such largesse
> can prompt fundamental transformations in the way
> African institutions work,
> or do not work, these efforts will produce only
> another decade of deep
> frustration."

     African institutions set-up by colonials.

     [Ham] 
> As some wise person once said: "You can feed a
> starving person and relieve
> his hunger, but unless you teach him how to fish, he
> will never be
> self-reliant."  Throwing money at a problem is the
> least effective way to
> solve it.

     We are agreeing.

     [Ham]
  Humanitarians from Albert Schweitzer to
> Mother Theresa, and
> numerous privately funded organizations, have
> administered to the poor of
> Africa, but such charity is a drop in the bucket
> when a country has not
> advanced to the point of establishing a free
> enterprise economy.  This is
> the kind of "evolution to higher quality" that
> Pirsig talks about.  The free
> world cannot impose it on those who are not ready
> for it, as has recently
> been demonstrated in Russia and Iraq.

     I see this, and other things occurring, too.  Two
things are the cultural mindset's are trying to
incorporate a different civilizations view, and
secondly, the basic water and sewage systems in Africa
are not in place.  This second part would avoid many
of the diseases in this part of the world.  Medicine
helps, but if your not getting at the root of the
agricultural and industrial by-products where the
roots of many if not all of the diseases are
originating.  


     [Ham]
> But to say that capitalism "requires" people to
> suffer is ludicrous.

     Yet, the inevitable suffering in $ systems occur.
 $ systems have these sufferings, and you can
pin-point those problems on human laziness, but those
systems are human systems.  Humans are not that
intelligent.  We have tried to make large
civilizations, to only see problems run amuck through
them.  The system is the person in the mirror.  We
don't even understand how this system totally runs,
and yet we are living it.  Winging it most of the
time.

SA


 
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